Thursday, August 28, 2008

Workmobile!

Volkswagen recently revealed its T-6 concept vehicle - quite literally an office on wheels - that appears to be larger than a VW Camper and a cross between Tom Cruise’s ride in Minority Report and Tron’s Lightcycles.
Your experience as a passenger is more likely to resemble Tom Scott’s hilarious Tea Party In A Transit than an orderly business meeting.

Who wants to be the first to own one?



Monday, August 25, 2008

Why CEOs Fail

11 behaviors, either deep-seated personality faults or qualities that once were beneficial but became problematic, that can de-rail any organization... from the book by the same name written by David L. Dotlich and Peter C. Cairo.

Arrogance

Melodrama

Volatility

Excessive Caution

Habitual Distrust

Aloofness

Mischievousness

Eccentricity

Passive Resistance

Perfectionism

Eagerness to Please






Sunday, August 24, 2008

What is Falun Gong?

A new book attempts to answer this question:

FALUN GONG AND THE FUTURE OF CHINA

By David Ownby

By 291 pp. Oxford University Press. $29.95


Here is a review from the New York Times.

Ownby himself praises another book on this subject, David Palmer's Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China -- and makes it clear where his own interpretations tend to diverge. The biggest difference between the books, from the everyday reader's point of view, is that Palmer looks at the larger Qigong movement since the 1940s and explores Falun Gong within that context. Ownby's book is focused entirely on Falun Gong -- both in China and in the Chinese diaspora.

Another book on Falun Gong is "Falun Gong: The End of Days", by Maria Hsia Chang. Though not perfect (and somewhat trivialized by David Ownby), it offers less history and more about the actual beliefs of Falun Gong.











Saturday, August 23, 2008

Agent of Change?

Analysis: Biden pick shows lack of confidence (AP)

A statesman known for slips of his tongue

Eamon Javers, Jonathan MartinSat Aug 23, 2:44 AM ET

Forget the idea that opposition researchers got cracking the very moment that Sen. Barack Obama announced Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his running mate—they’ve long been poring over his records and background, and those of all the most likely vice-presidential picks.

For all that, though, the likeliest attacks in Biden are all matters of public record, and often problems of his own making.

Biden, who dropped out of the 1988 Democratic primary after he was accused of lifting sections of his stump speech about his humble origins from British Labour party leader Neil Kinnock, more recently took heat in 2006, when he said, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

This year, he managed to blow up his official announcement he was entering the race when he deemed Obama “the first mainstream African American [candidate] who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

Reporters and opposition researchers are already salivating at the verbal grenades yet to be launched.

More substantively, Biden supported the 2002 resolution that authorized the war in Iraq—a resolution that Obama opposed and, in the primaries at least, painted as “the most important foreign-policy decision in a generation.”

Biden was on the wrong side of that thinking, by Obama’s lights. In 2002, he said that America had “no choice but to eliminate” Saddam Hussein.

While preparing for his own run at the party’s nomination last year, he took several shots at Obama’s inexperience, warning that “If the Democrats think we’re going to be able to nominate someone who can win without that person being able to table unimpeachable credentials on national security and foreign policy, I think we’re making a tragic mistake.”
When Obama gave a speech saying he’d send troops into Pakistan if he had actionable intelligence and the Pakistani government was unwilling to act, Biden told NPR that “It’s a well-intentioned notion he has, but it’s a very naïve way of thinking how you’re going to conduct foreign policy,” adding of his then-rival, in a remark Republicans are sure to revive, “Having talking points on foreign policy doesn’t get you there.”

Biden also said last year of his now running mate, that “I think he can be ready, but right now I don’t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.” He may also see clips from his 1988 presidential run, when he ran an ad in which the narrator warns:

”The White House isn't a place to learn how to deal with international crisis, the balance of power... the economic future of the next generation,'' the narrator of Biden's 1988 ad for the Democratic nomination said. "The president has got to know the territory.”

Biden, 65, came to Congress at the age of 30, meaning he’s spent more than half his life in the institution, which Republicans will surely charge makes him an unsuitable running mate for a candidate of change.

Another moment likely to be re-used against him is his August 2, 2005 Daily Show appearance where Jon Stewart asked him of a potential 2008 run, “You may end up going against a Senate colleague, perhaps McCain, perhaps Frist?”

