JDYFJ - The Latest Management Fad

Thanks to Nick at Nearing Zero for coming up with a management approach that just might work in the long term!

I'm thinking about recommending this new approach to one client's management team.

It's actually a simple enough, if novel, proposition to base a change management initiative on. Everyone should be able to understand it without the need to rely on outside experts.

The implementation might be a little tricky. I suspect it might start with facilitating real communication. You know, the type of communication that can happen when people come face-to-face and start to relate to each other as humans with a common purpose, rather than just as functions in a process.

Who knows how much talent, creativity, innovation and energy might be released using this novel insight?

Who knows just how much better each of us might be able to do our fricking jobs?

Maybe that's what we're afraid of? (a bit of reverse psychology)

[go to Nick's site: www.nearingzero.net. It's worth the trip.]

Am I a Failed Blogger?

I've often wondered why I don't blog more.

Listening to the advice of many of those who advocate using blogs as a marketing tool, I'm committing a cardinal sin. Some say the idea is to blog, blog, blog just as the traditional approach might be to advertise, advertise, advertise. Otherwise people (prospective clients?) might forget that I am out there. Sort of a shotgun approach, I suppose, but I'm reminded of the old saw about money spent on advertising - only 50% of it is effective ... the trouble is you can't tell which 50%.

There are others who look at blogging as a relationship tool. It's important to blog, blog, blog because otherwise your readers won't trust you. Well, maybe ... at least before RSS. With RSS the situation seems to me to have changed. There are some blogs I have sitting on my RSS feed that don't post all that often, but when they do it's similar to the feeling I have when an old friend gets in touch. I mightn't hear from them every day but when I do hear from them I know it will be worth it. And there are other blogs from people I like and admire, but gee sometimes I wish they would not say so much. Once again, thanks for RSS.

It seems a shame to me to have to fill up the bandwidth with whatever simply because it is there and we can. More consumerism?

When I go into the blogosphere, it's like I go into myself. How else could it be with all the millions of blogs out there? And, in a respectful (of myself), almost mindful approach, I'm hoping for something deeper. I'm not saying that this is the best approach, or the preferred approach. Just that it is what I'm comfortable with at the moment.

I like what Barbara Kingsolver said:

Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them. "Because it really happened" is the worst reason to write anything, leading directly to ramshackle prose and the painful American custom of oversharing. I suppose 10,000 bloggers would disagree with me on that point. Perhaps here we've hit upon the distinction between blogger and author.