James Drogan

I am involved, as many of you know, in the graduate program at SUNY Maritime.   My mission, as I concieve of it, is to:

“The aim of the graduate program is to provide a quality educational experience that prepares students to thrive and make a difference in the world. The theme of the program, international transportation management, is continually being shaped by events in the world. Hence, to continue to be relevant the program must change in its essential elements – students, faculty, courses, and learning environment.

If Maritime did less it would not be fulfilling its commitment to its most important constituencies, the students and the organizations that hire them.”

The development of leadership skills is essential in discharging this mission.  Consequently, the level at which I teach my courses is characterized by:

"The point of view taken in my courses is that of the middle and upper level executive.  With what issues must these executives contend?  How do they discharge their responsibilities?  What does success mean?  How can that be achieved?" 

This characterization along with other characterizations such as ethics and culture are woven through all of my courses. 

With that in mind, I draw your attention to a post by one of my favorite bloggers, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, titled "Lou Gerstner at MIT."  Wladawsky-Berger recounts a visit by Gerster to MIT in which a number of key aspects of organization and leadership are covered.  You may, as I, have wished you were there, but this is what we have and its worth your time.

Perhaps one of the clearest explanations yet of what is happening.

So how does The Generalist get to be, and stay a Generalist?

Well, it helps to cast one's net far and wide in search in interesting people and interesting issues.  Dave (the Dave from Re: Conversations with Dave) introduced me to TED Talks available through iTunes as well as through TED. 

TED Talks equal far, wide, and interesting -- just what the doctor ordered.  A few that have caught my attention are: 

E.O. Wilson on saving life on Earth

 

Julia Sweeney on letting go of God

 

Sirena Huang dazzles on violin

 

Tony Robbins asks why we do what we do

 

Anna Deavere Smith's American character

 

Janine Benyus shares nature's designs

 

Jennifer Lin improvs piano magic

Just a few of the many that found their way into my iPod, then into my thought.  Good stuff and worth the time.

There are a number of things that have occurred recently that prompt this musing.  No need, I think, to enumerate them.

My good friend, Answers.com, defines prescience as " Knowledge of actions or events before they occur; foresight."  There is an implication, as you can see, of time here.

Does time matter in the definition of prescience?  Was Nostradamus, who died in 1566, prescient?  Is the person who forecasts the NYSE opening average this coming Monday prescient?  What about the plethora of political pundits?  Or the guy who declared "Mission Accomplished."

Well, I don't know.  I'm confused.  It seems to me that prescience has some sort of associated time limitation.

The short vertical line is the limitation.  To the left of the line you are prescient, to the right you are not prescient.  Who decides where the line is placed?

Then there is the question of who declares prescience.   A committee?  The person who desires the adjective? 

If the star represents that about which one is prescient, does it have to have certain characteristics?  If the "that" is an event, does the event need to have a certain size?  Or a certain type of impact? 

What is prescience anyway?

Perhaps the word is too confusing to worry about. 

I have often thought of myself as a generalist.  My sense is that I demonstrate this trait in my conversation, writing, and teaching.  Whether this is delusional is a conclusion I will leave to others.

I wasn't always of this ilk.  In the beginning I was a System 360 Assembler Language programmer -- pretty specific I would say.  Now, if you look at Research Interests and scan other material on this site, I think it fair to say that my interests have become fairly broad.  How I went from there to here is a subject for another post.

I bring this subject of The Generalist up to contribute to discussions of alternative life tracks.  You may recall that I have encouraged my students to tune in to this blog with the idea that some of what they find here may be of use as they move forward.  This post is intended to be useful.

I also want to point to two useful items from the Creative Generalist, a blog I have been reading for some time.

The first of these is a beautiful graphical depiction, Specialists and Generalists in 3D, of the essential differences and similarities between generalists and specialists.  I'm attracted to this because much of my thinking is done in terms of graphical representations.  I therefore connect very easily with it and find myself in agreement with its contents.

The second, What Specifically Do Generalists Do?, represents a considerable amount of detail which hangs on the framework of the first piece.  It is full of links to other items which I have not yet explored.  I also very much agree with the content of this post.

So, if you are wondering about specialization versus generalization, maybe there is some helpful leads here. 

This morning, from Businesspundit, comes The Top 10 Changes In My Business Thinking. 

