I just read about the death of Isabel Menzies. She was a major force for good in healthcare organization and a long-time member of the Tavistock Institute. She died in February of this year. The Independent carried an obituary of Menzies Lyth.
The Bros. Heath Explain Incentive Pay Structures
This post has been one of my most popular since I wrote it. If you’re coming to this site for the first time, let me know what you thought in a comment below. In January, I scored a copy of the Bros. Heath’s Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die as I was working with an Australian …
How Chris Saved the Training In Less Than Two Days (a story for the weekend)
by Michael Baranovsky (GDL 1.2) Have you ever sat in one of those meetings where it seemed like the jackals were circling one of their own injured? I was sitting in a meeting with the department heads of an IT outsource account in Chicago. We had just finished listening to a dry run of some help desk training. It hadn’t …
Where to Read More About “Work Levels” (and How They Affect You!)
You may have been sitting there, listening to me prattle on and on about this Work Levels -slash- Levels of Work -slash- Requisite Organization -slash- Real Boss -slash- whatever and have gotten to the point where your eyes are getting glazy or, more likely, they’re starting to glance about for someone else to talk to. You think they might be …
Luc Hoebeke on Koldo Saratxaga, IRIZAR and Pride in Your Work
A little teaser for the forthcoming Part 2 of my conversation with Luc Hoebeke, the Belgian organizational expert and author of Making Work Systems Better: A Practitioner’s Guide. In this 30-second excerpt, Hoebeke talks about the most important thing Koldo Saratxaga did to help IRIZAR create a high-performance, team-focused work culture. If you’re not Spanish or Basque, you probably have …
ANN: Now read us on your iPhone & Blackberry, too!
I’ve implemented a little addon that will let you read Requisite Writing on your iPhone, Blackberry or other mobile device. I’ve been delighted by how it works on my Blackberry Curve. If you have an iPhone, would you consider testing out this page’s permalink and leave a comment below? The addon is “WordPress PDA & iPhone Plugin” by Imthiaz Rafiq, …
Working Where You Don’t Fit Can Make You Sick
Let’s return to something Mary wrote in a comment about my post, “Knowing Who You Are Can Get You Out of Underachievement“: When I read “Underachievers, Are You Simply Out of Flow” and then Andrew Olivier’s “Our Working Journey and Stress”, I could hardly believe my eyes. I diagnosed myself immediately. I have been on 2 sick leaves, the last …
“What’s With This ‘Coding’?” A bit of personal manifesto
One of the problems with having grown a blog out of one’s own thoughts (and conversations with friends) is that the early stuff always looks a little questionable. Last time, I linked to a post from 2004 October in which I used some of the technical language about the Capability of Information Processing coding. The language rightly raised some eyebrows. …
You Can’t Move Forward In Your Career Until First You Leave
You complain about being stuck where you are, thinking it can somehow work out. To find right-fitting work, Hidden High Potentials have to move forward and leave their past behind. A quick comment from Wilfred Brown, at the time retired both CEO of Glacier Metal Company and Minister of State at the Board of Trade (UK), makes the point that …
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 …