Management

There is a push afoot to use evidence based medicine (EBM) to generate standards of care and then use pay-for-performance  (P4P) to Nudge people towards better behavior.

We’ve all been there, facing a problem so large or complex it seems insoluble. Fortunately, insoluble problems are solved with great regularity. If that weren’t true, we’d still be living in caves and eating only what we could catch or pick.

What can we do to increase our chances of solving the big problems in our lives and workplaces? Here are three suggestions.

During an interview in the post season, the franchise quarterback explained his success.

“When you pay a lot of money for bullshit, you have to pretend you like how it smells. To do otherwise is to admit you were wrong, and that is not allowed in management.”

From STAR-Whacked at Trustus Pharmaceuticals. 

In an organization – as in society – there is an important distinction between faith and religion. 

Faith is belief in the organization’s mission, supported and embodied in its values and long term goals. In a successful organization, faith is a common good, co-owned and held by the entire community.  Leadership doesn’t own or control faith, but functions as steward and guide, helping the community stay connected with (and by) their shared faith.

You know who I mean. We've all had to work with (or around) the guy everyone calls the pain in the ass.

He is not the person you would choose to make the decision, but he is a person you definitely want in the room when the options are being explored.

The leadership and management techniques that still dominate in the early 21st Century remind me of the mediocre and aging rock bands so common in local and regional venues: neither group has realized they are past their prime. Change is inevitable. Success is not. Mark Twain wrote that sacred cows make the best hamburger. We shouldn’t be adding spices to stale recipes or spoiled food. We should be designing a new menu.

A basic and well documented characteristic of human behavior is that, in any group, most of the activity is done by a small number of individuals. 

Joseph Campbell observed that the more a culture felt threatened or controlled by unpredictable forces, the more rituals it would evolve, the more complex they would be, and the more vigorously they would be enforced.

Ernest Martin Hopkins said that intelligent leadership requires an intelligent constituency.