The Cranky Middle Manager Show #061  (MP3 11.3MB 33:20 Min)

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Welcome to this episode all about “Unmanagement” with our guest Dr Charlie Ehin.

Show Notes

0:00  This show is dedicated to Robin Hood- not because I want my taxes to go up but because he managed his Merry Men in an “UnManagement” kind of way- small agile groups that drove the big guys crazy…

2:58 the quote of the week is from Jean Jacques Rousseau, a man who knew something about independence and the like…..

4:27 Welcome Charlie Ehin, the intellectually promiscuous guy in charge of http://www.unmanagement.com . Since most of us busted our humps to become managers, why would we want to be UNmanagers?

6:30 Charlie is the author of two books (well more than that but two we’re talking about today) Unleashing Intellectual Capital and .  Your peoples’ brains are the most valuable thing we have, but can you manage knowledge workers like you do industrial workers? Do things really get done by following the Employee Handbook?

9:40 How is managing knowledge workers different? You can’t tell if someone’s really working or not by watching their feet or hands. Also, I use the big trainer term “Key Performance Indicators”. I apologize for that…..

11:30 How do informal networks make stuff happen? Let’s take the example of two new hires……This is called Social Capital. You can read a big fancy report on it here…but it’s more like Al Qaeda than an army. You can’t fight it…may as well enjoy it.

16:55 There’s a difference between explicit and tacit knowledge. One is easy to find, the other is a different beast entirely….

20:35  So what’s a manager to do so you actually run something and not letting things go amok? There are two systems: Controlled Access (top down)  or Shared Access (everyone has a hand in it). WL Gore (Goretex) is maybe the most famous example. A piece of the action is usually a good motivator.

26:38 So if this works so well, why isn’t it more commonly applied? Most management theory was devised by economists and engineers…. you see the problem?

Besides Gore, study companies like IDEO. Not that I would hold them up as shining examples, but Hezbollah, Tamil Tigers and others are effective examples too…

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