I recently ran across Barbara Kellerman’s Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters (Leadership for the Common Good) (2004, Harvard Business School Press). Kellerman makes the argument that the current thinking on leadership is that it is always positive. Hitler is a bad leader because he did evil. People don’t talk about bad leadership and have …
What I'm Reading
I noticed that I did not actually say what I was reading these days in my prior posting asking you for your list. My stack includes:
Warren Kinston's "A Total Framework for Inquiry"
Kinston’s 1988 article is up.
How Ed Went from $35k to $115k in an Afternoon
Four years ago, I posted about the difference between Closed-Sector and Open-Sector careers. It’s worth looking at again, because your choice of career will affect the choices that you have. A brief excerpt: If your first appointment in a Closed-Sector Career matters, it may be used as a proxy for capability. I may assume that you are low-capability because you …
The Bookshelf Mocketh Not the Poor
(Or perhaps “Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker: and he that is glad at calamities shall not be unpunished.” The make of my bookshelf is 57th Street Bookcase & Cabinet so maybe they don’t care.) Michelle Malay Carter tagged me recently to participate in the book your reading meme. The assignment, since I decided to accept it, was to …
Time Span of Discretion and Naturalistic Decision Making
Klein, Gary. 1997. Making Decisions in Natural Environments. Alexandria, VA: Research and Advanced Concepts Office, U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. I’ve been reading up on Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM). Klein and his colleagues studied how experts such as fire commanders actually make decisions. In turns out that they don’t, if you think of formal decision …
On Naming: It’s For Survival
Warren talks a lot about the power of naming, that until you get the all the names right in a particular framework of the Taxonomy, the whole thing seems wrong somehow. He’s not the only one to recognize the power of naming, of course. The Bible’s Adam starts naming things almost immediately, and it’s important enough that it is about …
Latest Reading, or what’s keeping me busy
Besides a new appointment at the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago, I’ve been busy trying to get my mind wrapped around Warren Kinston’s materials. And parent a colicky baby, of course. Current reading list (for my tracking purposes): Warren Kinson, 1994. Strengthening the Management Culture (available as a PDF download from the GO Society). The Sigma Centre, London. …
Le Guin, high moders and systems thinking
I don’t think that Elliott Jaques was right about high moders’ distribution in society. They certainly seem much more prevalent than his published numbers. If I know a handful of mode 7s and 8s, then they can’t be all that rare: I don’t get around that much. I think the issue comes in where they work. High moders are prevalent in IT because the field is so poorly managed. High capacity people can continue to work as technical experts, even though they don’t get paid well. It’s odd how many times I’ve seen a Str4 or 5 person working for a Str2 manager.
Power of Intrinsic Motivation
It’s the problem that management wants HR to solve: how do we get these people motivated to do what we want them to do. Even then I knew the answer: the only way to make someone do something that they don’t want to do is to coerce them. You make the reason for them doing it outside them.
There are other ways, of course, but they mean reframing the problem to be sensical to the person. And you have to give them a voice in their own life. Otherwise, you end up with non-motivated workers.