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June 2002
Stuff ...
- Perhaps it's just my age: I was of the '50s cohort that practiced hiding, balled up under my elementary school desk—to avoid the expected Soviet nuclear bomb blast. Whatever the reason, I literally wept last week when Russia officially joined NATO. To be sure, we are now confronted with a new set of daunting threats; still, whenever mankind can put any horror pretty much behind us, it's a very heartening & unusual story. Bravo to Mssrs. Bush and Putin!
- Did I read it right? The board of Adelphia lent the controlling Rigas family several billion dollars? How could that happen? Bernie Ebbers, late of WorldCom, was lent a scant few hundred million buckaroos by his board. Again: How could that happen? Then there was the sorry spectacle of my former Stanford B. School dean, Bob Jaedicke, before Congress. Jaedicke, head of the Enron board's audit committee, testified that he hadn't a clue that anything was amiss. How could that happen? (I inquired of Stanford about sending my MBA back-or at least having the course Jaedicke taught me—"advanced accounting"—expunged from my transcript.) It appears that "business integrity" is the ultimate oxymoron! Whatever can we do? (Obviously, the big guilty-conscience grant to teach ethics at the Harvard B. School didn't solve the problem.)
- Speaking of morons, oxy or otherwise … whaddabout the "leaders" of the FBI? Truth is, I'm not really on their case … because the case is so much bigger than a few slip-ups. The No. 1 organizational issue … everywhere … is failure to communicate over org walls. Sometimes it leads to customer-service glitches. Sometimes it leads to the death of thousands. Just read a book called Zero Space: Moving Beyond Organizational Limits, by Frank Lekanne Deprez and René Tissen. Sample: "The organizations we created have become tyrants. They have taken control, holding us fettered, creating barriers that hinder rather than help our businesses. The lines we drew on our neat organizational diagrams have turned into walls that no one can scale or penetrate or even peer over." Brilliant! And the answer is ... ? There surely are no easy answers, because the issue is as intractable as the deep-seated, dare I say genetic, human traits—ego, hierarchy needs, etc.—that created these monster orgs. Truth is, every sure-fire solution—e.g., cross-functional project teams—brings its own set of issues. The Web should help ("Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy," wrote the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto a couple years ago), but we have a long, long, long way to go. Help!
- Morons redux! India & Pakistan agree not to talk—03 June 2002. Ye gads. Estimates are that 12 MILLION would die in a nuclear exchange. Idiots! Or, rather: Human nature/Ego sucks!
- I'm wondering if it's significant that the two major whistle-blowers of late—Sherron Watkins of Enron and Coleen Rowley of the FBI—are women. Women have historically been shafted by male-dominated hierarchies; moreover, studies clearly demonstrate that women aren't slaves to hierarchical thinking in general. Maybe the greatest hope for both enterprise integrity and less hierarchical rigidity is more women in senior leadership roles. Think about it!
- On a lighter note: It's said that Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak is sports' most durable record. (The late Stephen Jay Gould took a swing at proving as much via arcane statistical analysis.) I, however, have an alternate nomination. Did you read that the win in game 7 over the Kings gave basketball coach Phil Jackson ... 23 consecutive playoff series victories. Holy moley! Sure, he had MJ and Scottie and Dennis, Kobe and Shaq ... but it is truly amazing. The playoff talent level is sooooooooo high. The emotions run so high. The distractions are so great. Etc. Etc. Etc. Why don't we put Phil in charge of the FBI or CIA ... or, better yet, both? (No kidding.)
Ciao.
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