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October 29, 2004
Five Questions of Candidates for Leadership
JACK WELCH, formerly of GE has five quetions to ask
when choosing a leader.
Is he real ? What a crazy question, right? But authenticity really
matters when it comes to crisis leadership. A person cannot make hard
decisions, hold unpopular positions, or stand tall for what he
believes unless he knows who he is and feels comfortable in his own
skin. I am talking about self-confidence and conviction. These traits
make a leader bold and decisive, which is absolutely critical in times
where you must act quickly, often without complete information. Just
as important, authenticity makes a leader likable, for lack of a
better word. His “realness” comes across in the way he communicates
and reaches people on an emotional level. His words move them; his
message touches something inside.
Does he see around corners? Every leader has to have a vision and
predict the future, of course, but great leaders in tough times must
have a special ability to anticipate the radically unexpected. In
business, the best leaders in brutally competitive environments have a
“sixth sense” for market changes, as well as moves by existing
competitors and new entrants. For the next president in our new world,
a “sixth sense” is not enough. He needs a seventh sense—paranoia about
what lurks in dark corners we cannot even see.
Who’s around him ? In tough times in particular, a leader needs to
surround himself with people who are smarter than he is, and they must
have the grit to disagree with him and each other.
Does he get back on the horse ? Every leader makes mistakes, every
leader stumbles and falls. The question is, does he learn from his
mistakes, regroup and then get going again with renewed speed,
conviction and confidence? The name for this trait is resilience, and
it is so important that a leader must have it going in to a job
because if he doesn’t, a crisis time is too late to learn it.
Is he pro-business ? Last but not least, the leader of the United
States must love business, because a thriving economy is the free
world’s last, best hope. It has become very fashionable in the past
few years to say that business is bad and crooked. The antibusiness
fervor even got to the point that CEOs who outsourced production, in
order to stay competitive, were labeled “Benedict Arnolds.” What
nonsense.
See also lgf.
Posted by omor at 07:14 PM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2004
vivisimo's clusty
Vivisimo's clusty categorizes web search results
and groups results by category. These results look
quite reasonable.
Posted by omor at 09:34 PM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2004
Pitch 04
Baseball season is over, rejoice.
Posted by omor at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2004
Tradesports Tracker
Tradesports tracker summarizes the Tradesports market,
and draws a elecotral vote visualization.
Nice work, GeekMedia.
Posted by omor at 07:19 AM | Comments (0)
Switchers for Kerry
Errol Morris has some nice ads for Kerry. Why aren't they being run ?
Switchers for Kerry highlights:
*** Science Project, Todd Clifton.
** Record, Lee Buttrill.
** Reckless, Kim Mecklenburg.
* Amounts to Nothing, Kenneth Berg.
* A Mess, Anthony Pirro.
* Don't Abuse It, Lee Buttrill.
Remember Ellen ?
Posted by omor at 02:35 AM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2004
Euler's equation is best
Euler's equation is best, according to Dr. Robert P. Crease,
a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York
at Stony Brook and a historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Posted by omor at 06:11 AM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2004
Bush's dialectic reality
I ask you, who amongst us are part of the reality-based
community?
Without a doubt, W is certain.
The senior adviser to Bush said that guys like me were
''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which
he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge
from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded
and murmured something about enlightenment principles
and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world
really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now,
and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're
studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again,
creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's
how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you,
all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
[As told to Ron Suskind]
Posted by omor at 01:43 AM | Comments (0)
October 02, 2004
Electoral vote visualizations
Meta & sensitivity analysis scales states by how many electoral votes each casts.
Compare to the state-by-state polling at electoral-vote.
Button above is updated daily; map below is a snapshot from 2004 Oct 02.
Posted by omor at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)