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Japan Bombs U.S. Nuclear Facility!?

January 31, 2022 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

Did that get your attention? If it were a tweet, would you re-tweet it? No? Why not? Because, obviously, you know that it’s not true.

But here’s the problem – it is true. However, before you go and do something foolish you should know the whole story.

The story

Back in the winter of 1944-45 (you know, during WWII) Japan launched about 9,000 fusen bakudan (33-foot diameter balloon bombs) that were carried by the jet stream toward the United States. They carried incendiary devices or high explosives and were intended to create damage and panic when they crashed in the United States.

Most of the balloon bombs crashed in the Pacific, but some made it to America’s shores, killing a few people and causing fires. One even crashed into the high-tension electric lines carrying power to the Hanford Engineer Works, on the Columbia River in south-central Washington state.

Of course, no one knew anything about this site because it was, in fact, the secret site where the U.S. government built a reactor that was making the plutonium for the first atomic bombs.

This story is interesting to me for two reasons. First, we (America) could keep a secret “back in the day.” Not everything has to be public. Second, the story ties to one of my beliefs for the current social environment, Ya Gotta Be Skeptical.

I found this story in a book I received from one of my. The book, Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process is basically a book filled with remembrances and lessons written by 86-year-old John McPhee about his long life as a long-form writer. This story came from the chapter entitled “Checkpoints.”

You see, it was 1973 and he was writing a long piece entitled “The Curve of Binding Energy” for The New Yorker. The article was about 60,000 words long and focused on weapons-grade nuclear material in private industry and what terrorists might do with it if they acquired it. The balloon bomb story was a tiny piece of the article, but it would not be included unless, and until, a “checker” could verify that it was true.

It took the checker weeks to find an eyewitness to the event that was now over a quarter-century old. But she did, and it was included in the story.

Lesson

It provides a wonderful lesson about the discipline of writing and the need to be skeptical about everything we read and write. Errors live forever and are carried on by non-skeptical readers. Truth and the search for truth seems to be a dying requirement of “the news.”

Application

Vet your sources before sharing a story that seems “interesting.”

Filed Under: stories, Uncategorized Tagged With: history lessons

The Covid Roller Coaster

August 27, 2021 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

Wow!

2019 – Everything is (kind of) going accord to plan.

2020 – The world went Covid-crazy.

2021 Q1 and Q2 – “Let’s find the new normal.”

2021 Q3 – Oops! The new normal has been put on hold.

So, here are three opening thoughts to a series we are starting at MindPrep. You can get the full newsletters HERE.

It’s a Wicked World – deal with it

No, this is not a commentary on morality. It’s a commentary on working in a world without precedent. First, some simple explanations.

“Kind” environments have repeating patterns and feedback is accurate and rapid. Therefore, decision making can often improve with added experience. You can learn “the rules of the game” and become an expert by developing expert intuition. Examples of people in this environment range from chess masters to golf professionals to suburban firefighters to business strategists before 2020.

“Wicked” environments exist where the rules of the game are unclear, feedback is spotty at best, and patterns are lacking or not obvious. Expertise-based thinking may be helpful or, more likely, may lead you astray because it is based on a past that is no longer relevant and will likely not return.

Planning and decision making in this environment is anything but routine and intuition must be challenged. This is the environment we are living in right now with the pandemic. The “new normal” is and will be very wicked.

It’s time to think like an explorer.

Throughout history explorers prepared for expeditions by understanding, as best they could, the conditions they were about to face and then went about improving the equipment they would use.

Early explorers to the South Pole knew that they needed warm clothing and lightweight (but strong) sleds, so they focused a lot of their efforts on improving their equipment. Sometimes explorers opted for maximum flexibility because they didn’t know how the conditions would change over time. Blankets can be used for warmth; they can also be used for shade.

The explorers’ reality is a world of known and unknown; and it calls for elegant flexibility.

Consider the most flexible equipment at your disposal – the ability to think and imagine new ways and new things.

Mistakes will be made. Pick yourself up and dust yourself off.  

We’ve spent decades fine tuning our careers and business models. Efficiency was paramount and rewarded. We gave lip service to “innovation,” but punished experiments that didn’t provide rapid ROI.

