Here’s the second in the set, from 1990. Warren probably hasn’t really looked at these for some time, and I know that he has taken things farther in documents coming out of his SIGMA Centre. Warren Kinston and Ralph Rowbottom. 1990. “A New Model of Managing Based On Levels of Work”. Journal of Applied Systems Analysis, 17: 89-113. [PDF, 9.3MB] …
"Management" Isn’t a Curse Word
I’ve been extolling the wonders of Warren Kinston’s Strengthening the Management Culture (SMC) for the past few months. It’s not the equal of his meatier Working With Values: The Software of the Mind but has the virtue of being one fifth that tome’s length. (It’s really thick: there’s just so much in it.) One of the complaints I’ve been hearing …
Luc Hoebeke Conversation: Don't Miss "A really high end conversation"
I sent out a short announcement to some of my Flemish colleagues about the audio of my conversation with the Belgian management guru, Luc Hoebeke. Vincent gave back a brief review: A really high end conversation. Very intellectual guy: he looks to me like an economic/organisational philosopher, even a bit of an utopian/anarchist socialist (breaking the rules and the trust …
Restoring Discretion: The Reason for the US Army's New Air Reconnaissance Unit
The New York Times reports Sunday that the US Army has created its own aerial surveillance unit because they weren’t able to get the service levels they wanted out of the unmanned Predator operations run by the US Air Force. It’s happening because the new unmanned systems have changed where the discretion for the reconn should lie. From NYT: In …
Transcript of "Here Comes the Boss" on Wilfred Brown
The BBC have taken down the “Here Comes the Boss” series by Patrick Wright, mentioned by Ken Craddock in his excellent bibliography on Requisite Organization related writings. I’ve been trying to track down a copy for weeks now. And then I remembered: the Internet Archive Wayback Machine! They have collected the transcripts of the series. Not as good as having …
A Conversation with Luc Hoebeke: Part 2
Here’s part two of my interview with Luc Hoebeke, the Belgian management thinker and author of Making Work Systems Better: A Practitioners Guide. Hoebeke (pronounced, more or less, “HOO-bay-kuh”) is a RO-heretic: he likes General Theory of Bureaucracy and the original work, but thinks pretty poorly of Requisite Organization. See Part 1 for his particular departures.
If the CEOs are Vetting the Next Leaders, You'd Better Have Big Enough CEOs
A colleague sent an announcement for the Oliver Wyman Journal. They had an article on succession planning (“Bench Strength: How are you developing your highpotential leaders?” by Steve Krupp) that had some interesting thoughts on the problem. The CEO must own and sponsor the process. No major initiative within an organization will succeed unless the CEO champions the efforts…. General …
The Bros. Heath Explain Incentive Pay Structures
This post has been one of my most popular since I wrote it. If you’re coming to this site for the first time, let me know what you thought in a comment below. In January, I scored a copy of the Bros. Heath’s Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die as I was working with an Australian …
Luc Hoebeke on Koldo Saratxaga, IRIZAR and Pride in Your Work
A little teaser for the forthcoming Part 2 of my conversation with Luc Hoebeke, the Belgian organizational expert and author of Making Work Systems Better: A Practitioner’s Guide. In this 30-second excerpt, Hoebeke talks about the most important thing Koldo Saratxaga did to help IRIZAR create a high-performance, team-focused work culture. If you’re not Spanish or Basque, you probably have …
Conversation with Luc Hoebeke, Part 1
In April 2007 while vacationing in Tervuren, I took an afternoon to drive out to see Luc Hoebeke at his home outside Leuven, Belgium. Luc and I sat on his patio in some historically warm spring weather (above 80F) amongst a small brook, the birds and his neighbor’s lawn mower. I never intended to release the interview, which was primarily …