Monthly Archives: October 2014

Phaticized work : Gladhanding

Posted on by

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAPhaticized work is defined as a covert and often unconscious form of corruption in which organizational resources are diverted to personal ends by way of social instincts.

Phatic is a term borrowed from linguistics, where it refers to speech that serves a social function rather than conveying information. For our purposes, phatic refers to any workplace activity that perhaps appears to serve the organization’s mission, but actually serves a social function that either does not genuinely support the mission or undermines it.

Today’s example of phaticized work is gladhanding.

Continue reading

Odd Thought on pronunciation

Posted on by

Reading-Jester-OddThoughts“I got a lot of thanking to do.” – grateful person or pensive hillbilly

Category: Odd Thoughts

My Two Cents on Disruptive Creativity

Posted on by

mytwocentsHere’s a thought about harnessing “disruptive ideas.”

If you create a process to absorb and benefit from disruptive ideas, the truly disruptive ideas are not the ones you absorb, but the ones that disrupt your absorption process.

It’s like how “think outside the box” has become the new box. Creativity/disruptiveness are either there or not. You can’t institutionalize spontaneity.

Category: My Two Cents

More proof of the corruptive effects of phatic elements in the workplace

Posted on by

transverse-selectionUniversity of Pennsylvania social network researcher Lynn Wu recently discovered a perfect example of transverse selection.

After analyzing several years of anonymized electronic communications from 8000+ employees of a tech firm, she found that while instrumental communications about practical matters drove productivity, social communications about sports and primate food-sharing rituals—like lunches and coffee breaks—drove retention during lay-offs.

More importantly, she found that these two types of communication were substitutes for each other, meaning that they can’t occupy the same network space at the same time.

In simpler terms: practical thinkers did the mission, but social thinkers kept their jobs when push came to shove.

Continue reading

Visual Poetry – John Wilkes Booth

Posted on by

A brief commentary on human nature.
JohnWilkesBooth

Category: Poetry

Odd Thought on Television Dramas

Posted on by

Reading-Jester-OddThoughtsAmbidexterous – “I can’t figure out if this guy is a serial killer or not.”

Category: Odd Thoughts

Visual Poetry – i broke a fence

Posted on by

ibrokeafence

Category: Poetry

Follow-up on Ebola : Practical thinking is strategic, managing expectations is tactical

Posted on by

ebolaNot to stray too far into politics, but one of the purposes of New Gov Office is to save government from the corruption and paralysis of tactical obsession.

Recent events indicate a lot of upside-down thinking in our approach to the Ebola crisis.

Continue reading

Some punctuation we can do without

Posted on by

We occasionally need to bring our organizational discussion down a notch in intensity, and talk about some rather mundane principles of communication.

Today? Punctuation.

Continue reading

What to watch for in the Ebola post-game analysis : Avoiding the people factor

Posted on by

ebolaWhat will we see in response to revelations that Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital (THPH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) dropped the ball on persons infected with or at risk from the Ebola virus?

At New Gov Office, we expect to see the social factors of failure aggressively suppressed, in the all-too-typical hesitation to assign personal consequences for failed performance.

Continue reading