Great New Book!

I wish I would have written this one!



Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life






How about these Chapter Titles!

"Too Much Cost, Not Enough Value"
Too Much Speculation, Not Enough Investment"
"Too Much Complexity, Not Enough Simplicity"
"Too Much Counting, Not Enough Trust"
"Too Much Business Conduct, Not Enough Professional Conduct"
"Too Much Salesmanship, Not Enough Stewardship"
"Too Much Focus on Things, Not Enough Focus on Commitment"
"Too Many Twenty-first Century Values, Not Enough Eighteenth-Century Values"
"Too Much 'Success,' Not Enough Character"

Mr. Bogle begins with this:

"At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, 'Yes, but I have something he will never have; Enough".

The only thing I can say is Buy this Book

Religious Group's Private Jet Not Tax Exempt

Originally found here.

"A Kenneth Copeland Ministry jet worth $3.6 million has been denied tax-exempt status by the Tarrant Appraisal District, setting the stage for a battle that could require the minister to reveal his salary if he wants the jet to be tax-free.

Jeffery D. Law, Tarrant chief appraiser, said the jet was denied tax exemption because the ministry failed to disclose salaries of directors as an application requires…

Compensation paid Copeland and other members of his family has been the source of a U.S. senator’s inquiry, but the televangelist has been unwilling to disclose the information publicly.

If the ministry gives the compensation information to the appraisal district, it would be open to public disclosure."

I'm so happy our preachers can ride around in their own corporate jets. These guys are too "good" to ride coach?

Steve

Tom Peter's 27 Points to Transform an Organization

The Top 27: Twenty-seven Practical Ideas That Will Transform Every Organization

1. Learn to thrive in unstable times—our lot (and our opportunity) for the foreseeable future.

2. Only putting people first wins in the long haul, good times and especially tough times. (No "cultural differences" on that one! Colombia = Germany = the USA.)

3. MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around. Stay in touch!

4. Call a customer today!

5. Train! Train! Train! (Growing people outperform stagnant people in terms of attitude and output—by a wide margin.)

6. "Putting people first" means making everyone successful at work (and at home).

7. Make "we care" a/the company motto—a moneymaker as well as a source of pride.

8. All around the world, women are an undervalued asset.

9. Diversity is a winning strategy, and not for reasons of social justice: The more different perspectives around the table, the better the thinking.

10. Take a person in another function to lunch; friendships, lots of, are the best antidote to bad cross-functional task accomplishments. (Lousy cross-functional communication stops companies and armies alike.)

11. Transparency in all we do.

12. Create an "Innovation Machine" (even in tough times). (Hint: Trying more stuff than the other guy is Tactic #1.)

13. We always underestimate the Innovation Advantage when 100% of people see themselves as "innovators." (Hint: They are if only you'd bother to ask "What can we do better?")

14. Get the darned Basics right—always Competitive Advantage #1. (Be relentless!)

15. Great Execution beats great strategy—99% of the time. (Make that 100% of the time.)

16. A "bias for action" is a "bias for success." (Great hockey player Wayne Gretzky: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.")

17. No mistakes, no progress! (A lot of fast mistakes, a lot of fast progress.) (Australian businessman Phil Daniels: "Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.")

18. Sometimes "little stuff" is more powerful than "big stuff" when it comes to change.

19. Keep it simple! (Making "it" "simple" is hard work! And pays off!)

20. Remember the "eternal truths" of leadership—constants over the centuries. (They say Nelson Mandela's greatest asset was a great smile—you couldn't say no to him, even his jailors couldn't.)

21. Walk the talk. ("You must be the change you wish to see in the world."—Gandhi)

22. When it comes to leadership, character and people skills beat technical skills. (Emotional Intelligence beats, or at least ties, school intelligence.)

23. It's always "the little things" when it comes to "people stuff." (Learn to say "thank you" with great regularity. Learn to apologize when you're wrong. Learn the Big Four words: "What do you think?" Learn to listen—it can be learned with lots and lots of practice.)

24. The "obvious" may be obvious, but "getting the obvious done" is harder said than done.

25. Time micro-management is the only real "control" variable we have. (You = Your calendar. Calendars never lie.)

26. All managers have a professional obligation to their communities and their country as well as to the company and profit and themselves. (Forgetting this got the Americans into deep trouble.)

27. EXCELLENCE. ALWAYS. (What else?)

See more great stuff at Tom Peter's Website

Weekend Fun

I was out playing golf today and a seven foot gator decided he wanted to watch.

Project Scope Overload

Always remember to keep your scope manageable. Too much scope when resources are limited can have unpredictable results.

Project Failure

Project Failures are everywhere.  Below is a list of project failures taken from an article that appears on the Lessons-from-History website.  You can read the full article here.

