You’ve got a problem: your executives are all “baby boomers” and about to hit retirement. But so are the ranks just below them. How in the world can you get new executives in the pipeline who have industry experience and know your corporate culture?
Pfeffer & Sutton: Hire more to learn to get out of the way
Some more from the email wasteland. I have a habit of emailing myself stuff when I’m researching on a machine not my own, so that I can have it. I have no idea where this is from, really. It must have been hardcopy research rather than online. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll find it. Pfeffer, Jeffrey and Sutton, Robert I. …
“Compensation plans should look more like royalty streams”
From “The Wrong Incentive” by Roger Martin, Baron’s, Dec 23, 2003: How, then, should incentive compensation be structured? It should be based exclusively on features of the real market — sales, costs, investments, margins, profits. These are items over which management and employees have some control and their actions can be directly linked to such items. Compensation plans should look …
Why the Big Baboon Doesn’t Always Win
Neurologist Robert Sapolsky is an interesting character. The Edge has an interesting piece by him, which seems to be fairly stream of consciousness. Sapolsky, of couse, has done some fascinating field research on baboons and lab research into the inner workings of the brain, and a little of both all the time. In the Edge pice, Sapolsky writes about what …
Why Work Levels Are Rejected: Others Are Selfish Fallacy
While reading the excellent and highly recommended book by Heath & Heath, Made to Stick, I came upon this passage about Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs: Imagine that a company offers its employees a $1,000 bonus if they meet certain performance targets. There are three different ways of presenting the bonus to employees: Think of what that $1,000 means: a down …
Uncertainty: Why Both Executives and Creatives Are Managed Through Collegiality
In a recent flurry of emails about something else with a variety of folks, Jack Fallow discussed why he thought that the executive levels were called a “collegium” by Elliott Jaques. Fallow, who was CEO of GasWorks in the UK, believes that the nature of the work at level 5+ meant that you couldn’t have the same QQT/R management style …
Leaderless Groups and Why Wilfred Brown Was Brilliant
Mohit Kishore, an always interesting perspective, published an article in The Hindu Business Line — “Leaderless groups – a case against hierarchy“. (He republished it in his blog.) It’s interesting in light of some of our recent discussions, especially at Toronto. A few thoughts and responses to it. Many of the cases that he cites are indeed the cases that …
Global Organization Design Conference 2007: highly recommened
The bi-annual Global Organization Design Conference is coming up in Toronto, July 16-19. Subtitled “Designing Organizations for Value-Creation, Sustainability, and Social Well-Being”, the conference proved to be of value to me two years ago. The bullshit level is amazingly low for conference. People are there who are using the theory in their own organizations, from large multinationals to entrepreneurial operations …
Managing a Church of High-Moders
One of the guys I interviewed for my CIP training class with PeopleFit was a local Christian Reformed pastor, whom I had hoped would give me an example of Stratum 3. Instead, he gave me what seemed clearly Stratum 5. An example: ME: [REV], I’d love to hear what you think is the most critical issue facing y’all today. REV: …
Structured Process vs. Drift: A Question of Worklevel?
Claudio Ciborra, who unfortunately died too early recently, left a rich quantity and breadth of writings on information systems from a sociological perspective. Here I look at one of thisClaudio Ciborra. 2002. “Design, Kairos and Affection“. From Managing as Designing: Position Papers [?], Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University. … if speed is the main characteristic of this activity, then in …