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Essential Balances: Stop Looking and Start Seeing What Makes Organizations Work
If you are a manager or leader in an organization – company, public service, or NGO – or you are simply interested in how to make your organization work better, then this book is for you. If you have the feeling that you are skating over the surface of what is really going on in your organization, if you know that there is something more vital that you are missing out on, if you’re frustrated by applying the same management fads over and over, just with different labels on, then perhaps you are open to looking deeper into what makes organizations function, fail, and flourish.
This book will walk you through these questions and more. But instead of giving you answers and prescriptions, Essential Balances guides you through a whole new way of seeing, thinking, and being. You will see how to turn this into new habits, discover fundamental principles, and be able to see and influence the three Essential Balances:
Autonomy and Cohesion
Stability and Diversity
Exploration and Exploitation
Autonomy and Cohesion – Can you have freedom but keep everything working together at the same time? The rabbit is independent, not stuck to the ground, but what are the limits to its freedom? And now free, is it better off than the carrot it once was?
Stability and Diversity – Is difference and divergence at odds with a stable organization? How would you know? What can we learn from our immune systems about dealing with uncertainty?
Exploration and Exploitation – Should you go out and find new clients, new markets, or new opportunities or would it be better to wring the most out of where you are, what you have, and what you currently do? If you arrive late for a jazz festival and run into the first hall you come to, might you discover a new act that you love, but never would have picked from the programme?
These balances apply at all levels: personal, organizational, and societal. The habits to monitor, maintain and adjust them, start with noticing that they pervade everything we do. Then we must learn not just to balance ourselves and our organizations, but also to balance the use of the balances.
When we explore this and embrace the paradoxes of organizations and discover that it is those very paradoxes that make organizations vital and alive, we start to realise that it is dynamic balance – constant adjusting, noticing, shifting.So if you want to cast off the weight of management fads and fashions and glimpse wisdom that will change the way you notice the essence of everything, then get Essential Balances today.
This book will walk you through these questions and more. But instead of giving you answers and prescriptions, Essential Balances guides you through a whole new way of seeing, thinking, and being. You will see how to turn this into new habits, discover fundamental principles, and be able to see and influence the three Essential Balances:
Autonomy and Cohesion
Stability and Diversity
Exploration and Exploitation
Autonomy and Cohesion – Can you have freedom but keep everything working together at the same time? The rabbit is independent, not stuck to the ground, but what are the limits to its freedom? And now free, is it better off than the carrot it once was?
Stability and Diversity – Is difference and divergence at odds with a stable organization? How would you know? What can we learn from our immune systems about dealing with uncertainty?
Exploration and Exploitation – Should you go out and find new clients, new markets, or new opportunities or would it be better to wring the most out of where you are, what you have, and what you currently do? If you arrive late for a jazz festival and run into the first hall you come to, might you discover a new act that you love, but never would have picked from the programme?
These balances apply at all levels: personal, organizational, and societal. The habits to monitor, maintain and adjust them, start with noticing that they pervade everything we do. Then we must learn not just to balance ourselves and our organizations, but also to balance the use of the balances.
When we explore this and embrace the paradoxes of organizations and discover that it is those very paradoxes that make organizations vital and alive, we start to realise that it is dynamic balance – constant adjusting, noticing, shifting.So if you want to cast off the weight of management fads and fashions and glimpse wisdom that will change the way you notice the essence of everything, then get Essential Balances today.
280 pages, Paperback
Published November 27, 2020
7 people are currently reading
19 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 5, 2021
Making complicated simple is a hard work. Ivo did exactly that and made his great knowledge in domain (reference list is own treasure) accessible.
The book is not only accessible, but practical guide on how to assess the situation more effectively and to spot suitable leverages around key tradeoffs to turn things around.
The book is not only accessible, but practical guide on how to assess the situation more effectively and to spot suitable leverages around key tradeoffs to turn things around.
March 9, 2023
Full disclosure: I know the author personally. But, to be fair, I got to know him because of our shared interest in the concepts he covers in the book!
Essential Balances approaches coaching with the same "teach a man to fish" mentality that is central to my own coaching philosophy. In a world of corporate consultants providing comprehensive "solutions," Ivo Velitchkov proposes instead that executives and managers learn to recognize certain balances (and imbalances).
