What history teaches us is...........

Does my project fit the overall strategy?

As much as Dilbert makes us all laugh, conversations like this one happen all too frequently within most organisations, and quess what we are all to blame.

It's not a business versus IT thing, these 'disconnects' happen across most organisations (between sales and marketing, HR and operations, etc, etc), however they are most glaring when they relate to IT given the high dependancy of most organisations on information.

Innovative

Don't you just love having conversations like this with supposedly intelligent people! Especially when you are trying to keep a straight face as they justify why their innovative thinking must have constraints and boundaries.

More on this one once I stop laughing so much!

Secure your desk!

Let's talk about the concept of a clean desk, which refers not to neatness, but to data and information security.

A clean desk ensures that when you're not at your desk or in your office, sensitive data is properly locked and secured against unauthorised access. It ensures that no inadvertent disclosure of sensitive information occurs.

If you leave your computer unattended, make sure it is locked so that a password is required to log in. Using the screen saver option in control panel - display provides a password lock option for when the computer is idle after a set period of time. If in doubt ask IT for help.

A clean desk prevents those who have physical access to your area from getting any items or information to which they are not entitled. This could be a co-worker, visitor or contractor during normal business hours or the cleaners after hours.

Another benefit of a clean desk is that items won't be susceptible to accidental damage. Besides the desk itself, make sure that you erase white-boards after meetings if any type of sensitive data is on them. Also think twice about the paper you place in your rubbish bin, should it go into secure bins instead?

A clean desk policy is not meant to make you paranoid about keeping your workspace under lock and key. It's simply meant to make you aware of how easy it is for information to be leaked, and a clean desk helps prevent this.

All files and records with which you are working should ideally be returned to your records storage area each day or at a minimum, securely locked up in drawers or cupboards.

Part of any good clean desk strategy includes making sure that your computer monitor is not easily viewable to outsiders. Thus, it's a good idea to position your computer monitor in such a way that people from outside can't see the display.

Things to remember about your clean desk include:

Treat sensitive material like any other type of valuable. Lock and secure it.

Secure hard copies and files/folders, as well as your laptop and other devices, in your workspace or office.

Make sure your monitor is not easily viewed by people walking by your desk. It may display a treasure trove of confidential information.

How Wrong Can You Get?

From an article in Harvard Business Review, April 2005, "Selection Bias and the Perils of Benchmarking".

During World War II, the statistician Abraham Wald was assessing the vulnerability of airplanes to enemy fire. All the available data showed that some parts of planes were hit disproportionately more often than other parts.

Military personnel concluded, naturally enough, that these parts should be reinforced. Wald, however, came to the opposite conclusion: The parts hit least often should be protected.

His recommendation reflected his insight into the selection bias inherent in the data, which represented only those planes that returned.

Wald reasoned that a plane would be less likely to return if it were hit in a critical area and, conversely that a plane that did return had probably not been hit in a critical location. Thus, he argued, reinforcing those parts of the returned planes that sustained many hits would be unlikely to pay off.

Selection bias it would seem is something we all need to consider when undertaking any form of statistical analysis during our daily work.

Note: The Wald story is one of the most widely cited anecdotes in the statistical community. To find out more about it see W. Allen Wallis, "The Statistical Research Group, 1942-1945", Journal of the American Statistical Association, June 1980, and M. Mangel & F.J. Samaniego, "Abraham Wald's work on Aircraft Survivability", Journal of the American Statistical Association, June 1984.

A simple thought to remember for your next meeting

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn"

Benjamin Franklin

Play Rugby Union this season with Melbourne Rugby

Do you love your Rugby Union? Do you live in Melbourne Australia? Are you aged over six years (we have people playing in their forties!)?

Then come an play rugby for Melbourne Rugby Club. Melbourne Rugby Union Football Club is one of the two oldest clubs in Victoria (the other being Melbourne University Rugby Football Club). Officially established in 1926, some 38 years after the first game of rugby was played in Victoria, under the 'Melbourne Rugby Union' banner. The first rugby union games were played in Victoria were in 1888. Three games are recorded as being played that year:- one against an English touring team and two against a New Zealand Maoris side. All three resulted in losses - but the game they play in heaven had arrived in Victoria.

