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December 01, 2009
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Peter A.
is now friends with
Brad Federman
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Dec 01, 2009 01:50am
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March 18, 2009
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Peter A.
gave  to:
The Human Side of Enterprise, Annotated Edition
by
Douglas McGregor
read in January, 2007
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my rating:
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Peter A. said:
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The Human Side of Enterprise by Douglas McGregor - 1960.
A review of an extraordinary book by Peter A Hunter, Author of “Breaking the Mould.”
This is the most difficult book it has ever been my extraordinary pleasure to revi ...more
The Human Side of Enterprise by Douglas McGregor - 1960.
A review of an extraordinary book by Peter A Hunter, Author of “Breaking the Mould.”
This is the most difficult book it has ever been my extraordinary pleasure to review.
For some time now I have, at intervals, come across the influence of this book and have never thought to look for the source or follow up the reference.
When I was given a copy of the book I glanced at the first two pages intending to put it on the shelf next to the growing pile of “management” books I keep there for a rainy day.
Two hours later I was making excuses about why everything else could wait until I had finished it.
I didn’t get the book finished in one sitting but at that first sitting I resolved to do what I could to bring this fifty year old wisdom back to the fore.
To say that Douglas McGregor was way ahead of his time is obvious, but to assume that his time has passed is just as wrong.
“The Human Side of Enterprise” shows us how to make more money by doing less work but, because it sounds too good to be true, we assume that it must be, and therefore disregard it.
In the cynical sixties the book got a mixed reception, those who understood and practiced the McGregor philosophy were in the minority and those who were absolutely sure that the McGregor proposition could never happen were the huge majority.
I was neither but assumed that the cynics were right because I heard no other point of view.
What caught my eye first in the book was that this was the source of the Theory Y Management Strategy. Douglas McGregor characterised the current management practises as Theory X and in this book he proposed the antidote to the destruction that was waged by Theory X managers.
He called it, “Theory Y”
Initially this was going to be a simple review whose purpose was to bring to another generation the astonishing wisdom that McGregor had developed in coining the terms Theory X and Theory Y.
Unfortunately, after revealing the grace and power of this alternate theory of management practice, instead of acknowledging that this was an epoch shattering piece of work and being content, the book continues to become even more powerful with every turn of the page until it is almost impossible to write succinctly about the innovative thinking and wisdom of this book without running out of superlatives. You might want to read that sentence again.
Here is a selection of quotes culled from the pages.
You might be forgiven for thinking that this is a book of quotes, it is not.
It is simply so powerful that the quotes seem to leap off every page.
They are as true today as they were when Douglas McGregor wrote The Human Side of Enterprise nearly fifty years ago.
“The effectiveness of organisations could be at least doubled if managers could discover how to tap into the unrealised potential present in their workforces.”
“The ingenuity of the average worker is sufficient to outwit any system of controls devised by management.”
“When people respond to managerial decisions in undesired ways the normal response is to blame them, rather than managements failure to select the appropriate means of control.”
“A half a century ago industrial management had, in the threat of unemployment, a form of punishment which made the use of authority relatively effective.
The situation today is vastly different.”
“When the use of authority does not work don’t use less or more. Use another means of influence.”
“When objectives are externally imposed indifference or resistance are the most likely consequences.”
“It is one of the favourite pastimes of management to decide, from within their professional ivory tower, what help the field organisation needs and then to design and develop programs for meeting these needs.
Then it becomes necessary to get the field organisation to accept the help provided.
This is normally the role of the Change Manager; to implement the change that no-one asked for or wants”.
The above quotes are all taken from the text of this book, written fifty years ago.
All of them could have been written yesterday and still be true.
This book heaves with the lessons that we should have learned fifty years ago.
Peter A Hunter
Author – Breaking the Mould
www.breakingthemould.co.uk
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May 22, 2008
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Peter A.
gave to:
Freedom from Command and Control: A Better Way to Make the Work Work
by
John Seddon
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my rating:
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Peter A. said:
"
“Freedom from Command and Control”
A Review of the book by
John Seddon
John Seddons Book “Freedom from Command and Control” catches the eye immediately with the promise in the title.
