#management styles

Theory Y describes a participative style of management which assumes that people will exercise sell-control and self-direction in the achievement of organizational objectives to the degree that they are committed to those objectives. This theory assumes people view work as participative, positive, and democratic.

Theory X assumes that individuals inherently dislike work and avoid it if possible. This theory assumes people view work as negative.

Theory Z assumes workers accept responsibility when they understand the big picture. Employees are the greatest asset of the company.

Strong leaders surround themselves with individuals comfortable challenging them and proposing alternative perspectives. Weak leaders remove those who disagree with them and feel threatened, offended, and attacked when their team challenges their ideas and opinions. -adapted from @giffordthomas at Leadership First. I have worked in both environments and it is easy to tell the difference, even on…

Micromanagers Need Not Apply

Going to try and keep this short and sweet, but you know that may not happen.

It again has been awhile since my last blog. But if you are paying attention to any of them you will see I try and get the most bang for the buck out of what I am about to bitch about.

Let’s get started. Are you a boss? A Chief, Asst. Chief, Captain or Lieutenant?

Do you run your men/woman or crew like they…

“The notion that bands should make music for the love of it was always romantic and now seems positively quaint. Rock groups are mini-corporations (some of them not so mini).”

“If rock groups are businesses, businesses are getting more like rock bands.”

“Successful startups have to make a difficult transition from being a gang of friends working on a cool idea to being managers of a complex enterprise with multiple stakeholders. It’s a problem familiar to rock groups, which can go quickly from being local heroes to global brands, and from being responsible only for themselves to having hundreds of people rely on them for income... A study from Harvard Business School found that 65% of startups fail because of “co-founder conflict”. For every Coldplay, there are thousands of talented bands now forgotten because they never survived contact with success.

“The history of rock groups can be viewed as a vast experimental laboratory for studying the core problems of any business: how to make a group of talented people add up to more than the sum of its parts. And, once you’ve done that, how to keep the band together. Here are four different models:”

“FRIENDS: ‘We can work it out’”

“AUTOCRACIES: ‘I won’t back down’”

“DEMOCRACIES: ‘Everybody hurts’”

“FRENEMIES: ‘It’s only rock ’n’ roll’”