Managing chaos: Thinking out of the box

Chaos means that strategies go wildly astray. It is often associated with missed deadlines, understaffing, runaway costs, and similar situations generally considered negative. Under these circumstances “Chaos” describes a situation where the goals of a strategy are unachievable and therefore the outcomes become random, unpredictable and often undesirable. This is exemplified in a recent E-mail message by Bill Ford to all of Ford Motor’s employees saying: "The business model that sustained us for decades is no longer sufficient to sustain profitability." Geoffrey Colvin, senior editor at Fortune magazine, analyzes Ford’s problems in his article “Managing in Chaos” [2].

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