Nov. 18, 2009-Worcester Polytechnic Institute juniors Chad Caisse, Ben Johnson, Seanna Reilly, Dora Fiske, Chris Baker, and Carlos Donado, (from left) prepare their final presentation, to be delivered Dec. 17th on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. The students comprise the Worcester Polytechnic Institute's oil remediation and oil prevention (best practices) teams, which are working closely with Rep. McGovern to clean up oil contamination in Ecuador. 30,000 indigenous people have sued Chevron, the owner of Texaco, for pollutants seeping into soil and groundwater from Ecuadorian oil pits Texaco built in 1964. The court case has been ongoing for 13 years. The WPI students hope juniors next year will continue their project.

Juniors at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts combine brainpower to clean up oil pollution in Ecuador. In 1965, Texaco, now Chevron, tapped oil reserves in Ecuador. The company built oil pits, long since abandoned, which have been leaking pollutants into the groundwater for the past half century or so. 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorians have sued Chevron over the pollution but the case has continued unresolved for 13 years. Jessica Leving wrote the story and I shot the photos, in today’s Worcester Telegram and Gazette.

Nov. 18, 2009-Chad Caisse, junior at Worcester Polytechnic Institute majoring in mechanical engineering demonstrates the flow of pollutants into groundwater from old Texaco oils pits in Ecuador, to his colleagues Chris Baker (left) WPI junior majoring in civil engineering and Ben Johnson (right), a junior majoring in mechanical engineering. The three comprise the Worcester Polytechnic Institute's oil remediation team, which is working to clean up oil contamination in Ecuador. 30,000 indigenous people have sued Chevron, the owner of Texaco, for oil pollution in Ecaudor. The case has been ongoing for 13 years.

Nov. 18, 2009-Worcester Polytechnic Institute juniors Chad Caisse, Seanna Reilly, Ben Johnson, Dora Fiske, Chris Baker, and Carlos Donado, (from left) prepare their final presentation, to be delivered Dec. 17th on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. The students comprise the Worcester Polytechnic Institute's oil remediation and oil prevention (best practices) teams, which are working closely with Rep. McGovern to clean up oil contamination in Ecuador. 30,000 indigenous people have sued Chevron, the owner of Texaco, for pollutants seeping into soil and groundwater from Ecuadorian oil pits Texaco built in 1964. The court case has been ongoing for 13 years. The WPI students hope juniors next year will continue their project.

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When I first started thinking about making the transition to Agile, I decided that rather than focus on how different Agile was from my current workflow, that it might be less anxiety producing to focus on what I was already doing that seemed Agile.

I’d always been part of a cross-functional team that included (depending on the company) product managers, developers, QA testers, technical writers, support personnel, and training course developers. Although I was used to the teams meeting once a week for an hour, with Agile that would change to meeting daily for 15 minutes.

I already had experience working with skimpy product specifications. There is a great deal of variety in the quality of design and functional specifications that product managers write. I’ve never worked anywhere with what I thought were “extensive” specs, so this idea that a company could spent all their time defining requirements and never get around to writing code was alien to me. It seemed to me that one of the appeals of Agile for developers is that they’d get to write code instead of documentation.

I’d always written the documentation against the product, working through the UI in a development sandbox, not against the specs. So while I was worried about how I was going to estimate without specs, I wasn’t too worried about how I’d do the actual writing.

I liked the idea of a product backlog. Due to time constraints, there was always something that was getting cut at the last minute so that I could hit my deadlines. So I was already keeping a documentation backlog of topics to write or revise for the next release.

The whole concept of “done is done” seemed to require that the writing be broken down into small chunks. I was trained to do modular writing, breaking things down into topics of a page or less. And for the past couple of years I’ve adopted a watered down form of DITA, organizing my content into into Concept, Task, and Reference topics.

But when I started as an Agile writer, I had more questions than answers. And after a couple of months, I still have more questions than answers about how to be the most Agile writer that I can be.

Six months ago I had more questions than answers about Agile.

Five months ago I had serious reservations about Agile.

Today, I can say that I am a believer. With only one reservation.

It wasn’t the overwhelming positive press about Agile.  In my experience, you can hear 100 things opposed to your point of view and cling to your beliefs even tighter. So the positive news didn’t hurt, but it didn’t change my mind.

