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Was My M.B.A. A Waste of Time?

30 October, 2017 by James Lawther 3 Comments

Thought Experiment

Collaboration For my sins I have an M.B.A.  I am a child of the ’70’s.  By the time I hit the ’90’s an M.B.A. was the qualification to have if you were intent on pursuing a corporate career. The course taught me all about the parts of big business.  I learnt about: Finance and accounting […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: best practice, collaboration, communication, culture, systems thinking

Three Types of Culture

7 August, 2017 by James Lawther 4 Comments

Justice

1. Blame culture I am not a big fan of blaming people when things go wrong. There are two reasons why: It is hard to apportion blame correctly. Business is a team sport. With so many players involved failures are rarely the fault of one person. If a goal keeper lets in a goal, was […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: blame, culture, management style

Pseudoscientific Management

28 July, 2017 by James Lawther 4 Comments

Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience Pseudoscience answers everything Pseudoscience hates being challenged Pseudoscience rejects new ideas Pseudoscience cannot fail Pseudoscience is static Science Science questions everything Science thrives on being challenged Science opens up to new ideas Science is designed to fail Science changes Pseudoscience or Science? Opinions or observations? Dogma or debate? Convinced or sceptical? Performance Management or Test […]

Filed Under: Blog, Wild Cards Tagged With: beliefs, culture, management style, performance management, test and learn

The Project That Couldn’t Fail

15 July, 2017 by James Lawther 2 Comments

Plan to Fail

Trite management sayings Managers love clichés. They pick them up as they gain experience and seniority. The most popular are those that prove their superiority and make others feel small. A couple of my personal favourite statements of the obvious are: “Fail to plan and plan to fail” and “Poor Planning leads to P### Poor Performance”. […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: ballistic model of success, command and control, culture, Dilbert, political will, project management

Not Invented Here

29 June, 2017 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Mixing Ideas

Nothing comes from nothing I sat in a meeting the other day, it was a nightmare… Two guys were trying to extol the benefits of automation to a team of sales managers.  The tension was palpable.  In one corner stood a bunch of consultants trying to explain the latest and greatest thinking in operational improvement.  […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: culture, human nature, innovation

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