Melbourne Rugby has teams from Under 6's thru to 1st Grade, in the VRU (Victorian Rugby Union) premier division competition.

If you are interested and want to find out more - click here.

What is strategy?

What is strategy? to use a simple yet powerful definition from 'The Economist', Strategy answers two basic questions: "Where do you want to go?" and "How do you want to get there?”

Traditional approaches to strategy focus on the first question. They involve selecting an attractive market, choosing a defensive strategic position, or building core competencies. Only later, if at all do companies address the second question. These types of approaches are incomplete, as they overemphasise the companies ability to analyse and predict which industries, competencies or strategic positions which will be viable and for how long, and they underemphasize the challenge of actually creating effective strategies.

Successful companies in rapidly changing markets must adopt a different perspective on strategy, one which lies in the recognition that strategy combines the questions of "Where" and "How" to create a continuing flow of temporary and shifting competitive advantages. Therefore the ability to make fast, widely supported and high quality strategic decisions on a frequent basis is the cornerstone of effective strategy. Because as Michael Dell, commented "The only constant in our business is that everything is changing. We have to be ahead of the game".

Effective decision makers create strategy by:

1. Building collective intuition that enhances the ability of the team to see threats and opportunities.

2. Stimulates quick conflict to improve the quality of the strategic thinking without sacrificing significant time.

3. Maintaining a disciplined pace that drives the decision process to a timely conclusion.

4. Defusing political behaviour that creates unproductive conflict and wasted time.

They also pay attention to innovation - related metrics such as sales from new products, time related metrics such as trends in average sales size per transaction, rates such as number of new product introductions per quarter, and durations such as the time it takes a launch a product globally.

Strategic decision making is the cornerstone of effective strategy, in high velocity competitive markets where traditional approaches to strategy give away to "competing on the edge", where strategic decision-making is the fundamental capability leading to superior performance. After all when strategy is a flow of constantly shifting competitive advantages, the choices that shape strategy matter greatly and occur frequently.

Falling asleep in meetings? Play Buzz Word Bingo

The Little Boy Asks the Meaning of Life

The Little Boy Asks the Meaning of Life
By: Author Unknown

An eight-year-old boy approached an old man in front of a wishing well, looked up into his eyes, and asked:
"I understand you're a very wise man. I'd like to know the secret of life."

The old man looked down at the youngster and replied:
"I've thought a lot in my lifetime, and the secret can be summed up in four words. The first is think. Think about the values you wish to live your life by. The second is believe. Believe in yourself based on the thinking you've done about the values you're going to live your life by. The third is dream. Dream about the things that can be, based on your belief in yourself and the values you're going to live by. The last is dare. Dare to make your dreams become reality, based on your belief in yourself and your values."

And with that, Walter E. Disney said to the little boy, "Think, Believe, Dream, and Dare."

The importance of an Idea

Next time you're wanting to convey to others the importance of sharing ideas and information, try this simple exercise:

Ask people to form pairs. Now ask them to share a similar amount of money - say two dollars.

Ask how much money each person has after they've exchanged their two dollars. (They'll have what they started with)

Now ask each person to share an idea with his or her partner. Ask how many ideas they now each have. (They will have twice as many ideas)

It was Harvey Firestone, the US tyre pioneer, who said that, in business, capital isn't so important, nor is experience, becasue you can get both of these. What is important, he said, is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need. What is remarkable about ideas, too, is that they multiply, and because of this, there isn't any limit to what you can do with your business and your life, said Firestone. They are our greatest asset - ideas.

Your most important words as a Manager

The five most important words for any manager: You did a great job.

The four most important words: What do you think?

The three most important words: Could you please.......

The two most important words: Thank you.

The most important word: We.

The least important word: I.

