James Drogan

Metaphor for Baruch: A Beehive is a provocative post on cac.ophony that will, at least, cause you to pause a bit and consider the student's point of view.  Over the last few days I have been thinking about how students view the educational experience and the attention that we in academia give, and should give, to this view.  They are, after all, customers.  They do have choices.

From Maxine Udall comes this beautiful piece regarding markets, morals, economic distortions, and leadership.

I spoke this term to our incoming graduate students on the matter of ethics and I hope to do that again.  If so, Maxine's remarks will be one of the foci of the talk.

The following clip is from John Mauldin's Thoughts from the Frontline Weekly Newsletter of February 26.

"George, I have a problem. I feel like I am drinking information through a fire hose. I am addicted to information. It is beginning to interfere with my productivity, as I get so much high-quality material from the best sources that I feel I need to absorb. Each bit of information becomes a clue to the larger puzzle. But I have to write more. I am going to have to start randomly deleting things every now and then if I am going to stay on top of it all, and get some of these books that are in me done."

I am determined to have a life outside of work (family and friends are important), and am for the most part successful at that, but I am not getting done all that I wish I could do when I'm at work. And there are books piled on my desk that simply scream for attention.

I thought George would understand. He has some 90 analysts all over the world feeding him up-to-the-minute analysis on country and issue situations. Surely, he must have an idea for me on how to handle the "download" problem.

'John,' he replied quietly, sighing heavily, 'I know what you mean. But if I started randomly deleting, I'd be afraid I would miss something important. What else can you do but keep at it?'"

Indeed, what else can you do?

I'm on a number of social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Epsilin, probably some others I have forgotten about) and, on occassion, occupy my mind in thinking about their value, especially in a business context.  There are a lot of pros and cons expressed by a lot of thoughtful and not-so-thoughtful people.  Ergo, we need to make up our own minds.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger is one of the more thoughtful and mostly neutral bloggers I follow.  He has recently posted The Business Value of Social Networks.  I recommend a reading and a following of the links he has provided.

Attention 7200 students.  Be alert for I intend to bring this matter to your attention.

I have, as some of you may recall, returned to school.  I thought it would be interesting to keep track of how my workbench changes as I progress through the course.

Here's what it looked like after the first seminar on the theory of international relations (click on the picture to see a larger view).

The stack to the right of the laptop is the reading and other material accumulated during the 11 weeks.  I've five more seminars to go.  I don't imagine the laptop will get any larger physically, but if the stack of paper grows at the same rate as that of the first seminar, I reckon it may be as tall as I.

The following exchange took place in my MIS in Transportation course.

Me:

Let's assume that we can divide the world of decisions into the routine (we do it every day, there are no surprises, we have the data, the decision rules are clear) and the non-routine (we're facing a new situation).

I'm interested the experience that your company has had with decisions in these two categories, especially how the relative number of decision may have changed in the two categories over time.  For example, does your company face more non-routine decisions now than in the past.  What are the causes of this change?

Student:

We have recently encountered a whole new set of decisions within the last year. I started at the company in the summer of 08' when the market has reached its pinnacle and the shipping world was a very different place. Once the market began to fall in the fourth quarter, the nature of the business began to change drastically.

The operations department was suddenly bombarded with claims that normally would have never been pursued. The charterers department was flooded with sketchy companies that seemed to be created overnight and brokers were crying for us to fix with them because of "good relationships". The area where we had to be most vigilant was in regards to payments especially for hire on ships and freight for cargoes. Almost overnight specific charterers began defaulting on payments. The company had not seen this in a very long time, but knew that it meant their cash flow had run out and/or they were very close to bankruptcy. The main goal of operations was now to collect freight or immediately inform management if charterers were not cooperating.

Management's new focus was to monitor payment and the charterers who were defaulting. Existing deals had to be renegotiated because many charters could not meet their prior commitments. The company has been in existence for over 125 years and has the reputation for being a good performer. Our proceeding reputation helped us to weather the storm since people were not as reluctant to do business with us. However, charterers were aware of the cash flow associated with a major company that has significant backing and were suddenly throwing claims at us left and right. The legal department became more important than ever in immediately addressing disputes and trying avoid trials.

(The company and student have been concealed at the student's request, and other minor editing changes have been made.)

My sense is that this example of the non-routine is going to become the new routine.  Business systems (inclusive of information systems) will require reconfiguration in order to be able to compete in this "new normal."  Clinging to old ways may well lead to exit from the market.  In Forces and Managing the Business I have suggested ways to contend.

Dave, over on bizzXceleration: Performance, Value and Profit, also has some things to say about this matter.

From my firiend, Larry, comes the following.

'This video shows the winner of "Ukraine’s Got Talent",  Kseniya Simonova, 24,  drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II.  Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch.
 
The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about £75,000.
 
She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.
 
It is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman’s face appears.
 
She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.
 
This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house.
 
In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye.
 
The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million.

Kseniya Simonova says:

"I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me. The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there’s surely no bigger compliment."'

Extraordinary indeed.

Harvard Business Review Blogs brings The Decade in Management Ideas.  I don't necessarily endorse all these nor, given the current state of the world, suggest that these are ideas that have been widely accepted and implemented.  I bring them to your attention as a way of provoking thought about what it takes to run a successful business in current and emerging world.

Be sure to read the comments.

Here's a nice little piece from Joho the Blog.  Be sure to click through on the Marginal Revolution link.  More good stuff there.

One of the most important things we do in life is to provide advice. What classes and professors to take.  How to think about a career.  These are two examples of topics I discuss with students on a regular basis.  I also take my classroom students through a small exercise on constructive criticism, one of the most important things (along with the assessment of personnel) that anyone does.

We never do any of this as well as we ought or can.  It's a constant learning process.  It is in this learning that Joho the Blog and Marginal Revolution can be helpful. 

From John Mauldin comes this:

"Lying here, during all this time after my own small fall, it has become my conviction that things mean pretty much what we want them to mean. We'll pluck significance from the least consequential happenstance if it suits us and happily ignore the most flagrantly obvious symmetry between separate aspects of our lives if it threatens some cherished prejudice or cosily comforting belief; we are blindest to precisely whatever might be most illuminating."

-- from Transition, by Iain M. Banks

Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest

-- The Boxer, by Paul Simon