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 organizations (it’s a bank …
Change Management, IT, Improvisation and What Work Really Is
After recently finishing a gig with a company that has hit a spate of bad luck, both self-inflicted and environmental, I have taken to reading. And as always when I read, I like to meander aimlessly through the thoughts of disparate thinkers who have nothing in common except that they caught my fancy for the moment. So my apologies to …
Site Maintenance
On Monday, 2006 March 20, we will be doing some minor site maintenance from noon to 14:00 GMT. We apologize for the inconvenience.
IT Models as Transitional Objects
David Wastell, who was Senior Lecturer in information systems at University of Manchester, points out that information systems development (ISD) projects are learning endeavors, a movement from one state to another. This learning therefore creates organizational anxiety. He says that models and other IT project deliverables can function as emotional transitional space, using the Tavistock use of the term. ISD …
How Total Quality Management Led to a Totally Failed Management
You would think that when you install a successful total quality management (TQM) program, you would see some great side-effects going throughout the organization. But that’s not always true. Installing any new system is tricky and sometimes doing something “good” leads to performance problems.
Fallows to Publish in GO Society Book
If you missed on of Jack Fallows’s presentations at the GO Society conference last August, you will be pleased to hear that he will be publishing a portion of his work as a chapter in the new book coming out this fall from that group. It won’t have his spiffy Flash animations to illustrate his points (very spiffy, IMO) but …
Vaill on High-performing Systems
A second kind of evidence to suggest that the evolving success of the system has a powerful developmental effect on the leadership comes from the way members of high-performing systems talk about the early formative period of the system. There are consistent statements such as, “We had no idea things would turn out like this”; “In the early years, we …
Integrity Will Get You Promoted, But Limited Vision Will Get You Fired
Elliott Jaques talks about time span of discretion — the time from a decision to when that work decision comes due — as a way to measure how “big” a role is. This is related to your personal time horizon, how far you can think into the future to handle uncertainty and complexity. Lots of people disagree with it. What’s …
Management Books by Lord Brown Now Free and Online!
Just to let y’all know: the GO Society has finally put up the books by Wilfred Lord Brown, Minister of Health and CEO of Glacier Metals. Lord Brown had a different take on the work that Jaques did for him, and it’s interesting to read an owner’s accounts of how to run a business. The books now online include some …
“RadioShack isn’t about anything!” How to turn it around and make millions
What’s wrong with RadioShack? I asked my middle-schoolers on Sunday what they thought about RadioShack. Josh, one of my gadget-happy boys, seem to understand what RadioShack executives don’t. “RadioShack isn’t about anything,” he said. “I mean, are they a cellphone company? Parts? You just don’t know what they’re about. They never have anything you want, either. “And,” he added, “the …