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brainroads-toward-tomorrows mental patterns

pyramid2dna

pyramid to dna

NAVIGATING     
    changing WORLDS   ↑ ↓

 

#mmit #sda #dwrau #fastp → ← #fan ← #adt ← #wtin

Water Logic (adapting to conditions/circumstances)

Outer world — inner world

Concepts ::: Context ::: Attention flow

 

↑ In both
LIFE” and “TIME” —



#fastp Social ecology” ↓

evidence-wall-and-time-line-hotw-t-pict-600

Who has already experienced the worldS of 2030, 2040, 2050 … ?

Are tomorrowS extrapolations of yesterdayS?

Attention flow


Life-chapters #lchp

Missing the turn to the future #mttttf
#dotmp = danger of too much planning
What goes on behind closed doors #wgobcd
Why bother? #wb

 

#dwrau
“And it ought to be remembered
that there is nothing more difficult
to take in hand,
more perilous to conduct,
or more uncertain in its success,
then to take the lead
in the introduction
of a new order of things.”
Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince

History of the world + evidence wall + time line

 

Opening links/URLs ↑ ↓ in a NEW TAB
will make navigating this page
much easier

 

WorldS   RELENTLESSLY
moving
toward
#uf = unimagined
and often unimaginable
futures #memo #tln #rlaexp #adt   ↑   ↓ …

 

Living in an age of overlap #lchp #only2things

 

↑ about #hashtags

#fastp and #adt are of primary importance
and are related to each other
#connections
#connect

 

 

 

Your thinking,
choices, DECISIONS are

determined by

what

you’ve “SEEN
↑ ↓ …

 

evidence-wall-and-time-line-hotw-t-pict-600

 

SEEN → #msdOuter world — inner world
Alistair Cooke’s America

Attention flow

#mmit #sda #dwrau #fastp → ← #fan ← #adt ← #wtin




Time usage clues ↓

nagging aunt

Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it

Executive realities: unless executives
work at becoming #effective,
the realities of their situation
will push them into futility
radar_limited-pict-no-reflect
Time InvestmentS for tomorrowS

The explorer #htmp

Concepts ::: Context ::: Attention flow



Being prepared for what comes next

play-book-sheet-pict-300

#woo Windows of Opportunity


Wisdom ::: #4almost-n

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

Thinking broad and thinking detailed

thinking-books-300w

Basic thinking processes


#4almost-n Subjects/Topics vs. realities ::: larger view

color bars ::: color swatches ::: Kaleidoscopes
education-experience-reality-399

#fastp

jigsaw-puzzle-colors-250


evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

The day the horse lost its job

… the philosophical shift
from the Cartesian universe
of mechanical cause
to the new universe
of pattern, purpose and process …
an age of transition

#dotmp = danger of too much planning

play sheet thinking books

 

 

#fastp “… the world is a complicated place
with lots of small moving parts,
when someone moves one part
just a little
it causes all the other parts
to move in ways
we can't see coming … #twabi

We ain't at the start of anything
and we ain't likely
at the end of it neither …”


Small Moving Parts by D.B. Jackson



Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (micro-history)


As life unfolds
there are parallel events
evolving
and interacting
with other evolving events.

Carry on/connect up?

Build on or take off from?


Easy prey to totalitarian demagoguery and demonology


economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-400

The day the horse lost its job

The Educational Revolution
↑ Digital economy including video streaming
has become ever more relevant


Start looking for something to contribute
to a world that doesn't exist
quite yet

Unless the education system can teach
the right answer
to every conceivable situation,
then the skill of thinking is needed.

 

What mental resources
are needed
or will be needed
for
INFORMED
futureS directed action?


evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

#mmit

Carry-on and Connect-up ( #connect)

Life lines #lchp
life lines
Learning to Learn ↑ ↓

and learning to forget
(escaping the prison of the past)

evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

In real life
#values determine
choices, decisions,
success and failure”

page search for "values"



The Second Curve

s-second-curve-sigmoid-black-original-300

the-second-curve-124w-200h

Tomorrow always arrives and
it is always different

 

 

PastS, Present and FutureS

 

The PRESENT MOMENT
is a composition
of incalculable time dimensionS.
It is alway location based.
These DIMENSIONS include
all individual YESTERDAYs,
DAYs-BEFORE-YESTERDAYs
and attempts to preserve the PRESENT
or MAKE THE FUTUREs

 

A concrete example can be explored in the
transition from a pre-electricity world
to a post-electricity world below

 

Why Tim Cook Is Going All In
on the Apple Vision Pro — Vanity Fair

 

Making the futureS

 

«§§§»

 

Things are … like they were … until they’re not …

 

“People in any organization
are always attached to the obsolete
the things that should have worked
but did not,
the things that once were productive
and no longer are.” Druckerism

 

«§§§»

 

The thought fragments
on this page are
attention directing tools
#adt #sda

What do they mean for you?

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400
Concepts ::: Context ::: Attention flow

#uf To know something ↑ ↓,
to really understand
something important
,
one must look at it
from sixteen different angles#sda

 

The first part of this page
primarily concerns
the mental challenges of navigating

 

«§§§»

 

Finding and selecting …
the pieces of the puzzle
#sda

 

Social ecology

↓ Most mistakes in thinking … #mmit
niall-ferguson-books-pict-t-600x245
#wtin “What Thinking is Needed’

Niall Ferguson

the-square-and-the-tower-pict-t-350w-471
Networks and power? ↑

Why thinking is important

What thinking
is needed
? ↑ ↓

thinking-books-601w

What kind of information?

 

 

Subjects/Topics vs. realities ::: larger view

color bars ::: color swatches ::: Kaleidoscopes
education-experience-reality-399

#fastp

jigsaw-puzzle-colors-250

thinking books image

 

 

Operacy ↓ alone is not enough
to-loposo-go-pict-400

The Second Curve

 

 

#uf Developments, events, circumstances and situations ↑ ↓
SEEABLE
radar_limited-pict-no-reflect
Concepts ::: Context ::: Attention flow

A “toolbox” ↑ containing “attention-directing tools” #adt

as does Alistair Cooke’s America — Kindle #ad

Tools extend human capabilities





#uf #wwh The unpredictable chapters in the American story

alistair-cookes-america-150x217

 

mind map ↓ for collecting #ideas (puzzle pieces #fastp)
thinking canvas

 

#uf “Electricity is an essential part of modern life
so vital that most of us cannot imagine #uf
a life without it.

But – amazingly – it has only been
an everyday aspect of our lives
for a little over a century.

(Only in 1925 did half of all homes
in the U.S. have electric power.)


Back in 1752,
when Benjamin Franklin demonstrated
that lightning was electrical
with his famous kite experiment,
people couldn’t even fathom

the many conveniences and luxuries

that electricity would bring

product-technology-adoption

to the 20th and 21st centuries.” source




The Second Curve

s-second-curve-sigmoid-black-original-300

the-second-curve-124w-200h

Tomorrow always arrives and
it is always different




Broader thoughtscape PATTERNS

One thing always leads to something else unexpected

#uf The Manager and the Moron

#uf Luther, Machiavelli, and the Salmon

#uf artificial intelligence

 

«§§§»

 

The road ahead
Something genuinely interesting to work toward

The big picture

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

Trying to predict the future
is like trying to drive down a country road
at night
with no lights
while looking out the back window.” — Peter Drucker

 

#uf To know something ↑ ↓,
to really understand
something important
,
one must look at it
from sixteen different angles

 

#uf Intelligence Information Thinking

 

 

Where the universe began?
#uf
history-of-the-world-in-two-hours-03-pict-400
#uf Transnational and tribal together

#uf Continuing turmoil → #connect connect, connect,



#uf Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity

A long page ↑
please wait for it to finish loading
(10 seconds)



#uf The danger of too much planning

Successful careers are not planned

characters in history

 

 

#fastp

The pieces of the puzzle ?

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400
#htmp = How the mind performs

THE PICTURE THAT EMERGES


MEANS SOMETHING SO VERY DIFFERENT

From Knowledge to KnowledgeS

Finding and selecting #connect

thinking canvas
Subjects/Topics vs. realities ::: larger view

color bars ::: color swatches ::: Kaleidoscopes
education-experience-reality-399

#fastp

jigsaw-puzzle-colors-250



Finding and selecting …
the pieces of the puzzle

mind map ↓ for collecting #ideas (puzzle pieces)
thinking canvas

 

#dawa
Developing a realistic

work approach #fastp

that is effective #gtrtd for

the challenges ahead(two things)

 

#woo #lchp
stages-simple-horizons-w-opportunities

Why thinking is important

What thinking is needed?

Build on vs. take off from

What do you want to be remembered for? NYT Obits

Different life seasons

Second half of your life

The difficulties associated with “the bright idea” and
dealing with risk and uncertainty

Each Of Us As CEO

Wisdom

Challenges ↓
niall-ferguson-books-pict-t-600x245

Colonialism vs. Imperialism
America before Columbus
Alistair Cooke's America
The Journals of Lewis and Clark

The Long Shadow:
The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century


Hitler's Circle of Evil
The U.S. and the Holocaust (Ken Burns)
World War Two: 1941 and the Man of Steel (Stalin)
The Vietnam War (Ken Burns)
COVID-19 pandemic

#fastp

Living a fulfilling life

#wlh #lchp Life 2.0 Make your life your endgame

The second half of your life

The importance of perceptiveness

the-square-and-the-tower-pict-t-350w-471
#wgobcd

The Square and the Tower:
Networks and Power, from the
Freemasons to Facebook
at Amazon

#uf #hor2 #hor3 #wlh2

Management Challenges for the 21st Century and Managing in the Next Society

drucker-post-mtrp-pict

 

Water Logic (adapting to conditions/circumstances)

Life directions — alternative approaches (#hor3 → #whtmal)

HORIZONS to navigate and work toward? #hor3 → #org

Near horizons and non-linear future horizonS

The Second Curve (acting before necessity)

evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

“TEN or twelve years are not a long time in history,
but they are a very long period in current events
#sda source

 

Something genuinely interesting to work toward
The big picture

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

 

Try searching this page
for the word “RESULTS”

 

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-400

what exists is getting old

Water Logic (adapting to conditions/circumstances)

The Second Curve (acting before necessity)

“You have to produce results
in the short term. But you also have to
produce results in the long term.

And the long term is not simply
the adding up of short terms.” — Druckerism

Aim high

On Fortune's Role in Human Affairs
and How She Can Be Dealt With

by Niccolò Machiavelli published in 1532

Tomorrow always arrives and
it is always different

 

 

#adt

~1957Landmarks of Tomorrow

At some unmarked point
during the last twenty years
we imperceptibly
moved out of the Modern Age
and into a new, as yet nameless, era …

The situation today #lot

 

Water Logic (adapting to conditions/circumstances)

 

~1994Post-Capitalist Society

EVERY FEW HUNDRED YEARS in Western history
there occurs a sharp transformation

Knowledge THE resource → Org. characteristics

 

Water Logic (adapting to conditions/circumstances)

 

~2001Management Challenges for the 21st Century

Long years of profound changes

 

Water Logic (adapting to conditions/circumstances)

 

#ptf
We know only two things
about the future
(continue)

 

 

 

What thinking is needed? …
to navigate?

 

#mmit #hor3
Most mistakes in THINKING
are mistakes in perception

1. Seeing only part of the picture #information #sda

sit-combo-pict-340w

attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

2. Jumping to conclusions

3. Misinterpretation caused by feelings

 

Dealing with risk and uncertainty

 

 

#fastp #sda
↑ “Finding and selecting
the pieces of the puzzle
” ↓
Edward de Bono


evidence-wall-unknown-pict-426w

evidence wall

Missing the Turn to the Future

 

 

Fine print ↓
This site is NOT about school, academics,
scholarship, intellectualism or jobs. It is about
REALITY and LIFE.
Obviously jobs and careers
play a role — a changing role —
in the broad timescape of reality in time.

Education and learning for effective ACTION
is an essential life skill. #uf #tln

 

 

#fastp #adt
For almost nothing
in our educational systems
prepares people
for the reality
in which they will live,
work, and become effective

The Second Curve


CONDITIONS FOR SURVIVAL

 

 

 

#lchp #hor3 #wlh
HorizonS to navigate and work toward? ↓

evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

#wgobcd
A Year with Peter Drucker #mmit #fastp #lchp

 

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

tblue Effective work approach

 

No two people ever read the same book

Highlighting text in a book:

Useless if doesn’t become effective

mtrpractices-400

Wisdom

Concepts ::: Context ::: Attention flow

Operacy: the thinking involved in doing

#dwrau

work-life horizons ::: work-life evolution


From Knowledge to KnowledgeS ↓

book_harvest_pcs


Francis Ford Coppola Godfather notebook

francis-coppola-godfather-notebook-page-pict-t-600

liquidtext-2023-12-15-550w
LiquidText ::: YouTube

LiquidText

to-loposo-go-pict-400

page from Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

Why thinking is important

What thinking is needed?

 

#thinkingcanvas or #mindmap1 /mind map ↓ for collecting #ideas
thinking canvas

Social ecology

The Daily Drucker

Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

Management, Revised Edition

The Executive in Action #executive #eia

The Definitive Drucker

 

life_lines-400w

#lchp Career time view
career-time-view-400x231

Career time view

 

tblue More than anything else,
we are responsible for
our own self-development

 

tblue Earning a living is no longer enough.
Work has to make a life

 

tblue Why we need effective executives

 

tblue What makes an effective executive

 

tblue What Executives Should Remember ::: html ::: AMZ #ad #wesr

 

tblue The CEO in the New Millennium

 

tblue Those who want to live a fulfilling life

 

tblue What do you want to be remembered for? NYT Obits

 

tblue Making the turn to the future

 

blue Adapting to circumstances?

 

 

#hor3 #wlh2
How is it possible to
work toward horizonS
that aren’t on your radar
at the right pointS in time ↓

 

#ewtl = evidence wall + timeline
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

 

Outer world — inner world #hor3

 

One can only act
on what one is
paying attention (#adt) to —
no surprises

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

#fastp
↑ “Finding and selecting
the pieces of the puzzle
” ↓
Edward de Bono

 

#ewtl = evidence wall + timeline
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600


the road ahead?


economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-400

 

Dealing with risk and uncertainty

 

 

Every thing here ↑ ↓ can be summarized as:
Time-life Navigation©
#tln #adtperceptual identity
#lms → #ams

TIME ::: LIFE ::: NAVIGATION

#sda Having informed HORIZONs is essential

#sda An exploration path

 

 

 

 

#80 Action

#sda ↓ → #mmit #only2things #msd

No two people ever read the same book

Outer world — inner world ↑ ↓

Image Thinking ↑ ↓

PCS with highlighting ↓

book_harvest_pcs

Dealing with risk and uncertainty

mtrp-400w

Attention flow

Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

 

harvest


#wtin “What Thinking is Needed” ↓


thinking-books-300w


calendarization-breakdown-414w72dpi

 

Knowledge
is useless to executives
until it has been translated into deeds.

But before springing into action,
the executive needs to
plan his course.

Adequate ecological awareness is needed — #eia #cfs

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

 

 

He needs to think about

desired RESULTS,

What needs doing?

Serious Creativity

probable restraints,
future revisions,
check-in points,
and implications for how
he'll spend his time.

The action plan is a
statement of intentions
rather than a commitment … .
#dwrau

It should be revised often
because every success
creates new #opportunities. #woo

So does every failure ….

A written plan should anticipate
the need for flexibility.

In addition, the action plan
needs to create a system
for checking the results
against expectations ….

Finally, the action plan has to
become the basis
for the executive's time management.

Time is the executive's scarcest
and most precious resource.

And organizations … are inherently time wasters.

The action plan will prove useless
unless it's allowed to determine
how the executive spends his or her time.”

Peter F. Drucker,
"What Makes an Effective Executive,"
Harvard Business Review, June 2004

The Effective Executive

What executive should remember #wesr

The Executive In Action Preface #eia

 

Decisions

TO-LO-PO-SO-GO

Personal knowledge management system? No
Getting the right thing done? Yes #gtrtd

work-life horizons ::: work-life evolution

#gtd: Topic work

#gtd: Action Plans

 

The Power of an Hour

 

 

Major changeS #uf
are never linear,
never extrapolations of the past, and
never come with
warning or instruction booklet. #fastp

 

Searching for changeS #woo

 

 

WordS or ConceptS ending with an uppercase S
signal more than plural, more than plural plural,
more than plural plural plural …
(e.g., “sound transportation deviceS” — narrow example) ↓

Out of Africa circa 1920 ish ↓ YouTube
sound-players-pict-no-reflect-400
what exists is getting old

Concepts

Knowledge and technology

Technologies crisscross industries
and travel incredibly fast,
making few of them unique anymore.


The future of the planet
depends on our
intelligence, information, and thinking






Continuing Turmoil … ↓





Making the future #lypc

sound transportation

 

 

 

«§§§»

 

 

 

This page is a

relevant collection ↑ of

thought fragmentS details

Finding and selecting
the pieces of the puzzle
#mmit #broad #sda



radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400

Each element on an evidence wall ↑ is a brain address #adt

Books are attention directing frameworks/devices #adt

Each highlight or margin note ↓ is a brain address #adt


No two people ever read the same book

book_harvesting_thumb

Always remember this is YOU
and your brain
at a specific place and time
looking at something
written sometime in the past
by someone with their brain


Knowing what to do


Practical Thinking toc


Putting knowledge to work


When a thought fragment (brain address #adt)
implies action

how do you process that fragment,

how do you identify the core concept,

how do you determine

the effective action direction,

the effective timing and

develop the necessary movement?

How do you integrate that fragment
into YOUR day-to-day life?
Integration requires caution: there are
going to be different tomorrowS

When do you abandon parts of your life?

The danger of too much planning

Warren Buffett’s Formula for Success: One Good Decision Every Five Years :::
Cornelius Vanderbilt ::: Time spans




#fastp Finding and selecting
the pieces of the puzzle

Dealing with risk and uncertainty



peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

↓   ↑

#adt Dealing with risk and uncertainty

No two people ever read the same book

book_harvesting_thumb

Highlighting and margin notes = #adt

Just reading is not enough
for creating a work approach
that is effective for the challenges ahead

↓   ↑

Putting knowledge to work

work-life horizons ::: work-life evolution
The patterning system of the human mind

Three types of broad


Dealing with risk and uncertainty

 

 

“The human mind
attempts to fit
impressions and stimulations
into a frame of expectations.” — PFD

Outer world — inner world

 

 

“At some unmarked point …
we imperceptibly moved out of the Modern Age
and into a new, as yet nameless, era” ↓

Landmarks of Tomorrow (circa 1957) by Peter Drucker

 

Alistair Cooke's America — first few chapters — Amazon

 

Post capitalist Society

Managing in the Next Society

 

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect
#fastp Finding and selecting
the pieces of the puzzle

 

product-tech-evolution-600w

About technology ::: what exists is getting old


The INDIVIDUAL
in entrepreneurial society



This is who I am


Positive revolutions


auto-evolution-600

100 Years of Car Design: An Overview

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-400
#fastp Finding and selecting
the pieces of the puzzle


Our idea of process


How is it possible … ?


What exists is getting OLD


Conditions for survival


Long years of PROFOUND change


Intelligence, Information, Thinking
as a “system” (PDF)


What’s Wrong with Economics?:
A Primer for the Perplexed

Dismal economics



whats-wrong-with-economics-300w-459h


The Poverty of Economic Theory #pdf


Economics, economists, and real people #pdf


#hor1 #wlh
the-big-con-300-456l


The Big Con:
How the Consulting Industry
Weakens Our Businesses,
Infantilizes Our Governments, and
Warps Our Economies


Snake-oil ↑


how-the-mighty-fall


Dealing with risk and uncertainty

why_great_companies_fr540

McKinsey: What happened to the world's “greatest” companies?


From Good to Great … to Below Average


Tomorrow always arrives and
it is always different



the-second-curve-124w-200h

The Second Curve


CONDITIONS FOR SURVIVAL

product technology auto evolution

 

 

What does this evolution mean for you?

 

 

Image Thinking

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

What thinking is needed?

 

work-life horizons ::: work-life evolution

# hashtags ↓ are brain addresses #adt

#connections

#wlh = work-life horizons

#hor3© → #wle = work-life evolution ©

#hor3 = key horizons

#hor1 and #hor2
are mostly reserved for unimagined futures #uf

 

#wlh = work-life horizons©
are a sub-system of
“time-life navigation”© #tln
and “work-life evolution©
#hor3 = key horizons

#tln #hor3 #wle #wlh
and #fastp are connected

 

 

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

picture-technology-pict-no-reflect-400

sound-players-pict-no-reflect-400
About technology ::: what exists is getting old


economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-400

work-life horizons ::: work-life evolution

 

 

Knowledge
is useless to executives
until it has been translated into deeds.

But before springing into action,
the executive needs to
plan his course.

Adequate ecological awareness is needed

He needs to think about

desired RESULTS,

What needs doing?

Serious Creativity

probable restraints,
future revisions,
check-in points,
and implications for how
he'll spend his time.

The action plan is a
statement of intentions
rather than a commitment … .
#dwrau

It should be revised often
because every success
creates new #opportunities.

So does every failure ….

A written plan should anticipate
the need for flexibility.

In addition, the action plan
needs to create a system
for checking the results
against expectations ….

Finally, the action plan has to
become the basis
for the executive's time management.

Time is the executive's scarcest
and most precious resource.

And organizations… are inherently time wasters.

The action plan will prove useless
unless it's allowed to determine
how the executive spends his or her time.”

Peter F. Drucker,
"What Makes an Effective Executive,"
Harvard Business Review, June 2004


The Effective Executive

#67 #wlh The Executive In Action Preface #eia

 

Decisions

TO-LO-PO-SO-GO

work-life horizons ::: work-life evolution

Topic work

Action Plans

The Power of an Hour

 

 

#hor3 Dealing with
risk and uncertainty

 

 

Text formatting is an
attention-DIRECTING TOOL #adt

 

 

#hor3 #fastp
Finding and selecting
the pieces of the puzzle

 

 

#hor3 #sda

Most mistakes in THINKING
are mistakes in perception:
seeing only part of the situation

 

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

 

 

The thought fragments
and thought clusters
on this page
are relevant to
navigating changing worldS. #tln

They are more than things to just READ. ↓

book_harvesting_thumb

To be other than a waste of time

↑ ↓ NAVIGATING #wlh needS to be

made operational

within and across time dimensions. #ams


Just reading and taking notes
is not enough


Thinking and operacy are also needed


But first there needs to be
“adequate” ecological awareness. #ea


Many of the thought clusters
contain links to
other closely related #mmit #sda
thought clusters ↓



line


Time spans ::: Horizon evolution work

work-life horizons ::: work-life evolution

finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle ↑ ↓


grail-diary-2019-02-04-900_300x231

 

line

 

People change over such a long time span

Teach Yourself to Think : Basic Processes
Broad/Specific, General/Detail ::: Projection ::: Attention Directing :::
Recognition and Fit ::: Movement and Alternatives
Situation coding

 

… again, before undertaking decisive action,
“adequate” ecological awareness is needed ↓

 

 

#hor3
AWARENESS
is an essential FOUNDATION for DOING

 

Where to jump next? No stable places (from or to)

ice-floe-post-360w

What we do today
needs to ‘crack doors’
toward tomorrowS

Now and then the ‘edge effect’

 

FoundationS for futureS directed decisionS

 

The Second Curve

 

peter-drucker-timescape_600x545

#hor3
Drucker: a political/social ecologist
Books by
Peter Drucker ::: Walter Wriston ::: Bob Buford ::: Rick Warren

 

 

 

 

#hotw
History Of The World In Two Hours

Last 15 minutes — A pivotable event
in human history (Columbian Exchange)

More food → more calories → more energy

Population doubles to 900 million within three centuries
Power shifts to the “West
Population explosion of the 20th century
November 18, 2022 world population reached 8 billion people

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

About technology ::: what exists is getting old

picture-technology-pict-no-reflect-400

Tomorrow always arrives
and it is always different

America Before Columbus


The TransformationS: From YesterdayS toward TomorrowS


THE EDUCATIONAL REVOLUTION:
the meaning and impact of knowledge FOR society


The Search for Intelligent Life Is About to Get a Lot More Interesting

 

«§§§»

 

#uf #tln #hor3 #wlh
How is it possible
to WORK TOWARD
#horizonS
that aren’t on YOUR mental radar
radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400
at the right pointS in time?

radar-differences-pict-400

time line

When is the right point time, the necessary point in time,
the adequate point in time to be able to prepare and pivot,
or the best point in time?

 

↑ Consider major historical events
in combination with various global locations

 

“THE BEST TIME TO PLANT A TREE
WAS 20 YEARS AGO.

THE SECOND BEST TIME
IS NOW.”
Chinese Proverb

 

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

picture-technology-pict-no-reflect-400

sound-players-pict-no-reflect-400

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-400

No two people ever read the same book

 

Dealing with risk and uncertainty

 

“Tools” will be needed

toolbox-pict-400

They have to be identified and acquired.

Information is a tool as are thinking skills.

#Information: IIT ::: Six frames ::: The White Hat ::: Executives need

Tools extend human capabilities ↓

 

 

#hor3 #sda The brain can only SEE ↑ ↓ what it is prepared to SEE

We live in the world WE SEE ::: The centering of mental patterns

evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600
Parallel thinking

 

#fastp
finding and selecting
the pieces of the puzzle

jigsaw-puzzle-colors-250

erector-set-results-300

 

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

picture-technology-pict-no-reflect-400

sound-players-pict-no-reflect-400

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-400

The New Society



Judgement required

 

Why didn’t somebody SHOW me?


Dealing with risk and uncertainty

Self-development … something once gained
can’t be taken away

Apple™ Freeform
radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

Before long
new puzzle pieces emerge
while existing pieces change, age, and disappear ↓

The Transformations

evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

The Grail Knight : “But choose wisely,
for while the true Grail will bring you “life”,
the false Grail will take it from you”.

That knowledge has become THE resource …

 

Ludecy

 

#wlh
Making a living is no longer enough,
work has to make a life

Average life-expectancy of an organization #org

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

#tln #fastp Everyday thinking — knowing what to do


Real GDP


#hor3 #wlh #worldview
People of high #effectiveness
are conspicuous by their absence
in executive jobs continue

AMZ What makes an effective executive?

What Executives Should Remember ::: html ::: AMZ

A road ahead — connect, connect, connect

 

#tln #knowledge2
From Knowledge to KnowledgeS

Knowledge exists only in application.

Libraries and schools are concerned with information

 

#hor1 #lchp (= life-chapters) #wlh

Replace the quest ↑ for achievement or success
with the quest for contribution.

 

 

#hor1 #tln #lchp #wlh #second-curve #mo1

Buford said Drucker passed on
three questions
everyone should ask themselves during

different seasons of life:

“Who am I, now?”

Where do I belong?”

“What’s my contribution now?”

“Who I want to be tomorrow” — Thomas Crown 2:23

 

The Josh Abrams story

 

THE ALTERNATIVE TO TYRANNY

 

“For almost nothing
in our educational-system
PREPARES people for …

THE REALITY

in which THEY will live, work.
and become effective.” PFD

Political/social ecologist




Subjects/Topics vs. realities ::: larger view

color bars ::: color swatches ::: Kaleidoscopes
education-experience-reality-399

#fastp

jigsaw-puzzle-colors-250




“Is it then
not only astonishing
but also absurd
that THINKING is not
the core subject
in all education? …
totally neglected#wtin ::: explore

education-experience-reality

 

Most mistakes in THINKING
are mistakes in perception

sit-combo-pict-340w

YouTube: A brief celebration of Edward de Bono's
ideas on thinking


attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

 

Choice of ATTENTION areas

 

The Black Cylinder Experiment

 

ATTENTION directing frameworks

 

 

 

Hierarchical institutions vs. social networks —
as the true sources of power
and drivers of change? — Niall Ferguson

the-square-and-the-tower-pict-t-300w

THE ALTERNATIVE TO TYRANNY

niall-ferguson-books-pict-t-600x245

Niall Ferguson book covers

#ptf Civilization: The West and the Rest at Amazon.com

Charles Kuralt’s America

Alistair Cooke’s America

Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

The Vietnam War: An Intimate History

 

 

The New Pluralism

principles-for-dealing-with-the-changing-world-order-300w

#ptf Amazon: Principles for Dealing with
the Changing World Order —
Why Nations Succeed or Fail
by Ray Dalio

Kara Swisher:
A Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Predicts the Future —
and What He Sees Is Concerning.
Ray Dalio discusses the economic and political
mechanics of a changing world order

Google: “what are the big social issues of today”

Every social problem is an opportunity

 

 

Amazon.com: Thomas Friedman books ::: NYT

books-by-thomas-l-friedman

Amazon.com: The World Is Flat :
A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century


Amazon.com: Thank You for Being Late:
An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

 

 

The future of the planet
depends on the
perceptions — and
the horizons —
between OUR ears

“Practical men who believe themselves
to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence,
are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air,
are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler
of a few years back” — John Maynard Keynes

 

#sda From Knowledge to KnowledgeS

 

Management Worldview(S)

No one has any relevant experience here ↓
and REALITY does’t care

 

#hor2 #hor3 #wlh2

Management Challenges for the 21st Century and Managing in the Next Society

drucker-post-mtrp-pict

management worldviews

 

 

“The quality of our future
will depend entirely on
the quality of our thinking” — #EdB

“Applies on a personal level,
a community level
and on the world level” EdB

Think! Before It's Too Late

#ptf Dealing with risk and uncertainty

#ptf We know only two things about the future … (continue)

Intelligence, Information, Thinking #pdf

 

#wlh #ewtl Operacy — the thinking that goes into doing …

evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

The INDIVIDUAL in entrepreneurial society

Imagining Navigation Course Changes

From Knowledge to KnowledgeS ::: Knowledge and Technology #technology #pdf

#hor3

Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity !!!
And with knowledge becoming the key resource,
there is only a world economy

About technology

Information challenges ::: #41 Strategic decisions ↑ ::: Six Thinking Hats

 

 

What would happen

if …

a region (North America, EU, ASEAN etc.)
a nation, a sub-nation, an organization,
city, ethnic group or other group of people

were satisfied

repeating last week

over and over and over and over?

 

Where in the world
is this stagnation
the prevailing reality?

 

herding-sheep

 

sound-players-pict-no-reflect-400

sound players

The INDIVIDUAL in entrepreneurial society

From Knowledge to KnowledgeS ::: Knowledge and Technology #pdf

 

#twabi
Richard N. Haass
the-world-a-brief-introduction-pp-399w

the world a brief introduction

#ptf The World: A Brief Introduction — Amazon #ad

Preface on steriods pdf


The explorer #htmp


PART I: THE ESSENTIAL HISTORY :::
From the Thirty Years War to the Outbreak of World War I (1618-1914) :::
The Long Shadow: the Great War and the Twentieth Century :::
From World War II Through World War I (1914-1945) :::
The Cold War (1945 - 1989) ::: The Post-Cold War Era (1989 -Present) :::

PART II: REGIONS OF THE WORLD ::: Europe :::
East Asia and the Pacific ::: Asia :::
The Middle East ::: Africa ::: The Americas :::

PART III: THE GLOBAL ERA ::: Globalization :::
Terrorism and Counterterrorism :::
Nuclear Proliferation ::: Climate Change ::: Migration :::
The Internet, Cyberspace, and Cybersecurity :::
Global Health ::: Trade and Investment :::
Currency and Monetary Policy ::: Development :::

PART IV: ORDER AND DISORDER :::
Sovereignty, Self-Determination, and Balance of Power :::
Alliances and Coalitions ::: International Society :::
War Between Countries :::
Internal Instability and War Within Countries :::
The Liberal World Order :::
Preface PDF

 

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-400

 

thinking-books-601w

What thinking is needed?

What kind of information?

 

 

Is reality divided into conceptual “islands”
similar to the parts and chapters of a book?

Obviously not,
but we still need
attention-directing frameworks.

 

Social ecology ↑ ↓ #soceco #apta

 

The future that has already happened

 

 

If a book
similar to The World ↑ had been
researched and written
in the 1930s, 1950s, or 1970s,
how useful would it be
to those
attempting to navigate their lives
toward positive horizons
in the 1990s, 2010s, today
or tomorrowS?

 

Kevin Kelly: 103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known

 

We know only two things about the future … (continue)

 

 

About time

 

About hashtags (#) on this page

#ptf = predicting the future

 

The road ahead?

 

 

finding and selecting
the pieces of the puzzle

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

A few people
(not very many)
higher up your
LIFE
food chain

may be OBSERVING
your #worldview
and behavior

people decisions are the real control of an organization #org

Who might some of these observers be? Stalin, Hitler, Le Duan

 

“You have to produce results
in the short term. But you also have to
produce results in the long term.

And the long term is not simply
the adding up of short terms.” — Druckerism

Aim high

 

 

#sda Most mistakes in thinking
are
mistakes in perception

continue

 

Seeing only
part of the situation ↑ ↓

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

Dealing with
risk and uncertainty
↑ ↓

 

An #idea
can never
make the best use
of available information
because

 

«§§§»

 

 

How is it POSSIBLE to

work toward



compass-and-books-300w

unexpected #horizons

 

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

Books by
Peter Drucker ::: Walter Wriston ::: Bob Buford ::: Rick Warren

 

thinking-books-collage-shrunk-pict-t-300w

… that aren’t on your mental radar

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400

… at the right pointS in time?

 

«§§§»

 

#hor1 #wlh
You must take
integrating responsibility
for putting YOURSELF
into the BIG PICTURE
.”

#horizons
#whtmal = work has to make a life
#bp = big picture #self-development
#ir #lter #dtao #operacy #trade Pluralism

 

 

#bp #fastp #lter
hist-e-wall-t-line-eco-cntnt-mo-l-line-ctv-act

What Executives Should Remember
AMAZON ::: html

 

Aim high

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

From Knowledge to KnowledgeS ::: Knowledge and Technology #pdf

Information challenges ::: #41 Strategic decisions ↑ ::: Six Thinking Hats

 

 

These ↑ #horizons
are YOUR means
for making YOUR futureS
requires different time usage
including
some different
“ecological awareness” here

 

#worldview and #horizons overlap … worldview
provides the “mental space”
for choosing horizons

 

#horizons
What’s the outer limit of your concern? …

… Tomorrow, next week, your life-time,”
the futureS of the planet?

 

#lter #horizons
Who you really are
and
who you might become
… ?

 

«§§§»

 

Ideas, thoughts, “brain addresses” on this site
can be individually copied, edited, and organized
in a sequence
that fits your aspirations and horizons

Who was Peter Drucker? Jump to Edward de Bono books

 

 

«§§§»

 

Reality is not linear
so don’t expect this page/site
to be linear —
where all of the pieces
are in one place

 

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400

 

#worldview #fastp
Pick a time and place in history
then consider
how you could
integrate yourself
into the existing situation
and what strategic intent
should you pursue … ?

 

the overnight leap … from Abraham’s time


Human Evolution 101

human-migration-map-plain-pict-t
“Homo erectus appeared about 2 million years ago
and, in several early migrations,
spread throughout Africa (where it is dubbed H.ergaster)
and Eurasia.” — Wikipedia

Technology: what really matters

evolution-toward-man-2022-08-10-pict-t

Evolution is very slow, very messy,
very wasteful and is incapable of
making the best use of available resources.” #EdB

“Scientists say planet in midst of
sixth mass extinction,
Earth’s wildlife running out of
places to live” —CBS

Language is an encyclopedia of ignorance” ↑

Do we need a new theory of evolution?

Your family tree ↑ ↓

Practical Thinking

What you have others want and will struggle to get more

What Goes On Behind Closed Doors #wgobcd

#uf Dealing with risk and uncertainty

History of the World in Two Hours (audio playback 7 min.)

History hasn’t come to an end

 

↑ Imagine someone, somewhere
in an earlier time
trying to figure out
what to do
with the rest of their life. #sda

 



We can only work TOWARD
the thingS on our mental radar ↓
at a point in time

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400

“Most mistakes in thinking ↑ are
mistakes in perception

Connect, connect, connect

“The mind can SEE
only
what it is
prepared to SEE”

“Once you SEE something
you can not UNSEE it” ↓ continue

sit-combo-pict-340w
“Most mistakes in thinking ↑ are
mistakes in perception


#sit ↑ → … → #JUDGEMENT
#seek #avoid #means ← to get other things

Intelligence, Information, Thinking pdf

Attention-directing frameworks

 

 

 

#self-development

a.k.a.
#tln #sda #uf Time-life navigation ©
human-migration-map-plain-pict-t
#Trade
trade-main-flows-1400-1800-pict-t-600w
The Ascent of Money ↑ ::: WPedia ::: AMZ ::: YT

The Square and the Tower:
Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook
#wgobcd

America Before Columbus

The Great Degeneration

#lter The Second Curve or Why bother?

Outliers ::: Finishing Well

From Knowledge to KnowledgeS

Management and the World’s Work

What Executives Should Remember ::: html ::: AMZ

THEY don’t want YOU to SEE!

TLN Insights

What thinking is needed?

 

Time-life navigation concept map

 

 

 

You must take
integrating responsibility
for putting YOURSELF
into the BIG PICTURE
.”

#wlh #horizons
#whtmal = work has to make a life
#bp = big picture #self-development
#ir #lter #dtao #operacy #trade Pluralism

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

What Executives Should Remember ::: html ::: AMZ

the real pattern of economic activity

 

#worldview
What exists is getting old ↑ ↓ #bp

 

sound-players-pict-no-reflect-400

The Five Deadly Sins

 

Unimagined futureS ↑ ↓ are near receding #horizonS #ptf

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

information challenges

#horizons
↑ Making a living is no longer enough ↑.
“Work” has to make a life. continue #whtmal

finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle#fastp

Life is based on
#beliefs, expectations and assumptions.” ↑ ↓ EDB

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

Attention directing frameworks ::: Think! Before It's Too Late ::: The Six Thinking Hats

Knowledge-Based Management

 

This page offers:

#bp #fastp A brainroad for designing a way forward ↓ …

pyramid-to-dna-annotated-pict-t-600
#fastp
… an evolving life action #work-approach and work plan

that circumvents

your history, your current #situation or your current #worldview

that imprison you in the past #psdapa

pryamid to dna annotated

 

#Work-approach: Identify and record the thought-fragments ↑ ↓ —
with their implied #horizons translated for YOU ↓ —
that you're willing to work toward
in your life — within time. #adt #apta

 

 

#36 #uf #tln #lchp #hor3 #wlh #horizons #mo1 #seek #means

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279


“Those who want to live a #fulfilling life

who want to feel as if there is

some purpose
in their being on this earth —

will have to learn

to MANAGE THEMSELVES
PFD
#mo1 = key managing oneself “ideas” #wb

 

“They will have to accept the fact
that it is their own responsibility

to find #fastp

meaningful work

that builds on

their strengths and #values
PFD #svm.

 

Work has to make a life

 

How can the individual survive? →
“What cause do I want to serve?” →
Josh Abrams → allocating one’s life

 

The second half of your life

 

Make your life your endgame

 

Buford said Drucker passed on
three questions everyone should ask themselves during

different seasons of life:

“Who am I, now?” Where do I belong?”

“What’s my contribution now?”

“Who I want to be tomorrow” — Thomas Crown 2:23

The danger of too much planning ::: Return on luck
Opportunities

 

 

Connect, connect, connect

 

Managing Oneself overview on steroids

 

Seeking guidance?

Imagining Navigation Course Changes

 

Why bother?

 

#org
Who Is An Executive?

Every knowledge worker
in modern organization
is an “executive” if,
by virtue of
his position or knowledge,
he is responsible for
a contribution
that materially affects
the capacity of the organization
to perform and to obtain results. summary ::: full version

 

The INDIVIDUAL in entrepreneurial society

 

How can the INDIVIDUAL survive?

 

 

#70 #sda #wlh #thinking

“One can … never be sure

what the

knowledge worker

thinks—

and yet

THINKING !!!

is her/his specific work;

it is his/her “doing.””

 

Where in an organization?

 

 

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400

Within ↑ REALITY there are recursive needs for:

star SEEINGbroad #sda

star SEEINGthe road ahead

star Thinking broad and thinking detailed

star Dense reading and dense listening

star SEEING → that REALITY
is not controlled by
any system
including an education system
now or in the future … ↓ #ptf

 

 

#worldview #bp #ptf Druckerism
“We know only two things

about the future ↑.

It cannot be known.

It will be different

from what exists now

and from what we now expect #msd::: now two people
#worldview ::: The Second Curve ::: Water Logic

 

↑ … projecting your current work or current life #situation
into the future
will very likely imprison you in the past
e.g. The Bomber Mafia

 

 

Being prepared for what comes next

play-book-sheet-pict-600

Situation coding

 

Why We Need New Thinking About Thinking

Information and thinking ::: Intelligence and thinking :::
Cleverness and thinking ::: Does thinking need to be difficult? :::
How to be an intellectual ::: Reactive and pro-active thinking :::
Operacy ::: Critical thinking ::: The adversarial system :::
Challenge and protest ::: The need to be right ::: Analysis and design :::
Creative thinking ::: Logic and perception :::
Emotions, feelings and intuition ::: Summary

 

YouTube: A brief celebration of
Edward de Bono's ideas
on thinking

 

thinking-books-601w

 

Topics vs. realities ::: larger view

color bars ::: color swatches ::: Kaleidoscopes
education-experience-reality-399

#fastp

jigsaw-puzzle-colors-250

 

TomorrowS
… you can’t get there
directly from here
… so you can’t get there by
piling up more todayS
even with some adjustments.

The challenge:
‘To boldly go (some) where (valuable)
no person has gone before’?
e.g., In 1910 no one had gone to 1920 or 1930 or 1940 …

 

#hor3 #ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

Your thinking, choices, DECISIONS are

determined by

what you’ve “SEEN
↑ ↓ …

 

Today perceptiveness is more #important than analysis continue

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp

As time unfolds
the pieces and the puzzles
change radically

 

Knowledge-Based Management

 

#uf #tln #hor3 #wlh
Perception provides

the ingredients for thinking #apta

 

#apta = [attention → perception (water logic) → thinking → action] ← reside within
#circumstances (#cir) and #situations
(#sit) summary

#adt → #sit → #exp → … → #apta (including preparation — #prepare)

 

 

#mmitamip ↓ → Wisdom → Broad #sda

Most

mistakes in thinking


are

mistakes in perception

Social ecology



version on steroids #apta

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer

Concepts ::: Context ::: Attention flow
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

* SEEING only part of the #situation↑ ↓
inadequate #worldview (#sda — sixteen different angles) #broad


* Jumping to conclusions

* Misinterpretation caused by feelings

 

version ↑ on steroids

 

 

 

#tln #fastp #mmit #information #wb why bother
Outer world — inner world
GEORGIAN-MANOR mansion

The future of the planet is between our ears ↑

 

 

 

Questions as attention directing TOOLS !!!

toolbox
toolbox.pict

 

#horizons
Intelligence Information Thinking

 

Practical Thinkingbeing right #apta

 

Decision making is a time machine


FREEDOM — the heaviest burden laid on man

 

Social ecology ↑ ↓ #soceco #apta

 

Dealing with risk and uncertainty ↑ ↓ #apta

 

 

line

 

 

#lms1 #hor2 #wlh1

How is it possible

to NAVIGATE and WORK toward

THE “right horizonS”
#worldview #horizons

that aren’t on your mental radar

at the RIGHT pointS in time?

#work-approach ::: #fastp
sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

Managing Oneself — a revolution in human affairs

JUDGEMENTAttention-directing frameworks

“Your first and foremost job as a leader
is to take charge of your own energy
and then help to orchestrate the energy
of those around you” — Peter Drucker

Intelligence Information Thinking

Doing what the “situation” dictates rather than what you want to do

Who you are now and who you might become

Intelligence and Naming People Behavior

Why bother?

an idea outside of yourself

Executive realities: unless executives
work at becoming #effective,
the realities of their situation
will push them into futility

Tactics

Questions for different life ‘seasons’ ::: being prepared

remembered for
NYT Obits

The Happiness Purpose ::: Textbook of Wisdom ::: Daily Drucker

#wlh Finishing Well

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600


hashtag → = #connections or related #worldview ::: Water Logic


stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

Life directions No one to ask


#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

PERCEPTION provides the ingredients for thinking ↓ ↑

 

#lms2
harvest-to-action-2015-pict-t-600

finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp

Constructing a life #work-approach (#apta)
by assembling ↑ ↓ thought fragments

Henry Jones Grail Diary
grail-diary-2019-02-04-900_300x231
… a.k.a. building blocks (living in a Lego™ world)

Richness of perception, 'possibly' and alternatives all ↑ go together

#apta = attention → perception (water logic) → thinking → action


The Perfect Person

What exists is getting old






#worldview
NAVIGATING :

If you can SEE the road ahead … ↑ ↓



Wisdom ↑ is largely about

broadening PERCEPTION ↑ ↓
#apta #sda




«§§§»



How is it possible ↑ ↓

to know

#wgobcd #worldview #ea

what

goes on


behind closed doors
?


Ideas
that emerge from behind closed doors
originate from powerful people
in various locations
and various positions of power
Hitler’s Circle of Evil


Where on a map might these meetings take place?
sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

 


«§§§»



Your thinking, choices, and decisions
are determined by
what you’ve SEEN
. ↑ ↓ #mmit #worldview #apta

 

NAVIGATING ↑ ↓ is done by the human mind (#mmit)
Intelligence Information Thinking — (#PDF) #apta
PLUS
why thinking is so very important

 

Why bother?

 

human-migration-evolution

Estimated global population from 10,000BCE to 2100

global-population-growth-500w


Introduction to Human Evolution ::: Imagine a time so vast
How many species? ::: Water logic

Try reflecting on the daily and longer-term lives ↑
over thousands of years — up to the industrial revolution


Human migration and evolutionwhat’s driving them?

A change in the human condition ::: Landmarks of Tomorrow

human migration map global population growth

 

the-second-curve-124w-200h

The Second Curve by Charles Handy

Those who want a fulfilling life

Successful careers are not planned

A year with Peter Drucker

books-about-drucker-collage-pict-t-600

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

Danger of too much planning ::: Return on Luck

Finishing Well ::: Charles Kuralt’s America

the road to Davy’s Bar
missing the turn to the future



#dwrau #sda #fastp
#second-curve #connect #worldview #horizons #ptf

s-second-curve-sigmoid-black-original-300

#YouTube ::: larger 1 ::: larger 2

WHAT EXISTS IS GETTING OLD

 

sound-players-pict-600

 

The Second Curve ↑ ↓

 

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

What Executives Should Remember ::: html ::: AMZ

the real pattern of economic activity

Water Logic

The Five Deadly Sins

#bp Long years of profound changes ↑ ↓

You don’t know what you’re going to be doing next

Management: 21st Century   ~   Next Society

The Economy ↑ ↓

Knowledge Dimensions

 

 

 

#49 #tln #hor3 #wlh #work-approach #lms #ams
A work approach ↑ ↓
that is effective for the challengeS ahead
is needed

 

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

 

The danger of too much planning — the need
for being flexible and ready to seize the right opportunities
when they come …

 

The #wisdom learning curve

 

Boredom is one of those challenges

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

There are things that happen
between two points in time
and things that are happening over time … ↑ ↓

What exists is getting old

If you can see the road ahead

harvest and implement

THEY don’t want you to see!

 

harvest-to-action-2015-pict-t-600

finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp

Knowledge-Based Management

 

«§§§»

 

To know something,
to really understand
something important
,

one must look at it
from sixteen different angles #sda #apta



Most mistakes in thinking are

mistakes in perception #sda

 

Richard Haass #worldview ↓

the-world-a-brief-introduction-pp-pict-200h.jpg

The World: A Brief Introduction Amazon ::: Preface #pdf

The World: A brief introduction

 

Allocating one’s life ::: Managing Oneself :::
Executive realities #work-approach

 

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

 

 

line

 

 

Important: Page/site exploration/navigation

This page contains a great many web links (a.k.a. brainroadS)


These links are a means
of making mental #connections (#sda)

In quite a few places on this page,
you will see a cluster of links.
These clusters are meant to create
a bigger mental picture and
a better mental map.
Some of these clusters are in “teleprompter” format
to make exploration vectors more obvious

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

 

… To further aid in making connections,
this page contains #hashtags (#sda #dtmp #lms #connect etc.) and
word stem search suggestions.
Search results may create
another set of thought clusters
and a different mental map.
Not every possible connection ( #connect) is tagged.

Some hashtags are “place marks,” brain-addresses/neighborhoods —
#01 → #81 #sda

Web #page-search: Windows = Control F | macOS = Command F | iOS

Try a #page-search ↑ for
“effectiveness” ::: “concentration” or
management by objectives

For each thought fragment, concept, illustration, link, or text block
you encounter ↑ ↓
your could EXP lore (rla exp.com)
employing dense reading and dense listening
plus #thinkingbroad and thinking detailed
then ask yourself what does this mean for me? (illustration)
along with performing a #PMI
in conjunction with visualizing (#visual) the operacy involved
Teach Yourself to Think
sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400
Situation coding

This page is
an entry point, an introduction, a brainroad & a breadcrumb trail for ↓

 

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BEWARE OF THE PRISONs OF THE PAST —

YOURS plus “your small worldS” with their six degrees of separation

and their water logic

(past, present and future)

In a relatively short period of time,
humanity has moved from a world
where people had to be totally self-sufficient
to a world becoming more and more dependent on
a society of interdependent organizations,
but these organizations are not permanent.

 

The journey through this page
is going to be confusing
because changing realities must be confusing.

 

breaks-in-the-pattern-pict-t-450w

 

YouTube : The History of Europe: Every Year #youtube image

what exists is getting old

Imagining Navigation Course Changes

 

evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

#horizons   Age of Discontinuity ::: The Divide ::: Post Capitalist Society

Moving beyond CAPITALISM
#worldview #horizons #apta

Capitalism in One Country (1946) ::: The Code of Capital #pdf

Xerox, Kodak, Nokia, Excellent companies et al. #pdf

CNN miniseries: 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 2000’s, The Movies

Social Needs and Business Opportunities ::: The Descent of Money

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

 

If Socialism is defined, as Marx defined it,
as ownership of the means of production
by the employees, then
the United States has become
the most “socialist” country around
while still remaining
the most “capitalist” one as well. continue

 

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You may find it very useful
to create and maintain
a “travel log” and “map”
for recording the
important mental “points of interest
along your mental journey ↑ ↓

 

 

As a person moves through life and time,
major new realities
aren’t automatically revealed to them
when it is convenient

 

Never heard of#apta

 

“To know something,
to really understand

something important,

one must look at it from sixteen different angles.

People are perceptually slow,

and there is no shortcut to understanding;

it takes a great deal of time.” more

 

#wlh #hor3
More than anything else
we are responsible for
our own #self-development
and allocating our lives continue

 

If you can see the road ahead

 

There are no answers here. There are
there are only BROAD #sda
attention-directing #adt
thought-fragments
and/or connectable thought clusters

Life and Action Management System Foundation
(#LMS3 #AMS #work-approach) ↓

harvest-to-action-2015-pict-t-600
finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle

Larger view

The Six Thinking Hats may be applied
to the concepts implied
within the thinking map above

finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp

 

“In today’s ever changing world,
you can’t meet the responsibilities of leadership
unless you keep up with the times”
— and that must be confusing
because there will alway be
multiple contradictions.

 

hist-e-wall-t-line-eco-cntnt-mo-l-line-ctv-act

larger view ↑ ::: seen-ew-attention ::: explore

history, evidence wall, operacy

#wlh
“Your first and foremost job as a leader
is to take charge of your own energy
and then help to orchestrate the energy
of those around you” — Peter Drucker

 

Your thinking, choices, DECISIONS are

determined by

what you’ve “SEEN
↑ ↓ …

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

 

Perception provides

the ingredients for thinking #apta

 

 

Most mistakes in thinking ↑ …

are mistakes in
perception
#apta ::: explore


* SEEING only part of the situation↑ ↓
inadequate #worldview (#sda ::: water logic)
* Jumping to conclusions
* Misinterpretation caused by feelings

 

Outer world — inner world

 

Questions as attention directing tools

 

Intelligence Information Thinking #pdf

 

Practical Thinkingbeing right #apta

 

Decision making is a time machine


FREEDOM — the heaviest burden laid on man

 

Social ecology ↑ ↓ #apta

 

Dealing with risk and uncertainty ↑ ↓ #apta

 

 

 

line

 

 

BEWARE OF THE PRISONs OF THE PAST

If

you

don’t

design

Alternative life directions

(Why you NEED many competing patterns ::: broad #sda ::: #design :::

imagining navigation course changes ::: early career work :::

insights ::: why bother? ::: self-development :::

managing oneself a revolution in human affairs ::: Peter Drucker)


your own life

then

someone else

(#worldview #hotw ::: The Vanishing East ::: IBM ::: guttersnipes !!! :::

Easy prey !!! ::: #28 #ea #fastp Trans/Tribal ::: Wars !!!)

What’s happening to America's middle class? And the implications?

Can workers really “fix” the problem? (Kodak, Blackberry, Sears … )
#pdf

will

do it

for you


me → #wgobcd → Vietnam-era Vet and former

Fortune 200 Fixer and General Manager of Discontinued Operations

#wgobcd #surprises

 

“If you don’t design your own life plan,
chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan.
And guess what they have planned for you?
Not much.” ― Jim Rohn

Alternative life directions

 

«§§§»

 

What happens
when the world changes
and you don’t?


BEWARE OF THE PRISONs OF THE PAST → our inheritance ↓

 

 

Circa 1958 ish ↑ “No one born after the turn of our century (1900)
has ever known anything
but a world uprooting its foundations,
overturning its values
and toppling its idols.

No one younger than this century
has known anything
but an age of revolution.

In the political, the social, the economic,
even the cultural sphere,
the revolutions of our time
have been revolutions “against
rather than revolutionsfor.””

The New Frontiers (The Marshall Plan →)


A panoramic view of Ottoman era Istanbul in the 19th century

panoramic-view-of-ottoman-era-istanbul-from-galata-tower-in
		-the-19th-century-600x57 Istanbul

VS.

Handbook for
the Positive Revolution


avoiding a system that makes intelligent people
stagnate and ineffective


Principles ::: Methods ::: Power
The Principles : Effectiveness ::: Constructive (design) :::
Respect ::: Self-Improvement ::: Contribution



Effectiveness: Lord heart of the matter


The four elements of Commando Spirit :
Courage, Determination, Unselfishness,
and Cheerfulness in the face of adversity small worlds ::: Aldo Kane

 

«§§§»

 

Thinking conclusions ↑ ↓
based on something familiar
are likely to be
associated with
yesterday’S reality
continue

Outer world — inner world

 

«§§§»

 

Imagine your life existing within the world of
1910, 1935, 1950, 1960, 1970 or …,
how would you devote your time
to creating your future
without basing your actions
on an ill-fated extrapolation of the past?

BEWARE OF THE PRISONs OF THE PAST

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

We know only two things about the future (continue)

Why you NEED many competing patterns ↑ ::: broad worldview #sda within perception

The danger in excessive emphasis on
rigid
acceptances and rejections judgement

 

compass-and-books-pict-t-450w

 

«§§§»

 

This page provides a compass and

a unique breadcrumb trail

for SEEING an evolving life

among other lives

in changing, unpredictable small worlds

over time

 

If you focus your attention
on anyone’s life
at a point in time
you will see their small worldS
connected to other small worldS
through degrees of separation

 

↑ Can be seen in Rick Steves’ Europe #youtube

 

This page is
a time-investment menu
and thought-scape for

identifying (seeing) and exploring horizons

alternative horizons to consider

 

ice-floe-compass-attn-485w
Look north, look south … note what you SEE #adt continue

 

There are no answers
only alternatives and
constantly receding horizons

 

 

#horizons
work has to make a life continue ↑ ↓

but how?

r-banson-pict-500

 

#wlh
Successful careers are not planned continue ↑ ↓ #ptf

 

 

We are … what we do — repeatedly ( Groundhog Day )

#horizons From Knowledge to KnowledgeS

#evidence-wall and timeline #iewt → larger


#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

If you can see the road, life is easier continue

Your thinking, choices, decisions are determined by what you’ve “ SEEN

FREEDOM

Build on islands (a.k.a. small worlds) of health and strength

 

What, exactly, will we remember years from now?

Memories from people who lived through major historical events —
World War II, the Vietnam War, and others —
offer a clue for how we’ll look back on the pandemic.



We know only two things about the future (continue)



Why you NEED many competing patterns ↑ ↓


«§§§»


Along the road of time there are new realities
that create a new reality
which is followed by another new reality
followed by another new reality.

New realities have an impact on an old reality and old realities.
Transnational/Tribal #ea #fastp #worldview #connect

Part of a new reality is that there will be people around the world
who are/were trapped in prior realities at various points in time.

 

Circa 1958 ish ↑ “No one born after the turn of our century (1900)
has ever known anything
but a world uprooting its foundations,
overturning its values
and toppling its idols.

No one younger than this century
has known anything
but an age of revolution.

In the political, the social, the economic,
even the cultural sphere,
the revolutions of our time
have been revolutions “against
rather than revolutionsfor”” The New Frontiers

#ihor ↓

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t


Fragmentary evidence of
changing worldS may be seen in museums around the world —
at various pointS in time. All worldS are small worldS
Karen Blixen : Out of Africa
What Goes On Behind Closed Doors #wgobcd ↓

#evidence-wall

history-of-the-world-in-two-hours-03-pict-600

the-square-and-the-tower-pict-t-350w-471
The Square and the Tower:
Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook
at Amazon
#wgobcd

Importance of thinkingLovers in Auschwitz, Reunited 72 Years Later. He Had One Question. #pdfWWII

“Only the paranoid #survive” — boredom? ::: From Progress to Innovation #pdf

#lter #hotw History of the World in Two Hours (first 2 and last 13 minutes)

The origins of native Americans:
First Face of America

What happened to America before Columbus? #youtube #worldview

What happened to the empires in world history? GONE #worldview

"David Reynolds" historian YouTube #youtube #worldview

The Asian Century

This page and it’s linked pages
are a foundation for creating life work -books.

history-of-the-world-in-two-hours-01-healed-pict-400

images: single cell 1 ::: single cell 2 ::: tree of life ::: history of life ::: stages

first-face-america-pict-t

#video playback

america-before-columbus-pict-t

Did you #SEE and #NOTE the patterns (#connect #pattern #patterns) of change? ↑ —


The universe and our worldS are not stable nor static but dynamic and
non-linear — tomorrowS aren’t extrapolations of yesterdayS

Even the variety of universe “conceptualizations” ↓ are of very recent origins

big-bang-related-04-pict-t-600

#hotw History of the world in seven minutes #audioplayback
Making the future #ptf #mtf

big-bang-related-03-pict-t-600

 

#08 “It is almost frightening
how fast the obvious of yesteryear
is turning incomprehensible continue

 

radar-differences-pict-600

time line

On the road ahead ↑, there will be multiple, multiple new realitieS

 

In less than 150 years, (circa 1988)
MANAGEMENT
has transformed
the social and economic fabric
of the world’s developed countries. … continue
#sop The Spirit of Performance #pdf

 

hong-kong-then-now-horizontal-pict-600

Hong Kong more recent

Google: McKinsey Asia

The New Pluralism ::: Up to poverty ::: Luther, Machiavelli, and the Salmon

 

What is the social impact of your participation and contribution? ↑ ↓

How will your children and grandchildren
know to
and
know how to
integrate their lives
into this
unfolding and unpredictable reality?

Does being just another job-holder count?

How can the individual survive? continue

We live in the world we see continue

In a relatively short period of time
humanity has moved from a world
where people had to be totally self-sufficient
to a world becoming more and more dependent on
a society of interdependent organizations,
but these organizations are not permanent.

 

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#iecs We know only two things about the future:
It cannot be known.
It will be different from what exists now and from what we now expect

The future that has already happened #ptf

Living in an Age of Overlap

Intelligence Information Thinking (#iit)

BROAD worldview #sda

From Knowledge to KnowledgeS ::: Knowledge and Technology #pdf

The Emerging Knowledge Society
> Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity
> School and Education as Society’s Center
> The Competitive Knowledge Economy
> How Can Government Function?

The Manager and the Moron ::: Luther, Machiavelli … ::: Transnational/Tribal

#worldview to RESPONSIBILITY based organization ::: #article titles

The mothership

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

What Executives Should Remember ::: html ::: AMZ

the real pattern of economic activity

harvest and implement

larger view and additional connections

The Five Deadly Sins

Try mentally running this ↑ backward and forward through time !!! — 1800 - 2050

#Cities ::: Supply chain management ::: Last mile

Even organizations that normally are long-lived

In a transition period, the number of people in need always grows

Easy prey !!!

The English Constitution ::: Lombard Street

Supplemental awareness

BEWARE OF THE PRISONs OF THE PAST ↑ ↓

 

Real GDP (gross domestic product) trend 1950 - 2020 ↓

gdp-real-2020-09-30-pict-t-600

Economic #growth ↑ is linked to interest rates ↓ Central banks running scared

1-year-treasury-rate-54-year-historical-chart-pict-t-600

Stock prices vs. economic growth. ↓ both are linked to interest rates ↑

real-gdp-per-capita-stock-prices

Per capita GDP ↓

gdp-per-capita-pict-t-600

“Economists never know anything until twenty years later.

There are no slower learners than economists.

There is no greater obstacle to learning
than to be the prisoner
of totally invalid but dogmatic theories.

The economists are where the theologians were
in 1300: prematurely dogmatic” — Frontiers of Management

 

“The customer never buys
what you think you sell.
And you don’t know it.
That’s why it’s so difficult
to differentiate yourself.” — Druckerisms

 

Potential customers are somewhere else ↓

population-distribution-by-place-pict-t-600

Population distribution by location ↓

population-distribution-by-location-pict-t-600

 

value-stream-map-pict-t-annotated-600

Production ::: Larger view of the image above

industry_structure-pict-600

larger view of the image above

 

Ports
ports-top-americas-600w
larger

port-of-los-angeles
larger 1 ::: larger 2

 

What needs doing around here?
A local view from Google Earth ↓

local business

Try searching Google for "largest cities" then see
what do they look like on the map in overview and in street view.

Along the road to Terra Alta ↓

Urban world: The shifting global business landscape

micro

Knowledge: Its Economics and Its Productivity

Economic content and structure landscape

 

 

High tech is living in the nineteenth century continue

futile heroic efforts … but tomorrow always arrives

Victims of success

Dense reading and Dense Listening

thinking broad and thinking detailed

Decisions ::: Topic work ::: Action plans ::: Communications

Google: global falling birth rate implications

… and at the same time ↓

Why good people still can’t get jobs #pdf

Will GE’s pension freeze help or hurt? #pdf

#reality check: the journeyS ahead ↓ are not going to be easy …

 

 

For almost nothing (#fan — source)

in our educational systems

prepares people

for the #reality

in which they will live, work,

and become #effective” —

Peter Drucker


peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

… and graduate school is much worse …

… “ not even educated in management ” … continue

Google search

Druckerism and intellectual capitalist #wlh #lms #education

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

Books by
Peter Drucker ::: Walter Wriston ::: Bob Buford ::: Rick Warren

Drucker timescape

How could an education system
prepare us
for unknown and unpredictable
future #realitieS? #ptf

Topics in books by Walter Wriston #ea #fastp ::: Transnational/Tribal

A Century of Social Transformation

 

take more responsibility for himself or herself,
rather than depend on the company
. continue

 

#ATTENTION: Preparing to SEE #adt

The Educational Revolution circa 1957 A sudden, sharp change
has occurred in the meaning and impact of
knowledge for society

#dinp Description is not #perception

 

Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity

 

 

#worldview
People of high #effectiveness are conspicuous by their absence in executive jobs continue

The Pentagon Papers ::: The Afghanistan Papers

 

 

#hor3 #wlh “To say that most executives spend most of their time tackling the problems of today is euphemism.

They spend most of their time on the problems of yesterday.

Executives spend more of their time trying to unmake the past (here) than on anything else.” Druckerism

what exists is getting old

 

«§§§»

 

#79 #lms #hor1 #hor3

“We need judgement to find our way through life.

The danger is an excessive emphasis on rigid acceptances and rejections, and not enough attention to design.

#Design is a matter of putting things together to achieve an objective and to serve our values #svm.

Instead of searching for the standard solution we design a way forward.” Edward de Bono

 

work-life horizons ::: work-life evolution

 

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

JUDGEMENT

attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

 

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

The patterning system of the brain

NO SURPRISES

Managing the Moron

 

 

“We can only move through life because the judgement of ‘recognition’ tells us at every moment

what things are;

what things to #seek; #lms #hor1 #hor2 #hor3 #wlh

what things to #avoid; #lms

what things to #use as means to get other things. #lms

 

Without judgement we could not proceed at all .


The danger lies in the harsh, quick and rigid judgements that we require of ourselves and that are required by our traditional thinking habits .

 

Too often we use stereotypes to ease our judgement.

 

Too often we put up false either/or choices to force ourselves, or others, into a certain position .

 

All this is an integral part of the Gang of Three thinking system, with its emphasis on:

rejection of the ‘untruth’

the search for absolutes

and an inclusion/ exclusion box type of logic with the avoidance of contradiction.

 

This is an excellent system for many purposes but it has its limits and its dangers.

 

In a changing world the ‘boxes’ derived from the past may no longer be adequate to describe a changed present .


The dangers of judgement lie both in the rejection aspect and in the acceptance aspect .

 

Something rejected drops out of attention and perception .

It is no longer an ingredient in our thinking .

 

Something accepted may be accepted too wholeheartedly, when acceptance should be

milder ,  

doubtful or  

related to circumstances .

 

While acknowledging the practicality of simplistic black/white judgements, most people are coming to realize that the world does not work that way.

 

If you choose to take a black and white photograph of the world this does not mean that the world has no colors.


Instead of judgement the emphasis is on ‘design’ .

 

How do we put things together in order to satisfy our values and needs ?

 

Design may be much more difficult than judgement but the results will be better .


Many problems can be solved by analysis .

 

You identify the cause of the problem and then you seek to remove that cause .

 

 

But when the cause cannot be found or, if found, cannot be removed, then we are paralyzed because more and more #analysis will not solve that problem.

 

We need to be able to ‘design the way forward ’, leaving the cause in place .


#ihong While we are excellent at #analysis we are not nearly so expert at design — because design requires idea creativity .” continue

 

Judgement needs to be made OPERATIONAL

 

 

Parallel Thinking

 

 

Dealing with risk and uncertainty continue

 

Harnessing Everyday Genius?

 

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#04 In navigating … ↑ ↓

“Your #thinking, choices, #decisions are determined by

what you’ve SEEN

 

Not everything you’ve seen is equally valuable and there maybe contradictions

 

Once you’ve seen something you can’t unsee it

 

We live in the world WE SEE

 

“#Decision making #PDFs is a time machine (here)


that synchronizes into a single time — the present

a great number of divergent time spans.”
Druckerism

 

 

 

Wisdom is about awareness ↑. #ptf



If you know the road ↑, life is easier.
TLN insights


If you can see the road ↑ ↓, life is easier.

If you can discover new roads ↑ ↓, life is richer.

If you know you have a choice of roads ↑ ↓,

life is richer.” continue

 

r-banson-pict-500

Richard Branson

 

#tln #whtmal
“Making a living is no longer enough,” …
Work also has to make a life.”
Druckerism ::: TLN insights ::: Managing oneself (calendarize this? #ams)

Successful careers are not planned#ptf continue

 

Consider these observations ↑ from different points in time.
How could you make them operational? ↓

 

evidence wall and timeline larger

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

… still thinking inside the box?

“one acts only upon what one is paying attention to …” ↑

 

Build on islands (a.k.a. small worlds) of health and strength

 

We are nowhere near the end of the turbulences,
the transformations, the sudden upsets #lter continue

Long years of profound change #ptf

And “The actual #results of (current) action are not predictable ↓” #ptf continue

“I have known many people who are
very clever indeed within their own fields
(even winning #Nobel prizes)
but not especially ‘wise
outside their own fields of study.” — EDB

#reality assumptions ::: The Black Cylinder Experiment !!! #bce

Josh Abrams — lessons ::: Danger of too much planning

Annual review ::: Goal review

 

«§§§»

 

#01 How is it possible

to work toward

the “right horizonS” — the “right thingS” —

that aren’t on your mental radar ↓ …

#evidence-wall ↓

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

… at the right points in time? ↑ ↓

 

 

#02 How is it possible

to know

what goes on

behind closed doors? #wgobcd #surprises

 

 

Why not let Peter Drucker provide some awareness and insights?

radar-differences-pict-600

#worldview

Is “right” something #dogmatic or something determined by a #situation? ↓

The images above suggest an answer and
there is a connection to time spans #connect

What exists is getting old ↑ (wip) ::: The future that has already happened ↑ (wip) #worldview

You have to be prepared for the abandonment of everything (#wgobcd) ↑

From Progress to Innovation

The Shift To The Knowledge Society

Handbook for the Positive Revolution

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40
The explorer

rla exp.com = r eal l ife a dventures   from exp ↑ loration #adt

The general intention: getting on down the road —
in YOUR life within TIME


employee development ↓

leader-to-leader-march-12-2020


Judgement Needs to be Made Operational within time

#Thinking stages: exploring what to do → concluding → doing (#operacy) → back to stage 1

There are structureS to be considered in deciding what to do next ↓

 

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

“That knowledge has become THE resource ↑,
rather than a resource,
is what makes our society ‘post-capitalist.’


This fact changes — fundamentally —

the structure of society.


It creates new social and economic dynamics.


It creates new politics.” #knowledge ::: KEKP ::: MW

 

THIS ↑ MEANS IT HAS TO BE A SOCIETY OF ORGANIZATIONS

 

«§§§»

 

Knowledge exists only in application
(… and not in school courses)

 

The knowledge we now consider knowledge proves itself in action

 

Knowledge exists only in application

 

Moving beyond capitalism

 

 

sound-players-pict-no-reflect-400

From Progress to #Innovation

Startup thinking ::: Entrepreneurs and Innovation

 

«§§§»

 

#61 #attention1 of 3 #tln #wlh #ns #surprises

NO SURPRISES

 

#adt1
One does not pay attention to everything.

And one acts only upon


what one is

paying attention to. …

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

 

Attention-directing frameworks

 

The reaction
may be thinking or
it may be action (which is only thinking
that passes through our mouths
or our muscles instead of our minds)
.

Getting things done

The world around
is full of a huge number of things
to which one could pay attention.

But it would be impossible
to react to everything at once.

So one reacts only to a selected part of it.

#wlh The choice of attention area
determines the action
or thinking that follows.

The choice of this area of attention
is one of the most
fundamental aspects of thinking” #edb TLN Insights

The reaction is governed by ↓

 

The brain is a history library
that has to run in the future tense. continue

 

what exists is getting old

 

«§§§»

 

#wlh
… “Another implication is that the performance of an #individual, an organization, an industry, a country

 

in acquiring and applying #connect

 

#KNOWLEDGE

 

will increasingly become THE key competitive factor —for career and earnings opportunities of the #individuals; for the performance, perhaps even the survival, of the individual organization; for an industry; and for a country. (#mtf)

radar-differences-pict-600

About time (wip) ::: The future that has already happened (wip)

 

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competitive than any society we have yet known for the simple reason that with knowledge being universally accessible, there are no excuses for nonperformance.

There will be no “poor” countries.

There will only be ignorant countries.

And the same will be true for individual companies, individual industries, and individual organizations of any kind.

It will be true for the #individual, too.

In fact, developed societies have already become infinitely more competitive for the #individual than were the societies of the early twentieth century—let alone earlier societies, those of the nineteenth or eighteenth centuries.

Then, most people had no opportunity to rise out of the “class” into which they were born, with most #individuals following their fathers in their work and in their station in life.” continue and small worlds

radar-differences-pict-600

Knowledge and technology #pdf

WW II as Three-dimensional Chess #pdf #sda #thinking #knowledge #technology

Joining technological frontiers #pdf #knowledge

How marriage became an outdated concept #pdf

 

hong-kong-then-now-horizontal-pict-600

#Hong Kong more recent

Google: McKinsey Asia

 

Knowledge as THE key resource is fundamentally different from any of the traditional key resources, that is, from land and labor, and even from capital.

It is not tied to any country.

It is transnational.

It is portable.

It can be created everywhere, fast, and cheaply.

Finally, it is, by definition, changing.

Knowledge always makes itself obsolete within a short period of time.

The one thing that is predictable about a competitive advantage based on knowledge —whether the advantage be that of a country, of an industry, of an institution (whether a business or a university), or of an #individual—is that the advantage will soon be challenged, and probably by a total newcomer.

#evidence-wall ↓

sound-players-pict-600

 

For that reason alone the acquisition of knowledge, that is, learning, can no longer stop at any age. #wlhschools as partners with high performing adults and their organizatons

 

For an #individual, having a socially needed knowledge specialty is valuable — but #reality is not quite so simple

 

#thinkingcanvas ↓

sit-combo-pict-623w
Make Judgement Operational within time

 

#wlh More than anything else, the #individual has to take more responsibility for himself or herself, rather than depend on the company explored further down the page

sound-players-pict-no-reflect-400

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

product-technology-adoption-pict

#careerTimeView ↓ → knowledge industries, work, worker
career-time-view-pict-t-675x420

Buford said Drucker passed on
three questions everyone should ask themselves during

different seasons of life:

“Who am I, now?” Where do I belong?”

“What’s my contribution now?”

“Who I want to be tomorrow” — Thomas Crown 2:23

The danger of too much planning ::: Return on luck
Opportunities

 

What are the elements of work-life and career that need to be considered?

Google: Average company life span ::: Life expectancy of an institution

If you can see the road ahead — work-life time view #wisdom ↑ ↓ …

We live in the world WE SEE


#engagement?
engagement-garry-hamel-pict-300w

Assumptions

Engagement

Tactics (success) by Edward de Bono ::: People decisions

StrengthsFinder
::: Knowledge specialty evolution ::: Mojo :::
What Got You Here Won't Get You There ::: Managing Oneself a revolution …
The Second Half of One’s Life

Allocating your life

larger #careerTimeView ↑ ::: The walking dead

Opportunities ::: The return on luck

Build on islands (a.k.a. small worlds) of health and strength

sound-players-pict-no-reflect-400

#worldview #horizons It is time to give up thinking of jobs or career paths as we once did and think in terms of taking on assignments one after the other continue

Broad worldview #sda ::: Danger of too much planning ::: Learning to learn ::: Seasonal changes #parallel

 

Evolution of occupations

occupation-evolution-pict-t-600

 

Know your strengths ::: The first #question to ask is what needs to be done ::: Every six months, ask yourself, what do I want to be remembered for? NYT Obits continue

 

You are the Twenty-first Century CEO of yourself

 

If you read only one management book OR Where do I begin to read Drucker? #whtmal

 


 

“To say that most executives spend most of their time tackling the problems of today is euphemism.

They spend most of their time on the problems of yesterday. (here)

Executives spend more of their time trying to unmake the past than on anything else.” Druckerism (what exists is getting old)

 


 

#62 #hor3 #wlh 25 JAN — Reinvent Yourself

 

The following thought fragments are a part of
managing oneself — a revolution in human affairs

The concepts below imply the need for dense reading plus
thinking broad and thinking detailed

 

“Knowledge people

must take responsibility


for their own

development #self-development

and placement.

 

In today’s society and organizations,

people work increasingly with knowledge,

rather than with skill.

 

Knowledge and skill differ in a fundamental characteristic —

#skills change very, very slowly.

Knowledge, however, changes itself.

sound-players-pict-no-reflect-400

What different knowledge specialties ↑
were necessary in each broad situation?
What were their origins and evolution?

 

It makes itself obsolete ↑, and very rapidly.

 

A #knowledge worker becomes obsolescent ↑ if he or she does not go back to school every three or four years. continuing education

 

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

The individual in entrepreneurial society

 

This not only means that the equipment of learning, of knowledge, of skill, of experience that one acquires early is not sufficient for our present life time and working time ↓.

 

People change over such a long time span.

 

They become different persons with
different needs,
different abilities,
different perspectives,
and, therefore,
with a need
to “reinvent themselves.”

 

I quite intentionally use a stronger word than “revitalize.”

 

If you talk of fifty years of working life — and this, I think, is going to be increasingly the norm — you have to reinvent yourself.

 

You have to make something different out of yourself, rather than just find anew supply of energy.” — The Daily Drucker

 

The second-half of your life

 


 

“Quite simply, the #values habit determines the whole value of the thinking (in real life).

Without values there is no value to the thinking. #svm

In real life #values determine choices, decisions, success and failure” continue

 


 

#tinl “There is no law requiring one to think for oneself or to make one's own #ideas.

In important matters it is usually easier to accept other people's ideas ready-made and this saves one the trouble of doing any thinking for oneself — though one may still have to do it in minor matters.

Often one has no choice but to accept the ideas of others because thinking things out for oneself can be so difficult.

Education unfortunately provides little help in this matter.

You can probably remember things you were taught at school

about geography (valleys, river deltas, rice-growing countries, etc.) and

about history (dates of battles, names of kings, etc.).

But can you remember what you were taught about thinking?

Or is thinking something that one knows all about anyway — like walking or breathing?

The truth is that thinking is too important a matter to do anything about.

So we have left it to the philosophers who over the ages have amused themselves with the most intricate analyses which have little relevance to everyday life.

Some time ago a man (Rudolf Carnap), who was described as being one of the most influential philosophers of the century, died.

Influential on his fellow philosophers, but hardly on anyone else.

Just how much influence does logical positivism have on everyday thinking?” practical thinking

 


 

#14 #wb #worldview #mmit
Why bother?

Why didn’t somebody show me?

 

This is a sensible phrase to cover a sensible strategy.

Go your own way.

Do your own thing.

Carve out a little niche in the complex world and then be happy and content in that niche.

Being worried about the rest of the world is too futile and too difficult a task.

Let those (the unreasonable man) who are motivated to change the world work on that task. #wgobcd

The world will always last long enough to see out your lifetime.

 

Century of social transformation

history-of-the-world-in-two-hours-03-pict-600

#wgobcd guttersnipes ::: The Alternative to Tyranny

#wgobcd The Forces Creating a New Geography of Opportunity?

How can the individual survive?

 

I am not going to disagree with this point of view but to side-step it in order to write for those who know that they are inseparably part of the world in which they live : their own internal world, the local community world and the world at large

Outer world — inner world

 

sidebar — ↑ #connect

 

What goes on behind closed doors #wgobcd

evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

Freedom is not fun … guttersnipes

 

Your education has not prepared you …

 

Plenty of people will always be needed
who can bring only muscle to the job continue

 

The End of Loyalty

 

“The reasonable man
adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable man
persists in trying to
adapt the world to himself.

Therefore, all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.”
George Shaw

 

Dealing with risk and uncertainty

 

Wisdom BROAD #sda

 

Intelligence and PEOPLE BEHAVIOR #seek

 

More than an animal

 

Time-life navigation insights

 

Beware of the guttersnipes

 

Tomorrow always arrives

 

WHAT EXECUTIVES SHOULD REMEMBER (Audible)

 

How Much Labor Is Needed — and What Kind? #wgobcd continue

 

Managing oneself — a revolution in human affairs

 

#wlh A non-competitive life #aomt

 

Danger of too much planning

 

The responsibility based organization

 

We face long years of profound changes

 

Survival is competition

 

Living in a Lego™ world

 

Post-capitalist society has to be decentralized

 

#hor3
Remembered for — a difference in the lives of people —
A MAJOR HORIZON
NYT Obits

 

The Walking Dead

 

Alternative life directions

 

Ludecy

 

main brainroad continues

 

… Let the others munch contentedly like cows in the field — happy that there is grass today.

 

My concern has always been with human thinking because this seems to me to play so central a #role in human happiness and development both from moment to moment and also over the longer term.

 

I believe that we have done relatively little about thinking but have been content with a fluency of argument and the ability to attack and defend positions.

 

This sort of thinking unfortunately lacks the creative, constructive and #design energies that we really need in order to go forward.

 

Indeed, our absurd emphasis on negativity seriously impedes such progress.

 

This particular book is not, however, about thinking habits and methods.

 

This book is about the fundamental background and setting in which we would use our thinking skills .

 

If we are disposed to be negative then our thinking skills will help us to be negative.

 

If we are disposed to be positive then our thinking skills will take us in that direction.

 

This is more than a moment to moment emotional bias — it is THE fundamental attitude of our being.

 

There are far too many people who believe that natural evolution controlled by critical negativity will form the #ideas that we need — just as Darwinian evolution perfected a variety of life forms.

 

This is a dangerous fallacy.

 

Evolution is very slow, very messy, very wasteful and is incapable of making the best use of available resources.

Inadequate — but not disastrous — #ideas and #institutions will #survive, perfect and defend themselves (#cfs #ole #lypc) thus preventing the more effective use of resources.

 

sidebar — ↑ #connect

 

Realities:
Business realities, Market realities, and Knowledge realities

 

why_great_companies_fr540

The Second Curve

Amazon → How the Mighty Fall — Stages: 1 Hubris Born of Success; 2 Undisciplined Pursuit of More; 3 Denial of Risk and Peril Stage; 4 Grasping for Salvation; 5 Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death.

Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline.

There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top.

Anyone can fall and most eventually do.

 

Tomorrow always arrives
and it is always different

 

main brainroad continues

 

… That has always been the logical basis for revolution.

 

This book is intended for those who see this logical need.

 

There is a useful place for negativity  

in changing values;   #svm

in providing shaping pressures;  

in curbing excesses;  

in removing defects in order to improve an idea; and  

in forming the conscience of society.

 

But the constructive and creative energies have to be there in order to get the steady, step by step progress that is the basis of the positive revolution. …

 

A revolution in every generation
is not the answer

 

Management Worldview(S)

 

… How we generate these constructive energies is what the positive revolution is about . Handbook for the Positive Revolution

 

Beware of boredom

 

Josh Abrams → allocating one’s life

 

Starting small fires

 

Beware of waisting time and energy on good intentions and “good causes

 

 

#mmit
A few people
(not everyone)
higher up your LIFE food chain
may be observing your worldview and behavior

 

line

 

#31 #hor3 #think #dwrau #fastp #tln #wlh #ea

Pieces of the Puzzle #fastp #connect #mmit

 

A person is sitting down at a table with all the pieces of a puzzle on the table before him.

The task is to complete the puzzle.

The intelligent person may complete that puzzle rather quickly.

When all the pieces of the puzzle are given there is a skill in seeing how they fit together.

 

jigsaw-puzzle-colors-250

 

But in most #situations the pieces of the puzzle are not given.

 

 

sidebar

 

Homeland Showtime ::: #evidence-wall ↓

evidence-wall-homeland-pict-600

The stepladder is gone,
and there’s not even the implied structure
of an industry’s rope ladder.

vines

It’s more like vines,
and you bring your own machete.


The Daily Drucker topic list (puzzle pieces)

If you can see the road ahead

#wb #mo

 

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

Seeing only part of the situation

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40
JUDGEMENTAttention-directing frameworks

Before long
new puzzle pieces emerge
while existing pieces change, age, and possibly disappear
#ewtl

evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

If you can see the road ahead

attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

The patterning system of the brain

Learning to learn

 

main brainroad continues

 

 

You have to find the pieces and

assess the value of the pieces

and then select the pieces.

 

Most #situations are open-ended
not closed-ended. #dwrau

 

 

sidebar

 

 

Homeland (Wikipedia)

evidence-wall-homeland-pict-600

“Needle in a haystack”
“the dog didn't bark”
Murder at the Baskervilles

#sda To know something,
to really understand something important,
one must look at it
from sixteen different angles.


If you can see the road ahead

 

 

Information challenges

 

Mistakes in Perception #dwrau

 

Ludecy

 

Six Frames for Thinking About Information

 

Connect, connect, connect

 

main brainroad continues

 

 

The intelligence needed to find and select the pieces #dwrau is not the same as the intelligence needed to put pre-selected pieces together.

 

 

sidebar

 

 

The Intelligence Trap

 

Brain-addresses in books by Peter Drucker

The Daily Drucker topic list (puzzle pieces)

Topics in books by Walter Wriston

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400

If you can see the road ahead

 

Assembling puzzle pieces ↓


THE CONVERSATIONS:
WALTER MURCH and the ART of EDITING FILM

MICHAEL ONDAATJE


the-conversations-400w

 

The Conversations

Making connections

 

main brainroad continues

 

 

Intelligence may be very good

at ‘understanding’ things

but is not necessarily so good

at ‘designing’ or‘doing’ things.

 

 

sidebar

 

harvest-to-action-2015-pict-t-600
finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle

If you can see the road ahead

The Daily Drucker topic list (puzzle pieces)

The Second Curve

s-second-curve-sigmoid-black-original-300

the-second-curve-124w-200h

Tomorrow always arrives and
it is always different

The World: A Brief Introduction by Richard N. Haass

 

main brainroad continues

 

 

Different skills
are needed
for the different #situations. — EDB

 

↑ Same for knowledgeS

 

Intelligence Information Thinking #pdf

 

In navigating
“Your #thinking, choices, #decisions
are determined by
what you’ve “SEEN”

 

Men of high effectiveness
are conspicuous
by their absence in executive jobs

 

One does not pay attention
to everything — No Surprises

 

One acts …

… only upon …

… what one is paying attention to

 

An exploration path designed for finding the pieces

 

 

line

 

 

Education

“Education teaches reading, writing, arithmetic and a lot of #knowledge (#information).

 

The reading, writing and arithmetic are basic skills which everyone needs to survive in society — and to contribute.

 

There is, however, a skill missing from traditional education.

 

This is the skill of thinking.

 

I do not mean thinking in the sense of argument or #analysis but thinking in the sense of '#effectiveness'. explore

 

This is the thinking needed to get things done : objectives, priorities, alternatives, other people's views, idea creativity, decisions, choices, planning, #consequences of action.

 

We have literacy and numeracy but we need 'operacy' or the skill of doing.

Many years ago I designed the #CoRT thinking lessons for the deliberate and direct teaching of thinking as a school subject.

These lessons are now widely used throughout the world with several countries making them compulsory in all schools.

There is increasing use of the lessons in the USA, Canada and Australia and a more limited use in China and Malaysia.

Intelligence is a potential just like the horsepower of a car.

To use that potential the driver needs to develop skill.

That is the skill of thinking.

Education must teach #effectiveness.

#knowledge ( #information) is not enough.

Knowledge without effectiveness can be very dangerous.

It can mean that the people with knowledge get into positions of power and do not know how to be effective.

The new education of the positive revolution must teach the thinking skills necessary for #effectiveness, leadership and the skills of dealing with other people.” — Handbook for the Positive Revolution

 

line

 

#wlh #apta
Language is an encyclopedia of ignorance

 

“Language has been the biggest help in human progress.

Language is now by far the biggest barrier to human progress.

If language has indeed been the biggest help to human progress, how can it now be the biggest barrier?

Language has enabled the human species to move ahead of primates even though there is only a tiny difference in genetic DNA.

Language has allowed communication and therefore cooperation.

Language has allowed the storing of knowledge (a.k.a. #information) , so that future generations can benefit from the learning and wisdom of past generations.

Language allows the formulation and expression of thoughts.

Language allows competent and subtle descriptions.

 

So how can language now be the biggest barrier to human progress?

 

Any self-organizing system like human thought and human language reaches a stable equilibrium state (sometimes called a local equilibrium).

It is very difficult to budge from this state because any change seems inferior.

Landmarks of Tomorrow

The Manager and the Moron

So we are sucked back to the equilibrium state.

That is why changes in language are so slow and so difficult.

COMPLEX WORLD

Purely on this system basis it is inevitable that language will reach a complacent ‘stable’ state and will become more and more inadequate at describing an increasingly complex world.

So language may indeed have been the biggest help towards human progress up to this point in time.

It may also be the biggest barrier to further progress.

A child’s clothes are important and suitable, but the child eventually grows out of them.

The clothes remain wonderful, but their value is changed.

Trainer wheels on a bicycle are essential until you learn to ride the bicycle — but a hindrance thereafter.

The apparent contradiction can also be resolved in another way.

Language as a general concept remains as valuable as it has always been.

At the same time, our current language is a barrier to progress.

That is why my book ( The De Bono Code Book: Going Beyond the Limits of Language ) needed to be written.

Language is an encyclopedia of ignorance.

Words and concepts enter language at a state of relative ignorance (relative to our current knowledge).

Luther, Machiavelli, and the Salmon

These perceptions are frozen into permanence with a language word.

So we are forced to perceive the world in a very old-fashioned way.

It is for precisely this reason that language has become a barrier to human progress.

For example, the perception of profit has severely limited the social development of business and value creation in society.

Why, then, have we not been able to develop the new concepts and perceptions that are needed?

The answer to this question is the key element in the book, which is published by Viking this month.

We have not developed new perceptions or complex perceptions because our ability to describe in words is so superb that we feel we can describe any #situation perfectly well with the existing language.

This is a dangerous and fatal mistake because description and perception are two different things.” — EDB

 

line

 

Afterword: The Descent of Money by Niall Ferguson

Today’s financial world is the result of four millennia of economic evolution. #second-curve

Money — the crystallized relationship between debtor and creditor begat banks, clearing houses for ever larger aggregations of borrowing and lending.

From the thirteenth century onwards, government bonds introduced the securitization of streams of interest payments; while bond markets revealed the benefits of regulated public markets for trading and pricing securities.

From the seventeenth century, equity in corporations could be bought and sold in similar ways.

From the eighteenth century, insurance funds and then pension funds exploited economies of scale and the laws of averages to provide financial protection against calculable risk.

From the nineteenth, futures and options offered more specialized and sophisticated instruments: the first derivatives.

And, from the twentieth, households were encouraged, for political reasons, to increase leverage and skew their portfolios in favor of real estate.

Economies that combined all these institutional innovations banks, bond markets, stock markets, insurance and property-owning democracy performed better over the long run than those that did not, because financial intermediation generally permits a more efficient allocation of resources than, say, feudalism or central planning.

For this reason,it is not wholly surprising that the Western financial model tended to spread around the world, first in the guise of imperialism, then in the guise of globalization.’

From ancient Mesopotamia to present-day China, in short, the ascent of money has been one of the driving forces behind human progress: a complex process of innovation, intermediation and integration that has been as vital as the advance of science or the spread of law in mankind’s escape from the drudgery of subsistence agriculture and the misery of the Malthusian trap. (Malthusianism is the idea that population #growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear.)

In the words of former Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin, ‘the financial system [is] the brain of the economy …

It acts as a coordinating mechanism that allocates capital, the lifeblood of economic activity, to its most productive uses by businesses and households.

If capital goes to the wrong uses or does not flow at all, the economy will operate inefficiently, and ultimately economic #growth will be low.’

#idea Yet money’s ascent has not been, and can never be, a smooth one.

On the contrary, financial history is a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs, bubbles and busts, manias and panics, shocks and crashes.

One recent study of the available data for gross domestic product and consumption since 1870 has identified 148 crises in which a country experienced a cumulative decline in GDP of at least 10 per cent and eighty-seven crises in which consumption suffered a fall of comparable magnitude, implying a probability of financial disaster of around 3.6 per cent per year.

Even today, despite the unprecedented sophistication of our institutions and instruments, Planet Finance remains as vulnerable as ever to crises.

… snip, snip …

Keynes went on to hypothesize about the ways in which investors ‘manage in such circumstances to behave in a manner which saves our faces as rational, economic men’:

(1) We assume that the present is a much more serviceable guide to the future than candid examination of past experience would show it to have been hitherto.

In other words we largely ignore the prospect of future changes about the actual character of which we know nothing.

(2) We assume that the existing state of opinion as expressed in prices and the character of existing output is based on a correct summing up of future prospects …

(3) Knowing that our own individual judgment is worthless, we endeavor to fall back on the judgment of the rest of the world which is perhaps better informed.

That is, we endeavor to conform with the behavior of the majority or the average.’

Though it is far from clear that Keynes was correct in his interpretation of investors’ behavior, he was certainly thinking along the right lines.

… snip, snip …

This brings us to the second reason for the inherent instability of the financial system: human behavior.

As we have seen, all financial institutions are at the mercy of our innate inclination to veer from euphoria to despondency; our recurrent inability to protect ourselves against ‘tail risk’ our perennial failure to learn from history.

… snip, snip …

If any field has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the way financial markets work, it must surely be the burgeoning discipline of behavioral finance.

It is far from clear how much of the body of work derived from the efficient markets hypothesis can survive this challenge.

Those who put their faith in the ‘wisdom of crowds’ mean no more than that a large group of people is more likely to make a correct assessment than a small group of supposed experts.

But that is not saying much.

The old joke that ‘Macroeconomists have successfully predicted nine of the last five recessions is not so much a joke as a dispiriting truth about the difficulty of economic forecasting.

Meanwhile, serious students of human psychology will expect as much madness as wisdom from large groups of people.”

A case in point must be the near-universal delusion among investors in the first half of 2007 that a major liquidity crisis could not occur (see Introduction).

To adapt an elegant summation by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

People may be overconfident and over-optimistic.

They may focus on overly specific scenarios for the future, to the exclusion of all others.

They may not recall any past liquidity crises in memory.

They may overestimate the predictability of the past, and hence underestimate the surprise of the future.

They may not realize the difficulty of preparing for [liquidity crises] without the benefit of hindsight.

They may prefer … gambles with higher payoff probabilities, neglecting the value of the stakes.

They may conflate positive information about the benefits of a technology [e-g.bond insurance] and negative information about its risks.

They may be contaminated by movies where the [financial system] ends up being saved … Or the extremely unpleasant prospect of [a liquidity crisis] may spur them to seek arguments that [liquidity] will not [dry up], without an equally frantic search for reasons why [it should].

But if the question is, specifically, “Why aren’t more people doing something about it?’, one possible component is that people are asking that very question — darting their eyes around to see if anyone else is reacting … meanwhile trying to appear poised and unflustered.

Most of our cognitive warping is, of course, the result of evolution.

… snip, snip …

Thorstein Veblen first posed the question ‘Why is Economics Not an Evolutionary Science?’ (implying that it really should be) as long ago as 1898.

In a famous passage in his Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy , which could equally well apply to finance, Joseph Schumpeter characterized industrial capitalism as ‘an evolutionary process’: This evolutionary character is not merely due to the fact that economic life goes on in a social and natural environment which changes and by its change alters the data of economic action; this fact is important and these changes (wars, revolutions and so on) often condition industrial change, but they are not its prime movers.

Nor is this evolutionary character due to quasi-autonomic increase in population and capital or to the vagaries of monetary systems of which exactly the same thing holds true.

The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates …

The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as US Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation — if may use the biological term — that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.

This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.

A key point that emerges from recent research is just how much destruction goes on in a modern economy.

Around one in ten US companies disappears each year.

Between 1989 and 1997, to be precise, an average of 611,000 businesses a year vanished out of a total of 5.73 million firms.

Ten per cent is the average extinction rate, it should be noted; in some sectors of the economy it can rise as high as 20 per cent in a bad year (as in the District of Columbia’s financial sector in 1989, at the height of the Savings and Loans crisis).

According to the UK Department of Trade and Industry, 30 per cent of tax-registered businesses disappear after three years.

Even if they survive the first few years of existence and go on to enjoy great success, most firms fail eventually.

Of the world’s 100 largest companies in 1912, 29 were bankrupt by 1995, 48 had disappeared, and only 19 were still in the top 100.

Given that a good deal of what banks and stock markets do is to provide finance to companies, we should not be surprised to find a similar pattern of creative destruction in the financial world.

We have already noted the high attrition rate among hedge funds.

(The only reason that more banks do not fail, as we shall see, is that they are explicitly and implicitly protected from collapse by governments.)

… snip, snip …

I remain more than ever convinced that, until we fully understand the origin of financial species, we shall never understand the fundamental truth about money: that, far from being ‘a monster that must be put back in its place’, as the German president recently complained,” financial markets are like the mirror of mankind, revealing every hour of every working day the way we value ourselves and the resources of the world around us.

It is not the fault of the mirror if it reflects our blemishes as clearly as our beauty. full text

 

line

 

What about feelings and values? #svm

You may believe that feelings and values are the most important things in life.

You are right.

That is why thinking is so very important.

 

The purpose of thinking is to deliver to you the values you #seek just as the purpose of a bicycle is to get you to where you want to go.

A bicycle uses less energy; gets you there faster and allows you to go much further.

So thinking allows you to enjoy your values more effectively.

 

You are locked in a room.

You desperately want to get out.

You want freedom.

Your feelings are very strong.

Which is the more useful, this very strong feeling or a key to the lock?

 

Feelings without the means to carry them out are not much good.

At the same time, the key without the desire to leave the room is also not much good.

 

We need values, feelings and thinking.

Feeling is no substitute for thinking.

Thinking without values is aimless. Allocating your life

 

This book is about thinking.

Values and feelings are equally important but insufficient without thinking. the manager and the moron

teach yourself to think to/loposo/go thinking structure
Situation coding

About thinking and 12 principles

thinking principles

thinking principle

Thinking takes place along a time line
leading toward unimagined futures

Reality assumptions ::: The Black Cylinder Experiment !!!

 

What Everybody Knows Is Frequently Wrong ::: If You Keep Doing What Worked in the Past You’re Going to Fail ::: Approach Problems with Your Ignorance — Not Your Experience ::: Develop Expertise Outside Your Field to Be an Effective Manager ::: Outstanding Performance Is Inconsistent with Fear of Failure ::: You Must Know Your People to Lead Them ::: People Have No Limits, Even After Failure ::: Base Your Strategy on the #Situation, Not on a Formula — A Class With Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World's Greatest Management Teacher

 

 

line

 

To aid in

the relentless

necessary

navigating,

this page (#sda) provides

#11 a jumble of ↓

 

CONCEPTs (about #concepts),

thought fragmentS, thought clusterS,

brain-addresseS & clueS

that can be used as

HORIZONs and BUILDING BLOCKs
Freedom etal. ::: TLN insights

 

… to #SEE (attention-scape) …

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

… and CONSIDER (what does a thought area ↓ ↑ mean 4 you?)

 

— much more like a “future” museum or menu
than an article. ↓

 

There are things to #avoid

and

things( horizons and building blocks )

to seek out #horizons #seek

and make operational #ams

within time

 

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40
Judgement Needs to be Made Operational #operacy

 

Brain-addresses” ↑ provide a concept for recording targets for repeated deliberate thinking
#ams #ir #dtao #thinkingworkbook

harvest-to-action-2015-pict-t-600
finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle

Larger viewWhat exists is getting old

finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp

Knowledge-Based Management

harvesting action areas

Tom Peters → The project50

 

line

 

 

Navigating changing worldS
involves “moving on” ↓

 

what exists is getting old

manhattan-panorama-1906-pict-600


Finding a way forward from yesterdayS

manhattan-panorama-modern-pict-600

 

Without “moving on”

a person remains a prisoner of the past

their pastS and other people in their prisons of their pastS.



These pastS are complex constellationS and universeS

of ageS and pointS in time —

age 21 in 1950 vs. age 21 in 1970.

Imagining navigation course changes ↑ ↓ #thinkingcanvas

 

 

#05 Everybody is born totally ignorant

life lines

and get their #guidance from somebody

who was also born totally ignorant and

who got their guidance from somebody (Twitter → @NewsLitProject)

who acts on the assumption that tomorrowS

are extrapolationS of yesterdayS —

despite the massive obvious evidence to the contrary (ludecy) ↓


Perception provides the ingredients for thinking
Escaping the kiddy table

Imagining navigation course changes

 

 

What about guidance from topic area experts?

Experts, chapter 2, “The 10,000-Hour Rule” Outliers

Which #experts control #reality? #lms

(Those associated with a university, a consulting firm,
or an operational institution …

or those with an exalted station in life

or economists who ignore aspects of #reality (#pdf)
that don’t fit their prior preaching

or lying politicians and other dogmatists …

What about mental health experts? …

What did Machiavelli say?)

Experts speak

 

Which of these ↑ have a #broad #worldview #sda

and what would a broad worldview look like?

And where would Management Worldview(S) fit?

#Intelligence #Information #Thinking

 

#evidence-wall ↓

Collage created using TurboCollage software from www.TurboCollage.com

Collage created using TurboCollage software from www.TurboCollage.com

Larger ↑ ::: Awareness ::: Post-capitalist executive ::: The Daily Drucker

 

peter-drucker-timescape_600x545
Drucker book search

Imagining navigation course changes

Those who want to live a #fulfilling life

 

How can you work toward
the “right horizons” — the “right things”
that aren't on your mental radar
at the right points in time? ↑ ↓

 

#wlh1
How can the INDIVIDUAL survive?

Knowledge specialty ::: The #individual in entrepreneurial society :::
Return on luck ::: Danger of too much planning

Managing Oneself Overview

The responsibility based organization ::: Survival (#mtf) ::: Next society

radar-differences-pict-600

#tln Time-life navigation © ↑ ↓ is NEEDED #lms #ams

#horizons That man must die

Remembered for — a difference in the lives of people — A MAJOR HORIZON NYT Obits#horizons #tln #uf

tln-ltis-components-cooper-simple-pict-trans-400

TLN concept map

 

#06 #awp In your whole life,

how much time

have you spent

“trying to” #see

the content and the dynamics of society and the economy?

What were your #information sources?

How has the content and structure of the economy and society changed over time? #intelligence

 

#thinkingcanvas or #mindmap1 /mind map ↓ for collecting #ideas
thinking canvas

How do you explain an event you cannot understand? continue

 

#07 #awp At what point in your life
did someone
with a broad #sda,
top of the food chain worldview (#lter)
provide you
a breadcrumb trail
for navigating changing worldS —
worldS continuing to move toward unimagined futureS. How many
major global institutions (#wgobcd) look to this person for guidance on
making THEIR futureS? #connect

 

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

 

Replace the quest for success
with the quest for contribution.

The #critical #question is not,
“How can I achieve?”

but “What can I contribute?”
… to the society of organizations

Try searching this page for the word stem “contribut”

 

#careerTimeView ↑ ↓ #thinkingcanvas

career-time-view-pict-t-675x420

Copying a predecessor’s work approach will lead to the prison of the past

Tactics (success) by Edward de Bono

What does it take to be an expert?

It is time to give up thinking of jobs or career paths as we once did and
think in terms of taking on assignments one after the other continue

Buford said Drucker passed on
three questions everyone should ask themselves during

different seasons of life:

“Who am I, now?” Where do I belong?”

“What’s my contribution now?”

“Who I want to be tomorrow” — Thomas Crown 2:23

The danger of too much planning ::: Return on luck
Opportunities

↑ Near-term ecological awareness #ntea :::
Purposeful self-development and parallel approach #psdapa #parallel #mbr :::
Jump before you have to #jump ::: Long-term ecological revolution #lter :::
Deliberate thinking (#pdf) and #operacy
deliberate thinking and operacy = #dtao ↓

Where to jump next? ↓ No stable places (from or to) #lter

ice-floe-post-pict-400

Connect, connect, connect

#ntea

#ptf Flash Gordon and Ming the Merciless ↓

flash-gordon-rocket-space-ship-1_LUCiD-pict-t-600

↑ Space travel — circa 1940s — vs. the various versions of Starship Enterprise
What exists is getting old #lter

5-stages-of-decline-pict

Why do “things” exist?Why do they die?

 

horizon evolution stages #hes

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

 

Action system (harvesting and implementing) #thinkingcanvas #lms #ams ↓ larger view #ntea ↑ ↓

harvest-to-action-2015-pict-t-600

finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp

Knowledge-Based Management

What exists is getting old

The thoughts you encounter as you move through time
need to be integrated into your unfolding life.

This implies that you need an idea recorder tool,
a review process and a thinking and scheduling mechanism.

 

One acts (#intelligence #information #thinking) only upon
what one is paying attention to explore

For example: Power of an Hour ::: de Bono books ::: Drucker books

Brain dangers: try a #page-search for → past or synonyms for past or brainstorming or brain or mind or ignorance

 

«§§§»

 

 

#hor3 #tcd
In navigating … ↓

“Your #thinking, choices, #decisions are determined by

what you’ve SEEN

#decision or #decisions

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

 

Attention is a key part of thinking

 

one acts only upon what one is paying attention to

 

attention-ogp-pict-trans-400

#hor3
Perception provides the ingredients for thinking

 

“#Decision making ↑ is a time machine (here)

that synchronizes into a single time — the present
a great number of divergent time spans.”
Druckerism

time spans larger view

time-spans-pict-600

Time spans

Dealing with risk and uncertainty

 

#ntea

We can make decisions only in the present,

and yet
we cannot make decisions
for the present alone
;

the most expedient, most opportunistic decision — let alone

the decision not to decide at all —

may commit us for a long time,

if not permanently and irrevocably.” — Chapter 11, MRE by Druckerism

 

“Most discussions of decision-making
assume that only senior executives
make decisions or that only senior executives
decisions matter.
This is a dangerous mistake.” — PFD

 

evidence wall and timeline larger

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

#Decision Making: The Chassis That Holds the Whole Together ↑ ↓

 

 

#hor3 #wlh #sda

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

“To know something,

to really understand

something

important
,

one must look at it

from s ixteen d ifferent a ngles ↓.”

#sda important = #impact #druckerism #thinkingcanvas #mindmap

social ecology

 

People are perceptually slow,

and there is no shortcut to understanding;

it takes a great deal of time.” read more

Wisdom → Broad

Drucker book contents

What do these ↑ mean for you? ↓

 

 

“If you do not care to

understand

something
,

then you must borrow an explanation
from someone else (and they will deceive you)
or do without one.” continue

 

 

… “expert systems” are about;
they attempt to put into … process,
the perception of experience
that comes from understanding the

whole

of a #task or #subject-matter … continue

 

«§§§»

 

#78 #hor3 #mmit
For almost nothing (#fan — source)

in our educational systems

prepares people

for the #reality

in which they will live, work,

and become #effective” —


Social ecology

The future of the planet

From Knowledge to KnowledgeS

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

… and graduate school is much worse …

… “ not even educated in management ” … continue



How to make
the schools accountable

ALBERT SHANKER → Learning that becomes a part of you


Google search

Druckerism and intellectual capitalist #lms #education

 

No educational institution — not even the graduate school of management — tries to equip students with the elementary skills of effectiveness as members of an organization:

ability to present ideas orally and in writing (briefly, simply, clearly);

ability to work with people;

ability to shape and direct one’s own work, contribution, career;

and generally skills in making organization a tool for one’s own aspirations and achievements and for the realization of values. — The New Realities

 

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

Books by
Peter Drucker ::: Walter Wriston ::: Bob Buford ::: Rick Warren

 

 

How could an education system
prepare us
for unknown and unpredictable
future #realitieS?

 

Thinking broad and thinking detailed

thinking-books-300w

Basic thinking processes


#4almost-n Subjects/Topics vs. realities ::: larger view

color bars ::: color swatches ::: Kaleidoscopes
education-experience-reality-399

#fastp

jigsaw-puzzle-colors-250


evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

The day the horse lost its job

… the philosophical shift
from the Cartesian universe
of mechanical cause
to the new universe
of pattern, purpose and process …
an age of transition

#dotmp = danger of too much planning

 

Science has been in a “replication crisis” for a decade

Topics in books by Walter Wriston ::: Transnational/Tribal

A Century of Social Transformation

 

take more responsibility for himself or herself,
rather than depend on the company
. continue

 

Intelligence, Information, Thinking

 

Unless you can teach (education system)
the right answer
to every conceivable situation,
then the skill of thinking
is needed.

 

«§§§»

 

#hor3
“#Thinking is the most fundamental of all human skills.

The quality of our future will depend directly
on the quality of our thinking.

Is it then not only astonishing but also absurd that thinking
is not the core subject in all #education
and the central subject on any school curriculum” #EDB explore

 

«§§§»

 

Thinking … the most fundamental,

the most important aspect of life,

the basis for everything

is totally neglected

School : no thinking subject

Book store : no thinking category

Universities : no thinking faculty
and zero possibility thinking

What about critical thinking?

#edb Edward de Bono

 

 

Thinking is the skill missing from traditional education.

 

A similar path

 

#visual
Atlas of Management Thinking

 

What I do think is important is the recognition of a type of thinking that is not dominated by language. …


They are 'idea pictures' which represent relationships, functions and happenings, not physical reality. …


Unfortunately we do not have non-verbal images for complex situations. …


The reason is that we have never experienced such situations with any 'sense'. …


We have only recognized them intellectually, so there is no sense-image storage. …


The specific, and perhaps too bold, purpose of this book is to create a repertoire of just such nonverbal sense-images for management situations.explore

 

 

 

#research “There is, of course, a place for academic intellectualizing and passive scholarship (which consists of repeating what others have repeated about still yet others) but that is only a small part of thinking — but valuable nevertheless.” EDB

 

«§§§»

 

“We know only two things about the future ↑.
It cannot be known.
It will be different from what exists now and
from what we now expect #msd::: now two people #wwh ” ↓ Druckerism

 

alistair-cookes-america-150x217

Alistair Cooke’s America — Kindle #ad

 

Trying to predict the future
is like trying to drive down a country road
at night
with no lights
while looking out the back window.”

 

“Data analytics” does not alter the assertion above

(why the #analysis of data
can never produce all the #ideas
present in that data
and
try a #page-search for the word stem “innovat” #innovation)

 

 

#63 #msd = means something different
#htmp #ptf #sda

Consider integrating the following
into your mental reflex system ↓

 

The really
important
things


as usual

in an attempt

to analyze
and to predict

are changes

which the author
when writing the book

fully saw
but failed to perceive,

fully recognized
but failed to understand. #sda

What makes
predicting the future #ptf
so certain of failure
is not
that the unexpected

always happens.

It is that
the expected

always

MEANS

something

so very different. #msd

The most disappointed man
is always
the prophet whose vision has come true,
the pioneer who has reached the new frontier,
the explorer who has found the new continent.” —

The New Society: The Anatomy of Industrial Order (1950)

If you can see the road ahead

 

MEANS? What does it mean
if a person's house burns down?
To the owner? occupants? neighbors?
emergency services? community? financial services? etc.

 

The brain is a history library
that has to run in the future tense continue

 

what exists is getting old

 

Intelligence Information Thinking #pdf

 

Making the future (#mtf)a chance for survival
one ::: two ::: three

We face long years of profound changes ↑

Managing oneself — a revolution in human affairs continue

A non-competitive life

 

radar-differences-pict-600

The alternative is to be someone else’s whipping boy

 

«§§§»

 

This page (#sda) provides a coping tool ↑ for
directing one’s energy toward “present” opportunitieS
to make the future
rather than toward the dead past

 

«§§§»

 

#hor3
“What Everybody Knows Is Frequently Wrong” continue

“If You Keep Doing What Worked in the Past You're Going to Fail

Approach Problems with Your Ignorance — Not Your Experience

Base Your Strategy on the #Situation, Not on a Formula” Druckerisms

 

#evidence-wall ↓

time-line-and-adoption-rates-pict-t-600

The Five Deadly Sins

What economist still need to learn #pdf

Don’t balme economics blame public policy #pdf

The Meritocracy Muddle #pdf

What divides NATO? #pdf

Germany’s divided soul #pdf

 

«§§§»

 

Alternatives do not have to show themselves” ↓ #EDB

 

«§§§»

 

Life-long learning” → Learning what ← from whom → to do what?

And what is useful learning?

The individual in entrepreneurial society

 

«§§§»

 

 

r-banson-pict-500

Richard Branson
What do you want to be remembered for?

 

#whtmal “Making a living is no longer enough,” …
Work also has to make a life.”
Druckerism ::: TLN insights ::: Managing oneself
An Alyssa Goodman example #pdf (calendarize these? #ams)

Successful careers are not planned#ptf continue

 

Replace the quest ↑ for achievement or success
with the quest for contribution.

 

Depending on where you live and your aspirations,

managing oneself along with citizenship through the social sector

may provide a timeline that will/would work #sda for you.

 

 

Bonting: Thinking to Create Value
YouTube ::: Amazon

 

 

Just reading is not enough

 

 

line

 

This page (#sda) provides a tool for

necessary awareness exploring

before it’s too late (avoiding stagnation)

 

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) complicates the situation

 

 

line

 

 

#12 #wwpd #pfd
Who was Peter Drucker?
An Über Mentor+

What’s the #impact ↑ ↓ on your life

drucker-man-invented-corp-soc-pict-t-no-ref

peter-drucker-brand-leadership-wisdom-pict-t

#12b #doe #ms Drucker on professional writing, economics,
business schools, philosophy, religion,
political science, Japanese Art,
accountants, and academia



peter-drucker-timescape_600x545

Books by
Peter Drucker ::: Walter Wriston ::: Bob Buford ::: Rick Warren

The New Pluralism ↓ circa 1957

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

 

Management WorldviewS

 

Vienna Imperial Palace

10th-global-peter-drucker-forum

 

I am not atheoretician

through my consulting practice
I am in daily touch with the
concrete opportunities and problems
of a fairly large number of institutions,
foremost among them businesses
but also hospitals, government agencies
and public-service institutions
such as museums and universities. …” continues below

 

#24 #seco Drucker ↑: a political/social ecologist #lms

drucker-man-invented-corp-soc-pict-t-no-ref

Who was Peter Drucker?

 

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

 

SEEING things as they really are #pdf

Social ecologist 2

 

… It also implies that society, polity and economy

are a genuine environment, a genuine whole, a true “system,”


to use the fashionable term,

in which everything relates to everything else

and in which men, ideas, institutions, and actions

must always be seen together

in order to be seen at all
,

let alone to be understood.

 

 

There is an individual connection to carry on/connect up

 

 

… But they also know that

the man-made environment

of society, polity, and economics,

like the environment of nature itself,

knows no balance

except
dynamic disequilibrium.

 

… Political ecologists believe

that the traditional disciplines

define fairly narrow and limited tools

rather than meaningful and self-contained areas of

knowledge, action, and events
— in the same way

in which the ecologists of the natural environment

know that swamp or the desert is the reality

and ornithology, botany, and geology only special-purpose tools. the rest of the story

 

For almost nothing in our education system prepares people for …

 

 

The Daily Drucker (examples of a BROAD worldview) #sda


If you can see the road ahead ↑ ↓ continue

 

 

Continuing Turmoil

 

 

“Peter was an original thinker,

a self-created,

one-of-a-kind #individual

who comes along

every two or three centuries. …



He was an indefatigable observer

of human nature


and the interaction of

human beings


with one another

and with #circumstances” …


«§§§»


“All of us had the same story,” Buford says.

“We all had wanted to talk to Peter

because we knew

he was

the wisest man alive

Bob Buford ::: #wisdom

 

 

“THE PRESIDENT (Nixon) knew the man needed no introduction,
so, without a word of identification” … continue

 

 

“Drucker belonged to the church of #results

“Good intentions,” he would seemingly yell
without ever raising his voice,
“are no excuse for incompetence.”
continue

 

 

Interviews with Drucker #pdf
including
Moving beyond capitalism

 

 

Peter liberated me” … #lms continue

 

“Drucker’s secret to great #mentoring, says Buford,
is that he “has the most comprehensive, 50,000-foot view
of how the world works, on one extreme

On the other extreme,
he’s incredibly personal in his mentoring.

He joins those two points of view.”

 

#gpdf No human being
has built a better brand
by managing just himself
than Peter Drucker has. continue

 

#Note the number of books about Drucker ↓

#evidence-wall ↓

books-about-drucker-collage-pict-t-600

“I am not a ‘theoretician

through my consulting practice

I am in daily touch with the concrete opportunities and problems

of a fairly large number of institutions,

foremost among them businesses

but also hospitals, government agencies

and public-service institutions such as museums and universities.

 

And I am working with such institutions on several continents:

North America, including Canada and Mexico;

Latin America; Europe; Japan and South East Asia.

 

Still, a consultant is at one remove

from the day-today practice —

that is both his strength

and his weakness.

And so my viewpoint tends more to be that of an outsider.”

broad worldview #sda

 

«§§§»

 

By the mid-1940s, he had found his way deep inside General Motors, and by the 1950s he was consulting for Sears, General Electric and IBM.

Over the decades, he’d add a host of other major companies and nonprofits to his client list: Intel, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and many more.

 

Why was Drucker so in demand?

What made him so good?

For starters, he understood that his job wasn’t to serve up answers.

“My greatest strength as a consultant,” Drucker once remarked, “is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.”

 

In many cases, they were deceptively simple: Who is your customer?

 

What have you stopped doing lately (so as to free up resources for the new and innovative)?

 

What business are you in? (What is YOUR business? What contribution to the outside world can you make NOW?)

Or, as he urged the founders of the investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette to ask themselves in 1974, after they had enjoyed a heady period of #growth: “What should our business be?”

 

“I shall not attempt to answer the question what your business should be,” Drucker added.

 

“First, one should not answer such a question off the top of one’s head.

 

… Secondly, one man’s opinion, no matter how brilliant, is at best one man’s opinion.”

No two people ever read the same book

Outer world — Inner world

Logic bubbles

 

Besides, Drucker said, “I can only ask questions.

The answers have to be YOURS.”

 

Other times, of course, corporations sought Drucker’s counsel to deal with narrower challenges.

In 1992, for example, he wrote a 56-page analysis for Coca-Cola that explored distribution, branding, advertising, the structure of the company’s bottling operations and more.

Still, the approach was always the same: “This report raises questions,” Drucker told Coke.

“It does not attempt to give answers.”

 

Another thing that made Drucker stand apart was his integrity.

He wouldn’t come in, do a job — and then stick his client with the bill without knowing whether he had made a real difference.

“Remember,” Drucker told the assistant to the chairman of Sears, as he turned in an invoice in March 1955, “that this is submitted on condition that there is no payment due unless the work satisfies you.”

 

Indeed, Drucker knew that the test wasn’t whether he had delivered some sharp insight.

All that counted was whether his client could use that insight to make measurable progress on an important issue.

It’s the performance of others, Drucker wrote, that “determines in the last analysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results, or whether he is … at best a court jester.”

 

In this respect, Drucker knew that the most dangerous thing for any consultant was to become too impressed with his own wisdom.

He didn’t like his clients getting carried away, either.

“Stop talking about ‘Druckerizing’ your organization,” he told officials at Edward Jones, the investment firm.

“The job ahead of you is to ‘Jonesize’ your organization — and only if you accept this would I be of any help to you.

Otherwise, I would rapidly become a menace — which I refuse to be.”

 

Oh, and one other thing: Peter Drucker never drew a four-box matrix in his entire life.

 

«§§§»

 

… “As an author he is a phenomenal seller; his books remain in print, and some have gone into dozens of editions.

His byline remains potent in magazines.

 

When, for example, Harvard Business Review publishes a Drucker piece, the staff braces itself for a flood of reprint requests.

Drucker’s influence is worldwide.

One reason that his thinking is valued by politicians and managers in many countries is that he does not just enunciate principles.

He tries to get inside the traditions and culture of a particular place, to understand how things really work, so that he can focus on what is truly important.

 

For example, Drucker has been a welcome guest in Japan for many years.

He first went there during the occupation, to lecture to Japanese businessmen.

In the beginning, one observer reports, Drucker’s lectures were popular but not necessarily productive.

Typically, there is a story of two Japanese executives meeting after one of Drucker’s sessions.

One says, “My friend, you enjoyed Drucker-san?”

“Oh, yes, very much.”

They talk about the brilliance of what they have heard; how important it will be to them.

Then one asks, “What have you done about what you heard last year from Drucker-san?”

 

“Nothing,” is the reply.

 

“Will you return next year to hear him again?”

 

“Oh, yes.”

 

For some years Drucker told the Japanese wise and sometimes brilliant things, but he was talking from the outside.

He realized this.

He dedicated himself to penetrating and understanding the Japanese culture.

Now his thinking on management and organization is tempered by his sense of Japanese tradition.

His words are welcomed—and acted upon.

 

In turn Drucker’s experience in Japan has enabled him to bring new insights to Western organizational thinking, notably in his analyzes of the decision-making process.

 

Drucker is a conservative and a moral opponent of Communism.

This does not keep Soviet management technicians from studying his theories and appropriating what they think is relevant.

The Soviets approach Drucker on the basis that, while he cannot be trusted at all in terms of overall political and economic theory, he is nevertheless a valuable thinker when it comes to practical matters of organization policy and procedure.

Soviet experts acknowledge that it is Drucker who has formulated the definition of management that has become the standard in “bourgeois” writings.

Moreover, Drucker even wins grudging praise from Communist management theorists.”Drucker: The Man Who Invented the Corporate Society

 

«§§§»

 

The Practical Drucker ← Amazon link

 

10th-global-peter-drucker-forum

 

FOREWORD

I must confess that my first reaction when I learned of the title of Bill Cohen’s new book, The Practical Drucker, was to think to myself:

“Hmmm.

Perhaps an official from the Department of Redundancy Department should be asked to write the foreword instead.”

In my mind, after all, Drucker and practicality are synonymous.

Calling a book The Practical Drucker is like referring to someone as a “big giant” or a 100-story building as a “tall skyscraper.”

 

Indeed, Drucker was so practical that much of the scholarly community regarded him as a pariah.

Although he taught at four institutions of higher learning over his long career — Sarah Lawrence College, Bennington College, New York University, and Claremont Graduate University — Drucker never fit the mold of many of his colleagues.

Those around him often seemed most interested in racking up citations in peer-reviewed academic journals; Drucker, for his part, was focused on making a difference in the real world.

“Being incomprehensible has become a virtue in academia,” Drucker complained in the mid-1980s.

By contrast, he added, “I have a deep horror of obscurity and arrogance” — a trait that constantly pushed him to present his work “in a form that people could apply.”

He hardly used footnotes.

He eschewed regression analysis, charts, and graphs.

As a consultant to major corporations and nonprofits, he stressed the need to put ideas into action.

“Don’t tell me you had a wonderful meeting with me,” he’d say.

“Tell me what you’re going to do on Monday that’s different.”

Theory was fine with Drucker, but only insofar as it helped to lead to pragmatic solutions to pressing issues.

 

“Sure, we want and need research,” he said.

“But consider the modern medical school, which began in the late 18th century.

The emphasis in medical school is not on publication but on the ability to treat patients and make a difference in their lives.”

In a similar manner, he believed, “business educators should be out as practitioners where the problems and results are.”

This fundamental insight — that writing about management and leadership isn’t worth a whole lot if it isn’t rooted in the day-to-day trials of organizational life — lies at the heart of Drucker’s work.

It is also where many of his peers get things backward.

 

“Intellectuals and scholars tend to believe that #ideas come first, which then lead to new political, social, economic, psychological realities,” Drucker wrote. #apta

“This does happen, but it is the exception.

As a rule, theory does not precede practice.

Its #role is to structure and codify already proven practice.

Its role is to convert the isolated and ‘atypical’ from exception to ‘rule’ and ‘system,’ and therefore into something that can be learned and taught and, above all, into something that can be generally applied.”

 

This bent toward application, toward action, toward usefulness, animated everything that Drucker did.

In the end, it was what set him apart.

Drucker “spoke in plain language that resonated with ordinary managers,” Andy Grove, the co-founder of Intel, has remarked.

“Consequently, simple statements from him have influenced untold numbers of daily actions; they did mine over decades.”

Tom Peters, the best-selling management writer who also bends strongly toward the practical, once praised Drucker for his pioneering #role in helping “incredibly complex organizations” run better. #pdf Drucker’s real main thrust was to help them perform better — structure follows strategy — for society.

“Drucker was the first person to give us a handbook for that,” he said.

Actually, that’s not quite right.

Rather than produce one handbook, Drucker penned thirty-nine books and thousands of articles over many decades — a trove so immense that, all in all, it may add up to the most impractical thing he ever did.

How many times have you ever thought, “What would Drucker say?” about a particular situation — and then tried to quickly find the answer?

Where do you begin?

 

Perhaps The Practice of Management is the best source.

 

Maybe the The Essential Drucker

 

But what about Managing for Results ?

 

No, wait.

 

Maybe what you really need is a later text, like Management Challenges for the 21st Century .

Searching through this vast ocean of content when all you want to take away is a single glass of water can be difficult, if not downright frustrating. “And it is the wrong approach to management” — bobembry rlaexp.com developer

Drucker’s output was so massive, it led another best-selling management writer, Jim Collins, to ask a pointed question.

