Since I’m having a tough time with my case study, I’ll try putting down some things that I think are true about organization change in general. Forrest’s Postulates on Organizational Change
![Employees at Mid-Continent Refinery [ca. 1943 Tulsa, OK (LOC). By John Vachon]](https://i0.wp.com/www.manasclerk.com/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/2179123915_75b400bf47_o-men-group-Employees-at-Mid-Continent-Refinery-c-1943-Tulsa-OK-LOC-Vachon-John-e1377964113665.jpeg?fit=862%2C519&ssl=1)
Communities of Practice Help Teams and Their Managers Perform Better
Robert McDermott has written an excellent (if aged) introduction for people who don’t yet understand Communities of Practice (CoP). He compares and contrasts them to teams, and describes how a community of practice can complement teams in team-based organizations in a way that the Matrix Organization (“does the Matrix have YOU?”) does not. Matrix organizations are almost always a bad …
How to Break Through the “Impermeable Clay Layer” of Middle Managers
In the last post on implementation, APFG commented that the middle layer in the company is where you have most of the problems. Since almost everyone says this, let’s take a look at why. Let’s admit that it is not always true: the middle layer in a company isn’t always the source of the problems. There are often people at …
Implementation
I’ve avoided talking about implementation for awhile. So let’s get into it! I’ve got some questions and thoughts that I’ll be posting over the next few days about the general problems associated with “implementing RO”. Although I think that the whole idea is kind of whacked. It sounds a bit like “how do we get these people on board with …
More Evidence of the High Failure Rate of Performance Improvement Efforts
Top Consultant, a UK-based operation dealing with consultancies, has an interesting article describing a recent study by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by Celerant Consulting, an affiliate of Novell. Top-Consultant reports that More than 4 in 10 senior executives surveyed in a major new cross-industry study said that performance improvement initiatives undertaken at their companies over the past three …
Ulysses S. Grant and the Pettiness of Small Bosses
Military organizational experts point out that the war-fighting armies are almost always organized “requisitely” — that is, according to a natural order of hierarchical needs. But it often takes armies that aren’t continually at war to get to that state. An interesting case is that of Ulysses S. Grant. From Ulysses S. Grant:: Soldier & President, in regards to Grant’s …
The South’s Insular Death Wish
From Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier & President, an interestingly balanced if slightly dull biography of the General who became President of the American States. The unthinkable had become thinkable. The South, unable to manage either transition to a postslavery economy or irrevocable economic decline, was now talking only to itself as it sought to defend the indefensible, slavery, and deny …
Marcel on Communities of Practice in 1952
I’ve been reading Thomas Fleming’s extended essay on the requirements of morality and why provincialism should trump any call to universalism (“Save my family” trumps “Save the world”), The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition. It’s an interesting read. I’ll review it when I’m done. He quotes Gabriel Marcel, from Man Against Mass Society …
Knowledge and Abstraction
I’ve been reading KM articles and discussions lately. Again. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of the problem of different levels of abstraction. Just because I’m in Software Development doesn’t mean that I want the same level of detail as the guy down the hall. I tend towards big picture thinking, wanting to see the details of the program, …
Communities of Practice as the Basis of Silos
I am simply trying to get this down. Communities of practice, left unmolested in a small organization, formalized and evolved (i.e., changed into the new form of) the functional silo. That’s why getting rid of the functional silo is so difficult: they keep on coming back. Walk with me on this one. When a company is small, below the magical …