Leading complex organizations

Gill Eapen
1 min readMay 23, 2020

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It has been argued that women are superior in the management of complex organizations (1). This is due to the early specialization of jobs by Homo sapiens — men specialized in hunting and gathering and women in the organization and management of diverse groups and clans. The side effect of this focus for hundreds of thousands of years, something that appears to continue unencumbered in modern societies, is that men tend to be process focused.

Process expertise is not sufficient to manage complexity (1). A process focus forces the simplification of the objective function and aids linear thinking. Although this could be beneficial in simple and repetitive tasks, it impedes the understanding of non-linear interconnectivity and the big picture.

One test of competence for a leader is her ability to handle shocks and uncertainty. The recent shock of Covid-19 appears to prove this again. Countries led by women seem to have handled it better than their male counterparts. Examples include New Zealand, Germany, Norway, Taiwan, Iceland, Denmark, Finland, and others.

It is important for societies and companies to raise women to top leadership.

(1)

Flexibility: Flexible Companies for the Uncertain World

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Gill Eapen
Gill Eapen

Written by Gill Eapen

Gill Eapen is the founder and CEO of Decision Options ®, Mr. Eapen has over 30 years of experience in strategy, finance, engineering, and general management

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