Blog posts on culture

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• What Motivates Programmers?

  ...I will repeat my statement for all managers for all employees: your job is to eliminate de-motivation not to motivate.

  If you really want to manage programmers well, read these blogs and take action to prevent yourself from becoming a pointy haired boss: Signal vs. Noise – Joel on Software – Paul Graham – Coding Horror – Scripting News – xkcd

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• Good Journalism Aids Society by Shining the Light on Corruption

  That police departments cover up abuse by their own to the public is pitiful. So many good police officers serve these systems that are failing to stop criminal behavior against the public. It shouldn't fall to journalist to protect the public, but when the police perpetrate such bad practices journalists are a potential protection to the public. If we don't support real journalism we risk great damage to our society.

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• Create a Continually Improving Management System - not the Perfect Management Solution

  In most instances I think a PDSA approach to the approach to use it best. Test out various options in parts of the company. See what works. Build and improve the process and spread it more widely.

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• Why are We So Slow to Change?

  In management we often seek the new new thing. So while great ideas take a long time to become common practice we stop looking at them fairly quickly because we decide they are old outdated ideas. Not a very effective strategy :-(

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• Sustaining Management Improvement Through Personnel Changes

  Executives can't just have whims (usually driven by a desire to "make their mark") that throw out the principles used to manage the company if there is actually a strong management system.
  
  Most organizations just float with whatever fads are going on, so in most they can flip flop as new executives come into place.

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• Steve Jobs on Quality, Business and Joseph Juran

  "The importance of customer focus is obvious at the companies Jobs led. It wasn’t a weak, mere claim of concern for the customer, it was a deep passionate drive to delight customers."

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• Children are Amazingly Creative At Solving Problems

  “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.” Daniel Boorstin

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• A Vision can be a Powerful Driver but Most Often It is Just a Few Pretty Words

  When the vision is merely a pretty collection of words that doesn’t drive decisions and behavior it is pointless. When it does drive behavior it is powerful. Sadly that is rarely the case.      

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• Culture Change Requires That Leaders Change Their Behavior

  ...Real gains can be made by applying a few tools and concepts effectively; without transformation. But changes to the culture come from significant changes in how people think...

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• Revolutionary Management Improvement May Be Needed But Most Management Change is Evolutionary

  Revolutionary change is powerful but very difficult for entrenched people and organizations to actually pull off. It is much easy to dream about doing so.

  Often even revolutionary ideas are adopted in a more evolutionary way: partial adoption of some practices based on the insight provided by the revolutionary idea.

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• Strategy Based on Capability and Integrated with Execution

  “Strategy” without a thorough understanding of the organization as a system or an understanding of the capabilities of the organization is little more than dreams. Planning and strategy without the capability in the organization or a process to turn strategy into action are not much use.

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• Attracting Members and Volunteers to Professional Organizations

  Organizations frequently get attached to their ways of doing things and fail to adapt to changing conditions.

  ...

  many membership organizations... turn from being focused on promoting their mission to being focused on perpetuating their organization.

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• Stupid Bureaucratic Requirement

  Is it really unquestioningly doing whatever you are told that is the value that is what is being aimed for? Seems pretty clear to me from even this short article this teacher understands the constitution much better than most people and cares enough to take the values that constitution endorses seriously. While the government looks like they only care about getting their form on file and don’t care at all what the purpose of that form is (the purpose can’t really be just to coerce everyone to sign it, can it?).

  ...

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• A Good Management Culture Encourages the Debate of Ideas

  I believe much of the reason for fear of critical thinking is insecurity and mistaking respect for people with not making anyone uncomfortable. When people are insecure or unconfident they often take criticisms of ideas, plans, results, etc. as personal attacks. Then misunderstanding of don't be "dis-respectful" to people comes into play.

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• Curious Cat as a Celebrity in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

  The others asking to have me in their photos were usually from people I think were tourists from other parts of Indonesia. It was definitely a concentration of such request that I don’t normally see. I do occasionally get such requests, as I travel. Usually I think just people having a bit of fun interacting with other people.

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