Biblio
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(2002). Seeds of Innovation : Cultivating the Synergy That Fosters New Ideas.
"Without curiosity, a person has great difficulty discovering new ideas. Being curious involves (a) having an open mind, (b) gaining a broader perspective. and (c) asking probing questions." (p. 29)
(1959). Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson.
I never hear the word "escape"
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation
A flying attitude!
I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars
Only to fail again!
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation
A flying attitude!
I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars
Only to fail again!
(1990). Self Directed Work Teams: The New American Challenge.
"The most potentially damaging kind of performance feedback at this stage is one-on-one feedback from manager to team member. Because that relationship carries so much emotional baggage...it's important to find alternatives to manager-to-employee feedback wherever possible." (p. 135)
(1994). Self-Esteem : A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing and Improving.
"Within a given profession or social level, our culture next awards worth based on accomplishments. Getting a raise, a degree, a promotion, or winning in a competition are worth a lot. Acquiring the right house, car, furnishings, boat, or college education for your kids—all those accomplishments are worth a lot, too. If you get fired or laid off, lose your home, or in any other way slip down the accomplishment ladder, you are in deep trouble. You lose all your counters and become socially worthless.
Buying into these cultural concepts of worth can be deadly. For example, John was a bank examiner who equated his worth with his accomplishments at work. When he was late in meeting an important deadline, he felt worthless. When he felt worthless, he got depressed. When he got depressed, he worked slower and missed more deadlines. He felt more worthless, got more depressed, worked less diligently, and so on in a deadly downward spiral." (p. 88)
Buying into these cultural concepts of worth can be deadly. For example, John was a bank examiner who equated his worth with his accomplishments at work. When he was late in meeting an important deadline, he felt worthless. When he felt worthless, he got depressed. When he got depressed, he worked slower and missed more deadlines. He felt more worthless, got more depressed, worked less diligently, and so on in a deadly downward spiral." (p. 88)
(1992). Selling the Dream: How to promote your product, company, or ideas, and make a difference using everyday evangelism.
"At great companies, management leaves the engineers alone. At good companies, management interferes but engineers ignore them. At lousy companies, management thinks it is the engineers. 'Engineers' is too specific a term here; I mean anyone who creates products, services, and projects." (p. 148)
(1999). Set For Life.
(1997). The Seven Fatal Management Sins: Understanding and Avoiding Managerial Malpractice.
"Every employee should be part of the corporate family. While that may be the case in some organizations, in other organizations employees are numbers—objects to be utilized and manipulated. Motorola stresses that the organization is a 'family' with human and democratic values, where no one can be fired without approval from the top." (p. 165)
(2008). Shake Hands with the Devil.
You get dirty, and the pig likes it.
'There's a very animalistic response to a bully. It's either fight: "Hey, you talkin' to me?" or flight: "I'm outta here—my life's too short for this crap." The problem with the flight strategy, is that you've just taught the boss that you're the doormat he always thought you were.
'There's a very animalistic response to a bully. It's either fight: "Hey, you talkin' to me?" or flight: "I'm outta here—my life's too short for this crap." The problem with the flight strategy, is that you've just taught the boss that you're the doormat he always thought you were.
But the fight strategy is no better. For one thing, it's hard to outtalk a bully. He doesn't like you. He's never liked you. He's been gunning for you, he's had lots of practice being a bully, and he enjoys it. And besides, if you get down on his level, it's like wrestling with a pig: you get dirty, and the pig likes it!' (p. 45)
(1990). Shame & Guilt: Masters of Disguise.
"Children who grow up in shaming environments quickly learn that one must blame or be blamed. There are very few compromises in shaming environments. It often feels like we are playing 'emotional hot potato' in our adult relationships...Passing the blame to someone else is our attempt to protect an already injured self from more wounds." (p. 82)
(1985). Shame: The Power of Caring.
"Defenses against shame are adaptive. They have been the client's only ways of surviving intolerable shame. Strategies of defense aim at protecting the self against further exposure and further experiences of shame. Several of the most prominent strategies are rage, contempt for others, the striving for perfection, the striving for power, and internal withdrawal. Both perfectionism and excessive power-seeking are strivings against shame and attempt to compensate for the sense of defectiveness which underlies internalized shame. None of these are unitary strategies; rather, they become expressed in unique and varied ways, with several often functioning together." (p. 128)
(1990). Shared Minds: The New Technologies of Collaboration.
"As William James wrote in Great Men and Their Environment, 'The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual; the impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.'" (p. xxiii)
(1993). Sharkproof: Get the Job You Want, Keep the Job You Love...in Today's Frenzied Job Market.
