An article from Conference Rev., Winter 2011 at 37, tickled me. It lampoons business jargon. Throughout, the article skewers all manner of clichés, acronyms, styles of obfuscatory speech, and words sucked of all meaning. The Orwellian/Dilbertian mess of messaging presents easy targets. So, I thought I would compile my own…
Richard Koch and Greg Lockwood in Superconnect: Harnessing the power of networks and the strength of weak links (Norton 2010) at 80, refer to psychological studies that find that “we are less satisfied when we have more choices than when we had fewer.” More choices means we pay a higher…
More than a decade ago, the Economist wrote about a man, Art Hammer, and his deductive methodology for number crunching, multivariable testing (MVT). It is a mathematical way to sort through many variables in a decision and determine which are better without time-consuming calculations. As explained in the Economist, Aug.…
“A network is a set of interconnected people or things that can communicate with each other, share information and achieve results that would not be possible if the network did not exist.” Richard Koch and Greg Lockwood, Superconnect: Harnessing the power of networks and the strength of weak links (Norton…
“Any seemingly grand idea can be divided into an infinite series of smaller, previously known ideas.” This quote from a book by Scott Berkun, The Myths of Innovation (O’Reilly 2007) at 7, set me to thinking about innovations in law department management and the shoulders of giants they were built…
One of the myths exposed in Scott Berkun, The Myths of Innovation (O’Reilly 2010), is that people love new ideas. They don’t, especially if the idea challenges their accustomed way of thinking or their power. Berkun lists (at pg. 57, with more at 90) ten negative things often slung at…
A thoughtful and useful book, Scott Berkun, The Myths of Innovation (O’Reilly 2010), should correct many of the misimpressions we hold about much-vaunted innovation. To summarize them, this post takes discounts from a law firm that increase as fees increase. Let’s apply the myths to that innovation, since it had…
Rewarding or penalizing inside attorneys based on outcomes of legal matters overestimates how much of the random variability of the world the attorneys actually control. A din of “noise” clutters what happens out there, which means that good managers can suffer from bad outcomes as much as bad managers can…
The three authors of Decide & Deliver: 5 Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization got some publicity in the Harvard Bus. Rev., Jan./Feb. 2010 at 26. The squib implies that, in a different context, the Seven Samurai hit upon the perfect number of fighters to make good decisions as…
A theory-based article in the Academy Mgt. Rev., Oct. 2010 at 579, analyzed studies on expertise and proposed an ”entrenchment perspective.” The author proposes “that a trade-off is associated with expertise. Specifically, as expertise is acquired, flexibility may be lost.” Harry Truman made a similar point acerbically, “An expert is…