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Blog

Category Archives: General

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In Praise of Ecological Rationality: The Return of Practical Wisdom to Management

This is the title of the article of mine published last week by the European Financial Review. It begins like this: Just over fifty years ago in America a concerted attempt was made to professionalize the field of management and … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Leadership | Tagged ba, both...and, ecocycle, ecological rationality, either/or, European Financial Review, existentialist, functional disciplines, functions, Haridomos Tsoukas, hermeneutist, Immanuel Kant, John Dewey, Jorgen Sandberg, Martin Heidegger, means and ends, phenomenologist, practical rationality, practical wisdom, Rene Descartes, Richard Feynman, rigor and relevance, scientifi rationality, theory and practice, William James, Yogi Berra | Comments Off on In Praise of Ecological Rationality: The Return of Practical Wisdom to Management

Obama and Romney: Prisoners of the System?

I spent Thursday and Friday of last week at a conference in Las Vegas where I was speaking. The meeting was put on by the Applied Finance Group (AFG), a financial consulting company who create sophisticated corporate valuation models for … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged addiction, Barack Obama, Clinton incrementalism, Congress, corruption, creative destruction, dependency, East Coker, ecological perspective, economic rents, Facebook, flat tax, gift economy, House of Representatives, Instagram, Lawrence Lessig, Milton Friedman, Mitt Romney, Republic Lost, Ronald Reagan, rootstriker, Senate, social traps, sunset clause, The New Ecology of Leadership, Thoreau, TS Eliot | Comments Off on Obama and Romney: Prisoners of the System?

Seeing The World With New Eyes

A few weeks ago I put on a seminar in New York City, kindly hosted by Kaihan Krippendorf. Kaihan is a management strategist, speaker and author who helps organizations “outthink” their competition. He is also an expert blogger for Fast … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Marcel Proust, naive, new eyes, The New Ecology of Leadership | Comments Off on Seeing The World With New Eyes

Catch 22: The Anatomy of a Social Trap

Joseph Heller’s best-selling, satirical novel, Catch-22, gets it name from the self-contradicting circular logic that the book’s protagonist, Captain John Youssarian encounters while on active service as a B-25 bombardier during World War II. This was the logic that prevented … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged complex systems, fund returns, pension funds, public service, social traps, sustainability | Comments Off on Catch 22: The Anatomy of a Social Trap

The Spirit of Capitalism: the Quakers and the First Industrial Revolution

The ecological model in The New Ecology of Leadership shows enterprises as being conceived in passion and born in communities of trust and practice. My insights into this dynamic were first guided by my discovery of the Society of Friends, … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Adam Smith, Anglican Church, Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Barclays Bank, Book of John, Book of Matthew, Catholic Church, charcoal, Christian calling, Coalbrookdale, coke, community, complex systems, engines, English Civil War, English Nonconformists, First Industrial Revolution, George Fox, ideology of markets, iron, Iron Bridge, Lloyds Bank, market price, Max Weber, means and ends, pots, pumps, Quakers, Robert Barclay, Royal Navy, Sermon on the Mount, Shropshire, skillets, Society of Friends, sociology of virtue, spirit of capitalism, The Wealth of Nations, Theory of Moral Sentiments, William Penn | Comments Off on The Spirit of Capitalism: the Quakers and the First Industrial Revolution

Bain or Bane? Private-Equity and Creative Destruction

With Mitt Romney now the inevitable Republican Presidential candidate, renewed attention is being focused on his incredibly lucrative years running Bain Capital. In that private-equity firm he and his colleagues played key roles, mostly as the turnaround managers of mature … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged American economy, Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Bain, complex systems, creative destruction, ecological perspective, forest renewal, incentives, innovation, Mitt Romney, neoclassical economics, Obama, predator, private-equity, scavenger, shareholders, tax policy, The Economist, venture capital | Comments Off on Bain or Bane? Private-Equity and Creative Destruction

Sustaining Complex Systems: Fairways and Traps

This past Sunday’s New York Times contained another cautionary tale about complex systems and the people who live in them. It is the story of the seaside town of Matunuck on the southern coastline of Rhode Island. The entire region … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged American politics, complex systems, decision-making, expedient, important, quick fix, Senate, sustainability, urgent | Comments Off on Sustaining Complex Systems: Fairways and Traps

The Re-Enchantment of Management and The Renewal of Capitalism

Recently the Harvard Business Review, McKinsey & Company and the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) conducted a series of three competitions on “Reinventing Management”. The first was the The Management 2.0 Challenge, which characterized the existing version of management as version … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, disenchantment, ends, financialization, Harvard Business Review, human potential, management academy, McKinsey, means, mission, MIX, nurture, positivism, purpose, re-enchantment, release, renewal | Comments Off on The Re-Enchantment of Management and The Renewal of Capitalism

The Poverty of Economics: Capitalism Is Not Just About Competition

Last week David Brooks wrote a column titled “The Creative Monopoly” (New York Times, April 24). In it he told a story about Peter Thiel, the entrepreneur who founded PayPal and the course he is now teaching about entrepreneurial startups … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, creative monopoly, David Brooks, ecological narrative, Fannie Mae, IMF, market power, neoclassical economics, niche, perfect competition, Peter Thiel, regulator capture, Simon Johnson | Comments Off on The Poverty of Economics: Capitalism Is Not Just About Competition

Disrupting the Past: (Channeling David Brooks #2)

As readers of my blog know from a previous posting, New York Times columnist David Brooks is an alumnus of the University of Chicago. Famously he got his big break when he wrote a satirical parody of William F. Buckley’s memoir Overdrive, just … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged Adolph Hitler, anomalies, causes, competency, context, continuities, David Brooks, disrupting the past, ecocycle, Elliot Gorn, Henry Ford, history, John Lewis Gaddis, Marc Bloch, Peter Drucker, Saddam Hussein, science of change, singularities, strategy, University of Chicago, Vietnam. Philippines, virtuous habits | Comments Off on Disrupting the Past: (Channeling David Brooks #2) ← Older posts Newer posts →