I agree. A keeper post.

I guess that both you are me are the only freaking weirdos to see the wisdom thrown around here.

Now back to watching MSNBC where they tell me how hateful white people are.

Yup, I’m no great expert in business management, but I’ve seen enough in business to see the problems of “energy” and “alignment” as in the book Alignment at the link given.

I followed the link, read some of the materials on the Amazon pages, and saw the endorsement by and comments of Fred Smith, founder, COB, FedEx. From the comments, Fred has learned some of what he needed to know, found some solutions, to some management problems he had when I was at FedEx and saved his company twice.

So, I tried to buy a “digital” copy, likely PDF, but didn’t see how to do that. For a paper copy, I already have too many books in paper.

In my experience in organizations, both academic and business, once for a short time, on a small scale, under some special circumstances I was “energy sources” and good “alignment”. Otherwise all I saw was “energy sinks” and just awful “alignment”.

E.g., at IBM, what I saw was L. Gerstner’s “IBM is the most arrogant, inwardly directed, process oriented company I have ever seen”, IIRC. So, there was fighting down the hall and with other divisions and ignoring the customers and the competition.

There were cliques in vicious civil wars, lots of destructive gossip, etc.

Really, there is an academic description for most of this “energy sink” and bad “alignment” called “goal subordination” in the fields of organizational behavior and public administration. It’s standard stuff, ubiquitous and very old.

The fundamental problem is that, really, a lot of employees, especially middle management, see more potential for themselves pursuing their own goals, likely in conflict with the goals of the organization, instead of the goals of the organization — “goal subordination”.

The main reason people get by with this garbage is the usual one of politics — too much stuff hidden from clear view making a lot of gossip, lying, propaganda, manipulation, clique formation, etc. possible.

Yes, being clear about tactics, objectives, and evaluations can stop a lot of such stuff.

But there’s another issues, at least touched on in Alignment: What the heck to do about keeping up with change, at least that, and, really, leading in valuable change?

Actually there’s no way to get very far with leading change without getting close to, participating in, exploiting, and applying original research.

For research, the tactics, objectives, and evaluations are more complicated but, curiously, in practice easier for research. E.g., Bell Labs knew just what the heck they really wanted — a transistor to replace vacuum tubes. Then they wanted small solid state lasers. Then, optical fibers — lit by the lasers — to replace copper. They got all three, brilliantly. Much of the key was that Bell Labs research management was good enough for those accomplishments.

There are other good examples of research management and productivity.

But, there are also plenty of cases of office politics, goal subordination, energy sinks, and poor alignment in some research and academic organizations. I’ve seen some really bad cases.

IMHO, in the end, management, from the top down to fairly close to the bottom of the organization chart, needs to understand the threats and symptoms, stay well informed on the cliques, gossips, internal fighting, etc., and, when sick cases are observed, give a warning and have the pruning shears ready and be willing to use them — “SNIP”.

E.g., commonly there is a lot of loose talk about “low performers” and “high performers”. My experience says that low and mediocre performers are the smart ones because they see too clearly that a “high performer” is regarded by all their management chain up to and including the CEO and COB as a big threat, a protruding nail to be beaten down.

So, an organization that wants high performance needs to encourage, provide safety for, and reward “high performers”. If a CEO does that, then the full management chain down to some non-management worker bee high performer will be drinking like a fish, Pepto-Bismol, stomach anti-acid, beer, wine, whiskey, vodka, etc., trembling in their sleep, boots, etc. So, be it: Clear out that deadwood, groom some high performers for more authority, etc.

Uh, that a brilliant person is also likely to be an “energy sink” and a problem of “alignment” is just a common gossip, slander mediocre performers use to defend themselves from a high performer!

Or, necessarily the best performer will be unique, just some one person, and, then, everyone else can naturally gang up against that person. That unique person can be and should be respected but usually they won’t be much liked. In that case, being respected is likely sufficient and much more important than being liked which is likely not necessary.

You need to know.

http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/entrepreneurial-energy-ceo-shoptalk/

BRC
http://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com

#ceo #founder #entrepreneur #startup #entrepreneurialenergy