Quote of the day

“A brilliant European sociologist, Norbert Elias, wrote a history of manners called The Civilising Process. He figured out how people conducted themselves in the tntimate matters of daily life many centuries ago by reading what authors of etiquette books were telling them not to do. Why write books telling people not to defecate in public, he reasoned, if that’s not exactly what people are doing all the time? And so it is today. Change management would not be the industry it is if organisations were changing. Change management is huge precisely because organisations are not fundamentally changing”.

From The Support Economy by Shoshana Zuboff and James Maxmin.

Sony appoints Welshman as Supreme Being

The New York Times is reporting that Sony has appointed a Welsh-born former television news journalist called Howard Stringer (currently running Sony Corporation of America) to succeed Nobuyuki Idei, the current chairman and chief executive, who is retiring next year after Sony’s 60th anniversary. You can bet that this Stringer is no Welsh nationalist — he’s accepted a knighthood, no doubt for “services to industry”. Just like that other devout monarchist, ‘Sir’ Bill Gates.