Kallokain

I have begun experimenting with webcasts. This is the first result:

Kevin Rutherford made a few comments on my posting on risk aversity . He also posted a link to a posting of his where he is writing about several articles on related topics, including mine. Kevin's posting is well worth reading, and so are the articles he references.

If you happen to be a CEO, have you noticed a certain sluggishness in your department managers? A reluctance to take decisive action. Perhaps not. The problem is pervasive, but it is more noticeable from the bottom of the organization than it is from the top. The reason is that even though problem causes can often be found high up, the effects are usually felt further down. Most organizations have a built in resistance to take action. It is generally safer for a person, especially for managers, to take no action at all. The illustration below shows how it works: The Current Reality Tree (CRT) shows that there are two root causes contributing to exaggerated risk aversity: Detected mistakes are punished Decisions resulting in no action are not recorded Because of this, it is a much safer strategy for an individual to take no action, than to take action, when faced with a problem. This discourages managers from taking action. Employees at the lower levels of the corporate hierarchy hesita...

I have just relaunched www.henrikmartensson.org . The site has been rewritten from the ground up. Right now, the material you'll find there is mostly about my TOC consulting business. Over time I will add material on TOC, Lean, and agile. In addition to the kallokain.blogspot.com address, the Kallokain blog can also be reached at blog.henrikmartensson.org . Please allow up to 48 hours (that would be on Sunday), to allow the address information to propagate over the Internet. (Depending on where you are, the address will work right now. Try it! )

There was some interest in my process improvement story . Both Tobias Fors and Torbjörn Kalin have commented . I talked to the manager at the café. She had noted the head-bang problem long ago, and wanted to fix it by replacing the low hanging lamps. Upper management won't let her. The lamps match other lamps in the bookstore. A possible solution would be to shorten the power cords.