Communicating Where We're Going

Today I've been listening to a fascinating interview with General Stanley McChrystal from the always excellent Art of Charm podcast.

I was especially interested in what the General had to say about getting everyone on board so that they know what the team is working on. Basically the lesson to be learnt is if everyone has a sense of purpose and knows what they are involved in then they are better able to make decisions on their own. Given the complexity of many of the systems we work on these days micromanagement of everyone on your team is just impossible.

Communicating the objective, the why, the where, and the how, at a high level, will better allow people to make the best decisions on their own.

This is what I intend to do more emphatically with the team I am working with at the moment.

Starting A New Discipline

So, the first day of 2017 is a time for me to have a bit of a think and "a damn good look at myself" as Dads sometimes say.

I am going to follow Seth Godin's example and try to post some thoughts daily. Might be short and might be long. Usually short-ish. (-:

Why Are We Being Forced Into Recession?

I'm amazed at the amount of UK reporting on recessions and economic slowdowns that are full of weasel words!

For instance, take today's reporting of the drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Everything is full of "biggest one-day drop ever" and "massive slump". It was in numbers, 770 points, but not in percentage terms. Only 6.9%.

Yet when you look back at previous large falls, October 1929, was a fall of 22%, albeit across three days of trading on the 24th, 28th and 29th. And 19th October 1987 was even larger at 32%.

But we aren't told these percentages. Just that it was the "biggest one-day drop ever!"

It's like the results of the poll that were announced a few weeks back that said that three million people in the UK are afraid of losing their job. No details were given for:

• who conducted the poll,
• what the sample size was, or
• where the people who were surveyed came from.

I'm used to hearing things like "In a survey of 10,000 households across the UK that was conducted by the Gallup Organisation this week, 10 out of every 6 people...." But no such details were provided. More weasel words!

Wonder why the government wants to talk us all into a recession?

Is it because they want people to stop spending and start saving more? Like they do in Japan? Here's an interesting article about the Japanese bailout that occurred in the 1990's.

I wonder if banks that are "flush with cash" from savings don't have to have such an interconnected and complicated set of borrowings between themselves.

Advance Australia Fair

Wow.

Didn't expect this to inspire the first post but the Aussie national anthem, Advance Australia Fair, has words that can be sung to a whole stack of other melodies.

For instance, Adam Hills, who inspired this search, has this post on YouTube of him singing Advance Australia Fair to Barnsey's (Jimmy Barnes) tune Working Class Man.

Since then, I've heard, and found, that Advance Austraia Fair can be sung along to the tunes of:

1. The theme from The Beverley Hillbillies.
2. The theme from Gilligan's Island - BTW will Gilligan ever get off that island? No. Never. According this excellent article by Clay Shirkey! Whose new book (Amazon link) (Amazon UK link), that expands on the theme in this article, should be compulsory reading for everyone who works in this zoo we call IT, development, software development, yadda-yadda! VBG! (To quote Lenny). IMHO natch.
3. The Beach Boys/Chuck Berry song "Surfing USA" - Hmmm. When will they release "Chuck Berry's Golden Decade" on CD/MP3/etc.
4. The theme from The Monkees.
5. The John Paul Young song Love is in the Air.

Anyone have any other tunes that they know of?

cheers,

Rob