Beyond knowledge management to better management
If you let your sense of time be guided by Madison Avenue, then by January 5 we are well into the New Year, and Christmas is long since past. Even the after-Christmas sales are old news at this point. But the Madison Avenue view of life is not the only, or even the best, view... Continue Reading →
We should have learned our lesson by now: the lesson that one shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Nonetheless, time after time, we rush to judgment with precious little objective evidence to support our position. I was reminded of this when a trail of links led me to some clips from Britain's Got Talent.... Continue Reading →
Nature may abhor a vacuum, but management abhors chaos. And middle managers cling to control as if it is the only thing standing between them and perdition. "Winning the middle" is the strategy that targets those middle managers who sometimes seem so fearful of social media tools behind the firewall. To be fair, they may... Continue Reading →
I'm not easily impressed, but today Google impressed me. How? They put an extraordinary "Google Doodle" on their search page in honor of the June 9 birthday of the legendary guitarist, Les Paul. (See video below.) One of the great benefits of living in New York City is that we have access to amazing performers.... Continue Reading →
Enterprise 2.0 finally has a fight song. While reading Andrew McAfee's discussion of the key criteria by which to judge whether a collaboration software deployment meets the requirements of E2.0 and Alexander van Elsa's post on how old-fashioned business models are holding back Web 2.0, I found myself thinking about the importance of user independence,... Continue Reading →
Do you know where you're going to?* That's the critical question Mark Gould asks in his recent post on social media, in which he makes the fair point that there really isn't a one-size-fits-all social media strategy. Each person and each organization has to figure it out for themselves. And it all begins with knowing... Continue Reading →
For those of my readers who were secretly hoping that I'd lose interest over the weekend in my current fascination with popular music and management, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I was getting ready to stop and then I discovered that Billy Joel is not only a philosopher, but a pragmatic one. His song, Just... Continue Reading →
I really didn't intend to write a series on management skills and popular songs but, after yesterday's reference to "Love the One You're With" by Crosby, Stills & Nash, here we are today with staffing issues again and Paul Simon's classic "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover."* The impetus for the journey from one song... Continue Reading →
Two stories this week from senior managers I know made me think again about the responsibilities of managers with respect to their staff. In the first case, the manager was a senior executive in a financial firm. He said he was struggling with what to do with certain members of his staff who "would never... Continue Reading →
Above and Beyond KM 