The change was a result of a Scrummaster workshop and seeing it in action. The workshop dismantled three of my biggest misconceptions about Agile.

The First was that…

1. Agile is lax on Technical Rigor
   And the assumption is that where a process is lax in technical rigor, there’s poor quality. In nearly everything I’d read about Agile to that point, I’d seen the phrase “good enough.”

   Unfortunately, in my mind, “good enough” doesn’t have a positive connotation.The workshop turned that concept on its head by explaining that Scrum is a process.  What we bring to the process is up to us. Responsibility for technical rigor is put back squarely on the shoulders of the team who have to deliver working code and demo it to the customer at the end of the sprint.

   The emphasis here should be on the phrase “working code”. In Waterfall, we have milestones where we deliver documents, but there is never a chance for the customer to see working functionality until the end; when we may have completely misunderstood what they wanted.  Or the business environment has changed.

2. I would hate the process
   The role of Scrummaster did not sound appealing. I became a Project Manager in a Waterfall environment and that was what I was used to: working with teams to define detailed plans, then tracking those plans to completion. Would all that change?

   What I discovered was that the scope had changed from 12 months to 2 weeks. The Scrummaster still works with the team to plan the sprint and holds Daily Scrums to track status, but the focus is reduced to the window of a sprint – not 9 -12 months.

   What I viewed as a side benefit to being a Release Manager in a Waterfall environment (working with smart people, facilitating and watching as they solved problems) became the focus of my role as Scrummaster.  The key question: How can I help you remove any obstacles?

3. Agile can be used on any project
   
   My final misconception was the idea, fixed in my head because of my familiarity with Waterfall, that Agile should probably only be used on projects with bleeding-edge technology or products with critical time to-market constraints. Those type of projects could benefit from the quick turnaround time and “good enough” quality would be delivered.

   The workshop leader was adamant.  Scrum could be used on any project. I had heebie jeebies in reaction because it seemed like an extreme answer (and I tend to distrust anyone who seems to have drunk the koolaid without considering the other side). I questioned whether Scrum would work on a project that required high reliability.

   He reminded us that questions about reliability could be a part of the customer discussions about the functionality to be delivered in that sprint. The working code demoed to the customer must answer the question that the team asked when they made the sprint commitment: How do we know that it works?  The answer should include input from the customer.
   
   This would be a good place to draw this post to a close. It would be nice if I could say (as a former Scrum skeptic) that I have no more doubts.

   Unfortunately, I still have my doubts about whether Scrum can be used on projects that require high reliability. The good news is that as a result of this workshop and my experiences, I am far more likely to consider its use when time to market is critical.

I know there must be some of you who have seen Scrum used on projects that require high reliability? Leave me a comment or send me a tweet, my id is jgodfrey.

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Most of these “Leadership Proverbs” I’ve just picked up, absorbed and imbibed by some process of osmosis along the way and don’t know exactly whom they originated from. But when I know I’ll make reference, and when I don’t it’s not that I’m ungrateful or that I want to appear like a genius. It’s genuinely that I can’t remember. But this leadership insight came to me by way of Ken Blanchard.

Understand the life-cycle of a team

 Teams have a clear and predictable life cycle. This life cycle corresponds with a life cycle which happens to those individuals within the team – which we’ll look at next week. These cycles have been noted by various observers and everyone gives them their own titles. Here is how I explain them. The titles don’t mean much, it’s what is actually happening and what the titles refer to that is most important. A team has 4 distinct stages. Every team will go through these four stages. None will be short-cut or overcome, but some teams will pass through certain stages faster than others.

Stage 1: Formation. Teams come together as a collection of individuals who have some specific task they are trying to achieve. There’s a fair degree of excitement and enthusiasm. Roles are either assigned or simply taken on unofficially. Rules are set up regarding how the team will work and what is expected. These aren’t so much verbal and stated but rather how things are actually done.

Stage 2: Fighting. The team begins to lose motivation and enthusiasm and can become disillusioned and jaded. Don’t panic or get angry, this is normal and simply needs to be managed and the individuals need to be appropriately cared for. More conflict than normal is to be expected along with team members being confused or unsure of roles and purpose.

Stage 3: Figuring. The team begins to gel and get into a groove where roles are beginning to be owned and understood. Teamwork becomes more natural and trust begins to be created.

