Here is a tricky question: How many living management gurus can you name who did not learn their trade in North America? I have asked many colleagues this question, and it's pretty hard to come up with a good list. For example, consider the individuals in last year's "Thinkers 50" ranking list. By...
How can we be inspired by nature (on its way to manage living things, ecossystems, etc.) to solve management challenges?Nature is million years old of a harsh competitive environment.
In order to sustain long term growth, organizations need to constantly reinvent themselves. But reinventing requires constant change, which may be hard to implement.
When you ask children what they want to be when they are older, how many of them say they want to be a manager? I've certainly never met one who had such aspirations. In part this is because management is a pretty amorphous concept to a ten-year-old. But it's also because we adults aren't exactly...
Trust is an essential human attribute and virtue. When we are born, we are completely helpless and at the mercy of others. We instinctively trust that someone will look after us, nurture us, protect us. Being trusting and being trustworthy are central tenets of what it means to be a human being...
Editor's Note: Ross Smith has worked in every corner of the software industry for over 20 years and is currently a Director of Test at Microsoft. You can read his M-Prize-winning STORY Organizational Trust: 42projects . In 1855, Robert Browning published a poem about the Italian Renaissance painter...
The infrastructure for access to information still lags significantly behind the infrastructure within which information enters and leaves a company's network. The answer is metrics.
Some companies have the knack of turning in stellar performance decade after decade. To be sure, they may lose their way for a year or two, but somehow they overcome the setback and resume their relentless progress. General Electric is one such company. So is Shell. Understanding what sets these...
Editor's note: This is the second in a series of three posts (previously published in The Wall Street Journal ) introducing the Moonshots for Management that now make up the framework for the MIX. We're republishing them here to give an introduction for those readers of the MIX who may not be...
Robert Pirsig’s philosophy, woven into “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and its sequel “Lila”, could have profound effects on business and society, if understood and implemented correctly.