Can there be such a thing as Fre ...more
“Freedom from Command and Control”
A Review of the book by
John Seddon
John Seddons Book “Freedom from Command and Control” catches the eye immediately with the promise in the title.
Can there be such a thing as Freedom from Command and Control?
The workforce have longed to be liberated from the directive, destructive “Command and Control” that has passed for management strategy for such a long time.
In the title of Johns book we see the possibility.
From the word go John tells us that “Command and Control is failing us, there must be a better way to design and manage work. He shows us through his use of real life examples how management, by their disengagement from the shop floor, are frequently incapable of appreciating the nature of the real value added work and are therefore in the very worst position from which to Command or Control.
But they go ahead anyway causing untold damage through their assumption that they are in charge and that the workforce will do what they are told.
He tells us that adding resources to a wasteful system simply compounds those efficiencies, that a better way to progress is to seek out the waste and remove it.
The problem is that for many organisations it is the “waste” who decide on the changes that are required to produce savings.
John sites the example of the National Health Service which successive governments have thrown huge amounts of money at to convince the voters that they are a caring socially responsible government.
John points out that despite this increase in investment it is becoming increasingly apparent that the expected return in improved service is simply not happening.
The “waste” is absorbing the extra investment while the value provided by the Health Service professional is being made increasingly difficult to deliver due to the lack of resources, leading to further reductions in the level of service provided.
To get out of this destructive loop John insists that we must change management thinking, we must stop believing that inspection controls quality.
We have to get away from measuring activity which results in people being active to achieve their measures rather than accomplishing the purpose for which they were employed.
This book reveals why, and what we have to do to initiate this change in behaviour.
This would be enough for most authors to include in a single volume but John goes on to take a considered look at several other management white elephants.
Customer Relations Management,
“Just because CRM software can do something does it mean that thing adds value?”
Seminars on “Culture”, that “generate quagmires of pseudo-intellectual and psuedo-emotional nonsense.”
ISO 9000,
“An economic disease for which the UK should be ashamed.”
Investors in people,
“Instead of investing in people we should be investing in the re-education of management.”
Balanced Scorecard,
“I have yet to see an example of the balanced scorecard that passes the test of a good measure.”
Six Sigma,
“The most important criticism is that there is no requirement for management to change the way that it thinks.”
IT,
“Managers are sold a dream that becomes a nightmare, full of features that suit the Command and Control view of management, but are they benefits?”
Public Service Investment
Massive investment in public services that are not being matched by results.
“Police in one area as a result of investment in the new Command and Control IT technology report that a domestic disturbance (A husband and wife fighting) is now reported as two assaults, each on the other, recorded as detected with no further proceedings. It does wonders for their detection rate, but is it effective policing.”
John Seddon, in this book has presented us with a well argued tour de force.
Management by Command and Control, does not work.
Telling people what to do, does not work,
Setting targets, does not work
It may have been a defence for this kind of behaviour in the past that managers simply did not know any other way to behave.
John Seddon in “Freedom from Command and Control” has shown the way.
After reading this book there can be no excuse for continuing to think of management in terms of strategies for Command and Control, unless the purpose of that management is to destroy the enterprise it is supposed to be managing.
Peter A Hunter
www.BreakingtheMould.co.uk .
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March 23, 2008
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Mar 23, 2008 02:39am
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March 21, 2008
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Mar 21, 2008 06:53am
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Peter A.
wrote Does My Bum Look Big In This?: Does My Bum Look Big In This?.
"If a good manager asks his workforce for their opinion of him he will receive their expressions of a"
...more
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Mar 21, 2008 06:44am
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Peter A.
wrote A New Way to Handle Complaints, Or Is It?: A new way to Handle Complaints, Or Is It..
"What a lot of money we have been wasting on dealing with customer complaints.
