Tag Archives: Talent

Communism is dead. Long live (corporate) Communism!

05 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by in business, capitalism, future, human capital, knowledge, management, philosophy, society

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Communism

The sensible consensus is that communism became all but extinct with the end of the Cold War. I say it may be so, but the mindset that fueled it continues to live unhindered. Your next thought may be that I am referring to North Korea. But I have something much closer to home in mind: the U.S. corporate sector. Yes, you didn’t misread. I will dare to say that the mindset of the corporate sector in 2014 is eerily reminiscent of communist thinking.

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Your boss, the middleman – Part II

20 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by in business, human capital, management, Organizational Development, problem solving

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I ended my initial post on this topic with a pointer to the so-called “freelance economy”. In this post I want to take this thread further, as I think it can shed light into the future of employment.

What I was implying at the end of my initial post is that reducing or even doing away with “middleman” corporate hierarchies in a post-materialistic, fluid economy of ideas doesn’t lead to anarchy. Rather it logically leads to a “freelance economy”, a world where, in British management philosopher Charles Handy’s words, free-floating freelancer “fleas” service multiple corporate “elephants” following the need for their specific talents.

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Modern society as an inertial machine

18 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Crisis, future, human capital, learning, society, technology

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Conspiracy theories vs. idiosyncrasies

I for one am no big fan of conspiracy theories. I see them as the construct of minds unable to grasp modern life’s intricacies. The fact that few of us manage to agree within the same family leaves me suspicious as to the proliferation of occult groups with the coherence to pull the world’s strings – that is assuming they would possess the means. I have however become convinced that society doesn’t need conspiracies to create its own self-imposed idiosyncrasies which in turn come with a hefty price.

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The fear economy

10 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by in business, human capital, Organizational Development, society

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We hail the successes of the knowledge economy to improving the human livelihood, but in fact, the psychology of the typical workplace is not much different than it must have been in the middle ages. From a psychological perspective, I am comfortable claiming that we have yet to move beyond what I would call the “fear economy”.

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Empowering true talent

03 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by in business, human capital, management, Organizational Development, Uncategorized

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talented

“Managing” true talent is a misnomer. Subjecting the truly inspired to rules is akin to plowing fields with Ferraries – yes it might just work, but it sure is stupid. Use the talented rather for creating the recipes around which the hoards of less inspired can be assembled and scaled. In the same vein, don’t compensate the truly talented by the hour or with a fixed income: you would in effect incentivize them to limit their imagination. Strategy and vision are holistic products, they cannot be bought or measured by the hour, and don’t bow to quantitative rewards.

So then how can you empower the talented? Here’s a few hints.

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