The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”. Warning: link may evoke baleful despair!
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 on Oct 16, 2009 - 57 comments

"The most important of the all-too-human functions of consultants is to sanctify and communicate opinion. Like ministers of information, consultants condense the message, smooth out the dissonances, unify the rhetoric, and then repeat and amplify it ad nauseam through the client's rank and file. The chief message to be communicated is that you will be expected to work much harder than you ever have before and your chances of losing your job are infinitely greater than you ever imagined."

If you've ever known a management consultant, this explains why they always seem to have that "outrageously unjustified level of self-confidence." A fascinating insider's look into the anthropology of business consulting -- Masters of Illusion: The Great Management Consultancy Swindle
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese on Sep 16, 2009 - 76 comments

Netflix's awesome vacation policy -- famous for crowdsourcing, Netflix is now making waves with its employee handbook. (via fs)
posted by kliuless on Sep 2, 2009 - 84 comments

Email patterns can predict impending doom. [more inside]
posted by WPW on Jun 25, 2009 - 18 comments

On the role of MBA-based management culture in the current credit-crisis. Downloadable audio and transcript of a radio show that presents some strong opinions on MBA oriented management culture. [more inside]
posted by jouke on Apr 28, 2009 - 59 comments

Where Is Bob? We have a manager — Bob. Bob is incompetent, overweight, unattractive, uncouth, socially awkward, and generally, not a very nice person at all. For a while, we were convinced that Bob had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. But then, something happened — Bob stopped showing up for work on a regular basis. Sometimes he wouldn’t even bother explaining his absence, acting as if spontaneous five-day weekends were simply the norm. And that is how everyone came to wonder — where is Bob?
posted by nakedcodemonkey on Aug 15, 2008 - 117 comments

"Your anger just earned you a car wash, ma'am." Gas prices in California are hovering around an upsetting $4.58 per gallon. One gas station in the Bay Area is offering stress relief: a chance to dunk a Shell employee and an Express Rant for an Express car wash. The owner, Bobak Bakhtiari, tells NPR: “Cashiers are trained to really encourage all forms of expression during the rant. Well, except for throwing a chair through the window.”
posted by msamye on Jun 29, 2008 - 138 comments

In an artificial world, only extremists live naturally. Or: You weren't meant to have a boss. On the other hand, maybe you are.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Mar 21, 2008 - 36 comments

Life at Google - The Microsoftie Perspective Microsoft Employee writes: "The following has been making the rounds on just about every internal email list I belong to in Microsoft. Here it is to share a little insight with the rest of the world. Microsoft is an amazingly transparent company. Google is not. Any peek is a good peek." Let the metavalanche begin.
posted by psmealey on Jun 27, 2007 - 66 comments

Stupid Management Tricks at Circuit City. Is your retail electronics company losing money? Want to cut costs? Then how about firing some of your people? I know! How about singling out those store workers who are making too much -- 3,400 of them, and get them to reapply for the same job at a lower wage?
posted by storybored on Mar 28, 2007 - 66 comments

Boy chimp meets Girl chimp boy chimp beats girl chimp to keep her from having sex with his buddies. New scientific study.
posted by angryinla on Feb 9, 2007 - 37 comments

W. Edwards Deming: Noted consultant, and proponent of total quality management. The prevailing forces of destruction start early in life-grades in school from toddler on up through the university, gold stars for school athletics, merit system or annual appraisal on the job, incentive pay, work standards, MBO (rather, MBIR: Management by Imposition of Results), MBR (Management by Results). These forces of destruction must be replaced by leadership.... The transformation will restore the individual; will abolish grades in school on up through the university; will abolish the annual appraisal of people on the job, MBO, quotas for production, specified requirements that people work 57 minutes out of every hour, incentive pay, monthly or quarterly reports on business targets, competition between people, competition between divisions, and other forms of suboptimisation. Leadership will replace these bad practices, and will restore the individual.
posted by Brian B. on Jan 27, 2007 - 51 comments

We Are Smarter Than Me
The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, Pearson Educational Publishing, and Pennsylvania University's SEI Center for Advanced Studies In Management at The Wharton School are collaborating on a project to write a business management book, wiki-style. Wanna help?
posted by carsonb on Nov 28, 2006 - 11 comments

John Hall of the University of Florida delivers a praiseworthy lecture. Part One, Part Two.
posted by rxrfrx on Sep 29, 2006 - 31 comments

Ad Supported Software It started with email, and now it's everything from IM, maps and photo galleries. But, free network management software? Can this work?
posted by tboz on Jul 28, 2006 - 8 comments

Time Management for Anarchists is an idea long overdue...if you ask me.
posted by mickeyz on Mar 4, 2006 - 37 comments

