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