Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

Wide open spaces. A review of "More Space"

Morespacecover On my last flight (seems like I start a lot of things that way, but that is when I have a lot of time to catch up on my reading) I read some excellent articles from some of my favorite bloggers. Here's the catch - I wasn't online, or even using a computer. I was reading a book called "More Space - Nine Antidotes to Complacency in Business," edited by Todd Satterstein (with a foreword by the inimitable Seth Godin).

The concept is simple - take nine bloggers, and give them lots of space to express their thoughts about business. The results are quite impressive.

The authors are Jory Des Jardins, Lisa Haneberg, Rob May, Johnnie Moore, Marc Orchant, Robert Paterson, Evelyn Rodriguez, Curt Rosengren, and Jeremy Wright.

The wide array of styles brought out a wide array of responses from me as I read. At various points I was intriqued, enraged, inspired, and (surprisingly) touched by the material. These folks shine in this book.

Just to give you a taste, here are some things I liked from the book:

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Bend It Like Drucker

"Management" means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folklore and superstition, and of cooperation for force. . .

--Peter Drucker,
People and Performance

My February issue of the Harvard Business Review came in a couple of days ago, and I just finished reading a great article on "What Executives Should Remember." This article is a "best of" compilation of some phenomenal essays by the late Peter F. Drucker (1909-2005), perhaps the most influential business thinker in the last century.

These are the kinds of articles that keep me coming back to the HBR as a subscriber. If you don't subscribe, head down to the book store or news stand and pick up this issue even if this is the only article in there that you read.

Here an example of what I took away from this piece:

It's wrong to keep doing "the right things" after the old reasons no longer exist.

In the first essay of this compilation, "The Theory of Business," Drucker talks about how so many companies find a routine that works for them and then cling to that routine long after the world has moved on. It's the old story of "survival of the most adaptive," and he uses GM as an example (he wrote this article back in 1994, by the way).

There is a great discussion of how the "right thing" for success in business is dependent on the times you live in, and the conditions that impact you. This isn't about values, ethics, compassion, or any of that - it's about effective response to changing economic realities. Sure, some of those economic changes are driven by social change, but social responsibility alone isn't enough to drive business success. A cost model is an unfeeling bastard (my words, not his).

I love Drucker's closing thought in this piece: "[CEO's of stumbling organizations] accept that a theory's obsolescence is a degenerative and, indeed, life-threatening disease. And, they know and accept the surgeon's time-tested principle, the oldest principle of effective decision making: A degenerative disease will not be cured by procrastination. It requires decisive action." Whoa.

More nuggets of gold await you, o reader!

The other essays are excellent, as well.

  • In 1963's "Managing for Business Effectiveness," he tells us how to "organize the job of managing for economic effectiveness and how to do it with both direction and results." This is masterfully done through his treatment of the three questions: "What is a managers job?," What is the major problem?," and "What is the principle?"
  • In "What Business Can Learn from Nonprofits," from 1989, when he talks about how nonprofits have a stronger sense of mission, a higher sense of responsibility, and better focus on the long term than their for-profit peers. His theory is that a big reason for this is that the nonprofit board is more committed and active. Indeed, in many cases, the board members are some of the largest financial contributors to the organization, and have often spent their own time volunteering to support the cause. Very thought-provoking.
  • In "The New Society of Organizations," 1992, you'll find a disconcerting discussion about how modern organizations are a destabilizing influence (as opposed to society, community, and family which are all "conserving institutions" that try to maintain stability by preventing or slowing change). Again, this essay is even more interesting in light of the recent public challenges of Ford, GM, et al.
  • And the fun continues through "The Information Executives Truly Need," "Managing Oneself," "They're Not Employees, They're People," and "What Makes an Executive Effective" (the last line says it all: Listen first, speak last.)

I really only began to appreciate the wisdom of Peter Drucker about 3 years ago. When he died in November, I was sad to hear the news. But the ideas of this special man live on in his writing - pick up a copy of HBR and see for yourself.

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Don't let the judges scare you...

January has been a particularly time-hungry beast, of late, so I haven't had as many cycles as I'd have liked to post things here. But - here is something you should check out - it's a very cool idea-sharing project run by Lisa Haneberg of Management Craft.

Bren, Skip, and I are judges but don't let that scare you. We're practically neutral (though we're all fascinated by any cool gadgetry) and we love to promote great ideas.

So bring out your best - and share.

And I'll get some of my half-written posts out here real soon now, you'll see.

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GTD 2006.17: Unplanned Work is an oxymoron

In my day job I do a lot of work with IT organizations on best practices -- aka 'best known methods' -- and IT process improvement. I spend a lot of time working with various research bodies (such as Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute, the IT Process Institute, along with other industry bodies). Our goal is to determine and evangelize repeatable ways to improve IT efficiency and effectiveness.

For a while, my fellow researchers and I have been talking about "unplanned work" as the silent killer of IT efficiency. Unplanned work is also known as "firefighting," and it usually means you're being totally reactive to what happens to you and your organization.

In a conversation with a colleague of mine a few hours ago, he told me that unplanned work was eating him alive this week. I joked that there are actually two types of unplanned work:

Type 1: This is our traditional definition of reactive firefighting in which you have to deal with urgent stuff didn't expect.

Type 2: This is work that you've consciously added to your list, but you just don't have a plan.

I asked him how much of his unplanned work was self-inflicted -- type #2.

Over the past couple of hours, my mind has drifted back to that discussion and I realized it wasn't just a joke, and it applies to our own personal productivity. When I look at days in my life that have seemed chaotic and unproductive, or taken on a life of their own, I realize that one of these two kinds of unplanned work are often at the heart of my frustration.

And my fondness for procrastination just amplifies both of these. Procrastination is particularly "effective" on Type 2, because those are the situations in which I probably don't know what the next action really is.

After pondering (wallowing?) a bit more, I realized that David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) is effective because it tries to deal with both of these issues head-on. After all, the proper use of GTD combats firefighting by helping you systematically deal with (or renegotiate) the things that "show up" in your day. GTD also combats Type 2 by providing you with a system to ensure that you don't have a bunch of ambiguous, unplanned projects or next inactions sitting there on your action lists.

What about you? Do you find yourself dealing with lots of unplanned work these days? Might be time for a refresher on the basics of Getting Things Done.

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[Updated] Bring your jumper cables for the jump start of your life

Jumpercables Last year, I read Rosa Say’s book, “Managing with Aloha” (MWA) and, as I wrote in my review (”Not what, or how - but why?”) it is a truly special book. At the time, I found it challenging to write about Rosa’s book because it was so easy to feel strongly about it but so hard to explain in a way that does it justice. I always just summarize it down to “You’ve gotta read it, and you’ve gotta learn what it means to you.”

You may recall that I recently wrote about Rosa’s book as one of my favorite books from 2005. All of my favorite books have one thing in common - they not only touched something in me when I read them; they all ended up being books that have become ongoing influences in my life since I’ve read them. I keep revisiting, re-reading, and reflecting on them and continue to find new ways to apply the wisdom they hold.

So, it was with great pleasure that I learned of a cool project Rosa is starting to help people create a personal connection with her book. Whether you’ve read MWA or not, there’s another thing “you’ve gotta do” — check out Rosa’s new Jumpstart Program for Managing with Aloha. See what Aloha is all about.

Update:  You should also check out Rosa’s post over at Lifehack.org, on the 10 Beliefs of Great Managers.

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