Featured Management Theory
Recent Management Theory
Rules Should Not apply
Some organizational rules are critically important to keeping people safe from harm. Organizational leaders should ensure these rules are always followed. Other organizational rules exist to help staff know what to expect and to keep operations running smoothly. Making project teams working on critical change initiatives follow these rules can often do more harm than good.
How and When You Communicate Matters
Most organizations understand that communication can make or break a project. Nonetheless, few organizations actually effectively communicate with staff and stakeholders about key initiatives. In particular, many organizations wait too long to communicate with staff and stakeholders and use horribly ineffective channels when they finally do communicate.
It is So Shiny! I Need to Have It!
It seems like every few years some new, must have process or piece of technology sweeps through industries. When this happens, it can very difficult for leaders of organizations to resist the urge to jump on the bandwagon and adopt the newest thing, even if doing so might be in their organization’s best interest.
All Management Theory
Rules Should Not apply
Some organizational rules are critically important to keeping people safe from harm. Organizational leaders should ensure these rules are always followed. Other organizational rules exist to help staff know what to expect and to keep operations running smoothly. Making project teams working on critical change initiatives follow these rules can often do more harm than good.
How and When You Communicate Matters
Most organizations understand that communication can make or break a project. Nonetheless, few organizations actually effectively communicate with staff and stakeholders about key initiatives. In particular, many organizations wait too long to communicate with staff and stakeholders and use horribly ineffective channels when they finally do communicate.
It is So Shiny! I Need to Have It!
It seems like every few years some new, must have process or piece of technology sweeps through industries. When this happens, it can very difficult for leaders of organizations to resist the urge to jump on the bandwagon and adopt the newest thing, even if doing so might be in their organization’s best interest.
The Most Important Aspect of Change Management
It can take a lot of time and effort to complete all of the work required by many formal change management methodologies. If an organization has the resources to complete all of this work, it is often very beneficial to do so. However, if an organization does not have the resources to do this much work, significant gains can still be made by focusing solely on the most important aspect of change management.
The Need for Enterprise Systems Engineering
Many modern enterprise IT systems fall far short of the ideal of operating as fully integrated wholes. In many instances, this is the result of too much focus on sub-system optimization and not enough focus on overall system performance. This situation can often be brought back into alignment through an increased focus on enterprise systems engineering.
In Defense of the Humble Spreadsheet
Spreadsheets have developed an ill-deserved bad rap and many organizations seem hell-bent on dramatically reducing their use. But spreadsheets are actually very powerful and versatile tools that almost everyone is comfortable and good at using. Organizations would be well served to encourage their appropriate use instead of working to eliminate it.
Human Organizations as Complex Systems
Human organizations have typically been viewed as complicated systems. As such, the behavior of human organizations has been considered to be by-in-large predictable. New evidence is arising, however, that points toward human organizations being complex, not complicated, systems, and this has significant ramifications for the predictability of organizational behavior.
The Value of a Good Dedicated Project Manager
A good project manager can be hard to find, and if you do find one, expensive to hire. For these reasons, many organizations attempt to complete complex projects without employing a dedicated project manager, opting instead to have an existing employee take on the added responsibilities of managing the project. This very seldomly ends well.
The Never-Ending Treadmill of Chasing Best Practices
Many organizations invest significant time and money in implementing best practices in hopes of surpassing the performance of their competitors. Unfortunately, the best these organizations can hope for is to match the performance of their best-performing peers, not surpass it – and even this outcome is highly unlikely.
The Case for Organizational Change Marketing
Most for-profit and non-profit organizations understand the value of marketing to external customers and donors and do not hesitate to invest significant time and money on it. However, very few organizations understand how valuable similar marketing efforts can be to winning staff and stakeholder support for internal organizational change initiatives.