what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

the search for the holy grail

One of my problems has always been that I imagine that the next book I read will give me the key to the problematics about effective organisations. In reality, the next book confuses even more - by introducing a plausible new idea or praxis...
I'm not an academic - so I can't be satisfied with critiquing ideas - I'm looking for what works!
And Toyota have gained a reputation for working! And so, inevitably, the reformers and consultants in the public sector seek to identify the essence of that success and transfer it into a message of reform for the public sector. So the last Amazon delivery here contained 2 books - by Jeffrey Liker - on their principles and operations. I've started the first - and can relate to it. It tells stories - amazing stories - about a different way of doing business which one idealistically imagines should be seen in the public sector. The ideas may be radical - but the company is well-known for being conservative - taking time to think things through - but implementing fast.
This is what is needed in the UK where ideas are valued - but not implementation.

At the same time I dip into an academic study of the application of business reengineering ("big-bang")principles to a UK hospital - Reengineering Health Care - the complexities of organisational transformation by Mc Nulty and Ferlie and reel away, appalled and injured by the jargon and complexity. See for yourself here.
Ricardo Semler is the MD of Semco which has turned traditional management principles on their head - he writes about this in 2 books Maverick and The Seven-Day Weekend. There is a link here with cooperatives - the underrated organisational principle.....

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