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(1981). Models for Management : The Structure of Competence.
"Chain of command looks good on paper, but in practice it falls far short as an effective system for arousing cooperation when basic economic conditions have resulted in men being released from industrial servitude." (p. 122)
(2003). The Geek Syndrome.
Flattened workplace hierarchies are more comfortable for those who find it hard to read social cues. A WYSIWYG world, where respect and rewards are based strictly on merit, is an Asperger's dream.
(1998). Critical SHIFT: The Future of Quality in Organizational Performance.
"Sometimes the search for a position in your organization that matches your desires leaves you empty-handed. In this situation you must make the decision to leave the organization or stay and create a new position if you believe it will add value. If you decide to stay, do not be deterred by those who tell you it will be impossible to create a new role. Our parents taught us 'Where there's a will, there's a way.' "
(1999). A Safe Place for Dangerous Truths: Using Dialogue to Overcome Fear & Distrust at Work.
"In a strict hierarchy, when someone in power has the reputation for retribution, it would be irresponsible to encourage the discussion of dangerous truths. One time I believed a manager's self-description as 'open-minded and empowering.' Introducing dialogue into her group was a mistake. She was not open-minded and had a reputation for shooting the messenger. The result was agony—two hours of people squirming in their seats, eyes darting longingly toward the door, and no one daring to tell the truth." (p. 194)
(1989). Getting Unstuck: Breaking Through Your Barriers to Change.
"Cooperation increases when your criticism decreases. If negative criticism worked, you would not spend so much of your time nagging, complaining, and repeating yourself. The next time you feel the urge to criticize—STOP. Instead, ask yourself: Will what I am about to say really help the other person? Will it really get me more of what I want? Is the damage it might do to my relationship in the long run worth the short-term benefit of being right or feeling superior to the person I am about to criticize?" (p. 212)
(1978). Negative criticism: Its swath of destruction and what to do about it.
"It is a little after midnight. You have just come out of the last show at the movie. To save a block you cut through a dark alley. Halfway through it—just as you are beginning to relax—two men step out of the shadows. You hear a nasty metallic snick and suddenly there is the glint of knife blades in the feeble light.
What would you do?
I know what I would do.
Quickly I'd turn and throw a fearful look back up the alley. It is clear and free. A surge of adrenalin sends the blood pumping to my legs. Getting out of that alley I set a new indoor Olympic sprint record. The jogger in me has never seen such speed. Nothing seems sweeter than the glare of street lights and the chatter of people making their way to their cars. I look for a police officer and tell my story.
That is what everybody would do in such a situation, right?
But let me play you another version. The scene is the same. The two hulking men are coming at you with knives. But you keep strolling casually on to meet them. You throw up your arms and say, 'I'm all yours. Let me feel the steel. I know it will help me in the long run.'
They oblige by savagely thrusting the knives deep into your defenseless belly. You fall to the pavement writhing with pain. The men stand over you. You roll onto your stomach and gasp, 'You'd better give me a couple in the back, too.'
Ridiculous?
Of course, but it is exactly what thousands upon thousands of us do each and every day by failing to recognize that the knives of negative criticism which people stick in us are just as sharp and deadly as those made of steel and borne by assassins." (p. 9)
What would you do?
I know what I would do.
Quickly I'd turn and throw a fearful look back up the alley. It is clear and free. A surge of adrenalin sends the blood pumping to my legs. Getting out of that alley I set a new indoor Olympic sprint record. The jogger in me has never seen such speed. Nothing seems sweeter than the glare of street lights and the chatter of people making their way to their cars. I look for a police officer and tell my story.
That is what everybody would do in such a situation, right?
But let me play you another version. The scene is the same. The two hulking men are coming at you with knives. But you keep strolling casually on to meet them. You throw up your arms and say, 'I'm all yours. Let me feel the steel. I know it will help me in the long run.'
They oblige by savagely thrusting the knives deep into your defenseless belly. You fall to the pavement writhing with pain. The men stand over you. You roll onto your stomach and gasp, 'You'd better give me a couple in the back, too.'
Ridiculous?
Of course, but it is exactly what thousands upon thousands of us do each and every day by failing to recognize that the knives of negative criticism which people stick in us are just as sharp and deadly as those made of steel and borne by assassins." (p. 9)
(1998). The Mentor's Spirit : Life Lessons on Leadership and the Art of Encouragement.
"There is a clear link between mentoring and the unleashing of leadership power. New managers frequently experience self-doubts when needing to control their work team's outcomes. Yet early in a career nothing is more natural than wanting control over results. Mentors can help proteges notice their cultural programming: Have they learned to be excessively docile? Are they able to say no or do they get pushed around? Or are they bullies? The young, unaware that creativity needs autonomy in the sphere of expertise, may thwart their finest impulses. The desire to retain creative control over work is often a sign that one is tending toward self-actualization. Shaping outcomes, carving out privacy, or protecting independence are elementary aims of inventive sorts." (p. 122)
(2000). Work Rage: Identify the Problems, Implement the Solutions.
"Ocassionally, I encounter and organization that really does practice what it preaches, or 'walks the talk'. But I can say with great certainty that the companies that really do a lot of talking and walking are few and far between. There is a lot of talking but very little walking out there in the big wide world of management.