Instead of "
...more
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Mar 21, 2008 06:39am
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Peter A.
gave to:
Spiritual Motivation
by
Aida Shuhei, Jeremy Ramsden, Andrew Kakabadse, Peter A Hunter.
read in January, 2007
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my rating:
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Peter A. said:
"
Spiritual Motivation:
New Thinking for Business and Management
This is a profoundly different book that may not reveal itself to everybody at the first reading.
It is an amalgam of some of the best thinking on this planet t ...more
Spiritual Motivation:
New Thinking for Business and Management
This is a profoundly different book that may not reveal itself to everybody at the first reading.
It is an amalgam of some of the best thinking on this planet to address a problem that has been dogging our civilised world for centuries.
Why do Managers fail to manage?
Spiritual Motivation is an expedition into the best of Eastern and Western philosophies then back again to the hard practical values that pursue the real truths behind this question and the real answers.
Since men have managed other men we have encountered the same problem, that men (and women) don't like being told what to do.
In the past this has led to stricter and more brutal regimes to force the individual to accept the control of the organisation.
Traditionally the people who were best at this form of command and control were the ones who won battles and captured cities, but our world has moved on.
The ancient aspiration of domination through subjugation is no longer appropriate in the modern corporate world.
Since reliance on corporal or capital punishment has fallen from favour many different strategies have been developed to try to reproduce the same level of control that was enjoyed by ancient military organisations.
Spirtual Motivation heralds a new age in which we eschew the Command and Control policies of old and instead, look for the strategy that creates the conditions in which others want to work for us and therefore respond to a different kind of control.
The one unified message of this whole book is that this new thinking is the only solution to the impasse in which the civilised world now finds itself, caught between an ancient militaristic management tradition and the knowledge that we need in future to nurture, and therefore profit from, the value of the individual.
“Spiritual Motivation” is about why we should do that and practically, what we have to do on Monday morning to make it happen.
If reading this book changes your life, try to tell others what has happened.
Peter A Hunter
Author "Breaking the Mould"
www.breakingthemould.co.uk
www.hunter-consultants.co.uk
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Peter A.
gave to:
Breaking The Mould: True Stories About Ordinary People Becoming Powerful
by
Peter A. Hunter (Goodreads Author)
recommended for:
Anybody who enjoys a great read.
read in January, 2004
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my rating:
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Peter A. said:
"
If you have ever experienced or learnt something which you then knew was instinctively right - you will never have forgotten it. Peter Hunter leant something years ago which, regrettably, most of us have still yet to learn. But, when we do - once w ...more
If you have ever experienced or learnt something which you then knew was instinctively right - you will never have forgotten it. Peter Hunter leant something years ago which, regrettably, most of us have still yet to learn. But, when we do - once we have understood the simplicity of 'Breaking the Mould' - it will transform our lives forever!
Vic Baxter - Business Workout.
Peter's thinking on effective organisational change is absolutely spot-on.
Stephen Scott, Syncresis Ltd
A very enjoyable read. "It made me laugh".
Chris Dale, Director BTT
Hi Peter
Definitely enjoyed the book. I'll be honest and say that the way the book is structured and the way it draws you to a natural level of understanding around the point being made is fantastic.
Jeff Hearn, MD of IIR
I've read your book and enjoyed it immensely - Reminded me more of the James Herriott / Year in Provence style than a management textbook.
Regards
John Couldstone, Capita learning and development
Fantastic read Peter. I have always believed that no matter what business, organization you're in - - it's always about the people.
Paul Synnot, Cruise Control
Hello Peter,
Your style is alive: the narrative is vivid and simple. Boileau, the French writer, said that he who writes well must first think well. You’ve thought well and written well. Congratulations.
John Coglan, Rome
Hi Peter
Love the book...it calmly, confidently unwraps the message a layer at a time without ever once making the reader feel preached to.
Best wishes
Steve Bownass, AMBIT - Professional Development
Thanks for yet another jewel on performance management, Peter!