Stage 4: Flourishing. The team really catches and owns the vision, individuals understand their place and role within the team, deep trust has formed between team members, more is achieved with less effort, confidence is high as people perform roles “naturally”, motivation and enthusiasm is high.

Each stage of a team’s life has a leadership style that fits best. What makes it complicated is that individuals go through a similar cycle which, though corresponding, doesn’t exactly overlap with this team process. This means that sometimes teams as a whole need a different leadership style than do individuals within that team. But we’ll look at the corresponding leadership styles next week.

The American sociologist Howard Becker has just written a book called ‘Do you know…’ which is a study into how jazz musicians improvise. Becker is himself a jazz pianist. He was interested to know what happens when jazz musicians, who may not ever have met before, start playing. He noticed that negotiation is the beginning, middle and end of the improvisation process, as the musicians draw on a shared background repertoire.

Similarly, in an article on reflection-in-action, a term coined by the architect-cum-organisational theorist Donald Schon, academics Yanow and Tsoukas wrestle with what it means to improvise with others in a professional context. In the article they argue against the more individualist and cognitive aspects of Schon’s theory, although they go on to point out how influential and helpful it has been. Improvisation is a collective enterprise drawing on skills and knowledge which have been learnt in social settings. It draws on a repertoire which has been rehearsed and practised over time, although it may look to onlookers like it has been made up in the moment. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu made a similar point when he remarked that excellence is improvisation on collectively understood norms and standards. Although experts appear to be making things up on their own, actually they are responding to collectively constructed codes of practice and professional norms.

The authors make the distinction between feedback, a term ubiquitously used in organisation denoting a cognitive process of reflection on action, and backtalk. As an example the authors draw the distinction between a lecturer asking for feedback from his students after a lecture, and the prereflected backtalk that he notices as he is giving his lecture, as the students communicate their responses to what is being said through the way they hold themselves and the small physical clues that they give out without intending to. Improvisation partly depends upon successive layerings of people responding to each other’s  backtalk. GH Mead would add an extra dimension to this process: that we call out in ourselves the response that we are calling out in others and find ourselves responding to self and other both at the same time. We notice our response to what we ourselves are saying and doing as we are noticing other people’s responses.

Yanow and Tsoukas argue that improvisation requires a permeability of self, a continuous openness to the backtalk of others and the resistance of the materials that are to hand.  The idea, then, is that it is not just people who talk back, but inanimate objects do too. There are limits to what it is possible to do when designing a particular building, or even making a plan: organisations are constrained in their possibilities.

Additionally, actors talk of the need for a yes-and approach, which invites the continuous opening up of experience. Once when working with a theatre troupe I was advised always to make my improvisation partners ‘look good’. What the troupe leader meant by this is that is possible to close down an improvisational gesture of a colleague by making them look foolish: instead, seizing what they offer and trying to work with it an open it up and return a gesture that is easy for them to work with keeps the dialectical process of gesture and response open and fluid. It is the equivalent in tennis to knocking up pre-match with a tennis partner and returning the ball just in front of them so that they can easily return it, so that they can loosen up and prepare for the game.

Another important aspect of improvising is the public ability to acknowledge not knowing, of being open to the improvisatory gestures of others. According to Yanow and Tsoukas, in so openly relinquishing the desire to control one will be forced to live with one’s own anxiety about not knowing, as well as the anxiety one is likely to evoke in others.

A number of themes arise from this discussion of improvisation which are important for managers. The first is the necessity of remaining open to the attitudes of others, of adopting a disposition towards enquiry rather than closing things down with positional authority that tries to establish certainty and control. This will raise questions about the way that power is habitually exercised in any particular organisational context, especially in the current managerialist discourse where management is often understood to be about knowing, choosing and controlling. Simply asserting authority may well close down the opportunity of collective improvisation. The second is the importance of understanding improvisation as a social practice which draws on a background of evaluative theories of the good and a history of improvisation and a rehearsal of routines. People will improvise well together if they have developed a history of working well together. A number of commentators, including Leonard Cohen in a previous post, have drawn attention to the importance of being prepared, of developing a repertoire of routines with others.