Jim Collins is the author of Built to Last , Good to Great , How the Mighty Fall and Good to Great and the Social Sectors

Although Collins is a huge Drucker fan, he couldn’t help but wonder, “Do you think Peter Drucker would have been more influential if he had written less?”

I’d argue no, but I get the point.

And this is where Bill Cohen’s book comes in.

By combing through Drucker’s enormous body of work and deftly synthesizing the “how to do” (as opposed to the “what to do”) aspects of his writing, Bill has made a great contribution. (I disagree for a number of reasons. I think the book is a waste of time and money. I think Bill Cohen’s worldview is ineffective. bobembry rlaexp.com developer)

In this way, The Practical Drucker is less redundant and more a revelation.

 

#wlh “Knowledgeable executives are plentiful,” Drucker observed shortly before he passed away in 2005.

 

“But executives are not being paid for knowing.

 

#wlh2 #gtrtd They are being paid for getting the right things done.”

Rick Wartzman — Executive Director, The Drucker Institute

 

Books by Peter Drucker

 

10th-global-peter-drucker-forum

Beware of narrow worldviews

THE ALTERNATIVE TO TYRANNY

 

It is very, very difficult to effectively grasp the implicationS of
w hat g oes o n b ehind c losed d oorS (#wgobcd) #ntea ↓

To what extent are these people ↑ ↓ looking after your interests?

Three types of intelligence

e.g., The End of Loyalty et al.

 

11th-global-peter-drucker-forum-pict-stroke-t-600

Management Worldviews ↑ ::: Post-capitalist executive

Global Peter Drucker Forum ::: Charles Handy → Starting small fires

Hofburg ↑ ↓

hofburg-004-500w

larger view one ::: two ::: three

 

#09 #sda ↑ “In less than 150 years, (circa 1988)

MANAGEMENT has transformed

the social and economic fabric

of the world’s

developed countries. …

 

How would it be possible to participate in this transformation process
if you’re not aware of it?

 

world-map-over-city-pict

 

… It has created a global economy ↑

(as a concept, “global” is on a higher level
than international #trade.
And there is a transnational level
that challenges/supplants multi-national operations)


and set new rules

for countries

that would participate in that economy

as equals.” ↓

 

 

Origins of The Practice of Management

 

Corporate America in the Crossfire #pdf

 

#knowledge economy and knowledge polity #lter

 

#knowledge and technology #pdf

 

From #knowledge to knowledgeS

 

The organization of the post-capitalist

SOCIETY OF ORGANIZATIONS

is a DESTABILIZER. (#cities)

It must be organized for
constant change explore

 

Purpose and #Objectives First

 

There is only world history and world civilization continue

 

world-map-lights-pict

 

 

Drucker: The Man Who Invented the Corporate Society

#evidence-wall ↓

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

the real pattern of economic activity

larger composite view ↑ ::: Economic & content and structure ::: Adoption rates: one & two

The Forces Creating a New Geography of Opportunity?

The Five Deadly Sins

Entrepreneurship vs. traditional economics

… A change as tremendous as this doesn’t just
satisfy existing wants, or replace things we are now doing.
It creates new wants
and makes new things possible continue

It also requires an almost 180-degree change
in the #knowledge workers' thoughts and actions
from what most of us — even of the younger generation —
still take for granted as the way to think and the way to act continue

We face long years of profound changes continue

Managing in the Next Society

 

For almost nothing in our educational systems

prepares people

for the reality

in which they will live, work,

and become #effective” —

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

Druckerism and intellectual capitalist #lms #education

How could an education system prepare us
for unknown and unpredictable future #realitieS?

Topics in books by Walter Wriston ::: Transnational/Tribal

A Century of Social Transformation

 

«§§§»

 

Thinking … the most fundamental,

the most important aspect of life,

the basis for everything

is totally neglected

School : no thinking subject

Book store : no thinking category

Universities : no thinking faculty
and zero possibility thinking

What about critical thinking?

Edward de Bono

 

«§§§»

 

Try a #page-search (#sda) for each of these words: determine, education, reality,
effective, work, risk, different, and live

 

“The traditional notion in #education
that #information is sufficient
is old-fashioned and dangerous.”
Edward de Bono #EDB ↓

Intelligence ::: Information ::: Thinking



peter-drucker-timescape_600x545

#pdw larger ↑ ::: Books by Peter Drucker ::: Rick Warren + Drucker

Drucker's work and connections

 

the #knowledge society

#09b #hor3 #wlh

 

“The leading social groups of the knowledge society

will be “knowledge workers” —

knowledge executives

who know HOW to

allocate knowledge

to productive use



just as the capitalists knew HOW to

allocate capital to productive use;

knowledge professionals; knowledge employees.

 

What thinking is needed?

 

Practically all these knowledge people will be employed in organizations.

Yet, unlike the employees under Capitalism,

they will own both

the means of production

and the tools of production” —

the former through their pension funds, which are rapidly emerging in all developed countries as the only real owners;

the latter because knowledge workers own THEIR knowledge

and can take it with them wherever they go — a.k.a. mobility.

How does this alter economic dynamics?

The economic challenge of the post-capitalist society will therefore be

the productivity

of knowledge work and the knowledge worker
” — here, here, here and pcs.

 

Try a #page-search for the word stem “productiv” (#productivity)

 

«§§§»

 

#technology1

About Technology

 

What really matters is that all these developments alter man’s biological capacity — and not through the random genetic mutation of biological evolution but through the purposeful nonorganic development we call technology.

 

What I have called here the “Wallace insight,” that is, the approach from human biology, thus leads to the conclusion that technology is not about things: tools, processes, and products.

 

From Analysis to Perception — The New Worldview

 

It is about work: the specifically human activity by means of which man pushes back the limitations of the iron biological law which condemns all other animals to devote all their time and energy to keeping themselves alive for the next day, if not for the next hour.

     continue

 

10th-global-peter-drucker-forum

Who was Peter Drucker

 

#knowledge2 #technology2

Knowledge exists only in application

Knowledge and Technology

The Daily Drucker — Feb 4

 

The new technology
embraces and feeds off
the entire array
of human knowledges
.

 

evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

The search for knowledge, as well as the teaching thereof, has traditionally been dissociated from application.

Both have been organized by subject, that is, according to what appeared to be the logic of knowledge itself.

The faculties and departments of the university, its degrees, its specializations, indeed the entire organization of higher learning, have been #subject-focused.

They have been, to use the language of the experts on organization, based upon “product,” rather than on “market” or “end use.”

 

Now we are increasingly organizing knowledge and the search for it around areas of application rather than around the subject areas of disciplines.

 

Interdisciplinary work has grown everywhere.

 

 

This is a symptom of the shift in the meaning of knowledge from an end in itself to a resource, that is, a means to some result.

 

Knowledge
as the central energy
of a modern society

exists altogether

in application
and when it is put to work
.

 

 

Work, however, cannot be defined in terms of the disciplines.

 

End results
are interdisciplinary
of necessity
.

… but not knowledge as it is presented in the education system

 

That knowledge has become THE resource rather that A resource is what makes continue

 

The knowledge we now consider knowledge proves itself in action

 

Moving beyond capitalism

 

Knowledge and Technology PDF

 

From Knowledge to Knowledges

 

Try searching this page for: “knowledge”

 

The road ahead

 

evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

see Chapter 10 ::: The future … already happened ::: Making the future :::

Research management

… the importance of accessing, interpreting, connecting, and translating knowledge

Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity

 

«§§§»

 

#hor3 #wlh
More than anything else,

the individual

has to take more responsibility for himself or herself,
rather than depend on the company.”
dangerous jobs #psdapa continue

 

Responsibility for: freedom ::: all powerful ::: survival ::: #worldview

Developing yourself — as a person, as an executive, as a leader — #pdf

radar-differences-pict-600

Learning to learn !!!!!
Try a #page-search (#sda) for the word stem “learn”

 

Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity

 

«§§§»

 

#reality deals us “cards” from
an ever changing “deck” —
only in fairy tales do we get to live happily ever-after ↓

 

Annotated pyramid to DNA ::: Larger view

pyramid-to-dna-annotated-pict-t-600

Most successful executive … ::: … organized by #information

 

brainroads-toward-tomorrows

time-line-and-adoption-rates-pict-t-600

Road ahead timeline ↑ ::: Knowledge and technology ↑ (#impact #pdf)

Imagining navigation course changes

What might be the global content of each radar at each point in time?

 

This exploration work ↑ ↓ involves “TIME TRAVEL
that goes way beyond jobs and careers …

(decision making is a time machine)

 

Your today
is just one “scene” in one chapter
in an evolving story

… where trees don’t grow to the sky (2, 3, 4)

 

evidence-wall-and-time-line-hotw-t-pict-600

There are #discontinuities ahead

For each thought fragment, concept, illustration, link, or text block
you encounter ↑ ↓
your could EXP lore (rla exp.com)
employing dense reading and dense listening
plus #thinking broad and thinking detailed
then ask yourself what does this mean for me? (illustration)
along with performing a #PMI
in conjunction with visualizing the operacy involved
sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

 

Saigon, 1965 Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History #podcast

The black cylinder experiment #bce

You don’t know what you’re going to be doing next

Luther, Machiavelli, and the Salmon

 

↑ So, there is life to navigate and
there are evolving time spans to navigate.

Conflating and inter-twining the two
becomes “time-life navigation © .”

the future of any nation

 

#worldview “In a transition period, the number of people in need always grows.

There are the huge masses of refugees all over the globe, victims of war and social upheaval, of racial, ethnic, political, and #religious persecution, of government incompetence and of government cruelty.

illegal-border-crossing-pict-600

Even in the most settled and stable societies

people will be

left behind

in the shift to knowledge work
.

It takes a generation or two before a society and its population catch up with radical changes in the composition of the work force and in the demands for skills and #knowledge.

It takes some time—the best part of a generation, judging by historical experience—before the productivity of service workers can be raised sufficiently to provide them with a “middle-class” standard of living.” citizenship through the social sector

 

TLN overview #pdf ↓ ::: brainroad example and links ::: #article titles (#see #sda)

time-life-navigation-overview-pict

You can’t get there directly from here

#pdvdd #sda Supplemental awareness PDFs #pdf

#pdvdd #sda Notes from Peter Drucker’s work on
developmental directions#pdf

inside-druckers-brain-pict-t-283x350

Drucker: a political or social ecologist

Imagining navigation course changes

 

The need for roots ::: From command to responsibility-based organization #information
::: Post-capitalized society has to be decentralized #lter

 

“… being right is the feeling of being right. This is what
guides your actions …” Practical Thinking

Why is #thinking important? continue

¶ ¶ ¶

#conversation
“‘Everyone is always right — no one is ever right.’

What it means is that at any moment
everyone is acting logically within
his or her ‘bubble’ of values and perceptions.

So at that moment in time that person is ‘right’.

In the broader, overall and objective sense
no one is ever right because
we do not have a full understanding of the world
or the detailed #consequences of our action far into the future.”
Logic bubbles ::: Rules of everyday thinking

#hotw The History of the World in Two Hours

What Everybody Knows Is Frequently Wrong continue

 

«§§§»

SEEING and exploring connections → Remember to
use your browser’s back button
when following links within this page ↑ ↓

There are quite a few duplicate links
on this page. They exist to help #see possible connections

«§§§»

 

How is it POSSIBLE to work toward unexpected horizons
that aren’t on your mental radar?

These ↑ horizons are your means
for making your future S — requires different time usage including
some different “ecological awareness” here

 

“Your thinking, choices, decisions are determined by
what you’ve SEEN (and here) that challenges your assumptions

Your horizons are determined by what you’ve SEEN ↑ ↓

 

#Decision Making: The Chassis That Holds the Whole Together

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400

“We cannot #see things unless
we are prepared to #see them” more & true system

Nobody is going to do this ↑ for you — quite the opposite

«§§§»

“Decision making is a time machine (here)

that synchronizes into a single time — the present
a great number of divergent time spans.”
Druckerism

larger view ↓ #thinkingcanvas

time-spans-pict-600

«§§§»

We can make #decisions only in the present,
and yet we cannot make decisions for the present alone;
the most expedient, most opportunistic decision — let alone
the decision not to decide at all —
may commit us for a long time,
if not permanently and irrevocably.” — Chapter 11, MRE by Druckerism

«§§§»

“The future requires decisions-now. It imposes risk-now.
It requires action-now.” Druckerism

decision-making is a time machine — explored

 

line

 

#attention3
“One does not pay attention to everything …

And one acts only upon what one is
paying attention to.

radar

harvesting

Harvesting and implementing



The reaction may be #thinking or it may be action (which is only thinking that passes through our mouths or our muscles instead of our minds).


The world around is full of a huge number of things to which one could pay attention.


But it would be impossible to react to everything at once.


So one reacts only to a selected part of it.

 

The choice of attention area determines the action or thinking that follows.

 

The choice of this area of attention is one of the most fundamental aspects of thinking”. very powerful ::: TLN Insights ::: #adt #edb

«§§§»

*this page is a work in progress*

Warning: this site is not for you if you are anchored to the idea that tomorrowS
are an extrapolation of yesterdayS — a #belief that sabotages your family tree

 

line

 

Navigating unimagined
future S

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

JUDGEMENTAttention-directing frameworks

 

If you run your imagination over the last hundred years,
how many sequences of unimagined futures do you see? #surprises

What reasons would make you think this pattern ↑ is going to stop?

What do you think is going to happen to the time spans
between yesterdays and tomorrows?
Will the time spans get shorter, longer, stay about the same?
Or maybe it is totally random

 

drucker-man-invented-corp-soc-pict-t-no-ref

At what point in your life
did someone
with a broad #sda,
top of the food chain worldview (#lter)
provide you
a breadcrumb trail
for navigating changing worldS —
worldS continuing to move toward unimagined futureS. How many
major global institutions (#wgobcd) look to this person for guidance on
making THEIR futureS? #connect

 

Google → “How Baby Boomers Broke America” continue

Thoughts to add to your evidence wall (see image below ↓)

Google → “A Princeton sociologist spent 8 years asking rural Americans
why they're so pissed off” continue

Google → “The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy” continue

Stagnation?

Evidence Wall

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

 

#sda #parallel Navigating requires
parallel pre-thought work approaches action system #ams

Try a #page-search for
the words “parallel” and “organized”

radar-differences-pict-600

… that identifies relevantblind-spots” ,
acknowledges the NEED for new understanding,
and passes the test of time (the shift to a #knowledge society)

 

Revisionist History : Saigon, 1965 ::: The Prime Minister and the Prof #podcast

 

When the crisis happens
there will be little or no time
to think and prepare an action plan.

Thinking is that waste of time
between seeing something
and knowing what to do about it.

The time is filled with #ideas
which lead on from one to another
as we try and sort out the unfamiliar situation
and change it into a familiar one
with which we know how to cope. continue

… But how do you #see an unfamiliar situation
before it is too late to effectively respond …
the future that has already happened

How do you explain an event
you cannot understand? continue

playsheet-collage-pict-600

A work approach that will help you get through a world
that is unfamiliar to you and everybody else

A work approach that is
effective for the challenges ahead …

A life and action management system (#lms #ams)
Who knows anything specific about the world ten years from now?
And you can’t get there directly from here …

To be able to navigate you have be prepared to
abandon everything — before one really wants to,
let alone before one has to … (#wgobcd)

The Society of Organizations and
the accompanying destabilization
society of organizations brainroad

(↑ the only way to be prepared ↓)

 

WW2 battle map

ww2-battle-maps-2019-08-29-001-pict-t-600

 

«§§§»

 

Our vocabulary is of necessity based on multiple layers of primitive history …
History of the World in Two Hours

We are always completely hostage to
the limited words of language. We have to use available words.
Language is an encyclopedia of ignorance, which
forces us to perceive and communicate in a limited way.

 

↑ requires unilateral, effective action in multiple now S
(everything visible and “SEEABLE” on this page)

… you may believe that feelings and values are
the most important things in life. You are right.
That is why thinking is so very important. ↓

TO-LO-PO-SO-GO ↓ — a thinking landscape ↓

But first, something has to get on your mental radar (this page)
then what does that radar blip mean for you? ← who is you? →
then something like TO -LO-PO-SO-GO+

TO-LOPOSO-GO-pict-t-400

Feedback #analysis applies to all important action

 

Getting to tomorrowS isn’t easy,

but being left behind

and becoming a prisoner of the past (pre-knowledge dynamics)

is very easy …

#belief — Try a page search for “belief” here

 

line

 

For each thought fragment, concept, illustration, link, or text block
you encounter ↑ ↓ ask yourself what does this mean for me? (illustration)
along with doing a #PMI, dense reading and dense listening,
#thinking broad and thinking detailed plus visualizing
the operacy involved.

 

line

 

#72 #hor3
The future of any nation is the
sum of #individual behaviors.

It is an insane delusion to believe
that a country can improve
while #individuals
keep repeating the past
.
the competitive knowledge economy
#MAGA

 

«§§§»

 

#73 #lchp #wlh The #knowledge society, by definition, is a competitive society; with knowledge accessible to everyone, everyone is expected to place himself or herself, to improve himself or herself, and to have aspirations.

It is a society in which many more people than ever before can be successful.

But it is therefore, by definition, also a society in which many more people than ever before can fail, or at least can come in second.

And if only because the application of #knowledge to work has made developed societies so much richer than any earlier society could even dream of becoming, the failures, whether poverty or alcoholism, battered women or juvenile delinquents, are seen as failures of society.

In traditional society they were taken for granted.

In the #knowledge society they are an affront, not just to the sense of justice, but equally to the competence of society and its self-respect.” continue

 

«§§§»

 

“More than anything else, the individual
has to take more responsibility for himself or herself,
rather than depend on the company.” continue

 

«§§§»

 

#74 #lchp #wlh Given the competitive struggle, a growing number of highly successful #knowledge workers of both sexes—business managers, university teachers, museum directors, doctors— plateau in their forties.

They know they have achieved all they will achieve.

If their work is all they have, they are in trouble.

Knowledge workers therefore need to develop, preferably while they are still quite young, a noncompetitive life and community of their own, and some SERIOUS outside interest. continue

 

«§§§»

 

Escaping the “kiddy table”

kiddy-table-001-pict-t-350

Broad worldview #sda

 

Self-development of the executive

toward effectiveness

is the only

available answer

to satisfy both

the objective needs of society for performance by the organization, and

the needs of the person for achievement and fulfillment.

It is the only way

in which organization goals and

individual needs

can come together.” Druckerism

 

«§§§»

 

Furthermore, in the #knowledge-based organization all members have to be able to control their own work by feedback from their #results to their #objectives.

All members must ask themselves: “What is the one major contribution to this organization and its mission which I can make at this particular time?” responsibility-based organization

 

... snip, snip...

 

There is a great deal of talk today about “entitlement” and “empowerment.”

These terms express the demise of the command and control-based organization.

But they are just as much terms of power and rank as the old terms were.

We should instead be talking about responsibility and contribution.

For power without responsibility is not power at all; it is irresponsibility.

 

 

Our aim should be to make people be more responsible.

#wlh What we ought to be asking is not, “What should you be entitled to?” but, “ What should you be responsible for?

The task of management in the #knowledge-based organization is not to make everybody a boss.

It is to make everybody a contributor.

The emerging knowledge society

 

«§§§»

 

... replace the quest for success with the quest for contribution. The #critical #question is not, “How can I achieve?” but “What can I contribute?”

 

«§§§»

 

Skills (and skill sets) vs. #knowledgeS

Try a page search for “skill” on A Century of Social Transformation

 

 

line

 

 

#19 #tln #wlg #moo #mo1

#horizons #fastp #adt #ptf #pdf #whtmal #seek

Managing Oneself

overview PDF tame

overview PDF on steroids

 

is a revolution in human affairs

and is the

action foundation and eventual beginning point for everything,

but ecological awareness ↑ ↓ is also needed #psdapa

 

Essential Awareness

 

Most mistakes in thinking
are mistakes in perception

 

Dealing with risk and uncertainty

 

We know only two things about the future

 

The Essential Drucker

 

#fastp
finding and selecting
the pieces of the puzzle

 

People change over such a long time span

 

The ideas on the image below
can be found on this page

managing-oneself-overview-pict-t-450

larger and evolving map

 

a change in the human condition

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

Tactics (success) by Edward de Bono

Intelligence, Information, Thinking

JUDGEMENTAttention-directing frameworks

 

The concepts below imply the need for dense reading plus
thinking broad and thinking detailed.


Then you have to make it ↑ operational

… and that involves Practical Thinking and the awareness of risk and uncertainty

 

#mo1 Managing oneself is a revolution in human affairs.

It requires new and unprecedented things from the individual, and especially from the knowledge worker.

For in effect it demands that each #knowledge worker think and behave as a Chief Executive Officer.

Further, the shift from manual workers who do as they are told — either by the task or the boss — to knowledge workers who have to manage themselves profoundly challenges social structure.

It also requires an almost 180-degree change in the knowledge workers' thoughts and actions from what most of us — even of the younger generation — still take for granted as the way to think and the way to act.

 

More and more people in the workforce — and most knowledge workers — will have to MANAGE THEMSELVES.

They will have to place themselves

where ↓ THEY

can make the greatest contribution ↓
; (something that needs doing)

they will have to learn to develop themselves. (#responsibility word stem #contribut or #voluntee)

 

sidebar

 

 

To know something ↑ ↓ … one must look at it

from sixteen different angles
continue

drucker-man-invented-corp-soc-pict-t-no-ref

Who was Peter Drucker?

The alternative to tyranny


Origins of a new world (#wgobcd ↑ ↓)

Moving on

tomorrow always arrives

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

The Walking Dead

The World: A Brief Introduction

the-second-curve-124w-200h

The Second Curve by Charles Handy

Management Challenges for the 21st Century

Managing in the Next Society

The Forces Creating a New Geography of Opportunity?

 

 

#hor3
Striving
toward an #idea
outside of yourself
continue

 

#bigpicture … we can only work toward the horizons on our mental radar at a point in time #ams

work-toward-available-horizons-v2-pict-t-600

work-toward-available-horizons

Why do things exist? Why do they die? ↑

larger composite view ↑ ::: Economic & content and structure ::: Adoption rates: one & two

The Forces Creating a New Geography of Opportunity?

#Ideas and action system ::: Idea collection and organization ::: Action thinking ::: Converting idea sources to action

 

The Management Revolution ↑ ::: Developing countries

The Poverty of Economic Theory #pdf

Dangers of inside-out thinking

How can the individual survive?

Imagining navigation course changes

Cityscapes

Build on islands (a.k.a. small worlds) of health and strength

Annual goal review

Reviewing the previous year then looking forward

 

In helping people learn how to be responsible,
our educational system is
more and more counterproductive …

The longer you stay in school,
the fewer decisions you have to make. …

And graduate school
is much worse
. continue

 

main brainroad continues

 

#mo1 #ptf They will have to learn

to stay young and mentally alive

during a fifty-year working life.

 

They will have to learn

how and when

to change

what they do,

how they do it

and when they do it.

See: The rest they contract out

 

sidebar

 

Dealing with risk and uncertainty

 

Listening for the signal

that it is time to change

is an essential skill

for self-development and self-renewal



The stages of Josh Abrams +++ continue

the-second-curve-124w-200h

The Second Curve by Charles Handy

 

Reinvent Yourself (something that needs doing and make your life your endgame)

 

main brainroad continues

 

#mo1 Knowledge workers are likely to outlive their employing organization.

Organization characteristics
within
post-capitalist society

 

#survive Why great companies fail

 

We should expect
radical changes
in society
as well as in business.
Even the very products we buy
will change drastically. #connect ::: continue

 

#wlh #44 Even if knowledge workers postpone entry into the labor force as long as possible — if, for instance, they stay in school till their late twenties to get a doctorate — they are likely, with present life expectancies in the developed countries, to live into their eighties.

 

And they are likely to have to keep working, if only part-time, until they are around seventy-five or older.

 

The average working life, in other words, is likely to be fifty years, especially for knowledge workers.

 

#mo1 #ole #lypc #ptf #survive #cfs

But the average life expectancy

of a successful business


is only thirty years

and in a period of great turbulence

such as the one we are living in,

it is unlikely to be even that long.

 

#mo1 #uf #taa #wgcf #lypc
Even organizations that normally are long-lived if not expected to live forever — schools and universities, hospitals, government agencies — will see rapid changes in the period of turbulence we have already entered.

 

#mo1 #survive
Even if they survive — and a great many surely will not, at least not in their present form — they will change their structure, the work they are doing, the knowledges they require and the kind of people they employ. consider the case for outsourcing ::: conditions for survival ::: long years of profound change

 

sidebar

 

Evolution of sound transportation — in time and place ↓

sound-players-pict-600

Why do “things” exist?

Why do they die? ↑

tomorrow always arrives #taa

 

11th-global-peter-drucker-forum-pict-stroke-t-600

Hofburg ::: Post-capitalist executive

 

main brainroad continues

 

#mo1 Increasingly, therefore, workers, and especially knowledge workers,

will outlive any one employer,

and will have to be prepared for

more than one job,

more than one assignment,

more than one career.

 

So far, this book — Management Challenges for the 21st Century — has dealt with changes in the environment : in society, economy, politics, technology.

This concluding chapter deals with the new demands on the individual.

#mo1 The very great achievers, a Napoleon, a Leonardo da Vinci, a Mozart, have always managed themselves.

This in large measure made them great achievers.

But they were the rarest of exceptions.

And they were so unusual, both in their talents and in their achievements, as to be considered outside the boundaries of normal human existence.

#mo1 Now even people of modest endowments,
that is, average mediocrities,
will have to learn
to manage themselves
.

 

How can the INDIVIDUAL survive? continue

The INDIVIDUAL in entrepreneurial society continue

 

#mo1 #moq Knowledge workers, therefore, face drastically new demands:

 

They have to ask:

star Who Am I?

 

star What Are My Strengths? → Drucker methodology vs. StrengthsFinder

 

star HOW Do I Work/Perform ? (here)

 

star They have to ask: Where Do I Belong? In details 1 ::: details 2 ::: Insight: Where right becomes wrong

 

This is not a decision that most people can or should make at the beginning of their careers. (here)

 

Tactics (success) by Edward de Bono

 

star They have to ask: What is My Contribution? (something that needs doing)

 

And do you know the biggest thing these young executives have to learn in their new positions?

My friend continued, “We have more Ph.D.’s in biology and chemistry than we have janitors, and they have to learn that their customers aren’t Ph.D.’s, and the people who do the work aren’t.”

In other words, they must learn to speak English instead of putting formulas on the blackboard.

They must learn to listen to somebody who does not know what a regression analysis is.

Basically, they have to learn the meaning and importance of RESPECT.

 

From Command to Information
to the Responsibility-based organization

 

“Men of high effectiveness are conspicuous by their absence in executive jobs.”

 

Q: A difficult thing to learn, let alone teach.

A: You have to focus on a person’s performance.

The individual must shoulder the burden of defining what his or her own contribution will be.

We have to demand — and “demand” is the word, nothing permissive — that people think through what constitutes the greatest contribution that they can make to the company in the next eighteen months or two years.

Then they have to make sure that contribution is accepted and understood by the people they work with and for.


Most people don’t ask themselves this question, however obvious and essential it seems.

When I ask people what they contribute to an organization, they blossom and love to answer.

And when I follow with, “Have you told other people about it?” the answer often is “No, that would be silly, because they know.”

But of course “they” don’t.

We are one hundred years past the simple economy in which most people knew what others did at work.

Farmers knew what most farmers did and industrial workers knew what other factory workers did.

Domestic servants understood each other’s work, as did the fourth major group in that economy: small tradesmen.

No one needed to explain.

But now nobody knows what others do, even within the same organization.

Everybody you work with needs to know your priorities.

If you don’t ask and don’t tell, your peers and subordinates will guess incorrectly. start here

 

star They have to take Relationship Responsibility.

Very few people work by themselves and achieve #results by themselves—a few great artists, a few great scientists, a few great athletes.

Most people work with other people and are #effective through other people.

That is true whether they are members of an organization or legally independent.

To manage oneself, therefore, requires taking relationship responsibility.


Can we then say anything constructive about communication?


From command to responsibility-based organization and Managing the boss — boss list

 

star They have to plan for the Second Half of THEIR Lives. more on this below … #parallel

 

sidebar

 

Alternative life directions

 

Reinvent yourself

 

The individual in entrepreneurial society

 

The Return on Luck

 

Danger of too much planning

 

 

#mo1 #moq Equally important, knowing the answer to these #questionsenables a person to say to an opportunity, an offer, or an assignment

 

“Yes, I will do that.

But this is the way I should be doing it.

This is the way it should be structured.

This is the way the relationships should be.

These are the kind of #results you should expect from me, and in this time frame, because this is who I am.” ↓

Try searching this page for the word “team

 

People Decisions
radar-differences-pict-600

Beware of “what goes on behind closed doors” #wgobcd continue

 

What do I want to put into life

and

what do I want to get out of it?
continue

 

↓ From Interview: Post-Capitalist Executive

 

#mo1 Even today, remarkably few Americans are prepared to select jobs for themselves.

Jobs that kill you

When you ask, “Do you know what you are good at?

Do you know your limitations?” they look at you with a blank stare.

Or they often respond in terms of subject knowledge, which is the wrong answer.

 

sidebar

 

Connect, connect, connect

The Individual in Entrepreneurial Society


From Knowledge to KnowledgeS



Knowledge is always specialized


The answers that gave you an “A+”
40 years ago are the wrong answers (research)


About knowledge ::: connecting ::: not connecting

 

main brainroad continues

 

When they prepare their resumes,

they still try to list positions

like steps up a ladder.

 

It is time to give up

thinking of jobs

or career paths

as we once did

and

think in terms of

taking on assignments

one after the other
.

 

 

 

 

#75 #wlh #mo1

Q: If a young man in a gray flannel suit represented the lifelong corporate type, what’s today’s image?

A: Taking individual responsibility and not depending on any particular company.

Equally important is managing your own career.

The stepladder is gone, and there’s not even the implied structure of an industry’s rope ladder.

It’s more like vines, and you bring your own machete.

vines

You don’t know what you’ll be doing next, or whether you’ll work in a private office or one big amphitheater or even out of your home.

You have to take responsibility for knowing yourself, so you can find the right jobs as you develop and as your family becomes a factor in your values and choices. continue → Interview: Post-Capitalist Executive

… snip, snip …

#wlh Performance is not hitting the bull’s-eye with every shot.

Performance is rather the consistent ability to produce #results over prolonged periods of time and in a variety of assignments.

A performance record must include mistakes.

It must include failures.

It must reveal a person’s limitations as well as his strengths.

… snip, snip …

The one person to distrust is the one who never makes a mistake, never commits a blunder, never fails in what he tries to do.

Either he is a phony, or he stays with the safe, the tried, and the trivial.

The better a person is, the more mistakes he will make—for the more new things he will try. — The Daily Drucker

 

Read more on the preceding topics

 

The individual in entrepreneurial society

… one thing worth being remembered for
is the difference one makes in the lives of people more

Wisdom → broad #sda

thinking broad and thinking detailed

The Return on Luck

Danger of too much planning

Knowledge and technology #pdf

Knowledge economy and knowledge polity

Management Challenges for the 21st Century

Managing in the Next Society

A Year with Peter Drucker:
52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness

Freedom (et al.) is the heaviest burden
laid on mankind

 

Origins of The Practice of Management

 

the main managing oneself brainroad continues

 

... snip, snip...

 

#20 #lchp #wlh The Second Half of Your Life #parallel #second-curve

 

As said before: For the first time in human history, individuals can expect to outlive organizations.

This creates a totally new challenge: What to do with the second half of one’s life?

If you can see the road ahead

#adt One can no longer expect that the organization for which one works at age thirty will still be around when one reaches age sixty.

#wlh #worldview #horizons But also, forty or fifty years in the same kind of work is much too long for most people.

 

They deteriorate, get bored, lose all joy in their work, “retire on the job” and become a burden to themselves and to everyone around them.

 

This is not necessarily true of the very top achievers such as very great artists.

Claude Monet (1840-1926), the greatest Impressionist painter, was still painting masterpieces in his eighties, and working twelve hours a day, even though he had lost almost all his eyesight.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), perhaps the greatest Post-Impressionist painter, similarly painted till he died in his nineties and in his seventies invented a new style.

The greatest musical instrumentalist of this century, the Spanish cellist Pablo Casals (1876-1973), planned to perform a new piece of music and practiced it on the very day on which he died at age ninety-seven.

But these are the rarest of exceptions even among very great achievers.

Neither Max Planck (1858-1947) nor Albert Einstein (1879-1955), the two giants of modern physics, did important scientific work after their forties.

Planck had two more careers.

After 1918 — aged sixty — he reorganized German science.

After being forced into retirement by the Nazis in 1933, he, in 1945, almost ninety, started once more to rebuild German science after Hitler’s fall.

But Einstein retired in his forties to become a “famous man.”

 

There is a great deal of talk today about the “mid-life crisis” of the executive.

It is mostly boredom.

At age forty-five most executives have reached the peak of their business career and know it.

After twenty years of doing very much the same kind of work, they are good at their jobs.

But few are learning anything anymore,

few are contributing anything anymore

and few expect the job again to become a challenge and a satisfaction.

 

Manual workers who have been working for forty years — in the steel mill for instance, or in the cab of a locomotive — are physically and mentally tired long before they reach the end of their normal life expectancy, that is, well before they reach even traditional retirement age.

They are “finished.”

If they survive — and their life expectancy too has gone up to an average of seventy-five years or so — they are quite happy spending ten or fifteen years doing nothing, playing golf, going fishing, engaging in some minor hobby and so on.

But knowledge workers are not “finished.”

They are perfectly capable of functioning despite all kinds of minor complaints.

And yet the original work that was so challenging when the knowledge worker was thirty has become a deadly bore when the knowledge worker is fifty and still he or she is likely to face another fifteen if not another twenty years of work.

To manage oneself, therefore, will increasingly require preparing oneself for the second half of one’s life.

(The best books on this subject are by Bob Buford — a very successful businessman who himself has created his own second half of life.

They are Half Time [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994] and Game Plan [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997].)

... snip, snip...

People who manage the “second half” may always be a minority only.

The majority may keep doing what they are doing now, that is, to retire on the job, being bored, keeping on with their routine and counting the years until retirement.

But it will be this minority, the people who see the long working-life expectancy as an opportunity both for themselves and for society, who may increasingly become the leaders and the models.

They, increasingly, will be the “success stories.” continue

 

#wlh Finding Your #Role #pdf

 

Reinvent yourself

 

#33 The following is from the chapter “Non-profits: the second career — interview with Robert Buford in Managing the Non-Profit Organization

PETER DRUCKER: You’ve had significant achievements in both of your careers.

Is there any particular experience that helped you either to do the right things or avoid doing the wrong ones ?


ROBERT BUFORD: Perhaps two experiences that came early in my life.

My mother gave me a great deal of responsibility early in life and a great deal of freedom to fail.

The second thing that was important to me is that I got caught off base a couple of times when I was quite young.

For the rest of my life I’ve assumed that anything I did in violation of the rules, I would get caught doing.

So, I’ve made it a rule that I’m simply not going to take shortcuts and cheat, because I assume I’ll get caught.

And I find that’s good discipline.


PETER DRUCKER: Can you remember any one person in your own company or in your own community who made you realize who really you are and who you might become?

For instance, I’ve heard you talk a great deal about how much you gave, but also how much you got from the Young Presidents Organization.

Was that one of the important relationships in your life?


ROBERT BUFORD: The Young Presidents Organization has been important in my life because it’s given me a window into the real worlds of other executives.

I have chosen to live all my life in a town with a population of seventy-five thousand because it seems to me to be a sane environment to function from, and a caring and warm environment.

But it is a small town.

The Young Presidents Organization has provided me with access to sophisticated and successful people whom I would otherwise have been unlikely to meet.


PETER DRUCKER: That’s why it’s so important, I think, for people who work in an organization to have an outside interest , to meet people and not just become totally absorbed in their own small world .

And all worlds are small worlds . (Try a #page-search for “small worlds”)

Six degrees of separation

That’s particularly important for people in non-profit organizations because their work is so much more absorbing than it is in a business.

#adt Build on islands (a.k.a. small worlds) of health and strength

When you say to a business executive, you’re working hard from nine to five, make sure you have some other interest—be a Scout Master, well, that gets a resonance.

But when you say to a pastor, perhaps you should go on the board of the local hospital, he says, I’m too busy .

He becomes a victim of his own organization .

One of the most successful—and busy—non-profit executives I know sits on several company boards.

She says that gives her a window on a different world—that she learns from doing that.


Let me ask you what important advice you have on self-development for people in non-profit service organizations?

You have seen more of them than almost anybody I know, worked with more of them through your pastoral churches and the service organization executives you work with in Leadership Network.

What would be the important advice?


ROBERT BUFORD: #adt On either the business side or the non-profit side, stay in touch with your constituency, or you run the risk that they will change and you won’t.

radar-differences-pict-600

You’ll be left a prisoner of your own tradition, a prisoner of the insiders in an organization and their desires, and will miss the role of a service organization, which is to serve.


sound-players-pict-no-reflect-400

Josh Abrams story

PETER DRUCKER: I’m reminded that Gustav Mahler told his orchestra members they should sit in the audience at least twice a year so that they know what music sounds like to the listener.

A great pastor I knew years ago made it his habit to take off about four or five Sundays a year, go to other churches, and sit in the congregation.

Is that what you are telling me is important?


ROBERT BUFORD: A great pastor I know summers in the country and goes to small local churches all summer.

Another pastor I know makes it his practice to go to the offices of his members on a frequent and disciplined basis to meet them on their turf.


PETER DRUCKER: The best hospital administrators I know have themselves admitted once a year as a patient, go through the admission routine, and then spend a day just to see not only how their organization works but what it is like to be a patient.


So that’s one of the important development things.

Any other?


 

ROBERT BUFORD: #adt It’s very important that the leader, and, for that matter, the whole leadership team, stay in touch with the seasonal changes within themselves .

We all have different experiences and levels of intensity in our mid-forties than we had in our mid-thirties.

And we will be entirely different in our mid-fifties when, perhaps, we’re, bored with our current careers, where we have achieved virtuosity and mastery in things which we used to think very challenging, but which are now yesterday’s work .

 

How is it possible
to NAVIGATE and WORK toward
THE “right horizonS”
that aren’t on your mental radar
at the the RIGHT pointS in time?

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

This is who I am

 

 

↓ #hor3 #wlh #mo1 ↓

The individual in entrepreneurial society

 

The Return on Luck

 

Danger of too much planning

 

Management Challenges for the 21st Century


Managing in the Next Society

 

Living in more than one world
Knowledge workers therefore need to develop,
preferably while they are still quite young,
a noncompetitive life and community
of their own,
and some SERIOUS outside interest
. continue

 

 

Consider all factorsa broader landscape → Life 2.0 et al.

 

Just reading ↑ is not enough — you’ve got to make it operational

 

 

line

 

 

Curiosity is a mindset, and it is a skill.

Intelligence and behavior

The art of asking the right #questions can make all the difference in a manager’s success or failure no matter the stage in their career.

Learn from a legend.

Billionaire Mort Mandel learned this critical lesson from leadership legend Peter Drucker.

In Mandel’s autobiography, “It’s All About Who” he shares the following story:

 

“Years ago the famous management guru Peter Drucker sat down with me and gave me the best advice I’ve received.

I asked him how we could grow faster.

He told me to put my best person on my biggest #opportunity Mort Mandel, billionaire and philanthropist

 

That simple answer probably feels a bit like something Captain Obvious would tell you.

How helpful is it?

Well, after hearing that advice, Mandel was as skeptical as you, so he followed up with another #question:

“If my best person is a dentist, would I put him in charge of running a brass foundry?”

Mandel figured he’d be able to stump Drucker with this extreme situation, but Drucker took no time to insightfully respond:

“Yes.

Let me tell you what that dentist will do if he’s your best person.

He’ll walk into that building, tour the plant, and speak to the employees.

He’ll immediately realize he doesn’t know anything about a brass foundry.

But he’s going to get his people together and figure it out.

He’ll try to find someone on that team who is highly qualified to run the plant.

If he doesn’t come up with one, he’ll find the best foundry man in the country.

The dentist will soon learn how to improve the leadership and the culture and reinforce the values.”

I bet you can imagine the dentist doing all those things around the plant.

And as they do, the dentist will be asking critical #questions like:

What’s working well at the foundry right now?

What could we do to improve your work area?

What’s management missing that matters?

Who is the best leader among the staff?

Why?

Who is the best foundry man in the industry?

 

It is the act of listening and asking good questions to the right people that will turn the dentist into the leader the foundry needs.

They’ll discover the problems plaguing the foundry, what’s working well, and help find the right people to appoint as leaders.

While the dentist would never succeed on their knowledge alone, by using questions and curiosity they can forge a path to success.

Be inquisitive when you start a new role.

Like many of us, when put in a new role, the dentist didn’t know much about their new job.

However, asking the right people the right questions (#rq) quickly changed the situation for them and can do the same for you and your team.

Learning by experience alone does not scale as a leader.

 

Where’s the exploration of the biggest #opportunity?

 

Your best hope is to become great at asking questions to learn from others.

But curiosity isn’t just for when you start.

It’s a habit you should never stop, regardless of your leadership role and experience level.

Why Asking Great Questions is a Critical Management Skill

Many of the best leaders in the world have learned this lesson and shared it with others.

Here are some of our favorite quotes from leaders at companies like Pepsi, Pixar, and Intel, as well as a legendary Hollywood producer.

1) Bossing people around misses out on a ton of learning.

Brian Grazer is a legendary Hollywood producer you probably have never heard of, but you’ve definitely heard of the movies he’s helped make make.

He’s been working for decades with director and long time friend, Ron Howard, on films like A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13. In his book, “A Curious Mind” he reveals how he’s learned so much in his career by asking questions.

He’s used it to meet and learn from brilliant and famous people including multiple US Presidents, Michael Jackson, and Princess Diana.

He’s also used his curiosity to inform his management style, which he describes in his book:

“I especially think questions are a great management tool when I think someone isn’t doing what I would hope they would, or when I think something isn’t going in the direction I want it to go.

Asking questions creates the space for people to raise issues they are worried about that the boss, or their colleagues, may not know about.

Asking questions gives people the chance to tell a different story than the one you’re expecting.

Most important from my perspective is asking questions means people have to make their case for the way they want a decision to go.”

Rather than being the boss, and telling everyone how to do things, Grazer uses questions to listen and learn.

When his team answers them, sometimes Brian changes his mind, and other times, the act of answering changes theirs.

Either way, the outcome has nothing to do with Brian’s ego or his ideas being the only way to do things.

Brian doesn’t mind sacrificing his ego, because his real goal is to make a great work of art.

The result of his approach speaks for itself: he has 43 Academy Award nominations and 149 Emmy nominations.

Don’t be bossy; ask questions when you see something wrong and use the answers to shape a better path forward.

2) Problems don’t come to you.

You have to seek them out by asking.

Pixar Animation Studios has been making hit animated films for the last 20 years.

This hot streak is no mistake.

It is the careful attention to a hard working, candid culture, that has helped them succeed.

At the helm of this culture is co-founder Ed Catmull.

In his book, Creativity, Inc, he shares many lessons on how he architected the culture and improved it as they grew and changed.

One major lesson he learned early on that he wrote about in his book was that leaders must seek out problems:

During the arduous journey to make Toy Story, he never once heard about issues production managers were having.

When he finally did find out about them, he felt horrible they had gone on for so long.

It was a painful lesson he learned that shaped much of his management approach going forward.

After Toy Story was a big success and the future of Pixar seemed secure after so many years of struggling, Catmull was looking for his next challenge.

That turned out to be focusing on Pixar’s leadership and culture.

Reflecting on how he and other leaders have risen to that challenge over the years, he wrote:

“What makes Pixar special is that we acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; that we work hard to uncover these problems, even if doing so means making ourselves uncomfortable; and that, when we come across a problem, we marshal all of our energies to solve it.

This more than any elaborate party or turreted workstation, is why I love coming to work in the morning.

It is what motivates me and gives me a definite sense of mission.”

Building a great culture in your company or on your team does not happen by accident.

It is only by hard work setting a good example and actively seeking out problems that you will find the changes you need to make for your team to perform at their highest possible levels.

These problems do not come to you.

You must seek them out.

3) Questions level the playing field.

No matter the role you’re in, as your team grows, you’ll work with many different personalities.

One of the risks you run as your team grows is that you can be dominated by your extroverts.

As the saying goes, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

If you’re not careful, you’ll end up having your most outspoken team members driving your decisions and changes you make on the team’s behalf.

This is why it’s important to ask questions of everyone on your team, even if they aren’t coming to you or readily volunteering information.

One of the best places to ask questions is in your one on ones with each person on your team.

These meetings are invaluable for many reasons, and Ben Horowitz, VC and author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things points out a crucial one:

You have to ask your introverts.

Draw the answers and insights out of them.

(Ed.note: these one on one questions can help if you’re looking for ideas on what to ask.)

It can be hard work, but it’s critical to getting their input.

They can help you fully understand what problems or opportunities exist.

And even if someone on your team does come to you with something, don’t just take it at face value.

You should probe deeper so you fully understand the situation, idea, or feedback.

That’s why Andy Grove, former CEO and founder of Intel has, “Grove’s Principle of Didactic Management”, which he writes about in his leadership classic, High Output Management:

“When the supervisor thinks the subordinate has said all he wants to about a subject, he should ask another question.

He should try to keep the flow of thoughts coming by prompting the subordinate with queries until both feel satisfied they have gotten to the bottom of the problem.”

If you know the 5 Why’s method to get to the root of a problem, consider this the sibling to that approach.

Never assume you fully understand something from simply an initial statement.

You need to probe deeper so you’re not treating symptoms without knowing the disease.

For example, someone may tell you they want to be involved in a meeting they hadn’t been attending before.

The easy answer would be to just invite them along and move on.

However, if you probe deeper, you may discover the reason they want to be there has little to do with the meeting.

Instead, it could be due to a feeling of being out of the loop, not having input where they feel they should, or that they want to impress someone in the meeting.

All 3 of those would have different ideal solutions and be worthy of much more discussion to determine the best approach.

Whether your team member is starting the discussion or you are, it’s important bring questions and keep asking questions so you get the full story regardless of their personality.

4) Questions prevent rushing to judgment.

When you hear bad news or about a problem, it’s easy to jump to conclusions and want to take action quickly.

However, if you do that, it’s easy to say or do things you’ll regret later.

That’s why Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsi, takes a different approach:

When you assume positive intent, and come to those involved in a situation with good questions to learn more, you’ll be in a much better position.

Not only do you avoid making any ill advised decisions, you can diffuse the situation by not escalating tensions.

As Nooyi wrote:

“Sometimes in the heat of the moment, people say things.

You can either misconstrue what they’re saying and assume they are trying to put you down, or you can say, “Wait a minute.

Let me really get behind what they are saying to understand”…when you assume positive intent, I think what often happens is the other person says, “Hey, wait a minute, maybe I’m wrong in reacting the way I do because this person is really making an effort.”

And it goes deeper.

When you take a positive approach and use questions to learn more, you make mistakes safe to occur, and for you to be told about them.

The downward spiral of rushing to judgment.

If you have a habit of killing the messenger, no one will come to you with problems for long.

Similarly, if a you tend to explode over any problem, your team will quickly learn to avoid making any mistakes.

Both are catastrophic for you and your team.

If everyone is afraid to come to you with problems, then many issues will fester and force you into a fire fighting, reactionary management mode.

Once you’re there, it’s quite easy to get trapped as a new, major problem will likely be emerging just as you dealt with the last one.

Meanwhile, if your team is afraid to make mistakes and take risks, you will never discover breakthrough opportunities, and creativity will be stymied.

This is a recipe for your best people to leave and your team as a whole to underperform.

Be a thoughtful manager.

Give people the benefit of the doubt and use questions to get all the facts before rushing to a decision.

5) Questions help you learn your people’s motivations.

Many people want to “be the boss,” but no one likes being bossed around.

You have to tap into people’s motivations to get the best work out of them.

It’s why a core part of Dale Carnegie’s leadership classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People, has this simple, yet important lesson:

Later in How to Win Friends, Carnegie relays the following story about how a plant manager got his employees to step up to help deliver a massive order that he originally thought was impossible to do with their other order commitments:

“Instead of pushing his people to accelerate their work and rush the order through, he called everyone together, explained the situation to them, and told them how much it would mean to the company and to them if they could make it possible to produce the order on time.

Then he started asking questions:

Is there anything we can do to handle this order?

Can anyone think of different ways to process it through the shop that will make it possible to take the order?

Is there any way to adjust hours or personnel assignments that would help?”

Because the plant manager came to his people and involved them in the decision, they rallied with him and helped create a way to deliver the order on time.

If he had simply come out and started giving orders, he would have likely been met with groans and resistance instead.

As Carnegie later wrote, “Asking questions not only makes an order more palatable; it often stimulates the creativity of the persons whom you ask.

People are more likely to accept an order if they have had a part in the decision that caused the order to be issued.”

Do you know what excites your team?

Do you engage or order them?

The only way to get anyone to do anything is if they want to do it.

The only way to know what they want is to ask.

Questions are at the core of every facet of succeeding as a manager.

If you want to develop your management skills, hone your curiosity.

Looking for helpful questions to ask?” source

 


 

#30 #Questions from #Parallel Thinking by Edward de Bono (#attention #adt #apta)

 

They have to be YOUR answers

 

… But, on the whole, the question is the preferred device because it is more polite (asking instead of instructing) and simpler to use.

 

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Attention is a very KEY part of thinking !!!!!!!!!!

 

one acts only upon what one is paying attention to

 

attention-ogp-pict-trans-400

 

main brainroad continues

 

Attention-directing is a very important part of #perception.

 

We look and then notice, and note
what we #SEE
in the direction
to which our attention is drawn

The brain can only SEE
what it is prepared to see

Six Frames for Thinking about Information

 

 

Perception
provides
the INGREDIENTS
for thinking

 

Most mistakes in thinking are mistakes in perception:

Seeing only part of the situation :::
Jumping to conclusions :::
Misinterpretation caused by feelings

 

 

An #expert in a subject may have acquired an ‘attention-directing framework’.

 

When an art expert looks at a painting, that expert may direct his or her attention to the colors, the brushwork, the composition, the use of light, the hands, etc.

 

A hypothesis will itself immediately direct attention.

 

If the expert believes that the unsigned work is by a certain artist then the expert may immediately look at the nose because that artist is known to paint noses in a characteristic way.

 

 

In #thinking about anything
we need
‘attention-directing’
frameworks.

 

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#fastp
finding and selecting
the pieces of the puzzle

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40



Six Frames
for Thinking about
Information





JUDGEMENT

attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

Six Frames for Thinking about Information

 

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

Attention flows

The patterning system of the brain

NO SURPRISES

Managing the Moron

The CEO in the New Millennium

Information Challenges

Six Frames for Thinking about Information

How To Be More Interesting

Serious Creativity

 

Operacy — effectiveness and
the thinking that goes into doing —
getting things done

 

main brainroad continues

 

We cannot look at everything at the same time in order to put us into the same position as an expert who has built up just such a framework.

 

Answers to Drucker questions have to be YOUR answers

Rick Warren tribute to Drucker

 

 

 

Without the ability to direct attention, we see only the familiar patterns

 

Instead of waiting for our attention to be pulled towards something unusual, we can set out frameworks for ‘directing’ our attention in a conscious manner

 

We need attention-directing devices in order to prevent confusion.

 

 

It is more effective to look at one thing after another and to make a thorough job of each ‘look’. #cities

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

JUDGEMENT

Teach Yourself to Think : Basic Processes
Broad/Specific, General/Detail ::: Projection ::: Attention Directing :::
Recognition and Fit ::: Movement and Alternatives
Situation coding

 

We also need attention-directing devices in order to be sure that we have not left anything out but have done a broad #sda and competent perceptual scan: that we have looked in all directions that matter.

 

The #CoRT Thinking Lessons, which are now in wide use in many countries around the world and with excellent results, deliberately provide just such attention-directing devices. #adt

 

So instead of the hit-and-miss haphazard questioning of the Socratic method we can have the organized attention-directing of the ‘de Bono method’ of parallel thinking.

 

The formal attention-directing devices of the #CoRT method provide ‘executive concepts’ for the mind.

 

Our minds are full of ‘descriptive concepts’ like chair, car, dog, etc.

 

But there are few, if any, executive #concepts, which we use to direct our thinking or attention.

 

In the #CoRT lessons there is an attention-directing device called ‘C&S’ or ‘C and S’.

 

This stands for ‘Consequence and Sequel’ but is always referred to by the initials. #c&s or c and s

Why?

To give it its own perceptual identity.

It is perfectly useless simply to exhort someone to ‘look at the consequences’.

Such an instruction, which would apparently do the same thing, has no permanent standing in the mind, whereas the #C&S comes to have its own identity.

 

When a teacher asks a student to ‘do a C&S’ the student knows exactly what to do.

 

In time the student gives himself or herself the same instruction.

 

 

The results, as shown by the research of Professor John Edwards at James Cook University in Australia, can be very powerful.

Just telling a student to ‘think’ is perfectly useless.

 

In Canada I once #suggested to a roomful of about 150 senior women executives that women should be paid 15 per cent more money than men for doing the same job.

Eighty per cent of those present liked the idea and even muttered that it was ‘about time too’.

I then briefly explained the #C&S technique: direct attention to immediate, short-term, medium-term and long-term consequences of the suggestion.

At the end I again asked for their opinion regarding the suggestion.

The 80 per cent in favor had now dropped to only 15 per cent.

So ‘doing a formal C&S’ had made a huge difference.

Now, I suspect that everyone in that room would have regarded the C&S as an unnecessary device because as ‘thinking adults’ they always looked at the consequences of a suggestion .

If so then the formal request to do a C&S should have made no difference at all.

 

Most people make the mistake of believing that because something is simple, obvious and sensible we do it all the time.

This is not so at all.

We do not usually do even the simplest of things.

 

I have often told how I once asked a class of 30 12-year-olds in a school in Australia to give me their reaction to the suggestion that they should each receive a small amount of money each week for going to school.

All 30 thought it was a great idea since they would be able to buy sweets, comics and chewing gum.

I then briefly explained another simple attention-directing device: the ‘#PMI’.

Here the thinker directs attention to the ‘plus’ points first, followed by the ‘minus’ points and finally the ‘interesting’ points.

At the end of the exercise 29 of the 30 students had totally changed their mind and decided that the suggestion was a bad idea: ‘Where would the money come from?’, etc.

The important point to notice about this story is that I did not stand there asking them questions.

I did not say another word after explaining the PMI.

The students used this attention-directing device on their own.

As a result, they had a broader #sda perceptual picture.

As a result of having a broader perceptual picture they changed their mind about the suggestion.

 

The difference from the Socratic method, in which the teacher has to ask a string of questions, is very obvious.

 

Other attention-directing tools in the first set of CORT Thinking Lessons include:

#CAF: Consider All Factors — this directs attention to all the factors that need to be looked at when considering a decision, choice, design, plan, etc.

#FIP: First Important Priorities — an attempt to spell out the priorities.

Which things matter most?

#AGO: Aims, Goals and Objectives — this directs attention to the purpose of the action or choice.

What are you trying to achieve?

#APC: Alternatives, Possibilities and Choices — this is an executive order to find other ways of looking at something or doing something.

#OPV: Other People’s Views — this directs attention to the view or thinking of the other people involved.

All these attention-directing devices are very obvious and very simple.

But, in action, they have a powerful effect.

And students love using them, because they provide a framework for thinking about something.

Just telling a student to ‘think’ is perfectly useless.

One enlightened philosopher in Canada declared that the devices could not possibly work.

Even as he was writing this the devices were in use in hundreds of classrooms, where they were working very well.

It is somewhat like trying to prove that cheese does not exist when people are eating cheese every day.

We get many reports of children going home and teaching the attention-directing devices to their parents who are about to make major decisions.

We get reports of children helping their fathers and mothers think through business decisions.

There are countries where the methods are taught in some, many or all the schools.

There is no magic.

 

A question is an attention-directing device.

But who tells you where to direct the question?

 

The #CoRT thinking tools provide a framework for directing the directing of attention.

The #CoRT method also gets the students or thinkers to direct their own attention instead of just waiting for the teacher to ask the right question (#rq).

The CoRT Thinking Lessons are also used in business as well as in schools.

 

Intelligence Information Thinking

 

Books by Edward de Bono

 

 

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#tsoo The Society of Organizations

 

society of organizations brainroad ::: The need for a theory of organizations ::: Toward a theory of organizations ::: Society of organizations #pdf

 

These text blocks ↓ — made up of book heading titles — are meant to facilitate finding topics spread among various conceptual resources and creating conceptual landscape awareness.

 

sidebar

 

The Poverty of Economic Theory #pdf

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

the real pattern of economic activity

larger composite view ↑ ::: Economic & content and structure ::: Adoption rates: one & two

The Forces Creating a New Geography of Opportunity?

 

The Management Revolution ↑ ::: Developing countries

 

main brainroad continues

 

#worldview

 

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#hor3 #wlh #org1 #fastp
Organizations

 

 

regular text version

An organization is a special-purpose institution ::: A human group composed of specialists — not labors — working together on a common task ::: The function of organizations to make knowledge productive ::: The more specialized knowledges are, the more effective they will be ::: Have to be put together with the work of other specialist to become #results — outside the organization ::: Knowledges by themselves are sterile ::: Specialist are effective only as specialists — and knowledge workers have to be effective ::: The most highly effective knowledge workers do not want to be anything but narrow specialists #ntea ::: Specialist need exposure to the universe of knowledge, but they need to work as specialists and to concentrate on being specialist ::: And for this to produce results, an organization is needed ::: Organization as a distinct species ::: All one species … Armies, Churches, Universities, Hospitals, Businesses, Labor unions ::: They are the man-made environment, the “social ecology” of post-capitalist society ::: Management is a generic function pertaining to all organizations

 

Knowledge-based management

 

The characteristics of organizations ::: Organizations are special-purpose institutions ::: They are effective because they concentrate on one task ::: In an organization, diversification means splintering ::: It destroys performance capacity ::: Organization is a tool ::: The more specialized its given task, the greater its performance capacity ::: Its mission must be crystal clear ::: Because the organization is composed of specialists ::: Each with his or her own narrow knowledge ::: Otherwise its members become confused ::: They will follow their specialty ::: Rather than applying it to the common task ::: They will each define “#results” in terms of that specialty — imposing their own values on the organization ::: Only a clear, focused, and common mission can hold the organization together and enable it to produce #results ::: The prototype of the modern organization is the symphony orchestra ::: Many high-grade specialists ::: By themselves they don’t make music. Only the orchestra can do that ::: Perform because they have the same score ::: # Results exist only on the outside ::: Organizations exist to produce results on the outside ::: Results in an organization are always pretty far away from what each member contributes ::: Results need to be defined clearly and unambiguously and, if at all possible, measurably ::: Organizations need to appraise and judge itself and its performance against clear, known, impersonal #objectives and goals ::: “Voluntary” membership and the ability to leave an organizations ::: Organizations are always in competition for its essential resource qualified, knowledgeable, dedicated people ::: Need to market membership (what do the jobs really have to be to attract the needed people) ::: Have to attract people ::: Have to hold people ::: Have to recognize and reward people ::: Have to motivate people ::: Have to serve and satisfy people ::: Has to be an organization of equals, of “colleagues,” of “associates” ::: The position of each is determined by its contribution to the common task rather than by any inherent superiority or inferiority ::: Must be organized as a team of “associates” ::: They are always managed ::: Have “leaders” ::: May be perfunctory and intermittent ::: Or may be a full-time and demanding job for a fairly large group of people ::: Have to be people who make decisions ::: or nothing will get done ::: Have to be people who are accountable for the organization’s mission, spirit, performance, results ::: Must be a “conductor” who controls the “score” ::: There have to be people who: focus the organization on its mission; set the strategy to carry it out; define what the results are ::: This management has to have considerable authority ::: Yet its job in the knowledge organization is not to command; it is to direct (and inspire) ::: To be able to perform, an organization must be autonomous ::: Cannot be used to carry out “government policy”

Organization as a destabilizer #jump #lter #psdapa #sda ::: The organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer ::: Its function is to put knowledge to work on tools, processes, and products + on knowledge itself ::: #horizons   It must be organized for constant change ::: It must be organized for #innovation ::: It must be organized for systematic abandonment of … the established, the customary, the familiar, the comfortable, products, services, and processes, human and social relationships, skills, organizations themselves (#wgobcd) ::: Knowledge changes fast ::: Today’s certainties will be tomorrow’s absurdities ::: Skills change slowly and infrequently ::: Changes that most profoundly affect a knowledge do not, as a rule, come out of its own area ::: Social innovation is as important as new science or new technology in creating new knowledges and in making old ones obsolete ::: Purposeful innovation has itself become an organized discipline ::: Which is both teachable and learnable ::: Every organization has to build into its very structure the management of change ::: Organized abandonment ::: Increasingly, organizations will have to plan abandonment rather than try to prolong the life of a successful policy: practice, or product—something which so far only a few large Japanese companies have faced up to (#wgobcd) ::: The ability to create the new (three systematic practices) ::: Continuing improvement of everything it does (Kaizen) ::: What every artist does ::: Aim is to improve each product or service so that it becomes a truly different product or service in two or three year’s time ::: Learn to exploit ::: Develop new applications from its own successes ::: Learn how to innovate ::: Every organization will have to learn how to innovate and to learn that innovation can and should be organized as a systematic process ::: Then we come back to abandonment and we start all over again

 

Post-capitalist society has to be decentralized (#sda #horizons) ::: Its organizations must be able to make fast decisions based on closeness to performance, to the market, to technology, to the changes in society, environment, and demographics, all of which must be seen and utilized as (REAL not imagined) opportunities for innovation ::: Organizations in the post-capitalist society thus constantly upset, disorganize, and destabilize the community (#horizons #sda) ::: The “culture” of the organization must transcend community ::: It is the nature of the task that determines the culture of an organization, rather than the community in which that task is being performed ::: If the organization’s culture clashes with the values of the community the organization’s culture will prevail or else the organization will not make its social contribution ::: “Knowledge knows no boundaries” ::: Of necessity every knowledge organization is of necessity non-national, non-community ::: Even if totally embedded in the local community

 

The employee society ::: Another way to describe the phenomenon of the society of organizations ::: Employees who work in subordinate and menial occupations ::: Service workers ::: The wage earner, the “worker” of yesterday ::: Knowledge workers ::: 1/3 of the work force ::: They own the “means of production” ::: Cannot, in effect, be supervised ::: Cannot be told what to do, how to do it, how fast to do it and so on ::: Unless they know more than anybody else in the organization they are to all intents and purposes useless ::: They hold a crucial card in their mobility ::: Organizations and knowledge workers are interdependent ::: “Loyalty” will have to be earned by proving to knowledge employees that the organization which presently employs them can offer them exceptional opportunities to be effective ::: Capital now serves the employee ::: From command and control to information-based to responsibility-based organizations (#responsibility #information word stem #contribut) ::: The Society of Organizations text society of organizations brainroad

 

The need for productivity

 

regular text version

 

 

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Realities and concepts are the essence of this page

They ↑ are vision elements in a life design & management system

This page and its connected pages can be used as starting points
to create your own pre-thought work approach
A work approach that is effective
for the challenges ahead ↓

 

#43 #wlh RealitiesBusiness realities, Market realities, and Knowledge realities

“… being right is the feeling of being right. This is what
guides your actions …” Practical Thinking and logic bubbles

 

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The Black Cylinder Experiment #bce

First museum exhibit → Imagine the time span between the emergence of the railroad
— making the industrial revolution accomplished fact — and 2050 …

how many alternative realities and unimagined futures do you #see?

From various points around the world, how many? ↓
( Long Shadow may be available on Netflix streaming)

 

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

radar-differences-pict-400

Adventures of a Bystander → toward organic design !!!

The management of change → abandon the old
and create the new ← a community destabilizer explore !!!

 

Exhibit 2 ↓

“We know only two things about the future ↑.
It cannot be known.
It will be different from what exists now and
from what we now expect

This ↑ means the future isn’t going to be like today
which was created yesterday …
and yesterday
was the product of the day before yesterday ↓

We are nowhere near the end of the turbulences,
the transformations, the sudden upsets #lter continue :::
Long years of profound change

And “The actual results of (current) action are not predictable ↓” continue

#reality assumptions ::: The Black Cylinder Experiment !!! #bce

 

Exhibit 3 ↓
These unimagined alternative realitieS ↑ imply the need to
circumvent the organization and political power structureS that
act on the assumption (here) that tomorrow
is going to be an extrapolation of yesterday.

This backward focus ↑ sabotages the futureS and
leaves its victimS as prisonerS of the past …

“Looking out the window” ↓ is a useful alternative

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400

Exhibit 4 ↓
↑ A work approach that searches for
“INFORMED” future horizons to work toward
is needed ↓ REPEATEDLY

A work approach that is effective for the challenges ahead

There are major horizons (here) and supporting horizons (here) at different points in time

And what is the global social value of those horizons and how operationally specific are they?

 

Exhibit 5 ↓
One example of unimagined futureS ↑ → KNOWLEDGE is the only
meaningful resource “TODAY” — dynamicS ↓ & implicationS ↓


A change in how the world functions

 

Exhibit 6 ↓
It is impossible to work on “things/opportunities” that
aren’t on one’s mental radar ↓ ↓ at the “right & necessary” point S in time ↑ ↓

radar-differences-pict-600

The Power and Purpose of #Objectives: The Marks & Spencer Story and Its Lessons !!!

The case against corporate short termism

It is also impossible to work toward horizons that
aren’t on one’s mental radar ↑ ↑ at the “right & necessary” point S in time ↑ ↓

The things on your current mental radar are most likely
wrong, out-of-date, or mis-informed important

The sequence of “things” ↑ and “horizons” ↑ needs to be operationally reversed

 

Awareness ↑ ↓

 

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about Questions

 

#Questions are a key time-life navigation tool #question

 

Try a #page-search for the word stem “question”



A question thoughtscape ↓ ::: Larger view

questions-pict-559



Creating a constellation from question alternativess ↓ ::: Larger view

questions-constellations-pict-600

 

Questions are attention-directing tools #adt

 

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#54 We cannot #see things unless we are prepared to see them.

That is why science advances by fits and starts as paradigms change and we are allowed to #see things differently.

That is why the analysis of #data can never produce all the ideas present in that data.

Think “big data” vs. #information challenges.

The inherent weaknesses in all possible #information systems

That is why #analysis is a limited tool, not the complete one we have always believed it to be. continue

 

“Your thinking, choices, #decisions are determined by
what you have SEEN edb

 

Why Peter Drucker Distrusted Facts

Try a #page-search for the word “information”
and then visualize the connections between what you have #SEEN

 

Hash tags (#) 53, 54, 55 56 and 57 form a thought space

 


 

The CEO in the New Millennium #worldview #mbr

 

The CEO in the new millennium has six specific tasks.  

They are

  1. To define the meaningful outside of the organization
  2. To think through what #information regarding the outside is meaningful and needed for the organization, and then to work on getting it into usable form
  3. To decide what # results are meaningful for the institution
  4. To set priorities for the organization
  5. To place people into key positions
  6. To organize top management

The concept of the CEO is an American invention and export.

 

Connections :

tblue A PDF #pdf

tblue Not even educated in management

tblue Management revolution → making knowledge productive

tblue A radical change in structure for the organizations of tomorrow

tblue The prototype of the modern organization

tblue From command to information-based to responsibility based organization

“#Information is data endowed with relevance and purpose.” — Druckerism

Attention-directing frameworks

Continuing turmoil

tblue The Society of Organizations and the accompanying destabilization society of organizations brainroad

 

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Meta-System by Edward de Bono continue

 

Meta-System definition

A meta-system provides a reason for doing something which does not lie within the immediate situation itself.

The Happiness Purpose

What do you want to be remembered for?
Try a #page-search for: “remembered for”

A meta-system is a higher system outside the immediate system in which one happens to be operating.  

Examples

Perhaps the most striking example of the operation of a powerful meta-system is the way Christian martyrs went singing to their deaths in the Colosseum of Rome and elsewhere throughout the ages.

Their meta-system of belief was so powerful that they were willing to give up life itself:

the meta-system required that the operating system close down.

A meta-system can make no higher demand.




Not very different was the fervour with which the Janissaries and other soldiers of Islam hurled themselves into battle with a disregard for their personal safety.

They knew that once a jehad or holy war had been declared, death in battle meant instant access to heaven.

Suicides (lack of a meta-system)

In contrast to the Christian martyrs and the Islamic soldiers there is the opposite example of suicides or people who end their lives not through the operation of a meta-system but through the lack of one.  

From this must be exempted ritual suicide such as the Japanese hara-kiri which is another example of the operation of a powerful meta-system (though this time a social one and with no reward of heaven).  

I have known many people who have attempted suicide and several who have succeeded.

Anthony Bourdain: Wikipedia ::: CNN ::: images

If we leave aside the gesture type of suicide attempt there seem to be two mechanisms.  

One is a sort of temporary madness or rage and fury at life itself and especially at oneself.  

Though the end-point is different the process is probably not any different from any burst of destructive rage.




The other mechanism is a sort of blankness or emptiness of the will to live.  

There seems to be nothing to look forward to and no point in life.

The spirit appears to have died and so the body might as well follow it.

It is sadly characteristic of depression that at the depth of depression it does not seem possible that anything can ever change or get better.

It does not seem possible that there should ever be any enjoyment again in anything.

No matter how many up and down swings a depressive may experience, in each down-swing he cannot believe that it will pass.

The depressive exists from moment to moment.

There is no meta-system of belief which allows him to get outside of himself and outside of the moment.

Figure 2 shows how in the moments of depression a meta-system can provide the needed continuity and hope.

A device for reacting

A meta-system is a device for reacting to something other than what is immediately under one’s nose.  

Left to himself a child would eat poison berries (or medicines) because they were red and pretty.

Human children would have difficulty in surviving if there were not the meta-system of parents who provide instruction that goes beyond the gratification of the moment.

Because of his freedom of action a human child needs such an outside meta-system.




A bird, however, avoids the poison berries because instinct has programmed him against them.




Instinct provides an inbuilt meta-system—except that the bird probably does not feel attracted to the berries in the first place since he is not free to be attracted unless his instinct programme includes such attraction. continue

 

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A road ahead ↑ and horizon ↓
Striving toward an idea outside of yourself

 

A horizonKnowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity !!!
And with knowledge becoming the key resource,
there is only a world economy ↑ ↓

 

 

“Making a living is no longer enough,” …
Work also has to make a life.”
The need for roots
Druckerism (calendarize this? #ams)

 

 

Self-development — #wlh ↑ — seems to me
to mean both
acquiring more capacity and also
more weight as a person altogether.

By focusing on accountability,
people take a bigger view of themselves.

That’s not vanity, not pride,
but it is self-respect and self-confidence.

Its something that, once gained,
can’t be taken away from a person
.

It’s outside of me but also inside of me.” continue two development tasks

 

“The … I wouldn’t say happy people, but satisfied, contented people I knew were all people who lived in more than one world.

Those single-minded people — you meet them most in politics — in the end they are very unhappy people.

There isn’t that much room at the top — there is very little room at the top.” Then what? and #YouTube

How much labor?

 

Where right becomes wrong

 

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#16 #iit #sda
#Intelligence ::: #Information ::: #Thinking

Intelligence Information Thinking → PDF

A brief celebration of Edward de Bono's ideas on thinking (YouTube)

Edward de Bono interview — The Science Show #audioplayback

Books by Edward de Bono

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

JUDGEMENTAttention-directing frameworks

Intelligence Information Thinking #dtao #pdf by Edward de Bono

The #PMI and mental scanning

Information is energy for mental tasks

Information vs. Thinking

The inherent weaknesses in all possible information systems

B.C. Forbes → Foundations and opportunities

Knowing what to do #apta

How do you explain an event
you cannot understand?

foundations-and-opportunities-2016-pict

The concepts above imply the need for dense reading plus
thinking broad and thinking detailed

Malcolm Forbes ↑ ::: Remembered for?

The love letters of Walter Bagehot and Eliza Wilson #pdf

 

#wlh
“Your first and foremost job as a leader
is to take charge of your own energy
and then help to orchestrate the energy
of those around you” — Peter Drucker

 

What Makes An Effective Executive?

 

Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

 

Management, Revised Edition

 

Drucker’s other work

What thinking is needed
to get these ideas ↑ ↓ — this information —
effectively accomplished?

 

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

hist-e-wall-t-line-eco-cntnt-mo-l-line-ctv-act

larger view

How could you convert these concepts ↑
into evolving operational steps ↓? calendarize this? #ams

Ludecy

 

#wlh “Why is ‘thinking’ important? awareness

Because without thinking we can only act in the following ways:

1. Act purely on instinct like insects.

2. Repeat the usual routines.

3. Do what someone else > decides > and orders.

4. Follow the emotion of the moment.” — Edward de Bono

 

What about feelings and values?

 

Thinking is a skill

 

line

 

We live in the world we ‘see’.

 

But the world we see

is not the physical world around us

but the ‘perceived’ world in our minds.

 

Outer world — inner world

 

The physical world may be exactly the same

but different people

will see different things
.


 

A holiday is half gone.

Or, half the holiday is still to come.


 

A glass is half empty.

Or, the glass is half full.


 

The mistake is a disaster.

Or, the mistake teaches a useful lesson.


 

A plate of chicken is placed on the table before a person.

How does that person perceive the food?

1. A vegetarian does not want to eat the chicken but is timid about asking for something else.

2. A hungry person looks with delight and anticipation at the food.

3. A person who is trying to lose weight wonders how many calories there are in the chicken and remembers the fat is mainly in the skin.

4. A person who has a stomach upset is nauseated by the smell of the food.

5. A person who has just read about an outbreak of salmonella infection is suspicious and cautious.

Would it be risky to eat the chicken?


 

For each person

the physical appearance of the chicken

is exactly the same

as would be shown

if each person

took a photograph

from the same angle.

 

But the mind does not take photographs.

 

The mind brings in information, experience, frames, present contexts, feelings and emotions.

All these get organized

by perception

to give us

‘the way we look at the situation’ evolving worldviews ::: Grandmother and the Twentieth Century.

 

line

 

On Being Right — Rules Of Everyday Thinking

 

#conversation

“If I had to summarize the most important rules of everyday thinking I would reduce them to two. #conversation

1. Everyone is always right

2. No one is ever right

These are not contradictory.

In his own mind no one is wrong on purpose.

According to his knowledge, experience, emotions and the way he looks at things a person sets up his ideas in the best possible way.

One has to realize that this is the case when one is dealing with other minds.

It may be obvious but it is very easy to forget.

If one does want to show someone a different point of view one has to arrange things so that his mind can of itself snap over to that point of view in an insight change.

Insight is also the process by which one moves, oneself, from an idea that is adequate to one that is even better.

Although everyone is always right within his own context this rightness is not absolute but limited to that context.

This means that one must forego the arrogance and dogmatism of those who feel that they are so right that they must impose their ideas on others.

This arrogance is the most deadly mistake since it goes right against the natural behavior of the mind in improving its ideas.

If one accepts that no one is ever right in an absolute sense then one is more willing to look around for better ideas, and to look at the ideas of others.” — EDB

 

line

 

Thinking is the most fundamental of all human skills.

The quality of our future will depend directly on the quality of our thinking.

Is it then not only astonishing but also absurd that thinking is not the core subject in all #education and the central subject on any school curriculum?

It is not.

It is not there at all.

There are some schools that teach thinking.

Many of them teach #critical thinking, which is excellent but totally inadequate.

Judgement thinking is important but so is design thinking.

We need to create as well as to judge. continue

 

line

 

“Attention is a key element of perception

Without the ability to direct attention #adt ,
we #see only the familiar patterns (#connect)

Attention can be pulled or attracted
to something unusual

How much attention do we pay to the usual?” — EdB


“Attention-directing tools (#adt) are very powerful.

If you are looking in the right direction you #see things.” continue

 

«§§§»

 

 

#03 #patterns #mmit

 

#htmp = how the mind performs

“The mind works to

recognize familiar patterns

in the outside world … ↓ #apta

Outer world — inner world

 

misspelled-words-pict-t

As soon as such a #pattern is recognized (Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot)

the mind switches into it

and follows it along —

further thinking is unnecessary

 

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400
The explorer

Unless there are competing patterns (here+),

then anything remotely similar

to the established pattern

will be treated

just as if it were that #pattern
.


It is not unlike the watershed into a valley.


Unless there is a competing valley,

water which falls quite far away

will end up at

the center of the valley.


This is what we might call ‘the centering of patterns.’” continue

 

#sda

Most mistakes in THINKING
are mistakes in perception:
seeing only part of the situation

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

 

THE OBSCURE VIRUS CLUB

Throughout the 1970s, a biologist named Howard Temin became convinced that something wasn’t right in science’s understanding of viruses.

His colleagues dismissed him as a heretic.

He turned out to be right — and you’re alive today as a result.


Season Four (Revisionist History) ends with a bedtime story about how we should be freed by our doubts (#adt), not imprisoned by them. Druid Hills #adt ::: Research Management #adt

 

 

 

hitler-tell-em-pict-600

nazi-salute-pict-t-600

hitler-behavior-pict-600

Connections: Pearl Harbor, Pentagon Papers, Afghanistan Papers, Watergate, Flint water lies, Newark water lies

 

 

Examples of competing landscapes:
One ::: Two ::: Three

To know something … one must look at it from sixteen different angles continue

 

Sources of competing patterns :

The Daily Drucker

The Textbook of Wisdom

Practical Thinking

#Podcasts

This page and #hotw the history of the world in two hours

 

 

Try a #page-search
for the word stem “pattern”
to see the #pattern concept in different contexts

 

Why thinking is important

 

line

 

Highly intelligent people do not necessarily make good thinkers. the #intelligence trap below

 


 

#lchp

“For there are three types of intelligence

 

* one understands on its own

* the second discerns what others understand

* the third neither understands by itself nor through the intelligence of others

 

 

# the first kind is most excellent

# the second excellent

# the third useless” — Machiavelli

 

The Prince

On New Principalities Acquired by One's Own Arms and Skill

On the Prince's Private Advisers

On Fortune's Role in Human Affairs and How She Can Be Dealt With

 


 

(naming) People behaviors

CATEGORY ONE: Behavior that is constructive but also very effective

The Intelligence Trap

 

Effectiveness: Getting the right things done

CATEGORY TWO: This is a person who is actually contributing a great deal at this moment

CATEGORY THREE: This is someone who is hardworking, cooperative, helpful and also effective.

CATEGORY FOUR: This person is positive, agreeable, pleasant and cheerful.

CATEGORY FIVE: Behavior that is neutral, behavior that is passive.

CATEGORY SIX: This behavior is critical, negative and destructive.

CATEGORY SEVEN: Behavior that is totally selfish.

CATEGORY EIGHT: This is the behavior of the bully.

CATEGORY NINE: This is the behavior of the outlaw. continue

 

The manager and the moron ↓ The point at which we teach people to think will have to be moved further and further down the line → Knowledge, technology, computers, managers, economic impact … the future continue

 

line

 

#35 #sda #tias Thinking is a skill,
not
intelligence in action.

 

 

“Why is ‘thinking’ important? awareness — seeing the road ahead

Because without thinking we can only act in the following ways:

1. Act purely on instinct like insects.

2. Repeat the usual routines.

3. Do what someone else > decides > and orders.

4. Follow the emotion of the moment.” — Edward de Bono

 

If you don’t design your own life THEN someone else will do it for you!!!

The Alternative to Tyranny

Dealing with risk and uncertainty

 

Everyday thinking is what fills in the time when you are neither asleep nor dead.

 

Thinking is that waste of time between SEEING something and “knowing” what to do about it.

 

Knowing what to do

 

The purpose of thinking is to deliver to you the values you seekcontinue

 

“If you do not care
to understand something
,
then you must borrow an explanation
from someone else (and they will deceive you)
or do without one.” continue

 

#wlh #thinking
“One can … never be sure
what the knowledge worker thinks—and yet
THINKING !!! is her/his specific work;
it is his/her “doing.””

 

Dealing with risk and uncertainty

What thinking is needed — now or later? ↑ ↓

Now and then the ‘edge effect’

 

line

 

Edward de Bono interview (12+ minutes) #audioplayback

Wisdom is largely about broadening perception

to know something important … (#sda on memo)

history-of-the-world-in-two-hours-01-healed-pict-400

Finding and selecting the pieces

Connect, connect, connect

Getting a broader view !!! helicopter

DEALING WITH RISK AND UNCERTAINTY ↑ ↓

 

Most of the mistakes in thinking are mistakes in perception. an exploration #sda

 

star-red-16x16 SEEING only part of the situation — insufficient #information #wb

 

Topics vs. realities ::: larger view
education-experience-reality-399

#fastp

jigsaw-puzzle-colors-250

education-experience-reality

 

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400

Three types of broad — width, depth, richness

 

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

Once you see something you can’t unsee it

JUDGEMENTAttention-directing frameworks

attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

mental patterns

evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

harvest and implement

Now and then the ‘edge effect’

It’s easy to get lost without a map

Creating a better “map”

 

bluebox10 The patterning system of the mind — the NEED for MANY competing patterns

 

bluebox10 Finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle

“Alternatives don’t have to show themselves” ↓

 

bluebox10 A big really picture

A smaller element ↓

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-400

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict

star-green-10x10 “The terms knowledge industries, knowledge work and knowledge worker are nearly fifty (sixty, seventy, eighty) years old.

They were coined around 1960, simultaneously but independently— the first by a Princeton economist, Fritz Machlup, the second and third by this writer.

Now everyone uses them, but as yet hardly anyone understands their implications for human values and human behavior, for managing people and making them productive, for economics, and for politics.” — PFD

star-green-10x10 The Second Curve — missing the turn to the future

star-green-10x10 The World: A Brief Introduction

star-green-10x10 Books by Walter Wriston

star-green-10x10 Technology is about work: the specifically human activity by means of which man pushes back the limitations of the iron biological law which condemns all other animals to devote all their time and energy to keeping themselves alive for the next day, if not for the next hour.

star-blue-10x10 “A change as tremendous as … doesn’t just satisfy existing wants, or replace things we are now doing.


It creates new wants and makes new things possible.”

star-green-10x10 Knowledge and technology

star-green-10x10 No surprises

star-blue-10x10 Long years of profound changes

star-blue-10x10 The Five Deadly Sins

star-green-10x10 A FREEDOM brainroad

star-green-10x10 T. George Harris — civil rights, politics, business, psychology, careers, self-development, health and spirituality

star-green-10x10 Celebrating the life of Peter Druckeraudio by Rick Warren

star-green-10x10 Things don’t alway work out as expected. What are the implications for those impacted?

star-blue-10x10 The voyage of the St. Louis 1939

star-blue-10x10 The really bad guys don’t always get what they deserve

star-blue-10x10 The good guys don’t always carry out their obligations

 

bluebox10 Intelligence, information, thinking

star-green-10x10 If you never change your mind, why have one?

Have a sign on your desk which says:

‘Same thinking as yesterday, last year or ten years ago.’ — life experience

star-green-10x10 Parallel Thinking

star-blue-10x10 Water Logic — what does something lead to?

star-green-10x10 Think! Before It's Too Late

star-green-10x10 Practical ThinkingThe black cylinder experiment and the world surrounding you

star-green-10x10 Textbook of Wisdom — if you can SEE the road ahead …

star-green-10x10 Attention directing frameworks — a place in the mind

star-green-10x10 Intelligence ::: Information ::: Thinking combo pdf

star-green-10x10 Three types of intelligence

star-green-10x10 Dealing with risk and uncertainty

star-green-10x10 Information: Search not Think

star-green-10x10 Windows of Opportunity #woo

star-green-10x10 Information and Decisions

star-green-10x10 What Everybody Knows Is Frequently Wrong

star-green-10x10 Time-life Navigation Insights

bluebox10 The memo THEY don’t want you to see

bluebox10 Why bother?

star-green-10x10 How can the INDIVIDUAL survive?

star-green-10x10 The INDIVIDUAL in entrepreneurial society

bluebox10 Managing Oneself — a REVOLUTION in human affairs

star-green-10x10 More than anything else we are responsible for our own self-development and allocating our lives

star-green-10x10 The second half of one’s life

star-blue-10x10 Who you really are and who you might become!?

 

star-red-16x16 Jumping to conclusions

sit-combo-pict-340w
see above

altenative paths toward judgement

bluebox10 “Most people make the mistake of believing that because something is simple, obvious and sensible we do it all the time.

This is not so at all.

We do not usually do even the simplest of things.” EDB

bluebox10 Assumptions

 

star-red-16x16 Misinterpretation caused by feelings

bluebox10 What about feelings and values?

bluebox10 What about beliefs? It is also true that beliefs can stand in the way of progress

bluebox10 Doing a PMI

bluebox10 Social ecologist

bluebox10 Sixteen different angles

bluebox10 Broad

 

line

 

 

Perception provides

the ingredients for thinking ↓ #pta

 

↑ “If our perceptions are wrong
then no amount of logical excellence
will give the right answer.” ↓

 

Your thinking, choices, DECISIONS are

determined by

what you’ve “SEEN
↑ …

 

 

“It is only our lack of complete information
that makes it necessary for us to think”

The traditional notion in education that information is sufficient is old-fashioned and dangerous

 

 

“In addition to information

we need #ideas.

Ideas are
the spectacles
through which
we look
at information
.”

 

 

‘An #idea
can never
make the best use
of available information
because
information trickles into the mind
over a period of time
the idea patterns set up
cannot be as good
as if
all the information
arrived at once.’ continue

 

line

 

“One does not pay attention to everything.

 

And one acts
only upon what one is
paying attention to.

 

(A Century of Social Transformation)

 

The reaction may be #thinking or it may be action (which is only thinking that passes through our mouths or our muscles instead of our minds).


The world around is full of a huge number of things to which one could pay attention.


But it would be impossible to react to everything at once.


So one reacts only to a selected part of it.

 

The choice of attention area
determines
the action or thinking
that follows.

 

The choice
of this area of attention
is one of the most fundamental
aspects of thinking.”

Very powerful ::: TLN Insights ::: #adt #edb

 

The thinking
needed
to get things done
:

Getting the RIGHT things done and avoiding the four realities of an executive’s situation that push them toward futility

Is it a problem or an important decision?

Career Performance or trivial pursuit

objectives, priorities, alternatives,
other people's views,
creativity, decisions, choices, planning,
consequences of action operacy

 

 

 

#hor3 #wlh “There are three types of broad.

 

star The first type of broad is to do with width.

How widely do we #see?

This means taking into account different factors, different people, different values and different needs.

 

star The second type of broad is to do with depth.

This means looking forward and looking backwards.

We look backwards in time to seek explanations and reasons for what is before us.

We look backwards to examine past experiences, both our own and those of other people.

We look forward to #see the #consequences of what is before us.

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

This might be prediction in terms of what may happen.

It may also be looking for the #consequences of any action we are contemplating.

We look forward from the immediate #consequences to the long-term #consequences

 

star The third type of broad is to do with richness.

Here we open up alternatives and different ways of looking at things.

We seek out the existing alternatives.

attention-ogp-pict-trans-400

mental patterns

We imagine the different viewpoints of other people.

We make an effort to generate further alternatives.

These are alternatives of perception and alternatives of action.

We look for ‘might be’ and for ‘possibly’.

We go beyond ‘what is’.” wisdom ::: Water logic

 

line

 

#wlh #Information vs. Thinking

 

We need both information and thinking.

Information is no substitute for thinking and thinking is no substitute for information.

In connection with information there are two uses for our thinking.

The first is directed at the information itself:

getting information

obtaining the maximum from the information we already have

checking the information.

The second is the use of the information to carry out some thinking purpose:

decision

action

choice

plan

design

or pleasure.

 

§

 

We need as much information (1) as we can get.

But we also need thinking.

We need thinking to decide what information (2) we should seek and where to look for it.

We need thinking to make the best use of the information (3) we have.

We need thinking to set up possible ways of putting the information together.

The traditional notion in education that information is sufficient is old-fashioned and dangerous.

radar-differences-pict-600

It is only our lack of complete information that makes it necessary for us to think

Thinking is no substitute for information.

Check the timetable, do not just try to think when there might be a flight to Geneva.

The more information we have the better will our thinking be and the more appropriate our actions.

Since every little bit of information helps, every bit of time must be taken up with providing more information.

So there is no time to look directly at thinking as a skill.

The dilemma is obvious.

If we could have complete information in an area then thinking would be unnecessary.

But if we cannot have complete information then it is better to have somewhat less information and higher skill in thinking.

«§§§»

There may be certain areas where it is possible to have complete information but more often we have to supplement the information with thinking.

Suppose the timetable does show that there is a flight from London to Geneva at 9.45 A.M. designated as SR 815.

Now that we know, do we need thinking?

Indeed, we do.

How are we going to get to the airport?

How long should we allow to get there?

Is it rush hour?

Are there any strikes on at the moment?

Is there likely to be bad weather and what would be the best way of checking this?

Does it matter if the flight is late?

If the plans are disrupted how do I let the person at the other end know of this?

These are all considerations that require thinking.

Information and ideas #apta

In our management thinking we tend, quite rightly, to rely heavily on information.

A good financial reporting system leads to profits. #profit

A speedy sales reporting system results in effective marketing.

Detailed market analysis information brings about the correct product choice.

An examination of trends and forecasts provides the information required for planning.

It could be said that the size of any decision is proportional to the inadequacy of the reason for making it

If our information was complete then the information would make its own decisions.

If a shipowner for instance had complete information about oil transport requirements, future cost of finance, the firm plans of his competitors, knowledge of political and labour stability, information about government subsidies and regulations and so on, he could feed all this into a computer and the decision would be produced for him.

It is only when our information is inadequate that we have to make a human decision.

And the greater the inadequacy of information the bigger the decision will seem

Our hunger for information should not, however, blind us to the fact that information alone is insufficient

 

In addition to information we need #ideas.

Ideas are the spectacles through which we look at information.

 

I once gave the following problem to a group of chief executives:

'A man buys a dog as a watch-dog.

He then finds that the dog does not bark.

What should he do?' continue

 

 

#53 de Bono's 1st law: #apta

'An idea can never make the best use of available information.'

Since an idea develops slowly over time as more information becomes available the idea cannot make as good use of that information as would be possible if all the information had become available at once

 

de Bono's 2nd law:

'Proof is often no more than lack of imagination in providing an alternative explanation.'

The realization that proof does not arise solely from the excellence with which the explanation fits the facts but also from a feeble imagination is hugely important.

It leads at once to three things:

1. It is not enough for scientists to be accurate and to work with painstaking logic on their data.

They need to be imaginative and creative as well.

It is idea creativity that turns up alternative explanations to challenge the certainty of a current explanation and so suggest new experiments.

2. No explanation can be absolute in its rightness since it is impossible to exclude an alternative explanation simply because you cannot think of one yourself and no one else can at the moment.

3. People with feeble imaginations are the most sure of their conclusions.

If one puts the law in a rather fiercer form:

'Certainty arises only from a feeble imagination,'

then one can clearly see the shift in emphasis from the solidity of a proof in itself to the feeble imagination which cannot provide an alternative explanation.

Hash tags (#) 53, 54, 55 56 and 57 form a thought space

 


INFORMATION

Thinking is never a substitute for information.


We need all the information we can get.


Two thousand years ago China was far ahead of the rest of the world in science and technology.

They had gunpowder, rockets and many other things long before the rest of the world.

Had China continued at the same rate of progress it would easily be the dominant power in the world today.

But it did not continue.

Progress came to a dead end.

Why?


The scholars started to believe that they could move from certainty (fact) to certainty without any need for the messiness of ‘possibility’.

So they never developed the possibility system: hypothesis, speculation, imagination, etc.

Progress came to a dead end.


Exactly the same thing is happening today in the West.

Because of the excellence of our computers we are starting to believe that all you need to do is to collect and collate information.

That information will do your thinking for you.

That information will make your decisions, design your strategy and indicate the way forward.

This is much more dangerous than most people realize.

Thinking is needed to interpret the information in different ways.

Thinking is needed to put information together to design value.

Thinking is needed to see where to get more information.

Thinking is not a substitute for information but information is not a substitute for thinking.

 

Search Not Think

Youngsters given computers and Internet connections have a huge world opened up for them.

This is a great privilege.

There is a danger, however, that youngsters start to believe that you do not need to think.

All you need to do is to ‘search’ and somewhere you will find that answer.


This is a difficult point.

Everyone does not need to re-invent the wheel for him and herself.

There is much useful information available that can save a lot of thinking.


What is important is that as we develop the search abilities we should at the same time develop the ‘thinking’ abilities.


The combination of thinking and information is most powerful.

 

School and Information

A large part of school is taken up with information.

This is for two very practical reasons and two less so.


The first practical reason is that there is a lot of information around.

It is there and it is relatively easy to teach.

So as school is a sort of ‘baby-sitting’ exercise the information fills up time.

The pupils are busy.

The teacher is busy.

The parents are happy.


The second practical reason is that information is easy to test.

Does the pupil remember the information he or she is supposed to know?

Marks and grades can be given.

These are believed to be good motivators to get the pupils to work harder — directly or through the parents.


The third reason is that the information is there and has always been taught traditionally.

In the UK children leave school knowing the names of most of Henry VIII’s wives and even the date of the Treaty of Utrecht.

Yet they have no ideas how the corner shop works or how value is created in society.


The fourth reason is the unfortunate belief that teaching information is a way of teaching thinking.

This is a dangerous mistake since it blocks the direct teaching of thinking as a skill.


Certain skills of presentation and argument may accompany the teaching of information but these are only a very tiny part of practical real-life thinking.

 

Necessary but not Enough

If a chef spends so much time making elaborate pastries that he has no time to make a decent sauce that does not mean that the pastries are bad or even a waste of time.

It simply means that time must be made available for the sauces.


There is no substitute for information.

We need as much as we can get.

But we need thinking as well.

The skill of thinking does not arise from teaching more and more information.

Unless you can teach the right answer to every conceivable situation, then the skill of thinking is needed.

 


 

Intelligence and thinking

 

Far too many people regard thinking as a matter of inborn intelligence — which it is not.

In my researches and experiments I have again and again come across very intelligent people who turned out to be very poor thinkers.

Nor have I found that thinking skill has much to do with #education, for some of the best educated people (Ph.D.s — phds, university lecturers and professors, senior business executives, etc.) have also been poor thinkers.

To regard thinking as a skill rather than as a gift is the first step towards doing something to improve that skill.

«§§§»

Highly intelligent people do like to be right.

This may mean that they spend their time attacking and criticizing others since it is so easy to prove the others wrong.

It also may mean that highly intelligent people are unwilling to take speculative risks because they cannot then be sure they are right.

There is, of course, nothing to prevent highly intelligent people also being excellent thinkers.

But this does not follow automatically.

There is need to develop the skill of thinking.

 

Intelligence ::: Information ::: Thinking

 

Intelligence is like the horsepower of a car.

Thinking is like the skill with which the car is driven.

Information (including ecological awareness) is like the road map available to the driver.

By themselves, each of these three components — #intelligence, information, thinking — is not enough, but together they can be used to great effect in the world around us.

 

#40 Operacy → the thinking that goes into doing #apta

 

… objectives, priorities, alternatives, other people's views, idea creativity, decisions, choices, planning, #consequences of action.

 

… “It is perfectly true that the characteristics of effectiveness are more important in doing than intellectual niceties.

But the characteristics of effectiveness include a great deal of thinking : especially of the goal-setting variety.

The action-directed thinker is perhaps more concerned with the positive aspects of the possible than with doubts and fears, but that is thinking none the less.

That a doer should stand up and proclaim his pride in not thinking reflects either upon his luck or the poor image that thinking possesses.”

 

Idea creativity and #brainstorming

REAL Opportunities ::: Serious Creativity idea creativity

Six Thinking Hats

 

Management and the World's Work #pdf #mbr

 

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

the real pattern of economic activity

larger composite view ↑ ::: Economic & content and structure ::: Adoption rates: one & two

The Forces Creating a New Geography of Opportunity?

 

#27 3 kinds of #intelligence and 9 action behaviors ↑ ↓ ← Niccolò Machiavelli ↑ ↓

The motivation to seek REAL opportunities ::: Executive styles

Finding Your Role #pdf

 

Society of Organizations

 

Executive realities
unless executives work at becoming #effective,
the realities of their situation
will push them into futility

 


 

The Intelligence Trap continue

 

“Twenty-five years of experience in the field have convinced me that many people who consider themselves to be highly intelligent are not necessarily good thinkers.

They get caught in the intelligence trap.

There are many aspects of this trap but I shall mention just two.

 

A highly intelligent person can take a view on a subject and then use his or her #intelligence to defend that view.

The more intelligent the person the better the defense of the view.

The better the defense of the view the less that person sees any need to seek out alternatives or to listen to anyone else.

If you know "that you are right" why should you do either of those things?

As a result, many highly intelligent minds are trapped in poor #ideas because they can defend them so well.

 

A second aspect of the intelligence trap is that a person who has grown up with the notion that he or she is more intelligent than those around (possibly a correct view) wants to get the most satisfaction from that intelligence.

The quickest and most reliable way to be rewarded for intelligence is to "prove someone else wrong."

Such a strategy gives you an immediate result and also establishes your superiority.

Being constructive is much less rewarding.

It may take years to show that a new idea works.

Furthermore, you have to depend on the listener liking your idea.

So it is obvious that being #critical and destructive is a much more appealing use of #intelligence.

This is made even worse by the absurd Western notion that " #critical thinking " is enough.”

¶ ¶ ¶

#research “There is, of course, a place for academic intellectualizing and passive scholarship (which consists of repeating what others have repeated about still yet others) but that is only a small part of thinking — but valuable nevertheless.” EDB

 


 

#pti Practical Thinking

 

“You can probably remember things you were taught at school :

about geography (valleys, river deltas, rice-growing countries, etc.) and

about history (dates of battles, names of kings, etc.).

But can you remember what you were taught about thinking?”

… “Far too many people regard thinking as a matter of inborn #intelligence — which it is not.” continue

 


 

Perception

Perception is how we look at the world, what things we take into account, how we structure the world — #worldview #apta Water Logic.


Outside highly technical matter, perception is by far the most important part of thinking.

Professor David Perkins at Harvard has shown that almost all the errors of thinking are errors of perception.

In real life, logical errors are quite rare.

Yet we persist in believing that thinking is all a matter of avoiding logical errors.


… snip, snip …

Exactly the same thing applies to logic.

If your perception is limited then flawless logic will give you an incorrect answer.


Bad logic makes for bad thinking.

Everyone would agree with that.

But the opposite is not true at all.

Good logic does not make for good thinking.

If the perception is poor then good logic will give you a faulty answer.

There is even the added danger that good logic will give a false arrogance with which to hold the false answer. #arrogance


Unlike most books on thinking this book is not about logic but about perception .


It now seems very likely that perception works as a “self-organizing information system” (see The Mechanism of Mind , Penguin, 1976, I Am Right You Are Wrong , Penguin, 1992).

Such systems allow the sequence in which information arrives to set up patterns.

Our thinking then remains trapped within these patterns.

So we need some ways of broadening perception and of changing perception (idea creativity).

These are the sort of matters that are covered in this book.

 

More on perception.

 


 

Man’s mind

#10 Man's mind creates the world in which he lives.

Man lives according to
his own map of the world,
his own way of SEEING things,
which has been created by
his perception.

The process of perception
is a self-organizing one
in which signals
from the external world
received through the senses
are converted into
nerve excitations in the brain.

These excitations
organize themselves
into recorded patterns.

 

The patterns are individual
and depend on
#circumstances,
past experience
and the particular
sequence of
arrival of the information
.

 

It is quite possible
for the same information
to be put together
in another pattern
by a different brain
or by the same brain
in the process
known as
insight or idea creativity
. #apta

 

 

 

‘An #idea
can never
make the best use
of available information
because
information trickles into the mind
over a period of time
the idea patterns set up
cannot be as good
as if all the information
arrived at once.’ continue

Finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp

 

 

 

 

#57Why We Need Creativity

The human brain is not designed to be #creative.

It is designed to set up routine #patterns and to use and follow these patterns.

That is why life is practical and possible.

We may need to use routine patterns 98 per cent of the time and only to be creative 2 per cent of the time.

To show this, there is a game where you start with a letter and then add another letter.

At each point, as you add another letter, a whole word has to be formed.

Start with ‘a’.

Add ’t’.

The new word is ‘at’.

Add ‘c’.

The new word is ‘cat’.

Add ‘o’.

The new word is ‘coat’.

Add ‘r’.

The new word is ‘actor’.

Until the addition of the ‘r’ it was quite simple to add the new letter to the existing ones to form a new word.

With the ‘r’ it was necessary to go back and completely restructure the use of the previous words.

INSIGHT

We live over time.

New information comes in over time.

We add this new information to what we already have.

There may come a point where we have to go back and restructure what we had before.

This is #creativity. idea creativity

More often we are not forced to go back.

We stick to what we have.

If, however, we choose to go back and restructure then we get a much better arrangement.

This is idea creativity we choose to use.

Another important consequence is the realization that no amount of ‘tinkering’ with an existing idea will suddenly change it into a fundamentally different idea.

The new idea may require a basic rearrangement of the components.

It is also possible to claim that no idea can ever make the best use of its components, since these have arrived in a particular sequence over time and that sequence of arrival plays too large a part in the final arrangement.

Theoretically all the components would have needed to be present simultaneously.

But what are the practical outcomes from these realizations and considerations?

One outcome is the understanding that radical changes are sometimes essential.

What was wonderful and the best in its time may need to be radically changed.

But how do you change from something which is adequate, or which people have come to accept as adequate, to something that is unknown and risky?

If the existing idea is the best then we should keep it.

If the new idea is better then we must change.

We are tied here to the either/or and true/false dichotomies that underly our thinking.

So what is the ‘parallel’ approach?

The answer is very literal.

You introduce the new idea ‘in parallel’ or alongside the old idea.

You allow both to coexist.

You might even give people the option of choosing.

If the new idea is valuable, over time it will then gain force.” — Edward de Bono

 

Hash tags (#) 53, 54, 55 56 and 57 form a thought space

 

 

 

No two people

 

“Actually, the real quote is, “ No two persons ever read the same book.” (Edmund Wilson)

And holy mackerel is that statement true!

Take any book and read a sampling of the reviews and you’ll find yourself wondering if they even read the same book.

What is praised in one is completely trashed in the other, from the writing and grammatical errors (which shouldn’t be debatable but apparently are) to the story line, the writing style, the characterizations, the dialog, and everything (and I mean everything) in between.

It’s amazing how each person reacts to the same book: the words are the same, the story is the same but the response is vastly different. (#meetings, #conversation, #communication)

And the higher the expectations the worse the review if the story fails to deliver.

What a person brings with them when they begin a story matters, too; being in the right frame of mind can mean the difference between loving a book and loathing the same book.

It’s fascinating to see the different responses and learning more about what makes people tick.” source

 

«§§§»

 

“To raise the question (What is our business? — chapter 7, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices) always reveals cleavages and differences within the top-management group itself. (See what exists is getting old)

People who have worked side by side for many years and who think that they know each other’s thoughts suddenly realize with a shock that they are in fundamental disagreement.”

 

«§§§»

 

Lateral thinking is a provocative process used for changing the patterns of perception.

Thinking, in general, is an exploration of the map of the world created by perception.

The purpose of thinking is either direct enjoyment or else a change in the world map intended to increase happiness.

This change in the world map may take the form of an adjustment to circumstances or an alteration of circumstances by means of activity which follows the thinking.

The balance between adjustment of oneself or alteration of circumstances is emphasized.

 


 

Water Logic

 

At several points in the book I have referred to ‘water logic’ as a contrast to the ‘rock logic’ of traditional thinking.

The purpose of this naming of ‘water logic’ is to give an impression of the difference.

At this point I shall spell out in more detail some of the points of difference.

 

A rock is solid, permanent and hard.

This suggests the absolutes of traditional thinking (solid as a rock).

Water is just as real as a rock but it is not solid or hard.

The permanence of water is not defined by its shape.

 

A rock has hard edges and a definite shape.

This suggests the defined categories of traditional thinking.

We judge whether something fits that category shape or not.

Water has a boundary and an edge which is just as definite as the edge of a rock, but this boundary will vary according to the terrain (#connections).

 

Water will fill a bowl or a lake.

It adapts to the terrain or landscape.

Water logic is determined by the conditions and circumstances.

The shape of the rock remains the same no matter what the terrain might be.

If you place a small rock in a bowl, it will retain its shape and make no concession at all towards filling the bowl.

The absolutes of traditional thinking deliberately set out to be circumstance-independent.

 

If you add more water to water, the new water becomes part of the whole.

If you add a rock to a rock, you simply have two rocks.

This addition and absorption of water logic corresponds to the process of poetry, in which new images become absorbed in the whole.

 

It is also the basis of the new artificial device of the ‘strata!’.

With conditions and #circumstances, the addition of new circumstances becomes part of the whole set of circumstances.

 

We can match rocks by saying this shape ‘is’ or ‘is not’ the same as another shape.

A rock has a fixed identity.

Water flows according to the gradient.

Instead of the word ‘is’ we use the word ‘to’.

Water flows ‘to’ somewhere.

 

In traditional (rock) logic we have judgements based upon right/wrong.

In perception (water) logic we have the concepts of ‘fit’ and ‘flow’.

The concept of ‘fit’ means:

Does this fit the circumstances and conditions?

The concept of ‘flow’ means:

Is the terrain suitable for flow to take place in this direction?’

Fit and flow both mean the same thing.

Fit covers the static situation, flow covers the dynamic situation.

Does the water fit the lake or hole?

Does the river flow in this direction?

 

Truth is a particular constellation of circumstances with a particular outcome.

In this definition of truth we have both the concepts of fit (constellation of circumstances) and of flow (outcome).

 

In a conflict situation both sides are arguing that they are right.

This they can show logically.

Traditional thinking would seek to discover which party was really ‘right’.

Water logic would acknowledge that both parties were right but that each conclusion was based on a particular aspect of the situation, particular circumstances, and a particular point of view.   …  

continue

 

line

 

#42 #tln #wlh #dwrau #ptf #apta #fastp #ole #lypc
#brainstorming #mindfulness #journaling

Dealing with risk and uncertainty

 

The brain is a history library

that has to run

in the future tense
.

Almost all our thinking activity

is directed towards

dealing with the future

since all actions taken

are directed towards

bringing about an effect

which is not yet present.

Yet the brain can only make

observations of the moment
(#worldview)

and recall experience of the past.

Even what we see

at the moment

is conditioned by

the perceptions of the past


Water Logic Outer world — inner world

this brainroad continues following the sidebar below

 

sidebar

 

We know only
two things
about the future

continue


What are the implications ↑ for #brainstorming?

 

“And it ought to be remembered
that there is nothing more difficult
to take in hand,
more perilous to conduct,
or more uncertain in its success,
then to take the lead
in the introduction
of a new order of things.”
Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince

 

Making the future

 

Practical Thinking >
The Black Cylinder Experiment

 

Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it #arrogance

 

Intelligence and behavior

 

Information challenges

 

Most
mistakes in thinking
are
mistakes
in perception

explore further ::: #sda

 

The dimensions of Broad #sda ::: Assumptions

 

main brainroad continues

 

Our habit of #analysis

has been developed

in order to

break down unfamiliar chunks.

 

We seek to discover scientific truths

so that we may predict

what will happen

and how we can make things happen

with a practical degree of certainty.

 

Five ways to understand

The use of understanding

 

We are forever extrapolating the past

in order to prepare the future

into which we are always moving
.

#wlh Luther, Mac, and the salmon

 

sound-players-pict-no-reflect-400

Experts speak !

 

It is not surprising that

much of business

is dealing with risk and uncertainty

because all of business

is dealing with the future.

 

When we concern ourselves with #opportunity

we are dealing with greater risk and uncertainty

because we have to do

much more

than predict

that an already existing business #ole

will go on being successful #lypc

(the minimal prediction anyone has to make — and

it is increasingly difficult to make). — Edward de Bono ::: continue

 

 

The expected always means
something so very different

 

The concept of “risk management” is essentially fairy-tale BS.

See “Innovation—The New Conservatism?” and

Search the contents of The Daily Drucker for “risk”

Why Drucker distrusted “facts”

The inherent weaknesses in all possible #information systems

 

line

 

The Tool Method

Carpenters have tools and learn how to use them.

The hammer, the saw, the plane and the drill all have their purposes.

Each tool carries out a defined function.

 

toolbox.pict

 

The skilled carpenter knows which tools to use at any point in order to get the desired effect.


In an exactly similar way, some very fundamental thinking tools are put forward in this book.

They are extremely simple but very powerful to use.


You can learn and practice the tools.

When you have built up some skill in using the tools they can be taken and applied to any situation whatever.


 

The tools are really “attention-directing tools.” #adt

 

We can now direct attention at will.

 

Without attention-directing tools,

attention follows the patterns

laid down by experience

and we remain trapped.


 

This tool method has now been in use for twenty years and it works very well.

It is easy to learn, easy to practice and easy to apply.


The tool method is much easier and more effective than other methods of teaching thinking.


Teaching people to avoid mistakes is very limited.

You could avoid all mistakes in driving by leaving the car in the garage.


Debate and discussion around a subject may practice thinking but do not leave any transferable skills.


Following the thinking of an outstanding teacher could work but would depend on a long period of contact and the general availability of outstanding teachers.


Each tool is very simple to learn.

Once learned it can be applied explicitly.


 

Our minds are full of “descriptive” concepts such as table, shop, book, #education etc.

 

What the thinking tools do is to furnish the mind with some “executive” concepts so that at different points in our thinking we can instruct our own minds to work as we wish .


 

Thinking is a skill that can be improved—if we want to improve that skill.


 

The tool method is a powerful and effective way of improving that skill.

Some of the most basic tools are laid out in this book.

These tools are derived from the basic #CoRT Thinking Lessons program, which is available for use in schools across a wide range of ages and abilities.

 


 

#CAF: Consider All Factors

This is one of the thinking tools from the widely used #CoRT Thinking Program (published by SRA) that I developed.

This program is now in use in thousands of schools world-wide.

The CoRT Program is a comprehensive program consisting of sixty thinking lessons divided into six sections.

There are detailed teacher guides.


A small handful of the #CoRT tools are included in this book because it would be confusing to create new tools to serve the same purpose .

I must make clear, however, that the full CoRT Program is the one designed for educational use in schools.

This book is designed for parents at home.

It may also happen that parents who use this book may want to move on to the full CoRT Program .


 

CAF is an attention-directing tool.

 

CAF is a tool designed to increase the breadth of perception. #sda

What are the factors that have to be considered in this matter?


CAF is pronounced ‘caff’.

… ‘Please do a “caff” on this.’

… ‘If you had done a “caff” you would not have left out that important point.’

… ‘Should we do a CAF here?’

 

The more you use the tool in a deliberate manner the more of a tool it becomes.

If you are shy about mentioning the tool, it does not become usable as a tool but remains as a weak attitude.


 

A father told his young daughter that she could call in early at his office on her way back from school, because business was very slack.

When she arrived at his office the girl (who had been doing CoRT Thinking at school) suggested to her father that they do a CAF on why business was slack.

Some ideas were developed that helped the business to pick up again.


 

Looking around a used-car lot a man suddenly spots his favorite make of sports car.

The condition is good, the mileage is right and the price is just affordable.

He is delighted.

Later he comes back and purchases the car.

He drives home in triumph.

He then finds that the car is too wide to fit in the garage at his home.

He had forgotten to do a CAF.


 

A dwarf got into the elevator intending to go up to the twentieth floor.

But he had to get out at the tenth floor.

He could only reach as high as the tenth-floor button.

He had not done a CAF.

If he had, he might have waited until someone else was ready to get into the elevator.


 

The government allowed wealthy foreigners to bid up the price of houses in the town.

They then found that they could not get local people to work in the town because the local people could not afford the same prices.

Someone had not done a CAF.


 

Teaching CAF is a matter of adding to the list of factors.


What has been left out?


Can you add another factor to the list we have?


What else must be considered?


 

Of course, there is a difference between important factors and less important factors.

 

But the main effort is to find the factors.

 

Far too often we go ahead with our thinking without having done a proper CAF.


 

Although CAF is a very simple tool it can be very powerful when it is done well.

 

Exercises on CAF

1. A lion-tamer in a circus has lost one of his lions in an accident.

He has to replace this lion.

Do a CAF for him.

What factors must he take into account?


 

2. You are asked to design an advertisement to get young people to drink more Coke.

What factors do you have to keep in mind?

Do a CAF.


 

3. A herd of wild horses roams freely over some grazing lands.

Dead horses are found and the farmers are accused of shooting the horses.

The farmers claim that there are now too many horses and they are taking the grazing from the cattle.

Do a CAF on this situation.


 

4. You are going to a job interview.

What things do you have to keep in mind?

Do a CAF.


 

5. Your parents are choosing a place to go on holiday.

They have done a CAF and list the following factors.

Have they left out anything?

cost

climate

good restaurants

nearness to a beach

sporting facilities

 

6. A friend asks to borrow some money from you.

You do a CAF and list the following factors.

Are these enough?

the amount of money

how long he wants the money for

how good a friend he is

 

7. If you had to make suggestions for re-designing the human head and face, what factors would you keep in mind?

Do a CAF on this.


 

8. You are running a large department store and you want to recruit some new staff.

When interviewing the applicants what factors would you consider?

 


 

Emotions and Values

Far too many people believe that thinking is unimportant because, in the end, emotions determine our choices and actions and that thinking makes little difference .

This is partly true.

In the end all thinking is emotional, and so it should be.

The purpose of thinking is to so arrange the world so that the application of our emotions and values will give an effective and acceptable outcome .

It is true that logical argument is very unlikely to change emotions .

But changes in perception can change emotions .

 

If you look at something in a different way then your feelings will also be different .


There is, however, an important point.

Do we use emotions first and allow these to determine our perception and our thinking?

Or do we use our perception first and allow emotions to determine our final decision?

Gut Feeling and Thinking

There is among some people a belief that thinking is a waste of time and that gut feeling is all that matters.

There is disillusionment with thinking.

Thinking seems to be a matter of solving puzzles or playing intellectual word games which are of great interest to philosophers and more or less useless to the real world.

Time and again thinking has been seen to rationalize and justify courses of action that have, in hindsight, been inhumane or disastrous.

Thinking, like mathematics, is seen as a tool that serves big business and the military as much as it serves anyone else.

The thinking of politicians is seen as justifying their continuation in power rather than the improvement of society.

Gut feelings and human values are seen to be more reliable.


Much of this disillusionment is directed at the “ intellectualizing ” type of thinking that seems to exist for its own sake.

This is the type of thinking that I described in the “ intelligence trap ,” where thought is used to justify any position .

This is the type of thinking that is used in endless debate and argument and point scoring.

This is the type of thinking that is used in philosophical word games .

Like everyone else I, also, am disillusioned with that type of thinking.

It has its value but as a small part of thinking .

Most of thinking needs to be of the

common-sense, robust, everyday type of thinking on one level

and objective thinking directed towards effectiveness on another.


There is nothing wrong with gut feelings and emotions as the final judges of options .

The danger arises if we place them first and use them as a substitute for thinking .

To the person holding them at the moment gut feelings always seem true and honest and, by definition, good for society #gfs .

We must not forget, however, that some of the most ridiculous and inhuman behavior in the history of man has also been fueled by gut feelings.

Persecutions and wars and lynchings and South Sea bubbles are all a result of gut feeling.

No doubt our gut feelings have improved along with the rest of our civilization, but to entrust them with the task of doing our thinking for us seems, to me, to be too dangerous and too unreliable .

For one thing gut feeling seems to favor violence in clash and revolution .

Maybe that part of our brain still adheres to the simple methodology of animals.


So I am all in favor of using gut feeling at the end of our thinking but not as a substitute for it.

I would also like to insert a “ sense of humor ” as one of our gut feelings which otherwise are always so solemn.


There is, of course, another reason for our flight from thinking to gut feeling, the stars, and other determinants of action.

It is that the world is getting so complicated that it seems impossible to think about anyway.

If all the learned economists argue about inflation to the point that the onlooker can only assume they know very little about it, then how is the voter, himself, going to figure out the economic basis for his vote?

This is a more serious problem than the first one and seems to demand a much greater attention to the teaching of thinking as a skill in #education and elsewhere (even to economists).

Emotions at Three Points

The figure below shows three possible ways in which emotion can interact with perception .

emotions-at-three-points-pict-258w-400h

I will use the word “perception” rather than thinking for throughout this book I have tried to emphasize that for most practical matters perception is thinking .


In the first situation the emotion is present from the beginning even before the particular situation is encountered.

This is equivalent to blind rage or panic.

It may also occur in a particular context even before the details of the situation have been seen.

This may happen with aggression, jealousy or hatred.

We can call this “blind emotion.”


The second situation is by far the most usual one.

With our perception we examine the situation briefly .

We recognize some pattern .

That switches on our emotion .

From then on our further perception is narrowed and channeled by that emotion .

If you offer a foul-looking liquid to people to drink, most of them will wrinkle their noses and decline the offer.

A blindfolded person will taste the drink and declare it to be orange juice—which is what it has been all along.

The initial perception has triggered our feelings , which then determine our actions .


In the third situation we have the ideal .

There is a broad and calm exploration of the situation and in the end emotions come in to make the final #decision and choose the course of action .

This is the model I have been advocating in this book.

Explore first with such tools as #PMI, #CAF, #APC, #EBS, #ADI, #OPV.

Then make a choice or decision .

This choice may be based on survival, ego-needs, achievement, or self-interest of any sort.

These are all emotionally based .


Some years ago a friend of mine stopped to help a lady who had been hit by a motorist and left bleeding at the side of the road.

As he was bending over the lady another motorist pulled up and slugged my friend, knocking him unconscious.

What had happened was that the motorist’s initial perception had interpreted that my friend had knocked the lady down.

This triggered his emotions and he reacted accordingly.


The point is a very important one indeed.

In general when we think we are acting from gut feeling we nevertheless have a short perception phase during which we interpret the situation .

We need to extend that phase and to do far more thinking in it.


There is much less we can do about the “blind emotion” situation.

Jealousy is a most curious emotion since it seems (unlike the other emotions) to have no intrinsic survival value unless on a sexual basis.

A person who is jealous of another person will interpret any action whatsoever in a negative manner.

As an emotion jealousy is more interesting than most and could benefit from some scrutiny.

Changing Feelings

But can perceptions change feelings?

Many believe that perception or thinking cannot really change feeling.

The orange juice experiment is a suggestion that such change is impossible.

Consider a man who is having an argument with a woman who is in tears.

The man feels that he is a bully and is about to concede some points—then a friend whispers to him that he is being emotionally blackmailed .

At once his attitude changes .

This suggestion has changed his perception or way of looking at things —and with this his feelings .

A woman feels that she has to look after her aging parents and cannot therefore get married.

A friend tells her that she is making herself a “victim” and at once her attitude and feelings change.


David Lane used the #CoRT thinking lessons at the Hungerford Guidance Center and told me the effect they had on the violent youngsters.

Before the lessons the youngsters had been inclined to react with a violent cliché when asked to think about society or their place in it.

The question triggered their emotions and the reaction followed.

After the thinking lessons they had developed some pride in themselves as “thinkers.”

There was now a thinking pause instead of a rush to reaction.

There was more consideration and more objectivity to the thinking.

Edna and Bill Copley reported a similar trend when using the #CoRT lessons in a reformatory.


It is possible for thinking to alter feelings—especially the perceptual type of thinking which allows us to #see things in a different way .

The PMI demonstration I mentioned earlier in the book showed how some simple thinking changed the feelings of children who had at first welcomed the idea of being paid to go to school.


We shall see later in this section how certain “value-laden” words can alter perceptions and feelings .

Some new proposal is put to a work force to settle an industrial dispute.

At first they are inclined to accept it—then it becomes labeled as a bribe or a trick and feelings begin to change.

 

Carpenters and Thinkers by Edward de Bono in Teach Your Child How To Think

My favorite model for a thinker is that of the carpenter.

Carpenters do things.

Carpenters make things.

Carpenters do things step by step. A need to employ Practical Thinking at every step

Carpenters deal with the physical substance of wood — so we can see what they are doing.

Basic Operations

The basic operations of a carpenter are few and we could summarize them as three:

1. Cutting

2. Sticking

3. Shaping

Cutting means separating out the piece you want from the rest.

As I shall explain later this corresponds to the thinking operations of: extraction, analysis, focus, attention etc.


Sticking means putting things together with glue or nails or screws.

The corresponding thinking operations include: connections, linkages, synthesis, grouping, design etc.


Shaping means setting out to achieve a certain shape and comparing what you have at the moment to what you want.

In thinking this corresponds to: judging, comparing, checking and matching.


So the basic operations of a carpenter are quite few (actually there are some others like drilling and polishing) but with these few operations a carpenter can make complicated objects.

Tools

In practice the carpenter uses tools to carry out the basic operations.

The carpenter does not just say, ‘I want to cut this,’ but picks up a saw and uses the saw.

These tools have been developed over the centuries as effective ways of carrying out the basic operations.


So we have saws, chisels and drills for cutting.


So we have glue, hammer and nails, screws and screwdriver for sticking things together.


So we have planes and templates for shaping things.


In exactly the same way we can have tools for thinking.

Some of these tools (like the PMI) will be presented in this book.


The carpenter builds up skill in the use of the tools.

Once the carpenter has acquired the skillful use of the tools, they can be used in different combinations to do different things.


A saw is something quite definite.

In the same way the thinking ‘tools’ are also definite and need to be treated in this manner.

When you use a saw you use a saw and not just a ‘method of cutting.’

Structures

There are times when the carpenter needs to hold things in a certain position so that he or she can work upon them.

For example you need to hold the wood steady in order to saw through it.

You need to hold the wood steady so you can drill the holes where you want them.

For this purpose there are vices and work-benches.


When the carpenter wishes to glue certain pieces together he puts the pieces in a sort of holding structure called a jig.

This is a supporting structure which enables him to carry out his construction.


In exactly the same way there are thinking ‘structures’ that will be presented in this book.

These are ways of holding things so that we can more easily work on them.

Attitudes

A carpenter usually has some background attitudes towards his or her work.


The attitude may be one of always seeking simplicity.

Another attitude may be an emphasis on durability.

Strength is a background attitude for all carpenters.

In the same way a good thinker has certain background attitudes which are always present in his or her thinking.

Principles

Attitudes are more general and principles are more specific.

Often the two overlap.

A carpenter will also build up a number of guiding principles of things to do and things to avoid.

These principles might include: Go with the grain of the wood.

Arrange the maximum sticking surface for all joints.

Measure everything.

Use a thin layer of glue.

In the same way there are certain basic principles which guide thinking.

For example, good thinking will always want to examine the specific circumstances in which a statement is true.

Larger view of thinking principles ↓ Text version ↓ :::
Always be constructiveWhat additional thinking is needed?

thinking-principles-taskcard-400

Habits

A carpenter develops certain work habits.

These may not come naturally and the carpenter may have to keep reminding himself or herself of the habit until it does become automatic.

Such habits may include: Always replacing a tool in the rack immediately after use.


Regular sharpening of the cutting edges.

Frequent checking of a shape against the template.

Sometimes the habit may consist of the automatic application of a principle, so the distinction between the two may not always be clear.

The important point is that habits are routine procedures.

In the same way there are routine habits which a good thinker seeks to build up.

For example, as a matter of routine, a good thinker will always pause to see if there are alternatives at any point.

There may be alternative ways of looking at the situation, alternative explanations, alternative courses of action, alternative values etc.

Summary

So the model of the carpenter provides us with all the elements of thinking skill that I shall be describing in this book.

ATTITUDES: The attitudes with which we approach thinking.

PRINCIPLES: The guiding principles that make for good thinking.

HABITS: The routines we seek to make automatic.

BASIC OPERATIONS: The fundamental operations of thinking.

TOOLS: The thinking tools we practice and use deliberately.

STRUCTURES: Formats in which we hold things for convenience.

Always keep in mind the model of the carpenter as he or she goes about constructing things.

 


 

#66 #hor1 #hor2 #hor3 #wlh #lms #ams

If you can see the road ahead

Wisdom is not at all the same as cleverness.


