Management Innovation

Taking a look from outside

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:47:00 +0000

An excellent discussion this morning on Radio 4's 'Start the Week'.

Gillian Tett is credited with being one of the first financial journalists to spot the credit crunch coming. How did she do it? It was her experience of social anthropology - she spent a year in Tajikistan during for her PhD - that gave her the insight that there was a common delusion going on.

The Radio 4 programme is currently featured here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jwxz0

And this Guardian article also gives an insight:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/31/creditcrunch-gillian-tett-financial-times

So I find this interesting as a consumer, but even more interesting as an educator (hooray for the concept of a liberal education) and a coach of managers who have precious little time to look at things from the outside.

Walking and change

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:11:00 +0000

The fantastic walkit site and blog has inspired me to think again about the effect of the environment on our thinking. Walkit is essentially about urban journeys by foot. It's a great idea.

Urban earth takes a different slant of the experience of cities as a kind of art. Go straight to one of their films to get the feel: this one's set in Bristol.

I'm going to be doing some research in this area (starting - ahem - when OUP send me the books they owe me for a review I did), and I'd really like to hear from people about their experience of walking, whether in the urban or rural environment.

Here are the themes:
physical activity and effects on emotion and thinking
location/environment and effects on emotion and thinking
and if anyone can make a meaningful link to psychogeography, I'd be grateful.

What happens when managers listen

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:34:00 +0000

I'm reading Carl Rogers' 'On Becoming a Person' at the moment. It's a remarkably readable, human and tender book collated from a number of writings and lectures.

In one piece Rogers outlines what he has observed from his years of counselling practice, and amongst them is the observation that the more honest he is, the more present, the more he is 'himself', the more he is able to help his clients.

If it works in counselling, does it not work in management? What about just listening to understand and if you're distracted by the current management agenda, just saying so without trying to influence what the other person is saying.

Worth an experiment.

Performance is the enemy

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:35:00 +0000

What do I mean? Well it's golf, I'm afraid.

I like a bit of competition and find it motivating. But I've noticed recently that focusing on my score is slowing down the improvement in my golf. I had a lesson with the pro this morning and we changed one or two things. I can see they work and I can see why they work. I was pretty pleased actually.

So I go out to play one or two holes and wouldn't you know it ... put a flag in my eyeline and the desire for a score overwhelms the desire to improve.

The bottom line is you can't learn if you're scared to make a mistake.

Peek-a-boo ... learning is fun

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:28:00 +0000

I've been reading up on theories of intellectual development. Hmmm. As with the way with these things, ones mind wanders.

So at one point I found myself reading a description of part of Piaget's thinking about children's development, and I realised why peek-a-boo makes sense. But we all play peek-a-boo with babies ... we don't need to know that there's a theory. So why do we? Is it because it makes the baby laugh? And why does the baby laugh? Is it partly so that we'll play with them? It makes all sorts of sense. Learning is fun!

How quickly we can forget, though.

Questions that move you forward #2

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:57:00 +0000

In the same way as we tend to focus on shortcomings when we think about goals, we can very easily focus on the barriers when we think about actions. And again, how you ask the question can really help. What about...

"What do I need in order to do this?"

or

"What would really help me?"

These questions focus both on what can be done and imply/encourage the taking of responsibility.

Do you have any useful questions?

Questions that move you forward #1

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:49:00 +0000

Well, new year again, and like everyone else I've been thinking about what's been and what's to come. I commented this time last year on new year's resolutions and some of the ways our goals are undermined before we even start.

But being happy and effective is not just about challenge, challenge, challenge. Sometimes focusing on goals can skew our perspective towards what's not happening rather than what is: what's not happening now, or what went wrong with our efforts. Of course goals drive us onwards, but this holiday I've been thinking about what questions we can ask that reveal values as much as targets.

So when it came to new year, I started asking my kids what they want for this year. What came out was a pretty predictable mix of wish lists for birthday presents and goals for themselves. But I've noticed that they've already been pretty engaged with working towards some of those goals. Almost as if the question, 'what do you want?', put the idea in some kind of 'want' box, rather than an 'ought to' box. Well I know which box I'd be inclined to look in first.

