Blog posts on psychology

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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• Knowing How to Manage People Is the Single Most Important Part of Management

  The challenge with managing people is not that good sources on what is important don’t exist it is that far too often we make superficial application of management ideas and then give up and superficially try another management idea.

  Learning from the gemba is important. But superficially visiting the gemba and doesn’t work. Without an understanding of how the components of a management system fit together and a long term commitment to create a management system that focuses on respect for people the organization fails to capture most of the gains possible with better management of people.

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• But, That Won't Work Here

  George Box, a good friend (and a close colleague to my father), put the problem of getting new ideas adopted this way (from Management Matters by John Hunter):

  1. It won’t work
  2. It won’t work here
  3. I thought of it first

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• Setting Goals Can Easily Backfire

  I achieved my goal by not my aim. That happens a lot, we honestly translate aims to goals. And then we do stupid things in the name of the goal get it the way of the aim. We forget the aim sometimes and put the goal in its place.

  Mike Tveite

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• Giving and Accepting Advice and Feedback

  If the core issue the person raises with feedback is something you should address, do so. Don't have how your respond determined by how successfully they gave feedback.

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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ideas take a long time to become common practice we stop looking at them fairly quickly because we decide they are old outdated ideas.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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• Individual Bonuses Are Bad Management

  The idea that bonuses are bad management is one of the more difficult management improvement ideas for people to accept. See related post links for much more on the problems with them and what to do instead...

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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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• 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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• Peter Drucker Discussing The Work of Juran, Deming and Himself

  Drucker talked about the shared importance he, Deming and Juran put on the importance of valuing all employees and creating management systems that capture all the value they can offer. He spoke of all 3 of them tilted against those that believed in command and control business organizations. Sadly the lack of respect for all workers is still common today; but it is much better than is was due to the work of these 3 management experts.

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• Take Advantage of the Strengths Each Person Brings to Work

  Managers should be setting up the organization to take maximum advantage of the strengths of the people in the organization while minimizing the impact of weaknesses.

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• Don’t Ignore Customer Complaints

  If the complaint is not something that should be addressed or explored fine. But that has nothing to do with the category of the person (“complainer” or not); it has to do with the merit of the complaint.

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• How to Deal with Motivation Problems

  Our organizations often demotivate us. We don't need pep talks and reward/carrots to get over the de-motivation. We need the practices that de-motivate us (Dilbert does a good job highlighting many of these) to cease.

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• Alternative Career Paths Attract Many Women in Science Fields

  The challenge of how to maximize the opportunities for those interested in careers in science, technology, engineering and math is important to all economies. There are difficulties in doing this and so continued focus on this area is good. My personal belief is we focus too much on the gender issue. Yes, we should reduce discrimination. I think we have done well but still have further to go.

  Most of the suggested changes in how things should be done help women and also plenty of men that are turned off by the old way of doing things.

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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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