We’ve been looking at how various modern professionals look at the questions of how the universe works, what our place is in it, and which elements – physical reality or psychic will – drive which. But this is an ancient question. And the earliest of those who asked it never thought to separate the two realms of investigation.

One of these was a Greek philosopher who argued that there was definitely life after death. In fact, he insisted, it was exactly the same as life before death. No difference at all – mom, dad, the kids, the cat – they’re all there, and everything proceeds as it had previously.

One day as he preached these ideas, he was asked, “If everything’s the same after death as now, why don’t you commit suicide and be done with it?” He didn’t miss a beat. “If everything’s the same,” he replied, “why should I?”

While we continue to pursue the question of what the answers to questions like these – or even just the act of asking them – mean for management, you will want to consider how you would answer such a question. It’s not a superfluous exercise. The state of our knowledge about the universe and our place in it is no less important to all of us than is the nature of corporate enterprise and the role of management in it is to managers.

And yet, stentorian declarations of absolute certainty explode in regular intervals over the the fields of debate for both, pocking them with dangerous obstacles for those of us trying our best to simply make our way through. Indeed, many of us adhere to one or another of these creeds simply to relieve the tension we feel over the unresolved questions, or to give definition to unexplored predispositions to which we are inclined.

But at some point, some one or some thing is going to draw attention to the illogical conclusions that so frequently lie at the end of these blindly followed rhetorical paths. When that happens to you, will you be able to meet it with the presence of mind of our friend the Greek philosopher?

Let’s see how that works out as we proceed. Next, we’ll take a look at how these questions more specifically are asked and answered in management. Then we’ll move on to see how some try to put them together. Please do stay with us!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of presence of mind, please see this WSJ piece about how investors at one company are being worked on by its managers in order to smooth the way toward their paying themselves grand bonuses. Perhaps there will be a difference after death for such as these.

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Continuing from Friday’s post, today we are going to finish up reviewing some of the blog and press activity of the past few weeks which touches on themes we expect to address here soon. Again, virtually all of this material is on my daily reading list, and I mention that here because I think it would make an immediately effective addition to the daily scan of any serious manager or student of management; I hope you will be persuaded and add some of this to yours. Please provide me your feedback, in any event.

Doers, directors and didactors. The Economist’s Schumpeter column is one to watch. Recently it has offered interesting insight into a growing movement by European directors and shareholders to influence corporate governance by splitting the roles of CEO and Chair of the Board among two people, rather than concentrating them in one as is more customary in the US. The governance issue will only continue to grow in visibility – especially in the US where there is so much duplicity regarding it – and this movement will grow as well. Watch for viewpoints and assessments like this one.

And speaking of advice, see this column from the series, touching on some of the marketing dynamics that drive so-called management gurus to make such ludicrous claims about their own “work.” The piece doesn’t go far enough, but it identifies and addresses the issue; you should, also.

Aristocrats and influence. I always read Peggy Noonan’s WSJ columns. She is insightful and combines a keen eye for the spirit of the times with an extraordinarily eloquent pen to identify and strike chords that originate deep in our cultural sub-consciousness, making them resonate powerfully into the light of day. But she also unapologetically yet awkwardly assumes the mantle of the intelligentsia, which, unfortunately, dissipates much of the force of her arguments. Please see this about “ranters” – yet another supposition that the political discourse of this country, which began with opponents accusing one of our founding fathers of using taxpayer money to import European prostitutes for his private enjoyment, as having somehow become unacceptably abusive lately. Then see this one about the callous children who “govern” us.

Job reports and headsets. Please see this piece, from Yahoo! Finance, about nine companies that have never laid off a single employee. You will find an interesting mix with some surprises. But the general explanation for this success in all of them? Alert and shrewd management. Imagine that. Now see this WSJ item reporting on GE’s efforts to retrain its top executives with games and studies of famous explorers so that these “leaders” can learn “humility” and “listening skills.” Even the press is being invited to witness this revolution, characterized with appropriate ineptness as the adoption of a “post-mortem headset.”

Culture, coherent chaos, clarity, and questions. Speaking of daily reading, here are some you should definitely add to yours: Cultural Offering provides a wide-ranging overview of matters small and large relating to societal and business culture – but whatever the dimension chosen, you will find valuable echoes in your own life and work. See, for example, this on confidence done right and gone bad, and this on illusory safety.

