Get some things done

The second chapter, The Execution Difference, opens with more of the story of “Joe”, the loser CEO.  He is characterized as a “typical” leader that does not know how to execute.  I would characterize him more as a typical “Business Specialist” – a person with credentials in sales, marketing, administration but no background in the business at hand. If you follow the story, he also was stuck with or selected poor lieutenants to implement his grand visions for the company, as they had no background in the actual business of the company.  Joe and his team handed down targets and were surprised that the peons below didn’t meet their goals, no matter how much “chewing out” was applied. Of course it didn’t help that they had no understanding of the actual operation of their company. I think the most appalling point about this story is that the authors think that this type of leader is “typical” and did all the right things from a management point of view.  If  Joe was a “good manager”, what does that say about management?

The next parable of CEO incompetence is Richard Thoman, then CEO of Xerox, starting in April of 1999 after starting as president in 1997. This guy was completely insane to create the twin goals of completely restructuring administration and sales in the company at the same time. He alienated the customers and the employees. He was fired in May 2000. Alas, don’t fret for poor Mr. Thoman, according to Xerox’s 10-K, he still gets $800,000 per year after screwing up the company for only three years. I want to be so incompetent.

The next candidate for loser CEO is Richard McGinn, CEO of Lucent Technologies from 1996 until October 2000.  His problems are characterized as a failure to execute. However, it appears to be more of the same – a marketing guy trying to run a high-tech research and development company (Western Electric and Bell Labs spun off from (the old) AT&T). Cluelessness about the company led to bad decisions and things went bad… yadda, yadda, yadda. I discovered that Mr. McGinn also used $45 million in company funds to build a golf course near its headquarters. Apparently, this did get executed. Shortly after Mr. McGinn was shown the door, Lucent had to restate its earnings lower by $700 million; it appears that, in order to show progress on Mr. McGinn’s audacious sales goals, some people booked sales that weren’t.  Fear not for Mr. McGinn, he pocketed a cool $12.5 million in severance for screwing up the company for four years. Once again, I want to be this incompetent.

For the success parable, the authors discuss Mr. Dick Brown of EDS.

Dick Brown was brought in as CEO for EDS in 1999 after a stint at Cable & Wireless where he “turned the company around”. Prior to C&W he was CEO of Compuserve. Investigation reveals that Mr. Brown took C&W on a buying spree and made something like 60 deals in his short tenure there (1997-1999) He did focus the company on emerging communications technology and was able to impress business reporters. He left unexpectedly and quickly in 1999 for EDS.

There are far too many examples of Mr. Browns execution prowess for me to list here. He streamlined, re-focused, and “infused the company with and energy and focus it hadn’t experienced in years.” Online I found another fawning review of Mr. Brown’s leadership in a Fast Company archive article from 2001.  Based on our book and the Fast Company article, I’m quite sure that Mr. Brown was God’s gift to management execution. Our book was published in 2002. Mr. Brown was fired from EDS in 2003 after months of bad news concerning “innovative” leasing arrangements for hundreds of millions of dollars. It was interesting to note that Mr. Brown was the force behind the Super Bowl “herding cats” commercial (one of my personal favorites – I remember the commercial but until I looked this up I couldn’t tell you what company it was for – so much for brand association) The Fast Company article revealed the Jeff Heller, then the Vice Chairman of the Board hated the “cats” commercial. He was made COO at EDS after Mr. Brown’s departure. Again, do not cry for Mr. Brown. In addition to having his retirement vested and stock options on 344,000 shares granted, he was also given $12.4 million in severance pay. Just like the non-execution guys. In this case, I want to be as competent and then screw up just like Mr. Brown.

These parables of corporate CEO incompetence and execution brilliance are used as a tales of how important it is to “execute”.  The authors extend the ordinary definition of the word into a business … (wait for it)… paradigm which incorporates the following concepts:

1. Business goals should be set cooperatively between upper management (the strategery guys) and the managers and personnel in charge of implementing them. This avoids unrealistic goals and increases personnel buy-in. The whole team has to answer the following questions:
   • What is the goal?
   • Why is it important?
   • How can we make it happen?
   • When can we make it happen?
   • What tools/personnel/procedures do we need to make it happen?
2. Each goal should have milestones and have dependencies clearly elaborated. Each step (again) should be set within a frank discussion between management and personnel about the issues to make the step and who is responsible.
3. As milestones are approached, they should be evaluated and the goal re-evaluated to see if other issues need to be addressed to keep on target or re-evaluated completely.
4. A reward system must be in place to reward performance toward the milestones and tasks. This includes support performance by others internal to the organization (for example across business units so that internal competition doesn’t hurt the company’s goals.)
5. Managers need to be proactive in helping or replacing individuals that cannot meet milestones or goals.

