Intelligent Management is on the move to new premises but we’ll be back with the regular blog next week. In the meantime, we’re pleased to show you the cover of our new book coming out AUGUST 2016 from CRC Press New York! ‘Quality, Involvement Flow: The Systemic Organization’ Summary Current organizations underperform due to silo […]
Archives for 2016
Time is Money – Quit Busy and Get Productive Now
Being busy is considered by many to be a virtue. People may be giving their businesses 200% of effort. But in reality, being busy as you work through a shopping list of “to do” tasks can be the opposite of virtuous. How? Because it can lead to wasting time on the wrong things, unproductive multi-tasking […]
Silos vs Systems: Solving the CIO Conflict
Current organizations underperform due to silo thinking and CIOs seem to be constantly trapped in an uncomfortable conflict. But maybe CIOs can become the fulcrum for the success of the entire organization. In our last post, we looked at the 7 symptoms of “silo sickness”. In other words, these are the Undesirable Effects that […]
7 Symptoms of Silo Sickness that CIOs Must Cure
Most organizations are hierarchical. This way of managing means that responsibility gets divided up into functions and the ‘head’ of each function is responsible for the results of that function and the budget allocated. Isn’t this rational? After all, the notion of hierarchy is as old as the bible. Literally. Moses was introduced to it […]
You Say You Want a Revolution: Where Digital Transformation is Taking You
Change is happening fast and everywhere. The familiar is shifting from a physical, tangible world to a reality that is online and digital. Even some of our oldest, even ancient industries like printing and clothes manufacturing are becoming increasingly digitalized. What do these changes mean for the business world and where are they taking us? […]
Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood: 5 Steps To Give Clear Instructions
You need people to do things and to do them in a certain way, but so often they just don’t get it. To paraphrase Nina Simone, the Animals, Elvis Costello and many others, you’re intentions may be good and you don’t want to be misunderstood. So how do you get people to do things? By telling […]
Operations Lessons from a Martian, or How to Give Clear Instructions
One of the major causes of unsatisfactory results in operations and dissatisfied employees in organizations is that we are unable to give clear instructions. We don’t know how to adequately communicate the knowledge required to carry out the task given. (This is answer number two to the question from our previous posts on Empowerment: “Why can’t people […]
Empowerment: 5 Questions to Find Out Why People Can’t Do Their Work On Their Own
Empowerment is a great word but can be meaningless unless we give it an operational definition. Operationally, empowerment means that there is alignment between a person’s authority and the responsibility they are given. Continuing from our previous post on Empowerment, what can we do operationally when people don’t seem able to do their work on […]
Empowerment: How To Make It Happen in Your Organization
The word “empowerment “ has been applied so broadly that it is now meaningless. It has become “a catch-all and therefore empty word” as pointed out in reference to women by Hadley Freeman in her excellent recent article (‘From shopping to naked selfies, how ‘empowerment’ lost its meaning’.) Sadly, with the overuse of certain words, […]
In Management? Why You Need Theory of Constraints for Your Organization Today
The world is full of tips on how to do things better. The problem is that without some solid theory behind you, those tips are just patches. Theory, you say? But we need something practical, don’t we? Well, here’s the thing. There is no such thing as good practice without solid theory to back it […]
