Sunday, February 22, 2009

Shameless Promotion 1

On the behalf of my mate Schnitz:

Footy season is nigh and I thought I’d make it interesting this year by coordinating an AFL footy tipping comp. Go the mighty Crows!

Just to make it worth your while, I am going to throw in $500 of my own hard-earned cash as the major prize at the end of the minor round. I will also give a $30 Boomerang Books voucher to anybody who picks 8 winners in a round. But we all know that the biggest reward of all is bragging rights!

It’s free to join – just follow these steps:

- Go to http://www.footytips.com.au/jc.cfm?c=130316&P=btefootytipping

- Select the ‘Join this Competition’ button at the bottom of the page

- Complete the paperwork and you’re done. Don’t forget to enter your tips before each round!

The more the merrier, so please pass this on to your friends.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

The Cynic loves the organisation

When you pick it up a tool should fit your hand and way of working (like my Macbook and social computing in general) rather than requiring me to bio-reengineer my hand (and often my brain) to fit some idealistically designed and all too often fetishistic tool. 

Whilst Dave used this in a rant referring to KM approaches and Social Networking, but I am overwhelmed by the relevance to Lean and other forms of Business Process Re-engineering.

This relevance refers to some recent exposure to some zealots who have perpetuated every case-study of failure I have read of the Lean approach. It always seems to be a failure of leadership... I mean really, if it is always the same failure mode, surely one would've figured out the cure...

Or maybe Leadership is really just a figment of one's imaginations... but that is more the realm of Scott Adams.

So what does leadership do? Well it appears that they convert the low-level non-believers to this one true way of Business Improvement, but the hardened rebels and cynics are culled to make way. This then appears to constitute 'Success'.

So if you need to reengineer your organisation to make the approach work, maybe it is not the right tool... 

The title is also attributed to Dave Snowden

Monday, February 9, 2009

You Might Be In a Cult if...

  • There are rituals that validate the hierarchy
  • Everyone wears the same clothes
  • There is one true way
  • When the one true way fails, it is always due to a lack of faith
  • Dissent is treated as a lack of faith
  • Information is controlled
Sound familiar?