And speaking of wide-ranging scope, Eclecticity is a fascinatingly – and sometimes startingly – wild ride all around the landscape in which we live, with a secret unifying theme that you will define for yourself as you read. Aside from the site itself, some of the most edifying and enlightening sources I’ve found were first identified by the enigmatically omnipresent “E.” A must read.

On the other hand, Wally Bock is pretty focused: on management. And so are we, right? Well, we would be better at that if we not only read his site daily, but subscribed to it by email so we could enjoy his weekly newsletter, surely worth infinitely more than the subscription price. Easily one of the clearest-eyed and most effective writers in business and management today.

And for questions that will exercise your assumptions, you will want to read Miki Saxon’s Leadership Turn. She offers a range of intriguing challenges, images, riddles, and commentary that will force you to reexamine and become better acquainted with your own thinking. Another must-read.

Perspective. As an overseas American, part of my daily scan is of non-news and non-business sources, in order to try to maintain a sense of the atmosphere and attitudes at play in the States. For example, I used to read summaries of the late-night talk show monologues, until the shows became available here. But one source I recommend to anyone – whether American or not, whether in-country or not – is The Onion News Network. Items with titles like “Bomb squad member takes seven hours to open birthday present,” and “Scientists dissect co-worker to find out more about scientists” only hint at the superb radio, video, and print-news items offering striking, if not enlightening, perspectives on current events.

Okay: we’re caught up. See you tomorrow for something new!

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The responsibility for administering a business originates, unsurprisingly, in owners. They are the only group naturally possessed of the requirement to make decisions regarding the direction and management of the organization. They can delegate their authority to other groups, but not their responsibility.

Except in circumstances wherein they become one or another sort of silent, or absentee, owner. While many partnership arrangements provide examples of this, the classic is the shareholder-owned corporation.

In this case fundamental administrative responsibility is placed in a board of directors. The board then hires a manager or management team to, typically, take on the greater part of this burden.

The purpose of this perfectly legal sleight of hand is to facilitate productive investment and entrepreneurial activity. But in the context of the current discussion, it is important to keep track of what has happened, here: responsibility that ordinarily cannot be delegated by owners has been structurally removed from them and placed into the hands of one group, which retains a directive role and then contracts out – not delegates – responsibility for management, to another group.

Thus, administrative responsibility has been transplanted into a group where it does not naturally arise. The strength and integrity of the chain of responsibility have been diluted quite a bit by this process, and it is not unexpected that some may under-appreciate the significance of this fact.

Here is that significance: just because responsibility has been removed two degrees from its normal source – from owners through directors to managers – we are not to conclude that it can be further extended, divided, or assigned. It is not a resource belonging to managers which they can allocate. It is a fiduciary duty they have shouldered which they cannot share.

So, however deeply in thrall you may be to the most genuinely inspiring and seemingly enlightened modern management theories, you cannot give away your responsibility to run the company. It is yours, and whether you do it personally or not, you must retain – you will be held – responsible for it.

You own the management-level decisions made in your company. You cannot give ownership of them to employees.

But you can do something else. We’ll talk about that next – see you tomorrow!

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Today’s tip: Wally Bock recently assembled one of the most thought-provoking selections of quotes on strategy that you are likely to find in one place. It is definitely worth a visit, some time, and careful deliberation, so please do stop over – you will enjoy and profit from it.

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Responsibility is a surprisingly slippery subject in the world of modern organizations. We talk about it easily and with assurance. But it turns out that we can often find ourselves talking past each other about quite different uses of the term.

Let’s take a quick look at one way this works. Let’s say you own your business as a sole proprietor. In this case the nature of your responsibility is clear: it is complete. You may delegate some matters to certain individuals, but you remain responsible.

Sure, you can hold them personally responsible, for their assigned tasks, to you. But if there is a problem – a product doesn’t meet contracted specifications, an employee is injured performing assigned duties as prescribed, a process causes harm in the community where your facility is located – people are going to come to you for restitution.

You cannot claim that the matter is out of your hands because you had made someone else responsible; you will find that you have not. Nor, when you hold your delegatees responsible, will you accept the excuse that they really aren’t, having further delegated the matter to their own juniors.

So, the subject would seem pretty clear: you cannot delegate your own responsibility. Saying you have done so is really only to use a rather misleading figure of speech; all you have actually done is establish a specific relationship of personal accountability between you and your delegatee. This does not dilute in any meaningful way the responsibility that was, and remains, yours.