These are important words if you want to get on well with other people.

Death by Powerpoint

Yet another event, and instead of just trying to find as much free food as possible, this time you decided to go see a few of the sessions. This experience brought to mind an old concept: "Death by PowerPoint."

It is almost embarrassing how some people use PowerPoint. E-mail has, in the past, been described as "the place where knowledge goes to die." Well not so, nothing kills knowledge as fast as putting it in PowerPoint presentations.

Some of the most egregious (definition: remarkably or extraordinarily bad) ways to use PowerPoint include:

PowerPoint is NOT a word processor! The point of a PowerPoint slide is not to cram as much information into a single slide as possible. The idea of a slide is to have memory joggers that trigger thinking in the audience. That means you do not need to even have complete sentences (although it is a bonus if the words are spelled correctly). Simple statements work just fine


Most of your audience probably knows how to read ? A corollary to the thinking that PowerPoint is a word processor is that far too many presenters stand on stage reading the slides. It turns out that most of the audience members probably are literate and can read the slides for themselves. The purpose of a presentation is not to do so for them. If you want to read to people, go to the story time at the local library. A presentation is about explaining things to people that go above and beyond what they get in the slides. If it weren't they may as well just get your slides and read them in the comfort of their own office, home, boat, or bathroom.

A picture is worth a thousand words, possibly more ? Just because PowerPoint has bullets is no reason to use them. There is no way you can convey as much information in a slide full of bullets as you can in a slide with a single picture on it. Try this next time, insert a picture instead of the bullets and then talk about the picture. People will find it much more interesting and much more informative. As a bonus, it makes it more worthwhile to come to the presentation as opposed to just downloading the slides - making you a more important person to have at the event.

It's a good idea to know your presentation ? Statements like "oops, what is that slide doing here" or "I don't really know what this point is trying to say" are never a good thing in a presentation. Generally speaking, an audience that went through the time and effort to attend your presentation expects you to have spent at least that much time preparing for it. Taking someone else's presentation and just standing up and reading the slides as they show up is typically not going to work out too well.


Bullets are bad, stories are good ? There is no law that says everything you say has to fit in a bullet. In fact, teaching by bullet points was never one of the more interesting methods in school was it? Think back to the classes that you enjoyed. Most of the time they were the ones where the teacher related the material to real life, by telling a story that illustrated the points. Which would you rather hear? A sound-bite explanation of the four pieces that need to be proven in a lawsuit over negligence, or a story about how someone was negligent and got sued over it?

The actual content of your presentation is much more important than the slide show template you used! ? For some reason, every single presenter feels that they must have a unique PowerPoint template for their slides. It takes anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours to reapply a template, depending on the presentation and what you have done in it. That is two hours that could be profitably spent doing other things, like putting in content that the audience would care about as opposed to setting it in a template they don't care about.

The purpose of the three-pane view is not so you can see what the next slide is ? PowerPoint's three-pane view is great for building presentations. It is not there as a substitute for rehearsals so you can tell what the next slide is. Hit F5 and use PowerPoint the way it was designed.

Don't put your audience in pain. ? OK, so the general idea is to transfer knowledge. If you make the audience's collective eyes bleed by putting up white slides with a black font, something which is just horribly painful to look at in a dark room, you are much less likely to actually convey any points since they will be trying to look away from the screen the whole time.

Be conscious people with disabilities ? Most disabilities do not interfere with a presentation. However, some do. For instance, red text on a blue background is impossible to see for people who are color blind since it won't stop moving. Red text on black has the same effect, and red text on green simply disappears unless they are completely red and completely green, in which case the red text just jumps around a lot instead.

It is not a requirement to have at least one slide in each presentation that nobody can read ? You do not have to have a slide that nobody can read, contrary to popular opinion. That is what handouts are for. If people can't read it, why put it on the screen? Why waste the audience's time with it?

