| Synopsis | IntroductionManaging When You Don't Know Where You're GoingIf you don't know where you're going, any mapwill do. 1 Thisconventional wisdom sounds right to many managers. It highlights the safety ofhaving a clear objective for your management actions. It implies that allmanagement actions are likely to be confused and inefficient if you don'thave a clear objective. If you don't have a good fix on yourdestination-be it a product or service, a strategic or competitiveoutcome, or anything else-you may as well not start the journey.For a lot of your work, though, this so-called wisdom iswrong. Why? For one thing, you can't always know your destination inadvance. Whether you're designing a new product, running a business involatile conditions, operating a process that might encounter unforeseeninputs, or just trying to figure out what to do with your life, the journeyusually involves exploration, adjustment, and improvisation. Situations inwhich you don't or can't know the results in advance are common andconsequential. All businesses face them.If you're not too narrow in what you're willingto call "management," you can manage these situations. You canenhance effectiveness and efficiency, and you can improve the likelihood ofvaluable outcomes. However, the methods you'll use will differ from, andsometimes conflict with, methods that work when you do know where you'regoing.There is an increasingly important category ofwork-knowledge work-that you can best manage by not enforcing adetailed, in-advance set of objectives, even if you could. Often in this kindof work, time spent planning what you want to do will be better spent actuallydoing (or letting others in your charge do), trying something you haven'tthought out in detail so you can quickly incorporate what you learn from theexperience in the next attempt. In appropriate conditions-only inappropriate conditions-you can gain more value from experience than fromup-front analysis. In certain kinds of work, even if you can figure out whereyou're going and find a map to get you there, that may not be the bestthing to do.Forging ahead without detailed specifications to guide youobviously requires innovation, new actions. We take this observation one stepfurther by suggesting that knowledge work, which adds value in large partbecause of its capacity for innovation, can and often should be structured asartists structure their work. Managers should look to collaborative artistsrather than to more traditional management models if they want to createeconomic value in this new century.We call this approach artful making. "Artful,"because it derives from the theory and practice of collaborative art andrequires an artist-like attitude from managers and team members."Making," because it requires that you conceive of your work asaltering or combining materials into a form, for a purpose. 2 Materials thus treated become something new, something they would not becomewithout the intervention of a maker. This definition usually points to workthat changes physical materials, iron ore and charcoal into steel, forinstance. But the work and management we're considering don'talways do that. Instead they mostly operate in imagination, in the realm ofknowledge and ideas. While artful making improves any thing that exhibitsinterdependency among its parts, we're not primarily concerned withheating metal and beating it into shapes. We're more concerned withstrategies, product designs, or software-new things that groups create bythinking, talking, and collaborating. Artful MakingAny activity that involves creating something entirely newrequires artful making. Whenever you have no blueprint to tell you in detailwhat to do, you must work artfully. A successful response to an unexpected moveby a competitor requires artful activity; so does handling a sudden problemcaused by a supplier. An artful manager operates without
| | Product Identifiers | | ISBN-10 | 0130086959 | | ISBN-13 | 9780130086952 |
| | Key Details | | Author | Lee Devin, Robert Austin | | Number Of Pages | 240 pages | | Publication Date | 2003-04-28 | | Language | English | | Publisher | FT Press |
| | Additional Details | | Copyright Date | 2003 |
| | Dimensions | | Weight | 11.5 Oz | | Height | 0.5 In. | | Width | 6 In. | | Length | 9 In. |
| | Target Audience | | Group | Trade |
| | Classification Method | | LCCN | 2003-053102 | | LC Classification Number | HD53.A96 2003 | | Dewey Decimal | 658.4/001/9 | | Dewey Edition | 21 |
| | Table Of Content | | Table Of Content | Foreword. Introduction. 1. What's Really Different About Knowledge Work. Artful and Industrial Making in Action. Realizing the Importance of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems. Rolling Out Web Technology at Ford Motor Company. Comparing Sun and Ford. Streetcar at the People's Light and Theatre Company. Comparing Sun and People's Light. The Four Qualities of Artful Making (An Artful Framework). Understanding Artful Making. 2. Artful Making Relies on Emergence. The People's Light Way of Working. Not Quite Experiment, Not Quite Discovery. Exploration and Efficiency. Emergence in Business. 3. Artful Making is Iterative, Not Sequential. Auto Making: Mostly Industrial. Software Making at Trilogy: Mostly Artful. The Iterative Structure of Play Production. The Script Is Not the Play, Nor Is It a Specification. The Writer's View of the Script. Rehearsal Process. Agile Software Development. Artful Making in Software Development and Theatre. Iteration as a Structure for Rigorous Work. 4. The Prerequisite Conditions for Artful Making. Artful Making Isn't Always the Best Approach. Reconfiguration Costs. Exploration Costs. The General Applicability of Artful Making. The Role of Enabling Technologies in Reducing the Cost of Iteration. Reducing Reconfiguration Costs: Software Development. Reducing Exploration Costs: Simulation, Prototyping, and Version Control. When Artful and Industrial Making Are Combined. How Competitive Forces Drive Work Toward Artfulness. A Common Problem: Imposing Industrial Costs on Potentially Artful Processes. The Historical Evolution of Artful Making Prerequisites. 5. Artful Making as Part of the Shift to a Knowledge Economy. Ancient Making. An Armory on the River Severn. The Costs and Benefits of Ancient Making. Toward Industrial Making. Industrial Making. Eli Whitney. Henry Ford. Frederick Winslow Taylor. The Evolution of Sequential Processes. Toward Artful Making. Artful Making. Learning to Make Artfully. 6. Artful Making Turns Industrial Notions of Control Upside Down. Managing People Who Are Smarter Than You Are. Supervision in an Industrial Context. Management in an Artful Context. Some New Realities of Management. Control in Artful Making. Physical Release. Mind Release and Focus. Sir Alec Guinness and the Challenge of Control by Release. The Director's/Manager's Artful Lever: Focusing the Group. Saving Apollo 13: Gene Kranz as Ensemble Director. The Director's/Manager's Source of Authority. The Precision of Control by Release. Control by Release. 7. Artful Making Reconceives; Industrial Making Replicates. Reconceiving Hamlet. Reconceiving to Recover Apollo 13. The Differences Between Reconceiving and Replicating. The Capabilities of Reconceiving and Replicating. Artful Making and the Customer. Never-Done, Constantly Improving Development. Reconceiving versus Compromising. Artful Collaboration. 8. Artful Making Requires a Secure Workspace. Securing the Workspace. Edmondson's "Psychological Safety" Concept. Security Beyond the Workspace. Creative Interchange. Working on Your "Edge". Finding a Physical Edge. Learning |
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