« Practicing identifying anecdotes | Main | Developing your narrative competence »
| 2/11/05 | | Home Comforts not Sun Tzu |
The military metaphor is dominant in many organisations. How many times have you heard colleagues talking about doing battle, gathering the troops, working in headquarters, having Chief EOs, FOs, IOs, OOs. Sun Tzu’s Art of War is often suggested reading for new managers. Here is an alternative metaphor—the organisation as a tumultuous household. Hillary Johnson’s article is funny and insightful. She recounts her experience as a new manager and the wisdom to be found in Cheryl Mendelson’s Home Comforts: The Art & Science of Keeping House. Here are some of the pearls:
- Learn how to make a meal without looking at a cookbook
- In the old days, laundering was done on Monday, after the Sabbath rest, because it involved such backbreaking labor that you needed to be fresh and rested to get through it.
- Having a meal is not the same thing as simply eating something
- Avoid walking around with knives.
What are some of the alternative metaphors you can think of which can help us understand how an organisation works?
Email this entry to a friend
View the Technorati Link Cosmos for this entry
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.anecdote.com.au/cgi-bin/mt-tback.cgi/193
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Home Comforts not Sun Tzu:
» Sun Zi, home comforts from 卦
Shawn at Anecdote posted the other day on the topic of "Sun Tzu and Home comforts". He's making a common mistake, which is to assume that the Sun Zi Bing Fa (孙子-兵法) is about war. One of my lecturers in Singapore was the same,saying that in busine [Read More]
Tracked on November 5, 2005 1:19 AM
Comments
Hi Shawn,
Just got my site's comment queue sorted out and finally saw your reply.
You're right that that I didn't address the main point of your post, which is one that I quite agree with! It just started a train of thought about Sun Zi that I wanted to run with.
However, I guess I can justify it by responding to your question: what other metaphors can we use? From my viewpoint here in Beijing, we can ask whether an organisation is a rigid Confucian hierarchy where authority and tasks are rigidly defined, or a collection of Daoist hermits collaborating according to their insight, need, and nature. Sun Zi is very much about finding the appropriate level of control and flexibility according to the time and the prevailing conditions.
Posted by: Emlyn ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.anecdote.com.au/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 22, 2005 12:13 PM