Monday, January 24, 2005

Simplicity - what I believe

My passion is to dispel the myth of complexity in management and leadership.

After all, complexity is merely the sum of simple parts. Management is not complicated at all ….we just love to make it complicated.

I also love lists.

This is a list of 17 things I believe. Yes 17 is a strange number. There is no mystery or significance in 17 - that is as far as I got!

So here goes .....things I believe with a passion - not in priority order

  1. Staff at the front line know all the answers all the time
  2. The words “managing people” should be exorcised from the workplace. Nobody “manages” people any more - people manage themselves.
  3. If a manager has any job at all in 2005 it is to move heaven and earth to make it easier for front line staff to do neat work
  4. Get other people to do bits of your job - they usually do it better than you
  5. Management is simple
  6. Leadership is not - it is an art form
  7. The basics are the new cutting edge
  8. I’m not convinced leadership can be taught
  9. Give all the budget to front line staff ….yes I did say all the budget
  10. Complexity is merely the sum of simple parts
  11. Forget MBA think MST (Masters in Story Telling)
  12. We are all Chief Executives of our own future
  13. “Powerlessness is a state of mind - not a state of reality” Tom Peters
  14. I don’t know what “a big organisation” means in 2004
  15. I would take a pay cut for some leaders ….I would not follow some leaders if they doubled my wages
  16. Our greatest motivation is always from within
  17. The older I get the more I like words like “difference” and “diversity” …and the less I like words like “right” and “wrong

1 comment:

Trevor Gay said...

Thanks for that comment smaltoy - I agree with you we have Universities making things far too complicated.

I advocate replacing MBA with MBS -Masters By Storytelling!!

I went through post-grad training in the mid 90's so I would never knock education per se ....

BUT!!!...

What we need to do is encourage people high up in the Educational systems round the world to make things more simple.

Is it really useful for people to learn how to pass exams? - that surely just tells us how good people are at taking exams!!

I would love to see more emphasis in education on what relationships are about; how can we help young people learn about feelings and emotions; how we can better equip young people for life after school; and so on .....

Sure keep telling kids to learn parrot fashion the King's and Queens of England for the last 1000 years ... but at the end of the day there are surely more simple and important things about learning to cope in the world we face now!

Take care smaltoy and thanks again for viting my Simplicity blog

Trevor