Why are there so many project failures?  My therory is it they are many times a result of a combination of several things:

Weak project management

Poor or non-existent project sponsorship

An organizational culture that severely disfunctional

Incomplete and/or inaccurate requirements

Some Notable Project Failures (from Lessons-from-History.com)

The following list of failures happened within the project itself supporting the Standish claim that close to 50% of projects are seriously challenged:

• The IRS project on taxpayer compliance took over a decade to complete and cost the country an unanticipated $50 bn.
• The Oregon DMV conversion to new software took eight years to complete, the budget grew by 146% ($123m) and public outcry eventually killed the entire project.
• The State of Florida welfare system was plagued with numerous computational errors and $260m in overpayments!
• August 2008 Unencrypted memory stick lost with names/dates of birth of 84,000 inmates, England 's entire prison population. Home addresses of 33,000 who had six convictions.
• Feb. 2007 £20bn UK NHS computer system 'doomed to fail‘a senior insider has warned.
• 2007 laptop with records of 600,000 recruits was stolen from Royal Navy recruiter's car
• In September 2006 Department of Homeland Security admitted project failure and closed the Emerge2 program $229m (a new financial IT system).
• In May 2006 the disastrous Seasprite helicopter program for the Australian Navy, with $1bn spent, the helicopters were grounded due to software problems.
• In April 2005 inter-departmental warfare played a significant role in the failure of a $64m federal IT project.
• In 2005 British food retailer J Sainsbury had to write off $526m it had invested in an automated supply-chain management system.
• In 2005 US Justice Department Inspector General report stated $170m FBI Virtual Case File project was a failure, after five years and $104m in expenditures. Over one 18-month period, the FBI gave its contractor nearly 400 requirements changes. 
• In 2005 the UK Inland Revenue produced tax payment overpayments of $3.45 bn because of software errors. 
• May 2005 major hybrid car manufacturer installed software fix on 160,000 vehicles. The automobile industry spends $2 to $3 bn per year fixing software problems.
• July 2004 a new government welfare management system in Canada costing $200m was unable to handle a simple benefits rate increase. The contract allowed for 6 weeks of acceptance testing and never tested the ability to handle a rate increase.
• In 2004 Avis cancelled an ERP system after $54.5m is spent
• In 2002 the UK government wasted £698m on Pathway project, smartcards for benefits payments, & £134m overspend on magistrates' courts Libra system.

Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes

From the Guardian

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. ‘Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,’ said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. ‘They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.’

 Click here for the full article

Quality Improvement – Six Steps to Improving Quality

Step 2 - What is the Objective - To select a problem and set a target for improvement

What key activities should be undertaken?

Collect data on all aspects of the theme (all problems)
Clarify the problems from various viewpoints
Select a problem collected in the previous step
Identify what the customer wants (their requirements)
Write a clear statement of the problem
Utilize data to help establish a target
Present the problem statement to management or your project sponsor

Tools You Can Use:

Checklists
Graphs
Pareto Charts
Control Charts
Histograms
Problem Statement Matrix

Note – Step Three will be coming in the next few days

Weekend Video - Kind of Creepy!

Quality Improvement – Six Steps to Improving Quality

Step 1 - Reason for Improvement

Objective – Identify the Problem (Theme).

What key activities should be undertaken?

Research for Theme(s) (Problems)

- Review key processes and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

- Survey internal/external customers

- Identify what the team knows (brainstorming)

- Conduct interviews

Determine Process Ownership (related to problem/improvement)

- Document the “As Is” processes

- Determine customer needs

- Determine what improvement is needed using available data

- Show likely impacts of the solution/new process

- Get to work on the new solution/activities

Tools to Utilize

* Control Charts

* Brainstorming

* Process Maps

* Relationship Interaction Diagram

* Variance Analysis

Key Questions to Ask

* What do we produce? (Work products)

* Whom do we do it for?

* How well do we do it?

* How do we know we are doing it well?

*** Note: The other five steps will be posted in the coming days.

Interesting and Enlightening Video

McCain and Obama Dance Off

They can do scary things with video software these days.

General Colin Powell and Leadership

General Colin Powell spoke at this year's PMI (Project Management Institute) Global Congress in Denver, CO.

The PMI website summarizes General Powell's remarks below.

“Leadership is leadership is leadership,” says General Powell, who served as a U.S. National Security Advisor for former President Ronald Reagan and held executive positions at several organizations.

“At the end of the day you have to convince a bunch of followers to do what you want them to do—and [convince them] that they want to do it.”

The goal, he says, is to make sure every member of the team knows what is expected of them and to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. That means providing support, plus clear, concise missions and inspiration.

“The leader’s passion has to be the example of excellence in the organization and people will want to follow you,” he says.

Sometimes, though, the difference between a good leader and a bad leader is as simple as the ability to recognize when an employee is worth the investment—and when they are not. While it’s important, General Powell says, to capitalize on strengths and build on weakness, leaders can’t “carry dead weight.”

In Denver,CO and a Mile High!

Waiting for the PMI global conference to start. I attended the ISSIG business meeting today and walked around the city. Denver is a great town.