But the subject, in the modern economy, is really not that clear. In order to encourage and facilitate wealth-creating investment and entrepreneurship, various legal business structures have been created to limit individual exposure to risk, shifting it, in various ways and degrees, to the enterprise itself. These legal devices progress from the various forms of partnership to the corporation.

Let’s now suppose, then, that you are an owner of one of these, a publicly-traded, anonymous shareholder corporation. In this case, you have no responsibility at all for the administration of the business, nor for the consequences of its acts. The fate of your investment depends on these, but that is the limit of your similarity with the sole proprietor.

What, then, happened to the rest the roles, in this regard, of the sole proprietor? In general, the corporation itself, as a “legal person,” is responsible for the consequences of its own acts. The board of directors is principally responsible for its administration.

Thus, responsibility is cut off from its natural source, ownership. It is then allocated, according to two of its applications, to two institutions created or modified specifically to receive them, neither of which, of course, are in the ownership group.

This creates some serious problems. As we have noted here before, perhaps the most fundamental of these are related to corporate governance (please see the series index and this subject’s category, in the sidebar, for more on this).

But it also produces a broader, and graver, environment of moral hazard. This, as the daily news amply demonstrates, can have a baleful influence on the integrity and expression of administrative responsibility, as well.

It is important to note this. However, for the purposes of our current discussion, we will look at the question of administrative responsibility alone. We will also fairy dust away any moral hazard concerns, so that we can focus more productively on our main topics of managing the decision making process – and leadership – in an organization.

We will turn to that tomorrow. See you then!

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Today’s tips: Speaking of moral hazard and problematic corporate governance practices, please see this piece, from The Economist, about the unfortunate effects of cross-shareholding in Japan.

In the last series, “Conceptualizing capitalism,” we suggested that one should be wary of the world-view of experts. Please see this otherwise interesting essay by one, Gary Marcus, in the WSJ. Pay particular attention from paragraph 14, beginning “All this matters,” to the end. Then ask yourself what he might mean, precisely, by the need to confront “evolution’s limits” head on.

On another subject altogether, please be sure to see what Cultural Offering has to say about where the art of reading aloud is still alive, and why that is important.

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The concept of the democratic workplace has gained a good bit of ground in recent times. A particularly interesting aspect of it is the idea that employees should be given “ownership” of the decisions they implement. One version of this theme goes so far as to insist that the more important the decision, the larger should be the group that makes it.

The problem, though, is that in politics the core tenet of democracy is that the right to rule resides in the true owners, or sovereigns, in society – the citizens. The parallel for the citizen in the workplace is not the employee, but the owner – the shareholder.

Thus the rights attendant on ownership belong to the latter, and can only be delegated to, not arrogated by, the former. They certainly cannot, in a fit of false enlightenment, be simply awarded to employees by managers, themselves only agents lent – not actors naturally possessed of – this right.

I attempted to make these points in a recent post entitled “The decision-maker.” But Chris Young, consultant and author of the Maximize Possibility Blog, made the strong objection that employees are inescapably more involved, focused, and effective precisely when they are given appropriate decision-making authority, and held suitably accountable for its use.

It has also been suggested to me that my apparent unwillingness to delegate decision-making is in conflict with the general position this site is dedicated to promulgating: that organizational leadership should arise from among and be expressed through employees; that it should be cultivated and managed by management, not coopted by it.

These are good points, which warrant a careful response. Moreover, they do indeed touch on the principle purpose of these pages. I will attempt, then, over the next few days, to address them together, and to demonstrate how they ought to be – must be – reconciled.

We will talk about delegating decision-making, the roles in this of authority and responsibility, and, of course, managing leadership. Please do be sure to stop in!

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Today’s tips: As we cover these topics in the next few days, one thing we may note is the degree to which managers claim to believe in a principle – and to which they sincerely think they do – in contrast to the extent to which this is belied by their decisions and actions when push comes to shove. With this – as well as these general topics – in mind, please how Miki Saxon, at Leadership Turn, connects the dots between beliefs and behaviors.

And speaking of expressing leadership, please see these four crucial bits of advice from Steve Roesler, of All Things Workplace, about how to influence upward. I’m inclined to pick #3 as the most vital, but it’s a tough call – what about you?

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Note: The February Leadership Development Carnival is up at Dan McCarthy‘s outstanding site, Great Leadership. As always, Dan has provided great material from some of the best contributors around. Please be sure to visit – and be prepared to add a lot of great sites to your regular reading lists!

