The Management Myth de Matthew Stewart (p.303 - final del libro)
"The questions that the management theorists raise and the insights that they offer belong not to a speciously practical discipline of management, but to the history of philosophy, and they should be taught and studied as such.
What makes for a good manager? If we put all of their heads together, the great management thinkers at the end of the day give us the same, simple, and true answer. A good manager is someone with a facility for analysis and an even greater talent for synthesis; someone who has an eye both for the details and for the one big thing that really matters; someone who is able to reflect on facts in a disinteresed way, who is always dissatisfied with pat answers and the conventional wisdom, and who therefore takes a certain pleasure in knowledge itself; someone with a wide knowledge of the world and a even better knowledge of the way people work; someone who knows how to treat people with respect; someone with honesty, integrity, trustworthiness, and the other things that make up character; someone, in short, who understands oneself and the world around us well enough to know how to make it better. By this definition, of course, a good manager is nothing more or less than a good and well-educated person."
lunes, 31 de enero de 2011
viernes, 28 de enero de 2011
La urgente y particular innovación necesaria en la enseñanza del noble oficio del management (7 de 8)
The Management Myth de Matthew Stewart (p.264)
"To dispute gurus on questions of fact, however, is a fool's game. When Peters and his fellow gurus contrast the innocent past with the present danger, they are not describing phenomena that can be observed in real time. They are invoking a certain emotional state of being. They are expressing our fear of change -and, ultimately, our fear of death. The pressure from which they seek refuge has its ultimate source not in managerial experience per se, nor even in a particular economic system, but in our own mortality. They are, in fact, taking the first step in the long-established formula for success in any democratic religion, which is to tie this fear of death and destruction to our particular time (whenever that may be), and so to link our existential anxieties with a claim about the peculiar wickedness of the age.
The gurus, like their evangelical predecessors, undersatnd instinctively how to exploit a fundamental flaw in the human intuition of time. Reason tell us that time is a continuum, and that yesterday, today, and tomorrow are in reality no different from one another. But the primitive, chthonic mind disagrees. It tell us that yesterday is very unlike today, which is nothing at all like tomorrow. The past is innocent and stable, like childhood, like Garden of Eden, or like the father who went off to work every morning with the same briefcase in hand. The present, which really exist only as the immediate future, is a source of perpetual instability, fearsome threats, and relentless anxiety. The far future (see step 3 below) resolves this instability in the form of calamity or rapture, permanent doom or eternal salvation.
The gurus understand that to invoke this particular state of being, this anxiety before the present/immediate future, has a salutary aspect. It is a way of predisposing us to action. It shake us out of complacency and bring focus to our energies. What the gurus may not always be willing to say is that invoking this state of being also happens to be a highly profitable move for the gurus themselves. As America's evangelists understood, fear sells. Bad news for you is good news for the gurus. Management theory has its feet glued to superstition, and superstition floats only on an ocean of fear."
"To dispute gurus on questions of fact, however, is a fool's game. When Peters and his fellow gurus contrast the innocent past with the present danger, they are not describing phenomena that can be observed in real time. They are invoking a certain emotional state of being. They are expressing our fear of change -and, ultimately, our fear of death. The pressure from which they seek refuge has its ultimate source not in managerial experience per se, nor even in a particular economic system, but in our own mortality. They are, in fact, taking the first step in the long-established formula for success in any democratic religion, which is to tie this fear of death and destruction to our particular time (whenever that may be), and so to link our existential anxieties with a claim about the peculiar wickedness of the age.
The gurus, like their evangelical predecessors, undersatnd instinctively how to exploit a fundamental flaw in the human intuition of time. Reason tell us that time is a continuum, and that yesterday, today, and tomorrow are in reality no different from one another. But the primitive, chthonic mind disagrees. It tell us that yesterday is very unlike today, which is nothing at all like tomorrow. The past is innocent and stable, like childhood, like Garden of Eden, or like the father who went off to work every morning with the same briefcase in hand. The present, which really exist only as the immediate future, is a source of perpetual instability, fearsome threats, and relentless anxiety. The far future (see step 3 below) resolves this instability in the form of calamity or rapture, permanent doom or eternal salvation.