12-point font is not appropriate ? 12-point font can't be read unless you are right in front of the slide, in which case you need to move your head far too much. 14-point is bare minimum. Ideally, don't go below 18. There is no contest as to who can use the most fonts. You won't get dinged if you don't use 12 different fonts in a single slide. One or two is perfectly fine, and actually makes the slide readable instead, an extra bonus.

Aircraft engineering support (lessons in communications and support service)

According to the story, after every Qantas Airlines flight the pilots complete a a 'gripe sheet' report, which conveys to the ground crew engineers any mechanical problems on the aircraft during the flight. The engineer reads the form, corrects the problem, then writes details of action taken on the lower section of the form for the pilot to review before the next flight. It is clear from the examples below that ground crew engineers have a keen sense of humour - these are supposedly real extracts from gripe forms completed by pilots with the solution responses by the engineers. Incidentally, Qantas has the best safety record of all the world's major airlines.

(1 = The problem logged by the pilot.) (2 = The solution and action taken by the mechanics.)

1. Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
2. Almost replaced left inside main tire.

1. Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
2. Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

1. Something loose in cockpit.
2. Something tightened in cockpit.

1. Dead bugs on windshield.
2. Live bugs on back-order.

1. Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
2. Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

1. Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
2. Evidence removed.

1. DME volume unbelievably loud.
2. DME volume set to more believable level.

1. Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
2. That's what they're there for.

1. IFF inoperative.
2. IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.

1. Suspected crack in windshield.
2. Suspect you're right.

1. Number 3 engine missing.
2. Engine found on right wing after brief search.

1. Aircraft handles funny.
2. Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.

1. Target radar hums.
2. Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

1. Mouse in cockpit.
2. Cat installed.

1. Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
2. Took hammer away from midget.

Spellchecker poem (check your meaning, and the perils of modern technology)

I halve a spelling checker,
It came with my pea see.
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I dew knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait aweigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the era rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

I've scent this massage threw it,
And I'm shore your pleased too no
Its letter prefect in every weigh;
My checker tolled me sew.

Problem resolution in the workplace

Call to ban Dihydrogen Monoxide globally

Dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there. Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage.

Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death. Dihydrogen monoxide:

1. is also known as hydroxl acid, and is the major component of acid rain
2. contributes to the "greenhouse effect."
3. may cause severe burns.
4. contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.
5. accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
6. may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.
7. has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.

Contamination Is Reaching Epidemic Proportions! Quantities of dihydrogen monoxide have been found in almost every stream, lake, and reservoir in America today. But the pollution is global, and the contaminant has even been found in Antarctic ice.

DHMO has caused millions of dollars of property damage in the Midwest, and recently California. Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used: as an industrial solvent and coolant. in nuclear power plants. in the production of styrofoam. as a fire retardant. in many forms of cruel animal research. in the distribution of pesticides.

Even after washing, produce remains contaminated by this chemical. as an additive in certain "junk-foods" and other food products. Companies dump waste DHMO into rivers and the ocean, and nothing can be done to stop them because this practice is still legal. The impact on wildlife is extreme, and we cannot afford to ignore it any longer! The Horror Must Be Stopped!

The American government has refused to ban the production, distribution, or use of this damaging chemical due to its "importance to the economic health of this nation." In fact, the navy and other military organizations are conducting experiments with DHMO, and designing multi-billion dollar devices to control and utilize it during warfare situations.

Hundreds of military research facilities receive tons of it through a highly sophisticated underground distribution network. Many store large quantities for later use.

It's Not Too Late! Act NOW to prevent further contamination. Find out more about this dangerous chemical. What you don't know can hurt you and others throughout the world.

Further to the above post

The claims above about DHMO are all true. If you’ve never heard of DHMO (molecular formula H2O), you might know it by one of it’s other names: hydrogen hydroxide, hydronium hydroxide, hydric acid or, most commonly, water. Yep, water.

It just goes to show you can not take everything you see at face value. Sometimes you need to read between the lines and understand the deeper questions of the motives behind the message.

