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 …
Thomas Friedman’s Flat World
There are two recent articles by Thomas Friedman, who did the recent PBS series on outsourcing to India. He’s also written a book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, which is due out soon. Friedman’s article in the New York Times Magazine (It’s a Flat World After All”) is interesting. The article has been archived …
Paul Graham on Startups
Paul Graham has written his thoughts on what it takes to startup a sustainable company. It’s worth reading, as is a good deal of his writings. Graham’s an interesting guy: trained as a painter in Italy with a PhD in CompSci from Harvard.
India and China in pact
J sent me this article on the improving relations between China and India. When I went to the colloquiom on leading multi-cultural change (new associate coming out of that; stay tuned for an announcement here), I heard an earful on this from the Indians present. India needs stable relations with China simply because of proximity. The fact that the United …
InformIT’s “Breaking the Mold: Preparing Your Company for Innovation and Change”
InformIT has a sample chapter from SCORE!: A Better Way to Do Busine$$: Moving from Conflict to Collaboration by Thomas Stallkamp. The chapter discusses a case at Chrysler where the management team did not follow the herd with some bully business practices.
Glenn’s Correction on “Universals”
Glenn wrote the following to correct some of my terminology about what Jaques said happens when people move out of the what I was calling the “Strategic” order of thinking. He clears up some confusion that I was creating, so it’s worth noting here in full. I’ve done some minor layout to make it easier to read. Universals! Interesting. Let’s …
Does Cost Determine Value?
Just because you got me to spend $65M on a project doesn’t mean that its value isn’t a tenth of that. Costs do not determine value but can determine the value of replacement.
High Adaptability Factor and Over-Stratum
In his discussions of building dams with the Navajo as a young white man in the 1930s (West of th Thirties), E.T. Hall describes how he had to adapt to the ways that were culturally acceptable to the them. As a white manager, and as a young man, he started off coming onto the site noisily, slamming the car door …
New PeopleFit Class
For those who are interested in RO but know little, here is a great introductory course led by Glenn Mehltretter and Michelle Carter of PeopleFit. I’ve gone to one of their classes before and it was one of the best training classes I’ve ever attended. It even rivaled my own, which is high praise coming from such a fathead as …