Robert Paterson: The Work PlaceWhat is it about traditional work places that is so stifling to the creative? Is reform possible? What are the alternatives?Blogging and Society- August 29, 2003 500 years ago the communications system in the west was owned by one organization - the church. If you wanted something in writing a monk transcribed it. Few knew how to read as a result of books being so expensive. Your network news was delivered from the pulpit. The system supported the status quo of the power of God's elect, the King and his henchmen the aristocracy and above supported the most powerful multinational enterprise the world had yet seen the church itself. The church was the...http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/categories/theWorkPlace/2003/08/29.html#a753 Blogging and Education - eBay- August 29, 2003 Enrollment for the media courses at our community college is way down this year. Is this part of the dot-com fallout or is something more going on What is on offer is a one year full time class based course that costs $10,000 and teaches you to create web pages. I asked my blogging friends on PEI, none of whom are older than 24 and most younger and all of whom are experts in web based communication, - note I did not say experts in web creation.- to tell me how they learned to be so good. They..http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/categories/theWorkPlace/2003/08/29.html#a752 Blogging - St Paul - The Real Needs of Business- August 29, 2003 New movements tend to stall when the "in group" want to keep the movement within the "in group" The same may be true for blogging. The number of people that know about what a blog is among my clients is very small. Intuitively I would say less than 2%. What would put them off Anything technical. Blogging has to be made really easy. Why do I mention St Paul At the outset of Christianity there was a huge debate. The "In Group" as lead by the surviving disciples of Jesus insisted that to be.http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/categories/theWorkPlace/2003/08/29.html#a750 (Untitled)- August 27, 2003 More Great KM Stuff. Collaboration is in the KM toolbox. Collaboration is the new KM Why collaboration I think it appeals because its less fluffy than 'KM' - people intuitively think its good (few CEO's are crying out for their people to collaborate less) - and it taps a current need: in trying to cut costs by e.g. reducing travel, people are feeling the pain of projects failing and mis-communication. 'Virtual teams' as a term has been around long enough, but few companies are getting it...http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/categories/theWorkPlace/2003/08/27.html#a746 No safety in the familiar in a storm- August 12, 2003 Several years ago, a friend of mine came close to breaking free from the institutional life. He had a foot in each place. But frightened by the unknown, he pulled back into the world he knew - confident that he was safer there where his mastery lay. Last week he was fired. In my own life and family too we have a recurring story, a Greek tragedy, where the pull of duty and obligation to the familiar overwhelms the preservation of self. The outcome - an early death for both my father and...http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/categories/theWorkPlace/2003/08/12.html#a723 Universities - Where next- August 10, 2003 We live today in one of those periodic times, when shifts in beliefs and in communication technology drive a fundamental change in how power is defined and exercised. What are these trends and how do they manifest themselves in the lives of universities How can universities, with their unique cultures and management processes, cope and even prosper in this type of environment What is going on What are these trends and what do they mean for managing a University In particular, what do...http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/categories/theWorkPlace/2003/08/10.html#a721 What is going on at Universities Growing cultural complexity!- August 10, 2003 I have been talking to a number of universities about what their world feels like today. Here are some of my early views. The bottom line - Universities have become too complex for conventional management processes and conventional HR approaches which have a tendency to seek conformity and are based on both a mechanical mindset and the belief in cause and effect. Many enterprises have complexity such as different divisions, but at a modern university the complexity is overwhelming. What..http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/categories/theWorkPlace/2003/08/10.html#a720 Marriage - Another Ptolemaic Construct- August 6, 2003 As the debate about Gay Marriage builds, I wonder what is the "natural state of marriage". Much of what I read in our local paper righteously informs me that Jesus, God and the church determine what marriage is all about. In short in this view, marriage is a union of one man and one woman whose role is to have children. Just for fun, let's explore the history of the union of adults a bit further than the few thousand year perspective that the CW allows for. For most of the 4 million years that.http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/categories/theWorkPlace/2003/08/06.html#a712 Social Capital - Are we at the edge of a Copernican revolution in OD- August 6, 2003 A theme of my posting is to examine why so many people today are so deeply unhappy about their work life. Recently I have been looking at our need to have a higher purpose and at our need to have a more collegial relationship in the hierarchy. I have posted two great articles by Ross Mayfield below because it seems clear to me that we have another basic flaw in how we organize - except for the military who have never forgotten - we are mainly are ignorant of the inherent numbers and...http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/categories/theWorkPlace/2003/08/06.html#a711 Worried about cholesterol Worried that you cannot afford the drugs that you think that you need - Don't worry be happy!- August 2, 2003 Here is another view from the Whitehall study. What is shows are the rate of death from Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) your rank in the hierarchy and the risk factors. Look to the right at the longest bar chart. This shows that you are 4 times more likely to die form CHD if you are at the bottom of the pile than at the top. See that thin black line at the foot of the chart - that is your risk factor to scale if you have high cholesterol. yet what is the main topic of your conversation with your..http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/categories/theWorkPlace/2003/08/02.html#a699 |