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Found this piece, entitled, Playing to our strengths in this morning's Globe and Mail. The author is an executive coach -- not the high-priced kind that calls some of the money shots from an expensive box overlooking the game, but the wayward "orgy-b" type trying to convince organizations and their employees that they can be all they can be, but I digress -- who has prepared a little item that probably hits home for a few of my loyal readers. Here's an example from the text
If you managed a hockey team, would you put the goalie on left wing? Would you ask Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong to go back from the front to fetch water for his cycling team? Would you fix Tiger Woods' swing because it's not what other golfers have used?The article's a nice little warm pick-me-up for those of you churning your way through and fretting about the annual review process.
Of course not. You're going to put your best team members in the place where you can use their particular skills and let each apply their style and strengths to your advantage.
But if it's so darn obvious, why try to force employees into positions they can't play or change their style to conform with what you've always used? Why look at what's wrong with them instead of what's right with them?
It's managing for mediocrity and the results speak for themselves: stress and burnout, boring and bland corporate people who look over their shoulders as they speak.
This, from The Globe and Mail, is worth a thought for a few minutes on at least three levels. Here's one quotation from the very short item:
Three-fourths (76 per cent) of global executives would prefer more satisfaction from their job over money (18 per cent) or power (6 per cent), according to research today by executive recruitment firm, Korn/Ferry International.
In a post yesterday, I noted that Bill G had made a statement in Davos to the effect that spam would be eradicated by a post-office like mechanism. Naturally, I thought the world's most forward-looking rich guy was thinking of the actual post offices as the mechanism for doing so.
Maybe he was. However, with a tip from Dean, I found out that Microsoft has been working on solving this issue for some time in a project called Penny Black. In short, Penny Black (name taken from the first British postal stamp) is research into how to make spam infeasible through mostly technological means that include an economic cost to the issuer rather than on the recipient of the emailings. Good idea. It is, however, quite possible based on what they're doing that MS thinks it can be the post office of the 21st (electronic)-century.
Of course there's that whole independent, disinterested, regulated, socially-benefitting aspect of the post office in the communications paradigm that Microsoft doesn't actually fit . . . Keep at it Bill
Oops. For those of us "in the business," this may come as something of a shock -- especially if we're using the 10:1 rule with US data aas our guidepost. Of course, the article (and maybe even the Ipsos-Reid study that spawned it) doesn't make as plain the following information and questions:
Lot's of "privacy stuff" today. [Duh! It's Monday . . . slow business news day, remember? ed.] This item in the NYTimes, entitled, Plans for Wireless Directory Raise Concerns About Privacy is interesting. Background: telecomm carriers considering publishing of a white pages for cellular phones; law put before both the House and the Senate (US) to require user "opt-in" to protect privacy; privacy advocacy groups insisting that it is a privacy imposition and should not be done.
What nonsense! What a red herring! What . . . [insert something else displaying proper level of indignance here]!
First, the telcos need to publish a wireless directory to re-generate revenues that have been lost to the waning land-line publishing operation. So, they want to make money off the listing as they've done FOREVER.
Second, those opposed to it are less concerned about privacy in the "you shouldn't know that about me" variety than about privacy in the "do not disturb me" variation. [Sadly there doesn't appear to be a set of different words for these two meanings -- at least not in English. Maybe, given the debate that is developing, there should be. But, I digress. ed.] Regardless, neither is or has been a RIGHT of holders of a telecommunications address, EVER. Nor, probably, should it be. So, despite the fact that I completely agree with this side's desires -- who wants telemarketers to have the cell phone number too? -- the argument and action is cloudy nonsense.
Third, who's heard of the philosophical paradox of the immovable object and the irresistible force? That's what we have here: social desire facing off against the profit motive. Hoo-wah!
Finally, if/when the wireless connection becomes more pervasive than the land line connection, what happens? What's the logic behind it.
It's not exactly bread and circuses, but it does keep one amuse while the City burns.
A couple tenuously related Bill Gates news items today that hit close to home.
