Wilfred Brown’s structures for a decent work organization led to the speculations that I’m making this week. However, reading him again over the last two days, I’m not sure that these points are actually in his work. They are perhaps my own interpretations being read in. Brown believed in Workplace Democracy. This wasn’t the simplistic ideas of others that you …
Elliott Jaques on How the Workplace Influences Democracy’s Development
One of the things that impressed me about Elliott Jaques when I first read him was his stated desire to build democratic feeling within workers. It may have been the influence of Wilfred Brown at Glacier, as Brown was always interested in democracy and how to build it, leading to his great interest in workplace democracy which predated his work …
How to Win? Change the Game
Back in 2007, my alma mater’s football team (American-style) did something that garnered them national attention, quite rare for a 2,000 person university: they won a game with 2 seconds on the clock by having seven players run a ball 60 yards for the score. Why should you care? Because you need to do the same thing that they did: …
Lord Wilfred Brown’s Training Films Now Available Online
The GO Society has quietly put up the Exploration in Management training films. These films, produced for the Glacier Institute of Management and narrated by Lord Wilfred Brown, the retired Managing Director of Glacier Metal Company and Prochancellor of Brunel University, show how the radical ideas Brown developed with Dr. Jaques work from a manager’s point of view. I’m glad …
Sometimes, You Have To Free Your IP To Succeed
Jack Fallow recently sent me a link to a TED session by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, the FLOW social psychologist [psychosociologist?] at the University of Chicago who also did the amazing The Meaning of Things research. (Thanks, Jack!) W hich of course led me to something else entirely. Jennifer B. Lee of the New York Times has been chasing down the origin …
Happy New Year!
I hope that y’all who have been celebrating holidays have been having a great time. We’ve been sidelined here with the Xmas Plague (motto: “Pass it on!”) so I’m not going to post again until the new year. Best wishes for a prospering 2009.
Tools: Express Scribe Transcription Playback Software
NCH’s Express Scribe Transcription Playback Software is digital transcription software that plays the audio file back while you type, at varying speeds. The speed thing is the trick: I’ve not seen a lot of software that does this. This is barebones software but it is available free for Windows, Mac and Linux. Even though there are problems on Mac (I …
Saxo Bank: In 2009 Things Get A Lot Worse
For everyone who thinks that my economic outlook has been bleak, I offer you Saxo Bank’s (Switzerland) predictions that 2009 is when we will see the worst. Their 10 Outrageous Predictions are unfortunately within the realm of reasonable speculation at this point. No one can predict the future. However, we can say that the level of uncertainty has increased to …
Leadership Is Amoral: Review of Kellerman's "Bad Leadership"
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 …
"How To Make a Madoff"
Ben Levisohn, “How To Make A Madoff“, Business Week, December 16, 2008. You don’t have to do anything to get a Madoff. They are always with us, like the poor. The question is whether or not you will create the social structures that detect them early. In evolutionary psychology, this is called cheater detection and it makes up a major …