Recently an executive said to me that “we need someone who is buttoned-up on this project.”
It got me thinking. What is “buttoned up?” What do we mean when we say “buttoned up?”
On complex projects there can be lots of little details. No matter how “Agile’ you are, you cannot escape details. The details become more distributed, I think, but they remain. We just can’t get out of them in complex activities. (more…)
This weekend I had a chance to study a bit, particularly last week’s New York magazine and its articles on Wall Street. This morning came across this video as well as Gareth Kay’s note on judging the Clios. Of course this all interconnects and weaves together because they talk about what’s accepted within a context and that we need to pull in views from outside of our context to know what’s smartest to do next. The current trial of Joseph Massino and how we deal with it in media also connects. More about all of this soon, I hope. By the way, may not be allowed to post my deck, for “reasons,” but we’ll see!
Because I have hypothesized, and truthfully without consciously knowing the cultural origin of my own hypothesis, that Scientific Management (“Taylorism”) may be at the root of some of our non-academic ideas on workflow, I’ve thought to try to study it a bit more in an effort at becoming more aware of the cultural context of my own assumptions.
Today I ran some searches on Taylorism and Unions because it struck me this morning that it’s interesting Scientific Management and Unions all appeared during the same time period.
I found some interesting work.
First, this review of a book by Milton J. Nadworny, published by Harvard in 1955: (more…)
One – figured out I’d inadvertently tweeted a spam site when trying to make a point about taylorism and agile. Some “@-ed” me causing me to draw the conclusion that I’d picked up a spam link.
Two – ran into a colleague who had changed jobs recently. He had come to the conclusion that it was the people at his previous company and, since he likes his current team better, that he’s now a bit happier. I said “Maybe it’s not the people but the work?” and he then concluded that in fact it might indeed be the drawing of boxes (he’s an IA) just isn’t that interesting. That it is this software-like version of the ad industry making him unhappy.
Three – saw a truck that says “TaylorCreativeInc.com” – which felt completely ironic under the circumstances of my concern, that I’d tweeted about Taylorism without methodically (and “scientifically”) examining the source of my info. I drew the conclusion that it was a sign (on a truck!) (more…)
Work Different 