Breaking the logjam

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:57:00 +0000

A lot of people find they can't start to address a problem because there are too many things binding them into the current situation. A lot of coaching looks at whether these binds are real or imaginary; another view I rather like Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey's analysis ('The real reason people won't change' HBR Nov 2001) which gives emphasis to the idea of competing commitments. Perhaps the two are connected.

Well, oddly, I've just found this happening right here at home. Our kitchen lights were faulty and were flipping the electrics for the whole house. We've been getting by with a table lamp and the light in the cooker hood. For a long time I haven't wanted to do anything about it because I know the whole system is pretty old and I just couldn't imagine where it would end. There's lots of other stuff that needs doing in the house that has ended up in the same box. I don't like having this box filling up with renovation projects, but up until now, I guess I've liked the prospect of the cost and disruption even less.

Well several weeks after the electrician started, the kitchen has just been replastered. What a difference (I mean to the kitchen.) And suddenly I'm looking at it thinking - 'right, is it the kids rooms next or the landing'. Motivation totally turned around (despite the cost and disruption being worse even than I feared). And I haven't been 'thinking' about change, more seeing it happen.

If you want to change, but you don't know where to start, sometimes it pays to just start somewhere.

Moving more slowly

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:40:00 +0000

So, not necessarily on the back of the last post, but anyway I seem to be thinking more and more about slowness. I had a search round the blogs the other day for stuff about 'slow leadership' and it seems it's the thing of 2007. I hadn't really thought in those exact terms, but it does work in a number of ways.

Here's some good sense from Carmine Coyote: http://slowleadership.org/blog/

You can find my current thoughts at www.4mph.com

Doing nothing

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 17:38:00 +0000

Like I just have for six months. Well in blogging terms anyway. Actually I've been incredibly focused ... on other things.

But I'm a big fan of changing things around and just letting something different happen. Just had a nice reflexology session this afternoon which does exactly that. Oddly, although I'm a big fan of changing things around and just letting something different happen, I don't often do it for myself. Not often enough.

This afternoon I thought how organisations want to talk in terms of specific results and outcomes and yet the best experiences - and learning - come out of being open about what might happen.

How to make sure nothing changes

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 12:46:00 +0000

As promised:

Happy with the status quo? Want to stay stuck in your rut? These tips will help you make sure nothing changes in 2007...

We all know what January's like. After two weeks of excess, indigestion, fights and feuds all you want is a quiet life. It's cold, it's probably raining, and now is just not the time to be stirring things up. But what on earth do you do about those - I can hardly say it - new year's resolutions.

Whether you're someone who just doesn't want anything to change, or if you're looking forward to a major shot of disappointment before Lent, here is your 10 point plan to making absolutely sure you can avoid keeping your New Year's resolutions. January is already too late, mind, you need to get these principles sorted before you even start.

Make your resolutions very very late at night
If you get this one right, you can successfully avoid any change at all. If you're lucky, you won't even remember having made them. You certainly won't be able to take any immediate action that risks getting the ball rolling. New Year's Eve is the ideal opportunity to score highly on this one.
Do not write anything down
People keep making this mistake. Research shows over and over that if you write down what you want to achieve you are more likely to achieve it. Treat pen and paper with extreme caution.
Keep it vague
Simple but effective.
Do what other people think is best
Parents are especially useful as a source of ideas that you have no intention of pursuing, but you can also farm ideas from your friends or work colleagues. People who care about you, just want you to be OK. And the best thing about their solutions are that they can bear no relevance whatever to your situation or your feelings. In one ear, out the other. Perfect. Could backfire. Use with care.
Choose something utterly unrealistic
Another trump card.
Cultivate clutter
This is one to use if you want to do something new. Keep your task list completely full and you'll never have to go to the gym again. Don't under any circumstances clear out activities you no longer need. Padding is not just a waste of time, it stops other stuff getting into life. Procrastinate like a professional.
Leave a gap
This is the complement to number 6. Use it when you want to give something up. Fags is a perfect example. Think about all the times you would normally smoke. Make sure you don't let anything else creep into that space: it could cloud your yearning.
Keep it open-ended
This really works. No destination, no route map. These are the I-want-to be-a-better-person type resolutions. Classy. Socially acceptable and inherently impossible, you need never pay any more attention to them.
Do not tell anyone else about your resolutions
This is surprisingly important. It's well known that public commitment to goals is strongly associated with achievement. Keep it to yourself.
Focus on what you don't want, not what you do
Remember that the first and biggest barrier to achievement and change is your own belief that you can do it. Focus on the barriers; fill your mind with them; don't be seduced by what's on the other side.

