Newsletter of July 10, 2010

Will social media transform the organization? Every now and then a new technology comes along and people begin to think: this will change the world! With the explosive growth of social media, there is talk of "Enterprise 2.0", as though a new kind of organizations is being born. People are saying that new web tools like Facebook and Twitter will transform the organization drastically and permanently. Communications will now be open and horizontal, rather than constrained and vertical. Hierarchy will become less important. Collaboration will blossom. Trust will flourish. Work will become fun again. Is this likely? Find out here.

TAKE THE SURVEY AND WIN A FREE ADVANCE COPY

OF MY NEW BOOK

Why wait till October for a copy of my new book, The Leader's Guide to Radical Management? As we approach the book's publication, I am giving thought as to what sort of learning events might be useful to people who are interested in implementing radical management. An online event is already scheduled for Oct-Nov 2010. You can get more information and register here You can help me fine-tune these learning events by taking just a few seconds to fill out this brief survey. This will enable me to put on events that meet your needs as closely as possible. If you leave your email, you will qualify for the raffle in which I am offering three advance copies of The Leader's Guide to Radical Management. The three winners of the raffle will be announced in my newsletter. So complete the survey and give yourself a chance to win an advance copy of my new book by going here!

IN SEARCH OF CIVILIZATION

In his classic television program, Civilization, Kenneth Clark remarked that people were often disappointed when they saw the famous beginnings of Renaissance architecture in the 15th Century, like the Pazzi Chapel in Florence. The buildings seem so small, in comparison to great historic monuments. Similarly when people first encounter radical management, they ask themselves: why is it so small? Can it scale? To find the answer, go here.here. EARTH TO BUSINESSWEEK: WE ARE NOT LIVING IN 1965! Just look at the current issue of BusinessWeek, with its lead story, How to Make An American Job"" by Andy Grove. Grove who makes a perfect case for running the organization just the way he did it back in 1965. To be sure, there are good pieces even in BusinessWeek, such as Helen Walters' insightful piece pointing out, despite Andy Grove, that the modern corporation is all about people. But she's the exception. The lead articles and the dominant philosophy of BusinessWeek remain traditional management. If Harvard Business Review is the Vatican of traditional management, then Bloomberg BusinessWeek is the Vienna Boys Choir. Read my review of BusinessWeek here.

BOSSES' PAY GOES UP WHILE STAFF SKILLS DECLINE

In a rational world, one would expect that managers who run their organizations into the ground would be chastised or punished, not given juicy financial rewards. But the strange world of traditional management is not run on rational lines. For instance, in the UK, board directors are getting bigger and bigger bonuses at the very moment that surveys also show that the employees' skills are inappropriate and declining with precious little being done about it. To learn more, go here.

MY MOST POPULAR BLOG POSTS

My two most popular blog posts over the last month are Why Do Great KM Programs Fail? And HBR: Rushing To the 20th Century.They are still attracting a lot of traffic and discussion. particularly the KM piece. If you missed them, you might want to check them out and join the discussion.

MY NEW PROFESSIONAL PAGE ON FACEBOOK

Those of you who follow my work will know that most of it appears on my website, my blog, and on Twitter. While I have always had a personal page on Facebook, (with a mere 260 friends) which receives feeds from Twitter, I haven't been too active on Facebook per se. That's partly because the personal page has limitations, for instance that you can only send an email to 20 people at a time. I have now launched a professional Facebook page which is more flexible and I will be using it more actively. As it has just been created, activity is only just starting. Sadly it only has one friend! :-} If you are a friend on my personal Facebook page, you might want to consider following my professional page here, where most of my Facebook activity will be in future. You can find it here. Content Coming Soon!