Thinking about management as a kind of improvisation expands our sense of what we might be looking for in managers and perhaps in management education. Rather than thinking of management as a kind of professional expertise that a manager ‘has’, a stable body of knowledge somehow locked up in an individual which the manager calls on at will, we could begin to think of management practice as a form of social awareness, an openness of self to the influence of others and of a particular context. It is a collective practice which requires individual submission to a discipline but also an openness to the patterning of the interpretation of others of the same discipline partly achieved through negotiation.

While learning about lean, I came across the five S’s, which is a tool to organize a workspace with visual controls and order.
The S’s stand for five Japanese words that start with an S: seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu, and shitsuke. Translated in English this becomes Sort, Straighten, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain.

 
(image courtesy of b2b.blogsome.com)

Sort
Sort your material and get rid of all the unnecessary pieces.

Straighten
Give every item a fixed place and make it visual.

Shine
Clear up and inspect for shortcomings.

Standardize
Create standards to monitor and guard the previous 3 S’s.

Sustain
The discipline that is needed to maintain this in a process of continuous improvement.

Working in a clean, organized workplace is not the only goal of the 5 S’s. The biggest benefit is the prevention of errors and defects that are caused by waste. This is a reality for manufacturing, but can also be applied to software development, as you can read in the Poppendieck’s book Implementing lean software development.

Sort
Reduce the size of your codebase

Straighten
Organize the projects and packages

Shine
Clean up. Resolve failing unit tests, warnings, TODO’s, … Problems are more visible when everything is clean and tidy.

Standardize
Keep clean and refactor mercilessly to reduce complexity and improve maintainability.

Sustain
Build in regular checkpoints to control the current state (ex. Retrospectives), so actions can be taken.

I think it goes further than code. By keeping the team room clean, we

• avoid being influenced by old information which may no longer be accurate
• assure that every information we look at is still relevant
• stimulate the use of visual aids, such as whiteboards and flipcharts
• keep our stress level down
• make it easier for stakeholders to get the data they need from the information radiators

I don’t like to clean up, and probably neither do you. Fact is that I do want to have these benefits and cleaning can go fast as long as you don’t let the clutter pile up.

To celebrate the Holidays I am going to post a free winning pick for every day of the week starting on Thanksgiving and going all the way to Sunday. I will also post some great sportsbook bonus so you can take advantage of some of the best in the business! Take time out to be thankful for everything in life and remember the troops that can’t be home on Thanksgiving.

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Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone!

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Free Pick for Thursday November 26th, Turkey day!

Texas @ Texas A& M

Texas has already clinched the Big 12 South and will play Nebraska in the

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Championship game but they can’t afford to get caught napping here. This will be no problem for Texas as they are focused on going to the Championship game after the loss last year that put them out. Texas A&M has flopped in six of nine as dogs of 20 points or more and in 10 of 12 ATS off a home win. The Longhorns have scored at least 41 points in their four previous road games this season. They are 23-12-2 ATS in November and get a blowout win here.

Play: Texas -21

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Free Pick for Friday November 27th

Alabama @ Auburn

Auburn enters this game with revenge after getting blanked last year. Alabama is going to the SEC Championship game against Florida so this game is a warm up. The Tigers have covered seven of 11 against Alabama and the home team is 4-1 ATS in the last five showdowns. The Crimson Tide dropped nine of 13 ATS when giving up more than 11 points on the highway. Auburn will not win but they will keep it close.

Play: Auburn +10

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Free Pick for Saturday November 28th

Arkansas @ LSU

The loss for LSU was a tough one that will linger over to this week. Arkansas has pulled off the upset against LSU the last two seasons. The Razorbacks are 11-6 as road dogs and the visitor is 6-3 in the past nine meetings. The Tigers are 2-14 as SEC home favorites and they have floundered in 27 of 34 ATS at Baton Rouge in November. Arkansas knows hwo to beat LSU and will do it again.

Play: Arkansas +3.5

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Free Pick For Sunday November 29th

Indianapolis @ Houston
Houston will be playing on a short week and they have to get Chris Brown in the right mindset for this game. Houston has cashed eight straight as home dogs and won six of those eight SU, the only two losses at the hands of the Colts by a total of four points. The Colts have struggled within the division, dropping 14 of 21 ATS, while the Texans are 6-2 at Reliant Stadium versus AFC-South citizens. Indianapolis has won six of seven at Houston, but failed in five of seven ATS. Houston finally gets the win against the Colts.

