Topic: "Beyond Management: Taking Charge at Work "
Mark Addleson is a teacher, writer-researcher, and consultant, with a PhD in management. He began this journey in South Africa at the Graduate School of Business, in Johannesburg, at the time of the Soweto Uprising. This phase ended in the mid 90’s with the birth of a democratic new nation. At the time he headed the school’s general management program and consulted to organizations in many sectors.
Crossing the Atlantic he joined the faculty of George Mason University. He was instrumental in starting the Masters degree in Organization Development and Knowledge Management (ODKM) in the School of Public Policy and served as the program’s founding director.
A recovering economist, Mark was a director of Econometrix (Pty) Ltd. for a number of years, consulting to a wide range of companies and government departments. He is now an Associate of the OCL Group, LLC.
Program:
Mark Addleson’s book, "Beyond Management: Taking Charge at Work" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), is about management and knowledge-work and the fact that they are completely incompatible.
Managers and consultants alike – in fact everyone who works – should be paying attention to work, but we don’t. We are focused on managing and on ‘six D’s’ –documents, data, directives, deliverables, deadlines, and dollars – that have nothing to do with getting things done.
Looking ‘inside’ work, at what it is, what people do, and what it takes to do it well, we discover that management practices, which evolved in the industrial age for organizing factory-work, are completely unsuited to organizing knowledge-work. The result is all kinds of breakdowns at work.
In this session, Mark will set the scene for a general discussion by highlighting the nature of knowledge-work, what it means to wear management lenses, and why these hide the most important aspects of work. In the discussion he would like to hear participants’ responses to these arguments and their views on where we go from here.
Time: 8:00 AM - 9:30 AM
Location:
Insperity - Rockville Office
1 Preserve Parkway, Suite 100
Rockville, MD 20852
Cancellation policy: If Federal work force doesn’t need to come in to work that day. See OPM website or radio announcement.
Additional notes: For specific questions about the program, contact the facilitator.
*Please register in advance so that seating can be prepared.