
My Steam Engine is Broken – Contents
My Steam Engine is Broken explores 10 paradoxes: 10 things that organisations do that directly prevent them from achieving the things that they know – and overtly say – that they need to achieve. The ten paradoxes are addressed in each chapter; a final chapter reminds us that we need emotionally healthy workplaces.
My Steam Engine is Broken – Content
Introduction – The modern organisation is still structured and managed in the same way as the first manufacturing companies that sprang up in the Industrial Revolution – with a little bit of tweaking from early-twentieth century ‘scientific management’. Not surprisingly, this outmoded structure is no longer delivering success in the Age of Ideas.
Chapter 1 – Learning to let go: How control is killing the organisation
Chapter 2 – What gets measured is what gets done: But are we measuring the right things?
Chapter 3 – Lose the fruit bowl: When ‘efficiency’ masks lack of ambition
Chapter 4 – The innovation committee: Be disruptive; you have two hours
Chapter 5 – Everybody’s talkin’ at me: I don’t hear a word they’re saying
Chapter 6 – A waste of space: Making the workspace work
Chapter 7 – In praise of anarchy: Why corporate democracy is not the answer
Chapter 8 – You’e the leader: Now find 100 more leaders
Chapter 9 – Don’t do networking: be networked
Chapter 10 – Increasing the gene pool: Why diversity is everything and monoculture is no culture at all
Chapter 11 – Getting emotional: The emotionally healthy organization