Tag Archives: means and ends

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True But Useless: Why So Much Management Advice Sucks (and what to do about it).

Why does so much management advice sound reasonable but turn out to be of little value? Most readers will know what I mean. Take the following guidance on how companies can ‘accelerate their agile transformation’: Create a C-suite with an … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged abstraction, Alfred North Whitehead, altruism, Aristotle, BSC, budgets, cause-and-effect, complex adaptive systems, Daniel Boorstin, experience, gardeners, gemba, growing people, KPI, Lao-Tzu, management, Mary Parker Follett, MBO, means and ends, measurement, mindset, RONA, selfishness, Stanley McChrystal, Tao Te Ching, truisms | Comments Off on True But Useless: Why So Much Management Advice Sucks (and what to do about it).

Lead Like A Gardener: The Movie

This is the video of my short plenary presentation at the 10th Annual Global Peter Drucker Forum held in Vienna on November 28 and 19 in Vienna. For all the video from the conference see: Global Peter Drucker Forum 2018 … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy, Uncategorized | Tagged adaptive cycle, change, community, complex systems, ecocycle, ecological perspective, ecological rationality, ecology, ecosystem, Henry Mintzberg, leadership, meaning, means and ends, metaphor, mission, narrative, Pope Francis, The New Ecology of Leadership | Comments Off on Lead Like A Gardener: The Movie

Lead Like a Gardener! – Agile and Design Thinking Will Become Management Fads Unless We Expand Our Concept of Management

This blog is a shortened version of a full-length article Lead Like a Gardener that appeared in Medium earlier this week. Management is notoriously faddish. Managers can reflect on a long line of management innovations that attracted huge attention, were widely … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged adaptive, agile, Cartesian mindset, CEO Theory of Mind, Champy, complex systems, Davenport, design thinking, ecological perspective, identity, leadership, management fads, means and ends, Michael Hammer, social movement | Comments Off on Lead Like a Gardener! – Agile and Design Thinking Will Become Management Fads Unless We Expand Our Concept of Management

Management: 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 | Comments Off on Management: a Noble Practice

Brexit: 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 | Comments Off on Brexit: Crisis and Opportunity for Britain and the EU – a Systems Perspective

Cultivating 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 | Comments Off on Cultivating Organizations – Background to The New Ecology of Leadership

The VW Debacle: How Large Successful Organizations and Institutions Can Become “Bad Barrels” And What To Do About It

The outlines of Volkswagen’s comprehensive program to defeat national auto emissions laws are becoming clearer. According to the New York Times the company began installing software designed to cheat on emissions test in 2008, when they realized that their new … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Alex Gorsky, Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Aristotle, change, complex systems, context, creativity, crisis, destruction, diesel emissions, ecological perspective, efficient cause, General Motors, gun control, hip joints, ignition locks, J&J, Johnson & Johnson, material cause, means and ends, Risperdal, shareholder value, Volkswagen debacle, Winterkorn | 1 Comment

Don’t Throw the Past Away: Rediscovering the “Drucker Space”

For Peter Drucker history was an essential resource. Commentators have described the scope of his writings as “Braudelian” in honor of the work of historian, Fernand Braudel, the leader of the French Annales school of history, renowned for its broad, … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged American Dream, Boorstin, change, Drucker Forum, Drucker Space, efficiency, European Enlightenment, Frederick Taylor, Leon Wieseltier, meaning, means and ends, narrative, Peter Drucker, Postman, Progress, purpose, Radowitz, Stahl, Technopoly, The New Republic, Wilhelm von Humboldt | Comments Off on Don’t Throw the Past Away: Rediscovering the “Drucker Space”

Management by Machine: MBO as Manipulation?

Recently Adrian Wooldridge, the Schumpeter columnist for The Economist, reviewed the introduction by BetterWorks, a Silicon Valley startup, of “goal science” to the workplace. The New York Times reviewed the same company on Monday. The company “makes office software that blends … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Adrian Wooldridge, auftragstaktik, befehlstaktik, BetterWorks, change, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, John Doerr, management by objectives, means and ends, Peter Drucker, Prussian Army, SMART, The Economist | Comments Off on Management by Machine: MBO as Manipulation?

A Theory and a Hammer: Managing With Incentives (Part II)

I spent the past week teaching a leadership class at the Kenneth Levene Graduate School of Business at the University of Regina. At the same time my HBR blog “Is Management Due For a Renaissance” has been attracting continuing comment … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Alfie Kohn, change, complex systems, context, creativity, Jack Welch, means and ends, Peter Drucker, purpose, Sears Roebuck, Steve Denning, telos | Comments Off on A Theory and a Hammer: Managing With Incentives (Part II) ← Older posts