Wilfred Brown film series: Excerpt

Forrest ChristianManaging, Organizations, Wilfred Brown Leave a Comment

I’ve been talking about how Wilfred Brown, management (heck, all-round) genius, made this series of films in the 1970s. Here’s an excerpt I pulled from the first film. This gives you a flavor of the series. The information is fascinating, especially when you know that Brown actually implemented these ideas at Glacier Metal Company.

Plus you get to hear Mr. Brown say “hear-ar-ky”.

Wilfred Brown's Ideas Abandoned: Glacier's Glasgow Strike

Forrest ChristianWilfred Brown Leave a Comment

From the Scottish Socialist Voice, here’s a note about how far Glacier Metal Company has fallen from the structures created through years of hard work by so many people during Wilfred Brown’s tenure as CEO of the company. Let’s note how ill-thought this was on management’s part. Even if they worked only 5 days per week, at “£200,000-a-day” this 7-week …

Lord Wilfred Brown, Island Owner

Forrest ChristianWilfred Brown Leave a Comment

As I’m cleaning up stray references to Wilfred Brown in Wikipedia, I came upon an unsupported reference to his ownership of Eilean Rìgh, a smallish island off the coast of Argyll in western Scotland. Nothing really to say here, just noting that it’s the only reference to this important figure.

Transcript of "Here Comes the Boss" on Wilfred Brown

Forrest ChristianManaging, Wilfred Brown Leave a Comment

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 …

New Wikipedia Entry for Wilfred Brown

Forrest ChristianWilfred Brown Leave a Comment

Not the famous tenor but the Managing Director of Glacier Metal Company. I noticed that there wasn’t one up there, so I added one. I need to set up a disambiguation page to separate out the two Wilfred Browns. (Actually, there are several famous WBs in the late twentieth century.) It’s odd that the entry for Elliott Jaques had no …

Belgian royal conservatory's dome, interior with sun. (c) E. Forrest Christian

Alistair Mant speaks on Wilfred Brown and Industrial Democracy

Forrest Christianelliott jaques, requisite organization, Wilfred Brown Leave a Comment

Alistair Mant, Chairman, Socio-technical Study Group, spoke at the 2005 GO Society Conference in Toronto about his experiences and work with Wilfred Brown, the chairman of Glacier Metal Company, where the ideas about work levels were originally worked out. Mant makes the point that well before Dr. Jaques and his Tavistock colleagues came onto the scene, Brown was working to …

Wilfred Brown's Ideas Rejected By Labour's Socialisation of Industries Committee

Forrest ChristianWilfred Brown Leave a Comment

As I continue to attempt to understand the history of the Glacier Project, I’ve been reading about Wilfred Brown’s work in there political sphere to gain some of this. Because he was a socialist and socialism dominated the political landscape of the UK during this time, it is probably hard to separate out. Nick Tiratsoo and Jim Tomlinson mention Wilfred …

Quick Tale of Glacier and Wilfred Brown

Forrest Christianelliott jaques, Wilfred Brown 4 Comments

From Rushworth Kidder’s Moral Courage, chapter one. Walter Eric Duckworth (OBE), who I believe went on to serve as Head of the Fulmer Ltd. and Chairman of the London Metallurgical Society, describes an incident early in his career with Glacier Metal Company, right about the time that Tavistock and Elliott Jaques started working with the company. He is also a …

A Brief Historical Interlude: On the Glacier Metal Company

Forrest Christianelliott jaques, Underachievers, Wilfred Brown 3 Comments

(The next post today will address the Underachieve issue directly. This one describes why Wilfred Brown is important to listen to. We’ll refer to these things later.) As Paul Holstrom pointed out, my telling of the story about the Glacier guys coming up with Timespan was a bit off. They had been having a pint and were talking about the …