Image by Getty Images via Daylife There is a tendency in American youth soccer to emphasize winning and losing at all costs and at the earliest ages. This tendency should be combated in order to develop players who have the emotional reselling is to try things out and who have an innate love of the […]
Category: management
Reflecting on surveys for organizational feedback
Image via Wikipedia Discuss the usefulness and limitations of survey feedback. What are the key issues/problems the OD practitioner has to be aware of while feeding back data? Usefulness of survey feedback (when it is effective) (Cummings & Worley, 2009, pp141-2): Motivation to work with the data: organization members have to believe in the purpose […]
Erasmus: the last educated man?
Image via Wikipedia There are some who say that Erasmus was the last man about whom it could be said that he knew all that there was to know (available at the time). Ever since then the amount of knowledge being developed daily is increasing more rapidly than our ability to find, assess and add […]
Dog-eat-dog vs cooperation in military acquisition
Image via Wikipedia Some look at acquisition as a purely dog-eat-dog zero sum game. Another perspective coming out of game theory that takes a slightly different approach than the “Always Trust” strategy is documented in a Robert Axelrod‘s “The Evolution of Cooperation” . There are games where the strategy of “Always Trust” or Don’t Play” […]
Managed risks?
Image via Wikipedia The risks now? Risk of being left behind if the fear was an anomaly and there is now the mother of all buying opportunities: my strategy? Continue to trade intraday with no overnight risk, at my usual levels of risk, in large cap US companies, and broad index ETFs, in either direction […]
complexity in the curriculum
Image via Wikipedia The college in-briefed the new Commander yesterday; From the dialogue emerged his 4 priorities: FYSA. LD&E executed its orientation briefing to LTG Caslen yesterday, and one slide briefly illustrated the following as the CG’s top four priorities: 1. Leader Development (sub-bullets below are not all-inclusive) – Develop and implement ILE 2010 – […]
Reflecting on wicked force management problems (Army)
My take on the problem with force management is that it has been treated as a complicated problem, suitable for central planning (PPBES) and not as a complex problem, rife with social & political context, in a dynamic state where the variables change parameters far faster than the planned decision cycles. Consequently, we never get […]
Systems dynamics meets the Afghan war via Powerpoint
It is becoming a common practice to laugh at that slide, but try on this thought experiment: what if someone made a slide of a zoom in on the surface of a semi-conductor chip? Wouldn’t that seem as incomprehensible and “foolish”? and yet by the slow process of developing knowledge we have become capable of extraordinary […]
Obama declares people of Arizona are irresponsible
Image via Wikipedia Obama, elected by citizens, according to the law, has declared the citizens and their duly elected representatives, who followed the law to pass a law, as irresponsible. You would expect that from true believers, who see the world in absolutes: the members of this group include children, the naive, idealists, utopianists, and […]
Complexity in process consulting: a good thing?
Image via Wikipedia A colleague used the word “simplistic” in describing the 10 principles of process consulting offered by Ed Schein. I interpreted his use of the word simplistic in describing shines 10 principles as a negative thing. There’s a part of me that remembers the 10 Commandments are simplistic too. In my studies of […]