It is easy (especially for me) to be cynical about this book, knowing in hindsight that one of their proudest success stories (the others, if you read ahead, is Jack Welsh of GE and Larry Bossidy of Allied Signal and then Honeywell) turned out a lot like their failure stories. We don’t know who Joe is or what company he worked for but, based on my research, it might be Inprise/Borland – the CEO and CFO resigned suddenly at the same time in 1999 amid problems that sounded a lot like Joe’s.  Cynical or not, the execution ideas, which I have reduced to the five “core” bullet points above, are really valuable. Much of the praise for Mr. Brown’s work is really commonsense streamlining of operations and allocation of resources. Mr. Brown tried to refocus the company on its customers rather than his division’s desires. He tried to break down internal barriers that were inhibiting business. Unfortunately he also made some bad financial decisions that placed EDS in a financial bind. So, execution or not, bad decisions make a mess of a company.

The other lesson I took form this chapter is that CEO’s get rewarded regardless of performance – in fact, when you think about it, the best thing to do for personal gain as a CEO is to screw up quickly and get a big severance – then you’re rich and you have all the time in the world. I’m sure this was not an intended lesson.

Postscript: Were are they now?

Lucent merged/was bought by Alcatel, the French telecom. The combined firm still struggles.

Xerox is on a roll after years of struggling with debt and bad decisions in diversification (Thanks, Mr. Thoman). The current CEO, Anne Mulcahy, is the recent the subject of an interview in Costco Connection. She comes from 16 years in sales and then a stint as VP of Human Resources, similar to the group above. However, she’s been doing the job since 2000 and is still employed. Perhaps we can get her take on execution – it might be more useful. I recommend that you read the interview.

EDS is now a part of HP. They never did get it all together.

I did not find that any of the CEO’s mentioned were working anywhere. Of course, if you got that kind of lump sum and payments, would you look for a new job? But, hey, I’m a cynic.

Physics Based Games

Physics games set up an initial scenario and you have to use the laws of gravity, masses of objects, springs, etc. to reach some goal like putting a ball in a basket or putting shape into a certain spot.  I think what I like about the physics based games is the multiple steps to get to the final solution, as well as the trial and error involved.  I love trying things out, seeing that they don’t work and retrying over and over again.  Each time I get something wrong, I learn something new.

Some of my favorites include:

Assembler Series

Assembler

Over at physicsgames.net, they have loads of physics games.  Assembler 3 is addicting.  You move objects around by clicking and dragging them.  The neat thing about it, is that it knows the center of gravity of each item.  So for instance if you click and raise the corner of a box, it will “hang” by that corner and swing back and forth.  If you run that box into a smaller box, the small box will move around quite a bit.  The goal is to get the green circle into the designated area.  It sounds easy and up to about level 10 or so it is.

Civiballs

Civiballs

Civiballs involves little bowling type balls on chains.  You cut the chains to allow the ball to drop.  Once the ball drops it interacts with other objects to, with the ultimate goals of getting the balls inside the baskets.  You have to match the color of the balls with the color of the baskets.  Some of the levels get pretty complex with mutliple layers of interaction required in order to get the balls in the right baskets.

Word Puzzles

Come to find out I really enjoy word puzzle games.  I haven’t played that many, but the ones I have played I quite enjoy.  I found one in the back of the Southwest Airlines magazine (Spirit) on my last flight entitled Mix and Match.  I was thrilled that I completed the entire game before we got to the magic 10,000 foot elevation.  The game was essentially a crossword puzzle, except the clues were a little more obtuse.  You are given three words.  Two of the words describe the final answer and the third word is an anagram for the answer.  The answer is then placed around a the number corresponding to the clue, but you have to choose whether it is clockwise or counter-clockwise.  It sounds complicate, but once you get two or three it turns out to be a lot of fun.

