By Pascal Dennis
Who says there's no poetry in business?
President Akio Toyoda recently greeted 1,179 new Toyota hires, urging them to find
“the strength seen in cherry blossoms that persevere in winter..."
(Hard to imagine Bill Ford welcoming new UAW hires in this way!)
Nonetheless, a recent HBR piece suggests business and poetry are complementary.
Both entail wresting with & simplifying complex realities. Both require comfort with ambiguity.
Poetry also helps develop empathy, which is in greater demand than ever.
According the NY Times, Harman Industries founder Sidney Harman once told his staff, "Get me poets as managers. Poets are our original systems thinkers. They look at our most complex environments and reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand."
You'll get no argument from your faithful business nomad.
Best,
Pascal
Showing posts with label NY Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NY Times. Show all posts
Monday, June 10, 2013
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Economies I & II
By Pascal Dennis
Great piece in the NY Times recently by John Brooks.
Brooks comes up with a helpful formulation: Economy I & II
The former comprises private sector companies like Apple, Amazon, Toyota and GE.
These companies face withering competition every day.
As a result, they're wonderful at creating value, but not so good at creating jobs.
Economy II, by contrast, comprises government and quasi-government organizations like schools, universities and hospitals.
These organizations face comparatively little competition (or in the case of government agencies, none at all.)
As a result, they're wasteful and inefficient -- but good at creating 'jobs', of a sort.
Lean thinkers will argue that a job by definition is an activity that creates value for a customer.
Seen in this light, is a job in a suffocating bureaucracy that serves no one, truly a job?
I don't want to be misunderstood. Economy II is full of smart dedicated people who work hard and want to do the right thing.
They deserve what Deming called the 'pride of workman ship'.
They deserve to be involved in managing and designing their work. Given the opportunity, I've found they're very good at it.
The bigger problem is that Economy I organizations are no longer able to pay for Economy II.
As a result Economy II is bankrupting the state. Seen in this light, Greece is the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
Wither thou goest, go I.
Most western economies will hit the same wall before long.
What to do?
More next time.
Best,
Pascal
Great piece in the NY Times recently by John Brooks.
Brooks comes up with a helpful formulation: Economy I & II
The former comprises private sector companies like Apple, Amazon, Toyota and GE.
These companies face withering competition every day.
As a result, they're wonderful at creating value, but not so good at creating jobs.
Economy II, by contrast, comprises government and quasi-government organizations like schools, universities and hospitals.
These organizations face comparatively little competition (or in the case of government agencies, none at all.)
As a result, they're wasteful and inefficient -- but good at creating 'jobs', of a sort.
Lean thinkers will argue that a job by definition is an activity that creates value for a customer.
Seen in this light, is a job in a suffocating bureaucracy that serves no one, truly a job?
I don't want to be misunderstood. Economy II is full of smart dedicated people who work hard and want to do the right thing.
They deserve what Deming called the 'pride of workman ship'.
They deserve to be involved in managing and designing their work. Given the opportunity, I've found they're very good at it.
The bigger problem is that Economy I organizations are no longer able to pay for Economy II.
As a result Economy II is bankrupting the state. Seen in this light, Greece is the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
Wither thou goest, go I.
Most western economies will hit the same wall before long.
What to do?
More next time.
Best,
Pascal
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