YKSIW

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by: Sigurd Rinde

You Know Something Is Wrong…

With management theory when the Roman army established that ten subordinates per boss was the right number (decurions, centurions..), and now 2,000 years later, 100 years of management schools and 40,000 management handbooks in print we believe the right number is eight.

With management practice when those 40,000 management handbooks does not help much.

With management practice when it keeps alive a whole army of consultants that lives very well indeed and the results are barely noticeable over time.

With organisational hierarchies when millions read and enjoy Dilbert every day. Worse, that most of his work is based on reality.

With organisational hierarchies when society measures your success by "position" instead of what you created and did.

With organisational hierarchies when the worst thing you can do to your boss or your subordinate is to bypass him/her.

With tree structures when I forget where I put that file three weeks ago, and I do not even remember what the folder name was.

With modern enterprise software when the must-have-tool for the very best and biggest systems is not even a part of the system: Excel.

With modern enterprise software when reconciliation is still a major issue.

With modern enterprise IT systems and management practices when you spend hours on creating reports, pestering others to report and being pestered yourself.

With modern enterprise IT systems when middle managers tells you that they spend hours every week to "botch the system" or write snippets of code to survive with the monolithic and rigid top-to-bottom stuff.

With the whole system when about ten percent of what I pay for music or a book goes to the actual product; music and content.

With the whole system when on average I pay at least 50 percent for broadly defined information (think over what you pay for the actual product, it be a shirt, car or a good story) that could easily be replaced with cheap information and communication technology.

With the concept of marketing when you switch channels immediately when the advertising starts.

With the concept of marketing when you immediately go aggressive when some voice on the phone during dinner goes "Good evening Sir, I’m…. from the firm…. and I would like to offer you…".

With the concept of marketing when such callers and e-mailers have become today’s poltergeists.

With all of the above when it relies on push instead of pull and we all know inherently what we detest (push) and what we love (pull).

With us all when we know this and still try to patch and tweak something that is so obviously wrong at it’s core!

The time is ripe to right the wrong.