Logic Puzzles

Puzzles!

I played logic puzzles all the time as a kid, and I am seeking them out now as an adult.  The logic puzzles I enjoyed the most are the ones where you are given a set of rules or statements and you have to infer through the process of elimination and powers of deduction, what the other choices are.  Puzzlersparadise.com has some interactive web based versions of the pencil and paper puzzles I loved as a kid.

Photosynthyness

A while back, a TED video was floating around that demoed a Microsoft Labs project entitled Photosynth.  It was the coolest thing I had seen in a while.  Photosynth stitched together photos taken of an object, say Notre Dame Cathedral, so you could explore and dive into the image with incredible detail.

At the time of the talk, Photosynth was a labs project, not released for the public to play with.  That changed in October 2008, when anyone could make their own “synth”.

Photosynth came back on my radar recently because Microsoft is starting to incorporate synths into their mapping product Virtual Earth.

Well, what does that mean for the A/E/C industry?  Visualization is a useful tool.  Imagine buildings being documented with pictures, that you can explore in an amazing amount of detail.  A yearly synth could be made to show changes in condition over time.  I see annotating the synths with loads of metadata.  For instance you hover over a door knob and it could display manufacturer information, links to websites comparing current prices.  Synths could be linked up with facilities managment and asset management programs to better explore data.  Maybe we could incorporate the synths into a completed Revit model.  That Revit-synth mashup would be useful to visualize and explore projects in a very intuitive manner.

An owner could start out in Virtual Earth, dive into a property via Photosynth and wind up looking at Revit model data on when a mechanical unit was last serviced.

My Own Synth

After all the theorizing, I went out to make my own synth.  I took almost 50 pictures of my office and uploaded them.  I was surprised at how many pictures one would need to make a really good synth.  I uploaded 140 MB of photos, I thought I did a really good job of getting detail, but I was only 57% synthy (which I believe is a measure of how good your synth is).  I don’t think I had as much overlap in pictures as I thought I did.

If you can’t see the synth below, you might have to install a Microsoft browser plugin, but it is worth it.  Then go explore more synths at http://photosynth.net.

April BJG Wallpaper

We are not getting into the product market (yet), but we do have some wallpaper for your computer.  Or backgrounds, if you’d like.

I got the idea from smashingmagazine.com (March calendars on smashing).  I really liked the idea of a wallpaper that functions as a calendar as well.  Soooo, I made my own from a picture I took of a building in Walnut Creek, CA.

Why this building you may ask.  Well, the Pleasanton office helped out with the East Bay CREW Careers program in Febraury.  In short, high school girls come up with a way to revitalize an existing building.  In the process they learn about all of the different careers available in commercial real estate.  Read more about the program here. Teresa organized the event, Reena was a presenter on architecture and I helped to videotape the event.

Also, the building had a very interesting pattern on the north wall.  It works will with our logo, the blue sky, the white pattern, etc.  I am expressing my inner architect!

The building in the the BJG April wallpaper was the building picked for the case study.  It proved to be a great building for the event.  Many speakers spoke on the building, presenting their opinions on the the best use for the building, as well as background into their profession.  Teresa had speakers from the City of Walnut Creek (a planner and an attorney), brokers, environmental consultants, architects and property managers.  Pictures from the day can be found on our flickr page.

Nice high quality .png files can be found on our flickr page.  Lower res jpegs are below (right click and save as on the picture).  The original picture is here. Let me know if you have any suggestions for future wallpapers.  Enjoy!

• 1680×1050
• 1600×1200
• 1280×1024
• 1920×1200
• 1280×960
• 1280×800

Then I recieved my Personal Travel Report.  What an amazing service!  I really like visualizations of data and this was most of my big trips visualized.  Plus, it gives you a footprint calculation for the year of travel.

Here is some more information on Dopplr travel reports.  They take travel data from the presidential candidates and plug it into their system.  Pretty interesting stuff.

Try it out, and friend me on Dopplr while you are at it.

Dopplr Personal Report


The Start

Pete started off Bad Poetry Day with an email to the company.

