Category Archives: Capability

Swan Lake and Nutcrackers

2010 was a year where much of our attention and anxiety were held captive by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It was a sobering reminder of our dependence on fuels that support our lifestyle, commerce, defense, and essentials to life today. Moratoriums on deep water drilling ensued followed by hearings and probes into why it happened and who we need to blame and subsequently seek a means of exacting some comforting justice. It’s been months since the topic has had front page coverage, almost forgotten much like the devastation and impacts of Katrina, the earthquakes in Haiti, China, and Chile.

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Going to Pieces

It’s hard to miss the changes in the media world, specifically, the demise of the Blockbuster empire. Netflix has a business model that is a game changer, a Blockbuster buster, as iTunes changed the way we access music and other entertainment, a CD and DVD killer. The world of content will soon be without the burdens of physical media. I’m fascinated by the Blockbuster busting by a competitor, one implementing the very strategy that made Blockbuster king of the block. Blockbuster was the brainchild of Wayne Huizenga, an entrepreneur recognized for this value creation strategies. Huizenga’s strategy was to take businesses that were very fragmented in the marketplace and integrate them, creating customer value. He did the same in the world of waste management. Interestingly, Netflix saw the Blockbuster blindness to its current fragmentation and jumped in.

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Roads, Forks, and Prongs

The term robber baron is said to have originated as a medieval name attributed to those that controlled passage on the Rhine River and charged exorbitant tolls. They recognized the power they held, as constrainers or enablers of commerce. The term lived on and thereafter was attached in 19th century America to the magnates that built and operated the railroads. Their power, the same as their predecessors, came as they became the harvesters of the power that came to gatekeepers to commercial traffic. The big and exciting commercial wars in the mid to late 1800’s were about control of the rails. The magnates who built the rails, steamship lines, and the routes of commerce did much to shape the course of history and how we operate today. We may not recognize names like Gould, Crocker, Flagler (outside of Florida), Harriman or Vanderbilt, but their tribe of visionaries and shapers continues on.
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The Winter of Our Discontent

The yearly onset of winter has been a critical milestone in our history, life for that matter, on this planet. It triggered severe constraints in access to food, travel, safety and the quality of life overall. Travellers who needed to get across mountain ranges had to make tough choices, and often make winter quarters and postpone travel until the thaws. Even in war, some armies huddled in winter and fought from early spring to late fall. Today, winter continues to constrain and often reminds us that our advancement and technology can be humbled by severe weather. Those in the tropics see a different face of nature, the tropical cyclones and monsoons.

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My Way or the Highway

American Airlines war with the web is a fascinating series of events. Nobody can argue that the web is the neural and circulatory network for the preponderance of businesses. Unavailability and inaccessibility are likely to be two deathly symptoms of a commercial entity headed for life challenging times. Now, when I hear about accessibility issues, I tend to associate them with technical or network failures. Something broke, or glitches or evildoers are driving the calamity. Not so in this case. This war has to do with how accessibility is managed. American has made a decision that they will set the rules of how customers can access them.

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Into the Light

We’re at the winter solstice, the beginning or middle of winter. It’s hard to fathom a day in the year that has had more impact on human behaviors over millennia. We, in the Northern Hemisphere, will experience it for an instant around 11:38 PM tonight and those in the Southern will have to wait 6 months. Today brings the yearly tipping point for day length, that is, tomorrow’s day will begin to be longer and nights will become shorter. Day length was the metric for our earliest forms of calendaring. If early man did not have enough food stored by now, famine was a likely threat in the months of March-April. Although time is continuous, we are anthropologically moved by seasons and milestones. (It even shows up in some of end-of-budget yearly behaviors.)

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Who’s in Your Wallet?

Many great cities over developed for one important reason. They were at crossroads, or at bays, river crossings, or safe harbors. Some were near resources to be harvested or emerging roads, tracks, or caravan routes. They grew because they were or would become markets. Markets towns enabled trade, commerce, and exchanges that enabled value creation. Agriculture, mining, cattle, diamonds, forestry … all types of enterprises emerged, so that exchanges could be made, with money or barter as instruments. We could get and sell stuff. For most of human history, markets were visible, tangible, and somewhere we travelled to buy or sell. This tangible requirement and the transportation linkages determined life or death to commerce and the development of cities. Ask the railroad towns that were bypassed by the interstate highway system or mining towns that had no metals or minerals left to harvest. Our conquest of time and space over centuries has shaped this dynamic.

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What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

“Could have, would have, and should have”, or, “if I knew then what I know now”, or, “hindsight is 100%.” This last weekend, through a very agile collaboration between governments, agencies, public and private sectors, an attempted act of cowardly terrorism was averted; a bomb did not take innocent lives. It hinged on a decision from a former terrorist to come forward and alert Saudi authorities of the despicable deed and the cascade of information and resource deployment worthy of commendation. Of course, the media chimed in and warned that all passenger flights may be in danger of carrying explosives in the baggage holds.

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Get Lost

Last Wednesday, October 14th, H.R. 946, or in plain English, the Plain Writing Act of 2010 was signed into law. It’s a refreshing intent to align the language of government with the language and understanding of the people governed. For centuries, our law has been written in codes that require specialists to interpret and often serve as combatants in a system wherein the consequences are typically borne by others. Granted, it does not address doublespeak in contracts and service agreements, but it is a good directional beginning. Specifically, “plain writing” in the new law is defined as writing that is “clear, concise, well-organized and follows other best practices.” Perhaps now the governance battle moves to decide what best practices are.

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Fuzzy Plans

“The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.” Benjamin Disraeli. It’s October, and for many, this the month wherein our business plans go from aspirations to commitments and planned investments, or, what we will do and how much we will spend. It is at this juncture that many “stretch goals” are stretched out across time and spending with some promise of results and outcomes. In other words, we get money, people and kit in order to execute processes and projects for our enterprises. What are the probabilities that next year will be as we’ve planned? Well, how confident are we in our predictions and assumptions for next year? Does our plan plot out as a line over time?

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