Is leadership something that individuals exclusively provide, or is it a collaborative effort of a group of “leaders” who take turns, or different roles, in the expression of leadership in an organization? The method used by Roger Bannister to break the four-minute barrier in the one mile run offers insight in to this question.
Contracts are really only a starting point – and often turn out to be a false start – for a project. Ongoing and frank conversations between all parties help keep disappointment at bay, and execution on track. . .
There is plenty of evidence that, for all the fancy MBAs and trendy management theories behind their initiatives, managers don’t always get things quite right. Indeed, they may not get most things right. According to a survey quoted by Joann Lublin in a recent installment of her WSJ column, nearly 80% of managers and professionals are convinced that a project they are currently working on will fail. . .
Almost 30 years ago, a military unit I was in had a competition for its young lieutenants. We were deployed aboard Navy ships in the Western Pacific, so the contest was to write an order for a ship-to-ship raid, and the winner would get to actually use his plan to conduct the raid against one of the ships in the fleet. . .
Many of us aren’t too sure of that, actually. We see the accouterments of power surrounding many CEOs and other senior executives, behold with wonder how easily they enfold themselves in those symbols of knowledge and levers of control, and, further intimidated by the promotion and celebration of the myths of singular ability cloaking these [...]
We’ve discussed, here, the value of conflict in the workplace. Mary Parker Follett was probably the first modern advocate of using dissension and diversity of opinion to give an organization traction for understanding and generating effective approaches to dealing with the challenges it faces. Her ideas bear close study, and we will be returning to [...]
Nearly 80 years ago, Mary Parker Follett, perhaps (as often mentioned in these pages) the greatest management thinker of all, elaborated what she called the “law of the situation.” She did this to help managers develop more effective ways to organize their businesses, to distribute power in them, and even to give orders. . .
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