Play: Houston +3

It’s hard not to laugh.  One fiasco after another, this Knicks organization just can’t seem to get anything right.  Is it just me or have the Gods of Basketball seemed to have put some kind of curse on this team?  There have been so many problems with the Knicks that it doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to stop.  What kind of player would want to play there?  Especially if that player is a superstar free agent hungry for a ring?

This all began with Isiah Thomas.  The guy was a fantastic player, but he was a hothead and made many poor choices as coach and executive of the franchise (this combination never works: just look at Mike Dunleavy in Clipperland) .  Thomas sold away most of the Knick’s future draft picks for the likes of Eddy Curry (came with a lot of baggage) and Zach Randolph (a locker room nightmare).  He signed fringe players to mid-level exceptions.  And worst of all, he coached the New York Knicks to some of their worst seasons in franchise history.

So Isiah Thomas was fired after much public pressure from the fans, and former Phoenix coach Mike D’antoni was hired.  But it almost seems like Thomas left a legacy behind.  A beloved point guard of Thomas, the talented but troubled Stephon Marbury butted heads with the franchise and was eventually told to stop coming to practice.  This fiasco gained much publicity in the press throughout the 2008-2009 season.

Even now, the Knicks are in a sorry state.  Right now they are 3-10, and at this rate it would surprise a lot of people if they won more than 25-30 games this season.  Their source of hope right now is a still out of shape Eddy Curry, who is coming back from a sore knee.  The Knicks even thought about signing the extremely troubled Allen Iverson, a sure sign of desperation.  But to me, their biggest problem is their players themselves.  Most of them are in a contract year, and they all know that to get better contracts next year they need good stats.  As a result, a lot of players are extremely greedy with the ball and there is just an overall lack of cohesiveness and team spirit.

The franchise is resting its hopes on next summer, when there will be enough money to sign one or maybe even two max contract players.  But what player would actually come to this sorry franchise?  Lebron James, arguably the most coveted of the free agents, flirts with the Knicks relentlessly, wearing NY caps and shoes to games, dropping subtle hints here and there (at least he used to), etc.  This is a losing franchise that is a soap opera of fiasco after fiasco, and there’s no end in sight.

Lebron won’t come to the Big Apple.  They have nothing to offer him.  Even from Cleveland he’s gotten so many endorsements that he is already a household name.  Neighboring franchise New Jersey Nets are just as bad of a team as the Knicks but without all the drama.  One of his close friends, mogul rapper Jay Z, is a minority shareholder for the Nets and has been courting James for months.

Yes, the Knicks can offer money.  But James seems like the ambitious type and it’s doubtful that he will spend the next few years of his career rotting on an embarrassment of a team.  For the New York Knicks, yes they will probably get a big FA or two who’s in it for the money, but the ultimate prize, the best player on the market, stays out of their grasp.

This franchise, starting from the bottom up, needs to get its act together.  The fans deserve it.

1. Indianapolis Colts
2. New Orleans Saints
3. Minnesota Vikings
4. Cincinnatti Bengals
5. San Diego Chargers
6. Arizona Cardinals
7. New England Patriots
8. Dallas Cowboys
9. Philadelphia Eagles
10. Jacksonville Jaguars
11. New York Giants
12. Green Bay Packers
13. Denver Broncos
14. Atlanta Falcons
15. Baltimore Ravens
16. Miami Dolphins
17. Houston Texans
18. Tennessee Titans
19. Carolina Panthers
20. Chicago Bears
21. New York Jets
22. San Fransisco 49ers
23. Kansas City Chiefs
24. Washington Redskins
25. Oakland Raiders
26. Seattle Seahawks
27. Buffalo Bills
28. Detroit Lions
29. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
30. St Louis Rams
31. Cleveland Browns

It’s Tuesday November 24^th and for breakfast I slam down a cup of coffee and head to Avs morning skate. The best breakfast ever.  I was glad to see twenty-five fans in the stands.  Play was lively and a lot of smiles.  The Colorado Avalanche have found their chemistry on the ice.