I call your attention to this item for two reasons:

1. Blogging can turn into unsatisfying work.  Blogging may be one of the most powerful forces of the Internet Age, but it may not be for everybody and may not be for all time.  Now, as readers, we might conclude that from the sheer volume of gibberish we encounter in blogs, but we don't often hear of this conclusion being drawn by a blogger.
   
   What lies behind my occasional entries in this blog is the comforting idea that volume doesn't matter much, only quality.  I don't get too much confirmation of the latter, but I'm not much concerned.
   
   
2. The second part of the item from Businesspundit is the ten changes in the author's business thinking.  I particularly call this to the attention of my students who occasionally visit here.  These reasons align well with my own experience.
   
   Their value is as a stimulus to one's own thinking about the ends and means to a whole life.
   

In Managing the Business I called out the adaptive enterprise as a fundamental idea for dealing with the unpredictable velocity of change that, in my view, characterizes the current and emerging environment.

In May of 2006 The McKinsey Quarterly released "The adaptable corporation,"  an article that underscores the need for adaptibility.  The abstract is:

"Any business faces two basic demands: it must execute its current activities to survive today's challenges and adapt those activities to survive tomorrow's. Since both executing and adapting require resources, managers face an unending competition for money, people, and time to address the need to perform in the short run and the equally vital need to invest in the long run. This problem raises an important question—is it possible to do both well or is there an inevitable trade-off between executing and adapting?"

This relatively sudden burst of activity on droganbloggin results from notes that have been stacking up for some time regarding a number of matters of interest to me.  Most are related to Managing the Business and  supports the thesis of the paper.  I also think these posts will be of value to my students.

In my presentation of  Managing the Business at the 2008 Conference on Cutting Edge Issues in Shipping I ended my remarks by displaying the following.

A theme through the paper and the presentation was the primacy of the person as the driver of business success, and the consequent responsibilities of education to produce such people, and the subsequent responsibilities of organization to treat people as assets.

In December 2007 The McKinsey Quarterly published The organizational challenges of global trends: A McKinsey Global Survey.  This article dove tails nicely with Managing the Business, hence I bring it to your attention.

Here is the abstract of the article.

"Companies around the world are struggling to confront the organizational challenges presented by global trends such as growing competition for talent, shifting centers of economic activity, and an increasingly networked business environment, a McKinsey Quarterly survey¹ shows. Although the challenges are manifold, two themes—how to move quickly and how to deal with geographic and regional diversity—emerge most frequently.

Yet more than two-thirds of the executives we surveyed say that their organizations do not have a clear view of the changes needed to meet these and other looming social and economic developments. Almost half admit that their companies have not installed the right people to lead a response, and around a third do not know who’s accountable for dealing with such issues.

Nonetheless, nine out of ten executives insist that organizational change is either “extremely important” or “very important” to building or maintaining competitive advantage."

This article is useful to both students and business people alike in addressing actions necessary to maximize one's potential.

The December 30, 2007 issue of The Economist includes the article "The future of futurology."  I especially want to bring this to the attention of my students who, from time to time, may deign to tune in here.

Many of us, but especially students, face the prospect of what to do next, to look ahead, to identify choices.  Articles such this help us to identify and think about the alternatives.

I include here two paragraphs from the article to whet your appetite for the whole thing.

"A third piece of advice: say you don’t know. Uncertainty looks smarter than ever before. Even politicians are seeing the use of it: governments that signed the Kyoto protocol on climate change said, in effect: “We don’t know for sure, but best to be on the safe side”—and they have come to look a lot smarter than countries such as America and Australia which claimed to understand climate change well enough to see no need for action.

The last great redoubt of the know-alls has been the financial markets, hedge funds claiming to have winning strategies for beating the average. But after the market panic of 2007 more humility is to be expected there too."

Managing the Business is a paper I submitted to and was accepted by the Third Annual Conference on Cutting Edge Issues in Shipping, Maritime College, February 1, 2008.

Abstract

The ebb and flow of global business and the compression of time converge to present a business environment of increasing complexity and uncertainty. Prior management principles and practices are continually battered by the global forces at play.

Transportation cannot escape these pressures inasmuch as it is a derived demand, the golden thread upon which the world relies for the free, fast, reliable worldwide exchange of items of value such as goods and services; money; information, ideas, and news; and culture.

This paper examines ideas for contending with these global forces.