For Friday, here’s “Seven Distinct Paths of Decision and Action” by Warren Kinston and Jimmy Algie from 1989. This paper describes the seven different approaches to decision-making, but note that it’s really about action.

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I have decided to take the advice I gave Paul Holmström at Management Unplugged, I’m posting my answers to questions posed elsewhere. Recently, Jim Heskett of Harvard Business School asked “Why Don’t Managers Think Deeply?”

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I’ve implemented a little addon that will let you read Requisite Writing on your iPhone, Blackberry or other mobile device. I’ve been delighted by how it works on my Blackberry Curve. If you have an iPhone, would you consider testing out this page’s permalink and leave a comment below?
The addon is “Wordpress PDA & iPhone [...]

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The New York Times has a recent piece on the surprising loyalty of Chinese young people to the government, especially its actions in Tibet. (They do have a point that China is treating its “aborigines” better than the Americans treated theirs.)
This is not just a problem in China. Because growth in one’s capability of information [...]

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Which probably broke more things.

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As part of the shift back to our goals here at The Manasclerk Company, I’ve been looking at what the web has to say (popularly) about “adult underachievers”. Today I found the “advocate for extremely bright children”, Stephanie S. Tolan. Her brief article, “Discovering the Gifted Ex-Child“, describes the trajectory issues that Elliott Jaques & [...]

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I’ve been studying Warren Kinston’s Strengthening the Management Culture [I work for one of Warren's companies]. I’d thought I’d blog some thoughts, partly because I feel that the title will turn people off in the New Economy Companies — I’d reckon that Building Your Organizational Culture would do better, although I’m not sure that it [...]

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It’s the problem that management wants HR to solve: how do we get these people motivated to do what we want them to do. Even then I knew the answer: the only way to make someone do something that they don’t want to do is to coerce them. You make the reason for them doing it outside them.

There are other ways, of course, but they mean reframing the problem to be sensical to the person. And you have to give them a voice in their own life. Otherwise, you end up with non-motivated workers.

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Hanseth, Ole and Braa, Kristin. 2001. “For the Treasure at the End of the Rainbow: Standardizing Corporate IT Infrastructure”. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. 10:261–292.
Hanseth and Braa, both of the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo, examined a desktop standards project done within Norsk Hydro. The company had grown substantially over a period [...]

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I’m helping out a European bank with some communications work. I know that the secret will be to communicate at the right level. The right level for the role, sure, but also the right level for certain people.
It’ll be tough. I know that in the meetings to communicate the vision across and down the organization’s [...]

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