The bear market in management bullshit is over

Is management dead?  Lucy Kellaway has an interesting article in today’s FT.  One example is of a British company that sent global staff to training in the US for key skills needed to prosper in the future.

The first of these was a “Maker Instinct”, defined as an “ability to turn one’s natural impulse to build into a skill for making the future and connection with others in the making”. As it is impossible to know what this skill actually is, it is hard to know whether one possesses it or not.

Future leaders are also required to have “Bio-Empathy”, which is an “ability to see things from nature’s point of view; to understand, respect and learn from nature’s patterns”. At least one can understand the words – but the sentiment is quite up the spout. Most patterns in nature are things one would pay top global managers to disrespect and disregard. Flies are sick on their food before they eat it. Pigs eat their own babies when they become stressed. Indeed, if you stand back from the last 3bn years, the animal kingdom has done a prodigious amount of brutal Darwinian suffering, with weaker species tortured, killed or left to starve to death. Is that our corporate future? I hope not.

A third trait is called “Quiet Transparency” or the “ability to be open and authentic about what matters to you – without advertising yourself” – which is the weakest of the lot. In the future, successful managers will need to go on blowing their own trumpets just as noisily as they do now.

When to say enough is enough?

During five full days, not one of these senior manager dared to say: why are we doing this? Or: this is total crap. Each of them lay down and took it all like a lamb; the Americans doing so in good faith, the Brits in rather less so. The latter were too cowed to say a word during any of the sessions

http://www.ft.com/lucykellaway

If you have an interest in the land of PC.  You may want to check out Five Myths About Our Land of Opportunity by Haskins and Sawhill.  It’s from a book recently published that addresses creating opportunity.  The premise is that in America, there is little intergenerational movement in economic class.  To help children succeed they point to a stunning conclusion for parents:  Finish High School, get married before having children, Hold a full time job. 

This is the kind of book that will make the far left and the far right angry...and wins one for the centrists.

The 5 Myths?

1. Americans enjoy more economic opportunity than people in other countries.

2. In the United States, each generation does better than the past one.

3. Immigrant workers and the offshoring of jobs drive poverty and inequality in the United States.

4. If we want to increase opportunities for children, we should give their families more income.

5. We can fund new programs to boost opportunity by cutting waste and abuse in the federal budget.

http://www.brookings.edu/