Peter Drucker; the Prince of Management, dead at 95. He was a visionary leader to many. I tried to look up some opposing views and could not readily find any. Peace out.
posted by Mr T on Nov 12, 2005 - 22 comments

How Powerful Is Productivity? TCS interviews Former Carter Staffer (and Democrat) William Lewis, who makes some interesting remarks about worker productivity: There were many disparaging comments made in the US and maybe even stronger abroad, (and especially in Japan) about how the US labor force was getting what it deserved because it was lazy, uneducated and maybe even dumb. And of course, the Japanese then showed -- the really capable, competent Japanese manufacturing companies -- showed that was wrong by coming here, building their own factories, managing American labor and taking a lot of other local inputs and coming within five percent of reproducing their home country productivity.
posted by Kwantsar on Jun 20, 2005 - 11 comments

Do we need management consultancies? A new book written by "David Craig" - a nom-de-plume for an insider with 20 years of consultancy experience.
"What distressed me and many other consultants was how the greed of directors and partners put me into situations where we cheated,lied to and defrauded clients while our bosses became enormously rich through various tax avoidance schemes."
Of course John Birt (BBC) and other consultants tend to disagree. The UK goverment spend on consultants is now £1.9 Billion per annum (about $10 Million/day.)
posted by Lanark on Jun 19, 2005 - 17 comments

Management methods, models, thoeries Kick off 2005 sounding and/or being smarter than everyone else. Minds will spin given the amount of info available here.
posted by Voyageman on Dec 25, 2004 - 13 comments

The Intel IT Manager Game lets you manage an IT department (flash, reg. required, you don't have to enter a valid e-mail address). Here is another attempt (click "Simulation" at the top). For those who rather calculate than point-and-click, try the Ipas TCO simulation. [via Flex-MX Blog]
posted by tcp on Apr 16, 2004 - 3 comments

NPR's "All Things Considered" had a great piece on the anger management industry today and it's increasingly ubiquitous presence in many strata of American society. This is the most well known anger management company in the biz, while programs like this promote less orthodox techniques of trumping stressors.

Had any network rage lately?
posted by moonbird on Oct 28, 2003 - 6 comments

Terrorism Status: Orange - High Condition Homeland Security has announced that the Terrorism Advisory Status is moving up to Orange. According to the HSO, Orange alerts mean that we should be "preparing to work at an alternate site or with a dispersed workforce, restricting access to essential personnel only." What is your company's policy for the Orange alert? Will you be working from home tomorrow? Better compose that email to HR now...
posted by DragonBoy on Sep 10, 2002 - 45 comments

J.K. Galbraith shocked at scale of corporate failures. "I can only say I hadn't expected to see this problem on anything like the magnitude of the last few months – the separation of ownership from management, the monopolisation of control by irresponsible personal money-makers." Myself and chrispy came to the same conclusion on the drive home from the resolutely un- (rather than anti-) corporate Glastonbury Festival today. Profit is valued and rewarded by the vast majority of corporations above all else. As a consquence, people with the same values dominate executive positions, to the exclusion of those with more 'humanitarian' or longer-term outlooks. Where is the balance? Should we make hippie non-exec directors compulsory? Or should I just go back to bed and let the drugs wear off???
posted by barnsoir on Jul 1, 2002 - 9 comments

Time for a change of business strategy focus? Nokia and VolksWagen are the examples given,
'the heart of productivity growth is what happens inside the firm, and firms are first and foremost organisations of human beings'
positive role models to lead us from downturn alley?
posted by asok on Apr 29, 2002 - 2 comments

The Red Cross has a decade-long pattern of using local crises to raise funds, and then to spend those funds on other things. The donors had thought their money would go to help specific victims, and sometimes up to 80% would be diverted to other causes. I think this is wrong.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Nov 19, 2001 - 39 comments

Laid-Off Workers Are Striking Back What's interesting is the retailators are not doing so *because* they were laid off, but because of the *way* they were laid off. When will business learn humans need to be treated like-- well-- humans?
posted by christina on Aug 2, 2001 - 16 comments

Toy Yoda... Expecting a Landcruiser, but getting the land speeder instead, a Hooter's waitress uses the Force to fight against her employer's dark side in court.
posted by fooljay on Jul 28, 2001 - 21 comments

Someone's written my book! Slack by Tom Demarco (look for the pdf download at this link) is one of the most straightforward, easy -to-read, common sense books on management since Goldratt's Critical Chain. It's the antithesis to the recent headline I saw about Lucent and Alcatel -- Rebuilding With an Ax and a Cattle Prod. How do you build anything with an ax?
posted by fpatrick on May 29, 2001 - 2 comments