Reviewing Cass R. Sunstein’s “Deliberative Trouble? Why Groups Go To Extremes” in The Yale Law Journal, Oct 2000.
Requisite Organization Can Improve Unions’ Collective Bargaining Results
I propose that arguing from the top down makes more sense. The board can determine an appropriate Total Compensation (TC) for the CEO. We then take that and divide to get the lower ranks’ pays. Let’s take a real-life example, American Express’s CEO and President, Ken Chenault.
Project Portfolios Require High-Level Capability
In Waltzing With Bears, Lister and DeMarco describe the benefits of running IT projects within a portfolio. Not every one of them would have to succeed: you could take on several very high-risk (but high-payoff) projects and balance it with several low risk / low payoff projects. Having low-risk/high pay-off projects would be great, but most of the time those …
“Factors Affecting Professional Competence of IT Professionals”
Blanton et al. did a small study in one metropolitan area of IT professionals, measuring variables that the earlier literature on professional obsolescence and how they interact with these IT pros keeping up (professional development to avoid obsolescence).
Hierarchy versus Emergence in Organizations
Hierarchies are emergent phenomena. One of the things that has bothered me with the several “postmodern” discussions about organizational life has been the disregard for hierarchies often expressed by them. Flat oranizations are superior to hierarchical ones, they say, because inforrmation and knowledge flows more freely between equals. I agree that information and knowledge flows better between equals but I …
Self-Organizing for Success in IT?
I’ve been thinking about how many things have to get done right in order to any of the projects that I am working on to be successful. I’m show surprised that anything ever gets accomplished. There has to be a better way. If societies can evolve into complex structures through emergent whatevers, why can’t information systems? Image credit: Satellite image …
How Berners-Lee Finally Built Hypertext By Taking It Back 30 Years
There were lots of more interesting and much more robust systems that provided better access to knowledge. But they didn’t have Berners-Lee and his peculiar mix of vision and practicality. That mix was uncommon, and for innovators to be successful with bringing technology to change the world, they have to believe that they work for a greater good.
Risky Monocultures: In Agriculture or IT Systems, It’s Bad Risk Taking
You wouldn’t think that books discussing agronomics would have much to say relevant to Organizational Structure, IT Management or Knowledge Management. You’d be wrong, of course, but you can see how people would think that. I’d like to show how some of the ideas being debated in the agricultural industry’s fringes can illuminate our own issues. James C. Scott, in …
Do Best Practices Destroy Long Term Value in Knowledge Management & Process Design?
Jack Vinson has an interesting report on a recent presentation by Bob Hiebeler of St. Charles Partners. The fascinating part was the discussion of “best practices”: it got me thinking about James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (The Institution for Social and Policy St) and what it implies for …
How Do You Know If The Training Was Worth It?
While reviewing training literature recently, I stumbled on Daniel R. Tobin’s The Knowledge-Enabled Organization: Moving from “Training” to “Learning” to Meet Business Goals through some serendipitous web searches. My enquiry first led me to his website that dealt with “The Fallacy of ROI Calculations for Training“. An obvious ploy to perk up my ears. The article is an abbreviated version …