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Strategy Without a Roadmap

AlwaysOn is sort of like the new Fast Company or similar magazines of the go-go late '90's Silicon-Valley-as-the-center-of-the-world.

Having said that, they do have some interesting content, including a transcript of a Churchill Club panel Ann Livermore of HP, John Thompson of Symantec (formerly of IBM), and John Hagel of McKinsey & Company (or at least I am assuming he is still there, they simply refer to him as "strategy author.") The panel discussion, "Strategy Without a Roadmap" has some fluff in it, but they succintly express views which EyeToIT readers may find valuable.

Technology Is Not for Babysitting

Dr Carsten Sorensen of the London School of Economics has recently released a report comissioned by Microsoft. The report titled, "The Future Role of Trust in Work" [PDF] has some findings that are potentially troubling, and not for the reasons privacy activists may be concerned.

In a nutshell, the report observes that network technolgy such as cell phones, e-mail, instant messaging and phone-based text messaging have created an environment in which managers are more prone to micromanage. From the LSE press release:

He describes how the old classical management hierarchies of the past are being replaced by flatter networked structures. He explained how micromanagement causes people to spend a lot of time proving that they are working, instead of getting on with actually working. The trick will be setting up a system where the workers see a benefit in being monitored. ’But building the kind of trust between management and workers can take years, and it can be erased in a second,’ Sorensen notes.