This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Linkage Lagniappe -- My roughly monthly disgorging of random links I've gathered and want to share before they get stale, but for which I don't have time to devote full postings...
1. You've got leaders who fake it.
Lesson: The discrepancy between what leaders say they want and what they really want often causes company dysfunction. You can't ask employees to do anything you're not willing to do yourself.
2. You've got bosses who like to point fingers.
Lesson: The remedy is to put your trust in the people you hire and give every employee sincere responsibility. Hands-on, my-way-or-the-highway entrepreneurs won't find this easy. But that's how the business gets better.
3. You've got a CEO who doesn't set priorities.
Lesson: Company leaders must set the mission and the agenda. A hands-off policy can only go so far.
"In order to create innovativion, we don't need to merge or erase the gaps between groups of people and their ideas — we need to bridge them in a way that preserves the ambiguity that created the gaps in the first place."
From Max Wideman, a fascinating review of graphical "models" of project management from the late eighties to the "new century." An interesting read, despite the disappointing final "mind map" model that is nothing but a linear outline with items and arrows, providing no real appreciation for the holistic interactions between components.
"Most of us belong to more than one learning community. These multiple communities form a personal learning network . If a learning community equates somewhat with a course, then our learning network is equivalent to a degree program. Each community is a node on the network."
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