First, Bill is in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum [What, again my invite was lost? That's nine years running!! ed.] and is, naturally, on the podium at least once. This year he's promising the elimination of spam (email not the fake meat kind, although both are interesting propositions). OK, whatever. Another plug for some Microsoft upgrade or another. Yes, but no. Soothsaying Bill points to . . . the post office for the solution. Well, not exactly, but close enough. Here's a couple grafs from the NYTimes:
The third way [spam will be elminated], which Mr. Gates said was likely to arrive later but be the long-term solution, would require that e-mail messages sent by strangers come with postage attached, the equivalent of a postage stamp.Given my employ: You Rock Bill!.
"If the sender is your long-lost brother," he said, the payment can be declined, costing the sender nothing.
But recipients who want to fight spam would always accept the payment if the incoming mail appeared to be spam, making the sending of such messages uneconomic.
Britain will give an honorary knighthood to Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates in recognition of his contribution to enterprise in Britain, the government said Monday.Now, he can't be called "Sir Bill," because he's not British -- or a citizen of the Commonwealth -- but he'll officially be aristocracy of a sort.
The murky depths of the privacy issue (or non-issue, depending on how you view it) created by the effect of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) seems pretty opaque right now. But, as this item in The Globe and Mail shows with regard to the law's impact on law firms, "you ain't seen nothing yet."
The law has wrinkles that need to be worked out which probably nobody foresaw in the good intent of four years ago. One of two things is going to happen: (a) we're going to have a significant shift in information transmission and holding -- short term very likely; or (b) the Court will start changing the law through a number of challenges, and the whole world of privacy and information, etc. is going to be (d)evolving for the next decade.
Should create "privacy" job opportunities though . . . for those who care and get on board early.
If you are taking the time to peruse this blog I'll assume you have others on an "A" list that you read. So, logically, you read. If you're here, it's for one of three reasons: 1. I've conned you into it because you're family or friend. 2. You found your way here by recommendation one day and liked something, and are patiently waiting for something witty/relevent/interesting to happen again. 3. You found your way here because I state an interest in complexity, emergence, self-organization, etc., etc. This post is about the last one.
Credit Suisse First Boston, notable Wall Streeters, have been holding an event called the Thought Leader Forum on what would seem to be an annual basis. David Weinberg pointed the way to the 2003 Thought Leader Forum page. Last year's forum was specifically centred on the concepts of self-organization and the speakers were (as usual, it seems) VERY high calibre. The previous forums appear to have been geared toward subsets of this fascinating (to me anyway) subject. Anyway, if this emerging science interests you in general of for your day job, there are a number of papers and concept cards there that are well-worth reading.
Does anybody know how to get invited to this thing?
Home from work today -- "sick." Feels wrong not to be working, and, in fact, have my laptop open doing some strategy writing anyway -- over the Mrs.'s protestations. Problem is that I'm not sick in the "got pneumonia" sense -- been there done that -- but in the "I've got a very peculiar migraine" way.
For those who care to be Cliff Clavenesque at their next dinner party or around the water cooler should the subject come up, here's a little tidbit about migraines. They are not always the "my head is exploding" variety of super-headache that most people equate with the word. Sometimes there isn't even a headache at all -- at least initially -- just a load of unseemly and sometimes debilitating symptoms. I found this out a few years ago because I would periodically either (a) lose part of my vision in the central focal area, so that when I was looking at someone's face for instance, I would be mentally filling in the bottom-left quarter because in actuality I wasn't seeing it, or (b) my field of vision was full of starbursts, or (c) my peripheral vision would suddenly be quite milky. Long story short, went to a neurologist and found out these were migraines: peculiar because there was no headache.
Well, I've come a long way. Now, apparently, these initial symptoms are leading indicators only. What follows is a massive headache, dizziness, light sensitivity, periodic loss of equilibrium and nausea, randomly interspersed [sp?] with boughts of general well-being of the "I'm feeling OK, what am I doing here," variety. So, here I am. It sucks.
