The Four Workarounds: How the World's Scrappiest Organizations Tackle Complex Problems

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This book helps us live happier, successful, and more fulfilling lives." —Jenn Lim, CEO and cofounder of Delivering Happiness, and bestselling author of Beyond Happiness If you watched On the Basis of Sex, the biographical legal drama about RBG, you’ll have seen how by arguing from the position of a man’s diminished rights in front of all-male judges, RBG and her husband successfully set a historic precedent that unequal treatment on the basis of sex is unconstitutional. They chose the seemingly low-stakes case of Charles Moritz. If Moritz were a woman, he would have been entitled to a tax deduction for a caregiver’s expenses, but the law didn’t consider the case of a single man caring for his elderly mother. By winning this case, RBG exposed the broader sexism in US laws that afflicted women the most, creating precedents to press for changes in laws in Congress and to contest many court decisions that discriminated against women. In this volume, Paulo Savaget focuses on workarounds —“a creative, flexible, imperfection-loving, problem-solving approach”— and each workaround at its core “is a method that ignores or even challenges conventions on how, and by whom, a problem is meant to be solved.” He devotes a separate chapter to each of the four. Albert Einstein once suggested that problems cannot be solved by the same way(s) of thinking that caused them. Long ago, Charles Kettering observed, “If that’s how you’ve always done, it’s probably wrong.”

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Companies can actually stimulate a culture that embraces this flexibility and an adaptive nature that a workaround requires and that this positive deviance also requires. There are many ways of doing this that involve, for example, from a strategy perspective, allowing people to be a bit more pragmatic, be more practical, value imperfection, plan less, but allow people to experiment and pivot based on their experiments. This myth of the hero entrepreneur, who is visionary and who knows where we are going and is leading everyone to this, is not only inaccurate, but it’s undesirable as well on so many levels. It recreates and reinforces a very toxic culture in organizations that value some people who are portrayed as if they had special skills and abilities—change-making abilities—as if they know the future, and completely dismisses or ignores the contributions from a lot of other people who made things happen. Interested in how business leaders and policy makers can improve our lives and spread happiness across the world? Could you do with a how-to go guide for subverting the norm and achieving huge wins, all with minimal resource? Or would you like to delve deep into your social brain, so you can create dynamic, happy and high performing teams? If you’re interested, then read on … As you search for loopholes, try it from two different angles. First, you can make use of a different, more favorable set of rules than the status quo. When zooming out of what constrains you and focusing instead on less common types of rules or paths less taken, you may find loopholes to get what you want in a technically right but unconventional way. Second, you can look more closely at the specific performance of the rules you find restrictive to either void them or make their enforcement impossible. This task involves the analysis of the ambiguity of the rules and the circumstances under which they can, or cannot, be enforced. 4. The roundabout workaround.A smart guide to finding creative solutions for a variety of difficulties ... clever case studies enlighten, and business readers will appreciate the suggestions on how to make one's workplace "workaround friendly." ... Wise and level-headed, this delivers." — Publishers Weekly We constantly encounter complex problems at home, in our places of work, and in society at large. Even if we had all the time and money in the world, sometimes no good solution can be found. So, what should we do, especially when we can’t wait? The answer: a workaround.

The Four Workarounds - Google Books The Four Workarounds - Google Books

At its core, a workaround is a method that ignores or even challenges conventions on how, and by whom, a problem is meant to be solved. A hymn to deviance and “scrappiness” and a rich repository of stories . . . Entertaining’ Financial TimesWorkarounds are very powerful mechanisms for deviating from norms, from these rules that constrain us. What are the best Fintech Frameworks and Standards to design user-friendly, scalable, and secure solutions?

The Four Workarounds - LinkedIn The Four Workarounds - LinkedIn

You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. Tracey commented: ‘Our book has come at a very important moment - leaders are required to be courageous in reimagining work for young people joining organisations, for a hybrid context and for an ever-changing and ever-challenging external landscape. We explores the ancient needs, gifts and challenges that underlie teamwork while at the same time provides a practical guide to new approaches to work and leadership that make the best use of our unique human gifts. By understanding the ‘social brain’, leaders will be better equipped to create - and sustain - successful groups.’ They provide an environment where people can experiment, where they can test, where they can be flexible. It’s adaptive-management style that works really well. Also, this idea of portraying them as heroes with special skills has been often reproduced by the media, for example, or even by business books, like the myth of the dropout. Associate Professors Tracey and Samantha wrote their book for those leaders who are curious about how to lead sustainable high performing, innovative and impactful groups of people.I realized that my reports were relatively similar in terms of recommendations. I was already working with these ideas of systems thinking, systems design, and realized that the work I was doing wasn’t necessarily engaging with all the ways of approaching change. It was very much focused on single assumptions of making big, systemic changes. It is particularly suitable when traditional problem-solving methods have systematically failed or when you don’t have the necessary power or resources to pursue the conventional approach (Savaget 2023). The workaround is a creative, flexible, imperfection-loving, problem-solving approach. The next best workaround focuses on repurposing or recombining resources, which can range from tangible to intangible, and from the most high-tech to the most basic. The key is to focus on alternatives that are available but largely ignored, as well as the different and unconventional affordances or assemblages of resources at your disposal. Once in motion, normalized situations may seem difficult to disrupt, but disruption is precisely what roundabout workarounds offer. Here, we can learn from Scheherazade, the legendary Persian queen who used a series of workarounds to change the course of a seemingly inevitable fate bestowed upon her by her husband, King Shahryar. The story goes that Shahryar discovered that his first wife had cheated on him, and he came to believe that all women would betray him. After having that wife executed, the king decided to marry a new virgin every day and have her beheaded in the morning, before she had the chance to dishonor him. Obviously, no brief commentary such as mine could possibly do full justice to the value of the information, insights, and counsel that Paulo Savaget provides but I hope that I have at least provided some indication of why I think so highly of his book. It is a brilliant achievement. Bravo!