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If you look at the contents section on the sidebar of the main page of this site, you will see a listing of the article series that have been published here. You can click through to view summaries of the pieces, and then read the full series or selections that are of most interest to you. Enjoy!

And while you are, please also subscribe by email or RSS reader – thanks!

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We observed, yesterday, that the workplace is just one of many social settings in the lives of its workers. This, if nothing else, compels managers to pay close attention to both employees and the community. That is, it is prudent for managers to do so well beyond the requirements of the law, and even beyond the provisions of contracts they may otherwise be able to negotiate, in order to more effectively discharge their primary responsibilities to enhance shareholder value.

As uninspiringly calculating as this may sound, it does nothing to diminish the worth or importance to an organization of engaging, thoughtful managers of high moral character who genuinely care about their colleagues and staff, and who inherently build trust and confidence in the integrity of management and the corporation. It simply adds the vital acknowledgement that everyone there is an employee of the corporation’s owners. All of the former’s actions should address, directly or indirectly, the specific goals of the latter.

When we forget that, and assume that we have the right, or convince ourselves that we have the obligation, to use someone else’s resources to further any aim not specifically established by that person, we begin to head for real trouble. If you examine recent scandals or failures among publicly held corporations, you will find this failure at the heart of all too many of them.

Which, of course, brings us to the subject of owners. Why do you suppose it is that most of the controversy over how businesses interact with a wide range of “stakeholders” is about large publicly held corporations owned by anonymous shareholders?

When a company is owned by a member of the community, he or she, just as do the employees, ingests the multitude of its relationships with individuals, organizations, communities, and even interest groups.  Thus, the owner combines the comprehension of these issues with the right to use – or direct the use of – the company’s resources to do what he or she wishes regarding them.

But what about the owners of a publicly held company? They can be spread all over the globe – certainly diminishing their sense of personal connection with and interest in parties the company interacts with, or whose fortunes its practices effect.

And yet, they are still the owners. As distant as that ownership is, and as cumbersome as is its expression, it is theirs – not management’s. Moreover, the body charged with representing them, the board of directors, via one device or another, is dominated by the very party, management, that it is supposed to direct in the pursuit of owners’ interests.

In such circumstances, owners are unlikely to develop positions about how to view and address various groups demanding stakeholder status, much less to effectively direct their application by management. Do you believe that this situation is sufficient to permit management to adopt such positions in the name of its employers – or to be importuned to do so by stakeholder groups?

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This post is a part of a series. You can learn about and link to the other articles here: Conceptualizing capitalism

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Today’s tip: Speaking of establishing connections between owners and interest groups, how about a direct one? Please see this piece about for-profit activism, from The Economist.

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It is common to think of corporations as entities separate from ourselves – as “things” with no  human characteristics or motives. They are just profit making machines, the deadening instruments of distant and terrible masters. We are dragooned into service from the local villages, and all of us  – we and our communities, in our ignorance, destitution, and dependence – are held hostage to the mysterious rulers of the silent keep in our midst.

Or so it sometimes seems. But the truth is that our workplaces are themselves, like our communities, social settings. It is inevitable that they be so, since we are social creatures. All of the things that occur, and all the dynamics that drive behavior, in other social settings will also happen in the workplace.

Moreover, as individuals disperse from one social setting and reassemble in different groupings in other ones – family, friends, religious gatherings, recreational events – the workplace inevitably becomes bound up in the identity of the wider community. It is thus but a component, albeit a major one, of our individual identities as well.

So it appears that workplaces aren’t just places where work is done. They aren’t even merely, in and of themselves, self-contained societies. Rather, they contribute some elements to individual identities, and serve as one of many venues where social needs are met and individual aspirations pursued. This has the additional effect of further diminishing their distinctness as separate entities, intertwining them via the lived lives of their members into the myriad other groups to which they belong, a part of the fabric of the larger community.

This carries two implications for companies. One is for their managers. The phenomena just described are, to one degree or another, at the bottom of all employee empowerment theories of management, and are studied in order to help managers draw more productivity from employees by giving them more reward and value from their work.

Maintaining good relations with communities is also an inescapable necessity for managers due both to the need for reciprocal cooperation and to further strengthen the good will and loyalty of employees. For the most part, this is neither controversial nor inconsistent with the principles of capitalism.

