Warren Kinston needed to take the company in a direction that, at least for the next year or so, would preclude the work I had joined with him to do. We have therefore parted ways, and I wish him the best in getting his taxonomy into online products. Any questions about the future of the taxonomy should be directed to …
Contemplative Work
From Kinston, Warren. 1988. “A total framework for inquiry”. Systems Research, 5(1): 9-25. The inherent dangers in the Level VII' [the contemplative] inquiry include fixation on an incorrect idea and inappropriate messianism. Speculative ideas are not practically usable until they have been socially shared with the relevant community…. Scientific process occurs at this level through holistic syntheses which reframe or …
Time Span of Discretion and Naturalistic Decision Making
Klein, Gary. 1997. Making Decisions in Natural Environments. Alexandria, VA: Research and Advanced Concepts Office, U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. I’ve been reading up on Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM). Klein and his colleagues studied how experts such as fire commanders actually make decisions. In turns out that they don’t, if you think of formal decision …
New Directions Require A New Name
You might have noticed a subtle change on the name. It’s a harbinger of coming changes. Over the next month, everything at The Manasclerk Company will be undergoing a major (and much needed) overhaul to bring us inline with our original vision. I’ve let the company drift away from what the vision I originally had. Some of you are going …
Greybox Really Is a Popup Window That Doesn’t Suck
I’ve been evaluating several technologies for a small web project I’m working. One of the things that I’ve seen lately are these popup windows that display on top of the original page, graying out the original and “floating” on top of it. There are several neat implementations of this for images but I needed to popup little informational windows, something …
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. …
McKinsey interview with Ratan Tata of Tata Group
Tata Consultancy just won the Chrysler IT contract, worth billions. It’s probably a good time to look again at McKinsey Quarterly’s interview with Ratan Tata from 2005. The Indian mega-corporations have some different ways of thinking than their US competitors, holding values that oddly sound more democratic. Well, India is the world’s largest democracy with a robust (and admittedly sometimes …
Upgrade No-Joy: Articles Are Gone
Figures. If you are reading the feed, you can’t see anything. Will work it out.
New Upgrade, Different Look
I’ll work this out sooner or later, but I haven’t gotten around to it. (When I was a kid, my mom gave me a wooden coin labeled “toit” just so that I, in her words, “got a round toit.”) Anyway, this is now black and white for no good reason.
“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 …