Great Managers Don’t Have Jobs

Mr Burns

Image by billypalooza via Flickr

I was thinking last night about some of the great, obvious questions your kids ask when they’re little.  The Mrs. and I were blessed with two very inquiring little minds to play that role.  Even though it was quite a while ago that they were asking, one question stand out in my mind and I thought I’d share it with you today since the response says a fair amount about how I see the management world.

One of my daughters – and I don’t remember which one – asked “Daddy, what do you do?”  Simple, right?  But like most great questions, it prompted an answer that’s anything but simple. Continue reading →

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Drawing The Line

Grumpy old man on a Scottish island (wary of p...

Image by Ninian Reid via Flickr

Maybe I’m getting less flexible as I get older.  Not the kind of flexibility that might affect my golf swing, thank you.  No, I mean my willingness to consider other points of view.  Maybe I really do want to become, or HAVE become, what the Mrs. sometimes accuses me of being: a grumpy old man.  An Altacocker.  Could be.

Here’s why I raise the issue.  I asked another consultant yesterday if they’d ever fired a client, either as a consultant or during their previous career in the corporate world.  His response isn’t material for a family blog such as this.  But it did get me thinking. Continue reading →

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Won’t Get Fooled Again?

There are so many things about which to write this morning and yet I find myself reverting to a few common themes expressed in this space over the last few years.  It just amazes me that Santayana‘s maxim about the past is given so much lip service and yet ignored in practice.

I’ll apologize upfront if I sound kind of angry but I kind of am.  You see, things such as earthquakes, which we can’t control, are very different from things such as knee-jerk reactions to malicious underhandedness, which we can.  In this and other cases it costs people their jobs and embarrasses their organizations for absolutely no reason.  I’ll also tell you upfront that this is NOT a political rant because in this case although the incident was politically motivated the business implications could not be more clear. Continue reading →

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