The other implication of the above discussion is for owners. It is an interesting subject. It has a lot to do with recent and current crises, the general issue of corporate governance, and certainly with our overall discussion of capitalism. We will look at it tomorrow – see you then!

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This post is a part of a series. You can learn about and link to the other articles here: Conceptualizing capitalism

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Today’s tips: The current posts on the question of stakeholders’ relationships with corporations is prompted by a strong general case made for the concept by Wally Bock, of Three Star Leadership. He also, however, agrees that there is a lot of “nonsense that marches under its banner.” (See his comment, here, to yesterday’s post.) Please see this piece, from The Economist, for a sterling contemporary example of one of the three groups Wally identifies as falsely flying that flag.

Such behavior distorts the perception and operation of capitalism – enough to prompt policy initiatives to counter these excesses. Please see this piece from The Sidney Morning Herald, which presents the case against such distorted versions of capitalism, and reports on calls for another: a “new era of ‘social capitalism.’”

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Capitalism is not a program of action designed to facilitate economic activity, but a model used to describe it. It depicts the consequences of the freedom to pursue economic self-interest. These include everything from markets to anonymous shareholder-owned companies, their interactions, and the individual and collective results of them.

Many celebrate the accomplishments of this system, and others condemn the presumed costs entailed in achieving them. But it is worth pointing out that the model does not advocate the pursuit of self-interest; it merely identifies it as the primary economic instinct of individuals, and observes that, when given proper free rein in free markets, it works to the benefit of humankind.

That would suggest that companies are in the business of creating value for their owners. But Wally Bock, of Three Star Leadership, pointed out in a comment to “Creating businesses” that this is “true as far as it goes, but it’s also important for companies to consider other stakeholders such as employees, communities and customers.”

There is a relationship between ends and means that demands mutual respect. If you are dismissive of your means, you will find your purpose harder to achieve. On the other hand, if you allow too much of your attention to stray from your ends to a perhaps undue solicitation for your means, you will often bring harm to both.

The central point is to retain your central focus on your purpose, but to expand your perspective sufficiently to allow you to capture everything that helps you achieve it, and to understand the relationship of those things with your pursuit of it. This most assuredly includes your customers and employees, and almost certainly your community, as well.

But what is the nature of the importance these stakeholders carry, and what should be the extent of your managerial attention to them? The very use of the term “stakeholder” is intended to imply some degree of inherent right on the part of those who claim it, and of inherent obligation on you. It may, therefore, be an expression to avoid.

But at the very least, it should be examined. Please see this post for more about that. For our purposes here, let’s just look at the subject this way:

Consider the commonly used expression “corporate citizen.” This is a great expansion of the stakeholder concept. It is used to justify approaching CEOs to have them sign on to everything from charitable giving and contributing to disaster relief drives, to subscribing to popular international social and scientific movements arranged under the rubric of “sustainability” – environmentalism, animal rights, global weather concerns, and the like.

That may sound like something only reasonable to be expected from large, profitable, faceless corporations. But what if you were a shareholder, building your retirement or other goals for financial security on that ownership? How would you feel on discovering that the managers of the company had decided to pour profits into one of these movements, rather than into your dividends or, at least, to reinvest them in the company?

If that doesn’t make the point, try this: suppose you are an entrepreneur, and your business has grown to the stage that called for you to bring in professional management. Suppose you stopped in to the office one day to find that management had, of its own accord, given a large donation to a local museum, volunteered material and manpower to a charity drive, or undertaken a strategic shift in corporate operating philosophy and identity in order to conform with popular ideas about the environment? Would you not find that an unexpected development, perhaps even an outrageous usurpation of your rights, and an unconscionable overstepping of their bounds?

If you find the thought upsetting, how do you reconcile that with contemporary calls on public company CEOs to engage in just such behaviors? Is it not possible that such calls for “corporate ethics” contain a hidden blow to the heart of corporate fiduciary duty – the responsibility of managers to owners?

How can you be sure, when you consider such activities yourself, that you are advancing, rather than degrading, the creation of value for your owners? What criteria do you use to evaluate such requests and pressures?

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This post is a part of a series. You can learn about and link to the other articles here: Conceptualizing capitalism

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Today’s tips: Speaking of who value should be created for, please see this WSJ piece about European triumphalism over their brand of – as opposed to US-style – capitalism.

