Words of Bizdom

Don't assume that you always know the answer, but always trust that you know the person who does.

Manage as if you are a LEADER and Lead as if you are a MANAGER. Thus you will maximise the productive power of your organisation and operations as a LEADAGER.

BISIKAY
drbisikay@yahoo.com

The only thing missing in life is a conversation. mlelievre@leharegroup.com

If you really want it, you will make it happen

Fix the problem not the blame

When recruiting staff or buildig team, there is no substitute for experience and intelligence - qualifications are secondary.

Businesses involve the interaction of people (complex systems) either with one another (relationships, sensu lato), or with structures (economic apparatus of various forms). Because Governments and Other Large Corporations need to be Manageable in real time when they are handling large quantities of Information, they have developed structures that lack intra- and intersystem diversity. This is an inherent property of large systems; the more variety you have to manage, the larger the variety you require to manage it successfully (Systems Theory 101, anywhere in the world).
All of which assumes that the Managers know exactly what is needed to manage the future activities of their hybrid organizations (people and their machines, where machine here means anything that is not a person). But that admirable aim can never be realized because the larger the system (Governments, Corporations) the greater chance that "things happen" that cannot be foreseen. Again, this is an inherent property of large systems, and is intrinsic in any system where stochastic processes (unpredictable in detail, eg.weather, tsunamis, earthquakes), mutational events,(all EMR-powered agents of change, eg., UV solar storms, ozone holes, even high-energy blue light ) or gods ( our name for the changes that occur by an agency we don???t understand, one of which is the famous(?infamous) Deus ex machina).
And so as a 71yr old ex Harvard PhD (Biology 1966) and Junior Fellow,(1964-7) I am astounded at what looks like the ignorance of seriously successful Corporate Staff of very large firms of the inherent dangers they are inviting by failing to recognize that their rush for uniformity of governance methods has opened the door to what Biologists call Ecosystem Catastrophes. In Nature these occur frequently, on nested time-scales, that range from milliseconds=>eons, and which constantly challenge the fitness of the Ecosystems to survive (eg., arrival of a large comet, the eruption 500,000 years ago of the Wyoming Volcano, now 250,000 years overdue for eruption!), the present firestorms of UV energy in the far UV (sunburn range). The Wyoming Volcano erupted with a force almost 200 times greater than Mt Pinatubo last time, and created a crater 100 miles across and put 200 cubic miles of planetary detritus into the air. It is a supervolcano, a demon (depending on your religion or knowledge of Geology). Mt Pinatubo put 0.4 cubic miles of dust upstairs, reduced global photosynthesis measurably in the tree ring thicknesses in the Bristlecone Pine Research Labs in Arizona, gave us sulfuric acid-droplet enriched brown haze around the sun for over a year. The impossible-to-predict next eruption will produce a 1000 mile radius (? diameter) ash fallout that will totally destroy the Canadian and US Granary output for X years. If X is greater than 3, perhaps a billion will die.

But it has happened every 250,000 years on average since that volcano was first created by a missile from space that hit off the coast of what is now Oregon (it wasn???t there when it hit), hit so hard it penetrated the crust and opened a route into the mantle. That was perhaps 70-45 million years ago; no human ear heard the bang because we had not been invented, but it set the course of the evolution of the USA and probably the world for the next 70-45 million years.

No simple IBM type system can hope to manage the changes wrought by such a simple catastrophe; but Nature can, did, and will continue to do so as long as one factor holds true. Biodiversity must be maintained because it is in that that "strength" lies to always have an "answer" ready to go. In the genes of the individuals, in the variability of the populations, in the unknowable interactions that they have one with the other, at all levels of scale.