I have known many people who are very clever indeed within their own fields (even winning #Nobel prizes) but not especially ‘wise’ outside their own fields of study.


Wisdom is more about perspective than about detail.


Wisdom is about how the information fits into the world around and our own values.


Wisdom is the art with which perception crafts experience to serve our values.


Wisdom is about broader perception, deeper perception, richer perception, etc. #sda


If you have a good sense of humor you have the potential to be wise.

Thinking, perception and idea creativity — the basic elements of ‘wisdom’


Since so much of my work is in the field of thinking, perception and idea creativity, it is hardly surprising that these are the basic elements of ‘wisdom’.

In a sense, I have always been writing about wisdom indirectly.

I am now writing about wisdom directly (AWARENESS) .

Wisdom is to do with the broader view.

Wisdom is to do with the deeper view.

Wisdom is to do with the richer view.


Wisdom seeks to take the helicopter view, so that everything can be seen in perspective and in relation to everything else. #sda


The whole point about wisdom is that, used effectively, it reduces your anxiety.


The notion of ‘stupid and happy’ only refers to a very stable world in which nothing ever goes wrong.


If you are lucky enough to find such a world then stay there.


Otherwise you need wisdom to cope with difficulties.” #edb

 

 

«§§§»

 

#76 #lchp #hor2 #hor3 #wisdom

 

The richer and more complex the world in which you live, the more likely you are to be confused. 

But it does not have to be so.

A fear that conscience like a nagging aunt is forever observing, scolding and directing behaviour …

Go through this book picking out the points that make sense to you and putting them together. 

You can ‘graze’ through the book as often as you like or dip into it anywhere at any time

You are supposed to integrate what you read here with your own experience, rather than to choose one or the other. 

You use what you find to be of value for you.

Wisdom is about awareness and possibilities: awareness of the world around; awareness of possibilities and #choices.

Perception is a matter of picking out the patterns that we have got used to seeing. 

It becomes difficult to see things in another way unless we make the effort demanded by wisdom.

Wisdom is about breadth of perception. 

There are three types of breadth.

1. How widely do we look? How widely do we see?

2. How deeply do we look? Forward, backwards and into detail.

3. How rich is our vision? This means possibilities, speculations, alternatives and different points of view.

A logic bubble is that bubble of perceptions and values within which everyone acts logically.

Possibility is the key to wisdom. 

Possibility is the basis of creativity. 

Possibility is the best antidote to arrogance. 

Possibility drives exploration.

Richness of perception and design are based on alternatives.

So is effective action. 

The design of alternatives is a key element in wisdom.

Wisdom encourages different thoughts and different values.

This gives a richness of perception.

There does not have to be a #choice of one and a rejection of the others

Parallel thinking is the opposite of traditional adversarial thinking.

Instead of judgement, both sides are laid down in parallel and then a way forward is designed.

Because wisdom encourages alternatives and possibilities, wisdom also encourages #choice according to your values.

If we determine our values then those values can determine our #choices and behaviour.

If our emotions come first then they determine our perceptions. 

We only see things the way we want to see them.

We need judgement to find our way through life.

The danger is an excessive emphasis on rigid acceptances and rejections, and not enough attention to design.

Design is a matter of putting things together to achieve an objective and to serve our values.

Instead of searching for the standard solution we design a way forward.

Wisdom comes with #growth.

But wisdom is also the fertilizer for growth.

 

Why bother?

 

#wlh
How can the INDIVIDUAL survive?

Knowledge specialty ::: The #individual in entrepreneurial society :::
Return on luck ::: Danger of too much planning

Managing Oneself Overview

 

THE ROAD AHEAD exploration

 

Social awareness

 

line

 

#32 ↓ #fastp #hor3 #whtmal

Life directions — alternative approaches

 

If you don't design your own life
someone else will do ii for you!

 

Why thinking is important

 

“A painter does not paint with her fingers, in the air with no brush, no canvas and no colors.

The full freedom of painting is not too seriously restricted by the need to apply color to the canvas with a brush.

These are specific tools which make possible the expression of the artist’s vision.


How structured do we have to be in the use of wisdom?


There are people who have known what they want to do with their lives from the age of ten.

There are others who go through university and still wonder what they are going to do.

There are others who are content to drift about, taking each direction and each opportunity as it arises .


 

Can you get to a destination if you do not know where you are going ?

The simple answer is that you cannot.

 

So you ought to know where you want to go.

The detailed plan may not be so important as the destination .


The more complex answer is that you can get to a destination even without knowing where you wanted to go .

You simply choose to make your destination the place where you happen to have arrived .

This is a post hoc destination .


Detailed plans give purpose , values , decisiveness and a basis for choice .

There is a way of monitoring achievement .

Where necessary the plan can be made flexible or changed.

There is a reason for every next step .


Plans, however, restrict choices and values to ones which were set down some time ago .

Plans freeze the plan-maker at the date the plans were made .


An alternative to a plan is ‘evolution’.

Let influences and events mould the next steps.

Take advantage of all that is happening .

You may end up doing something you could never have planned to do .

Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been to, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground.

I set out as a medical doctor but became interested in human thinking and perception as a result of my work in the more complicated systems of the body (glands, kidneys, lungs, circulation and their interaction).


How can the INDIVIDUAL Survive ::: The INDIVIDUAL in Entrepreneurial Society ::: The Danger of Too Much Planning ::: The Return on Luck

 

Another alternative is to plan to get yourself into the best position to move in any direction that takes your fancy .

Just as an athlete works towards being fit and healthy with high stamina, so you plan to develop your skills and abilities to their fullest (including wisdom).

Many major corporations have given up long-term planning because in an uncertain world it is almost impossible to tell what is going to happen .

Dealing with risk and uncertainty

So they concentrate on being efficient, fit and lean, and then wait to see in which direction to move.


Another alternative is to decide that the hand that chance and circumstance have dealt to you is the hand you are going to play as well as you possibly can .


The International (audio)

 

Another alternative is to make mini-plans which just take you a short way ahead.

Then you make another mini-plan, and so on.

Wisdom is not just a clever way of deciding between the obvious options .

Wisdom is much more concerned with the ‘design’ of options .

There may be ways of combining existing options which seem different . ” — continue

 

#wgobcd

 

Why bother?

 

No surprises

 

Managing Oneself

 

#caf Consider All Factors

 

line

 

A wisdom learning curve

It is time to be wise about wisdom and to summarize this book.

‘Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.’

This well-known quotation is itself a useful piece of wisdom.

The ‘wise’ in the quotation refers to knowledge.

There are times when it is better not to know everything.

The saying could be misinterpreted on the basis that it might indeed be better to be stupid and happy than wise and anxious.

The whole point about wisdom is that, used effectively, it reduces your anxiety.

The notion of ‘stupid and happy’ only refers to a very stable world in which nothing ever goes wrong.

If you are lucky enough to find such a world then stay there.

Otherwise you need wisdom to cope with difficulties.

Continue

 

The danger of too much planning

If you don’t design your own life
then someone else will do it for you.

What do you want to be remembered for?

Alternative life directions

 


 

Belief

A woman is wheeling along a pram in which are her two children aged three and five years.

An acquaintance comes up to her and looks at the children:

‘Aren’t they beautiful children?’ gushes the acquaintance.

‘Oh, never mind them,’ replies the mother, you should see their photographs — now those are really beautiful.’

 

I sometimes use this story when addressing a conference.

People always laugh at the absurdity of the photograph being more important than the real thing.

So I go on to explain my point.

Maybe the photographs are more important than the children.

When you see the photographs you see beauty and the photograph will be the same for ever (a reasonable number of years).

The children will grow and change.

When you look at the children you may see a smiling child or a dribbling child or a fractious child but the photograph always shows beauty.

Perhaps the purpose of the children is only to create beautiful photographs.

This seems a perverse and outrageous point of view, but it is not.

Perhaps the purpose of life is to create beautiful and enduring myths and it is these we are meant to enjoy.

Day-to-day reality is there only to fuel the myths.

 

It is true that myths and beliefs are easy and often false and impossible to substantiate.

Yet they may be the true reality for a perceptual system.

 

Myths provide beauty, purpose, value, comfort, security and emotional fuel.

 

A few small details

 

It is also true that beliefs can stand in the way of progress and have, in the past, been responsible for very much suffering — and passive acceptance of what might have been changed.

 

I have dealt with belief at so many different points in this book that I do not wish to repeat all I have written, so I shall summarize it very simply.

A belief is a perceptual framework which leads us to see the world in a way which reinforces that framework.

This circularity is a very natural function of a self-organizing patterning system, so beliefs are very easy to form.

In a sense ‘belief’ is the truth of a perceptual system.

When you burn your finger at a fire only once in your lifetime, you are operating a belief system.

Your fear of fire is not built up by induction based on repeated experience.

Your initial trauma creates a belief that prevents you from ever contradicting that belief, so the circularity is established.

 


 

Humor, hindsight and insight, idea creativity and lateral thinking, lateral thinking as process, judgment and provocation, the word "Po", the stepping stone method, the escape method, the random stimulation method, general use of lateral thinking, the logic of lateral thinking continue #pdf

 


 

“Age can provide richer experience, but not necessarily so.

Professor John Edwards is fond of saying that a teacher with twenty years’ experience may indeed have twenty years’ experience or may have twenty times a one-year experience.

If you always look at things in the same way then more experience only provides more books on the same shelf.

Age permits you to have more experience but only if you permit yourself to be open to new experiences.

If you never change your mind, why have one?

Have a sign on your desk which says: ‘Same thinking as yesterday, last year or ten years ago.’” — Edward de Bono

 

#wlh Wise about Wisdom : # 170 Awareness ::: # 171 Perception ::: # 172 Broad #sda ::: # 173 Logic Bubble ::: # 174 #Possibly ::: # 175 Alternatives ::: # 176 Plurality ::: # 177 Parallel Thinking ::: # 178 Choice ::: # 179 Values ::: # 180 Emotions and Feelings ::: # 181 Judgement ::: # 182 Design ::: # 183 A new super-pattern: What would Merlin do here?

 

Water Logic

 

Questions from Parallel Thinking

 


 

#information #org
“Information is what holds an organization together and
information is what makes individual knowledge workers effective.” — Druckerism

 

You can search the contents of de Bono books below

 

line

 

Thought fragments about the future

pics ::: #discontinuity ::: decisions exist only in the present

 

“We know only two things about the future.
It cannot be known.
It will be different from what exists now and
from what we now expect

 

see Chapter 10 ::: The future … already happened ::: Making the future ::: Research management
… the importance of accessing, interpreting, connecting, and translating knowledge
Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity

 

 

#SEEThe Wisdom of Peter Drucker ::: Life 2.0 ::: A change in the human condition

 

 

 

#hor3 #wlh #mo1

“Making a living is no longer enough,” …
Work also has to make a life.”

The need for roots

Druckerisms (calendarize these?)

 

#wlh
Successful careers ↑ are not planned ↓ they exploit opportunities

 

#37 #wlh The Return on Luck … ↓ by Jim Collins

needs to be a part of a Managing Oneself structure

(strengths? → values?) or striving toward an idea outside of yourself

where you belong?


The actual results of action are not predictable


Danger of too much planning ::: more on managing oneself further down the page :::

all of these sequences need to be made operational if they are to be of any value

 

calendarize this ↑ ? → begin with an end in mind

 

This is who I am

 

 


 

Second, Peter changed not just the minds of his students but their lives and, through them, the lives of other people.

Think of a student like a vector heading out into time and space ; if you can change the trajectory of that vector even a little bit, those small changes will turn into a large sweeping arc years down the road.

 

And then if that vector in turn changes the trajectory of tens or hundreds or thousands of other vectors, then a teacher can have a multiplicative impact on the world.

This is exactly what Drucker-as-teacher did. the return on luck

by Jim Collins
author of Built to Last , Good to Great , How the Mighty Fall and Good to Great and the Social Sectors

 

«§§§»

 

“The … I wouldn’t say happy people, but satisfied, contented people I knew were all people who lived in more than one world.

Those single-minded people — you meet them most in politics — in the end they are very unhappy people.

There isn’t that much room at the top — there is very little room at the top.” And it doesn’t last that long. Then what? and #YouTube

How much labor?

 

line

 

#38 #lchp #hor3 #wlh #mo1 #dotmp
The danger of too much planning

#ptf #horizons #seek #dtmp water logic

 

… subconsiously assuming
that tomorrowS will be an extrapolition of today
is a form of planning

 

Peter maintained that planning doesn’t work. #psdapa #jump

radar-differences-pict-400

What is the purpose of various career fields or areas of work?

Managing Oneself ::: The return on luck ::: Water logic

 

You can

prepare yourself,

learn what you ought to know, and

expand your experience and professionalism (#mindmap / #mind map these),

but ultimately, he said, “ opportunity comes in over the transom,”

and that means

you have to be

flexible,
ready to seize the right (REAL, not delusional) opportunities
when they come. #mindmap these

Information challenges

 

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

“Too much planning,” he said, “can make you deaf to opportunity.”

 

Knowing what youwant to do, and being prepared and equipped to do it, is more important than the specific “how.”

SUCCESSFUL CAREERS ARE NOT PLANNEDTHIS IS WHO I AM

WORK HAS TO MAKE A LIFE

Ten Principles for Life II

 

This is who I am

 

Peter said, “Opportunity knocks, but it only knocks once.

You have to be ready for the accident.”

#opportunity ::: #broad ::: #question ::: #productivity ::: #innovation ::: #effective (Also try a #page-search for the word stem “effective”)

 

“Most of us, if we live long enough, must change careers.

If career planning means not being open to opportunity, it doesn’t work.


Planning should tell you only

which opportunities are the right ones for you

and which are the wrong ones
continue, but

some ecological awareness (for example) is also useful

 

The individual in entrepreneurial society

 

«§§§»



“The most effective road
to self-renewal is to
look for the unexpected success
and run with it.” continue



«§§§»



Opportunities — the book



«§§§»



What should you be doing now,
to be effective in your new job? continue

 

«§§§»

 

The concepts in this collection of thought-fragments
are part of a life-management system
. #lms

thinking broad and thinking detailed ↑ ↓

Successful careerS are not planned here

Foundations and opportunities

foundations-and-opportunities-2016-pict

A Year with Peter Drucker:
52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness

Every dreamer ↓

every_dreamer-pict

 

line

 

This page purposefully lacks a contents list — that
would be too orderly. Reality
doesn’t unfold in an convenient manner …

 

line

 

The future of the planet depends on our ability to
navigate unimagined futureS.

And that depends on
what’s between our earS #worldview #apta ↓ … ↑ here

“Our thinking, choices, decisions are determined by
what we have seen edb

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400

The Black Cylinder Experiment #bce

Competing mental patterns are one of those “thingS” ↑ ↓

 

The fallacy of empowerment

 

“Background awareness plus a broad and deep #worldview needs to be part of those “thingS” ↑ ↓

Awareness and worldview are part of a foundation for future directed decisions ↑ ↓

This page provides an exploration path for building that foundation ↑ ↓

 

… Another implication is that the performance of an individual, an organization, an industry, a country, in acquiring and applying knowledge will increasingly become the key competitive factor — for career and earnings opportunities of the individuals; for the performance, perhaps even the survival, of the individual organization; for an industry; and for a country.

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competitive than any society we have yet known — for the simple reason that with knowledge being universally accessible, there are no excuses for nonperformance.

There will be no “poor” countries.

There will only be ignorant countries.

And the same will be true for individual companies, individual industries, and individual organizations of any kind. continue

 

drucker-man-invented-corp-soc-pict-t-no-ref

Drucker: The Man Who Invented the Corporate Society

Why was Drucker in such demand?

 

Click image ↓ for a Drucker intro
peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279
Larger image view

 

Wisdom is about awareness

 

Celebrating the Life of Peter Drucker

#audioplayback ↑ ↓

A tribute to Peter Drucker by Pastor Dr. Rick Warren —
Author of the all-time best selling book (printed in English)
The Purpose Driven Life and
Founder of Saddleback Church continue

 

What follows is Rick Warren’s PERCEPTION
of Drucker
and his experiences with Drucker.

These perceptions are based on Warren’s existing mental patterns.

When Drucker asked Warren a question,
Drucker may not have been seeking information,
but attempting to redirect Rick’s attention.

Drucker’s secret to mentoring

 

PD → “Integrity ::: humility ::: generosity” RW’s ↑

#ea Druckerisms are brain-addresses

 

Notes from audio : On behalf of the Drucker School, Drucker Institute, Drucker Society

thank you. Thank you for coming to honor this man...

 

10th-global-peter-drucker-forum

 

… Two or three hundred Drucker proverbs, Druckerisms … Had a way of saying things so succinctly... Well Peter said ::: Principles that changed RW’s life … A tribute to Peter the man

Peter was far more than the founder of modern management and a brilliant man one of the greatest minds of the 20th century … He was a great soul ::: Anybody who knew him found their lives enriched by this man ::: Uniquely great man

Met Peter when Warren was 29 years old... Peter became not just a teacher, a mentor, a friend... Over the years Saddleback grew to 100,000 names, 120 acre campus, network of over 400,000 churches in 160+ countries

This man changed my life ::: I don't just admire Peter, I love him for what he did in my life

First QUESTION → how often do you have to change the structure in a rapidly growing organization? First decade Saddleback growing 42% … Drucker 45% … Drucker just made up the number (a stupid question) Had to be on a consistent basis. The shoe could never tells the foot how big it gets … Organization structure had to adapt and change … had to be fast and fluid flexible if you’re going to grow and develop and meet the needs

The Purpose Driven Life (best selling book in English in history?)

Drucker was a purpose driven man ::: QUESTIONS → What is our business? Who is our customer? What do they value? What is our mission? (See what exists is getting old)

And he always said it is the mission
that matters
.

I never knew a more purpose driven person in my life

#Experts

Talk about the man (Drucker)... If I summed up Peters life in three words it would be these... Integrity, humility, generosity ::: Three words are the antidotes to three traps of leadership

Integrity... compartmentalize our lives … exact opposite of integrity ::: Far more than honesty … means wholeness

Authentic ::: Life was integrated ::: The only renaissance man … knew a lot about everything and integrated it all ::: It all matters

Management not just a science, art, liberal art, social construct, spiritual discipline … all of these things

Asking questions forces the other person to do their own thinking and accept the answer

Exchanging questions ::: Examples from Japanese art etc. … made it all fit ::: A way of looking at the world from a system's view … it all matters ::: Can't be just economic, spiritual, psychological … there’s a relationship between it alland it all matters (#connect ::: T. George Harris)

He was a man of integrity ::: Titanic myth ::: If you are weak in one area … that's where the chain breaks … it all matters ::: Peter not just taught it … he lived it … it all matters … every area of life.

Humility ::: Misunderstood term ::: Being honest about your weaknesses ::: Not cover them up … personally or institutionally ::: That needs to be changed ::: Needs to be worked on ::: Being teachable ::: All learners are leaders ::: When you stop learning you stop leading ::: Corporations require growing leaders ::: Effective Executive ::: building on strengths so weaknesses become irrelevant ::: Humility is the willingness to learn ::: The number one characteristic of humility is the ability to ask #questions ::: You can learn from anybody ::: Everybody ignorant on different subjects ::: Drucker asking questions to both acquire information and make the other person think for themselves ::: Peter's greatness ::: Tears

Most of us would rather pretend that we know it all than know it all ::: Don't want to admit it when we don't know something … so we pretend … live in ignorance ::: Trained over 400,000 leaders in 162 countries over the last 30 years … the things he learned from Peter Drucker

Generosity ::: Time, affirmation ::: Miser makes us miserable ::: The more you give away the more you get

Learn from the person of Drucker … commitment to integrity, humility, generosity

 

books-about-drucker-collage-pict-t-600

 

“If you want to diagram my work #lms, in the center is writing,
then comes consulting, then comes teaching.
I’ve never been primarily an academic. I like to teach
because that’s the way I learn.” Peter Drucker

 

Peter Drucker → he liberated me

 

Management and the World’s Work #impact and #mbr #pdf

↑ In less than 150 years, (circa 1988)
management has transformed the social and economic fabric
of the world’s developed countries.

It has created a global economy
and set new rules for countries
that would participate in that economy as equals. ↓

 

The Management Revolution

↑ Making knowledge productive

 

Purpose driven life

purpose-driven-life-3-cropped-pict

 

Political ecologists (Drucker ↑) believe that the traditional disciplines define
fairly narrow and limited tools rather than meaningful
and self-contained areas of knowledge, action, and events
continue

↑ It would be difficult to say, I submit, which of chapters in this volume
are “management,” which “government” or “political theory,”
which “history” or “economics.” continue

 

“To know something,
to really understand something important,
one must look at it from sixteen different angles.

People are perceptually slow,
and there is no shortcut to understanding;
it takes a great deal of time.” read more

 

What Everybody Knows Is Frequently Wrong ::: If You Keep Doing What Worked in the Past You’re Going to Fail ::: Approach Problems with Your Ignorance — Not Your Experience ::: Develop Expertise Outside Your Field to Be an Effective Manager ::: Outstanding Performance Is Inconsistent with Fear of Failure ::: You Must Know Your People to Lead Them ::: People Have No Limits, Even After Failure ::: Base Your Strategy on the #Situation, Not on a Formula — A Class With Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World's Greatest Management Teacher

 

time-line-and-adoption-rates-pict-t-600

 

the-end-of-economic-man-200h

 

#hor3
From The End of Economic Man:

The Origins of Totalitarianism

 

The End of Economic Man was my first book, and at the time of its publication I was still an unknown young man.

Economic Man (Wikipedia)

Yet the book received tremendous attention when it came out in the spring of 1939, and was an instant success. #adt

It was even more successful in Britain than in the United States.

Winston Churchill, then still out of office, wrote the first review, and a glowing one. #pdf

When, a year later, after Dunkirk and the fall of France, he became prime minister he gave the order to include The End of Economic Man in the book kit issued to every graduate of a British Officers’ Candidate School.

(It was, appropriately enough, packaged together with Lewis Catroll’s Alice in Wonderland by somebody in the War Department with a sense of humor.)

 

Although this book was published more than fifty years ago, it was actually written even earlier.

It was begun in 1933, a few weeks after Hitler had come to power.

An early excerpt — the discussion of the role of anti-Semitism in the Nazi demonology and the reasons for its appeal — was published as a pamphlet by an Austrian Catholic and anti-Nazi publisher in 1935 or 1936.

And it was finished between April 1937, when I first arrived in the United States from England, and the end of that year.

It was the first book to try to explain the origins of totalitarianism — its subtitle.

It has kept on selling.

Indeed it has been reissued several times before this republication as a Transaction book, the last time in 1969 (the preface to that reissue is included in this volume).

And lately the book has again gotten a fair amount of scholarly attention.

 

But for a long time during the nineteen-sixties — and indeed, well into the nineteen-seventies — the book was pointedly ignored by the scholarly community.

One reason: it was not “politically correct” to use current jargon.

It fitted neither of the two politically acceptable theses of the postwar period: the thesis that Nazism was a “German” phenomena to be explained by German history, German character, German specifics of one kind or another or the Marxist thesis of Nazism as the “last gasp of dying capitalism.”

This book, instead, treated Nazism — and totalitarianism altogether — as a European disease, with Nazi Germany the most extreme, most pathological manifestation and with Stalinism being neither much different nor much better.

Anti-Semitism, for instance, appeared first as persecution and popular demagoguery in France, rather than in Germany, in the Dreyfus Affair of the eighteen-nineties.

 

And it was the failure of Marxism — rather than that of capitalism — as a creed and as a savior, The End of Economic Man asserted, that led to the “despair of the masses” and
made them easy prey to
totalitarian demagoguery and demonology ↓

hitler-tell-em-pict-600
hitler-behavior-pict-600

King Trump ↑ #evidence-wall ↓

trump-collage-500

 

But there was a second reason why the book did not fit into the scholarly climate of the postwar period.

It is the more important one, simply because the climate still persists.

#idea This book treats a major social phenomenon as a social phenomenon.

This is still largely considered heresy (except by such fellow-heretics as the publishers of Transaction books and Society magazine).

No two people ever read the same book

Major social phenomena are treated either as political and economic history, that is, in terms of battles, armies, treaties, politicians, elections, national-income statistics, and so on.

(A good example for Germany and Nazism are the excellent books of the Stanford historian Gordon Craig, for example, his 1978 book Germany: 1866-1945 .)

Such developments are also explained in terms of “isms.” that is, in terms of all-embracing philosophies.

The prototype and exemplar of this approach for our theme is the 1951 book by Hannah Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism which blames Hitler and Nazism on the systematic German philosophers of the early nineteenth century: Fichte, Schelling, or Hegel.

 

No matter how valid either approach, they are not adequate by themselves.

 

The stool needs a third leg.

Social phenomena need social #analysis, an analysis of the strains, stresses, trends, shifts, and upheavals in society.

This, I would maintain, is what sociology was meant to do, was indeed invented for in the early years of the last century.

It is what the great men of sociology, a Max Weber (1864-1920) or a Vilfredo Pareto (1864-1923), did.

It is what Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) did when he identified the “innovator” as the social force that turns economies upside down; the innovator does not behave economically, does not try to optimize, is not motivated by economic rationale — he is a social phenomenon.

It is what this book tries to do.

 

Society (#pdf) is vague and impossible to define, argue my historian friends, my economist friends, my philosopher friends.

They are absolutely right.

But equally resistant to definition are history, economics, philosophy, nation, science, and poetry — indeed everything worthwhile thinking, talking, and writing about.

 

Yet all of us know what to do with these terms — “plus or minus 80%” as the statisticians would say — that is, adequate for operational purposes (despite everything the linguistic logicians say to the contrary).

The End of Economic Man treats society as the environment of that very peculiar critter, the human being.

History treats what happens on the surface, so to speak.

“Isms” — that is philosophical systems — may be called the atmosphere.

But society is the “ecology.”

 

This book does not attempt to define “society.”

It tries to understand it.

Whether it succeeds in this attempt readers must decide for themselves.

But this book was the first attempt to understand THE major social phenomenon of the first half of this century, that is, the rise of totalitarianism as a social event.

It is still, half a century later, the only such attempt.

This alone, I hope, makes it worthwhile reading.”

 

Peter F. Drucker

 

The End of Economic Man: The Origins of Totalitarianism book page

 

 

 

 

Freedom, power, revolutions, and
the alternative to tyranny

 

«§§§»

 

… “It is this belief in diversity and pluralism and in the uniqueness of each person that underlies all my writings, beginning with my first book ( The End of Economic Man ) more than fifty years ago.

During most of these fifty years centralization, uniformity, and conformity were dominant.

The totalitarian regimes ( The End of Economic Man ) in which everybody was to conform, to think the same, to write and paint the same, to be centrally controlled — the Nazis called it “switched onto the same track” (gleichgeschaltet)— were but the head of a universal current.

It swept over the democracies as well.

 

#pdsv But every one of my books and essays, whether dealing with politics, philosophy, or history; with social order and social institutions; with management, technology, or economics, has stressed pluralism and diversity.

Where the prevailing doctrines preached control by big government or big business, I stressed decentralization, experimentation, and the need to create community.

And where the prevailing approaches saw government and big business as the only institutions and as the “countervailing powers” of a modern society, I stressed the importance and central role of the nonprofit, public-service institutions, the “third sector”— as the nurseries of independence and diversity; as guardians of values; as providers of community leadership and citizenship. #profit more from Adventures of a Bystander

but there’s no virtue in being a nonprofit #profit

Every social problem is an opportunity

 

And I pointed out how much of society is organized and informed by non-business, non-governmental institutions, the universities, for instance, or the hospitals, each with very different values and a different personality.

But I was swimming against a strong current.

 

Now, at last, the tide has turned, and it has turned my way.

The flag-bearer of the collectivist, centralizing, uniformity-imposing parade, Communism, has proven a sham, incompetent even to provide the mere rudiments of effective government, functioning economy, citizenship, and community.

And in the West too we are now rapidly decentralizing, indeed uncentralizing.

For a generation after World War II, we believed that any sickness was best treated in a centralized hospital, the bigger the better.

We are now moving patients into “outreach” facilities as fast as we can.

During the last fifteen years America’s large corporations have been shrinking steadily.

All the phenomenal employment #growth in this period — the fastest growth in jobs in peacetime history anywhere — has been in small and middle-sized enterprises.

In the decades following World War II, America built ever-bigger consolidated schools — one cause, I believe, of our educational malaise.

Now we are moving towards diverse, decentralized schools, the “magnet schools,” for instance.

     (See chapter 14, “The Accountable School” in Management, Revised Edition)

“Small is beautiful” is, of course, as much stifling dogma as “big is best”— and equally stupid, as one look at the diversity of God’s creation will show.

We surely will not return to the nineteenth-century society, which knew only the smallest and weakest of governments and few institutions except the local church and school.

 

The knowledge society into which we are moving so fast is going to be a society of organizations.

But of organizations — plural — that will be diverse, decentralized, multiform.

And within these organizations, we are moving away from the standardized, uniform structures that were generally accepted in public administration and business management, “the one right structure for the typical manufacturing company,” for instance, or the “model government agency.”

We are moving toward organic design, informed by mission, purpose, strategy, and the environment, both social and physical — the design I began to advocate forty years ago in The Practice of Management (which came out in 1954). …

 

This means a radical change in structure for the organizations of tomorrow

 

From command to responsibility-based organization

 

… November 11 in the Austria of my childhood was “Republic Day,” commemorating the day, in 1918, on which the last of the Habsburg emperors had abdicated and the Republic was proclaimed.

For most of Austria this was a day of solemnity, if not of mourning — the day of final defeat in a nightmare war, the day in which centuries of history had crumbled into dust. …

 

A Functioning Society ::: The (human) Ecological Vision ::: The End of Economic Man

Management Tasks Responsibilities Practices Management Revised Edition and

Management Revised Edition Cases

ONCE upon a time a young man set out to write
the definitive book on China. continue

The Effective Executive ::: Managing Oneself

about Questions

Creating Tomorrow’s Society of Citizens

 

Drucker and Me by Bob Buford

What Bob Buford is remembered for #pdf

drucker-me-by-bob-buford-pict-300

Peter once told me ↑, “The fruit of your work grows on other people’s trees.”

 

T. George Harris

t-george-harris-pict-500

YouTube : Thoughts on prayer #youtube

Interview with T. George Harris ↑ → Deming, Juran, Drucker

 

↑ A deeper sense of purpose : T. George Harris was born a Baptist on a small and rocky Kentucky tobacco farm in 1924, a time when most Americans believed the earth was 7,000 years old and heaven was a place you could point to—straight up. …

Harris wrote and edited about many subjects, including civil rights, politics, business, psychology, careers, self-development, health and spirituality.

Sixteen different angles #sda

Social ecology

Served in World War II and graduated from Yale.

He became a journalist, as a reporter and later bureau chief and editor for Time and Look magazines.

Harris was a media pioneer when it came to mind-body health, for instance as founding editor of American Health magazine, and particularly about how health intersected with spirituality.

He was a founder of Spirituality & Health magazine, and was an early columnist for Beliefnet.com.

Besides their friendship, Harris and Drucker were associated in a variety of ways. Post Capitalist Executive

Harris was editor-in-chief of Psychology Today and later executive editor of the Harvard Business Review .

Celebrating the life of Peter Drucker — Rick Warren

Who was Peter Drucker

 

line

 

Charles Handy a concept maker

Amazon → The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society

charles-handy2-cropped-pict-t-450

The many lives of Charles Handy → YouTube link #youtube

Give it a name

 

The Second Curve #second-curve

 

the-second-curve-124w-200h

Humans First — Technology Second #youtube

Self renewal ::: Reinvent yourself

 

#smallfires “Five hundred years ago an unknown friar in an unknown German town laid a complaint against his employer.

The friar was Martin Luther, the town Wittenberg.

His employer was the Catholic Church, and the burden of his complaints — 95 of them — was twofold.

First, to be permitted to buy your way to heaven — as the church offered through the sale of indulgences — was wrong: a scam on the poor to make the rich richer, which sounds familiar today.

… So where do we find another leader?

One who will lead our reformation?

Well, let me follow another Martin Luther and have a dream.

Couldn’t the modern Wittenberg be the Drucker Forum?

And the Luther of our time be Peter Drucker? #mbr

With his words from the grave magnified … by all of us.

And exemplified by putting our words into practice.

If people criticize, we have to be bold, like Luther, and say: here I stand, I can do no other, because this is the right way to behave.

So don’t ask for leaders.

It’s up to us to start small fires in the darkness, until they spread and the whole world is alight with a better vision of what we could do with our businesses (and other organizations) .

If not us, then who? if not now, then when?” continue

The Alternative to Tyranny

Living in an Age of Overlap

A Functioning Society

Citizenship Through the Social Section

 

11th-global-peter-drucker-forum-pict-stroke-t-600

Post-capitalist executive

 


 

… “Given a choice, the average manager would like to have at his side, not so much a computer as a super-management #expert; someone like Peter Drucker, or at least like the image of Drucker as super-consultant that exists in many executive minds.

The manager could handle most chores on his own; but, when difficulties arose, he could turn to his mentor and obtain expert guidance.

Of course Peter Drucker does not do this.

Even if you could afford to buy his time, you could not so involve him in the day-to-day tasks of management.

For one thing he would not leave his study at Claremont to undertake the job.

For another thing, it would bore him to distraction.

 

So the manager who wants answers from Drucker reads Drucker’s books and articles and listens to his lectures when he can.

This can be extremely frustrating.

Most executives are looking for specific answers to the nitty-gritty problems that come up, day after day.

They know they should be thinking big thoughts #pdf and taking the broad view, but nagging details keep interfering.

So they want help in handling the recurring, mundane matters that make up their working lives.

It is hard to find this in Drucker.

His books do not resemble the typical books produced for managers in great profusion.

Within a Drucker book — even those that focus most specifically on the tasks of management — you do not find the kinds of chapter headings you find in a typical “how-to-run-a-business” book; headings like “Six Ways to Make Things Happen,” “How to Change Bad Habits to Good Ones,” “Ten Steps to Solving Problems,” “A Sure-Fire Way to Organize Your Time,” and so forth.

Drucker does not make it seem that simple.

It is not that he is vague; he is quite specific.

But he does not distill his message into convenient and catchy little nuggets that can be ingested with no effort at all.

Drucker is a stimulator.

He tries to make people think, not give them substitutes for thinking.

The return on luck

The manager and the moron

Moreover, he approaches management from a philosophical point of view.

He places small, discrete activities in a larger framework.

So you can’t consult the index of a Drucker book and thumb the pages to a brief, specific “answer” for your current problem.

He doesn’t make it look that easy because he doesn’t think it is that easy.” Drucker: The Man Who Invented the Corporate Society

 

The Practice of Management ::: Where do I begin to read Drucker? #whtmal

 

line

 

The world is rapidly becoming a knowledge society, a society
of organizations
, and a network society.

At the same time,
if you look at the life story of any prominent organization
you will see multiple non-linear chapters
in their story. The iPhone is not a natural outgrowth
of anything Apple™ had done previously.

Without an effective mission there will be no #results

This ↑ is a dynamic system of evolving, non-static, and impermanent parts.

 

Management and the World’s Work (#pdf) — 1850 … ↑ ↓
In less than 150 years, (circa 1988) management has transformed the social and economic fabric
of the world’s developed countries. #mbr

It has created a global economy
and set new rules for countries that would participate in that economy as equals. ↓

↑ is connected to → time span, unimagined futures, impossible, mental patterns, awareness, and worldview ↑ ↓

Concepts and applications → Management Tasks Responsibilities Practices Management Revised Edition and Management Revised Edition Cases

WHAT EXECUTIVES SHOULD REMEMBER (Audible)

Executive realities ::: What makes an executive effective?

Post-Capitalist executive interview — A MAJOR work-life brainroad
… accept that it’s your own responsibility
to work on your development and not depend
on any one company

The need for roots ::: From command to responsibility-based organization
::: Post-capitalized society has to be decentralized

Knowledge specialty → Knowledge in application is specialized.
It is always specific, and therefore, not applicable to anything else.

 

 

How To Guarantee Non-Performance #apta

No one can guarantee the performance of a public service program.

But we know how to ensure non-performance with absolute certainty.

Part I : Have a Lofty Objective ::: Try to Do Several Things at Once :::
Believe That "Fat is Beautiful" ::: Don't experiment, be #dogmatic :::
Make sure that you will not learn from experience ::: Inability to Abandon :::

Part II : Avoiding These Six Deadly Sins is the Prerequisite for Performance and #Results → What Results
Should You Expect? — A Users' Guide to MBO
:::

Part III: The Lack of Concern With Performance in Public Administration Theory

Have a lofty objective = To use such statements as “#objectives” thus makes sure that no effective work will be done. For work is always specific, always mundane, always focused. Yet without work there is non-performance. To have a chance at performance, a program needs clear targets, the attainment of which can be measured, appraised, or at least judged.

Aim high

 

 

The theory of the business et. al. #second-curve #connect

The University Art Museum: Defining Purpose and Mission

Find First Things First on this page

 

Management as a liberal art #mbr ::: #wgobcd

 

2017 Wharton text + #podcast ‘The End of Loyalty’: Shock and Awe for Many American Workers (#wgobcd)
“The previous generation of American workers had a different relationship with their employers
than the workers today. Many skilled-labor employees stayed with one company for the long haul,
earning solid wages, good benefits and a pension in exchange for loyalty and hard work.

But those days are long gone, notes Rick Wartzman. The reduction in salaries, retirement, health care
and other perks has prompted a breakdown in the relationship between employee and employer,
a problem that Wartzman focuses on in his book, The End of Loyalty:
The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America
. Wartzman, a Pultizer Prize-winning former journalist
who is a senior adviser at the Drucker Institute , joined Knowledge@Wharton
to talk about the new state of the American worker …” #surprises podcast access ::: NPR

How did the employers “manage” to create this situation? ↑

 

Middle-class blues (#wgobcd)

middle-class-blues-pict-t

Why good people still can’t get jobs #pdf

Will GE’s pension freeze help or hurt? #surprises

The organization graveyard

Singapore-on-Thames?

 

Investigation shows IBM flouted US laws against
age discrimination and estimates the company
eliminated about 20K+ US employees
over 40 in the past five years

by Peter Gosselin · March 22, 2018

“For nearly a half century, IBM came as close as any company to bearing the torch for the American Dream.

As the world’s dominant technology firm, payrolls at International Business Machines Corp. swelled to nearly a quarter-million U.S. white-collar workers in the 1980s.

Its profits helped underwrite a broad agenda of racial equality, equal pay for women and an unbeatable offer of great wages and something close to lifetime employment, all in return for unswerving loyalty. #profit …snip, snip …

 

sidebar

 

Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? :
Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change
.

When Louis Gerstner joined IBM in 1993
he noted that IBM employed more #Nobel Laureates
than most countries possess. And yet,
IBM was just a few months from being forced to
declare bankruptcy. In addition to the Nobel Laureates,
IBM also employed many people possessing
“#education credentials” — PhDs, masters, and college graduates.
And yet, not one of the nearly 400,000 employees was thought
capable of leading IBM more #dead #intelligence. Mike Kami connection

mike-kami-corp-planning-manual

What thinking is needed?

 

main brainroad continues

 

But when high tech suddenly started shifting and companies went global, IBM faced the changing landscape with a distinction most of its fiercest competitors didn’t have: a large number of experienced and aging U.S. employees. #surprises

The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning document, would “correct seniority mix.” (#wgobcd)

It slashed IBM’s U.S. workforce by as much as three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger, less-experienced and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas.

ProPublica estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those years.

In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked U.S. laws and regulations intended to protect later-career workers from age discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information provided via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.

Among ProPublica’s findings, IBM:

Denied older workers information the law says they need in order to decide whether they’ve been victims of age bias, and required them to sign away the right to go to court or join with others to seek redress.

Targeted people for layoffs and firings with techniques that tilted against older workers, even when the company rated them high performers.

In some instances, the money saved from the departures went toward hiring young replacements.

Converted job cuts into retirements and took steps to boost resignations and firings.

The moves reduced the number of employees counted as layoffs, where high numbers can trigger public disclosure requirements.

Encouraged employees targeted for layoff to apply for other IBM positions, while quietly advising managers not to hire them and requiring many of the workers to train their replacements.

Told some older employees being laid off that their skills were out of date, but then brought them back as contract workers, often for the same work at lower pay and fewer benefits.

IBM declined requests for the numbers or age breakdown of its job cuts.

ProPublica provided the company with a 10-page summary of its findings and the evidence on which they were based.

IBM spokesman Edward Barbini said that to respond the company needed to see copies of all documents cited in the story, a request ProPublica could not fulfill without breaking faith with its sources.” continue

 

Tomorrow always arrives

why_great_companies_fr540

The Second Curve

Amazon → How the Mighty Fall — Stages: 1 Hubris Born of Success; 2 Undisciplined Pursuit of More; 3: Denial of Risk and Peril Stage; 4 Grasping for Salvation; 5 Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death. Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do.

 


 

… accept that it’s your own responsibility
to work on your development and not depend
on any one company … ↓

Managing Oneself overview #pdf

Moving toward organic design

Post-Capitalist Society PCS

Management Challenges for the 21st Century ::: Managing in the Next Society

The Management Revolution

 

line

 

 

#18 #hor2 #hor3 #lms #tln #seek #competingpatterns → #podcast

Time-life navigation insights

 

“Wisdom is about awareness.

 

If you know the road, life is easier.

 

No surprises

 

If you can see the road, life is easier.

 

At what point in your life?

Alternatives do not need to show themselves !!!!!

 

If you can discover new roads, life is richer.

 

If you know you have a choice of roads,

life is richer.” continue

Finding and selecting the pieces

 

Managing oneself is a revolution in human affairs

 

Foundations and opportunities

foundations-and-opportunities-2016-pict

The concepts above imply the need for dense reading plus
thinking broad and thinking detailed

Malcolm Forbes ↑ ::: Remembered for?

“Making a living is no longer enough.
Work has to make a life”. Druckerism

“I don't think of work as work
and play as play. It's all living.” Richard Branson

 

 

For almost nothing in our educational systems

prepares people

for the reality

in which they will live, work,

and become #effective” —

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

#Druckerism and intellectual capitalist #lms #education

Books by
Peter Drucker ::: Walter Wriston ::: Bob Buford ::: Rick Warren

 

How could an education system prepare us
for unknown and unpredictable future #realitieS?

Topics in books by Walter Wriston ::: Transnational/Tribal

A Century of Social Transformation

 

«§§§»

 

Thinking … the most fundamental,

the most important aspect of life,

the basis for everything

is totally neglected

School : no thinking subject

Book store : no thinking category

Universities : no thinking faculty
and zero possibility thinking

What about critical thinking?

Edward de Bono

Malcolm Gladwell’s exploration of
Law School Admission and other competitive realities part 1 ::: part 2 #podcast

 

economic-structure-and-calendar-500-pict

Move: The Forces Uprooting Us
is a book about
how humanity responds to complexity.

We’re facing simultaneous global risks and challenges,
such as geopolitical competition, demographic imbalances,
political upheaval,
economic dislocation, technological disruption,
and climate change—all at the same time.

These are not parallel phenomena.

In fact, they’re converging, and they’re even colliding.
And we don’t have adequate global responses
to any of these issues individually,
let alone taken together.
Even at the national level,
very few governments are actually prepared.

 

“Success always
obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it.

It always creates new realities.

It always creates,
above all,
its own and different problems …” continue

Many businessman are always
establishing new beachheads. They never ask,
“Is there a beach to the beachhead?”

 

 

Foundations : Wisdom, The Daily Drucker, Practical Thinking, Deliberate Thinking #dtao

 

The Danger of Too Much Planning

Kevin Kelly: 103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known

 

 

Make Judgement Operational within time

 

#worldview #conversation
Great minds talk about #ideas ↑ ↓,
average minds talk about events,
and small minds talk about people.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

Dinner #conversation at Downton Abbey: one and two

Prince of Tides — dinner party scene HD

A changing world — constructive design,
contribution … commando spirit needed

Make everybody a contributor

Family worldview

 

#ideas … but equally resistant to definition are
history, economics, philosophy, nation, science, and poetry —
indeed everything worthwhile
thinking, talking, and writing about
. in context

 

Adventures of a Bystander deals with people and events
that have struck me—
and still strike me—
as worth recording, worth thinking about,
worth rethinking and reflecting on,
people and events
that I had to fit
into the pattern of my own experience
and into my own fragmentary vision
of the world around me
and the world inside me. Inner world — outer world

 

What ↑ ideas, events, and people? A mind map?

#Experts speak !

Luther, Machiavelli, and the Salmon

From Knowledge to KnowledgeS

Moving Beyond Capitalism

The Three Stonecutters

Dogmatic

Dinner conversation

 

 

“If you never change your mind, why have one?”
Edward de Bono

The very rich no longer matter — economically continue

“If it works, it’s obsolete.”
Marshall McLuhan

#um “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
— George Shaw ::: Five ways to be wrong
The Bomber Mafia

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
Frank Zappa

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning,
but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”
Maria Robinson

Finishing Well

When threatened by defeat
change the situation
so it favors you

Self-development becomes self-renewal
when you walk a different path,
become aware of a different horizon,
move toward a different destination.”
Druckerism

“If you want to diagram my work, in the center is writing,
then comes consulting, then comes teaching.
I’ve never been primarily an academic. I like to teach
because that’s the way I learn.”
Peter Drucker #lms #whtmal

 

“Today is always the result of actions
and decisions taken yesterday.”
Druckerism

Luther, Machiavelli, and the Salmon

 

#55 “Tomorrow is being made today,
irrevocably in most cases.”
Druckerism

radar-differences-pict-400

“Decision making is a time machine

that synchronizes into a single time — the present
a great number of divergent time spans.

larger view

time-spans-pict-600

We are learning this only now.

Our approach still tends toward making plans for something
we will decide to do in the future,
which may be entertaining but is futile.

We can make decisions only in the present,
and yet we cannot make decisions for the present alone;
the most expedient, most opportunistic decision — let alone
the decision not to decide at all —
may commit us for a long time,
if not permanently and irrevocably.” — Chapter 11, MRE by PFD

«§§§»

#apta The unique event that changes the universe is an event “at the margin.”

By the time it becomes statistically significant, it is no longer “future”
it is, indeed, no longer even “present.”

It is already “past.”

«§§§»

“The future requires decisions-now. It imposes risk-now.
It requires action-now.”
Druckerism

“The purpose of the work on making the future (#mtf)
is not to decide what should be done tomorrow,
but what should be done today to have a tomorrow.”
Druckerism

“What do we have to do now to obtain our #objectives tomorrow?”
Druckerism

“The constant temptation of every organization is safe mediocrity.”
Druckerism

Hash tags (#) 53, 54, 55 56 and 57
form a thought space

 

“It takes years to build a management team;
but it can be destroyed in a short period of misrule.”
Druckerism

“Every company that has put its trust in financial manipulation
as a substitute for purposeful management has eventually come to grief.”
Druckerism

“The first policy — and the foundation for all the others — is to abandon yesterday.”
Druckerism

“Performance of management, therefore, means in large measure
doing a good job in preparing today’s business for the future.”
Druckerism

“The most effective way to manage change successfully
is to create it.”
Druckerism

“To know what a business is
we have to start with its purpose.”
Druckerism

“The first lesson business executives can learn
from successful nonprofits is to begin with mission.”
Druckerism #profit

It is paradoxical but profoundly true and important
principle of life
that the most likely way to reach a goal
is to be aiming not at that goal itself
but at some more ambitious goal beyond it. — Arnold Toynbee

“We are at the beginning — perhaps one-third
of the way through — a transition
from a Western-dominated international economy
to a world economy that is multi centered.”
Druckerism

“Tomorrow’s school — whether kindergarten,
university or continuing #education
has to be integrated into the community
and to be an integrator of the community.”
Druckerism

“Knowledge may be neutral,
but what we do with it is by no means neutral.”
Druckerism

 

You can’t get there from here —
you can’t get to tomorrowS from yesterdayS
Bob Embry

 

“Success breeds complacency.
Complacency breeds failure.
Only the paranoid #survive.”
Andy Grove

“Failure should always be considered a symptom
of an innovative opportunity.”
Druckerism

“Market domination produces tremendous
internal resistance against any innovation.”
Druckerism

“The first task of a leader
is to be the trumpet
that sounds the clear sound.”
Druckerism

“Your first and foremost job as a leader
is to take charge of your own energy
and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.”
Druckerism

“In cost control, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Druckerism

“It is perhaps the biggest job of the modern corporation —
to find a synthesis between justice and dignity,
between equality of opportunities and
social status and function.”
Druckerism

“Just as modern money penetrated the whole world
within less than a century and
totally changed people’s lives and aspirations,
we can safely assume that information now penetrates everywhere.”
Druckerism

“That one can truly manage other people
is by no means adequately proven.
But one can always manage oneself.
Indeed, executives who do not manage themselves for effectiveness
cannot possibly expect to manage their associates and subordinates.”
Druckerism

“The better a person is,
the more mistakes they will make—
for the more new things they will try.”
Druckerism

“Information is what holds an organization together
and information is what
makes individual knowledge workers effective.”
Druckerism

“Every decision is risky:
it is a commitment of present resources
to an uncertain and unknown future.”
Druckerism

“The customer is the foundation of a business
and keeps it in existence.”
Druckerism

“Management has no choice but to anticipate the future,
to attempt to mold it,
and to balance short-range and long-range goals.”
Druckerism

“Corporations once built to last like pyramids
are now more like tents.
Tomorrow they’re gone or in turmoil.”
Druckerism → Long years of profound change

“A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation
with the bricks that others throw at him or her.”
David Brinkley

“We’ve also moved from a society in which capital was its scarce resource
into one in which knowledge is the scarce resource.
If you have the knowledge, you can get the money.”
Druckerism

“Knowledge differs from all other means of production in that it
cannot be inherited or bequeathed. It has to be acquired
anew by every individual, and everyone
starts out with the same total ignorance.”
Druckerism

“Management will have to learn to run, a the same time,
an existing managerial organization and a new innovative one”
Druckerism

“How much business can we expect in this new company
if we are successful?
And how much front-end investment
is then justified?”
Druckerism

#tspans “You have to produce #results in the short term.
But you also have to produce results in the long term.
And the long term is not simply the adding up of short terms.”
Druckerism

“The #critical feature of a knowledge workforce is
that its workers are not labor, they are capital.”
Druckerism

“There is a great deal said and written these days about
the technological impacts of information. But perhaps
its social impacts are greater still, and more important.”
Druckerism

“We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: If you’ve
got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession,
regardless of where you started out.”
Druckerism

“I’ve learned from experience
that the greater part of our happiness or misery
depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.”
Martha Washington

“Effective executives concentrate on what is important.
They are not overly impressed by speed in decision making.”
Druckerism

“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new #ideas
as in escaping from old ones.”
John Maynard Keynes

“I’ve learned to run with success and not worry too much about non-success.
You know there’s an old saying ‘At first if you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.’
It’s wrong.
If at first you don’t succeed, try once more,
and then try something else.” Druckerism

“It is futile to try to guess
what products and processes the future will want.
But it is possible
to make up one’s mind what #idea
one wants to make a reality in the future,
and to build a different business
on such an idea.” Druckerism

“Keep on going
and the chances are you will stumble on something,
perhaps when you are least expecting it.
I have never heard of
anyone stumbling on something sitting down.”
Charles F. Kettering

“All #growth depends upon activity.
There is no development physically or intellectually without effort,
and effort means work.”
Calvin Coolidge

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill

“Practically no product or service any longer
has either a single specific end-use or application, or its own market.”
Druckerism

The beacons of productivity and innovation must be our guideposts
Druckerism

“Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?”
Abraham Lincoln

“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember;
involve me and I’ll understand.”
Chinese Proverb

“Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.”
Washington Irving

“People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world,
are the ones who do.”
Apple

“Strength does not come from physical capacity.
It comes from an indomitable will.”
Mohandas Gandhi

“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined,
and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”
Stephen Hawking

“What we #see depends mainly on what we look for.”
Sir John Lubbock

“Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others
as what he does from day to day to lead himself.”
Thomas J. Watson Sr.

“Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness.
Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.”
Scott Adams

“Management is about human beings.
Its task is to make people capable of joint performance,
to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.”
Druckerism

“All management books, including those I have written,
focus on managing other people.
But you cannot manage other people unless you manage yourself first.”
Druckerism

“We perceive, as a rule, what we expect to perceive.
We #see largely what we expect to #see, and we hear largely
what we expect to hear.”
Druckerism

“The people who keep themselves alive and growing
also build a review of their performance into their work.”
Druckerism

“The most effective road to self-renewal is to
look for the unexpected success
and run with it.”
Druckerism

“Above all, effective executives treat change as an opportunity
rather than a threat.”
Druckerism

“It is the very nature of knowledge that it changes fast
and that today’s certainties will be tomorrow’s absurdities.”
Druckerism

“Risk failure. Risk ridicule. Risk shame. Risk criticism.
Risk snorts of derision. Risk embarrassment, mockery, and rejection.
But do not, do not, do not risk losing who you are.
Be your own embarrassment.
Don’t be someone else’s false ideal.”

“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.”
Naguib Mahfouz

“Prosperity and #growth come only to the business
that systematically finds and exploits its potential.”
Druckerism

“Innovative companies know that returns on #innovation
behave radically differently from returns in the ongoing business.”
Druckerism

“Information has to be organized to challenge a company’s strategy.”
Druckerism

Innovation is thus not only opportunity.
It is not only risk. It is first and foremost responsibility.”
Druckerism

“To be effective, an innovation has to be simple, and
it has to be focused.”
Druckerism

“Forget past mistakes. Forget failures.
Forget everything except what you’re going to do now
and do it.”
Will Durant

“Learning and teaching are going to be more deeply affected
by the new availability of information
than any other area of human life.”
Druckerism

“If you don’t encounter setbacks in your career,
if you don’t have doubts and disappointments,
let me tell you, you’re not dreaming big enough.”
Michael Bloomberg

“Just because people are doing extraordinary things
doesn’t mean they’re not ordinary people.”
Laird Hamilton

“I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Thomas Edison

“I am always doing that which I cannot do,
in order that I may learn how to do it.”
Pablo Picasso

“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
Henry Ford

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Maya Angelou

“Never let your memories be greater than your dreams.”
Doug Ivester

“We either make ourselves miserable
or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.”
Carlos Castaneda

Innovation → “The characteristic of the innovator
is the ability to envisage as a system
what to others are unrelated, separate elements.”
Druckerism

“Most innovations in public-service institutions
are imposed on them either by outsiders or by catastrophe.”
Druckerism

“Knowledge workers cannot be satisfied with
work that is only a livelihood.”
Druckerism

“Organizations are wise to be strategic
and proactive in presenting themselves to the public.
If they do not, the public will define their brand for them.”
Mary Gendron

“It is management’s job
to get the right regulation enacted.”
Druckerism

“Whether competing for business, attention, or contributions,
the experience needs to excite the customer
enough to last beyond that moment of engagement
in a vivid way that can be shared enthusiastically.”
Kevin Daum

“The purpose of an organization is to enable
common men to do uncommon things.”
Druckerism

“The test of an innovation is whether it creates value.”
Druckerism

“Innovation, almost by definition, has to be decentralized, ad hoc, autonomous.”
Drucker

“Identify a clear WHY or purpose statement about why change, adaptiveness, and
innovation are important to the organization to ignite people’s intrinsic motivation.”
Janet Sernack

“Just as no one learns as much about a subject as the person
who is forced to teach it, no one develops as much
as the person who is trying to help others to develop themselves.”
Druckerism

“The man who fails to perform must be relocated or let go.
“Management owes this … to the man himself.”
Druckerism

“Predicting the future #ptf
can only get you into trouble.

The task is
to manage what is there
and to work to create
what could
and should be.”
Druckerism

“What we call the Information Revolution is actually a Knowledge Revolution.”
Druckerism

“It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one,
than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.”
Whitney Young

“Knowledge is nonhierarchical.
Either it is relevant in a given situation, or it is not.”
Druckerism

“I have always been attracted to the unexpected success;
in my experience, it holds the key to understanding.”
Druckerism

#wlh
“Successful careers develop when people are
prepared for opportunities
because they know their strengths,
their method of work, and
their values.
Knowing where you belong
can transform you into an outstanding performer.”
Druckerism

“Would the roof cave in if we stopped doing this work altogether?”
Druckerism

“Key activities are not to be found in books.
They emerge from #analysis of the specific enterprise.”
Druckerism

Destiny is a name often given in retrospect
to choices that had dramatic #consequences. — J.K. Rowling

“Plans are worthless; but planning is invaluable.”
Druckerism

“In appraising themselves,
people tend to be either too #critical or not critical enough.”
Druckerism

“One survives problems by
making them irrelevant because of success.”
Druckerism

“Economic expansion and increase are not aims in themselves.
They make sense only as means to a social end.”
Druckerism

In the case of a police search, whether it is your car,
your home, or your briefcase, the police officer is
not looking for evidence to exonerate you from some
crime; they are looking for evidence to charge you
with a crime. Therefore, I do not consent to a
search without a warrant
.

If the officer needs to search your car, the
officer can apply for a search warrant. This, in
many cases, can be done over the telephone; This is
called a telephonic search warrant. If, on the
other hand, the officer is on a hunting and fishing
expedition, then they should fish somewhere else;
this lake is closed!

It's not possible that allowing a search will
somehow help you.

“Learn to manage your time.
The secret is not to do the five million things
that do not need to be done and will never be missed.”
Druckerism — Try a #page-search for the word “need”

“Individuals who can navigate this landscape, who can shift fluidly
from one source of information to another,
who can pull #ideas from multiple areas,
synthesizing them into groundbreaking innovations and discoveries,
are better suited for the times we live in.”
Dale Griffiths Stamos

“Even if you’re on the right track,
you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
Will Rogers

“Don’t just be yourself. Be all of yourself.
Don’t just live. Be that other thing connected to death.
Be life.”
Joss Whedon

“Always remember, your focus determines your #reality.”
George Lucas

“It is paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life
that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming
not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.”
Arnold Toynbee

“Not only can you not plan the impact you’re going to have,
you often won’t recognize it when you’re having it.”
Dick Costolo

“Either you run the day, or the day runs you.”
Jim Rohn

“The effective people I know simply discipline themselves
to have enough time for thinking.”
Druckerism

Freakonomics — The hidden side of everything is largely BS

“What do you want to be remembered for?”
Druckerism

Peter Drucker — my life as a knowledge worker #lms #whtmal

thinking broad and thinking detailed

 

Could we be embedded within ↑ ↓ just ONE dynamic system moving in time?

 

line

 

#34 #incc Imagining NAVIGATION course changes

 

NAVIGATION: “The process or activity of accurately ascertaining one’s position and planning and following a route” — Oxford Languages

 

Imagine it’s 1910 and you’re 21 years old.

Your parents fit in one of the following resource groups:

dirt poor, barely struggling to survive;

are employed by a major institution; or

are wealthy enough to be “truly independent”. Drucker’s childhood

 

See chapter 8: Rice Paddies and Math Tests in Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

 

You are living in one of the following #cities:

New York City, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow, Vienna, a city in South Vietnam, a city in North Vietnam, Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, or a random, isolated small town.

 

sidebar

 

World's busiest cities on Netflix — BBC → GOOGLE: world map with population ::: world map with population density ::: world map points of interest

 

main brainroad continues

 

#whtmal You have become aware of the NEED for #self-development.

 

Under each of the location and possible resource situations above,
what time investments
would you enter in your calendar

for the upcoming yearS?

 

Why bother?

 

Seeking guidance?

 

How can the individual survive?

 

He liberated me

 

Those who want to live a fulfilling life

 

Try adding different skin colors, ethnicities or tribal identities
to the thinking exercise above

 

How would these calendar entries
alter your situation
as you mature
and develop
and as time and #reality unfold?

 

Feedback #analysis applies to all important action

 

Three types of intelligence and
naming people behaviors
#seek

“The better a person is,
the more mistakes they will make—
for the more new things they will try.”
Druckerism

Most mistakes in thinking are …

Managing Oneself

The Vanishing East

Dealing with risk and uncertainty

Management World View

Life directions

radar-differences-pict-400

#Intelligence #Information #Thinking overview #pdf ::: related brainroad

Try a #page-search for the word “aim

 

If you changed the starting point
for this mental exercise
to 1940, 1960, 1980, 2000, today or 2030,
what would you change?

How would some
ecological awareness
be helpful?

The love letters of Walter Bagehot and Eliza Wilson #pdf

Karen Blixen

Lovers in Auschwitz, Reunited 72 Years Later.
He Had One Question.
#pdf

The Educational Revolution circa 1957

The end of loyalty

Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity

Attention directing tools

 

How could you
alter your calendar procedure
to minimize
the repeated rescheduling
of important actions?

 

Taking the 77 Important Truths I've Learned About Life into account,
how would they change
what you put in your calendar?

How can a person learn to #see
the difference between bull-shit artists
and genuinely informed people?

 

Feedback #analysis applies to all important action

 

The Daily Drucker

 

#wwh What happens if a region, nation, city, organization, ethnic group or whatever keeps repeating last week over and over again?

What would happen if a 6 year old kept repeating last week over and over again?

Where would that 6 year old be at age 75

What if the individual involved went to any of the top schools on the US News and World Report list of best universities?

Where could evidence be found? IBM?

What would happen if part of a region, nation, city, organization, kept repeating last week over and over again while another entity was trying to design a way forward?

Now coming from the opposite direction what if everyone on the planet were not in a repeat loop but heading in different directions?

How can the Six Thinking Hats arrive at an effective course of action if the underlying information/knowledge is based in yesterday?

 

 

# 181 Judgement

“We can only move through life because the judgement of ‘recognition’ tells us at every moment

what things are;

what things to #seek; #lms

what things to #avoid; #lms

what things to #use as means to get other things. #lms

Without judgement we could not proceed at all .


The danger lies in the harsh, quick and rigid judgements that we require of ourselves and that are required by our traditional thinking habits .

Too often we use stereotypes to ease our judgement.

Too often we put up false either/or choices to force ourselves, or others, into a certain position .

All this is an integral part of the Gang of Three thinking system, with its emphasis on:

rejection of the ‘untruth’

the search for absolutes

and an inclusion/ exclusion box type of logic with the avoidance of contradiction.

This is an excellent system for many purposes but it has its limits and its dangers.

In a changing world the ‘boxes’ derived from the past may no longer be adequate to describe a changed present .


The dangers of judgement lie both in the rejection aspect and in the acceptance aspect .

Something rejected drops out of attention and perception .

It is no longer an ingredient in our thinking .

Something accepted may be accepted too wholeheartedly, when acceptance should be

milder ,  

doubtful or  

related to circumstances .

While acknowledging the practicality of simplistic black/white judgements, most people are coming to realize that the world does not work that way.

If you choose to take a black and white photograph of the world this does not mean that the world has no colors.


Instead of judgement the emphasis is on ‘design’ .

How do we put things together in order to satisfy our values and needs ?

Design may be much more difficult than judgement but the results will be better .


Many problems can be solved by analysis .

You identify the cause of the problem and then you seek to remove that cause .

But when the cause cannot be found or, if found, cannot be removed, then we are paralyzed because more and more #analysis will not solve that problem.

We need to be able to ‘ design the way forward ’, leaving the cause in place .

#ihong While we are excellent at #analysis we are not nearly so expert at #design — because design requires idea creativity .” continue

 

Consider ALL Factors

 

See BrainroadS and image at the top of this page

Revisionist History : Saigon, 1965 ::: The Prime Minister and the Prof

Up to Poverty ::: The Vanishing East

Hong Kong & photography: 1910 vs. more recent ↓

hong-kong-then-now

Economic content & structure connected to “life in time” ↑ ↓ (larger ↓)

The Poverty of Economic Theory #pdf

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

the real pattern of economic activity

larger composite view ↑ ::: Economic & content and structure ::: Adoption rates: one & two

The Forces Creating a New Geography of Opportunity?

 

The Management Revolution ↑ ::: Developing countries

 

The Individual in Entrepreneurial Society

The End of Loyalty and IBM’s seniority mix fix

Managing Oneself overview — a revolution in human affairs #pdf

Now, most of us, even those of us with modest endowments, will have to learn to manage ourselves.

We will have to learn to develop ourselves.

Will have to place ourselves where we can make the greatest contribution.

And we will have to stay mentally alert and engaged during a 50-year working life, which means knowing how and when to change the work we do.

Managing Oneself is a REVOLUTION in human affairs.



It requires new and unprecedented things from the individual, and especially from the knowledge worker.

For in effect it demands that each knowledge worker think and behave as a Chief Executive Officer.

Further, the shift from manual workers who do as they are told — either by the task or the boss — to knowledge workers who have to manage themselves profoundly challenges social structure.

It also requires an almost 180-degree change in the knowledge workers' thoughts and actions from what most of us — even of the younger generation — still take for granted as the way to think and the way to act.



Managing Oneself is based on the very opposite realities : Workers are likely to outlive organizations, and the knowledge worker has mobility.

grail-diary-2019-02-04-900_300x231

What’s the focus of your diary? — Water logic?

 

For almost nothing in our educational systems

prepares people

for the reality

in which they will live, work,

and become #effective” —

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

Druckerism and intellectual capitalist #lms #education

How could an education system prepare us
for unknown and unpredictable future #realitieS?

Topics in books by Walter Wriston ::: Transnational/Tribal

A Century of Social Transformation

 

«§§§»

 

Thinking … the most fundamental,

the most important aspect of life,

the basis for everything

is totally neglected

School : no thinking subject

Book store : no thinking category

Universities : no thinking faculty
and zero possibility thinking

What about critical thinking?

Edward de Bono

 

line

 

#77

Every social problem is an opportunity#apta

 

 

Good intentions aren’t enough;

define

the results

you want
.

#Results should not to be confused with
#outcomes which are a polar opposite

 

«§§§»

 

The number of nonprofits and charitable organizations in this country has exploded in the past several years, but many of them get poor #results, Drucker said, because “they don’t ask about results, and they don’t know what results they want in the first place.

They mean well and they have the best of intentions, but the only thing good intentions are for (as the maxim says) is to pave the road to hell.”

To achieve the best results, Drucker said people must ask the right questions (#caf #rq) and then partner with others who have the expertise, knowledge, and discipline to get the right results. #caf (consider all factors) #profit #volunteer

 

“I think the public may have given up on many of our public institutions because of a feeling that these people have their jobs, their security, their tenure, their Civil Service regulations; but they’ve really stopped trying.

They’re just doing what they did last week and last year and five years ago, whether it works or not.” —ALBERT SHANKER continue

 

See Managing the Non-Profit Organization

 

Without an effective mission statement
there will be no performance
continue

 

Social Needs and Business Opportunities

 

Beware of guttersnipes

 

«§§§»

 

The Temptation to Do Good

Public-service institutions are out to maximize rather than to optimize.

The most important obstacle to innovation is that public-service institutions exist, after all, to “do good.”

This means that they tend to see their mission as a moral absolute rather than as economic and subject to a cost/benefit calculus.

Economics always seeks a different allocation of the same resources to obtain a higher yield.

In the public-service institution, there is no such thing as a higher yield.

If one is “doing good,” then there is no “better.”

Indeed, failure to attain objectives in the quest for a “good” only means that efforts need to be redoubled.

“Our mission will not be completed,” asserts the head of the Crusade Against Hunger, “as long as there is one child on the earth going to bed hungry.”

If he were to say, “Our mission will be completed if the largest possible number of children that can be reached through existing distribution channels get enough to eat not to be stunted,” he would be booted out of office.

But if the goal is maximization, it can never be attained.

Indeed, the closer one comes toward attaining one’s objective, the more efforts are called for.

For, once optimization has been reached, additional costs go up exponentially while additional results fall off exponentially.

The closer a public-service institution comes to attaining its objectives, therefore, the more frustrated it will be and the harder it will work on what it is already doing. — The Daily Drucker

 

«§§§»

 

Citizenship Through the Social Sector #seek

#worldview “In a transition period, the number of people in need always grows.

There are the huge masses of refugees all over the globe, victims of war and social upheaval, of racial, ethnic, political, and #religious persecution, of government incompetence and of government cruelty.

illegal-border-crossing-pict-600

Even in the most settled and stable societies

people will be

left behind

in the shift to knowledge work
.

It takes a generation or two before a society and its population catch up with radical changes in the composition of the work force and in the demands for skills and #knowledge.

It takes some time—the best part of a generation, judging by historical experience—before the productivity of service workers can be raised sufficiently to provide them with a “middle-class” standard of living.” citizenship through the social sector

 

«§§§»

 

“Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it.

It always creates new realities.

It always creates, above all, its own and different problems …” continue

 

11th-global-peter-drucker-forum-pict-stroke-t-600

The Management Revolution ↑ ::: Post-capitalist executive

 

Creating Tomorrow’s Society Of Citizens and Refining the Mission Statement

You have vital judgments ahead: whether to change the mission, whether to abandon programs that have outlived their usefulness and concentrate resources elsewhere, how to match opportunities with your competence and commitment, how you will build community and change lives.

Self-assessment is the first action requirement of leadership: the constant re-sharpening, constant refocusing, never being really satisfied.

And the time to do this is when you are successful.

If you wait until things start to go down, then it’s very difficult.

 

«§§§»

 

star #caf Consider ALL Factors → What need’s doing?

star Aim high (#impact)

star How to guarantee non-performance (#impact)

star The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Nonprofit Organization

star What Results Should You Expect? — A Users’ Guide to MBO

star Managing Service Institutions in the Society of Organizations

star Entrepreneurship in the Public-Service Institution

star The Wisdom of Peter Drucker

star Life 2.0

star Allocating your life

star Without an effective mission there will be no results

star Managing Oneself ← a revolution in human affairs

star Creating Tomorrow’s Society Of Citizens

star Purposeful Innovation (try a page search for “purpose” in Innovation and Entrepreneurship ) #profit

 

No one can guarantee the performance

of a public service program
.

But we know how to ensure non-performance

with absolute certainty. ↓

Part I: Have a Lofty Objective (details below) ::: Try to Do Several Things at Once :::
Believe That "Fat is Beautiful" ::: Don't experiment, be dogmatic :::
Make sure that you will not learn from experience ::: Inability to Abandon :::

Part II: Avoiding These Six Deadly Sins is the Prerequisite for Performance and Results → What Results Should You Expect? — A Users' Guide to MBO :::

Part III: The Lack of Concern With Performance in Public Administration Theory



#worldview
Have a lofty objective

… To use such statements as “objectives”
thus makes sure
that no effective work
will be done.

For work is
always specific,
always mundane,
always focused.

Yet without work
there is non-performance.

To have a chance at performance,
a program needs
clear targets,
the attainment of which
can be
measured,
appraised,
or at least judged.

Targets and measurements are very different concepts

How To Guarantee Non-Performance

 

 

#00 #wlh

Continuing Turmoil
#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

Books by
Peter Drucker ::: Walter Wriston ::: Bob Buford ::: Rick Warren

 

 

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

picture-technology-pict-no-reflect-400

sound-players-pict-no-reflect-400

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-400

 

See #lms1 for context ↓

harvest-to-action-2015-pict-t-600

 

“The twenty-first century

will surely be one of continuing

social, economic, and political turmoil and challenge
,

at least in its early decades. (#concept #impact #work-approach?)




The Age of Social Transformations

is not over yet.


And the challenges looming ahead

may be more serious and more daunting still

than those posed by the social transformations that have already happened, the

social transformations
of the twentieth century
.

 

Hong Kong — then and now

hong-kong-then-now

 

… Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve

these new and looming problems of tomorrow

unless we first address

the challenges

posed by the developments

that are already

accomplished #facts
,

the developments reported in the earlier sections of this essay. ↓

star Introduction to a A Century of Social Transformation

star The Social Structure and Its Transformations

star The Rise and Fall of the Blue-Collar Worker

star The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

star The Emerging Knowledge Society

star How Knowledges Work

star The Employee Society

star What Is an Employee?

star The Social Sector

star Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity

star School and #Education as Society’s Center (not the present system)

star The Competitive Knowledge Economy

star How Can Government Function?

star Conclusion: The Priority Tasks — The Need for Social and Political Innovations

 

 

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

Every social problem is an opportunity

 

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

 

 

Why you NEED many competing mental patterns

 

How can the Individual Survive? ::: The Individual in Entrepreneurial Society

 

Citizenship through the social sector and
subsequent topics …
#parallel

 

line

 

Thoughts on knowledge and
knowledge productivity

 

radar-differences-pict-600

On the road ahead ↑, there will be multiple, multiple new realitieS

 

 

#knowledge1 #know1 #mmit
THE knowledge

we now

consider knowledge


proves itself in action
. ↑ ↓

 

picture-technology-pict-no-reflect-400

What we mean by knowledge

is

information in action,

information focused on results. …



These results are seen outside the person —

in society and economy, or

in the advancement of knowledge itself.” ↓ — Druckerism (#impact) #mbr

 

 

That knowledge has become THE resource rather that A resource is what makes our society post-capitalist continue

 

The leading social groups of the knowledge society

 

knowledge industries, work, worker

 

Knowledge vs. skill

 

Knowledge — ever changing

 

 

“But knowledge has another very peculiar characteristic, which is that the important new advances do not come out of the specialist’s discipline

They come from the outside.” continue

 

 

Knowledge exists only in application

 

“Whatever the base, knowledge in application is specialized.

It is always specific, and therefore, not applicable to anything else.” continue

 

Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art.

It is a practice.

It has a knowledge base, of course, which this book attempts to present in organized fashion.

But as in all practices, medicine, for instance, or engineering, knowledge in entrepreneurship is a means to an end.

Indeed, what constitutes knowledge in a practice is largely defined by the ends, that is, by the practice.

 

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For the educated person in the nineteenth century, technés were not knowledge.

They were already taught in the university and had become “disciplines.”

Their practitioners were “professionals,” rather than “tradesmen” or “artisans.”

But they were not part of the liberal arts or the Allgemeine Bildung, and thus not part of knowledge.

University degrees in technés go back a long way: in Europe, both the law degree and the medical degree as far as the thirteenth century.

And on the Continent and in America — though not in England — the new engineering degree (first awarded in Napoleon’s France a year or two before 1800) soon became socially accepted.

Most people who were considered “educated” made their living practicing a techné whether as lawyers, physicians, engineers, geologists, or increasingly in business (only in England was there esteem for the “gentleman” without occupation).

But their job or their profession was seen as a “living,” not a “life.”

Outside their offices, the techné practitioners did not talk about their work or even about their disciplines.

That was “shop talk”; the Germans sneered at it as “Fachsimpeln.”

It was even more derided in France: anyone who indulged in shop talk there was considered a boor and a bore, and promptly taken off the invitation lists of polite society.

But now that the technés have become knowledges in the plural, they have to be integrated into knowledge.

The technés have to become part of what it means to be an educated person.

The fact that the liberal arts curriculum they enjoyed so much in their college years refuses to attempt this is the reason why today’s students repudiate it a few years later.

They feel let down, even betrayed.

They have good reason to feel that way.

Liberal arts and Allgemeine Bildung which do not integrate the knowledges into a “universe of knowledge” are neither “liberal” nor “Bildung.”

They fall down on their first task: to create mutual understanding, that “universe of discourse” without which there can be no civilization.

Instead of uniting, such disciplines only fragment.

We neither need nor will get “polymaths” who are at home in many knowledges; in fact, we will probably become even more specialized.

But what we do need — and what will define the educated person in the knowledge society — is the ability to understand the various knowledges.

What is each one about?

What is it trying to do?

What are its central concerns and theories?

What major new insights has it produced?

What are its important areas of ignorance, its problems, its challenges?

Without such understanding, the knowledges themselves will become sterile, will indeed cease to be “knowledges.”

They will become intellectually arrogant and unproductive.

For the major new insights in every one of the specialized knowledges arise out of another, separate specialty, out of another one of the knowledges.

Both economics and meteorology are being transformed at present by the new mathematics of Chaos theory.

Geology is being profoundly changed by the physics of matter, archaeology by the genetics of DNA typing, history by psychological, statistical, and technological analyzes and techniques.

An American, James M. Buchanan (b. 1919), received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economics for applying recent economic theory to the political process and thereby standing on their heads the assumptions and theories on which political scientists had based their work for over a century.

The specialists have to take responsibility for making both themselves and their specialty understood.

The media, whether magazines, movies, or television, have a crucial role to play.

But they cannot do the job by themselves.

Nor can any other kind of popularization.

Specialties must be understood for what they are: serious, rigorous, demanding disciplines.

This requires that the leaders in each of the knowledges, beginning with the leading scholars in each field, must take on the hard work of defining what it is they do.

There is no “Queen of the Knowledges” in the knowledge society.

All knowledges are equally valuable; all knowledges, in the words of the great medieval saint and philosopher St. Bohaventura, lead equally to the truth.

But to make them paths to truth, paths to knowledge, has to be the responsibility of the men and women who own these knowledges.

Collectively, they hold knowledge in trust.

 

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The inherent weaknesses in all possible information systems

 

Moving beyond capitalism

 

see Chapter 10 ::: The future … already happened ::: Making the future :::

Research management

… the importance of accessing, interpreting, connecting, and translating knowledge

Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity

 

product-technology-adoption-pict

Knowledge has become THE key resource ::: Transnational ::: Portable ::: EVER Changing ::: Political issues ::: World economy ::: Increasingly competitive environment ::: The key to domestic prosperity ::: Knowledge knows no boundaries → And with knowledge becoming the key resource, there is only a world economy, even though the individual organization in its daily activities operates within a national, regional, or even a local setting continue

 

That knowledge has become THE resource rather that A resource is what makes continue

 

Moving beyond capitalism

 

Knowledge exists only in application ↓ ↑

sound-players-pict-600

From Progress to Innovation #pdf

 

 

ONLY CONNECT CONNECT CONNECT … !!!

 

Carry on - connect up

 

The productivity of knowledge

requires

increasing the yield

from what is known


whether by the individual or by the group.

 

There is an old American story of the farmer
who turns down a proposal
for a more productive farming method
by saying,

“I already know how to farm
twice as well as I do.”

 

#64 Most of us

(perhaps all of us)

know many times more

than we put to use.

 

The main reason

is that

we do not

mobilize

the multiple knowledges

we possess
.



We do not

use knowledgeS

as part of one toolbox.

 

Instead of asking:
What do I know,
what have I learned,
that might apply to this task?

we tend to classify tasks
in terms of specialized knowledge areas.

 

 

Peter Drucker: Social Ecologist

An ecological view

What needs doing? Here and here

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

the real pattern of economic activity

larger composite view ↑ ::: Economic & content and structure ::: Adoption rates: one & two

The Forces Creating a New Geography of Opportunity?

 

Again and again in working with executives
I find that a given challenge
in organizational structure, for instance,
or in technology
yields to knowledge
the executives already possess:

They may have acquired it,
for instance,
in an economics course at the university.”

Of course, I know that,” is the standard response,
“but it’s economics, not management.”

 

… This is a purely arbitrary distinction —
necessary perhaps
to learn and to teach
a “subject,”

but irrelevant as a definition

of what knowledge is

and what it can do ↓
.

 

sidebar

 

economic-structure-and-calendar-500-pict

↑ ↓

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

Finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp



Knowledge-Based Management

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400


The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

 

What’s your meta-system?

#fktk From knowledge to knowledgeS

Knowledge exists only in application

Knowledge and technology #pdf

 

Knowledge: Its Economics and Its Productivity

 

Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity

 

main brainroad continues

 

 

#47 #wlh The way we traditionally arrange

our businesses, government agencies, and universities

further encourages the tendency to believe that

the purpose of the tools

is to adorn the toolbox

rather than

to do work.

 

Peter Drucker: Social Ecologist

An ecological view

 

In learning and teaching, we do have to focus on the tool .

 

In usage,
we have to focus
on the end result,
on the task,
on the work
.

 

sidebar

 

For almost nothing in our educational systems

prepares people

for the reality

in which they will live, work,

and become #effective” —

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

Druckerism and intellectual capitalist #lms #education

How could an education system prepare
us for unknown and unpredictable future #realitieS?

Topics in books by Walter Wriston ::: Transnational/Tribal

A Century of Social Transformation


radar-differences-pict-400

11th-global-peter-drucker-forum-pict-stroke-t-600

 

The Management Revolution ↑ ::: Post-capitalist executive

Global Peter Drucker Forum ::: Charles Handy → Starting small fires

Hofburg ↑ ↓

hofburg-004-500w

larger view one ::: two ::: three

 

“The traditional notion in education
that information is sufficient
is old-fashioned and dangerous.”

Edward de BonoIntelligence ::: Information ::: Thinking

 

main brainroad continues

 

Only connect was the constant admonition of a great English novelist, E.M. Forster.

 

Finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

 

sidebar

 

connections ↓

Young people not knowing how to connect :::
Intelligence trap ::: Logic bubble


radar-differences-pict-400

Up to poverty

The vanishing east

The manager and the moron

Luther, Machiavelli, and the Salmon

A broad #sda #worldview

For each ↑ ↓ thought fragment, concept, illustration,
link, or text block … continue

 

main brainroad continues

 

It has always been the hallmark of the artist, but equally of the great scientist — of a Darwin, a Bohr, an Einstein.

At their level, the capacity to connect may be inborn and part of that mystery we call “genius.”

But to a large extent, the ability to connect and thus to raise the yield of existing ↓ knowledge (whether for an individual, for a team, or for the entire organization) is learnable. ↓ …

Finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

radar-differences-pict-600

Knowledges existing at various point in time ↓ ↑

sound-players-pict-600

… Eventually, it should become teachable. continue

 

Knowledge and Research management

 

Knowledge economy and knowledge polity

 

Knowledge and technology
#pdf #apta #impact #lter #knowledge #technology #situation #mbr

 

Now we are increasingly organizing knowledge and the search for it around areas of application (at a point in time) rather than around the subject areas of disciplines.

Interdisciplinary work has grown everywhere.

This is a symptom of the shift in the meaning of knowledge from an end in itself to a resource, that is, a means to some result.

 

Finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

The explorer
attention-ogp-pict-trans-40

 


 

“To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to #SEE both the forest and the tree. We will have to learn to connect.” — Druckerism #apta

¶ ¶ ¶

#research “There is, of course, a place for academic intellectualizing and passive scholarship (which consists of repeating what others have repeated about still yet others) but that is only a small part of thinking — but valuable nevertheless.” EDB

¶ ¶ ¶

“There are risk and cost to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risk and cost of comfortable inaction.” — John F. Kennedy

 

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#worldview #48 #wlh

“Three stonecutters”
Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices by Peter Drucker

 

Most mistakes in THINKING
are mistakes in perception
1. Seeing only part of the picture
2. Jumping to conclusions
3. Misinterpretation caused by feelings

The New Pluralism

 

“An old story tells of three stonecutters who were asked what they were doing.

The first replied, “I am making a living.”

The second kept on hammering while he said, “I am doing the best job of stonecutting in the entire country.”

 

The third one looked up with a visionary gleam in his eyes and said, I am building a cathedral.”


 

The third man is, of course, the true manager.

 

#worldview People of high #effectiveness are conspicuous by their absence in executive jobs continue

 

The first man knows what he wants to get out of the work and manages to do so.

He is likely to give a “fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.”

But he is not a manager and will never be one.

 

It is the second man who is a problem.

Workmanship is essential: in fact, an organization demoralizes if it does not demand of its members the highest workmanship they are capable of.

But there is always a danger that the true workman, the true professional, will believe that he is accomplishing something when in effect he is just polishing stones or collecting footnotes.

Workmanship must be encouraged in the business enterprise.

But it must always be related to the needs of the whole.


sidebar

 

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

 

The Second Curve

 

why_great_companies_fr540

 

What Executives Should Remember ::: html ::: AMZ

Realities

Management Worldviews

The society of organizations

Knowledge economy and knowledge polity

 

main brainroad continues

 

The majority of managers and of career professionals in any business enterprise are, like the second man, concerned with specialized work.

True, the number of functional managers should always be kept at a minimum, and there should be the largest possible number of “general” managers who manage an integrated business and are directly responsible for its performance and results.

 

The way we organize

 

Even with the utmost application of this principle the great bulk of managers will work in functional jobs, however.


 

sidebar

 

#sda

The management revolution

The rest they contract out

What executives should remember (Audible)

Organization life expectancies

Trans/Tribal

Taking relationship responsibility

The responsibility-based organization

Can we then say anything constructive about communication?

Executive realities

The employee society

Where do I begin to read Drucker?

Operacy — the thinking that goes into doing

Serious Creativity

 

main brainroad continues

 

A man’s habits as a manager, his vision and his values, are usually formed while he does functional and specialized work.

It is essential that the functional specialist develop high standards of workmanship, that he strive to be “the best stonecutter in the country.”

For work without high standards is dishonest; it corrupts the man himself and those around him.

Emphasis on, and drive for, workmanship produces innovations and advances in every area of management.

That managers strive to do “professional personnel management,” to run “the most up-to-date plant,” to do “truly scientific market research,” to “put in the most modern accounting system,” or to do “perfect engineering” must be encouraged.


But this striving for professional workmanship in functional and specialized work is also a danger.

It tends to divert a man’s vision and efforts from the goals of the business.

 

sidebar

 

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

 

The Second Curve

 

why_great_companies_fr540

 

What Executives Should Remember ::: html ::: AMZ

Realities

Management Worldviews

The society of organizations

Knowledge economy and knowledge polity

 

main brainroad continues

 

The functional work becomes an end in itself.

In far too many instances the functional manager no longer measures his performance by its contribution to the enterprise but only by his own professional criteria of workmanship.

He tends to appraise his subordinates by their craftsmanship and to reward and to promote them accordingly.

He resents demands made on him for the sake of business performance as interference with “good engineering,” “smooth production,” or “hard-hitting selling.”

The functional manager’s legitimate desire for workmanship becomes, unless counterbalanced, a centrifugal force which tears the enterprise apart and converts it into a loose confederation of functional empires, each concerned only with its own craft, each jealously guarding its own “secrets,” each bent on enlarging its own domain rather than on building the business.


This danger is being greatly intensified by the technological and social changes now under way.

The number of highly educated specialists working in the business enterprise is increasing tremendously.

And so will the level of workmanship demanded of these specialists.

Our work force is increasingly becoming an “educated” work force in which the majority make their contribution in the form of specialized knowledge.

“Whereas knowledge is the ability to apply information to specific work and performance through use of the brain and skill of the hands.” — Managing for Results by Peter Drucker

The tendency to make the craft or function an end in itself will therefore become even more marked than it is today.

But at the same time the new technology will demand much closer coordination between specialists.

It will demand that functional men, even at the lowest management level, see the business as a whole and understand what it requires of them.

The new technology will need both the drive for excellence in workmanship and the consistent direction of managers at all levels toward the common goal.


That university teachers no longer see the university as their “home” but rather give allegiance to their specialization is considered an important reason for the crisis of the university.

But exactly the same tendency exists in all other institutions, business enterprise included.” — Chapter 34 Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

 

Knowledge and technology #pdf

The economic challenge
of the post-capitalist society
will therefore be the productivity
of knowledge work and the knowledge worker. continue

Conditions for survival

 

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Knowledge is always SPECIALIZED.

The oboist in the London Philharmonic Orchestra has no ambition to become first violinist.

In the last 100 years only one instrumentalist, Toscanini, has become a conductor of the first rank.

 

Specialists remain specialists, becoming ever more skillful at interpreting the score.

 

Yet specialism carries dangers, too.

 

sound-players-pict-600

Truly knowledgeable people tend by themselves to overspecialize, because there is always so much more to know.

The individual in entrepreneurial society

As part of the orchestra, that oboist alone does not make music.

He or she makes noise.

Only the orchestra playing a joint score makes music. #Information #org

For both soloist and conductor, getting music from an orchestra means not only knowing the score, but learning how to manage knowledge.

And knowledge carries with it powerful responsibility, too.

In the past, the holders of knowledge have often used (abused) it to curb thinking and dissent, and to inculcate blind obedience to authority.

Knowledge and knowledge people have to assume their responsibilities.

So Organizations Must Do it Themselves

But there is another consideration.

For the first time in human history it really matters whether or not people learn.

When the Prince Regent asked Marshal Blücher if he found it a great disadvantage not to be able to read and write, the man who won the battle of Waterloo for Wellington replied: "Your Royal Highness, that is what I have a chaplain for."

Until 1914 most people could do perfectly well without such accomplishments.

Now, however, learning matters — and not just for school. #partnering

The knowledge society requires that all its members be literate, not just in reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also in (for example) basic computer skills and political, social, and historical systems.

Richard N. Haass #worldview ↓

the-world-a-brief-introduction-pp-pict-200h.jpg

The World: A Brief Introduction Amazon ::: Preface #pdf

 

And because of the vastly expanding corpus of knowledge, it also requires that its members learn how to learn. (performance learning — learning to perform in a sense similar to the requirements of an effective rocket scientist or brain surgeon)

There will — and should — be serious discussion of the social purpose of school education in the context of the knowledge society.

That will certainly help to change the schools.

In the meantime, however, the most urgent learning and training must reach out to the adults.

Thus, the focus of learning will shift from schools to employers.

Every employing institution will have to become a teacher.

Large numbers of American and Japanese employers and some Europeans already recognize this.

But what kind of learning?

In the orchestra the score tells the employees what to do; all orchestra playing is team playing.

In the information-based business, what is the equivalent of this reciprocal learning and teaching process?

One way of educating people to a view of the whole, of course, is through work in cross-functional task forces.

But to what extent do we rotate specialists out of their specialties and into new ones?

And who will the managers, particularly top managers, of the information-based organization be?

Brilliant oboists, or people who have been in enough positions to be able to understand the team, or even young conductors from smaller orchestras?

We do not yet know.

Above all, how do we make this terribly expensive knowledge, this new capital, productive?

The world's largest bank reports that it has invested $1.5 billion in information and communications systems.

Banks are now more capital intensive than the biggest manufacturing company.

So are hospitals.

Only 50 years ago a hospital consisted of a bed and a sister.

Today a fair-sized U.S. hospital of 400 beds has several hundred attending physicians and a staff of up to 1,500 paramedics divided among some 60 specialities, with specialized equipment and labs to match.

None, or very few, of these specialisms even existed 50 years ago.

But we do not yet know how to get productivity out of them; we do not yet know in this context what productivity means.

In knowledge-intensive areas we are pretty much where we were in manufacturing in the early nineteenth century.

When Robert Owen built his cotton mills in Scotland in the 1820s, he tried to measure their productivity.

He never managed it.

It took 50 more years until productivity as we understand it could be satisfactorily defined.

We are currently at about the Robert Owen stage in relation to the new organizations.

We are beginning to ask about productivity, output, and performance in relation to knowledge.

We cannot measure it.

We cannot yet even judge it, although we do have an idea of some of the things that are needed.

How, for instance, do famous conductors build a first-rate orchestra?

They tell me that the first job is to get the clarinetist to keep on improving as a clarinetist.

She or he must have pride in the instrument.

The players must be craftsmen first.

The second task is to create in the individuals a pride in their common enterprise, the orchestra: "I play for Cleveland, or Chicago, or the London Philharmonic, and that is one of the best orchestras in the world."

Third, and this is what distinguishes a competent conductor from a great one, is to get the orchestra to hear and play that Haydn symphony in exactly the way the conductor hears it.

In other words, there must be a clear vision at the top.

 

Unless we can learn how to
increase the productivity of knowledge workers
and service workers, and increase it fast,
the developed countries will face
economic stagnation and severe social tension continue

 

This orchestra focus is THE MODEL for the leader of any #knowledge-based organization.

 

“For the first time in human history, individuals can expect to outlive organizations.

This creates a totally new challenge: What to do with the second half of one's life? (#volunteer)

— Peter Drucker

 

From Knowledge to KnowledgeS

 

But knowledge has another very peculiar characteristic, which is that the important new advances do not come out of the specialist’s discipline.

They come from the outside.

It makes no difference what you look at.

Every one of the things that have transformed the discipline of history, for instance, came from outside — from psychoanalysis and psychology, from economics, from population statistics, from archaeology. continue

 

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Knowledge and human development (#education #horizons #psdapa #parallel)

… “Such people know a great many things, but they are not educated in the sense that they can reflect this knowledge on their own work or development, their own personality.

This, I submit, is the great challenge ahead of us, for the next generation of educational leaders.

Without it, we will have a great deal of specialized competence, but little else.

The challenge ahead of us is to make knowledge again a means to human development.

The challenge is to go beyond knowledge as tools and to recover education as the road to wisdom.” #sda continue

 

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There is a site breadcrumb trail ↓ near the bottom of this page

 

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Each “thought-fragment” ↓ on a board ↓ could be a brain-address
along one of many brainroadS. A brain-address-book is needed
for conducting appropriate reviews …

harvest-to-action-2015-pict-t-600

Larger view ↑   What exists is getting old

finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp

Trying to #SEE

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

arrow-down

radar-differences-pict-400

arrow-down

Economic content and structure snapshot
Thoughtscape ::: Larger image view

Destabilization is in full swing

economic_content_structure-pict-t-400

Production

In a growing economy ↑, things should get easier — right?

 

arrow-down

“The stepladder is gone, and
there’s not even the implied structure
of an industry’s rope ladder.

It’s more like vines …

vines

and you bring your own machete.

You don’t know
what you’ll be doing next

 

He’s ↑ trying to #SEE & figure out ↓ what needs doing next

sit-combo-pict-340w

rlaexp.com = r eal l ife a dventures + exp loration ↑ ↓

Your thinking, choices, decisions are determined by what you have seen ↑ ↓

SEEING” ↑ ↓ precedes Doing

“Looking” comes before “Seeing”

The people who will largely shape an individual’s future
are aware — if only subconsciously — of that individual’s
#worldview breadth and realism

 

Beware of the David Allen’s #gtd model (getting things done)
The things that 99.7% of people get done
don’t adequately deal with the challenges of
navigating a world continuing to move toward unimagined futureS.
What needs doing? continue

 

#Arrogance, apathy, complacency

 

Peter Drucker → The Über Mentor → Top of the food chain ↓

A political/social ecologist
A uniquely constructive and dominant #worldview.
Different from disciplines and education system “courses.”
Beware of working with invalid assumptions (here).

Business Week : Drucker — the man who invented management

drucker business week

The Dangers of American Complacency

#Arrogance, apathy, complacency

 

… but the only thing that is “new” about political ecology is the name.

As a subject matter and human concern, it can boast ancient lineage, going back all the way to Herodotus and Thucydides.

It counts among its practitioners such eminent names as de Tocqueville and Walter Bagehot.

Its charter is Aristotle’s famous definition of man as “zoon politikon,” that is, social and political animal.

As Aristotle knew (though many who quote him do not), this implies that society, polity, and economy though man’s creations, are nature to man, who cannot be understood apart from and out of them.

#idea It also implies that society, polity and economy are a genuine environment, a genuine whole, a true “system,” to use the fashionable term, in which everything relates to everything else and in which men, ideas, institutions, and actions must always be seen together in order to be seen at all, let alone to be understood. continue

 

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Managing Oneself — a revolution in human affairs —
an “earlier” site beginning point.

 

Now, most of us, even those of us with modest endowments, will have to learn to manage ourselves .

We will have to learn to develop ourselves here.

 

Will have to place ourselves where we can make the greatest contribution.

 

And we will have to stay mentally alert and engaged during a 50-year working life, which means knowing how and when to change the work we do continue or overview #PDF.

 

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Why America’s Richest #Cities Are Pulling Away From All the Others
(What are the implications for them and the rest?)

 

radar-differences-pict-600

The road ahead … ↑ going where no one has gone before ↑ ↓

We are all born into changing worldS
at different points in time
and different situationS situation examples.

These situations (#cities) frequently become life-long mental prisons
without awareness

Very, very, very frequently this ↑ is not seen before
an unpredictable, life-altering major change
or #discontinuity takes place.

 

This complex #reality ↑ is reflected in
the non-linear jumble of topics here ↑ ↓

 

To have a chance to deal with these realities
a pre-thought work approach is needed: the calendarization
of informed horizons to work toward ↓

This work approach has to extend beyond a current job or employer

 

The calendarization includes
concept   seeing & noting,

harvesting and action thinkingexplored further down the page.

 

SEEING the non-linearity of time, the systems or
ecologies within which we are embedded and
the way-points you need to navigate during your
evolving horizons is very challenging … Attention

attention-ogp-pict-trans-400

The Black Cylinder Experiment #bce

To know something … one must look at it
from sixteen different angles ↓

Part of this connection challenge can be visualized by
conducting a #page-search (page search) for
any of the following topics, words, word stems, or phrases
with or without a hashtag #
#page-search-list:
experience
performance of
"work approach"
"at best"
purpose
management or #mbr (management brainroad),
#think, think, thinking, brain, mind important or #important
the future that has already happened
constructive, contribution, effective
budget or budgeting ::: #budget or #budgeting
word stem “develop” (with or without hashtags #)
#prepare preparation
word stem “appli”
#educat, education, educated
word stem “explor” for explore exploration
growth or #growth
“rather than”
executive, #executive central
lateral thinking
#visual or visualizing
word stem: integrat
#idea
#institution or institution
the other
more important
even if
what exists is getting old
results, outcome, #outcomes,
of the situation
#arrogance → arrogance
the word stem ‘success’
“success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it”
ideas, concepts
#possible, possible or #possibility
outside, ignore
#attention, #opportunity, #opportunities
#question or #questions, individual, never, nothing, "part of"
#expert, #perception, role, survive, impact, "of the situation"
expert, knowledge, information, skills, innovation, leader,
fundamental, marketing,
#cities, city, cities, #podcast,
#connect, #connect #connecting, #connections and the word stem "connect"
#meetings, #conversation, #communication
#FoundationsForFutureDirectedDecisions, #OrganizationEvolution,
#TimeLifeNavigation
#LifeTimeInvestmentSystem, #BrainroadsTowardTomorrows,
#LifeDesign, #CareerEvolution…

 

One way to digest the thought fragments on this page
is to visualize them along a timeline ↓

Life lines ↓

life lines
Perception provides the ingredients for thinking

Just go out and make YOURSELF really usefulDruckerism

#careerTimeView ↑ ↓

career-time-view-pict-t-675x420

Tactics (success) by Edward de Bono

The concepts on the career time view illustration ↑ can be found by a #page-search

Buford said Drucker passed on
three questions everyone should ask themselves during

different seasons of life:

“Who am I, now?” Where do I belong?”

“What’s my contribution now?”

“Who I want to be tomorrow” — Thomas Crown 2:23

The danger of too much planning ::: Return on luck
Opportunities

 

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This site is not for you if you think tomorrow
is going to be an extrapolation of yesterday and
that some organization or politician is going to take care of you — despite
all the evidence to the contrary.

If you’re convinced that your daily work routines or
some organization change program is a safety net,
then this site is not for you.

If you naïvely believe that the
conversation and thinking that takes place behind closed doors (#wgobcd)
revolve around making your fantasies or passions come true,
then this site is not for you.

These ↑ notions essentially sabotage
the future of society and future generations.

If you accept that it’s your own responsibility
to work on your development and not depend
on any one company, maybe this site (rlaexp.com) can help you
#SEE your basic options or horizons continue

 

You can’t design your life around a temporary organization

 


 

How could you calendarize the concepts ↑ ↓ on this page?

The secret office

radar-differences-pict-600

larger version ↑ ::: Realities ::: The outer limit of your concern? ↑

We have no idea what’s coming next — other than it will be dramatically different — and

there is no way to know. There is no way to know what goes on behind closed doorS (#wgobcd) or

predict “Titanic type events” that sink rich and poor alike …

 

There are no permanent answers here or anywhere else ↓

 

The future is unpredictable and that implies it ain’t gonna be like today … And
with age and time we may become different people
in different situations

 

… And yet we can only work on, with and toward the ideaS ↓ on our mental radarS

at a point in time ↑ (see the images on this page) connection

The lack of competing patterns ↓ — the perennial danger

He’s ↓ trying to decide on the next effective action

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect

Each clue ↑ ↓ could be called a “brain-address” and thought fragment

@Pew Research Center ::: @Project Syndicate ::: @TheEconomist ::: @FT ::: The Long Shadow of WW I

The blue hat+ is needed ↑

The return on luck ↑ ↓ requires action (calendarize this?)

Successful careers ↑ are not planned ↓

 

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2 additional concepts that express the same ideas as the page title

o r mental tools for working & living through time ↑ It ain’t always convenient …

@Pew Research Center ::: @Project Syndicate ::: @TheEconomist ::: @FT ::: The Long Shadow of WW I

o r Navigating unimagined horizonS ↓ and their opportunitieS

 

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“The world ain’t what it seems … The moment
you think you’ve got it figured out you’re wrong.”

 

 

 

 

“To know something,
to really understand something important,
one must look at it from sixteen different angles.

People are perceptually slow,
and there is no shortcut to understanding;
it takes a great deal of time.” read more

 

“Perception is how we look at the world, what things we take into account, how we structure the world.” continue

” It now seems very likely that perception works as a “self-organizing information system” (see The Mechanism of Mind , Penguin, 1976, I Am Right You Are Wrong , Penguin, 1992).

Such systems allow the sequence in which information arrives to set up patterns.

Our thinking then remains trapped within these patterns.

So we need some ways of broadening perception and of changing perception (creativity).” #sda continue

 

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The navigation challenge ↑: to grow,
to change, and to age
without
becoming a prisoner of the past

 

Circa 1960 … “Indeed anyone over forty lives in a different world
from that in which he came to manhood,
lives as if he had emigrated, fully grown,
to a new and strange country.” continue

 

The closed doors (#wgobcd) ↑ may not even be obvious — China’s One Belt, One Road: Will it
reshape global #trade? continue

 

Successful careerS ↓ are not planned continue

 

The organization graveyard

Unimagined futureS
for many people

why_great_companies_fr540

The Second Curve

Amazon → How the Mighty Fall — Stages: 1 Hubris Born of Success; 2 Undisciplined Pursuit of More; 3: Denial of Risk and Peril Stage; 4 Grasping for Salvation; 5 Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death. Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do.

Many of these organizations ↑ were not initially resource strapped — at one time they may have had plenty of financial resources and they didn’t lack people with substantial reputations, high educational credentials (Nobel laureates, Ph.Ds, MBAs), high IQs, high performance ratings or long experience, facilities or the popular activities (“#marketing”, “innovation efforts” , “strategic planning”, “quality” efforts, employee and management “development”) Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?

What changed their fortunes? What were their reactions? How mentally prepared were they?

picture-technology-pict-no-reflect-400

Picture technology: larger view

There can’t be reached from here tomorrowS can’t be reached from yesterdayS
— at least not directly …

The concepts and patterns implied in the illustration above ↑ can be used
for testing the snake oil that floods through the Internet.

Of the 500 companies that started the Standard & Poor’s index,
85% failed to survive forty years –
less than the working life of the people in them –
and these figures pre-date the 2007/8 crisis.
Only one of the original 500 remains.
In Europe, the average life expectancy of a company
is currently around 12.5 years. continue

So when you lose your current source of income ↑
how many top of the food chain organizations (here and here)
will be clamoring to get you?
Why would they be interested in you?
What do you have that they want?

All one can do is strive to have a prepared mind ↓ that doesn’t extrapolate the past …

… and nobody is going to do it for you — quite the opposite!

 


 

This page is a top-of-the-food-chain exploration path
for collecting navigation building blocks below

These building blocks are essentially thought fragments and “brain-addresses”

horizons to work toward and those to steer away from

It is your job to connect these fragments in ways
that are genuinely useful to you over the long-term …

Look ↓ → north, south, east, west and #note what you #SEE ↓ continue

(calendarize this ↑?)

 


 

Political ecologists
believe that the traditional disciplines define fairly narrow
and limited tools rather than meaningful and self-contained
areas of knowledge, action, and events
continue

Peter Drucker ::: The Über Mentor

 


 

A quick page scroll provides a preview of this page’s breadth#sda

 


 

Navigating can only be undertaken
with what’s on each individual’s mental radar (explore ↓)
at a point ↓ in time
↓ → about time

radar-differences-pict-400

Danger: yesterday’s mental patterns

“No two persons ever read the same book.” — Edmund Wilson

“Truth ↑ is a particular constellation of circumstances ↑ with a particular #outcome ↑” continue

“The actual results of action are not predictable ↓” continue

Areas of change ↑ = opportunity continue

 

Knowledge → ← research management and technologies outside one’s field of vision at a point in time are two examples of point-in-time dependance

Organization as a community (#cities) destabilizer at a point-in-time is another example

Windows of opportunity #woo

Connect, only connect

These examples of ↑ areas of change are dynamic rather than static. They produce continuing sets of new realities and new options ↓ …

Four forces are upending everything you thought you knew | McKinsey Global Institute

New Maps, New Media and a New Human Condition — Knowledge@Wharton

Summer’s Unhappy Returns by Project Syndicate — Project Syndicate

Why China’s Cities Will Drive Global #Growth by Chang Ka Mun and Jaana Remes — Project Syndicate #cities

The Economic Trend Is Our Friend — Project Syndicate

Experimental Capitalism by Haydn Shaughnessy (fortune favors the bold)

Google: disruptive


“Shipping: The struggle to stay afloat

Last month (August 2016) Hanjin Shipping, one of the world’s largest shipping-container firms, filed for bankruptcy protection.

Around the world, 66 of its ships, loaded with $14.5 billion of goods, were left stranded at sea.

Ports refused to let the vessels dock because the line had no money to pay unloading fees.

Companies that move their goods around by sea are worried that other container lines will soon follow, writes our online business editor” continue

 


 

What’s needed to make that navigation effective?

First of all, taking more responsibility for oneself and not depending on any one company continue

This implies that you can’t depend on any of society’s organizations, but all of them aren’t going to simultaneously vaporize — some will crystalize and die a slow death, some will transmute themselves, some will die a sudden death and there will be new ones that survive the startup process continue

 

“Making a living is no longer enough,” wrote management guru Peter Drucker. “Work also has to make a life.” (calendarize this?)

If you want to keep good people, their work needs to provide them with meaning — a sense they are doing something important, that they are #fulfilling their destiny.

At the end of the day, these psychological needs are likely to be as important, and perhaps more important, than the salary you pay. source

Effective navigation requires choosing one’s horizons very wiselyexperts speak :(

 

“Making a living is no longer enough,” …
Work also has to make a life.”
Druckerism (calendarize this?)

 


 

“History’s great achievers — a Napoleon, a da Vinci, a Mozart have always managed themselves.

 

 

That, in large measure, is what makes them great achievers.

But they are rare exceptions, so unusual both in their talents and their accomplishments as to be considered outside the boundaries of ordinary human existence.

Now, most of us, even those of us with modest endowments, will have to learn to manage ourselves.

 

We will have to learn to develop ourselves.

 

Will have to place ourselves where we can make the greatest contribution. see about “time”

 

And we will have to stay mentally alert and engaged during a 50-year working life, which means knowing how and when to change the work we do.” more on managing oneself

 

Power is a #reality ::: How can the individual survive?

 


 

Caution: the knowledge areas (fiefdoms) contained within the education system do not control reality continue

 

 

Fortune favors the prepared mind ↓

radar_limited-pict-corners

@Pew Research Center ::: @Project Syndicate ::: @TheEconomist ::: @FT ::: The Long Shadow of WW I

Peter Drucker (a social ecologist) → he liberated me

Drucker: The Man Who Invented the Corporate Society

 

“I (Drucker) am not a ‘theoretician’ through my consulting practice I am in daily touch with the concrete opportunities and problems of a fairly large number of institutions, foremost among them businesses but also hospitals, government agencies and public-service institutions such as museums and universities.

And I am working with such institutions on several continents: North America, including Canada and Mexico; Latin America; Europe; Japan and South East Asia.” — PFD

 

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The 500+ pages on rlaexp.com are attention directing tools for navigating a world moving toward unimagined future S.

It’s up to the reader — the explorer — to figure out what to harvest and calendarize

Calendarization means working something out in time ( 1915, 1940, 1970 … 2040 … the outer limit of a person’s concern) — nobody is going to do it for them.

A foundation + you can’t build a life around a temporary organization

It may be a step forward to actively reject something (rather than just passively ignoring) and then figure out a coping plan for what has been rejected.

The reader’s future is between their ears and our future is between our collective ears — it can’t be otherwise.

 

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The apparently unperceived constant reality

 

We are surrounded by previously unimagined futureS ↑ ↓

We may also be embedded in previously unimagined futures

Nobody and I mean nobody, foresaw today’s world just
a few years ago and nobody
knows what tomorrowS will bring …

… except it won’t be like today

You can easily test this assertion ↑ by looking back in time …

Examples ↑ can be seen in the daily news #pdf
Twitter: @TheEconomist @FT @ProSyn @mckinsey
@whartonknows @pewresearch @GallupNews

So don’t get surprised by the next sudden #discontinuity
in your strategic situationS
. examples

 

Try to maintain an informed ↑ proactive work approach
It ain’t easy …
in fact, it is very, very difficult

 

The alternative ↑ to a proactive approach
is waiting to fail before
exploring new and different horizons

 

And how and where will younger generations
gain exposure to a comparable thoughtscape ↓ ↑ —
the education system? NOT, at work? NOT, or from a narrow focus consultant? NOT

Will they be left behind in the shift to knowledge work? PCS

Will they inherit a world in stagnation and not #SEE ↓ what to do? PCS

 

“Vienna in 1909 was widely recognized as the intellectual hub of Europe, if not the world.

And Peter’s parents, Caroline and Adolph, a top trade official for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, traveled easily among the elites of the day.

Indeed, their home on Kaasgrabengasse, a quiet avenue in the Viennese neighborhood of Döbling, embodied the tradition of the European salon society.

 

#conversation Two or three times a week his parents hosted gatherings of state officials, doctors, scientists, musicians, and writers to discuss a remarkably wide range of topics.

Peter, who would become a true polymath, soaked in all of it.

¶ ¶ ¶

Among his parents contemporaries was Sigmund Freud, who became known as the “father of psychoanalysis.”

Peter was eight years old when he first met Freud and recalled what his father told him later that afternoon: “Remember, today you have just met the most important man in Austria and perhaps in Europe.”

Ironically, Peter would go on to be celebrated as the “father of modern management (#pdf),” a title that held little interest or fondness for him.” continue

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Navigating requires finding “horizons” or “destinations”
and “way-points” to work toward ↓
… but how can this be done in a world moving toward
repeated unimagined futureS? more examples

 

It is impossible to work on “things” ↑
that aren’t on your mental radar ↓

↑ is an over-simplification — it should mention START ↓ to work

Those “things” ↑ don’t fit into one familiar, remotely-neat, integrated tool kit ↓
… but everything here ↑ ↓ is intertwined …

Reading is only the first step in navigating
calendarizationworking something out in timeis essential

Your mental radar needs to contain top-of-the-food-chain ideas
that don’t make you a prisoner of the past

Druckerisms are brain-addresses

currently ↓ individually ↓ and collectively ↓ → Awareness

radar_limited-pict

Site scope
This site contains over 500 web pages ↑ and thousands of topics #sda

Fortune favors the prepared mind” continue

Once you #SEE something you can’t unsee it

 

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#think

Just reading is not enough … #ams

Concepts have to be converted into daily action

book harvesting

 

Harvesting and action thinking are needed

Managing oneself should be the action foundation

You can select and note areas of interest. You can employ what does this mean for me? (illustration) with the PMI, dense reading and dense listening plus thinking broad and thinking detailed with operacy to see where that takes you. The potential effectiveness of our thinking depends on our existing mental landscape → see experts speak. What’s the next effective action?

 

Concept acquisition → action conversion → click image ↓

harvest

harvest and implement

When we are involved in doing something, it is very difficult
to look outside that involvement — even when our future depends on it.
Additionally, everything eventually outlives its usefulness continue

 

And now for the rest of the story

 

Being prepared for what comes next

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

#ipb Coach ::: Pre-thought Playbook ::: Pre-thought Playsheet ::: mental scan sheet #iss

play-book-sheet-pict-600

How many organizations implement the features found
in college and pro football: front office general
management, coaches, facilities, scouting, training
camps, practices, game video and analysis,
sideline/booth play calling …

 

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This page and its links
contain thought fragments
that can be added to your
life evidence wall ↓, thoughtscape and timescape ↓

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400

Translated into an action system for building YOUR life #ams

 

A quick page scroll provides a preview of the breadth involved … #sda

As you are looking at the thought fragments on this page and site, don't memorize → instead calendarize. Use these though fragments as a tool to redirect your attention from your current routines to possible horizons and action constellations to work toward. Liberate yourself → Don’t be a prisoner of the past …

You can only work on, with, and toward ↑ the things on your mental radar at a point in time ↓. This means you need an individual work approach and approach to work. Briefly this entails: mental exploration ↑ ↓ selection and noting; time scheduling; reviewing; doing; expectation recording; feedback; and monitoring change … The ideas and realities of on, with, and toward ↑ need to be fully perceived — time and place dependence — for any of this to be individually useful …

 

Just reading ↑ ↓ is not enough,
harvesting and action thinking are needed
continue

book-content-usage-pict

Tom Peters ↑

francis-coppola-godfather-notebook-page-pict-t-600

#hor3 #wlh #fastp #ams #mmit
YouTube: Francis Coppola's Notebook on 'The Godfather' #youtube
::: Book content #pfd (1) (2) #pdf to Scrivener (3) … to MarginNote ::: LiquidText
Just reading is not enough ::: What thinking is needed? :::
A brief celebration of Edward de Bono's ideas on thinking

francis-coppola-godfather-notebook-pict-t-600

radar-differences-pict-600

Aim high (#impact) ↑ ↓ Parallel thinking

The Wisdom of Peter Drucker

Life 2.0life two point zero or life 2 point zero

 

Horizon evolution work ↓

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

If every stage ↑ results in organization resource increases
then the next stage can move more quickly, but
innovation in the existing organization requires special effort

 

↓ collected, effective thought fragments provide building blocks ↑ ↓ ::: project plan ↓

The Wisdom of Peter Drucker

Life 2.0

“Making a living is no longer enough,” …
Work also has to make a life.”
Druckerism (calendarize this?)

Action system #ams #dtao

harvest-to-action-2015-pict-t-600

Larger view ↑   What exists is getting old

finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp

Time spans

time-spans-pict-600

thought fragments about the future

Successful careerS are not planned continue

 

“Decision making is a time machine (#tspans)

that synchronizes into a single time — the present
a great number of divergent time spans.

larger view

time-spans-pict-600

We are learning this only now.

Our approach still tends toward making plans for something
we will decide to do in the future,
which may be entertaining but is futile.

We can make decisions only in the present,
and yet we cannot make decisions for the present alone;
the most expedient, most opportunistic decision — let alone
the decision not to decide at all —
may commit us for a long time,
if not permanently and irrevocably.” — Chapter 11, MRE by PFD

Search this page for the word “decision”

 

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Kitchen utensils metaphor: Our kitchens typically contain utensils and devices that make possible or assist us in what we are attempting. Once a person #SEES the device or utensil’s function, they can use it when it’s appropriate — at the right time and in the right sequence. The same applies to thought fragments ↑ ↓. What happens when you add recipe books, websites, or tv shows to the cook’s arsenal?

Try a #page-search for the #SEE, #see, and the word stem “see”

Chess metaphor: Situation review → Consider alternative available moves → Make your move(s) → Evaluate new situation → Others respond → Repeat loop

Imagine this ↑ taking place in multiple parallel conceptual spaces

How can you connect the intersections between a concept or thought fragment and a point in time (needs doing)?

 

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The memo they don't want you to see #wb

 

The “MEMO” ↓

#THEY don’t want

you to SEE

 

THEY ↑ are the dogmatic, simpleton, narrow ideologues
plus the political
and organization power structures …


THEY think and act as if tomorrowS

are going to be extrapolationS of yesterdayS
— they

direct efforts toward problems rather than opportunities.



Consequently they are the enemies of prosperity and the future.



THEY don’t want you to be able to circumvent them.


THEY want you depending on them — it makes them feel “important.”


THEY “want” you to be a prisoner of yesterdayS — just like they are …

 

THEIR approach effectively sabotageS

themselves (if they get caught),

THEIR communitieS, THEIR colleagues and

the futureS of society


Don’t be their victim … or a co-conspirator

 

what exists is getting old

 

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Abandonment

“People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete — the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.” ― more on abandonment (#wgobcd)

Organization efforts ::: Opportunities

 

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WIP: This “subject” is a complex and evolving timescape → As you are exploring this page and its linked pages try to develop a mental model — a work approach and approach to work — that is effective for your realistic needs — which includes how you touch others and how will you remember and revisit what you’ve seen before the next crisis?

 

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TomorrowS … you can’t get there directly from here ↓
… so you can’t get there by piling up more todayS — even
by making some adjustments.
The challenge is to “go where no one has gone before”  

 

Time usage is the central navigation challenge about time

Clue ↑: if you keep doing what worked in the past you’e going to fail — think about it …

Allocating your life is a related dimension …

Everything here concerns time investing and time investments …

 

Freedom is the heaviest burden
laid on man … about freedom

 

Information is not enough … thinking is needed

 

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“If you know the road, life is easier. If you can see the road, life is easier. If you can discover new roads, life is richer. If you know you have a choice of roadS, life is richer.” … more wisdom #sda

 

 

To know and not do is to not yet know

 

 

Having alternative mental landscapes is a very good !!! thing … essential competing patterns

Edward de Bono’s thoughtscape

Larger view of thinking principles ↓ Text version ↓ :::
Always be constructive What additional thinking is needed?

thinking-principles-taskcard-400

“One can … never be sure
what the knowledge worker thinks—and yet
THINKING !!! is her/his specific work;
it is his/her “doing.””

When does a person possess a broad enough mental landscape
to effectively work on the challenges confronting them? #sda ↓ ↓ ↓

sit-combo-pict-340w

Dealing with risk and uncertainty ↑ ↓

why_great_companies_fr540

Amazon → How the Mighty Fall — Stages: 1 Hubris Born of Success; 2 Undisciplined Pursuit of More; 3: Denial of Risk and Peril Stage; 4 Grasping for Salvation; 5 Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death. Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do.

Reality check

People at each of these organizations ↑ ↓ think they are doing fine. They
act — mis-act — on this assumption …

picture-technology-pict-no-reflect-400

Picture technology: larger view

“Corporations once built to last like pyramids
are now more like tents.

Tomorrow they’re gone or in turmoil.”

HP 10+ years later

Only The Paranoid Survive

Sur/petition : Going beyond competition —
Creating Value Monopolies
When Everyone Else is Merely Competing

The Theory of the Business #pdf

There ↓ can’t be reached from here tomorrowS can’t be reached from yesterdayS
— at least not directly …

Evolution of sound players ↓

sound-players-pict-600

 

From Inside-Out to Outside-In #worldview #mbr

 

“The failure to understand
the nature, function, and purpose
of business enterprise”
Chapter 9, Management Revised Edition

 

“The customer never buys ↑ what you think you sell.
And you don’t know it.

That’s why it’s so difficult to differentiate yourself.” Druckerism

 

“People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete
the things that should have worked but did not,
the things that once were productive and no longer are.” Druckerism

 

Conditions for survival

radar-differences-pict-600

Going outside

 

Making the future — a chance for survival

Successful careerS are not planned ↑ continue

The life span ↑ of successful companies has been shrinking steadily … victims of success

 

How to guarantee non-performance ::: What results should you expect?

No one can guarantee the performance of a public service program.

But we know how to ensure non-performance with absolute certainty.

Part I : Have a Lofty Objective ::: Try to Do Several Things at Once :::
Believe That "Fat is Beautiful" ::: Don't experiment, be dogmatic :::
Make sure that you will not learn from experience ::: Inability to Abandon :::

Part II : Avoiding These Six Deadly Sins
is the Prerequisite for Performance and Results → What Results
Should You Expect? — A Users' Guide to MBO
:::

Part III : The Lack of Concern With Performance in Public Administration Theory

Have a lofty objective = To use such statements as “objectives” thus makes sure that no effective work will be done. For work is always specific, always mundane, always focused. Yet without work there is non-performance. To have a chance at performance, a program needs clear targets, the attainment of which can be measured, appraised, or at least judged.

 

 

McKinsey & Company (Global management consultants) on
the disappointing realities of change programs and learning / training

“We need a new concept of information and
a new understanding of learning and teaching.” — Peter Drucker

Chaotics: The Business of Managing and Marketing in the Age of Turbulence

What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious
Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation
by Gary Hamel

When consultants and other advice givers ↑ do their thing,
there is a foundational assumption that the object of their focus can be tweaked
so as to last forever — disco, station wagons …
In other words they are trying to predict what is unpredictable.

Successful careerS are not planned ↓ continue

Five stages of decline ↓

5-stages-of-decline-pict

… By now everybody at General Motors knows that these are the crucial problems.

And yet General Motors does not seem able to resolve them.

Instead General Motors has tried to sidestep them by the old — and always unsuccessful — attempt to “diversify.”

Acting on the oldest delusion of managements: “if you can’t run your own business buy one of which you know nothing,” General Motors has bought first Electronic Data Systems and then Hughes Aircraft.

Predictably this will not solve General Motors’s problems.

Only becoming again a truly effective automobile manufacturer can do that. — The Concept of the Corporation

sans-strategy-tragedy-pict-600

The theory of the business et. al.

culture eats strategy?
culture-eats-strategy-for-breakfast-not-pict-t

culture eats strategy

The spirit of performance

 

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Taking careerS responsibility in a world repeatedly moving toward unimagined futureS — continuing radical changes in the world of work ↑ ↓ and the world of employers ↑ (it’s all around you already)

Stuck in a rut

stuck-in-a-rut

skt-managing-oneself-sketch-small-druckerinst-2016-jun-08-pict-600

larger version

This responsibility ↑ includes: (a foundation of awareness ::: the right kind of education ::: a valuable, mobile knowledge specialty (a knowledge specialty applicable to a specific application where they need you more than you need them) ::: self-knowledge ::: finding meaningful work that builds on your strengths and values ::: self-placement ::: contribution thinking and doing ::: self-development ::: evolving aspirations that aim high (#impact) ::: not depending on any one organization ::: becoming and remaining mobile (what do — or will — you have that others want? and why would they be interested in you?) ::: the second half of your life + ? the main career evolution exploration path

For knowledge workers, How do I perform? may be an even more important question than What are my strengths?

 

“You must take integrating responsibility for putting yourself into the big picture.” #ir #lter ::: #dtao #operacy #trade Pluralism

 

Knowledge Work As A Systemorthopedic surgeons knowledge as a system

 

Where do MBAs fit in a knowledge organization? continue

The most successful of the young entrepreneurs today are people who have spent five to eight years in a big organization … The ones without that background are the entrepreneurs who, no matter how great their success, are being pushed out continue

 

The Educated Personhtml or #pdf

 

Young people not knowing how to connect their knowledge Drucker on Asia

 

No matter how much money you’re making you may still be a passenger on a Titanic. Try to keep an eye on external conditions and maintain an realistic, effective escape strategy and plan. (calendarize this?)

 

Make a difference

If you went to the mall or a major service provider and looked at the offerings → Which ones really make a difference? For whom? Under what circumstances?

Pretend that this thinking exercise ↑ was conducted at different points in time → What would you see?

 

Try to mentally arrange the elements ↑ above so they lead you …

atlanta-map-pict-600

larger view

 

A structural view ↑ ↓

time-usage-structures-pict-600

larger view

 

The executive and the knowledge worker have only one toolinformation

Quantification for most of the phenomena in a social ecology is misleading or at best useless continue

 


 

Don’t tell anyone they can be anything they want ↓

 

“Most human beings excel at one thing at most, and not very many excel even at one.

And very few people excel at more than one.

And I don’t think you’ll find anybody who excels at three.” — PFD

 

Apply this ↑ observation to
Managing Oneself and Post-capitalist executive

 

line

 

“It’s up to you to keep yourself engaged & productive
during a work life that may span some 50 years.” Druckerism

 

… But in our knowledge economy, says Drucker,

“if you haven’t

LEARNED HOW TO LEARN,

you’ll have a hard time. more

Knowing how to learn is partly curiosity.

But it’s also a discipline.”

 

He’s talking about learning for life — rather than schools, grading etc.
Is that learning to do what the life situation needs?

more

 

line

 

Warning: the corporate-ladder is a dying concept — think symphony orchestra and taking on one assignment after the other.

 

Managing the boss is an essential career skill.