See You at the PMI North American Global Congress 2008

I'm traveling to Denver on Saturday to attend the PMI Global Congress. Anybody else going? Want to meet up? E-mail me at sfseay(at)yahoo.com

PMI North American Global Congress 2008 Announcement

PMI is proud to host its Global Congress 2008—North America in Denver, Colorado, USA. The city of Denver is the largest city in Colorado and is also the state’s capital. The nickname of "the Mile-High City" was given to Denver because it is situated at an elevation of one mile above sea level. Denver has the largest park system in the U.S. and experiences more than 300 sunny days in a year, which makes it sunnier than San Diego or Miami Beach. Because of this and its proximity to the mountains, Denver has gained a reputation as being a very active, outdoor-oriented city for skiing, hiking, climbing and camping.

Denver lies at the foot of the Rocky Mountains and experiences a semi-arid type of climate. Autumn (October through December) has a warm climate with sunny days and cool nights. The climate of Denver can be quite unpredictable and does experience frequent weather fluctuations. A popular saying in Denver is that if you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute; it will change.

John McCain shows he is a Statesman.

Thanks Senator McCain for bring some civility to the conversation.

New World Order and One World Bank?

Our politicians have failed us.  

Our National Debt

Gosh, I owe the Federal Government a lot of money!

Principles and the Leader

Principles are mile posts that help to guide our conduct. They come from natural laws that are recognizable by all cultures. Principles have been around since the dawn of time. They are timeless and aren’t dependent on us making them a permanent part of our lives.

I believe a most of our problems in society come from the fact that many of our leaders don’t live principle-centered lives.

What are principles that are easily recognized? These are a few: Patience, Kindness, Tolerance, Integrity, Honesty, Encouragement, Empathy…

Principles should guide our conduct, and when they do, they are easily recognizable by others. When our leaders decide to reject principles in order to gain power, influence or money, the organizations they lead are in deep trouble.

Many times leaders attempt to put aside principles to get short-term gains. They believe by making speeches filled with empty promises they will gain the trust of others. This happens all the time in our organizations and results in the same mistakes repeated over and over. Having said that, we keep electing the same people to office over and over, don’t we? Where has this gotten us?

Albert Einstein said, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them”. To solve the tough problems we need to look at our paradigms and habits and be willing to change them. Sometimes this means firing (not re-electing) our current leaders.

Do we really think we can just buy our way out of the current mess on Wall Street without fundamentally changing the way things work (paradigms and habits) and putting principled leaders in place? Can you or your organization really change things for the better without focusing on principles and rethinking your paradigms and habits? Do organizations really believe that layoffs alone change anything when their current broken paradigms and habits are left intact?

I have seen the results of unprincipled leadership, and the behaviors these “leaders” exhibit can have a profound, lasting, and negative influence on others. The sad part is these leaders believe they are part of the solution, however we know better. You can’t lead your way out of a problem that you don’t fully understand, and if you try to do it without principles the results are easily predicted. DISASTER!

Big problems cannot be solved by small people and small mindedness. Remember, principles aren’t values. The Mafia has values, but their practices certainly aren’t related to principles. As Stephen Covey say’s “Principles are the territory. Values are the map”.

The Bailout is a Crime!

We are being ripped off. See the article below from John Dvorak (http://www.dvorak.org/blog)

Give the Public $600 Billion By John C. Dvorak

The administration talks a big game about economic stimulus packages and claims that the public is the winner when taxes are low or they are simply given a handout to spend. So take $600-plus billion and give each man, woman and child $2000 each. That will distribute all this money. A family of 5 would have a nice $10,000 nest egg for a down-payment or to rent a house and pay off their credit cards thus sending the money back into the system.

The trickle-down bail-out is designed to go to the same people who gave themselves huge salaries and ran these firms into the ground? It gets them off the hook. They can then slither out of town when they all should be tarred-and-feathered.

Why not let the public buy up the mortgages at these low-ball prices and move in? Why can’t that be arranged? Use the FHA to do it if the banks cannot. Why do the crooks get to re-buy the bad mortgages at the low price? So they can gouge later?

There has never been economic stimulus from the top down when the money is given to these weasels. These are people who will sell dollars and buy Euros, or horde the money or move to Switzerland to spend the money there. All of the CEO’s of these failed companies have offshore villas. The average Joe spends his money in the USA, not Europe. It stays in circulation. Good things happen.

According to the pro-bail-out “experts” the economy should have melted down on Tuesday hurling us into a depression. Instead the market went up. So how does that work?
Start looking at this bail-out and you start to see that it is an exit strategy for Paulsen and his friends at Goldman, Sachs. There was a need to rush it through before anyone discovered what it was all about.

No oversight, a finance Czar, more free reign than ever.

Exactly why is there such a rush? It’s like the sleazeball salesman telling feeble-minded customers that they MUST buy now. It just makes no sense.