Further thoughts on management

Stagflation is when an economy suffers from three problems at the same time: slow or no growth, high unemployment, and rising prices. The word is a combination of “stagnation” (meaning little or no economic growth) and “inflation” (meaning prices for goods and services keep going up)[1][2][3][4]. Economists once thought these two problems couldn’t happen together—normally, high inflation shows up…

Pete Hegseth is neither qualified nor experienced to lead the DoD his disordered appetites will destroy him and his failure to understand himself will get people killed.

Pete Hegseth’s collapse is only a matter of time.  Pete Hegseth is Trump’s Secretary of Defense. He will lead the Department of Defense (DoD). Two things are clear. First, he was chosen for his loyalty to Trump. Trump wants him to do what others failed to do when asked.  Trump wants a Secretary of Defense who will order troops to shoot American citizens. Second, he will collapse under the…

Trump’s response to the health crisis is problematic. He has botched the four steps of a crisis response that Joshua M Sharfstein identified in his excellent book: The Public Health Crisis Survival Guide.[i]

The four steps are:

Identifying the crisis,

Managing the crisis,

Addressing communications and the politics of it and lastly,

Developing a long-lasting change as a result.

Although the final…

Raiders of the lost Ark is the story of GDPR preparations.

I was reflecting on GDPR preparations and it struck me that the best movie to explain GDPR preparations was Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The film starts with Indiana Jones (our lowly DPA officers and the upstanding DPA consultants) trying to protect an artefact (DPA compliance). He is gazumped by an unscrupulous rival Belloq (i.e. GDPR cowboys).  He goes back to the home office where the government…

Apologies, the wrong article was posted to this blog

Dear Subscribers,

I hope you are enjoying the blog. Please accept my apologies as the previous article was not a topic for this blog. I posted the wrong article to this blog. The intended home for the article was at one of my other sites–Philosophical Politics.

As you can imagine from the title, it is a better fit than Thoughts on Management. If you do want to find out what that article said,…

Milo, nihilism, and conservatism’s decayed soul

English: Photo of Thomas Hill Green. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Recently, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) withdrew their offer to have Milo Yiannapolous speak at their event. He was rejected after a video surfaced which showed him explaining how sex between an older man and a 13yr old boy could be good for the boy. In the furore that followed, Milo lost the CPAC invite, his…

Why do you work for the Sun?

Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster, The Sun, 13 March 1986 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For a number of years, people have campaigned against the Sun newspaper. The rallying cry is “Don’t buy the Sun”.[1] The movement emerged after the Sun’s infamous and defamatory headline.[2] The campaign has grown with the advent of social media. When columnists like Katie Hopkins compares refugees to cockroaches[3]or…

If you work at Fox News, you enabled Roger Ailes

Fox Real Time logo on Fox News Channel” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For 20 years, Roger Ailes ruled over Fox News like a personal fiefdom. He was in control and everyone knew it. If you did not do as he wanted, you would soon find that you were no longer needed. Even if you were successful, he would get rid of you. Despite removing females hosts from successful shows, Ailes was never questioned by…

Silence and the South Yorkshire Police

South Yorkshire Police (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For 27 years, the South Yorkshire Police (SYP) were institutionally silent about their Hillsborough failures. For 27 years the officers maintained their silence. For 27 years, they fought hard to deny the truth. The issue was not a dispute over evidence. The issue was not about interpretations. The issue was between truth and lies. The Police chose…

Who was going to stop Roger Ailes?

Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, News Corporation, USA and Co-Chair, Annual Meeting 2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In any organisation, the question is never “how did sexual harassment occur”, it is “who is going to stop it?” The organisation will not stop it unless someone stops him. The organisation as organisation will simply continue to function as necessary to deliver…

If the future of work is automation, what is the future of management?

English: Jim Tracy, the manager of the Colorado Rockies baseball team. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have been wrestling with this question for a few months. I have been interested in the way automation is changing work and what it means for the future of work. Some of my essays over the past years have looked at the manager and their role. What seems to return is the need for managers as someone…

Answering Drucker’s Question for an information Organisation

When organisations want to buy an Electronic Document and Records Management System (EDRMS), they often believe it will solve their records management problems. They find they have lots of paper. They have lots of electronic documents. They have shared drives that are full and disorganised. The EDRMS is often touted as the magic bullet, it will solve these problems. However, if we read Peter…

Two Continents, Two Information Governance Conferences, One Conclusion

An excellent overview of transformation in records management and information management. If you are not thinking on these lines you are missing what is coming.

Threat to openness: managing access to public archives

Portrait of Henri Bergson by J.E. Blanche 1891 to illustrate Henri Bergson article. Uploaded from http://www.marcelproust.it/gallery/bergson.htm (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In November 2015, I attended the Threats to Openness conference held at Northumbria University. The conference had a specific aim “discuss the growing threats to citizens’ rights to access public archives across the digital…

Words of Wisdom on turning 30

On New Year’s Day, Silvia Spiva asked me to offer some words of wisdom to two friends who were turning 30 this year. I was surprised, yet honoured to be asked. I don’t consider myself to be particularly wise or knowledgeable. However, it is a rare person who can see themselves as others see them.

I promised her that I’d write some words once I had time to reflect on what I would say. When such…

Dear Subscribers,

Thank you for following this blog in 2015. I hope you had a good year for 2015 and I wish you an even more successful 2016. I will take a break from this blog until February.

I will take January off to reconsider the blog, review my writing, and develop some new ideas for posts over the year.

Thanks for reading the blog and I hope you continue to follow it in 2016.

All the best,

Daniel Morgan’s murder, police corruption and the health of the UK regime

Daniel Morgan was brutally murder with an axe. In the days before his murder, he had claimed to have information about a network of corrupt police officers. Despite, 6 investigations and two failed prosecutions, his killers have never been brought to justice. They have escaped justice in part because of police corruption. Police corruption during the initial investigation has made it unlikely…