 

Promotions don’t automatically confer new magical capability continue

 


 

Leaders and leadership beware of snake-oil sales pitches

… “And another thing, they know how to say no.

The pressure on leaders to do 984 different things is unbearable, so the effective ones learn how to say no and stick with it.

They don’t suffocate themselves as a result.

Too many leaders try to do a little bit of 25 things and get nothing done.

They are very popular because they always say yes.

But they get nothing done.” (calendarize this?)

 


 

In my job there isn't much challenge, not enough achievement, not enough responsibility; and there is no mission, there is only expediency

Today, the great majority of Americans live in big #cities and their suburbs.

They have moved away from their moorings, but they still need a community.

And it is working as unpaid staff for a nonprofit institution that gives people a sense of community, gives purpose, gives direction #profit continue

 

Beware of good intentions

 

¶ ¶ ¶

 

Successful people in Holland ↓

humansofny_2016-Apr-11-pict-t

Successful careerSare not planned

They develop when people
are prepared for opportunities
because they know
their strengths,
their method of work,
and their values ↓

thought fragments about the future

Being prepared for opportunities

See NYT Obits

«§§§»

This is who I am ::: The new job

(Attention, dissect, harvest, calendarize these ↑?)

Life lines ↓

life lines
Perception provides the ingredients for thinking

Just go out and make YOURSELF really usefulDruckerism

#careerTimeView ↑ ↓

career-time-view-pict-t-675x420

Tactics (success) by Edward de Bono

The concepts on the career time view illustration ↑ can be found by a #page-search

Buford said Drucker passed on
three questions everyone should ask themselves during

different seasons of life:

“Who am I, now?” Where do I belong?”

“What’s my contribution now?”

“Who I want to be tomorrow” — Thomas Crown 2:23

The danger of too much planning ::: Return on luck
Opportunities

Traditional career paths are an endangered species and
all career paths will lead toward unimagined futureS — continued below

This ↑ takes place within the dynamics of a changing world

 

This thoughtscape ↑ ↓ is not about looking for or doing jobs.
It is about continuously looking for YOUR future liveS
and own person — a moving target.

Our natural mental foundation in life is that of a baby, a teenager,
a beginner, an imitator of numerous other ordinary people …
with no exposure toward top-of-the-food-chain vision and thinking.

The best time (remember time usage?)
to work on creating your futureS is when you don’t need to —
when there isn’t a serious cloud in the sky — like now.
Nobody is going to do it for you … Josh Abrams stages ++

 

What do you want to be remembered for?

First, one has to ask oneself what one wants to be remembered for.

Second, that should change.

It should change both with one’s own maturity
and with changes in the world.

Finally, one thing worth being remembered for
is the difference one makes in the lives of people.

“None of my books or ideas mean anything to me in the long run.

What are theories? Nothing.

The only thing that matters is how you touch people.

Have I given anyone insight?

That’s what I want to have done.

Insight lasts; theories don’t.

And even insight decays into small details,
which is how it should be.

A few details that have meaning in one’s life are important.”
A tribute to Peter Drucker by Rick Warren

 

What Got You Here Won't Get You There

Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It

Richard Hackborn: The Man Behind the Curtain in the Hewlett-Compaq Merger

From an overall viewpoint this thoughtscape ↑ ↓
is about the future of society
If capable people just keep on doing
what they are currently doing
there will be stagnation or worse → road ahead PCS

 

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

The Power and Purpose of Objectives: The Marks & Spencer Story and Its Lessons

Deciding ↑ where to jump next ↓ — there
are no guaranteed safe landing spots … and
that’s why you need to be mobile
Why great companies fail #situation #wgcf

Ice flows ↓

ice-floe-post-pict-400

Nine groups larger view

global-consumer-McKinsey_MGI_2016-Mar-31-600

Money ↑ knows no fatherland ↑ Nor does information … An economic
landscape and timescape → content and structure of the economy

FULL UP: there is no vacuum, there are no gaps.
Time, space and resources are all committed continue

Knowledge system view ↑ ↓ (image only)

#worldview

radar_limited-pict-t-400

#ptf #fah

The terms knowledge industries, knowledge work and knowledge worker
are nearly fifty years old. (#impact)

They were coined around 1960, simultaneously but independently —
the first by a Princeton economist, Fritz Machlup,
the second and third by this writer.

Now everyone uses them, but as yet hardly anyone
understands their implications
for human values and human behavior,
for managing people and making them productive,
for economics, and for politics.

 

What is already clear, however, is that the emerging knowledge society
and knowledge economy will be radically different
from the society and economy of the late twentieth century.
Chapter 4, Management, Revised Edition

 

line

 

This is far more than a social change. It is
a change in the human condition. continue

 

The Emerging Knowledge Society

… “For the major new insights in every one
of the specialized knowledges arise out of another,
separate specialty, out of another one of the knowledges.

Both economics and meteorology are being transformed
at present by the new mathematics of chaos theory.
Geology is being profoundly changed by the physics of matter;
archaeology, by the genetics of DNA typing;
history, by psychological, statistical, and technological analyses
and techniques.” Chapter 48, Management, Revised Edition

How Knowledges Work

The Employee Society

What Is an Employee?

The Social Sector

Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity

School and Education as Society’s Center
(not the present system)

The Competitive Knowledge Economy

How Can Government Function?

Conclusion: The Priority Tasks — The Need for
Social and Political Innovations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing
social, economic, and political turmoil and challenge, at least in its early decades.

The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet.

And the challenges looming ahead may be more serious and more daunting still
than those posed by the social transformations that have already happened,
the social transformations of the twentieth century.

 

line

 

#lms

Knowledge exists only in application #pdf

 

Peter observed that we are now in another #critical moment :
the transition from the industrial to the knowledge-based economy
We should expect radical changes in society
as well as in business.
“We haven’t seen all those changes yet,” he added.
Even the very products we buy will change drastically. …
He spent the better part of the next two hours defining and pulling this idea apart
(the application of knowledge to knowledge): the importance of
accessing, interpreting, connecting, and translating knowledge ” …   more

Political map and knowledge connections ↓

us-election-map-2016-pict-600

How Baby Boomers Broke America #pdf

A Princeton sociologist spent 8 years asking rural Americans why they're so pissed off #pdf

The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy #pdf

 

#3koi 3 kinds of #intelligence and 9 action behaviors ↑ ↓ ← Niccolò Machiavelli ↑ ↓

harvesting-implementing-broad+site-2015-pict-t-600

Harvesting and implementing larger view ↑ ::: TEC-PISCO

Thought collector and harvested action items

It is impossible to work on things that aren't on your mental radar

The Wisdom of Peter Drucker

Life 2.0

“Making a living is no longer enough,” …
Work also has to make a life.”
Druckerism (calendarize this?)

“#Concentration — that is, the courage to impose on time and events
[one’s] own decision as to what really matters and comes first — is
the executive’s only hope of becoming the master
of time and events instead of their whipping boy.” PFD

harvest-to-action-2015-pict-t-600

finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp

Big picture connected to project work view

What exists is getting old

dense reading and dense listening plus thinking broad and thinking detailed

Six Thinking Hats ↓ ::: Teach Yourself to Think #pdf ::: Why?

Thinking canvases are needed

Aim high ↑ ↓ Parallel thinking ::: “Begin with an end in mind — in sight”

Executive responsibilities: #decisions → that lead to real change

Operacy — the thinking that goes into doing

Water logic vs. rock logic

“The actual results of action are not predictable” continue

calendarization

Project work larger view

Constant vigilance is required to prevent oneself from being mentally blind to the changes taking place around them while they are busy encapsulated within their own mental involvements (calendarize this?)

 

In the real world → levels of work and impact can be perceived:

The invisible hand

Wisdom

The designing network

The shaping network

The doing networks

Professional football

College football

High school football

 

“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. (#impact) #mbr

From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.” — Peter Drucker

 

line

 

#15 AWARENESS SEEING

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

JUDGEMENTAttention-directing frameworks

 

It’s not just that the world has changed.
It is that the way the world ↓ functions ↓ has changed !

… but it is happening at different times and speed in different places

ExampleSthe manager and the moron ↑ ↓
Knowledge not economic ::: Information economics

Knowledge economy +++ ↑ or Far-east cities

 

 

#horizons Unimagined FutureS ↑ ↓ (#impact)
Post Capitalist Society PCS ::: a thoughtscape

 

A Century of Social Transformation — Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity !!! ↑

 

The shift from manual workers

 

“Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation.

We cross what in an earlier book, I called a “divide.”

The New Realities —1989.

Within a few short decades, society rearranges itself
its #worldview; its basic values; its social and political structure; its arts; its key institutions.

Fifty years later, there is a new world.

And the people born then cannot even imagine the world in which their grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born.

awareness ↑ ↓

 

sidebar

 

… and at that time ↓, unimagined future S seemed unthinkable …
because tomorrow is always going to be like yesterday … right?

Downton Abbey

downton-abbey-pict-t

thought fragments about the future

Who would imagine the British Empire and social system ↑ unraveling? …
And then almost a century later the withdrawal from the EU (brexit)

Successful careerS are not planned continue


On June 28, 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand ↓ of Austria was assassinated.

This lead to WW I and the punitive treaty at its conclusion
which lead to Hitler and WW II, which lead to
the awakening of a sleeping giant (the U.S.), which lead to Japan’s ascendance
as a global economic power and
then to the rise of South Korea, Singapore, and the overseas Chinese …

Long Shadow

assassination-archduke-franz-ferdinand-pict-600

… and at that time ↓, unimagined future S seemed unthinkable …

family-old-pict-500

… and at that time ↓, unimagined future S seemed unthinkable …

nyc-street-600t

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

… and at that time ↓, unimagined future S seemed unthinkable …

Early TV or early television

watching-old-tv-600

Will this ↑ be the last unimagined change in the sequence portrayed above?
If not, when will unimagined change come to a halt?

Yahoo! — an organization odyssey

 

main brainroad continues

 

We are currently living through just such a transformation.

It is creating the post-capitalist society,
which is the subject of this book.

... snip, snip...

A Century of Social Transformation —
Emergence of Knowledge Society

... snip, snip...

Our period, two hundred years later, is such a period of transformation.

This time it is not, however, confined to Western society and Western history.

Indeed, it is one of the fundamental changes that there no longer is a “Western” history or, in fact, a “Western” civilization.

There is only world history and world civilization — but both are “Westernized.” see images below

... snip, snip...

The Vanishing East

... snip, snip...

#worldview The one thing we can be sure of is that the world that will emerge from the present rearrangement of values, beliefs, social and economic structures, of political concepts and systems, indeed, of worldviews, will be different from anything anyone today imagines. (so a “work approach employing water logic” and “approach to work” is needed ↓)

 

The future always requires a rearrangement of previously existing “elements” — at various points in time

radar-differences-pict-400

 

... snip, snip...

Making the future → a chance for survival

... snip, snip...

That the new society will be both a non-socialist and a post-capitalist society is practically certain.

Moving Beyond Capitalism?

And it is certain also that its primary resource will be knowledge.

… but not knowledge as it is presented in the education system

left behind in the shift to knowledge work

This also means that it will have to be a society of organizations.

… and Knowledge Workers hold THE crucial card in their mobility

The Management Revolution

Certain it is that in politics we have already shifted from the four hundred years of the sovereign nation-state to a pluralism in which the nation-state will be one rather than the only unit of political integration.

It will be one component — though still a key component — in what I call the “post-capitalist polity,” a system in which transnational, regional, nation-state, and local, even tribal, structures compete and co-exist.”

“The more transnational the world becomes, the more tribal it will also be.

 

This undermines the very foundations of the nation-state.

In fact, it ceases to be a “nation-state,” and becomes a “state” plain and simple, an administrative rather than a political unit.

 

Internationalism, regionalism, and tribalism between them are rapidly creating a new polity, a new and complex political structure, without precedent”

... snip, snip...

#68

The economic challenge of the post-capitalist society will therefore be the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker.

People can only get paid in accordance with their productivity

Knowledge: Its Economics and Its Productivity

Management Challenges for the 21st Century

The new-productivity challenge

 

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-400

 

... snip, snip...

 

Forty years ago, people doing knowledge work and service work formed still less than one third of the work force.

Today, such people account for three quarters if not four fifths of the work force in all developed countries — and their share is still going up.

Their productivity, rather than the productivity of the people who make and move things, is THE productivity of a developed economy.

It is abysmally low.

The productivity of people doing knowledge work and service work may actually be going down rather than going up.

 

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-400

 

... snip, snip...

To improve the productivity of knowledge workers will in fact require drastic changes in the structure of the organizations of post-capitalist society, and in the structure of society itself.

... snip, snip...

Unless we can learn how to increase the productivity of knowledge workers and service workers, and increase it fast, the developed countries will face economic stagnation and severe social tension.

... snip, snip...

… This means a radical change in structure for the organizations of tomorrow.

It means that the big business, the government agency, the large hospital, the large university will not necessarily be the one that employs a great many people.

Outsourcing (not offshoring)

“To get productivity, you have to outsource activities
that have their own senior management
.

Believe me, the trend toward outsourcing
has very little to do with economizing
and a great deal to do with quality.” continue

It will be the one that has substantial revenues and substantial results — achieved in large part because it itself does only work that is focused on its mission; work that is directly related to its results; work that it recognizes, values, and rewards appropriately.

#horizons The rest it contracts out.

 

Theory of the business ::: What executives should remember

 

 

 

“Its organizations ↑ must be able to make fast decisions …”

 

Making the future → one ::: two ::: three

 

The Management Revolution

 

line

 

Outflanking the Nation-State

The nation-state is not going to wither away.

It may remain the most powerful political organ around for a long time to come, but it will no longer be the indispensable one.

Increasingly, it will share power with other organs, other institutions, other policy-makers.

What is to remain the domain of the nation-state?

These questions will be central political issues for decades to come.

In its specifics, the # outcome is quite unpredictable.

But the political order will look different from the political order of the last four centuries, in which the players differed in size, wealth, constitutional arrangements, and political creed, yet were uniform as nation-states — each sovereign within its territory and each defined by its territory.

We are moving — we have indeed already moved — into post-capitalist polity. continue

 

... snip, snip...

I am often asked whether I am an optimist or a pessimist.

For any survivor of this century to be an optimist

would be fatuous.

We surely are nowhere near the end

of the turbulences, the transformations, the sudden upsets,

which have made this century

one of the meanest, cruelest, bloodiest

in human history
. continue

 

see ↑ Conflict and Power is a reality

 

The alternative to tyranny

 

... snip, snip...

 

Nothing “post” is permanent or even long-lived.

Ours is a transition period.

What the future society will look like,

let alone

whether it will indeed

be the “knowledge society

some of us dare hope for,

depends on

how the developed countries RESPOND

to the challenges of THIS transition period,

the post-capitalist period

their intellectual leaders,

their business leaders,

their political leaders,

but above all

     each of us

     in our own WORK and LIFE
. Starting small fires



Yet surely this is a time

to make the future

precisely because everything is in flux.

This is a time for action.

 

«§§§»

 

The twenty-first century

will surely be one of

continuing

social, economic,

and political turmoil

and challenge
,

at least in its early decades.



The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet.

And the challenges looming ahead

may be

more serious

and more daunting

still

than those posed by

the social transformations

that have already happened,

      the social transformations

      of the twentieth century
” ↓

 

 

A Century of Social Transformation —
Emergence ↓ of Knowledge Society,
Society of Organizations, and
Network Society

 

Not so long ago the world ↑ looked like this ↓

… and at that time, unimagined future S seemed unthinkable …
pics?

Old photo: rural life

arkansas-old-600

There is more to this story
and there is “remanence” for a long time …

 

line

 

YouTube : #hotw The History of the World in Two Hours #youtube
beginning with the industrial revolution (#impact)

history-of-the-world-in-two-hours-01-healed-pict-400

The rise of man? 85 million years? 200,000 years and then BOOM around 1900
evolution-toward-man-2020-02-11-001-pict-t

evolution-tree-2020-02-11-pict-t

history-of-the-world-in-two-hours-03-pict-600

Netflix : Marco Polo

Netflix : Empire of the Tsars

Netflix frequently drops previous content. Try searching #YouTube.

 

The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant

 

lessons-of-history

… Juxtaposing the great lives, ideas, and accomplishments with cycles of war and conquest, the Durants reveal the towering themes of history and give meaning to our own. #situation

Hesitations | History and the Earth | Biology and History | Race and History | Character and History | Morals and History | #Religion and History | Economics and History | Socialism and History | Government and History | History and War | #Growth and Decay | Is Progress Real? #surprises

 


 

“The Columbian Exchange was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, technology, and ideas between the Americas and the Old World in the 15th and 16th centuries, related to European colonization and trade after Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage.

Invasive species, including communicable diseases, were a byproduct of the Exchange.

The changes in agriculture significantly altered and changed global populations.

However, the most significant immediate impact of the Columbian Exchange was the cultural exchanges and the transfer of people between continents.

The new contact between the global population circulated a wide variety of crops and livestock, which supported increases in population in both hemispheres, although diseases initially caused precipitous declines in the numbers of indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Traders returned to Europe with maize, potatoes, and tomatoes, which became very important crops in Europe by the 18th century.

The term was first used in 1972 by American historian Alfred W. Crosby in his environmental history book The Columbian Exchange .

It was rapidly adopted by other historians and journalists and has become widely known.” continue

 

internet-activity-pict-600

History of electric power transmission — the foundation for ↑

 

Landmarks of Tomorrow — a 1957 worldview

At some unmarked point during the last twenty years
we imperceptibly moved out of the Modern Age and
into a new, as yet nameless, era. #surprises

Post-Capitalist Society

Our view of the world changed; we acquired a new perception
and with it new capacities.

 

A time like this is not comfortable, secure, lazy.

It is a time when tides of history — over which he has no controlsweep over the individual.

It is a time of agony, of peril, of suffering—an ugly, hateful, cruel, brutish time at best.

It is a time of war, of mass slaughter, of depravity, of mockery of all laws of God or man.

It is a time in which no one can take for granted the world he lives in, the things he treasures, or the values and principles that seem to him so obvious. #surprises

Those of us who have been spared the horrors in which our age specializes, who have never suffered total war, slave-labor camp or police terror, not only owe thanks; we owe charity and compassion.

¶ ¶ ¶

But ours is also a time of new vision and greatness, of opportunity and challenge, to everyone in his daily life, as a person and as a citizen.

It is a time in which everyone is an understudy to the leading role in the drama of human destiny.

Everyone must be ready to take over alone and without notice, and show himself saint or hero, villain or coward. #surprises

On this stage the great roles are not written in the iambic pentameter or the Alexandrine of the heroic theater.

They are prosaic—played out in one’s daily life, in one’s work, in one’s citizenship, in one’s compassion or lack of it, in one’s courage to stick to an unpopular principle, and in one’s refusal to sanction man’s inhumanity to man in an age of cruelty and moral numbness.

¶ ¶ ¶

In a time of change and challenge, new vision and new danger, new frontiers and permanent crisis, suffering and achievement, in a time of overlap such as ours, the individual is both all-powerless and all-powerful.

He is powerless, however exalted his station, if he believes that he can impose his will, that he can command the tides of history.

He is all-powerful, no matter how lowly, if he knows himself to be responsible.

Starting small fires

How could you calendarize this ↑ ↓?

 


 

The Age of #Discontinuity :
Guidelines To Our Changing Society
— 1968 #lter

… But these revolutions are largely the effects of shifts in the foundations
that precede them and make the revolutions inevitable

age-of-discontinuity-big-t-325w

 


 

Systematic entrepreneurship

Purposeful Innovation (#impact)

Entrepreneurs innovate.

Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship.

It is the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.

Innovation, indeed, creates a resource.

There is no such thing as a “resource” until man finds a use for something in nature and thus endows it with economic value.

Until then, every plant is a weed and every mineral just another rock.

Not much more than a century ago, neither mineral oil seeping out of the ground nor bauxite, the ore of aluminum, were resources.

They were nuisances; both render the soil infertile.

The penicillin mold was a pest, not a resource. continue

«§§§»

Three Case Studies on #Innovation Strategy

 


 

The 6 Laws of Technology Everyone Should Know

Professor who summarized the impact of technology on society 30 years ago seems prescient now, in the age of smartphones and social media

Three decades ago, a historian wrote six laws to explain society’s unease with the power and pervasiveness of technology.

1. ‘Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral’

2. ‘Invention is the mother of necessity.’

Yes, that’s backward from the way you remember it.

3. ‘Technology comes in packages, big and small.

4. ‘Although technology might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in technology-policy decisions.’

5. ‘All history is relevant, but the history of technology is the most relevant.’

6. ‘Technology is a very human activity.’

As Prof. Kranzberg presciently noted at the dawn of the internet age, “Many of our technology-related problems arise because of the unforeseen #consequences when apparently benign technologies are employed on a massive scale.”

 


 

#26 Financial survival

… “There are so many great families whose former grandeur survives only as an echo — in the names of museums, converted mansions, streets, and towns.

Their descendants don't have it anymore.

Taxes, inflation, expropriation, and changing times have pulled them down. #wgobcd

If they, armed with the cleverest advisers, bankers, and lawyers couldn't keep their money, can it be easy?

Survival is a competition. #wisdom #wgobcd

What you have, including your savings, others want, and will struggle to get.

The push to take it back from you is as relentless as that of the sea to overcome the dikes that contain it or the jungle to enfold a patch of cleared ground. #wgobcd

The whole order of nature pushes to reclaim its own. #wgobcd

Governments bow to that kind of pressure. #wgobcd

Pieces of paper are a weak defense.

How did Vladimir Putin become so rich? #wgobcd

Only through deep understanding and superior tactics can the investor hope to preserve even part of what he has saved, and the job gets harder every year.

In many countries it is virtually impossible, and almost everybody eventually becomes a ward of the state, whose pretensions thus become irresistible.

The barons being impoverished, King John is supreme.” continue and Warren Buffett

 


 

A basic challenge confronting all of us is that we get older and older and more and more set in our ways and thoughts in a world that is going to become less and less recognizable — a world that bears less and less resemblance to the world S of 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020, 2030, 2040...

BTY there are surely movies or TV shows that focus on the major events and situations of each of these ↑ time periods.

Beyond the above there are changing strategic situations that cause individuals a great deal of difficulty, damage and pain: things not working out the way we assumed, wars, epidemics, rampant inflation, government incompetence and cruelty, terror attacks, community and industry meltdowns, conspiracies, job and career loss, crime, not getting or digesting the memo, boredom …

People that have no real connection to you may seek repeated revenge on you for actions by other people that have no real connection to you — The Savage Peace

What else can you imagine?

There’s no way to know what goes on behind closed doors that is going to have an impact on you … prepare yourself … #wgobcd

the-square-and-the-tower-pict-t-350w-471
The Square and the Tower:
Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook
at Amazon
#wgobcd

Economists, Politicians, Hitler, Churchill, Stalin …

11th-global-peter-drucker-forum-pict-stroke-t-600

Post-capitalist executive

 

Strategic situations can change so slowly
that the motion
may be practically invisible or undetectable


and yet they can
change so fast
that it’s almost impossible to keep up.

 

“Few people in America during the Depression years believed in “recovery,” certainly not after 1937 when the slight economic improvement that had followed Roosevelt’s reelection spending proved a short-lived mirage.” continue

 

What could you do if your prime source of income immediately came to an end? continue

 

End of loyalty ::: IBM corrects seniority mix

middle-class-blues-pict-t

Why great companies fail #second-curve

why_great_companies_fr540

Amazon → How the Mighty Fall
Stages: 1 Hubris Born of Success; 2 Undisciplined Pursuit of More;
3: Denial of Risk and Peril Stage; 4 Grasping for Salvation;
5 Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death.

Every institution, no matter how great,

is vulnerable to decline.

There is no law of nature
that the most powerful
will inevitably remain at the top.
Anyone can fall and most eventually do.

picture-technology-pict-no-reflect-400

Picture technology: larger view

“Corporations once built to last like pyramids
are now more like tents.

Tomorrow they’re gone or in turmoil.”

 

TomorrowS ↓ can’t be reached from what exits — at least not directly …

sound-players-pict-600

car-and-truck-sales-title-pict-550
car-and-truck-sales-chart-pict-600

What Executives Should Remember ::: html ::: AMZ

 

In 9 Out Of 10 Cities, Middle-Income Families Are Slipping Away

 

Why America’s Richest #Cities Are Pulling Away From All the Others
(What are the implications for them and the rest?)

 

#YouTube : 1000 years of European borders change ↓ —
wars, migration, killing, stealing, enslavement, rape, revenge
and the roots of terrorism and other bad stuff.
The wounds still fester … and yet.

List of wars by death toll

What thinking can be observed ↑ ↓?
on the part of individuals and social groups?

 

#worldview
What goes on behind closed doors? #wgobcd ↓ ↑

 

Search #YouTube : Long Shadow — Each episode explores an enduring legacy
of the First World War through the century that followed,
tracing the impact on attitudes to war and peace,
on politics and on nationalism. Liberal democracy #situation

The Troubles

Detective Sean Duffy Books: The Cold, Cold Ground; 
I Hear the Sirens in the Street;   In the Morning I'll Be Gone;
Gun Street Girl;  Rain Dogs;
Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly

#YouTube : Armistice by David Reynolds

The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell

#wgobcd #Google : “Hitler’s Circle of Evil

#wgobcd Netflix : Apocalypse: The Second World War

#wgobcd #YouTube : World War Two: 1941 and the Man of Steel → Stalin the terrorist

#wgobcd #audioplayback

What could be added to a person’s pre-thought work-approach
that would adequately deal with
the challenges presented by
the behavior of
Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff or Stalin’?

Liberal democracy

Hideki Tojo — a Japanese politician and general of the
Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) who served as Prime Minister of
Japan and President of the Imperial Rule Assistance
Association for the majority of World War II. During his
years in power, he also oversaw the perpetration of numerous
war crimes including the systematic massacre and starvation
of civilians and prisoners of war. continue

Google : Putin's hidden treasure

Google : Putin "the food that never came"

Google image search : Putin money laundering flowchart



Money trail involving global banks ↓ ::: Larger view

money-trail-involving-global-banks-600

Money launderingmore

Crimetown is a serial documentary #podcast hosted by Marc
Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier and produced by Gimlet Media
which looks at how organized crime has shaped particular
American cities.

Project Nazi: The Blueprints for Evil: The Industry of Wa r

Operation Otto Preliminary Plan for Operation Barbarossa ↓ #wgobcd

marcks-plan-for-operation-barbarossa-pict-600m

See the immediate human impact along the initial thrust lines and
the broader subsequent impacts created by
the reactions to the immediate impacts. This is a common change theme …

Einsatzgruppen

larger view

Netflix : Winston Churchill: Walking with Destiny

The Prime Minister and the Prof — How does friendship
influence political power? The story of Winston Churchill’s close friend
and confidant — an eccentric scientist named
Frederick Lindemann — whose
connection to Churchill
altered the course of British policy in World War II.
And not in a good way. Revisionist History ::: #wgobcd

Netflix : Hitler and the Nazis

Netflix : Tokyo Trial

Netflix : Hiroshima: BBC History of World War II

Netflix : World War II in Colour

Netflix : World War Two: 1942 and Hitler's Soft Underbelly

Netflix : Auschwitz: The nazis and the final solution

Netflix : World War II: Final Days

Europe’s Last Chance

Netflix : World War II Spy School (an evolutionary tale)

Netflix : Ian Fleming — The Man Who be Bond (an evolutionary tale)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The Constant Gardener

The Good Shepherd (an evolutionary tale on multiple fronts)

Netflix : Navy SEALs: Their Untold Story (an evolutionary tale)

Out of Africa

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Netflix : The Honorable Woman (a tale of deception, sabotage, and conspiracies)

The End of Economic Man: The Origins of Totalitarianism

Schindler’s List

Netflix : Afghanistan: The Great Game
tells the story of foreign intervention by
Britain, Russia, and the United States in Afghanistan
from the 19th century to the present day.
Slow learners

The Vietnam War :( — a heart-breaking American television documentary.
Total political and military incompetence + stupidity. (#wgobcd)
Written by Geoffrey C. Ward and
directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick
Amazon

Saigon, 1965 — In the early 1960s, the Pentagon
set up a top-secret research project in an old villa
in downtown Saigon. The task? To interview
captured North Vietnamese soldiers and guerrillas
in order to measure their morale:
Was the relentless U.S. bombing
pushing them to the brink of capitulation? Revisionist History

The Unabomber Trial: The Manifesto

 

The Accountant of Auschwitz
The Nazis among us

 

Extreme survival skills and tools : Taken , Jack Reacher , The Racheteer ,
Jason Bourne, The Talented Mr. Ripley +++

Run, Hide, Fight

#YouTube : Evolution of Europe and European borders starting point

1000-years-in-10-minutes-pict

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli — Kindle version available

 

#25 Vietnam ::: History of France in Indochina ::: … The Vanishing East

vietnam-diptic-2020-01-07-600

 

“It is the Veteran”

It is the Veteran, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of #religion.

It is the Veteran, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Veteran, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Veteran, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to assemble.

It is the Veteran, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Veteran, not the politician, who has given us the right to vote.

It is the Veteran, who salutes the Flag,

It is the Veteran, who serves under the Flag,

To be buried by the flag,

So the protester can burn the flag.

Author: Anonymous

 


 

The walking wounded

by Colonel Gary Thomas

In the #cities you see them everywhere,

the walking wounded;

watching everything with a thousand yard stare.

People used to ask, “Why did you give that bum money?”

“He isn’t a bum;

he just lost himself in the war.”

One died, just the other day, among his possessions they found a purple heart and a silver star;

two of his country’s highest awards is what they are.

He was one of our heroes and yet;

he dies on the streets, just another homeless vet!

People say I’m one of the lucky ones, that I’ll forget in time, it’s been thirty years.

So why do I still wake up at 3:00 a.m. in a cold sweat and feel the need to talk;

or maybe just go for a walk?

Thirty years and I still have the dreams, I see the blood, and I hear the screams.

I’m one of the lucky ones, I came back, I just had to adjust.

My friends go hunting and invite me to go,

I say, “Thanks, but no.”

I know what that would do,

it’s something I just can’t go through.

The rustle of leaves, snap of a twig, sound of gunfire and smell of powder in the air, suddenly, I’m in another time, another day;

in a jungle, half a world away.

My wife used to say, “Thank God, you’re normal.”

I have a lot to be thankful for,

my back to the wall;

watching the door.

Then slowly look around,

aware of every movement,

every sound,

noting the escape routes as I sit down.

 

sgt-will-gardner-cropped-pict-t-600

 

Only fairy tales end with: “They lived happily ever after”

 

Zero Days
a documentary thriller about warfare in a world without rules —
the world of cyberwar. The film tells the story of Stuxnet … The
cyber ability to cause physical damage …

 

Freakonomics — The hidden side of everything

 

The alternative to tyranny

 

The Unfashionable Kierkegaard

 

Planning is frequently misunderstood as making future decisions,
but decisions exist only in the present.”

 

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#17 #wv1 #Worldview(s)

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

JUDGEMENTAttention-directing frameworks

Homeland Showtime ::: #evidence-wall ↓

evidence-wall-homeland-pict-600

#worldview “Individuals hold worldviews, beliefs about the purpose of existence, who they must ultimately answer to, and what they are responsible for …” Water Logic ::: continue

 

 

“But a worldview is, above all, an experience”

 


 

Management and the World’s Work (#pdf here) — 1850 … ↑ ↓
In less than 150 years, (circa 1988) management has transformed the social and economic fabric
of the world’s developed countries. It has created a global economy
and set new rules for countries that would participate in that economy as equals. ↓

 


 

What Everybody Knows Is Frequently Wrong ::: If You Keep Doing What Worked in the Past You’re Going to Fail ::: Approach Problems with Your Ignorance — Not Your Experience ::: Develop Expertise Outside Your Field to Be an Effective Manager ::: Outstanding Performance Is Inconsistent with Fear of Failure ::: You Must Know Your People to Lead Them ::: People Have No Limits, Even After Failure ::: Base Your Strategy on the #Situation, Not on a Formula — A Class With Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World's Greatest Management Teacher

 

The Management Revolution

 

Thinking broad and thinking detailed ↑ ↓

 

#23 #data
Why Peter Drucker Distrusted #Facts
(HBR blog) and #pdf
#Opinions come first ::: Prepared to see ::: fact-based decisions?

 

… “They will simply do
what everyone
is far too prone to do anyhow:
look for the facts’
that fit the conclusion
they have already reached.

And no one has ever failed
to find the facts he is looking for.

The good statistician knows this
and distrusts all figures—
he either knows the fellow
who found them
or he does not know him;
in either case
he is suspicious.” continue

The inherent weaknesses in all possible #information systems

 

#loq Limits of Quantification

The unique event that changes the universe is an event “at the margin.”

By the time it becomes statistically significant, it is no longer “future”;
it is, indeed, no longer even “present.”

It is already “past.”

 


 

Making the future → a chance for survival

 

True Detective #evidence-wall ↓

evidence-wall-true-detective-cropped-pict

Attention-directing tools and
the patterning system of the human brain ↑ continue

#swayKara Swisher investigates power: who has it, who’s been denied it, and who dares to defy it.”

 

… A good many organizations and their managements do not even make their present organizations effective — and yet the organizations somehow survive for a while. #mbr #taa

The big business, in particular, seems to be able to coast a long time on the courage, work, and vision of earlier managers.

#wgcf
why_great_companies_fr540

Amazon → How the Mighty Fall — Stages: 1 Hubris Born of Success; 2 Undisciplined Pursuit of More; 3: Denial of Risk and Peril Stage; 4 Grasping for Salvation; 5 Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death. Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do.

But tomorrow always arrives. #apta

It is always different.

And then even the mightiest company is in trouble if it has not worked on the future.

It will have lost distinction and leadership — all that will remain is big-company overhead.

It will neither control nor understand what is happening.

Not having dared to take the risk of making the new happen, it perforce took the much greater risk of being surprised by what did happen.

And this is a risk that even the largest and richest organization cannot afford and that even the smallest one need not run.

continue

 

what exists is getting old

 

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#56 The inherent weaknesses in all possible information systems #apta

The information system can be #data #information

as well designed as possible

as complete as possible

as much in “real time” as possible.

Yet

It only answers #questions which top management has already asked.

It can only report what had already had impact — that is what is already yesterday.

For one can only codify the past.

Every report is codification.

 

The new developments that really matter#org

Are always by definition outside any possible reporting system.

By the time they show up in the figures, it is very late — and may well be too late.

Unless one understands what is truly relevant.

Unless one has the ability to hold the actual reality against one’s expectations.

One will be overtaken by events.

One will become aware of problems only when they become “trouble.”

One will see opportunities only when they have already been missed.

 

Man's mind

 

Hash tags (#) 53, 54, 55 56 and 57 form a thought space

Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

 

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But precisely because there are so many different areas of importance,
the day-by-day method of management
is inadequate
even in the smallest and simplest business. #mbr

 

Because deterioration is what happens normally — that is,
unless somebody counteracts it — there is need for
a systematic and purposeful program.

 

There is need to reduce the almost limitless possible tasks
to a manageable number.

 

There is need to concentrate scarce resources
on the greatest opportunities and results.

 

There is need to do the few right things
and do them with excellence.

Managing for Results connect by Peter Drucker

 

… more on organization efforts

 


 

“Managers are synthesizers #mbr #sda #apta

who bring resources together

and have that ability

to “smell ↓” opportunity and timing.



Today perceptiveness (#connect to Water Logic)

is more important

than #analysis




In the new society of organizations (#pdf),

you need to be able to recognize patterns
to see what is there

rather than what you expect to see.”

Interview: Post-Capitalist Executive

From Analysis to Perception: The New Worldview

 

Find “How Perception Works” in the overview of
I Am Right — You Are Wrong
(From this to the New Renaissance: from Rock Logic to Water Logic)

 

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#hor3 #freedom
drucker-man-invented-corp-soc-pict-t-no-ref
Who was Peter Drucker? ↑ ↓

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279
Larger view

 

Freedom is not fun. (#lchp #impact #worldview)

It is not the same as individual happiness, nor is it security or peace or progress.

It is a responsible choice.

Freedom is not so much a right as a duty.

Real freedom is not freedom from something; that would be license.

It is freedom to choose between doing or not doing something, to act one way or another, to hold one #belief or the opposite.

It is not “fun” but the heaviest burden laid on man :

to decide his own individual conduct as well as the conduct of society and to be responsible for both decisions. #consequences #fastp #dwrau

 

 

#hor3

history-of-the-world-in-two-hours-03-pict-600

YouTube: The History of the World in Two Hours
— beginning with the industrial revolution ↑ ↓

 

Power has to be used

“It is a reality.

If the decent and idealistic toss power in the gutter, the guttersnipes pick it up.

If the able and educated refuse to exercise power responsibly, irresponsible and incompetent people take over the seats of the mighty and the levers of power.

 

#Google : “Hitler’s Circle of Evil” ↑ ↓

Power not being used for social purposes passes to people who use it for their own ends.

At best it is taken over by the careerists who are led by their own timidity into becoming arbitrary, autocratic, and bureaucratic.” — PFD

 

#horizons Naming people behavior #seek

 

Why bother?

 

The antidote and the alternative to tyranny #mbr

 

totalitarianism

From Progress to Innovation
#pdf

 

Ludecy

 

#hor3
A revolution in every generation is not the answer #mbr

“Yet “revolutions,” as we have learned since Jefferson’s days, are not the remedy.

They cannot be predicted, directed, or controlled.

They bring to power the wrong people.

Worst of all, their results — predictably — are the exact opposite of their promises.

totalitarianism

Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump

Indeed, we now know that “revolution” is a delusion, the pervasive delusion of the nineteenth century, but today perhaps the most discredited of its myths.

We now know that “revolution” is not achievement and the new dawn.

It results from senile decay, from the bankruptcy of ideas and institutions, from failure of self-renewal.

And yet we also know that theories, values, and all the artifacts of human minds and human hands do age and rigidify, becoming obsolete, becoming “afflictions.”

What exists is getting old

… But these revolutions
are largely the effects of shifts
in the foundations that precede them
and make the revolutions inevitable The Age of Discontinuity

Post-Capitalist Society

Innovation and entrepreneurship are thus needed in society as much as in the economy, in public-service institutions as much as in businesses.

It is precisely ↓

because innovation and entrepreneurship are not “root and branch” but “one step at a time,” a product here, a policy there, a public service yonder;

because they are not planned but focused on this opportunity and that need;

because they are tentative and will disappear if they do not produce the expected and needed results;

because, in other words, they are pragmatic rather than dogmatic and modest rather than grandiose — that they promise to keep any society, economy, industry, public service, or business flexible and self-renewing.

They achieve what Jefferson hoped to achieve through revolution in every generation, and they do so without bloodshed, civil war, or concentration camps, without economic catastrophe, but with purpose, with direction, and under control.

 

Conditions for survival

 

What we NEED is an entrepreneurial society in which innovation and entrepreneurship are normal, steady, and continuous.

Just as management has become the specific organ of all contemporary institutions, and the integrating organ of our society of organizations, so innovation and entrepreneurship have to become an integral life-sustaining activity in our organizations, our economy, our society.

 

This requires of #executives in all institutions that they make innovation and entrepreneurship a normal, ongoing, everyday activity, a practice in their own work and in that of their organization.” continue

 

#horizons ↓

 

Intelligence, Information and Thinking

 

Moving Beyond Capitalism?

 

The economic challenge of the post-capitalist society

 

We face long years of profound change

 

The first task of management

 

Citizenship through the social sector

 

Handbook for the Positive Revolution

 

 

“Man becomes the instrument of evil when, like the Hensches, he thinks to harness evil to his ambition; and he becomes the instrument of evil when, like the Schaeffers, he joins with evil to prevent worse.

I have often wondered which of these two did, in the end, more harm — the Monster or the Lamb; and which is worse, Hensch’s sin of the lust for power or Schaeffer’s hubris and sin of pride?

But maybe the greatest sin is neither of these two ancient ones; the greatest sin may be the new twentieth-century sin of indifference, the sin of the distinguished biochemist who neither kills nor lies but refuses to bear witness when, in the words of the old gospel hymn, “They crucify my Lord.”” — Adventures of a Bystander

 


 

“Beware the man on the white horse promising to fix things” continue

Hitler’s PR (#wgobcd)

hitler-tell-em-pict-600
hitler-behavior-pict-600

#evidence-wall ↓

trump-collage-500

The Original Donald Trump (#wgobcd)

Roy Cohn: Joe McCarthy’s henchman and Donald Trump’s mentor

Senator Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn ↓

joseph-mccarth-roy-cohn-pict-600

quote-i-bring-out-the-worst-in-my-enemies-and-that-s-how-i-get-them-to-defeat-themselves-roy-cohn-600

Roy Cohn and Donald Trump ↓

roy-cohn-donald-trump-pict-600

Trump and Putin

trump-putin-600-mm-pict

 

The Great War laid waste to the economic and political foundations of Europe, but did not establish a new international order, thus setting the stage for the disasters of the 1930s and 1940s. As the world approaches another period of vast economic and political change, the lessons of the interwar interregnum are more relevant than ever. The Great Crack-Up, Then and Now

Ten Weimar Lessons

 

… “The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet.

And the challenges
looming ahead may be more serious and more daunting still
than those posed by the social transformations that have already happened,
the social transformations of the twentieth century” continue

 


 

You can’t have a healthy organization
in a sick society
” — Druckerism

 

“Man in his social and political existence must have a functioning society just as he must have air to breathe in his biological existence. #pdf

However, the fact that man has to have a society does not necessarily mean that he has it.

Nobody calls the mass of unorganized, panicky, stampeding humanity in a shipwreck a “society.”

There is no society, though there are human beings in a group.

Actually, the panic is directly due to the breakdown of a society; and the only way to overcome it is by restoring a society with social values, social discipline, social power, and social relationships.

 

 

Social life cannot function without a society; but it is conceivable that it does not function at all.

The evidence of the last twenty-five years of Western civilization hardly entitles us to say that our social life functioned so well as to make out a prima-facie case for the existence of a functioning society (#pdf).” — The Daily Drucker

 

 

drucker-man-invented-corp-soc-pict-t-no-ref

Drucker: The Man Who Invented the Corporate Society

Homeland Security ↓

“For the individual there is no society unless he has social status and function.”

The individual must know where he stands in the order and be able to feel with good reason that he fills a role in making that society work.

The rulers must be legitimate rulers, representative of those whom they rule and responsive to their needs.

Collage created using TurboCollage software from www.TurboCollage.com

 

Evil + mentally ignorant and lazy #MoscowMitch #TrumpLies

evil-mcconnell-meadows-jordon-nunes_600x600

 

Wonder where Trump got the idea for rallies?

evil-trump-nazi-salute-pict

evil-trump-goebbels-600

 

The individual who lacks status and function is not only unhappy; HE IS DANGEROUS.

Lacking a fixed (though not immutable) place in the order of things, he is a destructive wanderer through the cosmos.

Feeling no responsibility to a society in which he has no place, he sets little value on life.

He will DESTROY and KILL because he has NO REASON not to destroy and kill.

Here we see prefigured the current, awful realities of the rootless destroyers — the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Weather Underground, the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

“Status-seeking,” Drucker was saying, is not an egocentric foible.

It is a part of the human condition.

When human beings seek status and do not find it, THE WORLD IS IN TROUBLE.

jumping forward

He anticipates the debate that was to grow over the question of “relativism versus eternal verities.”

He scorns both extremes — but he is a lot tougher on the relativists.

He dismisses the “masses” and derides the kind of thinking that glorifies the faceless crowd.

The masses are not glorious; they are “a product of SOCIAL DECOMPOSITION and a RANK POISON.”

Cold? Remote? Cynically snobbish?

Maybe; but Drucker’s aim is to take people out of the mass and MAKE THEM FUNCTIONING INDIVIDUALS in a FUNCTIONING SOCIETY.” #pdfMake everybody a contributor — The knowledge based organization → from command to information to the responsibility-based organization (#responsibility word stem #contribut) continue

 


 

The political scene is infested with deniers accumulating wealth at the expense of society. They deny climate change, the holocaust, Russian actions …

 


 

If Socialism is defined, as Marx defined it, as ownership of the means of production by the employees, then the United States has become the most “socialist” country around — while still remaining the most “capitalist” one as well. continue

 


 

…“I was lost long before the (Berlin) wall fell.

I was once destined to become a man much like yourself — true hearted, determined, full of purpose — but character is easier kept than recovered.

We cannot control the things that life does to us.

They are done before we know it, and once they are done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and the man you wanted to be.

... snip, snip...

Sometimes a man can meet his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.

... snip, snip...

… The system guarantees IBBC’s (Deutsche Bank) safety because everyone is involved

… Hezbollah, the CIA, the Colombian drug traffickers, Russian organized crime, governments of China, Iran, U.S., every multinational corporation, everyone.

They all need banks like IBBC so they can operate within the black and grey latitudes.

This is why your investigative efforts have been ignored or undermined”

... snip, snip...

“Sometimes the hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn”

audioplayback

The International

Is this ↑ something that would be beneficial to calendarize?

 


 

May’s Day

“No one should underestimate [Theresa] May.

Like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has proved her mettle in successive crises, May has all the tools she needs to get things done.

She is clever and tough, with little patience for nonsense.

She has a strong sense of public service, and an equally strong set of values.

She carries little ideological baggage, and is adept at staying in control, operating within self-imposed boundaries that keep her on familiar terrain.

May wins most of the battles she fights, and shows little mercy to those who have used underhanded tactics against her.

Yet she has few known enemies within her party and is popular with its rank and file.

It is a robust combination – one that she will need to use fully as she attempts to lead Britain out of the EU.”

Flash forward

“The actual results of (current) action are not predictable” continue

Is this ↑ something that would be beneficial to calendarize?

 

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#13a #wlh ( 13b below)

How can the individual survive?

 

PDF

 

The society of organizations demands of the individual

decisions regarding himself.

 

At first sight, the decision may appear only to concern career and livelihood.

 

“What shall I do?”

is the form in which the question is usually asked.

 

But actually it reflects a demand that the individual

take responsibility for

society and its institutions.

 

What cause do I want to serve?” is implied.

Josh Abrams → allocating one’s life

And underlying this question is the demand the individual

take responsibility for himself
.

 

“What shall I do with myself?”

rather than “'What shall I do?”

is really being asked of the young

by the multitude of choices around them.

 

The society of organizations forces the individual to ask of himself:

“Who am I?”

“What do I want to be?”

“What do I want to put into life

and what do I want to get out of it?”
in context

 

Managing Oneself — a revolution in human affairs

 


 

Warning: the corporate-ladder is a dying concept — think symphony orchestra and taking on one assignment after the other.

 

“Making a living is no longer enough,” …

Work also has to make a life.”
Druckerism (calendarize this?)

 

r-banson-pict-500

Richard Branson

 

Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because

so few of the so-called entrepreneurs

know what they are doing
continue. #mbr (#impact)

 


 

#13b #hor3 #wlh The individual in entrepreneurial society

Notes on entrepreneurial activities and destabilizer

 

… “They can no longer assume that

what they have learned as children and youngsters

will be the “foundation” for the rest of their lives
.

It will be the “launching pad”

the place to take off from

rather than the place to build on and to rest on
.

 

sidebar

 

 

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

the real pattern of economic activity

larger composite view ↑ ::: Economic & content and structure ::: Adoption rates: one & two

The Forces Creating a New Geography of Opportunity?

 

A discipline is a necessary container

What does it take to be an expert?

Knowledge and Technology #pdf

Knowledge economy, knowledge polity

Conditions for survival

radar-differences-pict-600

Knowledge based management

Career danger

 

main brainroad continues

 

… They can no longer assume that

they “enter upon a career” which then proceeds

along a pre-determined, well-mapped and well-lighted “career path”

to a known destination
— what the American military calls “progressing in grade.””

 

 

The assumption from now on has to be

that individuals on their own

will have to find, determine, and develop

a number of “careers” during their working lives. (calendarize this?) See Josh Abrams story

 

sound players

And the more highly schooled the individuals,

the more entrepreneurial their careers

and the more demanding their learning challenges
.

(calendarize this?) continue

 

#ltl Learning to learn

 

time-line-and-adoption-rates-pict-t-600

Successful careerS are not planned continue ::: Katie Couric

 

“The stepladder is gone, and
there’s not even the implied structure
of an industry’s rope ladder.

It’s more like vines …

vines

and you bring your own machete.

You don’t know
what you’ll be doing next


Managing in a Time of Great Change

 

“You can’t design your life around a
temporary organization”
— Peter Drucker

 


 

#blad #impact Peter Druckersocial ecologistMy life as a knowledge worker

 

 

The leading management thinker describes seven personal experiences that taught him how to grow, to change, and to age —without becoming a prisoner of the past. (calendarize this?)

 

 

 

Handbook for the Positive Revolution

The Happiness Purpose

H+ (Plus) A New #Religion?: How to Live Your Life Positively Through Happiness, Humour, Help, Hope, Health

 

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#tln #wlh #ted The Essential Drucker

The linked page above ↑ contains links to additional pages exploring many of the topics below

bbx Introduction: The Origin and Purpose of TED

Where do I begin to read Drucker?

bbx MANAGEMENT

bbx Management as Social Function and Liberal Art

bbx The Dimensions of Management

bbx The Purpose and Objectives of a Business #objectives #pdf #lter #ir #dtao #operacy #thinkingworkbook

The profit motive and its offspring maximization of profits are just as irrelevant to the function of a business, the purpose of a business, and the job of managing a business. #profit

In fact, the concept is worse than irrelevant: it does harm.

Actually, a company can make a social contribution only if it is highly profitable. #profit

bbx What the Nonprofits Are Teaching Business

bbx Social Impacts and Social Problems

bbx Management’s New Paradigms #mnp #pdf #lter #ir #dtao #operacy #thinkingworkbook

bbx The Information Executives Need Today

bbx Management by #Objectives and Self-Control

bbx Picking People — The Basic Rules

The following three chapters are from Innovation and Entrepreneurship

bbx The Entrepreneurial Business

bbx The New Venture

bbx Entrepreneurial Strategies

 

bbx II. THE INDIVIDUAL

bbx Effectiveness Must Be Learned

bbx Focus on Contribution

bbx Know Your Strengths and Values

For knowledge workers, How do I perform? may be an even more important question than What are my strengths?

bbx Know Your Time

bbx Effective Decisions

bbx Functioning Communications

bbx Leadership as Work

bbx Principles of Innovation

bbx The Second Half of Your Life

bbx The Educated Personhere and #pdf here

 

bbx III. SOCIETY

bbx A Century of Social Transformation — Emergence of Knowledge Society

The priority tasks

bbx The Coming of Entrepreneurial Society

bbx #wlh Citizenship through the Social Sector ← a top of the food chain mental landscape

from Post-Capitalist Society

“In a transition period, the number of people in need always grows.

There are the huge masses of refugees all over the globe, victims of war and social upheaval, of racial, ethnic, political, and #religious persecution, of government incompetence and of government cruelty.

illegal-border-crossing-pict-600

Even in the most settled and stable societies

people will be

left behind

in the shift to knowledge work
.

It takes a generation or two before a society and its population catch up with radical changes in the composition of the work force and in the demands for skills and #knowledge.

It takes some time—the best part of a generation, judging by historical experience—before the productivity of service workers can be raised sufficiently to provide them with a “middle-class” standard of living.” citizenship through the social sector

 

«§§§»

 

Every social problem is an opportunity

Good intentions ↑ aren’t enough.

You have to define the results you’re after.

There has been a huge expansion in the number of nonprofits and charitable organizations the past several years.

A lot of people want to put their resources to work where they can do the most good.

Unfortunately, as Peter noted, many of them get poor results — or no results.

“The problem,” he said, “is that they don’t ask about results, and they don’t know what results they want in the first place.

They mean well, and they have the best of intentions, but the only thing good intentions are for (as the old maxim says) is to pave the road to hell.”

The best results are achieved, he said, when people ask the right questions (#rq) and then partner with others who have the expertise, knowledge, and discipline to get the right results. See network society below.

Managing the Nonprofit Organization

“The nonprofits are human-change agents (a.k.a. “human change” organizations) .

And their results are therefore always a change in people —in their behavior, in their circumstances, in their vision, in their health, in their hopes, above all, in their competence and capacity.

In the last #analysis, the nonprofit institution, whether it’s in health care or education or community service, or a labor union, has to judge itself by its performance in creating vision, creating standards, creating values and commitment, and in creating human competence .

The nonprofit institution therefore needs to set specific goals in terms of its service to people .

And it needs constantly to raise these goals—or its performance will go down .”

 

How to guarantee non-performance

No one can guarantee the performance of a public service program.
But we know how to ensure non-performance with absolute certainty.

Part I : Have a Lofty Objective see below ::: Try to Do Several Things at Once :::
Believe That "Fat is Beautiful" ::: Don't experiment, be dogmatic :::
Make sure that you will not learn from experience ::: Inability to Abandon :::

Part II : Avoiding These Six Deadly Sins is the Prerequisite for Performance and Results → What Results Should You Expect? — A Users' Guide to MBO :::

Part III : The Lack of Concern With Performance in Public Administration Theory

Have a lofty objective = To use such statements as “objectives” thus makes sure that no effective work will be done. For work is always specific, always mundane, always focused. Yet without work there is non-performance. To have a chance at performance, a program needs clear targets, the attainment of which can be measured, appraised, or at least judged.

 

Creating Tomorrow’s Society Of Citizens and Refining the Mission Statement

You have vital judgments ahead: whether to change the mission, whether to abandon programs that have outlived their usefulness and concentrate resources elsewhere, how to match opportunities with your competence and commitment, how you will build community and change lives.

Self-assessment is the first action requirement of leadership: the constant re-sharpening, constant refocusing, never being really satisfied.

And the time to do this is when you are successful.

If you wait until things start to go down, then it’s very difficult.

 

but there’s no virtue in being a nonprofit #profit

 

Management and Entrepreneurship in the Public-Service Institution

tblue Managing Service Institutions in the Society of Organization

tblue Managing Public-Service Institutions For Performance

tblue Entrepreneurship in the Public-Service Institution

 

The change in the individual’s situation … The world of the American citizen in those days looked very much like the Kansas prairie. Except for one hill, the individual #citizen was the tallest thing as far as the eye could see. And even this hill, the federal government, while it looked imposing, was only a few hundred feet high. continue — new pluralism

A noncompetitive life

 

bbx From #Analysis to Perception — The New #Worldview.

In 1946, with the advent of the computer, information became the organizing principle of production.

With this, a new basic civilization came into being.

We are now in a fourth surge, triggered by information and biology.

Like the earlier entrepreneurial surges, the present one is not confined to “high tech” it embraces equally “middle tech,” “low tech,” and “no tech.”

Like the earlier ones, it is not confined to new or small enterprises, but is carried by existing and big ones as well — and often with the greatest impact and effectiveness. continue

And, like the earlier surges, it is not confined to “inventions,” that is, to technology.

Social innovations are equally “entrepreneurial” and equally important. continue

 

Find “How Perception Works” in the overview of
I Am Right — You Are Wrong
(From this to the New Renaissance: from Rock Logic to Water Logic)

 

bbx Afterword: The Challenge Ahead

bbx The paradox of rapidly expanding economy and growing income inequality — the paradox that bedevils us now

bbx Growing health care and education, possibly a shrinking market for goods and services

bbx Center of power shifting to the consumer — free flow of information

bbx Knowledge workers — expensive resource

bbx Governments depending on managers and individuals

 


 

Managing Service Institutions in the Society of Organizations

 

Entrepreneurship in the Public-Service Institution

 

“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”

 

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Josh Abrams: Allocating one’s life (the second half) (#impact)

Additional life allocation horizons ↓

Specific topics

Values; Time Management; Knowledge society; Society of Organizations; Mission; Network society; Abandonment; Opportunities; Design; Brainroads and brainscapes; Topic work (a work approach for topics—like these pages); Action Plans; Project thinking and planning; About #growth and development efforts; Globalization; Education; Learning; Data, Information, Knowledge; Data; Information; Knowledge; Knowledge specialty; Knowledge workers; Knowledge technologists; Management; Leadership; Managing people; Entrepreneurship; Results created by organizations; Performance: organizations and individual; Measurements; Marketing; Innovation; Productivity; Profitability #profit; Spending :: A foundation for future directed decisions; Strategy; Execution; Organization; Working with people; Production; Organization Culture; Strengths; Contribution; Thinking; Questions; Alliances and Collaborations; Kaizen; Using Amazon.com book pages; Knowledge management; Concepts; From computer literacy to information literacy; Community; Other word challenges

Some timescape vistas …

bbx The First Technological Revolution and its Lessons

history-of-the-world-in-two-hours-04-pict-600

bbx Technology (more than you might think)

bbx Up to Poverty — the agents of revolution

bbx The Vanishing East — the end of the European power system

bbx The Manager and the Moron

bbx Luther, Machiavelli, and the Salmon

bbx The New Pluralism Landmarks of Tomorrow ::: Frontiers of Management ::: Foundational books → the need for a political and social theory ::: How can government function? ::: Un-centralizing ::: The society of organizations PDF ::: see from Analysis to Perception — The New Worldview below ↓

bbx Trade lessons from the world economy g

#horizons No More Superpower → “Because of the emergence of the transnational company and of the symbol economy as the determinant force in the world market, there is no more economic superpower.

No matter how big, powerful, and productive a country may be, it competes every day for its world market position.

No one country can, in fact, expect long to maintain a competitive lead in technology, in management, in innovation, in design, in entrepreneurship; but it does not matter much to the transnational company which country is in the lead.

It does business in all of them and is at home in all of them.

However, the individual company too can no longer take its leadership position for granted.

There is no more “superpower” in industry, either; there are only competitors.

A company’s home country becomes a “location,” that is a headquarters and communications center.

But in any one industry there are a number of companies — some American, some German, some British, some Japanese — which together are the “superpowers” in that industry worldwide.

Managers need increasingly to base business policy on this new transnational structure of industry and markets”see from Analysis to Perception — The New Worldview below ↓ #apta

bbx From Analysis to Perception — The New #Worldview

Find “How Perception Works” in the overview of
I Am Right — You Are Wrong
(From this to the New Renaissance: from Rock Logic to Water Logic)

bbx Citizenship through the social sector (#volunteer #responsibility #cities word stem #contribut)

“We still talk of these organizations as “nonprofits.”

But this is a legal term.

It means nothing except that under American law these organizations do not pay taxes.

Whether they are organized as “nonprofit” or not is actually irrelevant to their function and behavior.

Many American hospitals since 1960 or 1970 have become “for-profits” and are organized in what legally are business corporations.

They function exactly the same way as traditional “nonprofit” hospitals.

What matters is thus not the legal basis.

What matters is that the social sector institutions have a different purpose.

Government demands compliance.

It makes rules and enforces them.

Business expects to be paid; it supplies.

The social sector institutions aim at changing the human being .

The “product” of the school is the student who has learned something.

The “product” of the hospital is a cured patient.

The “product” of the church is a church-goer whose life is being changed.

The task of the social sector organizations is to create human health .



Increasingly, these organizations of the social sector serve a second and equally important purpose.

They create citizenship .

Modern society and modern polity have become so big and complex that citizenship, that is, responsible participation, is no longer possible.

All we can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxes all the time.



As a #volunteer in the social sector institution, the individual can again make a difference — mentioned in 15+ sections of The Essential Drucker .

In the United States, where there has been a volunteer tradition all along, because of the old independence of the churches, almost every other adult in the 1990s worked at least three—and often five—hours a week as a volunteer in a social sector organization.

Only in Britain is there something like this tradition, although on a very much lower basis (in part because the welfare state is far more embracing, but in much larger part because of the tradition of an established church that is paid for by the state and run as a civil service).

Outside of the English-speaking countries, there is not much volunteer tradition.

In fact, the modern state in Europe and Japan has been openly hostile to anything that smacks of volunteerism —most so in France and Japan.

It is ancien régime and fundamentally suspected of being subversive.



But even in these countries—Japan is perhaps the main example—things are changing.

For the knowledge society needs the social sector, and the social sector needs the volunteer.

But knowledge workers also need a sphere in which they can act as citizens, that is, a sphere in which they create a community.

Organization does not give it to them.” continue

bbx Knowledge and Technology #pdf

bbx What Needs to Be Done?

bbx Adventures of a Bystander

bbx The Unfashionable Kierkegaard

“Like all #religious thinkers, Kierkegaard places in the center the question, How is human existence possible?

All through the nineteenth century this #question — which before had been the core of Western thought — was not only highly unfashionable; it seemed senseless and irrelevant.

The era was dominated by a radically different question, How is #society possible?

Rousseau asked it; Hegel asked it; the classical economists asked it.

Marx answered it one way; liberal Protestantism another way.

But in whatever form it is asked, it must always lead to an answer which denies that human existence is possible except in society.

Rousseau formulated this answer for the whole era of progress: whatever human existence there is; whatever freedom, rights, and duties the #individual has; whatever meaning there is in individual life all is determined by society according to society's objective need of survival.

The individual, in other words, is not autonomous.

He is determined by society.

He is free only in matters that do not matter.

He has rights only because society concedes them.

He has a will only if he wills what society needs.

His life has meaning only insofar as it relates to the social meaning and as it fulfills itself in #fulfilling the objective goal of society.

There is, in short, no human existence; there is only social existence.

There is no #individual; there is only the #citizen.

#wgobcd It is hardly possible to exaggerate the differences between Rousseau's "General Will," Hegel's concept of history as the unfolding of #ideas, and the Marxian theory of the individual's determination through his objectively given class situation.

But they all gave the same answer to the question of human existence: there is no such thing, there is no such question!

#Ideas and citizens exist, but no human beings.

What is possible is merely the realization of ideas in and through society.

For if you start with the question, How is society possible?, without asking at the same time, How is human existence possible?, you arrive inevitably at a negative concept of individual existence and of freedom: individual freedom is then what does not disturb society.

Thus freedom becomes something that has no function and no autonomous existence of its own.

It becomes a convenience, a matter of political strategy, or a demagogue's catch phrase.

It is nothing vital.

To define freedom as that which has no function is, however, to deny the existence of freedom.

For nothing survives in society save it have a function.

But the nineteenth century believed itself far too secure in the possession of freedom to realize this.

Prevailing opinion failed to see that to deny the relevance of the question, How is human existence possible?, is to deny the relevance of human freedom.

It actually saw in the question, How is society possible?, a key to the gospel of freedom — largely because it aimed at social equality.

And the break of the old fetters of inequality appeared equivalent to the establishment of freedom.

We now have learned that the nineteenth century was mistaken.

Nazism and Communism are an expensive education — a more expensive education, perhaps, than we can afford; but at least we are learning that we cannot obtain freedom if we confine ourselves to the question, How is society possible?

It may be true that human existence in freedom is not possible; which is, indeed, asserted by Hitler and the Communists as well as, less openly, by all those well-meaning “social engineers” who believe in social psychology, propaganda, re-education, or administration as a means of molding and forming the individual.

But at least the question, How is human existence possible?, can no longer be regarded as irrelevant.

For those who profess to believe in freedom, there is no more relevant inquiry.” continue

bbx Managing the Family Business: see December 28 and 29 in The Daily Drucker

bbx The shakeout

The “shakeout” sets in as soon as the “window” closes.

And the majority of ventures started during the “window” period do not survive the shakeout, as has already been shown for such high-tech industries of yesterday as railroads, electrical apparatus makers, and automobiles.

bbx Mission

bbx Good for what?

bbx Ten Principles for Life 2.0 Bob Buford

“Making a living is no longer enough,” …
Work also has to make a life.”
Druckerism (calendarize this?)

bbx The Wisdom of Peter Drucker Bob Buford

bbx Finishing Well Bob Buford

bbx The World is Full of Options Bob Buford

bbx My life as a knowledge worker

bbx Peter's Principles — Harriet Rubin → “no human being has built a better brand by just managing himself”

bbx Interview: Post-Capitalist Executive

bbx Interview: Managing in a Post Capitalist Society

 

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peter-drucker-timescape_600x545

 

Drucker's work and connections thinking books education-experience-reality harvest and implement thinking books image harvest and implement Who was Peter Drucker? harvest and implement

Your thinking,
choices, DECISIONS are

determined by

what

you’ve “SEEN
↑ ↓ …

↑ #msd ← SEEN



Time usage clues ↓
radar_limited-pict-no-reflect
Time InvestmentS for tomorrowS

The explorer #htmp

Concepts ::: Context ::: Attention flow



#woo Windows of Opportunity


Wisdom ::: #4almost-n

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

Thinking broad and thinking detailed

thinking-books-300w

Basic thinking processes


Subjects/Topics vs. realities ::: larger view

color bars ::: color swatches ::: Kaleidoscopes
education-experience-reality-399

#fastp

jigsaw-puzzle-colors-250


evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

The day the horse lost its job

… the philosophical shift from the Cartesian universe of mechanical cause
to the new universe of pattern, purpose and process …
an age of transition

#dotmp = danger of too much planning

Drucker book search

 

PDF Tables of Content for Books by Peter Drucker

1939: The End of Economic Man (New York: The John Day Company)

1942: The Future of Industrial Man (New York: The John Day Company)

1946: Concept of the Corporation (New York: The John Day Company)

1950: The New Society (New York: Harper & Brothers)

1954: The Practice of Management (New York: Harper & Brothers)

1957: America's Next Twenty Years (New York: Harper & Brothers)

1959: The Landmarks of Tomorrow (New York: Harper & Brothers)

1964: Managing for Results (New York: Harper & Row)

1967: The Effective Executive (New York: Harper & Row)

1969: The Age of Discontinuity (New York: Harper & Row)

1970: Technology, Management and Society (New York: Harper & Row)

1971: The New Markets and Other Essays (London: William Heinemann Ltd.)

1971: Men, Ideas and Politics (New York: Harper & Row)

1971: Drucker on Management (London: Management Publications Limited)

1973: Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices' (New York: Harper & Row)

1976: The Unseen Revolution: How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America (New York: Harper & Row)

1977: People and Performance: The Best of Peter Drucker on Management (New York: Harper's College Press)

1978: Adventures of a Bystander (New York: Harper & Row)

1980: Managing in Turbulent Times (New York: Harper & Row)

1981: Toward the next economics, and other essays (New York: Harper & Row) ISBN 0060148284

1982: The Changing World of Executive (New York: Harper & Row)

1982: The Last of All Possible Worlds (New York: Harper & Row)

1984: The Temptation to Do Good (London: William Heinemann Ltd.)

1985: Innovation and Entrepreneurship (New York: Harper & Row)

1986: The Frontiers of Management: Where Tomorrow's Decisions are Being Shaped Today (New York: Truman Talley Books/E.D. Dutton)

1989: The New Realities: in Government and Politics, in Economics and Business, in Society and World View (New York: Harper & Row)

1990: Managing the Nonprofit Organization: Practices and Principles (New York: Harper Collins)

1992: Managing for the Future (New York: Harper Collins)

1993: The Ecological Vision (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers)

1993: Post-Capitalist Society (New York: HarperCollins)

1995: Managing in a Time of Great Change (New York: Truman Talley Books/Dutton)

1997: Drucker on Asia: A Dialogue between Peter Drucker and Isao Nakauchi (Tokyo: Diamond Inc.)

1998: Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing)

1999: Management Challenges for 21st Century (New York: Harper Business)

1999: Managing OneseIf (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing) [published 2008 from article in Harvard Business Review]

2001: The Essential Drucker (New York: Harper Business)

2002: Managing in the Next Society (New York: Truman Talley Books/St. Martin's Press)

2002: A Functioning Society (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers)

2004: The Daily Drucker (New York: Harper Business)

2008 (posthumous): The Five Most Important Questions (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass)

 

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#81 #hor2 #wlh #eia #cfs

 

The Executive In Action Preface

Amazon #ad

There are many “How-to-Do-It” management books; few, however, tell the executive what to do, let alone why.

There are equally a great many “What-to-Do” management books; but few of them tell the executive how to do it.

Yet treatment without diagnosis is as useless as diagnosis without treatment.

In any practice the two go together — and Management is a Practice.


The three books of mine, here brought together in one volume, embrace the three dimensions of the successful practice of management:


Managing the Existing Business — Managing for Results

Changing Tomorrow’s Business — Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Managing Oneself — The Effective Executive


Each of these three books is distinct and self-contained.

Yet in the executive’s work the three are always joined.

 

What Thinking is Needed

thinking-books-601w

 

Managing the Existing Business is the first day-to-day task 

no matter how clear the executive’s vision; 

no matter how brilliantly he or she plans for the future and innovates, 

today’s business has to be managed for results now or there will be no tomorrow.

What knowledge is needed for that job?

What actions have to be taken?

What pitfalls to be avoided?

And what results should — perhaps must — be attained?


Conversely, the seemingly most successful business of today is a sham and a failure if it does not create its own and different tomorrow.

It must innovate and recreate its products or services but equally the enterprise itself.

 

Business is society’s change agent.

All other major institutions of society are designed to conserve if not to prevent change.

Business alone is designed to innovate.

No business will long survive, let alone prosper, unless it innovates successfully.

And neither innovation nor entrepreneurship are “inspiration,” let alone “flash of genius.”

They are disciplines and require concepts, tools, and organized, systematic work.


 

What Thinking is Needed

 

Finally, no matter how brilliant individual executives are or how hard they work, they will be failures and their efforts will be futile unless they are effective.

 

It is not so terribly difficult to be an effective executive.

All it requires are a few habits — that is, doing a few things day in and day out and not doing a few other things.

 

Yet few of the many executives with whom I have worked over more than fifty years were truly effective.

 

They were mostly very bright, worked mostly very hard, yet had little to show for their ability, their knowledge, their hard work.

The reason is simply that the modern organization — and with it executives in significant numbers — only emerged a little over a century ago and the human race is a slow learner.


To be sure, there have been “naturals” throughout human history.

The most effective executive on record of whom we have any information was surely that minister of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who, all of 4250 years ago, conceived the first pyramid (without any precedent whatever for such an edifice) designed it and built it — and it still stands today without once having to be “re-engineered.”

And he did so without any management books to help him and surely without having an MBA.

But we need far too many effective executives to depend on geniuses.

And then there is need for a discipline — the discipline for being an effective executive.


Together these three books should enable executives — whether high up in the organization or just beginning on their career — but also those men and women who are studying today to become executives tomorrow:


to know the right things to do;

to know how to do them; and

to do them effectively.

 

Together these three books provide The Tool Kit for Executive Action.


Claremont, Easter 1996 

Peter F. Drucker

 

#ptf
We know only two things
about the future
(continue)

 

dealing with risk and uncertainty

 

Today perceptiveness is more #important than analysis continue

 

From Analysis to Perception — The New Worldview

 

The rest of the story

 

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Conditions for survival

 

 

The rest of the story

 

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What Makes An Effective Executive

 

What Executives Should Remember

 

Managing Oneself — A Revolution In Human Affairs

 

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bbx The End of Economic Man: The Origins of Totalitarianism ::: Introduction to the Transaction Edition ::: Preface ::: Foreword ::: The Anti-Fascist Illusion ::: The Despair of the Masses ::: The Return of the Demons ::: The Failure of the Christian Churches ::: The Totalitarian Miracle ::: Fascist Noneconomic Society ::: Miracle or Mirage? ::: The Future: East Against West?

 

 

bbx The Future of Industrial Man ::: Introduction to the Transaction Edition ::: The War for the Industrial Society ::: What Is a Functioning Society? ::: The Mercantile Society of the Nineteenth Century ::: The Industrial Reality of the Twentieth Century ::: The Challenge and the Failure of Hitlerism ::: Free Society and Free Government ::: From Rousseau to Hitler ::: The Conservative Counter Revolution of 1776 ::: A Conservative Approach

 

bbx Concept of the Corporation #mbr

Concept of the Corporation had an immediate impact on American business, on public service institutions, on government agencies — and none on General Motors!

 

3 Kinds of Intelligence — Niccolò Machiavelli

 

It appeared in early 1946, just when Henry Ford II, still only in his mid-twenties, had taken over a near-bankrupt Ford Motor Company that was even more denuded of management than it was short of cash and weak in market standing and products.

As both Henry Ford II and Ernest Breech, the GM-trained executive whom Henry Ford II brought in as his Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, have said and written repeatedly, it was Concept of the Corporation which they took as their text to save and to rebuild their company.

A few years later, in 1950, the General Electric Company took Concept of the Corporation as the basic blueprint for its own massive reorganization, which then became the model of organization structure and set off the big “organization boom” of the next twenty years.

In the course of this boom practically every large business anywhere in the non-Communist world restructured itself on the concepts of decentralization that GM had pioneered and that Concept of the Corporation first described and analyzed.

 

 

Almost immediately after its publication, the book also became the text for the restructuring of major state universities: Michigan and Michigan State, Minnesota, Iowa, and others all found their traditional structure totally inadequate to serve an exploding student population when the veterans of World War II streamed in under the G.I. Bill.

A few years later, when the United States unified its armed services, the first Secretaries of Defense, James Forrestal and George C. Marshall, both reached for Concept of the Corporation to find in it their organizational guidelines.

And so did Cardinal Spellman, at about the same time, when he tried to find new organizational principles for the Archdiocese of New York, which, as he asserted, had outgrown, in both size and complexity, the administrative and organizational lineaments of the world’s oldest organization chart, the Canon Law of the Catholic Church.

 

 

But Concept of the Corporation was not only even rejected by General Motors; it was studiously ignored by the company.

 

 

There was nothing personal in this.

On the contrary, with few exceptions every GM executive whom I met in the course of my study had been friendly or at least courteous, and willing to give me of his time despite the heavy burden which war production imposed on him.

And all of them, without exception, were patient with even the dumbest of my questions.

Some of these men became personal friends.

And not one of them tried to exert any pressure on me to change anything I had written.

 

 

GM’s most important executive, Alfred Sloan — Chairman, Chief Executive, and the main-force behind the company’s growth, its policies, and its organizational structure — always went out of his way to be friendly and helpful.

After the book was published, he repeatedly called me in to get my opinions on his two favorite projects, the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Institute in New York and the Sloan School of Management at MIT.

Indeed he offered me the Management Chair at the Sloan School and was quite hurt when I, by then happily settled at the Graduate Business School of New York University, turned him down.

 

 

Yet, the book itself was totally unacceptable to most GM executives, and above all to Alfred Sloan himself.

Indeed, as he told me a good many times, my book made him sit down and write his own book on General Motors, My Years with General Motors (New York: Doubleday, 1964), primarily to refute Concept of the Corporation and to lay down what a book on GM should really be and should really focus on.

Even though Concept of the Corporation was then the only book on General Motors, it is not even mentioned in Sloan’s work.

And this treatment of it as a “nonbook” was by and large the standard reaction of GM and of its executives.

The book was not distributed within GM, was rarely, if ever, mentioned, and could not be found on the bookshelves in the offices of GM executives.

And when General Motors Institute, the company-owned, company-run engineering school which was the apple of Alfred Sloan’s eye, started to teach management a few years after Concept of the Corporation appeared, the book was not on its reading list and indeed, I was told, was not even to be found in the catalogue of the Institute’s library.

 

 

The three main reasons for this reaction on the part of GM explain in large part both GM’s great success in the post-World War II years, and GM’s later equally great failure: (1) the book’s attitude toward GM’s policies; #52 (2) the recommendation on employee relations; and (3) the treatment of the large corporation as “affected with the public interest.”

continue

 

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The New Society ::: Contents ::: Introduction to the Transaction Edition ::: Preface to the 1962 Edition ::: Introduction: The Industrial World Revolution ::: First Part: The Industrial Enterprise ::: 1. The New Social Order ::: 2. The Enterprise in Modern Society ::: 3. The Anatomy of Enterprise ::: 4. The Law of Avoiding Loss ::: 5. The Law of Higher Output ::: 6. Profitability and Performance ::: Second Part: The Problems of Industrial Order: The Economic Conflicts ::: 7. The Real Issue in the Wage Conflict ::: 8. The Worker's Resistance to Higher Output ::: 9. The Hostility to Profit ::: Third Part: The Problems of Industrial Order: Management and Union ::: 10. Can Management Be a Legitimate Government? ::: 11. Can Unionism Survive? ::: 12. Union Needs and the Common Weal ::: 13. The Union Leader's Dilemma ::: 14. The Split Allegiance Within the Enterprise ::: Fourth Pt: The Problems of Industrial Order: The Plant Community ::: 15. The Individual's Demand for Status and Function ::: 16. The Demand for the Managerial Attitude ::: 17. Men at Work ::: 18. Is There Really a Lack of Opportunity? ::: 19. The Communications Gap ::: 20. Slot-Machine Man and Depression Shock ::: Fifth Part: The Problems of Industrial Order: The ::: Management Function ::: 21. The Threefold Job of Management ::: 22. Why Managements Don't Do Their Job ::: 23. Where Will Tomorrow's Managers Come From? ::: 24. Is Bigness a Bar to Good Management? ::: Sixth Part: The Principles of Industrial Order: Exit The Proletarian ::: 25. Labor as a Capital Resource ::: 26. Predictable Income and Employment ::: 27. The Worker's Stake in Profit ::: 28. The Threat of Unemployment ::: Seventh Part: The Principles of Industrial Order: The Federal Organization of Management ::: 29. "The Proper Study of Mankind Is Organization" ::: 30. Decentralization and Federalism ::: 31 Is a Competitive Market Necessary to Management? ::: Eighth Part: The Principles of Industrial Order: The Self-Governing Plant Community ::: 32. Community Government and Business Management ::: 33. "Management Must Manage" ::: 34. The Worker and His Plant Government ::: 35. Plant Self-Government and the Union ::: Ninth Part: The Principles of Industrial Order: The Labor Union as a Citizen ::: 36. A Rational Wage Policy ::: 37. How Much Union Control Over the Citizen? ::: 38. When Strikes Become Unbearable ::: Conclusion: A Free Industrial Society ::: Epilogue to the 1962 Edition

 

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Landmarks of Tomorrow — Book Contents

 

Introduction: This Post-Modern World circa 1959

 

At some unmarked point during the last twenty years we imperceptibly moved out of the Modern Age and into a new, as yet nameless, era.

 

Post-CAPITALIST Society

 

The New Pluralism (1957)

 

Moving Beyond CAPITALISM

 

Our view of the world changed; we acquired a new perception and with it new capacities.

There are new frontiers of opportunity, risk and challenge.

There is a new spiritual center to human existence.

 

The old view of the world, the old tasks and the old center, calling themselves “modern” and “up to date” only a few years ago, just make no sense any more.

They still provide our rhetoric, whether of politics or of science, at home or in foreign affairs.

But the slogans and battle cries of all parties, be they political, philosophical, aesthetic or scientific, no longer serve to unite for action—though they still can divide in heat and emotion.

Our actions are already measured against the stern demands of thetoday,” the “post-modern world” and yet we have no theories, no concepts, no slogans—no real knowledge—about the new reality.

finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle

Indeed anyone over forty lives in a different world from that in which he came to manhood, lives as if he had emigrated, fully grown, to a new and strange country.

For three hundred years, from the middle of the seventeenth century on, the West lived in the Modern Age; and during the last century this modern West became the norm of philosophy and politics, society, science and economy all over the globe, became the first truly universal world order.

Today it is no longer living reality—but the new world, though real, if not indeed obvious to us, is not yet established.

We thus live in an age of transition, an age of overlap, in which the old “modern” of yesterday no longer acts effectively but still provides means of expression, standards of expectations and tools of ordering, while the new, the “post-modern,” still lacks definition, expression and tools but effectively controls our actions and their impact.

This book is a report on the new post-modern today we live in—nothing more.

It does not deal with the future.

It deals with the tangible present.

Indeed I have tried to resist the temptation to speculate about what might be, let alone to predict what will be.

I have not even tried to pull together into one order of values and perceptions what are still individual pieces.

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400

↑ finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle

 

Till this is done, we shall not, of course, have a really new age with its own distinct character and worldview; we shall only be “post” something else.

As I saw the job, it was to understand rather than to innovate, to describe rather than to imagine.

This is, of course, by far the smaller and less important of the tasks to be done; we still need the great imaginer, the great creative thinker, the great innovator, of a new synthesis, of a new philosophy and of new institutions.

This book encompasses a very wide horizon; yet it is incomplete.

Essentially I have tried to cover three big areas, each representing a major dimension of human life and experience:

The new view of the world, the new concepts, the new human capacities:

The first part of the book (Chapters One, Two and Three) treats the philosophical shift from the Cartesian universe of mechanical cause to the new universe of pattern, purpose and process.

I have also explored our new power purposefully to innovate, both technologically and socially, and the resulting emergence of new opportunity, new risk and new responsibility.

There is a discussion of the new power to organize men of knowledge and high skill for joint effort and performance through the exercise of responsible judgment, which has given us both the new and central institution of the large organization and a new ideal of social order in which society and individual become mutually dependent poles of human freedom and achievement.

The new frontiers, the new tasks and opportunities:

The second part (Chapters Four through Nine) sketches four new realities, each of them a challenge, above all to the peoples of the Free World.

The first is the emergence of Educated Society—a society in which only the educated man is truly productive, in which increasingly everybody will, at least in respect to years spent in school, have received a higher education, and in which the educational status of a country becomes a controlling factor in international competition and survival.

What does this mean for society and the individual?

What does it mean for education?

The second is the emergence of Economic Development—“Up to Poverty”—as the new, common vision and goal of humanity, and of international and interracial class war as the new threat.

Third is the decline of the government of the nation-state, the “modern government” of yesteryear, its increasing inability to govern internally and to act internationally.

And fourth is the new reality of the collapse of theEast,” that is of non-Western culture and civilization, to the point where no viable society anywhere can be built except upon Western formulations.

A short concluding section—only a few paragraphs—asks:

What does all this mean for the nations of the West and for the direction, goals and principles of their government and policies?

The human situation:

The third and last part (Chapter Ten) is concerned with the new spiritual—or, if one prefers the word, metaphysical—reality of human existence: the fact that both knowledge and power have become absolute, have gained the capacity for absolute destruction beyond which no refinement, no increase is meaningful any more.

This, for the first time since the dawn of our civilization, forces us to think through the nature, function and control of both.

 

Though I have tried to be faithful to the facts I am certain that I have often misunderstood themas any newcomer to a strange country is bound to misunderstand.

Though I have tried to be objective I am conscious of my Western background, and of my bias—that of the great tradition of European and especially Anglo-American conservatism with its beliefs in liberty, law and justice, in responsibility and work, in the uniqueness of the person and the fallibility of the creature.

I am equally conscious of the limitations of my knowledge and understanding—above all of my weaknesses in the creative arts.

But, still, I hope that the aim of this book: to report and to give understanding, has been reached at least to the point where it conveys to the reader both the shock of recognition—how obvious the unfamiliar new already is; and the shock of estrangement—how irrelevant the familiar modern of yesterday has already become.

bbx Landmarks of TomorrowIntroduction: This Post-Modern World ::: Essentially I have tried to cover three big areas ::: The new view of the world, the new concepts, the new human capacities ::: The new frontiers, the new tasks and opportunities ::: The human situation ::: Newcomer to a Strange Country ::: The New World-View ::: “The Whole Is the Sum of Its Parts” ::: From Cause to Configuration ::: The Purposeful Universe ::: Toward a New Philosophy ::: From Progress to Innovation ::: The New Perception Of Order ::: The Research Explosion ::: Man and Change ::: Innovation and Knowledge ::: The Power of Organized Ignorance ::: The Power of Innovation ::: The Open-Ended Technology ::: From Reform to Social Innovation ::: Innovation—The New Conservatism? ::: The Risks of Innovation ::: Plan or No Plan? ::: Local Plan or No Plan ::: Innovation as Responsibility ::: Beyond Collectivism and Individualism ::: The New Organization (hospital transformationnurses)::: The Capacity to Organize ::: Individual Work and Teamwork ::: From Magnate To Manager ::: Specialist and Manager ::: Power and Responsibility in Organization ::: The Organization Man ::: The Discipline of Managing ::: The Principle of Organization ::: Beyond Collectivism And Individualism ::: The Middle-Class Society ::: Freedom in Dynamic Order ::: The New Frontiers ::: The Educated Society ::: - The Educational Revolution ::: The Scale of the Explosion ::: The Impact on Society ::: The Educational Competition ::: Society’s Capital Investment ::: An Economic Analysis ::: Teachers and Teaching ::: How to Pay ::: Education For What? ::: Society’s Stake ::: The General versus the Special ::: Learning by Doing ::: The Educational Whole ::: The Social Responsibility of Education ::: “Up to Poverty" ::: The Frontier of Development ::: The Agents of Revolution ::: The Promise and the Danger ::: Is Economic Development Possible? ::: The “Take-off Crisis” ::: The Agriculture Problem ::: Distribution and Credit ::: “Social Overhead” Costs ::: The Problem of Attitudes ::: The Ultimate Resource ::: Building An Industrial Society ::: The Role of Money ::: Leadership by Example ::: The Problems We Face ::: Modern Government in Extremis ::: The End Of The Liberal State ::: The Definition of Modern Government ::: The Rise of the Liberal State ::: The Decline of the Liberal State ::: The New Pluralism ::: The New Metropolis ::: The Crisis of Government ::: Pluralism and the Common Interest ::: The Vanishing East ::: Success or Failure of the West? ::: The Failure of the East ::: Can the West and the New East Meet? ::: The Work to Be Done ::: Our Self-Delusion ::: The New Frontiers ::: The Human Situation Today ::: The Control of Power ::: Knowledge and Human Existence ::: Living in an Age of Overlap continue

 

books-about-drucker-collage-pict-t-600

Dense reading and Dense Listening

Thinking broad and Thinking detailed

Decisions ::: Topic work ::: Action plans ::: Communications

 

bbx The Practice of Management (1954) Preface #mbr

Management books, though only few of them, had been written and published before The Practice of Management appeared in 1954.

I myself had published in 1946 my first management book, Concept of the Corporation (New York: John Day).

A few years earlier, in 1938, Chester I. Barnard’s The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press) had appeared.

The papers on management Mary Parker Follett had written in the 1920s and early 1930s were collected and published under the title Dynamic Administration (New York: Harper & Brothers) in 1941.

Elton Mayo, the Australian-born Harvard professor, had published his two short books on work and worker: The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization (New York: Macmillan) and The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press) in 1933 and 1945, respectively.

The English translation of Henry Fayol’s Industrial and General Administration —first published in Paris in 1916—had come out in 1930 (London, England: Pitman); and Frederick W. Taylor’s Scientific Management had come out even earlier, in 1911 (New York: Harper & Brothers), and had been reprinted many times since.


Every one of these books is still being read widely, and deserves to be read widely.

Every one was a major achievement.

Every one laid firm and lasting foundations; indeed, in their respective fields, none has yet been surpassed.

There are no better guides to what we now call organizational psychology and organizational development than Barnard and Mary Parker Follett.

When we talk of “quality circles” and “worker involvement,” we only echo what Elton Mayo wrote forty and fifty years ago.

Fayol’s language is outdated, but his insights into the work of management (not the tasks of management) and its organization are still fresh and original.

Little has been added in respect to top management, its functions and its policies to what I wrote in Concept of the Corporation .


And we find ourselves today going back to Taylor in order to understand the work of knowledge-workers and to learn how to make knowledge-work productive.


Still, The Practice of Management was the first true “management” book.

It was the first to look at management as a whole, the first that attempted to depict management as a distinct function, managing as specific work, and being a manager as a distinct responsibility.

All earlier books had dealt with one aspect of management and managing—with communications, for instance, as did Barnard’s Functions of the Executive , or with top management, organizational structure, and corporate policy, as did my Concept of the Corporation .

The Practice of Management talks of “managing a business,” “managing managers,” and “the management of worker and work”—the titles, respectively, of Parts One,Two, and Four.

It talks of “the structure of management” (Part Three) but also of “making decisions” (Chapter 28).

It talks of “the nature of management,” its role, its jobs, and the challenges managements face.

But it also talks of managers as people, of the individual men and women who perform managerial work and hold managerial positions: their qualifications, their development, their responsibilities, their values.

The Practice of Management has a chapter entitled “The Spirit of an Organization” (Chapter 13), in which can be found everything that is now discussed under the heading of “corporate culture.”

The Practice of Management was the first book to talk of “objectives,” to define “key result areas,” to outline how to set #objectives, and to describe how to use them to direct and steer a business and to measure its performance.

Indeed The Practice of Management probably invented the term “objectives” at least, it is not to be found in the earlier literature.

And The Practice of Management was the first book to discuss both managing the existing business and innovating the business of tomorrow.


Conditions for survival

radar-differences-pict-600

Perhaps even more important—and certainly more novel—was the fact that The Practice of Management was a “first” also in that it saw the enterprise as a whole .

All earlier management books — and indeed most management books even now — only see one aspect.

Indeed, they usually see only the internal dimension : organization, policies, human relations within the organization, authority within it, and so on.

The Practice of Management portrays the enterprise three-dimensionally:

first, as a “business” that is an institution existing to produce economic results outside of it, in the market and for customers;

second, as a human and social “organization” which employs people, has to develop them, has to pay them, has to organize them for productivity, and therefore requires governance, embodies values and creates relationships of power and responsibility; and

third, as a “social institution” embedded in society and community and thus affected by the public interest.

The Practice of Management also discusses the “social responsibilities of business”—a term that was practically unknown at the time the book was published.


The Practice of Management thus created some thirty years ago what we now refer to as the “discipline” of management.

And this was neither accident nor good luck—it was the book’s mission and intent.


When I wrote The Practice of Management , I had ten years’ successful consulting practice under my belt.

My own starting point had been neither business nor management.

To be sure, I had, much earlier, worked for banks—one short year in Germany, three years in England.

But I had become a writer and journalist and taught government and political science.

 

Drucker’s life as a knowledge worker

 

I thus came to management almost by accident.

In 1942 I published a book, The Future of Industrial Man , in which I argued that a good many of the social tasks which community and family had performed in earlier societies had come to be discharged by organizations and especially by the business enterprise.

This book attracted the attention of a senior executive of the world’s largest manufacturing company, General Motors, who, in the late fall of 1943, invited me to make an in-depth study of his top management, its structure and its basic policies.

Out of this study grew Concept of the Corporation , finished in 1945 and published in 1946.


I found the work fascinating—but also frustrating.

There was practically nothing to help me prepare myself for it.

Worse, what few books on management and business enterprise existed were totally inadequate.

Landmarks of Tomorrow

They dealt with one aspect, and one aspect only, as if it existed in isolation.

They reminded me of a book on human anatomy that would discuss one joint in the body—the elbow, for instance—without even mentioning the arm, let alone the skeleton and musculature. #pta

Worse still, there were no studies at all on most aspects of management.

Yet what made management and the work of the manager so interesting, I thought, was precisely that there was always a true whole, a three-dimensional entity.

Managing, I soon learned, always had to take into account

the results and performance for the sake of which the business exists,

the internal organization of people engaged in a common task and

the outside social dimension —the dimension of social impacts and social responsibilities.

Yet nothing could be found on most of these topics, let alone on their relationship to one another.

Plenty of books existed at the time on the impact of government policy on business; indeed, courses on government regulation of business were then—and still are—highly popular.

But what about the impact of business on society and community?

There was ample material on corporate finance—but virtually nothing on business policy and so on.


I continued for some time as a consultant to General Motors after I had finished my study.

And then I gradually was called in to consult by some other large corporations—Sears, Roebuck, the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, General Electric. #mbr

Everywhere I found the same situation : a near-total absence of study, thought and knowledge regarding the job, function and challenges of management—nothing but fragments and specialized monographs.

And so I decided to sit down, first to map out that “dark continent,” management, then to define what pieces were missing and had to be forged and finally to put the whole together into one systematic, organized—yet short—book.

finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle #fastp

In my consulting assignments I was meeting large numbers of able younger people, people in middle- and upper-middle management positions or in their first major assignment, either as a manager or as an individual professional contributor.

These were the people who knew that they were managers —their predecessors, who had made their careers before World War II, were often barely conscious of that fact.

These younger achieving people knew that they needed systematic knowledge; needed concepts, principles, tools—and had none.

It was for them that I wrote the book.

 

Where do I begin to read Drucker?

 

And it was that generation which made the book an immediate success, that generation which converted being a manager from being a “rank” into work, function and responsibility.

And the book was an immediate success, not only in the United States but worldwide, in Europe, in Latin America and, especially, in Japan.


Indeed, the Japanese consider it the foundation of their economic success and industrial performance.


Some of my subsequent management books have taken one major theme of The Practice of Management and developed it at greater length—for instance, Managing for Results (1964), which was the first book on business strategy connect, and The Effective Executive (1966), which treats managing oneself as a manager and executive in an organization.

Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973) was written as a systematic handbook for the practicing executive but also as a systematic text for the student of management; it thus aims at being comprehensive and definitive, whereas The Practice of Management aims at being accessible and stimulating.

 

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

Managing in Turbulent Times (1980) further develops basic questions raised in The Practice of Management #question #ntea #lter

What is our business? (See what exists is getting old)

What could it be?

What should it be?

but also considers the question of how a business both innovates and maintains continuity in a time of change, thus turning change into opportunity.

These four volumes—all originally published by Harper & Row—have now come out as Harper paperbacks in the same format as this paperback edition of The Practice of Management .


But The Practice of Management has remained the one book which students of management, young people aspiring to become managers and mature managers still consider the foundation book.

“If you read only one book on management,” the chairman of one of the world’s largest banks tells his officers again and again, “read The Practice of Management .”

What explains this success is, I believe, the book’s balance between being comprehensive and being accessible and easy to read.

Each chapter is short, yet each presents the fundamentals in their entirety.

This is, of course, the result of the book’s origins; I wanted something that would give the managers I was working with in my client companies everything they would need to do their jobs and prepare themselves for top-management responsibilities; yet the material had to be accessible, had to be readable, had to fit the limited time and attention busy people could give to it.

It is this balance, I believe, that has made this book keep on selling and being read for thirty years despite the plethora of books on management that have been written and published since.

This balance, I believe, has made it the preferred book of the practitioner of management and of those who aspire to become managers, in public-service organizations as well as in businesses.

And I hope this paperback edition will serve the same function and make the same contribution to new generations of students, aspiring young management professionals, and seasoned practitioners for years to come.  
table of contents

PETER F. DRUCKER  

Claremont, California  

Thanksgiving Day, 1985  

 

10th-global-peter-drucker-forum

 

Where do I begin to read Drucker? #whtmal

 

Management and the World’s Work #pdf

↑ In less than 150 years, (circa 1988)
management has transformed the social and economic fabric
of the world’s developed countries.

It has created a global economy
and set new rules for countries
that would participate in that economy as equals. ↓

 

Post Capitalist Executive

 

#caf #pdbooks ↓ List of Drucker book contents

 

#fanFor almost nothing in our educational systems prepares people for the reality in which they will live, work, and become effective” — Peter Drucker in The New Realities

“Thinking is the most fundamental of all human skills.
The quality of our future will depend directly on the quality of our thinking.
Is it then not only astonishing but also absurd that thinking is not the core subject in all education
and the central subject on any school curriculum” — Edward de Bono

 

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

 

bbx Practice of Management The Nature of Management ::: The Role of Management ::: The Jobs of Management ::: The Challenge to Management ::: Managing a Business ::: The Sears Story ::: What is a Business? ::: What is Our Business—and What Should it be? (See what exists is getting old) ::: The #Objectives of a Business ::: Today's Decisions for Tomorrow's Results ::: The Principles of Production ::: Managing Managers ::: The Ford Story ::: Management by #Objectives and Self-Control ::: Managers must manage ::: The spirit of an organization ::: Chief Executive and Board ::: Developing Managers ::: Structure of Management ::: What kind of Structure ::: Building the Structure ::: The Small, The large, the growing business ::: The Management of Worker and Work ::: The IBM Story ::: Employing the Whole Man ::: Is Personnel Management Bankrupt? ::: Human Organization For Peak Performance ::: Motivating To Peak Performance ::: The Economic Dimension ::: The Supervisor ::: The Professional Employee ::: What parts of this can be done by top management and what part by the manager in charge of the operation ::: What it Means to be a Manager ::: The Manger and His Work ::: Making Decisions #PDFs ::: The Manager of Tomorrow ::: Conclusion: The Responsibilities of Management continue

 

The Poverty of Economic Theory #pdf

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

the real pattern of economic activity

larger composite view ↑ ::: Economic & content and structure ::: Adoption rates: one & two

The Forces Creating a New Geography of Opportunity?

 

The Management Revolution ↑ ::: Developing countries

 

Dismal Economics

by JAMES K. GALBRAITH

Jul 23, 2021

Although neoclassical economics relies on assumptions that should have been discarded long ago, it remains the mainstream orthodoxy.

Three recent books, and one older one, help to show why its staying power should be regarded as a scandal.

Mason Gaffney and Fred Harrison, The Corruption of Economics Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers Ltd., 2006 (first published 1994.

Stephen A. Marglin, Raising Keynes: A Twenty-First-Century General Theory, Harvard University Press, 2021.

Alessandro Roncaglia, The Age of Fragmentation: A History of Contemporary Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Robert Skidelsky, What’s Wrong with Economics?: A Primer for the Perplexed, Yale University Press, 2020.

AUSTIN – Self-regarding economics departments at prestigious academic institutions no longer bother to teach the history of economic thought — a field that I studied at Yale University in 1977, forever compromising my academic career.

Why was the topic abandoned – and even shunned and mocked?

Students with a skeptical turn of mind would not be wrong to suspect that it was for scandalous reasons (as when, in past centuries, inconvenient aunts were locked away in garrets).

The four books reviewed here each uncover parts of the scandal.

Three are brand new, and the other, The Corruption of Economics, first appeared in 1994 and was re-issued in 2006.

Its principal author, the American economist Mason Gaffney, kept his remarkable pen flowing until passing away last summer at the age of 96.

ECONOMICS WITHOUT HISTORY

Robert Skidelsky is a historian, an epic biographer of John Maynard Keynes, and a prolific debater in the United Kingdom’s House of Lords.

He calls What’s Wrong with Economics? a “primer,” and it is indeed the most accessible of the four books.

Skidelsky’s education in the history of economics resembles my own: a wide reading of the classical authors – Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, and others – followed by those associated with the “neoclassical” or “marginalist” revolution of the 1870s.

Project Syndicate

 

Some Books by Peter Drucker #bbpfd #sda

bbx Men, Ideas, and Politics — Preface ::: “Political (or social) ecology” ::: The aim is an understanding of the specific natural environment of man, his “policical ecology,” as a prerequisite to effective and responsible action, as an executive, as a policy-maker, as a teacher, and as a #citizen. ::: The New Markets And The New Entrepreneurs ::: The Unfashionable Kierkegaard ::: Notes On The New Politics ::: This Romantic Generation ::: Calhoun’s Pluralism ::: American Directions ::: The Secret Art Of Being An Effective President ::: Henry Ford ::: The American Genius Is Political ::: Japan Tries For A Second Miracle ::: What We Can Learn From Japanese Management ::: Keynes: Economics As A Magical System ::: The Economic Basis Of American Politics continue

bbx Technology, Management, Society Preface ::: Information, Communications and Understanding ::: What We Have Learned ::: Communication Is Perception ::: Communication Is Expectations ::: Communication Is Involvement ::: Communication and Information Are Different and Largely Opposite—Yet Interdependent ::: Management’s New Role ::: The Old Assumptions ::: Management is management of business, and business is unique and the exception in society ::: “Social responsibilities” of management ::: The primary task of management is to mobilize the energies of the business organization ::: It is the manual worker ::: Management is a “science” or at least a “discipline” ::: Management is the result of economic development ::: —And the New Realities ::: Every major task of developed society is being carried out ::: Because our society is rapidly becoming a society of organizations ::: Entrepreneurial innovation will be as important to management as the managerial function ::: A primary task of management in the developed countries in the decades ahead ::: There are management tools and techniques ::: Management creates economic and social development ::: Admittedly, these new assumptions oversimplify ::: Work and Tools ::: Work and Tools-1 ::: Work and Tools-2 ::: Work and Tools-3 ::: Work and Tools-4 ::: Technological Trends in the Twentieth Century ::: The Structure of Technological Work ::: The Methods of Technological Work ::: The Systems Approach ::: Technology and Society in the Twentieth Century ::: The Pretechnological Civilization of 1900 ::: Technology Remakes Social Institutions ::: Emancipation of Women ::: Changes in the Organization of Work ::: The Role of Education ::: Change in Warfare ::: A Worldwide Technological Civilization ::: Man Moves into a Man-made Environment ::: Modern Technology and the Human Horizon ::: Technology and Man ::: The Once and Future Manager ::: The Conglomerates Will Be the Stranded Giants of the Next Decade ::: Never Look at Any One Measure Alone in Any Business; Look at Multiple Measures ::: The First Yardstick by Which Management Is Judged Is, Do They Keep Us Busy? ::: The Facts and the Myth of Job Mobility in America Are Not Necessarily the Same ::: Small Business Has Done Much Better Than Any Other in the Last Twenty Years ::: The Main Impact of the Computer Has Been to Create Unlimited Jobs for Clerks ::: The Job Which Most Managers Were Brought Up to Spend Most Time on Will Disappear ::: Is the Traditional Organization Structure Going to Work Tomorrow as It Has till Now? ::: Managers Have to Accept That Industrial Relations Will Become Increasingly Bitter ::: The First Technological Revolution and Its Lessons ::: Long-Range Planning ::: Business #Objectives and Survival Needs ::: The Need for a Theory of Business Behavior ::: What Are the Survival Needs of Business Enterprise? ::: The Work to Be Done ::: An Operational View of the Budgeting Process ::: The Manager and the Moron ::: The Obsolescence of Experience ::: Enter the Knowledge Utility ::: A New Age of Information ::: Managing the Moron ::: Beyond the Numbers Barrier ::: The Technological Revolution: Notes on the Relationship of Technology, Science, and Culture ::: Can Management Ever Be a Science? continue

 

Technology, Management and Society Preface

There should be underlying unity to a collection of essays.

There should be a point of view, a central theme, an organ point around which the whole volume composes itself.

And there is, I believe, such fundamental unity to this volume of essays, even though they date from more than a dozen years ago and discuss a variety of topics.

One of the essays, “Work and Tools,” states: “Technology is not about tools, it deals with how Man works.”

This might be the device of this entire volume, if not, indeed, for my entire work over the years.

 

All the essays in this volume deal with one or the other aspect of what used to be called “the material civilization”: they all deal with man’s tools and his materials, with his institutions and organizations, and with the way he works and makes his living.

But throughout, work and materials, organizations and a living are seen as “extensions of man,” rather than as material artifacts and part of inanimate nature.

If I were to reflect on my own position over the years, I would say that, from the very beginning, I rejected the common nineteenth-century view which divided man’s society into “culture,” dealing with ideas and symbols, and “civilization,” dealing with artifacts and things.

“Civilization” to me has always been a part of man’s personality, and an area in which he expressed his basic ideals, his dreams, his aspirations, and his values.

Some of the essays in this volume are about technology and its history.

Some are about management and managers.

Some are about specific tools—the computer, for instance.

 

But all of them are about man at work; all are about man trying to make himself #effective.

 

An essay collection, however, should also have diversity.

It should break an author’s thought and work the way a prism breaks light.

Indeed, the truly enjoyable essay collection is full of surprises as the same author, dealing with very much the same areas, is suddenly revealed in new guises and suddenly reveals new facets of his subject.

The essays collected in this volume deal with only one of the major areas that have been of concern to me—the area of the “material civilization.”

But there is a good deal of variety in them.

Five of the twelve essays in this volume deal with technology, its history and its impact on man and his culture.

They range in time, however, from a look at the “first technological revolution,” seven thousand years ago, when the irrigation cities created what we still call “modern civilization,” to an attempt to evaluate the position of technology in our present century.

They all assume that history cannot be written, let alone make sense, unless it takes technology into account and is aware of the development, of man’s tools and his use of them through the ages.

This, needless to say, is not a position historians traditionally have held; there are only signs so far that they are beginning to realize that technology has been with us from the earliest date and has always been an intimate and integral part of man’s experience, man’s society, and man’s history.

At the same time, these essays all assume that the technologist, to use his tools constructively, has to know a good deal of history and has to see himself and his discipline in relationship to man and society — and that has been an even less popular position among technologists than the emphasis on technology has been among historians.

 

Four essays in this volume—the first two, the essay, “The Once and Future Manager,” and the essay on “Business Objectives and Survival Needs”—look upon the manager as the agent of today’s society and upon management as a central social function.

They assume that managers handle tools, assume that managers know their tools thoroughly and are willing to acquire new ones as needed.

But, above all, they ask the question, “What results do we expect from the manager; what results does his enterprise, whether a business or, a government agency, need from him?

What results, above all, do our society and the human beings that compose it have a right to expect from a manager and from management?”

The concern is with management as it affects the quality of life — that management can provide the quantities of life is taken as proven.

 

The remaining three essays (“Long-Range Planning,” “The Manager and the Moron,” and “Can Management Ever Be a Science?”) deal with basic approaches and techniques.

They are focused on management within the enterprise rather than on management as a social function.

But they stress constantly the purpose of management, which is not to be efficient but to be productive, for the human being, for economy, for society.

 

An essay collection, finally, should convey the personality of the author better than a book can.

This is why I enjoy reading essays.

It should bring out a man’s style, a man’s wit, and the texture of a man’s mind.

Whether this essay collection does this, I leave to the reader to judge.

But I do hope that these twelve essays of mine, written for different purposes and at different times over the last twelve years, will also help to establish the bond between author and writer, which, in the last analysis, is why a writer writes and a reader reads.

 

bbx Managing for Results ::: Understanding the business ::: The business realities ::: There are three different dimensions to the economic task ::: The present business must be made effective. ::: The present business's potential must be identified and realized. ::: It must be made into a different business for a different future. ::: One unified strategy ::: Requires an understanding of the true realities ::: of the business as an economic system ::: of its capacity for economic performance and ::: of the relationship between available resources and possible results ::: The generalizations regarding results and resources ::: Results and resources exist outside the business. ::: Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities ::: Economic results are earned only by leadership ::: Any leadership position is transitory and likely to be short-lived. ::: The generalizations regarding efforts within the business and their cost. ::: Making the business fit the realities of today ::: Allocating efforts/cost to high revenue producing activities ::: #Concentration is the key to economic results. ::: Result area identification ::: Nothing succeeds like concentration on the right business. ::: The basic business #analysis ::: Identify & understand those areas in a business for which results can measured ::: Defining the product/service ::: 3 dimensions of business results ::: The burden of pushing through the step-by-step process of analysis ::: Revenues, resources, prospects ::: Relate result areas to the revenue contribution and share of cost burden ::: Question ::: What are the essential, few but fundamental #facts on which to base a diagnosis of a business and its result areas? ::: Concepts apply to … ::: Products/services ::: Customers, markets, end-uses ::: Distributive channels ::: The form of analysis examines the entire product range of a business ::: - "Revenue contribution" based on transaction cost ::: Allocation of key resources to each result area. ::: - "Key resources" committed to result areas : quality /purpose ::: Questions ::: What are the scarce & expensive resources being used for? ::: In what areas are they deployed? ::: Are they applied to opportunities or to problems? ::: And to the most promising opportunities? ::: Key resources … ::: Knowledge-people resources - trained people ::: Money/working capital ::: Quality of resources vs. total resources ::: Mobility of resources ::: Analysis format : people ::: Product ::: Revenue ::: Quantity & quality of key personnel support ::: Analysis format : money ::: Product identification ::: Revenue ::: Money allocation as a % of company totals ::: Leadership position and prospects of each result area. ::: - "Leadership"(outside) analysis & #growth prospects(future) ::: Leadership ::: Not a quantitative term. ::: Product must be ::: Best fitted for one or more of the genuine wants of market or customer. ::: Customer must be willing to pay for. ::: Preferring the product to its competitors ::: Market size, development, monopoly, & market position ::: Need to be the leader in the areas of the business ::: which are the mainstay of the business ::: produce the bulk of the sales ::: generate the bulk of the costs ::: absorb the most important & most valuable resources ::: Foundations of leadership position ::: Analysis format ::: Product … ::: Revenue ::: Leadership position & comments ::: Short-term prospects ::: Tentative diagnosis of result areas ::: Classify the result area ::: Factors involved in diagnosing the product ::: What to do with a result area diagnosed as… ::: Analysis format ::: Anticipate a change in the character of a product ::: Cost analysis ::: What matters about costs ::: Prerequisites for effective cost control p.69 ::: To be able to control cost need an analysis that: ::: Identifies the "cost centers" ::: Finds the important "cost points" in each major cost center ::: Looks at the entire business as one cost stream ::: Defines cost as what the customer pays rather than by entities ::: Classifies cost [points] according to their basic characteristics ::: Tied to market analysis before action ::: Format ::: Conclusions: ::: What to tackle? ::: Where to go to work? ::: What to aim at? ::: Market analysis ::: Introduction ::: How are we doing? Is answered by the analysis of the business. ::: How do we know whether we are doing the right things ::: What in other words is our business—and what should our business be ::: Business is a process which ::: The purpose of a business is to create a customer. ::: Need to find out what one gets paid for. ::: The disparity between what producers and customers see as related products ::: People inside a business can rarely be expected to recognize their own distinct knowledge ::: An appraisal of ::: Looking at one's own business from the outside. ::: The #marketing realities ::: These marketing realities lead to one conclusion ::: The market analysis ::: Market analysis is a good deal more than ordinary market research or customer research ::: Other books ::: Analytical questions ::: Analysis worksheets ::: Picture ::: Knowledge analysis ::: Knowledge ::: Need a leadership position and differentiation ::: What a business is able to do with excellence may be quite humdrum but this one does much better ::: May be purely technological ::: Examples—from an outsiders point of view ::: Uncovering one's specific business knowledge strengths ::: What have we done well? ::: What have we done poorly? ::: What explains our performance? ::: Ask good customers: what do we do for you that no one else does as well? ::: Need to learn to set goals and measure in terms of one's specific knowledge ::: Knowledge realities ::: A valid definition of the specific knowledge of a business is deceptively simple. ::: Takes practice to do a knowledge analysis well. ::: Knowledge is a perishable commodity. ::: Every knowledge becomes the wrong knowledge. ::: Need to concentration on doing a few things superbly well ::: Evaluations (diagnosis)—how good is our knowledge? ::: Do we have the right knowledge? ::: How effectively the right knowledge is being used? ::: The conclusions ::: - of the knowledge analysis ::: must be fed back into the marketing analysis to bring out market opportunities that might have been missed or underrated. ::: of the market analysis ::: are projected on the knowledge analysis ::: to bring out needs for new and changed knowledge. ::: Superimpose ::: Combining the various analysis ::: The analysis ::: Results, revenues, resources ::: Cost centers and cost structure ::: Marketing ::: Knowledge ::: Should be able to ::: Understand itself ::: Diagnose itself ::: Direct itself ::: Market analysis  knowledge analysis: Needs for new or changed knowledge. ::: Knowledge analysis  market analysis: Missed or underrated market opportunities. ::: Reexamine tentative diagnois in light of the market and knowledge analysis ::: Change of classification ::: Change of definition ::: Change in the way products/services, channels, markets/customers/end-uses fit together. ::: Substantial modification in … ::: Radical reclassification of costs and to change in the deployment ::: Examples of actions taken ::: What is lacking (3 gaps) ::: Need a major development ::: Lack of "adequate support" to exploit opportunities & success ::: Gap in knowledge needs & opportunities ::: The end result of the self-analysis ::: The business's contribution ::: Knowledge area excellences ::: Target result areas ::: Vehicles required to reach these targets ::: The leadership position required in each result area ::: Focus on opportunity ::: Building on strength ::: Ideal business concept ::: Maximizing opportunities ::: Maximizing resources ::: What these approaches have in common ::: The three together (what they do) ::: Procedure ::: Develop concept of ideal business ::: Design of the ideal business ::: IDEAL BUSINESS design controls itself ::: The "present" ::: Important thing is to get Major Results fast. ::: Project the ideal business design on the analysis of the existing business ::: Sort all the … into 3 categories ::: Push priorities ::: Rapid & purposeful abandonment ::: Also rans ::: What are the different things that ought to be done? ::: Identify replacements ::: Distinguishing between a replacement and a development ::: Should never present great technical difficulty. ::: Identify innovations ::: Examples ::: Innovation is ::: Questions: describing the need ::: What is lacking to make effective what is already possible? ::: What one small step would transform our economic results? ::: What small change would alter the capacity of the ::: Decide whether the results can be obtained ::: Maximizing resources/staffing for performance ::: Obstacles ::: Opportunity & resource ranking ::: List & rank opportunities ::: List & rank first-rate people & staff groups ::: The highest ranked opportunities is assigned all the high ranking ::: The next ranking opportunity comes next ::: Finding business potential ::: Restraints & limitations ::: Questions ::: The restraints of the business and industry ::: The vulnerabilities of the business and industry ::: The limitations of the business and industry ::: Examples ::: The essentials ::: Three major areas in which restraint should be looked for ::: The most promising area of potential is the built-in restraint of a business. ::: Imbalances—turning weaknesses into strengths ::: Chronic imbalance ::: Cost structure ::: The required action depends on the cause of the imbalance ::: Imbalances in support/policing activities or waste ::: Imbalances caused by productive efforts ::: Most important cases—Businesses that are the wrong size ::: Threats ::: Examples ::: Hidden opportunity in developments that seem to threaten a business or industry ::: What everybody in the business "knows" can never happen should be examined carefully. ::: What opportunities does this trend offer? ::: Conclusion ::: Making the future today ::: The future ::: We know only two things about the future: ::: The implications ::: On risk ::: The one thing that man can try ::: The future that has already happened ::: The clues/sources of change ::: Knowledge ::: Major cultural changes ::: Industry and marketing structures ::: Population ::: Other industries, countries, markets ::: Internal friction within the company. ::: A business or activity that has reached its #objectives. ::: Own assumptions ::: Looking for the future that has already happened ::: The power of this approach ::: Making the future happen (the power of an idea) ::: A different idea. ::: An entrepreneurial idea. ::: Source of the idea ::: By converting an existing theoretical proposition into and effective business. ::: By converting an existing idea into a business ::: Merely imitation of something that works in another country or industry ::: What's needed? ::: Willingness to ask ::: Willingness to look beyond products to ideas ::: Requires courage to commit resources to such an idea. ::: A touchstone of validity and practicality. ::: Operation validity ::: Economic validity ::: Personal commitment ::: Is this necessary? ::: A personal opportunity. ::: Performance program ::: Key decisions ::: Idea of the business ::: The requirements of validity ::: Sums up the answers to the questions: ::: It establishes #objectives ::: It sets goals & direction ::: It determines what ::: The specific excellence the business needs ::: What is our excellence? ::: Very different definitions of excellence can be equally valid. ::: Basis for the decisions on personnel: ::: Cannot be changed very often ::: The priorities ::: There have to be priority decisions or nothing will get done. ::: Priority decisions ::: Need to set posteriorities ::: Principles of maximizing opportunities & resources govern the priority decisions ::: The key decisions must be made systematically. ::: What ever a company's program, it must ::: Decide on the right opportunities and right risks ::: A business has to try to minimize risks. ::: No way to make sure that the right opportunities are chosen. ::: Opportunities ::: Risks need to be classified ::: Decide on scope & structure ::: Every business needs a core - an area where it leads ::: Must specialize. ::: Must diversify. ::: The balance between the two ::: Determines the scope ::: Largely determines the productivity of the company's resource. ::: The perfect balance can be easily upset. ::: Integration is often used as a means to diversify or concentrate. ::: Seek the right balance between … ::: specialization ::: diversification ::: integration ::: These are strategies of high impact & high risk. ::: Need a map of concentration, diversification, and integration ::: Decide between "building one's own" & "buying" to attain one's goals. ::: Main thrust of development comes from within - requires time. ::: Financial strategies & the tools of finance: ::: Sale of subsidiary business or product line ::: Acquisition or merger ::: Joint venture ::: Decide on organization structure ::: Appropriate to: ::: Its economic realities. ::: Its opportunities. ::: Its program for performance. ::: Structure has to highlight the results that are truly meaningful ::: As changes occur: ::: One job that always needs to be organized as a distinct ::: Implementing the program ::: Building economic performance into a business ::: Program must be converted into work for which someone is responsible. ::: The work plan ::: The foundations are the decisions on ::: Derive goals & targets ::: Assessment of the efforts required ::: Selection of the resources to be committed. ::: Work assignments ::: Performance becomes the job for which someone is responsible. ::: Deadline ::: Special attention needs to be paid to planning knowledge work. ::: Demands ::: Especially for research of any kind. ::: It is important in knowledge work ::: Not to do things that will not lead to major results ::: To abandon what is no longer productive ::: Concentrate the scarce resources where the results are. ::: Done by people of extraordinary ability ::: Program must be anchored in the practices of the business. ::: Proposals ::: All proposals should be directed toward company's program for performance. ::: All proposals should be presented together rather than piecemeal. ::: Each proposal should clearly spell out ::: Systematic review ::: The focus on economic performance must be built into the ::: Jobs of people ::: Spirit of the organization. ::: If a company is to obtain the needed contributions, it must reward those who make them. ::: Spirit of the organization made by the people it chooses for senior positions. ::: The crucial promotion ::: Grounds for promotion ::: Building business performance into a human organization ::: Conclusion ::: Every knowledge worker has to act the entrepreneur. ::: The task of top management ::: The executive's commitment ::: The first social responsibility of the manager today ::: The knowledge worker continue

 

bbx The Age Of Discontinuity Introduction to The Transaction Edition ::: Preface to The 1983 Edition ::: Preface to The Original Edition ::: Part One: The Knowledge Technologies ::: 1. The End of Continuity ::: 2. The New Industries and Their Dynamics ::: 3. The New Entrepreneur ::: 4. The New Economic Policies ::: Part Two: From International To World Economy ::: 5. The Global Shopping Center ::: 6. Maxing The Poor Productive ::: 7. Beyond The "New Economics" ::: Part Three: A Society of Organizations ::: 8. The New Pluralism ::: 9. Toward a Theory of Organizations ::: 10. The Sickness of Government ::: 11. How Can The Individual Survive? ::: Part Four: The Knowledge Society ::: 12. The Knowledge Economy ::: 13. Work and Worker in The Knowledge Society ::: 14. Has Success Spoiled The Schools? ::: 15. The New Learning and The New Teaching ::: 16. The Politics of Knowledge ::: 17. Does Knowledge Have a Future? ::: Conclusion

 

 

bbx Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices — Preface - The Alternative to Tyranny ::: Introduction - From Management Boom to Management Performance ::: The Emergence of Management ::: The Management Boom and Its Lessons ::: The New Challenges ::: The Tasks ::: The Dimensions of Management #pdf ::: Performance ::: Business Performance ::: Managing a Business: The Sears Story ::: What Is a Business? ::: Business Purpose and Business Mission ::: The Power and Purpose of Objectives: The Marks & Spencer Story and Its Lessons ::: Strategies, #Objectives, Priorities, and Work Assignments ::: Strategic Planning: The Entrepreneurial Skill ::: Performance in the Service Institution ::: The Multi - Institutional Society ::: Why Service Institutions Do Not Perform ::: The Exceptions and Their Lessons ::: Managing Service Institutions for Performance ::: Productive Work and Achieving Worker ::: The New Realities ::: What We Know (and Don’t Know) About Work, Working, and Worker ::: Making Work Productive: Work and Process ::: Making Work Productive: Controls and Tools ::: Worker and Working: Theories and Reality ::: Success Stories: Japan, Zeiss, IBM ::: The Responsible Worker ::: Employment, Incomes, and Benefits ::: “People Are Our Greatest Asset” ::: Social Impacts and Social Responsibilities ::: Management and the Quality of Life ::: Social Impacts and Social Problems ::: The Limits of Social Responsibility ::: Business and Government ::: Primum Non Nocere: ::: The Manager: Work, Jobs, Skills, and Organization ::: Why Managers? ::: The Manager’s Work and Jobs ::: What Makes a Manager? ::: The Manager and His Work ::: Design and Content of Managerial Jobs ::: Developing Management and Managers ::: Management by Objectives and Self-Control #pdf ::: From Middle Management to Knowledge Organization ::: The Spirit of Performance ::: Managerial Skills ::: The Effective Decision #PDFs ::: Managerial Communications ::: Controls, Control, and Management ::: The Manager and the Management Sciences ::: Managerial Organization ::: New Needs and New Approaches ::: The Building Blocks of Organization… ::: … And How They Join Together ::: Design Logics and Design Specifications ::: Work- and Task- Focused Design: Functional Structure and Team ::: Result - Focused Design: Federal and Simulated Decentralization ::: Relations - Focused Design: The Systems Structure ::: Organization Conclusions ::: Top Management: Tasks, Organization, Strategies ::: Georg Siemens and the Deutsche Bank ::: Top - Management Tasks and Organization ::: Top - Management Tasks ::: Top - Management Structure ::: Needed: An Effective Board ::: Strategies and Structures ::: On Being the Right Size ::: Managing the Small, the Fair - Sized, the Big Business ::: On Being the Wrong Size ::: The Pressures for Diversity ::: Building Unity Out of Diversity ::: Managing Diversity ::: The Multinational Corporation ::: Managing #Growth ::: The Innovative Organization ::: Conclusion: The Legitimacy of Management continue

 

bbx Adventures of a Bystander 1978 Preface to the New Edition ::: Prologue: A Bystander Is Born ::: Report from Atlantis ::: Grandmother and the Twentieth century ::: Hemme and Genia ::: Miss Elsa and Miss Sophy ::: Freudian Myths and Freudian Realities ::: Count Traun-Trauneck and the Actress Maria Mueller ::: Young Man In An Old World ::: The Polanyis ::: The Man Who Invented Kissinger ::: The Monster and the Lamb ::: Noel Brailsford—The Last of the Dissenters ::: Ernest Freedberg's World ::: The Bankers and the Courtesan ::: The Indian Summer of Innocence ::: Henry Luce and Time-Life-Fortune ::: The Prophets: Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan ::: The Professional: Alfred Sloan ::: The Indian Summer of Innocence

 

 

bbx Five Most Important Questions Contents: Five Most Important Questions ::: 2008 version ::: Foreword ::: About Peter F. Drucker ::: Why Self-Assessment? ::: We need management ::: The Five Most Important Questions ::: Planning Is Not An Event ::: Encourage Constructive Dissent ::: Creating Tomorrow's Society Of Citizens ::: Notes ::: The Five Questions ::: What Is Our Mission? ::: Peter F. Drucker ::: Missions Are About Changing Lives ::: It Should Fit On A T-Shirt ::: Make Principled Decisions ::: Keep Thinking It Through ::: Jim Collins ::: Who Is Our Customer? ::: Peter F. Drucker ::: Identify The Primary Customer ::: Identifying Supporting Customers ::: Know Your Customers ::: Philip Kotler ::: What Does The Customer Value? ::: Peter F. Drucker ::: Understand Your Assumptions ::: What Does The Primary Customer Value? ::: What Do Supporting Customers Value? ::: Listen To Your Customers ::: Jim Kouzes ::: What are our results? ::: Peter F. Drucker ::: Look At Short-Term Accomplishments And Long-Term Change ::: Qualitative And Quantitative Measures ::: Qualitative measures ::: Quantitative measures ::: Assess What Must Be Strengthened Or Abandoned ::: Leadership Is Accountable ::: Note ::: Judith Rodin ::: What Is Our Plan? ::: Peter F. Drucker ::: The self-assessment process leads to a plan ::: Goals Are Few, Overarching, And Approved By The Board ::: Objectives Are Measurable, Concrete, And The Responsibility Of Management ::: Five Elements Of Effective Plans ::: Abandonment ::: Concentration ::: Innovation ::: Risk taking ::: Analysis ::: Build Understanding And Ownership ::: Never Really Be Satisfied ::: Note ::: V Kasturi Rangan ::: Planning process overview ::: Strategy formulation ::: A Plan is the Action Agenda ::: Central Element Of An Effective Plan ::: A Strong Focus on Goals ::: Steadfast in Direction, Flexible in Execution ::: Ownership and Accountability Placed with Individuals ::: Monitoring That Leads to Better Strategy ::: Transformational Leadership ::: Eight milestones toward a relevant, viable, effective organization ::: 1. Scan the environment ::: 2. Revisit the mission ::: 3. Ban the hierarchy ::: 4. Challenge the gospel ::: 5. Employ the power of language ::: 6. Disperse leadership across the organization ::: 7. Lead from the front, don't push from the rear ::: 8. Assess performance ::: The road ahead ::: The Self-Assessment Process ::: About the Self-Assessment Tool ::: Three phases of self-assessment ::: Workbook purposes and action ::: How to use this book ::: Note ::: Suggested Questions To Explore ::: Question I: What Is Our Mission? ::: What are we trying to achieve? ::: What are the significant external or internal challenges, opportunities, and issues? ::: Does our mission need to be revisited? ::: Question 2: Who Is Our Customer? ::: Who are our customers? ::: Have our customers changed ::: Should we add or delete some customers? ::: Question 3: What Does The Customer Value? ::: What do our customers value? ::: Question 4: What Are Our Results? ::: How do we define results for our organization? ::: To what extent have we achieved these results? ::: How well are we using our resources? ::: Question 5: What Is Our Plan? ::: What have we learned, and what do we recommend? ::: Where should we focus our efforts? ::: What, if anything, should we do differently? ::: What is our plan to achieve results for the organization? ::: What is my plan to achieve results for my group or responsibility area? ::: Notes ::: Definitions Of Terms ::: Action steps ::: Appraisal ::: Budget ::: Customers ::: Customer value ::: Depth interviews ::: Goals ::: Mission ::: Objectives ::: Plan ::: Results ::: Vision ::: About The Contributors ::: Jim Coffins ::: Philip Kotler ::: Jim Kouzes ::: Judith Rodin ::: V. Kasturi Rangan ::: Frances Hesselbein ::: About the Leader to Leader Institute ::: Acknowledgements ::: Additional Resources ::: Structure of the five most important questions (see third image below for a view of the questioning "brainscape" leading up to conclusions.)