Defenseman Kyle Quincey and superstar rookie Matt Duchene chatted amongst themselves along the boards, while Adam Foote was supervising puck drills.  J-M Liles repeatedly plowed the puck toward the net, but frustration was apparent, as his shots didn’t fire head on.  With Liles on the IR twice this year, his spot on fantasy teams has caused frustration, me included.  Wojtek Wolski seemed tired, as I observed for my fantasy line-up and his potential against the upcoming Predators.  He was smiling and talking with Duchene between drills, so I hope he can hold my LW spot for Wednesday.

I was impressed with defenseman Ryan Wilson who had good shots and was extremely persistent in achieving an accurate shot.  His puck handling skills were tight and skilled.

The last players on the ice were Ryan O’Reilly and Chris Stewart having a blast challenging goaltender Peter Budaj.

After the morning skate, I went to hang with the group of Avalanche fans eagerly waiting for the team to sign autographs and get pictures.  As each car crept through the gate, fans swarmed politely.  These Avalanche fans were very bonded in their love for their team and courteous to the players. As Budaj drove out of the gate, fans wanted to know if he would be starting against Nashville. He said he wasn’t.

I had a chance to give my blog card to Paul Stastny and Ryan O’Reilly.  I approached Stastny as fellow DU alumni, while I approached O’Reilly with “you’re on my fantasy team.”  He liked that.  I asked them both to check out my blog.

Shout out to Cody McLeod who got out of his truck to take pictures with everyone.  We were all glad he didn’t fight with ex-Av Lappy on Monday against the Flyers.

I’m not the best photographer with my camera phone, but here’s a few photos of Cody McLeod, Darcy Tucker and Ryan O’Reilly.

Until next morning skate, don’t cross my blue line!

Owner: Erin Hauber

Seasons: 2009-2009

Una Buena Coreografia…. Por el Team Campeon del Vertifight 2009…
Electro Addicte
Mis Respetos…

London is widely known for its history and culture but the city is equally popular for its sports. The Premier League boasts of having as many as five clubs from London. And Tottenham’s crushing victory at the weekend just reinforced that the city’s footballing pedigree.

The results of the weekend meant that currently there are three London based clubs in the Top Four of the league. Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham all hail from the city so famous for its half caste weather that it even inspired a poem about the same.

In Arsenal and Chelsea, London has two teams which are regular contenders for the title. Between them the two sides have won the league 16 times and are the only teams beside Manchester United to win the league in the last 15 years.

Tottenham are also no push overs and despite not having quite the level of success as the other two in recent times; they can boast of an impressive history. This means that the city has at least three highly competitive clubs which is an unprecedented  number.

History of Football & London

Many may be unaware but football and London have a long history together dating back to almost 1175. William FitzStephen describes ball games played by kids in schools in his description of London written sometime between 1174 to 1183.

Even after the game was outlawed in the Kingdom because of its previously violent nature many in the city continued playing it.One of the first forms of organised football was also held here by Richard Mulcaster, the famous English educator, with referees and rules.

The FA, the oldest footballing body, was also born in London in 18 63 and thus the city is the birthplace of modern day football clubs. Things however weren’t all that rosy as many of the original members broke away from the FA and founded the Rugby Football Union.

Of all the London teams, Fulham is the oldest having been established all the way back in 1879. Tottenham followed in 1882 before Arsenal was set up in 1886. Chelsea were born in the 20th century in 1905.

Other Great Footballing Cities

The truth is that London has only shot to prominence because of Chelsea’s Ambrahimovic takeover. Before that London was no match to the footballing mecca that is Milan.

The fashion capital of the world takes an equal amount of pride in its two great footballing teams viz. AC Milan and Inter Milan. These two sides are two of the most successful clubs on the globe.

Both have won the Italian league 17 times. AC Milan are also the European kings having won the prestigious trophy seven times second only to Real Madrid. Inter have picked up the trophy twice.

The other great city to boast of equally grand clubs is Rome – home to AS Roma and Lazio. Both the Italian capital sides have enjoyed varying degrees of success over the years but have huge reputations.

Interestingly both Milan & Inter and Roma & Lazio share their stadia. Whilst the Milan clubs ply their trade at the San Siro, the Romans play at the Stadio Olimpico, venue of last year’s Champions League final.

Manchester – A New Rival

Manchester United may be ‘Enemy#1′ for all English clubs. But with the exception of the Red Devils the city’s other team, Manchester City, have been relatively unsuccessful. In fact the famous Man Utd chant goes “There’s only one Manchester”.