I must be sick because this very post contradicts my opening position for the blog: that it wouldn't become some moronic slice-of-my-life diary. I'll try to do better. Maybe as soon as today . . . maybe.
What the hell do I know about wireless industry -- in the USA? Probabaly a lot less than analysts and people who make a living there. But, for an out-of-industry foreigner, I think I do OK. More than that, I know people who know. And, they told me this kind of consolidation in the US wireless industry was coming SOON. It seems that having so many incoherent and non-standardized (i.e., their registries, etc., let alone their choice of platform) organizations doesn't work so well for customers. Besides, if the companies themselves didn't do it, consumers would -- now that the stickiness of keeping a cool phone number doesn't matter.
Cingular gets AT&T? Verizon soon to step up to the buffet? What's on the table: BellSouth? Nextel?
I watch digital identity for fun (not profit, at least by trend) and take notice of interesting news. Here's an interesting item from two perspectives.
First, technology gets taken up and used in ways that may not be especially obvious to those who introduce them. I think its satisfactorily true that innovations are shaped by the people upon whom they are foisted: "you think we want this, but we'll use it like this for that." As the Globe and Mail article linked below shows, public schools are using security passes as a means to both protect property and children. Frankly, given the relative ease that perverts and other malcontents have in abducting children from around schoolyards, I applaud the initiative.
Second, you can count on somebody taking issue with anything that veers from the status quo. An excerpt from the story, entitled Schools resorting to ID cards after thefts:
"But civil libertarians say that forcing students to wear identification in school and even having video cameras watch them will make teenagers feel like criminals.I have to work in a building that requires a security badge -- as do most of the people I know. When I go through an airport, I practically have to keep my ID visible (and it's only a matter of time before . . .). Although I may feel like a prisoner in my cube, I'm not. So, boys and girls, OR BUSYBODIES SPEAKING ON THEIR BEHALF, welcome to the new millennium.
'We believe that schools are academies and places of learning, and with the recent trends of invading students' privacy . . ., the academy is starting to look more like a reformatory,' said Kirk Tousaw of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association."
". . . I come to bury Caesar not to praise him . . ." I'm late to the schadenfreude party called for the late great Conrad Black, but he's still a hero of a sort. Sadly though, pride -- as usual -- came before a fall. [What the hell is the matter with people -- don't they eventually see this coming, especially the smart and really well-read ones like Black? Ed.] I don't think it was his business dealings and skill -- or lack thereof -- that took Connie down, it was the hubris that overtook him. He was, after all, Peter Newman's "Establishment Man" in his thirties. How could he not be infallible? Well, as usual, when you stop looking, you'll find it (I think that's Taoist.)
Oh well. Such is life. The friends, the dough, the salary, the assets, the business that is his identity . . . Next gone will be the houses or the wife: I'm betting on the wife (high end real estate is a hard to unload right now apparently).
I got a heart rate monitor governor for Christmas and have been paying attention to heart rate matters fastidiously. My friends are working on my behalf too. Like my friend Warren, who noticed an interesting heart-rate inconsistency in the Sharper catalogue. In the picture below, taken from the Sharper catalog, check out the highlighted items.
Wow! Get off the ephedrine, lady!!
I'm from the centre of Canada where the temperature is known to drop to very low places on the thermometer and not come back up until somebody says, "Everyone ready to go to Cancun?" So you'd think that I'd be as used to the cold as a Yeti. Not so. It's been particularly cold, lately -- even for me. I thought it was just me getting old and soft. But no.
It seems it's been really cold lately. Even The Weather Network has had to make changes to its reporting. Plus temperatures just look better! [Note the scale: absolute zero Kelvin is -236 degree centigrade, I think.
My friend Sanjay, from Chicago, who is an engineer and knows these things, recommends pulling the electrical cabling out of the house because at these temperatures they just become super-conductors. Well, gonna hafta rely on fire, I guess.