 

 

bbx Revised Edition of Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices Chapter summaries #pdf ::: Contents ::: Peter Drucker’s Legacy by Jim Collins ::: Introduction to the Revised Edition of Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices ::: Preface ::: 1 Introduction: Management and Managers Defined ::: 2 Management as a Social Function and Liberal Art ::: 3 The Dimensions of Management #pdf ::: Part I Management’s New Realities ::: 4 Knowledge Is All ::: 5 New Demographics ::: 6 The Future of the Corporation and the Way Ahead ::: 7 Management’s New Paradigm #mnp ::: Part II Business Performance ::: 8 The Theory of the Business #pdf ::: 9 The Purpose and #Objectives of a Business #pdf ::: 10 Making the Future Today ::: 11 Strategic Planning: The Entrepreneurial Skill ::: Part III Performance in Service Institutions ::: 12 Managing Service Institutions in the Society of Organizations ::: 13 What Successful and Performing Nonprofits Are Teaching Business ::: 14 The Accountable School ::: 15 Rethinking “Reinventing Government” ::: 16 Entrepreneurship in the Public-Service Institution ::: Part IV Productive Work and Achieving Worker ::: 17 Making Work Productive and the Worker Achieving ::: 18 Managing the Work and Worker in Manual Work ::: 19 Managing the Work and Worker in Knowledge Work ::: Part V Social Impacts and Social Responsibilities ::: 20 Social Impacts and Social Responsibilities ::: 21 The New Pluralism: How to Balance the Special Purpose of the Institution with the Common Good ::: Part VI The Manager’s Work and Jobs ::: 22 Why Managers? ::: 23 Design and Content of Managerial jobs ::: 24 Developing Management and Managers ::: 25 Management by Objectives and Self-Control #pdf ::: 26 From Middle Management to Information-Based Organizations ::: 27 The Spirit of Performance #pdf ::: Part VII Managerial Skills ::: 28 The Elements of Effective Decision Making ::: 29 How to Make People Decisions ::: 30 Managerial Communications ::: 31 Controls, Control, and Management #pdf ::: 32 The Manager and the Budget ::: 33 Information Tools and Concepts ::: Part VIII Innovation and Entrepreneurship ::: 34 The Entrepreneurial Business ::: 35 The New Venture ::: 36 Entrepreneurial Strategies ::: 37 Systematic Innovation Using Windows of Opportunity #woo ::: Part IX Managerial Organization ::: 38 Strategies and Structures ::: 39 Work- and Task-Focused Design ::: 40 Three Kinds of Teams ::: 41 Result- and Relation-Focused Design ::: 42 Alliances ::: 43 The CEO in the New Millennium ::: 44 The Impact of Pension Funds on Corporate Governance ::: Part X New Demands on the Individual ::: 45 Managing Oneself ::: 46 Managing the Boss (The boss list) ::: 47 Revitalizing Oneself—Seven Personal Experiences ::: 48 The Educated Person ::: Conclusion: The Manager of Tomorrow ::: Author’s Note ::: Bibliography ::: Drucker Annotated Bibliography ::: Index continue

 

bbx Management Cases (Revised Edition) — Preface ::: Foreword: Rigor and Relevance by Warren G. Bennis ::: Part I Management’s New Realities ::: Yuhan-Kimberly’s New Paradigm: Respect for Human Dignity ::: Part II Business Performance ::: What Is OUR Business? (See what exists is getting old) ::: What Is a #Growth Company? ::: Success in the Small Multinational ::: Health Care as a Business ::: Part III Performance in Service Institutions ::: The University Art Museum: Defining Purpose and Mission ::: Rural Development Institute: Should It Tackle the Problem of the Landless Poor in India? ::: The Future of Mt. Hillyer College ::: The Water Museum ::: Should the Water Utility Operate a Museum? ::: Meeting the Growing Needs of the Social Sector ::: The Dilemma of Aliesha State College: Competence versus Need ::: What Are “Results” in the Hospital? ::: Cost Control in the Hospital ::: Part IV Productive Work and Achieving Worker ::: Work Simplification and the Marketing Executive ::: The Army Service Forces ::: How Does One Analyze and Organize Knowledge Work? ::: Can One Learn to Manage Subordinates? ::: How to Staff the Dead-end job? ::: The New Training Director in the Hospital ::: Are You One of “Us” or One of “Them”? ::: Midwest Metals and the Labor Union ::: Safety at Kajak Airbase ::: Part V Social Impacts and Social Responsibilities ::: Corporate Image to Brand Image: Yuhan-Kimberly ::: The Peerless Starch Company of Blair, Indiana ::: Part VI The Manager’s Work and Jobs ::: Alfred Sloan’s Management Style ::: Performance Development System at Lincoln Electric for Service and Knowledge Workers ::: Internal and External Goal Alignment at Texas Instruments ::: Can You Manage Your Boss? ::: Ross Abernathy and the Frontier National Bank ::: The Failed Promotion ::: Part VII Managerial Skills ::: Lyndon Johnson’s Decision ::: The New Export Manager ::: The Insane Junior High School Principal ::: The Structure of a Business Decision ::: The Corporate Control Panel ::: Part VIII Innovation and Entrepreneurship ::: Research Strategy and Business #Objectives ::: Who Is the Brightest Hamster in the Laboratory? ::: Andy Grove of Intel: Entrepreneur Turned Executive ::: The Chardack-Greatbatch Implantable Pacemaker ::: Part IX Managerial Organization ::: The Invincible Life Assurance Company ::: The Failed Acquisition ::: Banco Mercantil: Organization Structure ::: The Universal Electronics Company ::: Research Coordination in the Pharmaceutical Industry ::: The Aftermath of Tyranny ::: What Is the Contribution of Bigness? ::: Part X New Demands on the Individual ::: The Function of the Chief Executive ::: Drucker’s Ideas for School Reform ::: What Do You Want to Be Remembered For? continue

 

bbx The Ecological Vision Part One: American Experiences ::: Introduction to Part One ::: The American Genius is Political ::: Calhoun’s Pluralism ::: Henry Ford: The Last Populist ::: IBM’s Watson: Vision for Tomorrow ::: The Myth of American Uniformity ::: Part Two: Economics as a Social Dimension ::: Introduction to Part Two ::: The Economic Basis of American Politics ::: The Poverty of Economic Theory ::: The Delusion of Profits #profit ::: Schumpeter and Keynes ::: Keynes: Economics as a Magical System ::: Part Three: The Social Function of Management ::: Introduction to Part Three ::: Management’s Role ::: Management: The Problems of Success ::: Social Innovation: Management’s New Dimension ::: Part Four: Business as a Social Institution ::: Introduction to Part Four ::: Can There Be “Business Ethic”? ::: The New Productivity Challenge ::: The Emerging Theory of Manufacturing ::: The Hostile Takeover and Its Discontents ::: Part Five: Work, Tools, and Society ::: Introduction to Part Five ::: Work and Tools ::: Technology, Science, and Culture ::: India and Appropriate Technology ::: The First Technological Revolution and Its Lessions ::: Part Six: The Information-Based Society ::: Introduction to Part Six ::: Information, Communications, and Understanding ::: Information and the Future of the City ::: The Information-Base Organization ::: Part Seven: Japan as Society and Civilization ::: Introduction to Part Seven ::: A View of Japan through Japanese Art ::: Japan: The Problems of Success ::: Behind Japan’s Success ::: Misinterpreting Japan and the Japanese ::: How Westernized Are the Japanese? ::: Part Eight: Why Society is Not Enough ::: Introduction to Part Eight ::: The Unfashionable Kiekegaard ::: Afterword: Reflections of a Social Ecologist continue

 

bbx A Functioning Society — This collection presents the full range of Drucker’s thought on community, society, and the political structure, and constitutes an ideal introduction to his work ::: Contents ::: Introduction: Community, Society, Polity Acknowledgments ::: Prologue: What is a Functioning Society? connect #pdf ::: Part 1: Foundations ::: Introduction to Part ::: 1. From Rousseau to Hitler ::: 2. The Conservative Counter Revolution of 1776 ::: 3. A Conservative Approach ::: Part 2: The Rise of Totalitarianism ::: Introduction to Part 2 ::: 4. The Return of Demons 4 ::: 5. The Failure of Marxism ::: Part 3: The Sickness of Government ::: Introduction to Part 3 ::: 6. From Nation-State to Megastate ::: 7. The Sickness-of Government ::: 8. No More Salvation by Society ::: Part 4: The New Pluralism ::: Introduction to Part 4 ::: 9. The New Pluralism ::: 10. Toward a Theory of Organizations ::: 11. The Society of Organizations ::: Part 5: The Corporation as a Social Institution ::: Introduction to Part 5 ::: 12. The Governance of Corporations ::: 13. The Corporation as a Social Institution ::: 14. The Corporation as a Political Institution ::: Part 6: The Knowledge Society ::: Introduction to Part 6 ::: 15. The New WorldView ::: 16. From Capitalism to Knowledge Society ::: 17. The Productivity of the Knowledge Worker ::: Part 7: The Next Society ::: Introduction to Part 7 ::: 19. The Next Society continue

 

 

bbx Post-Capitalist SocietyThe transformation ::: We are living through a sharp transformation ::: Post-capitalist society and post-capitalist polity ::: The shift to the knowledge society ::: Employee society ::: Knowledge work and knowledge worker ::: The “society of organizations” ::: The end of one kind of history: the belief in salvation by society ::: Same forces are making capitalism obsolescent ::: The new society is already here ::: Outflanking the Nation-State ::: The Third World ::: The danger of a tremendous flood of Third World immigrants far beyond their economic, social, or cultural capacity to absorb ::: Society, Polity, Knowledge ::: Nowhere near the end of the turbulences, transformations, the sudden upsets ::: Nothing “post” is permanent or even long-lived ::: Society ::: From Capitalism to Knowledge Society ::: The new meaning of knowledge ::: The industrial revolution ::: The productivity revolution ::: The management revolution ::: From knowledge to knowledges ::: The Society of Organizations ::: The function of organizations ::: To make knowledge productive ::: The more specialized knowledges are, the more effective they will be ::: The characteristics of organizations ::: The organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer ::: Its function is to put knowledge to work ::: It must be organized for constant change ::: It must be organized for innovation ::: It must be organized for systematic abandonment of … ::: The employee society ::: Labor, Capital, and Their Future ::: If knowledge is the resource of post-capitalist society, what then will be the future role and function of the two key resources of capitalist (and socialist) society, labor and capital? ::: Is labor still an asset? ::: How much labor is needed—and what kind? ::: Capitalism without capitalist ::: The Productivity of the New Work Forces ::: The new challenge facing post-capitalist society is the productivity of knowledge workers and service workers ::: To improve the productivity of knowledge work will require drastic changes ::: Knowledge and service workers account for 3/4 to 4/5 of the work force in all developed countries ::: Their productivity is the productivity of a developed economy ::: Their productivity is abysmally low. And may be going down ::: Improving productivity and the different types of work ::: Service work that is similar in nature to production work (making and moving things) ::: In all other work done by the new work forces ::: Restructuring organizations ::: Improving the productivity of knowledge and service workers will demand fundamental changes in the structure of organizations ::: Re-engineering the team so that work can flow properly will lead to the elimination of most “management layers” ::: Will raise tremendous problems of ::: The case for outsourcing ::: Averting a new class conflict ::: The Responsibility-Based Organizations ::: The society of organizations, the knowledge society demands a responsibility-based organization ::: Polity ::: From Nation-State to Megastate ::: The paradox of the nation-state ::: The dimensions of the Megastate ::: The nanny state ::: The Megastate as master of the economy ::: The fiscal state ::: The cold war state ::: The Japanese exceptions ::: Has the Megastate worked? ::: The pork-barrel state ::: The cold war state—the failure of success ::: Transnationalism, Regionalism, Tribalism ::: Money know no fatherland… ::: … nor does information ::: Transnational needs: the environment ::: Stamping out terrorism ::: Arms control ::: Regionalism: the new reality ::: The return of tribalism ::: The need for roots ::: The Needed Government Turnaround ::: The futility of military aid ::: What to abandon in economic theory ::: Concentrating on what does work ::: The half-successes: beyond the nanny state ::: Citizenship Through the Social Sector ::: Social needs with grow in two areas ::: The need to “outsource” ::: Patriotism is not enough ::: The need for community ::: The vanishing plant community ::: The volunteer as citizen ::: Knowledge ::: Knowledge: Its Economics and Its Productivity ::: The economics of knowledge ::: The productivity of knowledge ::: The productivity of money ::: The management requirement ::: Only connect … ::: The Accountable School ::: How the Japanese did it ::: The new performance demands ::: Learning to learn ::: The school in society ::: The schools as partners ::: The accountable school ::: The Educated Person ::: Knowledge ::: The shift to the knowledge society therefore puts the person in the center

 

Managing in a Time of Great Change ::: Preface ::: Interview: The Post-Capitalist Executive +++ $PDF ::: Part I. Management ::: The Theory of the Business ::: Planning for Uncertainty ::: The Five Deadly Business Sins ::: Managing the Family Business ::: Six Rules for Presidents ::: Managing in the Network Society ::: Part II. The Information-Based Organization ::: The New Society of Organizations ::: Transformations in Western history ::: Current transformation — only world history and world civilization ::: In this society, knowledge is the primary resource ::: The central tensions and issues ::: They will be resolved where they originate: the individual organization ::: Social and community stability vs. organization change (knowledge dynamics) ::: For managers, the dynamics of knowledge impose one clear imperative ::: Equally disruptive is another fact of organizational life ::: The issue of social responsibility is also inherent in the society of organizations ::: Organization has become an everyday term ::: All organizations now say routinely, “People are our greatest asset.” ::: Because the modern organization consists of knowledge specialists ::: The society of organizations is unprecedented in human history ::: There's Three Kinds of Teams ::: The Information Revolution in Retail ::: Be Data Literate; Know What to Know ::: We Need to Measure, Not Count ::: Part III. The Economy ::: Trade Lessons from the World Economy ::: The US. Economy's Power Shift ::: Where the New Markets Are ::: The Pacific Rim and the World Economy ::: China's #Growth Markets ::: The End of Japan, Inc.? ::: A Weak Dollar Strengthens Japan ::: The New Superpower.The Overseas Chinese ::: Part IV. The Society ::: A Century of Social Transformation ::: Introduction ::: The Social Structure and Its Transformations ::: The Rise and Fall of the Blue-Collar Worker ::: The Rise of the Knowledge Worker ::: II. The Emerging Knowledge Society ::: How Knowledges Work ::: The Employee Society ::: What Is an Employee? ::: The Social Sector ::: III. Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity ::: School and Education as Society’s Center ::: The Competitive Knowledge Economy ::: How Can Government Function? ::: Conclusion: The Priority Tasks—The Need for Social and Political Innovations ::: It Profits Us to Strengthen Non-profits ::: Knowledge Work and Gender Roles ::: Reinventing Government ::: Can the Democracies Win the Peace? ::: Conclusion > Interview: Managing in a Post-Capitalist Society ::: Acknowledgments continue

 

 

bbx Drucker on Asia: A dialogue between Peter Drucker and Isao Nakauchi Preface ::: Part I Times of Challenge ::: 1 The challenges of China ::: 2 The challenges of a borderless world ::: 3 The challenges of the 'knowledge society' ::: 4 The challenges for entrepreneurship and innovation ::: 5 Appendix to Part I: Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995 ::: Part II Time to Reinvent ::: 6 Reinventing the individual ::: 7 Reinventing business ::: 8 Reinventing society ::: 9 Reinventing government

 

bbx Innovation and Entrepreneurship ::: From Progress to Innovation #pdf ::: Contents ::: Preface ::: Introduction: The Entrepreneurial Economy ::: I ::: II ::: III ::: IV ::: V ::: The Practice Of Innovation ::: Systematic Entrepreneurship ::: I Who is an entrepreneur? ::: II Tradition economics vs. The Entrepreneur ::: III Should be low risk ::: Purposeful Innovation and the Seven Sources for Innovative Opportunity ::: Source: The Unexpected ::: The Unexpected Success ::: The Unexpected Failure ::: The Unexpected Outside Event ::: Source: Incongruities ::: Incongruous Economic Realities ::: The Incongruity Between Reality And The Assumptions About It ::: The Incongruity Between Perceived And Actual Customer Values And Expectations ::: Incongruity Within The Rhythm Or Logic Of A Process ::: Source: Process Need ::: Source: Industry and Market Structures ::: The Automobile Story ::: The Opportunity ::: When Industry Structure Changes ::: Source: Demographics ::: I ::: II ::: III ::: Source: Changes in Perception ::: “The Glass Is Half Full” ::: The Problem Of Timing ::: Source: New Knowledge ::: The Characteristics Of Knowledge-Based Innovation ::: Convergences ::: What Knowledge-Based Innovation Requires ::: The Unique Risks ::: The Shakeout ::: The Receptivity Gamble ::: The Bright Idea ::: Principles of Innovation ::: I—Brilliant ideas are not innovations ::: The Do’s ::: Purposeful, systematic innovation begins with the #analysis of the opportunities ::: Go out to look, to ask, to listen ::: An innovation, to be effective, has to be simple and it has to be focused ::: Effective innovations start small ::: A successful innovation aims at leadership ::: The Dont’s ::: Don’t try to be clever ::: Don’t diversify, don’t splinter, don’t try to do too many things at once ::: Don’t try to innovate for the future ::: Three Conditions ::: Innovation becomes hard, focused, purposeful work making very great demands on … ::: To succeed, innovators must build on their strengths ::: Innovation always has to be close to the market #horizons ::: The Conservative Innovator ::: The Practice Of Entrepreneurship ::: Entrepreneurial Management ::: The Entrepreneurial Business ::: I (Who innovates?) ::: Entrepreneurial Policies ::: A systematic policy of abandoning whatever is outworn, obsolete, no longer productive ::: Business X-Ray: a tool to find the right questions (#rq) ::: Kami: Gap and Need Analysis ::: An entrepreneurial plan with #objectives and deadlines ::: Summary ::: Entrepreneurial Practices ::: Focusing managerial vision on opportunity ::: What are you doing that explains your success? ::: Ideas from junior people ::: Measuring Innovative Performance ::: Each innovative project: Feedback from results to expectations ::: A systematic review of innovative efforts all together ::: Judging the company’s total innovative performance ::: Structures ::: The entrepreneurial, the new, has to be organized separately from the old and existing ::: Must have a top manager with the specific assignment to work on tomorrow as an entrepreneur and innovator ::: Keep away from it the burdens it cannot yet carry ::: Developing appropriate controls ::: A person or a component group should be held clearly accountable ::: Are all these policies and practices necessary? ::: Staffing ::: The Dont’s ::: The most important caveat is not to mix managerial units and entrepreneurial ones ::: Innovative efforts that take the existing business out of its own field are rarely successful ::: Acquire small entrepreneurial ventures ::: Entrepreneurship in the Service Institution ::: Obstacles to Innovation & some exceptions ::: There are three main reasons why the existing enterprise presents so much more of an obstacle ::: The public-service institution is based on a “budget” rather than being paid out of its results ::: A service institution is dependent on a multitude of constituents ::: Public-service institutions exist after all to “do good.” ::: These are serious obstacles to innovation ::: The most extreme example around these days may well be the labor union ::: The university, however, may not be too different from the labor union ::: There are enough exceptions, even old and big ones, can innovate ::: One Roman Catholic archdiocese in the United States ::: American Association for the Advancement of Science ::: A large hospital on the West Coast ::: Girl Scouts of the U.S. A. ::: Entrepreneurial Policies ::: The public-service institution needs a clear definition of its mission ::: The public-service institution needs a realistic statement of goals ::: Failure to achieve #objectives should be considered an indication that the objective is wrong … ::: Need to build into their policies and practices the constant search for innovative opportunity ::: One catholic archdiocese saw both as opportunities ::: American Association for the Advancement of Science ::: Girl Scouts ::: Even in government ::: The four rules outlined above constitute the specific policies and practices the PSI requires ::: Also needs to adopt those policies and practices that any existing organization requires ::: The Need To Innovate ::: The New Venture ::: The Need For Market Focus ::: Financial Foresight ::: Building A Top Management Team ::: “Where Can I Contribute?” ::: The Need For Outside Advice ::: Entrepreneurial Strategies ::: “Fustest with the Mostest” ::: Being “Fustest With The Mostest” ::: II ::: III ::: “Hit Them Where They Ain’t” ::: Creative Imitation ::: Entrepreneurial Judo ::: Ecological Niches ::: The Toll-Gate Strategy ::: The Specialty Skill ::: The Specialty Market ::: Changing Values and Characteristics ::: Creating Customer Utility ::: Pricing ::: The Customer’s Reality ::: Delivering Value To The Customer ::: Conclusion: The Entrepreneurial Society ::: I ::: What Will Not Work ::: The Social Innovations Needed ::: The New Tasks ::: The Individual In Entrepreneurial Society ::: Suggested Readings ::: Index continue

 

 

bbx The New Realities The realities ::: “Next century” is already here ::: Are different ::: The toughest problems we face ::: Half-forgotten lessons of the past becoming relevant again ::: This book ::: Attempts to define … that will be realities for years to come ::: Focuses on what to do today ::: Attempts to set the agenda ::: Faulted for ::: Political realities ::: The divide ::: Organizing political principles ::: When the Russian Empire is gone ::: Now that arms are counterproductive ::: Government and political process ::: Government ::: Society and polity has become pluralist ::: The changed demands of political leadership ::: Economy, ecology, and economics ::: Transnational economy ::: Transnational ecology ::: Economic development ::: Economics ::: The new knowledge society ::: The post-business (knowledge) society ::: Two countercultures ::: The information-based organization ::: Management as social function and liberal art ::: The shifting knowledge base ::: Conclusion: New world view: From analysis to perception ::: The mechanical universe ::: A new age is born—A new basic civilization came into being ::: The social impacts of information ::: Organization form and function ::: From analysis to perception

 

bbx Managing the Nonprofit Organization (Principles and practices) by Peter Drucker ::: Preface ::: NPOs are central to American society and are indeed its most distinguishing feature ::: America’s largest employer ::: 2–3% of GNP. Same as 40 years ago. ::: NPOs “product” is a changed human being ::: NPO ::: Cured patient ::: A child that learns ::: A young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult ::: A changed human life altogether ::: Business supplies goods and services ::: Has discharged its task when ::: Government … ::: Has discharged its function when its policies are effective ::: Need management so they can concentrate on their mission ::: Work together on their… ::: mission ::: leadership ::: management ::: Need management because they do not have a conventional “bottom line” ::: Need to learn how to use management as their tool lest they be overwhelmed by it ::: There is a “management boom” ::: Little that is so far available to the NPO help them with their leadership and management has been specifically designed for them. Little of it pays any attention to the distinct characteristics of the NPO or to their specific central needs ::: Their mission ::: What are “results” in nonprofit work ::: Strategies required to market their services and obtain the money they need to do their job ::: Challenge of introducing innovation and change in institutions that depend on #volunteers and therefore cannot command ::: The specific human and organizational realities of NPO ::: The very different role that the board plays in the NPO ::: The need to attract volunteers, to develop them and to manage them for performances ::: Relationships with a diversity of constituencies ::: Fund-raising and fund development ::: The problem of individual burnout, which is so acute in NPOs precisely because the individual commitment to them tends to be so intense. ::: Need materials that are specifically developed out of their experience and focuses on their realities and concerns ::: Bob Buford of the Leadership Network ::: Get audio tapes. Leadership and Management in the Nonprofit Institutions (“The Nonprofit Drucker”). ::: NPOs — America’s resounding success in the last 40 years ::: In many ways it is the “#growth industry” of America ::: Health-care institutions ::: Community services ::: Fast growing pastoral churches ::: Hospital ::: Many other NPOs that have emerged as the center of effective social action in a rapidly changing and turbulent America ::: Has become America’s “Civil Society” ::: Face very big and different challenges ::: Convert donors into contributors ::: Need more money to do vital work ::: Giving is necessary above all so that the NPOs can discharge the one mission they all have in common ::: To satisfy the need of the American people for… ::: To make contributors out of donors means that the American people can see what they want to see—or should want to see—when each of us looks at himself or herself in the mirror in the morning: ::: Give community and common purpose ::: People no longer have exposure to community ::: NPOs are the American community ::: The mission comes first (and your role as a leader) ::: The commitment (of the NPO) (What we really believe in.) ::: Introduction ::: NPO exists to bring about change in individuals and in society ::: What missions work and what missions don’t work ::: How to define the mission ::: The ultimate test of the mission is right action ::: The first job of the leader is to think through and define the mission of the institution ::: Setting concrete action goals ::: Workable examples ::: Unworkable examples ::: Has to be operational, otherwise it’s just good intentions ::: Has to focus on what the institution really tries to do ::: Task of the NPO manager is to try to convert the organization’s mission statement into specifics. ::: Common mistake is to make the mission statement into a kind of hero sandwich of good intentions. ::: It has to be simple and clear ::: Have to think through ::: Constantly look at the state-of-the-art ::: Look at the opportunities in the community ::: Things that were of primary importance may become secondary or even totally irrelevant. ::: Watch this constantly ::: Three “musts” of a successful mission ::: Look at strength and performance ::: Look outside at the opportunities, the needs ::: What do we really believe in (committed to) ::: Summary ::: Leadership is a foul-weather job ::: Crisis leadership ::: Depend on a leader when there is a crisis. ::: The problems of success ::: Hard choices ::: Innovation ::: People who will do what the situation calls for (p15). This is effective crisis leadership. ::: How to pick a leader ::: Try to match the strengths of an individual with the needs of the institution ::: Look for integrity or character ::: Mediocrity in leadership shows up almost immediately. ::: Your personal leadership role ::: Have maybe a year to establish yourself ::: The role the leader takes has to fit ::: All of us play roles ::: To work the role the leader takes has to fit in three dimensions ::: Two things to build on ::: No such things as “leadership traits” or “leadership characteristics” ::: Never say “I.” Think “we” and say “we.” ::: You are visible. ::: To every leader there is a season ::: The balance decision ::: One of the key tasks is to balance long range and short range, the big picture and the pesky little details ::: There are always balancing problems in managing nonprofits. This is only one example ::: Balance between concentrating resources on one goal and enough diversification ::: Balance between being too cautious and being rash ::: Timing: expect result too soon or wait too long ::: Opportunity and risk #profit ::: The don’ts of leadership ::: Just announce decision and leave it to everyone else to understand ::: Be afraid of the strengths in your organization ::: Pick your successor alone ::: Hog the credit ::: Knock your subordinates ::: Keep your eye on the task, not on yourself ::: Setting new goals — interview with Frances Hesselbein (Girl Scouts) ::: The Daisy Scout program ::: Only 20% of the councils were enthusiastic about the new program. Another 10% were waiting in the wings ::: Summary #1 ::: Ready but not competent ::: Increase in number of volunteers ::: Deserved and required superior learning opportunities. ::: Summary #2 ::: Minority communities ::: Look at the population projections ::: Most thoughtful kind of planning and including those community leaders in that planning ::: Working on the target of opportunity ::: More than one customer ::: Girls ::: Volunteers ::: General conclusions ::: Carefully construct a marketing plan ::: Understand all the ways there are to reach people and use them ::: Need people in the marketing chain ::: Continuing evaluation ::: What the leader owes — interview with Max De Pree (Herman Miller, Inc. & Fuller Theological Seminary) ::: The leader is indebted to the organization ::: A volunteer nation ::: Owes certain assets ::: People development needs to be oriented primarily toward the person, and not primarily toward the organization. ::: When you take the risk of developing people, the odds are very good that the organization will get what it needs. ::: Building on what people are—not about changing them ::: Goal achievement vs. realization of our potential applies to organizations as well ::: A leader ::: Primarily future-oriented ::: First duty—Define reality ::: Have to deserve the person who works for us ::: They are committed to us by choice ::: Opportunity ::: Young people ::: Building a strong team of colleagues ::: Team held together by a common mission & common vision ::: Understand the task ::: Selecting people ::: Assign the work very clearly with a lot of interaction ::: Agree on what the process is going to be for getting the work done ::: Agree on timetables where those are appropriate ::: We agree on how we’re going to measure performance ::: The way we judge the quality of leadership by the tone of the body ::: Summary ::: Leader as the servant of the organization ::: Indebtness of the leader ::: Summary: The action implications ::: The mission ::: Comes first ::: If you lose sight of your mission, you begin to stumble and it shows very, very fast ::: Needs to be though through. Needs to be changed ::: The mission is always long-range. It needs short-range efforts and very often short-range results. ::: Leadership ::: First task is to make sure that everybody… ::: The leaders’s job ::: Leadership is doing ::: Leadership is also example ::: You are a leader ::: We are creating a society of citizens in the old sense of people who actively work, rather than just passively vote and pay taxes ::: Each is doing a responsible task ::: Tomorrow’s society of citizens. Everybody… ::: Mission and leadership ::: From mission to performance (effective strategies for marketing, innovation, and fund development) ::: Converting good intentions into results ::: Results (Until these things have happened the NPO has had no results; only good intentions) ::: The NPO is not merely delivering a service ::: It wants the end user to be not a user but a doer ::: It uses a service to bring about change in a human being ::: It creates … ::: It attempts to become a part of the recipient ::: NPOs need 4 things ::: Plan (part one) ::: Marketing (this section) ::: People (parts 4 & 5) ::: Money (this section) ::: Strategies that convert the plan into results ::: How do we get our service to the “customer,” that is to the community we exist to serve? ::: How do we market it? ::: How do we get the money we need to provide the service? ::: Marketing in a NPO is quite different from selling ::: More a matter of … ::: Have to know … ::: Selling an intangible ::: Basic strategy tasks ::: Design of the right marketing strategy ::: Fund development strategy ::: Winning strategies ::: Introduction ::: Good intentions don’t move mountains; bulldozers do ::: In the nonprofit management, the mission and the plan—if that’s all there is—are good intentions ::: Strategies are the bulldozers ::: About Strategies. They … ::: Brown University (a marketing strategy) ::: Excellent faculty ::: No distinction ::: Question: What do we have to do to become a leader despite the tough competition? ::: Two focuses (goals) ::: Had strategies for each of these goals ::: Has become the “in” university for bright kids in the East ::: This is almost a textbook case of a successful marketing strategy ::: Improving what we already do well ::: A clear strategy for improving ::: To work systematically on the productivity of the institution ::: Need a strategy for each of the factors of production ::: Need productivity goals—and ambitious ones ::: Constant improvement also includes … ::: Abandoning the things that no longer work ::: The innovation objective ::: Strategy development structure ::: Example: How does a pastor set a strategy? ::: Example: Public library ::: Steps in strategy development ::: Process of strategy development ::: The best example of a winning strategy: The Nature Conservancy ::: Strategy don’ts ::: How to innovate ::: Introduction ::: Refocus and change the organization when you are successful ::: Best rule for improvement strategies is to put your efforts into your successes. ::: Responsibility of top management ::: The search for changes ::: The requirements for successful innovation ::: The common mistakes (In doing anything new) ::: Defining the market — interview with Philip Kotler (Northwestern University) ::: Strategic Marketing for Nonprofit Institutions 4th edition by Philip Kotler ::: Many institutions confuse marketing with hard selling or advertising ::: Most important tasks in marketing ::: Advertising and selling are afterthoughts ::: Marketing is finding needs and filling them. It produces positive value for both parties ::: Marketing starts with customers, or consumers, or groups you want to serve well ::: Selling starts with a set of products you have, and want to push them out into any market you can find ::: But isn’t the need the NPO serve obvious? ::: Many organizations are very clear about the needs they would like to serve, but they often don’t understand these needs from the perspective of the customers. They make assumptions based on their own interpretation of the needs out there ::: Different marketing efforts ::: Money raising ::: Recruiting students ::: Attracting and holding first-rate faculty ::: The problem marketing has to solve ::: How do I get the response I want? ::: The answer marketing gives is that you formulate an offer to put out to the group from which you want a response ::: The process of getting the answer is called exchange thinking ::: Reciprocity and exchange underlie marketing thinking ::: Institutional differentiation ::: Competition Examples ::: How important is it? ::: How do you do it? ::: Marketing is now thought of as a process of segmenting, targeting, and positioning (STP marketing) ::: As opposed to LGD marketing—lunch, golf, and dinner, which has its place ::: Positioning raises the question ::: So most organizations engage in the search for their own uniqueness, what we might call a competitive advantage or advantages ::: First steps in marketing ::: Define its markets, its publics ::: Before you think through the message ::: Church example ::: Market orchestration ::: The mission may well be universal. And yet to be successful … ::: the institution has to ::: This applies to fund-raising ::: Careful identification of the appropriate sources of funds and the giving motives ::: Why does that donor give money? ::: To whom does the donor give money? ::: Consumer research is important in the process of trying to direct your efforts ::: The extent to which a NPO has to mold what they are, do what they can for the market (p 78) ::: Church example ::: “Boutiques” are very successful for NPO ::: Translate boutiques into niches ::: Route of niching versus mass production ::: Do you want to satisfy one type of audience deeply or do you want to satisfy a number of audiences more superficially? ::: Museum example ::: More and more niching ::: We need product differentiation in NPO as much as we need it in business ::: Why does the NPO have to be interested in marketing and have to be engaged in marketing? ::: Is it to be sure that it really fulfills the need? ::: Will it satisfy the customer? ::: Is it to know what it should focus its energies on? ::: What are the real reasons for doing marketing for a nonprofit institutions? ::: Who should really do the marketing job in the NPO? ::: CEO is the CMO ::: Yet the CEO can’t do the marketing ::: The work has to be delegated to someone who is skilled in handling marketing ::: How can we tell whether marketing is making a genuine contribution? ::: Marketing is supposed to build up “share of mind” and “share of heart” for the organization ::: The cost side ::: It is very hard to gauge the impact of marketing without setting #objectives ::: Hospital example ::: Haven’t really gone into marketing in the right order ::: Do some customer research to understand the market you want to serve and its needs ::: Develop segmentation and be aware of different groups that you’re going to be interacting with ::: Develop policies, practices, and programs that are targeted to satisfy those groups ::: Communicate these programs ::: Hospital who resist to the bitter end the kind of communication their market research shows them the public wants ::: How many of the people who come in to have hip replacement can walk after six months. Because not everybody does. If we (see page 83) ::: Adopting marketing ::: NPO with little or no marketing takes 5 to 10 years to really install effective marketing procedures and programs if they’re fully committed to installing them. Many organizations give up after 1–2 years, especially if the early results are so good that they think they are already there. ::: More than a department ::: Everyone in the organization pursuing one goal ::: Getting everyone to understand… ::: Marketing becomes effective when the organization … ::: is very clear about what it wants to accomplish ::: has motivated everyone in the organization to … ::: has taken the steps to implement this vision in a way which ::: Marketing is … ::: the work—and it is work—that brings the needs and wants and values of the customer into conformity with the product and values and behavior of the supplier, of the institution ::: a way to harmonize the needs and wants of the outside world with the purposes and the resources and the #objectives of the institution ::: Building the donor constituency — interview with Dudley Hafner (American Heart Association) ::: Fund development ::: Recognizing that your true potential for #growth and development is the donor, is someone you want to cultivate and bring along with your program ::: Not simply someone to collect this year’s contribution from ::: Reduces the cost of getting the money, when you have a donor base that is already sold ::: You’re going to help them increase their support to the organization ::: Tools used by the local organization ::: Acquaint donors with what you are as an organization ::: What you are trying to get accomplished ::: So they can identify with your goals ::: Need a very clear mission ::: Very clear goals that relate to our mission ::: Process ::: Development means ::: Development requires a long-term strategy (rather than putting together an annual campaign to go out and collect money.) ::: Donor segments ::: Materials / tools for creating constituency ::: Summary ::: Focus your message on what in marketing we would call the values of the potential customers ::: Very clear goals for a marketing campaign in which you market the American Heart Association to potential investors, to people willing to commit themselves, if only in the beginning to a token donation just to get rid of the collector ::: Door to door fund raising ::: Don’t go Sunday afternoon during pro football games ::: How much do you want so I can go back to my TV ::: Ability to answer questions I get ::: Leave material ::: Next year ::: That literature you left was very interesting ::: Last year you gave …; how about 2.5X (or a target goal based on ability) this year? 50% success rate ::: Appeal to the rational in the individual as well as the emotional part of the individual ::: In building local campaigns ::: Think of the person who does door-to-door ::: Opportunity to educate those potential donors about ::: Your greatest opportunity to create a long-term strategy ::: Competition for funds ::: Well ahead of inflation ::: Cannot afford to create a strategy that will cause one of them to do better at the expense of another NPO. ::: Figure out how to get new monies that have not been previously given ::: Have a long-term really positive impact on the good that the NPO are trying to do. ::: Most say “We want people who give to nobody but us” ::: Market research ::: Because we feel a commitment to the volunteers who go out as our ambassadors ::: We give them the best possible materials ::: Kind of knowledge about the market is relevant ::: Asking for a specific gift dramatically improves the return in our campaign ::: Level of income you should give so much ::: They are usually flattered ::: Once a donor has given a gift that falls into the suggested amount they should be cultivated (pay special attention): The long-term strategy of upgrading that gift ::: The long-term strategy of upgrading that gift ::: First target of opportunity ::: Increase the size of the gift you ask for each year form those people who have given the suggested amount. Gently nudges them to a higher level ::: Building the relationship ::: Market research tries to identify ::: Market segmentation ::: Market value expectations ::: Fund development ::: Go where the money is ::: Look upon fund development as an educational campaign ::: Justification for having a broad-based annual campaign ::: Larger givers, you have one strategy and one expectation ::: Smaller givers, another strategy and another expectation ::: Strategy definition ::: Strategy development for a segment ::: Information provided to fund-raisers ::: Emerging for the future (p 95) ::: #Critical factors ::: Volunterism ::: Applies to all NPOs (big & small, local) ::: Summary ::: The central importance of the clear mission ::: The importance of knowing your market, not just in generalities, but in fine detail ::: Enabling those volunteers of yours to do a decent job by giving them the tools that make it almost certain that they can succeed ::: Don’t appeal to the heart alone, and you don’t appeal to the head alone ::: Do you really need volunteers? p97 ::: Computer ::: TV ::: Telemarketing ::: Many organizations facing a crisis ::: When you lose your volunteer base, you lose your constituency, the course of strength and #growth in the organization ::: Technology as a way of helping the volunteers do a more effective job ::: Summary ::: Fund development is people development ::: Both for donors and volunteers ::: You are building … ::: That is the way … ::: It is based on ::: This applies to purely local and small organizations as well ::: Summary: The action implications ::: About strategy ::: Strategy converts mission and #objectives into performance ::: Strategy ends with selling efforts ::: Strategy begins with knowing the market ::: The whole point of strategy is not to look at recipients as people who receive bounty, to whom the nonprofit does good. ::: Three strategies ::: Needs a marketing strategy that integrates the customer and the mission ::: Needs strategies to improve all the time and to innovate ::: Needs a strategy to build its donor base ::: All three strategies begin with research and research and more research ::: Organized efforts to find out ::: The important person to research ::: Training your own people ::: Everyone in the hospital must be patient-conscious. ::: That’s a training job—not just preaching. ::: It isn’t attitude, its behavior ::: Behavior training. This is what you do ::: Train the volunteers (may be even more essential) ::: Need to organize itself to abandon ::: What no longer … ::: If not built in … ::: The question always before the nonprofit executive ::: What should our service do for the customer that is of importance to that customer? ::: Think through how the service should be ::: Nuts and bolts ::: Strategy ::: Begins with the mission ::: Leads to a work plan ::: End with the right tools ::: The last thing to say about strategy that it exploits an opportunity, ::: Strategy ::: Commits the nonprofit executive and the organization to action ::: Its essence is action ::: The tests of strategy are results ::: Begins with needs and ends with satisfaction ::: Managing for performance (how to define it; how to measure it) ::: What is the bottom line when there is no “bottom line”? ::: NPOs tend not to give priority to performance and results ::: Yet performance and results are far more… than in a business ::: important ::: difficult ::: In a business, there is a financial bottom line ::: Profit and loss are not enough by themselves to judge performance #profit ::: but at least they are something concrete ::: A NPO executive faces a risk-taking decision when you try to think through your performance ::: First think through the desired result ::: Then the means of measuring performance and results can be determined ::: How is performance for this institution to be defined? ::: Examples ::: Not enough to say we serve a need. Really good ones create a want. ::: As NPO executive begin to define the performance that makes the mission of their institution operational two common temptations have to be resisted ::: Planning for performance ::: Performance in the NPO must be planned ::: This starts with the mission ::: Then one asks: Who are our constituencies, and what are the results for each of them? ::: Integrating constituency goals into the institution’s mission is almost an architectural process, a structural process. ::: Moral vs. economic causes ::: Illustration ::: Thinking through what results will be demanded of the nonprofit institution can protect it from squandering resources because of confusion between moral and economic causes. ::: NPO — almost impossible to abandon anything ::: Have to distinguish between moral causes and economic causes ::: Have a duty toward its … to allocate its scarce resources for results rather than to squander them on being righteous. ::: NPO are human-change agents ::: Their results are therefore always a change in people—in their… ::: The NPO has to judge itself by its performance in creating ::: NPO need to set specific goals in terms of its service to people ::: NPO needs to constantly raise these goals—or its performance will go down ::: Don’t’s and Do’s — The basic rules (Disregarding them will damage and may even impair performance) ::: The Don’t’s ::: Seeing the institution as an end in itself ::: Feuding and bickering ::: Tolerate discourtesy ::: Do ::: Build the organization around information and communication instead of around hierarchy ::: Delegation ::: Standard setting, placement, appraisal ::: Standards ::: Placement ::: Appraisal ::: The outside focus ::: Force you people, and especially your executives, to be on the outside often enough to know what the institution exists for ::: Get out in the field and actually work there again and again ::: Try to simulate being a customer ::: Don’t let people stay forever in a staff position in the office ::: The effective decision #PDFs ::: Everything comes together in the decision ::: Make or break point of the organization ::: Either make decisions effectively or render themselves ineffective ::: On decisions ::: What is the decision really about? ::: The most important part of the effective decision ::: Very rarely is a decision about what it seems to be about. That’s usually a symptom ::: Examples ::: Opportunity and risk ::: Opportunity: If this works, what will it do for us? ::: Risk ::: The need for dissent ::: They should be controversial ::: Acclamation means that nobody has done the homework ::: What is right? Not who is right? ::: Each see a different reality ::: Instead of arguing what is right, assume that each faction has the right answer. But which question is each trying to answer? ::: Creates mutual respect ::: Honest disagreement ::: Any organization needs a nonconformist ::: Enables NPO to brush aside the unnecessary, the meaningless, the trivial conflict ::: Enable #concentration on the real issues ::: Conflict resolution ::: You use dissent and disagreement to resolve conflict ::: Ask the two most vocal opponents to sit down and work out a common approach ::: Defusing the argument ::: From decision to action ::: Causes for decisions that remain pious intentions ::: Follow up ::: Decisions will turn out to be wrong more often than right. At least they will have to be adjusted ::: How to make the schools accountable — interview with Albert Shanker (American Federation of Teachers) ::: A leader in the crusade to ::: improve performance in the classroom ::: make teachers and schools accountable for performance ::: build the school around the classroom teacher ::: Performance in the school ::: What kind of human being are we trying to produce? ::: Performance dimensions ::: Assess achievement ::: longer range ::: Learning ::: Not memorization & instant forgetting ::: Something that becomes part of you ::: Teaching ::: Should be done on an adult level ::: Public may have given up on many of our public institutions ::: The employees have ::: They are just doing … whether it works or not ::: Summary: the action implications ::: Performance is the ultimate test of any institution ::: Exists for the sake of performance in changing people and society ::: The temptation to downplay results ::: To say … is not enough ::: Wasting resources on non-results ::: Results ::: How well are you doing in terms of the resource you spent? ::: What return do you get? ::: Parable of the Talents in the New Testament: Our job is to invest the resources we have — people and money — where the results are manifold. And that’s quantitative term ::: Kinds of results ::: Defining results in such a way that one can ask ::: Results are always outside the organization, not inside ::: The right allocation of resources to the mission, to goals, to results ::: Start with the mission (That is exceedingly important) ::: What do you want to be remembered for as an organization—but also as an individual? ::: The mission transcends today, but guides today, informs today ::: From the mission, one goes to very concrete goals ::: Only when a nonprofits’s key performance areas are defined can it really set goals ::: In a nonprofit institution, where people want to serve a cause, you always have the challenge of getting people to perform so that they grow on their own terms. They are then accomplished and fulfilled, and that makes its way down to the performance of the organization. ::: Results are achieved by #concentration, not by splintering ::: The courage to say (strength concentration analysis) ::: Need alone does not justify our moving in. We must match our strength, our mission, our concentration, our values ::: Good intentions, good policies, good decisions must turn into effective actions ::: This is what we are here for ::: This is how we do it ::: This is the time span in which we do it ::: This is who is accountable ::: This is the work for which we are responsible ::: The ultimate question, people in NPO should ask again and again, and again (major feedbacks) ::: What should I hold myself accountable for by way of contribution and results? ::: What should this institution hold itself accountable for by way of contribution and results? ::: What should both this institution and I be remembered for? ::: People and relationships (your staff, your board, your volunteers, your community) ::: People decisions (hire, fire, place, promote, develop, teams, personal effectiveness) ::: Introduction ::: People decisions are the ultimate—perhaps the only—control of an organization ::: People determine the performance capacity of an organization ::: No organization can do better than the people it has ::: Can only hope to recruit and hold the common run of humanity (unless it is a very small organization—a string quartet) ::: Effective NPO executive must try to get more out of the people he or she has. ::: The yield from the human resource really determines the organizations performance ::: That’s decided by the basic people decisions ::: The quality of these human decisions largely determines whether … rather than just public relations and rhetoric ::: Rules for making good people decisions (Objective: To place people who perform in assignments that match their strengths) ::: See measuring “Management Performance” ::: Not judges of people ::: A diagnostic process ::: The selection process ::: 90 days later (A reminder) ::: How to develop people ::: Introduction ::: Developing people ::: Building the team ::: The more successful an organization becomes, the more it needs to build teams ::: Teams don’t develop themselves—they require systematic hard work. They require a team approach to management ::: Team Building Process ::: Personal effectiveness on the job ::: Once the right match is made between key activities and strengths. ::: Enable ::: As the organization grows ::: The tough decision ::: A competent staff wherever performance is needed ::: Repotting the bored executive ::: The succession decision (at the top) ::: Most #critical, hardest to undo ::: What not to do ::: Positive ways ::: The key relationships ::: NPOs have a multitude of constituencies and has to work out the relationship with each of them ::: The board ::: To be effective, a NPO needs a strong board, but a board that does the board’s work ::: Board duties ::: Board must ::: CEO ::: A nominating process is the best way to get people on the board. See p 158 ::: Membership on this board in not power, it is responsibility ::: Age limit ::: The badly split board ::: Two-way relationships ::: Only two way relationships work ::: Bringing out problems into the open ::: Relations with the community ::: NPOs serve one specific community interest ::: Have to maintain relations with ::: Not PR (but you need good PR). Requires the service organization live its mission ::: From volunteers to unpaid staff — interview with Father Leo Bartel (Social ministry of the Catholic Diocese) ::: From “helpers” to “colleagues” or “unpaid staff” ::: Now in leadership positions in the Church and in Church work ::: Formal training program ::: Quality control ::: The biggest difficulty in asking people to serve is that they are painfully aware of their lack of experience and lack of preparation ::: We must ::: Management and development of people ::: Inspiration. How to excite and motivate folks who are apathetic ::: Organization: Getting board and council members to do the sort of paperwork, the sort of planning work, they really must do in order to be effective in their roles on councils or boards? ::: Guiding principle you have in managing a heterogeneous group of volunteers, and a rapidly growing one? ::: The effective board — Interview with Dr. David Hubbard (Fuller Theological Seminary) ::: The functions of the board ::: A partnership between the board and the professional staff ::: Organization chart ::: Board’s role ::: Active board members ::: Time commitment ::: Creating the partnership ::: The way the mission of the institution is stated ::: Need people who are open to that mission ::: The investment of the CEO and the staff in servicing the trustees ::: Making the board effective and keeping it effective: A priority task ::: CEO’s two primary areas of service ::: Care for the vice-presidents ::: Care for the trustees ::: Balancing board involvement with the possibility of board meddling ::: Meddling ::: Playing games with the board ::: Don’t ::: Share the bad news first at 110 percent ::: Share the good news at 90 percent ::: No surprises ::: Getting the board to change its position ::: To adopt a change in an old, outmoded, but cherished policy ::: Work for a win situation ::: Try to help the trustees change their minds or to expand their vision without feeling that they are letting go of their cherished goals. ::: Avoiding the board splitting into factions (p 176) ::: Working with outside boards ::: Don’t try to be clever & outsmart them ::: What do we all have in common ::: Summary ::: It is to the benefit of an institution to have a strong board ::: Summary: The action implications ::: Complexity of relationships ::: Paid staff and “volunteers” ::: Donors ::: Board ::: People (volunteers, board, employed staff) need clear assignments for which they themselves take responsibility ::: Need to know what the institution expects of them ::: The responsibility for developing the work plan, the job description, and the assignment should always be on the people who do the work ::: Think through their contribution ::: Evolve by joint discussion ::: Must be information based ::: Structured around information ::: Learning organization? ::: Emphasis on managing people should always be on performance (They owe performance, and the executive owes them compassion.) ::: Must also be compassionate (People work for nonprofits because they believe in the cause) ::: Learning and teaching responsibilities ::: Learning (CEO only?) ::: Aspirations, opportunities, threats, good & bad performance, improvements (for executives) ::: How I help or hamper you? (for executives) ::: May need clear information about the results of your organization’s work ::: Take responsibility for making it easy for people to… ::: Do their work ::: Have results ::: Enjoy their work ::: Make sure that people get results. ::: Developing yourself (as a person, as an executive, as a leader) ::: You are responsible ::: First priority for the NPO executive is to strive for excellence ::: Brings satisfaction & self-respect ::: Workmanship counts ::: Without craftsmanship there is neither ::: Be remembered for being a first-rate … (occupation) ::: Avoid the temptation to just get by and hope nobody notices ::: Self-development ::: Deeply meshed in with… ::: Pay serious attention to self-development — your own and that of everyone in the organization (is not a luxury for NPO executive) ::: Well-run, results-oriented organization ::: The key to building an organization with such a spirit is organizing work so everyone feels essential to a goal they believe in ::: Goal is that everyone work at the equivalent level of a minister in the church ::: The letter ::: To make a difference ::: The person with the most responsibility for an individual’s development is the person himself. ::: Encourage everyone to ask themselves: ::: Creating a record of performance ::: Review what you have done once or twice a year ::: PFD’s review. Focusing on where he can make a difference ::: Making Personal Vision productive ::: Self-development summary ::: Setting an example ::: A constant relationship between the performance and achievement of the leaders, the record setters, and the rest ::: Executives lead by example ::: What do you want to be remembered for? ::: To develop yourself, you have to be doing the right work in the right kind of organization. ::: Where do I belong as a person? Where right becomes wrong ::: “Repotting” yourself ::: Sometimes a change—a big change or a small change—is essential in order to stimulate yourself again. ::: 10–12 years with one organization is enough for many volunteers ::: The switch ::: When you begin to fall into a pleasant routine, its time to force yourself to do something different. ::: “Burnout” often is just boredom ::: Perhaps all that is needed is a small shift ::: The excitement is not the job—it is the result ::: To build learning into your work, and keep it there, build in organized feedback from results to expectations. ::: Summary to this point. It’s up to you to: ::: Manage your job and your career. ::: Doing the right things well ::: Effectiveness ::: Self-renewal ::: Work on your own self-renewal ::: Create the excitement, the challenge, the transformation that makes an old job enriching over and over again ::: Three most common forcing tools for sustaining the process of self-renewal ::: Focus efforts to have the greatest ability for self-renewal. ::: What do you want to be remembered for? ::: Early exposure to the question will make all the difference, although you aren’t likely to really understand that until you are in your forties ::: At age 25, some began trying to answer it, foolishly ::: If you still can’t answer it by the time you’re fifty, you will have wasted your life ::: Keep asking the question over and over ::: Pushes you to see yourself as a different person—the person you can become ::: Nonprofits: the second career — interview with Robert Buford (Leadership network & PFD Foundation for Nonprofit Management) ::: Learning required to make the transition from business to NPO ::: Reallocate sense of identity ::: Same values. But major change in proportions and behavior ::: Real sense of clarity about mission and goals and about what comes first ::: Do same things but to a different purpose and to a different drummer ::: Need self-knowledge ::: Experiences that helped you either to do the right things or avoid doing the wrong ones? ::: An outside interest ::: Avoid becoming a victim of own organization ::: Self-development ::: Stay in touch with your constituency ::: The woman executive in the nonprofit institution — interview with Roxanne Spitzer-Lehmann (St. Joseph Health System) ::: Keeping track of progress ::: List major undertakings that I have to do ::: List things that are in process ::: Differences between NPO & business ::: Bottom line oriented ::: Self-development ::: Developing others ::: Summary: The action implications ::: Joshua Abrams ::: Start all over again ::: I don’t learn anything anymore ::: I’ve done all I can do ::: I’m still young enough so that I understand … and old enough to have experience with most of the things they are going through. ::: I’m no longer young enough… ::: Decide then act two years later ::: You are responsible for allocating your life. Nobody else will do it for you ::: Self development means two things & two quite different tasks: Developing the person. Developing the skill, competence, and ability to contribute. ::: What will you do tomorrow as a result of reading this book? And what will you stop doing? continue

 

bbx The Definitive Drucker — Endorsements ::: Title and copyright info ::: Contents ::: Foreword by A.G. Lafley Chairman, President, and CEO P&G ::: Introduction ::: A call from Peter Drucker ::: An already full schedule ::: Twenty-first century realities ::: The shaping and creation of this book ::: Peter Drucker’ liberating impact ::: Drucker Ideas ::: Book contents ::: Drucker’s declarations ::: Drucker Philosopy ::: Efficiency vs. Effectiveness ::: On Money ::: On Management ::: On Knowledge ::: On the Individual ::: Doing Business in the Lego World (#wgobcd) ::: The Silent Revolution ::: Embracing The Future ::: The Primacy Of Knowledge ::: The Lego World ::: A New Solution Space ::: Implications For Managers ::: Conclusion ::: The Customer: Joined at the Hip ::: Medtronic ::: Connecting With Your Customer: Four Drucker Questions ::: Who Should Be Considered A Customer? ::: Ideas In Action: Shadow Customers ::: Customer Versus Competitor? ::: Who Is Not Your Customer? ::: Which Of Your Current Noncustomers Should You Be Doing Business With? ::: What Does Your Customer Consider Value? ::: Does Your Customer’s Perception Of Value Align With Your Own? ::: How Do Connectivity And Relationships Influence Value? ::: Which Customer Wants Remain Unsatisfied? ::: What Are Your Results With Customers? ::: How Are Outsiders Measuring And Sharing Results And Information About Your Products And Services? ::: Are You Fully Leveraging The Information Your Results Provide? ::: Are You Honest And Socially Responsible In Presenting Your Results? ::: Does Your Customer Strategy And Your Business Strategy Work Together? ::: Procter & Gamble ::: The Grandfather Of Marketing ::: Conclusion ::: Innovation and Abandonment ::: Creating Your Tomorrow: Four Drucker Questions ::: What Do You Have To Abandon To Create Room For Innovation? ::: If You Weren’t In This Business Today, Would You Invest The Resources To Enter It? ::: What Unconscious Assumptions Limit Your Innovative Thinking? ::: Are Your Highest-Achieving People Assigned To Innovative Opportunities? ::: Do You Systematically Seek Opportunities ::: Do You Look For Opportunities As If Your Survival Depended On It? ::: Are You Looking At The Seven Key Sources Of Opportunities? ::: The Unexpected ::: Industry Disparities across Time or Geography ::: Incongruities ::: Process Vulnerabilities ::: Demographic Changes ::: Perception and Priority Changes That Shift Buying Habits ::: New Knowledge ::: Do You Use A Disciplined Process For Converting Ideas Into Practical Solutions? ::: Do You #Brainstorm Effectively? ::: Do You Match Up Ideas With The Opportunity? ::: Do You Test And Refine Ideas Based On The Market Response? ::: Do You Deliver The Results? ::: Does Your Innovation Strategy Work With Your Business Strategy? ::: What Is Your Company’s Target Role In Defining New Markets? ::: Do Your Opportunities Fit With Your Business Strategy? ::: Are You Allocating Resources Where You Want To Be Making Bets? ::: How Innovation Enables Ge’s Longevity And Valuation ::: Making Innovation Everyone’s Business ::: In Contrast To Ge: Siemens Ag ::: Different Cultures ::: Differing Results ::: Conclusion ::: Collaboration and Orchestration ::: The Power Of Collaboration ::: Collaboration And Orchestration: Three Drucker Questions ::: What Are The Goals Of Your Collaboration? ::: How Should The Collaboration Be Structured? ::: How Can You Orchestrate Your Collaboration to... ::: Create A Living Business Plan ::: Structure Communications For Agile Decision Making ::: Track Progress As Measured By Expected Results ::: In one of our conversations, Bill Pollard ::: Conclusion ::: People and Knowledge ::: Alcoa And People ::: Investing In People And Knowledge: Five Drucker Questions ::: What Is The Task? ::: What Knowledge And Working Style Will Help An Individual Win? ::: Drucker listed five rules for making hiring decisions: ::: Are You Accessing The Full Diversity Of The Population? ::: Is There A Clear Mission And Direction That Builds Commitment? ::: Are People Given Autonomy And Support? ::: Are You Playing To People’s Strengths Rather Than Managing Around Their Problems? ::: Do You Systematically Match Strengths With Opportunities? ::: Do Your Structure And Processes Maximize The Knowledge Worker’s Contribution And Productivity? ::: Do You Systematically Develop Employees? ::: Using Talent Management To Accelerate Strategic Change ::: Background ::: A Changing World ::: Is Knowledge Built Into Your Customer Connection? ::: Is Knowledge Built Into Your Innovation Process? ::: Is Knowledge Built Into Your Collaborations? ::: Is Knowledge Built Into Your People And Knowledge Management? ::: How People Make The Difference At Edward Jones ::: Google’s 10 Golden Rules For Knowledge Workers ::: Conclusion ::: Decision Making: The Chassis That Holds the Whole Together #PDFs ::: Decision Making: The Right Risks ::: Decision Making: Four Drucker Questions ::: Is Action Required? ::: Who Should Make The Decision? ::: What’s The Real Issue? ::: What Specifications Must The Solution Meet? ::: Have You Fully Considered All The Alternative Solutions? ::: Have You Gained Commitment And Capacity Of The Implementers? ::: Do You Have Mechanisms That Provide Tracking And Feedback? ::: The Decision Process ::: How Toyota Gets Its Edge ::: The Origins Of The Toyota Way ::: How Toyota Makes Decisions ::: Do the Homework First ::: Look at All Solutions, Build Consensus among Stakeholders, and Set Sights High ::: Implement Rapidly ::: Decision Making By Alfred Sloan ::: Conclusion ::: The Twenty-First-Century CEO ::: Field Of Vision ::: On my first meeting with Frances Hesselbein ::: The CEO Brand ::: When Frank Weise became the CEO of Cott Beverage ::: Influence On People--Collectively And Individually ::: Each Of Us As CEO ::: Endnotes ::: Books By Peter F. Drucker ::: Acknowledgments continue

 

And that brought us to management, or what he called “ knowledge-based management.”

He spent the better part of the next two hours defining and pulling this idea apart: the importance of accessing, interpreting, connecting, and translating knowledge.

radar-differences-pict-400

He spoke about how critical it is to find and manage knowledge in new places like pharmaceutical companies as they move beyond chemistry to nanotechnology and software.

How would this search and application
be choreographed?

Knowledge-based management is also critical to old multinationals like GE as they begin to build infrastructure for the developing countries, with the caveat that they first need to fully understand those countries.

See Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

Essentially, GE has to access information about the developing world and its infrastructure, interpret this information, and connect it with the rest of GE.

The educated person

Drucker commented that #information will be infinite; the only limiting factor will be our ability to process and interpret that information.

That is what he meant when he emphasized the importance of the productivity of the knowledge worker.

  

Peter had a way of looking at something and teasing out both the positive and the negative.

“On the one hand, it’s important to specialize,” he said.

“On the other hand, it’s dangerous to overspecialize and be isolated.”

The ability to access specializations while cutting across them — that’s what I’d seen at the headquarters of the Myelin Repair Foundation only a few hundred miles away.

Finally, Peter was answering my questions — finding a way to specialize enough, but not too much, and without isolation.

“That,” he said, “is what should keep managers up at night.” continue

Management’s New Paradigm #mnp

 

bbx The Effective Executive GETTING THE RIGHT THINGS DONE ::: Preface ::: Introduction: What Makes An Effective Executive? ::: Get The Knowledge You Need ::: Write An Action Plan ::: Act ::: Take responsibility for decisions ::: Take responsibility for communicating ::: Focus on opportunities ::: Make meetings productive ::: Think And Say “We” ::: Rule: Listen first, speak last. ::: Effectiveness can be learned and must be earned ::: 1. Effectiveness Can Be Learned ::: #71 Why We Need Effective Executives ::: Who Is An Executive? ::: Executive Realities ::: The Promise Of Effectiveness ::: But Can Effectiveness Be Learned? ::: 2. Know Thy Time ::: The Time Demands On The Executive ::: Time-Diagnosis ::: Pruning The Time-Wasters ::: Consolidating “Discretionary Time” ::: 3. What Can I Contribute? ::: The Executive’s Own Commitment ::: How To Make The Specialist Effective ::: The Right Human Relations ::: The Effective Meeting ::: 4. Making Strength Productive ::: Staffing From Strength ::: How Do I Manage My Boss? ::: Making Yourself Effective ::: 5. First Things First ::: Sloughing Off Yesterday ::: Priorities And Posteriorities ::: 6. The Elements of Decision-making #PDFs ::: Two Case Studies In Decision-Making ::: The Elements Of The Decision Process ::: 7. Effective Decisions ::: Decision-Making And The Computer ::: Conclusion: Effectiveness Must Be Learned ::: Index continue

 

bbx The Effective Executive in Action — Contents ::: Foreword ::: Introduction: How to Use The Effective Executive in Action ::: 1 Effectiveness Can Be Learned ::: Introduction ::: Getting the Right Things Done ::: The Authority of Knowledge ::: Executive Realities ::: The Effective Personality ::: 2 Know Thy Time ::: Introduction ::: Time: The Limiting Factor to Accomplishment ::: Time Management: The Three Steps ::: Recording Time ::: Activities Involved in Managing Time ::: Eliminate Time-Wasters ::: Delegate Activities ::: Wasting Time of Other People ::: Prune Activities Resulting from Poor Management ::: Overstaffing ::: Malorganization ::: Malfunction in Information ::: Create and Consolidate Blocks of Discretionary Time ::: Effective Use of Discretionary Time ::: 3 Focus on Contribution ::: Introduction ::: Focus on Contribution: Results, Values, and Developing People ::: Focus on Results ::: Contribution of Knowledge Workers ::: Three Key Performance Areas ::: Direct Results ::: For What Does the Organization Stand? ::: Executive Succession ::: Focus on Contribution and People Development ::: Challenges and Contribution ::: Executive Failure ::: Communicating Knowledge ::: Good Human Relations ::: Communications ::: Teamwork ::: Individual Self-Development ::: Develop Others ::: Make Meetings Productive ::: Effective Meetings ::: 4 Making Strength Productive ::: Introduction ::: Purpose of the Organization ::: Staff from Strength ::: Weaknesses in People ::: Look for Outstanding Strength ::: Make Each Job Demanding and Big ::: Make Weaknesses Irrelevant ::: Jobs Structured to Fit Personalities ::: Decision Steps for Effective Staffing Decisions ::: Think Through the Assignment ::: Consider Several Qualified People ::: Study the Performance Records of Candidates ::: Discuss Candidates with Former Colleagues ::: Appointee Should Understand the Assignment ::: Five Ground Rules for Effective Staffing Decisions ::: Responsibility for Failed Placements ::: Responsibility for Removing Non-Performers ::: Right People Decisions for Every Position ::: A Second Chance ::: Place Newcomers in Established Positions ::: Appraise Based on Strengths ::: Character and Integrity ::: How Do I Manage My Boss? ::: A Boss List ::: Input from Bosses ::: Help Bosses Perform ::: Build on Bosses' Strengths ::: Keep Bosses Informed ::: No Surprises ::: Common Mistakes in Managing the Boss ::: Managing Oneself ::: Steps for Managing Oneself ::: Identify Your Strengths ::: Recognize Your Work Style ::: Determine How to Best Make Your Contribution ::: Take Responsibility for Work Relationships ::: Develop Opportunities for the Second Half of Your Life ::: 5 First Things First ::: Introduction ::: #Concentration ::: Abandonment ::: Where Abandonment Is Always Right ::: An Abandonment Process ::: Concentrate on a Few Tasks ::: Priorities and Posteriorities ::: Postponing the Work of Top Management ::: Deciding on Posteriorities ::: Rules for Priority Setting ::: 6 Effective Decisions ::: Introduction ::: Decision Making ::: Is a Decision Really Necessary? ::: Elements of Effective Decision Making ::: Classifying the Problem ::: Defining the Problem ::: Specifications of a Decision ::: Deciding on What Is Right ::: The Right Compromise ::: Building Action into the Decision ::: Testing the Decision Against Actual Results ::: The Effective Decision ::: Start with Untested Hypotheses ::: Opinions Rather Than Facts ::: Develop Disagreement ::: The Decision ::: Conclusion: Effectiveness Must Be Learned ::: Best Hope to Make Society Productive ::: Authors' Note continue

 

bbx Managing Oneself History’s great achievers ::: Learning to manage oneself ::: What Are My Strengths? ::: Feedback analysis ::: Action implications ::: How Do I Perform? ::: Am I a reader or a listener? ::: How do I learn? ::: Alone or with others—in what relationship? ::: Decision maker or advisor ::: What kind of work environment? ::: Conclusion ::: What Are My Values? ::: Where Do I Belong? ::: What Should I Contribute? ::: Responsibility For Relationships ::: Accepting others as individuals ::: Responsibility for communications ::: The Second Half of Your Life ::: The boredom challenge ::: Three ways to develop a second career ::: Starting a new one ::: The parallel career ::: The social entrepreneur ::: Those who manage themselves are the leaders and models for the rest of society ::: Starting early—a prerequisite ::: Serious setbacks—another motivator ::: Summary—A revolution in human affairs ::: About The Author continue

 

bbx Managing in Turbulent Times — Introduction ::: Managing the Fundamentals which pertain to TODAY's enterprise ::: Introduction ::: Adjusting for Inflation ::: Managing for liquidity & financial strength ::: Managing the productivities of all resources (PIMS) ::: Earning today the cost of staying in business. ::: Managing for TOMORROW ::: Tomorrow is being made today ::: Concentrating resources on results ::: Sloughing off yesterday ::: Managing #Growth ::: Managing Innovation & Change ::: Business Strategies for Tomorrow ::: Management Performance: preparing today's business for the future ::: Managing the Sea-Change : The New Population Structure and the New Population Dynamics ::: Introduction ::: The New Population Realities—Labor forces and customers ::: Institutional affects ::: From "Labor Force" to "Labor Forces" ::: The End of Mandatory Retirement Age ::: The "Double-Headed Monster" ::: Job Needs ::: The Need for Redundancy Planning ::: Managing in Turbulent Environments ::: In three related facets of its environment management faces new realities, challenges, uncertainties ::: Economic ::: Social ::: Political ::: The challenge to Management ::: Management is now being stridently attacked ::: Management will survive ::: Management is the organ of institutions ::: The form which management will take may be quite different tomorrow continue

 

 

bbx Toward The Next Economics and other EssaysToward The Next Economics ::: Saving The Crusade: The High Cost Of Our Environmental Future ::: Business & Technology ::: Multinationals & Developing Countries (Myths and Realities) ::: What Results Should You Expect? A User's Guide to MBO ::: The Coming Rediscovery Of Scientific Management ::: The Bored Board ::: After-Fixed Age Retirement Is Gone ::: Science & Industry : Challenges of Antagonistic Interdependence ::: How To Guarantee Non-Performance (Public Service Program) ::: Behind Japan's Success ::: A View of Japan Through Japanese Art

 

bbx The Changing World of The Executive — A Society of Organizations ::: Executive Agenda ::: Inflation-Proofing the Company ::: A scorecard for managers ::: Helping Small Business Cope ::: Is Executive Pay Excessive? ::: On Mandatory Executive Retirement ::: The Real Duties of A Director ::: The Information Explosion ::: Learning From Foreign Management ::: Business Performance ::: The Delusion of Profits #profit ::: Aftermath of a Go-Go Decade ::: Managing Capital Productivity ::: Six durable Economic Myths ::: Measuring Business Performance ::: Why Consumer's Aren't Behaving ::: Good #Growth and Bad Growth ::: The Re-Industrialization Of America ::: The Danger of Excessive Labor Income ::: The Nonprofit Sector ::: Managing the Nonprofit Institution ::: Managing the Knowledge Worker ::: Meaningful Government Reorganization ::: The Decline of Unionization ::: The Future of Health Care ::: The Professor as Featherbedder ::: The Schools in 1990 ::: People at Work ::: Unmaking the Nineteenth Century ::: Retirement Policy ::: Report on the Class of 68 ::: Meaningful Unemployment Figures ::: Baby Boom Problems ::: Planning for Redundant Workers ::: Job as a Property Right ::: The Changing Globe ::: The rise of Production Sharing ::: Japan's Economic Policy Turn ::: The Battle Over Co-Determination ::: A troubled Japanese Juggernaut ::: India & appropriate Technolgy ::: Toward a New Form of Money? ::: How Westernized Are the Japanese? ::: Needed: A Full-Investment Budget ::: A return to Hard Choices ::: The Matter of Business Ethics continue

 

bbx Frontiers of Management — The Future is Being Shaped Today ::: Interview ::: Economics ::: The Changed World Economy ::: America's Entrepreneurial Job Machine ::: Why OPEC Had to Fail ::: The Changing Multinational ::: Managing Currency Exposure ::: Export Markets and Domestic Policies ::: Europe's High-Tech Ambitions ::: What We Can Learn from the Germans ::: On Entering the Japanese Market ::: Trade with Japan: The Way It Works ::: The Perils of Adversarial Trade ::: Modern Prophets: Schumpeter or Keynes? ::: People ::: Picking People: The Basic Rules ::: Measuring White Collar Productivity ::: Twilight of the first-Line Supervisor? ::: Overpaid Executives: The Greed Effect ::: Overage Executives: Keeping Firms Young ::: Paying the Professional Schools ::: Jobs and People: The Growing Mismatch ::: Quality Education: The New #Growth Area ::: Management ::: Management: The Problems of Success ::: Getting Control of Staff Work ::: Slimming Management's Midriff ::: The Information-Based Organization ::: Are Labor Unions Becoming Irrelevant ::: Union Flexibility: Why Its Now a Must ::: Management as a Liberal Art ::: The Organization ::: The Hostile Takeover and Its Discontents ::: Five Rules of Successful Acquisitions ::: Innovative Organization ::: The No-#Growth Enterprise ::: Why Automation Pays Off ::: IBM's Watson: Vision for Tomorrow ::: The Lessons of the Bell Breakup ::: Social Needs and Business Opportunities ::: Social Innovation—Management's New Dimension ::: Priorities continue

 

 

bbx Peter Drucker On The Profession Of Management Preface The Future That Has Already Happened ::: Introduction Written by Nan Stone ::: Part I The Manager’s Responsibilities ::: The Theory of the Business ::: The Effective Decision ::: How to Make People Decisions ::: The Big Power of Little Ideas ::: The Discipline of Innovation ::: Managing for Business Effectiveness ::: Part II The Executive’s World ::: The Information Executives Truly Need ::: The Coming of the New Organization ::: The New Society of Organizations ::: What Business Can Learn from Nonprofits ::: The New Productivity Challenge ::: Management and the World’s Work ::: The Post-Capitalist Executive: An Interview with Peter F. Drucker by T. George Harris

 

 

bbx Managing For The Future — Preface ::: Interview: Notes on the Post-Business Society ::: Economics ::: The futures already around us ::: The poverty of economic theory ::: The transnational economy ::: From world trade to world investment ::: The lessons of the U.S. export boom ::: Low wages: no longer a competitive edge ::: Europe in the 1990s: Strategies for survival ::: U.S.-Japan trade needs a reality check ::: Japan’s great postwar weapon ::: Misinterpreting Japan and the Japanese ::: Help Latin America and help ourselves ::: Mexico’s ace in the hole: the maquiladora ::: People ::: The New Productivity Challenge ::: The mystique of the business leader ::: Leadership: ::: People, work, and the future of the city (Social impacts of information) ::: The fall of the blue-collar worker ::: End work rules and job descriptions ::: Making managers of communist bureaucrats ::: China’s nightmare: ::: Management ::: Tomorrow’s managers: the major trends ::: How to manage the boss ::: What really ails the U.S. auto industry ::: The new Japanese business strategies ::: Manage by walking around—Outside! ::: Corporate culture: Use it, don’t lose it ::: Permanent cost cutting: permanent policy ::: What the nonprofits are teaching business ::: Nonprofit governance: lessons for success (for nonprofits) ::: The Nonprofits’ outreach revolution ::: The organization ::: The governance of corporations ::: Four marketing lessons for the future ::: Tomorrow’s company: dressed for success ::: Company performance: five telltale tests ::: R&D: the best is business driven ::: Sell the mailroom: Unbundling in the’90s ::: The 10 rules of effective research ::: The trend toward alliances for progress ::: A crisis in capitalism: Who’s in charge? ::: The emerging theory of manufacturing ::: Afterword: 1990s and beyond ::: The changing world economy ::: Innovation and entrepreneurship ::: Personal effectiveness continue

 


 

bbx Management Challenges for the 21st Century Introduction

 

Conditions for survival

 

One thing is certain for developed countries —and probably for the entire world:

We face long years of profound changes. #lter

the-second-curve-124w-200h

The Second Curve by Charles Handy

The changes are not primarily economic changes.

They are not even primarily technological changes.

 

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

the real pattern of economic activity

larger composite view ↑ ::: Economic & content and structure ::: Adoption rates: one & two

The Forces Creating a New Geography of Opportunity?

Move: The Forces Uprooting Us

 

They are changes in demographics, in politics, in society, in philosophy and, above all, in #worldview.

... snip, snip...

Thus it can be confidently predicted that a large number of today’s leaders in all areas, whether business, education or health care, are unlikely still to be around thirty years hence, and certainly not in their present form.

... snip, snip...

But to try to anticipate the changes is equally unlikely to be successful.

These changes are not predictable.

The only policy likely to succeed is to try to make the future.

… → continue

 

❡ ❡ ❡

 

Knowledge workers are likely to outlive their employing organization

 

❡ ❡ ❡

 

bbx #hor3 #wlh The actual results of action are not predictable.

Indeed, if there is one rule for action, and especially for institutional action, it is that the expected results will not be attained.

The unexpected is practically certain.

But are the unexpected results deleterious? Read more

bbx The future that has already happened

bbx The unexpected success

 

bbx Management Challenges for the 21st Century

bbx Introduction

Those who do work on these challenges today, and thus prepare themselves and their institutions for the new challenges, will be the leaders and dominate tomorrow.

Those who wait until these challenges have indeed become “hot” issues are likely to fall behind, perhaps never to recover.

… snip, snip …

These challenges are not arising out of today.

… snip, snip …

In most cases they are at odds and incompatible with what is accepted and successful today.

We live in a period of PROFOUND TRANSITION and the changes are more radical perhaps than even those that ushered in the “Second Industrial Revolution” of the middle of the 19th century, or the structural changes triggered by the Great Depression and the Second World War.

… snip, snip …

For in many cases— … — the new realities and their demands require a REVERSAL of policies that have worked well for the last century and, even more, a change in the MINDSET of organizations as well as of individuals.

bbx Management’s new paradigms #mnp

bbx Strategy: The new certainties

bbx Introduction Why Strategy?

bbx The Collapsing Birthrate

bbx The Distribution of Income

Industries, whether businesses or nonbusinesses, have to be managed differently depending on whether they are #growth industries, mature industries or declining industries

… snip, snip …

In conclusion, institutions—businesses as well as nonbusinesses—will have to learn to base their strategy on their knowledge of, and adaptation to, the trends in the distribution of disposable income and, above all, to any shifts in this distribution. And they need both quantitative information and qualitative #analysis.

bbx Defining Performance

bbx Global Competitiveness

Competition on the road S ahead : … “One consequence of this is that every business must become globally competitive, even if it manufactures or sells only within a local or regional market. The competition is not local anymore—in fact, it knows no boundaries. Every company has to become transnational in the way it is run. … But in e-commerce there are neither local companies nor distinct geographies. Where to manufacture, where to sell, and how to sell will remain important business decisions. But in another twenty years they may no longer determine what a company does, how it does it, and where it does it” … source


All institutions have to make global competitiveness a strategic goal.

No institution, whether a business, a university or a hospital, can hope to survive, let alone to succeed, unless it measures up to the standards set by the leaders in its field, anyplace in the world.

One implication: It is no longer possible to base a business or a country’s economic development on cheap labor.

However low its wages, a business—except for the smallest and most purely local one, for example, a local restaurant—is unlikely to survive, let alone to prosper, unless its workforce rapidly attains the productivity of the leaders of the industry anyplace in the world.

This is true particularly in manufacturing.

For in most manufacturing industries of the developed world the cost of manual labor is rapidly becoming a smaller and smaller factor—one-eighth of total costs or less.

Low labor productivity endangers a company’s survival.

But low labor costs no longer give enough of a cost advantage to offset low labor productivity.

This (as already said in Chapter One) also means that the economic development model of the 20th century—the model first developed by Japan after 1955 and then successfully copied by South Korea and Thailand—no longer works.

Despite their enormous surplus of young people qualified only for unskilled manual work, emerging countries from now on will have to base #growth either on technological leadership (as did the United States and Germany in the second half of the 19th century), or on productivity equal to that of the world leaders in a given industry, if not on themselves becoming the world’s productivity leaders.

The same is true for all areas: Design, #Marketing, Finance, Innovation—that is, for management altogether.

Performance below the world’s highest standards stunts, even if the costs are very low and even if government subsidies are very high.

And “Protection” no longer protects, no matter how high the custom duties or how low the import quotas.

Still, in all likelihood, we face a protectionist wave throughout the world in the next few decades.

For the first reaction to a period of turbulence is to try to build a wall that shields one’s own garden from the cold winds outside.

But such walls no longer protect institutions—and especially businesses—that do not perform up to world standards.

It will only make them more vulnerable.

The best example is Mexico, which for fifty years from 1929 on had a deliberate policy of building its domestic economy independent of the outside world.

It did this not only by building high walls of protectionism to keep foreign competition out.

it did it—and this was uniquely Mexican in the 20th century world—by practically forbidding its own companies to export.

This attempt to create a modern but purely Mexican economy failed dismally.

Mexico actually became increasingly dependent on imports, both of food and of manufactured products, from the outside world.

It was finally forced to open itself to the outside world, since it simply could no longer pay for the needed imports.

And then Mexico found that a good deal of its industry could not survive.

Similarly, the Japanese tried to protect the bulk of their business and industry by keeping the foreigners out while creating a small but exceedingly competitive number of export industries—and then providing these industries with capital at very low or no cost, thus giving them a tremendous competitive advantage.

That policy too has failed.

The present (1999) crisis in Japan is in large part the result of the failure to make the bulk of Japanese business and industry (and especially its financial industries) globally competitive.

Strategy, therefore, has to accept a new fundamental.

Any institution—and not just businesses—has to measure itself against the standards set by each industry’s leaders anyplace in the world.

bbx The Growing Incongruence Between Economic Reality and Political Reality

bbx The change leader #pdf

sr One cannot manage change

“One can only be ahead of it.

We do not hear much anymore about “overcoming resistance to change,” which ten or fifteen years ago was one of the most popular topics of management books and management seminars.

Everybody has accepted by now that “change is unavoidable.”

But this still implies that change is like “death and taxes”: It should be postponed as long as possible, and no change would be vastly preferable.

But in a period of upheavals, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm.

To be sure, it is painful and risky, and above all it requires a great deal of very hard work.

But unless it is seen as the task of the organization to lead change, the organization whether business, university, hospital and so on will not survive.

In a period of rapid structural change, the only ones who survive are the Change Leaders.

It is therefore a central 21st-century challenge for management that its organization become a change leader.

A change leader sees change as opportunity.

A change leader looks for change, knows how to find the right changes and knows how to make them effective both outside the organization and inside

bbx Change policies

sb Organized abandonment

bbx Organized improvement

A-10 Warthog → YouTube ::: Wikipedia

bbx Exploiting success

Reports and meetings ::: staffing opportunities

bbx Creating change

The last policy for the change leader to build into the enterprise is a systematic policy of INNOVATION, that is, a policy to create change.

It is the area to which most attention is being given today.

It may, however, not be the most important one—organized abandonment, improvement, exploiting success may be more productive for a good many enterprises.

And without these policies—abandonment, improvement, exploitation—no organization can hope to be a successful innovator.

But to be a successful change leader an enterprise has to have a policy of systematic innovation .

And the main reason may not even be that change leaders need to innovate—though they do.

The main reason is that a policy of SYSTEMATIC INNOVATION produces the mindset for an organization to be a change leader.

It makes the entire organization see change as an opportunity.

bbx Windows of opportunity #woo

  • Unexpected successes ::: unexpected failures ::: unexpected events
  • Incongruities
  • Process needs
  • Changes in industry and market structures
  • Changes in demographics
  • Changes in meaning and perception
  • New knowledge

This requires a systematic policy to look, every six to twelve months, for changes that might be opportunities

The unexpected success was Drucker’s favorite

… but if innovation is based on exploiting what has already happened —in the enterprise itself, in its markets, in knowledge, in society, in demographics and so on—it is far less risky

And this work should be organized as a regular part of every unit within the enterprise, and of every level of management.

Important to harvest and apply Dense reading and Dense listening and Thinking broad and Thinking detailed

bbx What not to do

bbx Piloting

bbx The change leader’s two budgets

bbx Change and continuity

 

bbx Making the future

“One thing is certain for developed countries—and probably for the entire world:

#lypc We face long years of profound changes.

The changes are not primarily economic changes.

They are not even primarily technological changes.

 

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

 

They are changes in demographics, in politics, in society, in philosophy and, above all, in #worldview.

See these

 

Economic theory and economic policy are unlikely to be effective by themselves in such a period.

 

And there is no social theory for such a period either.

Only when such a period is over, decades later, are theories likely to be developed to explain what has happened.

 

But a few things are certain in such a period.

It is futile, for instance, to try to ignore the changes and to pretend that tomorrow will be like yesterday, only more so.

This, however, is the position that existing institutions tend to adopt in such a period—businesses as well as nonbusinesses.

It is, above all, the policy likely to be adopted by the institutions that were most successful in the earlier period before the changes.

They are most likely to suffer from the delusion that tomorrow will be like yesterday, only more so.

 

Thus it can be confidently predicted that a large number of today’s leaders in all areas, whether business, education or health care, are unlikely still to be around thirty years hence, and certainly not in their present form. #ptf

 

But to try to anticipate the changes is equally unlikely to be successful.

 

These changes are not predictable. #ptf

 

The only policy likely to succeed is to try to make the future.

Changes of course have to fit the certainties (which this book attempted to outline in the preceding chapter).

Within these restraints, however, the future is still malleable.

It can still be created.

To try to make the future is highly risky.

It is less risky, however, than not to try to make it.

 

A goodly proportion of those attempting to do what this chapter discusses will surely not succeed.

But, predictably, no one else will.” (survive?)

 

#dwrau
“And it ought to be remembered
that there is nothing more difficult
to take in hand,
more perilous to conduct,
or more uncertain in its success,
then to take the lead
in the introduction
of a new order of things.”
Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince

 

Creativity — making the future II (#mtf #ptf)

 

 

“The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing social, economic, and political turmoil and challenge, at least in its early decades.

The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet.

And the challenges looming ahead may be more serious and more daunting still than those posed by the social transformations that have already happened, the social transformations of the twentieth century” — A Century of Social Transformation

bbx Information challenges

bbx Knowledge worker productivity

bbx Managing oneself (a revolution in human affairs)

Introduction: Tomorrow's "Hot" Issues ::: How to use the book? ::: Management's New Paradigms ::: Introduction: Why Assumptions Matter ::: Management Is Business Management ::: The One Right Organization ::: The One Right Way to Manage People ::: Technologies and End-Users Are Fixed and Given ::: Management's Scope Is Legally Defined ::: Management's Scope Is Politically Defined ::: The Inside Is Management's Domain ::: Conclusion ::: Strategy—The New Certainties ::: Introduction Why Strategy? ::: The Collapsing Birthrate ::: The Distribution of Income ::: Defining Performance ::: Global Competitiveness ::: The Growing Incongruence Between Economic Reality and Political Reality ::: The Change Leader ::: One Cannot Manage Change ::: One can only be ahead of it ::: In a period of rapid structural change, the only ones who survive are the Change Leaders ::: A change leader sees change as opportunity ::: I Change Policies ::: Making an organization more receptive to innovation is not nearly enough to be a change leader ::: To be a change leader requires the willingness and ability to change what is already being done in addition to new and different things ::: It requires policies to make the present create the future ::: Organized Abandonment ::: In three cases the right action is always outright abandonment ::: Abandonment is the right action if a product, service, market or process “still has a few good years of life” ::: “It’s fully written off” ::: The old which is stuntin the new ::: GM & the United Automobile Workers Union (UAW) ::: Abandonment may take different forms ::: In the GM cases ::: The right answer may even be to do more of the same but to do it differently ::: The publishing backlist example ::: How to act on abandonment is thus the second question ::: In a period of rapid change the “How?” is likely to become obsolete faster than the “What?” ::: The change leader must therefore also ask of every product, service, market or process ::: Needs to be asked of both the successful and unsuccessful ... ::: This applies to all areas of the enterprise ::: Distributors and distribution channels ::: American university example ::: HMOs ::: So far, we can only speculate on the impact the Internet will have on distribution ::: American automobile market ::: “To Abandon What” and “To Abandon How” have to be practiced systematically ::: Here is an example of how successful abandonment policies can be organized ::: Organized Improvement ::: Whatever an enterprise does internally and externally needs to be improved systematically and continuously ::: And it needs to be improved at a preset annual rate ::: What constitutes “performance” in a given area? ::: One example ::: What is “quality” in a product? ::: Even more difficult very often is the definition of performance in services ::: Another example: a major commercial bank ::: Continuous improvements in any area eventually transform the operation ::: Exploiting Success ::: Monthly problem report ::: Problems cannot be ignored. ::: An additional “first page” to the monthly report ::: Enterprises that succeed in being change leaders make sure that they staff the opportunities ::: The way to do this ::: Exploit one’s own successes and to build on them ::: The best example, perhaps, is the Japanese company Sony ::: Another example is the medical electronics group of the American General Electric Company ::: Exploitation will, sooner or later, lead to genuine innovation ::: II Creating Change ::: Windows of Opportunity #woo ::: A systematic policy to look, every six to twelve months, for changes that might be opportunities ::: A change in any one of these areas raises the question ::: Innovation can never be risk-free ::: Innovation work should be organized as a regular part of every ... ::: What Not to Do ::: There are Three Traps to avoid ::: Not in tune with the strategic realities discussed in Chapter Two of this book ::: Confuse “novelty” with “innovation.” ::: Confusing motion with action ::: Attempting to reorganize first ::: Reorganization comes after the “what” and the “how” have been faced up to ::: By itself reorganization is just “motion” and no substitute for action ::: Every change leader can expect to fall into one of them—or into all three—again and again ::: There is only one way to avoid them, or to extricate oneself ::: to organize the Introduction of Change, that is, to PILOT ::: III Piloting ::: One cannot market research the truly new ::: Nothing new is right the first time ::: Unexpected everything ::: James Watt steam engine ::: Neither studies nor market research nor computer modeling are a substitute for the test of reality ::: Everything improved or new needs therefore first to be tested on a small scale ::: The way to do this — find a champion ::: This need not even be somebody within the organization ::: If the pilot test is successful ::: The Change Leader's Two Budgets ::: Successful change leadership requires appropriate accounting and budget policies ::: It requires TWO separate budgets ::: In most enterprises ::: The change leader’s first budget is an operating budget ::: And then the change leader has a second, separate budget for the future ::: The most common, but also the most damaging, practice ::: But the right argument is ::: We tend to manage according to the reports we receive and see ::: IV Change and Continuity ::: The traditional institution is designed for continuity ::: Change leaders are, however, designed for change ::: And yet they still require continuity ::: But continuity is equally needed outside the enterprise ::: The enterprise also has to have a “personality” that identifies it among its customers and in its ma ::: Change and continuity are thus poles rather than opposites ::: The more an institution is organized to be a change leader, the more it will need continuity ::: But we do know already a good deal about how to create it ::: One way is to make partnership in change the basis of continuing relationships ::: This is what the Japanese “Keiretsu” has done ::: Economic-Chain Accounting ::: Continuing relationships between manufacturer and distributor ::: Relationships within the enterprise ::: Balancing change and continuity requires continuous work on information ::: More important for these people to get together ::: V Making the Future ::: We face long years of profound changes ::: They are changes in demographics, in politics, in society, in philosophy and, above all, in worldview ::: Theories ::: It is futile, for instance, to try to ignore and pretend ::: But to try to anticipate the changes is equally unlikely to be successful ::: These changes are not predictable ::: The only policy likely to succeed is to try to make the future ::: Within these restraints, however, the future is still malleable ::: Information Challenges ::: Introduction: The New Information Revolution ::: From the "T" to the "I" in "IT" ::: Greatest and earliest impacts on business policy, business strategy and business decisions ::: The revolutionary impacts so far have been where none of us then anticipated them: on OPERATIONS ::: Not one of us, for instance, could have imagined the truly revolutionary software now available to a ::: Not one of us could then have imagined the equally revolutionary software available to today’s surgical residents ::: Half a century ago no one could have imagined ::: The new Information Revolution began in business and has gone farthest in it ::: In education and health care, the emphasis thus will also shift from the “T” in IT to the “I,” as it is shifting in business ::: The Lessons of History ::: History's Lesson for the Technologists ::: The New Print Revolution ::: The Information Enterprises Need ::: From Cost Accounting to Result Control ::: From Legal Fiction to Economic Reality ::: Information for Wealth Creation ::: Foundation Information ::: Productivity Information ::: Competence Information ::: Resource Allocation Information ::: Where the Results Are ::: The Information Executives Need for Their Work ::: Organizing Information ::: No Surprises ::: Going Outside ::: Knowledge-Worker Productivity ::: Introduction ::: The Productivity of the Manual Worker ::: The Principles of Manual-Work Productivity ::: The Future of Manual-Worker Productivity ::: What We Know About Knowledge - Worker Productivity ::: What Is the Task? ::: The Knowledge Worker as Capital Asset ::: The Technologists ::: Knowledge Work as a System ::: But How to Begin? ::: The Governance of the Corporation ::: Managing Oneself ::: Introduction ::: What Are My Strengths? ::: How Do I Perform? ::: Am I a Reader or a Listener? ::: How Do I Learn? ::: What Are My Values? ::: What to Do in a Value Conflict? ::: Where Do I Belong? ::: What Is My Contribution? ::: Relationship Responsibility ::: The Second Half of Your Life ::: There are three answers ::: Start a second and different career ::: The Parallel Career ::: Social entrepreneurs ::: People who manage the "second half" may always be a minority only ::: Begin creating it long before one enters it ::: No one can expect to live very long without experiencing a serious setback ::: A society in which success has become important ::: A revolution in human affairs

 

 

bbx The Essential Drucker Introduction: The Origin and Purpose of The Essential Drucker ::: Purposes ::: Coherent and fairly comprehensive Introduction to Management ::: Overview of works on management ::: Where do I start to read Drucker? ::: Which of his writings are essential? ::: Atsuo Ueda (Japanese friend, translator, editor) ::: Three volumes Japan, Taiwan, China, Korea, Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil ::: Cass Canfield ::: Western audience ::: Growing number of people who, while not themselves executives, have come to see management as an area of public interest ::: An increasing number of students in colleges and universities, while not necessarily management students, see understanding of management as part of a general education ::: A large and rapidly growing number of mid-career managers and professionals who are flocking to advanced-executive programs, both in universities and their employing organizations ::: Sources (original publications) ::: Here, therefore, are the sources in my books for each of twenty-six chapters of the The Essential Drucker: ::: Omits 5 important books: ::: MANAGEMENT ::: Management as Social Function and Liberal Art7 ::: The origins and development of management ::: Management and entrepreneurship ::: The accountability of management ::: What is management? ::: Management as a liberal art ::: The Dimensions of Management ::: Mission ::: Worker achievement ::: Social responsibilities ::: The Purpose and Objectives of a Business ::: The purpose of a business ::: What should our business be ::: Objectives, strategies, resource concentration, work ::: Marketing objectives ::: Innovation objective ::: Resource objectives ::: Productivity objectives ::: The social responsibilities objectives ::: Profit as a need and a limitation ::: What the Nonprofits Are Teaching Business ::: Social Impacts and Social Problems ::: Management's New Paradigms ::: The Information Executives Need Today ::: Management by Objectives and Self-Control ::: Picking People-The Basic Rules ::: The Entrepreneurial Business ::: The New Venture ::: Entrepreneurial Strategies ::: THE INDIVIDUAL ::: Effectiveness Must Be Learned ::: Focus on Contribution ::: Own commitment ::: Contribution of knowledges ::: The right human relations ::: Communications ::: Teamwork ::: Self-development ::: Development of others ::: Know Your Strengths and Values ::: What are my strengths? ::: How do I perform? ::: What are my values? ::: Know Your Time ::: Effective Decisions ::: Process/element ::: Principle based decision needed ::: Boundary conditions ::: What is right ::: Building in the action ::: Feedback ::: Thoughts ::: Opinions rather than facts ::: Develop disagreement ::: Is a decision really necessary? ::: Functioning Communications ::: Communication is perception, expectation, and demand ::: Downward and upward ::: Management by objectives ::: Leadership as Work ::: Work, responsibility and trust earned ::: Principles of Innovation ::: Innovation as a practice ::: The dos ::: The don’ts ::: Three conditions for a successful innovation ::: The conservative innovator ::: The Second Half of Your Life ::: Three answers ::: Revolution for the individuals ::: Transformation of every society ::: The Educated Person ::: At the core of the knowledge society ::: Knowledge society and society of organizations ::: Technes and the educated person ::: To make knowledges the path to knowledge ::: SOCIETY ::: A Century of Social Transformation—(From farmers and domestic servants to) Emergence of Knowledge Society ::: The Coming of Entrepreneurial Society ::: Planning does not work ::: Systematic abandonment ::: A challenge for the individuals ::: Citizenship through the Social Sector (includes the need for community) ::: A “Third Sector” ::: The need for community ::: The volunteer as citizen ::: From Analysis to Perception-The New Worldview ::: ENIAC (1946) began an age in which information will be the organizing principle for work. ::: The social impacts of information ::: Form and function ::: Question of right size for the task and for the ecology. ::: From analysis to perception ::: Information is analytical and conceptual ::: Yet information is the organizing principle of every biological process (life is matter organized by information). Biological process is not analytical—deal with “wholes” ::: In the biological universe perception is at the center. We hear “cat” not “C” “A” “T” ::: Descartes: “I think therefore I am.” “I see therefore I am.” ::: New realities are configurations and call for perception as much as analysis ::: Dynamic disequilibrium of the new pluralisms ::: Multitiered transnational economy and transnational ecology ::: The new archetype of the “educated person” that is so badly needed ::: The shift from a mechanical to a biological universe will eventually require a new philosophical synthesis ::: Afterword: The Challenge Ahead ::: the paradox of rapidly expanding economy and growing income inequality--the paradox that bedevils us now ::: growing health care and education, possibly a shrinking market for goods and services ::: center of power shifting to the consumer--free flow of information ::: knowledge workers—expensive resource ::: governments depending on managers and individuals

 

 

bbx Managing in the Next Society (#sda)

Preface

PART I: THE INFORMATION SOCIETY

bbx Beyond the Information Revolution

bbx The Exploding World of the Internet

We need to measure knowledge workers’ productivity (#58 #kwp #sda)

How do we do that?

 

We begin by asking even lower-level knowledge workers three things:

What are your strengths and what should you put work into?

What should this company expect from you and in what time span?

And what information do you need to do your work and what information do you owe?

 

I learned this many years ago when I worked with one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies.

A new CEO expected each department head to explain what their function should contribute.

The head of research said, “You can’t measure research.”

So we arranged meetings with eleven to thirteen people at a time, working through the research department.

I asked, “Looking over the last five years, what have you contributed which made a difference?

What do you think you can contribute in the next three years?”

Suppose they’d found some hormonal function that changed our understanding of how the pancreas works.

It might be twenty years, if ever, before that became a product.

However, repeatedly—this was the early 1960s—there’d been important contributions that evaporated.

They didn’t fit the market for pharmaceutical companies or how the medical director saw the company.

So we had to change that.

We brought the medical, marketing, and manufacturing people into what was happening in research.

They doubled the utilization—the yield from research—within five or six years.

 

What about American health care, which seems mired in contradictions?

 

It’s no worse than any other country’s.

They’re all bankrupt.

It’ll be a growth sector simply because health care and education together will be 40 percent of the gross national product within twenty years.

Already, they’re at least a third.

 

Furthermore, as more and more services by government agencies will be outsourced, it will make little difference whether the organization which gets a contract to clean the streets is for profit or not for profit.

It won’t be in the market economy.

If I could voice one comment on your magazine and the present e-commerce and e-business-to-business concern altogether, it’s so far focused on business.

Yet I think the greatest e-commerce impact may be in higher education and health care.

It makes possible a rational restructuring of health care.

Eighty percent of demands in health care require only a nurse-practitioner.

What she needs to know is when to refer a patient to a physician, which largely now can become a matter of using information technology.

 

I’ve worked with hospitals which are the only ones within two hundred miles.

It’s incredible what a difference information technology has made to them.

Take Grand Junction, Colorado, with thirty-four thousand inhabitants.

Denver and Salt Lake City two sizable cities—are both about two hundred miles away.

Now Grand Junction’s hospital can make a diagnosis of a patient which brings in the University of Colorado medical school in Denver and whatever medical school Salt Lake City has.

That answers that small hospital’s basic problem, which was that they couldn’t build their own specialist center.

 

Was this that hospital’s only problem?

Could it even be profitable, given that area’s population base?

 

You may have a million people for whom Grand Junction represents the nearest decent hospital.

I’ve worked with a consortium of twenty-five such hospitals, from West Virginia to Oregon.

Information technology can make them the equivalent of a big-city university hospital.

With that patient with convulsions and vertigo that nobody in Grand Junction can diagnose, for example, now the doctor says, this may be a thyroid problem and we’ll talk to Salt Lake City.

The specialist in Salt Lake City diagnoses a cyst on the thyroid pressing the carotid—this was an actual case—and says, “I’ve done some of those, but my colleague in Denver is better.

Helicopter him there.”

Three days later, the patient is back in Grand Junction.

 

Thus, in health care, information technology has already made a fabulous impact.

In education, its impact will be greater.

However, attempts to put ordinary college courses on the Internet are a mistake.

Marshall McLuhan was correct.

The medium not only controls how things are communicated, but what things are communicated.

On the Web, you must do it differently.

 

How so?

 

You must redesign everything.

Firstly, you must hold students’ attention.

Any good teacher has a radar system to get the class’s reaction, but you don’t have that online.

Secondly, you must enable students to do what they cannot do in a college course, which is go back and forth.

So on-line you must combine a book’s qualities with a course’s continuity and flow.

Above all, you must put it in a context.

In a college course, the college provides the context.

In that on-line course you turn on at home, the course must provide the background, the context, the references.

 

What about on-line education’s potential in the developing world?

For example, the Indian government has begun a program to put an on-line PC in each village for education.

 

My prejudices show.

In the early 1950s, President Truman sent me to Brazil to persuade the government there that with the new technology, we could wipe out illiteracy in five years at no cost.

The Brazilian teachers’ union sabotaged it.

We have possessed the technology to eliminate illiteracy for a long time.

 

Let me point out that the one great achievement of Mao’s government was to eliminate illiteracy in China.

Not by means of a new technology, but a very old one: the student who has learned to read teaches the next one.

Teachers have obstructed this everywhere because it threatens their monopoly.

Yet older students teaching younger students is the quickest way.

It’s what the Chinese have done.

For the first time the great majority of Chinese understand and can speak Mandarin.

You have the country unified not only by script, but by language.

It’s still only 70 percent.

But it was 30 when Mao came in.

 

We can make the new technology available to the remotest village in the Amazon.

The obstacles are, first, enormous resistance by teachers, who see themselves threatened.

Secondly, it isn’t true that you’ve support for education in every third-world country.

I worked hard in Colombia and helped found the Universidad del Valle in Cali.

We had a very difficult time in those small coffee growing towns because parents expected children to be at work in the fields at age eleven.

 

In India that’s a great problem.

Moreover, schools are an equalizing force.

That’s a tremendous obstacle in Indian provinces like Orissa, say, where the upper castes would bitterly fight admission of lower-class children.

 

Let’s return to health care.

Some people insist that market forces can be a cure-all for US. health care.

Given situations like these rural hospitals where little opportunity for profit exists, is that true?

 

No.

Market forces cannot be the cure-all for health care.

I always put my cards on the table.

I have been the consultant to two major national health care systems.

One for fifty years, one for thirty.

The idea that American health care is in particularly bad shape is nonsense.

They’re all in total disarray.

The reason is that they’re based on the facts of 1900.

The worst is either the German or the Japanese.

As I said, 80 percent of demands on a health care system are routine problems a nurse-practitioner can handle.

You face two issues with a nurse-practitioner.

First, you must ensure she doesn’t go beyond her competence, so you emphasize she should overrefer to the medical center, not underrefer.

The second problem is that a nurse-practitioner doesn’t have the authority to change anybody’s lifestyle.

For three thousand years we’ve built the mystique of the M.D.

When the doctor says you must lose fifteen pounds, and the nurse practitioner says it, you hear something different.

 

Then there’s the 20 percent of health care which requires modern medicine.

Incidentally, I’m going to shock you.

Medical advances since antibiotics have had no impact on life expectancy.

They are wonderful for tiny groups, but statistically insignificant.

The great changes have been in the workforce.

When I was born, 95 percent of all people worked in manual jobs—most of them dangerous, debilitating jobs.

You’ve heard of Franz Kafka, haven’t you?

 

Of course.

 

You know he was a great writer, don’t you?

But Franz Kafka also invented the safety helmet.

He was the great man in factory inspection and workmen’s compensation.

 

Kafka was the workmen’s compensation-factory safety man for what’s now the Czech Republic, which was Bohemia and Moravia before World War I. Our next door neighbor was the top workmen’s compensation-factory safety man for Austria.

Kafka was his idol.

When Kafka [was dying] outside of Vienna of throat tuberculosis, Dr. Kuiper—our neighbor—pedaled on his bike at five each morning for two hours to visit the dying Kafka, then took the train to work.

After Kafka’s death, nobody was more surprised than Dr. Kuiper to discover he’d been a writer.

Kafka got the gold medal of, I think, the American Safety Congress for 1912 because as a result of his safety helmet, the steel mills in what is [now] the Czech Republic for the first time killed fewer than twenty-five workers per one thousand a year.

 

Did you know that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts employs as many people to administer coverage for 2.5 million New Englanders as are employed in Canada to administer coverage for 27 million Canadians?

 

Yes.

And it isn’t true.

You are comparing…

 

Apples and oranges?

 

No.

Apples and beavers.

The Canadian system doesn’t administer health care.

It pays fixed rates, that’s all.

What we do now, the Canadian system doesn’t.

It doesn’t tell any doctor what to do.

It just says, for this you get X dollars in Ontario and Y dollars in Saskatchewan.

Blue Cross—in Massachusetts particularly—is trying to be an HMO: a health care provider, not a health care payer.

The Canadian system is not managed care, it’s managed costs.

 

What should happen with American health care?

 

Let me say that if we had listened to Mr. Eisenhower, who wanted catastrophic health care for everybody, we would have no health care problems.

What shut him down, as you may not have heard, was the UAW.

In the 1950s, the only benefit the unions could still promise was company-paid health care.

Under the Eisenhower principle—where for everybody who spent more than 10 percent of their taxable income for health expenditures, government would pay—this would have been eliminated.

So the UAW killed it with help from the American Medical Association.

Still, the AMA wasn’t that powerful.

The UAW was.

 

You’ve talked about demographic changes, with more old people in the developed nations and more younger people, for the next forty years, in the developing nations.

Do you worry how it will be for the young in a world dominated by the old?

 

Look.

In the developed countries, with the exception of the U.S. , the number of young people is already going down sharply.

In the U.S. , it will begin diminishing in fifteen or eighteen years.

Since 1700, we’ve tacitly assumed that population grows, and the foundation grows faster than the top.

So this is unprecedented.

We have no idea what it means.

 

There are indications.

We know that in the Chinese coastal cities, the middle class spends more on the one child they are allowed than they used to spend on all four that they had before.

Those kids are horribly spoiled.

 

That’s true in this country, too.

When I look at what ten-year-olds expect to own, it’s unthinkable for my generation.

 

Also, when you say young people, in the developed countries that will mean, very heavily, immigrants, not children.

They’re immigrants, whether a Mexican entering southern California, a Nigerian entering Spain, or a Ukrainian entering Germany.

These will be young, in that the average age of an immigrant into the developed countries is between eighteen and twenty-eight.

They represent a very heavy capital investment in their upbringing, yet aren’t adequately educated.

We don’t know what that means.

Perhaps tremendous additional productive power and tremendous demand for additional educational expenses.

We don’t know, we’ve never been there.

 

But it is predictable that today’s youth culture will not last forever.

It’s an old insight that the prevailing culture is made by the fastest-growing population group.

That will not be young people.

Why we need effective executives

The following is for topic search: How do we do that?
We begin by asking even lower-level knowledge workers three things:
What are your strengths and what should you put work into?
What should this company expect from you and in what time span?
And what information do you need to do your work and what information do you owe?
What about American health care, which seems mired in contradictions? Hospitals
Furthermore, as more and more services by government agencies will be outsourced, it will make little difference whether the organization which gets a contract to clean the streets is for #profit or not for profit nonprofit.
It won't be in the market economy.
Yet I think the greatest e-commerce impact may be in higher education and health care.
However, attempts to put ordinary college courses on the Internet are a mistake.
Marshall McLuhan was correct.
The medium not only controls how things are communicated, but what things are communicated.
On the Web, you must do it differently.
What about on-line education's potential in the developing world?
That's a tremendous obstacle in Indian provinces like Orissa, say, where the upper castes would bitterly fight admission of lower-class children.
Market forces cannot be the cure-all for health care.
The idea that American health care is in particularly bad shape is nonsense.
They're all in total disarray.
The reason is that they're based on the #facts of 1900.
The worst is either the German or the Japanese.
Medical advances since antibiotics have had no impact on life expectancy.
They are wonderful for tiny groups, but statistically insignificant.
The great changes have been in the workforce.
When I was born, 95 percent of all people worked in manual jobs — most of them dangerous, debilitating jobs.
You've heard of Franz Kafka, haven't you?
The Canadian system doesn't administer health care.
It pays fixed rates, that's all.
What we do now, the Canadian system doesn't.
It doesn't tell any doctor what to do.
It just says, for this you get X dollars in Ontario and Y dollars in Saskatchewan.
So the UAW killed it with help from the American Medical Association
In the developed countries, with the exception of the U.S., the number of young people is already going down sharply.
In the U.S., it will begin diminishing in fifteen or eighteen years.
Since 1700, we've tacitly assumed that population grows, and the foundation grows faster than the top.
So this is unprecedented.
We have no idea what it means.
There are indications.
Also, when you say young people, in the developed countries that will mean, very heavily, immigrants, not children.
They're immigrants, whether a Mexican entering southern California, a Nigerian entering Spain, or a Ukrainian entering Germany.
These will be young, in that the average age of an immigrant into the developed countries is between eighteen and twenty-eight.
They represent a very heavy capital investment in their upbringing, yet aren't adequately educated.
We don't know what that means.
Perhaps tremendous additional productive power and tremendous demand for additional educational expenses.
We don't know, we've never been there.
But it is predictable that today's youth culture will not last forever.
It's an old insight that the prevailing culture is made by the fastest-growing population group.
That will not be young people.

bbx From Computer Literacy to Information Literacy

bbx E-Commerce: The Central Challenge

bbx The New Economy Isn’t Here Yet

bbx The CEO in the New Millennium

PART II: BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES

bbx Entrepreneurs and Innovation

bbx They’re Not Employees, They’re People

bbx Financial Services: Innovate or Die

bbx Moving Beyond Capitalism?

PART III: THE CHANGING WORLD ECONOMY

bbx The Rise of the Great Institutions

bbx The Global Economy and the Nation-State

bbx It’s the Society, Stupid

bbx On Civilizing the City

PART IV: THE NEXT SOCIETY

bbx The Next Society

bbx The New Demographics

bbx The New Workforce

bbx The Manufacturing Paradox

bbx Will the Corporation Survive?

bbx The Future of Top Management

bbx The Way Ahead

 

Preface ::: I did once believe in a New Economy ::: Some of the chapters in this book deal with traditional "management" topics ::: All the chapters in this book were written before the terrorist attacks ::: The Information Society ::: Beyond the Information Revolution ::: The Railroad ::: Routinization ::: The Meaning of E-Commerce ::: Luther, Machiavelli, and the Salmon ::: The Gentleman versus the Technologist ::: Bribing the Knowledge Worker ::: The Exploding World of the Internet ::: Giving knowledge workers stock options amounts to nothing more than bribing them ::: I understand you were an investment banker in London ::: So companies can no longer drive knowledge workers with stock options? ::: Important knowledge workers will have to be made full partners ::: We need to measure knowledge workers' productivity ::: What about American health care, which seems mired in contradictions? ::: Was this that hospital's only problem? ::: How so? ::: What about on-line education's potential in the developing world? ::: Let's return to health care ::: Of course ::: Did you know that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts employs ::: Apples and oranges? ::: What should happen with American health care? ::: You've talked about demographic changes, with more old people in the developed nations ::: Today we can buy for $10 a wristwatch ::: Coming to America during the Great Depression ::: These aren't just children of affluence looking for a focus? ::: From Computer Literacy to Information Literacy ::: Most CEOs still believe ::: When we talk about the global economy, I hope nobody believes it can be managed ::: Although this country today has a merchandise trade deficit ::: We need outside information, and we will have to learn ::: Let's take a look at that endangered species, the American department store ::: E-Commerce: The Central Challenge ::: Cars by E-Mail ::: The New Economy Isn't Here Yet ::: Many of the newer Internet companies are struggling to keep their businesses afloat ::: Is it too late to pull out of the tailspin? ::: The argument that many of the start-ups pose is that they are simply buying land while land is cheap ::: Does that ten-year beginnings-to-boom timetable still apply? ::: If so, many new Net companies are stock market gambles, what about the established old-line companies? ::: Is it important to be a multi-brand organization? ::: Are there new metrics for success in an Internet company? ::: What are the most important numbers you'd look at to value a dot-com? ::: What do you think the corporation of the future looks like? ::: Will this ongoing quest for continuing education affect the structure of the corporation? ::: Today you need an organization that is a change leader, not just an innovator ::: An organization should be involved in the process of creative destruction ::: Any thoughts on the Microsoft antitrust trial? ::: The Age of Discontinuity ::: How does one manage successfully in this time of dramatic change? ::: How do you turn transition to an advantage? ::: What do you believe is the future of business on the Internet? ::: The CEO in the New Millennium ::: Transforming Governance ::: New Approaches to Information ::: Command and Control ::: The Rise of Knowledge Work ::: Tying It Together ::: Business Opportunities ::: Entrepreneurs and Innovation ::: Do you agree that we in the United States are the best practitioners of entrepreneurship ::: Who's number one? ::: If Korea is number one, and we're not number two, who is? ::: Okay, so third is still respectable, no? ::: America's entrepreneurial "delusion" is dangerous ::: Why do you think this is happening? ::: Is there any one key to that discipline? ::: The Four Entrepreneurial Pitfalls ::: Are there typical mistakes entrepreneurs make but could avoid? ::: So, often the entrepreneur is actually succeeding but doesn't realize it? ::: Good story, but is the rejection of success really all that common? ::: Why do entrepreneurs reject unexpected success? ::: Why do you think entrepreneurs have such a hard time grasping the concept of cash flow? ::: Why is that? Is it a product of our business schools? ::: And he doesn't see that he's outgrowing his management base ::: What's the one symptom an entrepreneur cannot afford to ignore ::: To really begin to work together as a team? ::: That's a hard decision for an entrepreneur to make, especially if Tom was there at the start ::: If you start out with them, you invariably end up killing yourself and the business ::: Do you think entrepreneurs today are smarter about avoiding the pitfalls ::: Can Large Companies Foster Entrepreneurship? ::: Can large companies really foster entrepreneurship? ::: How was that period of innovation different from today's? ::: What does that mean for entrepreneurship in large companies? ::: But can large companies foster entrepreneurship? ::: What are some examples of companies that have been successful at internal entrepreneurship? ::: The Rise of Social Entrepreneurship ::: Could you step back and summarize your views about social entrepreneurship? ::: You've said that more and more community jobs are being handled by local institutions ::: But so many people in business are leery of nonprofits because they see them as nonprofessional ::: What about innovation and entrepreneurship in government? ::: They're Not Employees, They're People ::: Strangled in Red Tape ::: The Splintered Organization ::: Companies Don't Get It ::: The Key to Competitive Advantage ::: Free Managers—to Manage People ::: Financial Services: Innovate or Die ::: A Wider Transformation ::: Time for Innovations ::: Moving Beyond Capitalism? ::: What is your critique? ::: Have we arrived at mass capitalism or post-capitalism? ::: How does society, then, manage in the long term? ::: Why is the social sector growing in Japan, where the community has been so strong? ::: The size of the social problems means they just can't be taken care of by voluntary associations ::: Why does the US. have such a large and vital third sector when compared to other countries ::: The Asian Crisis ::: On Japan ::: How can Japan as a nineteenth-century European state make it in the hypercompetitive 21st century ::: On China ::: A breakdown of the globalization process? ::: Will technological unemployment … ::: What, then, will be the "basic disturbance" of the twenty-first century as you see it? ::: The Changing World Economy ::: The Rise of the Great Institutions ::: Control over the Fief ::: Needed Autonomy ::: The Global Economy and the Nation-State ::: A True Survivor ::: The Nation-State Afloat ::: Virtual Money ::: Breaking the Rules ::: Selling to the World ::: War After Global Economics ::: It's the Society, Stupid ::: A Heretic's View ::: Descending from Heaven ::: Elites Rule ::: A Policy About Nothing ::: The Social Contract ::: It's the Society, Stupid ::: On Civilizing the City ::: Reality of Rural Life ::: The Need for Community ::: The Only Answer ::: The Next Society ::: The Next Society ::: Knowledge Is All ::: The New Protectionism ::: The Future of the Corporation ::: The New Demographics ::: Needed but Unwanted ::: A Country of Immigrants ::: The End of the Single Market ::: Beware Demographic Changes ::: The New Workforce ::: His and Hers ::: Ever Upward ::: The Price of Success ::: The Manufacturing Paradox ::: Smaller Numbers, Bigger Clout ::: Will the Corporation Survive? ::: Everything in Its Place ::: Knowledge workers provide “capital” just as much as does the provider of money ::: A growing number of people who work for an organization will not be full-time employees ::: The most productive and most profitable way to organize is to disintegrate ::: The customer now has the information ::: There are few unique technologies anymore ::: Who Needs a Research Lab? ::: The Next Company ::: From Corporation to Confederation ::: The Future of Top Management ::: Life at the Top ::: Impossible Jobs ::: The Way Ahead ::: The Future Corporation ::: People Policies ::: Outside Information ::: Change Agents ::: And Then? ::: Big Ideas

 

bbx The Daily Drucker January ::: Integrity in Leadership ::: Identifying the Future ::: Management Is Indispensable ::: Organizational Inertia ::: Abandonment ::: Practice of Abandonment ::: Knowledge Workers: Asset Not Cost ::: Autonomy in Knowledge Work ::: The New Corporation's Persona ::: Management as the Alternative to Tyranny ::: Management and Theology ::: Practice Comes First ::: Management and the Liberal Arts ::: The Managerial Attitude ::: The Spirit of an Organization ::: The Function of Management Is to Produce Results ::: Management: The Central Social Function ::: Society of Performing Organizations ::: The Purpose of Society ::: Nature of Man and Society ::: Profit's Function ::: Economics as a Social Dimension ::: Private Virtue and the Commonweal ::: Feedback: Key to Continuous Learning ::: Reinvent Yourself ::: A Social Ecologist ::: The Discipline of Management ::: Controlled Experiment in Mismanagement ::: Performance: The Test of Management ::: Terrorism and Basic Trends ::: A Functioning Society ::: February ::: Crossing the Divide ::: Face Reality ::: The Management Revolution ::: Knowledge and Technology ::: Shrinking of the Younger Population ::: The Transnational Company ::: The Educated Person ::: Balance Continuity and Change ::: Organizations Destabilize Communities ::: Modern Organization Must Be a Destabilizer ::: Human Factor in Management ::: Role of the Bystander ::: The Nature of Freedom ::: Demands on Political Leadership ::: Salvation by Society ::: Need for a Harmony of Interests ::: Social Purpose for Society ::: Reinventing Government ::: Reprivatization ::: Management and Economic Development ::: Failure of Central Planning ::: The Pork-Barrel State ::: The New Tasks of Government ::: Legitimacy of the Corporation ::: Governance of the Corporation ::: Balancing Three Corporate Dimensions ::: Defining Business Purpose and Mission ::: Defining Business Purpose and Mission: The Customer ::: Understanding What the Customer Buys ::: March ::: The Change Leader ::: Test of Innovation ::: Knowledge External to the Enterprise ::: In Innovation, Emphasize the Big Idea ::: Managing for the Future ::: Innovation and Risk Taking ::: Creating a True Whole ::: Turbulence: Threat or Opportunity? ::: Organize for Constant Change ::: Searching for Change ::: Piloting Change ::: The Purpose of a Business ::: Converting Strategic Plans to Action ::: Universal Entrepreneurial Disciplines ::: Managing for the Short Term and Long Term ::: Balancing Objectives and Measurements ::: The Purpose of Profit ::: Morality and Profits ::: Defining Corporate Performance ::: A Scorecard for Managers ::: Beyond the Information Revolution ::: Internet Technology and Education ::: The Great Strength of E-Commerce ::: E-Commerce: The Challenge ::: From Legal Fiction to Economic Reality ::: Management of the Multinational ::: Command or Partner ::: Information for Strategy ::: Why Management Science Fails to Perform ::: Nature of Complex Systems ::: From Analysis to Perception ::: April ::: Management as a Human Endeavor ::: The Responsible Worker ::: Spirit of Performance ::: Organizations and Individuals ::: Picking a Leader ::: Qualities of a Leader ::: Base Leadership on Strength ::: Leadership Is Responsibility ::: Absence of Integrity ::: Crisis and Leadership ::: The Four Competencies of a Leader ::: Fake Versus True Leaders ::: Churchill the Leader ::: Alfred Sloan's Management Style ::: People Decisions ::: Attracting and Holding People ::: Picking People: An Example ::: Decision Steps for Picking People ::: Placements That Fail ::: The Succession Decision ::: Sloan on People Decisions ::: A Good Judge of People? ::: The Crucial Promotions ::: Social Responsibility ::: Sloan on Social Responsibility ::: Corporate Greed and Corruption ::: What Is Business Ethics? ::: The Ethics of Social Responsibility ::: Business Ethics ::: Psychological Insecurity ::: May ::: Managing Knowledge Workers ::: The Network Society ::: Global Competitiveness ::: Characteristics of the Next Society ::: The New Pluralism ::: Knowledge Does Not Eliminate Skill ::: A Knowledge Society and Society of Organizations ::: Price of Success in the Knowledge Society ::: The Center of the Knowledge Society ::: Sickness of Government ::: Managing Foreign Currency Exposure ::: The Manufacturing Paradox ::: Protectionism ::: Splintered Nature of Knowledge Work ::: Use of PEOs and BPOs ::: Managing Nontraditional Employees ::: The Corporation as Confederation ::: The Corporation as a Syndicate ::: People as Resources ::: Making Manual Work Productive ::: Productivity of Service Work ::: Raising Service-Worker Productivity ::: Knowledge-Worker Productivity ::: Defining the Task in Knowledge Work ::: Defining Results in Knowledge Work ::: Defining Quality in Knowledge Work ::: Management: A Practice ::: Continuous Learning in Knowledge Work ::: Raise the Yield of Existing Knowledge ::: Rank of Knowledge Workers ::: Post-Economic Theory ::: June ::: Managing Oneself ::: A Successful Information Based Organization ::: The "Score" in InformationBased Organizations ::: Taking Information Responsibility ::: Rewards for Information Specialists ::: Hierarchy Versus Responsibility ::: Sudden Incompetence ::: Self Renewal ::: Individual Development ::: What to Do in a Value Conflict? ::: Place Yourself in the Right Organization ::: Management Education ::: Attracting Knowledge Workers ::: Pension-Fund Shareholders ::: Pension-Fund Regulation ::: Pension-Fund Capitalism ::: Test of Pension-Fund Socialism ::: The Business Audit ::: Inflation Versus Unemployment ::: When Regulation Is Required ::: Work ::: Goal and Vision for Work ::: Self-Governing Communities ::: Civilizing the City ::: Human Dignity and Status ::: Enjoying Work ::: Legitimacy of Management ::: Economic Progress and Social Ends ::: The Social Sector ::: Effective Management of Nonprofits ::: July ::: Theory of the Business ::: Reality Test of Business Assumptions ::: Synergy of Business Assumptions ::: Communicate and Test Assumptions ::: The Obsolete Theory ::: Focus on Excellence ::: Creating Customer Value ::: Identifying Core Competencies ::: Each Organization Must Innovate ::: Exploiting Success ::: Organized Improvement ::: Systematic Innovation ::: Unexpected Success ::: Unexpected Failure ::: Incongruity ::: Process Need ::: Industry and Market Structure ::: Demographics ::: Changes in Perception ::: New Knowledge ::: Innovation in Public-Service Institutions ::: Service Institutions Need a Defined Mission ::: Optimal Market Standing ::: Worship of High Profit Margins ::: Four Lessons in Marketing ::: From Selling to Marketing ::: Cost-Driven Pricing ::: Cost Control in a Stable Business ::: Cost Control in a #Growth Business ::: Eliminating Cost Centers ::: Making Cost-Control Permanent ::: August ::: Diversification ::: Being the Wrong Size ::: #Growth ::: Managing the New Venture ::: Calculated Obsolescence ::: Tunnel-Vision Innovation ::: Social Innovation: The Research Lab ::: Social Innovation: The Lab Without Walls ::: Research Laboratory: Obsolete? ::: The Infant New Venture ::: The Rapidly Growing New Venture ::: Managing Cash in the New Venture ::: Management Team for the New Venture ::: Unrealized Business Potential ::: Finding Opportunities in Vulnerabilities ::: Exploiting Innovative Ideas ::: First with the Most ::: Hitting Them Where They Aren't ::: Entrepreneurial Judo ::: Changing Economic Characteristics ::: Ecological Niche: Tollbooth Strategy ::: Ecological Niche: Specialty Skill Strategy ::: Ecological Niche: Specialty Market ::: Threats to Niche Strategies ::: Able Company: Research Strategy ::: Baker Company: Research Strategy ::: Charlie Company: Research Strategy ::: Success Always Creates New Realities ::: The Opportunity-Focused Organization ::: Finding Opportunity in Surprises ::: Maintaining Dynamic Equilibrium ::: September ::: Know Thy Time ::: Record Time and Eliminate Time Wasters ::: Consolidate Time ::: Practices of Effective Executives ::: Focus on Contribution ::: Performance Appraisals ::: How to Develop People ::: Knowledge Worker as Effective Executive ::: Take Responsibility for Your Career ::: Defining One's Performance ::: Results That Make a Difference ::: Managing Oneself: Identify Strengths ::: Managing Oneself: How Do I Perform? ::: Managing Oneself: What to Contribute? ::: Managing Oneself: Work Relationships ::: Managing the Boss ::: Managing Oneself: The Second Half ::: Managing Oneself: Revolution in Society ::: A Noncompetitive Life ::: Staffing Decisions ::: Widow-Maker" Positions ::: Overage Executives ::: Controls, Control, and Management ::: Controls: Neither Objective nor Neutral ::: Controls Should Focus on Results ::: Controls for Nonmeasurable Events ::: The Ultimate Control of Organizations ::: Harmonize the Immediate and Longrange Future ::: Misdirection by Specialization ::: Compensation Structure ::: October ::: Pursuing Perfection ::: Decision Objectives ::: Decision Making ::: The Right Compromise ::: Building Action into the Decision ::: Organize Dissent ::: Elements of the Decision Process ::: Is a Decision Necessary? ::: Classifying the Problem ::: Defining the Problem: An Example ::: Defining the Problem: The Principles ::: Getting Others to Buy The Decision ::: Testing the Decision Against Results ::: Continuous Learning in Decision Making ::: Placing Decision Responsibility ::: Legitimate Power in Society ::: The Conscience of Society ::: Capitalism Justified ::: Moving Beyond Capitalism ::: The Efficiency of the Profit Motive ::: The Megastate ::: Purpose of Government ::: Government Decentralization ::: Strong Government ::: Government in the International Sphere ::: Needed: Strong Labor Unions ::: Political Integration of Knowledge Workers ::: The Corporation as a Political Institution ::: Converting Good Intentions into Results ::: Fund Development in the Nonprofit ::: Effective Nonprofit Boards of Directors ::: November ::: Organizational Agility ::: Business Intelligence Systems ::: Gathering and Using Intelligence ::: The Test of Intelligence Information ::: The Future Budget ::: Winning Strategies ::: The Failed Strategy ::: Strategic Planning ::: Long-Range Planning ::: How to Abandon ::: Divestment ::: The Work of the Manager ::: Management by Objectives and Self-Control ::: How to Use Objectives ::: The Management Letter ::: The Right Organization ::: Limits of Quantification ::: Hierarchy and Equality ::: Characteristics of Organizations ::: The Federal Principle ::: Federal Decentralization: Strengths ::: Federal Decentralization: Requirements ::: Reservation of Authority ::: Simulated Decentralization ::: Building Blocks of Organization ::: Fundamentals of Communications ::: Rules for Staff Work ::: Rules for Staff People ::: Role of Public Relations ::: Control Middle Management ::: December ::: The Work of the Social Ecologist ::: Turbulent Times Ahead ::: The New Entrepreneur ::: Information on Cost and Value ::: Price-Led Costing ::: Activity Costing ::: Obstacles to Economic Chain Costing ::: EVA as a Productivity Measure ::: Benchmarking for Competitiveness ::: Resource-Allocation Decisions ::: Six Rules of Successful Acquisitions ::: Business Not Financial Strategy ::: What the Acquirer Contributes ::: Common Core of Unity ::: Respect for the Business and Its Values ::: Provide New Top Management ::: Promote Across Lines ::: Alliances for Progress ::: Rules for Successful Alliances ::: The Temptation to Do Good ::: The Whistle-blower ::: Limits of Social Responsibility ::: Spiritual Values ::: Human Existence in Tension ::: The Unfashionable Kierkegaard ::: Return of the Demons ::: Integrating the Economic and Social ::: The Family-Managed Business ::: Rules for the Family Managed Business ::: Innovations for Maximum Opportunities ::: From Data to Information Literacy

 


 

bbx The Effective Executive (#59 #worldview #impact)

 

EFFECTIVENESS: GETTING THE RIGHT THINGS

DONE

 

Making knowledge productive

 

To be reasonably effective it is not enough for the individual to be intelligent, to work hard or to be knowledgeable.


