Daily Updates

 Idea 44 - Theories X & Y (and Theory Z) Management's ideas about motivating employees have changed a bit since scientific management first considered how to make workers more efficient. Today, most managers would at least pay lip service to the idea that employees are human beings, with human needs and aspirations, and that you need to recognize this to get the best from them. This may seem obvious today, but as a management precept it owes much to Douglas McGregor and his Theory X and Theory Y. Theory X and Theory Yare a double act - a Mr Nasty and Mr Nice of human resource management - that leave you in no doubt as to which McGregor prefers, even though he insists that the optimal management style should draw from both. McGregor believed that the way a company was managed reflected its managers' view of human nature. His theories look at how satisfying the needs of employees can be used to motivate them, though each makes very dif(erent assumptions about what those needs...

Idea 43 - System thinking Some farmers discovered systems thinking the hard way. With their crops being devoured by insects, they reached for the spray gun and blasted them with pesticide. And it worked - for a time. But then the crop damage returned, worse than ever, and the pesticide that was so successful had no more effect, As it happened, the insect that was eating the crops had also been eating, or competing with, another insect. Now that insect no. 1 was out of the way, insect no. 2 was having a field day. 'Systems thinking' says that things are more complicated than they seem and actions can have unforeseen and unintended consequences.   Systems thinking recognizes that no man - or insect - is an island, and that there is an interconnectedness in social and natural processes that is not always immediately apparent. 'Linear' thinking operates in a straight line. It says that if you do A to B, the result will be C. Systems thinking says that if you do A to B, it m...