Tag Archives: environment

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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Seneca, Darwin, And The Flying Dinosaurs

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin. It is very specific about who or what survives, yet the more significant message is the meaning that “if you are not responsive to change, you will not survive.” There is ample anthropological evidence providing insights into how the differences we see between peoples may have evolved. It becomes more fascinating when I see birds that share a common ancestor with dinosaurs. Much of the same applies to organizations, governments, cities, businesses, religions, and even management systems. Management systems contain the DNA and resources that define how an organization operates with the intent of thriving and surviving to thrive another day.

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It’s Not in the Bag …

It’s hard to miss the green. Bordering on fashionable, sometimes imitating political correctness, tugging at our sensibilities of responsibility, the green movement is here. The issue is enormous and affects everything from choices about the water that we drink in or out of plastic bottles, how we sort and take out the trash, our transportation choices, and even the faddish colors of the cloth bags some carry to the market. I suspect that I’m not alone in the surrealism of the duality of playing a participant actor in my micro world, and simultaneously as a spectator to the unfolding of the global drama. Surrealism emerges in that I may “feel good” about my cloth bag, but am skeptical of how the big drama will end, and whether the writers of this bigger play have blinders as I may.
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“Good, or Got Lucky?”

“To the victor belongs the spoils” is the famous quote by New York Senator William Learned Marcy (1786-1857), recited in the U. S. Senate, 25 January 1832. This one sure gets lots of traffic. It brings with it a lot of imagery of the uglier side of politics, graft and an all or nothing perspective. I can recall, as I read world history in high school, images of conquerors doing all the pillaging and other stuff. Certainly, the principle still has legs today, ugly legs at that.

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This is Not What I Expected!

Planning has lots of meanings. Often, planning is a bridge between intent and action. That means once we want to accomplish something, get somewhere, achieve a goal, make a number, change, transform, grow, shrink, acquire, dispose, win, or a myriad of end states, we spend time some effort wrestling with the how to (plan) achieve the aforementioned intent (vision). The vision is described with adjectives and nouns, but the plan needs verbs to have any useful meaning. If the vision is big and farther out than the budget, the plan is often called strategic. If the vision looks out as far as the budget, the plan is often called business. The vision creates provide promise and the plan provides confidence to achieve the promise. Planning is getting harder to do.

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The Perfect Storm

Our customers make us better! Have you heard that phrase? When I have, the translation that emerges is that our customers sometimes have to drag us into improvement. In fact, it often means that we become aware of the needs to improve from feedback and complaints. Someone might argue that we sometimes innovate from negative feedback
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Francis Bacon, Top Guns, and the Breakfast of Champions

It’s time for breakfast. I’m having a bowl of OODA Loops, a true Breakfast of Champions. Want some?

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“Once Upon a Time … and Then They Lived Happily Ever After”

“Once Upon a Time … and Then They Lived Happily Ever After”
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“That’s Not What You Wanted?”

Have you ever played Gossip, the party game? It’s simple, great fun, and revealing. In Gossip, the participants line up in a row or a circle and the first player is given a sentence, or better yet, a number of …
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North by Northwest

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. –Abraham Lincoln

Abe asked two very important questions we should answer when deciding what to do and how to do it:

Do you know where you are?
Do you know where you’re going?
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