Management

In Management Issues

"Studies by Bruce Tulgan (Managing Generation X), Douglas Coupland (Generations X), and Australian company HCM Global Pty. Ltd., show the Generation X manger is typically mature beyond their years, very adaptable and flexible, and team oriented. They have high expectations of employees and don't buy into power structures, rather they prefer the project-based approach to work. Generation X managers need positive validation for their work or they will not hesitate to quit their jobs. They hate being micro-managed and want independence in their work, which may explain why so many of this generation have turned to entrepreneurship."

That, sadly, has not been MY experience. Rather what I find are a group of people who are unwilling or unable to understand that it is important to keep records and to maintain documentation on what is planned, what is being done and what is achieved. They seem to believe in a policy that as long as things work OK they will continue to work OK and that rules are strictly for those silly old duffers that came before them.

I have no problem either in principle or in practice with the notion that things could well be managed according to project management principles and practices. What I find difficult to accept that while espousing the concept of project management there is no adherence by many of the younger 'managers' I have encountered with the fundamentals of planning, resourcing and monitoring and reporting on the achievement of outcomes.

Holding people accountable for what they do is also perhaps an old fashioned idea but without it many businesses will simply grind to a halt - in my view.

Women Entrepreneurs

Take a look at: http://www.management-issues.com/2007/3/6/research/the-rise-of-the-female-entrepreneur.asp

Fantastic news and completely contrary to what educational authorities have been telling us for years.

FOCUS if you will on the bit of the story that talks about the fact that a large portion of the women going into business and starting enterprises have less than secondary education while most women in "developed" countries where they have access to heaps of education are in fact still working for others - albeit in more highly paid positions.

Is this another example of where MORE education is a disincentive to progress? Do people who have little education simply not know that they are trying to bite off more than they are allowed to chew and so succeed in spite of the odds!

Interesting that in countries that advocate women's rights and equal opportunity there are fewer women who take the risk of getting into business than in those countries where they are 'deprived' and where they have to struggle against adversity.

Worth a read if you want to ponder about what really makes people tick!

Now THAT's interesting!

National Geographic has once again come to the fore with an interesting comment.

Have a look at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070305-split-water.html

I can well imagine the time when human beings will be more aligned with plants and the way that they can convert sunlight into energy through photosynthesis.

Indeed the only thing that frightens me is whether plants that have been doing this neat trick for longer than humans have been alive, will finally get the idea that they don't need humans any longer and help to turn all of us into fertilizer!

While we are on the subject of THAT's interesting - Have a look at LOESS soil. Saw some really fascinating things about this subject the other day when there was a story about China and how productive their soil is. The explanation for the Yellow River lies in Loess as does some of the productivity of some other similar soil deposits in other countries as well. Simply fascinating!

Update 20/02/2007

I think it's time to provide people with an update on what's happening.

To be blunt I am at present busier than a one legged man at a kicking contest. (thanks George)

I have been helping a friend set up her computer. Imagine that, ME helping someone to set up their PC. I have to admit to some smug sense of self satisfaction when I managed to actually find all the right cables and plug them into the right locations WITHOUT damaging anything!

Then came the next set of tasks - taking an existing DVD on which the person had managed to get a private firm to back up her data from the machine that had died.

Yeah well that was exciting!

At my home I can read the files and actually see them easily.

At her home - the disk goes into the drive and absolutely nothing appears on the screen.

Why?

Rang the firm that did the work and of course they have some really interesting suggestions ranging from the DVD drive can't read their brand of DVD through to "It's all the fault of the manufacturer"

Gnashing teeth is not a well known way of getting things fixed. So I tried to avoid that approach.

Rang the manufacturer of a piece of software that the person has used to record financial data and found that they no longer support some of the older versions of their program and that there is actually a policy that only the Australian version of the program is supported here while programs purchase overseas are in the "too bad, so sad' arena.

So I have to confess I am defeated - I have no idea how to take the data that she has from this program on a back up disk and actually get it to load or to export it to anything else. I suspect that there is an export facility - but it's beyond me!

So if anyone out there has a shares in Quickentm - this might be a good time consider your investment!

Anyway managed to install some basic programs, configure things like screen savers and such and even managed to ensure that most of the stuff on the system like the virus protection etc worked. Then finally crawled home to look forward to some well earned rest.

The day before this was even busier.

An old friend came to visit from Sydney bringing an overseas tourist with her. Drove them to see the Tidbinbilla deep space centre and then off to see kangaroos and wallabies in the wild on a reserve. I cannot believe that in a few days of travelling around this traveller has managed to shoot over 400 pictures! In days gone by when the cost of developing photos would have made this prohibitive she would have felt deprived. With digital photography, the cost is minimal and the cost of transfer to a more stable medium like a CD more affordable. 400 shots! Just imagine what the home screen show will be like.

Tomorrow will be another busy day.

I am confirming, at least to my own satisfaction, that I am pure evil. They say that there is no rest for the wicked!