Author Archives: David
← Older postsManagement Needs to Return to Reason
‘The arts of life…turn out to possess their own special methods and techniques…Bad judgement here consists not in failing to apply the methods of natural science, but, on the contrary, in over-applying them’. Isaiah Berlin, Political Judgement Ever since the … Continue reading
Posted in Change, General | Tagged AI, analysis, big data, calculation, Cartesian, economists, Edmund Burke, Enlightenment, existential, French Revolution, Hamilton, identity, instrumental, Isaiah Berlin, Jefferson, Mercier, political judgement, pragmatism, rationality, re-engineering, reason, Ronald Reagan, Sperber, Steven Pinker, Thomas Paine, utility, West Point | Leave a commentCattle, Slaves and Automobiles: Driving Dangerously With Management Clichés
Language is rooted in metaphor. In their popular book, Metaphors We Live By (1982) George Lakoff and Mark Johnson showed the pervasive role that our embodied experience plays in our understanding of how the world works, or might work. We … Continue reading
Posted in Change, General | Tagged Cartesian, causality, change, complex systems, creativity, George Lakoff, Gilbert Ryle, innovation, language, Mark Johnson, metaphor, Newtonian | Leave a commentManagement: a Noble Practice
The theme of the 2017 Global Drucker Forum to be held in Vienna later this year is “Growth & Inclusive Prosperity – The Secular Management Challenge”. Dictionary definitions of prosperity mention a condition of being successful or thriving, especially economic … Continue reading
Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged Adler, Clayton Christensen, community, complex systems, Drucker, Frankl, Freud, identity, meaning, means and ends, pleasure, power, prosperity, purpose, utility | Leave a commentRenewing the American Republic: The Ecodynamics of Donald Trump Part II
In the early hours of Wednesday November 9 2016 I was as bemused as everyone else. Donald Trump had won the presidential election and would be the 45th President of the United States. The last polls I saw had given … Continue reading
Posted in Change, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, capitalism, change, community, complex systems, democracy, Donald Trump, ecocycle, ecological perspective, Hillary Clinton, Lawrence Lessig, lobbyists, Mancur Olson, narrative, NRA, power trap | Leave a commentWells Fargo: Culture Eats Strategy (again) and (this time) the CEO
Over the decades organizational culture has devoured hundreds, if not thousands of strategies. One of the most recent examples is the case of Wells Fargo, where culture not only ate a long-standing, apparently successful strategy but last week also consumed … Continue reading
Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged acquisitions, banking, Carrie Tolstedt, Cartesian mindset, cross-selling, culture, ethical code, ethics, Goldman Sachs, Jack Welch, John Stumpf, mega-bank, mergers, muppets, Norwest Corporation, outcomes, performance, process, scale, strategy, Timothy Sloan, Wachovia, wells fargo | Leave a commentBrexit: Crisis and Opportunity for Britain and the EU – a Systems Perspective
“In a multi-layered complex system stability is achieved by having the big and/or slow processes govern through constraint the smaller, faster processes. Sudden change can take place in a complex system when agents at one level escape the constraints usually … Continue reading
Posted in Change, General | Tagged American government, Anglo-Saxon capitalism, complex systems, crisis, David Cameron, destruction, directdemocracy, ecological perspective, Founding Fathers, Great Britain, James Madison, Jeremy Corbyn, Little England, means and ends, Nigel Farage, renewal, representative democracy, rule by experts, rule by faction, Senate, Tony Judt | Leave a commentWhy Business Books Still Speak Volumes
It’s easy to be critical of business books. What had been a dull cottage industry until the publication of Tom Peters; and Bob Waterman’s In Search of Excellence (1982) became an exuberant enterprise that churns out a vast number of … Continue reading
Posted in General | Tagged business books, management, meaning, narrative | Leave a commentBloody Ships – Bloody Systems: A Managerial Reflection on the Centenary of the Battle of Jutland
“There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today…” remarked Vice Admiral David Beatty to his Flag Captain. Beatty was commander of the Battle Cruiser Fleet at Jutland, and his cool comment belied the scale of the catastrophe. … Continue reading
Posted in Change, General | Tagged battle-cruiser, Bismarck, complex systems, context, David Beatty, HMS Hood, HMS Lion, Horace Hood, Indefatigable, innovation, Invincible, Jutland, Nelson, Queen Mary, Trafalgar | Leave a commentDown With Descartes! If You Can’t Measure It You Had Better Manage It
In Landmarks of Tomorrow (1959) Peter Drucker wrote “We still profess and we still teach the world-view of the past three hundred years… a Cartesian world-view.” It is a world-view redefined by Lord Kelvin (1824-1907): “… when you can … Continue reading
Posted in Change, General | Tagged Berlin, change, Descartes, Drucker, ecological perspective, Iraq, judgement, Kelvin, management principles, measurement, purpose, science, systems thinking, weight-loss | Leave a commentCultivating Organizations – Background to The New Ecology of Leadership
I am now publishing my blogs both here and on LinkedIn. In this case this article is already on the site (in Latest News About the Book), so just the link is here. It’s an article I wrote last year for … Continue reading
Posted in Change, General | Tagged change, complex systems, ecocycle, ecological perspective, means and ends, The New Ecology of Leadership | Leave a comment ← Older posts-
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