Sunday, July 27, 2008

Micromanagement

There is a style of management with which comes from these assumptions: 1) People are motivated by reward and punishment 2) System works best with chain of command and control 3) People should obey their managers 4) Employees must do what their managers tell them to do.

Now you have a system in place where subordinates are incapable of doing the job, giving close instruction and checking everything the person does. Managers seldom praise and often criticize. Whatever their subordinates do, nothing seems good enough.

Your great people now are being treated as if they are incapable and untrustworthy. In this way, people who are micromanaged can become dependent, unable to make the smallest decision without asking their manager. Your system requires robots and "yes man" people to fulfill the top leader’s insecurities and needs. There might be a chain of managers who are criticized and they in turn pass this and become critical to others.

How to cope with micromanage? One way is to build a feedback loop (carefully) to show how these things are broken. When they over-control, avoid them and when they give you space, give them a positive feedback. In this way you have more control yourself (don’t micromanage your boss) and you are on the road of changing the command and control culture.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Random thoughts

1. Finish one thing really well before starting something new.
2. "Loosen up." – life isn’t that serious
3. Exercise — it is more important for your brain that your body
4. Being irreverent and off tangent helps
5. This is geeky - logical data model concept is out of date
6. Your project should have a good story – Hollywood way of making things happen.
7. Why CA does spent 3 Billion on Education and 9 Billion on prisons and criminal affairs?
8. Release your product daily

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Cutting in the bad time

Cutting is typically Recession obsession-preoccupation. It may well be necessary, but smart leaders can always increase profit by promoting great and creative bunch, people like you who read stuff like this. The cutting mentality is deadly – most everyone goes into a demoralizing shell when "cutting" becomes the smell of the place.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

The Dreyfus Model of Skills Acquisition

As well as providing a useful description of each stage of learning, the Dreyfus model describes how best to help the learner progress to the next stage in their learning.
According to the Dreyfus model there are five distinct stages, as the learner gains experience and develops insight and intuition. Very briefly:
The Novice wants recipes, best practices, quick wins
The Advanced Beginner wants guidelines, a safe environment to make mistakes
At the Competent stage you want goals, freedom to execute
The Proficient learner wants maxims, war stories, metaphors
The Expert wants philosophies, discussions and arguments with other experts(!)

Below is a video clip from Ben Zender’s talk at TED where he is coaching the audience to realize their untapped love for the classical music. This is a very entertaining talk which Ben plays like a 7, 8, 9, 10 year old child and then play like an expert. This video is fascinating and shows the Dreyfus model in action.