Archive for September, 2009
ManagementSpeak, 9/28/2009
Monday, September 28th, 2009ManagementSpeak: I’m not worried about that. We’re all pros and we can figure this out.
Translation: I don’t have the slightest idea how to solve it. That’s your problem.
David Reed joins the KJR Club as a result of his ability to figure out what management euphemisms really mean.
The paths you didn’t take
Monday, September 28th, 2009Speaking of metrics, and their limitations, here’s a biggie: You can’t measure the results of any path you didn’t take.
The ramifications are enormous whether it’s public policy, business strategy, or your own day-to-day management decisions. While we don’t know, will never know, and in fact can’t know the outcome of the alternatives we didn’t pursue, [...]
ManagementSpeak, 9/21/2009
Monday, September 21st, 2009ManagementSpeak: We want world-class best practices, people, and processes here.
Translation: We want world-class brown-nosers here.
This week’s anonymous contributor is a world-class translator.
May the best panacea win
Monday, September 21st, 2009If it isn’t a miracle, it’s close.
A full-page ad from General Motors displayed an appealing-looking (except for Chevy’s hokey bow-tie logo) Malibu. The ad’s tag-line: “May the best car win.”
Other than its Cadillac brand, General Motors hasn’t sold the desirability of its cars in decades. It’s finally pursuing a seldom-stated business panacea: Sell products people [...]
Great Quotations, 9/14/2009
Monday, September 14th, 2009“Evolution is cleverer than you are.”
- Leslie Orgel, Biologist
Cwazy wabbits
Monday, September 14th, 2009This year’s must-read business book … and by must-read I mean you must read it because every other manager is reading it … is Steven Spear’s Chasing the Rabbit (2008).
Fortunately, it would be worth your time to read, even if it wasn’t a must-read book. Like Jim Collins’s Good to Great (2001) and Joyce, Nohria [...]
Great Quotations, 9/7/2009
Monday, September 7th, 2009“Government is a dog-eat-dog world, and business is just the opposite.”
- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
An ounce of metrics can’t be weighed
Monday, September 7th, 2009Cast your mind back to November of 2008.
Unlike many political commentators I suspect your memory of the time is vivid, filled as it was with layoffs, plummeting investments, layoffs, negative profits, layoffs, the failure of huge financial institutions and layoffs.
One might almost think something important went on back then.
Bob Lewis is president of 