Archive for October, 2007

The Chessboard of Management

Keith October 4th, 2007

“In a chess match, each position has its own unique possibilities and each opponent has his or her own ideas about how to capitalise on them.  But as a leader of a team or an organisation, you have one enormous advantage over the chess player sitting alone at the board.  All of your chess pieces can think, too.  The pieces on a chessboard are ranked according to their power.  But as all good chess players know, any piece on the board can deliver a great win if its potential is fully unleashed.  The same holds for each and every member of the team you lead.”

 - Carol Kinsey Goman

Ad astra per alia porci

Keith October 4th, 2007

How’s your Latin?  I have just read that this was a favourite saying of John Steinbeck.  Apparently all of his books carry this insignia.  Although I have read a Steinbeck or two, I don’t remember noticing this.

A  clue - apparently a professor once told Steinbeck that he would “be an author when pigs flew”.

Mythical Creatures

Keith October 1st, 2007

They come in the night. 

The only way that you know they have been is when you come into the office the next day, and notice that things on your desk are just not quite where you left them.  The phone headset is dangling off the edge of the desk.  The paperweight has been moved.  The puzzle ball has had a piece knocked out, and you have to remember how to put it back together again.  Nothing ever seems to be stolen, or actually broken - yet.

Some have a theory that the visitors are real people - that they are cleaners.  There is no evidence to prove this theory.  Things are no cleaner.  Like other items on the desktop, any visible dirt has just been rearranged, not removed.

No-one has ever seen one of these mythical creatures.  All we have is the evidence that they have visited in the night, and departed, leaving only the enigmatic evidence of their passing…

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