The Four typical ways in which organisations react to change:

"Not Invented Here": It didn't come from us, so it isn't any good
"Already Invented Here": We already do whatever the 'new' thing and can't learn from anyone else.
"Analysis Paralysis": We'll study the thing that might cause change to death, but never actually do anything about it.
"Head in Sand and March Right On": What change? Why change? Our way or the highway..."

What do you think these are?

Whaddya think these are?

Take a closer look and guess what they could be?

Pens with hidden cameras, right? WRONG!

Any wild guesses now?














Well ladies and gentlemen... congratulations! you've just seen the future of the lap top. These will soon replace your PC !

NOW SEE THIS BELOW!

Virtual Loops of Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management is not a new thing, we already do it without realising it!. Most people practice it in a 'siloistic' parallel model, rather than the 'true KM' cross functional interdepartmental model illustrated above (apology for the drawing - over four years I've never gotten around to re-drawing it properly!)

Competitive advantage and the triple bottom line

One of the most remarkable motion pictures ever made by Walt Disney was ‘The African Lion’. One sequence shows a cheetah accelerating from a walk to a sixty mile per hour sprint whilst chasing a nimble member of the deer family. The cat is so intent on the one animal he has selected as his prey that he actually passes other deer that are frenziedly running in all directions. One of them even runs alongside the cheetah for a while, not realising in his abject terror that the pursuer is his running companion. One swipe from the predator’s paw would bring down the nearby prey, but the hunter runs on, eyes fixed on the animal directly ahead. And he catches him, eventually.

The lesson to be learnt from this, author Edwin Feldman once encapsulated precisely: ”We must be so intent on attaining our goals as to be able to ignore distractions – but not to the extent of missing better opportunities”. (Feldman, 1982).

This analogy can quite easily be drawn to modern business trying to compete within today’s environment. World renowned investor Warren Buffet was once asked what is the most important thing he looks for when evaluating a company, without hesitation he replied, ‘Sustainable competitive advantage’.

So what is Triple Bottom Line reporting?. The term Triple Bottom Line (TBL) was coined by John Elkington, Chairman of Sustainability Corporation, and is described as the “Integrative measurement of a companies economic, environmental and social performance”.

Triple Bottom Line Reporting (TBLR) means taking responsibility for the social, environmental and economic impacts of the company endeavors and reporting them in an open and transparent way. TBLR can be seen as the synthesis of traditional financial reporting and two new concepts: Corporate environmental reporting and Social responsibility reporting. Corporate social responsibility refers to how companies act towards their workforce and their families, local communities as well as society at large, it entails the establishment of sound ethics and core values in its relationship with stakeholders.

TBLR is not an end in itself, it is a tool. TBLR is one of the tools that can be used to help develop competitive advantage become more sustainable through integration of economic, environmental and social aspects of decision making, ie External reporting that gives consideration to financial outcomes, environmental quality and social equity.

Two important conditions need to be satisfied for TBLR to become a worthwhile practice. First, it must be based on solid information. The required information can be generated through the use of environmental management systems (EMS) and updated accounting practices. Secondly, TBLR will only be a meaningful exercise as long as there is a genuine commitment by companies. TBLR needs to be perceived as good business practice today, as well as contributing to more distant goals.

TBLR serves two main objectives. Firstly, it is a means of promoting integrated decision making within the business. Secondly, it is a vehicle for companies to promote accountability of their activities towards a wide group of stakeholders and thereby respond to societies growing expectations of transparency.

What is competitive advantage?, well currently there are a number of theories relating to competitive advantage which dominate traditional strategic thinking. These include the resource based view, core competence, competitive positioning, competitive advantage of nations, competing for the future, and more recently strategic leadership and organisational learning and corporate knowledge management. These can be categorised into planned versus emergent and competitive positioning versus core competence strategies.

In the context of today’s world a more appropriate framework would be best seen as a synergy of these traditional frameworks integrated together. Sustainability of a companies competitive advantage lies in its ability to adapt quickly to meet the changing marketplace expectations and 'norms' in which it operates. This requires an emergent approach to strategy development, whilst utilising components of the planned approach, the key being flexibility.

