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 …
Security Lights Increase Vandalism
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 Editors and Requisite Organization and Software Development
Comics provides a great illustration of Jaques’s theories of work in clear practice.
“Ptolmaic Paradigm” by Heath
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 …
“The Pitfalls of Strategic Planning” by Mintzberg
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”
“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 Outsourcing: A Survey and Analysis of the Literature”
The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems, a publications of ACM’s Special Interest Group on Management Information Systems, has devoted an entire issue to IT Outsourcing. Jens Dibbern, Time Goles, Rudy Hirschheim and Bandula Jayatilaka take over the entire issue for a journal-length review of everything that has been done. One of the interesting things was that they did …
Mintzberg on Developing the Developing World
The previous discussion about Henry Mintzberg’s “Quiet Leadership” led me to read some of his newspaper articles. “Africa’s ‘Best Practices’” is from the Daily Times of Pakistan (March 9,2004), although it has been published elsewhere earlier. Mitzberg asks the important question: do we or even can we develop leaders? Perhaps we don’t develop leaders so much as foster the conditions …
Quiet Leadership
Jon pointed out “Managing Quietly” [Leader to Leader, 12 (Spring 1999): 24-30], one of the few articles by Henry Mintzberg available online. It talks about the fact that the loud, glossy CEOs who become darlings of the business press, do not in fact perform all that well. Quiet leaders, whom you never hear about, do much better. It’s worth a …
![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 …