As I wrote here a couple weeks back, I started blogging (again) over at Harvard Business Review a couple weeks ago and I kicked things off with a list of 12 Things That Good Bosses Believe, and will spend the next few weeks digging into each of the 12 things in a separate post there -- as I love lists (and apparently so do a lot of people), when these dozen are done, I will add them to this blog on the side. So far, I have added a post on how good bosses know that they are at risk of living in fool's paradise and on what every new generation of bosses has to learn --which are linked to the first and second beliefs. Quite a few of these ideas are themes from Good Boss, Bad Boss, but many touch on other topics. In fact, the point about what every generation needs to learn is inspired more by Hard Facts and a great book called Beyond the Hype than by Good Boss, Bad Boss. I especially had fun writing this paragraph:
Cries for the reinvention of management and claims that we have to discard old models are made by every generation of gurus. But really, the ideas that work aren't that complicated, and most of what is called new is really the same old wine in relabeled bottles. If you want to read a great book on this point, check out Robert Eccles' and Nitin Nohria's Beyond The Hype. When I read it for the first time, I realized that a big reason every generation thinks that its solutions are new is because it thinks its challenges are brand new. People can't quite bring themselves to believe that managers of the past faced remarkably similar problems, found frustration and satisfaction in similar sources, and came up with similar solutions. Just as teenagers discover sex and can't imagine that the fundamentals were the same for their parents, managers are convinced they are encountering forces and feelings that haven't been seen before. And management theorists do little to disabuse them of that notionSo far, I have been delighted and quite surprised by how many people are reading this stuff given all the people who blog on HBR. The 12 Things post was number one on the most read list (the list is on the landing page to the right), and and right now, the fool's paradise post is ranked first, the 12 things post is second, and the every new generation post is ranked 10th. I appreciate all the readers of Work Matters who will be checking things out and, as I hope you can tell, this remains the blog that is dearest to my heart. Also, as I have 10 more posts to write over at HBR on items 3 to 12 of the list of 12 Things That Good Bosses Believe, I would love to hear your suggestions about what I should write on any of those points.
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