Al Gorman What exactly is management and how do we provide for its effectiveness? The thought of navigating through the labyrinth of attributes, formulae and competencies being offered today is both a challenge and confusing. The evolution of modern management appears to be a myriad of trial and error and the very notion of what contributes to, or detracts from, …
High Adaptability Factor and Over-Stratum
In his discussions of building dams with the Navajo as a young white man in the 1930s (West of th Thirties), E.T. Hall describes how he had to adapt to the ways that were culturally acceptable to the them. As a white manager, and as a young man, he started off coming onto the site noisily, slamming the car door …
Research Questions
Does a requisitely/naturally organized company have managers that can make better performance evaluations? Does performance matter? More specifically, does what American corporations currently call performance matter? Is this not just a cover for failure to declare clear accountability? Why, when I agree with so much of the Emergence people, do I get so ticked off reading their stuff? (For example, …
War and Peace and Organizations
It’s interesting to read Tolstoy on organizations. I’ve not gotten this far in War and Peace yet but I saw this mentioned in Senge’s The Fifth Discipline. Tolstoy has a amazing insight into things: you have to regret the loss of him leaving his art later in life.
Bureaucratic Hierarchy vs. Hierarchy
Scheidegger describes a distinction between “bureaucratic hierarchy” and “hierachy per se” within organizations which shows how people currently understand the term “bureaucracy”.
Support for Human Capability Developmental Model
From The First Idea: Through a field study, we have been able to show that the early capacities are mastered for the first time (and then continue to be further developed) during specific, predicted time intervals. [pp. 54] No, I haven’t chased down the study yet and, no, I haven’t determined what these time periods are. I’m not done reading …
Requisite Organization Lens On Software Development vs Maintenance
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 …
“Ready, Fire, Aim”: Intuition, Analysis and Tacit vs. Explicit Knowledge
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.
“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 …
Bicameral Mind and Jaques
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 …