Good luck.

Happy New Year's Resolutions

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 17:09:00 +0000

My friend Marc sent me an interesting link to an article on fastcompany.com about why people don't change. Definitely a good time of year to understand this. This is a definite read ... and then review your new year's resolutions.

http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2007/01/change-or-die.html

A couple of years ago, I wrote this piece on new year's resolutions which is genuinely based on established goal-setting and motivation research ... but that wasn't the focus at the time. I'll put this up as a separate post.

Silence

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:52:00 +0000

I attended a session yesterday at a conference on Coaching Psychology organised by the BPS Special Group in Coaching Psychology.

Paul Furey talked about listening. Now listening is meat and drink to coaches and psychologists, but there's always a new perspective. In particular Dr Furey talked about the coach's desire to solve their client's problems and how this (perversely) can detract from their effectiveness in helping through listening. While you're trying to diagnose, you're not really listening any more.

Here's the logic: if you really really listen to someone, switch off everything that tends to make you jump ahead of the conversation (what's on your mind; whether it reminds you of your own situation; whether you think you might have seen it before somewhere), really listen and show you're listening, then people are more able to find their own, relevant, appropriate solutions to which they are committed.

Now two thoughts: 1. that might equally be true of staff who you manage; 2. technical specialists might have an even greater urge to diagnose other people's problems.

You might be interested in Paul Furey's research on empathy.

Personal Development Plans

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 11:37:00 +0000

Scenario: annual review, competency framework, personal development plan.

How much genuinely personal real development is actually planned?

Let's face it, often it's just another list of jobs. "Your list of jobs" doesn't sound so inspiring does it.

This goes back to values again. People will really do a good job when the work is aligned to what they believe (whether thats at some elevated spiritual level, or pragmatic and instrumental doesn't really matter). They may need resources to do the job well. How about having a review where the manager is producing "my list of ways I'm going to give you the resources to do a great job"?

Hmmm ...

It hurts sometimes

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:59:00 +0000

I was talking to a psychiatrist yesterday (my partner's stepfather), weirdly, about losing weight (as I tucked into Grandma's lemon cake).

We spun round the topic as you do and he commented that the thing people don't take into account is that losing weight actually hurts.

Now in one of my professional roles (as a lecturer) I quite frequently have reason to think about what I need to do in order to facilitate other people's learning. We often ask the learners. But it has often occurred to me that when they're in the thick of it, learners might be expressing all sorts of things in the feedback they give. Including, I guess .... yes, it hurts.

Changing what you do and think, or how your body works is going to hurt. Not agonising necessarily, but somewhere between strange and painful enough to make you want to take refuge in what you know. Seems to me this is something worth acknowledging.

Working from values

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:53:00 +0000

Technical disciplines encourage and reward analysis. General management rewards flexibility and the ability to work with the unknown.

There are two great ways out of the trap of over-analysis. One is reflection. The other is values. I'm not going to analyse either right here right now, but here are two links to two great UK values-driven initiatives - one commercial, one not.

Howies.
CareerShifters.org.

What do these mean to you?

Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 13:18:00 +0000

I've been reading Tim Gallwey's excellent Inner Game of Golf. Gallwey essentially proposes that people are much more capable of learning rapidly if they improve their awareness. In many contexts (especially those where complex actions are required) this, he argues, has a more direct route to performance than explaining concepts. He argues that the learning of concepts has become over-emphasised in our educational systems and people find it difficult to relearn how to trust their own learning. Furthermore, Gallwey argues that concepts are essentially the wrong language for physical performance; physical performance, and awareness of the performance, is the right language.

