Comments

Non linearist John Lennon - 'Life is what happens while we're busy making other plans'

Posted by Trevor Gay at October 26, 2006 1:05 PM

PLEASE DVT - Lennon [& Ono] = mainly known for 2 of the ugliest backsides in the history of the Universe. TP - funderful rant!

Posted by seanistan at October 26, 2006 1:15 PM

Hi Tom:

Your comments are really interesting.

I agree on your ideas.

Nevertheless I have some comments: I think that a Manager must have both linear and non-linear ways of act.

No think before act can be a disaster and thinking too much can make the same.

Management is a mixture of science and art. Therefore needs both.

However the hard reality is that the customers are changing more fast everyday. And companies must change accordingly or they will have the risk to dissapear.

Best regards

Juan Miguel

Posted by Juan Miguel Robles Vargas at October 26, 2006 2:06 PM

mintzberg - a rare and bright flame that enlightened my mba studies in germany. - he must be crazy!

have you got a link to the article by that german journalist or any kind of other relatetd information?
love to see that in perspective.

Posted by jens at October 26, 2006 2:43 PM

We had a saying when I was in the Navy, where I oft did dive:

"Figure it out underwater."

In other words, get going and work it out underway.

Posted by Paul at October 26, 2006 2:45 PM

really - mintzberg's 'structures in fives' was the best management book i read at university. i think it was even responsible for me carrying through with my studies.

it also made me wonder why other management authors do not think before they write.

mintzberg - a class of his own. and vital proof that elegance of thought can exist even in the most dullest of surroundings.

Posted by jens at October 26, 2006 3:13 PM

I posted a comment on the dueling opinion pieces in FT by Mintzberg and Frank Brown, Dean at Insead. Here's the link to that.

http://blog.threestarleadership.com/2006/10/24/can-you-really-learn-leadership-at-an-mba-program.aspx

The Mintzberg essay does not appear to be available online, though there is an FT article about it. The article title is "Scourge of the Business Schools slams 'Leadership Teaching.'" It includes this delightful quote.

"Prof Mintzberg argues that the conventional MBA classroom overemphasises the science of management at the expense of its practice, and that most MBAs are too young to appreciate what they are being taught."

Posted by Wally Bock at October 26, 2006 3:41 PM

I'm currently limping towards the end of an MBA. Mintzberg has preserved my sanity more than once with his uncanny ability to make complexity understandable to a simple soul like me. 'The Strategy Safari' is a brilliant book for me, as is 'The Nature of Managerial Work'

Porter is one of those who leaves me cold. It comes down to this for me: Mintzberg is describing a work-world that sounds like the one I'm in, Porter on the other hand...may as well be describing Mars.

Posted by tomjam at October 26, 2006 4:16 PM

I'm positivelty thrilled to see the outpouring of Mintzberg love!

Posted by tom peters at October 26, 2006 4:18 PM

Twelve months ago I was delighted to attend a 2 day conference in Birmingham, England featuring 3 internationally renowned business speakers Charles Handy, Gary Hamel and Michael Porter. Sadly this was a conference Tom Peters was unable to attend due to illness. This is what I wrote about my evaluation of Professor Porter’s presentation;

‘Obviously excellent technically but I have to say not my favourite topic – I am not a strategy man – I am more of a ‘get on with it’ pragmatist. He is no doubt very knowledgeable and many will have found his session interesting – I nearly fell asleep I’m afraid. Hope he is not a close friend of yours!’

Horses for courses I guess – and some will find ‘strategy people’ inspiring. I tend to judge speakers on a sliding scale of how many minutes they keep me away from doing the crossword. As matter of interest I resisted the crossword for Professor Handy and Professor Hamel. When I saw Tom speak in London in May 2006 I never even took my crossword book with me.

Posted by Trevor Gay at October 26, 2006 4:45 PM

Sometimes we get so caught up with our work that we feel trapped in the mechanical way we think and do things. Today i needed an escape... that's when I read your ppt "The (Necessary) War on Linearity: One Engineer's (Unusual) Life's Work" and your thought provoking stimulations really worked for me!!

Thanks for the mind freeing inspirational journey Tom!