The gurus understand that to invoke this particular state of being, this anxiety before the present/immediate future, has a salutary aspect. It is a way of predisposing us to action. It shake us out of complacency and bring focus to our energies. What the gurus may not always be willing to say is that invoking this state of being also happens to be a highly profitable move for the gurus themselves. As America's evangelists understood, fear sells. Bad news for you is good news for the gurus. Management theory has its feet glued to superstition, and superstition floats only on an ocean of fear."
miércoles, 26 de enero de 2011
La urgente y particular innovación necesaria en la enseñanza del noble oficio del management (6 de 8)
The Management Myth de Matthew Stewart (p.251)
"The gurus hold on to the pretense of management expertise because that is the idea that fuses their work into a meaningful whole. However much they disdain the academics, the gurus subscribe to the myth that Taylor concocted and that has sustained the business of management ever since - the idea that management is a specialized body of knowledge or expertise that evolves over time and is the preserve of a certain class of professionals. Indeed, the gurus are today's chief propagandists for this new, modern religion. Drucker, with his usual self-confidence, has allowed himself to be identified as "the man who invented management," or, at least, who "established management as a discipline and as a field of study." In fact, neither he nor his successors established a discipline; they merely asserted the idea of a discipline. (And, for what it's worth, it was Taylor, not Drucker, who had the idea first.) If one is to appreciate the gurus properly, to understand why they have risen to prominence and what their work actually portends, one must approach them not as the experts that they claim to be, but as the spiritual leaders that the really are."
"The gurus hold on to the pretense of management expertise because that is the idea that fuses their work into a meaningful whole. However much they disdain the academics, the gurus subscribe to the myth that Taylor concocted and that has sustained the business of management ever since - the idea that management is a specialized body of knowledge or expertise that evolves over time and is the preserve of a certain class of professionals. Indeed, the gurus are today's chief propagandists for this new, modern religion. Drucker, with his usual self-confidence, has allowed himself to be identified as "the man who invented management," or, at least, who "established management as a discipline and as a field of study." In fact, neither he nor his successors established a discipline; they merely asserted the idea of a discipline. (And, for what it's worth, it was Taylor, not Drucker, who had the idea first.) If one is to appreciate the gurus properly, to understand why they have risen to prominence and what their work actually portends, one must approach them not as the experts that they claim to be, but as the spiritual leaders that the really are."
lunes, 24 de enero de 2011
La urgente y particular innovación necesaria en la enseñanza del noble oficio del management (5 de 8)
The Management Myth de Matthew Stewart (p.219)
"The attempt to turn strategy into a rigorous academic discipline has done considerable violence to the core value in almost all strategic thinking - the fundamental idea that one should always keep an eye on the big picture. Seeing the big picture means seeing not just what is, but what can be. It is, by its nature, a synthetic activity, not an analytic one. It is essentially creative, not reductive. It happens in a imperfectly knowable world, and it is risky. It is what we mean by entrepreneurial, in the best sense of the word. The academic discipline of strategy, like the business school system from which it emerges and the managerial perspective it represents, is fundamentally analytic, reductive, and risk-averse. By the default settings of all such institutions, it is bound to prepare people to become bureaucrats rather than entrepreneurs. We can nonetheless take some comfort in the knowledge that the core value of strategy will surely suvive the academic onslaught. After all, there is nothing that a blackboard can do to halt the arrival of spring."
"The attempt to turn strategy into a rigorous academic discipline has done considerable violence to the core value in almost all strategic thinking - the fundamental idea that one should always keep an eye on the big picture. Seeing the big picture means seeing not just what is, but what can be. It is, by its nature, a synthetic activity, not an analytic one. It is essentially creative, not reductive. It happens in a imperfectly knowable world, and it is risky. It is what we mean by entrepreneurial, in the best sense of the word. The academic discipline of strategy, like the business school system from which it emerges and the managerial perspective it represents, is fundamentally analytic, reductive, and risk-averse. By the default settings of all such institutions, it is bound to prepare people to become bureaucrats rather than entrepreneurs. We can nonetheless take some comfort in the knowledge that the core value of strategy will surely suvive the academic onslaught. After all, there is nothing that a blackboard can do to halt the arrival of spring."
viernes, 21 de enero de 2011
La urgente y particular innovación necesaria en la enseñanza del noble oficio del management (4 de 8)
The Management Myth de Matthew Stewart (p.202)
"
A conceptual framework is a way of breaking up the landscape of experience into meaningful pieces. It is intended to help individuals engaged in a particular practice to describe and analyze the context of their actions. It is often expected to provide normative guidance on what to do.