I have thought about and experimented with Gallwey's approach for a few years, but I've always had a nagging doubt. While I accept his arguments, I have found it difficult to accept that it makes sense for the individual learner to reinvent the wheel - if there's complex technique why not learn from other people's experience? But yesterday I saw a parallel.

As well as learning to play golf, I'm also learning to play the piano.

I realised that this point about concept vs performance was so much more obviously true of playing music. The score is not the music. We may learn to read music, but when we play, we play with our fingers. Our fingers know the piece, the score just acts as an anchor or reminder. A cue not a script. And our fingers learn the piece through practice and repetition - a physical, not a conceptual embodiment of the music. If you have any doubts about this, just think of the great musicians who only play by ear. Or notice how much more difficult it is to sight-read.

So what might this have to do with management? Well I'm wondering if managers coming from a technical background have a greater propensity to emphasise concepts and conceptual learning. In fact, that's not a very big 'if' - I'm pretty sure that's true. Does this make us less inclined to experiment and take risks? To engage with the dangerous business of experience?

Embracing uncertainty

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 12:14:00 +0000

One of the great things about my work is that I genuinely learn from my clients. And I love learning about things.

Yesterday I was talking to a client - we'll call him Jim - who was talking about whether or not he had 'mastered' or 'got on top of' his new more senior role. I think it's fair to say that in his mind he had an idea of a 'bedding in' period during which it was ok not to know all the answers. He feels that time has now passed.

The upshot of this was that we started talking about uncertainty and how more senior positions carry with them greater levels of uncertainty. Maybe Jim's now in a role that just doesn't get mastered - there's just too much of it to know what's going on all the time. His boss certainly is, and so on up.

Faced with this situation, we noticed that people's strategies fall into one of two types: coping, or accommodating.

The obvious coping strategy is to work harder. It might not get rid of the uncertainty, but at least you can't be blamed. It's an excellent coping strategy in that it has all the appearance of being constructive, it has positive cultural implications, and it helps to avoid the problem.

The problem is uncertainty, though, and working harder only works so far because it is embedded in the wrong paradigm: the player/captain paradigm where activity is primary.

Working harder can remove some uncertainty but at some point - and it's different for different people in different jobs - at some point you're going to need to accommodate this escalating uncertainty; to step off the hamster wheel and think about what the executive paradigm really means. I think it means direction and systems, which require a view of the whole that's not going to come from slogging away at diversionary activity. In practical terms it might mean sometimes being well-briefed rather than all-knowing, putting people forward as well as fronting up.

I drew a model as we talked and Jim said that it really explained it for him. I liked it too, but I actually thought I'd been drawing his model.

The sports coach as Executive Manager

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 12:40:00 +0000

I'm picking up on my model of last week.

- doer
- manager
- executive manager
- enterprise manager

Sometimes it can be useful to look elsewhere to understand you own context, and two examples particularly strike me as useful. The first is sport. The model translates pretty neatly onto the pitch for team games in particular. Look at football or rugby:

- player
- captain (organises things on the pitch, holds people to their assigned roles, makes decisions 'in the moment')
- coach/manager (creates structure and purpose, selects personnel, decides on key strategies and style of play)
- chairman (overlays financial concerns on pure sporting issues, sets the enterprise in a social and economic context, and usually bears the losses)

So I'm arguing that player to captain is an OK transition, but coach/manager is traumatic. You can no longer show how it's done by simply being the best. In fact, although a successful playing career lends credibility to the coach/manager, it by no means predicts success (compare the careers of Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Keegan, Gascoigne with Wenger, Ferguson, O'Neill, Allardyce). OK this is not a rule, but there's a point there.

What, then, do the successful coach/managers do? I would say they focus on the structure rather than the process of performance. Less, 'how must you do this'. More, 'what makes it so that you do it well'. A great example of this is John Harbin. A soft spoken Australian from a rugby league background with a track record of getting teams to play better than they thought they could. I interviewed him last year while he was at Crystal Palace and was impressed by how strongly he felt for his players. Here's an extract from that interview.

“We treat the player firstly as a human being and secondly as a footballer. And that’s absolutely vital,” says Harbin.