Effectiveness is something separate, something different.

 

The realities of the executive’s situation

both demand

effectiveness from him

and make effectiveness

exceedingly difficult to achieve
.

 

#60 Executive Realities

 

Indeed, unless executives work at becoming effective,

the realities of their situation

will push them into futility
.

 

what exists is getting old

Working in the wrong time dimension

Misdirected efforts — three stonecutters

 

Take a quick look at the realities of a knowledge worker outside an organization to see the problem.

A physician has by and large no problem of effectiveness.

The patient who walks into his office brings with him everything to make the physician’s knowledge effective.

During the time he is with the patient, the doctor can, as a rule, devote himself to the patient.

He can keep interruptions to a minimum.

The contribution the physician is expected to make is clear.

What is important, and what is not, is determined by whatever ails the patient.

The patient’s complaints establish the doctor’s priorities.

And the goal, the objective, is given: It is to restore the patient to health or at least to make him more comfortable.

Physicians (doctors) are not noted for their capacity to organize themselves and their work.

But few of them have much trouble being effective.

 

The executive in organization is in an entirely different position.

In his situation there are four major realities over which he has essentially no control.

Every one of them is built into organization #pdf and into the executive’s day and work.

 

The Three Stonecutters

 

He has no choice but to “cooperate with the inevitable.”

 

But every one of these realitiesexerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance.

 

tblue 1. The executive’s time tends to belong to everybody else

 

tblue 2. Executives are forced to keep on “operating” unless they take positive action

The fundamental problem is the reality around the executive.

Unless he changes it by deliberate action, the flow of events will determine what he is concerned with and what he does.

Where do I begin to read Drucker?

Conditions for Survival

 

tblue 3. Being within an “organization” pushes the executive toward ineffectiveness

 

tblue 4. Finally, the executive is “within” an organization

 

Explore Executive realities

 

Organizational and executive realities

 

«§§§»

 

“Men of high effectiveness are conspicuous by their absence in executive jobs.

High intelligence is common enough among executives.

Imagination is far from rare.

The level of knowledge tends to be high.

But there seems to be little correlation between a man’s #effectiveness and his #intelligence, his imagination, or his knowledge.

Brilliant men are often strikingly ineffectual; they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not by itself achievement. #intelligence

They never have learned that insights become effectiveness only through hard systematic work.

Conversely, in every organization there are some highly effective plodders.

While others rush around in the frenzy and busyness which very bright people so often confuse with creativity,’ the plodder puts one foot in front of the other and gets there first, like the tortoise in the old fable.”

Executive realities

The Effective Executive in Action

What executives should remember (Audible)

 


 

“Follow effective action with quiet reflection.

From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.” — Peter Drucker

 


 

“Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it.

It always creates new realities.

It always creates, above all, its own and different problems …” continue

 


 

“The last twenty years have been very unsettling.

Executives really don’t understand the world they live in” — PFD Forbes

 

bbx What Makes An Effective Executive?

… a brief introduction from Peter F. Drucker’s work

An effective executive does not need to be a leader in the sense that the term is now most commonly used.

Harry Truman did not have one ounce of charisma, for example, yet he was among the most effective chief executives in US. history.

Similarly, some of the best business and nonprofit CEOs I’ve worked with over a 65-year consulting career were not stereotypical leaders.

They were all over the map in terms of their personalities, attitudes, values, strengths, and weaknesses.

They ranged from extroverted to nearly reclusive, from easy-going to controlling, from generous to parsimonious.

What made them all effective is that they followed the same eight practices:

1. They asked, “ What needs to be done?

 

sidebar

 

“I’ve seen a great many people who are exceedingly good at execution, but exceedingly poor at picking the important things.

They are magnificent at getting the unimportant things done.

They have an impressive record of achievement on trivial matters” — PFD

 

main brainroad continues

 

The answer to the question “What needs to be done?” almost always contains more than one urgent task.

But effective executives do not splinter themselves.

They concentrate on one task if at all possible.

If they are among those people—a sizable minority—who work best with a change of pace in their working day, they pick two tasks.

I have never encountered an executive who remains effective while tackling more than two tasks at a time.

Hence, after asking what needs to be done, the effective executive sets priorities and sticks to them.

For a CEO, the priority task might be redefining the company’s mission.

For a unit head, it might be redefining the unit’s relationship with headquarters.

Other tasks, no matter how important or appealing, are postponed.

However, after completing the original top-priority task, the executive resets priorities rather than moving on to number two from the original list.

He asks, “What must be done now?”

This generally results in new and different priorities.

 

 

… But Welch also thought through another issue before deciding where to concentrate his efforts for the next five years.

He asked himself which of the two or three tasks at the top of the list he himself was best suited to undertake.

Then he concentrated on that task; the others he delegated.

Effective executives try to focus on jobs they’ll do especially well.

They know that enterprises perform if top management performs—and don’t if it doesn’t.

2. They asked, “What is right for the enterprise?”

Effective executives’ second practice—fully as important as the first—is to ask, “Is this the right thing for the enterprise?”

They do not ask if it’s right for the owners, the stock price, the employees, or the executives.

Of course they know that shareholders, employees, and executives are important constituencies who have to support a decision, or at least acquiesce in it, if the choice is to be effective.

They know that the share price is important not only for the shareholders but also for the enterprise, since the price/earnings ratio sets the cost of capital.

But they also know that a decision that isn’t right for the enterprise will ultimately not be right for any of the stakeholders.

3. They developed action plans.

4. They took responsibility for decisions.

People decisions — the true control of an organization

5. They took responsibility for communicating.

6. They were focused on opportunities rather than problems.

7. They ran productive meetings.

8. They thought and said “we” rather than “I.”

The first two practices gave them the knowledge they needed.

The next four helped them convert this knowledge into effective action.

The last two ensured that the whole organization felt responsible and accountable.

We’ve just reviewed eight practices of effective executives.

I’m going to throw in one final, bonus practice.

This one’s so important that I’ll elevate it to the level of a rule: Listen first, speak last.

 

bbx Managing the Nonprofit Organization and part-one summary

 

bbx Beware of good intentions

bbx Managing Service Institutions in the Society of Organizations

bbx Entrepreneurship in the Public-Service Institution

bbx How to guarantee nonperformance

No one can guarantee the performance of a public service program.

But we know how to ensure non-performance with absolute certainty.

Part I : Have a Lofty Objective ::: Try to Do Several Things at Once :::
Believe That "Fat is Beautiful" ::: Don't experiment, be dogmatic :::
Make sure that you will not learn from experience ::: Inability to Abandon :::

Part II : Avoiding These Six Deadly Sins is the Prerequisite for Performance and Results → What Results Should You Expect? — A Users' Guide to MBO :::

Part III : The Lack of Concern With Performance in Public Administration Theory :::

Have a lofty objective = To use such statements as “objectives” thus makes sure that no effective work will be done. For work is always specific, always mundane, always focused. Yet without work there is non-performance. To have a chance at performance, a program needs clear targets, the attainment of which can be measured, appraised, or at least judged.

bbx What results should you expect? — a user’s guide to MBO

 

 

bbx Organization actions: creating change to abandonment

r-banson-pict-500

bbx Job-holder horizons

StrengthsFinder 2.0

Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It by Marshall Goldsmith

How to Win Friends & Influence People

Winning: The Answers

 

 

line

 

 

#21 #wlh #mwv #mbr #adt
Management #Worldview(s)

 

From knowledge to knowledgeS

My life as a knowledge worker

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

JUDGEMENTAttention-directing frameworks

books-about-drucker-collage-pict-t-600

 

Worldviews determine the future of the planet

Freedom, power … continue

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400

Most mistakes in THINKING
are mistakes in perception
1. Seeing only part of the picture
2. Jumping to conclusions
3. Misinterpretation caused by feelings

 

To know something …
one must look at it
from sixteen different angles
↑ ↓ continue

 

dense reading and dense listening ↑ ↓ plus thinking broad and thinking detailed

sit-see-explore-judge-pict-400

JUDGEMENTAttention-directing frameworks

 

 

Management

and

the World’s

Work
#pdf continue

 

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

Moving Beyond Capitalism?

 

«§§§»

 

#50 “None of our institutions

exists by itself and

is an end in itself,”

Drucker wrote in his book Management — Revised Edition

“Every one is an organ of society and

exists for the sake of society.

 

Business is no exception.

Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business;

it can be justified only as

being good for society.” continue ::: #fastp #gfs

 

Good intentions or untested opinions don’t count

How To Guarantee Non-Performance — lofty goals

The alternative to tyranny

 

«§§§»

 

“The failure to understand
the nature, function, and purpose
of business enterprise”
Chapter 9, Management Revised Edition

 

«§§§»

 

“Managers are synthesizers #mbr #sda #apta

who bring resources together

and have that ability

to “smell ↓” opportunity and timing.



Today perceptiveness (#connect to Water Logic)

is more important

than #analysis




In the new society of organizations (#pdf),

you need to be able to recognize patterns
to see what is there

rather than what you expect to see.”

Interview: Post-Capitalist Executive

From Analysis to Perception: The New Worldview

 

Find “How Perception Works” in the overview of
I Am Right — You Are Wrong
(From this to the New Renaissance: from Rock Logic to Water Logic)

 

«§§§»

 

“The customer never buys ↑ what you think you sell.

And you don’t know it.

That’s why it’s so difficult

to differentiate yourself.” Druckerism

 

«§§§»

 

“People in any organization
are always attached to the obsolete
the things that should have worked
but did not,
the things that once were productive
and no longer are.” Druckerism

 

«§§§»

 

The CEO in the New Millennium here

 

«§§§»

 

#51 Management and Economic Development (#impact #seek)

“Management creates economic and social development.

Economic and social development is the result of management.

It can be said, without too much oversimplification, that there are no “underdeveloped countries.”

There are only “undermanaged” ones. continue

 

Urban world ↓ ::: Larger view ↓ ::: #evidence-wall

urban-world-800-pict-600

Frontiers of development

 

This means that management is the prime mover and that development is a consequence.

All our experience in economic development proves this.

Wherever we have only capital, we have not achieved development.

In the few cases where we have been able to generate management energies, we have generated rapid development.

Development, in other words, is a matter of human energies rather than of economic wealth.

And the generation and direction of human energies is THE task of management.” continue

Feb 20 — The Daily Drucker

 

 

11th-global-peter-drucker-forum-pict-stroke-t-600

Post-capitalist executive

 

 

 

… Of course, it is always important to adapt to economic changes rapidly, intelligently, and rationally. (#impact) #mbr #intelligence

 

But managing implies responsibility

for attempting to shape the economic environment;

for planning, initiating, and carrying through changes in that economic environment;

for constantly pushing back the limitations of economic circumstances on the enterprise’s ability to contribute.

 

What is #possible — the economist’s “economic conditions”— is therefore only one pole in managing a business.

 

What is desirable in the interest of economy and enterprise is the other.

 

 

And while humanity

can never really “master” the environment,

while we are always held

within a tight vise of #possibilities,

it is management’s specific job

to make what is desirable

first possible

and then actual.

 

 

Management is not just a creature of the economy;



it is a creator as well.

 

And only to the extent

to which it

masters the economic circumstances,

and alters them

by consciously directed action,

does it really manage.

 

To manage a business

means, therefore,

to manage by objectives #apta #objectives #mbo




The Power and Purpose of Objectives: The Marks & Spencer Story and Its Lessons ::: How to guarantee non-performance ::: What Results Should You Expect? — A Users’ Guide to MBO #mbo ::: Search Management, Revised Edition page for “9 The Purpose and Objectives of a Business” ::: #objectives

Chapters 4 - 11, Management, Revised Edition

 

What need’s doing? ::: How to guarantee non-performance ::: The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Nonprofit Organization ::: What Results Should You Expect? — A Users’ Guide to MBO ::: The Wisdom of Peter Drucker ::: Life 2.0 ::: Allocating your life ::: Without an effective mission there will be no results ::: Managing Oneself ← a revolution in human affairs ::: Creating Tomorrow’s Society Of Citizens ::: Managing Service Institutions in the Society of Organizations ::: Entrepreneurship in the Public-Service Institution ::: Purposeful Innovation (try a page search for “purpose” in Innovation and Entrepreneurship )

 


 

DESPITE its crucial importance, its high visibility and its spectacular rise, management is the least known and the least understood of our basic institutions.

Even the people in a business often do not know what their management does and what it is supposed to be doing, how it acts and why, whether it does a good job or not.

Indeed, the typical picture of what goes on in the “front office” or on “the fourteenth floor” in the minds of otherwise sane, well-informed and intelligent employees (including, often, people themselves in responsible managerial and specialist positions) bears striking resemblance to the medieval geographer’s picture of Africa as the stamping ground of the one-eyed ogre, the two-headed pygmy, the immortal phoenix and the elusive unicorn.

 

 

Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.

 

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.

 

The really important things are said over cocktails and are never done. (calendarize this?)

Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.

Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are means to mobilize the resources and energies of the business for the making of the future.

 

People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.

 

That people even in well paid jobs choose ever earlier retirement is a severe indictment of our organizations — not just business, but government service, the universities. These people don’t find their jobs interesting. (calendarize this?)

 

Few top executives can even imagine the hatred, contempt and fury that has been created — not primarily among blue-collar workers who never had an exalted opinion of the ‘bosses’ — but among their middle management and professional people.

 

The individual is the central, rarest, most precious capital resource of our society.

The subordinate’s job is not to reform or re-educate the boss, not to make him conform to what the business schools or the management book say bosses should be like. It is to enable a particular boss to perform as a unique individual. (To calendarize this see chapter 46 in Management, Revised Edition)

 

 

What then is management: What does it do?

 

«§§§»

 

To make our institutions perform responsibly, autonomously, and on a high level of achievement is thus the only safeguard of freedom and dignity in the pluralist society of institutions.

But it is managers and management that make institutions perform.

Performing, responsible management is the alternative to tyranny and our only protection against it.

Management is work, and as such it has its own skills, its own tools, its own techniques.

A good many skills, tools, and techniques are discussed in this book, a few in some detail.

But the stress is not on skills, tools, and techniques.

It is not even on the work of management.

It is on the tasks.

For management is the organ, the life-giving, acting, dynamic organ of the institution it manages.

Without the institution, e. g., the business enterprise, there would be no management.

But without management there would also be only a mob rather than an institution.

The institution, in turn, is itself an organ of society and exists only to contribute a needed result to society, the economy, and the individual.

A Functioning Society

Organs, however, are never defined by what they do, let alone by how they do it.

They are defined by their contribution.

 

Most books on management are books on the work of management.

They look at management from the inside.

 

This book starts with the tasks.

It looks at management first from the outside and studies the dimensions of the tasks and the requirements in respect to each of them (Part One).

Only then (in Part Two) does it turn to the work of the organization and the skills of management, and (in Part Three) to top management, its tasks, its structures, and its strategies. continue

 

«§§§»

 

“Management, in most business schools, is still taught as a bundle of techniques, such as the technique of budgeting.

To be sure, management, like any other work, has its own tools and its own techniques.

But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysis, important though it is, the essence of management is not techniques and procedures.

The essence of management is to make knowledge productive. — here, here and here

 

From Knowledge To KnowledgeS

 

Management, in other words, is a social function.

And in its practice, management is truly a “ liberal art.”” different view

 

back to Management Worldviews

 

«§§§»

 

“The human being has multiple characteristics and dimensions.

People are not only biological and physiological beings but also social, spiritual, and moral beings.

Individuals hold worldviews, beliefs about
the purpose of existence,
who they must ultimately answer to,
and what they are responsible for.

A person at work
is still a biological person
and a spiritual person,
and these dimensions combine
to guide her or his actions
throughout the day.

Management involves
an acknowledgment of
the multiple dimensions
of human beings.

Crucial, therefore, to understanding Drucker’s methodology
as a social ecologist
is grasping his assumptions
about the fundamental nature of the human being.

As discussed in Chapter 1, Drucker was so profoundly influenced by Kierkegaard
that he came to the same realization about human existence
as the Danish philosopher:
it is an existence in tension.

It consists of existence
in time — that is in society —
and in eternity where society is no longer relevant.

God is outside of time
and is eternal,
as is the soul of the individual.

Therefore, a true ecology of human-made existence
must take into account
the question of the existence of God
in order for man
to “fly right-side up.” source

 

«§§§»

 

“Implicit in this is that different groups in the work population have to he managed differently, and that the same group in the work population has to be managed differently at different times.

Increasingly, employees have to be managed as partners — and it is the definition of a partnership that all partners are equal.

It is also the definition of a partnership that partners cannot be ordered.

They have to be persuaded.

Increasingly, therefore, the management of people is a marketing job.

And in marketing one does not begin with the question, “What do we want?”

One begins with the question, “What does the other party want?

What are its values?

What are its goals?

What does it consider results?”

 

«§§§»

 

For almost nothing in our educational systems

prepares people

for the reality

in which they will live, work,

and become #effective” —

Druckerism and intellectual capitalist #lms #education

How could an education system prepare us
for unknown and unpredictable future #realitieS?

peter-drucker-timescape-pict-306wx279

Topics in books by Walter Wriston ::: Transnational/Tribal

A Century of Social Transformation

 

«§§§»

 

Thinking … the most fundamental,

the most important aspect of life,

the basis for everything

is totally neglected

School : no thinking subject

Book store : no thinking category

Universities : no thinking faculty
and zero #possibility thinking

What about critical thinking?

Edward de Bono

 


 

 

The Management Revolution #mbr

 

Management and the World’s Work #pdf

 

From Post-Capitalist Society — “When I decided …”

 

“The change in the meaning of knowledge that began two hundred fifty years ago has transformed society and economy. History of the World in Two Hours

 

A new view

 

Formal knowledge is seen as both the key personal and the key economic resource.

 

In fact, knowledge is the only meaningful resource today.

 

The traditional “factors of production” — land (i. e., natural resources), labor, and capital — have not disappeared, but they have become secondary.

They can be obtained and obtained easily, provided there is knowledge.

 

And knowledge in this new sense means

knowledge as a utility,

knowledge as the means

to obtain social and economic results
.

 

❡ ❡ ❡

 

These developments, whether desirable or not, are responses to

an irreversible change:

knowledge is now being applied to knowledge.

 

This is the third and perhaps the ultimate step in the transformation of knowledge.

 

Supplying knowledge

to find out how

existing knowledge

can best be applied

to produce results

is, in effect,

what we mean by

management
.

 

But knowledge is now

also

being applied

systematically
and purposefully

to define

what new knowledge is needed,

whether it is feasible,

and what has to be done

to make knowledge effective
.

 

It is being applied,

in other words,

to systematic innovation. purposeful innovation

 

radar-differences-pict-600

 

picture-technology-pict-no-reflect-400

Picture technology: larger view

 

This third change in the dynamics of knowledge can be called the “Management Revolution.”

 

Like its two predecessors — knowledge applied to tools, processes, and products, and knowledge applied to human work — the Management Revolution has swept the earth.

 

It took a hundred years, from the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, for the Industrial Revolution to become dominant and worldwide.

Management and the World's Work #pdf

It took some seventy years, from 1880 to the end of World War II, for the Productivity Revolution to become dominant and world-wide.

 

It has taken less than fifty years — from 1945 to 1990— for the Management Revolution to become dominant and worldwide.

❡ ❡ ❡

Most people when they hear the word “management” still hear “business management.”

Management did indeed first emerge in its present form in large-scale business organizations.

When I began to work on management some fifty years ago, I too concentrated on business management

But we soon learned that management is needed in all modern organizations

In fact, we soon learned that it is needed even more in organizations that are not businesses, whether not-for-profit but non-governmental organizations (what in this book I propose we call the “social sector”) or government agencies.

Management: The Central Social Function

These organizations need management the most precisely because they lack the discipline of the “bottom line” under which business operates.

Citizenship through the social sector

That management is not confined to business was recognized first in the United States.

But it is now becoming accepted in every developed country.

❡ ❡ ❡

We now know that management is a generic function of all organizations, whatever their specific mission.

It is the generic organ of the knowledge society.

 

11th-global-peter-drucker-forum-pict-stroke-t-600

T. George Harris ::: Post-capitalist executive

 

Books by Walter Wriston #bbww (Quotes ::: Remembering Kathryn Dineen Wriston (Kathy Wriston) ::: Obit | #PDF 1 | #PDF 2 Touching People ::: Touching people ::: The University Art Museum: Defining Purpose and Mission

Bits, Bytes, and Balance Sheets: The New Economic Rules of Engagement in a Wireless World (2007) ::: Foreword by The Honorable George P. Shultz ::: A Note to Readers ::: A Momentous Revolution ::: Unintended Consequences ::: The Creation of Wealth ::: Bits, Bytes, Power, and Diplomacy ::: New Rules: Different in Kind, Not Degree ::: The Whiskey Ain’t Working Anymore ::: What Gets Measured, Gets Done ::: The Great Disconnect: Balance Sheets Versus Market Value ::: Politically Correct Versus Accurate Earnings ::: Global Accounting for a Global Market ::: Other People’s Money ::: Afterword ::: Selected Bibliography ::: About the Author

The Twilight of Sovereignty: How the Information Revolution is Transforming Our World (1992) ::: The Twilight of the Idols ::: A New Source of Wealth ::: The Global Conversation ::: The Information Standard ::: The End of Trade ::: Where We Stand ::: Serendipity Inc. ::: Borders are not Boundaries ::: The Great Equalizer ::: Power to the People

Risk & Other Four-Letter Words (1986) ::: The Individual and Society ::: Not Every Battle is Armageddon ::: The Great American Transference Machine ::: The Other Nine Amendments ::: The Law May Be Hazardous to Society’s Health ::: Going to Hell on a Best-Fit Curve ::: The Business/Government Connection ::: Banking in Wonderland ::: The Ultimate Loophole: Spend Your Own Money ::: From Adam to George, from 1776 to 1984 ::: The Land Where No One Speaks the Truth ::: Observations From the Global Attic ::: Gnomons, Words, and Policies ::: Common Sense and Technological Nonsense ::: The Great Whale Oil Syndrome ::: We Were an LDC Once Too ::: If it Works, Don’t Fix It ::: Agents of Change Are Rarely Welcome ::: Gresham Revisited ::: EPILOGUE: Risk Is a Four-Letter Word

 

Management has been around for a very long time.

I am often asked whom I consider the best or the greatest executive.

My answer is always: “The man who conceived, designed, and built the first Egyptian Pyramid more than four thousand years ago — and it still stands.”

pyramid2dna-2012-07-12-pict-trans-500
From pyramids to a world organized by information top

But management as a specific kind of work was not seen until after World War I — and then by just a handful of people.

Management as a discipline only emerged after World War II.

Management and the World’s Work #pdf

As late as 1950, when the World Bank began to lend money for economic development, the word “management” was not even in its vocabulary.

In fact, while management was invented thousands of years ago, it was not discovered until after World War II.

❡ ❡ ❡

One reason for its discovery was the experience of World War II itself, and especially the performance of American industry.

But perhaps equally important to the general acceptance of management has been the performance of Japan since 1950.

Japan was not an “underdeveloped” country after World War II but its industry and economy were almost totally destroyed, and it had practically no domestic technology.

The nation’s main resource was its willingness to adopt and adapt the management which the Americans had developed during World War II (and especially training).

Within twenty years — from the 1950s, when the American occupation of Japan ended, to the 1970s — Japan became the world’s second economic power, and a leader in technology.

When the Korean War ended in the early 1950s, South Korea was left even more devastated than Japan had been seven years earlier.

And it had never been anything but a backward country, especially as the Japanese systematically suppressed Korean enterprise and higher education during their thirty-five years of occupation.

But by using the colleges and universities of the United States to educate their able young people, and by importing and applying the concepts of management, Korea became a highly developed country within twenty-five years.

❡ ❡ ❡

With this powerful expansion of management came a growing understanding of what management really means.

When I first began to study management, during and immediately after World War II, a manager was defined as “someone who is responsible for the work of subordinates.”

A manager in other words was a “boss,” and management was rank and power.

This is probably still the definition a good many people have in mind when they speak of “managers” and “management.”

❡ ❡ ❡

But by the early 1950s, the definition of a manager had already changed to one who “is responsible for the performance of people.”

Today, we know that that is also too narrow a definition.

 

#wlh #65 The right definition of a manager is one who “is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.”

 

 

11th-global-peter-drucker-forum-pict-stroke-t-600

T. George Harris ::: Post-capitalist executive

 

The CEO in the New Millennium

Management Challenges for the 21st Century

Managing in the Next Society

 

❡ ❡ ❡

 

This change means that we now see knowledge as the essential resource.

Land, labor, and capital are important chiefly as restraints.

Without them, even knowledge cannot produce; without them, even management cannot perform.

But where there is effective management, that is, application of knowledge to knowledge, we can always obtain the other resources.

 

❡ ❡ ❡

 

That knowledge has become THE resource, rather than a resource, is what makes our society post-capitalist.”

 

This fact changes — fundamentally — the structure of society.

 

Imagining a world moving toward unimagined futureS ↓ ::: ECS → time — larger composite view

economic-structure-and-calendar-pict-600

the real pattern of economic activity

larger composite view ↑ ::: Economic & content and structure ::: Adoption rates: one & two

The Forces Creating a New Geography of Opportunity?

 

It creates new social and economic dynamics.

It creates new politics.”

 

 

Conditions for survival

 

Management’s New Paradigm #mnp

 

The Society of Organizations (#PDF) and

the accompanying destabilization

 

The alternative to tyranny

 

Management as a liberal art

 

From Command
to Information
to the
Responsibility-based organization
(#responsibility word stem #contribut)

 

What is management? a first look

 

Because the knowledge society
perforce has to be a society of organizations,
its central and distinctive organ
is management

 

What is management? above all else,
a very few, essential principles

 

What executives should remember (#PDF ::: Audible)

 

From Landmarks of Tomorrow through
management and
economic development
et al.

 

Management Cases

 

Drucker’s management books

 

The relationship between
leadership and management
here

 

a Leadership bread-crumb trail

Management tasks vs. management work

 


 

“Despite all the outpouring of management writing
these last twenty-five years,
the world of management is still little-explored.” more

 

From The Essential Drucker

Management by Objectives and Self-Control — A Philosophy of Management #apta #mbo

What the business enterprise needs is a principle of management that will give full scope to individual strength and responsibility, and at the same time give common direction of vision and effort, establish team work, and harmonize the goals of the individual with the commonweal.


The only principle that can do this is management by objectives and self-control #pdf.

It makes the commonweal the aim of every manager.

It substitutes for control from outside the stricter, more exacting and more effective control from the inside.

It motivates the manager to action not because somebody tells him to do something or talks him into doing it, but because the objective needs of his task demand it.

He acts not because somebody wants him to but because he himself decides that he has to—he acts, in other words, as a free man.


The word “philosophy” is tossed around with happy abandon these days in management circles.

I have even seen a dissertation, signed by a vice president, on the “philosophy of handling purchase requisitions” (as far as I could figure out, “philosophy” here meant that purchase requisitions had to be in triplicate).

But management by objectives and self-control #pdf may legitimately be called a “philosophy” of management.

It rests on a concept of the job of management.

It rests on an analysis of the specific needs of the management group and the obstacles it faces.

It rests on a concept of human action, human behavior, and human motivation.

Finally, it applies to every manager, whatever his level and function, and to any business enterprise whether large or small.

It ensures performance by converting objective needs into personal goals.

And this is genuine freedom, freedom under the law.

 

From The Essential Drucker

Management by Objectives

Can we then say anything constructive about communication?

Can we do anything?


Management by objectives is a prerequisite for functioning communication.

It requires the subordinate to think through and present to the superior his own conclusions as to what major contribution to the organization —or to the unit within the organization—he should be expected to perform and should be held accountable for.


What the subordinate comes up with is rarely what the superior expects.

Indeed, the first aim of the exercise is precisely to bring out the divergence in perception between superior and subordinate.

But the perception is focused, and focused on something that is real to both parties.

To realize that they see the same reality differently is in itself already communication.


Management by objectives gives to the intended recipient of communication—in this case the subordinate—access to experience that enables him to understand.

He is given access to the reality of decision-making, the problems of priorities, the choice between what one likes to do and what the situation demands, and above all, the responsibility for a decision.

He may not see the situation the same way the superior does—in fact, he rarely will or even should.

But he may gain an understanding of the complexity of the superior’s situation and of the fact that the complexity is not of the superior’s making, but is inherent in the situation itself.


The examples given in this chapter perhaps illustrate the main conclusion to which our experience with communications—largely an experience of failure —and all the work on learning, memory, perception, and motivation point: communication requires shared experience.


There can be no communication if it is conceived as going from the I to the Thou.

Communication works only from one member of “us” to another.

Communication in an organization—and this may be the true lesson of our communication failure and the true measure of our communication need—is not a means of organization.

It is the mode of organization.

 

From The Essential Drucker

A Warning to Business

This move from nonprofit volunteer to nonpaid professional may be the most important development in American society today.

We hear a great deal about the decay and dissolution of family and community and about the loss of values.

And, of course, there is reason for concern.

But the nonprofits are generating a powerful countercurrent.

They are forging new bonds of community, a new commitment to active citizenship, to social responsibility, to values.

And surely what the nonprofit contributes to the volunteer is as important as what the volunteer contributes to the nonprofit.

Indeed, it may be fully important as the service, whether #religious, educational, or welfare related, that the nonprofit provides in the community.


This development also carries a clear lesson for business.

Managing the knowledge worker for productivity is the next great challenge for American management.

The nonprofits are showing us how to do that.

It requires a clear mission, careful placement and continual learning and teaching, management by objectives and self-control #pdf, high demands but corresponding responsibility, and accountability for performance and results.


There is also, however, a clear warning to American business in this transformation of volunteer work.

The students in the program for senior and middle-level executives in which I teach work in a wide diversity of businesses: banks and insurance companies, large retail chains, aerospace and computer companies, real estate developers, and many others.

But most of them also serve as volunteers in nonprofits in a church, on the board of the college they graduated from, as scout leaders, with the YMCA or the Community Chest or the local symphony orchestra.

When I ask them why they do it, far too many give the same answer: In my paying job there isn’t much challenge, not enough opportunity for achievement, not enough responsibility,; and there is no mission, there is only expediency.

 


 

 

What Is Management?

From Management, Revised Edition

But what is management?

Is it a bag of techniques and tricks?

A bundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schools?

These are important, to be sure, just as a thermometer and anatomy are important to the physician.

But the evolution and history of management — its successes as well as its problems — teach that management is, above all else, a very few, essential principles.

To be specific:

Management is about human beings.

Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. See chapter 27 — The Spirit of Performance

This is what organization is all about, and it is the reason that management is the critical, determining factor.

These days practically all of us, especially educated people, are employed by managed institutions, large and small, business and nonbusiness.

We depend on management for our livelihoods.

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as much on the management of the organization in which we work as it does on our own skills, dedication, and effort.

Because management deals with the integration of people in a common venture, it is deeply embedded in culture.

What managers do in West Germany, in Britain, in the United States, in Japan, or in Brazil is exactly the same.

How they do it may be quite different.

Thus one of the basic challenges managers in a developing country face is to find and identify those parts of their own tradition, history, and culture that can be used as management building blocks.

The difference between Japan’s economic success and India’s relative backwardness is largely explained by the fact that Japanese managers were able to plant imported management concepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow.

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals and shared values.

Without such commitment, there is no enterprise.

There is only a mob.

The enterprise must have simple, clear, and unifying objectives.

The mission of the organization has to be clear enough and big enough to provide common vision.

The goals that embody it have to be clear, public, and constantly reaffirmed.

Management’s first job is to think through, set, and exemplify those objectives, values, and goals.

bbx How to guarantee non-performance

bbx What Results Should You Expect? — A Users' Guide to MBO

bbx The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of its members to grow and develop as needs and opportunities change.

Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institution.

Training and development must be built into it on all levels — training and development that never stop.

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skills and knowledge doing many different kinds of work.

It must be built on communication and on individual responsibility.

All members need to think through what they aim to accomplish — and make sure that their associates know and understand that aim.

All have to think through what they owe to others — and make sure that others understand.

All have to think through what they, in turn, need from others — and make sure that others know what is expected of them.

Neither the quantity of output nor the “bottom line” is by itself an adequate measure of the performance of management and enterprise.

Market standing, innovation, productivity, development of people, quality, financial results — all are crucial to an organization’s performance and to its survival.

Nonprofit institutions, too, need measurements in a number of areas specific to their mission.

Just as a human being needs a diversity of measures to assess its health and performance, an organization needs a diversity of measures to assess its health and performance.

Performance has to be built into the enterprise and its management; it has to be measured — or at least judged — and it has to be continuously improved.

Finally, the single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that results exist only on the outside.

The result of a business is a satisfied customer.

The result of a hospital is a healed patient.

The result of a school is a student who has learned something and puts it to work ten years later.

Inside an enterprise, there are only costs.

Managers who understand these principles and manage themselves in their light will be achieving, accomplished managers.

 


 

Despite all the outpouring of management writing these last twenty-five years, the world of management is still little-explored.

It is a world of issues, but also a world of people.

And it is undergoing rapid change right now.

 

 

These essays explore a wide variety of topics.

They deal with changes in the work force, its jobs, its expectations, with the power relationships of a “society of employees,” and with changes in technology and in the world economy.

They discuss the problems and challenges facing major institutions, including business enterprises, schools, hospitals, and government agencies.

They look anew at the tasks and work of executives, at their performance and its measurement and at executive compensation.

 

 

However diverse the topics, all the pieces reflect upon the same reality: In all developed countries the workaday world has become a “society of organizations” and thus dependent on executives, that is on people — whether called managers or administrators — who are paid to direct organizations and to make them perform.

These chapters have one common theme : the changing world of the executive —

changing rapidly within the organization;

changing rapidly in respect to the visions, aspirations, and even characteristics of employees, customers, and constituents;

changing outside the organization as well — economically, technologically, socially, politically.

The Changing World of The Executive

 


 

Post-capitalist society has to be decentralized. (#sda)

Its organizations must be able to make fast #decisions, based on closeness to performance, closeness to the market, closeness to technology, closeness to the changes in society, environment, and demographics, all of which must be seen and utilized as opportunities for innovation. continue

 

11th-global-peter-drucker-forum-pict-stroke-t-600

T. George Harris ::: Post-capitalist executive

radar-differences-pict-600

Dense reading and dense listening ↑ ↓ plus
thinking broad and thinking detailed ↑ ↓

 


 

 

“Indeed the disagreement was not about GM policies but about the nature of policies altogether.

The GM executives believed, consciously or not, that they had discovered principles and that these principles were absolutes, like laws of nature.

Once thought through and tested, they were considered to be certain.

I, by contrast, have always held that principles of this kind, being man-made, are at best heuristic — that is, ways of identifying the right question (#rq) rather than the one right answer.

The GM executives, for all that they saw themselves as practical men, were actually ideologues and #dogmatic, and they had for me the ideologue’s contempt for the unprincipled opportunist.

 

 

This by the way has been the one point on which my approach to management has always differed from most of the writers or theoreticians on the subject — and the reason perhaps that I have never been quite respectable in the eyes of academia.

I do believe that there are basic values, especially human ones.

I am convinced that there is a fairly small number of basic questions. #question

But I do not believe that there is the “one right answer.” diversity

There are answers that have a high probability of being the wrong ones — at least to the point where one does not even try them unless all else has failed.

But the test of any policy in management or in any other social discipline is not whether the answer is right or wrong, but whether it works #apta.

Management, I have always maintained, is not a branch of theology but at bottom a clinical discipline.

The test, as in the practice of medicine, is not whether the treatment is “scientific” but whether the patient recovers.

When, eight years after the publication of Concept of the Corporation , I brought out the first systematic book on management — still the most widely read management treatise all the world over — I deliberately called it The Practice of Management rather than Principles of Management, even though my publisher pointed out that my title would seriously impede the book’s acceptance as a textbook in colleges and universities.” continue

 


 

the end of business is not “to make money.” #mbr

Making money is a necessity of survival.

It is also a result of performance and a measurement thereof.

But in itself it is not performance.

As I mentioned earlier, the purpose of a business is to create a customer and to satisfy a customer.

That is performance and that is what a business is being paid for.

The job and function of management as the leader, decision maker, and value setter of the organization, and, indeed, the purpose and rationale of an organization altogether, is to make human beings productive so that the skills, expectations, and beliefs of the individual lead to achievement in joint performance. continue

 


 

… I have always emphasized in my writing, in my teaching, and in my consulting the importance of financial measurements and financial results. #mbr

Indeed, most businesses do not earn enough.

What they consider profits are, in effect, true costs. #profit

One of my central theses for almost forty years has been that one cannot even speak of a profit unless one has earned the true cost of capital. #profit

And, in most cases, the cost of capital is far higher than what businesses, especially American businesses, tend to consider as “record profits.” #profit

I have also always maintained — often to the scandal of liberal readers — that the first social responsibility of a business is to produce an adequate surplus. #profit

Without a surplus, it steals from the commonwealth and deprives society and the economy of the capital needed to provide jobs for tomorrow.

❡ ❡ ❡

Further, for more years than I care to remember, I have maintained that there is no virtue in being nonprofit and that, indeed, any activity that could produce a profit and does not do so is antisocial. #profit

Professional schools are my favorite example.

There was a time when such activities were so marginal that their being subsidized by society could be justified.

Today, they constitute such a large sector that they have to contribute to the capital formation of an economy in which capital to finance tomorrow’s jobs may well be the central economic requirement, and even a survival need. continue

 


 

Indeed, the first task of management is to define what results and performance are in a given organization — and this, as anyone who has worked on this task can testify, is in itself one of the most difficult, one of the most controversial, but also one of the most important tasks #mbr

It is, therefore, the specific function of management to organize the resources of the organization for results outside the organization


From chapter 44 of Management, Revised Edition

We no longer need to theorize about how to define performance and results in the large enterprise.

Rather, they maximize the wealth-producing capacity of the enterprise.

It is this objective that integrates short-term and long-term results and that ties the operational dimensions of business performance — market standing, innovation, productivity, and people and their development — to financial needs and financial results.

It is also this objective on which all constituencies depend for the satisfaction of their expectations and #objectives, whether shareholders, customers, or employees.

 

 

To define performance and results as maximizing the wealth-producing capacity of the enterprise may be criticized as vague.

To be sure, one doesn’t get the answers by filling out forms.

Decisions need to be made, and economic decisions that commit scarce resources to an uncertain future are always risky and controversial.

Financial #objectives are needed to tie all this together.

Indeed, financial accountability is the key to the performance of management and enterprise.

Without financial accountability, there is no accountability at all.

And without financial accountability, there will also be no results in any other area.

 

 

What we have is not the “final answer.”

Still, it is no longer theory but proven practice.

... snip, snip...

For while the business audit need not be conducted every year (every three years may be enough in most cases), it needs to be based on predetermined standards and go through a systematic evaluation of business performance, starting with mission and strategy, through marketing, innovation, productivity, people development, community relations, all the way to profitability. #profit

Still, the question remains, Who is going to use this tool?

In the American context, there is only one possible answer: a revitalized board of directors

 


 

“75%+ of U.S. board members & execs worry that management sets strategy with stale assumptions” — Twitter

 

Increasingly, the true investment in the knowledge society is not in machines and tools.

It is in the knowledge of the knowledge worker. continue

 

time-line-and-adoption-rates-pict-t-600

 

“But management is always a #decision-making process.

The importance of decision-making in management is generally recognized.

But a good deal of the discussion tends to center on problem-solving, that is, on giving answers.

And that is the wrong focus.

Indeed, the most common source of mistakes in management decisions is the emphasis on finding the right answer rather than the right question (#rq #sda).

The only kind of decision that really centers in problem-solving is the unimportant, the routine, the tactical decision.

If both the conditions of the situation and the requirements that the answer has to satisfy, are known and simple, problem-solving is indeed the only thing necessary.

In this case the job is merely to choose between a few obvious alternatives.

And the criterion is usually one of economy: the decision shall accomplish the desired end with the minimum of effort and disturbance.

In deciding which of two secretaries should go downstairs every morning to get coffee for the office — to take the simplest example — the one question would be: What is the prevailing social or cultural etiquette?

In deciding the considerably more complex question: Shall there be a "coffee break" in the morning, there would be two questions: Does the "break" result in a gain or in a loss in work accomplished, that is, does the gain in working energy outweigh the lost time?

And (if the loss outweighs the gain): Is it worth while to upset an established custom for the sake of the few minutes?

Of course, most tactical decisions are both more complicated and more important.

But they are always one-dimensional, so to speak: The situation is given and the requirements are evident.

The only problem is to find the most economical adaptation of known resources.

But the important decisions, the decisions that really matter, are strategic.

They involve either finding out what the situation is, or changing it, either finding out what the resources are or what they should be.

These are the specifically managerial decisions.

Anyone who is a manager has to make such strategic decisions, and the higher his level in the management hierarchy, the more of them he must make.

Among these are all decisions on business objectives and on the means to reach them.

All decisions affecting productivity belong here: they always aim at changing the total situation.

Here also belong all organization decisions and all major capital-expenditures decisions.

But most of the decisions that are considered operating decisions are also strategic in character: arrangement of sales districts or training of salesmen; plant layout or raw-materials inventory; preventive maintenance or the flow of payroll vouchers through an office.

Strategic decisions — whatever their magnitude, complexity or importance — should never be taken through problem-solving.

Indeed, in these specifically managerial decisions, the important and difficult job is never to find the right answer, it is to find the right question (#rq).

For there are few things as useless — if not as dangerous — as the right answer to the wrong question.

Nor is it enough to find the right answer.

More important and more difficult is to make effective the course of action decided upon.

Management is not concerned with knowledge for its own sake; it is concerned with performance.

Nothing is as useless therefore as the right answer that disappears in the filing cabinet or the right solution that is quietly sabotaged by the people who have to make it effective.

And one of the most crucial jobs in the entire decision-making process is to assure that decisions reached in various parts of the business and on various levels of management are compatible with each other, and consonant with the goals of the whole business.

Decision-making has five distinct phases:

defining the problem;

analyzing the problem;

developing alternate solutions;

deciding upon the best solution;

converting the decision into effective action.

Each phase has several steps.

Making decisions can either be time-wasting or it can be the manager's best means for solving the problem of time utilization.

Time should be spent on defining the problem.

Time is well spent on analyzing the problem and developing alternate solutions.

Time is necessary to make the solution effective.

But much less time should be spent on finding the right solution.

And any time spent on selling a solution after it has been reached is sheer waste and evidence of poor time utilization in the earlier phases.” — by Peter Drucker in The Practice of Management

 

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#45 #cfs Five deadly sins #mbr #avoid

1. Worship of high profit margins and of “premium pricing.” #profit

2. Mispricing a new product by charging “what the market will bear.”

3. Cost-driven pricing

4. Slaughtering tomorrow’s opportunity on the altar of yesterday.

5. Feeding problems and starving opportunities. continue

 

What executives should remember

 

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#46 #seek #horizons ↓
#cfs Conditions for survival
#mbr #mmit #second-curve ::: water logic #eia

 

The executive in action #eia

 

Life expectancy of a successful business

 

Long years of profound changes

 

 

It should have been obvious
from the beginning
that management and entrepreneurship
are only two different dimensions
of the same task. continue

 

… snip, snip …

dense reading and dense listening

integrated with

thinking broad and thinking detailed

Consider all factors — #CAF

… snip, snip …

 

Entrepreneurial activities ↑ ↓

 

Every institution — and not only business — must build into its day-to-day management four entrepreneurial activities that run in parallel.

radar-differences-pict-600

Organization efforts ::: Problems or Opportunities?

 

1. One is the organized abandonment of products, services, processes, markets, distribution channels and so on that are no longer an optimal allocation of resources.

 

sidebar

 

… “But if it is known throughout the organization that the dead will be left to bury their dead, then the living will be willing — indeed, eager — to go to work on innovation.” more on abandonment

 

«§§§»

 

After conducting an abandonment #analysis and completing the abandonment work, the remainder provides a taking off point rather than a place to build on …

 

main brainroad continues

 

This is the first entrepreneurial discipline in any given situation.

 

An operational view of the budgeting process

 

2. Then any institution must organize for systematic, continuing improvement (what the Japanese call kaizen).

A-10 Warthog → YouTube ::: Wikipedia

 

3. Then it has to organize for systematic and continuous exploitation, especially of its successes.

It has to build a different tomorrow on a proven today.

 

#horizons 4. And, finally, it has to organize systematic innovation, that is, to create the different tomorrow that makes obsolete and, to a large extent, replaces even the most successful products of today in any organization. #innovation

The realities of the “the bright idea

 

Glass Works: How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future (pdf) Why we need creativity

 

sidebar

 

#innovation

 

From Progress to Innovation

 

About Innovation

 

Entrepreneurs and Innovation

 

#lchp #hor3 #wlh #woo
Purposeful Innovation
and the
Seven Sources
for Innovative
Opportunity

 

 

 

#lchp #hor3 #wlh
Changing Values and Characteristics

In the entrepreneurial strategies discussed so far,
the aim is to introduce an innovation.

In the entrepreneurial strategy
discussed in this chapter,
the strategy itself
is the innovation.

 

 

 

Innovation is not a technical term.

It is an economic and social term.

Its criterion is not science or technology, but a change in the economic or social environment, a change in the behavior of people as consumers or producers, as citizens, as students or as teachers, and so on.

Innovation creates new wealth or new potential of action rather than new knowledge.



This means that
the bulk
of innovative efforts

will have to come from
the places that control
the manpower
and the money
needed for
development and marketing,

that is,
from the

existing
large
aggregation

of

trained manpower and

disposable money


existing businesses and existing public-service institutions
— see here (calendarize this?)

 

Innovation in the existing organization requires special effort #innovation #org

 

All of the above ↑ evolves, shifts and unfolds in time ↓

radar-differences-pict-600

Network society

 

main brainroad continues

 

 

More on marketing and innovation

… snip, snip …

… “But unless it is seen as the task of the organization to lead change, the organization whether business, university, hospital and so on will not survive.” more on the change leader

… snip, snip …

#horizonsBut the tools we originally fashioned to bring the outside to the inside (a.k.a. #marketing) have all been penetrated by the inside focus of management.

They have turned into tools to enable management to ignore the outside.

 

Even worse, they are used to make management believe it can manipulate the outside and turn it to the organization’s purpose.” more on this topic

 

what exists is getting old

evidence wall and timeline larger

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

High tech is living in the nineteenth century,
the pre - management world. #mbr

They believe that people pay for technology.

They have a romance with technology.

But people don't pay for technology:
they pay for what they get out of technology.”

The Frontiers of Management

 


 

Analysis of the entire business and its basic economics always shows it to be in worse disrepair than anyone expected.

The products everyone boasts of turn out to be yesterday’s breadwinners or investments in managerial ego.

Activities to which no one paid much attention turn out to be major cost centers and so expensive as to endanger the competitive position of the company.

What everyone in the business believes to be quality turns out to have little meaning to the customer.

Important and valuable knowledge either is not applied where it could produce results or produces results no one uses.

I know more than one executive who fervently wished at the end of the analysis that he could forget all he had learned and go back to the old days of the “rat race” when “sufficient unto the day was the crisis thereof.”


But precisely because there are so many different areas of importance, the day-by-day method of management is inadequate even in the smallest and simplest business.

Because deterioration is what happens normally—that is, unless somebody counteracts it—there is need for a systematic and purposeful program.

There is need to reduce the almost limitless possible tasks to a manageable number.

There is need to concentrate scarce resources on the greatest opportunities and results.

There is need to do the few right things and do them with excellence.

Managing for Results by Peter Drucker

 

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Broken Washroom Doors : Drucker said the problem of having people in positions where they do the least amount of good exists everywhere, but it is more rampant in hospitals, churches, and other nonprofits than in corporations.

 

 

To raise productivity in most any organization managers should regularly assess their key people, their strengths, and the results they achieve.

Then they should ask themselves:

Do we have the right people in the right jobs, where they can make the greatest contributions?

Are the jobs the right ones, meaning do we have people performing tasks that even if achieved do not add value to the organization?

What changes in people, jobs, and job functions can we make that will yield greater results?

Inside Drucker’s Brain

 

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The 90/10 Rule at Yum! Brands

But every analysis of actual allocation of resources and efforts in business that I have ever seen or made showed clearly that the bulk of time, work, attention, and money first goes to ‘problems’ rather than to opportunities, and, secondly, to areas where even extraordinarily successful performance will have minimal impact on results. (calendarize this?)

One of the hardest things for a manager to remember is that of the 1,000 different situations he or she will be asked to deal with on any given day, only the smallest handful have a shot at moving the enterprise forward in a truly significant way (calendarize this?)

The job of management, then, is to make sure that financial capital, technology, and top talent are deployed where most of the results are and where most of the costs aren’t. The temptation often exists, however, to do exactly the opposite

 

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Purpose and Objectives First

To Drucker, strategy, like everything else in management, is a thinking person’s game.

It isn’t arrived at by following some rigid set of rules but by thinking through various aspects of the business.

 

 

It all starts with #objectives.

bbx How to guarantee non-performance

bbx Management by Objectives — a user's guide

“Only a clear definition of the mission makes possible clear and realistic business #objectives.

It is the foundation for priorities, strategies, plans and work assignments.

It is the starting point for the design of managerial jobs, and, above all, for the design of managerial structures.

Structure follows strategy.

Strategy determines what the key activities are in a given business.

And strategy requires knowing what our business is and what it should be.

Chapters on “What is a Business” and “Business Purpose and Business Mission” in Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices and Chapters 8 and 9 in Management, Revised Edition

Drucker also explained that “nothing may seem simpler or more obvious than to answer what a company’s business is.

A steel mill makes steel, a railroad runs to carry freight and passengers ….

Actually ‘what is our business?’ is almost always a difficult question which can be answered only after hard thinking and studying. (See what exists is getting old)

And the right answer is usually anything but obvious.”

 

 

Thinking back to Drucker’s Law, no strategy can be created without the customer, for it is the customer who defines business purpose.

And “therefore the question ‘what is our business?’ can be answered only by looking at the business from the outside, from the point of view of the customer and the market. (See what exists is getting old)

What the customer sees, thinks, believes and wants at any given time must be accepted by management as an objective fact deserving to be taken as seriously” as any hard data collected from salespeople, accountants, or engineers, contended Drucker.

 

 

Drucker claimed that the single most important cause of business failure can be attributed to management’s failure to ask the question “what is our business?” in a “clear and sharp form.” (See what exists is getting old)

And it isn’t only when a company is starting out that the question should be asked, or when the company is in trouble.

“On the contrary,” Drucker wrote, “to raise the question and to study it thoroughly is most needed when a business is successful.

For then failure to raise it may result in rapid decline.”

Inside Drucker's Brain

A product or service name is never an effective answer to these questions because it doesn’t specify the specific contribution to the customer that matches what customers value and pay for — they buy what it does for them. See “The Customer: Joined at the Hip” in The Definitive Drucker and “Changing Values and Characteristics (creating a customer)” in Innovation and Entrepreneurship — bobembry

 

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Executives of any large organization #mbr — whether business enterprise, Roman Catholic diocese, university, health care institution, government agency — are woefully ignorant of the outside, as everybody knows who has worked with #decisions in a large organization” continue

 


 

“Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it.

It always creates new realities.

It always creates, above all, its own and different problems …” continue

 


 

“The customer never buys what you think you sell.

And you don’t know it.

That’s why it’s so difficult to differentiate yourself.”

 

To the outside customer,
what is the value
of the different
kinds of work
that take place
inside an organization?

 

“People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete — the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.” Druckerism

 


 

#Concentration is the key to economic results.

No other principles of effectiveness is violated as constantly today as the basic principle of concentration.

 


 

Businesses that go unchallenged for long decades are rare exceptions.

The great majority, no matter how successful, need to think through their basic assumptions much sooner.

The great majority, moreover, then find it almost impossible to change.

The business which, after ten years of continuing success, retains the capacity to change and to maintain its effectiveness, is in the minority.

It may not disappear, but it is likely to become an ‘also ran’ and to fall way behind.

The American magazine Fortune has for more than forty years published each year a list of the 500 top manufacturing companies in the US.

During these forty years, one-third of the companies in the original list have disappeared from it altogether — either because they have been liquidated or merged or because they have become insignificant.

Another third has lost position in the list, that is, has dropped from being a major to become a relatively minor business.

Only one-third have maintained themselves in the list, that is, in their position in the American economy.

Every one of these companies that has been able to prosper for four decades has had to change fundamentally.

Yet, the last forty years have been years of great continuity and, generally, years of tremendous prosperity, not only in the American economy but in the world economy.

What is needed is not only the capacity to overcome adversity.

Equally important, and equally needed, is the capacity to take advantage of opportunity, and this, too, is equally threatened by continuing success, threatened by complacency. without an effective mission, there will be no performance

 


 

Financial results are not the purpose

Mission statements that express the purpose of the enterprise in financial terms fail inevitably, to create the cohesion, the dedication, the vision of the people who have to do the work so as to realize the enterprise’s goal.

An old saying — going back to ancient Rome, I believe states that ‘Human beings eat to live, but do not live to eat.’

Similarly, enterprises have to have satisfactory financial results to live; without them they cannot survive and cannot, in fact, do their job.

However, they do not exist to have financial results.

Financial results, by themselves, are not adequate, are not the purpose of the enterprise, and are not the justification and reason for its existence. continue

 


 

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

In some cases they started the next chapter early enough
and in others they waited for a near deadly crisis — they
were busy working on other things.


“Today’s executives are, of course, a good deal more
than passive custodians of the past.

They can, and properly should,
modify the decisions they inherit.

Indeed to bail out these decisions
when they go wrong,
as all decisions in respect to the future
are likely to do,
is one of their most important
and most difficult assignments.

But today’s executives are also charged with the
responsibility for making the future (#mtf) of the business — with
lead times that are becoming increasingly longer
and in some areas
range up to ten years or so.” —
The Changing World of the Executive

 


 

“AS WE ADVANCE deeper into the knowledge economy, the basic assumptions (#apta) underlying much of what is taught and practiced in the name of management are hopelessly out of date. They no longer fit reality.”Management’s New Paradigm #mnp

“The managed institution is society’s way of getting things done” today

The center of a modern society, economy and community is not technology.

It is not information.

It is not productivity.

The center of modern society is the managed institution.

The managed institution is society’s way of getting things done these days.

And management is the specific tool, the specific function, the specific instrument, to make institutions capable of producing results (on the outside).

The institution, in short, does not simply exist within and react to society.

It exists to produce results on and in society.

…snip, snip …

Management’s concern and management’s responsibility are everything that affects the performance of the institution and its results — whether inside or outside, whether under the institution’s control or totally beyond it.

 


 

Despite all the outpouring of management writing these last twenty-five years, the world of management is still little-explored. #mbr

It is a world of issues, but also a world of people.

And it is undergoing rapid change right now.

 

«§§§»

 

These essays explore a wide variety of topics.

They deal with changes in the work force, its jobs, its expectations, with the power relationships of a “ society of employees,” and with changes in technology and in the world economy.

They discuss the problems and challenges facing major institutions, including business enterprises, schools, hospitals, and government agencies.

They look anew at the tasks and work of executives, at their performance and its measurement and at executive compensation.

 

 

However diverse the topics, all the pieces reflect upon the same reality: In all developed countries the workaday world has become a “ society of organizations ” and thus dependent on executives, that is on people — whether called managers or administrators — who are paid to direct organizations and to make them perform.

These chapters have one common theme : the changing world of the executive

changing rapidly within the organization;

changing rapidly in respect to the visions, aspirations, and even characteristics of employees, customers, and constituents;

changing outside the organization as well — economically, technologically, socially, politically.

The Changing World of The Executive

 


 

Management: The Central Social Function #mbr

Noneconomic institutions need a yardstick that does for them what profitability does for business. #profit

Nonbusiness institutions flock in increasing numbers to business management to learn from it how to manage themselves.

The hospital, the armed service, the Catholic diocese, the civil service — all want to go to school for business management.

 

 

This does not mean that business management can be transferred to other, nonbusiness institutions.

On the contrary, the first thing these institutions have to learn from business management is that management begins with the setting of #objectives and that, therefore, noneconomic institutions, such as a university or a hospital, will also need very different management from that of a business.

But these institutions are right in seeing business management as the prototype.

Business, far from being exceptional, is simply the first of the species and the one we have studied the most intensively.

Noneconomic institutions need a yardstick that does for them what profitability does for the business. #profit

“Profitability,” in other words, rather than being the “exception” and distinct from “human” or “social” needs, emerges, in the pluralist society of organizations, as the prototype of the measurement needed by every institution in order to be managed and manageable. #profit

The Ecological Vision

 


 

Modern Organization Must Be a Destabilizer #mbr

The Daily Drucker

Only a society in dynamic disequilibrium has stability and cohesion.

Society, community, and family are all conserving institutions.

They try to maintain stability and to prevent, or at least to slow, change.

And yet we also know that theories, values, and all the artifacts of human minds do age and rigidify, becoming obsolete, becoming afflictions.

 

 

Yet “revolutions” every generation, as was recommended by Thomas Jefferson, are not the solution.

We know that “revolution” is not achievement and the new dawn.

It results from senile decay, from the bankruptcy of ideas and institutions, from a failure of self-renewal.

The only way in which an institution — whether a government, a university, a business, a labor union, an army — can maintain continuity is by building systematic, organized innovation into its very structure.

Institutions, systems, policies, eventually outlive themselves, as do products, processes, and services.

They do it when they accomplish their objectives, and they do it when they fail to accomplish their #objectives.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are thus needed in society as much as in the economy, in public service institutions as much as in business.

The modern organization must be a destabilizer; it must be organized for innovation.

Managing in a Time of Great Change

The Ecological Vision

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

 

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Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Polity

 

Conditions for survival

 

Four dimensions of change ↑ ↓ #lter

knowledge technology

Knowledge technology

Luther, Machiavelli, and the Salmon

For each thought fragment, concept, illustration, link, or text block
you encounter ↑ ↓ ask yourself what does this mean for me? (illustration)
along with doing a PMI, dense reading and dense listening,
#thinking broad and thinking detailed plus visualizing
the operacy involved.

 

 

Knowledge and Technology #impact #lter #knowledge #technology #situation #mbr

Now we are increasingly organizing knowledge and the search for it around areas of application rather than around the subject areas of disciplines.

Interdisciplinary work has grown everywhere.

This is a symptom of the shift in the meaning of knowledge from an end in itself to a resource, that is, a means to some result.

radar-differences-pict-400

#29 WARNING: These ↑ ↓ are not one time events

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

 

Research Laboratory: Obsolete? continue

Now many research directors, as well as high-tech industrialists, tend to believe that such labs are becoming obsolete. Why?

Technologies crisscross industries and travel incredibly fast, making few of them unique anymore.

And increasingly, the knowledge needed in a given industry comes out of some totally different technology with which, very often, the people in the industry are quite unfamiliar.

 

Technologies And End-Users Are Fixed And Given

Now the assumption to start with is that the technologies that are likely to have the greatest impact on a company and an industry are technologies outside its own field.

Today’s technologies, unlike the nineteenth-century technologies, no longer run in parallel.

They constantly crisscross, as discussed briefly in chapter 6.

Technology that people in their given industries have barely heard of (just as the people in the pharmaceutical industry had never heard of genetics, let alone medical electronics) revolutionizes those industries.

Such outside technologies force industries to learn, to acquire, to adapt, to change their very mindset, not to mention their technical knowledge.

Therefore, management now has to start out with the assumption that there is no one technology that pertains to an industry and that, on the contrary, all technologies are capable — and indeed likely — to be of major importance to any industry and to have impact on any industry.

economic_content_structure-pict-t-400

WARNING: These ↑ ↓ are not one time events

 

Destabilization

Similarly, management has to start with the assumption that there is no one given end-use for any product or service and that, conversely, no end-use is going to be linked solely to any one product or service.

And then there is the new “basic resource” information.

It differs radically from all other commodities in that it does not stand under the scarcity theorem.

economics of information

On the contrary, it stands under an abundance theorem

If I sell a thing, e.g., a book, I no longer have the book.

If I impart information I still have it and can sell it again and again.

What this means for economics is well beyond the scope of this paper — though it is clear that it will force us radically to revise basic economic theory.

But economics aside, managements had better understand what this means to them.

Information does not pertain to any specific industry or business.

#Information also does not have any one end-use nor does any one end-use require a particular kind of information

One implication of this is that noncustomers are as important as customers, if not more important: because they are potential customers.

There are very few institutions which supply as large a portion of a market as 30%.

In other words, there are very few institutions where the noncustomers do not amount to at least 70% of the potential market.

And yet very few institutions know anything about the noncustomers — very few of them even know that they exist, let alone know who they are.

And even fewer know why they are not customers.

Yet it is with the noncustomers that changes always start.

… The foundations have to be customer values and customer decisions on the distribution of their disposable income.

It is with those that management policy and management strategy increasingly will have to start

 

New Knowledge

New knowledge is not the most reliable or most predictable source of successful innovations.

For all the visibility, glamour, and importance of science-based innovation, it is actually the least reliable and least predictable one.

 

There ↓ can’t be reached from here tomorrowS can’t be reached from yesterdayS
— at least not directly …

evolution of refrigeration evolution of refrig

Organization Evolution© Patterns of development

Successful careerS are not planned continue

Mission ::: Continuity and Change

sound players

October 16th, 2003 — “ Hell Froze Over.” Apple launched – iTunes for Windows.
That opened up the iPod to the 97% of people who had PCs.
Their first iPods turned into their first iPhones
… switched to a Macintosh all together
… along the way Apple’s market cap climbed to
the most valuable company in the world …

music

The evolution ↓ of photography technologies →
From Film to Point-and-shoot to Smartphones

Successful careerS are not planned continue

#evidence-wall ↓

picture tech picture tech

Technology adoption

product-technology-adoption-pict

More illustrations → 1 ::: 2 ::: 3 ::: 4 ::: 5 ::: 6

How useful would “guidance” from something with a Management Golf or Chaotics: The Business of Managing and Marketing in the Age of Turbulence thoughtscape be in the situations above ↑ — the evolution of refrigeration, the evolution of sound transportation, or the evolution of picture taking? Mike Kami’s world (Corporate or Strategic Planning) ::: Mike Kami’s “razor blade reading and clue management” vs. situations — Management Cases

mike-kami-corp-planning-manual
What thinking is needed?

 

More on the modern chaos #pdf ↑ ↓

 

Conditions for survival

 

The Divide

Even in the flattest landscape there are passes where the road first climbs to a peak and then descends into a new valley.

Most of these passes are only topography, with little or no difference in climate, language, or culture between the valleys on either side.

But some passes are different.

They are true divides.

They often are neither high nor spectacular.

The Brenner is the lowest and gentlest of the passes across the Alps; yet from earliest times it has marked the border between Mediterranean and Nordic cultures.

The Delaware Water Gap, some seventy miles west of New York City, is not even a real pass; yet it still divides Eastern seaboard and mid-America.

 

 

History, too, knows such divides.

They also tend to be unspectacular and are rarely much noticed at the time.

But once these divides have been crossed, the social and political landscape changes.

Social and political climate is different and so is social and political language.

There are new realities.

 

 

Some time between 1965 and 1973 we passed over such a divide and entered “the next century.”

We passed out of creeds, commitments, and alignments that had shaped politics for a century or two.

We are in political terra incognita with few familiar landmarks to guide us.

No one except a mere handful of Stalinists believes any more in salvation by society — the faith which since the eighteenth century’s Enlightenment had been the dominant force and main engine of politics.

But the one effective political counterforce is also spent: political integration in and through interest blocs.

It was America’s own contribution to the art and practice of politics, fashioned first by Mark Hanna at the very end of the last century and then perfected, forty years later, by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the New Deal.

 

 

The last of the colonial empires, Russia, has entered the final phase of decolonization.

Whatever succeeds, it is unlikely to be either “Russian” or “Empire.”

 

 

And after three hundred or more years in which armaments were “productive” and worked as instruments of policy, they have become “ counterproductive”: an economic drain if not economically crippling; treacherous as a tool of politics; and — the most important and least expected change — impotent militarily.

 

Assumptions

 

Management Challenges for the 21st Century

 

Managing in the Next Society

 

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Executive realities IMPORTANT (#sda)

The realities of the executive’s situation both demand effectiveness from him and make effectiveness exceedingly difficult to achieve.

Indeed, unless executives work at becoming effective, the realities of their situation will push them into futility.

tblue The executive’s time tends to belong to everybody else

tblue Executives are forced to keep on “operating” unless they take positive action

tblue Being within an “organization” pushes the executive toward ineffectiveness

tblue Finally, the executive is “within” an organization

People of high effectiveness are conspicuous by their absence in executive jobs continue

 

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Return to top

#22 Management creates economic development ↑ ↓ continue

 

Management and the World’s Work — 1850 … ↑ ↓ #pdf #mbr
In less than 150 years, (circa 1988) management has transformed the social and economic fabric
of the world’s developed countries. It has created a global economy
and set new rules for countries that would participate in that economy as equals. ↓

How are you participating in this? ↓

The Competitive Knowledge Economy

Internet activity ↓ ::: ← → Form and function

internet-activity-pict-600

China’s One Belt, One Road

one-belt-one-road-1-pict-600

Cities, metropolitan areas and polycentric regions of the world #horizons #cities

 

Pinterest ::: Polycentric

 

Istanbul workbook #pdf ::: Berlin ::: Rhine-Ruhr ::: Frankfurt Rhine-Main

 

How would Ian Fleming describe each of them and their contents?


List of countries by GDP (nominal)

World’s largest cities

List of #cities by population density



American clothing styles 1940s

American clothing styles 1970s

American clothing styles 1990s



Lonely Planet travel destinations ↓ ::: Larger view

lonely-planet-600



#imwan World at night — electricity ↓ ::: Larger view

world-at-night-lights-600

 

Not so bright in North Korea ↓ ::: Larger view

north-korea-at-night-600

#imwveg World vegetation ↓

world-map-vegitation-pict-t-shad+stroke-600

 

Why America’s Richest #Cities Are Pulling Away From All the Others
(What are the implications for them and the rest?)



What does your state hate? #state ↓ ::: Larger view

what-does-your-state-hate-600



Why does? ↓ ::: Larger view

why-does-state-600

 

Cityscapes

 

Seoul post Korean war ↓

far-east-cities

 

Seoul in more recent years ↓

far-east-cities

 

Shanghai post-WW II

far-east-cities

 

Shanghai later ↓

far-east-cities

 

Shanghai more recent ↓

far-east-cities

 

Singapore back then ↓

far-east-cities

 

Singapore more recent

Cosmopolis → an internationally important city
inhabited by many different peoples
reflecting a great variety of cultures, attitudes, etc.

The New Metropolis #pdf

The future of the central city

Try a #page-search for the words “city” or “cities”

What about “organized crime” and “money laundering”?

far-east-cities

 

Population Growth Means a City is Thriving, or Does it?

“Public officials and reporters alike adopt the myth that bigger is better. That’s not always the case.

Every year, the U.S. Census Bureau releases its latest data on #cities and population growth. The reaction is always the same: News outlets look at the numbers showing which places gained and which ones shed residents, and use them as instant proxies for a decline, a boom or a turnaround in cities all over the country.

Population loss can become a symbol for other things people feel is going wrong in a city, such as rising poverty and unemployment rates, vacant and blighted housing, increased violent crime, the exit of pro sports franchises, racial segregation and police brutality. The “decline” in newspaper headlines may refer to the population, but it’s often shorthand for a host of complex problems, an easy-to-understand indicator that things are getting worse.

In Detroit, where the population fell 64 percent between 1950 and 2016, Mayor Mike Duggan told The Wall Street Journal shortly after he took office three years ago that “the single standard a mayor should be defined on is whether the population of the city is going up or going down.”

Every year, the U.S. Census Bureau releases its latest data on cities and population growth. The reaction is always the same: News outlets look at the numbers showing which places gained and which ones shed residents, and use them as instant proxies for a decline, a boom or a turnaround in cities all over the country.

Population loss can become a symbol for other things people feel is going wrong in a city, such as rising poverty and unemployment rates, vacant and blighted housing, increased violent crime, the exit of pro sports franchises, racial segregation and police brutality. The “decline” in newspaper headlines may refer to the population, but it’s often shorthand for a host of complex problems, an easy-to-understand indicator that things are getting worse.

In Detroit, where the population fell 64 percent between 1950 and 2016, Mayor Mike Duggan told The Wall Street Journal shortly after he took office three years ago that “the single standard a mayor should be defined on is whether the population of the city is going up or going down.” continue

10 Most Advanced #Cities in the World with High-Tech Infrastructure

“The number of advanced #cities in the world are increasing year over year. But it's difficult for other tech destinations around the world to grab position from other well established advanced cities. Tokyo is considered as the most advanced city in the world, thanks to their world class infrastructure, number of people working STEM, best railway network, healthcare facilities, and much more.” continue

Google search: migration growth fastest growing shrinking #cities in the world

 

#immig Illegal border crossings ↓ ::: Larger view

illegal-border-crossing-pict-600

 



Coming to America ↓ ::: Larger view

coming-to-america-pict-600



Jupiter Cable ↓ ::: Larger view

cable-jupiter-pict-600



NTT Cable ↓ ::: Larger view

cable-ntt-pict-600

What has to happen ↓ to make people realize that the way the world functions ↑ ↓ has changed and that different situations ↑ ↓ require new thinking and behavior?

A change in the way the world works

Survivor

 


 

The Definitive Drucker



The world is flat → Living in a Lego™ World (#wgobcd) ↑ #mbr

 

The walking dead

dead-snapheal-intensify-800

 

walking-dead-season-1-intensify-800

 

Innovation requires abandonment (#sda)

 

Innovation (a condition for survival) requires major effort.

It requires hard work on the part of performing, capable people — the scarcest resource in any organization.

Executive realities

“Nothing requires more heroic efforts than to keep a corpse from stinking, and yet nothing is quite so futile,” is an old medical proverb.

 

picture-technology-pict-no-reflect-400

Picture technology: larger view

 

product-technology-adoption-05

 

In almost any organization I have come across, the best people are engaged in this futile effort; yet all they can hope to accomplish is to delay acceptance of the inevitable a little longer and at great cost.

 

what exists is getting old

breaks-in-the-pattern-pict-t-450w

Bad thinking

Executive realities

The intelligence trap

Organization efforts ::: Problems or Opportunities?

But if it is known throughout the organization that the #dead will be left to bury their dead, then the living will be willing — indeed, eager — to go to work on innovation and the conditions for survival.

 

walking-dead-season-1-intensify-800-350x280

↑ frequently seen in office buildings — the bigger
the building (e.g., The Pentagon) the more walkers you #SEE #intelligence

 

To allow it to innovate, a business has to be able to free its best performers for the challenges of innovation.

 

The danger of too much individual planning

 

Equally it has to be able to devote financial resources to innovation.

 

It will not be able to do either unless it organizes itself to slough off alike the successes of the past, the failures, and especially the “near-misses,” the things that “should have worked” but didn’t.

If executives know that it is company policy to abandon, then they will be motivated to look for the new, to encourage entrepreneurship, and will accept the need to become entrepreneurial themselves.

This is the first step — a form of organizational hygiene.” about Innovation

 


 

“Increasingly, organizations will have to plan abandonment
rather than try to prolong the life
of a successful policy, practice, or product … only a few
large Japanese companies have faced up to” Druckerism

The transition to a knowledge-based economy

 


 

“Effective innovations start small. They are not grandiose. They try to do one specific thing” continue

 

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An Operational View of the Budgeting Process #mbr #budgeting

 

The final conclusion is that we need a new approach to the process in which we make our value decisions between different objective areasthe budgeting process.

 

Conditions for survival

Change and Continuity

Without an effective mission statement,
there will be
no performance continue

How to guarantee nonperformance

 

And in particular do we need a real understanding of that part of the budget that deals with the expenses that express these decisions, that is, the “managed” and “capital” expenditures.

 

Thinking broad and thinking detailed

sound-players-pict-no-reflect-400

The Five Deadly Sins

 

Commonly today, budgeting is conceived as a financial process.

But it is only the notation that is financial; the decisions are entrepreneurial.

Commonly today, managed expenditures and capital expenditures are considered quite separate.

But the distinction is an accounting (and tax) fiction and misleading; both commit scarce resources to an uncertain future; both are, economically speaking, capital expenditures.

And they, too, have to express the same basic decisions on survival objectives to be viable — Harmonize the Immediate and Long-range Future.

Finally, today, most of our attention in the operating budget is given, as a rule, to other than the managed expenses, especially to the variable expenses, for that is where, historically, most money was spent.

But, no matter how large or small the sums, it is in our decisions on the managed expenses that we decide on the future of the enterprise.

 

picture-technology-pict-no-reflect-400

 

Indeed, we have little control over what the accountant calls variable expenses — the expenses which relate directly to units of production and are fixed by a certain way of doing things.

We can change them, but not fast.

We can change a relationship between units of production and labor costs (which we, with a certain irony, still consider variable expenses despite the fringe benefits).

But within any time period these expenses can only be kept at a norm and cannot be changed.

This is, of course, even more true for the expenses in respect to the decisions of the past, our fixed expenses.

We cannot make them undone at all, whether these are capital expenses or taxes or what have you.

They are beyond our control.

 

In the middle, however, are the expenses for the future which express our risk-taking value choices: the capital expenses and the managed expenses.

Here are the expenses on facilities and equipment, on research and merchandising, on product development and people development, on management and organization.

This managed expense budget is the area in which we really make our decisions on our #objectives.

(That, incidentally, is why I dislike accounting ratios in that area so very much, because they try to substitute (#hotw) the history of the dead past for the making of the prosperous future.)

 

We make decisions in this process in two respects.

 

First, what do we allocate people for?

For the money in the budget is really people.

What do we allocate people, and energy, and efforts to?

To what #objectives?

We have to make choices, as we cannot do everything.

 

And, second, what is the time scale?

How do we, in other words, balance expenditures for long-term permanent efforts against any decision with immediate impact?

 

picture-technology-pict-no-reflect-400

picture tech

 

The one shows results only in the remote future, if at all.

The development of people (a fifteen-year job), the effectiveness of which is untested and unmeasurable, is, for instance, a decision on faith over the long range.

The other may show results immediately.

To slight the one, however, might, in the long range, debilitate the business and weaken it.

And, yet, there are certain real short-term needs that have to be met in the business — in the present as well as in the future.

 

Until we develop a clear understanding of basic survival objectives and some yardsticks for the decisions and choices in each area, budgeting will not become a rational exercise of responsible judgment; it will retain some of the hunch character that it now has.

But our experience has shown that the concept of survival objectives alone can greatly improve both the quality and effectiveness of the process and the understanding of what is being decided.

Indeed, it gives us, we are learning, an effective tool for the integration of functional work and specialized efforts and especially for creating a common understanding throughout the organization and common measurements of contribution and performance.

 

The approach to a discipline of business enterprise through an analysis of survival objectives is still a very new and a very crude one.

 

#ewtl
evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

information challenges

 

Yet it is already proving itself a unifying concept, simply because it is the first general theory of the business enterprise we have had so far.

It is not yet a very refined, a very elegant, let alone a very precise, theory.

Any physicist or mathematician would say: This is not a theory; this is still only rhetoric.

But at least, while maybe only in rhetoric, we are talking about something real.

For the first time we are no longer in the situation in which theory is irrelevant, if not an impediment, and in which practice has to be untheoretical, which means cannot be taught, cannot be learned, and cannot be conveyed, as one can only convey the general.

 

This should thus be one of the breakthrough areas; and twenty years hence this might well have become the central concept around which we can organize the mixture of knowledge, ignorance, and experience, of prejudices, insights, and skills, which we call “management” today. continue

 

Research management

Innovation

What executives should remember

 

Try a #page-search for the word “budget”

 

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Disintegration #mbr

… “But now the traditional axiom that an enterprise should aim for maximum integration has become almost entirely invalidated.

One reason is that the knowledge needed for any activity has become highly specialized.

It is therefore increasingly expensive, and also increasingly difficult, to maintain enough #critical mass for every major task within an enterprise.

And because knowledge rapidly deteriorates unless it is used constantly, maintaining within an organization an activity that is used only intermittently guarantees incompetence ” — Peter Drucker

 

 

 

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Drucker on Asia — A Dialogue Between Peter Drucker and Isao Nakauchi

“I AM WRITING THIS PREFACE on March 11, 1995 — ten years to the day since the collapse of Communism and of the Soviet Empire began with Mikhail Gorbachev’s election as the First Secretary of the Communist Party.

The political world has changed beyond all recognition in these ten years.

But, while less dramatic, the changes in the economic world have been fully as great, fully as important, fully as irreversible.

And far too little attention is being paid to them.

 

Specifically, government has become the storm center of the non-communist world, threatening sudden, unpredictable economic and currency upheavals — the legacy of forty years of failure of the ‘Keynesian Welfare State’ whose theories and policies dominated the Western noncommunist world before 1985.

These threats — and especially the threat of sudden panic and collapse undoing years of hard, steady work on economic development and prosperity such as only a few months ago occurred in Mexico — are by no means confined to developing countries.

Sweden and Italy, to name only two European countries, are equally unstable as a result of government over-spending and over-borrowing.

Even France’s stability is doubtful.

And the U.S. is engaged in a massive last-ditch attempt to cut its government deficit.

While Japan alone of all major countries in the developed world — has not indulged in the reckless expansion of government spending and in under-saving grossly, her government and policies too are in crisis.

Forty years of stability have come to an end.

And no country is as exposed to the shock waves which a collapse of government finance and currencies creates as is Japan — endaka is just a foretaste of what a collapse of the Chinese economy and Chinese currency under the threat of run-away inflation might, for instance, mean to Japan.

 

Secondly, the structure and the dynamics of the world economy have changed profoundly.

The ‘growth economies’ of the world in the last ten years have not been Japan or the U.S. or Western Europe.

They have been the rapidly developing countries of mainland Asia — with Coastal China in the forefront — and some countries of Latin America which, returning to fiscal rectitude and free markets after years of wild inflation and protectionism, have shown almost explosive (though also very dangerous) growth.

There is no one ‘economic center’ in the world economy any more; the tiny island of Taiwan has now the world’s second-largest foreign-exchange surplus.

And there are no ‘superpowers’.

Japan leads in the development of mainland Asia.

But in the high-tech industries where the real growth is — biotechnology and genetics, information technology, software, the new finance — Japan is still sadly lagging.

The U.S. has put its manufacturing house in order.

Most of U.S. manufacturing industry is now as competitive as that of any other country; even the automotive industry has almost caught up.

And the U.S. has attained an almost unbeatable lead in the new growth industries, and especially in the high-tech industries.

But government finance and the savings rate are in sorry shape.

 

Western Europe has not been able to exploit the enormous opportunities of economic unification and has fallen badly behind in manufacturing efficiency in all high-tech areas, and in employment.

 

Thirdly, organization structure and business strategies are in flux.

#Information is beginning to affect both, to the point where traditional business organization is becoming obsolete.

But also the traditional concept of the ‘employer’ — the company for which people work — is unravelling.

More and more people work as temporaries.

Outsourcing is becoming general. #horizons

In outsourcing people work with a company, for example doing its data processing, but do not work for the company, and are not its employees.

In the West — though apparently not yet in Japan — more and more of the most senior and most responsible employees, such as senior researchers, rarely even come to the company’s office any more but work at home or in small office clusters close to where they live.

 

Fourthly, the work force is changing rapidly.

Blue-collar industrial workers in the mass-production plants were the center of the work force only yesterday.

Today, they are shrinking rapidly in numbers and, even more rapidly, in importance.

Even the people who do the jobs in the plant which the blue-collar worker did yesterday, are increasingly different people.

They are ‘technicians’ with a substantial theoretical knowledge rather than people who get paid for working with their hands or for tending machines.

And at the center of gravity of the work force in every developed country are increasingly knowledge workers, people who do not work with their hands at all but are being paid for what they have learned in school and university.

These people have totally different expectations — of their work; of the way they are being managed; of their opportunities and rewards.

But also the measures that made traditional blue-collar workers productive do not work to make knowledge workers productive.

They pose a different, but no less #critical, productivity challenge.

And fifthly, underlying all this is the shift to knowledge as the key resource of production.

 

What happened in the last ten years is not that free markets and free enterprise won.

Communism and central planning collapsed.

But this only brought out all the more clearly the challenges which free markets and free enterprise now face.

What then does all this mean for an individual country and its economy — and specifically for Japan?

For society?

For the individual company?

And, finally, for the individual, and especially for the individual executive or professional?

These are the questions to which the dialogue between Mr. Nakauchi and myself addressed itself.

The dialogue started last Autumn on my most recent visit to Japan.

It was then continued during the Autumn and Winter by letter and fax.

Mr. Nakauchi and I share the same concerns, but we tackle them differently: Mr. Nakauchi as a Japanese, though one with intimate knowledge of the West; as an entrepreneur who has built and runs the Daiei Company, one of the world’s largest and most successful food retailers; and as a businessman deeply concerned through his leadership in Keidanren (where he is Vice Chairman) with public policy and with society.

I approach the same concerns as a Westerner though as one who knows a little bit about Japan and deeply loves the country.

I am not a ‘theoretician’ through my consulting practice I am in daily touch with the concrete opportunities and problems of a fairly large number of institutions, foremost among them businesses but also hospitals, government agencies and public-service institutions such as museums and universities.

And I am working with such institutions on several continents: North America, including Canada and Mexico; Latin America; Europe; Japan and South East Asia.

Still, a consultant is at one remove from the day-today practice — that is both his strength and his weakness.

And so my viewpoint tends more to be that of an outsider.

The two approaches, however, complement each other as Mr. Nakauchi and I soon found out.

 

This dialogue is presented in two parts because that is how it was conducted.

The first part looks at the major developments in economy, society and business.

The second then focuses on the specific challenge of a period of transition such as ours: how to change and renew oneself as an individual ? one’s business ? government ?

But both parts have in common a conviction that Mr. Nakauchi and I share: theory and practice have to go together.

Theory tells us what needs to be done.

Practice then tells us how to do it.

Throughout this dialogue Mr. Nakauchi and I have tried to provide both understanding and effective action.

There are many questions a reader will ask which neither of us could answer — we are still in mid-transition.

But I hope that there is enough in this dialogue to enable each reader both to obtain much deeper understanding of our rapidly changing world and effective guidance to his own action, learning, improvement, and growth, and to better performance of his business.

 

The initiative for this dialogue came from Mr. Nakauchi, and so did the formulation of the main questions.

I am deeply grateful to him for the searching thinking that went into his questions and for the foundation for a productive dialogue which his extensive comments laid.

But thanks are due to some other people too, who, during the course of the project, constantly advised and challenged us: to Mr. Tatsuo Fukuda, Mr. Shinichi Uesaka and Mr. Katsuyoshi Saito, respectively Publisher, Editor and Foreign Rights General Manager at Diamond Publishing, Inc. in Tokyo.

The project owes to these three gentlemen a great deal of its cohesion and clarity.

They deserve our and the reader’s thanks.”

Peter F. Drucker

Claremont, California

 

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It is impossible to work on things that aren't on your mental radar ↑ ↓

Homeland

evidence-wall-homeland-talking-pict-600

 

#Podcast

Travel Genius

Broken Record

Future of Asia

Go and See

Revisionist History

Mobituaries

Pardon My French

 

 

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The main work-life related brainroadS ↓

 

The following ↓ is a condensed strategic brainscape that can be explored and modified to fit a user’s needs

 

The concepts and links below ↓ are …

major foundations ↓ for future directed decisionS

aimed at navigating

a world constantly moving toward unimagined futureS

history-of-the-world-in-two-hours-03-pict-600

YouTube: The History of the World in Two Hours
— beginning with the industrial revolution ↑ ↓

Management and the World’s Work

↑ In less than 150 years, management ↑ has transformed
the social and economic fabric of the world’s developed countries …

 

“Your thinking, choices, decisions are determined by
what you have seen edb

radar_limited-pict-no-reflect-400

Take responsibility for yourself and
don’t depend on any one organization ↑ ↓ (bread-crumb trailS below)

We can only work on the thingS on our mental radar at a point in time

About time The future that has already happened

radar-differences-pict-400

The economic and social health of our world
depends on
our capacity to navigate unimagined futureS
(and not be prisoners of the past)

 

The assumption that tomorrow is going to be
an extrapolation of yesterday sabotages the future — an
organization’s, a community’s and a nation’s future.

The assumption ↑ sabotages future generations — your children’s,
your grandchildren’s and your great grandchildren’s — in
spite of what the politicians say …

The vast majority of organization and political power structures
are engaged in this ↑ futile mind-set
while rationalizing the evidence

 

The future is unpredictable and that means
it ain’t going to be like today
(which was designed & produced yesterday)

 

The capacity to navigate is governed by what’s between our ears ↑ ↓

 

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When we are involved in doing something ↑

it is extremely difficult to navigate

and very easy to become a prisoner of the past.

 

We need to maintain a pre-thought ↓

systematic approach to work and work approach

Click on either side of the image below to see a larger view

Harvest to action

Harvesting and implementing Work

based on reality

the non-linearity of time and events

and the unpredictability of the future

with its unimagined natureS. ↓ ↑

 

(It’s just a matter of time before we can’t get to the future
from where we are presently
)

Foundations and opportunities ::: larger view

foundations-and-opportunities-2016-pict-400

Intelligence and behavior ↑ ↓ ← Niccolò Machiavelli ↑ ↓

Political ecologists believe that the traditional disciplines define fairly narrow and limited tools rather than meaningful and self-contained areas of knowledge, action, and eventscontinue

❡ ❡ ❡

Foundational ↑ Books → The Lessons of History — unfolding realities (The New Pluralism → in Landmarks of Tomorrow ::: in Frontiers of Management ::: How Can Government Function? ::: the need for a political and social theory ::: toward a theory of organizations then un-centralizing plus victims of success) ::: The Essential Drucker — your horizons? ::: Textbook of Wisdom — conceptual vision and imagination tools ::: The Daily Drucker — conceptual breadth ::: Management Cases (Revised Edition) see chapter titles for examples of “named” situations …

foundational-books-cropped-pict-600

What do these ideas, concepts, horizons mean for me? continue

 

picture-technology-pict-no-reflect-400

Society of Organizations

“Corporations once built to last like pyramids
are now more like tents.

Tomorrow they’re gone or in turmoil.”

sound-players-pict-600

“The failure to understand the nature, function, and
purpose of business enterprise” Chapter 9, Management Revised Edition

“The customer never buys ↑ what you think you sell.
And you don’t know it.

That’s why it’s so difficult to differentiate yourself.” Druckerism

 

“People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete
the things that should have worked but did not,
the things that once were productive and no longer are.” Druckerism

 

What Everybody Knows Is Frequently Wrong ::: If You Keep Doing What Worked in the Past You’re Going to Fail ::: Approach Problems with Your Ignorance — Not Your Experience ::: Develop Expertise Outside Your Field to Be an Effective Manager ::: Outstanding Performance Is Inconsistent with Fear of Failure ::: You Must Know Your People to Lead Them ::: People Have No Limits, Even After Failure ::: Base Your Strategy on the #Situation, Not on a Formula — A Class With Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World's Greatest Management Teacher

 

Why Peter Drucker Distrusted Facts (HBR blog) and here

 

Best people working on the wrong things continue

 

Conditions for survival

 

Going outside

 

Making the future — a chance for survival

 

“For what should America’s new owners, the pension funds,
hold corporate management accountable?” and
“Rather, they maximize the wealth-producing capacity of the enterprise”
Search for the quotes above here

 

Successful careerS are not planned ↑ here and

 

What do these issues, these challenges mean for me & … — an alternative

 

Exploration paths → The memo they don’t want you to see ::: Peter Drucker — top of the food chain ::: Work life foundations (links to Managing Oneself) ::: A century of social transformation ::: Post-capitalist executive interview ::: Allocating your life ::: What executives should remember ::: What makes an effective executive? ::: Innovation ::: Patriotism is not enough → citizenship is needed ::: Drucker’s “Time” and “Toward tomorrowS” books ::: Concepts (a WIP) ::: Site map a.k.a. brainscape, thoughtscape, timescape

 

Just reading ↑ is not enough, harvesting and action thinking are neededcontinue

Information ↑ is not enough, thinking ↓ is neededfirst then next + critical thinking

thinking-principles-taskcard-400

Larger view of thinking principles ↑ Text version ↑ :::
Always be constructiveWhat additional thinking is needed?

 

Initially and absolutely needed: the willingness and capacity to
regularly look outside of current mental involvements continue

bread-crumb trail end

 

Where you go from here
is determined by your values.

 

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Our futureS will play out in different ecologies ↓

Post-Capitalist Society  book  managing in the next society

 

Post-Capitalist Society

Amazon.com link

Management Challenges for the 21st Century

Managing in the Next Society

 

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#tln Time-life navigation

 

The way I see it time-life navigation involves the navigation needed to make it from childhood to the final moments embedded in a world moving toward unimagined futures. The major elements might be conceptualized as:

Organization evolution

Career or worklife evolution

Life design

Financial investing

A life navigation system or action management system

Life-TIME investment system

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Fun thinking ::: fun planning

Don’t put off fun.

Set up a schedule

model-annual-calendar-500w

 

line

 

Make Judgement Operational within time

 

 

 

Leadership vs. Management

Leadership: More Doing Than Dash

The Mystique of the Business Leader

 

 

 

Intelligence ::: Information ::: Thinking #caf ↓

 

 

What thinking is needed — now or later?

What information?

 

Edward de Bono thinking books by category and book


Note the distinction between Edward de Bono’s take on decisions and the approaches in Peter Drucker’s writing



de Bono book search


Life specific

#wlh = work-life horizons

 

 

#wlh #ea #think

Bonting: Thinking to Create Value
YouTube ::: Amazon

 

 

Intelligence Information Thinking #wlh #ea #think contents page ::: Amazon ::: INTELLIGENCE ::: The Intelligence Trap ::: Pieces of the Puzzle ::: Intelligence as Potential ::: Develop Potential ::: INFORMATION ::: Search Not Think ::: School and Information ::: Necessary but not Enough ::: THINKING ::: By and large, however, most schools do not teach thinking explicitly ::: 1. Thinking is not necessary ::: 2. Information is enough ::: 3. We already teach thinking ::: 4. Thinking cannot be taught ::: Our Software for Thinking :::

They were not interested in ::: #think Creative thinking ::: Constructive thinking ::: Operational thinking ::: Perceptual Thinking ::: Critical Thinking ::: Attitudes and Tools ::: Creativity ::: Argument ::: Parallel Thinking ::: Range ::: Love It pdf


Think! Before It's Too Late contents page ::: Amazon Contents ::: About the Book ::: Also by Edward de Bono ::: In Praise of Edward De Bono ::: Author's Note ::: Introduction ::: Why Do We Need This Book? ::: Think grey not green ::: Emotion vs. thought ::: Thinking Software ::: The Renaissance and the Church ::: The Renaissance and the Church-1 ::: The mechanism of mind ::: We Have Such Excellent Thinking! ::: Different ::: Excellent but not enough ::: My Thinking ::: How new thinking has worked ::: Boasting ::: 1 Creativity ::: Why We Need Creativity ::: Commodities And Values ::: Language Problem ::: Idea creativity ::: Reasons ::: #Brainstorming For Creativity ::: Creativity: Talent Or Skill? ::: Behavior ::: The Logic Of Creativity ::: Patterns ::: What is a pattern? ::: Asymmetry ::: Humor And Creativity ::: The Random Word Tool For Creativity ::: Process ::: Logic ::: Shaping ::: The Random Word Effect ::: Exercise ::: Summary: Creativity ::: 2 The Formal Tools of Lateral Thinking ::: Challenge ::: Focus ::: Concepts ::: Provocation ::: Movement ::: Summary: The Formal Tools Of Lateral Thinking ::: 3 Judgement Not Design ::: Judgement And Recognition ::: The Dog Exercise Machine ::: Operacy ::: Design And Conflicts ::: 4 Knowledge and Information ::: China ::: Computers ::: Corporations ::: Alternatives and #Possibilities ::: Argument ::: Alternatives to Argument ::: Excellent — but Not Enough ::: Summary: Knowledge and Information ::: 5 Language ::: Judgement And Boxes ::: Complex Situations ::: Language And Perception ::: Summary: Language ::: 6 Democracy ::: Other And Preceding Systems ::: Advantages Of Democracy ::: Limitations Of Democracy ::: Summary: Democracy ::: 7 Universities ::: Truth, Knowledge And Scholarship ::: Thinking ::: Design ::: The Six Value Medals ::: Argument ::: Examinations ::: Skills ::: Summary: Universities ::: 8 Schools ::: Schools in the European Union ::: Thinking ::: Other Subjects ::: Summary: Schools ::: 9 The Media ::: Negative ::: What Can The Media Do? ::: Summary: The Media ::: 10 Perception ::: Logic Vs. Perception ::: Perception In The Real World ::: Possibilities And Alternatives ::: What Can We Do? ::: Summary: Perception ::: 11 Critical Thinking and Criticism ::: Criticism And Complaint ::: Problem-Solving ::: Defects ::: Summary: Critical Thinking And Criticism ::: 12 Art and Thinking ::: Negative Is Real ::: Different ::: Creativity And Art ::: Music ::: Summary: Art And Thinking ::: 13 Leadership and Thinking ::: Complacency ::: New Directions ::: The Codes ::: Septines ::: Recognition ::: 14 Conflicts and Disagreements ::: Perception ::: Exploration ::: Design ::: Tools Of Lateral Thinking ::: Summary: Conflicts And Disagreements ::: 15 Twenty-three Reasons Why Thinking Is So Poor ::: Success In Science And Technology ::: No Faculty Or Classification ::: Left To Philosophers And Psychologists ::: Ignorance Of How The Brain Works ::: The Greek Gang Of Three ::: Perception Ignored ::: Religion ::: Truth And Possibility ::: Critical Judgement Not Design ::: Language ::: Argument ::: Democracy ::: Courts Of Law ::: The Media ::: Knowledge And Information ::: Universities ::: Computers ::: The Right Answer ::: Schools And Exams ::: Art ::: Leadership ::: Continuity ::: Right/Wrong ::: Summary: Twenty-Three Reasons ::: 16 What Can I Do? ::: The Palace Of Thinking ::: Summary: What Can ::: 17 What Can You Do? ::: Individuals ::: Parents ::: Educators ::: Business Executives ::: Formal Programs ::: 18 What Can Society Do? ::: Creativity And Education ::: Creativity And Government ::: Creativity And Business ::: Creativity And The Home ::: 19 Values ::: Truth ::: Vague ::: The Six Value Medals ::: Search, Recognition And Assessment ::: Why Six? ::: 20 The Right to Think ::: Instruction ::: Permission To Think ::: Absurd ::: Epilogue

 


Parallel Thinking contents page ::: Amazon Contents ::: About the Book ::: About the Author ::: Also in the Series ::: Title Page ::: Preface ::: 1 The Wrong Tackle ::: 2 Order Out Of Chaos ::: 3 Order ::: 4 The Doubters ::: 5 The Socratic Method ::: 6 How The Socratic Method Worked ::: 7 The Search ::: 8 Criticism And Removing ‘Untruth’ ::: 9 Adversaries, Argument And Debate ::: 10 Parallel Thinking ::: 11 Problem-Solving ::: 12 The Evolution of Ideas ::: 13 The Search For The Truth ::: 14 The Truth ::: 15 Questions ::: 16 Definitions, Boxes, Categories And Generalizations ::: 17 The Value Of Boxes ::: 18 The Problem Of ‘IS’ ::: 19 The Tyranny Of Judgement ::: 20 Possibility vs. Certainty ::: 21 Exploration vs. Judgement ::: 22 Design vs. Analysis ::: 23 Information vs. Ideas ::: 24 Movement vs. Judgement ::: 25 Create vs. Discover ::: 26 Inner World vs. Outer World ::: 27 Alternatives ::: 28 Parallels ::: 29 Possibilities ::: 30 Designing a Way Forward ::: 31 Wisdom vs. Cleverness ::: 32 Dialectic vs. Parallels ::: 33 Action vs. Description ::: 34 Value vs. Truth ::: 35 Water Logic and Parallel Thinking ::: 36 Overlap ::: 37 Change vs. Stability ::: 38 New Language Devices ::: Summary 1: Parallel Thinking vs. Western Thinking ::: Summary 2: The Failure of Western Thinking ::: Action Epilogue

 


Water Logic contents page ::: Amazon ::: Foreword ::: Introduction ::: Stucture of the book ::: Outer world—inner world ::: Water logic ::: 'TO' ::: Dance of the jellyfish ::: Stability ::: Self-Organizing ::: How the Brain Flows Into Perception ::: Self-Organizing ::: The Behaviour of Perception ::: Recognition ::: Centring ::: Preparedness ::: Discrimination ::: Meaning ::: The Importance of Words ::: Myths and 'Why?' ::: Closure ::: Shift ::: Levels of Organization ::: Broad Principles of System Behaviour ::: Flowscapes ::: Stream of Consciousness List ::: Examining the Flowscape ::: Collectors ::: Stable Loops ::: Links ::: Further Examples ::: Faithful and Loyal Secretary ::: List ::: Flowscape ::: Petrol Pump Price War ::: List ::: Flowscape ::: Absenteeism From Work ::: List ::: Flowscape ::: Sectarian or ethnic violence ::: List ::: Flowscape ::: Inner and Outer World ::: Practical Technique ::: Stream of Consciousness—Base List ::: CAF on the Choice of a Pet ::: The Stream of Consciousness List Is Not an Analysis of the Situation ::: Analysis ::: Stream of Consciousness ::: Problem Solving ::: More Complex Flowscapes ::: Choosing a Holiday ::: Choosing a Career ::: Rapidly Escalating Health Care Costs ::: Complexity ::: Concepts ::: Concepts, Categories and Aristotle ::: Lumping and Splitting ::: Concepts and Flexibility ::: Pre-Concepts and Post-Concepts ::: Blurry Concepts ::: Working Backwards and the Concept Fan ::: Concepts and Flow ::: Interventions ::: Juvenile Crime ::: Old Church Which Is Standing in the Way of a Major Road Development ::: Racism ::: Action ::: Context, Conditions and Circumstances ::: Creating Contexts ::: Accuracy and Value ::: Flowscapes for Other People ::: From Written Material Etcetera ::: Guessing ::: Discussion ::: Hypothesis ::: Attention Flow ::: 'Isness' ::: Tension ::: Triggering ::: Directing Attention ::: Difficulties ::: Example: Looking Around for a New Job ::: Errors ::: Summary

 

#aomt Atlas of Management Thinking ::: Amazon ::: Contents ::: Introduction ::: Confrontation ::: 1 Clash, Confrontation, Argument Or ... ::: 2 A Sort of Ritual Dance ::: 3 Trumping With a Fact ::: 4 Different Values ::: 5 Different Objectives ::: 6 Different Perceptions ::: 7 Both Sides Are Right ::: 8 Arguing About a Matter of Principle ::: 9 Destructive Arguments ::: 10 Doctrinaire Argument ::: 11 Constructive Argument ::: 12 Cross-Purposes ::: Productivity ::: 13 Efficiency ::: 14 Effectiveness ::: 15 Waste ::: 16 Flurry ::: 17 Detail ::: 18 Structural Fault ::: 19 No Flexibility ::: 20 Difficult ::: 21 Structural Improvement ::: 22 Diversion ::: Decision ::: 23 Yes Decision ::: 24 No Decision ::: 25 The Effortless ‘No’ ::: 26 The Yes Effort ::: 27 An Easy Decision ::: 28 A Difficult Decision ::: 29 A Decision That Is Not Obvious ::: 30 A Weak Decision ::: 31 Decision For Choice ::: 32 Coping With An Obstacle ::: 33 Refusal To Make A Decision ::: 34 Indecisiveness ::: 35 A Counter-Productive Decision ::: 36 Consultation For A Decision ::: 37 Dilemma ::: 38 A Political Decision ::: Getting There ::: 39 On Target ::: 40 Poor Aim ::: 41 Short-Fall ::: 42 Collapse ::: 43 Recovery ::: 44 Shifting Target ::: 45 Intermediate Targets ::: 46 Guidelines ::: 47 Bring The Target Nearer ::: 48 Broaden The Target ::: Problem Solving ::: 49 Information And Problem Solving ::: 50 The Factors Involved ::: 51 Combining Elements ::: 52 Define The Problem ::: 54 Confusion ::: 54 Contradiction ::: 55 Solving The Wrong Problem ::: 56 Diversion ::: 57 An Approximate Solution ::: 58 Break Down The Problem ::: 59 Working Backwards ::: 60 Self-Created Problems ::: 61 Opportunities ::: 62 Hidden Opportunity ::: 64 Crowded Opportunity Space ::: 54 The Shallow Opportunity ::: 65 False Opportunity ::: 66 Sensing An Opportunity ::: 67 False Entry ::: 68 Delayed Reward ::: People ::: 69 Approval ::: 70 Disapproval ::: 71 Leadership ::: 72 Instruction ::: 73 Demand ::: 74 Coaxing ::: 75 Blocking ::: 76 Turn-off ::: 77 Motivation ::: 78 Organization ::: Change ::: 79 Sign-Posts ::: 80 Bell-Wethers ::: 81 Block The Old Route ::: 82 Atrophy ::: 83 Temptation ::: 84 Staged Transition ::: 85 Transition Channel ::: 86 New Entry Point ::: Objectives ::: 87 Setting An Objective ::: 88 Momentum ::: 89 Rear-End Objectives ::: 90 Shopping ::: 91 Vague Objectives ::: 92 Alternative Objectives ::: 93 Short-Term And Long-Term Objectives ::: 94 Contradictory Objectives ::: Fit ::: 95 Wrong Fit ::: 96 Inadequate Fit ::: 97 Excess ::: 98 Complicated ::: 99 Pre-Emption ::: 100 Combined Fit ::: 101 Standard Units ::: 102 Adaptive Reception ::: Future Forecasts ::: 103 Wide Uncertainty ::: 104 Extrapolation ::: 105 Degrees Of Gloom ::: 106 Accelerating Disaster ::: 107 Stable States ::: 108 Optimism ::: 109 Bumpy Ride ::: 110 Base-Line Drift ::: 111 Wilder Fluctuations ::: 112 Multiple Scenarios ::: 113 Discontinuity ::: Planning ::: 114 Planning ::: 115 Sub-Plan ::: 116 Incomplete Plan ::: 117 Patchy ::: 118 Unnatural ::: 119 Dislocation ::: 120 Friction ::: 121 Unbalanced ::: 122 Top-Down ::: 123 Bottom-Up ::: 124 Conflicting Plans ::: Information ::: 125 Thrust ::: 126 General Exploration ::: 127 Broad Front ::: 128 Linking-Up ::: 129 Finding Support ::: 130 Challenge ::: 131 Disbelief ::: 132 Exchange ::: 133 Come Together ::: 134 Putting A Question ::: 135 Detail ::: 136 Consolidation ::: 137 Confusion ::: 138 Survey ::: Communication ::: 139 No Communication ::: 140 Communication ::: 141 Selling ::: 142 Different Languages ::: 143 Barrier ::: 144 Pseudo-Communication ::: 145 Polarization ::: 146 Ambiguity ::: 147 Field of Communication ::: Risk ::: 148 Stability ::: 149 Vulnerability ::: 150 Bankers’ Risk ::: 151 Investors’ Risk ::: 152 Speculators’ Risk ::: 153 Broadway Risk ::: 154 Insurance Risk ::: 155 Inevitable ::: Group Decisions ::: 156 Compromise ::: 157 Consensus ::: 158 Leadership ::: 159 Power ::: 160 Voting ::: New Venture Investment ::: 161 Steady and Predictable ::: 162 Front-End Investment ::: 163 Ravine ::: 164 High Technology ::: 165 Deceptive ::: 166 Hidden Costs ::: 167 Cut-off ::: Priorities ::: 168 Total Fit ::: 169 Sloppy ::: 170 Almost Suitable ::: 171 Modification ::: 172 Tolerance ::: 173 Design ::: Organization Structure ::: 174 Pyramid ::: 175 Layers ::: 176 Tree ::: 177 Network ::: 178 GoIf Tee ::: 179 Mutual Support ::: Failure ::: 180 Growth ::: 181 Edge Problems ::: 182 Sag ::: 183 Snap ::: 184 Split ::: 185 Disintegration ::: 186 New Roots ::: Basic Thinking ::: 187 Explore ::: 188 Search ::: 189 Posing a Question ::: 190 Project ::: 191 Other Viewpoint ::: 192 Analysis ::: 193 Extract ::: 194 Compare ::: 195 Alternatives ::: 196 Select ::: 197 Synthesis ::: 198 Design ::: 199 Processing ::: 200 Provocation ::: Conclusion

 

Happiness Purpose #ea contents page ::: Amazon ::: The proposed #religion ::: Introduction ::: Nature ::: Religion and Change ::: Meta-Systems ::: Meta-System definition ::: Examples ::: Suicides (lack of a meta-system) ::: A device for reacting ::: Gödel's theorem ::: The use of meta-systems ::: Explanation ::: Origin and destiny ::: Purpose ::: Value ::: Decision ::: Judgement ::: Action ::: Achievement ::: Simplicity ::: The hump effect ::: The community as a meta-system ::: Internalized meta-systems ::: Astrology ::: Ping-pong ball ::: Elements of a New Meta-System ::: Happiness and enjoyment ::: Positive aspects of man's nature ::: Life-enhancing ::: Involvement in the world ::: Now-care and future-care ::: Self-enhancing ::: Humour ::: Balance ::: A god of man's mind ::: New thinking system ::: Truth ::: Respect ::: Activity and achievement ::: Structure ::: System cheats ::: Organization ::: New words ::: Details in following sections ::: Only a framework ::: God, #Belief and Meta-Systems ::: God as creator ::: Self-organizing systems ::: God and self-organizing systems ::: Belief and the new meta-system ::: Truth ::: The need for absolute truth ::: Types of absolute truth ::: Mathematical truth ::: Logical truth ::: Scientific truth ::: Mystic truth ::: Revealed truth ::: Dogmatic truth ::: The process of truth ::: Proof and truth ::: The #consequences of absolute truth ::: Proto-truth ::: Proto-truths and absolute truths ::: Practical varieties of truth ::: Absolute truth ::: Proto-truth ::: Hypothesis ::: Pragmatic truth ::: Proto-truth and hypothesis ::: Proto-truth and pragmatism ::: The #consequences of proto-truth ::: Defence ::: Persecution and intolerance ::: Man's mind ::: The practical use of proto-truths ::: The Mind of Man as God ::: Perception as a self-organizing system ::: Towel and gelatine systems ::: The towel model ::: The gelatine model is different ::: The gelatine model and the brain ::: The importance of patterns ::: Alternative patterns ::: Changing patterns ::: Influencing patterns ::: Thinking ::: Purpose of thinking ::: Misconceptions about thinking ::: Ignorance and information ::: Beauty and feeling ::: Mistakes ::: The ego and thinking ::: Unsolved problems ::: Wisdom and cleverness ::: Exlectics ::: Exlectics and dialectics ::: The process of exlectics ::: Exploration stage ::: Extract a key-point from the situation ::: 'Re-clothing' of the key-point ::: Modification and development of the new idea to make it workable ::: The lump effect ::: Changing ideas ::: Humour ::: Humour and perception ::: Negative aspect of humour ::: The Biodic Symbol (Biodos) ::: What the biodic symbol means ::: Sequence of experience ::: Humour and the biodic symbol ::: Possibility of perceptual change ::: Hope ::: Different ways of looking at things ::: Moving away ::: Going back ::: The lump effect ::: The edge effect ::: The hump effect ::: Functional symbol ::: Stable patterns ::: Use of the biodic symbol ::: Self ::: Christianity and self ::: Buddhism and self ::: Marxism and self ::: The abdication of self ::: The deep self ::: Burden or joy ::: Life-Space and Self-Space ::: Life-space ::: Self-space ::: The gap ::: Pressure and opportunity ::: Self-improvement ::: Different life-spaces ::: Dignity and happiness ::: Happiness ::: Deliberate happiness ::: Types of happiness ::: Pleasure ::: Excitement ::: Enthusiasm ::: Joy ::: Interest ::: Relief ::: Peace ::: Now-care and future-care ::: Balance ::: Action ::: Ups and downs ::: Limitations ::: Activity and Achievement ::: Apathy and activity ::: Boredom ::: Action activity ::: Awareness activity ::: Achievement ::: Achievement and life-space ::: Oasis of competence ::: Confidence ::: Ratio-effect ::: Direction ::: Helping other people ::: Hobbies and special interests ::: Work ::: Organization and community work ::: Inner-world activity ::: Reactive activity and projective activity ::: High-achievers and competition ::: World involvement ::: Dignity ::: The value of self-space ::: Plurality ::: Self-improvement ::: Increasing control ::: Detachment ::: Actual change ::: Perceptual change ::: Discipline ::: Oscillations ::: Dignity and happiness ::: Respect ::: The three respects ::: Positive respect ::: Ordinary interaction ::: Competition ::: Conflict ::: Bullying ::: Help ::: Responsibility ::: Size of respect ::: Mood ::: Holiday mood ::: Other beliefs ::: Positive ::: Constructive ::: Happiness and enjoyment ::: Self ::: Respect ::: Humour ::: Tolerance ::: Plurality ::: Gentle ::: Sensitivity ::: Effectiveness ::: Focus ::: Activity ::: Achievement ::: Involvement ::: System sins ::: Control ::: Practical and realistic ::: Opportunity ::: Day-to-day ::: Balance ::: Wisdom ::: Simplicity ::: Summary ::: Belief ::: Man's mind ::: Proto-truths ::: Biodic symbol ::: Self ::: Life-space ::: Self-space ::: Cope/demand ratio ::: Dignity ::: Respect ::: Happiness ::: Activity ::: Key elements ::: Application ::: Application ::: Avoid ::: Negativity ::: Criticism ::: Opposition ::: Put-downs ::: Sneer ::: Superiority ::: Pretension ::: Egotism ::: Bullying ::: What you can get away with ::: Violence ::: Cynicism ::: World-weariness ::: Boredom ::: Apathy ::: Drift ::: Self-pity ::: Props ::: Passivity ::: Applied Thinking ::: The purpose of thinking ::: Enjoyment ::: Problem-solving ::: Review ::: Perceptual change ::: Preceding overlap each other ::: Starting-point ::: Scan ::: Focus ::: Analysis ::: Framework ::: TEC-PISCO framework ::: TEC ::: PISCO ::: The above framework is only an example ::: Such a framework is not a restricting structure but a liberating one ::: Being wrong ::: Instant judgement ::: Inadequate scan ::: Magnitude effect ::: Point-to-point ::: Being right ::: Error-free ::: Emotional rightness ::: Unique rightness ::: Decision ::: Priorities ::: Review ::: Consequences ::: Alteration ::: Prepared to give up ::: Lateral thinking ::: The three basic processes of lateral thinking ::: Stepping-stone ::: Concept-challenge ::: Random juxtaposition ::: There are many other techniques and processes in lateral thinking ::: Exlectics ::: Practical problems with thinking ::: Life-Space Care ::: Content of the life-space ::: Expectations ::: Pressures ::: Tensions ::: Action processes ::: Ignore them ::: Discard them ::: Flee them ::: Change them ::: Tools ::: Focus ::: Thinking ::: Discipline ::: Cut-off ::: Convenience ::: Abilities and talents ::: Sources of unhappiness ::: Maps ::: Caution ::: Self-Space Care ::: Activity of awareness ::: The moment ::: Activity of action ::: Forms of action activity ::: Hobbies ::: Craft ::: Organizing ::: Involvement ::: Work ::: Helping others ::: Interest ::: Sport ::: Television ::: Achievement ::: Intensity ::: Plurality ::: Stone-cutters' religion ::: Happiness Profiles ::: Ingredients of happiness ::: In setting up a happiness profile it is useful to keep certain things in mind ::: Distraction ::: Counter-effective ::: Effort-expensive ::: Continuity ::: Green-field ::: Sensitization ::: Trade-off ::: Cut-off ::: Happiness audit ::: Happiness foundation ::: Balance ::: Types of balance ::: The spectrum type of balance ::: The mix type of balance ::: The alternation type of balance ::: Dealing with balance ::: Recognition and audit ::: Middle-place concepts ::: Personality ::: Counter-effective ::: Trade-off ::: Cut off ::: Sequence ::: Artificial proportions ::: Balance areas ::: Adjustment and change ::: Involvement and drop-out ::: Now-care and future-care ::: Ignore and react ::: Inner world and outer world ::: Awareness activity and action activity ::: Projective and reactive action ::: Excitement and peace ::: Stability and change ::: Prejudice and doubt ::: Lateral and logical thinking ::: Self and society ::: Structure and freedom ::: Perfect balance ::: Relationships ::: Respect ::: Positive respect ::: The three respects ::: Relationship between individuals ::: Non-intrusion ::: Relationship between individual and society ::: Regulation ::: Modification ::: Replacement ::: Positive respect and the soda! system ::: Priorities ::: Attention ::: Conflict ::: Action ::: Dialectic ::: Failure of respect ::: Action ::: Action Steps ::: 1 Mood and attitude ::: Positive and constructive ::: Anti-negative ::: Happiness and enjoyment ::: Self ::: Respect ::: Anti-passivity ::: Summary ::: 2 Review and audit ::: Life-space maps ::: Happiness-profile and audit ::: EPA ::: Recognize ::: Identify ::: 3 Focus and #objectives ::: Problems ::: Tasks ::: Activity ::: Balance ::: Priorities ::: Conflict ::: Summary ::: 4 Self-space examination ::: 5 Life-space examination ::: 6 Shrinking ::: 7 Expanding ::: Coping ::: Activity ::: 8 Practice and training ::: Being positive ::: The shrug ::: Awareness activity ::: Decision and problem-solving ::: Thinking ::: 9 Understanding ::: 10 Organization ::: Transition Steps ::: 1 The positive mood ::: 2 Improvement ::: 3 Dignity ::: 4 Space-care ::: 5 Role-playing ::: Summary ::: Network ::: Network ::: Purpose and nature of the Network ::: Structure ::: The importance of thinking ::: Group and individual ::: Thinking as a craft ::: Tone ::: Academy and gymnasium ::: Qualifications ::: Motivation ::: Involvement ::: Positive attitude ::: Tolerance ::: Plurality ::: Operating ::: Organizers ::: Information compilers ::: Detectives ::: Researchers ::: Idea generators ::: Synthesizers ::: Reactors ::: Explainers ::: Communicators ::: Salesmen ::: Group organizers ::: Diplomats ::: Leaders ::: Effectors ::: Thinking ::: Logic ::: Analysis ::: Criticism ::: Description ::: Assessment ::: Observation ::: Lateral thinking ::: System design ::: Problem-finding ::: Problem-solving ::: Evaluation ::: Decision ::: Coping ::: Initiative ::: Operation ::: Construction ::: Activity ::: Group and individual ::: Exploration of thinking ::: Thinking practice ::: Problem-solving ::: Task forces ::: Think-tank ::: Communication medium ::: Thinking strategies ::: Network operation and organization ::: Principles ::: Definite ::: Effective ::: Tolerance ::: Respect ::: Organization ::: Problems ::: Lack of consideration ::: Crispness ::: Flavours ::: Eccentrics ::: Involvement ::: Endorsement ::: Contribution ::: Spread ::: Organizing work ::: Funds ::: Thinking ::: Start ::: Symbol ::: Summary

 

Handbook for the positive revolution contents page ::: Amazon ::: Contents ::: Note on the Author ::: Author's Note ::: Introduction ::: The Positive Revolution ::: The Principles ::: Constructive ::: Design ::: Contribution ::: Circles of Concern ::: Special Talent and Positions ::: Selfishness ::: Effectiveness ::: The Joy of Effectiveness ::: Education ::: Self-improvement ::: Increasing the Positive ::: Reducing the Negative ::: Better at What You Are Doing ::: New Skills ::: Emotions ::: Respect ::: Human Dignity and Human Rights ::: Methods ::: Perception ::: Crude Perceptions ::: Humour ::: Information ::: Naming ::: People ::: Situations ::: Symbols ::: Organization ::: Members of the Positive Revolution ::: Groups ::: Education Groups ::: Spread ::: Enemies ::: Uniformity ::: Education ::: The New Education ::: Leadership and Effectiveness ::: Self-help ::: Thinking ::: The Six Thinking Hats ::: Power ::: The Power of Positive and Constructive Attitudes ::: The Power of the Best People ::: The Power of Perception ::: The Power of Thinking and of Information ::: The Power of Co-ordination and Alignment ::: The Power of Support ::: The Power of Spreading ::: The Power of Water ::: Sectors of Society ::: Women ::: Older People ::: Younger People ::: Media ::: Business ::: Art ::: Labour Unions ::: Political Parties ::: Other Revolutionary Groups ::: Problems ::: Summary ::: Appendix: How To Run An E-Club



H+ contents page ::: Amazon ::: Is H+ a #religion? ::: Belief ::: Compatible ::: Different ::: A Way Of Life ::: Positive And Negative ::: Human+ ::: Happiness+ ::: Adjust and change ::: Thinking and happiness ::: Habit ::: Humour+ ::: Attitude ::: Help+ ::: Hope+ ::: Health + ::: Cool ::: Warm form ::: Waffo ::: Waffo and H+ ::: 'Pons' ::: Agenda ::: Pontoon ::: Beggars ::: Charities and good works ::: H+ recruitment ::: Being asked for help ::: Thinking Up Pons ::: Boasting And Showing-Off ::: Failure, Fines And Achievement ::: Projects ::: Rituals ::: Signals ::: Organization ::: Energizers ::: Fines ::: Communication ::: Registration ::: Headquarters ::: Central headquarters ::: Operational headquarters ::: Summary ::: About The Author ::: The Edward de Bono Foundation



