Some time ago, Gordon had an interesting comment about a couple of posts (see “Getting Work Done at the Right Level” and “Ready, Fire, Aim”: Intuition, Analysis and Tacit vs. Explicit Knowledge). I wanted to finally get around to addressing some of his points. I’m reading this just after reading your “Ready, Fire, Aim…” post, and just wondering “how do …
I just thought that this was funny. I have no idea what they’re talking about. Okay, I have some idea but not much of one. QUANTUM COMPUTING: Safer Coin Tosses Point to Better Way for Enemies to Swap Messagesby Charles Seife In an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters, physicists describe an experiment in which a fair coin flip is …
It looks like Dick Grasso won no friends in the new NYSE management. Grasso had worked for the exchange for years before getting the boot when someone leaked that he had been paid US$140M in 2003. The exchange asked Winston & Strawn to investigate the matter and report. You can hear the directors screaming, “We’re innocent! We didn’t know! We …
By investigating the solutions as you are trying to determine the problem, you get farther ahead. If you knew what they problem was, it wouldn’t be much of a problem: you’d just go ahead and fix it. Most of what we do we don’t truly understand what will work or why. We move around by intuition, using analysis to then determine whether we’re on the right track or how to sharpen our focus.
Surely keeping the lights on reduces vandalism, right? If you think that I can see you, then you are less likely to commit a crime. Not so fast, according to one commenter at Half Bakery. ldischler pointed out that security lighting actually increases vandalism. That’s a bold claim but it may be right. And the underlying principle may be vital …
Comics provides a great illustration of Jaques’s theories of work in clear practice.
I went ahead and skimmed more of the New Management Network’s materials. The following is from “PTOLEMAIC PARADIGM: Motivation, Negotiation, Power and Communication” by Terrence Heath. The Ptolemaic-Copernican example is useful, I think, in our trying to look at the present situation in management theory. For we are in a very advanced stage of the paradigm, perhaps even witnessing its …
Mintzberg, Henry (1993). “The Pitfalls of Strategic Planning”. California Management Review, Fall 1993:32-47. In this ten-year old article, Mintzberg summarizes the points he makes at length within The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. Much of the material that you get out of the longer book can be gained by simply reading this article closely. The book’s still worth reading. …
“Getting Work Done at the Right Level: Why Hierarchy is Important” by Ken Shepard and Don Fowke. An introductory discussion of levels of organization. I’ve always wondered what Ken Shepard looks like.
Is there any way that Jaques’s ideas about creativity fit with the idea of the bicameral mind (right brain, left brain)? Reading Mintzberg got me wondering. As I understand Jaques and Cason’s theory (which I haven’t read because I haven’t gotten the book yet), creativity is having too much CIP for the task. But I don’t see this as quite …