And speaking of good corporate citizenship, please also see this Pasadena Star-News item about the consequences of its being mandated by government. This is an example of why some larger corporations may encourage such regulation, since they can bear its weight, whereas compliance with it drives smaller rivals out of the market.

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Two weeks ago, we discussed the question of management fads, their causes and effects (academics, consultants, management). Author and consultant Ravi Tangri pointed out in a comment that some of the management ideas commonly viewed as fads are actually productive concepts that do much good when properly conceived and applied.

That this is true only adds to the problem. Many of them are nevertheless transformed into fads – not by their inherent worth – but due to their presentation by providers and treatment by management teams.

Many such concepts become fads – passing rapidly into and then out of favor – due to the discovery over time that they, in fact, lack practical value at work. But others that do have such actual usefulness also degenerate into fads due to some of the factors discussed over the past two weeks – poor comprehension, presentation, and application by both providers and consumers.

That some of those in this latter category quietly survive among those who properly understand and employ them only adds a certain misery to the wider issue of the frenzied marketing-oriented character of much management “thinking.”

Speaking of sensible management thinking, Peter Drucker once ascribed this problem to companies that find themselves with excess, expensive management:

Typically such a business goes in for the latest management fads. When “human relations” are in season, it hires psychologists, social workers, and personnel experts and puts everybody through “leadership training.” Two years later everybody talks “operations research” and attends management-science seminars.”

The solution, according to Drucker, is to scale back the ranks of management. We seem to be suffering from excess, expensive management, today. Is it their ranks that are being scaled back as a result?

And, ultimately, who is responsible for this – the development of ill-conceived management fads, the faddish treatment of good ones, and the misdirection of the bill for the consequences of their use or misuse? Is it even the managers themselves, or those charged with supervising them – their boards of directors?

Of course, if the latter is stacked with the former, then we just have another form of excess and expensive management, with no one to trim them back. As we have seen with the government handling of the current crisis, not even the naturally restorative forces of the market will be allowed to do that. So, in the absence of accountability, the fads – fatal and futile – will continue.

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Today’s tips: Of course, everyone with a contending view on this matter insists they are right. But someone has to be wrong; some are even wrong all the time. Please be sure to see Beth Robinson’s insightful look at the problem of kaleidoscoping perspectives.

Then, you will want to read Michael Wade’s explanation of how failing to enter that kaleidoscope can increase the odds that a project will go wrong.

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We discussed, last week, the contributions of academics and consultants to the unfortunate waves of management fads that have made a repeated mockery of so many over recent decades. But physicist, consultant, speaker, and author Ravi Tangri makes the important point in a comment here that the market for these unfortunate services is due at least as much to demand as to supply.

Markets, as we all know, are where supply and demand meet. Their meeting, though, generally isn’t a coincidental collision; markets are typically driven by demand, which then creates supply, rather than the reverse.

So, the ever roiling management fad industry, in the context of this fundamental idea, would be attributable to a perverse demand for substandard concepts of (perhaps mercifully) substandard shelf-lives delivered at substandard levels of competence. Does that sound right to you? If so, why might it be the case?

Who is the customer in your firm for management ideas produced by academics or consultants? Who is the end user of programs such as those listed last week? What need, precisely, is being filled? Where is the purchase decision made, the assessment leading to that decision? Is there oversight of such matters, a real-time approval process, or a subsequent review? Where are these conducted, and how meaningful are their processes and influence?

Analyses like these are typically conducted of the market by the marketer. But if your firm is a customer in this market, frequently falling victim to the sort of churning we have pointed to, might it not be a good idea to conduct such an analysis of yourself?

You might be surprised what you learn from investigating your own outfit’s behavior as a consumer. You may make important discoveries about how fundamental executive functions are performed in your organization. Most particularly, you will uncover the mechanisms of accountability.

Benjamin Graham used to dismiss suggestions that securities were always priced accurately by describing the machinery for setting them as an often emotional, commonly irrational, and certainly unpredictable “Mr. Market.” His intent was to assure you that the purchasing or sale terms offered you by the market were not necessarily coherent, and far from inevitably stacked against the investor.

Does Mr. Market make your purchasing and implementation decisions regarding management consulting proposals? How is he feeling, today? How about you? How about those who meet him in the marketplace of management ideas?

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Today’s tip: Speaking of succumbing to management fads, maybe we should go back to basics. Please take a look at this effective piece from Stepcase Lifehack on how to take notes in the digital era.

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