HBR articles are a bit like comic books for execs in that they always seem to be exactly what you want to read. That’s the style. If you read enough issues of HBR you can pretty much prove or disprove any management technique you can imagine. That’s because business is about people and people are pretty hard to predict and model when it comes to thought and associated behavior! That’s what makes all this so interesting.
Zef, I see where you are going with this argument, but I’m not buying it. If I had suddenly become in charge of a project and the boss came to me with what he called “context augmentation process,” which sounded a little like a recommendation, the phrase “context augmentation” would sound like a foreign or unusual concept to my ear because I'd never heard of it before. It’s been my experience that most people recoil a bit when someone hits them with unrecognizable terms with the implication that, "you should know this." My reaction would be to do exactly what he tells me to do and not deviate.
Zef, I see where you are going with this argument, but I’m not buying it. If I had suddenly become in charge of a project and the boss came to me with what he called “context augmentation process,” which sounded a little like a recommendation, the phrase “context augmentation” would sound like a foreign or unusual concept to my ear because I'd never heard of it before. It’s been my experience that most people recoil a bit when someone hits them with unrecognizable terms with the implication that, "you should know this." My reaction would be to do exactly what he tells me to do and not deviate.
WIlliam White