One thought before sleep… why is management changing so slowly ?
August 18, 2014 2 Comments
Midnight is passed… I’m reading some pages of the book “How to Change the World” of Jurgen Appelo… and I’ve found just in some lines the sum up of my feelings… I share it with you, to be your thought for today, your thought for tonight:
“W. Edwards Deming wrote decades ago that bonuses are bad for business
[Deming 1986]. But most managers around the world are still using them.
Peter F. Drucker said ages ago that knowledge workers cannot be
subordinates of managers [Drucker 1974], but managers still act as if they are
other people’s superiors. And research tells us again and again that
performance appraisals don’t work [Bobinski 2010]. But many managers keep
relying on them as their primary evaluation technique.
Why?
Why is management changing so slowly (or not at all)? “
AgileEspresso 
Psychology. Why it is we hold to beliefs and habits without evidence is a hard question that probably takes several books worth of material to answer
But it is true that change is most often very slow. It isn’t only management. It is our psychology that then manifests itself everywhere, even the least likely of all places – science.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Max Planck
Ironically in management we often also seek the new new thing. So while great ideas take a long time to become common practice we stop looking at them fairly quickly because we decide they are old outdated ideas. Not a very effective strategy 😦
http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2009/12/10/habits/
Hi John,
thanks for your comment! 🙂 You are right psychology is really important. I think also that a problem is that often manager lack this knowledge about psychology and instead we need more and more managers able to understand how people behave in group, why, what motivates them, etc…
I will read your articles. I add your interesting blog among my preferred links.
Thanks
Davide.