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 in the last 100-200 years. …
Open vs. Closed Sector Careers and What That Means for Consulting
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 first importance. Transfers from …
Empty Space and Learning
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 Holes and Good Ideas“, …
Does Social Network Analysis Simply Show You Work Levels at Work?
Art Kleiner has an interesting piece about Professor Karen Stephenson, the guru of social network analysis, entitled “The Quantum Theory of Trust“. It’s part of the same strategy+business series where he profiled Elliott Jaques’s requisite organization and felt fair pay work, which I’ve mentioned before. His work is always interesting and you may want to check out the rest of …
“Incentive Systems Promote Corporate Corruption”: Guest article by Al Gorman
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 Harald Solaas make such similar points. I think that Solaas says …
Learn More & Faster By Doing Something Else (That’s Similar)
Implicit in discussions of learning curves in organizations (and explicit in most) is the idea that focused, uninterrupted learning is best. Learning curves (which go down and to the right, please note) are descended because of doing the same thing over and over. That may not be quite the case. In “Learning by Doing Something Else: Variation, Relatedness and the …