After the success of the Abrams tanks and Bushmaster vehicles in Desert Storm, who could have foreseen that RPG's and roadside bombs of ammonium salts could wreak such death and destruction on such weaponry? Who could have hoped to foresee that in the Bosnian War, Serbian Military could make cardboard tank cutouts that would fool a fighter bomber into attacking them, while the real tanks stayed hidden underground or in caves? Who would have predicted that a minor genetic alteration in a flu virus of birds could generate such a costly quarantine effort and lead to the loss of a lot of lives, and livelihoods? Well, probably any decent Ecology graduate student, but Army Commanders are not going to ask them very often for their advice!
Many years ago the great genius of the cybernetician Stafford Beer wrote several books including Platform for Change, the Brain of the Firm, among others. He lived in an abandoned Welsh mine at the time with his 8 children, and I think addressed the US Congress or at least its leaders.

The outcome left him a very bitter man, who, in the wake of the Allende Assassination, wrote that he forgot that Giant Systems cannibalize Microsystems if they lack the will to be cooperative, and rely instead on ruthless competitive advantage and confrontation. So it was with his miracle of Governance in Peru, where for a few short years, the Peruvian Government actually delivered progress to the Peruvian people, for the first time since the Spaniards annihilated the Incas, and later the Aztecs, by deception, European armor and horses, and outright treachery.

It was a simple lesson, and re-applied in Allende's assassination; Beer quit the game and vanished from sight.

Well, I am no Beer (though as an Aussie, I like mine, especially Negro Modela from Mexico, which is so much better than Corona, with or without lime in it!) But I have a message for you. Continue to manage your security, your infrastructures and your systems by non-diverse systems and you will all experience the meaning of Biological Catastrophe. It is not a matter of ???if???; it is only a matter of when.

Can you avoid that? Of course: install Cooperation, not Confrontation and its softer sounding but equally ruthless euphemism "Competition". In Nature, Mr. Charles Darwin got it wrong. Natural Selection never occurs at the level of the individual and only rarely at the level of the species. It is Ecosystems that are exposed to the forces of Natural Selection, and as they wade their way through time and catastrophes of various magnitudes, their species-composition alters back and forth, within the limits set by the population genetic variance, and the cultural parameters that "nurture" sensu lato, permit.

E.g., some rules deal with a lot. There are only 7, and cannot be more than 7 in this Universe, ways that crystals can be produced that have at least one symmetry, despite the fact that thousands of minerals exist. There are less than 10 body shapes for trees, no more than 3-4 for herbs, and the strucutre of roots is so significant that they ahve remained unchanged for over 280 million years. Now that is the design of a successful structure.
Our structures are wide open to IT attack, or a burst of EMF radiation that lasts for a few weeks and could kill our satellites. Every time the poles reverse ( about once every 250,000 years and, alarmingly like the Yellowstone Volcano, also 250,000 years overdue, I am advised that mammal extinctions rise sharply, with a correlation coefficient of 0.98 (Prof Gordon Sanson, Monash hearsay...but knowing Gordon, not likely to be in error!)

Have we all managed to make it this far in the last 500,000 years because we are in a strangely long interval between polar reversals, or supervolcano eruption? That would be ironic, would it not? That our progress from hunting ape to man that started perhaps 3 million years ago and ends with us as we are, which saw us safely through a number of Ice Ages in the last 125,000 years of the Pleistocene, saw the Aboriginal Australians survive on the driest, most-forbidding continent outside Antarctica for at least 60,000 years and probably twice that, is due to a "Lucky Break" of 250,000 extra years between world-wide catastrophes, generated by two items whose triggers we do not understand? Or what has its finger on these triggers ? Or when they will fire again?

We need to learn the real meaning of cooperation, and real fast; co-operation can shield you from hackers, confrontation can???t. Perhaps cooperation can allow human survival when Yellowstone blows; competition will fail utterly. We should be able to survive global warming easily, but we better get it right that the melting of the ice is driven not only by elevated carbon dioxide, but by elevated UV, which it is apparently not fashionable to consider.

