Are you a manager trying to get by in a flat or agile company?

Do you find the role of manager repeatedly maligned?

This is more than just “It’s lonely in the middle.” There are significant positive shifts in making the workplace more productive, efficient and effective. However, each of these shifts has been accompanied by changes in roles – and these changes are rarely clearly spelled out.

In Episode 3 of Collaberwocky, Jabe Bloom, Corey Ladas, and I discuss how to speak from power in this new uncertain world.

Watch Gary Hamel, celebrated management thinker and author and co-founder of the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX), make the case for reinventing management for the 21st century. In this fast-paced, idea-packed, 15-minute video essay, Hamel paints a vivid picture of what it means to build organizations that are fundamentally fit for the future—resilient, inventive, inspiring and accountable. "Modern” management is one of humanity’s most important inventions, Hamel argues. But it was developed more than a century ago to maximize standardization, specialization, hierarchy, control, and shareholder interests. While that model delivered an immense contribution to global prosperity, the values driving our most powerful institutions are fundamentally at odds with those of this age—zero-sum thinking, profit-obsession, power, conformance, control, hierarchy, and obedience don’t stand a chance against community, interdependence, freedom, flexibility, transparency, meritocracy

presents and futures

Critical management studies (CMS) is a loose but extensive grouping of politically left wing and theoretically informed critiques of management, business and organisation, grounded originally in a critical theory perspective. Today it encompasses a wide range of perspectives that are critical of traditional theories of management and the business schools that generate these theories.

This model does two things. First, it defines the eight competencies we think are required for successful community management. Second, it attempts – at a high level – to articulate how these competencies progress from organizations without community management that are still highly hierarchical to those that have embraced a networked business ecosystem approach to their entire organization.

It’s a hard call made harder by power struggles. CEOs can force a more thoughtful debate by asking three critical questions.

ACM is more of a concept than a product category. I think it is best to define it as the software the knowledge workers use for themselves to get things done. Knowledge workers were not being served by traditional BPM, because knowledge work is unpredictable.

While barriers to collaboration are manifold, the underlying deterrent is lack of trust. When we're willing to do the work of finding collaborators with whom we can entrust both our expertise, and lack thereof, we can create something much grander than we could have on our own — the reward will be more than worth the risk.

The six templates provide rough models against which people can identify the characteristics of their own organizations or organizational subunits and understand the generic nature of their particular difficulties in managing organizational change

The management model that predominates in most organizations has its roots in the early 20th century. At that time, management innovators were focused on the challenge of achieving efficiency at scale. Their solution was the bureaucratic organization, with its emphasis on standardization, specialization, hierarchy, conformance, and control. These principles comprise the philosophical foundations of Management 1.0, and are deeply baked into management mindsets and processes. In virtually every organization, one finds that power cascades down, that strategies get set at the top, that tasks are assigned and not chosen, that supervisors review subordinates rather than the other way around, that control is imposed, and that senior executives allocate resources.

At 37signals, however, we have a different position on ambition. We're not big fans of what I consider "vertical" ambition—that is, the usual career-path trajectory, in which a newbie moves up the ladder from associate to manager to vice president over a number of years of service. On the other hand, we revere "horizontal" ambition—in which employees who love what they do are encouraged to dig deeper, expand their knowledge, and become better at it. We always try to hire people who yearn to be master craftspeople, that is, designers who want to be great designers, not managers of designers; developers who want to master the art of programming, not management

Contingency theory is a class of behavioral theory that claims that there is no best way to organize a corporation, to lead a company, or to make decisions. Instead, the optimal course of action is contingent (dependent) upon the internal and external situation. Several contingency approaches were developed concurrently in the late 1960s.

We live in a world of haves and have nots. No, not the kind you might imagine. These people reside within our companies. We increasingly group the people in our firms into two classes: those who have knowledge and talent and, by implication, those who do not. This segmentation is misleading and damaging to firms in the long run.

Despite the widespread implementation of intranets over the last few years there is virtually no professional literature available on intranet management to which to turn for ideas and examples of good practice. This book fills that gap, offering a wealth of practical advice on intranet management, based on the work of the author as an intranet consultant over the past fifteen years.

