Some interesting point-counterpoint on the relative merits of
organizational scale, but I can’t help but smile at the notion the 80+
employees constitutes “big.” To me the more interesting question here
is how low we’ve been able to drive the scale of micro-businesses such
as 37Signals who are able to have impact and presence far beyond their
size because they [...]
A nice reminder from Jack Vinson about an excellent resource on ways to
poke on complex systems that are more likely to be effective than our
typical efforts. I’ve pointed to this before in several incarnations (here and here).
We’ve certainly seen more than our share recently of ineffective ways
to intervene. Perhaps we can hope that some of [...]
(cross posted at Future Tense)
One of the most profoundly important (and disturbing) things about the Internet is that fundamentally no one is in charge. One of the individuals responsible for that design is David Reed, a computer scientist from MIT.
As far back as Jethro and Moses in Exodus, we’ve applied hierarchy [...]
This is indeed a succinct and useful introduction to knowledge management in the context of knowledge intensive organizations.
Sharing Knowledge.
Sharing Knowledge
(.pdf) has been receiving quite a bit of attention in various knowledge
management blogs. It’s essentially a case study of how to create a
knowledge sharing environment in smaller organizations. Most of the
suggestions are basic and should be [...]
Doc Searls points to an excellent essay by Paul Graham on What Business Can Learn from Open Source. It’s full of thought-provoking observations. Here’s just one sample:
The third big lesson we can learn from open source and
blogging is that ideas can bubble up from the bottom, instead of
flowing down from the top. Open [...]
Rex is right. Go read what Kevin Kelly said.
Then think about how the same logic applies inside organizations. Organizations that continue to try to apply top-down control will increasingly fall behind those organizations that can figure out how to tap the same kind of bottoms-up logic that has driven the web over [...]
Fascinating case study of better meshing high school with real world demands. I suspect that, if this experiment is allowed to continue (by no means a certain thing), these are students who will be prepared to cope with the world they will have to face. Here’s the money quote for me:
“You [...]
This made me grin at least.
At the same time, if you get better and faster at recognizing your mistakes, that alone can help improve performance. I remember talking to my instructor a few years back as I switched from skiing to snowboarding. Her observation about both sports was that you could [...]
Shortly after last December’s tsunami, Dina Mehta and a group of fellow bloggers began what started as a blog (The South East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog), grew into a wiki, and became an important experiment and case example of the power of new technologies to support and amplify bottoms-up organizational invention. [...]
Rob Patterson is absolutely right, this is easily one of the best articles on change that’s shown up in a long time. Why it’s hard, why most conventional approaches are unlikely to work, and why efforts that appear doomed actually worked. I expect to be re-reading and recommending this one [...]