Sur/petition contents page ::: Amazon ::: Introduction ::: Sur/petition ::: Integrated values ::: Concepts and creativity ::: Valufacture ::: The age of contraction ::: Format of this book ::: A new perspective ::: Summary ::: What Is Wrong with the Fundamentals? ::: Efficiency ::: Problem Solving ::: Information Analysis ::: Competition ::: Recent Fashions in Business Thinking ::: Cost-cutting ::: Restructuring ::: Quality Management ::: People Care ::: Environmental Concerns ::: Complacency ::: Types of Complacency ::: Comfortable complacency ::: Cozy complacency ::: Arrogant complacency ::: Lack-of-vision complacency ::: Comfortable complacency ::: Comfortable complacency ::: Evolution ::: Nominated Champions ::: Unused Potential ::: The Four Wheels of Human Thinking ::: Procedures and Routines ::: Information ::: Analysis and Logic ::: Creativity ::: Concepts and Information ::: Forming Concepts ::: Concept and Context ::: Sur/petition versus Competition ::: Value Monopolies ::: Protection or Plus ::: The Source of Sur/petition ::: Words, Traps, and Dangers ::: Competition ::: Lumpers and Splitters ::: The Same As ... ::: Integrated Values ::: Benefits of Focus ::: The Three Stages of Business ::: The Stage of Production ::: The Stage of Competition ::: The Stage of Integrated Values ::: Examples ::: The auto industry ::: Airlines ::: Computers ::: Banks ::: Food retailing ::: Integrated Values ::: The Limits of Competition ::: Double Integration ::: Sur/petition ::: Values and Valufacture ::: Opportunities ::: Value Drivers ::: Convenience ::: Quality of life ::: Self-importance ::: Distraction ::: Types of Value ::: Perceived value ::: Real value ::: Gateway value ::: Context value ::: Synergy value ::: Security value ::: Appeal value ::: Fashion value ::: Function value ::: Convenience value ::: Yellow and Green Hats ::: People and Values ::: Nature of the Values ::: Multiple values ::: Focused values ::: By-product values ::: Value Notation ::: Serious Creativity ::: The Use of Creativity in an Organization ::: Does It Work? ::: Motivation ::: Attitudes ::: Focus ::: Lateral Thinking Techniques ::: Asymmetric Patterns ::: Provocation ::: Movement ::: Not Crazy ::: Concept Design ::: Level of Concept ::: Defined Needs ::: The Asset Base ::: Concept Extraction ::: Sur/petition ::: Improving Concepts ::: Concept R&D ::: Cataloging ::: Generating ::: Developing ::: Testing ::: Structure ::: The People ::: Summary (Key Points) ::: Housekeeping ::: Sur/petition ::: Integrated Values ::: Serious Creativity ::: The Importance of Concepts ::: Concept R&D ::: Index



Tactics #ea contents page ::: Amazon ::: Contents ::: Introduction ::: Lucky ::: A Little Mad ::: Very Talented ::: Rapid Growth Field ::: Tactics ::: Alphabetical list of interviewees ::: Part I Success ::: Styles and characteristics of success ::: Creative Style ::: Management Style ::: Entrepreneurial Style ::: Characteristics of Typically Successful Styles ::: Energy, Drive and Direction ::: Ego ::: 'Can-do' ::: Confidence ::: Stamina and Hard Work ::: Efficiency ::: Ruthlessness ::: Ability to Cope with Failure ::: Tactics ::: What stimulates success ::: Negative Stimulants ::: Anxieties ::: Positive Stimulants Power and Money ::: Image Improvement ::: Status ::: Making Things Happen ::: Doing Something Worthwhile ::: Tactics ::: How far is success within our control? ::: Early Environment ::: Born to Succeed ::: Key Factors ::: Expectation ::: Can You Copy a Style and Become a Success? ::: Learning by Copying ::: What Can We Learn from Images? ::: Role-playing to Success ::: Role-living and Success ::: Spot the Phony ::: When is Artificial Phony? ::: Does Luck Leave Success Outside our Control? ::: Is There Such a Thing as Luck? ::: Good Luck or Good Judgment? ::: Looking for Opportunity in Time and Place ::: Tactics ::: Part II Prepare For Success ::: Focus I ::: Self-knowledge ::: Strengths/Weaknesses ::: Self-awareness and Self-correction ::: Tactics ::: Focus II ::: Choice of Field ::: How They Chose What to Do ::: Does the Perfect Job Exist? ::: Be Ready to Change Targets ::: Tactics ::: Part III Make It A Success ::: Thinking and doing ::: How to Generate Ideas ::: Create New Ideas ::: The Creativity of Innocence ::: The Creativity of Escape ::: Tactics ::: Strategy ::: Design a Strategy ::: General Strategy ::: Detailed Strategy ::: How Rigid Should a Strategy Be? ::: Why Strategy Is More Than a Plan ::: How Strategy can Create the Culture of an Organization ::: Tactics ::: Decision-making ::: How to Make a Decision ::: Category Thinkers ::: Intuition Magic of the Muse? ::: Tactics ::: Opportunity ::: No Standing Still ::: Types of Opportunity ::: Opportunity Building ::: Opportunity Seeking ::: Assessing Opportunity. ::: Is Technical Advancement Always an Opportunity? ::: New Technology as Opportunity, A High-risk Area? ::: Opportunism ::: The 'Me-too' Philosophy ::: Niche Strategy ::: Play Your Own Game ::: Tactics ::: Risk ::: Are Successful People Risk-takers? ::: Gambler's Risk ::: The Risk of Innovation ::: Courage to Be at Risk ::: The Difference between Risk and Adventure ::: Risk Reduction ::: Work to Make a Decision Work ::: Learn to Wriggle ::: Tactics ::: Strategy for people as resources ::: How to Choose the Best People ::: How to Construct a Balanced Team ::: Team Motivation ::: Use People Wisely ::: Create a Sense of Involvement ::: Display a Sense of Involvement ::: You Don't Have to be Liked ::: Communicate Goals ::: How to Communicate ::: Getting Rid of People ::: Tactics ::: Tactical play ::: Tactics, Communication and Negotiation ::: How Far Should You Go? ::: The Game's the Thing ::: Image ::: Illusion and Bluff in Negotiation ::: Thinking on Your Feet ::: The Merit of Surprise ::: Gamesmanship ::: Psyching Your Opponent ::: The Proper Place of Tactics? ::: Tactics ::: Epilogue ::: The Lessons ::: New Horizons ::: Index



Textbook of Wisdom #wlh #ea contents page ::: Amazon ::: Authors note ::: # 1 Preventing someone from getting from Point A to B ::: # 2 Provide an easy path to C ::: # 3 Deciding which path to pursue ::: # 4 Wisdom is much concerned with the richness of ‘possibility’ ::: Introduction ::: Perception ::: Now and then the 'edge effect' ::: Truth, certainty and arrogance ::: The power of #possibility ::: Values ::: Contrary and Contradiction ::: Hostage, Slave, Prisoner and Puppet ::: I, We and Identity ::: Contribute ::: The beach and the road ::: Wise about wisdom ::: # 165 A wisdom learning curve ::: The richer and more complex the world in which you ::: # 166 Traditionally, wise people have lived very simple lives ::: # 167 Far better to think of wisdom as a ‘pair of super-spectacles’ ::: A fear that conscience like a nagging aunt is forever ::: # 168 Working with this book ::: Go through this book picking out the points that make ::: You are supposed to integrate what you read here with ::: # 169 About things to avoid and things to seek out ::: # 170 Awareness ::: Wisdom is about awareness and possibilities: awareness ::: # 171 Perception ::: Perception is a matter of picking out the patterns ::: #172 Broad ::: Wisdom is about breadth of perception. There are three ::: # 173 Logic Bubble ::: A logic bubble is that bubble of perceptions and values ::: # 174 Possibly ::: Possibility is the key to wisdom. Possibility is the ::: # 175 Alternatives ::: Richness of perception and design are based on alternatives ::: # 176 Plurality ::: Wisdom encourages different thoughts and different ::: # 177 Parallel Thinking ::: Parallel thinking is the opposite of traditional adversarial ::: # 178 Choice ::: Because wisdom encourages alternatives and possibilities ::: # 179 Values ::: If we determine our values then those values can determine ::: # 180 Emotions and Feelings ::: If our emotions come first then they determine our ::: #181 Judgement ::: We need judgement to find our way through life. The ::: # 182 Design ::: # 183 A New Super-pattern → What would Merlin do? ::: Design is a matter of putting things together to achieve ::: Wisdom comes with growth



General thinking

Teach Your Child How to Think contents page ::: Amazon ::: Part One ::: This Book is Not For You If … ::: Introduction: Why We Need New Thinking About Thinking ::: Information and Thinking ::: Intelligence and Thinking ::: Cleverness and Wisdom ::: Does Thinking Have to Be Difficult? ::: How to Be an Intellectual ::: Reactive and Pro-Active Thinking ::: The New Word 'Operacy' ::: Critical Thinking ::: The Adversarial System ::: Challenge And Protest ::: The Need To Be Right ::: Analysis and Design ::: Creative Thinking ::: Logic and Perception ::: Emotions, Feelings and Intuition ::: Summary ::: Note About the Author ::: Education ::: Business ::: Public Affairs ::: International ::: Publications ::: Think About Thinking ::: Experience ::: Summary ::: How to Use This Book ::: Age ::: Teaching From the Book ::: Motivation ::: Hobby or Sport ::: Teaching Style ::: Discipline ::: Necklace Structure of the Book ::: Sequence ::: Formal Practice ::: Informal Practice ::: Exercises ::: There are four types of practice items ::: 1. Fun Items ::: 2. Remote Items ::: 3. Backyard Items ::: 4. Heavy Items ::: There should always be a mix of items ::: If I had to give a percentage of the mix of items, this would be as follows ::: Stage of building up thinking skills ::: Stage of application of skills already acquired ::: Performance ::: Demonstration ::: Joint ::: Request ::: Parallel ::: Group ::: Written ::: Nature of This Book ::: Age and Ability ::: Simplify ::: Groups ::: Young Group ::: Middle Group ::: Older Group ::: Further Use and Repeat Use ::: Thinking Behaviour ::: You WANT TO THINK ::: You HAVE TO THINK ::: Routine and Non-Routine ::: Focus, Situation and Task ::: Changing Gears ::: Practical Thinking ::: Casual ::: Discussion ::: Applied ::: Automatic and Deliberate (de Bono's Thinking Course) ::: Summary ::: The Nature of Thinking ::: The Nature of Mind (I Am Right — You Are Wrong (From this to the New Renaissance: from Rock Logic to Water Logic) ::: Self-Organizing ::: What Can We Do? ::: Attention-Directing Tools ::: Training ::: Summary ::: Part Two ::: Carpenters and Thinkers ::: Basic Operations ::: Tools ::: Structures ::: Attitudes ::: Principles ::: Habits ::: Summary ::: Attitudes ::: Bad Attitudes ::: Good Attitudes ::: First of all there are attitudes towards the skill of thinking itself ::: Now we can consider some attitudes about the nature of your thinking ::: Exercises for Attitudes ::: The Six Thinking Hats ::: The Six Thinking Hats ::: The six thinking hats is a method for doing one sort of thinking at a time ::: Why Hats? ::: Role-Playing ::: Use of the Hats ::: 1. Yourself ::: 2. Someone Else ::: 3. Group ::: The Six Thinking Hats in Use ::: Attention Directing ::: Exercises on the Six Thinking Hats ::: White-Hat Thinking and Red-Hat Thinking ::: White Hat ::: Missing Information ::: Getting the Information We Need ::: Information and Feeling ::: Challenge ::: Red Hat ::: Justification ::: At This Moment ::: Mixed Feelings ::: Summary ::: Exercises on White-Hat and Red-Hat Thinking ::: Black-Hat Thinking and Yellow-Hat Thinking ::: Black Hat ::: Is It True? ::: Does It Fit? ::: Will It Work? Will the idea work? ::: What are the weaknesses in the idea? ::: Over-Use ::: Yellow Hat ::: What Are the Benefits? ::: Why Should It Work? ::: Over-use ::: Summary ::: Exercises on Black-Hat and Yellow-Hat Thinking ::: Green-Hat Thinking and Blue-Hat Thinking ::: Green Hat ::: Exploration ::: Proposals and Suggestions ::: Alternatives ::: New Ideas ::: Provocations ::: Action and Energy ::: Blue Hat ::: Where are We Now? ::: What is the Next Step? ::: Program for Thinking ::: Summary ::: Observation and Comment ::: Over-use ::: Summary ::: Exercises on Green-Hat and Blue-Hat Thinking ::: Six Thinking Hats in Sequence ::: Occasional Use ::: Systematic Use ::: Sequence Use ::: Seeking an Idea ::: Reacting to a Presented Idea ::: Short Sequences ::: Summary ::: Exercises on the Sequence Use of the Six Hats ::: Outcome and Conclusion ::: Three types of outcomes ::: Better Map ::: Pin-Pointing Needs ::: Specific Answer ::: Summary ::: The Five-Minute Thinking Format ::: One Minute (Purpose, Focus, Outcome, Situation) ::: Next Two Minutes (Explore) ::: Next One Minute (Choosing or Deciding) ::: Final One Minute (Outcome) ::: Output ::: Exercises on the Five-Minute Thinking Format ::: Forward or Parallel ::: LOGIC AND PERCEPTION ::: CAF: Consider All Factors ::: Exercises on CAF ::: APC: Alternatives, Possibilities, Choices ::: Exercises On APC ::: Values ::: Exercises on Values ::: OPV: Other People's Views ::: Two Sides in an Argument ::: Exercises on OPV ::: C&S: Consequence and Sequel ::: Time Scale ::: Immediate ::: Short-Term ::: Medium-Term ::: Long-Term ::: Risk ::: Certainty ::: Exercises on C&S ::: PMI: Plus, Minus and Interesting ::: Interesting ::: Scan ::: Exercises on PMI ::: Focus and Purpose ::: Key Questions ::: Setting the Focus ::: Type of Thinking ::: Exploring ::: Seeking ::: Choosing ::: Organizing ::: Checking ::: Type of thinking as a part of focus & purpose ::: Exercises on Focus and Purpose ::: AGO: Aims, Goals and #Objectives ::: Alternative Definitions of the Objective ::: Sub-Objectives ::: Exercises On AGO ::: FIP: First Important Priorities ::: Include and Avoid ::: How Many Priorities? ::: Exercises on FIP ::: First Review Section ::: Tools and Habits ::: The Thinking Habits ::: Focus and Purpose ::: Forward and Parallel ::: Perception and Logic ::: Values ::: Outcome and Conclusions ::: Summary ::: The Six Thinking Hats ::: The Thinking Tools ::: AGO: Aims, Goals and Objectives ::: CAF: Consider All Factors ::: OPV: Other People's Views ::: APC: Alternatives, Possibilities and Choices ::: FIP: First Important Priorities ::: C&S: Consequence and Sequel ::: PMI: Plus, Minus and Interesting ::: Use of the Tools ::: Habits and Tools ::: Summary ::: Review Exercises ::: Part Three ::: Broad and Detail ::: Generating Alternatives ::: Extracting the Broad Idea ::: Concept and Function ::: Summary ::: Exercises on Broad and Detail ::: Basic Thinking Operations ::: Carpenter Model ::: The Cutting Operation ::: Focus ::: Extract a Feature ::: Analysis ::: Expansion ::: The Sticking Operation ::: Connections ::: Recognition ::: Synthesis ::: Construction ::: Design ::: The Shaping Operation ::: Judgement ::: Matching ::: Hypothesis ::: Comparison ::: Summary ::: Exercises on Basic Thinking Operations ::: Truth, Logic and Critical Thinking ::: Game Truth ::: Reality Truth ::: 1. Checkable truth ::: 2. Personal experience ::: 3. Second-hand experience ::: 4. Generally accepted ::: 5. Authority ::: Consider the following statements about cows ::: Thinking Habit ::: Logic ::: Logic, Information and Creativity ::: Critical Thinking ::: Summary ::: Exercises on Truth, Logic and Critical Thinking ::: Under What Circumstances? ::: Thinking Habit ::: Exercises on Circumstances ::: Hypothesis, Speculation and Provocation (Serious Creativity) ::: Jump Ahead ::: Levels of Speculation ::: Certain ::: Reasonably Sure ::: Good Guess ::: Possible ::: Tentative ::: Provocation ::: Action and Change ::: Creative Attitude ::: Scientific Thinking ::: Business Thinking ::: Summary ::: Exercises on Hypothesis, Speculation and Provocation ::: Lateral Thinking ::: Is creativity a mysterious talent possessed by a few people? ::: Creating ::: Art ::: Genius ::: Changing Ideas and Perceptions ::: Origin ::: Use of Lateral Thinking ::: Definition ::: General and Specific ::: Patterns ::: Humour ::: Hindsight ::: Provocation and Po ::: Movement ::: Setting Up Provocations ::: Received Provocations ::: Reversal ::: Escape ::: Wishful Thinking ::: Outrageous ::: Summary ::: Exercises on Provocation and Po ::: Movement ::: Introduction ::: Ways of Getting Movement ::: Attitude ::: Moment-to-Moment ::: Extract a Principle ::: Focus on the Difference ::: Search for Value ::: Interesting ::: Summary ::: Exercises on Movement ::: The Random Word ::: Introduction ::: Getting the Random Word ::: List of Random Words ::: Why It Works ::: Use of the Technique ::: Summary ::: Exercises on the Random Word ::: Second Review Section ::: The first review covered many specific thinking tools plus attention-directing ::: This second review section is concerned with some of the fundamental thinking operations ::: Truth and Creativity ::: Critical Thinking ::: Creative Thinking ::: Lateral Thinking ::: Basic Operations ::: Cutting ::: Sticking ::: Shaping ::: Further Thinking Habits ::: Circumstances ::: Broad and Detail ::: Summary ::: Review Exercises ::: Principles for Thinking ::: 1. Always be constructive ::: 2. Think slowly and try to make things as simple as possible ::: 3. Detach your ego from your thinking and be able to stand back to look at your thinking ::: 4. At this moment, what am I trying to do? What is the focus and purpose of my thinking? ::: 5. Be able to 'switch gears' in your thinking ::: 6. What is the outcome of my thinking--why do I believe that it will work? ::: 7. Feelings and emotions are important parts of thinking but their place is after exploration ::: 8. Always try to look for alternatives, for new perceptions and for new ideas ::: 9. Be able to move back and forth between broad-level thinking and detail-level thinking ::: 10. Is this a matter of 'maybe' or a matter of 'must be'? ::: 11. Differing views may all be soundly based on differing perceptions ::: 12. All actions have #consequences and an impact on values, people and the world around ::: Summary ::: Part Four ::: Structures and Situations ::: Structures ::: Situations ::: Summary ::: TO/LOPOSO/GO (Teach Yourself To Think) ::: TO ::: LO ::: PO ::: SO ::: GO ::: Visual Structure ::: Interaction ::: Summary ::: Exercises On TO/LOPOSO/GO ::: Arguments and Disagreements ::: Emotions and Feelings ::: Use of the Red Hat ::: Words ::: Perceptions ::: Values ::: Logic ::: Specific Structure ::: Declaration ::: Comparison ::: Design ::: Trading ::: Power Disputes ::: Summary ::: Exercises on Arguments and Disagreements ::: Problems and Tasks ::: Tasks ::: Guessing and Estimating ::: The Problink Method ::: 'Link' ::: Route ::: Detail ::: Selection of Alternatives ::: Objective ::: Feasibility ::: Priorities ::: Values ::: General Assessment ::: Action ::: New Problems or Tasks ::: Summary ::: Exercises on Problems and Tasks ::: Decisions and Choices ::: Emotions ::: Greed ::: Fear ::: Laziness ::: Emotional contribution check ::: Minor Decisions and Choices ::: The Six-Hats Structures ::: Attention-directing Tools ::: Major Decisions and Choices ::: Objective and Priorities ::: Benefits ::: Feasibility ::: Difficulties and Dangers ::: Impact ::: Consequences ::: Cost ::: Risk ::: Short-Fall ::: Harm and Danger ::: Cost-Overrun ::: Circumstance Change ::: Fall-Back Position ::: Risk awareness and minimization ::: Trial and Testing ::: Selection ::: Four Choices ::: The Ideal Choice ::: The Emotional Choice ::: The Practical Choice ::: The Minimal Choice ::: Making the Choice ::: Design ::: Analysis Paralysis ::: Summary ::: Exercises on Decisions and Choices ::: Third Review Section ::: General-Purpose Structure ::: Argument and Disagreement ::: Problems and Tasks ::: Decisions and Choices ::: Summary ::: Review Exercises ::: Part Five ::: Newspaper Exercises ::: 1. The Tower ::: 2. The Adjectives ::: 3. The Bridge ::: 4. Headline Story ::: 5. the Chain ::: 6. Picture and Story ::: The Ten-Minute Thinking Game ::: The Drawing Method ::: Words and Pictures ::: Operacy ::: Discussion ::: Summary ::: Exercises With Drawing ::: Final Word ::: Appendix: Thinking Clubs ::: Purpose of the Thinking Clubs ::: Activities of the Thinking Clubs ::: Principles ::: Practical Matters ::: Discipline ::: Duration of Meetings ::: Frequency of Meeting ::: Organizer ::: Place of Meetings ::: Number of People ::: Log Book ::: Activities During a Meeting of a Thinking Club ::: 1. Formal matters ::: 2. Thinking task catalogue ::: Practice Items ::: Personal Items ::: Local Items ::: Project Items ::: World Affairs ::: 3. Skills learning and practice ::: 4. Comment upon thinking skill ::: 5. Application to personal matters ::: 6. Application to local matters ::: 7. Project report and thinking ::: 8. World affairs ::: 9. Final matters ::: Total Timing ::: Material ::: Training ::: Register of Thinking Clubs ::: Summary



de Bono’s Thinking Course contents page ::: Amazon ::: Note on Author ::: The leading authority in the world on the direct teaching of thinking as a skill ::: “Thinking about thinking” ::: Lessons widely used in ::: Education ::: Leading corporations ::: Governments ::: Background ::: Rhodes Scholar ::: Medicine ::: Psychology ::: Invented lateral thinking ::: Author’s note ::: Most people think their thinking is pretty good ::: Improving thinking skill ::: Wisdom vs. cleverness ::: Thinking is the ultimate human resource ::: The quality of our future will depend entirely on the quality of our thinking ::: Applies on a personal level, a community level and on the world level ::: Summary ::: On the whole our thinking is rather … ::: poor ::: short-sighted ::: egocentric ::: We have come to believe that judgement and argument are sufficient ::: In a rapidly changing world we are finding that our thinking is adequate to meet the demands put upon it ::: Thinking as a skill ::: Introduction ::: Thinking is a matter of intelligence vs. a skill that can be improved ::: Intelligence and genes ::: We can do a great deal more about the operating skill with which intelligence is used—the skill of thinking ::: Intelligence and education ::: Assumptions ::: Thinking is the operating skill with which intelligence acts upon experience (for a purpose) ::: Not interested in measuring intelligence or thinking skills ::: More interested in designing thinking tools and training methods ::: The intelligence trap ::: Many people who consider themselves to be highly intelligent are not necessarily good thinkers. They get caught in the intelligence trap ::: Aspects ::: Take a view of a subject and then use intelligence to defend that view ::: Don’t seek alternative ::: Don’t listen to anyone else ::: Satisfaction factor ::: Prove someone else wrong ::: Critical ::: Destructive ::: Being constructive is much less rewarding ::: Takes years to show that a new idea works ::: Depend on the listener liking your idea ::: Practice ::: Surely all the “practice” is thinking should make people better thinkers? ::: Two finger typists ::: If you practice poor thinking for years you will become an extremely skilled poor thinker ::: Education ::: Doesn’t teach thinking ::: Certain fundamental processes that cut across all fields ::: Assessing priorities ::: Seeking alternatives ::: Forming hypotheses ::: Generating new ideas ::: As little as 7 hours can have a powerful effect ::: Critical thinking ::: Inadequate on its own ::: Gang of three ::: Analysis ::: Judgement ::: Argument ::: World problems ::: because traditional education ::: Our success in science and technology ::: Not from critical thinking ::: From the “possibility” system ::: Moves ahead of our information to create hypothesis and visions ::: A framework through which to look at things ::: Also something to work towards ::: Critical thinking’s part ::: If you know your hypothesis is going to be criticized ::: Then you seek to make it stronger ::: But critical destruction of one hypothesis has never produced a better one ::: It is creativity that produces the better hypothesis (???) ::: Perception ::: Outside highly technical matters, perception is by far the most important part of thinking ::: Perception is … ::: how we look at the world ::: what things we take into account ::: how we structure the world ::: In real life logical errors are quite rare ::: Garbage In Garbage Out ::: If your perception is limited then flawless logic will give you an incorrect answer ::: Bad logic makes for bad thinking. But the opposite is not true at all ::: This is a book about perception ::: It now seems very likely that perception works as a “self-organizing information system” ::: See ::: The Mechanism of Mind ::: I Am Right You Are Wrong ::: The tool method ::: Know which tool to use at any point in order to get the desired effect ::: Tools are really “attention-directing tools” ::: We can now direct attention at will ::: Without attention-directing tools attention follows the patterns laid down by experience and we remain trapped ::: Sales job on the method ::: CoRT Thinking Lessons ::: Perfection Learning ::: 10520 New York Avenue ::: Des Moines, Iowa 50322 ::: 515 278-0133 ::: Deleted headlines ::: Learning thinking and teaching thinking ::: The thinker ::: Self-image ::: Think slowly ::: The PMI ::: Scan ::: Interesting ::: Use of the PMI ::: Two steps ::: Practice ::: Alternatives ::: Introduction ::: A deliberate search for alternatives counteracts the natural tendency of mind ::: certainty, security, and arrogance ::: arise from the pattern-making and pattern-using system ::: The tool is the APC ::: About alternatives ::: Easy alternatives ::: Because there are few constraints (as to practicality, cost, mess) ::: More difficult alternatives ::: The “L-Game” ::: The real difficulty ::: is to set out to look for alternatives in the first place ::: Beyond the adequate ::: Contentment with an “adequate” solution or approach is the biggest block there is to any search for a better alternative ::: Change the idiom (see page # 28) ::: The APC ::: Alternatives, #Possibilities, Choices ::: Doing an APC means making a deliberate effort to generate alternatives at that particular point ::: Situations in which we may want to “do an APC” ::: Explanation (alternative explanations) ::: Hypothesis ::: Perception ::: Problems ::: Review ::: Design ::: Decision ::: Courses of action ::: Forecasting ::: Practicality ::: Alternatives and creativity ::: Exercises for APC ::: Perception and patterns ::: Perception ::: Crossing the road ::: Pattern making ::: How patterns are formed ::: The use of patterns ::: Recognition ::: Getting it wrong ::: Abstraction ::: Grouping ::: Analysis ::: Awareness ::: Art ::: Exercise ::: Lateral thinking ::: Progress ::: Pattern changing ::: Humor ::: Hindsight and insight ::: Creativity and lateral thinking ::: Lateral thinking as process ::: Judgement and provocation ::: The word “po” ::: The steppingstone method ::: The escape method ::: The random stimulation method ::: General use of lateral thinking ::: The logic of lateral thinking ::: Information and thinking ::: Operacy ::: Experience scan ::: CAF ::: C & S ::: Dense reading and dense listening ::: Logic ::: Getting more information ::: Questions ::: Experiments ::: Selecting information ::: FI-FO ::: Two uses ::: Other people ::: Most thinking has to do with other people ::: The problem of the clash system ::: Need to outline so I can name the game ::: You can criticize anything at all by choosing a frame different from what you see ::: We need to make a great effort to develop … ::: Design thinking ::: Constructive thinking ::: Creative thinking ::: Exlectics ::: The constructive part. The alternative to the clash system ::: Has to do with … ::: Map reading ::: Creative design ::: Seek to “lead out” or “pull out” of the situation what is of value ::: No matter on which side it is to be found ::: Much more that compromise or consensus ::: Compromise is still within the clash system ::: Consensus means staying with that part of a proposal on which everyone is agreed ::: It is passive ::: A lowest common denominator type approach ::: More like the “osmosis” method used by the Japanese ::: No opposing or varying ideas to begin with ::: There is joint listening and joint exploration ::: Later the ideas begin to emerge ::: “Views” begin to gel after many meetings ::: A matter of dealing with the “terrain” ::: Not a matter of dealing with “views” ::: The sort of difference that was to be found between the intelligence trap and the PMI ::: The CoRT tools that are used for exlectics are … tools ::: exploratory ::: mapping ::: EBS (Examine Both Sides) ::: “What really is the other point of view…” ::: Not just as it is expressed in argument form but the “terrain” behind it? ::: This exploration is neutral ::: EBS does not preclude the holding of … But this comes after the exploration not, before it ::: a point of view ::: a value system ::: a preference ::: An attention-directing tool ::: More difficult to do that it seems ::: Similar to doing a thorough reconnaisance of the enemy’s territory during wartime ::: Except you are examining the territory for a constructive purpose ::: Not easy to sustain this difference of attitude ::: Need the detachment of the committed mapmaker ::: ADI (Agreement, Disagreement, Irrelevance) ::: The EBS mapping exercise leads almost directly into the ADI ::: The two maps are compared (from examination of both sides) ::: The areas of agreement are noted ::: The areas of disagreement are noted ::: Finally the areas of irrelevance ::: Often shows that the areas of disagreement might be quite small ::: But appear very much larger in the argument situation because neither side dare concede a point for fear that this will be used ::: At the end of an effective ADI both parties should be able to point directly at the area of disagreement ::: What we are really in disagreement about is this point here ::: Usually be quite a lot on which there is agreement ::: This can be used as a base for trying to design a way around the disagreement ::: In any case there is a stronger negotiating base ::: Isolating the area of disagreement also means that it can be further examined in order to find out how basic the disagreement may be ::: ADI can be done … ::: separately by both parties ::: or it can be done as a cooperative undertaking (the best) ::: Logic-bubbles ::: Someone does not agree with you or does not do what you think he ought to do ::: He is … ::: stupid ::: cantankerous ::: obstinate ::: or He is … ::: highly intelligent ::: and acting intelligently within his own logic-bubble ::: His logic bubble happens to be different from yours ::: The logic bubble is that bubble of perception within which a person is acting ::: The bubble included perception of … ::: circumstance ::: structure ::: context ::: relationships ::: Too often we put intelligent people into certain situations and then complain when they act intelligently ::: Innovation example ::: Strike example ::: It is probably quite far from the truth that everyone is acting very logically within his or her logic-bubble ::: As a practical way of looking at things ::: Direct attention to the circumstances in which the behavior is quite logical ::: The logic bubble includes … ::: The actual circumstances surrounding a person ::: His perception of the situation ::: It is useful to map out the logic bubbles of the other people involved ::: This is especially important in the area of motivation ::: Management always regards motivation as vital ::: Motivation depends on the logic-bubbles of those who are to be motivated, not on the logic bubble of management. ::: OPV ::: Another of the CoRT tools ::: Overlaps with EBS and the logic bubble ::: Stands for other people’s views ::: Tries to put himself in the other person’s shoes in order to look at the world from that position ::: Identify the other people who are really part of the situation ::: Getting into the shoes of all these other people ::: See format on page 96 ::: Doing an OPV ::: Doesn’t mean … ::: Putting into the mouths of all parties sane and rational arguments of the sort one might hold oneself ::: Putting into their mouths complaints and irrationality in order to condemn their point of view ::: It means ::: Objectively trying to look at the world from that point of view ::: and perhaps adding what is thought to be the actual point of view ::: It is a blend between “position” point of view and the “actual” point of view ::: Constructive Design ::: The mapping techniques mentioned in this section (EBS, ADI, logic-bubble, and OPV) are intended to give a broader and clearer view of the situation: a better map ::: Maybe they don’t want to resolve the dispute ::: Maybe the dispute is of value to them ::: Allow the dispute to continue on a ritual or cosmetic level ::: While the real issues are resolved in a constructive manner ::: Where necessary, the second part of the exlectic process might be the constructive design of an outcome or course of action ::: Maybe a solution ::: Maybe just a way of living or a way of getting on with things ::: Design questions ::: What are the ingredients? ::: What is to be achieved? ::: What are the constraints? ::: Design process may go through … ::: Several stages ::: Several alternative approaches ::: Several rejections ::: A design is judged satisfactory when it is judged to be satisfactory by those who are to use it ::: Negotiation ::: In it’s true sense — a specialized form of constructive design ::: Involves … ::: Thorough mapping of the areas as suggested in this section ::: And then a stage of constructive design ::: In its “pressure bargaining” sense it is a form of the clash system ::: “Variable value” ::: An important part of negotiation ::: Value can differ much according to the person and the situation ::: What one party wants very much may cost the other party little ::: There is a trading in values ::: There is also a trade-off ::: In order to achieve one thing there ma have to be acceptance of another ::: All this is very much helped by thorough mapping and the attitude of constructive design ::: Values—and especially perceived values—are the most important ingredient in the design ::: Communication ::: Useful communication must always be in the language of the receiver ::: The mapping methods listed in this section should be used to map out the terrain in terms of … ::: position ::: history ::: mood ::: value ::: concepts available ::: The logic-bubble of the listener includes the concepts and perceptions available to him or her ::: Simple concepts may be very complicated and subtle ::: Such as those held by children ::: Complex concepts are often broken down into subconcepts ::: Whereas simple concepts have to embrace a great deal with one concept ::: Adults always tend to think that children have simple adult concepts: but children have complicated child concepts ::: Emotions and values ::: Gut feeling and thinking ::: Emotions at three points ::: Changing feelings ::: Values ::: HV and LV ::: Value-laden words ::: Awareness ::: Making decisions ::: Introduction ::: Size of a decision … ::: is always proportional to the inadequacy of the reason for making it ::: If information is sufficient to make the decision for us ::: then we, as humans, are superfluous ::: We are only called in to make decisions when ::: an analysis of information is insufficient ::: when we have to ::: speculate or guess ::: or apply human values and emotions ::: In the end all decision are emotional ::: This chapter deals with quite ordinary decisions ::: Not the type that requires running various factors through an econometric model ::: The L-game ::: The value of the decision can be checked ::: In almost all decision situations the difficulty is that the value of the decision can only be checked in the future—after the decision has been made ::: The number of alternatives is only limited by our imaginations ::: Decision preframe ::: This is the setting for the decision ::: Context ::: What is the context? ::: What is the situation in which the decision is to be made? ::: calm, panic, conflict, competitive pressure, or what? ::: Need ::: Why is there a need to make a decision at all? ::: Why is there a need to make it now? ::: If the decision is put off will the matter resolve itself or will an opportunity be lost? ::: Is there pressure to make the decision? ::: Is this pressure self-imposed, imposed by others or imposed by the advice of friends? ::: Time frame ::: What is the time frame of the decision? ::: To making of the decision ::: Today, this month, this year, within the next decade ::: To the effects ::: When will the effects of the decision become apparent? ::: Next week ::: In 20 years’ time ::: Type ::: The “type” of decision ::: Is it an adjustment or change in direction ::: Or is it a major switch? ::: Is it a decision to stop doing something or to start doing something? ::: Is it the sort of decision that depends very much on other people for its implementation ::: Or is it one that can be make directly by the deciders? ::: Is it irrevocable or can it be reversed if it does not work out? ::: Is it one among many decisions or one which sets the course for all that follows? ::: Is it a decision that the people making the decision are capable of making? ::: Generation of alternatives ::: Obvious alternatives ::: (Some) alternatives that have to be discovered ::: Should be a practical cutoff when a decision has to be made ::: To hope for the ultimate alternative is unrealistic ::: When a decision is difficult to make … ::: It is always worth going back to try to generate further alternatives ::: Values and priorities ::: These can be spelled out in advance ::: Priorities may sometimes … ::: appear as values ::: and sometimes as subobjectives ::: Values and priorities are interwoven in the ten decision methods which follow ::: Decision methods ::: The dice method ::: List the alternatives and just throw a die to decide which one is to be followed ::: Is it more important to make the right decision or to be happy with the decision ::: People tend to get to like and justify decisions after they have been made ::: Make the decision ::: Get to like ::: In some situations making a decision work is even more important that choosing the right decision ::: The easy way out method ::: Decisions not only have to be made, they have to be acted upon ::: Some alternatives are much easier to choose and to act upon than others ::: What is the easiest alternative to choose? ::: Then the effort is made to build up and justify this decision ::: this is a conscious positive effort ::: If at the end of this effort the choice seems an acceptable one it can be made ::: The spell-out method ::: Imagine having chosen each alternative in turn ::: Describe to a friend why he has made that decision ::: Put forward all the reasons ::: Why it is a good choice ::: Why it suits him ::: Write down the reasons ::: Read through in their own right ::: Which one sounds best? ::: Which one makes the most sense? ::: Sometimes the best stand out very clearly ::: At other times some of the justifications are so feeble that those alternatives disappear from the list ::: The spell out is an extension of the “easy way out” method ::: Balaam’s ass method ::: When the alternatives are equally attractive ::: The difficulty lies in bringing ourselves to give up an attractive alternative ::: Do the very best you can to “knock” or make unattractive each alternative in turn ::: If you succeed then there is no pain in giving them up and the best decision emerges ::: The ideal solution method ::: The alternatives are listed—and then ignored ::: An “ideal solution” is fashioned for the situation ::: The general “shape” of this solution is considered ::: It should not be detailed but the characteristics should be noted ::: The list of alternatives should be uncovered and examined to see which of them approached the nearest to the ideal solution ::: The best home method ::: The best “home” for an idea is that … in which the idea would thrive ::: situation ::: context ::: For each alternative we find the best home ::: For what type of person in what type of circumstances would that choice of alternative be the best? ::: You then compare that “home” to actuality ::: The “what if …?” method ::: Different “what if …?” type changes are made in the circumstances to see at what point an alternative suddenly stops being attractive ::: When you hit on a “what if” that makes the choice unattractive then you have isolated the real reason behind making that particular choice ::: The process is really a focusing one ::: The simple matrix method ::: Grid ::: List the alternatives along the side ::: List the qualities you are looking for along the top ::: In the boxes you indicate how a particular alternative relates to that particular quality ::: Attempt to pick out the few crucial qualities that would be required for any decision ::: A way of screening out those alternatives which are totally unsuitable ::: The remaining alternatives can be treated with another decision method, or else a further “crucial” quality can be tested ::: This can go on with the application of further qualities until only one alternative survives ::: What alternative survives the crucial demands? ::: The full matrix method ::: The laziness method ::: Decision postframe ::: Personal style and self-image is vary important factor here ::: Is it the sort of decision that one can see oneself making? ::: If the decision is a ruthless one ::: Can the person making it see themselves carrying it through? ::: Decisions need to be objective but the personal style of the decider is part of that objectivity ::: The people involved need a lot of consideration ::: They may have to agree to the decision ::: They may have to carry it through ::: They may be affected by it ::: At this point such techniques as the OPV or logic-bubble need to be applied ::: The #consequences of the decision have to be examined in the different time frames by doing a C&S ::: Immediate ::: Short-term ::: Medium-term ::: Long-term ::: Then there is the implementation of the decision ::: Who is going to implement it? ::: How is it going to be implemented? ::: Are the channels available or must they be set up? ::: What are the stages of implementation? ::: What are the likely problems and sticking points? ::: What are the risks and dangers? ::: All these points apply to any course of action ::: What is the terrain? ::: This is a “map” of the circumstances or environment in which the decision is going to be carried out ::: Competitors ::: Rivals ::: The state of the world (both on a large scale and a small scale) ::: The “fall-back” position ::: What if the decision proves to be wrong? ::: What if it cannot be implemented? ::: What if circumstances change? ::: Can the decision be resersed? ::: Is rescue possible? ::: Can there be a switch to a reserve position? ::: It sometimes feels as though the decision of a fall-back position weakens the confidence with which a decision is made ::: If you are sure it is the right decision why design an escape route? ::: But all decisions are speculative—otherwise they would not be decisions ::: There is a difference between being unwilling to take risks and making provision for things not turning out as hoped ::: Emphasis on fit ::: In many of the methods suggested the emphasis is not directly on the value of the alternatives but on how they fit the actual circumstances ::: We need to change difficult decisions into easy decisions first ::: In the end all decision must be emotional, but the clearer the picture the more suitable the application ::: The future ::: Thinking and doing ::: Operacy ::: Three ways of doing things ::: Setting #objectives ::: AGO ::: Targets ::: Strategy and tactics ::: Course of action ::: If-box method ::: Planning ::: The terrain ::: People ::: Risks ::: Constraints ::: Resources ::: Future ::: Business and daily life ::: Deliberate thinking ::: What can one do about developing thinking as a usable skill? Make it … ::: Deliberate ::: Turn on thinking at will ::: Direct thinking to any subject or any aspect of a subject ::: There are general aspects of thinking which apply at all times ::: Focused ::: The thinking tools are a means for being focused in thinking ::: You can set out to do a PMI or OPV ::: The first step is to determine to do it ::: The second step is to do it ::: It is like giving a definite instruction to oneself ::: The focus can be as tight as you wish ::: Confident ::: Thinking should be confident ::: Not arrogant ::: To be sure that you are right ::: To be sure that your thinking is better than anyone else’s ::: To be sure that there can be no alternatives ::: Arrogance is a major sin in thinking ::: Not necessarily brilliant ::: Has nothing to do with value ::: It is the way something is done ::: Knows the limits of his skills ::: Exercises it with confidence ::: A confident thinker … ::: Does not have to prove himself right ::: and the other person wrong ::: He or she see the thinking as an operating skill ::: not an ego-achievement ::: Is willing to listen to others ::: Is willing to improve his thinking by acquiring … ::: a new idea ::: or a new way of thinking ::: Is willing to set out to think about something ::: Is able to acknowledge that an answer has not been found ::: Is able to make mistakes and to learn from them ::: Enjoyable ::: If you only do it when there is a problem, it won’t be enjoyable ::: Not talking about puzzles, games, and brainteasers ::: It is more a matter of being able to think about different things ::: Having ideas ::: Working things out ::: Engaging in “thinking” type discussion ::: Boring type ::: Each party is trying to put across a particular point of view ::: Enjoyable type ::: Each is exploring the subject ::: Self-image ::: The most important point of all ::: “I am a thinker” ::: I can try to think about things ::: I enjoy thinking about things ::: I am interested in developing more skill at thinking ::: The techniques, understanding, and methods are of secondary importance to this ::: Time discipline (two to four minutes for thinking about an item) ::: Strict time discipline enhances not only the effectiveness of thinking but also the enjoyment ::: Should be very short ::: 30 seconds ::: One minute ::: Five minutes ::: Reasons ::: More deliberate and more focused ::: Switch on thinking and operates it ::: Focuses directly on the task ::: Freedom ::: Takes burden and stress out ::: Can stop at the end of the time ::: Don’t have to solve the problem or gotten a wonderful answer ::: Just have to think for two minutes ::: For the alloted time they should have been using their thinking—whatever the result ::: Harvesting ::: Another very important point ::: “Harvesting” is the other side of the coin to “time-discipline” ::: It is a matter of making oneself aware of what has been achieved, even in a very brief thinking session ::: Perhaps some point has become more clear? ::: Perhaps there is an actual suggestion? ::: Perhaps some alternatives have been spelled out? ::: Perhaps some point has been identified as problem area that needs further thinking attention? ::: Sensitive harvesting means being acutely aware of just what has been achieved ::: There will always be something that has been achieved ::: It is a matter of being aware of it ::: “I just keep going round in circles” is a considerable achievement: as an identification of a “locked-in” situation ::: Exercises ::: Later he discusses “setting thinking tasks” ::: Thinking about thinking ::: A skilled thinker can do two things ::: Think about the subject (performing the thinking task) ::: Think about the thinking used in performing the thinking task ::: Not a common habit ::: Look … ::: back at the thinking he used in performing a thinking task ::: at the thinking he is using at the moment ::: at the thinking he feels he is going to use ::: at the thinking used by other people ::: Not doing so with the aim of criticizing it or attacking it ::: The intention is to watch what thinking is being applied ::: Just as bird watchers watch birds ::: The better one gets at it, the more the fascination grows ::: In looking at thinking ::: Areas of observation ::: Blockages ::: The recurrence of certain ideas ::: Emotional points ::: Possible difficulties in generating more alternatives ::: Blank spots ::: Other ways of looking at things ::: The likelihood of a conclusion ::: The identification of any sticking points ::: Difficulties in getting going ::: Finding a starting point ::: Exercise ::: Write down a repertoire of these observations ::: Stocking your mind with such concepts ::: Becomes possible to “observe” thinking ::: The concept of “value-laden” words ::: Allow your to search for ::: Pick out ::: Aware of the various uses. Stand out more obviously ::: Look at the thinking used “in general about a particular subject” ::: Thinking structures ::: A simple structure ::: The TEC framework ::: A very simple structure for … ::: focusing thinking ::: and making of it a deliberate task ::: It will be incorporated in the “five-minute think” ::: For the time being it will be treated in a more general sense ::: T stands for “Target” and “Task” ::: The “target” is the precise focus of the thinking ::: May be as tight or general as you wish ::: The “task” is the thinking task that is to be performed ::: Review ::: Look at the way something is being done with an eye to improvement ::: Fault finding and fault correction ::: Problem solving ::: Problem finding ::: A creative exercise ::: Any of the thinking tools mentioned in this book (or in the CoRT lessons) ::: Doing a C & S or AGO ::: Both should be defined precisely ::: E stands for “Expand” and “Explore” ::: This is the opening-up phase ::: We could … ::: use lateral thinking techniques ::: do a CAF ::: and consider all factors ::: scan our experience ::: analyze the situation ::: try to abstract familiar patterns ::: We are … ::: opening up the field ::: filling in the map ::: exploring the territory ::: A certain amount of wandering is permissible ::: Write all you know about … ::: The expansion is positive and free-flowing ::: Not trying to exercise judgement of find the best ideas at this stage ::: We are pulling in information and concepts ::: “Richness” is all important ::: C stands for “Contract” and “Conclude” ::: This is the narrowing down phase ::: We are trying to make sense of what we have ::: We are trying to come to a definite conclusion ::: This may be … ::: A solution ::: A creative idea ::: An additional alternative or an opinion ::: We can now use design, shaping and judgement ::: The conclusion is the outcome of our thinking, not just a summary of it. ::: What does it boil down to? ::: What does it add up to? ::: What is the outcome? ::: What is the result? ::: Three levels at which the conclusion can be set ::: A specific answer, idea, or opinion ::: A full harvesting of all that has been achieved, including for example a listing of ideas considered ::: An objective look at the “thinking” that has been used ::: Even in the absence of anything at level 1 there should be an output at levels 2 and 3 ::: TEC can be applied at any point ::: Focus ::: Set task ::: Open up ::: Narrow down ::: Conclude ::: The 5-minute think (also see Teach your child how to think) ::: The time allocation ::: 1 minute for Target and Task ::: 2 minutes for Expand and Explore ::: 2 minutes for Contract and conclude ::: Strict adherence to the time allocation. No rushing ahead ::: A sample 5 minute think ::: There should be no sense of rush ::: If there is, then the target has been pitched too widely ::: It is also possible to repeat a 5 minute think with the same target ::: There is a temptation to turn a 5 minute think into a 30 minute think through a succession of sessions on the same subject ::: This destroys the whole point of the exercise ::: Symbolic TEC (see drawing) ::: Could be placed in the margin of a report ::: A fuller structure ::: PISCO ::: A rather fuller framework is provided by PISCO ::: Both TEC and PISCO are more fully described in section VI of the CoRT Thinking Program ::: P stands for Purpose ::: What is the purpose of the thinking? ::: What is expected as the end product? ::: Why is the thinking being done? ::: Similar to the T of TEC ::: More emphasis on why the thinking is being done at all ::: I stands for Input ::: This is the input information, experience and all the ingredients that need to go into the thinking ::: Tools such as … can be used to develop a rich map ::: CAF ::: C & S ::: OPV ::: This is somewhat similar to the E part of TEC ::: S stands for Solutions ::: These are alternative solutions, ideas, or approaches to the matter ::: In this sense the S is a narrowing down not unlike the C of TEC ::: C stands for Choice ::: This is the choice between the alternatives that have been offered at the previous stage ::: A decision and an evaluation is made at the end of which there is but one surviving alternative ::: The section on decision making could be of help here ::: O stands for Operation ::: This is the action stage ::: What are the steps to be taken? ::: How is the matter to be staged” ::: The implementation of the idea is focused upon at this point ::: Symbolic PISCO (see drawing) ::: TEC-PISCO ::: The two frameworks can be combined ::: TEC is the more general framework ::: PISCO ::: spreads out the stages ::: can be more useful if there is an actual problem or matter that has to be thought about ::: there is not particular time limit on the stages ::: just a consciousness of whichever stage is being used ::: At any point in the PISCO process an area that needs more thinking can be identified and the TEC frame can then be applied directly at that spot ::: For … the TEC framework is sufficient and there is not need to go for the more elaborate PISCO ::: general purpose ::: the exercise of thinking skill ::: Deliberate practice of thinking ::: Thinking clubs ::: General thinking skills ::: These are the second nature skills ::: Need both deliberate and general thinking (second nature) ::: The general thinking skills as second nature ::: The ability to focus formally upon a matter ::: The formal stage is essential before the second nature stage develops ::: General thinking skills ::: An understanding of the importance of perception and the nature of perception as a pattern-making and pattern-using system ::: An instinctive tendency to search for alternatives not only when there is a clear need for this, but also when there is not alternative in sight ::: A dislike of arrogance in thinking ::: A dislike of negative thinking and a preference for exlectics over dialectics. A disdain for negative thinking as one of the easier and cheaper forms of thinking ::: A willingness to listen to the ideas of others. The habit of doing an OPV and examining logic-bubbles ::: In an argument situation, the habit of doing both an EBS and an ADI. The ability to clarify values in such situations ::: An overall view of the importance of emotions, feelings and values in thinking, but an effort to do some perceptual thinking before finally applying the emotions ::: A broad scan of situations before coming to a conclusion ::: This might include things like a PMI, CAF, and C & S ::: The ability to make decisions ::: The ability to set up objectives and subobjectives and to design courses of action ::: The ability to use ideas for the “movement value” and also to set up and use deliverate provocation ::: An understanding of lateral thinking and the willingness to change perceptions ::: even if this is not successful ::: the courage to use such techniques as the random word stimulation when ideas are needed ::: The ability to switch into formal, focused thinking ::: A liking for effectiveness. An appreciation of “operacy” ::: A clear appreciation of thinking as a skill and a self-image as a “thinker” ::: Formal and informal ::: Summary ::: Matters of understanding, appreciation, putting things in perspective, undoing misconceptions and attempting to trigger insights into thinking ::: We need … ::: To remove certain misconceptions and undo certain habits ::: To think of thinking as a skill ::: An awareness of the intelligence trap ::: To encourage the self-image of “I am a thinker” ::: To appreciate the domination of Western thinking habits by the negative idiom ::: Clash ::: Criticism ::: Dialectics ::: To put negative thinking in its proper place as a part of thinking ::: To put creative, constructive and design thinking before negative thinking ::: To change our conceptions about thinking and action ::: A concept such as operacy ::: Give status to the thinking involved in doing ::: To appreciate effectiveness and not just intellectual games ::: To understand the major role of perception in thinking ::: How perception works as a self-organizing patterning system with all that follows ::: Lateral thinking then follows directly and logically ::: To place emotions, feelings, and values in the proper perspective ::: In the end they are the most important part of thinking ::: But only if used in the end rather than at the beginning ::: To understand the practical value of being formal and deliberate about thinking instead of just waffling about ::: ::: The biggest enemy of thinking is the feeling that our thinking is pretty good anyway and we do not need to do anything about it. ::: Creation of new words ::: Descriptive phrases ::: Specific tools ::: Practice ::: Reference ::: How to set up a thinking club



Practical thinking #wlh contents page ::: Amazon ::: Introduction ::: Knowing What to Do ::: Three basic know-all processes ::: Instinct ::: Learning ::: First-hand learning ::: Second-hand learning ::: Understanding ::: Thinking in practice ::: Why bother? ::: Basic thinking process ::: Understanding is thinking ::: The Black Cylinder Experiment ::: Experimental subjects ::: Relevance ::: Process not content ::: Raw thinking ::: Results ::: The Five Ways to Understand ::: L-1 Simple description ::: Impossible to say nothing ::: Pass it on ::: A Valid First-Level Explanation of What Happened ::: L-2 Porridge words ::: Very useful meaningless words ::: L-3 Give it a name ::: Magic and magnets ::: Modern magic ::: Minor magic ::: Names mean a lot ::: L-4 The way it works ::: Cause and effect ::: Name or process ::: Follows on ::: L-5 Full details ::: How full are full details? ::: Combination of third and fourth levels ::: Summary of levels of understanding ::: Levels used everywhere ::: The Use of Understanding How much detail ::: Scientific analysis ::: Everyday thinking ::: Doing something ::: Need and use ::: Detail danger ::: Usefulness is what matters ::: Black boxes ::: Press the right button ::: Spells and special gods ::: More primitive but more advanced ::: Automation age ::: Ignorance tools ::: Leap-frog ::: To use a black box one has first to recognize it in order to know which is the right button to press ::: #ideas Named-ideas and bundle-ideas ::: Contents ::: Movement ::: Requirements ::: Requiron ::: Modification ::: Named-ideas and action ::: Trapped ::: Stock ::: 1. Precise named-ideas ::: 2. Vague named-ideas (porridge words) ::: 3. Interaction named-ideas ::: The vague ideas and the interaction ideas are the ones used to make up bundle-ideas ::: Third and fourth level of understanding ::: Bundle-ideas tend to correspond to the fourth level ::: Named-ideas on the other hand correspond to the third level ::: Precise principles and vague general ideas ::: Ignorance or knowledge ::: Summary ::: The Basic Thinking Processes ::: Carry-on ::: Connect-up ::: Movement ::: Problems and questions ::: Jump ahead ::: Known and unknown destinations ::: Porridge words ::: Man is stupider than animals ::: The short-sighted hen ::: The dog with a cold ::: Cabbages and kings ::: Cross-links ::: Tortoises win races ::: Summary of porridge words ::: The Five Ways to be Wrong ::: M-1 The monorail mistake ::: Lean against it ::: Weight to one side ::: Top-heavy ::: Top-heavy and to one side ::: Shift in centre of gravity ::: Monorail mistake is easy to make ::: M-2 The magnitude mistake ::: Abstract ideas ::: Measurement ::: Names not measurement ::: M-3 The misfit mistake ::: Goodness of fit ::: Easy to make ::: M-4 The must-be mistake ::: Stops evolution ::: Shuts out alternatives ::: Culture and personality ::: M-5 The miss-out mistake ::: The whole picture ::: Selection ::: Attention area ::: Summary ::: Correcting mistakes ::: Mistakes arise directly from the way the mind handles information ::: The Four Ways to be Right ::: The need to be right ::: Understanding the unknown ::: Education and being right ::: Being right is a feeling ::: Four ways of being right ::: R-1 Emotional rightness (currant cake) ::: Gut feeling ::: Limitations ::: The time-scale is likely to be the shortest possible one ::: The ideas it supports may clash with the interests of others ::: Summary ::: R-2 Logical rightness (jig-saw puzzle) ::: Funny-shaped pieces ::: Choose your own pieces ::: Make the pieces fit ::: Using the wrong pieces ::: Which bowl is more contaminated … ::: Increasing the ratio of boys to girls ::: Reaching the wrong conclusions ::: Limitations ::: 1. Incorrect basic ideas are … properly fitted into a logical structure ::: 2. Conclusions can never be more valid than the ideas one starts with ::: 3. A clever person can prove just about anything by skillfully fitting together … ::: 4. Incorrect basic ideas at the bottom … ::: 5. Arrogance and a #belief in the absolute rightness ::: 6. Being right at each step is the essence of logical rightness ::: Main limitations of logical rightness can be summed up as the arrogance … ::: R-3 Unique rightness (the village Venus) ::: de Bono's 2nd law ::: Soft sciences ::: Outside science ::: Limitations ::: 1. Can quickly become dogmatic certainty ::: 2. Uniqueness achieved not by lack of imagination but by demolition of alternatives ::: 3. Refusal to accept alternative explanations ::: R-4 Recognition rightness (measles) ::: Immediate recognition ::: Worked-up recognition ::: Enough ::: Limitations ::: 1. The feeling of certainty is almost inversely related to the accuracy of the recognition ::: 2. You can never be sure … ::: 3. Different people see different features ::: 4. The diagnosis names or patterns have to have been established beforehand ::: 5. Diagnosis name you use has the same meaning for other people ::: 6. You have to exclude other diagnoses which are fairly close ::: 7. Recognition rightness does not in any way prove that the basic picture is itself right ::: Recognition rightness summary points ::: The YES / NO System ::: Limitations ::: 1. Adequate is good enough ::: 2. Permanent labels ::: 3. Sharp polarization ::: 4. Arrogance of righteousness ::: The arrogance of being right ::: Ideas first ::: Intellectual tradition based on arrogant righteousness ::: Types of arrogance ::: Arrogance, effectiveness and fanaticism ::: Arrogance and stupidity ::: Justified arrogance ::: Arrogant righteousness and the thinking process ::: The arrogance mistake ::: Doubt ::: Retardant doubt ::: Propellant doubt ::: Anti-arrogance ::: Summary ::: Humour, Insight and PO ::: Humorous explanations for cylinder falling over ::: Escape from the YES/NO system ::: Half right ::: Push ahead ::: Intermediate impossible ::: Right at each step ::: Insight ::: Problem ::: de Bono's 1st law ::: Discontinuity ::: 'PO' the new word ::: Two uses of PO ::: First use: liberation ::: Second use: provocation ::: Change and new ideas ::: Summary ::: Imagination ::: Aspects of imagination ::: 1. Picture vividness ::: 2. Number of alternatives ::: 3. Different ways of looking at something ::: 4. Creative imagination ::: Imagination in the black cylinder experiment ::: Timing devices ::: Raising weight to the top ::: Impact on side wall ::: Alterations to base ::: Reverse approach ::: Unstable to start with ::: Bent to start with ::: Turning a process off ::: The use of imagination ::: Imagination and unique rightness ::: Imagination and basic thinking processes ::: Imagination and creativity ::: Summary ::: Creativity ::: Black cylinder experiment: lack of multiple possible explanations and reasons ::: 1. No time ::: 2. Satisfied ::: 3. Thrown out ::: 4. Too detailed ::: 5. Too general ::: 6. No knowledge ::: 7. No ideas ::: Lateral thinking (the process); Creativity (the result) ::: Purpose of creativity ::: Escape old ideas ::: Generation of new ideas ::: Satisfaction and creativity ::: Change ::: Knowledge and creativity ::: Being wrong and creativity ::: Techniques and time in creativity ::: Summary ::: Attention and Clues ::: Area of attention ::: Carving out areas of attention ::: Different attention areas ::: Clues ::: Generating clues ::: Purpose of clues ::: 1. To suggest ideas ::: 2. To confirm ideas ::: 3. To exclude ideas ::: Shuttle ::: Danger ::: Science tries to be wrong ::: Practical man has to be right ::: Bandwidth analysis ::: Distortion ::: Think-2 ::: Starting place ::: Disagreement ::: Summary ::: Conclusion ::: The most important rules of everyday thinking ::: Summary Notes ::: Back cover De Bono's 1st Law 'An #idea can never make the best use of available information.' (Because information trickles into the mind over a period of time the idea patterns set up cannot be as good as if all the information arrived at once.) ::: De Bono's 2nd Law 'Proof is often no more than a lack of imagination — in providing an alternative explanation.' (If you cannot think of a better explanation you are sure the one you have is right.)



Edward de Bono’s Effective Thinking Course contents page ::: Amazon ::: Part 1: Basic Thinking Tools ::: 1. Are you a thinker? This section looks at your self image as a thinker and at thinking skills ::: 2. P.M.I. ::: Analysis of Plus, Minus and Interesting points. ::: This is a powerful tool for considering new ideas ::: 3. A.G.O. ::: The examination of Aims, Goals and Objectives. ::: A.G.O. is used to clarify thinking , for example, when considering new initiatives ::: 4. CAF ::: CAF involves a structured process to the Consideration of All Factors. ::: It is often used when considering situations prior to developing ideas. ::: CAF helps ensure that no possibilities have been overlooked. ::: 5. O.P.V. ::: O.P.V. is an extension of CAF that gets you to consider Other People’s Views. ::: Almost any thinking activity involves other people, at least indirectly: choices, decisions, plans, and so forth. ::: O.P.V. tries to get the thinker inside the heads of those involved. ::: 6. FIP ::: FIP is a basic tool like the others. ::: It provides a deliberate instruction to you (or to others) to focus directly on priorities (in general or at a particular moment). ::: FIP stands for First Important Priorities. ::: 7. A.P.C. ::: A.P.C. is another of the convenience tools that we can use with ourselves or with others in order to direct our minds to carry out some task. ::: A.P.C. involves looking for the Alternatives, Possibilities or Choices (whichever is appropriate) in that situation. ::: 8. C.&S. ::: " C" stands for #Consequences, ::: " S" stands for Sequel. ::: Doing a " C&S" means focusing upon and spelling out the #consequences that might arise from a decision, course of action or change of any sort. ::: Part 2: Thinking Situations ::: 1. Plan and action: ::: Getting things done, making something happen, implementation, carrying something out. ::: Thinking is involved not only in arriving at a decision but also in carrying it out. ::: Planning is usually an essential part of getting something done. ::: 2. Decision and evaluation: ::: Judging the value of an option. ::: Is this worth doing? etails ::: Making decisions and making choices. ::: Why decision making can be so difficult. ::: Decision-making as necessity and opportunity. ::: 3. Problem-solving and design: ::: Finding solutions to problems, and designing solutions to problems. ::: In a sense any design task is also a problem-solving task because there is something to be achieved and no obvious way of achieving it ::: 4. Coping and organising: ::: Coping with confusion and mess. ::: Creating order out of chaos. ::: Organising different elements so that the whole works- a common enough real-life situation. ::: 5. Negotiation and conflict: ::: Two party situations. ::: Each side trying to get what it wants. ::: This extends from win/win or mutual benefit negotiation to argument and conflict. ::: 6. Communication and persuasion: ::: The transfer of information. ::: The transfer of perceptions. ::: Getting other people to see what you want them to see. ::: Clarity of communication. ::: Opening up perceptions in persuasion. ::: 7. Exploration and discussion: ::: Making a map of the situation. ::: Getting as much information as possible. ::: Investigation, hypothesis and hypothesis testing. ::: Explanation: what is going on? ::: Discussion with the purpose of exploring a situation: different information and different views. ::: 8. Opportunity and initiative: ::: "Greenfield" thinking. ::: Much of our thinking is reactive: we are forced to think about something. ::: In this Section we look at initiatives: we set out to think about something because we want to. ::: Looking for opportunities. ::: Part 3: Creativity and Lateral Thinking ::: 1. The need for lateral thinking: ::: Realising the need to improve the quality of our thinking. ::: Application of thinking to different areas. ::: 2. Basic level creativity: ::: The cure for arrogance and the deliberate search for alternatives: concepts and explorations. ::: The mechanics of new routes. ::: 3. Judgement and movement: ::: The difference between perception and processing. ::: Patterning systems, and the concept of idiom, humour, logic and lateral thinking. ::: 4. Escape: ::: The first technique of lateral thinking. ::: 5. Stepping stone: ::: The second technique. ::: 6. Random juxtaposition: ::: The third technique. ::: 7. The treatment of ideas: ::: Constraints, shaping, using and harvesting. ::: 8. Focus: ::: How to define the creative thrust. ::: The creation of idea sensitive areas for the generation of creative thinking.



The Five-Day Course in Thinking contents page ::: Amazon ::: Insight Thinking ::: Sequential Thinking ::: Strategic Thinking



Serious Creativity contents page ::: Amazon ::: Introduction ::: The Need for Creative Thinking ::: Take-Away Value ::: The Theoretical Need for Creativity ::: The Practical Need for Creativity ::: Information and Creativity ::: Misperceptions About Creativity ::: Sources of Creativity ::: Lateral Thinking ::: Perception and Processing ::: Design and Analysis ::: The Uses of Creative Thinking ::: Lateral Thinking Tools And Techniques ::: The Six Thinking Hats ::: The Creative Pause ::: Focus ::: Challenge ::: Alternatives ::: The Concept Fan ::: Concepts ::: Provocation ::: Movement ::: Setting Up Provocations ::: The Random Input ::: Sensitizing Techniques ::: Application of the Lateral Thinking Techniques ::: Harvesting ::: The Treatment of Ideas ::: Formal Output ::: Group or Individual ::: The Application of Creative Thinking ::: Application ::: Everyday Creativity/Specific ::: Creativity ::: The Creative Hit List ::: Introduction of Creativity ::: Responsibility ::: Structures and Programs ::: Training ::: Formats ::: Evaluation ::: Summary ::: Appendixes ::: The Lateral Thinking Techniques ::: Notes on the Use of the Lateral Thinking Techniques ::: Harvesting Checklist ::: Treatment of Ideas Checklist



Teach Yourself To Think pdf contents page ::: Amazon ::: Why ... Because ... What about feelings and values ::: Foreword ::: This book offers a simple approach ::: Who will read this book? ::: Non interested in improving thinking ::: Introduction ::: This section is only for a few readers ::: A frame for the rest of the book ::: Perception provides the ingredients for thinking ::: Over-reliance on logic ::: Foresight and hindsight ::: The Gang of Three ::: Socrates ::: Plato ::: Aristotle ::: Limitations of the traditional thinking system ::: What about the progress in science and technology? ::: Argument vs. Parallel Thinking ::: Inadequacies of the traditional thinking system summary ::: Illustrations ::: The Five Stages of Thinking ::: TO symbol ::: LO symbol ::: PO symbol ::: SO symbol ::: GO symbol ::: The symbols used in conjunction with the words ::: Later sections in the book ::: Thinking situations differ greatly ::: Some Basic Processes in Thinking ::: Broad/Specific, General/Detail ::: Projection (running something forward in your mind, imaginings, or visualizing) ::: Attention Directing ::: Recognition and Fit ::: Movement and Alternatives ::: Frameworks ::: The Six Thinking Hats ::: The White Hat ::: The Red Hat ::: The Black Hat ::: The Yellow Hat ::: The Green Hat ::: The Blue Hat ::: Use Of The Hats ::: Single or occasional usage ::: Sequential usage ::: The CoRT Thinking Programme ::: CoRT 1 ::: The tools are used explicitly and directly ::: TO Where Do I Want to Go To? ::: Thinking Action ::: Define ::: Redefine ::: Alternative Definitions ::: Smaller Definition ::: Larger Definition ::: Breaking It Down ::: Change ::: The 'right' definition ::: The Concept Fan ::: Working Forwards ::: The Dog-leg Approach ::: Constraints and Qualifiers ::: Problems ::: Different Thinking Situations ::: Problem ::: Task ::: Achieve A Dream ::: Invention ::: Design ::: Improve In A Defined Direction ::: Negotiation ::: Get This Information ::: Carry Out A Task ::: Plan ::: Organize ::: Choice ::: Decision ::: Judge ::: Communicate ::: Explore ::: General Improvement ::: Opportunity ::: Change (think about it) ::: Peace, Excitement Or Happiness ::: Cope With Change ::: Formulate A Dream ::: Initiative ::: Outcome, Review And Summary ::: Neutral-area Focus ::: Blank-sheet Creativity ::: Explanation ::: Looking Into The Future ::: Crisis ::: Strategy ::: Creative Thinking ::: General Summary ::: Area Focus ::: Purpose Focus ::: Summary of the TO Stage ::: LO The Information Stage ::: Is Information Enough? ::: Sources of Information ::: Questions ::: Fishing Questions ::: Shooting Questions ::: Quality of Information ::: Perception ::: Feelings ::: Analysis ::: The Search for Information ::: Making the Most of the Information ::: Information Is Not Enough ::: Summary of the LO Stage ::: PO What are the Possibilities? ::: PO and Possibility ::: Three Levels of Possibility ::: Making the Connection ::: The Four Basic Approaches ::: 1. The Search for the Routine ::: Analysis ::: Similarity ::: Transform the Problem ::: Three Thinking Situations ::: Situation A The Car Park ::: Situation B The New Restaurant ::: Situation C The Graffiti Problem ::: 2. The 'General' Approach ::: Working Backwards ::: Three thinking situations ::: The Concept Fan ::: Three thinking situations ::: The 'Something' Approach -- Magic Words ::: Three thinking situations ::: Situation A The Car Park Problem ::: Situation B The new restaurant ::: Situation C The Graffiti Problem ::: Summary of the General Approach ::: 3. The Creative Approach ::: The Challenge Process ::: There are three basic questions ::: Outer World ::: Inner World ::: The Use of 'Challenge' ::: The three thinking situations ::: Provocation ::: Movement ::: Setting Up Provocations ::: The three thinking situations ::: Random-entry Provocation ::: Three thinking situations ::: Situation A Car Park Problem ::: Situation B The New Restaurant ::: Situation C The Graffiti Problem ::: Summary of the Creative Approach ::: 4. The Design and Assembly Approach ::: List The Needs ::: Lead With Priorities ::: Concept First ::: Parallel Input ::: Everyday Design ::: Three thinking situations ::: Situation A The Car Park Problem ::: Situation B The New Restaurant ::: Situation C The Graffiti Problem ::: Summary of the PO Stage ::: SO What Is the Outcome? ::: Sequence ::: Development of Possibilities ::: Shaping Ideas ::: Tailoring ::: Strengthen The Idea ::: Fault Correction ::: Practicality ::: Acceptance ::: Cost ::: Simpler ::: Take The Concept ::: Evaluation and Assessment ::: Values And Benefits ::: Difficulties And Dangers ::: Feasibility ::: Choice ::: Stronger And Weaker ::: In And Out ::: Priorities ::: Direct Comparison ::: Greed, Fear And Laziness ::: Final Evaluation ::: Decision ::: Decision Frame ::: Decision Need ::: Decision Pressure ::: Scenario ::: Risk ::: Outcome ::: Looking Back: the Reasons ::: Summary of the SO Stage ::: GO Putting the Thinking to Work ::: Operacy ::: Simple Output ::: Routine Channels ::: The Design of Action ::: Stages ::: Objectives And Sub-objectives ::: Flexibility And Routine ::: Checks And Monitoring ::: Fall-back Positions ::: People ::: Acceptance ::: Motivation ::: Obstacles ::: Incentives And Expectations ::: Effectiveness ::: Task Forces And Groups ::: Experts ::: Energy ::: Amplification ::: Planning ::: Summary of the GO Stage of Thinking ::: Situation Coding ::: The Coding ::: Should Be ::: Summary ::: Summary ::: The Five Stages of Thinking ::: TO 'Where am I going to? ::: LO 'Lo and behold.' ::: PO 'Let's generate some possibilities.' ::: SO 'So what Is the outcome?' ::: GO 'Go to It!' ::: Simpler ::: Backwards and Forwards ::: Enjoy Your Thinking Skill



More specific thinking



Conflicts #ea contents page ::: Amazon ::: Contents ::: Prologue ::: Introduction ::: PART I The way the mind works and modes of thinking ::: Why We Need to Know How the Mind Works ::: What Is Wrong With Argument ::: Map-Making, Thinking and Think ::: Fight, Negotiate, Problem-Solve or Design? ::: PART II Why Do People Disagree? ::: Why do people disagree? Because they see things differently ::: Why do people disagree? Because they want different things ::: Why do people disagree? Because their thinking style encourages them to ::: Why do people disagree? Because they are supposed to ::: PART III Creativity, design and the third party role ::: Design ::: Why disputants are in the worst position to solve their dispute ::: Continuity ::: Objectives, benefits and values ::: Creativity ::: The third party role in conflict thinking ::: PART IV Conflict ::: Conflict models ::: Conflict factors ::: Conflict factors: fear ::: Conflict factors: force ::: Conflict factors: fair ::: Conflict factors: funds ::: Conflict attitudes ::: PART V Structures For Conflict Resolution ::: Why existing structures are inadequate for conflict resolution ::: S.I.T.O. ::: Epilogue ::: Index ::: Prologue



Creativity Workout contents page ::: Amazon ::: CONTENTS ::: Introduction ::: How to Use this Book ::: How to Use Random Words Exercises ::: Tables of Random Words ::: Number Maps ::: Tables of Random Numbers ::: Pre-set Table ::: About the Author ::: INTRODUCTION ::: Everyone wants to be creative. ::: Everyone should want to be creative. ::: Creativity makes life more fun, more interesting and more full of achievement. ::: Research shows that 94 percent of youngsters rate “achievement” as the most important thing in their lives. ::: Creativity is the key skill needed for achievement. ::: Without creativity there is only repetition and routine. ::: These are highly valuable and provide the bulk of our behavior-but creativity is needed for change, improvement and new directions. ::: In business, creativity has become essential. ::: This is because everything else has become a commodity available to everyone. ::: If your only hope of survival is that your organization will continue to be more competent than your competitors, that is a weak position. ::: There is nothing you can do to prevent your competitors also becoming competent. ::: Information has become a commodity available to everyone. ::: Current technology has become a commodity, with a few exceptions-where a 16-year patent life offers some protection. ::: Imagine a cooking competition with several chefs at a long table. ::: Each chef has the same ingredients and the same cooking facility. ::: Who wins that competition? ::: At a lower level the chef with the highest quality wins. ::: But at the higher level all chefs have excellent quality. ::: So who wins? ::: The chef who can turn the same ingredients into superior quality. ::: In business, competing with India and China on a price basis is impossible. ::: That leaves creating new value as the basis for competition. ::: And that needs a more serious commitment to creativity than is the case at the moment. ::: CREATIVITY AS TALENT ::: Too many people believe that creativity is a talent with which some people are born and the rest can only envy. ::: This is a negative attitude that is completely mistaken. ::: Creativity is a skill that can be learned, developed and applied. ::: I have been teaching creative thinking for over 30 years to a wide variety of people: ::: … from four-year-olds to 90-year-olds from Down’s syndrome children to Nobel laureates … from illiterate miners in Africa to top executives ::: Using just one of the techniques of “lateral thinking,” a group of workshops generated 21,000 ideas for a steel company in one afternoon. ::: UNINHIBITED ::: An ordinary man is walking down the road. ::: A group of people seize him and tie him up with a rope. ::: Then a violin is produced. ::: Obviously, the man tied up with the rope cannot play the violin. ::: So what do we say? ::: We claim that if the rope was cut the man would play the violin. ::: This is clearly nonsense. ::: Cutting the rope does not make the man a violinist. ::: Unfortunately we have the same attitude towards creativity. ::: If you are inhibited it is difficult to be creative. ::: Therefore if we make you uninhibited you will be creative! ::: This is the basis of “#brainstorming” and other popular techniques. ::: There is some merit in these systems but the approach is a very weak one. ::: The formal and deliberate “tools” of lateral thinking are much more powerful. ::: The brain is designed to be “non-creative.” ::: If the brain were creative, life would be impossible. ::: With 11 pieces of clothing to put on in the morning there are 39,916,800 ways of getting dressed. ::: If you tried one way every minute you would need to live to be 76 years old, using your entire waking life trying ways of getting dressed. ::: Fortunately for us, the brain is designed to form stable patterns for dealing with a stable universe. ::: That is the excellence of the brain and for that we should be very grateful. ::: So removing inhibition is of value, but only a weak way of developing creativity. ::: CREATIVITY AS SKILL ::: Creativity is a skill that everyone can learn, practice and use. ::: It is as much a skill as skiing, playing tennis, cooking or learning mathematics. ::: Everyone can learn such skills. ::: In the end not everyone is going to be equally good at these skills. ::: Some people cook better than others. ::: Some people play tennis better than others. ::: But everyone can learn the skill. ::: And everyone can seek to get better through practice. ::: CREATIVITY IS NOT A MYSTERY ::: For the first time in history we can now look at creativity as the “logical” behavior of a certain type of information system. ::: The mystery and mystique can be removed from creativity. ::: 1. We need to look at the human brain as a “self-organizing information system.”. ::: 2. Self-organizing information systems form patterns. ::: 3. All pattern-making systems are “asymmetric.” ::: 4. This is the basis of humor and of creativity. ::: Humor is by far the most significant behavior of the human brain ::: because it indicates the nature of the underlying ::: system. ::: Reason tells us very little because any “sorting system” run backwards is a reasoning system. ::: Humor ::: indicates asymmetric patterns. ::: This means that the ::: route from A to B is not the same as the route from B to A. ::: “Lateral thinking” is the creativity concerned with changing ::: ideas, perceptions and concepts. ::: Instead of working harder with the same ideas, perceptions and concepts, we seek to change them. ::: This “idea creativity” is not the same as “artistic creativity,” which is why a new term was needed. ::: All these things are explained in my books on lateral thinking; an understanding of such systems is the logical basis for the practical tools of lateral thinking. ::: THE WORD “CREATIVE” ::: In the English language, the word “create” means to bring into being something that was not there before. ::: So someone can “create a mess.” ::: That means bringing into existence a mess that did not exist before. ::: Is that person “creative”? ::: We hasten to add that what has been brought into existence must have “value.” ::: So creativity is bringing into existence something that has value. ::: There is, of course, the element of “newness” because repetition-no matter how valuable-is not seen as creative. ::: The word “creative” has largely been taken over by the arts, because in the arts all the work is new and has value. ::: It is true that the value is not always recognized at first. ::: For example, the Impressionist painters were not fully appreciated in their time. ::: In the English language there does not exist a separate word to distinguish the creativity of new ideas from the creativity of art. ::: So when I claim that “creativity” can indeed be taught, I am ::: asked if Beethoven could be produced in this way. ::: The answer is “no,” but “idea creativity” can be taught, learned and developed in a formal way. ::: The purpose of the exercises in this book is to help develop creative habits of mind. ::: The “creativity” of the art world includes a large element of “aesthetic judgement.” ::: The artist judges that something is “right.” ::: This is quite different from the ability to produce new ideas. ::: While artists may be excellent in their field, they are not especially good at changing ideas and creating new ideas. ::: This language problem has two very serious #consequences. ::: The first consequence is that education authorities believe that they are “teaching creativity” by encouraging dancing and music-playing. ::: This is totally wrong. ::: These activities are of value in themselves but they are not teaching creativity. ::: The second consequence is that people say that if you cannot produce a Beethoven to order, then creativity cannot really be taught. ::: This is also garbage. ::: Idea creativity can be taught. ::: As a matter of interest, my work is used quite widely in the arts world, particularly in music. ::: Because music does not represent existing sounds, there is a great need for creativity rather than just expression. ::: HABITS OF MIND ::: There is no sharp distinction between a mental skill and a mental habit. ::: The two overlap and blend into each other. ::: The purpose of this book is to provide opportunity for practising the mental skill of creativity and developing the habits of mind that make creativity happen. ::: Suppose you developed the habit of mind of trying to find alternative meanings for well-known acronyms. ::: So when you looked at NASA, you did not only think of the North American Space Agency, but of other possibilities: ::: Not Always Same Astronaut Not Always Same Ascent Not Always Same Ambition ::: Or: ::: New Adventures Splendid Achievements New Ambitions Serious Attainments ::: As with a joke, the new explanation is more powerful if it links in with existing knowledge, or even prejudice, about the organization. ::: POSSIBILITY ::: Educational establishments totally underestimate the importance of “possibility.” ::: Two thousand years ago, China was far ahead of the West in science and technology. ::: They had rockets and gunpowder. ::: Had China continued at the same rate of progress, then today China would easily have been the dominant power in the world. ::: What happened? ::: What brought progress to a halt? ::: The Chinese scholars started to believe you could move from “fact to fact.” ::: So they never developed the messy business of possibility (hypothesis, etc.). ::: As a result, progress came to a dead end. ::: Exactly the same sort of thing is happening in the world today. ::: Because of the excellence of computers, people are starting to believe that all you need to do is to collect data and analyze it. ::: This will give you your decisions, your policies and your strategies. ::: It is an extremely dangerous situation, which will bring progress to a halt. ::: There is a huge need for creativity to interpret data in different ways; to combine data to design value delivery; to know where to look for data; to form hypotheses and speculations, etc., etc. ::: I have held academic positions at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and Harvard. ::: I have to say that at each of these wonderful institutions the amount of time spent on the fundamental importance of possibility was zero. ::: Our culture and habits of thinking insist that we always move towards certainty. ::: We need to pay equal attention to possibility. ::: Peptic ulcer (stomach or duodenal ulcer) is a serious condition that affects many people. ::: Sufferers used to be on antacids for 20 years or more. ::: There were major operations to remove part or all of the stomach. ::: A large number of beds were occupied by patients under treatment or diagnosis of the condition. ::: Hundreds of people were researching this serious condition. ::: Then a young doctor, Barry j. ::: Marshall, in Perth, Western Australia, suggested that peptic ulcer might be an infection. ::: Everyone laughed, because the hydrochloric acid in the stomach would surely kill any bacteria. ::: No one took the possibility seriously. ::: Many, many years later it turned out that he was right. ::: Instead of antacids for 20 years and losing some or all of your stomach, you simply take antibiotics for one week! ::: Possibility is very important. ::: And possibility is the key to creativity. ::: HOW TO USE THIS BOOK ::: There is no way you can learn a skill if you do not practice the skill. ::: There is no short cut. ::: There is no other way to develop skill. ::: This holds for the skill of creativity. ::: There is no magic fountain that you can drink from in order to become creative. ::: The nearest equivalent would be to read this book! ::: The use of creativity and the practice of creativity are the best ways to develop the mental skills and the mental habits of creative thinking. ::: If you want to become good at golf, you had better practice hitting the ball. ::: If you want to develop the skill of cooking, you had better get into the kitchen. ::: If you really want to develop the skill of creative thinking, you had better treat this book seriously and work through it diligently and systematically. ::: It is not much use reading the book for knowledge or to find out how the story ends. ::: That’s like going to the gym to watch other people exercise. ::: The more you practice, the better you will get-as with golf or cooking. ::: The book is designed to be simple, practical and usable. ::: The ::: subject of creativity could be made very complicated, but then the book would have no value except to academics. ::: The book is, however, designed for everyone who wants to become more creative and who is willing to enjoy the process. ::: The book is designed around a series of exercises. ::: You can do the exercises on your own. ::: You can do the exercises with other people. ::: You can use the exercises to practice a little bit of creativity every day. ::: EXERCISES/GAMES ::: The purpose of the exercises in this book is to provide training in creative thinking. ::: The attitudes, habits and skills of creative thinking will be developed as you go through the exercises systematically and in a disciplined way. ::: There are those who believe that any disciplined or systematic approach is the opposite of creativity. ::: This view is complete garbage and shows a lack of understanding of the fundamental nature of creative thinking as the behavior of a self-organizing informational system that makes asymmetric patterns. ::: At the same time, the exercises are enjoyable and so can be regarded as “games.” ::: Generally you would play these games on your own (as with a crossword) and get a sense of achievement when you succeed. ::: It is also possible, occasionally, to play with others and to compare your results. ::: So, they are enjoyable exercises that could be called either “exercises” or “games.” ::: The intention is to train your creative mind. ::: The book is a playground. ::: If there were a playground with a ball ::: in it, you would certainly kick the ball around. ::: That is the way you should treat this book. ::: Have fun. ::: But it is serious fun. ::: Creativity is a very serious skill. ::: Unlike many other skills, you can have fun while you develop this serious skill. ::: From this point onward, it is up to you. ::: What you get out of the book will be directly proportional to the effort you put into using the book. ::: There are 62 exercises in the book. ::: That means 52 + 10. ::: That suggests that you could, if you wished, practice one exercise one week and the next exercise the following week. ::: The 10 extra exercises are in case you feel extra energetic and want to do more than one exercise that week. ::: PROBLEMS AND SITUATIONS ::: Use the given problems and situations even if you find them difficult. ::: You may also insert problems and situations of your own. ::: Only do this after you have attempted to use the given problems. ::: Otherwise you will tend only to work on easy problems you have chosen. ::: TIME LIMITS ::: The exercises may be done without any time limit at all. ::: You can also set a time limit. ::: To begin with, this could be four to five minutes per exercise. ::: As you get better, the time limit can be reduced to two to three minutes. ::: RIGHT ANSWERS ::: With creativity, there is no one “right answer.” ::: For the exercises there is no one right answer. ::: Any answer that fits the stated requirements of the exercise is equally right. ::: Players will, however, learn to recognize that some answers are indeed better than others-because they are more practical, more unusual, or offer a higher value. ::: NOTE: The fact that there are no right answers does NOT mean that any answer will do. ::: The answer must satisfy the requirements of the exercise. ::: If you were asked to suggest “food for breakfast,” there is no one right answer. ::: But if you were to suggest “the transmission of a car,” that would indeed be a wrong answer. ::: If you are asked for “alternative modes of transport” and you suggested “a frying pan,” that would indeed be a wrong answer. ::: In the course of the book you will practice both perceptual creativity and constructive creativity. ::: Perceptual creativity involves looking at things in different ways. ::: It involves extracting concepts. ::: It involves extracting values. ::: It involves opening up connections and associations. ::: Constructive creativity means putting things together to deliver ::: value. ::: This is “design thinking.” ::: While education focuses a great deal on analysis, there is practically no attention at all to design thinking. ::: Yet life and human progress depend on design thinking. ::: Analysis is important, just as the rear left wheel of a car is important-but it is not enough. ::: Readers of this book will develop creative habits of mind and a fluency in dealing with ideas, concepts, perceptions and values. ::: The emphasis is on the creativity of “what can be” rather than the usual education emphasis on “what is.” ::: ONE A DAY ::: Many people do some physical exercises every day. ::: Some people go to the gym every day. ::: I would suggest that you make a habit of doing at least one of the exercises every day. ::: You should be able to go back to the book again and again to repeat exercises (using different problems, etc.). ::: The book is like a gym for creative thinking habits and skills. ::: And, as with physical exercise, the important thing is to be disciplined about it. ::: 1. Choose an exercise. ::: 2. Set a time limit. ::: 3. Do the exercise. ::: HOW TO USE RANDOM WORDS ::: The whole book is based on Random Words. ::: So it is important to understand how to use these. ::: A Random Word is there for no reason at all-it is random. ::: The words are all nouns because these are easier to use. ::: The Tables of Random Words are given on pages 153-165. ::: You can get your Random Word in a number of different ways: ::: 1. You can throw a single die four times. ::: … the first throw indicates which of the six tables you are going to use the second throw indicates which column you are going to use … the third throw indicates which section you are going to use in the column the fourth throw indicates which word you are going to use in the section ::: You can also throw four dice all at once and then arrange them in a sequence. ::: You can use colored dice with a given sequence of colors. ::: 2. You can use the Number Maps given on pages 167-169. ::: With your eyes closed, stab with a pencil, matchstick or toothpick at the map. ::: Take the number you have hit. ::: If you are on a dividing line or miss a number, simply try again. ::: Do this four times to obtain the four numbers (table number, column number, group number and word number). ::: 3. Use the Tables of Random Numbers given on pages 171-173. ::: Take the numbers in order and tick off the ones you have used. ::: Alternatively, take a sequence from the Tables of Random Numbers and just change one number in the given sequence. ::: You can also create your own Table of Random Numbers in advance so that you can use it whenever you want. ::: 4. Simply invent a sequence of numbers. ::: Each number must be between 1 and 6. ::: Use these numbers as if thrown with a die. ::: 5. In the Pre-set Table (pages 174-175) the sequences of ::: numbers are already given. ::: You can insert your own number (1 to 6) in the gap to give the new sequence. ::: VERY IMPORTANT: Do not keep trying different Random Words until you get one you like. ::: This destroys the whole point of the exercises. ::: You must seek to use the first word you obtain. ::: If, however, you do not understand the meaning of a Random Word, ignore that word and try again, or else take the next word down. ::: POWERFUL TOOL ::: The Random Word process on which the book is built is just one of the powerful tools of lateral thinking which is a process I invented in 1967. ::: The process is now widely used and the phrase has an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. ::: There are other powerful tools of lateral thinking such as: challenge; concept extraction; concept fan; provocation and movement, etc. ::: Lateral thinking is serious and systematic creativity. ::: It is not being different for the sake of being different. ::: It is not based on sitting on a river bank and playing Baroque music. ::: It is not a matter of messing around in a #brainstorming session. ::: There are formal tools and processes that can be used deliberately and with discipline. ::: These tools are based on the understanding of self-organizing information systems, as described in my book The Mechanism of Mind (1969). ::: For the first time in human history we can treat creativity as a mental skill, not just a matter of talent or inspiration. ::: PROVOCATION ::: In a way the Random Word process is an example of provocation. ::: In normal thinking there needs to be a reason for saying something before it is said. ::: Otherwise the result is nonsense. ::: With provocation, there may not be a reason for saying something until after it is said. ::: Develop your creative thinking skills. ::: It’s up to you!



de Bono's Code Book #ea contents page ::: Amazon ::: Something of the sort is going to happen sooner or later ::: Language has been the biggest help in human progress ::: Language is now by far the biggest barrier to human progress ::: The barrier ::: Description is not perception ::: Grotesque and bizarre ::: To create the new concepts and perceptions we use numbers ::: Shock, Horror and Outrage ::: Benefits ::: Benefit 1: International ::: Benefit 2: Perception ::: Benefit 3: Complex Concepts ::: Benefit 4: New Concepts ::: Benefit 5: Precision ::: Benefit 6: Expectations ::: Benefit 7: Avoiding Awkwardness ::: Benefit 8: Saving Time ::: Benefit 9: Information Management ::: Benefit 10: Uniformity ::: Benefit 11: Calm ::: Benefit 12: Locus ::: This book contains two codes ::: Pronunciation Usage ::: Part 1 De Bono Code B ::: Overview of the Codes From De Bono Code B That Are Included in This Book ::: Code 1: Pre-Code ::: Code 2: Attention Directing ::: Code 3: Action Code ::: Code 4: Difficult Situations ::: Code 5: Response Code ::: Code 6: Interaction (Frantic) Code ::: Code 7: Information Code ::: Code 8: Youth Code ::: Code 9: Meetings ::: Code 10: Mood Code ::: Code 11: Distance Code ::: Code 12: Relationships Start ::: Code 13: Relationships Continue ::: Code 14: Relationships End ::: Code 15: Negotiation ::: Code 16: Assessment ::: Code 17: Project Status ::: Code 18: Travel Code ::: Code Details ::: Pre-Code Code 1 ::: 1/1 This is a friendly greeting. There is no request attached to it ::: 1/2 This is a request for information on the matters indicated ::: 1/3 I need very specific and very detailed information on the matter indicated ::: 1/4 This is a request for your response and your reaction to what is indicated here ::: 1/5 Please expand on this ::: 1/6 I simply do not understand the following matter ::: 1/7 I want to draw your attention to the following matter ::: 1/8 This is a request that you lay out your action plans for the matter specified ::: 1/9 This is a request that you carry out the action specified here ::: 1/10 I am putting forward a proposal or suggestion for your consideration ::: 1/11 I want to register a complaint. I want to bring this to your attention because ::: 1/12 This is a direct response to your request (specified) ::: 1/13 I wish to register a disagreement ::: 1/14 This is the information which you requested ::: 1/15 Here is some information. This communication contains information ::: 1/16 This is a schedule, plan, timetable, action sequenceetc. This is information you need ::: Attention Directing Code 2 ::: 2/1 Direct your attention to the PMI points. Tell me what you see ::: 2/2 Direct your attention to the future ::: 2/3 What are the factors involved here? ::: 2/4 What is the objective? What are we really trying to do? ::: 2/5 What are the views of the other people involved? ::: 2/6 What are the alternatives? ::: 2/7 What are the priorities? ::: 2/8 Direct your attention to the key values involved ::: 2/9 Direct your attention to the matters on which we agree/disagree/irrelevant ::: 2/10 Can you recognize this as a standard situation? ::: Action Code Code 3 ::: 3/1 I want in. I want to take part in this ::: 3/2 I am very interested ::: 3/3 Thank you, but no thank you. I am not interested ::: 3/4 I want out. I want to get out of this ::: 3/5 Let's move right forward to action ::: 3/6 What is the problem? What is the hold-up? ::: 3/7 We need to design a way forward ::: 3/8 We need some creative thinking here ::: 3/9 There are no problems but nothing seems to be happening ::: 3/10 What is the immediate next step? ::: 3/11 We need to think about this ::: 3/12 what has been happening? What is the feedback? Where is the action report? ::: Difficult Situations Code 4 ::: 4/1 Lack of the necessary resources ::: 4/2 Lack of management at all levels or at some levels ::: 4/3 Low morale. Low motivation. A workforce uninterested in what they are doing ::: 4/4 Lack of leadership ::: 4/5 An organization that is rigid and old-fashioned ::: 4/6 Lack of Vision. Lack of mission. Survival is enough ::: 4/7 4/7 The world outside is tough. Everything takes time and a great deal of effort ::: 4/8 Situations which are 'locked' in ::: 4/9 Fights, factions, disputes and far too much internal politics ::: 4/10 Too much corruption, cheating, nepotism, etc. An organization with rather low morals ::: 4/11 Coasting. A once-successful organization, group or even country coasts on its reputation ::: Response Code Code 5 ::: 5/1 I am sorry, this matter is not of interest to me ::: 5/2 Here is the information that you wanted ::: 5/3 This is some of the information that you requested. I am not able to supply the rest of it ::: 5/4 I am not able to provide you with the information that you requested ::: 5/5 You are asking for far too much information ::: 5/6 I could be interested in what you have suggested but I would need much more information ::: 5/7 I am going to have to think about this matter and will then get back to you ::: 5/8 Thank you for your proposal. Here are my reactions to your proposal ::: 5/9 With regard to your suggestion of a meeting I would like to have in writing ::: 5/10 Thank you very much for your comments ::: 5/11 I accept your invitation and will be happy to be there ::: 5/12 I regret that I am unable to accept your invitation owing to a prior engagement ::: 5/13 I am sure you are entitled to your opinion no matter how you arrived at it ::: Interaction (Frantic) Code 6 ::: 6/1 What exactly is the matter? Spell out the problem directly and simply ::: 6/2 You give me what you think my point of view might be and I shall give you ::: 6/3 There are things we do need to discuss here. Let us find time to discuss them ::: 6/4 Give me space. Don't crowd me. Don't pressure me ::: 6/5 Calm down. There is no need to be frantic or aggressive ::: 6/6 Don't take yourself so seriously. Don't overreact ::: 6/7 Cut the crap, what do you want? Never mind the preamble and background ::: 6/8 Things are becoming too emotional. I suggest we take a break ::: Information Code Code 7 ::: 7/1 This information is purely factual. It is comprehensive and not selective ::: 7/2 These are administrative details ::: 7/3 Instructions, operating procedures, laws, regulations, etc ::: 7/4 This information is intended to be an honest, objective description of or comment on some matter ::: 7/5 This is a subjective category, description or review ::: 7/6 This is a dishonest review or commentary ::: 7/7 This is advocacy or case-making ::: 718 This indicates material that is of an advertising and selling nature ::: 7/9 This is also 'selling' information but the information is put forward in a neutral way ::: 7/10 This indicates chat or conversation ::: 7/11 This is the fine print. These are the 'footnotes'. ::: 7/12 Proposals, propositions, suggestions, offerings, etc. ::: 7/13 This indicates hate, bigotry and a strong emotional outpouring ::: 7/14 This indicates advice, help, motivation, self-help, training, etc ::: 7/15 This indicates 'forms to fill in. Forms of any sort come into this category ::: Youth Code Code 8 ::: 8/1 I am in trouble and I need your help. I do not want a lecture ::: 8/2 I am having difficulty making a decision ::: 8/3 I am confused. I am in a muddle. I need clarification ::: 8/4 There is something that I need to talk about ::: 8/5 I would like an honest and direct answer to the question that I am going to ask you ::: 8/6 This thing is really very important to me. You may not think so ::: 8/7 This is something I really, really want to do ::: 8/8 Sure, let's talk. Let's discuss things. I am willing to listen without judging ::: 8/9 What is troubling you? What is the matter? Tell me the problem ::: 8/10 What do you really think and feel about this? ::: 8/11 What are your intentions? What are you plans? What are you going to do? ::: 8/12 You are behaving like a spoiled brat. You are being very selfish ::: 8/13 Show some manners and respect. Don't behave in that boorish and oafish manner ::: 8/14 For some reason you are in a difficult and cranky mood. Could you snap out of it? ::: 8/15 Don't sulk. It won't get you anywhere ::: 8/16 Clean up the mess. Tidy Up. Put things away ::: 8/17 Be nice to your brothers and sisters ::: 8/18 It would be nice if you could help. It would be nice if you could contribute ::: 8/19 Let's have some peace and quiet. Stop that racket or go somewhere else ::: 8/20 Don't be unreasonable ::: 8/21 I need attention. Don't ignore me ::: 8/22 Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate what you are doing or have done ::: 8/23 That is fine. That is just right. That is perfect. I like that very much ::: Meetings Code 9 ::: 9/1 I am confused. I am lost. I cannot follow you. Please repeat. Please clarify ::: 9/2 Do not assume that we know the current situation. Please spell it out ::: 9/3 Get to the point. What do you propose? What do you want to see happen? ::: 9/4 Could you summarize what you have been saying? Could you repeat the main points? ::: 9/5 More information is needed at this point. I need more information. ::: 9/6 What are the benefits? Why is this worth doing? Why is this a good idea? ::: 9/7 What is the downside? What are the risks? What are the drawbacks? ::: 9/8 This is a weak case. I am doubtful. I am not convinced. I do not agree with the argument ::: 9/9 I fully agree. I am convinced. I have followed your line of reasoning and I agree with you ::: 9/10 This stuff is irrelevant. This stuff has nothing to do with the main point or ::: Mood Code Code 10 ::: 10/1 Would you like to tell me what your mood is today? What is your mood right now? ::: 10/2 I am happy. I am in a happy mood. Things are going well ::: 10/3 The mood is neutral and normal ::: 10/4 This is the broad, generic 'unhappy' response ::: 10/5 I am overworked. I am very busy. There is far too much to do ::: 10/6 I am under pressure. I am being hassled. There are many demands to be met ::: 10/7 I am tense. For some reason I feel tension. It may be a combination of factors ::: 10/8 I am just very tired. I have been doing a lot lately ::: 10/9 I am depressed. I am going through a phase of depression. This is no one's fault ::: 10/10 I am unwell. i am not feeling well. I think I may be il ::: 10111 I am worried about something. I am anxious about something ::: 10/12 I am preoccupied. I am thinking about something ::: 10/13 I am in the best of moods. I am at the top of my form. I am full of energy ::: 10/14 I am annoyed and upset about a particular individual or action ::: 10/15 I am upset and not pleased in a general sense ::: 10/16 I am furious. I am very angry ::: 10/17 I am becoming increasingly unhappy about the way this project is going ::: 10/18 I am disappointed. I expected better ::: 10/19 I am stressed out at the moment. There are a lot of things going on ::: 10/20 I congratulate you. I applaud your success. What you have done is wonderful ::: 10/21 Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate what you have done for me ::: 10/22 I feel frustrated. I feel thwarted. I feel blocked ::: 10/23 I am feeling full of energy. I feel able to do anything ::: 10/24 I am in a creative mood. I feel creative. I feel inspired ::: Distance Code Code 11 ::: Code 11 Distance Code ::: 11/1 Do you know how to use this code? Do you use this code? ::: 11/2 I like the look of you and I would like to meet you. Is this a good idea? ::: 11/3 Fine. Let's meet. Let's meet halfway ::: 11/4 Yes, we can meet. I do want to meet. But not right now ::: 11/5 The answer is 'no'. I am not interested. Don't pester me. Keep away ::: Relationship Codes Code 12,13 and 14 ::: Code 12 Relationships Start ::: 12/1 I am looking forward to the development of this relationship ::: 12/2 I have no hidden agenda or dark intentions. I like you and want to know you better ::: 12/3 Let's try it out and see how we get on ::: 12/4 Where do we go from here? What is the next step? ::: 12/5 There is no hurry. Let things evolve on their own ::: 12/6 This seems to be getting a bit one-sided. I seem to be doing all the running ::: 12/7 You are getting too intense. You are crowding me. Give me space or I shall back off ::: 12/8 I am not going to ask you any questions and I do not want you to ask me any questions ::: 12/9 I want you to e very honest with me about your status, commitments, baggage arid encumbrances ::: 12/10 You seem to be becoming too possessive. I need space. I want to let you know how I feel ::: 12/11 You are becoming very demanding. I find this difficult. I feel I ought to tell you this ::: 12/12 I am in this as a romance, as an adventure, as a fling ::: 12/13 I am looking for a long-term relationship or commitment ::: 12/14 I like you very much and I want to be friends. Nothing more heavy than that ::: 12/15 I just want a small place somewhere in your life ::: 12/16 I love you for ever - or until next Monday ::: Code 13 Relationships Continue ::: 13/1 This relationship does not seem to be going anywhere ::: 13/2 This relationship has stagnated. It is getting boring ::: 13/3 Things are going very well. Things are getting better and better ::: 13/4 we have become complacent. We seem to take each other for granted ::: 13/5 Things seem to have changed. I have noticed a change in your behaviour ::: 13/6 There are some important things that we need to talk about ::: 13/7 What is the problem? What has gone wrong? What are you upset about? ::: 13/8 This is just a temporary hiccup. This is a very minor problem ::: 13/9 I am completely prepared to admit my fault over this matter. I am sorry ::: 13/10 There you go again. Insisting on having your own way ::: 13/11 I feel we are making real progress and moving forward to overcome the difficulties ::: 13/12 You know I do not like that. It annoys and irritates me ::: 13/13 Don't overplay the victim. Don't overplay the martyr role ::: Code 14 Relationships End ::: 14/1 it is no one's fault but I do not think we are compatible after all ::: 14/2 This relationship has been dying for some time ::: 14/3 People change. I may have changed or you may have changed ::: 14/4 This relationship has been dead for a long time ::: 14/5 This is a good relationship but I do not see any long-term future in it ::: 14/6 You want commitment without commitment ::: 14/7 I have come to the conclusion that I can't give you what you want from life ::: 14/8 The present level of involvement is over ::: 14/9 The plain truth is that I have met someone else ::: 14/10 This has happened. I am mad at you. I am disappointed ::: 14/11 The relationship has run its course ::: 14/12 You are simply not the person I thought you were ::: 14/13 We could both try harder to salvage the relationship ::: 14/14 If there were an elegant and painless way to end a relationship ::: Negotiation Code 15 ::: 15/1 Is this a genuine negotiation? ::: 15/2 Could you please lay out your position? ::: 15/3 You are asked to lay out what you think our position might be ::: 15/4 What can we agree upon? What do we disagree upon? ::: 15/5 What are the benefits that you are offering? ::: 15/6 As it is, your offer is not attractive ::: 15/7 These fears are real and do need to be addressed ::: 15/8 What is your proposal (or counter-proposal)? Please spell it out again ::: 15/9 What do you see as the alternatives and options at this point? ::: 15/10 We have gone over the old ground again and again ::: 15/11 How do you see the future unfolding? How do you see alternative futures? ::: 15/12 More information is needed on the following matters … ::: 15/13 At the moment I see this as rather one-sided ::: 15/14 Are we treating this as an adversarial confrontation or are we seeking, together ::: 15/15 What are the contingency arid fall-back positions? ::: 15/16 Who are the people who really matter in this situation? ::: 15/17 We are moving towards an outcome ::: 15/18 Is this outcome going to be acceptable? ::: 15/19 This is a stalemate ::: 15/20 Are there matters which have seen left out? ::: 15/21 Can we review what we have discussed and what seems to have been agreed? ::: 15/22 Who is going to take responsibility for what? Who is going to do what, and when? ::: 15/23 What is the next step? Where do we go from here? ::: 15/24 That was constructive. That was good. I think we made a lot of progress ::: Assessment Code 16 ::: 16/1 This is highly competent. I cannot find fault with it ::: 16/2 This is more than competent. This is excellent ::: 16/3 This is both competent and highly creative ::: 16/4 This is great on creativity but not so good on competence ::: 16/5 This is very patchy. Some parts are good and other parts are not good enough ::: 16/6 Barely adequate. This is the bottom rung ::: 16/7 This is a mediocre performance. It is not bad and it is certainly not good ::: 16/8 This is a disappointing performance. You are capable of a much better performance ::: 16/9 There is a great deal of room for improvement. This performance is not good enough ::: 16/10 Good but full of careless errors. May carelessness or lack of concentration ::: 16/11 Good performance but locking in sensitivity and people skills ::: 16/12 This is not a good performance at all. Perhaps there are reasons for this? ::: 16/13 This is simply a poor performance. It is not acceptable in any way ::: 16/14 This is a truly shocking performance ::: 16/15 You may well have misunderstood what you were supposed to do ::: Project Status Code 17 ::: 17/1 What is the time status of the project? Is it on time or what? ::: 17/2 The project is behind schedule because of a number of … which could have been foreseen ::: 17/3 There are major problems and obstacles which are holding things up ::: 17/4 We need help in solving the following problem or problems ::: 17/5 This project is resource-starved as indicated here ::: 17/6 There is some doubt about the quality of management on this project ::: 17/7 This project has been poorly planned. We need to replan the whole project ::: 17/8 The project is in crisis. We need to see how we can rescue it ::: 17/9 What is the way forward? ::: 17/10 How do you see the future scenarios? ::: 17/11 The project seems to be running low on energy ::: 17/12 What can I do to help? What sort of help would be most useful? ::: Travel Code Code 18 ::: 18/1 I am feeling very ill. I need to see a doctor or get to a hospital. Can you help me? ::: 18/2 I have been robbed or am otherwise in trouble. I need to call the police. Can you help me? ::: 18/3 I am in difficulties and I need help. I need to get in touch with my embassy or consulate ::: 18/4 Can you take me to … ? The place is indicated by one of the following additional numbers ::: 18/5 Can you tell me how I can get to the following place, as indicated by the number given ::: 18/6 I need to find accommodation. I want you to recommend a place or to take me to such a place ::: 18/7 I need to find a bank or a place where I can change money. Can you help me? ::: 18/8 I need to make a telephone call. Where Carl I find a telephone? ::: 18/9 I need to make an international phone call. Where can I do that? ::: 18/10 I need to connect up with my e-mail or the Internet. How can I do that? ::: 18/11 I need to send a letter or postcard to the following country. ::: 18/12 Where can I find a toilet? Where is the nearest toilet? ::: 18/13 Would you like to join me for a coffee, a drink, a meal or a walk? ::: 18/14 I need to get a ticket to this destination. What do I need to do? ::: 18/15 I have this ticket, or this address, or this situation (pointing to something). What do I do? ::: 18/16 Do you speck English (or other specified language)? Does anyone here speak English? ::: Part 2 De Bono Code A ::: De Bono Code A ::: The Meaning of the Numbers ::: Change (Input, Change, Output) ::: System Values (Positive/Negative values) ::: The People Factor ::: The Time Factor ::: Existence and Presence ::: Absence, Not Present ::: The Grid ::: The Use of De Bono Code A ::: Prefix ::: Pronunciation ::: Overlap and Addition ::: Familiarity, Reference and Use ::: Code meanings ::: 7: Present / This ::: Make Happen ::: 5: Absent / Missing ::: 1: Situation / Input/ Starting Position ::: 2: the Change Process ::: 6: Output / Outcome / Result ::: 8: System Positive ::: 4: Negative / Harmful / Unfavourable / Bad ::: 3: the People Factor ::: 9: the Time Factor ::: Codes A and B: Duplicate and Parallel ::: International Numbers ::: Large Numbers ::: Summary ::: Standardization ::: Licensing ::: De Bono Code B summary ::: Code 1 // Pre-Code ::: Code 2// Attention Directing ::: Code 3// Action Code ::: Code 4// Difficult Situations ::: Code 5 // Response Code ::: Code 6 // Interaction (Frantic) Code ::: Code 7// Information Code ::: Code 8 // Youth Code ::: Code 9 // Meetings ::: Code 10 // Mood code ::: Code 11 // Distance Code ::: Code 12 // Relationships Start ::: Code 13 // Relationships Continue ::: Code 14 // Relationships End ::: Code 15 // Negotiation ::: Code 16 // Assessment ::: Code 17 // Project Status ::: Code 18 // Travel Code ::: Overview of the Codes From De Bono Code B That Are Included in This Book



How to be More Interesting #conversation contents page ::: Amazon ::: Contents ::: Author's Note ::: Frames of Interest ::: Special-interest Groups ::: Very Ordinary ::: Facts and Figures ::: Opening Up ::: Levels — certain to fantasy ::: Speculation ::: Mental Habits ::: The Fixed Point ::: Formal and Informal ::: Concept Differences ::: Concept Level ::: Joint Exploration ::: Associations and Triggers ::: Functional Links ::: Keep Going ::: Use of Provocations ::: Interest Sensitivity ::: Sensitization ::: The Pause ::: The Dance of Attention ::: Choice of Avenue or Alley ::: Alleys ::: Themes ::: Complex Situations ::: Lists ::: Summaries ::: The Red Hat ::: Examination of Feelings ::: Views, Opinions and Feelings ::: Other People’s Shoes ::: Remote Relevance ::: Show Relevance ::: Mixed Emotions ::: Surprise ::: Expectation ::: Curiosity ::: Stories ::: Attention Directing ::: Questions ::: Speculations and Provocations ::: Alternatives and Choices ::: Opinions ::: Develop and Build Upon ::: Partial Agreement ::: Parallel Thinking ::: Arrogance ::: Adjectives ::: Clarify and Map ::: The Six Hats ::: Jumps ::: Interrupt ::: Diversions ::: SUMMARY



How to have a beautiful mind contents page ::: Amazon ::: Introduction: what is a beautiful mind? ::: How to agree ::: The need to be right ::: The logic bubble ::: Special circumstances ::: Special values ::: Special experience ::: Sweeping generalisations ::: Summary ::: How to disagree ::: Politeness ::: Errors of logic ::: Interpretation ::: Selective perception ::: Emotions ::: Different experience ::: Sweeping generalisations ::: Extrapolations ::: Possible and certain ::: Differ or disagree ::: Summary ::: How to differ ::: Two sorts of difference ::: Sources of difference ::: Spell out the difference ::: Spell out the reasons for the ::: difference ::: Accept the difference ::: Summary ::: How to be interesting ::: Information ::: What if? ::: Possibilities and alternatives ::: Speculation ::: Connections ::: Creativity and new ideas ::: A most useful habit ::: Exercises ::: Summary ::: How to respond ::: Clarification ::: Support ::: Examples and stories ::: Build upon ::: Extend ::: Carry forward ::: Modify ::: Summary ::: How to listen ::: Impatience ::: Getting value ::: Notice ::: Repeat back ::: Questions ::: More details ::: Two focuses ::: Summary ::: Questions ::: Fishing questions and shooting questions ::: Source and validity ::: More detail ::: Explanation ::: Alternatives and possibilities ::: Modification ::: Multiple choice questions ::: Values ::: The basis for your thinking? ::: Summary ::: Parallel thinking - the six hats ::: Co-operative exploration ::: The six thinking hats ::: The white hat ::: The red hat ::: The black hat ::: The yellow hat ::: The green hat ::: The blue hat ::: Use of the hats ::: Benefits ::: Summary ::: Concepts ::: Why bother with concepts? ::: Pick out the concept ::: Vagueness ::: Levels of concept ::: Types of concept ::: Exercise ::: Completeness ::: Compare and contrast ::: Summary ::: Alternatives ::: Better ::: Perception ::: Alternative values ::: Generating alternatives ::: Possible ::: Summary ::: Emotions and feelings ::: Selective perception ::: Choice ::: Adjectives ::: First reaction ::: Positioning ::: Summary ::: Values ::: Circumstance ::: Different parties ::: Personal values ::: Organisation values ::: Quality values ::: Innovation values ::: Ecology (impact) values ::: Perceptual values ::: Negative values ::: Summary ::: Diversions and off-course ::: Purpose ::: Boring ::: Conventional ::: Humour ::: Enjoyment ::: Summary ::: Information and knowledge ::: How much? ::: The Zulu principle ::: The mirror strategy ::: Knowledge input ::: Making do ::: Summary ::: Opinion ::: Why have opinions? ::: Provoking opinions ::: Exercise ::: Point of view ::: Changing opinions ::: New information ::: Less complete ::: Value change ::: Comparison and difference ::: Summary ::: Interruption ::: My turn ::: Ego interruptions ::: Amplifying interruptions ::: Challenge interruptions ::: Immediate or later ::: Doubts ::: Summary ::: Attitude ::: The battle attitude ::: The ego power game ::: The learner attitude ::: The explorer attitude ::: The constructive attitude ::: The fun attitude ::: The 'who cares? attitude ::: Summary ::: Starting and topics ::: Current topics ::: On-going topics ::: What do you do? ::: False starts ::: New leads ::: Shaping ::: Anger and emotion ::: Bored ::: Summary ::: Conclusion ::: Enjoyment ::: Skill ::: The conversation club ::: Numbers ::: Regularity ::: The organiser ::: Format ::: Agenda and topics ::: Achievement ::: Cross visits ::: Range of activites



Opportunities contents page ::: Amazon ::: Title ::: About Edward de Bono ::: Title page ::: Contents ::: Introduction ::: Hindsight ::: The opportunity search ::: Objective ::: Form of the book ::: Lateral thinking and opportunity search ::: Information and ideas ::: The need for ideas ::: Part I: People attitudes and opportunities ::: The distinction between what is urgent and what is important ::: Minding the store ::: Problem-solving and problem-finding ::: Three types of problem ::: Block type ::: Run out of road type ::: Problem of no Problem ::: Opportunity could have been opened before ::: Doctors starting own insurance company ::: Example 2 ::: Example 3 ::: Example 4 ::: Constructing What if problems ::: Résumé example ::: Databank Example ::: Executive styles ::: About executive styles ::: The train-driver ::: The doctor ::: The farmer ::: The fisherman ::: The opportunity-negative structure ::: No one is to blame ::: Obstacles to opportunity search ::: Organizational ::: Urgent matters always have priority ::: No time to think ::: The style of management ::: Communication is always downward from senior executives to lower levels ::: Opportunity search is always delegated to too great a distance ::: Availability of resources ::: Shortage of expertise in implementing opportunities ::: Shortage of imaginative thinkers ::: Difficulty in obtaining information ::: Risk-taking related to small resources ::: Short-term profit problem ::: Environmental ::: Union involvement and restrictions ::: Legal, government and quasi-government regulations ::: Bureaucratic constraints ::: Tax and price controls ::: Ecological pressures ::: The size of the domestic market ::: Lack of risk capital ::: Personal ::: A tendency to follow trends elsewhere and to borrow ideas ::: A protectionist atmosphere breeds managers who are not competitive ::: Love of a quiet life ::: Preference for reacting to situations rather than thinking about them in advance ::: Preference for action rather than thinking ::: The preferred outcomes encouraged by management training ::: The difficulty of evaluating opportunities once they have been generated ::: Traditional blinkers ::: Lack of encouragement ::: Lack of financial motivation ::: Lack of confidence ::: Lack of focus ::: Lack of technique ::: Comment ::: Cultural attitude towards opportunity ::: Corporate attitude towards opportunity ::: Ride the cycle ::: Survive the pressures ::: Something will turn up ::: Complacency ::: Technology-push fears ::: Fear of an opportunity war ::: Plain caution ::: Disinclination to expand ::: Comment ::: Executive attitude towards opportunity ::: Indifferent ::: Reiuctant ::: Complacent ::: Blocked ::: What is an opportunity? ::: Alternative Views of What Constitutes an Opportunity ::: Why us? ::: Opportunities for expanding and opportunities for contracting ::: Direction, destination and means ::: The thinking involved ::: Levels of opportunity ::: Corporate level ::: Management level ::: Job level ::: Personal level ::: Benefits and motivation ::: Escape benefits and achievement benefits ::: Time course of search for benefits ::: Break-off point ::: The opportunity dilemma ::: The solution ::: Part II: The Opportunity Audit and the Opportunity Team ::: Status of the opportunity search exercise ::: Skill area ::: Coping with an all ::: Channel for upwards communication ::: Problems and opportunities ::: Surveillance ::: Value ::: Elements of the opportunity search exercise ::: Opportunity Audit ::: Opportunity Manager ::: Opportunity Team ::: Opportunity Task Force ::: Purpose ::: The Opportunity Audit ::: Focus ::: Start of the exercise ::: Timing of the exercise ::: Executives involved in the exercise ::: The output required in the exercise ::: Opportunity space ::: General opportunities ::: Specific opportunity objective ::: Opportunities elsewhere ::: The thinking required in the exercise ::: Opportunity space ::: Definition of opportunity space ::: Examination of opportunity space ::: Areas of activity ::: Types of operation ::: Reaction patterns ::: Example of opportunity space ::: Description of opportunity space ::: Purpose of opportunity space description ::: Job description and opportunity space ::: Idea-sensitive areas and general opportunities ::: Idea-sensitive areas (i.s.a.) ::: High-cost area (h.c.a.) ::: Specific-problem area (s.p.a.) ::: Further-development area (f.d.a.) ::: Emotional-target area (e.t.a.) ::: General opportunities ::: Separate ideas ::: Opportunity space ::: The specific opportunity objective ::: Summary of the opportunity ::: Benefits ::: Where from? ::: How? ::: Scale? ::: Depending on what? ::: Dangers? ::: Fall short? ::: Problems? ::: Assumptions? ::: Description of the opportunity ::: Plan of action ::: Resources ::: Sticking-points ::: Time course ::: Progress reports ::: Four-monthly intervals ::: Content of the progress report ::: Opportunities in other areas ::: Other departments ::: Corporate opportunities ::: The Opportunity Manager ::: Some of the tasks of the Opportunity Manager ::: 1. To organize the mechanics of the opportunity search exercise ::: 2. To act in a general liaison capacity with regard to opportunities ::: 3. To provide a communication by-pass ::: 4. To give help and advice ::: 5. To provide a listening post and to be an ombudsman ::: 6. To provide a 'fixit' service ::: 7. To set up and run the Opportunity Team ::: 8. To organize and coordinate the Opportunity Task Forces ::: 9. To bring together people to discuss opportunities ::: 10. To focus attention upon specific problems ::: 11. To act as a liaison officer with outside consultants ::: 12. To report on and represent the opportunity function ::: Difficulties ::: The Opportunity Team ::: The mechanics of the Opportunity Team ::: Input to the Opportunity Team ::: Evaluation ::: Reaction of the Opportunity Team to opportunity suggestions ::: Coordination of opportunity search and development ::: Taking the initiative ::: Review and report ::: Budget ::: Difficulty ::: Opportunity Task Force ::: Members of the task force ::: Briefing of the task force ::: Authority of the task force ::: Projects ::: Report back ::: Part III Thinking for opportunities ::: Contents ::: Review of fundamental thinking processes ::: Focus ::: Analysis ::: Abstraction ::: Alternatives (lateral thinking) ::: Synthesis ::: Search, judgement and matching ::: Modification ::: Provocation ::: Repertoire of operations ::: 'Moving-in' and 'moving-out' as modes of thinking ::: Starting point check-list ::: Intrinsic assets ::: Operating assets ::: Situation assets ::: 'Left behind' ::: Synergy ::: Variable value ::: Challenge ::: 'De-averaging' ::: Significant point ::: Disadvantage into advantage ::: 'Under what circumstances …' ::: 'What business are we in?' ::: Me-too ::: Brought in from abroad ::: Market size ::: Trends ::: Focus on areas of weakness and areas of strength ::: Idea-sensitive areas ::: Provocation ::: Transfer ::: The treatment of ideas ::: End-point check-list ::: Idea-sensitive areas ::: The 'something' method ::: Market gaps ::: Needs ::: #Objectives ::: Wishful thinking ::: Defects ::: Faults ::: Quality improvements ::: Problem-solving ::: Stock solutions ::: Constructed solutions ::: Working backwards ::: Re-definition of the problem ::: Provocation ::: Upstream problem avoidance ::: The treatment of ideas ::: The killer phrase ::: Function extraction ::: The PMI ::: Provocation and stepping stones ::: Tailoring an idea ::: Instruction symbols for thinking ::: No entry ::: Build upon ::: Make practical ::: Use as a stepping stone ::: Extract the function ::: Incorporate the function ::: Examine the basic assumptions ::: Focus ::: Challenge ::: Expand ::: Contract ::: Show evidence ::: The DPA rating ::: Spell it out ::: Information available and information required ::: Satisfy and define ::: If-box maps ::: Action-channels ::: If-boxes ::: Needed item ::: Problem solution ::: Search ::: Response ::: Circumstance ::: Protective ::: Constructing if-box maps ::: Action structure for opportunity ::: Channels of effort ::: Delegation ::: Fashions, trends and bandwagons ::: Tapping existing energy ::: Trigger ::: Amplification ::: Positive feedback ::: Contact channels ::: Dealing with risk and uncertainty ::: Sensitivity ::: Cycles ::: Self-#fulfilling ::: Observation ::: Analysis ::: Recognition ::: Comparison ::: Hunch ::: Trends ::: Market research ::: Test runs ::: Extrapolation ::: Feasibility study ::: Spell it out ::: Wide targets, narrow targets and nearby targets ::: Degree of innovation ::: Cumulative effects ::: Risk and reward ::: Evaluation ::: Spell out the benefits ::: Approval and rejection ::: Benefits ::: What are the benefits? ::: How do the benefits arise? ::: How large are the benefits? ::: On what do the benefits depend? ::: In what way may the benefits fall short of expectation? ::: What are the assumptions? ::: What problems are likely to be met? ::: Example ::: The time profile ::: Goodness of fit ::: Does the opportunity fit the type of manager we have? ::: Does the opportunity fit our cash-flow situation? ::: Does the opportunity fit our market strengths? ::: Does the opportunity fit production and research facilities? ::: Does the opportunity fit our style of thinking? ::: Investment ::: Test-beds ::: Cut-offs ::: Target cut-off ::: Cost cut-off ::: Time cut-off ::: Test response cut-off ::: Disaster cut-off ::: Review cut-off ::: Difficulties ::: Scenario ::: Excellent ::: Moderate ::: Poor ::: Disaster ::: Comparison ::: Pre-definition ::: Individual assessment ::: Comparison ::: Value ::: Summary of Terms ::: Hindsight ::: Lateral thinking ::: Important and urgent ::: Technology-push innovation ::: Market-pull innovation ::: Minding the store ::: Reactive and projective thinking ::: Problem-solving and problem-finding ::: Blocked by openness ::: The problem of no problem ::: Train-driver-style executive ::: Doctor-style executive ::: The farmer-style executive ::: The fisherman-style executive ::: An opportunity-negative structure ::: Riding the cycle ::: Opportunity war ::: Escape benefits and achievement benefits ::: Break-off point ::: The opportunity dilemma ::: Idea-sensitive area (i.s.a.) ::: Sticking point ::: Provocation ::: Po ::: Moving-in and moving-out ::: Intrinsic assets ::: Operating assets ::: Situation assets ::: Left behind ::: Synergy ::: Variable value ::: 'De-averaging' ::: Me-too ::: The 'something' method ::: Upstream problem avoidance ::: 'The same as' ::: Function extraction ::: PMI ::: Stepping stone ::: Tailoring an idea ::: DPA rating ::: Spell it out ::: FI-FO ::: If-box map ::: Action channel ::: If-box ::: Wide targets, narrow targets and nearby targets ::: Time profile ::: Goodness of fit ::: Cut-off ::: Scenario ::: Best-case and worst-case ::: The opportunity search exercise (Opex) ::: Opportunity Audit ::: Opportunity Manager ::: Opportunity Team ::: Opportunity Task Force ::: Opportunity space ::: General opportunities ::: Specific opportunity objective ::: Read More in Penguin