The survivors of the next two decades will be those who adopt my business motto, ???stolen??? more or less with her permission from Tamara Griffiths of the Moonrise Sanctuary in Bunyip, Victoria. You may decide what Tamara is like ( and get it wrong) if I tell you her email address is scarletwoman@hotmail.com Cooperate, don???t Compete: it is Biological Stupidity to Compete, and despite the Ecology Textbooks with chapters saying it does, in Nature it only occurs in very simple interactions. It is Biological Endpoint for 1-2 billion humans if we don???t Cooperate. Will you, I wonder? Cooperate and survive? Continue to believe you are secure and safe when nothing could be further from the truth? Vaya con Dios!

Dr Teri O'Brien B.Agr.Sc., MSc.(Melb); Ph.D (Harvard Biol'66; Junior Fellow 1964-7;first Aussie elected to the Society of Fellows at Harvard), D.Sc.(Monash), Foundation Fellow, Australian Institute of Biology (inactive list)., Sole Trader Tericati, an Aussie ABN, and devoted to the idea that Cooperation is a Hell of a Good Idea if we want to come through the next two decades with any living children.

61401325307, where it is presently 11.00 am 5.05.2008 (or in the USA 04.05.2008! I rather enjoy the fact that the USA is behind us!) In the same way that I enjoy the fact that a minor Mexican beer is streets ahead of Fosters in my book. God does have a sense of humor; She is occasionally hilarious, but not always.

When listening really be involved in hearing all that is said, the little words are as important as the grand explaination of concepts. Pay heed to the lowest employee of any business, always say thank you, and never take your own publicity as factual.

In Leadership Coaching, everything that's ever happened to us is useful, if
reflected upon.
We see and learn, when we reflect, and catch ourselves at it.
This changes our knee-jerk behaviour patterns.
That's the start of real leadership wisdom.
Then tomorrow we do it a bit more.

Hands down, the best piece of management advice has to be 'behave at all times ethically, honestly and honourably'.

If you don't have and display these three behaviours / traits / characteristics - toward yourself, your bosses and, most especially, your staff - well, you shouldn't be in business or in management. Leave jobs that don't let you be this way. Refuse to lie, cheat, steal, or otherwise debase yourself. You can be the most competent manager ever, but if you're a crook and, as we say in Australia, an unethical bastard, then you're not worth anything.

Know the culture of the organisation in which you work. You could be the best operator in the world, but if the culture won't "let" you shine, you are in for a frustrating time.

some of the best I have come across:

On decision making:
"There is always a choice about the way you do your work, even if there is not a choice about the work it self" unknown

"make decisions the way senior citizens 'wish' they had done." Richard Leider

On planning:
"the only certainty about a 5 year plan is that it will be dramatically wrong in 5 years" Garry Sutton

On leadership:
"Leaders get the behaviour they tolerate" Dick Brown CEO Cable & Wireless

"Leaders get under everyones skin - positive energy, enthusiasm, optimism" Jack Welsh

"walk the talk" or as australians like to put it - 'stop the bulsh#t factor'

On innovation:
"new ideas emerge in the conflict of perspectives, the clash of disciplines, the murky waters at the edge of science, the technology that doesnt quiet work, on the boundaries of old knowledge" R. McDermott

"innovation comes from the mind and soul of a malcontent, a dreamer, a smart-ass and not from some bespectacled boffin or besuited planner" anaon

wisdom from the past:
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new" Albert Einstein

"Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover that you are on a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount" anon

And lots of gret lessons from Peter Senge but one that comes to mind is "profound change is a self reinforcing process. As a leader you dont have to drive it"

And far to much wisdom from Steve Covey but I like "assume everything you say about another they can overhear - now speak accordingly"

And a couple from George Bush:
"the future will be better tomorrow"
if we dont succeed we run the risk of failure"

some not so good wisdom:
"Team effort is people doing what I say" Kerry Packer

and some wisdom to refute Packer
"never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience" anon

some australian zen wisdom:
give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he will sit in a boat all day and drink beer"

but to finish with the best management guru I know
"facts are meaningless. how could you use facts to prove anything that's remotely true" Homer Simpson

james
jcarey@parracity.nsw.gov.au

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you." - Dale Carnegie