We’re living proof that you can work much less than popular entrepreneur lore would have you believe and still run a very successful, multi-million dollar business. And still have time for taking flying lessons, learning to play the guitar, nurture your garden, go hiking, enjoy cooking, socialize with people outside your tech circle

In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust

So, with partial inspiration, Neven, Steve and I built the Panic Status Board. Take a secret, sneek peek:

Today, in the advanced knowledge economy of the United States, the information contained within documents represents about a third of total gross domestic product, or an amount of about $3.3 trillion annually. Yet our understanding of the value of documents and the means to manage them is abysmal. These failures impact enterprises of all sizes from the standpoints of revenues, profitability and reputation. Continued national productivity growth — and thus the wealth of all citizens — depends critically on understanding and managing these document values.

Intranets are supposed to make life easier for businesses, but a lack of expert management often hinders them from fulfilling their promise

Chances are that at some point in your career you've been asked to implement a strategy that was developed by someone other than yourself. A manager's job is to implement that strategy, and to be sure that her team, unit, or department executes well. But what if you believe the strategy you've been asked to implement is flawed? Perhaps you think the strategy won't achieve the intended result, or worse, that it will put the company at risk. Regardless of the severity of your concern, you have an obligation to speak up. However, immediately pulling the strategy fire alarm isn't always useful, and may brand you as an alarmist. It's important to find ways to express your concerns productively. By acting cautiously and thoughtfully, you can make your concerns heard while perhaps saving your team — or the company — time, energy, and money.

It's critical for people to understand that while importing these social platforms from the Internet, we also import an underlying electronic culture that will profoundly change the workplace organization. And these changes involve management principles. 10 of which are described below:

The dimension that distinguishes learning from more traditional organizations is the mastery of certain basic disciplines or ‘component technologies’. The five that Peter Senge identifies are said to be converging to innovate learning organizations. They are: Systems thinking Personal mastery Mental models Building shared vision Team learning

Conner and Patterson (1982) propose a total of 8 stages (see figure below) for an organisation or a person to go through when becoming committed to a change goal. The authors claim that each stage indicates a critical juncture, in which commitment can be threatened. This is shown in the illustration below. If a stage is completed successfully, advancement to the next stage is possible. If not, the downward arrows indicate the result.

The theory of appreciative inquiry was developed by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva in a paper they published in 1986 (read it here). Almost all change processes are predicated on some form of inquiry - some attempt to study the social system before or during the process of trying to change it. But the form of inquiry they use is "positivism" - a kind of inquiry that treats social reality as if it had objective properties. As if we could discover the right levers to pull and buttons to push to create the outcomes we seek.

There are many theories about how to "do" change. Many originate with leadership and change management guru, John Kotter. A professor at Harvard Business School and world-renowned change expert, Kotter introduced his eight-step change process in his 1995 book, "Leading Change." We look at his eight steps for leading change below.

Lee on new forms of leadership.

Size of intranet teams: Nielson Norman and JMC agree

In the NN report Intranet design Annual 2009 - The Year's 10 best intranets, the authors state that the average team size this year is 14 people for organisations averaging 37,500 employees. This makes 1 resource for roughly 2700 employees.

In the NetStrategy/JMC Global Intranet Trends report for 2007, we came to the conclusion that the ratio of intranet resource to number of employees was 1 for 2,300. You can read the full blog post here: Intranet resources: numbers.

Let's negotiate it to 1 intranet resource for 2,500 employees.

How does this compare to your own situation?

the trust equation, from Maister and Green

Project management meets cynefin

The topic for the day’s Cafe session was How can we best keep employees engaged in their work, in the current economic climate? But Dave’s talk addressed a much wider set of issues around what organisations should do to adapt to a complex and crisis-ridden world — one in which the ‘lessons’ of the past are no longer a guide for future action, and ‘management by objectives’ doesn’t equip us with the agility and intelligence to respond to emergent threats and opportunities.

he conclusion is reached that 'knowledge management' is an umbrella term for a variety of organizational activities, none of which are concerned with the management of knowledge. Those activities that are not concerned with the management of information are concerned with the management of work practices, in the expectation that changes in such areas as communication practice will enable information sharing.

Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management - A Revolution of Knowledge in Three Parts

These internal and external activities are a way of moving from implicit to explicit knowledge by observing, reflecting and then putting tentative thoughts out to our networks.

Geert Hofstede's research gives us insights into other cultures so that we can be more effective when interacting with people in other countries. If understood and applied properly, this information should reduce your level of frustration, anxiety, and concern. But most important, Geert Hofstede will give you the 'edge of understanding' which translates to more successful results.

Hofstede's study demonstrated that there are national and regional cultural groupings that affect the behaviour of societies and organizations, and that are very persistent across time.

Yesterday I stumbled across a post by Gordon Ross of Thoughtfarmer talking about a client where 50% of its staff is eligible to retire in the next eight years. What a massive brain drain!

Management in a dispositional world is about hiring the right people and then getting out of their way - it’s passive and uninvolved. Management in a situational world is an iterative systems design problem with constraints - managers have to pick a vision,

This is a compilation of other resources to help you learn how to be a good product manager.

The theme for this event is using wikis in the enterprise. Luke Closs, Chief Wiki Juggler at Socialtext will talk about his experience deploying wikis for large companies. Dan Schick, Social Media Manager at TELUS, will look at large-scale cultural change

increasingly practicality and ease-of-use will rule the day.

More than anything we need "Mindset 2.0" or "Thinking 2.0" - new ways of looking at and thinking about the world and seeing the opportunities to work in new innovative ways that these new technologies allow.

The (well-reasoned) book argues that there are five leading indicators for business success. They are: * Purpose and Values * Productive Relationships * Shared Direction * Creativity and Innovation * Performance Excellence

Consistency, dependability and regularity work: occasional peaks of excellence don't.

The truly revolutionary impact of the Information Revolution is just beginning to be felt.

Bob notes that we all act as assholes sometimes. “Most of us, even the most ‘naturally” kind and mentally healthy, can turn caustic and cruel under the wrong conditions,” he writes.

Three types of explanation of cost overrun exist: technical, psychological, and political-economic.

I need a cost estimate on your project...

Dave’s Simple test COW - CHICKEN - GRASS - THE RELATIONSHIP TEST:
Close your eyes…. which is the odd one out. How many think cow is the odd one out. Raise hands.

David Snowden explains why knowledge management in its classic form can actually inhibit the ability of an organisation to effectively implement a risk assessment and horizon scanning tool such as the RAHS system developed by the Singapore Government, in

In this paper, we challenge the universality of three basic assumptions prevalent in organizational decision support and strategy: assumptions of order, of rational choice, and of intent.

The original knowledge-management publication

"We know more than we say, and we say more than we write down. We only know what we need to know when we need to know it. Knowledge can only ever be volunteered; it cannot be conscripted. "
Looks like I missed a good talk.

Article about hiearchical intranet ownership

For someone who is not a superstar – and doesn’t know how to win, doesn’t know how to develop business, doesn’t know how to delegate, doesn’t know how to get organized – then just saying, I will pay you if you do it, is not exactly a tactic th

Strategic planning consists of the process of defining objectives and developing strategies to reach those objectives

Don't worry about what you're good at. If something turns you on, you'll be good enough. If it doesn't, you won't. Your "strengths" are irrelevant: What you like is critical.

My email exchange with David Maister. Should be interesting to see what comes of it.

What things in your life demand undivided attention? Whatever they are, I claim they define your life more than anything else you do. Your obituary will not list the hours you fought off boring meetings or ignored your friends by reading forgettable blurb

an interesting resource for those of us managing a rec facility in our spare time...

file under "books to read at some point in the future"

This article introduces some comparisons between managing a software production and managing a movie production, and then discusses four software management practices observed from successful projects.

The problem in IT is not just building the system right but also building the right system. And the latter problem is harder than the first. Building an already well-understood product is a matter of complying with a plan. Figuring out what that right thi

useful bunch of PM tools

The how-to-live movement has split into two camps: those who believe the key to contentment is to do more every day and those who say we should all be doing a lot less. The first group is into goal-setting, waking up early and making to-do lists, while th

apparently it's the hoax of the 90's or so I've heard