Questions (attention directing tools) ::: 78 Important Questions contents page ::: Amazon ::: Contents ::: Preface ::: How to Use This Book ::: A Warning ::: Acknowledgments ::: Introduction: Answers. You Want Answers ::: The Power and Problem of Why? ::: 1 Questions Leaders Need to Ask Themselves ::: 1. What does leadership mean? ::: 2. How do you feel about being a leader? ::: 3. What do you want to be remembered for? ::: 4. Are you happy ::: 5. What are you afraid of ::: 6. Are you sure you want to ask questions? ::: What Did You Learn? ::: Chapter One Worksheet ::: 2 Questions Leaders Need to Ask Customers ::: 7. Why do you do business with us? ::: 8. Why do you do business with our competition? ::: 9. How and when have we made it hard for you to do business with us? ::: 10. What will you need from us in the future? ::: 11. If you were me, what's one thing you'd change about my organization? ::: 12. How can we effectively tell you that we're grateful for your business? ::: What Did You Learn? ::: Chapter Two Worksheet ::: 3 Questions Leaders Need to Ask Employees About the Business ::: 13. How do we make money? ::: 14. How does your work contribute to our success? ::: 15. How could we save money? ::: 16. How could you make your job more effective? ::: 17. What's the most important thing you know about our customers? ::: 18. What's something we could offer to our customers? ::: 19. Who do you see as our competition, and what do you know about them? ::: What Did You Learn? ::: Chapter Three Worksheet ::: 4 Deeper Questions Leaders Need to Ask Employees ::: 20. What gets in the way of your doing your job? ::: 21. What does our leadership team do that gets in the way of your doing your job? ::: 22. What's a recent management decision you didn't understand? ::: 23. How could we communicate management decisions more effectively? ::: 24. If you could change one thing about our organization's collective behavior, what would it be? ::: 25. What's a potential benefit we could offer that would be helpful to you? ::: 26. What is it like to work on a team in our organization? ::: 27. How do you feel at the start of your workweek? ::: 28. How do you feel at the end of your workweek? ::: 29. What volunteer work do you do? ::: 30. What makes you proud of working as a part of our organization? ::: 31. What's something you've learned in the past week? ::: 32. What brings you joy in your work? ::: 33. What do you do just for the fun of it? ::: 34. What gives your life meaning? ::: What Did You Learn? ::: Chapter Four Worksheet ::: 5 Questions to Ask in Special Situations ::: Questions for New Employees ::: 35. Why did you decide to join our firm really? ::: 36. If you had to describe our organization in one word, what would that word be? ::: 37. What's a great question I could ask someone who's new to our organization? ::: 38. What questions can I answer for you? ::: Questions for Coaching and Mentoring Sessions .... ::: 39. What are the strengths you bring to the workplace?. ::: 40. What skills do you need to learn? ::: 41. What skills do you need to practice? ::: 42. Who in our organization do you need to know? .. ::: 43. What work would you like to be doing in five years? ::: Questions for Newly Promoted Leaders ::: 44. Why do you think we made you a leader? ::: 45. What did the best leader you ever had do? ::: 46. What do you need to learn to be a great leader? . . ::: 47. How can we support you as you grow into this leadership position? ::: Questions During a Crisis ::: 48. Are you all right? ::: 49. What do you need to know? ::: 50.What do you need? ::: What Did You Learn? ::: Chapter Five Worksheet ::: 6 Questions Leaders Need to Answer ::: 51. What do you see happening in our organization over the next twelve months? ::: 52. What is the future of our industry? ::: 53. What gets you excited about the future? ::: 54. How do you learn about our customers? ::: 55. How do you know what I do in my job? ::: 56. How can I advance in our organization? ::: 57. How do you make decisions? ::: 58. How do you take time to think? ::: 59. What makes you angry in the workplace? ::: 60. How do you measure success? ::: 61. What are you learning? ::: 62. How do you stay positive? ::: 63. How do you re-ignite your enthusiasm for your job? ::: 64. What do you love about your job? ::: 65. What do you do just for fun? ::: 66. What gives your life meaning? ::: What Did You Learn? ::: Chapter Six Worksheet ::: 7 Answers for Special Situations ::: During a Business Crisis ::: 67. What's happening? ::: 68. What's going to happen next? ::: 69. What's going to happen to me? ::: 70. Am I going to have a job next month? ::: 71. What's the long-term impact of this crisis ::: During a Merger or Acquisition ::: 72-73. What's going to change? What's going to happen to my job? ::: 74. Who will be my leader? ::: 75. Will our values last? ::: During the Personal Crisis of an Employee ::: 76-78. What will the organization do to support me? What are my benefits? What will this mean for my career? ::: What Did You Learn? ::: Chapter Seven Worksheet ::: 8 Delivering Tough Answers ::: Answering when the answer is I don't know ::: Answering when the answer is No ::: Answering when there isn't an answer ::: Answering when you can't answer ::: Answering when no one wants to hear the answer ::: Answering a question that's just too personal ::: What Did You Learn? ::: Chapter Eight Worksheet ::: Conclusion: Some Final Questions ::: Appendix: Good Questions From Other Leaders ::: What's the risk of doing nothing? ::: Does what you are doing make you and the organization grow? ::: What ideas do you have? ::: What if none of this works? What next? ::: How do we WOW this customer? ::: What difference will you make for the organization today? ::: How do you face disappointment with grace? ::: How will we know when it is enough? ::: How can you ensure that this plan will be effective? ::: How can we make a change for the better of the business? ::: If you owned the company, would you do it the way you are proposing? ::: What do you think? ::: Do you honestly have the time to put this new task on your calendar? ::: What should I do to make sure you've got no worries on this project? ::: What support do you need from me to make that happen? ::: Do you think the culture of an organization can be changed by one individual? Why or why not? ::: How are you doing today? ::: What is it that we want to accomplish in the long run? ::: I know it can be done... but should it be done? ::: What's the new learning here? ::: Suppose you owned the situation, what steps would you take? ::: How did you get into this profession? ::: Why have we always done it this way? ::: How can I be part of the solution, not part of the problem? ::: What can I do to make myself more valuable to the company? ::: Can you give me specific feedback on how I can be a better leader for our organization? ::: If you could make one decision that would put this organization on a more positive course, what would it be? ::: What is your true passion? ::: What are the greatest needs and challenges facing your customers? ::: What are you taking time to do these days? ::: Is there a better way to do this? ::: How can I make a difference to the team? ::: What have you done today to develop your leadership skills? ::: Does this meet the highest standards of quality? ::: Do we all have the same sense of purpose and understanding of the desired outcomes? ::: What about your job inspires you to help a customer? ::: What went wrong? ::: What questions should we be asking our customers? ::: Why? ::: Suggested Reading List ::: Index



Simplicity contents page ::: Amazon ::: The Ten Rules of Simplicity ::: To get simplicity you have to want to get it ::: Rule 1. You need to put a very high value on simplicity ::: Rule 2. You must be determined to seek simplicity ::: Simplicity has to be designed ::: Rule 3. You need to understand the matter very well ::: Rule 4. You need to design alternatives and possibilities ::: Rule 5. You need to challenge and discard existing elements ::: Modify if you can — start afresh if you cannot ::: Rule 6. You need to be prepared to start over again ::: Rule 7. You need to use concepts ::: Rule 8. You may need to break things down into smaller units ::: If simplicity is a real value then you must be prepared to trade off other real values in order to gain simplicity ::: Rule 9. You need to be prepared to trade off other values for simplicity ::: Rule 10. You need to know for whose sake the simplicity is being designed ::: Complexity harms everyone ::: In an increasingly complex world ‘simplicity’ is becoming one of the four key values ::: Almost everyone sees a value in simplicity ::: 1 Simplicity: What Use, Value, Need. Why better ::: Simplicity is not natural ::: 2 Simplicity: The challenge, search, effort, urge. Investing in ::: If simplicity has such a high value ::: 3 Simplicity: Love, hate, upset. Simplistic. Over-simplification. Why You Have to Know Your Subject Very Well ::: Why shouldn’t language be living and changing all the time? ::: 4 Simplifying Simplify and Simplification ::: New Suggestion ::: 5 How to: Make things simpler, Simplifym 'Simp' ::: Overview of Methods, Techniques and Approaches ::: A metaphor provides a physical model ::: 6 Tree metaphor ::: A Way of Looking at Things ::: Cooking is made up of ways of cooking. ::: 7 Three methods of simping ::: A mountain top can be reached by various routes ::: 8 Three More Ways to Work towards Simplicity ::: A carpenter can use all the tools of carpentry but at any one moment uses the tool that seems appropriate for the situation ::: 9 More Approaches: Restructuring, Start Afresh, Modules and Smaller Units ::: With a ‘provocation’ there may not be a reason for saying something until after it has been said ::: 10 Further Approaches: Provocative Amputation ::: Wishful Thinking ::: Shift Energies ::: It is possible to work with detail or to work with a very broad approach ::: 11 The Last Two Approaches: Ladder and Flavor ::: Electricity is generally useful but may be dangerous ::: 12 The Dangers of Simplicity ::: 13 Simple Notes on Everyday Simplicity ::: 14 The Simple Life ::: Some rules do not have to be obeyed — but it is useful to keep them in mind ::: 15 The Ten Rules of Simplicity ::: Complexity harms everyone



Six Thinking Hats contents page ::: Amazon ::: Title page ::: Info page ::: Table of contents ::: Preface ::: Impact ::: Widespread Use Around the World ::: The Six Hats Method ::: Special Note on the Black Hat ::: Notes on the New Edition ::: Introduction ::: Argument versus Parallel Thinking ::: A Changing World ::: What Is Parallel Thinking? ::: Directions and Hats ::: Directions Not Descriptions ::: Not Categories of People ::: Note on Using the Thinking Hats ::: Showing Off ::: Playing the Game ::: Results ::: Power ::: Time Saving ::: Removal of Ego ::: One Thing at a Time ::: Six Hats, Six Colors ::: White Hat ::: Red Hat ::: Black Hat ::: Yellow Hat ::: Green Hat ::: Blue Hat ::: Three pairs of hats ::: In practice refer to color, not function ::: For those who haven't read the book ::: Using the Hats ::: Single Use ::: Sequence Use ::: Discipline ::: Timing ::: Guidelines ::: Group and Individual ::: Individuals in Groups ::: The White Hat ::: Facts and Figures ::: Whose Fact Is It? ::: Japanese-Style Input ::: Thinking Facts, Truth and Philosophers ::: Who Puts on the Hat? ::: Summary ::: The Red Hat ::: Emotions and Feelings ::: The Place of Emotions in Thinking ::: Intuition and Hunches ::: Moment to Moment ::: The Use of Emotions ::: The Language of Emotions ::: Summary ::: The Black Hat ::: Cautious and Careful ::: Content and Process ::: The Past and the Future ::: The Problem of Overuse ::: Summary ::: The Yellow Hat ::: Speculative-Positive ::: The Positive Spectrum ::: Reasons and Logical Support ::: Constructive Thinking ::: Speculation ::: Relation to Creativity ::: Summary ::: The Green Hat ::: Creative Thinking ::: Lateral Thinking ::: Movement Instead of Judgement ::: The Need for Provocation ::: Alternatives ::: Personality and Skill ::: What Happens to the Ideas? ::: Summary ::: The Blue Hat ::: Control of Thinking ::: Focus ::: Program Design ::: Summaries and Conclusions ::: Control and Monitoring ::: Summary ::: Benefits of the Six Hats Method ::: Special Techniques ::: Not Surprising ::: Conclusion



Six Action Shoes contents page ::: Amazon ::: A brilliant new way to take control of any business or life situation ::: Author’s note: Thinking and Action ::: Think and then take action ::: Supermarket ::: Think about something to buy ::: Then you buy it ::: Company ::: Plan a new strategy ::: Implement the strategy ::: Often we assume that action is easy and obvious ::: That thinking lays out the roads and decides which road is to be taken ::: That action is simple as walking along the correct road ::: It’s not that easy ::: The direct teaching of thinking ::: Education is too often about description and analysis ::: The real world involves action as well as knowledge ::: Operacy is just as important as literacy and numeracy ::: Has to do with operations ::: Six action shoes helps ::: In the training of action skills ::: In the use of those skills at the moment of action ::: Specific guidance about the action that needs to be taken ::: Choose your action style to fit the needs of the occasion ::: Introduction ::: About the six HAT method ::: The six hat method has been widely accepted because it is simple, it is practical, and it works. ::: Attributes ::: Simple ::: Practical ::: Works ::: It actually changes how thinking takes place in meetings and elsewhere: ::: instead of the usual to and fro arguments it makes it possible for people to have constructive discussions ::: All people at a meeting can use a hat of a particular color for a few moments at a time ::: Changes how thinking takes place in meeting and elsewhere ::: Constructive discussion ::: The hats involve participants in a type of mental role playing ::: White hat: An objective look at data and information ::: Red hat: Legitimizes feelings, hunches, and intuition ::: Black hat: Logical negative, judgment, and caution ::: Yellow hat: Logical positive, feasibility, and benefits ::: Green hat: New ideas and creative thinking ::: Blue hat: Control of the thinking process ::: It works because it sets the rules of the game, and people then can be asked to play the game ::: People feel foolish if they don't seem to be able to follow the rules ::: Here are some of the benefits of the method ::: Is simple to learn and use and has an immediate appeal. The visualization of the hats and the colors helps ::: Makes time available for deliberate creative effort. You can ask for "three minutes of green hat thinking." ::: Allows the legitimate expression of feelings and intuition in a meeting-without apology or justification: "This is my feeling." ::: Allows an "unbinding" of thinking so that each mode gets full attention. It avoids the confusion of trying to do everything at once ::: Provides a simple and direct way of switching thinking without causing offense: "What about some yellow hat thinking here?" ::: Requires all thinkers to be able to use each of the hats instead of sticking to only one type of thinking. ::: Separates ego from performance in thinking. Frees able minds to examine a subject more fully. ::: Provides a practical method for using the different aspects of thinking in the best possible sequence ::: Gets away from to and fro arguments and allows parties to collaborate on constructive exploration ::: Makes for much more productive meetings ::: Exploring the subject ::: The hats are most effective in occasional use ::: using one hat at a time ::: in order to obtain a certain type of thinking ::: When there is need to explore a subject fully and effectively ::: a sequence of hats may be put together ::: and then each hat used in turn ::: Advantages ::: Simple ::: Easy to learn ::: It does work ::: The six pair of action shoes follows directly from the six hat frame work ::: Six pairs of action shoes ::: Introduction ::: Occasionally, thinking is an end in itself ::: Usually the purpose of thinking is to choose or design a course of action ::: Sometimes there is a distinct thinking phase and then an action phase ::: At other times thinking and action are intertwined ::: Shoes imply action ::: Shoes, like action, are for reaching a destination ::: Situations require different styles of action ::: The perfect person ::: Knowing how to act appropriately in any type of situation ::: There seem to be two traditional approaches to this problem ::: Method 1: Establish rigid codes of behavior and expect people to learn these codes and follow them without deviation ::: Method 2: Establish general guiding principles, and then allow people to design their own actions around these principles ::: Six styles of action ::: Introduction ::: Ask what type of action is required here? ::: Put on the appropriate action shoes, and behave in that style ::: The feel of a situation ::: The feel of a situation is all important ::: Based on experience ::: Also on perception ::: The mind ::: Sees what it is prepared to see ::: Notices what it is ready to notice ::: Works as a self-organizing system ::: Information arranges itself into patterns ::: Once the patters are there then we see the world through these patterns ::: Six action shoes provide a framework ::: Become familiar with different types of situations ::: Then use this familiarity to react suitably in similar situations ::: Two shoes in a pair ::: Have to respond to a particular situation without pretending that it is something that we would like it to be ::: Situations are rarely pure ::: Often require a combination of 2 types of shoes ::: 15 possible combinations ::: Color for the shoes ::: Must differ from the hats. To avoid confusion ::: Must suggest the nature of the mode ::: Physical nature of the shoes ::: Visualizing the action shoes, in color and shape, is an important part of the learning process ::: The shoes ::: Overview ::: Navy formal shoes ::: Routines and formal procedures ::: Grey sneakers ::: Exploration, investigation, and collection of evidence ::: Purpose of the action is to get information ::: Brown brogues ::: Involves practically and pragmatism ::: Do what is sensible and what is practical ::: Figure it out as you go using initiative, practical behavior, and flexibility ::: Almost the opposite of the formality navy formal shoes ::: Orange gumboots ::: Danger and emergency ::: Emergency action is required ::: Safety is a prime concern ::: Pink slippers ::: Suggest care, compassion, and attention to human feelings and sensitivities ::: Purple riding boots ::: Suggest authority ::: Playing out the role give by virtue of a position or authority ::: There is an element of leadership and command ::: The person is not acting in his or her own capacity but in an official role. ::: Once the framework has been learned and visualized, then there is not need to repeat the whole description of the action mode each time: ::: The shoes in detail ::: Navy formal shoes ::: Introduction ::: Sometimes routines help us to avoid making dangerous mistakes ::: It is easier to use a routine checklist that to figure everything out each time ::: Examples ::: Airlines ::: Doctors ::: Hotel check-in ::: Arrest ::: The need for rules, laws, procedures, and routines ::: Otherwise chaos and confusion ::: A stifling bureaucracy sometimes seems to exist solely to keep itself in existence ::: The overuse of routines may be a bad thing ::: Freedom of routines ::: In some ways routines provide freedom ::: If we had to think about every action we take ::: Then life would be very slow and very complicated ::: About the brain ::: The nature of perception ::: Occasionally we need to challenge these perceptions ::: That is what we call creativity ::: But most of the time having these routine perceptions makes life possible ::: Some people feel all routines and structures are restricting ::: Want to be free of structures ::: Want to use their own initiative ::: Even … are restrictive ::: The framework of the six hats and six action shoes ::: The deliberate technique of lateral thinking ::: The don’t realize the difference between restrictive structures and liberating structures ::: Examples ::: We need to keep a balanced view of structures and routines ::: We should not overlook their value ::: just because abuses of routine can be restrictive ::: Source of routines ::: May gradually evolve and accumulate over time ::: Examples ::: Weddings ::: Good manners ::: Those associated with a craft ::: Sometimes tempted to keep routines only for tradition’s sake ::: Some routines are set up by organizations just like laws are set up by society ::: Help avoid errors ::: Allow interaction between people ::: Represent crystallization of the best way of doing something ::: Such routine can be improved or even dropped ::: But at time we want and need to use them ::: Routines that individuals set up for themselves ::: They can have high use if they simplify life ::: Instead of working things out each time, just switch into the routine — navy formal shoes ::: What should routines be like? ::: Criteria ::: Should cover many situations ::: Should be easy to recognize when a particular routine needs to be used ::: Applying a routine should be straightforward ::: The steps should be clear ::: The steps should follow one another ::: The routine should be robust ::: The purpose of the routine is achieved even if the steps are not carried out exactly as prescribed ::: Routines should be flexible enough to cope with special circumstances ::: Routines should be easy to learn and remember ::: Routines should make sense of those who use them. Their logic and value should be apparent ::: Routines must avoid doubt and confusion ::: Designing routines takes skill ::: A routine should always be a little bit artificial ::: For example, because if it is too natural, then it is easy to forget that it is a routine ::: The use of routines ::: Some basic questions ::: Which routine should be used here? ::: What are the steps of this routine? ::: Is it necessary to combine routines ::: Is some flexibility necessary? ::: Where can the flexibility be used? ::: Can this routine be improved? ::: Can I check the application of this routine? ::: What output or result do I expect? ::: The better the routine is known, the less trouble there is in using that routine ::: Navy shoe action mode and exercises ::: Quotations ::: Navy formal shoes requires the carrying through of established routines ::: The action focus in on … ::: choosing the appropriate routine ::: then carrying it through meticulously ::: Focus on the step that is being taken ::: And think of the following step ::: Keep checking that the routine is being done properly ::: The navy shoe action mode can also include establishing formal routines where these would have a value ::: Exercises ::: Nave shoe action style ::: Precisely using formal routines ::: Adhering to formality and procedure ::: Taking the laid down steps one after the other ::: Acknowledging that the routine has a value and purpose ::: Instead of going through the routine mindlessly just because you have to ::: There is a sense that the routine is the best action plan of the moment ::: And that this action plan is being followed ::: You may ask a person to switch into the navy shoe action mode ::: People may decide for themselves that the situation demands the navy shoe action mode ::: In the framework of the six styles of action the navy shoe action mode has its rightful place ::: Quite often the best action is routine action ::: Sometimes routine action is absolutely necessary ::: Just as you would wish to carry out a dance routine effectively or to sing in tune, so you might desire to carry out a routine perfectly ::: Summary of navy formal shoes ::: Emphasizes formality and routines ::: Such as drills and routines of the navy ::: At times routines are essential to ensure safety and avoid error ::: Routines can represent a crystallization of the best way of doing something ::: Using routines can free up our thinking so that we can tackle other matters ::: But their overuse can stifle initiative and restrict flexibility ::: This does not make routines a bad thing ::: But cautions against excessive use of what is a good thing ::: A routine is an action pattern ::: that has been laid down in advance ::: Once the appropriate routine has been selected, then action consists in fully carrying through this routine ::: Grey Sneakers ::: Introduction ::: We need to know why there has been this increase in absenteeism. ::: Before we take any other type of action we need some grey sneaker action. ::: Let's get more information." ::: "We are investigating it. ::: We are still in grey action mode. ::: We'll let you know as soon as we have anything." ::: "Just find out all you can. ::: Limit yourself to grey sneaker mode. ::: Be as inconspicuous as possible. ::: Remember just the grey mode. ::: No heroics." ::: Sneakers are quiet, and you can pad around in them without being noticed. ::: In a sense, in grey shoe action mode the person is sneaking around, listening, and exploring. ::: The style is casual, relaxed, and quiet. ::: There is no desire to be noticed or even to affect other people. ::: In a grey mist and fog you cannot see clearly to find your way around. ::: All your energy is directed at getting information from the surroundings. ::: In the same way grey action mode implies removing the fog of ignorance. ::: We want to obtain as much information as possible. ::: Grey also suggests the grey matter of the brain, as in the colloquial, "Use your grey matter." ::: So the grey action mode includes both collecting information and also thinking. ::: When in the grey action mode, a person may use any aids to thinking that he or she wishes, such as the six thinking hats. ::: In the navy action mode you know exactly the next step that has to be taken because you are following a known routine. ::: In the grey action mode you are exploring, but you do not know what you are going to find. ::: What you find determines your next step. ::: If a clue turns up, then you follow that clue. ::: In the navy action mode you are reciting a poem you know by heart. ::: In the grey action mode you are conducting a conversation that may turn in any direction. ::: Note that the grey action mode includes all the activities that are necessary in order to obtain the information. ::: If the information is in a particular library, then tracking it down is part of the grey sneaker action mode. ::: It is not just a sit-and-think mode. ::: Scientists pursuing a theory, ::: investigating journalists, ::: detectives solving a crime, ::: market researchers trying to assess response to a new product, ::: pollsters, ::: investment bankers contemplating a takeover, and ::: tax inspectors are all using the grey action mode. ::: Perhaps the purest case of grey action mode would be the investigation of a computer fraud. ::: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, mainly involved himself in grey sneaker action. ::: In the end the criminal usually confessed, thereby removing the need for more vigorous action. ::: Today's television dramas allow less room for grey action mode and tend to emphasize orange and brown action modes. ::: The grey action mode can interplay with other action modes as information gathered reveals the need for other types of action. ::: Quite often there may be a pause in other types of action until you get the information that you need to go forward. ::: As with all the other action modes there is often an overlap of needs, and an action rarely consists of only one action mode. ::: The Use of Investigation ::: You need to investigate when you have no idea as to what is going on. ::: You're fishing. ::: You're looking for leads. ::: You want some basis on which to build a hypothesis. ::: A scientist, an archaeologist, a searcher for oil, and a detective are often in this sort of position. ::: There is a leak of sensitive information from a government department. ::: Where do you start looking? ::: When a patient first visits a doctor, the doctor has to search for clues. ::: The doctor may indeed use some fixed routine for eliciting information—a combination of navy and grey shoe action. ::: When a doctor forms an idea, then this hypothesis can be checked out by means of tests. ::: So the first use of investigation is to make a start. ::: The mind can see only what it is prepared to see. ::: That is why a hypothesis is so useful. ::: Using the framework of the hypothesis you can start to notice things you would not otherwise have noticed. ::: The hypothesis also provides a direction in which to look for further information. ::: The second use of information therefore is to confirm or reject hypotheses. ::: In theory scientists should seek to destroy an hypothesis, but they first need something to destroy, so they attempt to confirm the hypothesis as theory. ::: This second use of investigation is the checking-out phase. ::: Choices often have to be made. ::: You may need to choose between two possible hypotheses or two courses of action. ::: You need information to make choices of any sort. ::: A person buying a new stove wants to get as much information as possible, not only from the vendor but from existing users of that brand of stove. ::: You need information to build a case. ::: A prosecutor wants the detective to provide enough information to get a conviction. ::: The designer of a new product wants as much information as possible about how the product will be perceived by the designated market. ::: The information may not reach the level of certainty of proof, but the information must build a reasonable case. ::: You need information when looking into the future. ::: You need to see the #consequences of action—and also of inaction. ::: Today ecologists and green groups paint horrific scenarios about the greenhouse and other effects. ::: You need information to assess the seriousness of the danger. ::: Information about future possibilities gives a good basis for action. ::: Sometimes you need to know what you don't know. ::: You need to identify exactly what you don't know. ::: Thinking, Ideas, and Information ::: Thinking is involved in collecting information and making the maximum use of that information. ::: Information may trigger ideas, which may trigger an information search. ::: Information does not easily yield up all the ideas that are present in that information. ::: The mind has to put things together in different ways—to generate possibilities and even provocations. ::: Sometimes there is information which everyone has looked at in a particular way. ::: Then someone comes along and uses lateral thinking to look at information in a different way and reaches a new hypothesis about it. ::: It is a mistake to believe that collecting enough information will do all our thinking for us. ::: Information is not a substitute for ideas and thinking. ::: On the other hand, there is a real need for information. ::: The key is to sustain an active interplay between thinking and information collecting. ::: Thinking directs information collecting and also makes the best use of what has been collected. ::: At the same time information may suggest ideas, confirm some ideas, and lead to the rejection of others. ::: Use of the Grey Sneaker Action Mode ::: "Right now we are all in the grey sneaker action mode. We have to find out what our competitors are planning to do. That has to come first." ::: "Why are you trying to solve the problem in that way? Have you given it some grey action mode, or are you just doing the first thing that comes to mind?" ::: "We have only got half a story here. Get out there, put on your grey sneakers, and get the other half. Then we can publish it." ::: "How much is it all going to cost? Have you completed your grey actions on this?" ::: "He is always jumping to conclusions. He never checks things out. I don't think he likes the grey action mode. Perhaps it is too quiet for him. He prefers strong action." ::: "I congratulate you. That's very good grey sneaker action. That was a smart piece of investigation. It is going to save us a lot of time and money." ::: "How is it that those two scientists could show the effect but no one else has been able to?? What is going on? Did they cheat? Did they make an honest mistake? Did they just do things in a different way? There is a great need for some grey sneaker action." ::: Motivation for Grey Sneaker Action ::: What is the motivation for investigation and exploration? ::: Investigation may be a large part of your job as a scientist, detective, explorer, or spy. ::: Even so, some people satisfy the minimal requirements of such jobs, and some actually enjoy exploration. ::: Some people have a natural curiosity and a fascination with information. ::: They want to know things. ::: Other people may not have this curiosity but instead have an urgency to complete a task once the task has been started. ::: Such people may be slow to start grey sneaker action, but once started they are carried along by the momentum of what they are discovering. ::: Like the proverbial terrier, they cannot let go. ::: Other people want only certainties. ::: They are irritated by ambiguities and uncertainties. ::: They want everything to be neat and defined. ::: Such people are apt to switch into certainties and beliefs as soon as possible. ::: They quickly become dogmatic and move rapidly from possibility to certainty without any proper justification. ::: What is a #belief? ::: A belief is an idea, a hypothesis, a theory, or a way of looking at the world which forces us to look at the world in a way that supports that belief. ::: The classic example is paranoia. ::: Paranoid people use complicated logic to show that all events are directed toward themselves. ::: Unlike some other types of mental illness in paranoia there is no lack of organization of information but a type of excess of organization. ::: Everything is fitted together into one master theory. ::: In an investigation this type of person rushes to generate an idea or hypothesis. ::: All further investigation is designed to fit that hypothesis, which soon becomes a belief—which must be true. ::: Anything that does not fit is ignored or changed so that it does fit. ::: Objective exploration ceases. ::: As a lawyer in court makes and argues a particular case, so does the investigator. ::: This is dangerous grey shoe action. ::: The best preventative for this premature closing of the mind is to insist that in grey shoe action at least two hypotheses are kept in mind and that the investigator should be able to make a reasonable case for both of them at any time. ::: The premature acceptance of a theory also causes trouble in science. ::: An early reasonable hypothesis causes scientists to look at the world in a particular way and then ignore evidence that does not fit the hypothesis. ::: All evidence is seen through this hypothesis. ::: It can take a long time for a breakthrough to break through even though the evidence was there all along. ::: What Should Investigation Be Like? ::: A formal collection of information can take the form of house-to-house inquiries in a murder hunt. ::: A scientist tests many possible variations of a chemical molecule. ::: A pollster defines a sample and steadily works through it. ::: This is navy type action used for grey purposes. ::: The data should be neutral and objective even though eventually they are looked at through the window of an idea. ::: Having more than one person involved in collecting the data reduces the personal bias of an individual. ::: This type of data collection is driven by a systematic method. ::: The other type of data collection is driven by a hunch or theory that hypothesizes what data to look for and where to find it. ::: It requires a conscious effort by the grey sneaker operator to make a clear distinction between a theory that helps data collection and data collection that simply supports the theory. ::: There may be a need for a second person to show that the same data can indeed be looked at in a different way. ::: There can also be the habit, suggested earlier, of always having at least two theories or hypotheses in mind. ::: There is no easy way around the dilemma that without a theory it may be difficult even to collect data but that the theory may so dominate the data collection that it is no longer neutral or comprehensive. ::: Instead of pretending that people can be objective it may be better to acknowledge that the mind cannot really be objective and then to take steps to address that lack of objectivity (like the habit of twin hypotheses). ::: Investigation Leads to Action ::: Navy shoe formality may be involved in collecting data, and that may lead to grey shoe activity. ::: This in turn may lead to brown shoe (or other) action. ::: Investigation itself is a form of action, but at some point grey shoe action gives way to other forms of action and activity. ::: A scientist moves from data to theory to experiment to data to publication of a paper. ::: A detective collects evidence to build a case, which is passed to the prosecutor, who then presents the case in court. ::: In between comes the arrest of the person to be charged. ::: A market researcher takes action to collect information, which is then passed to the client, who decides what action to take. ::: An interplay occurs between the collection of information and the action that is going to be taken as a result of that information. ::: The key question for the grey shoe operator to ask is, "At this moment what is the central purpose of my activity-to collect information?" ::: If the answer to that question is yes, then grey sneaker action is called for. ::: The movement from information collection to action depends on several factors: ::: What is the time pressure? ::: Is there a hurry? ::: Will delay have negative #consequences? ::: What are the dangers of precipitate action? ::: What are the benefits of quick action? ::: What is the trade-off between more thorough data collection and the need for action? ::: If a criminal suspect is preparing to flee the country, further collection of evidence may make a better case, but there would be no suspect to try. ::: In some cases spending twice as much money and time in collecting data produces a benefit that is only 10 percent better. ::: That may not be a worthwhile investment if the information is for a market survey. ::: In other fields the extra information might be vital: in medicine one additional test may make the difference between recommending and not recommending a procedure. ::: Some ways of collecting information are more effective than others. ::: One way may take a long time and cost a great deal of money; another way make be quicker and cheaper. ::: The collection of data is an activity like any other and can be improved through careful and creative thinking. ::: It is not often that data must be collected regardless of cost. ::: Information is a product like any other. ::: What is the best way of producing that product? ::: The careful design of data collection is as important as the use of the data. ::: Carrying Through Grey Sneaker Action and Exercises ::: The data collector must be absolutely clear that at the moment he or she is in grey sneaker mode. ::: Information collection requires full concentration and must take precedence over other matters. ::: The casual and incidental collection of information does have a high value, but with grey sneaker mode the purpose of the action is direct collection of information. ::: Collecting the information is an end in itself. ::: Grey sneaker action requires effort and discipline. ::: It is easy to slip into other action modes that offer a reaction to the situation and make use of existing action habits. ::: Grey sneaker action is quiet and unobtrusive. ::: If the data collector uses an authority role (purple boot action mode), then the data provider might tell the collector only what is expected. ::: The information collector should be almost invisible. ::: That is why the color grey is so appropriate—a grey cat is always difficult to see. ::: Persistence is probably the most important characteristic needed for the grey sneaker mode. ::: If you do have persistence, then a lot else will follow. ::: If you do not have persistence, then all other qualities will amount to nothing. ::: Grey Sneaker Action Style ::: Information collection as a priority. ::: Quiet, unobtrusive, and objective. ::: Collecting information as a basis for theories and then collecting information to test the theories. ::: Asking, looking, and listening. ::: Designing ways of collecting the information. ::: Collecting information most effectively. ::: Being conscious of the value of an hypothesis and also of the danger of an hypothesis, which can reduce objectivity. ::: Grey sneaker action style also includes thinking. ::: The formal application of thinking to a chosen target area. ::: The solution of problems. ::: Making the maximum use of available information and deciding what further information may be required. ::: In general, grey sneaker action mode is absorbing information and using it. ::: Action is required to collect information, and skill is involved in deciding how to collect the information, in collecting the information, and in making the best use of it. ::: Summary ::: The grey sneaker action mode is one of the six action modes. ::: It emphasizes the collection and use of information. ::: Think of grey as indicating the grey matter of the brain because it is brain rather than muscle that is important in grey sneaker mode. ::: Think also of a grey fog or mist because the purpose of grey sneaker action is to remove the fog to make things clear. ::: The sneaker type of shoe suggests something that is casual, quiet, and unobtrusive. ::: In the grey sneaker mode the #objectives are the collection and use of information. ::: They must take precedence over everything else. ::: Information may be collected systematically where this is possible, but other times a theory or hypothesis may be needed to suggest a direction. ::: Remember that the collection of information should be as comprehensive and neutral as possible. ::: It is only in the second phase that information collection may be directed at testing a hypothesis. ::: Information collecting is a valuable activity that is the basis for many other types of action. ::: Brown brogues ::: Source Part V: Brown Brogues ::: Introduction ::: "This is brown brogue stuff. ::: Get in there and see what you can do. ::: Be sensible, be practical. ::: Work it out as you go along." ::: "I'm operating in the brown brogue mode. ::: Each step is determined by the evolving situation. ::: I have a general sense of direction, but the choice of action at any moment is purely practical." ::: "There is no fixed price. ::: You just bargain. ::: It is a sort of brown brogue way of conducting business. ::: He sets the price flexibly, and you pay flexibly." ::: "You want to be told what to do. ::: Well, I'll tell you. ::: Use the brown brogue action mode. ::: Do what is sensible and practical at every moment." ::: Brown is a practical color. ::: The earth is brown, and mud is brown. ::: There is nothing exotic about the color brown, which is basic and indeed earthy Brown is an everyday color. ::: Brogues are stout shoes capable of hard wear; they are not smart shoes for formal occasions but day-to-day shoes for most occasions. ::: All these factors contribute to what is meant by the brown brogue action mode. ::: The emphasis in brown brogue action is on practicality, pragmatism, and good sense. ::: What can be done in this situation? ::: Navy shoe action is determined by a preset routine that has to be followed. ::: Brown brogue action is determined moment to moment by the actual situation. ::: Quite often the situation falls outside established routine or training. ::: Flexibility is a key aspect of brown brogue action. ::: You change your behavior as the situation changes. ::: If you cannot do what you set out to do, you modify your objective. ::: There is no rigidity about brown brogue action. ::: You do what can be done. ::: You do what you can do. ::: Brown brogue action is low key and unspectacular. ::: There is something to be done, and you do it. ::: Good sense, common sense, and a little wisdom are required. ::: General experience can be a help, but general experience may have set up bad habits of behavior that interfere with the true flexibility required for brown brogue action. ::: Experience can trap people in routines of perception and behavior and lead to navy shoe behavior. ::: But experience also can help to prevent overreaction and provide a sense of perspective. ::: Experience can provide a sort of calmness in coping. ::: Brown brogue action is not detached and advisory but is always involved: it is "get your hands dirty" action. ::: Without thinking there would only be mindless action, but the thinking is directed to what can be done in the moment. ::: What are sometimes called street smarts come under brown brogue action. ::: The general skills of doing-for which I invented the word operacy—are best illustrated by brown brogue action. ::: Schools teach about literacy and numeracy, but in the real world operacy is just as important. ::: Knowledge does not automatically lead to action. ::: Matters like assessing priorities and guessing well are important parts of life, of operacy, and of brown brogue action. ::: When I fly short distances, I ask for a window seat because I enjoy looking at the world outside. ::: When I fly long distances, I prefer an aisle seat because it makes it easier to reach the lavatory in the middle of the night. ::: That is a sort of brown brogue action although you could argue that the window person climbing over me might wake me up. ::: On balance, it seems to make sense to me. ::: I have often suggested that airport information desks should have simple overhead projectors providing instant information that could be updated as often as required. ::: Passengers then would know when and why delays occurred instead of crowding around desks to hear announcements. ::: I have been told that the idea is too simple and that the airlines are developing a complicated electronic screen-which probably will be out of order half the time. ::: Simplicity and practicality are key features of brown brogue action. ::: The small cartons of fruit juice have been a huge success. ::: The fruit juice is the same, but the handy size and the attached straw provide great convenience. ::: Brown brogue action is concerned with what is doable and what gives value. ::: This book is being written entirely on a flight from London to Auckland, New Zealand, where I have been invited to address the meeting of the Commonwealth Law Society. ::: Why? ::: Because writing a book is by far the best way to make the time pass quickly. ::: Because it is a period of total peace when I am not going to be interrupted by phone calls or other matters. ::: Because there is nothing else that I could, or should, be doing. ::: Because being 35,000 feet up does give one a certain detachment. ::: Because I have found it better to write books like this in one go rather than a piece at a time. ::: Because I wrote another book, Six Thinking Hats, on a plane trip from London to Melbourne. ::: On that occasion I used a Canon 5 Star electronic typewriter, which meant messing around with pieces of paper. ::: This time I'm using a small Psion MC400 mobile computer, which removes the need for paper and also is quieter. ::: Brown brogue action may also include twisting your tie back to front when eating on a plane so that dropped food does not ruin the tie. ::: These are minor points of practicality. ::: Brown brogue action is not heroics but small practical things that come together to give effectiveness. ::: Chapter 23: Pragmatism ::: Some people condemn pragmatism because they believe that pragmatism seems to be a way of acting without principles. ::: Pragmatism does not mean being unprincipled: it means the pragmatic use of principles. ::: Pragmatism is when you do what can be done to achieve an objective and put as much emphasis on practicality as on principles. ::: Action without principles is dangerous and intolerable in a civilized society because principles help society control action. ::: The main objection to pragmatism is that the end might come to justify the means. ::: If offering false evidence to convict a drug dealer is acceptable because the end is worthwhile, then the door is opened to all sorts of behavior. ::: Pragmatism, however, asserts that the end cannot justify the means without leading to total chaos. ::: Much theft, for example, would be justified on the grounds of need. ::: Pragmatism is concerned with where an action might lead — with the effect or #consequences of the action — but it does not say that anything is acceptable as long as the outcome is positive. ::: Pragmatism should be contrasted with the arrogance (often based on principles) that declares, "I am sure that what I am doing is right, and I do not care what the #consequences might be." ::: Pragmatism means being sensitive to a situation, to the people involved in the situation, and to what is practical. ::: Pragmatism is the art of the possible. ::: Politicians are pragmatic people. ::: The term expediency also has a bad image. ::: Politicians are said to do things in order to gain votes even though these things may be unprincipled. ::: Buying votes with favors is an unpleasant practice, and some types of expediency are not acceptable. ::: Nevertheless, it may not be hygienic to use a dirty handkerchief to staunch a flow of blood, but if there is nothing else on hand then one urgent need overrides the danger. ::: An infection can be dealt with later. ::: Chapter 24: Effectiveness ::: In the course of my work I have met a lot of highly intelligent and creative people. ::: But what seems to be more rare than intelligence or creativity is simple effectiveness. ::: Effectiveness is very much a part of brown brogue action. ::: Brown brogue action is not just concerned with survival and getting by, even though that may sometimes be the priority. ::: Brown brogue action is concerned with getting results. ::: Efficiency and effectiveness are not at all the same thing. ::: Efficiency is a balance between input and output. ::: There is an effort to cut down on input and costs so that the ratio looks good. ::: Effectiveness means making sure that the resources are available to get the results that you want. ::: If the resources are not sufficient to allow you to do everything that you need to do, then you list priorities and go down that list as far as you can. ::: But you make sure that each item you tackle is done effectively. ::: Effectiveness does not mean inefficiency. ::: It means focusing directly on what you want to achieve rather than on the balance between input and output. ::: An efficient operation may give a poor quality output. ::: To some extent the Japanese tend to put effectiveness first, whereas the Americans tend to put efficiency first: the Americans removed all extras from cars to decrease the price, and the Japanese put in as many extras as possible to increase the value. ::: It is a good habit to ask at every step, what is the most effective course of action here? ::: That is a good brown brogue habit. ::: Chapter 25: What Is the Basis of Brown Brogue Action? ::: Brown brogue action is a combination of good values, good sense, and good principles. ::: What are good values? ::: Human respect is an example of a good value. ::: From this basic value comes an avoidance of bullying, pressure, extortion, torture, prejudice, racism, etc. ::: Human respect is a practical aspect of the love that #religions advocate. ::: You can respect an enemy even when you feel you can't love that enemy. ::: Respect acknowledges others' dignity and right to exist. ::: Being unwilling to cause harm is another basic value. ::: One of the most basic values in medicine is not to cause more harm than help: sometimes the side effects of drugs do just that. ::: Respect for the truth is another basic value and so is respect for the environment. ::: There are individual values, community values, social values, and environmental values. ::: Unless the brown brogue action is specifically directed toward doing something directly in these areas, the minimum requirement is to avoid doing harm. ::: If a person is in good standing in a community, then to destroy that standing unreasonably is causing harm to the community. ::: To arrest a person as publicly as possible causes such harm. ::: An arrested person is not yet a convicted person (that is for the courts to decide), so there is no justification for this harm. ::: Should brown brogue action attempt to create benefits or positive values as such? ::: Probably not, unless this is the specific purpose of the action. ::: A slight additional effort may be able to create such additional values, but it is usually difficult enough to achieve the main objective of the brown brogue action, and blurring one objective with another may confuse the action and make it less effective. ::: What is good sense? ::: In hindsight, everything that works out well can be attributed to common sense and any failure to lack of common sense. ::: Good sense and common sense are most easily visible in hindsight when everything has been worked out. ::: It is not unlike standing beside a roulette table when the number twenty-three comes up. ::: If you had had the good sense to put your money on number twenty-three, then you would have won a lot of money. ::: Hindsight is easy. ::: So a plea for common sense is usually pointless. ::: Good sense is a combination of sensitivity, priorities, and practicality. ::: Sensitivity means clear understanding of the situation and of the people involved. ::: This is a matter of perception and also of trying out different perceptions. ::: This sensitivity does not mean sympathy or compassion but an understanding of what is going on. ::: Establishing priorities is very much part of brown brogue action. ::: Without a good sense of priorities it is difficult to lay down the necessary action steps. ::: Priorities set objectives and guidelines for action. ::: What do you want to achieve? ::: What matters most? ::: What needs to be done first? ::: The final component of good sense is practicality. ::: This is an acknowledgment of what is actually doable. ::: You might like to do some things, but they may not be feasible. ::: What can actually be done? ::: This should not give rise to a sense of timidity and the setting of timid objectives. ::: The sense of practicality extends to a feeling of what is likely. ::: What is likely to happen? ::: How is the situation likely to evolve? ::: What is the likely reaction to an intervention? ::: To some extent this assessment of what is likely depends on experience and understanding human nature. ::: But even a simple pause to ask, "What is the most likely outcome here?" can make a significant difference. ::: It is important to distinguish between the likely and the possible. ::: There are times when the possible does indeed happen, but in general you are going to be better off aiming for the likely. ::: What are good principles? ::: That the end cannot justify the means is a basic principle. ::: A concern for the truth is both a principle and a value. ::: There are general moral principles such as these and also practical principles of action. ::: The latter might include the need to define your role, your resources, and your objectives. ::: Another practical principle is to define the action mode that you want to use. ::: Is it really brown action mode, or might it be a purple action mode? ::: Being reliable when others have to depend on you is a further important principle. ::: These guidelines for behavior in the brown brogue action mode may seem much like the guidelines for training the perfect person who acts appropriately on every occasion. ::: This is true but refers to only one of the six action modes. ::: The pragmatic nature of brown brogue action requires a double sensitivity: ::: 1. A sensitivity to the situation. ::: 2. A sensitivity to guiding principles. ::: This is the definition of pragmatic behavior. ::: The other five action modes do not have this characteristic. ::: Chapter 26: Initiative ::: Since there are no formal rules of procedure, then a person in the brown brogue action mode needs to use initiative. ::: Analyze the situation and determine priorities and objectives. ::: Behave in the most obvious and established way. ::: This depends on a personal repertoire of action steps provided by experience. ::: If the action does not work, then try another approach. ::: Always do the obvious thing first unless you are sure that surprise is important. ::: There may be a place for creativity if the value of a creative approach is high and the cost of failure low. ::: Is this the right situation in which to risk a new and untried approach? ::: Patterns of action depend on individual personalities and styles. ::: The extrovert may behave in a way that is different from the introvert. ::: No one pattern is right for everyone. ::: That is the difference between the navy action mode and the brown action mode. ::: With the navy action mode there is one routine that has to be used by everyone. ::: Brown action mode is more customized and more individualized. ::: Because brown action mode is individual, there is training value in discussing what has been done in debriefing sessions. ::: Why did you do that? ::: What did you do next? ::: In sales training colleagues quickly learn from the behavior of a master salesperson because there is a tangible measure of success (the sales volume). ::: This instant measurement of success is more difficult to find in other fields. ::: So training should include an acknowledgment of the success of the action. ::: This acknowledgment may be based on many criteria-effectiveness, speed, simplicity, low cost, low risk. ::: All these aspects need to be discussed. ::: Brown action mode does not mean having to create an action pattern from scratch on each occasion. ::: When you get up in the morning, you have a choice of clothes to wear (as distinct from having to wear a uniform). ::: So the brown action operator may choose from a range of available action patterns. ::: But the choice is up to the operator. ::: Chapter 27: Use of the Brown Brogue Action Mode ::: "There is no set way of doing this. ::: Keep your head. ::: Be practical. ::: Use the brown brogue mode. ::: Make your decisions as you go along." ::: "He's fine in routine situations. ::: A great navy action person. ::: But not so good at the brown brogue stuff. ::: He does not seem to have any common sense." ::: "We are going to put the books aside and use the brown brogue mode. ::: You know, practical and moment-to-moment action depending on what we find. ::: We have our objectives and our priorities for guides." ::: "I liked the way you used your initiative. ::: That was a very good example of brown brogue action mode. ::: You are getting pretty good at it." ::: "What do we do now? ::: I don't yet know. ::: We'll wait and see how the situation develops and then decide what to do. ::: Brown brogue stuff." ::: "I am sorry I just froze up. ::: I couldn't think of a thing to do. ::: I guess I am not very good at this brown brogue action mode." ::: "Yes, that is a reasonable plan of action. ::: You can try it, but if you find it does not work then switch to the brown brogue action mode." ::: "There are times when doing nothing at all is the correct brown brogue action mode." ::: "She is totally the wrong sort of person for that job. ::: She has no feel for situations. ::: She does not understand what is meant by pragmatism. ::: She wants to do everything by the book. ::: But the book does not cover all situations. ::: She just does not seem happy with brown brogue action." ::: Chapter 28: Source of Brown Brogue Action ::: Brown brogue action is determined in the first place by the needs of the situation. ::: What are you there for? ::: What are you trying to do? ::: What sort of situation is it? ::: Brown brogue action is, above all, responsive to the situation. ::: Brown brogue action follows a simple analysis, understanding, or appreciation of the situation. ::: What is going on? ::: How is it likely to develop? ::: What are the sensitive points in the situation? ::: What are the action points? ::: What are the needs? ::: Brown brogue action requires simple initiatives. ::: Keep things as simple as possible. ::: Do the obviousexcept in a conflict situation where surprise may have a benefit. ::: Don't try to be clever. ::: Prefer to be practical. ::: Brown brogue action draws on your experience and also the experience of others. ::: What action patterns are available to you? ::: What did you do in the past in similar situations? ::: Although brown brogue action is responsive to the situation, always try to be in control of the situation. ::: Avoid letting the situation get out of control so that you are carried along and have to respond to the initiatives of others. ::: Chapter 29: What Should Brown Brogue Action Be Like? and Exercises ::: Brown brogue action should be simple, practical, and effective. ::: There is nothing more to be said. ::: Everything is covered in those three words. ::: Use them to test any brown brogue actions: ::: • Are the actions simple enough? ::: • Are the actions practical (doable)? ::: • Are the actions likely to be effective? ::: If the answers to these three questions are not an easy yes, then think again. ::: Brown brogue action is not mindless action. ::: It includes the thinking necessary to choose suitable actions. ::: Exercises ::: For each of the following situations suggest a brown brogue course of action. ::: A father asks your advice because he suspects his son is a thief. ::: You are waiting patiently in a line when some newcomers move directly to the head of the line. ::: You are in a public meeting that is constantly interrupted by someone with a grievance who makes the same point over and over again. ::: You are in a store and notice that the man in front of you is stealing some of the merchandise. ::: At a party one of the guests gets drunk and wants to pick a fight with you. ::: A neighbor always parks her car so that it blocks the entrance to your garage. ::: When you come back late at night, you are unable to get into your garage. ::: Someone unknown is spreading false rumors that your business is in difficulties and is likely to go bankrupt. ::: You are driving a distance of fifty miles to get to an important meeting for which you cannot be late. ::: After twenty miles you hear a strange sound coming from the back of the car. ::: What do you do? ::: Chapter 30: Brown Brogue Action Style ::: The style is low key and practical. ::: You don't go in with any set plan, but you assess the situation moment to moment and act accordingly. ::: The emphasis is on practicality and effectiveness. ::: You do what is doable. ::: There is a need for a clear sense of objectives and a clear sense of priorities. ::: Within these guidelines you determine your actions. ::: Take initiatives and don't be passive. ::: Keep control of the situation. ::: Be sensitive to changes in the situation. ::: Give yourself space for action and fallback positions in case things do not work out as intended. ::: Have plans, but don't be trapped by them. ::: Be flexible: if the situation changes, then adjust to that change. ::: Keep your head and use it. ::: Pragmatism is the key aspect of brown brogue action. ::: Chapter 31: Summary ::: Think of brown earth and down to earth. ::: Think of mud and messy situations. ::: Think of the practicality of brogues, which are hard-wearing shoes suitable for most occasions. ::: The result is brown brogue action mode that is low key and practical. ::: Assess the situation, and then act on your own initiative. ::: Your actions will be guided by basic values, principles, good sense, and a feel for what is possible. ::: The emphasis is always on simplicity, practicality, and effectiveness. ::: Over time you will build up basic action patterns: pick and choose from these as the situation requires. ::: A strong sense of priorities and likelihood is useful in guiding your choice of action. ::: Be pragmatic, and be flexible. ::: Keep in control of the situation even as you adjust to it. ::: In brown brogue mode you watch and you act. ::: Introduction ::: Day-to-day shoes for most occasions ::: The emphasis is on practicality, pragmatism, and good sense ::: Action is determined moment to moment by the actual situation ::: Quite often the situation falls outside established routine or training ::: Flexibility is a key aspect ::: You change your behavior as the situation changes ::: If you cannot do what you set out to do ::: You change your objective ::: There is no rigidity ::: You do what can be done ::: You do what you can do ::: It is low key and unspectacular ::: There is something to do ::: You do it ::: Good sense, common sense, and a little wisdom are required ::: General experience ::: Can help ::: But may have set up bad habits of behavior ::: That interfere with true flexibility (that is required) ::: Can trap people in routines of … ::: perception ::: and behavior ::: Can lead to navy formal shoe behavior ::: Can help prevent overreaction ::: Can provide a sense of perspective ::: Can provide a sort of calmness in coping ::: It is “get your hands dirty” action ::: Without thinking there would only be mindless action, but the thinking is directed to what can be done in the moment ::: The general skills of doing come under brown brogue action ::: Operacy ::: Assessing priorities ::: Guessing well ::: The examples ::: The window seat ::: Plane status ::: Drink boxes ::: Writing a book while flying ::: Moving you tie when you eat ::: Brown brogue action is not heroics but small practical things that come together to give effectiveness ::: Pragmatism ::: The pragmatic use of principles ::: You do what can be done to achieve an objective and put as must emphasis on practicality as on principles ::: Action without principles is dangerous and intolerable in a civilized society because principles help society control action ::: Concerned with were an action might lead ::: With the effect or consequence of the action ::: But it does not say anything is acceptable as long as the outcome is positive ::: Should be contrasted with arrogance ::: often based on principles ::: “I am sure that what I am doing is right, and I do not care what the #consequences might be” ::: Means being sensitive to … ::: a situation ::: the people involved in the situation ::: what is practical ::: Is the art of the possible ::: Politicians are pragmatic people ::: Expediency ::: Effectiveness ::: The rareness of simple effectiveness ::: Concerned with getting results ::: The difference between efficiency and effectiveness ::: Efficiency is a balance between input and output ::: There is an effort to cut down on input and output ::: Effectiveness means making sure that the resources are available to get the results that you want ::: If the resources are not sufficient to allow you to do everything that you need to do ::: List priorities ::: Go down that list as far as you can ::: Make sure that each item you tackle is done effectively (did he mean efficiently) ::: Effectiveness means focusing directly on what you want to achieve ::: rather than the balance between input and output ::: It is a good habit to ask at every step, what is the most effective course of action here? ::: What is the basis of brown brogue action? ::: A combination of good values, good sense, and good principles ::: Good values ::: Human respect (an example) ::: Avoidance of bullying, pressure, extortion, torture, prejudice ::: A practical aspect of the love that religions advocate #religion #religions #religious ::: Unwilling to cause harm ::: Respect for the truth ::: Individual values ::: Community values ::: Social values ::: Environmental values ::: Unless the brown brogue action is specifically directed toward doing something directly is these areas the minimum requirement is to avoid doing harm ::: Should brown brogue action attempt to create benefits or positive values as such? ::: Probably not unless this is the specific purpose of the action ::: A slight additional effort may be able to create such additional values, but it is usually difficult enough to achieve the main objective of brown brogue action, and blurring one objective with another may confuse the action and make it less effective ::: Good sense ::: Combination of sensitivity, priorities, and practicality ::: Sensitivity ::: Clear understanding of the situation and of the people involved ::: This is a matter of perception and also of trying out different perceptions ::: Does not mean sympathy or compassion ::: Means an understanding of what is going on ::: Priorities ::: Establishing priorities ::: Needed to lay down the action steps ::: They set objectives and guidelines for action ::: What do we want to achieve? ::: What matters most? ::: What needs to be done first? ::: Practicality ::: An acknowledgement of what is actually doable ::: You might like to do some things, but they may not be feasible ::: What can actually be done? ::: This should not give rise to a sense of timidity and the setting of timid objectives ::: The sense of practicality extends to a feeling of what is likely ::: What is likely to happen? ::: How is the situation likely to evolve? ::: What is the likely reaction to an intervention? ::: To some extent this assessment of what is likely depends on experience and understanding human nature. ::: But even a simple pause to ask, “What is the most likely outcome here?” can make a significant difference ::: It is important to distinguish between the likely and the possible ::: There are times when the possible does indeed happen ::: But in general you are going to be better off aiming for the likely ::: Good principles ::: The end cannot justify the means is a basic principle ::: A concern for the truth is both a principle and a value ::: There are general moral principles such as these ::: And also practical principles of action ::: The need to define … ::: your role ::: your resources ::: your objectives ::: To define the action mode you want to use ::: Is it really brown brogue action? ::: Or might it be a purple action mode ::: Being reliable when others have to depend on you is a further important principle ::: These guidelines for behavior ::: May seem much like the guidelines for training the perfect person who action appropriately on every occasion ::: This is true but refers to only one of the six action modes ::: The pragmatic nature of brown brogue action requires a double sensitivity: ::: To the situation ::: To guiding principles ::: This is the definition of pragmatic behavior ::: Initiative ::: Since there are not formal rules of procedure, then a person in the brown brogue action needs to use initiative ::: Analyze the situation ::: Determine priorities and objectives ::: Behave in the most obvious and established way ::: This depends on a personal repertoire of action steps provided by experience ::: If the action does not work, then try another approach ::: Always do the obvious thing first ::: Unless you are sure that surprise is important ::: There may be a place for creativity if the value of a creative approach is high and the cost of failure low ::: Is this the right situation in which to risk a new and untried approach? ::: Patterns of action depend on individual personalities and style ::: The extrovert may behave in a way that is different from the introvert ::: No one pattern is right for everyone ::: That is the difference between the navy action mode and the brown action mode ::: Because brown action mode is individual, there is training value in discussing what has been done in debriefing sessions ::: Why did you do that? ::: What did you do next? ::: The instant measurement of success is more difficult to find in other fields ::: So training should include an acknowledgement of the success of the action ::: This acknowledgement may be based on many criteria ::: Effectiveness ::: Speed ::: Simplicity ::: Low cost ::: Low risk ::: All the aspects need to be discussed ::: Brown brogue mode does not mean having to create an action pattern from scratch on each occasion ::: When you get up in the morning ::: You have a choice of clothes to wear ::: As distinct from having to wear a uniform ::: So the brown action operator may choose from a range of available action patterns ::: But the choice is up to the operator ::: Use of brown brogue action ::: A list of quotes ::: Source of brown brogue action ::: Brown brogue action is determined in the first place by the needs of the situation ::: What are you there for? ::: What are you trying to do? ::: What sort of situation is it? ::: Brown brogue action follows a simple analysis, understanding, or appreciation of the situation ::: What is going on? ::: How is it likely to develop? ::: What are the sensitive points in the situation? ::: What are the action points? ::: What are the needs? ::: Brown brogue action requires simple initiatives ::: Keep things as simple as possible ::: Do the obvious ::: Except in a conflict situation where surprise may have a benefit ::: Don’t try to be clever ::: Prefer to be practical ::: Brown brogue action draws on your experience and also the experience of others ::: What action patterns are available to you? ::: What did you do in the past in similar situations? ::: Although brown brogue action is responsive to the situation, always try to be in control of the situation ::: Avoid letting the situation get out of control so that you are carried along and have to respond to the initiatives of others ::: What should brown brogue action be like? and Exercises ::: Brown brogue action should be simple, practical, and effective ::: Are my action simple enough? ::: Are the actions practical (doable)? ::: Are the actions likely to be effective? ::: If the answers to these three questions are not an easy yes ::: Then think again ::: Brown brogue action is not mindless action ::: It includes the thinking necessary to choose suitable actions ::: Brown brogue action style ::: Low key and practical ::: You don’t go in with any set plan ::: Assess the situation moment to moment ::: Act accordingly ::: The emphasis on practicality and effectiveness ::: You do what is doable ::: There is a need for a clear sense of objectives and a clear sense of priorities ::: With these guidelines you determine your actions ::: Take initiatives and don’t be passive ::: Keep control of the situation ::: Be sensitive to changes in the situation ::: Give yourself space for action and fallback positions in case things do not work out as intended ::: Have plans, but don’t be trapped by them ::: Be flexible ::: If the situation changes ::: Then adjust to that change ::: Keep your head and use it ::: Pragmatism is the key aspect of brown brogue action ::: Summary of brown brogue action ::: Think of brown earth and down to earth ::: Think of mud and messy situations ::: Think of the practicality of brogues ::: Mode is low key and practical ::: Assess the situation, and then act on your own initiative ::: Your actions will be guided by basic values, principles, good sense, and a feel for what is possible ::: The emphasis is always on simplicity, practicality, and effectiveness ::: Over time you will build up basic action patterns: pick and choose from these as the situation requires ::: A strong sense of priorities and likelihood is useful in guiding your choice of action ::: Be pragmatic and flexible ::: Keep in control of the situation even as you adjust to it ::: You watch and you act ::: Orange gumboots ::: Introduction ::: Once something is classified as an emergency, then priorities change ::: There are new rules for action ::: For most people these are rare situations ::: People where emergencies are a part of their daily lives ::: Police, fire fighters ::: Business crises due to financial problems or personnel problems ::: Domestic crisis ::: Any situation that threatens danger requires orange gumboot action ::: To the people within the situation ::: In a fight or an attempted suicide ::: To innocent people what are not responsible in any way for the situation ::: Flood ::: An accident involving a vehicle carrying toxic material ::: To people who are tackling problems ::: Fire fighters in a forest blaze ::: Police officers in a drug raid ::: Accidents of any sort usually require an orange gumboot response ::: Because speed is essential to … ::: save human lives ::: and limit the damage ::: We accept a degree of risk in order for society to function effectiv ::: We try to minimize risk ::: But risks do remain ::: Especially the natural disaster risks like … ::: Characteristic of emergency situations ::: Basic features ::: A danger to human life or lives is present ::: Events happen quickly ::: The situation is unstable ::: The situation is unpredictable ::: Action of some sort is required urgently ::: Someone usually can be blames in an emergency ::: When the emergency is over, some people claim that it could have been handled differently ::: Standard reaction patterns are ineffective because each situation is unique ::: Emotions are heavily activated ::: Impotence often characterizes the situation ::: Many of the about characteristics apply only to major emergencies ::: Minor emergencies are just as real as major emergencies ::: Routine of police and fire departments ::: Lack the extra pressures caused by medial and political involvement ::: Characteristics that apply to all emergencies ::: Threat of danger or harm ::: Rapid onset or quick acceleration of the situation ::: The situation is unstable ::: The situation is unpredictable ::: Action of some sort is required urgently ::: Standard reaction patterns are ineffective because each situation is unique ::: Emotions are heavily activated ::: Classification of the situation ::: The spectrum of emergency situations ::: Ranges … ::: From those that are clearly orange mode in nature ::: To others that have elements of orange mode ::: Many situations may be a mixture of orange and brown modes ::: A situation also may suddenly change into orange mode if a human life is endangered ::: Most organizations have ways of classifying and labeling major emergency situations ::: Red alert ::: Orange gumboot mode applies to a wider variety of situations ::: Because it describes not the situation but the action mode ::: Once a situation is classified as requiring orange gumboot action ::: Then the nature of the situation is set ::: and the priorities are determined ::: The basic priority is to remove, contain, or minimize the danger ::: At this point other considerations are less important ::: The focus become clear ::: What is the existing danger? ::: What are the potential dangers? ::: How can the dangers be removed, contained, or minimized? ::: Auto accident example ::: Cars may pile up ::: People may suffer unless they get medical attention quickly ::: Guidelines for orange mode action ::: Eleven guidelines ::: Assess the existing situation as accurately as possible ::: Determine what needs to be known (and how it can be found out) ::: and how it can be found out ::: Assess the potential development of the situation in terms of what is likely and what is possible ::: Assess the existing and potential dangers to the people ::: directly involved ::: innocent bystanders ::: those who intervene ::: the environment ::: property ::: Some people may wish to consider the political effects ::: Determine who needs to be involved, who is in charge, and the line of communication between the various parties involved ::: Set up methods of decision making and planning ::: Avoid actions that might make things worse ::: Decide on a strategy, but be prepared to change or modify the strategy if it is not working or if events demand a change ::: Avoid overreacting to every change and following events instead of taking the initiative ::: You may need two parallel strategies ::: One strategy may minimize and contain the danger (evacuating people in danger) ::: The second strategy may tackle the cause of the danger directly, in cases where this is possible ::: Develop and review a variety of action options ::: Some actions may not solve the crisis but may tilt the balance the right way ::: Some actions may put you in a better position if things move in a certain direction ::: Think ahead to deal with eventualities ::: Reassess the situation periodically, even when nothing new has happened ::: Reassess when there is a development or change in circumstances ::: Never panic or permit others panic ::: Panic never improves the quality of the actions of those involved ::: People who do not fully appreciate the danger in which they have been placed must be informed—but without causing panic ::: Formulate a strategy for dealing with public announcements and the media ::: This is required in certain circumstances ::: This requires direct attention and coordination among the involved ::: At times waiting it out is the best strategy ::: as in hostage situations ::: People tire and moods change ::: so waiting it out instead of taking precipitate action may be the better choice ::: In other situations ::: Waiting is not an option ::: because the situation is likely to worsen ::: It is difficult to justify inaction when things do get worse ::: At the very beginning of a crisis a spontaneous reaction might avert the crisis, but once the crisis is established, there is probably no room for spontaneity ::: Actions need to be designed, planned, and assessed ::: There is room for hunches and intuition ::: Provided these do not increase the danger ::: and provided there is a strong fallback position if the initiative fails ::: In conflict situations you may need to apply the techniques of negotiation ::: These involve … ::: Perceptions ::: Values ::: Expectations ::: and power ::: Important parts of negotiation are … ::: establishing trust and communication ::: and designing action options ::: Courage ::: Orange action modes requires courage of all sorts ::: Physical courage ::: Make a decision and follow a strategy knowing that things may not work out as hoped ::: Background courage of acting and knowing that the safety of others depends on your thinking and your actions ::: Courage (defined) ::: does not mean deliberating embracing risks ::: as in a Hollywood tough-guy movie: “I’m going in there.” ::: involves minimizing and avoiding risks ::: Entrepreneurs and risk ::: Many hated risks ::: Tried hard to have the odds stacked in their favor ::: See page 97 ::: Risk ::: The risks of any action need to be weighted against the risks of inaction ::: In some cases inaction is not very visible ::: In an emergency situation inaction is very visible as a form of action ::: 3 types of risk associated with action ::: The action will cause more harm and damage ::: This is the big danger ::: Where other people are involved ::: the other party may panic with disastrous results ::: It will fail to achieve its purpose ::: If an action can fail with … then there is little risk in trying it ::: no negative effects ::: no resetting of the situation ::: no closing off of further options ::: Fear of failure should not be a bar to action in such cases ::: “Will this make things worse if it does not succeed? ::: It will close off further options ::: Back-up and fallback positions ::: Risk is reduced if a backup position is designed to be implements should the initial operation falter ::: Sometimes ::: This new and secure fallback position can be designed as a secondary objective ::: “If we don’t reach the main objective, then we’ll try for this secondary objective.” ::: In general … are on the side of the orange mode operator ::: resources ::: thinking power ::: time ::: initiative ::: These benefits should therefore be used carefully ::: Resources include access to expert opinion in fields such as ::: psychology ::: chemistry ::: Design is a key word ::: Design means bringing resources to the emergency in a systematic manner ::: Design is impeded when too many people are involved in decision making ::: Advice should be take from many people ::: But designs and decisions are best left to one person or a small group ::: A good design is not a democratic consensus ::: Every action taken should fit into the design ::: In the orange gumboot mode ::: There is a greater need for strategy and design ::: Than in the brown brogue mode (which is more reactive) ::: If the disaster is major ::: Then it is important to review the available concepts ::: What are these concepts? ::: How can they be carried through? ::: There may be a need for … ::: new concepts ::: deliberate creative thinking ::: for some green hat thinking ::: What should orange mode thinking be like? ::: This is our assessment of the current situation ::: These are the existing dangers ::: and these are the potential dangers that might develop ::: These are the practical actions that can be taken right now to reduce (contain) the danger (to people, environment, property) ::: This is our overall strategy ::: We shall review it from time to time to see how it is working ::: and how it fits changing circumstances ::: We have obtained expert advice in the following matters ::: We are working with the following groups, and the lines of communication are as follows ::: These are the alternatives we have considered and the reasons we have put them aside for the moment ::: We assess the risks as follows. ::: We assess the chances of success as follows ::: Design for action ::: Orange mode actions need to be designed ::: The routine approach of the navy shoes cannot be applied ::: The free initiative of the brown brogue is not rigorous enough ::: There is a need to take grey sneaker action to collect information ::: and then to move into orange mode ::: and design a strategy ::: Simply thinking of the ultimate objective is not enough ::: Every subobjective and every step toward the objectives must be designed ::: The means must be specified as well as the ends ::: Alternative steps have to be … ::: generated ::: considered ::: assessed ::: The possible outcomes of each step must be examined ::: The priorities of the orange mode are very clear ::: Minimize the danger ::: Everything is assessed against this priority ::: As in chess steps may be taken to create a situation in which the final step will be effective ::: Every advantage is worth having ::: but it is not worth going for a short-term advantage ::: if this has a long-term negative consequence ::: Getting the situation under control is the first step ::: Until the situation is under control ::: action is going to be haphazard ::: Carrying through orange mode action ::: Requires … ::: control ::: decisiveness ::: a unified strategy ::: All those involved need to work as a team ::: Different opinions can be put forward up to the moment of a decision ::: But after that there should be cooperation ::: Modifications to moment-to-moment tactics can be suggested as long as the benefits are clearly stated ::: If such modification are rejected ::: They stay rejected ::: Everyone needs to know exactly what is to be done and who is to do it ::: The … need to be worked out in detail ::: backup ::: follow-through ::: fall-back actions ::: and the point at which they come into play ::: Contingencies are thought through, and provision is made for a change of plan should this be required ::: In the case of totally unexpected events some sort of stabilization plan needs to be prepared ::: People crises and exercises ::: People crises ::: When the emergency or crisis involves people ::: Then an understanding of psychology may be required ::: This may mean understanding the behavior of … ::: an individual ::: certain groups ::: certain situations ::: Understanding perceptions, values, emotions is important ::: It is difficult to empathize with people with different personal styles ::: but this must be attempted ::: The strategies and psychology of negotiation may be needed ::: Time and the use of time are important ::: In the end most people crises are solved through shifts in perception ::: either of the reality of the situation or of the future ::: Changes in perception precede changes in behavior and changes in emotion ::: Changes in perception are much more powerful than logic arguments ::: It is necessary to develop perceptions and present the possibility of alternative perceptions ::: Once an alternative perception is presented ::: it may not be accepted ::: but it can’t be unthought ::: Because perceptions are fragile ::: and can easily be destroyed by a false move ::: it is important for a single person to be in charge ::: Where people are involved ::: then trust, credibility, and personality play a big part ::: It may be necessary to change the people involved in order to begin a dialogue ::: Egos, pride, and turf battles are counter-productive when orange mode action is needed ::: Exercises ::: Orange gumboot action style ::: Emergency of crisis action ::: Accepting the need for orange gumboot action mode ::: Assessing the situation, the dangers, and the possible developments ::: Clear sense of priorities ::: Which means removing, containing, or reducing the danger ::: Everything is directed toward this purpose ::: Clear understanding who is in control and the lines of communication ::: Designing a detailed strategy for action ::: Planning the steps and also the fallback positions ::: Assessing the risks of any action and also the risks of inaction ::: Using expert help where possible ::: Assessing the likelihood of success ::: Putting the strategy into action ::: Everyone knowing what has to be done and who is going to do it ::: Periodically reassessing the situation ::: Modifying or even changing strategy as required ::: A main characteristic of the style is focus ::: On the danger ::: On ways of reducing that danger ::: Summary of orange gumboot action ::: Orange is a vivid color suggesting warning and alarm ::: Gumboots are worn by fire fighters and emergency teams ::: They are not normal everyday wear ::: So the orange gumboot action mode is concerned with emergencies, crisis, and dangers ::: It focus and priorities are clear ::: reducing the danger ::: The situation and the dangers involved need to be assessed carefully ::: A strategy and action steps for carrying through that strategy need to be designed ::: It is within this tight framework of defined action steps that action takes place ::: The risks of action and inaction are constantly reassessed within a framework of coordinated action rather than the ad hoc initiative of the brown brogue mode ::: There may be a range of situations ::: From those that obviously require orange gumboot mode to those that have some orange elements ::: Focus, urgency, and sense of priorities characterize orange gumboot action ::: Pink slippers ::: Introduction ::: Has to do with human … ::: feelings ::: compassion ::: sympathy ::: tender loving care ::: People caring for people … ::: is the essence of a family ::: defines a successful community ::: is the basis of civilization ::: The human caring values advocated in all religions are in pink slipper mode ::: Applies to all action involving human feelings and human caring ::: Some situations are pure pink slipper mode, but as with the orange mode, many situations have some pink slipper aspects ::: Only where a special caring element needs emphasizing does the pink slipper mode need to be spelled out ::: Many pragmatic situations require on brown brogue and one pink slipper ::: What is caring? ::: Is caring a matter of … ::: sympathy, compassion, and understanding ::: or the actions that go with these feelings ::: Active caring ::: The intention to care ::: and the actions that arise from this intention ::: Is it necessary to have a strong understanding of psychology or human nature in order to show caring? ::: Certainly not ::: Caring is a human emotion and not an intellectual exercise ::: Caring and action ::: Usually takes one of two forms ::: Adds an element of human caring and human compassion to other actions ::: Modifies other actions ::: Pink slipper mode as the prime activity ::: Comforting victims of an accident (may be a pure pink slipper behavior) ::: Dealing with an unhappy customer ::: Intervention in domestic disputes ::: The practical nature of the actions will vary with situations, but it includes such fundamentals as the willingness to listen ::: Training for caring ::: People matter ::: Over the last few years business has learned that people matter ::: Motivating employees has become a key element in business success ::: Human resource departments ::: In Search of Excellence ::: Viewing video tapes of poor service ::: Caring means what it says ::: Small gestures can be important ::: They show that someone matters ::: They show that someone cares ::: Calling people by their name ::: Remembering who they are ::: What their interests might be ::: Offering help in small ways ::: Being willing to listen ::: Inquiring about someone’s family ::: Sometimes these sort of things can become overdone ::: The simple process of labeling a situation pink slipper mode creates a particular framework for action ::: Action needs are now perceived in a special way ::: You are alerted to the human aspects ::: People are very good at playing the game that is required of them at the moment ::: But the rules of the game have to be clearly spelled out ::: That is what the six action shoes labeling does ::: It doesn’t mean play-acting, artificiality, or insincerity ::: It is a reminder of the nature of the situation and the action required ::: It is a tangible description of the idiom or feel of a situation ::: It is more powerful to say “Use the pink action mode” than to say “Be compassionate and caring” ::: Levels of caring ::: The possible levels of caring ::: Intention: The desire to care ::: Feeling: Empathy, sympathy ::: Gesture: Visible actions that show caring ::: Action: Actual help and care ::: Action can spring directly from intentions ::: Even if pink slipper action mode is carried through almost as a mechanical routine, it still has value ::: Interaction with other action modes ::: The example of the young person who got involved with the wrong crowd and committed a crime ::: Should not interfere directly ::: Help the family with welfare or support arrangements ::: The pink slipper action supports other actions ::: but usually does not run counter to those actions ::: At times pink slipper sentiments may clash with the formal impersonality of navy shoe routines ::: On such occasions it is necessary to explain the need for the routines ::: Sometimes, especially in brown action mode, pink slipper considerations may override other considerations because they become a central part of the situation ::: The pragmatism and flexibility of the brown brogue action mode would usually be sensitive to pink slipper factors ::: Sometime the main purpose of the action is human caring ::: and then actions are chosen specifically for that purpose ::: The priority is human caring just as the priority in orange mode action is reducing the danger ::: Using the pink slipper action mode ::: Quotes ::: Monsters ::: Some people behave inhumanely ::: The Nazi concentration camps ::: The Japanese prison camps ::: Pink slipper action removes these lines and barriers in order to realize that everyone deserves human care ::: This is not easy, especially if you come to expect equal consideration in return ::: The current business idiom is an attempt to change a perception ::: from “That is a member of the public who must accept what you care ::: to provide” to “That is the customer who really pays your wages” ::: Summary of pink slippers action ::: Pink ::: is a gentle and feminine color ::: suggests humanity and tenderness ::: Slippers ::: suggest comfort and domesticity ::: Has to do with caring ::: but actions show caring ::: Even when the feelings are not there ::: the actions should be carried through ::: There are times when the pink action mode is the main purpose of action ::: as in providing help and care ::: At other times the pink action mode modifies whatever else is being done so that what is done is done in a humane and caring manner ::: The pink action mode is always a reminder that people matter ::: The pink slipper action mode applies to everyone ::: Purple riding boots ::: Introduction ::: An officer is an officer because of the officer role ::: Playing out the purpose of that role is the purple boot action mode ::: Is all about official positions ::: An official position is not a superior on ::: When an official acts within the boundaries of that role ::: Then he or she has more authority that someone without an official role ::: It’s no longer the person who acts but the official role ::: There might even be a conscious separation between the person and the role ::: “Speaking as the principle of this school I am going to have to punish you for violating our discipline code” ::: The role of a judge is to administer justice ::: A good judge carries out that role properly ::: Even though in his or her private life the judge may not always act fairly or reasonably ::: People and their roles ::: Examples ::: Doctor ::: Vicar or priest ::: Village school master ::: Lawyer ::: In the above cases the official role is played by someone with expert training ::: Other official roles, however, have no grounding in expert training ::: A person may be in an official role because there seems to be a need … ::: for that role ::: and for having someone play that role ::: The most suitable person who is eligible or who applies is selected ::: You may object … (but) ::: to need for that role ::: and to the suitability of a particular person to hold the role ::: But ::: The role is there ::: and a person is filling it ::: Society is an organization of people for their mutual benefit ::: Organization require that decisions be made and actions be carried out ::: These needs justify establishing official roles ::: The will of society, as expressed by elected members of a legislature, is implemented by people performing official roles ::: Police officers, fire fighters, judges, school principals ::: Even in communes ::: Someone to wash dishes ::: Someone to carry out the trash ::: Living up to the role ::: Some argue ::: That no person should hide behind an official role ::: to escape personal responsibility for an action ::: Activities may be carried out by a person performing a role ::: rather than by that person as an individual ::: Some argue ::: That people in official roles should behave as they do in private ::: A teacher ::: should be a friend and counselor ::: rather than a teacher and disciplinarian ::: A tax inspector ::: should be a financial consultant ::: A police officer ::: should be a neighborhood watchdog ::: This is a sensible plea for … ::: more humanity ::: more pink slipper action in performing these roles ::: Taken to extremes it becomes impractical ::: The official role give authority and power to some people and not to others ::: Being cautioned or arrested by a police officer is not the same as being cautioned or arrested by an ordinary person ::: Actors and actresses are sometimes shy in ordinary life ::: They enjoy being on stage and losing their personality in the identity of the character they are playing ::: They pick up one role and put it down at the end of a performance ::: Judges ::: The abuse of something does not destroy its value ::: The petty tyrannies of some officials do not destroy the value of official roles ::: The role is bigger that the person because it has been identified by society as necessary ::: Can perform actions that might be impossible for them to perform without their role ::: The role magnifies innate abilities because it clearly defines how a particular ability is to be used ::: Navy action mode has a clear guide to behavior: carry out the routine ::: Grey action mode has a clear objective: collect information and use it ::: Orange action mode has clear priorities: reduce the danger ::: Pink action mode has clear objectives: care for people ::: Where is brown ::: Purple action mode also has clear guidelines: act according to your duties ::: An actor or actress performs on a stage ::: The person in purple action mode acts a part ::: There is no need to be embarrassed or apologetic about playing roles ::: Nor is there any value in always being in the purple action mode ::: That would be unnecessary and tedious to everyone ::: But when required ::: A person should be able to switch into the purple action mode ::: and act with the power and authority of that mode ::: Role and responsibility ::: With the power of a role also goes the responsibility of that role ::: Japanese CEO resignation ::: Where to draw the line between carrying out orders and doing wrong ::: If orders are illegal or criminal ::: Then they should not be carried out ::: If a country enacts laws that sanction behavior others regard as criminal ::: and if the behavior infringes on human rights ::: or is contrary to a generally accepted concept of natural law (meaning that in most countries it would be illegal) ::: Then purple action is no defense ::: No role takes a person above the law ::: Nor does any role relieve a person from being a human being first and official second ::: The roles is an enhancement of the person as a human being and as a member of society ::: and therefore those performing roles are bound by all the rules, laws, and considerations that apply to private individuals ::: If an official role requires you to act according to the laws of society and you still disapprove of the actions your role requires you to take, then you should resign from the role. You also should campaign to change the role’s responsibilities ::: Interaction with other action modes ::: Difference between Navy action mode and Purple action mode ::: In Navy action mode a routine is performed step by step ::: A clerk may ask a person to fill out a routine form ::: but has no authority to require that person to fill out the form ::: In the purple mode the person performs the role without referring to formal steps ::: It is almost brown action mode ::: but shaped by the character of the role ::: the nature of the role guides behavior ::: In the purple action mode a person can use initiative just as in the brown brogue mode ::: The navy action mode and the purple action mode overlap when an official caries out a formal routine ceremony ::: On occasion there also may be a close synergy between the purple action mode and the orange mode ::: Because the leadership and authority conferred by the role may be useful in emergency situations ::: When there is no time to establish personal leadership, the official role provides automatic leadership ::: The purple and the brown action modes sometimes harmonize and sometimes clash ::: Pragmatic brown action mode may be needed even when in purple action mode ::: At other times the low-key brown brogue approach may be subverted by an insistence on purple action rights ::: The pink action mode may help soften the harshness of the purple action mode ::: No role is designed to make people inhuman ::: But the pink mode may remind role players of their humanity ::: In a clash between the demands of the pink mode and the purple mode ::: the purple normally takes precedence ::: The grey sneaker mode is sometimes enhanced by the purple boot mode and sometimes inhibited ::: Sometimes obtaining certain types of information is easier when asking from an official position ::: but sometimes it may be inhibited by an official role ::: Use of the purple boot mode ::: Quotations ::: Carrying out purple boot behavior and exercises ::: There are two main requirements for carrying out purple boot behavior ::: The behavior must be clearly signaled ::: The behavior must be consistent ::: Purple riding boot action style ::: The style is authoritarian but civilized ::: The role player makes it clear when the official role is being performed ::: It is necessary to signal this role playing ::: and to remain consistently within the role ::: The duties, obligations, and expectations of the role provide guidelines for behavior ::: Behavior is firm, neutral, and fair ::: Those performing the role don’t need their actions to be liked all the time ::: but tyranny and bullying are unacceptable ::: Most important, the person acting in this mode must make clear that he or she is acting out a role and then must behave according to that role ::: To pretend to assume the role and then to act in a way that is inconsistent with that role leads to confusion and devalues the role function ::: Summary of purple riding boot action ::: Purple is an imperial color and suggests authority ::: Riding boots are used for special occasions ::: The purple riding boot action mode indicated that a person is acting in the capacity of an official role. ::: An individual is not acting: the role is acting ::: Indeed, the person consistently acts out the role ::: Behavior is guided by the behavior expected of that role ::: It is important to signal this role behavior and to act consistently with the role ::: Within these limits there is room for initiative ::: Combination of shoes ::: No formal framework for combining the different modes of action ::: See discussion of individual shoes for more suggestions ::: Types ::: Balanced combination ::: The situation demands an equal measure of two different modes ::: The uncertain situation ::: The balance of action may tip one way or the other. ::: Two colors are needed to cover the possibilites ::: A modifying situation ::: One action modes dominates but another action mode acts as a modifier :::  ::: It is also possible to have flavors of more than two colors in a situation ::: Doing so begins to dilute the effectiveness of the method ::: In practice, situations are rarely pure examples of one or another action mode. ::: There is no need to specify all possible combinations ::: It is usually enough to indicated the dominant action mode ::: even when the situation is not pure ::: Combination examples ::: ONE OF THE ADVANTAGES OF USING THE shoe metaphor is that we normally wear a pair of shoes. Although in real life it would be unconventional to wear one pink slipper and one orange gumboot, we can combine action modes when an action seems to call for a response that has both pink and orange elements. ::: There is no formal framework for combining the different modes of action. In discussing each of the shoes I have provided suggestions and examples of combinations, and I offer more in this section. ::: 1. Balanced combination: The situation demands an equal measure of two different action modes. ::: "This is very much a pink slipper and brown brogue situation." ::: "I want you to go in there with one purple boot and one orange gumboot." ::: "We want to make only official inquiries, so one grey sneaker and one navy shoe." ::: "Make your inquiries, but do it gently-grey sneaker with pink slipper." ::: 2. An uncertain situation: The balance of action may tip one way or the other. Two colors are needed to cover the possibilities. ::: "At this point I just don't know. Things could go either way. Be prepared for brown brogue or pink slipper action: carry them both." ::: "When you get there, you may find that it is more purple boot than orange gumboot. It depends on what happens. Be prepared for either." ::: "Essentially this is a grey sneaker assignment, but it could suddenly become brown brogue if you discover something important." ::: 3. A modifying situation: One action mode dominates but another action mode acts as a modifier. ::: "Straight purple action mode, but keep that pink slipper somewhere in the back of your mind." ::: "Brown brogue. Do what you think necessary. But keep the grey sneaker in mind too. There may be useful information to be picked up." ::: "Go through the navy shoe routine but with a strong flavor of purple boot in the background." ::: Here are some potential combinations of action shoe modes. They are simply suggestions: each pair could have several overlapping definitions. ::: Navy and Grey: Routine and formal inquiries. ::: Navy and Brown: Routine behavior with the possibility of being flexible and using initiative if necessary. ::: Navy and Orange: Routine procedure in an emergency. ::: Navy and Pink: Routine procedures carried out in a gentle manner. ::: Navy and Purple: Routine procedures with the weight of an official role behind them. ::: Grey and Navy: Investigations using formal procedures such as checklists. ::: Grey and Brown: Investigations using initiatives and ad hoc action to obtain more information. ::: Grey and Orange: Investigations in dangerous and sensitive situations, such as infiltration and undercover assignments. ::: Grey and Pink: Investigations using a sensitive and considerate manner to obtain information. ::: Grey and Purple: Investigations using an official position to collect information. ::: Brown and Navy: Practical action that uses flexibility and occasionally routine procedures, even personal routines. ::: Brown and Grey: Practical action that is sensitive to information in order to determine the next action step. ::: Brown and Orange: Practical action in a dangerous or potentially dangerous environment. ::: Brown and Pink: Practical action in a sensitive human situation where feelings and emotions are involved. ::: Brown and Purple: Practical action dealing with different officials and therefore requiring the use of an official position. ::: Orange and Navy: Using standard procedures in an emergency. ::: Orange and Grey: Collecting expert opinion and as much information as possible regarding an emergency. ::: Orange and Brown: Practical moment-to-moment action in a rapidly changing emergency situation before planning becomes possible. ::: Orange and Pink: Dealing with human suffering in an emergency. ::: Orange and Purple: Dealing with officialdom in an emergency; deciding who is in charge. ::: Pink and Navy: Using routines for dealing with delicate situations involving feelings and emotions; can be personal routines. ::: Pink and Grey: Listening and noting in order to offer help and comfort. ::: Pink and Brown: Practical action and initiatives in helping people. ::: Pink and Purple: Using official channels and positions in order to help people. ::: Purple and Navy: Formal behavior as part of an official position. ::: Purple and Grey: Using official statistics and information channels. ::: Purple and Brown: Practical action and individual initiatives within the framework of an official position. ::: Purple and Orange: Giving orders and organizing in emergencies; leadership in a crisis. ::: Purple and Pink: Modifying impersonal official behavior with human sensitivity. ::: It is also possible to have flavors of more than two colors in a situation, but doing so begins to dilute the effectiveness of the method. ::: In practice situations are rarely pure examples of one or another action mode. There is no need to specify all possible combinations. It is usually enough to indicate the dominant action mode, even when the situation is not pure. ::: Action, not description ::: The purpose of the framework is to set the style of the action in advance so that a person can behave within a certain style framework ::: Six action shoes are concerned with what is about to be done ::: Each person should be capable of operating in each of the different modes ::: Just as each person should be capable of using each of the six hats ::: Must resist the tendency to use the six action modes for purposes of description and categorization ::: Simple and practical ::: People who want things to be complicated (see page # 157) ::: Simple things are usable ::: Six hat method is extremely powerful ::: It is not easy to suggest that a person behave in a particular way ::: People may be offended if you tell them to behave in a more caring way ::: The six shoe framework is neutral and offends no one ::: The framework can be seen as a game or ritual ::: People find it easier to follow the rules of a game than to change their personalities ::: The colors and physical nature of the shoes make them easy to visualize and remember ::: Language and terminology ::: Different ways of referring to the six action shoes ::: The imagery is important for the ritual associated with mentally putting on the shoes ::: The framework ::: Six pairs of action shoes ::: Six shoe action framework ::: Six action modes ::: Action mode summary ::: Navy formal shoes ::: Color navy blue. Formal shoes. Navy suggest routines, drills, and formality ::: Navy action mode is for routine behavior ::: Select the appropriate routine ::: Switch into the routine ::: Carry through the routine as perfectly as you can ::: Routines ::: are crystallization of the best way of doing something ::: remove the need to think something through each time ::: reduce the risk of error ::: Go through the routine systematically step by step ::: Use flexibility if you absolutely have to, and return to the routine while you’re using it ::: Routines can be improved and may need changing ::: but that is separate action ::: Don’t seek to improve a routine while you’re using it ::: Although they may appear restrictive in some ways, routines are also liberating because they free you to think about other matters ::: Grey sneakers ::: Shoe description ::: Color grey ::: Sneaker type of shoe ::: Grey suggest grey matter of the brain ::: Grey also suggest fog and mist ::: Sneakers are quiet and casual ::: Action mode is for collecting information and thinking about it ::: That is the prime objective ::: The style is low key and unobtrusive ::: The information is used to clear up the fog and mist suggested by the color grey ::: Sometimes information can be collected in a systematic way by creating a procedure and then following it ::: Sometimes established routines can be followed ::: At other time it may be necessary to have a hunch, a theory, or an hypothesis to start collecting information ::: Collecting information may lead to a theory or hypothesis that then leads to further information collection ::: The purpose of information collection is to be as comprehensive and neutral as possible ::: It is not to support your initial hypothesis ::: It is a good habit to keep at least two hypothesis in mind to avoid being led astray by one hypothesis ::: The final stage of information collection is to check out the most reasonable hypothesis. ::: Avoid clinging to a single hypothesis too early. ::: Brown brogues ::: Shoe description ::: Color is brown ::: Brogue type of shoe ::: Brown is the color of the earth ::: And the action style is down to earth ::: The brogue is a hard-wearing shoe suitable for most occasions ::: The emphasis is on pragmatism and practicality ::: It is a matter of doing what can be done ::: Moment-to-moment adjustment and flexibility in response to the situation are called for ::: Have a clear sense of objectives and priorities ::: Behavior is guided by objectives, priorities, and basic values and principles ::: Behavior is determined by personal initiatives at the moment rather than by formal routines or master plans ::: Be sensitive and respond to the situation ::: But keep in control ::: Don’t just follow ::: Effectiveness and simplicity are important ::: The purpose of any action is to be effective ::: Choose from and combine existing action patterns ::: Do the obvious unless surprise has some particular value ::: Orange gumboots ::: Shoe description ::: Color orange ::: Gumboot style of footwear ::: Orange is the color of danger, fire, explosions ::: Gumboots are work by fire fighters and emergency crews ::: Has to do with emergencies, crises, and dangerous situation ::: When situations are … urgent action is required (if only to get medical attention) ::: Unstable ::: Unpredictable ::: and likely to get worse ::: Action is usually needed ::: But in special cases involving people waiting may have a strategic value ::: The clear objective is to reduce the danger ::: May require attending to the source of the danger ::: Or removing people from the danger area ::: Determine who is in charge ::: Establish communication between the different parties involved ::: A strategic plan needs to present carefully worked out steps ::: Everyone must know what is to be done and who is doing what ::: Back-up, follow-through, and fallback considerations are required ::: Flexibility is necessary if the plan does not work according to expectations ::: Obtain as much information and expert advice as possible ::: Assessment and reassessment of the situation are vital ::: Emotions are usually heavily involved ::: Courage is needed both in making decision and in taking action ::: It is always easy, in hindsight, to say how things could have been better ::: Pink slippers ::: Shoe description ::: Color pink ::: Slippers as a style of footwear ::: Pink is a gentle, feminine color ::: Slippers represent comfort and domesticity ::: Concerned with human caring ::: Sympathy ::: Compassion ::: Help ::: Feeling is not enough ::: The feeling must be put into action ::: If the feeling is not there, the intention to act is a caring way still results in caring actions ::: The prime consideration is that people matter as people ::: Caring applies to all people ::: Some people are not worth more caring than others ::: Listening is an important part of caring ::: Sometimes caring is the prime purpose of the action. ::: At other times the pink slipper action mode may be used to modify, in a caring direction, other types of action that are taking place. ::: Understanding the perceptions and values of others is a key part of caring. Understanding precedes appropriate actions ::: Purple riding boots ::: Shoe description ::: Color purple ::: Riding boots ::: Purple is the traditional color of authority, as in ancient Rome ::: Riding boots suggest a special function ::: Has to do with authority and playing out an official role ::: Not acting as a normal person ::: Through an official role that he or she is performing ::: Action must be consistent with the duties, obligations, and expectations of that role ::: Within this framework initiatives are possible ::: Signal to those around you when you switch into the purple action mode and are going to be acting through your official role ::: Once you have indicated that you are acting in an official capacity, be consistent and don’t keep switching back and forth between official and unofficial roles ::: Purple action mode can be modified by pink slipper considerations, but duties must be performed ::: There is no obligation to perform duties that are illegal or immoral



Six Frames for Thinking about Information contents page ::: Amazon ::: Preface (about attention, perception, information) ::: Directing attention (the function of the Six Frames) ::: Masses of information ::: Introduction ::: Purpose: The Triangle Frame ::: Notice ::: Time-filling and distraction ::: Awareness ::: Interest ::: General interest ::: Specific interest ::: Browse and scan ::: Need and search ::: What and where? ::: Confirmation ::: Very specific questions ::: Where? ::: The triangle frame ::: Point 1: WHAT? ::: Point 2: WHY? ::: Point 3: WHERE? ::: Offering information ::: Summary ::: Accuracy: The Circle Frame ::: Authority ::: Internal checking ::: Comparative accuracy ::: Adequate accuracy ::: Doubts ::: The circle frame ::: Summary ::: Point of view: The Square Frame ::: Persuasion ::: Difficulty of balance ::: The use of adjectives ::: Point of view ::: The power of balance ::: Alternative views from the same point ::: The square frame ::: Summary ::: Interest: The Heart Frame ::: General interest ::: Addition ::: Research ::: Special interest ::: Note-taking ::: Mining ::: The heart frame ::: Summary ::: Value: The Diamond Frame ::: Need satisfaction ::: Question answered ::: Interest value ::: Confirmation value ::: Disagreement value ::: Opportunity ::: Awareness of the world around us ::: Enrichment ::: Note-taking ::: Six value medals ::: Gold Medal ::: Silver Medal ::: Steel Medal ::: Glass Meda ::: Wood Medal ::: Brass Medal ::: Medal Usage ::: The diamond frame ::: Summary ::: Outcome: The Slab Frame ::: Next step ::: So what? ::: Information report ::: Computers ::: The slab frame ::: Summary ::: Summary ::: Truth paste ::: About the author ::: How to Have a Beautiful Mind ::: The Six Value Medals ::: H+ (Plus) A New Religion? ::: How to Have Creative Ideas



The Six Value Medals contents page ::: Amazon ::: Introduction: What Are the Six Value Medals? ::: Why We Need Values ::: Commodities ::: The Cooking Competition ::: Changes in Thinking ::: Thinking about Value ::: 1 Values ::: When Do We Need to Assess Values? ::: Decisions ::: Value Scanning ::: Analysis and Values ::: Perception and Value ::: Logic and Values ::: Values and Emotions ::: 2 Negative Values ::: Impact ::: Checking Values ::: 3 Frameworks ::: Attention ::: North, South, East and West ::: Other People's Views ::: The Six Thinking Hats ::: The Six Action Shoes ::: Perception ::: Purpose ::: 4 Six Value Medals ::: Symbol ::: Focus ::: Materials ::: Overview of the Six Value Medals. This is a quick overview of all the medals. Each medal will then get full attention in a chapter of its own. ::: GOLD MEDAL: This medal deals with human values, the values that affect people. Gold is a superior material and human values are the most important values of all in the end. What are the human values here? ::: SILVER MEDAL: This medal focuses directly on ::: organisational values. That means values related ::: to the purpose of the organisation (in business ::: this would be profitability). Silver is associated with money. There are also the values involved in the actual running of the organisation, such as cost control. The organisation may also be a family, group of friends or social club. ::: STEEL MEDAL: These are the quality values. ::: Steel should be strong. The values are in the intended direction. What are the values of the product, service or function in terms of what it is trying to do? If it is tea, is it good quality tea? ::: GLASS MEDALS: This medal covers a number of associated values: innovation, simplicity and creativity. Glass is a very simple material originating in sand. But with glass you can use your creativity to do a lot of things. ::: WOOD MEDAL: These are the environmental ::: values in the broadest sense. What are the impact values on the environment, on the community, on others? The values relate to those things and people not directly involved. ::: BRASS MEDAL: This medal deals explicitly with perceptual values. How does this appear? How might it be seen? Perception is real even when it is not reality. Brass looks like gold. ::: 5 Gold Medal Values ::: Assessing Gold Medal Values ::: Gold Medal Values of a Change ::: Gold Medal Values of an Existing ::: Situation ::: The Range of Human Values ::: Basic Needs ::: Freedom From... ::: Psychological Needs ::: What Are Your Gold Medal Values? ::: Summary ::: 6 Silver Medal Values ::: Purpose ::: Different Organisations, Different ::: Purposes ::: Operations ::: Levels ::: Problem-Solving ::: What Are Your Silver Medal Values? ::: Summary ::: 7 Steel Medal Values ::: Customer Values ::: Quality of Service ::: Function Quality ::: Quality and Change ::: Negative Values ::: Perceived Values ::: Quality Focus ::: What Are Your Steel Medal Values? ::: Summary ::: 8 Glass Medal Values ::: Innovation ::: Simplicity ::: Creativity ::: The Culture of Creativity ::: Fragility ::: Potential ::: What Are Your Glass Medal Values? ::: Summary ::: 9 Wood Medal Values ::: Impact ::: Nature ::: Other Parties ::: Competitors ::: Suppliers ::: Friends and Family ::: Negative Values ::: What Are Your Wood Medal Values? ::: Summary ::: 10 Brass Medal Values ::: Whose Interest? ::: Negative Perceptions ::: Shaping Perceptions ::: Credibility ::: Selective Perception ::: Different Points of View ::: What Are Your Brass Medal Values? ::: Summary ::: 11 Value Sensitivity ::: Criticism ::: Danger Sensitivity ::: Unseen Value ::: Elimination ::: The Value Scan ::: Habit ::: 12 Conflicts and Priorities ::: Prioritising Values ::: Conflict of Values ::: 13 Design ::: Problem-Solving ::: Conflict Resolution ::: Conflicting Values ::: 14 Value Size ::: Figures ::: Four Degrees of Value ::: Strong Values ::: Sound Values ::: Weak Values ::: Remote Values ::: Negative Values ::: Assessment ::: 15 Benefits and Costs ::: Decisions ::: Negative Values ::: 16 Sources of Value ::: Communication Values ::: Permission ::: Gateway ::: Enabler Values ::: Catalyst Values ::: Enhancer Values ::: Accelerator Values ::: Problem-Solving ::: Removing Bottlenecks ::: Mistakes ::: Competitors ::: Failures ::: Concepts ::: 17 The Value Triangle ::: The Triangle ::: Silver Medal ::: Steel Medal ::: Gold Medal ::: Glass Medal ::: Wood Medal ::: Brass Medal ::: Value Strength ::: Negative Values ::: Comparison ::: 18 The Value Map ::: Listing ::: Negative Values ::: Sample List ::: Joint Maps ::: State of Thinking ::: VICTERI Teams ::: Conclusion ::: Seeing Values ::: Perception and Communication ::: Visual Display



The brain



I am right - You are wrong (From this to the new renaissance: From rock logic to water logic) #ea contents page ::: Amazon ::: Preliminary ::: Foreword by Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize for Physics, Rensselaer Institute ::: Foreword by Brian Josephson, Nobel Prize for Physics, Cambridge ::: Foreword by Sheldon Lee Glashow, Nobel Prize for Physics, Harvard ::: Author's Note ::: Introduction: The New Renaissance ::: Our Thinking System ::: Overview ::: Some of the topics that are covered in this book are listed below: ::: Why humour is the most significant characteristic of the human brain and why humour has always been neglected by classical philosophers. ::: Why, contrary to our traditional view, the brain may be a very simple mechanism acting in a highly complex way. ::: The very important difference between our usual 'passive' information systems and 'active' information systems. ::: Why the very excellence of language for description has made language so crude and inefficient for perception. ::: Why we are able to see only what we are prepared to see. ::: Why it may be much easier to learn things backwards rather than forwards. ::: How patterns have both broad catchment areas and also knife-edge discrimination. ::: Why the classical thinking traditions of truth and reason that we inherited from the Greeks may have set civilization on the wrong track. ::: How we became, and remain, so very obsessed with history. ::: Why I call our traditional reasoning 'table-top' logic. ::: How we can have been so successful in technical matters and yet made so little progress in human affairs. ::: Why the analysis of data cannot by itself produce new ideas and is even unlikely to discover the old ideas in the data. ::: How we can move from the behaviour of a neurone in a neural network to the behaviour of the mind in politics, economics and world conflict. ::: How we can have a patterning system and yet enjoy free-will. ::: Why we have completely failed to understand creativity and why something that is logical in hindsight may be inaccessible to logic in foresight. ::: Why logical argument has never been successful at changing prejudices, beliefs, emotions or perceptions. Why these things can be changed only through perception. ::: How beliefs are cheap and easy to set up in a self-organizing system and how they provide the only perceptual truth. ::: How traditional logic has trapped us with the righteousness of its absolutes. ::: How we can design specific creative tools that can be used deliberately to generate new ideas. ::: Why there may not be a reason for saying something until after it has been said—the logic of provocation which is mathematically necessary in a patterning system. ::: How a simple, randomly obtained, word can be so powerful a creative tool. ::: Why there is an urgent need to create many new words to help our thinking. ::: Why there is a need for the functions (such as zero-hold) carried by the new word ' po '. ::: Why the established scientific method and its call for the most 'reasonable' hypothesis is perceptually faulty. ::: How the Laffer curve (more is better) is such a problem in our traditional thinking. ::: Why our cherished argument mode sets out to provide motivated exploration of a subject but soon loses the 'exploration'. ::: Why our underlying model of progress—evolution through muddling along—is bound to be ineffective. ::: Why philosophy can never again be more than a word-game unless we take into account the system behaviour of the human mind. ::: Why the false dichotomies we constructed in order to operate the logic principle of contradiction have been so especially disastrous. ::: Why poetry and humour both illustrate so well the logic of perception, which is different from the logic of reason. ::: Why we left perception to the realm of art and why art has done such a poor job. ::: Why truth is best described as a particular constellation of circumstances with a particular outcome. ::: How we may eventually derive a new ideology from information technology just as Karl Marx derived one from the steam-engine technology of the industrial revolution. ::: Human Affairs ::: Perception ::: Humour ::: Practical Outcomes ::: The Human Brain ::: Validity of the Model ::: Different Universes ::: Traditional Table-Top Logic ::: The Nerve Network of the Brain ::: How Perception Works ::: Overview ::: PATTERN-MAKING: the brain works by providing an environment in which sequences of activity become established as patterns. ::: TRIGGER: the brain will reconstruct the whole picture from just part of it or a sequence can be triggered by the initial part. ::: ASYMMETRY: the sequence patterns are asymmetric and this gives rise to humour and to creativity. ::: INSIGHT: if we enter the pattern sequence at a slightly different point we may follow a short cut. We can rely on chance to bring this about or do it deliberately. ::: LEARNING BACKWARDS: there is good reason to believe that learning things backwards is much more effective than learning them forwards. ::: SEQUENCE: the brain is a history recorder and the patterns are highly dependent on the initial sequence of experience. ::: CATCHMENT: each pattern has a very wide collection basin so that a variety of inputs will give the same output. ::: KNIFE-EDGE DISCRIMINATION: the boundary between two catchment basins is very sharp, so very clear distinctions may be made between things which are quite similar—provided the patterns are in place. ::: PRE-EMPTION: once a pattern exists it is very hard to cut across it to establish a new pattern. ::: MISMATCH: if what is offered to the brain contradicts what is established as pattern the brain notices this strongly. ::: READINESS: the patterns in the brain are not solely in an active/inactive state but there is a 'readiness' to go which is dependent on context and emotions. ::: CONTEXT: the actual patterns that emerge are determined by history, by activity at the moment and also by context which sets the background readiness level of different patterns. ::: CIRCULARITY: a circularity can be established in which patterns lead back into each other. This is the basis of belief systems. ::: MAKING SENSE: the brain has a powerful ability to put together and to seek to coalesce into sense whatever is put before it. ::: ATTENTION: there is unitary attention which may take in the whole field or focus on part of it, ignoring the rest. ::: RELEVANCE AND MEANING: attention will move to those areas which trigger existing patterns. ::: NO ZERO-HOLD: the activity in the brain cannot stabilize into a zero-hold which accepts input but does not seek to follow an accepted pattern. ::: Sequence Patterns ::: Trigger and Reconstruction ::: Asymmetry of Patterns ::: Insight ::: Learning Backwards ::: Time Sequence ::: Catchment ::: Knife-Edge Discrimination ::: Preemption ::: Mismatch ::: Readiness ::: Context ::: Circularity ::: Making Sense ::: Attention ::: Relevance and Meaning ::: Zero-Hold ::: Our Traditional Thinking Habits ::: Overview ::: LANGUAGE: marvelous as a communication system but poor as a thinking system, yet it dominates our thinking. ::: INTELLIGENCE: highly intelligent people do not necessarily make good thinkers. Thinking is a skill, not intelligence in action. ::: CRITICAL THINKING: a greatly over-esteemed part of our thinking culture. It is easy and satisfying but produces little. ::: LAFFER CURVE: a major type of error arising from table-top logic. Something is good so more must, surely, be better. ::: PROBLEM-SOLVING: part of the maintenance mentality which will get us back to where we were. Progress requires different thinking. ::: ANALYSIS: a central and valuable part of our thinking system but assumes all situations are closed and cannot produce ideas. ::: DESCRIPTION: both describes perception and can set perceptions through naming. But has no more validity than any perception. ::: NATURAL: the view that 'nature' and deep feelings are what really matter and should set our decisions rather than thinking. ::: MATHEMATICS: the strong certainty of a constructed system, powerful within its area of application, which is limited. ::: EITHER/OR: the seductive dichotomies which we need and create in order to operate the logical principle of contradiction. ::: ABSOLUTES: the need for truth and its multiple purposes. The problem is that absolutes must be circumstance-independent. ::: ARGUMENT AND CLASH: the motivated exploration as a subject. There are better methods of exploration. Clash is not generative. ::: BELIEF: a making sense of things. The circular system in which belief sets the perceptions that reinforce the belief. ::: SCIENCE: a methodology for testing beliefs. Driven mainly by the 'cause and effect' idiom. Weak on the perceptual side. ::: CREATIVITY: strongly neglected because it seems to happen anyway and we have not understood at all what is going on. ::: HISTORY: almost am obsession, possibly deriving from the period when all future progress could be got by looking backwards. ::: LOGIC: we use little explicit logic In our everyday thinking because we have fed it into our language habits already. ::: ART: this is directly concerned with reflecting existing perceptions and changing them, but does not encourage perceptual skills. ::: Language ::: Thinking and Intelligence ::: Critical Thinking ::: Laffer Curves ::: Problem-Solving ::: Analysis ::: Description ::: Natural ::: Mathematics ::: Either/Or ::: Absolutes ::: Argument and Clash ::: Belief ::: Science ::: Creativity ::: History ::: Logic ::: Art ::: Thinking In Society And Its Institutions ::: Overview ::: CHANGE: our basic belief in an evolutionary model. We muddle along and adapt to pressures, crises and innovations as they arise. ::: THE NEXT STEP: the next step we take is based on where we are and how we got there rather than on where we want to be. ::: FULL UP: there is no vacuum, there are no gaps. Time, space and resources are all committed. ::: EDUCATION: a locked-in system that is largely unaware of the need for thinking in society or of the type of thinking. ::: LUDECY: a new word to describe the playing of a game according to the way the rules are written. Not a matter of selfishness. ::: SHORT-TERM: much of our thinking has to be short-term (business, politics) because the rules are written that way. ::: DEMOCRACY: a system designed to get consensus for action but now much more effective in preventing things from happening. ::: PRAGMATISM: if behaviour is not driven by principles that are fixed and absolute, what is the alternative? ::: BUREAUCRACY: an organization put together for a purpose but coming to survive for its own sake. ::: COMPARTMENTS: one trend towards increased specialization and compartments and the other trend towards unifying understandings. ::: UNIVERSITIES: an educational, cultural and research role strongly based in history and dominating the use of intellectual re sources. ::: COMMUNICATION: the limitations of language and the imperatives of the media and yet a great power to change sentiment. ::: PACKAGING: our growing skill at perceptual packaging may pose a problem in the future. ::: Change ::: The Next Step ::: Full Up ::: Education ::: Ludecy ::: Short-Term Thinking ::: Democracy ::: Pragmatism ::: Bureaucracy ::: Compartments ::: Universities ::: Communication ::: Packaging ::: Summary Of Practical Outcomes ::: Overview ::: At this point we have reached the end of a progression which had the following stages: ::: 1. A look at the self-organizing model of the brain and a contrast between self-organizing information systems and table-top systems. ::: 2. A look at how the behavior of perception arises directly from the behavior of self-organizing systems. ::: 3. A look at the impact of an understanding of perception on our traditional thinking habits and their defects. ::: 4. A look at thinking in society and its institutions. ::: I would now like to pull together and summarize in this section some of the practical outcomes of this exercise. ::: There are many, ranging from the very specific (such as creativity tools) to the more general (such as concern with the deficiencies of language). ::: Some of the points are simple but others open up huge areas of further consideration. ::: To repeat a point I have so often made in this book, I have not set out to provide all the answers but to indicate that these matters now need very serious attention. ::: There are other points implicit in the book which I have not listed here but which individual readers will note and consider. ::: The practical outcomes fall into two broad areas: ::: 1. Practical points arising directly from our understanding of the nature of perception. ::: 2. Defects in our traditional thinking habits made visible by our understanding of perception. ::: Complacency ::: The Need for More Effort and Attention ::: System Basis ::: Traditional Philosophy Is Dead ::: Perception ::: Mental Illness ::: Free-Will ::: Evolution for Change ::: Argument ::: Critical Thinking ::: Clash ::: Analysis ::: Problem-Solving ::: Truth and Absolutes ::: Description ::: Obsession with History ::: Intelligence Is Not Enough ::: Language ::: Polarizations ::: More Is Better ::: Limited Gate-Keepers ::: Understanding Perception ::: Perception and Emotion ::: Perception and Belief ::: Perception and Truth ::: Prejudice and Logic ::: Time Sequence ::: Reconstruction ::: What We Are Prepared to See ::: Innocence ::: Humor ::: Poetry ::: Stratal ::: Six Thinking Hats ::: Attention ::: Perceptual Tools ::: Mechanics of Interest ::: Attention Flow in Art ::: Manipulation of Perception ::: Zero-Hold ::: 'Same as … ' ::: Understanding Creativity ::: The Logic of Provocation ::: The Logic of Insight ::: Specific Tools of Lateral Thinking ::: Resistance to Change ::: The Next Step ::: Education ::: Universities ::: Compartments ::: Short-Term Thinking ::: Ludecy ::: Learning Backwards ::: New Language ::: Water Logic ::: Hope ::: Summary ::: Appendix: Water Logic ::: Hodics

BELIEF: a making sense of things. The circular system in which belief sets the perceptions that reinforce the belief.

How beliefs are cheap and easy to set up in a self-organizing system and how they provide the only perceptual truth.

Why logical argument has never been successful at changing prejudices, beliefs, emotions or perceptions. Why these things can be changed only through perception.

CIRCULARITY: a circularity can be established in which patterns lead back into each other. This is the basis of belief systems.


 


The Mechanism of the Mind #ea contents page ::: Amazon ::: Introduction ::: Oxford example of perception ::: Part One ::: Understanding the System ::: The Simple Basis of Complexity ::: Simplicity and complexity ::: Levels of Organization ::: Transformations, Notations and Models ::: Models ::: Notation ::: Models and notation in this book ::: The model and the brain ::: Memory Traces and Memory Surfaces ::: Memory ::: Less obvious memories ::: Time course ::: Play-back ::: Storing memories ::: Functional connections ::: Good and bad memory-surfaces ::: Special Universes ::: A Self-Organizing Memory Surface: The Polythene and Pins Model ::: Summary ::: Threshold Effects: The Thousand Bulb Model ::: Circular System Effects ::: Notation ::: More complex systems ::: Artificial models ::: Limited Attention Span ::: Behaviour of the thousand bulb rnernory-surface ::: Summary ::: Passive Choice and Selection ::: Attention ::: Single attention area ::: The Past Organizes the Present: The Jelly Model ::: Centring ::: Assimilation ::: Fixed patterns ::: Linked patterns ::: Backbone channel ::: Representative part ::: Time sequence ::: Summary ::: Change and Flow on the Memory Surface ::: Swift flow and staccato flow ::: Self ::: Self and identity ::: Communication by Preset Patterns ::: Elaboration ::: Short-Term and Long-Term Memory ::: Synthesis ::: Time and space ::: Holding effect ::: Separation and synthesis ::: The Emergence of Patterns ::: Emotion, Need and the Internal Patterns ::: The Peculiar Universe of the Memory-Surface ::: D-Lines: A Notation of Convenience ::: D-lines and behaviour on the special memory-surface ::: Fragments and continuity ::: Diversion ::: Centring ::: Polarizing ::: Unit size ::: Abstraction ::: Starting-point and sequence of attention ::: Summary ::: Part Two ::: Characteristic Behaviour of the System ::: Thinking behaviour on the special memory-surface ::: The Mechanics of Thinking ::: Summary ::: Changes in established patterns ::: Extension ::: Diversion ::: Preference ::: Sudden changes in the established pattern ::: The Insight Phenomenon ::: Humour and insight ::: Further ways of changing the basic pattern ::: Cumulative effect ::: Effort and change ::: Errors, Defects and Limitations ::: Momentum ::: The Myth Effect ::: The Dividing and Polarizing Effect ::: Static divisions ::: Mobile divisions ::: Mechanics of polarization ::: The Continuity Effect ::: The Distorting Effects of internal Patterns ::: Bias ::: Overcoming the Limitations ::: Summary of faults ::: Natural Thinking ::: Thinking ::: Natural thinking ::: Repetition ::: Logical Thinking ::: Mathematical Thinking ::: Lateral Thinking ::: Alternatives ::: Non-sequential ::: Undoing selection processes ::: Attention ::: Use of lateral thinking ::: Random input ::: Quota ::: Rotation of attention ::: Reversal ::: Cross-fertilization ::: The New Functional Word ::: PO ::: The first use of PO ::: The end before the means ::: Disconnected jumps ::: Juxtaposition ::: Reversal ::: Being wrong ::: Semi-certainty ::: Construction ::: Random stimulus ::: Summary ::: The second use of PO ::: Anti-arrogance ::: PO as interjection ::: Re-unite ::: Counteracting NO ::: Alternative approaches ::: Summary ::: Emotional content of PO ::: Hypothesis, suppose, poetry ::: Grammatical use of PO ::: PO and language ::: Summary ::: Physiology ::: Translation ::: Inhibition and excitation ::: Units ::: Short-term memory ::: Long-term memory ::: Patterns on the surface ::: Parallel systems ::: Dangers of introspection ::: Broad features ::: PO and the brain ::: General Summary


 

line

 

… snip, snip …

Proto-truth

What would happen if we discarded the concept of absolute truth?

What would happen if we threw out absolute truth from its central position in philosophy and in religious meta-systems?  


We could replace absolute truth with temporary or contingent truths.

In areas such as science this would only seem to be acknowledging what any proper scientist knows to be the position anyway.

Karl Popper has suggested that the purpose of an hypothesis is not to be proved but to be disproved so that a better one can emerge.

Scientific truths are temporary truths which may seem absolute at the time but are later replaced by others.

Newton’s truths seemed a perfect and absolute explanation until Einstein came along and provided a different explanation.

In time Einstein’s concepts will certainly be replaced by an even newer truth.  


We can look at the evolution of truths in the same way as we can the evolution in any self-organizing system.

There is a stable state which continues for some time.

Then there is a period of change to a new stable state which again lasts for some time.

This gives a series of plateaux as shown below.

 

prototruth-pict

 

All the time the truth is ‘improving’.  


We can call these plateaux or stable states ‘proto-truths’.

We can treat them as truths in all respects except one:

a proto-truth is always held to be changeable and is never regarded as absolute.

A proto-truth is only changed for a better prototruth.

There is a constant readiness for change but at the same time a willingness to use the proto-truth as if it were absolute.

It is very important to realize that the rejection of absolute truths does not mean that no truth is possible and that we should not try to find any.

On the contrary, it means that we can freely believe in and use truths because we no longer fear being trapped by them.

We often reject absolute truths because we fear the consequences of accepting them.

The same fear is not present with proto-truths.  


Proto-truths satisfy the dilemma that has become more and more obvious in our scientific age.

In theory we should be unable to act until science had given a full explanation of the world and a scientific basis for action.

In practice we do have to act and in many areas we have to act on the basis of little information and little scientific understanding.

A proto-truth is a working truth with which we can proceed.

The distinction between a proto-truth and an hypothesis will be discussed later in this section.

Proto-truths and absolute truths

It should now be clear that there are two systems of truth.

Both types of truth are believable and usable.

The sole difference is that proto-truths are capable of being changed to better ones whereas absolute truths are not.

Absolute truths hold sway in special universes and in circular situations.

An absolute truth cannot be changed unless the universe in which it operates is changed.

Proto-truths hold sway in ‘open’ universes.  


The meta-system suggested in this book is based on proto-truth rather than absolute truth.

In particular it is realized that the world created by the perception of man’s mind is entirely a world of proto-truth:

one way of looking at things is capable of being replaced by a better way.

Most religious meta-systems are based on absolute truth.

Proto-truth

Obtains in open universes; an evolutionary type of truth which is usable as truth in every way but which is capable of replacement and change.

Proto-truth and hypothesis

It is important to make a clear distinction between the two.

In its essential meaning an hypothesis is a sort of guess which creates an explanation of events which can then be used to design experiments.

Any hypothesis is a provocative tool of science.

For example, I might have an hypothesis that certain species eat their young when upset in order to keep the population constant in an area.

My hypothesis would suggest that in conditions of overcrowding there would be changes in the brain leading to production of chemicals that made an animal more easily irritable.

Such animals would be easily upset and so would eat, their offspring.

Such an hypothesis would lead to a variety of experiments:

  • measuring chemicals in the brain
  • using tranquilizers
  • comparing the provocation thresholds of animals from overcrowded areas with those of animals from less densely populated areas
  • observing other instances of irritation in overcrowded areas
  • etc.

After thorough research there might be enough evidence to support a conclusion.

This conclusion would become a proto-truth.

The proto-truth could itself be used deliberately as an hypothesis by someone else who would confirm the proto-truth or replace it with a better one.

The essential difference is a matter of use:

a prototruth is a conclusion (even if short-lived) whereas an hypothesis is a provocative experimental tool.

Proto-truth and pragmatism

This is another important distinction.

Pragmatism was developed by the American philosopher William James who derived the idea from Charles Peirce, another American.

Pragmatism holds that there is no truth except the ‘cash-value’ of an idea.

In other words, a statement is true only if it makes a practical difference to life.

This is generally interpreted to mean that a statement is true only if it is useful.

At once huge dangers open up.

The Nazis may have found it useful to consider the Jews as sub-human because this gave their followers a feeling of superiority which was important for the functioning of the Third Reich.

The Catholic Inquisition may have felt that it was useful to burn apparent heretics because it kept others in line.

Truth can usually be rationalized around actions which seem useful.

A proto-truth does not have to be useful or even usable.

It may make no difference to life at the moment.

It is simply a truth which is acknowledged to be replaceable.

The consequences of proto-truth

Once absolute truth is replaced by proto-truth a number of possibilities at once explode into being.

The practical use of proto-truths

There can be personal proto-truths, group proto-truths and cultural proto-truths as well as more universal ones arrived at by consensus.

Proto-truths are ways of looking at the world, and the experience-histories of different people will lead to different proto-truths.

There may seem an obvious danger here that an individual or group may have arrived at a rather peculiar proto-truth which constitutes a danger to other people (like the Manson cult in the USA).

If such a person or group is entitled to its own version of truth, does this not open the way to anarchy?

The answer is that because a proto-truth is only a temporary truth it cannot be held with sufficient intensity to interfere with the rights or proto-truths of others.

Subjective truths are valid so long as they are not objectively imposed on others.

In any case a person or group who have considered their own version of truth as absolute are not going to be made more dangerous by being told that it is not absolute but only temporary.

The trend would be towards reducing such dangers along with the reduction in arrogance and intolerance.  


Like any other truth, a proto-truth should be free of deliberate error or deception.

It should also be based on a full consideration of the situation, not just on a tiny part of it or a special point of view.

The requirements for a proto-truth are no different from the requirements for truth as we now accept them—the only difference is the acknowledgement of the possibility of improvement or replacement.  


The Buddhist meta-system insisted that the human mind can only perceive illusion, not reality.

The mind has to be trained away from illusion until it is released into a state of contemplation of pure reality.

The new meta-system insists that illusions are usable and workable and may be regarded as proto-truths.

This does not mean that every illusion is a proto-truth but that some illusions may be regarded as proto-truths and others will still be regarded as illusions.

The distinction is based on the application of the usual criteria of evidence, proof, fit and consensus.  


The same distinction can be made between subjective proto-truths and objective proto-truths as is now made with truth.

The only difference is that the arrogance of absolute truth is removed from both.  


It may be suggested that if there is no such thing as absolute truth then it is better to dispense with the illusion of truth entirely.

This attitude would mistake the functioning of a self-organizing and evolutionary system.

Animals are ‘definite’ enough even though they may in time evolve into better animals.

It is only because we are so used to considering truth as absolute that proto-truth seems worthless.

In fact proto-truth is of more value than absolute truth because it is evolutionary.

We can use proto-truth with confidence because we know that we are not going to be trapped by it.

Proto-truth is not another word for doubt or indecision.

On the contrary it makes for definiteness and decisiveness:

we must use the proto-truth we have at the moment as we have to do in science.

Without proto-truth life is a meaningless drift of confusion.  


The essential point about a proto-truth is that we can use it and believe it—so long as we are prepared to improve or replace it with a better one.  


A proto-truth may seem intangible in the way water is intangible.

It cannot be handled and attacked because it is so fluid.

But there is nothing intangible about the way water supports a boat.

Just as a boat makes its way over water so we can live our lives supported by proto-truths that are fluid and changeable.

Proto-truths

The new system replaces absolute truth with proto-truth.

Absolute truths only exist in circular systems or special universes.

Proto-truths exist in the sort of open universe with which science and life deal.

A proto-truth is as free from conscious error or deception as any other truth, but it is never held to be unchangeable.

A proto-truth is believable so long as it is realized that it can be improved or replaced by a better one.

Proto-truths are regarded as relatively stable states in the evolution of ideas.

The self-organization of experience forms such stable states both in the mind of individuals and also in society as a whole.

There are individual proto-truths or cultural proto-truths.

Proto-truths are not dogmas but acceptable and sensible ways of looking at the world that fit experience.

Proto-truths may be changed by new experience or by the restructuring of existing experience.

Because proto-truths are not regarded as absolute there is no effort to impose them on other people, and this gives rise to the tolerance of the new meta-system.

Nor is there a need to defend the proto-truths at all costs, and this gives rise to the positive and constructive attitude of the meta-system.

Improvement in the proto-truths is brought about by the process of exlectics instead of dialectics.

Dialectics seek improvement by a process of attack and clash whereas exlectics seek improvement by reconstruction of the initial idea.

 

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“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not turbulence;

it is to act with yesterday’s logic”. — Peter Drucker

 

 

The shift from manual workers
who do as they are being told
either by the task or by the boss —

TO knowledge workers
who have to manage themselves

profoundly challenges social structure

 

Managing Oneself (PDF) is a REVOLUTION in human affairs.” …

“It also requires an almost 180-degree change in the knowledge workers’ thoughts and actions from what most of us—even of the younger generation—still take for granted as the way to think and the way to act.” …

… “Managing Oneself is based on the very opposite realities:
Workers are likely to outlive organizations (and therefore, employers can’t be depended on for designing your life),

and the knowledge worker has mobility.” ← in a context

 

 

More than anything else,

the individual
has to take more responsibility
for himself or herself,
rather than depend on the company.”
continue

 

“Making a living is no longer enough
‘Work’ has to make a life .” continue

finding and selecting the pieces of the puzzle

 

The Second Curve

 

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These pages are attention directing tools for navigating a world moving relentlessly toward unimagined futures.

 

evidence-wall-and-time-line-pict-600

What’s the next effective action on the road ahead

 

stages-simple-horizons-pict-t

 

It’s up to you to figure out what to harvest and calendarize
working something out in time (1915, 1940, 1970 … 2040 … the outer limit of your concern)nobody is going to do it for you.

It may be a step forward to actively reject something (rather than just passively ignoring) and then working out a plan for coping with what you’ve rejected.

Your future is between your ears and our future is between our collective ears — it can’t be otherwise.

A site exploration: The memo THEY don't want you to see

 

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