"So you got fired.
You can take the hurt and anger you feel and use it constructively. To prove they made a mistake when they let you go. Think. And do. Prove those critics wrong, wrong, wrong. Keep the vision of their pinched little faces handy, where you can get at them when you need them. Make them eat their words. Show them your stuff. Get mad. Get going. Get even.
Payback time is coming." (p. 248)
You can take the hurt and anger you feel and use it constructively. To prove they made a mistake when they let you go. Think. And do. Prove those critics wrong, wrong, wrong. Keep the vision of their pinched little faces handy, where you can get at them when you need them. Make them eat their words. Show them your stuff. Get mad. Get going. Get even.
Payback time is coming." (p. 248)
(2008). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
"'The use of cancer in political discourse encourages fatalism
and justifies "severe" measures—as well as strongly reinforcing
the widespread notion that the disease is necessarily fatal.
The concept of disease is never innocent. But it could be argued
that the cancer metaphors are in themselves implicitly genocidal.'
—Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 1977" (p. 177)
and justifies "severe" measures—as well as strongly reinforcing
the widespread notion that the disease is necessarily fatal.
The concept of disease is never innocent. But it could be argued
that the cancer metaphors are in themselves implicitly genocidal.'
—Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 1977" (p. 177)
(2003). Sick Caesars - Madness and Malady in Imperial Rome.
"Sick Ceasars is an account, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, of men transformed, and more often deranged, by absolute power." —from the cover jacket
(1995). Silent Sabotage: Rescuing Our Careers, Our Companies, and Our Lives from the Creeping Paralysis of Anger and Bitterness.
"At the organizational level, we must begin removing the hierarchical walls that we've built around us....We must move away from the concept that the boss is omnipotent and all powerful [sic] and move toward a more fluid organizational structure that favors a shared approach toward conducting business." (p. 57)
(1999). Since Strangling Isn't an Option... : Dealing with Difficult People–Common Problems and Uncommon Solutions.
"It isn't always easy to have compassion for people who are in positions of power over us. We tend to think of them as having achieved something, or as having been given something we have not. Instead of thinking of your boss as a boss, think of her as a person. It's easier, and more productive, for two human beings to talk than it is for a boss and a subordinate to deliberate." (p. 39)
(1997). Slaves of the Machine: The Quickening of Computer Technology (Bradford Book).
"Most of today's programmers are like lawyers who are concerned only with the law, not justice. Their letter-of-the-law, obey-or-you-will-be-punished tradition has the same problems in computing as it does in law." (P. 80)
(1997). Slowing down to the speed of life : how to create a more peaceful, simpler life from the inside out.
"See forgiveness as a process, and know that it will get easier and easier each time the memory comes to mind. If you see the value of forgiveness and are willing to forgive, each time the memory comes to mind while you are in a state of healthy psychological functioning, the experience will be a little less painful." (p. 135)
(1992). Small Decencies : Reflections and Meditations on Being Human at Work.
"Our accomplishments are not too simple, mundane, and ordinary to merit a moment of glory. We deserve to have our fellow workers sing our song. We owe them a poem in their honor." (p. 160)
(1968). The SNOBOL4 programming language.
(1993). Snow Crash.
Stephenson's dark social satire illustrates what an anti-ROWE future might look like:
"You could try to favor a particular station, try to sit there every day, but it would be noticed. Generally you pick the unoccupied workstation that's closest to the door. That way, whoever comes in earliest sits closest, whoever came in latest is way in the back, for the rest of the day it's obvious at a glance who's on the ball in this office and who is—as they whisper to each other in the bathrooms—having problems.
Not that it's any big secret, who comes in first. When you sign on to a workstation in the morning, it's not like the central computer doesn't notice that fact. The central computer notices just about everything....You're only required to be at your workstation from eight to five, with a half-hour lunch break and two ten-minute coffee breaks, but if you stuck to that schedule it would definitely be noticed..." (p. 282)
"You could try to favor a particular station, try to sit there every day, but it would be noticed. Generally you pick the unoccupied workstation that's closest to the door. That way, whoever comes in earliest sits closest, whoever came in latest is way in the back, for the rest of the day it's obvious at a glance who's on the ball in this office and who is—as they whisper to each other in the bathrooms—having problems.
Not that it's any big secret, who comes in first. When you sign on to a workstation in the morning, it's not like the central computer doesn't notice that fact. The central computer notices just about everything....You're only required to be at your workstation from eight to five, with a half-hour lunch break and two ten-minute coffee breaks, but if you stuck to that schedule it would definitely be noticed..." (p. 282)
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