Many organisations talk about ‘developing new leaders’. What they mostly mean in practice is ‘developing new managers’. Which is unfortunate, because they’re not the same… The blunt reality is that most organisations I see have an absurd surplus of managers, …

Managers and leaders Read more »

Is ‘manager’ the same as ‘leader’? Are leaders always managers? And are hierarchies – and, in particular, classic management-hierarchies – always a natural, necessary and unavoidable fact of (larger) enterprises? These questions came up for me whilst reading three articles …

Managers, leaders and hierarchies Read more »

In designing management-structures, why is it so often assumed that responsibility-relationships only go one way? Our organisations often place enormous attention on insubordination, a refusal or failure to follow ‘orders from above’; yet why don’t they place the same level …

Insuperordination Read more »

Several people picked up on this one after Gerold Kathan sent out a note about it, but perhaps David Sprott said it the best: davidsprott: RT @gkathan: John Seddon – a master class in how NOT to use IT in …

How not to use IT in services Read more »

Why is management the way that it is? Does it work well that way? And what part does the architecture of management play in determining how well it does or doesn’t work? (This is probably another politically-risky post for me …

Rethinking the architecture of management Read more »