Your book 'Breaking the Mould' reaches me so deeply that I have stopped halfway to be able to reflect on its rich messages thus far
Evelyn Samuels
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Peter A.
gave to:
It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy
by
Michael Abrashoff
read in January, 2007
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my rating:
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Peter A. said:
"
Captain Abrashoff has written a phenomenal book about the journey he made with his ship the USS Benfold, a guided missile destroyer, from a vessel that was failing on all counts, into the best ship in the US Navy at a time of active conflict in the ...more
Captain Abrashoff has written a phenomenal book about the journey he made with his ship the USS Benfold, a guided missile destroyer, from a vessel that was failing on all counts, into the best ship in the US Navy at a time of active conflict in the Persian Gulf.
You could be forgiven for assuming that this was another book about a Gung Ho great guy who dragged his crew kicking and screaming up to standard through his sheer force of will and amazing personality.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Captain Abrashoff realised that the only way to achieve the best for his ship was for his crew to want to achieve the best.
He knew that telling his crew to be the best would not make a blind bit of difference, he knew he had to create the environment in which they would want to become the best and he did that by allowing them to become proud of what they did.
This book tells the stories of what he did, and how the crew responded, to change this crew from a collection of losers into the tight knit crew of the most effective ship in the Pacific fleet.
Captain Abrashoff ‘s efforts were always about the way his crews felt about what they did.
By changing the environment that they worked in he changed the way that they felt about what they did and the result was their phenomenal performance.
As he said, “Given the right environment there are few limits to what people can achieve.”
In this book Captain Abrashoff shows us what happens when we do receive the suggestions from below, not only the hard financial value that occurs when we do something in a different way as a result of listening to the needs of the workforce but also the change in the way that we make the workforce feel about what they do as a result of the fact that someone has listened to them
Normal behaviour is to ignore the junior.
One of his crew, David Lauer, had been ignored in his last job before being transferred to USS Benfold.
He had ended up on a charge of insubordination and had been transferred as a last resort.
By listening to his ideas and giving him the authority to act on them Captain Abrashoff allowed him to become the imaginative independent thinker that he always had been instead of the insubordinate ne’er-do-well he had been forced to become because nobody would listen to his ideas.
In one environment David had been ignored, the result was his dysfunctional behaviour.
On USS Benfold he was listened to and as a result became Captain Abrashoff’s personal assistant bypassing on the way five more senior people
The fault was not his, it was the environment that had been created for him on his previous ship where nobody had listened.
Captain Abrashoff understood that the way people behave is the result of the environment that the manager creates for them. He was the manager of his ship and he deliberately set out to create the environment in his ship that allowed his crew to take pride in what they did.
The performance improvement that resulted for his ship, and in some cases for the entire Navy, were phenomenal.
The stories that Captain Abrashoff tells in this book are not however about the Navy.
These are stories about people and how there are two ways to manage people.
The first is the traditional command and control that Captain Abrashoff found so destructive when he first arrived on the USS Benfold.
The second is the supportive recognition driven environment that Captain Abrashoff created.
The way he did this, the stories and the strategies he used, translate into almost any working environment on this planet because the performance improvement he created was not about the Navy or process.
The performance improvement on USS Benfold was about people and an understanding that the way they are treated has a direct affect on their ability to perform.
The manager is responsible for performance, but most managers drive performance down by shouting and telling people what to do.
Captain Abrashoff discovered how to drive performance up by listening to what his crew needed to do a good job, then he gave them it.
As he said: “The more I thanked them for their hard work, the harder they worked.”
Any manager reading this book will recognise problems and performance that they see on a daily basis in their own organisation.
Unlike most management books, Captain Abrashoff does not suggest academic solutions or strategies that might work.
He tells simple stories of what actually happened, what did work and can be repeated in any organisation.
Captain Abrashoff’s philosophy is simple and the results are stunning.
If you don’t read this book, when you start to lose your market share, consider seriously if it might be because your competitors have read it.
Peter A Hunter
Author – Breaking the Mould
www.breakingthemould.co.uk
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Organizational Behavior & Industrial/Organizational Psychology Group
— 62 members
— last activity Jun 21, 2008 07:15pm