Some chiefs will undoubtedly find the "five forces of cooking" framework supplied here useful in these ways. Student chefs in particular will be keen to master whatever secrets they imagine to be lurking in the framework. Academics, as is their work, will inevitably dispute aspects of the framework and propose amendments or alternatives - such as, perhaps, a talent-based view of cooking. Most chefs, however, will immediately sense that the whole endeavor is an atrocious waste of time. A framework, they will point out, has never fried an egg."
"
A conceptual framework is a way of breaking up the landscape of experience into meaningful pieces. It is intended to help individuals engaged in a particular practice to describe and analyze the context of their actions. It is often expected to provide normative guidance on what to do.
Some chiefs will undoubtedly find the "five forces of cooking" framework supplied here useful in these ways. Student chefs in particular will be keen to master whatever secrets they imagine to be lurking in the framework. Academics, as is their work, will inevitably dispute aspects of the framework and propose amendments or alternatives - such as, perhaps, a talent-based view of cooking. Most chefs, however, will immediately sense that the whole endeavor is an atrocious waste of time. A framework, they will point out, has never fried an egg."
miércoles, 19 de enero de 2011
La urgente y particular innovación necesaria en la enseñanza del noble oficio del management (3 de 8)
The Management Myth de Matthew Stewart (p.195)
"By making market share one of only two variables in assessing a business, the matrix is inherently biased toward an expansionist strategy... The matrix, in keeping with the fundamental thrust of the strategy planning tradition, presumes that managers can do a better job of allocating resources among business than the market can. The matrix presumes, for example, that it is better to invest the milk from cash cows in the limited portfolio of stars and questions marks available to a corporation than to send it back to shareholders."
"By making market share one of only two variables in assessing a business, the matrix is inherently biased toward an expansionist strategy... The matrix, in keeping with the fundamental thrust of the strategy planning tradition, presumes that managers can do a better job of allocating resources among business than the market can. The matrix presumes, for example, that it is better to invest the milk from cash cows in the limited portfolio of stars and questions marks available to a corporation than to send it back to shareholders."
lunes, 17 de enero de 2011
La urgente y particular innovación necesaria en la enseñanza del noble oficio del management (2 de 8)
The Management Myth de Matthew Stewart (p.159) El Autor cita a Bruce Herderson, el fundador del Boston Consulting Group
"Can you think of anything less improbable [sic] than taking the world's most successful firms, leaders in their business, and hiring people just fresh out of school and telling them how to run their business and they are willing to pay millions of dollars for this advice?
"Can you think of anything less improbable [sic] than taking the world's most successful firms, leaders in their business, and hiring people just fresh out of school and telling them how to run their business and they are willing to pay millions of dollars for this advice?
viernes, 14 de enero de 2011
La urgente y particular innovación necesaria en la enseñanza del noble oficio del management (1 de 8)
El libro The Management Myth del filósofo y ex-consultor Matthew Stewart nos ofrece en las mismas 303 páginas una narración sucinta y muy bien documentada de la historia del pensamiento del siglo veinte sobre el management, otra narración (que es toda una novela de suspenso e intriga) sobre su experiencia como consultor de empresas, y sus reflexiones rigurosas desde la formación filosófica que le acompaña acerca de porqué el management y su enseñanza merecen mejor trato y atención que la que hasta ahora han recibido.
Todo dueño o administrador de una escuela de negocios, o decano de una facultad de administración de empresas, o director de programa MBA, etc. se deleitará con su lectura y eventualmente beneficiará a la organización a su cargo... (ni que decirlo, así mismo, todo manager en práctica actualmente)
En ocho entradas a partir de ésta publicaremos breves citas del libro con el doble propósito de despertar el apetito hacia su lectura y delinear porqué afirmamos que estamos de acuerdo con que es urgente y necesario innovar radicalmente en la enseñanza del noble oficio del management
***
PS: usamos el término "noble" en su sentido de "Honroso, estimable"
***
The Management Myth de Matthew Stewart (p.11)
“But the modern idea of management is right enough to be dangerously wrong and it has led us seriously astray. It has sent us on a mistaken quest to seek scientific answers to unscientific questions. It offers pretended technological solutions to what are, at bottom, moral and political problems. It conjures an illusion – easily exploited – about the nature and value of management expertise. It induces us to devote formative years to training in subjects that do not exist. It favors a naïve view of the sources of mismanagement, making it harder to check abuses of corporate power. Above all, it contributes to a misunderstanding about the sources of our prosperity, leading us to neglect the social, moral, and political infrastructure on which our well-being depends… The sixteenth-century English philosopher Francis Bacon defined an idol as a phantasm of the mind – sometimes founded in the limitations of our rational faculties, often furthered by the misuse of language an the sophistry of false teachers – that leads us to a pattern of misunderstanding of the world and sustain irrational practices. By that definition, the idea of management is an idol of our times. It is a fat word over a lot the thin questions marks. It is a edifice of grammatical errors, misperceptions, and superstitions that keeps in business much that should be put out of business.”