But now its time to think and act using less time than you want. Wicked worlds keep morphing and doing so in novel ways.

For those of you who know me, you know that I’ve been running workshops for decades built on a simple cycle of Sense, Make Sense, Decide, and Act. I refer to this cycle as the Sense-Response Cycle (SRC) and admonish attendees to “keep up with the pace of change or become irrelevant.” But what was fast in 2019 is normal today. We have to run this cycle uncomfortably fast.

Don’t let perfect get in the way of good-enough progress. All of us will make mistakes. It’s the reality of a wicked world. Deal with them and keep moving. We don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves.

Remember, the future favors a prepared mind. And preparing your mind is a never-ending responsibility. You can get our recent MindPrep Newsletters HERE.

Next

The next couple of newsletters will focus on understanding the future and ways of dealing with it.

Filed Under: prepared mind, Uncategorized Tagged With: covid-19, preparedmind

Question 2 of 12 — What’s the problem context?

April 13, 2021 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

All business problems evolve in the context of their external and internal environments. Department problems lie within the business and business problems lie within the industry. And, surprise, internal stakeholders are NOT aligned. Goo problem definition requires that you look out into the larger environment and pay attention to what’s happening on the inside.

We are offering a free 60-minute webinar addressing a dozen questions you must answer if you are going to resolve your complex business problems. Since this is a webinar and not our full workshop, the session is high-level, but valuable.

Also, it is not an infomercial!  

The webinar will provide an overview of the 12 questions and the knowledge and skills you need to answer them. You can learn more and enroll HERE.

Thanks for reading. It’s lonely out here in the blogosphere. (Wow, it that an old-timer word.)

Filed Under: pragmaticstrategist, problem solving, Uncategorized Tagged With: complexproblems

QUESTION ZERO

February 24, 2021 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

Last year Oliver Cummings and I created a free mini class for managers who are called upon to implement big-picture, organizational strategy. We approached this challenge by asking ten questions that had to be successfully answered if they were to succeed.

Then we realized that there is almost always the “unasked” question, which we refer to as Question Zero. It’s in the back (or front) of every manager’s mind but it often goes unasked and unanswered.

Ready? Here it is.

How will I make the time to implement the strategy?

You have to make time – you will never “find” it.

Now, I already know what you’re thinking. “He just doesn’t understand. I have to do my day job AND take on this new task.”

Sorry, but, as they say, “I’ve been there and done that.” So, let me be blunt – you will make time or you will have more problems than you want. You can’t keep adding items to your “to-do” list. Something has to drop off and it’s up to you.

Want to see the other ten questions we asked? Go visit the mini-course. You can fine it HERE. Sign up, watch a couple of videos, take the quiz and get going. Time’s a-wasting.

Filed Under: pragmatic leadership, prepared mind, Uncategorized Tagged With: executingstrategy, strategy

Good thinking – 9 – Think like an outsider

February 15, 2021 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

Thomas Edison had no standing in the (gas) lighting industry when he started to create a lighting system.

Outsiders have the advantage of not knowing what “can’t” be done. 

Look at your business through the eyes of an outsider. What’s weird? What’s wrong? What’s cool?

Outsider Thinking

When I look at my business with outsider eyes, I see:

Things that are weird:

  1.  
  2.  
  3.  

Things that confuse me

  1.  
  2.  
  3.  

Things that need to be changed

  1.  
  2.  
  3.  

Filed Under: pragmaticstrategist, Thinking, Uncategorized

Don’t be a Dapper Danny

August 2, 2020 by Oliver Cummings Leave a Comment

By Oliver Cummings

“Make hay while the sun shines” describes a farmer’s reality.

The sun came up hot on hay-bailing day and the dew was off the grass very early. By 8:00 I was throwing up wind rows of hay mown two days earlier and left to cure in the field. The side-delivery rake was just the right tool to pull behind the little red-belly Ford. Dad wasn’t far behind on the John Deere, pulling the bailer that produced 70-pound rectangular bales of alfalfa hay that would feed the cows and horses come winter. As the morning sun climbed the scent of the new mown hay gave way to the smell of dust kicked up by the raking and baling processes.

About 9:30, Johnnie and his hay-hauling crew pulled into the field. A couple of days later, we would move the whole operation to Johnnie’s farm to take in his hay crop, too.