The bottom line counts like it does anywhere else, and the management need to be clear about what’s required to do the job. The criticism, though, is very definitely about the performance not the person:
“Honesty at times hurts. But they’ll get over that. You can say to a player, ‘I’m dropping you this week, because of this part of your game, but I’m willing to spend time with you to help you improve it.’ The player will be very disgruntled overnight but they’ll accept what you’ve done.”

Yet I can’t believe that a team made up of experienced professionals suddenly developed a level of skill that accounts for the difference between relegation and promotion. I remind Harbin of some of Palace’s performances in the Premiership the following season: holding the far superior Arsenal team to a draw, in particular. How does that happen?

“It’s the intangibles: commitment, desire, hunger, dedication, unselfishness. A team, group or organisation which is overloaded with the intangibles can often outperform a team with more ability. History’s full of sporting teams that have pulled off upsets because they’ve been loaded up with the intangibles.”

How do you load up those intangibles? Harbin is a great believer in leading by example:

“I guess it’s your own attitude, your own persona: your own hunger, your own dedication, your own commitment that starts the ball rolling. If you haven’t got these, you can’t pass them on. Now you don’t necessarily have to be noisy about it. Some of the quietest people have got it. Take someone like Wayne Bennett at the Brisbane Broncos: he’s a quiet man, but as a human being he is absolutely loaded with the intangibles.”

Leading by example is a commitment, though; Harbin is absolutely clear:
“If that’s what you’ve based your building blocks on, the intangibles, and I think that’s a very secure foundation … but when they waver in your own life, those foundations become very shaky. It’s not for show – you’ve got to display these qualities always and all the time.”

This adds up to a very clear philosophy of team performance. I asked Harbin where it comes from.

“Criticism is soul-destroying. It’s so much easier to criticize than praise. I was fortunate that I did a teaching degree and we were analyzed in our classroom practice to measure how much positive and negative reinforcement we gave. Now I’m a positive person, but the figures were alarming. At first I actually thought, ‘no, that’s not me’, but what I needed to think was, ‘yeah, that is me, and what am I going to do about it?’”

What did he learn from that?
“People have the ability to change the attitude of others through changing their own attitude. And in their own way, they become leaders. They’re infectious. Their spirit is infectious. Of course if it’s a positive spirit, that works well, but if it’s negative it’s soul-destroying. Human beings are very very powerful.”

It’s more than just an approach to getting things done, though. “I’ve got a saying pinned up in my office: ‘You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.’ I taught for quite a while and you can really see how it works. Sometimes some of the young teachers found it hard with very disadvantaged kids to put their arm round them and give them the encouragement they need. But that’s when you know whether it’s genuine or just for show.”

And in Harbin’s case, it’s not just for show:

“I worked with Iain at Oldham, and if I didn’t think Iain had that same philosophy, I wouldn’t have come here. Whatever club I went to it wouldn’t matter to me what the philosophy of the manager the chairman the chief exec. I would hope that they’d have the same philosophy as me, but in the end, it wouldn’t matter, because I would never ever compromise my philosophy.

“It’s a strange philosophy for football. Players here say to me, ‘You’re one of a kind’. And I think, ‘what are you talking about. I’m just normal. This is how normal human beings are’. And the great thing about it is that these things are under your control. Nobody has an influence on how loyal I’m going to be. That’s me. Nobody has an influence on how dedicated I’m going to be. That’s me. I make that decision.”

Harbin tells me an anecdote which seems to sum it up.

“I was sitting on the beach reading a book by Jack Welch called ‘Winning’. Looking for some new ideas. I guess it’s about someone who’s been pretty successful by being a bit ruthless and being well organised. He talks about sacking people, keeping people competitive. It wasn’t really a turn on for me. But as I’m reading it, I see this guy in his fifties with three little kids. Two of the kids are trying to get the youngest one to go into the water. She doesn’t want to go. They’re trying to drag her in the water and the little girl just wouldn’t go. She’s screaming, and I’m thinking why doesn’t this guy do something? He let them go for a little while and just watched. Then he put his arm down to this little girl and she looked up at him and took his hand. He walked her down to the edge of the water and just looked at her again and smiled at her, and he walked out into the water without a murmur. And I thought, that’s what it’s all about. It’s about trust, caring, loving and getting somebody to achieve something that they’re terrified of. That’s what he did. And I threw the book about winning away. Because that guy showed in that brief moment that you’ll get people to follow you into the face of fear if you show those things.”
(From the Bulletin of the Association for Coaching, Issue 7, 2006)

Promotion: letting go of the comfort blanket.

