Leadership, teamwork, democratic workplace
The donkeys were tired of being burdened with burdens and labouring all the days of their lives, so they sent ambassadors to Zeus, asking him to release them from their toil. Zeus, wanting to show them that they had asked for something impossible, said that their suffering would come to an end on the day…
AN Inquisitive Man was one day met by a friend who cordially hailed him: “Good morning, my good fellow! And where do you come from?” “From the Museum of Natural History, where I have just spent three hours. I saw everything there was to see and examined it carefully. It was all so astonishing that…
As the reader may know, I have moved my 15-year-old blog from the Nucleus platform (no longer supported) to the WordPress platform which, I am told hosts 40% of the world’s blogs. My progress has been akin to traversing a squelching bog at midnight. . It’s been trial and error (or sink or swim) as…
The resolution of Tom T. Hall’s mournful song about a hospitalized pig farmer set me to thinking about work, the dignity of work, and perspectives on work*. The song ends: “Well, the doctors say they do not know what saved the man from death But in a few days he put on his overalls and he…
Some years ago, I gave a talk to a large group of department heads about Leading from the Middle. It went fairly well, but one participant, seated as far from me as possible, never let up scowling. Was it me, something I said, or something she ate? I suspect it was my topic. Some managers are…
Recently reading an old-timey Ellery Queen mystery, I stumbled across yet another nimble fat man allusion: “As the District Attorney closed the door the occupant of the room wheeled about with astonishing agility for a man of his weight.” This cliché appears in The Roman Hat Mystery (1929). The “astonishing agility” reminded me of a…
It’s an eternal question , why some teams do well and others fail. Is it luck or circumstance, personality, leadership, or urgency, nature or nurture? All of these, none of these? Some of my work teams would take off and soar far above others. I try to explain this phenomenon in my classes by exploring…
“A small elephant is not a rabbit.”
(This is an experiment using Word to put up a post on my new platform. The text below is one of Krylov’s fables; there are many more at my former blog, along with information on who he was here So far, WordPress is a maddening experience. Like the IRS, “simple” is a word they do…