Johnnie’s crew was his son, Jerry, just turned 17, Danny, one of Jerry’s high school buddies, and Bobby a 14-year old buddy of mine from school. All three were buff; strong. Jerry and Bobby, farm boys, a little rough around the edges. Danny was slicker, a town boy.

As they pulled into the field, Jerry and Danny dove off the wagon and started walking alongside the vehicle, now crawling along between two rows of bales. Jerry picked up a bale by the seagrass strings that bound it. He walked it to the wagon and heaved the bale up to Bobby, ready to start meticulously laying out the stack so the loaded wagon could move across the rough field without the load shifting. By the time Bobby got the bale positioned, Danny pitched the second bale on the wagon from the other side.

This ritual was repeated, with Bobby placing bale upon bale overlapping the so that one layer locked the next layer in place until they had five layers high and a tie-bale row down the middle, the length of the wagon.

Now they were thoroughly soaked with sweat, covered in hay dust, and ready to make the slow ride from the field to the barn, hoping for a breeze along the way. Johnnie turned the tractor over to Jerry to drive the half-mile to the barn for unloading and started walking home. He would be mowing the rest of the day on his own property a mile away.

The barn was a large central hallway flanked by stalls on either side. The hayloft was the second floor covering the main hallway and the internal stalls. It was cavernous today because last year’s hay crop had been almost totally fed out.

Jerry and Bobby climbed into the hayloft to carry back and stack the hay. Danny had volunteered to pitch up the bales from the wagon. With a light breeze at his back the outside work wasn’t too unpleasant. He would pitch a bale onto the hayloft floor; Jerry would hook it with the hay hook and drag it back to Bobby to stack. The hayloft was hot and stuffy.

All went well until the load was about two-thirds in the barn. Danny bucked a bale up and, more or less, pushed it into the door to the loft. With that, Jerry said, “Don’t strain yourself, Danny Boy.” Danny shot him a look and said, “Hey, I gotta go to the toilet.”

Jerry, short curly red hair glistening with sweat in the sunlight, jumped down onto the wagon and started bucking bales up for Bobby, now having to both drag back and stack. By the time Danny finished his toilet visit, the other boys had the wagon unloaded and were ready load number two. Danny trotted out to the road and jumped onto the wagon as they headed to the field. It was going on noon.

The second load went much as the first until half way through the unloading process, Danny got something in his eye and had to go to the house to see if Mom could get it out for him.

On the third load, it was a splinter in his finger that disabled poor old Danny, yet again.

Danny was a “goldbrick,” a slacker. Johnnie tolerated Danny on the crew because he was Jerry’s friend. But, when it came time for Dad to put a crew together to help Johnnie, Danny was not among those considered.

Goldbricks in Business

In the business world there are many ways that people exhibit slacking behavior.

Cyberslacking applies to employees who use company Internet connections and time for personal activities. However, there is a more subtle form of goldbricking in business that is a problem for managers and may result in personnel actions that the goldbricker may not expect.

As a young manager I hired a clearly talented person, I will call her Malinda, to evaluate training programs. In the first year she quickly became a good on-site evaluator.

I noticed, however, that on courses where she had some apparent investment (e.g., personal interest in the subject matter) she did a superior job. But, on assignments where she perceived the content to be boring, or the client to be “difficult,” her work output and the clients’ ratings of project quality were significantly degraded.

Over a period of three years Malinda’s performance was up and down, from excellent to below average.

I documented and discussed her performance on a project by project basis, summarized it during mid-year and annual reviews, and discussed it in career coaching sessions with her. The behaviors, however, persisted in a pattern that became predictable.

Toward the end of her third year, in spite of the negative feedback and coaching I had given her in the various venues, she apparently expected to be considered for a project lead position in the department. When I told her she would not be considered for the position, and that her performance was too inconsistent, she acted surprised and offended. Shortly thereafter she resigned, “to pursue other interests.”

The moral of the story.

Every employee needs to have some expertise that they are “known for.” This is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for being really successful in a career. To be successful on a job you must also be known as a steady performer, willing to take on every assignment with a clear intent to do it to the best of your ability.

Filed Under: Leadership, Learn from the past, stories, Uncategorized

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