Reflections on Management

In this episode, I dive further into the ideas of "responsibilities" of leader. I argue here that a leader's responsibilities are more than accomplishing missions and caring for members -- it is that the organization itself acts responsibly. For a professional organization, this meaning is clear -- that members naturally act professionally even in the case of extreme duress (e.g., war in the military, rioting or extreme strife in law enforcement, extremes in pandemic response for medicine). Individual professionals may act properly under such conditions, but instilling this in the culture of a whole organization takes leadership -- especially the right skills and attributes of the top leader in the organization.

Tells a vignette about how a wonderfully crafted, innovative display wound up earning a last place trophy for not following the rubric. Rules may be rules, but can they sometimes get in the way of the purpose for the event?

This is a follow-on to an episode on Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Y, reflecting two different set of assumptions that managers operate with when running an organization. I recount the theories here and the assertion that Theory Y -- where managers assume workers are trustworthy and wish to be active participants in organizational success -- is preferred. But why then do managers tend to default to Theory X assumptions -- is it learned behaviors or is it innate, part of so-called "human nature"? What do we do about it?

Sometimes change efforts success despite poor communication, or great communication doesn't lead to successful change. Why is that? I argue that the communications campaign operates one "phase" ahead of the change effort, so the levels of success in both are independent and not correlated to one another.

I argue that we need new co-ed sports designed to emphasize capabilities that men and women share equally while also being fun to watch. I discuss the origins and social factors that brought about a number of existing team sports, many designed by men for masculine purposes. I believe these sports contribute to notions that women's sports are inferior to men's, which carries over to gender stratification in the workplace.

A recent Talking About Organizations episode addressed contemporary challenges facing professions due to expanses of technology, growing distrust toward professional workers in some areas, and media coverage; all of which are challenging the autonomy and status of professionals and their work. Anti-professionalism is essentially the breakdown of the profession due to internal and external pressures. I argue in this episode that the way to strengthen professionalism is to re-kindle the sense of honor in serving in a profession -- how to do that is difficult, because one has to agree on what is meant by "honor."

The process of migrating one's teaching from resident to remote has been a popular topic due to the pandemic. But what about the content? If you are using stuff off the shelf, not such a big deal. But if you are the creator of a course designed for a specific professional purpose, then it becomes a massive undertaking. I had to do this for multiple courses this year, crossing both resident-distance and synchronous-asynchronous boundaries. I learned some tough lessons which I will share with you in this episode.

As this program enters its 5th season, I wanted to announce some upcoming changes to the program and the website to improve your experience

Sometimes, leaders decide to bring in external consultants with whom they have worked with before or they have prior professional relationships with. Sometimes that works out great for the organization -- the consultant knows what the 'boss' wants and is uniquely positioned to deliver, helping the leader foster change. But in the two cases I discuss in this episode, the opposite happened. Each consultant leveraged their relationship with the leader in the wrong way. What happened and what did I learn from it?

A common thread I have found in popular change management literature is how to initiate change. Find the problem. Build the sense of urgency. Get things started! This is because change really is hard to start. But the fact is, many of us will not necessarily be starting change efforts ourselves. We may first walk into a new job and be handed responsibilities over change already occurring in the organization, sometimes as a working group member, sometimes as a project lead. We can’t always count on having a good continuity book or record of the change effort thus far. So how should you proceed? How does one ‘inherit’ a change effort?