Reflections on Management

Reflections on Management

Reflections on Management blends theory with practical insight of Dr. Tom Galvin - a career military officer turned scholar-practitioner - to offer a series of in-depth reflections on how key management ideas play out in practice. What is the actual meaning of competitive advantage? How do organizations deal with death? Why is change inherently paradoxical? Tune in to hear Tom reflect on these, and numerous other questions by drawing on his long and eventful career as senior military leader!

Episodes

S7E10 - Owning and Appraising Knowledge (Knowledge Management, Conclusion)

December 20, 2022 • 20 mins
In this episode, I address a couple of critical points that drive what information is retained and what is withheld -- Who owns the information and who determines its value? And do our methods of establishing ownership and appraising knowledge make sense?
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S7E09 - Process Models and Other Oversimplifications (Knowledge Management, Part 9)

November 22, 2022 • 19 mins
In this episode, I present the process-based meta-narrative that addresses organizational actions. Going beyond the simple models of flowcharts or sequences of steps, these metanarratives capture the ranges of possible outcomes and the paths to get there.
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S7E08 -- The Drama of Decision Making (Knowledge Management, Part 8)

October 25, 2022 • 19 mins
In this episode, I present the preference-based meta-narrative that helps explain the way that decision makers deal with complexity -- both in terms of developing and selecting alternatives and in terms of the emotions that the decision generates.
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S7E07 - Sequencing Activity into Streams (Knowledge Management, Part 7)

September 27, 2022 • 17 mins
In this episode, I present the stream meta-narrative that helps capture sequences of interdependent processes that naturally flow from some sort of inputs to some sort of outputs. These metanarratives help explain complex decision spaces. I'll also give relevant examples.
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S7E06 - Stories of the Ordinary Experience (Knowledge Management, Part 6)

August 30, 2022 • 22 mins
In this episode, I talk about how I streamline the corporate vocabulary in the previous episode and use it to develop a meta-narrative that summarizes the full set of experiences in the organization by levels of deviation from the norm. Sound complicated, but hopefully you'll find it isn't.
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S7E05 - Navigating the Corporate Vocabulary (Knowledge Management, Part 5)

August 23, 2022 • 18 mins
Words matter, and sometimes the terms used in an organizational setting differ from common definitions and therefore create confusion. This is doubly difficult for an outside observer who is trying to understand the organization's behavior. I present an icebreaker exercise in this episode I use to help expose how different people define things.
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S7E04 - Meta-Narratives of Level and Utility (Knowledge Management, Part 4)

July 26, 2022 • 23 mins
How does one tell the difference between information meant for beginners versus information meant for experts? The short answer is the level of abstraction. What is meant for beginners tends to be more detailed or more prescribed than what is meant for experts. But there is more to it as the usage of the information is equally important. In this episode I talk about how to put these two ideas together -- levels of knowledge with th...
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S7E03 - Organizing Information Through Meta-Narrative (Knowledge Management, Part 3)

June 28, 2022 • 15 mins
There's an inherent challenge between the organization's preferred narrative that may drive how it organizes its corporate knowledge and the way individuals sort their component parts. One narrative may not fit all perspectives. What then?
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S7E02 - Transforming, Not Sorting, the Information (Knowledge Management, Part 2)

May 31, 2022 • 17 mins
When reviewing old archives, it occurred to me that the archive serves as a window into the organization's behavior, but while the products of knowledge are present, much of the meaning behind them get lost. How did I think about rebuilding that knowledge?
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S7E01 - Fifteen Years Archived on DVD (Knowledge Management, Part 1)

April 26, 2022 • 16 mins
Busy professionals are so awash with information, much of it irrelevant or uninteresting, that they rarely have time to go back and sort through it all and make sense of it. Instead, all this stuff ends up occupying storage space or sitting somewhere in the cloud. Well, I undertook a project to dive through an archive holding fifteen years worth of information on DVDs stored in a closet, and I learned a lot about what it means to g...
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S6E08 - Ideal Negotiations Through Pragmatism (The Social Contract, Part 8)

June 1, 2021 • 19 mins
In this final episode of the series, I ask what does 'right' look like in how we solve social problems and re-negotiate the social contract. What must we do once we decide to get people to come to the table? The short answer, as I reveal here, is rooted in classic pragmatism. Classic pragmatism, which is geared toward practical solutions to practical problems, and eschews theoretical or ideological approaches. But this is not easy...
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S6E07 - Ideal Engagements Among Collectives and Individuals (The Social Contract, Part 7)

May 25, 2021 • 19 mins
I complete the list of principles for re-negotiating the Social Contract and setting the stage for what constitutes the idea conversation for solving a complex social issue. What are principles that suggest the ideal ways that collectives deal with other collectives in the environment? Or how individuals should deal with each other?
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S6E06 - The Meaning of Duty, Responsibility, and Loyalty (The Social Contract, Part 6)

May 4, 2021 • 17 mins
Along with the ideal collective that acts with justice, equality, and fairness comes the ideal member, one who fulfills the principles of duty, member responsibility, and loyalty -- principles that leaders also must fulfill while setting proper conditions for their members.
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S6E05 - The Meaning of Justice, Equality, and Fairness (The Social Contract, Part 5)

April 27, 2021 • 19 mins
To resolve and efficiently and effectively renegotiate the social contract, we've got to find common ground. But we have to first change the way we react to things that we strongly disagree with. That begins with finding a language that sustains our emotional commitment to what we believe, but opens the door to shared interests with those we otherwise disagree with. I will explore one part of this common language associated with th...
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S6E04 - The Stilting of Competition (The Social Contract, Part 4)

March 30, 2021 • 19 mins
How does our assessment of how one "wins" drive us to throwing social competitions, and thus the social contract, out of balance? And even if the social contract is fixed, how can we prevent other forms of injustice from working their way in?
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S6E03 - On Power and Communication (The Social Contract, Part 3)

March 23, 2021 • 19 mins
This episode expands on the previous episode to explain the influences of power and communication over the competitive environment. What are the characteristics of the strategies used to shape such competition and what effects do they have on the social contract?
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S6E02 - On Systems and the Competitive Environment (The Social Contract, Part 2)

March 11, 2021 • 18 mins
Our focus on interpersonal relationships, though valid, is insufficient to overcome the problems in the social contract. We must also look at how we view competition and its role in societies and organizations.
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S6E01 - On Social Contracts (The Social Contract, Part 1)

March 2, 2021 • 17 mins
This is the first episode in a multi-part series about renegotiating the social contract we globally share to addressing inequality and spur dialogue between parties who present view each other as adversaries.
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S5E09 - When Organizations Allow Expert Knowledge to Just Walk Away

December 1, 2020 • 19 mins
Turnover can be a devastating thing to some organizations, the loss of expertise and experience, if not transferred in some way to existing members, can disrupt the organization's ability to perform at the highest level over time. I discuss two types of brain drain that organizations may experience when its experts walk out the door (whether departure or retirement) with their knowledge and propose a 'grand narrative' approach to e...
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S5E08 - How Mandatory Training Can Feel Less Mandatory

November 24, 2020 • 15 mins
Mandatory training serves important purposes but can be painful and ineffective in execution. Are there ways to do it better? Here I run down some of the common failings in the development of training materials for mandatory requirements, often developed for online delivery, and offer recommendations to better align these materials with the overall purposes set by leaders.
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