Requisite Writing

Because you are the killer app.

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Entries from July 2004

Elliott Jaques’s Requisite Organization is a Network and Acts Like One

July 29th, 2004 · 2 Comments

I am going out on a limb here and make a totally unsupported guess: Elliott Jaques’s Requisite Organization Hierarchies can be interpreted as Networks.
I think that the reason everyone has been talking about Markets, Hierarchies and Networks as separate classes has to do with how the first two have been implemented and written about [...]

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Tags: Theory

Open vs. Closed Sector Careers and What That Means for Consulting

July 27th, 2004 · 2 Comments

Beneviste, Guy. “Survival inside bureaucracy”. In Markets, Hierarchies & Networks, ed. by G. Thompson, J. Frances, R. Levačić & J. Mitchell. London: SAGE Publications, 1991 [1977], pp. 141-
Closed sector careers take place either in a single organization or in other organizations that are similar. Knowledge and experience with the organization or the sector are of [...]

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Tags: Organizations

Empty Space and Learning

July 23rd, 2004 · No Comments

One of the things that Block talks about is for managers to let their subordinates live with uncertainty. When they demand to know your vision, tell them the truth: you don’t know where the company should go right now. “Where do you think the company should go?”
I started thinking about that as I read “Structural [...]

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Tags: Knowledge

Art Kleiner on Karen Stephenson

July 22nd, 2004 · No Comments

Companies, she says, can exert far greater control over their competitiveness and their future than most researchers have ever thought possible, by putting the right people in the right places and fostering new opportunities for them to talk with each other.

Art Kleiner has an interesting piece about Professor Karen Stephenson, the social networks guru, entitled [...]

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Tags: Reviews - Articles

“Incentive Systems Promote Corporate Corruption”

July 20th, 2004 · 3 Comments

Al Gorman has sent me an article that explains in more depth some of the points about incentive systems that he has made on this site. He’s volunteered to have it posted here, so I’ve converted it to PDF for easy, non-threatening viewing enjoyment.
It’s interesting that he and Solaas make such similar points. I [...]

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Tags: Managing · Reviews - Articles

“Learning by Doing Something Else”

July 19th, 2004 · No Comments

“Learning by Doing Something Else: Variation, Relatedness and the Learning Curve” by Melissa A. Schilling, Patricia Vidal, Robert E. Ployhard & Alexandre Marangoni. Management Science, Jan 2003 49(1): 39-56.

Note: Learning curves go down and to the right. You want the learning curve to be as steep as possible, since you get back up to high [...]

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Tags: Reviews - Articles

What to do with those subordinates with attitude problems…

July 19th, 2004 · 4 Comments

Michelle Malay Carter, whom you may recall from her comments here on The Power Struggle (I’m so po-mo!), has a new article entitled “What To Do About Attitude Problems? Promote Them!“. If you haven’t already gotten a link to it in your in-box, click through and take a read. She discusses the problem of having [...]

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Tags: Managing · Reviews - Articles

Difficulty of Unnatural Organizational Structures

July 6th, 2004 · No Comments

One of the biggest problems I’m having is my realisation that if a company organizes naturally (Jaques’s “requisitely”), they can do just about anything and succeed. If they are dysfunctionally organized, almost no “best practice” will really work.
I’m looking at learning activities for BIG and realised that nothing will work well. We can do [...]

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Tags: Organizations