The Myth of Home Grown Solutions

Obviously, each organization and person has to customize solutions for their situation and goals. But there are some general principles in regards to the importance of priorities, communication, system dynamics, variation, and processes that will be constant. Engineers, doctors, and architects are generally expected to be licensed and / or recipients of a formal education before they can practice their craft. They, too, must improvise and problem-solve in situations that weren't covered in class - but they have a body of knowledge upon which they can rely when doing so.

The field of management is perhaps not as mature a science as meteorology, physics, or engineering. But some fabulous minds have delved into the topic and come out with insights that could change how you do business.

It seems a crime that so few practitioners of management have heard of the leading thinkers like Peter Drucker, W. Edwards Deming, Russell Ackoff, Edgar Schein, and Peter Senge. Their writing is not always easy, but it generally seems easier to understand their insights than to manage without them.

Next time you are debating about whether to work overtime or do something personal, compromise: read a book by one of these great thinkers.

The Myth of Power

Russell Ackoff makes a distinction between power over and power to. If you have power over someone, you have power to limit their behavior. "You have to be home by midnight." "You are not authorized to make purchases of more than $500." By contrast, power to enables. If you give someone the power to, say, repair refrigerators or set broken bones, you have given them power to.

“Power to” is elusive and difficult. Also, it often doesn't even look like what is traditionally thought of as power, so reliant is it on the education and empowerment of the subject. By contrast, power over looks like the cliché that animates the actions of so many; it clearly has a powerful person and one subject to that power.

If you are in a leadership position, take a different kind of inventory. Assess to what extent your people have new capabilities, have new sets of "power to," in the last 12 months. It is this increase in power, this increase in ability to create value that ultimately defines progress. Don't succumb to the allure of the myth of power taken out of children's literature about kings and queens.