... and
practicing management you don’t know what you don’t know about work
or organizing it.
Going “inside” work
Looking at work through a management lens today, what you see are
the six Ds: documentation, data, ... belief that
management will see to it that everything gets done properly. The other
Getting into work
17
the same ones at different times, in a room the size of a...
... conversation.
Each conversation generates its own possibilities for action. Opportu-
nities that weren’t there are created by the conversation, in the con-
versation, with each conversation generating ... brainstorming, and strategizing.
The heart and structure of project work is networks of conversations.
34
Beyond Management
Here is a paradox for me: we have all the pieces that man...
... up schedules of classes, and devise exercises
68
Beyond Management
Mgr 21
Mgr 11
Mgr 12
Mgr 13
Mgr 14
Mgr 15
Mgr 45
Mgr 44
Mgr 43
Mgr 42
Mgr 41
Mgr 22
Mgr 23
Mgr 24
Professional groups
General ... 6
Knowledge -work in close-up
What is knowledge -work?
It may be one of the great paradoxes of work life that we spend so much
time at work but have so little to say about th...
... and what they can do. Then, the sense of what
they’ll do—their work emerges, bit by bit, conversation by conversation.
Usually, as this happens, a network grows along with their conversations.
“I’ll ... the corporate culture,
which he calls, memorably, a “giant Hairball.”
11
Hallmark is certainly not an isolated hairball. “Corporate culture”
is a nicely alliterative term for standard...
... investigated the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon that took place in September 20 01 found
that security and intelligence organizations (of which there are a great
11 4
Beyond Management
matter ... also
desirable?
12 5
11 0
Beyond Management
requires a change in values, beliefs, or behavior.” Add “relationships”
and you have a neat summary of why the work of or...
... person-to-person, relationship -by- relationship. For the sake
of good work, for our humanity, and, perhaps, for the future of humanity
this matters a great deal.
210
Beyond Management
for exact benchmarks of ... circumstances, tied to attitudes, values, and
ideals. For example, what doctors can do and what their patients and the
Good work wanted
215
played out below, with all that...
... ‘Virtual Fence’ After $1 Billion
Is Spent,” New York Times, January 14 , 2 011 (www.nytimes.com/2 011 / 01/ 15/us/
politics /15 fence.html).
16 . On the nature of derivatives see Cris Sholto Heaton’s prophetic ... Knowl-
edge Management, ” Journal of Knowledge Management 15 , no. 2 (2 011 ): 17 5–97.
Both authors refer to the leading role that management consultants played in the em...
... technical work 93
8 .1 Work practices 10 1
9 .1 The waterfall model 11 5
11 .1 Letting go! 13 9
11 .2 A delicate balance 14 7
12 .1 Three domains of conversation: a framework for
organizing 15 5
15 .1 A pyramid-maze ... accountability 15 2
Aligning 15 2
Three domains of conversations 15 3
Illustrating the framework 15 5
What to do with the framework 15 6
Missing convers...
... and
practicing management you don’t know what you don’t know about work
or organizing it.
Going “inside” work
Looking at work through a management lens today, what you see are
the six Ds: documentation, data, ... in the work. With factory-
work, the difference isn’t that significant. You can get a good sense of what
people are doing by watching them, which is what supervisors...
... 6
Knowledge -work in close-up
What is knowledge -work?
It may be one of the great paradoxes of work life that we spend so much
time at work but have so little to say about the nature of work. In business
books, ... to the work of organizing, which I’ll call
“threads.” They are:
1. Negotiating meaning
2. Creating work
3. Building networks and negotiating boundaries
4. Aligning
1...