Todo dueño o administrador de una escuela de negocios, o decano de una facultad de administración de empresas, o director de programa MBA, etc. se deleitará con su lectura y eventualmente beneficiará a la organización a su cargo... (ni que decirlo, así mismo, todo manager en práctica actualmente)
En ocho entradas a partir de ésta publicaremos breves citas del libro con el doble propósito de despertar el apetito hacia su lectura y delinear porqué afirmamos que estamos de acuerdo con que es urgente y necesario innovar radicalmente en la enseñanza del noble oficio del management
***
PS: usamos el término "noble" en su sentido de "Honroso, estimable"
***
The Management Myth de Matthew Stewart (p.11)
“But the modern idea of management is right enough to be dangerously wrong and it has led us seriously astray. It has sent us on a mistaken quest to seek scientific answers to unscientific questions. It offers pretended technological solutions to what are, at bottom, moral and political problems. It conjures an illusion – easily exploited – about the nature and value of management expertise. It induces us to devote formative years to training in subjects that do not exist. It favors a naïve view of the sources of mismanagement, making it harder to check abuses of corporate power. Above all, it contributes to a misunderstanding about the sources of our prosperity, leading us to neglect the social, moral, and political infrastructure on which our well-being depends… The sixteenth-century English philosopher Francis Bacon defined an idol as a phantasm of the mind – sometimes founded in the limitations of our rational faculties, often furthered by the misuse of language an the sophistry of false teachers – that leads us to a pattern of misunderstanding of the world and sustain irrational practices. By that definition, the idea of management is an idol of our times. It is a fat word over a lot the thin questions marks. It is a edifice of grammatical errors, misperceptions, and superstitions that keeps in business much that should be put out of business.”
martes, 11 de enero de 2011
Filmmaking and distribution (very difficult to accomplish) innovation
Aquí la entrada completa desde Knowledge@Wharton: "No Hollywood Ending: Filmmaker James Kerwin on the Future of Independent Movie Production"
Extracto introductorio:
"Aspiring filmmaker James Kerwin had an image in his mind -- a 1940s-era Lauren Bacall wearing Humphrey Bogart's trench coat and walking through city streets at night. That image was the genesis of his first feature film, Yesterday Was a Lie, a black-and-white noir-style science fiction mystery starring Kipleigh Brown, Chase Masterson (who also served as producer) and John Newton. The independently produced film draws on myriad arcane influences ranging from Jungian psychology to quantum physics.
To fund the film, Kerwin used an approach that is uncommon in motion picture production: He established a tax exempt non-profit organization to raise the roughly $200,000 he needed. He was also fortunate enough to be awarded a grant from Panavision, which supplied most of his equipment.
Yet, as Lance Weiler, another independent filmmaker, previously told Knowledge@Wharton, "the real struggle comes when it's time to distribute" your movie. "Making the film is easy in comparison." If you want your film to be exhibited in a theater or your DVD to be available through the major retail chains, you need to have your film picked up by a major distributor. And working with a well-known one doesn't guarantee you'll generate enough revenue to fund your next project."
Extracto introductorio:
"Aspiring filmmaker James Kerwin had an image in his mind -- a 1940s-era Lauren Bacall wearing Humphrey Bogart's trench coat and walking through city streets at night. That image was the genesis of his first feature film, Yesterday Was a Lie, a black-and-white noir-style science fiction mystery starring Kipleigh Brown, Chase Masterson (who also served as producer) and John Newton. The independently produced film draws on myriad arcane influences ranging from Jungian psychology to quantum physics.
To fund the film, Kerwin used an approach that is uncommon in motion picture production: He established a tax exempt non-profit organization to raise the roughly $200,000 he needed. He was also fortunate enough to be awarded a grant from Panavision, which supplied most of his equipment.
Yet, as Lance Weiler, another independent filmmaker, previously told Knowledge@Wharton, "the real struggle comes when it's time to distribute" your movie. "Making the film is easy in comparison." If you want your film to be exhibited in a theater or your DVD to be available through the major retail chains, you need to have your film picked up by a major distributor. And working with a well-known one doesn't guarantee you'll generate enough revenue to fund your next project."
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