In this summer’s Atlanitc has an article describing a series of interviews that Mark Bowden held with Paul Wolfowitz from September 2004 to April 2005, before the American deputy secretary of defense took his new job heading the World Bank. Wolfowitz is a fascinating thinker, regardless of whether or not you agree with his politics of conservative realism. For the …
Replacing Management With Project Management Is Disastrous
CIO (Australia) Magazine had an interesting article last month by Sue Bushell on Information Technology (IT) organizations and their spectacular failure to the business [“Just Deserts”, 2005 May 5]. Bushell quoted Kathryn Cason of Requisite Organization International Institute on the problems of IT being caused by the organizational structure itself: The fact that IT has primarily been pushed into a …
Coordinating Work Is Harder Than The Tasks Themselves
This complexity level of the real business, the coordination of other people’s efforts, is the essence of management.
Retraining Mainframe COBOL Programmers to Object-Oriented Java Programming, via Requisite Organization
A few weeks ago, I talked about the basics of Requisite software developmen and organizational design affects the quality of software projects. Today, I will continue that, answering Paul’s questions about retoolling a mainframe shop to object-oriented programming (OOP). Computer solution groups within companies have different names, often from when they started. Management Information Systems (MIS) and Data Processing Center …
Added Galli’s Advance Cache for WordPress
For those who are interested, we have added the Advanced WordPress Cache from Richard Galli. This should increase the speed of this part of the our site. Please let me know if there are any problems resulting from this.
John C. Maxwell on Requisite Leadership (Requisite Organization)
John C. Maxwell provides a great explanation, albeit unknowingly, of what we call “The Theory of Real Boss” in “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”.
How Hope Breeds Success
People who have always been fully employed often pooh-pooh the idea that simply being unemployed can have detrimental effects on people, especially men. Even though they have never struggled to find work, usually moving seamlessly from one position to another, they have strong opinions on the laziness of the long-term unemployed. Studies in unemployment show how a long-drawn-out idleness affects …
The Problem of “Universal” Speech
In this post, I’d like to continue a thread about “Universals”, or ideas that are higher than Strata 5-8’s (“abstract conceptual”). I will go over some of the previous discussion, talk about the problems of 6th Order communication and maybe make a point or two. If you are coming to this site from outside the theoretical framework, you may want …
Requisite Organization in Software Development & Information Technology
Software development groups almost always form a shadow hierarchy or pecking order of merit. Elliott Jaques’s theory of Requisite Organization explains why.
Performance Reviews and Pay
Let me come clean: I have never had a good experience in any formal performance review. I tend towards the “tell me what you want me to do and let me do it” mindset. Whenever I have managed employees, I have always believed that if you didn’t know how you were doing at least every week, I wasn’t doing my …