Below you'll find a list of all posts from January, 2005
By investigating the solutions as you are trying to determine the problem, you get farther ahead. If you knew what they problem was, it wouldn’t be much of a problem: you’d just go ahead and fix it. Most of what we do we don’t truly understand what will work or why. We move around by intuition, using analysis to then determine whether we’re on the right track or how to sharpen our focus.
Surely keeping the lights on reduces vandalism, right? If you think that I can see you, then you are less likely to commit a crime. Not so fast, according to one commenter at Half Bakery. ldischler pointed out that security lighting actually increases vandalism. That’s a bold claim but it may be right. And the underlying principle may be vital …
Comics provides a great illustration of Jaques’s theories of work in clear practice.
I went ahead and skimmed more of the New Management Network’s materials. The following is from “PTOLEMAIC PARADIGM: Motivation, Negotiation, Power and Communication” by Terrence Heath. The Ptolemaic-Copernican example is useful, I think, in our trying to look at the present situation in management theory. For we are in a very advanced stage of the paradigm, perhaps even witnessing its …
Mintzberg, Henry (1993). “The Pitfalls of Strategic Planning”. California Management Review, Fall 1993:32-47. In this ten-year old article, Mintzberg summarizes the points he makes at length within The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. Much of the material that you get out of the longer book can be gained by simply reading this article closely. The book’s still worth reading. …
“Getting Work Done at the Right Level: Why Hierarchy is Important” by Ken Shepard and Don Fowke. An introductory discussion of levels of organization. I’ve always wondered what Ken Shepard looks like.
Is there any way that Jaques’s ideas about creativity fit with the idea of the bicameral mind (right brain, left brain)? Reading Mintzberg got me wondering. As I understand Jaques and Cason’s theory (which I haven’t read because I haven’t gotten the book yet), creativity is having too much CIP for the task. But I don’t see this as quite …
A friend asked this question: “Well, if you were CEO, how would you do it?” Good question. This is a random thought experiment using the companies that I have experience with, mostly large multi-billion dollar companies, some based in the States and some in Europe, ranging from 15,000 (for a subdiary) to 100,000 employees, although the sites I was at …
For whatever reason, there’s something about the “Aha!” nature of genius that resists deconstruction. Or reduction. Or even reducing to a broth. One of the problems with many of the current KM theories and practices is that they basically ignore this. It’s as if knowledge and knowing were somehow the big secret. The big secret is guessing and doing. Then …
From Mintzberg’s Power In and Around Organizations, page xvii: In our society, power in and around organizations is a kind of tragicomedy; we would like to laugh, and sometimes do, but there is also much to cry about.
