What Dostoevsky Knew About Management
The Grand Inquisitor is the sharpest case study on control versus trust ever written. The first entry in the Greats in Literature thread.
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Each title opens the full issue on LinkedIn.
Every issue
8 issues since May 2026, newest first.
Story Is Infrastructure
Two visits to the Lucas Museum, one sentence from Mellody Hobson, and the missing wall text that proves her point. Silence is never neutral.
The Most Demanding Pay Laws in the Country
Posted ranges, the salary-history ban, and pay-data reporting force the questions good compensation design was always supposed to answer.
When 22 Votes Elect a Board
Los Angeles built the largest network of community advisory bodies in the country, then forgot to build the infrastructure that makes them heard.
Human Dignity Into Measurable Results
It can sound like a banner. It is a design specification, and most organizations miss one of its two halves.
A Reward System Is a Communication System
Mission statements aspire. The paycheck reports what you actually reward, and people read it closely.
The Audit Nobody Assigned
A volunteer body audits the city's multibillion-dollar budget every year, and almost no one knows it happens. What Budget Day teaches about civic infrastructure.
The Minnesota Model and the LA Civic Experiment We Aren't Running
What the Twin Cities built between 1952 and 1977, and what the Los Angeles harbor could borrow.
About the Notebook
Written by Thomas J. Norman, Ph.D., professor of management at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and author of Management: Optimizing Talent for Organizational Effectiveness and Compensation: Rewarding and Retaining Talent. Some issues are essays; some start from a book, a building, or a budget. For the one-idea-a-week version, see Dr. Norman's Management Memes.