R3ciprocity.com - Prof David Maslach: Innovation; Research Life; Striving Towards Happiness

Much of modern management, and the outcome-based focus of management is an economic logic of management by fear. If you’ve done things, right, then you’ll get the right outcomes. If you’ve done things wrong, then we need to select a different person for the job.

An alternative logic, is a logic of love and understanding. It’s a logic of being curious about why somebody might’ve made an error. It’s a logic of asking multiple whys for the deeper reason. It’s a logic of saying you’re OK, and I have your back, let’s work on this together.

What logic do you prefer?

“#Strategy #Professor” is an ironic oxymoron.

I am a Strategy Professor. This implies that I must “profess” some understanding about the world.

Strategy implies that we know how to live a better life because we understand the key strategies of success. Surely, what we know applies to the organization of families?

I’m sitting here laughing and smirking as I write this.

Last night, I ate ice cream, watched TV with my kids, and was irritated by someone in my family.

I am wearing sloppy old ripped jeans, and often cut my own hair.

I shake uncontrollably and turn red if I have to give an important public speech.

Does this sound like someone who has their “shit together?”

Of all of the things that I’ve learned in my life, I could tell you that kindergarten teachers were more influential in my life then my strategy professors. (Sorry to my colleagues and mentors).

My elementary school teachers taught me more about how to live a good life and become successful than any strategy paper I’ve read.

I don’t know, nor should I know, what the “strategies of success”are.

I don’t know anything more than beyond my own experiences, and I don’t think that that is legitimate to profess.

It’s easy, actually.

I can tell you I am f-ed human that could not read in front of a class even in high school. I was dead last in every sport in elementary school. (Read this message closely and you will find mistakes.)

Everything I know that can equate to having a successful life, business, or relationship is taught by six grade, and I really can’t add to that.

Help others.

Love yourself.

Some people are jerks. Don’t try to fix them.

Save a bit.

Work as much as possible.

Don’t give up.

It’s okay to be f-ed up.

My parents taught me more about “success” than anything. The notion of success is BS, and you can have more fun watching the deer in the potato garden than “pretending success.”

Call me “Screwed-Up Sits In The Corner Guy.”

That makes more sense.

There’s a lot of people that have given up. They don’t feel like they should try.

But, the amount of potential that you have even when you get older is spectacular. You’ll never know how much potential you have until you actually get up and try.

almost all data is very messy, and requires a great deal of effort to work with it. We need to be more open and honest, with the messiness of the real world.

Much of my experience is my life, feeling like an outsider in academia, and feeling like I never quite fit in.

Because of this, I always want other people to be impressed with me. So when they don’t like my experiences, I have to feel the need to correct them.

This is something that I struggle with.

Work together as a team in a family. Knowing that everybody works as a team, but you have boundaries is an important part of a healthy relationship.

It’s about thinking how you can tackle the world together, rather than thinking about who is winning and losing in the relationship, that matters.

much of being a professor is admitting that you’re good enough as you are.

I contemplate whether academic tenure track jobs are dying, and what this means for anybody that is thinking about going into the career.

I suggest rather that they’re changing and some of these changing norms in society are quite positive for the career.

When you believe that other people are talking behind your back, you have to take a step back and realize that everybody is self interested in there likely not even thinking about you at any given time. That’s where you have to accept yourself and work on yourself more than you have to worry about other people.

is there a singular best answer to business success, and question and think about our world in the sense of a puristic world that is constantly changing. I question whether business success and the concept of business success actually makes sense in this world.