Bimodal Management

Bimodal ManagementTM is a management method and philosophy that combines planning and agility. The method provides managers and organizations with a set of tools and competencies that enable them to perform their management tasks flexibly, relevantly and effectively under complex conditions, marked by disruption and uncertainty.

Today, managers and organizations must achieve their objectives in a reality that is highly disruptive. Unanticipated events, consequences that develop over time, disruptive technologies and ever-more powerful networks are only some of the disruptions that make the organizational environment turbulent and unexpected. Traditional management methods that exalt planning and control, cannot truly provide an effective response to challenges in a chaotic market. Organizational growth in the era of digital technologies and networks is dependent upon the ability of the organization to identify frequently emerging trends early, respond to them quickly and innovate accordingly.

In a complex environment, skills such as personal and organizational agility, ability to see the big picture, knowing how to solve complex problems, addressing ambiguity, and rapid decision making are sometimes the difference between success and failure. These competencies, defined by leading research institutes as ‘future skills,’ are essential to the resilience and survival of the organization and creating an ongoing advantage in the disruptive market.

How do you bridge the gap between the need to develop these competencies and what happens in practice?

The bimodal management model proposes two courses of action that would seem to be diametrically opposed, “planning” and “agility”, which are essential for optimal management in the complex realities of the 21st century. Each of these courses of action represents a different set of skills and management tools. Studies indicate that managers and leaders who combine both modes of action make effective decisions in the face of uncertainty, are good at transforming disruptions into opportunities and are able to motivate customers, employees and stakeholders in their environment.

While traditional management methods put the focus on developing and nurturing ״planning״ skills, the competencies of “agility”, improvisation and flexibility are not only ignored and not nurtured under this method, but are at times even perceived as being unnecessary.

The Bimodal ManagementTM model provides managers with a rich set of competencies as well as simple and practical tools to actually implement agility and flexibility to address a wide array of issues and management challenges.

The Bimodal method recognizes the quality of agility as a decisive factor in organizational resilience in a disruptive reality and promotes development of agility as a strategy in tandem with investment in planning.

The Bimodal ManagementTM model, which is based on the principles of quantum theory, complexity science and network theory, was developed by Michal Zigelman over more than a decade as part of her research in physics at Tel Aviv University. The method innovatively applies the principles of physics in the business and management arena.

The model serves as a set of prisms through which the chaotic business arena, as well as our personal lives, can be viewed, to understand the rules of the game in a world marked by constant change, identify trends, risks and opportunities in time, respond with agility in a manner that is relevant to what is actually happening.