The potential for rage in these controlling organizations is going to be higher, and for several reasons. When you have a mentoring, coaching, and collaborative management style, employees tend more toward higher productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness, and there is a happier workplace atmosphere. Conversely, when there is a domineering, controlling, or even bullying environment, the employees feel threatened, are less productive, feel highly stressed and are unhappy." (p. 53)
The potential for rage in these controlling organizations is going to be higher, and for several reasons. When you have a mentoring, coaching, and collaborative management style, employees tend more toward higher productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness, and there is a happier workplace atmosphere. Conversely, when there is a domineering, controlling, or even bullying environment, the employees feel threatened, are less productive, feel highly stressed and are unhappy." (p. 53)
(1998). Is It Too Late to Run Away and Join the Circus?: Finding the Life You Really Want.
"'I get myself up in the morning. I shave my face. I dress in my clothes. I go to my office. I do my work. I come back to my house. But I feel like I'm only doing an imitation of myself, and it's not a terrific impersonation.'"
(1990). Working With Difficult People.
Phenomenal advances in technology have led to a demand for speedier production. Couple that with hiring and firing in the labor market, and stress may become overwhelming. Even patient people can appear apoplectic."
(2001). Nothing personal, just business: a guided journey into organizational darkness.
"Witnessing, bearing witness, and writing for others to see and hear—these are the beginning of hope for genuine change. If I cannot alter what I see, I can at least attest to the fact that it happened and is still happening." (p. xvi)
(2002). Defying the Crowd: cultivating creativity in a culture of conformity.
"Creative people are those who consciously and purposefully decide to follow their own path. They do it because they want to, not because someone makes them." (p. 237)
(1989). Management.
"Rosabeth Kanter has argued that power can easily become institutionalized. Those whom others believe to possess power seem to find it easier to influence other people around them—and thus to garner even more genuine power. By the same token, 'powerlessness' is a difficult condition to overcome." (p. 306)
(2007). The paranoia switch.
One instructive example is the Office of Financial Management at the University of Washington, which reports that those who are willing to admit mistakes belong to a category of leaders who have a genuine 'work process focus,' a quality that involves recognizing and supporting the team, and an interest in how the job gets done. In contrast, those who lead by using our fears focus solely on achieving and maintaining personal influence—regardless of how this is accomplished—and characteristically such leaders are unwilling to acknowledge their mistakes." (p. 182)
(1979). Power plays: How to deal like a lawyer in person-to-person confrontations and get your rights.
"Remember, an employer who won't give you your rights when you ask for them must be convinced that it is in his interest to give you your rights." (p. 105)
(2005). Innovation at the Speed of Laughter: 8 Secrets to World Class Idea Generation.
"Unfortunately some individuals who are full of wonderful and innovative ideas may be viewed as sullen, non-participating appendages, disconnected or, worse yet, lazy. Perhaps the real truth is that they are being asked to create ideas (already an emotional risk) in a way that is not suited for their style or comfort with focus. A drastic example of this sort of misclassification is Albert Einstein, who was labelled by many as lazy and arrogant by traditional academic standards of the time because he preferred a process of discovery and innovation that was isolated and introspective."
(1999). The Overload Syndrome: Learning to Live Within Your Limits.
"The recent book Finding Time: How Corporations, Individuals, and Families Can Benefit from New Work Practices describes work stress among software engineers, thus highlighting issues important throughout many occupations. 'Knowledge workers, like senior executives, experience immense pressure to . . . put work above all else,' observes University of Michigan business professor Leslie A. Perlow, who studied a Fortune 500 company to write the book. 'Engineers believe that they must be perceived as always willing to "accommodate the demands of the work." . . .They should be willing to do whatever is asked, not just in terms of producing output but also in terms of working whatever hours are deemed necessary to get the job done.' As long as nobody's getting hurt, what's the big deal? The big deal is—somebody's getting hurt." (p. 179)
(2002). Creativity.
Express Exec.
"Many of the most important tasks related to shaping and fostering ideas are not a 'mandated' part of a manager's role. The experimentation and play that is so important to creativity will not occur unless managers match what they say with what they and the organization do to reward and recognize risk taking, whether or not it is successful." (p. 85)
(2000). Digital Capital : Harnessing the Power of Business Webs.
"Corruption thrives in a culture of secrecy." (p. 182)
(1989). Anger: the misunderstood emotion.
"The anger that fuels revolt does not arise, therefore, from objective conditions of deprivation or misery. As long as people regard those conditions as natural and inevitable, as God's Law or man`s way, they do not feel angry about them. So sociologists speak instead of 'relative deprivation,' the subjective comparisons that people make when they compare their actual lives to what might be possible. Alexis de Toequeville observed that 'evils which are patiently endured when they seem inevitable become intolerable when once the idea of escape from them is suggested,' and the freed slave Frederick Douglass put the same idea more passionately. 'Beat and cuff your slave,' he wrote, 'keep him hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the chain of his master like a dog, but feed and clothe him well, work him moderately, surround him with physical comfort, and dreams of freedom intrude.'" (p. 261)
(2004). The organization of information.
(1967). The Principles of Scientific Management.
"The knowledge obtained from accurate time study, for example, is a powerful implement, and can be used, in one case to promote harmony between workmen and the management, by gradually educating, training, and leading the workmen into new and better methods of doing work, or, in the other case, it may be used more or less as a club to drive the workmen into doing a larger day's work for approximately the same pay that they had received in the past." (p. 134)
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