Self-Management and the Holy Grail

by Paul Green

We like this Paul Green’s article he published in Morning Star Self-Management Institute’s Synaptein newsletter (Winter 2011). Here are few excerpts:

Competitive advantage is generally defined as the ability of a firm to outperform its competitors through some unique attribute the firm has access to.That’s a little abstract, so think of competitive advantage as that “thing” that causes you to choose one business over another when you’re deciding where to spend your money…

The modern organization must be reinvented.The person closest to the action must be equipped and enabled to take action when necessary. They have to have information; they have to have decision-making tools; they have to have the authority to take whatever action needed to enable the organization to continue to perform excellently. Sadly, the course the business world seems to be taking is the exact opposite. We laud MBAs as the chosen few who are able to make enlightened business decisions. We restrict access to information on a “need to know” basis. We randomly divvy out authority based on some false hierarchy—ironically giving MORE authority to people the FURTHER away they are from the actual work being done in the firm. And we, essentially, ask employees to be automatons. We tell them with our management systems, “Don’t make decisions, simply do what you’re told.”

View the full article here