Posted by shorAlvito at October 26, 2006 5:49 PM

Tom,

I read Henry Mintzberg’s The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning
at your suggestion several years ago. I agree it is a great book.
But I still think I got more out of some of your books. In Search
of Excellence did more to change the way I look at management.

I also agree with your comments and feelings about Muhammad
Yunus and the Grameen Bank getting the Nobel Peace Prize. Will
we see you on the Motley Fool’s Foolanthropy discussion board
nominating the Grameen Foundation to be one of this year’s
Foolanthropy charities?
( http://boards.fool.com/Messages.asp?bid=112928 )

John

Posted by ShakespearesFool at October 26, 2006 6:10 PM

See this is why I remain a fan of yours. It takes guts to stare down the majority...the rationalists who pretend that life is something that can planned and structured all nice and neat and orderly. Rarely, if ever, does that conventional school of thought give peerage to the notion that chaos is something that ought not be controlled but rather embraced. In my own work, I try hard to remember that there's a sense of balance to the nature of business--order--helping clients change what can be changed, and adapt to what is immovable.

Posted by Patrick at October 26, 2006 7:19 PM

Tom - this post reminds me of some of the things that make your thinking so intriguing. You are so NOT a civil engineer in your conceptioning yet the paradox is that your civil engineering foundations may be the linear glue that allows you to organize and communicate your thoughts in a way that allows others to grasp non-linear thinking.

Here are some additional thoughts on linear thinking from another person who led the charge for new approaches to problem solving. Indeed, he felt that the very survival of our species was dependent upon approaching problems in a non-linear way.

"Conventional critical-path conceptioning is linear and self-under-informative. Only spherically expanding and contracting, spinning, polarly involuting and evoluting orbital-system feedbacks are both comprehensively and incisively informative. Spherical-orbital critical-feedback circuits are pulsative, tidal, importing and exporting. Critical-path elements are not overlapping linear modules in a plane: they are systemically interspiraling complexes of omni-interrelevant regenerative feedback circuits." - Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics 2

I absolutely love this quote. Try explaining it to a linear thinker...

-

Posted by Walter White at October 26, 2006 9:57 PM

Slide 25 - b>a (behavior shapes attitude) ... there is a wonderful Jewish legend that at the base of Mount Sinai the children of Israel said "n'asseh v'nishma," which basically means "if we do it first, then we'll understand it."

Posted by Steve Yastrow at October 26, 2006 10:31 PM

I like both Mintzberg and Porter writings, based on that I try to follow the middle path. Perhaps people like Mintzberg and Tom Peters are the rigth brain, and people like Porter are the left brain. Real people living in the real world need a whole brain (great book from D. Pink)

Posted by Carlos Pereira da Cruz at October 27, 2006 1:52 AM

For Christ’s sake why don’t we ever remember or pay tribute to Mary Parker Follet, who wrote on the topic in the early 20th century – Actually she defined management as “the art of getting things done through people” – that’s the best ever definition I have known form management – Subtle YET Distinct!

Posted by K.Sriram at October 27, 2006 1:57 AM

Tom,

Appreciate greatly your thoughts on Mintzberg. I think you should also take a look at John Kay's work in this area (strategy). Methinks you would find a kindred spirit.

But it breaks my heart that you still go after Drucker. Especially when it's so obvious( to me at least) that you profoundly misunderstand him and his views on people. And I may be wrong, but why did you not challenge him when he was still with us?

Posted by Fredd Kambo at October 27, 2006 7:52 AM

Dear Tom,

don´t you think that an hour of daily brisk walking is a good way for setting aside for planning/thinking/feeling?

