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Warp speed developments in technology - automation, artificial intelligence, and the arrival of the sharing economy - are transforming how we work. Beyond technology, traditional working patterns are also being disrupted by changes in society, organizations and workforce management, leading to the rise of a more independent and dispersed workforce.
Most corporate mission statements are worthless. They consist largely of pious platitudes such as: "We will hold ourselves to the highest standards of professionalism and ethical behavior." They often formulate necessities as objectives; for example, "to achieve sufficient profit." This is like a person saying his mission is to breathe sufficiently.
There's a tendency in graphics to allow the trimming of certain parts. But I think that if you're open about your process, your methodology, such as introducing thresholds, introducing filters, techniques people use in research and data management, it's legitimate. It's legitimate to say, "We're only going to show data above this level, or between levels."
I am working in my office. I've got a boss who tells me what to do. He's got a boss who tells him what to do. And above him is another boss who probably is telling my boss in the same way - or my boss' boss in the same way what to do. In actuality, this is not the way things work. Management science says that that kind of a chain doesn't work more than three levels up.
Our proposal had more than just money. We would increase their staff and keep their headquarters, their brand and their management in place. We made them a comprehensive offer they couldn't refuse. Shareholders simply receive cash, but with the staff and management, we had to show that we could share the same vision. Employees would probably resent us if money were all [we offered].
There's something wrong with the system when you've got someone who can provide so much to a company and can be enthusiastic, but isn't management material or whatever. So a lot of that just gets defined as the person who speaks with the loudest voice and gets up there with the most arrogance and overly confident, chest-beating approach. Those are the ones that are going to get the golden ring.
There is a difficult transition in management from being the knowledgeable expert and the problem solver to becoming a process architect. The importance of good process in organizations is undervalued and people seldom get credited for putting good processes in place. It makes sense therefore that C-level executives don't want to delegate expertise and problem solving tasks which help them to "shine" and attract widespread recognition.
I believe Washington should be a more active participant focusing on the issue of why corporate shareholders and mutual fund shareholders are not given fair treatment by corporate management and mutual fund management. We need to develop a national standard of fiduciary duty to ensure that these agents, if you will, are adequately representing the principles - pension beneficiaries and mutual fund shareholders - whom they are duty bound to serve.
All of human history is about the going from sudden fat years to the sudden lean years. We've always had good times and bad, and we've had ways of managing the bad times. We have ways of insulating ourselves, making ourselves less sensitive for the bad times by having things like grain stores, for example. Pretty much every civilization that's lasted for any reasonable length of time has some food management principles behind it. But what's been happening over the past thirty years is it's failed - the insurance policy.
What's less well known is that the CIA's executive management staff is far more concerned with selecting the right candidates to serve as CIA officers than it is about selecting agents overseas. The CIA dedicates a huge portion of its budget figuring how to select, control, and manage its own work force. It begins with instilling blind obedience. Most CIA officers consider themselves to be soldiers. The CIA is set up as a military organization with a sacred chain of command that cannot be violated. Somebody tells you what to do, and you salute and do it. Or you're out.
When Wikileaks came out... never heard of Wikileaks, never heard of it. When Wikileaks came out, all I was just saying is, "Well, look at all this information here, this is pretty good stuff." They tried to hack the Republican, the RNC, but we had good defenses. They didn't have defenses, which is pretty bad management. But we had good defenses, they tried to hack both of them. They weren't able to get through to Republicans. No, I found it very interesting when I read this stuff and I said, "Wow." It was just a figure of speech. I said, "Well, look at this. It's good reading".