Sources of competitive advantage have always shifted over time, but some are becoming more important, such as the importance of workforce, people, knowledge and transparency. Many of the traditional sustainable competitive advantages have over time proven not to be or have lost importance and benefit. Recognising that the basis for competitive advantage changes is essential in developing a revised different framework for reference into the future. Strategies have to be developed to cope with an age of change and must be increasingly flexible and outward looking to embrace the wider context and issues of our highly dynamic global environment.

The study of competitive advantage has evolved significantly since the concept was first proposed in the early eighties, when Day suggested types of strategies to help ‘sustain the competitive advantage’. ‘Sustainable’ is the kind of advantage which can not be easily copied. It is an advantage which is long term and which can not be easily eroded by the activities of competitors.

Porter brought about the Competitive Positioning or ‘outside in’ approach to strategy in the mid 1980’s. He believes that the nature and degree of competition in an industry hinges on five forces and argues that these forces of the underlying economic structure for an industry or economy will determine its profitability and as a consequence, the degree of competitiveness.
The Resource/Core Competency based strategy or ‘inside out’ approach to strategy became popular from Prahalad and Hamel in the 1990’s, emphasising the importance of business specific competencies in gaining competitive advantage. They believe that whilst the traditional planning focus is on the present, the here and now, fitting current competence and resources to market conditions. Unless traditional strategic planning approaches are continually reviewed and refined, a company is unlikely to gain long term benefits.

The resource-based framework asserts that competitive advantage is a function of strategic resources and is sustainable to the extent that the resources on which it is based are valuable, scarce and difficult to imitate. The resource based framework view of the firm also implies that the greater the intangibility of its resources, the greater the sustainability of its competitive advantages drawn from these resources. Whilst valuable, this framework leaves much to be desired, given that as argued by Smith, Vasuadevan and Tanniru (1993), the model is limited by its static view of the impact and interaction of resources, and its failure to consider learning, knowledge and people as a strategic resource.

Traditional sources of success, product and process technology, protected or regulated market’s, access to financial resources and economies of scale used by these frameworks can still provide competitive advantage and leverage, but in some cases to a lesser degree than in the past in the context of our global environment.

It can be concluded from my reading that competitive advantage in the global marketplace is difficult to sustain for good corporate citizens regardless of the framework employed, however it is very worthwhile remembering that true competitive advantage and hence a sustainable position, only exists in the mind of consumers, who believe the value they will receive is greater than the price they will pay for a product or service. Ultimately consumers determine whom and which company holds the greatest amount of competitive advantage. Without this mindset, and hence the consumers willingness to purchase your product or service, the best strategies in the world mean nothing.

The changing demands of society on the business world require a dialogue between society and business about what is desirable and what is possible in the short and long term, which is where TBLR comes into play.

Potential benefits that companies can derive from the TBLR can be classified as follows:
1. Disclosure drives performance.
2. Improved market positioning (Vis-à-vis).
3. Better stakeholder relationship.
4. Has the potential to yield significant benefits to reporting companies.
5. Other benefits can accrue beyond the organisations practicing TBLR.
6. TBLR implementation costs are small compared to the cost of the management systems needs to collect the information.
7. TBLR only makes sense if underpinned by solid information.

TBLR is a very young field of activity that is likely to continue to develop and change. Australia launched a voluntary system for “public environmental reporting” in April 2000 and Environmental Australia developed and published a framework which is in the process of being adopted as standard.

In conclusion, it is and will continue to be competitive advantage, not regulatory pressure, which is now forcing a move towards sustainability in business practices and corporate stewardship, TBLR. The old style of management - reaction to immediate crises without concern for long term costs and consequences - is giving way to managing the economy and the environment "not as concurrent or complimentary priorities, but as integral parts of a whole" (David Anderson, Canadian Minister of the Environment). The measure of the depth of this change in consciousness is TBLR, accounting for economic, environmental and social considerations in corporate performance.