Monday, August 18, 2008
At BJG will be great
You will be happy to know
It’s National Bad Poetry Day – ho ho

In honor of this festive event
A contest I propose to present
To the worst poem a prize
I can already see the gleam in your eyes

Please email to me
Verses at least three
Subject no matter
But tasteful as cookie batter

Any that are Great
Will be posted, not ate
The accolade that is won
Will definitely be fun

As is to be expected, some people were a little slow at getting in their submissions, so Pete sent out this little diddy:

Total awful submissions so far
Is not to the number I crave
It is true that I’ve gotten 5 sets of prose
Yet 25 do I yearn to save

Fear not however it’s not too late
The promised deadline is near
August 18 is the date
Write deeply and quickly and send to me
Prizes are waiting – you will love what you see

On the last day of the competition, Pete sent out this:

9 sets of verses so far
Today is the end of the game
Submit your prose
Or hold your nose
And avoid the fame

The Results

Today, Pete sent out the winners with this attached:

The submissions are in
The votes have been tallied
The rules say someone must win
Regardless how language was sullied

I’ve analyzed the verses
I’ve looked for good rhyme
I eliminated the curses
We had a good time

The winner is Elliott
Who penned a memorable phrase
“My Boss is my Wife”
“BJG is my Life”

Second goes to Denise
Who  rhymed Great and potentate
Also list and subsist
If only I could find a rhyme for Denise

Third must be awarded to Charles
For if bad is to be good
His poem is the worst
And reward terrible we should

The Contenders

In no particular order, here are the submissions.

Untitled by Monica

There once was an employee named Frank
Who failed to complete his timesheet
On payday he cried
And wished he had died
For there was no money in his bank.

There once was an employee named Rita
She wanted to order a fajita
But no money she had
For she was quite bad
Again, her timesheet was incomplete.

There once was an employee Dirk
Who wanted to go on vacation
He had hoped to avoid an altercation
But I’m afraid
a big deal was made
And now he will just have to work.

If it’s my week for kitchen duty
Would people think I was really fruity
If I dumped all the mold
The refrigerator can hold
And threw away the containers?

The Good Old Days by Pete

Oh when I was a young engineer
My head wasn’t as full – my thinking was clear
We used pencils and paper to create our inspirations
No computers but plenty of dripping perspiration

The code was all in a pocket-sized book
No bookshelf was needed; a small vessel to store was all it took
To stockpile the sum knowledge of engineers great
Now we know so a great deal more, it’s no piece of cake.

Calculators were simple, just plain RPN – reverse polish you know
Now we have parentheses, functions, equations – all blow
Today we have SAP, Etabs, STAAD and more
Give me a break, programs do bore.

In sum, it’s gotten much harder to do what we do
More books, more programs, more machines in the stew
Are our designs better for all of this stuff?
I think not – technology in lieu of judgment – that’s tough.

Untitled by Elliott (winner)

I am really excited about BJG poetry day
I finally have a chance to say what I want to say
The burden on my chest
I can finally rest
I am really excited about BJG poetry day

The P-town office is the best around
A nice little community is what I have found
Close to the bay
It’s sunny almost every day
The P-town office is the best around

Oh so happy at BJG I am
Like someone eating a Christmas Ham
My boss is my wife
BJG is my life
Oh so happy at BJG I am

Composing Poetry by Ed

Composing poetry is a lofty goal.
Crafting the words must come from your soul.
Think carefully about each verse you write
The words must have meaning….don’t be trite.

And once you have gathered the proper thoughts
….with frustration it may be wrought….
Don’t give in to this formidable test
Trying hard and again will make it the best.

It’s such pleasure to hear each word you compose
Your thoughts joined together in wonderful prose.
So sit down now don’t be afraid to start,
But don’t stress too much lest you cut a fat fart.

Untitled by Teresa

I wondered why, I wandered far
Then I stumbled on my car
I thought for a bit
Then opened it
And sat and slouched and sighed

I turned the key
Hopefully
It coughed and gasped then started
Is the only thing that rhymes farted?
Well that stinks

Off I went into the night
Like a solar landscape light
Strong at first
Yet undoubtfully cursed
To fade away

Untitled by Scott

Alone at my desk I sat thinkin
Out with my mates I should be drinkin
So I picked up the phone
Heard the ring tone
And had three on the way without blinkin

So I jumped in my car
To a pub not too far
for libations of plenty I was seekin
as my mates and I drank
I started to think
Awww…..crap I forgot to turn in my report to Pete!

