Purposive Drift

Managing by form-giving

One of my daily rituals is to visit Abe Burmeister's site Abstract Dynamics. His usually thought provoking posts are fairly infrequent, but he does do a good link. (One reason for his infrequent posts may be that he does lots of other things including writing a book, under his other name,William Abraham Blaze, "Nomadic Economics" - which you can look at free here and then go and buy here)

One of his recent links that caught my attention was to an article by Richard Farson "Management by Design". In his conclusion he remarks:

"Design has many definitions, but if design is the creation of form, then it surely applies directly to leadership and management. Everything we see and hear and do has form. By its form, everything sends a metamessage. Therefore, everything is amenable to design. If we are going to seriously and systematically incorporate the approaches of social design into management, we have much to learn, and much to invent. But we can do this with the comfort of knowing that we are embracing the perspectives and approaches of an ancient, distinguished and thriving discipline, with greater relevance for the 21st century than ever before."

I point to this article for two reasons. The first is that it deserves to be read and ponder upon. The second is that it gives me an excuse to point to some of my earlier posts that relate to aspects of what he is talking about and contain links that amplify some of his points:

"The Designer as a Good Host"

"Integrative thinking"

"The Manager as a Designer"

"Nobody smokes in church"

"The Design of Possibilities"

"Second thoughts"