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Best Sun Tzu Quote: Pinnacle of Skill
This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Sun Tzu Top 7Before his writings became a business management guide, I had read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War back in the early eighties. Yes, it can be almost psychopathic to view any business competitors as the “enemy.” Yet, if we view the enemy [… Read More]
Change Management – Tactic #8: Management by Walking Around
This entry is part 8 of 8 in the series Change Management TacticsNo matter how detailed and passionate someone describes his vacation to you, nothing compares to being there. The same holds true for assessing change and moving it forward: nothing compares to being there . . . there meaning with the people who are [… Read More]
Extremely Unified Groups: More Aggressive, More Destructive
Groups change people; a person in a group is very different alone. Subliminal influences encourage groups to accept those who adopt its ways and to excommunicate those who don’t. Since new approaches disrupt the status quo, creative people often fall in the latter. The Stanford Prison Experiment (August 1971) clearly showed what can happen to [… Read More]
Read Fiction! Improve Social Skills, Empathy, Problem-solving
While it’s easy to look at fiction as escapism, Keith Oatley’s article, “In the Mind of Others,” which appeared in the November 2011 edition of Scientific American Mind, reports on his work1 regarding the reading of fiction and concludes: . . . [it] facilitates the development of social skills because it provides experience thinking about [… Read More]
Process vs. Flexibility: The Tradeoff
We often overlook the downside of processes in our businesses because we enjoy how they allow us to scale and reduce labor costs. However, they often become the infrastructure that retards flexibility and adaptability as people’s self-interest and comfort zones become wedded to the processes. The November 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review, which [… Read More]
Social Media Strategy & The Natural Force of Integration
Several folks on Twitter inspired this post: Ted Coine, Kevin Vonduuglasittu, Tim Steigert, Peggy Fitzpatrick and Michele Price. Their discussion centered around the merits of Twitter relative to Facebook and other social media sites. While every social media site has its advantages and disadvantages, the challenge is not deciding where to spend your time but [… Read More]
Osama bin Laden’s Death: Intuitive Problem-solving Lesson
After watching PBS NewsHour’s analysis, “What’s Next for U.S. Military in Fight Against Al-Qaida?” which aired on Monday, May 2, 2011, I recalled an adage from a childhood story, “Sometimes the best place to hide something is in plain sight.” In the story, someone hid an incriminating letter in his apartment. Rather than a secret [… Read More]
When Best Technology Isn’t Best
Sometimes we become enamored with technology for its own sake, automatically assuming that the most advanced technology delivers the best. Since the U.S. military tends to be at the fore of technological implementation, observing how strategies and tactics change with technology can be instructive. Such is the case found in the article, “Air Power on [… Read More]
Is Confidence an Indicator of Incompetence?
“In the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” -Bertrand Russell, from his essay ‘The Triumph of Stupidity’, published in 1933. Professors Justin Kruger and David Dunning provide supporting research. Their findings are categorically called the Dunning-Kruger Effect (DKE). In my earlier post about lying, we saw liars using [… Read More]
Inherent Conflict Between Talent and Large Organizations
In his landmark book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) ponders why two Arabs can hold off a dozen Turks but a thousand Arabs cannot defeat a thousand Turks. He arrives at the realization that large scale armies need to be organized around the weakest link to tap the advantages that [… Read More]