Making Sense of Time: Memory, Attention, Expectation
David K. Hurst Blog
by David
1y ago
The ancient Greeks had many concepts of time but believed that two were particularly important. The first was sequential, or chronological, time, the relentless beat of time measured today by watches and calendars. In Greek mythology the personification of time was known as Chronos, familiar to us as Father Time. The abstract, labeled time of past and future—chronos—is captured in our words “chronicle” and “chronometer.” One can also think of it as managerial time, more prosaically as the time of “one damn thing after another,” the linear time of reports and budgets, of histories and forecas ..read more
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Words and Looks: Leadership Lessons from A Christmas Carol
David K. Hurst Blog
by David
1y ago
A Christmas Carol First Edition Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol, was first published on December 19, 1843. So it’s close enough to roll this blog out again. Happy Holidays to all! Management gurus have drawn lessons on leadership from diverse sources, ranging from the practices of Attila the Hun to the fictional events in Star Trek. Yet they seem to have missed one of the finest accounts of transformation and change familiar to us all. It is Charles Dickens’ best-loved story, A Christmas Carol. He said that he himself laughed and cried over it more than anything else he wrote, an ..read more
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Don’t Mistake Outputs for Inputs: The Folly of Trying to Plant “Cut Flowers”
David K. Hurst Blog
by David
1y ago
Why does so much management advice sound reasonable but turn out to be of little value? Most readers will know what I mean. Take the following guidance on how companies can ‘accelerate their agile transformation’: Create a C-suite with an agile mindset Hire and develop the right mix of talent Foster an agile-friendly culture and organizational structure What’s not to like? Well, that’s the problem. The first test of any management advice is to ask, “Is the opposite also true?” If not, then the statement is a simple truism like each of those above. Clearly one wouldn’t want a C-suite with an ..read more
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The Ecology of Digital Transformation: Sense-Making in Silicon Valley
David K. Hurst Blog
by David
2y ago
The “Cradle” of Silicon Valley – the Hewlett-Packard Garage at 367 Addison Avenue, Palo Alto (hpmuseum.net) I have just returned from a week of “educating” in Palo Alto, where the third residency module of the 2022 De Groote EMBA Digital Transformation was taking place. Palo Alto is, of course, the epicentre of the great disruption known as “digital transformation”, the focus of this EMBA. The week consisted of formal “teaching” sessions combined with field trips to local enterprises and presentations from and meetings with local experts in a wide variety of topics.  For the excited EMB ..read more
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The Ecology of Organizing: A Management Course for the 21st Century
David K. Hurst Blog
by David
2y ago
For the past six years or so I have been teaching what I call the “ecology of organizing” on masters-level programs at both McGill University in Montreal and the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University in Ontario. Here is my latest curriculum outline: This course is a non-traditional one, based on systemic thinking, complexity theory, and a dual-process approach to understanding (embodied) human cognition. The analogies are organic and ecological and the primary polarities are between the logico-scientific and narrative approaches to understanding the process of organizing in compl ..read more
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Social Renewal: The Story of the Quakers and the First Industrial Revolution
David K. Hurst Blog
by David
2y ago
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained . . . infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana I have just published a lengthy piece in Medium about social renewal and the role of the Quakers in the First Industrial Revolution. It is an extended and enhanced revision of material that first appeared in Chapter 4 of my book, Crisis & Renewal: Meeting the Challenge of Or ..read more
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Cuttlefish Spurting Out Ink: English and the Projection of Power
David K. Hurst Blog
by David
2y ago
An Octopus Squirting Ink The Guardian reported today that a massive leak from a whistleblower in the private bank, Credit Suisse, had exposed the hidden wealth of clients who are involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other crimes. The bank responded, “Credit Suisse strongly rejects the allegations and inferences about the bank’s purported business practices. The matters presented are predominantly historical, in some cases dating back as far as the 1960s, including at a time where laws, practices and expectations of financial institutions were very differe ..read more
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Podcast “Lead Like a Gardener: An Ecological Approach to Wicked Problems
David K. Hurst Blog
by David
2y ago
Last week I did a podcast with Toby Corballis of Wicked Problems. Toby is an agile business transformation specialist based in The Hague in the Netherlands. I had been attracted to his site by his earlier excellent interview with Keith Grint and felt it would be a great opportunity to discuss an ecological approach to wicked problems. We had a really good discussion and you can see the video here ..read more
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Why Management by Objectives Fails (and so may OKR)
David K. Hurst Blog
by David
2y ago
Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) With the annual Drucker Forum now taking place in Vienna it’s timely to reflect on Management by Objectives (MBO), the most enduring and popular of the ideas that Peter Drucker championed. MBO was not original to Drucker. He probably owed the idea to Mary Parker Follett and her concept of the law of the situation, expressed thirty years before him: “My solution is to depersonalize the giving of orders, to unite all concerned in a study of the situation, to discover the law of the situation and obey that…. One person should not give orders to another ..read more
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You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat!
David K. Hurst Blog
by David
2y ago
Sheriff Brody (Roy Scheider) sees the shark for the first time Steven Spielberg’s 1975 movie, Jaws, tells the story of a seaside town whose shores are terrorized by a killer shark. After several fatal attacks, the town sheriff, played by Roy Scheider, sets out to hunt the monster in a dilapidated fishing boat, together with the local salt and a nerdy marine biologist. On his first close encounter with the terrifying beast a stunned Scheider retreats back into the cabin, muttering to the old salt, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” I now use a clip from that movie to open my EMBA classes. I t ..read more
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