Is our fishbowl too big?

Imagine you are in a fishbowl. Imagine that you can see all around it, so you're completely aware of what's going on inside it. If you saw other fish causing havoc to the fishbowl environment so that the water is getting polluted and that the bowl has sprung a leak, would you ignore that? "Gosh, the water is running out and if I/we don't stop it draining the bowl, soon we'll have no water left!" If that was your reality, would you act?

If people want to do a good job, why don't they?

You often see it written or hear it said that people don't want to do a bad job at work. They may not love their job ("it's a means to an end") and they may not be workaholics ("I work the hours I'm paid"), but nevertheless while they are at work they don't want to do a bad job because it's demoralising and not good for self-esteem.

Viable Systems Modelling for Project Management part 8

In this series so far we have looked at each of Stafford Beers 5 Systems within the Viable Systems Model, relating them to project management, and also how the model is recursive so that the 5 systems are repeated at both lower and higher levels. I promised a round-up final post that proposed a VSM check-list for project management. That was over a year ago - how time flies! But I have got there eventually.