Posted by Gonzalo Mateos at October 28, 2006 8:01 AM

Dear Tom,
adding to our discussion at the World Business Forum/Frankfurt on Tuesday I see your non-linear management philosophy as the most influential for managers since a long time. Simon, March and Weick smoothed the way for non-linearists in management and your merit is bringing this thinking to the managers. As a manager, consultant and scientist in the very rational German management culture I know how important you are as a management thinker.
May I add two more cool friends in this academic lineage you quoted? First I have to single out the sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998). He went to Harvard and saw himself then in a line of Parsons. Most pertinent to his studies were also Simon, March and Weick. Luhmann is aiming to address any aspect of social life within a universal theoretical framework - of which the diversity of subjects he wrote about is an indication. Luhmann himself described his theory as labyrinth-like or non-linear. The core element of Luhmann's theory is communication. Social systems for Luhmann are all systems of communication. If management is communiction thinking logically, causal, developing plans etc. is too simple. Luhmann designed a postclassical management and assumed an undecidable reality. This is very close to your management thinking, Tom. Luhmann’s disciple Dirk Baecker discovered it when he studied at Stanford twelve years ago.
Second I quote the British mathematician George Spencer-Brown. He says that the primary form of mathematical communication is not description but injunction. Postclassical management refers to Spencer-Brown’s logic of distinctions that Francisco Maturana and Humberto Varela had earlier identified as a model for the functioning of any cognitive process. The supreme criterion guiding the self-creation of any given system is a defining binary code. In this academic lineage a management thinker has to buzz around (Charles Handy), has to draw a distinction (Spencer-Brown), has to do some radical stuff (Tom Peters) or – if you quote me (and my book Innovation durch Injunktion) – has to offer injunctions. Tom, you are the management thinker that stands for this postclassical management par excellence. Your thinking has strong parallels in this academic lineage.
As a direct descendent of Niklas Luhmann (my Ph.D. advisor Dirk Baecker had Niklas Luhmann as his Ph.D. advisor) I studied for years the social system of management gurus. In this disruptive age we need nothing more than someone who comes out and draws a distinction. Postclassical academics are good at analysing and showing the way out of the planning stuff. You encourage managers acting. You change our terms and how we talk about management, as Mark Gimein said now that we live in a Tom Peters’ World.
Tom, thanks for your inspiring speech in Frankfurt. More than twenty years after your first speech in Frankfurt some German managers has changed a lot. It is thanks to you that management is seen more complex now.

Posted by Winfried W. Weber at October 28, 2006 11:02 AM

Gonzalo - AGREE on the [up to] 1 hour of BRISK exercise per day = INCREDIBLE ROI = health & wealth [meditative/creative/innovative/profit ideas].

Posted by sean at October 28, 2006 6:09 PM

Interesting post - linearist vs. non-linearist, TP.

Please refer to Gene Woolsey or Robert Woolsey (a professor at the Colorado School of Mines) and his numerous articles regarding this issue.

Posted by Kay at October 30, 2006 11:05 AM

This way I see strategic management from the perspective from an outsider. :D

Choice; Three main 'intended' strategies, this is how YOU choose to compete, or strategic stance if you like, some consideration for market structure and conditions is expected, nothing outside common sense is needed:

1 - Position-Based (hunting)
2 - Resource-Based (farming)
3 - Hustle-Based (scavenging)

X - Unintended, meaning the world didn't conform to the above (genetically modified)

ps. sorry for the food analogies ;P

Posted by Rachel Dorrell at October 30, 2006 10:17 PM

Funny thing is that Porters competitive strategy books stands right near Re-Imagine on my shelf) but thats not the topic.

I visited a conference of Michael Porter 2 years ago. In general there were some interesting thoughts in his speech. But all the system was sounding a bit too easy. There were too much in the world, that cannot be explained and solved by simple planning or doing strategy.

Porter gives you a certain way of thinking. and I think it may help in some situations or maybe on the certain levels of organization. But the world right now is so unpredictable that for me the word "strategy" even does not have any stable sense.
What about you, Tom? How do you understand "business strategy"?

The irony is that in my presentation to my Masters Diploma, I, being a student of Strategy Business, was talking about you Tom and about Seth Godin, about Trevor Gay but not about Michael Porter.

Posted by Dmitry Linkov at October 31, 2006 5:00 PM

Linearity and non-linearity come from two separate intelligences and both can work together with an amazing integration - with the kind of aware in this article and post. I am really motivated to roll this out further in a bit of a brain based blog tonight, because of the great discussion. Thanks for sparking the insights, Tom and readers! Great stuff!

Brain Based Business

Posted by Ellen Weber at November 2, 2006 10:37 PM