Untitled by Noko

Pete is the one who found me in cyber.
Beat will be counted for me in the binder.
Short daily meeting appears on our calendars.
Only to be sorted for highly respected affairs.

Nothing much to do when I first started.
Little did I know that was soon to be changed?
Delegate work to me, so I can fill my time.
Now he’s the King of “Forward to Noko.”

Here we communicate a bit better than before.
As I recall the days when I couldn’t talk at all.
To be around a boss who is truly capable.
Only makes me humble and very inspired.

Yes, you are right that I’m totally sucking up.
As my review is near right here in his office.
Yet, I wonder how this one will be handled.
Bet it will be another warm and fuzzy one.

Poem by Charles (worstest place)

roses are red
violets are blue
I’m schizophrenic
so am I

Untitled by Cliff

You would think everyone would know it
That is, what it takes to be a bad poet
Is it enough to just not rhyme
Or would it be better to lack rhythm and time

Most good poems have a point to get across
They have alliteration, versus, things learned in class
Good ones can be short or long
Not much different than the lyrics in a song

So “what is it” to myself I ask
That makes a bad poem such a task
Maybe it really does just come down
To the words at the end of each line

Untitled by Marlon

I hate writing poetry
Can’t you see
But I’ll do it this one time
Just to practice my rhyme
My versus are horrible
Unlike our calcs for structural
Our new office in Pleasanton
Will one day make dollars by the ton
And let’s not leave out Henderson
I’m sure they’ll go on one hell of a run
And as for BJG’s architecture
Don’t worry architects, its respected for sure.
Bad poetry isn’t my fortay
But at least I tried and that’s all I have to say

It’s Badder Than Bad by Denise (second place)

“Bad Poetry” has been requested by our Potentate
What exactly does that mean
Who will judge which are less-than-great?
Who has sense that keen?

I will write what comes to mind
Hoping for some badness
But I sit here most resigned
Amongst the daily madness

Sitting amongst the madness you say?
What of your utilization?
It will go unnoticed I pray
When I charge to the most recent frustration

AT&T, ProLogis, the latest TI
What else is on the list?
Maybe the Hyatt has finally let fly
How else will I subsist?

International Language of Love by Mary

Ick bein American
Ich wohne in Americka

J’exprime ma passion á mon aimé
Par la poesie et l’amour

Scrivo le parole che ritengo, affinche tutti guardino fisso su
Ma quado la gente ha letto I miei pensieri su carta,

Cualquier lengua escribo
Cualquier lengua hablo
Lo que déjà mu pluma

It’s jacked

——-

(German)
I am an American,
I live in America

(French)
I express my passions to my beloved
Through poetry and love,

(Spanish)
Whatever language I write,
Whatever language I speak,
Whatever leaves my pen,

(American)
It always sounds like Greek

If you’re not familiar with the Sony Reader, you can download up to 160 books on the portable device. It weighs about nine ounces and is about the size of a large greeting card. You purchase the books from the on-line store; the prices could be cheaper, but they are certainly more reasonable than a book store. The battery lasts quite awhile because the display is not backlit. That also makes it easier to read and you get about 7500 page turns with each charge.

For me, it means that I can browse on-line and choose several books I want to read, purchase them, and download. When I finish one book, the next one is already there for me to read. No more being on vacation, finishing the books I’ve brought to read, and having to figure out where to get a new book. It used to be a problem if I wanted to finish a book I was reading on an airplane flight. I needed to carry the book I wanted to finish, plus the next one I wanted to read. If I didn’t like the book I brought, I was stuck reading it anyway; there weren’t any choices. Now I just have my Reader to carry and I can have all the choices I need. The more I use it, the more I like it. I find it’s way more comfortable and easier to hold than a heavy book; my only possible complaint is that I don’t really like the button you click to turn pages.

I’m sure there will be many improvements made in the future, but I figure I’ll get my money’s worth out of this one in a short period of time.

Or in pirate speak, courtesy of www.syddware.com

Today be Talk Like a Seafarin’ hearty Tide. Here at BJG, we like t’ be havin’ fun, so we be havin’ proclaimed ‘t Dress Like a Seafarin’ hearty Tide as well. We had a wee competition in th’ Reno office t’ be seein’ who could be most buccanneer-y. Needless t’ say, Kara won, however, fun be had by all.