The future is already here, I'm just trying to aggregate it.
Managers served a purpose in an age when information had to be delivered up and down the corporate hierarchy by actual people and you were dealing with employees doing a job that they weren’t sure how they’re job fit into the overall company strategy.
Make the company transparent and turn employees into leaders and you don’t need the dead weight of management.
I totally disagree with this premise. If you have to micromanage then you have systemic problems in your organization. That’s not to say leaders shouldn’t be involved. In fact I think the best leaders do get heavily involved in the pieces of the business that matter the most. Steve Jobs was heavily involved in product design but only at certain points of the process. He didn’t micromanage the whole thing.
It’s about knowing what the most important parts of your business are and making sure you’re there to direct the right course of action.
Gen X has always been that small little group of slackers sandwiched between the selfish Baby Boomers and the self-entitled Generation Y.
But when I read articles like this: Gen X Hits Another Bump in the Road
Here’s the bad news for Gen X: at each point thus far, you’ve drawn a pretty short straw. Your timing — at least in the context of contemporary generations, and through no fault of your own — could hardly have been worse. Not only did your childhood years coincide with social changes that significantly eroded trust and idealism, but during the early years of your adulthood, you have hit various economic landmarks at unfavorable points in the cycle.
I just remember articles like this: Generation X Doesn’t Want to Hear It
Generation X is used to being ignored, stuffed between two much larger, much more vocal, demographics. But whatever! Generation X is self-sufficient. It was a latchkey child. Its parents were too busy fulfilling their own personal ambitions to notice any of its trophies—which were admittedly few and far between because they were only awarded for victories, not participation.
We don’t want pity. We don’t want a bail out. We’re the most entrepreneurial generation ever. EVER! We don’t need your dreams or your rules. We’re too busy making our own. And we sure don’t want your pity.
There is one trait that I’ve gained over the last several years and that’s patience. It hasn’t come easily and sometimes I end up acting patient even when I’m not because I know that not being (or acting) patient will do more damage than being impatient.
That’s why I loved this quote about Steve Jobs:
He learned the value of patience and the ability to feign it when he lost it.