However all that may be set to change in the coming few years. Thanks to the Dubai takeover of the club, City boast of a budget which is unmatched in English football. Though recent results may indicate that the club is still far from the ‘Top Four’ but if their buying pattern continues they are sure to be there sooner rather than later.

However as things stand if not the world, London is most certainly the best footballing city in the country. And with the mouth-watering Arsenal -Chelsea game coming up this weekend. Things are just getting better.

William D. Green, CEO of Accenture shared a great story about what his company looks for in their recruits. In an interview in the New York Times, he recounts the story of recruiting a young man named Sam at Babson College in 1991. Although Sam’s resume was not impressive and the only work experience he had was at a small diner, Green was impressed with what Sam said.

Green asked him what else he was doing while he was working at the diner. Sam answered that the diner was a family business and that he would leave after classes on Friday and work until closing and then do the same thing the next day on Saturday and again on Sunday. Afterwards, Sam would drive back to the college.

The CEO was sold. Why?

“It’s work ethic. You could see the guy had charted a path for himself to make it work with the situation he had…[H]e had character. He faced a set of challenges. He figured out how to do both.”

Green, who came from humble beginnings as the proud son of a plumber maintains that, “It isn’t how many degrees you have. It’s what you can do. What that says is, it doesn’t matter what you look like, what you talk like, where you went to school, where you came from, any of that stuff. What matters is what you’re capable of.”

In his closing remarks to incoming managers to Accenture at a training session, Green stated that 3 things matter for success:

“The first is competence — just being good at what you do, whatever it is, and focusing on the job you have, not on the job you think you want to have.

The second one is confidence. People want to know what you think. So you have to have enough desirable self-confidence to articulate a point of view.

The third thing is caring. Nothing today is about one individual. This is all about the team, and in the end, this is about giving a damn about your customers, your company, the people around you, and recognizing that the people around you are the ones who make you look good.”

Last week, PNSR was afforded a great opportunity by World Politics Review, a forum we hold in high regard for its writers’ insight and depth of analysis of important issues. WPR hosted three op-eds authored by PNSR President and CEO, James R. Locher III, adapted from PNSR’s recently released report, Turning Ideas Into Action. Each piece focused on a significant initiative discussed or recommendation made in TIIA, and explained their objective.

The first in the series focused on PNSR’s call for a Next Generation State Department, one that “possesses [and] exercises sufficient authority to manage the full range of international civilian programs effectively:”

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Article.aspx?id=4648

The second explains the need for empowered interagency teams. In an era of “czars,” the president still runs high-risk with this unchecked, informal set up, and institutionalization of stand-up issue teams would be beneficial to the way national security is managed:

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Article.aspx?id=4663

The third op-ed deals with the need of improvement to high-level, national security strategic planning. “With the National Security Staff consumed with day-to-day priorities, and without comprehensive strategies for the medium- and long-term timeframe in place, planning and budgeting inevitably lack coordination and coherence,” Locher said.

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=4673

Please follow the links to read each op-ed at World Politics Review, and download the whole Turning Ideas Into Action report here. Also, please share your thoughts in the comments section of our blog, or by emailing info@pnsr.org.

-Michael Drohan

ESADE is all based on team work as we all know. However ESADE makes sure that the team work is not perfectly smooth and forms teams of 6-8 team members instead of the efficient 3-5. ESADE also ensures that the cultural and professional backgrounds are very diverse to make things even more tricky. This is done on purpose in my opinion but it has been extremely beneficial for our learning experience to be confronted with all those difficulties, different opinions, backgrounds, etc..

Another issue with team work is finding the time to meet and having the right tools to collaborate. Google docs and calendar, Yugma, Skype, Msn, etc. have been extremely useful but how about a tool that allows brainstorming for? I am still looking for the program or application that combines all the common online collaboration tools.

AND Google has done it again!!!

Check out the latest product of Google, called “Google Wave“. It is difficult to describe because it seems a little bit like a revolution on the web. It is an open source email service, wiki, blog, chat, collaboration tool, photosharing, IM, etc. in one! You don’t believe me? Have a look at this stunning piece of tool that is currently still in beta but will have an amazing future, of which I am sure! Check it out here.

I am curious what the feelings will be in 2 weeks when the first euphoria has settled but as of now it looks great! Create your own waves!