For all of you reading today (Jan 15), I've decided that today will be our 24-hour "no light special" readership drive. To anybody referring a reader and can prove that said reader makes recursive Progress his/her primary news/ opinion/ humour/ commentary/ irritation/ schadenfreude Web resource, I will guarantee the availability of hydro-electric power at your home after the weekend.
C'mon people. Lets make the server hurt. Only 15-1/2 hours left.
As an article in today's New York Times points out, online ad spending -- at least at Yahoo! [yeah, I know they don't use it much anymore, but I like the slammer!] -- went up.
"Yahoo, the big Internet portal, said its revenue from online advertising, its largest business line, was $1.2 billion in 2003, up 84 percent. That exceeded the expected ad sales for America Online, which has led online advertising since the dawn of the commercial Internet. This year, AOL's ad revenue is expected to be about $775 million, down 41 percent, said Jordan Rohan, of Schwab Soundview Capital Markets."So, was it a zero-sum shift? Maybe. Apparently Yahoo! actually raised CPM and got a demand expansion of unprovable size. Much of its increased volume came from the consolidated earnings of online advertising sales operation, Overture Services, which it bought in October.
A (the?) loyal Wild Rose country reader forwarded an image of an email making the rounds in Calgary. It's apparently the early salvo from Mr. Kraik, Esq., precursor to the law suit reported last month.
My first reaction was, "Wow, what pompous windbag!" I read it to my wife, and she cut me down a notch with: "Sounds like you might sound if it were your daughter." Obviously, I winced because she softened it a little bit by adding, "He sure is full of himself though." So, I read it again and have decided that, yes, I probably would defend my daughter equally vigorously in a similar circumstance.
But counselor Kraik is doing neither himself nor his son any favours by deluding himself with a fantastical notion of his child's purity and perfection. More than that, what kind of example is he setting by blaming somebody else for each problem and shouldering no responsibility? I wouldn't want to meet young Alexander when he becomes a teenager who has come to believe in his entitlement.
As though it weren't bad enough that Verisign controls Internet root DNS, now, as this article in the Washington Post (VeriSign to Manage Tags for Consumer Items) presents, they have now been selected to administer the directory for the forthcoming commercial RFID network. This network will likely become the replacement for bar-codes (AND SO MUCH MORE . . . as Phil Ronco might say).
Can you spell: "T-O-O M-U-C-H I-N-F-R-M-A-T-I-O-N I-N O-N-E P-L-A-C-E"
The venerable New York Times, still not bowing to the power of blogs, has a story about where people get their information. Now that the Internet has a penetration of over 2/3s of the population, it prints this AP item based on a recent poll that finds: Internet Said to Gain as Source for News.
I may not be the most pop-culture sensitive old fart on the planet, but you gotta ask, "Where have you people been?"
Every sales book (i.e., "how to sell") I've ever read has a section on overcoming objections. The most prevalent objection is the "price is too high" objection. Most suggest the one tack to take is to isolate price as the only objection and then defeat it in some way. So, to the province of Manitoba and it's smart (read: biometric) driver's license look-see, I ask, "If price were not an object, would it be the way you'd go?
If it truly is only price, and everything else is a go -- as it will be eventually, all Luddites take warning! -- then there are only two options:
Think about it.
I've never been especially good at understanding women. And, I've noticed, I'm not alone among my fellow men. Truth is, I think, women suffer the same way. A lot of ink has been spilled trying to figure out why Mars and Venus are not the same.
Yesterday I was looking through the local community newspaper [hunting for someone and some technology to make my double-pane windows better insulated ñ excluding plastic wrap] and came across this. It makes everything perfectly clear.
The first two days of a vacation are hard the same way that getting off the treadmill without a cool-down period is hard. You can't stop perspiring and either (a) you feel you need to keep going or (b) you feel like you should throw up. The last day of a vacation is equally hard because after a week or two one gets accustomed to the late mornings and easy evenings. Still, here we are again.
Lots happened while I chose to hibernate: SARS in China, airplane crash, year changed . . . And, now that we're really ready to put it in perspective -- I need more coffee. This is too soon.