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 11:48:00 +0000

There are transitions in the career of a technical specialist. In this posting, I’m suggesting a picture of those transitions, why they can cause problems, and why it’s worth thinking about them.

To my mind there are three major transitions in our work, regardless of scale. Each has different demands on the person and requires different competencies. I’ve sketched out the phases that sit either side of each of these transitions. By all means flesh out/colour in/challenge/or reject, but I’m suggesting they look like this:

- Doing. Doing the job that got you interested. eg programmer/analyst/designer
- Managing. Getting the job done. eg team leader/project manager/product manager
- Executive management. Fitting lots of different jobs together. eg programme manager/function manager/divisional manager/regional manager
- Enterprise management. Making sure it all works, meets the market, pays, and everybody stays on board. eg MD

OK these are broad categories, and the smaller the organisation, the greater the overlap, but you get the gist.

So here’s the next point. Every time we move from one of these phases or types of activity to the next, we lose stuff. We lose expertise, we lose a community, maybe we even lose a bit of credibility. And the harder we’ve worked to get these things in the first place, the less inclined we are (on average – yes, there are variations), the less inclined we are to leave them behind. In a sense, we are faced with the prospect of becoming someone else.

Now often we’re keen to make this transition. Move on. Move up. More money/status/control/prestige/autonomy whatever. Often we’re helped to develop the necessary skills in advance. But nobody told me, and nobody told anybody around me about losing identity. So we get two things: we get people clinging onto the comfort blanket of how they did things before (but what they did to make the last job work doesn’t fit and doesn’t work too well); and we get people losing touch with/starting to question what value they are adding. So then I meet people in their thirties and forties who can’t work out who, or what, they are professionally. Maybe it’s not the first transition, but the second or third that has hit them. For the first time in their working life, they’re no longer top of the class. And they can’t work out what that means to them. “That’s the way I’ve always done it,” they tell me, and, sure, it has always worked. Till now. (Suits me – I love working with these people – but it doesn’t have to happen.) So …

So what am I suggesting? Simply that people better prepare themselves for moving on. That they recognise that they are leaving some things behind and that they have to build something new: new skills, new approaches, new strategies. That they recognise they are making this choice and that they are prepared to enjoy the adventure. That they acknowledge they’re going somewhere else, somewhere unknown and that they are ready to let go.

More about those stages.
Doing – I am a programmer/analyst/designer
Qualities – knowledge and expertise
Core Challenges – seeing problems before they happen; consistency and rigour; problem-solving; intuition about logic.

Managing – I am a team leader/project manager/product manager
Qualities – technical lead; goal focus; communication; negotiation
Core Challenges – keeping focus on the end point; resolving the needs of different stakeholders; balancing technical, cost and delivery issues; intuition about technology.

Executive Management – I am a programme manager/function manager/divisional manager/regional manager
Qualities – rapid information processing/decision-making; building trust; alliances; influence.
Core Challenges – balancing flexibility and focus; demands and constraints; corporate and function; challenging people when they know more than you; intuition about people.

Enterprise Management – I’m keeping the whole ship together
Qualities – people, market, technology and finance.
Core Challenges – being ‘pre-active’ (reactive before the event).

Welcome

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Jackson) — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 12:19:00 +0000

Hi readers/sharers,

I'm interested in people and organisations. I'm particularly interested in people with technical competencies and organisations that make those competencies core to their business. And I'm particularly interested in when those people find they have to adapt to managing functions where maybe they're not the uber-geek any more.

You're there? Well let's share.

I just want to start by asking people if there's interest? If there's one of you out there, then I'll roll.

That's all for today.
Pete.

Privacy and legal

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