One key example is the balance between Autonomy and Cohesion. For an organization to be successful, individual employees need the freedom to recognize opportunities and pursue them, without having to navigate a bureaucracy. However, it is equally important that employees and leaders within an organization share a coordinated vision and aren't all following their own whims. This is the balance of Autonomy and Cohesion. You need both, not one or the other, and the size and culture of the organization will (in part) determine what that balance should be.
Other Essential Balances are covered as well, but the central point is that organizations thrive when they learn to see the balances and adapt when they slip out of balance. This is far more effective than repeatedly implementing (purported) one-size-fits-all methodologies.
The writing is clear and accessible, and provides both the philosophy to understand and the tools to implement the Essential Balances approach. It's an excellent book that I highly recommend!
Essential Balances approaches coaching with the same "teach a man to fish" mentality that is central to my own coaching philosophy. In a world of corporate consultants providing comprehensive "solutions," Ivo Velitchkov proposes instead that executives and managers learn to recognize certain balances (and imbalances).
One key example is the balance between Autonomy and Cohesion. For an organization to be successful, individual employees need the freedom to recognize opportunities and pursue them, without having to navigate a bureaucracy. However, it is equally important that employees and leaders within an organization share a coordinated vision and aren't all following their own whims. This is the balance of Autonomy and Cohesion. You need both, not one or the other, and the size and culture of the organization will (in part) determine what that balance should be.
Other Essential Balances are covered as well, but the central point is that organizations thrive when they learn to see the balances and adapt when they slip out of balance. This is far more effective than repeatedly implementing (purported) one-size-fits-all methodologies.
The writing is clear and accessible, and provides both the philosophy to understand and the tools to implement the Essential Balances approach. It's an excellent book that I highly recommend!
July 17, 2022
Written very clearly and understandably, Ivo Velitchkov introduces the concept of three essential balances in organizations and makes the reader easily understand the complex relations that keep an organization viable. While rooted in complexity of systems theory, the author manages to keeps his book a simple and relatable read throughout and allows readers to clearly follow his perspective instead of losing himself in difficult concepts and language. By giving plenty examples and cross references the book makes it easy to transfer knowledge into practicality and to understand how these essential balances apply in organizations of all possible kinds around us. A highly recommended read!
October 20, 2023
Excellent introduction to a systemic perspective in a very accessible language for a wide range of practitioners and free of the usual management/organizational jargon. Nevertheless, the selected bibliographical references and the added notes care for the theory minded. The balances that Ivo points at in the book constitute meaningful cornerstones of any organization, described in a grounded manner. Indispensable for everyone concerned in organizational life.
February 3, 2023
The ability to cooperate has been a driving force of human development and progress. In complex modern societies cooperation is not possible without organization, and to be organized means to abide by certain rules. ‘Essential balances’ makes these rules simple, applicable, and universal.
April 22, 2021
Ivo did a great job to make critical management science available to everybody. This book covers all aspects of organizational challenges. A must read for people who do care for their organization.
November 4, 2025
You need this book. If you work with organizational design, management, or work systems, you really need this book. Not because it has some fantastic methodology, tool, or strategy—it doesn’t. And it doesn’t make wild promises. Ivo gives us a few pairs of glasses. Not lenses, but full glasses. Because it’s important not to forget the frames, blind spots, and biases. Each pair shows us OUR organization in a way we probably have never seen before. There’s a chapter for each pair, and they are long. Easy to read, but long. Each chapter concludes with a wealth of notes that could easily deserve another review on their own.
So, don’t expect more of the same. Don’t expect that kind of book that takes one single idea—sometimes not even a good one—and runs it dry with endless anecdotes and stories.
Essential Balances is the kind of book that sticks because it’s original, timeless, practical, and deep (as much as you want it to be).
So, don’t expect more of the same. Don’t expect that kind of book that takes one single idea—sometimes not even a good one—and runs it dry with endless anecdotes and stories.
Essential Balances is the kind of book that sticks because it’s original, timeless, practical, and deep (as much as you want it to be).
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews