management
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Years ago, one of my favorite mentors shared his view that if you don’t understand an idea well enough to explain it using an analogy, you don’t understand it. In hindsight, I think this was his version of the quote attributed to Einstein that “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Over
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Years ago, I decided to accept a position that led to me transitioning from a high-volume industry with frequent product changeover and intense market forces to a low-volume industry with greatly reduced connectivity to market dynamics. My boss at the time provided me a bit of perspective and advice that has stuck with me over the
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Real systems are messy, noisy, difficult to measure, and can be a challenge to control. Organizations and organizational dynamics often exhibit analogous behavior. In control systems, it is common to analyze linear single input single output systems. There is a lot that can be done with those tools. However, applying these tools comes with accepting some compromises. Addressing complexity
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Organizations, like spacecraft, rockets, and airplanes, rely on guidance, navigation, and control systems. Recently, I have been thinking about the similarities between guidance, navigation and control (GN&C) systems, the management and leadership systems in organizations, and how learnings from one type of system might be useful to the other type of system. At their core, GN&C
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Years ago, my first boss after I finished graduate school shared his beliefs that “all learning applies to everything else” and that “more brains are better for every job.” I learned more from him than I have probably learned from any of my subsequent bosses. Maybe that was him. Maybe that is because of where I was then
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Churchill’s writing style is one that is particularly approachable and engaging for me. His books on the Second World War, in my opinion, are an incredibly interesting perspective on that arc of history. I have always been fascinated by the contrast in strategic philosophies between Churchill and Eisenhower. I don’t recall ever coming across anything
Musings of an Analyst 