Biden replied, “John McCain is a personal friend, a great friend, and I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country would be better off — be well off no matter who...”

First elected to the Senate at the tender age of 29, Biden has now spent more than half his life there, which cuts against Obama’s change message, even as it insulates the first-term Illinois Senator from charges that he’s too green for the White House.

Biden has accepted $5,133,072 in contributions from lawyers and lobbyists since 2003. Obama does not accept contributions from federally registered lobbyists.

And he has one other weakness that hasn't received much attention to date. One of Biden's sons, Hunter, is a registered Washington lobbyist in a year in which Obama has been excoriating lobbyists and the culture of corruption in Washington. The younger Biden is a name partner at the firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair, LLP, and seems to have specialized in lobbying for just the kind of earmark spending by Congress that Obama has vowed to slash. Republican insiders say the party is likely to make an issue of Biden's family lobbying ties.

Also expect to hear more about Biden's close ties with credit card companies. His largest contributor (based on total contributions by employees) over the past five years has been MBNA, the Delaware-based bank aquired in 2005 by Bank of America than until then was the world's largest independent credit card issuer and a major supporter of the 2005 bankruptcy bill that Biden crossed the aisle to support.

Top five donors (including employee donations):
MBNA Corp. (Delaware-based bank acquired in 2005 by Bank of America)
Pachulski, Stang et al. (law firm with major Delaware officers)
Young, Conaway et al. (large Delaware law firm)
Law Office of Peter Angelos (mid-Atlantic trial law firm)
Simmons Cooper LLC (national trial law firm)

Top five industry group contributors:
Lawyers/law firms
Real estate
Retired
Securities & investment
Miscellaneous finance


Friday, August 22, 2008

Another Business Book

Ho hum...

Here comes yet ANOTHER over-the-hill corporate big whig trying to sell you a book with supposedly "inside information" about what leads to failure in organizations.


Donald Keough was recently interviewed on the Charlie Rose Show, so you can take a look for yourself and draw your own conclusions...

Of course, it doesn't help matters much that Charlie lionizes this guy... which, for the record, may have something to do with the fact that Keough's company has sponsored Charlie's various TV projects over the years. Charlie has done this before with his various corporate benefactors, bless his heart! Remember his forgettable, recently re-broadcast interview with Chuck Fruit (who died "after his ritual morning swim")? Nice touch, that, perhaps... taking care of those that take care of you.

Not that this guy Keough is wrong, mind you.

It's just that the book, in my mind, is a wee bit oversold.

And there is just something that bothers me about rich people who talk in terms of me, me, me. Wouldn't be nice to hear Mr. Keough give constant and sustained credit to the hard working, every day people at Coke and elsewhere who actually EARNED the money. Nah... it's not about them, it's about me, me, me!

Moreover, he and his family are really well off by any reasonable standard of global wealth. Wouldn't it be nice for him to donate the proceeds of this book to the less fortunate... say, wounded veterans who protected the economic system which allowed him to amass a large personal fortune, and who actually bought the products he was selling? Nah... Keough wouldn't do that... it's not about them, it's about me, me, me!

If you do a web search online, you can find his "commandments"... 11 in fact, rather than the 10 commandments as advertised. Keough manages to do the Almighty one better!

Commandment one/top of the list: if you want to fail, quit taking risks

Commandment two: if you want to increase your chances for failure, be inflexible

Commandment three: to achieve failure, isolate yourself

Commandment four: for guaranteed failure, assume infallibility

Commandment five: to fail, play the game close to the foul line

Commandment six: don't take time to think

Commandment seven: to fail, put all your faith in experts and outside consultants

Commandment eight: if you want to fail, love your bureaucracy

Commandment nine: if you want to fail, send mixed messages

Commandment ten: if you want to fail, be afraid of the future

Commandment eleven: if you want to fail, lose your passion for work/for life.

Now, doesn't all this make you want to run right out and spend $16.47 of your hard earned, after-tax dollars to help amass even MORE wealth for this guy through book royalties... for even more of his "inside information"?

Nah... I think I'll pass...















Sunday, August 17, 2008

Stuck in Traffic?


Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Corporate Mismanagement

Great blog post about corporate mismanagement at public companies!

This one is definitely NOT to be missed!