Managing in a knowledge age
Via Knowledge Jolt, this list of 18 commandments of knowledge-conscious managers is spot-on. One funny bit though…the first sentence of the second paragraph reads:
The HR department of my company asked me to write a short memo
…which seems to conflict a bit with commandment number 6, which reads:
6. Don’t refer to internal organizations. Talk about specific people.
Referring to other organizations of the company as "them" is laying the
ground for future excuses about the lack of results. Organizations
cannot be trusted, because they are impersonal, complex, and change
every 24 months anyway. People and communities however are far more
resilient and trustworthy.
‘Course we can give Martin a break for not wanting to specifically name somebody at work, but he could’ve at least said the "HR Director" or the "Intern over in HR." Inconsistencies aside, this really is a great list. Some of my favorites:
3. Release the need to be right
It’s OK to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. If you punish failure, you destroy entrepreneurship, stiffle innovation
and in the end you harm the company. If you "forgive and forget"
because you want to be nice, that same mistake will be repeated twice
or a hundred times. You must accept failure as normal, but demand that
lessons be learned and communicated for the entire organization.9. Involve people collectively in your thinking
Using managerial authority to deploy programs and plans from the
top-down generates compliance at best, but never commitment. If you
want people to adopt your views and act accordingly, you must engage
into meaningful conversations with them, and not "cascade down" or
"communicate messages". Think about your teenage children if you have
any.
11. It’s not about giving objectives. It’s about making sure they understand your intent
If they really understand your goals and if it makes sense to them,
they will figure out what to do by themselves. Don’t delude yourself
however: It is by far more difficult to articulate a clear intent than
to give objectives.16. Don’t expect dedication from someone who fears for his job
All efforts are stalled by the fear of job loss. If you need to fire
people, do it at lightning speed, and make sure it appears to all as an
exceptional event. Don’t suscribe to the deadly spiral of cost cutting.17. Never manipulate your staff
Employees are hypersensitive to inconsistencies and incoherences across
organizations. They immediately detect every single sign of
manipulation when they hear conflicting messages. Establish trusted
relations with your peers first. Trust is the bandwidth of communication
I’d love to see this cleaned up and condensed into 10-15 points and formatted into a ChangeThis manifesto. I’d send it around to more than a few folks…
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4 opinions for Managing in a knowledge age
Josh Kaufman: Inside My Bald Head
Mar 18, 2005 at 1:33 pm
Mopsos - 18 Commandments of Knowledge-Conscious Managers
Mopsos blogs about the “18 commandments of Knowledge-conscious managers”: 1. Don’t always challenge. Welcome one another’s thoughts and opinions. 2. Experiment constantly. Enlightened trial and error outperforms the planning of flawless intellects. 3. …
Martin
Mar 22, 2005 at 12:10 am
I agree 100% with your comment about my inconsistencies. As a matter of fact, I thought about giving the title of the HR person who asked this from me, but as I couldn’t access the corporate directory at that time and didn’t know her exact title, I sort of chickened out ;-)
Love your idea about reducing it to 10 points. Cout me in.
CareerNiche
Mar 28, 2005 at 8:29 am
Managing in a KM-aware environment
Sorry for the lack of posts last week. I actually had a rather fascinating five days. I quit the job that was causing much undo stress. Two days later, I found a part-time instructor position. I am quite thrilled to
Kelly Graves
Mar 20, 2006 at 10:22 am
It is great to see an HR Dept take some initiative in getting solid and useful management tips out to their staff. In my line of work - primarily workplace conflict resolution - I see so many organizations out there that just assume that managers know how to manage. While in all reality very few do. This is generally by no fault of their own but rather a simple lack of knowledge and/or training.
What you write in this memo is SO useful to managers! Well done. It covers a lot of the topics I address when consulting with organizations. Simple guidelines to live by that make all the difference.
Keep up the good work!