I’ve been thinking about different ways to approach situations in life. One is to play to win – look at the rules the way they are, and figure out how to exploit those rules to your advantage to the maximum extent possible. James Carse calls this playing the finite game. Examples include: Figuring out how […]
Category: organizations
Radical Candor, by Kim Scott
Amazon link Book site Kim Scott starts this book with the story of how she once had an employee Bob, who was really nice and had great credentials, but who did not deliver great results when he started working for her. At the first big review of his work, she was worried about being too […]
The Fifth Discipline, by Peter Senge
Amazon link n.b. I read and reviewed this book as part of my coaching program, hence the references to coaching throughout this post. The titular Fifth Discipline is systems thinking, the ability to look beyond the linear cause-effect thinking that is embedded in our language and our culture, and see the larger forces acting to […]
The Culture Code, by Daniel Coyle
Amazon link I really enjoyed Daniel Coyle’s book The Talent Code, so when I saw he had written a follow-up book on organizational culture, I picked it up from the library. Subtitled “The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups”, Coyle investigates successful groups from the Navy SEALs to the San Antonio Spurs to a band of […]
Repurposing the college experience
I was having coffee with the always fascinating Grant McCracken last week, and we got into a digression on the function of the university in the world today (part of what I love about talking to Grant is that our conversations end up in such interesting places). It stemmed from a discussion about whether my […]
Corporate culture as illustrated by monkeys
I was talking to a friend tonight about organizational culture. She was wondering about how one can institutionalize or productize culture. And I laughed out loud. And she asked me why I thought it was so funny. So I thought for a second, and told the story of the five monkeys. The story is that […]
