Random Thoughts on Management

Some random thoughts on management:

• We know a great deal about what motivates people in general but very little about what is motivating one person at a particular time, possibly because even that person may not know.
• Because of that, speculating about a co-worker's motives may be one of the most wasteful of activities. Focus on the actions.
• More managers are done in by carrying virtues to extremes than by falling prey to any commonly acknowledged vice.
• You can have the greatest vision in the world, but somebody had better be paying attention to the details.
• You can find organizations that are awash in "safe" communication and yet thirsting for honest communication.
• One of the minor but important ethical tests for an organization is whether management behaves ethically when it is inconvenient to do so.
• Another test is the extent to which good people, who don't actively seek to do wrong themselves, are pacifists when it comes to taking action to prevent bad things from happening to others.
• The greatest force for unethical behavior in most workplaces is not evil, but indifference.
• More careers have been sidetracked by casual conclusions than by the careful deliberations of oral boards.