Short Takes
- Lip Reading Babies: Utter nonsense!
January 17, 2012 | 8:54 pmSays psychologist David Lewkowicz of Florida Atlantic University, who led [a] study published yesterday…
’The baby in order to imitate you has to figure out how to shape their lips to make that particular sound they’re hearing,’’
Can you “figure out” why this is utter nonsense? I should as obvious as monkey see, monkey do. With this sort of thing passing for science, we are surely doomed.
- The Mark of Cain
November 9, 2011 | 3:13 amWatching Herman Cain duel with his female accusers is like watching the Jerry Springer Show. Not a pretty picture. If you partake, be sure an wash you hands afterwards.
- The Truth About Sovereign Debt
November 1, 2011 | 4:01 pmDuring the housing bubble people bet on rising home prices by taking out loans on to-good-to-be true terms and investment banking made bets on the rising home prices by lending on to-good-be-true terms. Everyone drank the Kool Aid. Prices went down. Having made bad bets, home owners should default on their loans and bankers should take their losses. This is the simple-minded logic of every-man-for-himself market economics.
The nations that joined the EU placed bets on rising economic prosperity that would come from joining the EU and adopting the Euro and borrowing from the EU banks on to-good-to-be-true terms. The EU investment bankers made speculative bets on EU member nations by lending them billions on to-good-to-be-true terms. The borrower economies went down not up. Everyone drank the Kool Aid and having made bad bets the borrowers should default on their loans and the bankers should take their losses. This too, is the simple-minded logic of every-man-for-himself market economics.
So how do the bankers hold the world hostage to their bad bets? They claim they are too big to fail. In other words, the only game they know is heads they win, tails we lose.
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- Lip Reading Babies: Utter nonsense!
Author Archives: Business Consultant
Hiring the Best People
Although you can do your best in choosing, you cannot choose “the best”. There is no way to determine who is best. Bestness can only be determined in the context of the system in which people act. That system is … Continue reading
Transformation Strategies
It’s true that most kings are hardened in their ways and unwilling to change, though I have met a few… very few…who were genuinely good kings—wise, willing, and filled with caring.
Individual traits, inculcated, acquired, and habituated over the course … Continue reading
Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge
I have always been fascinated by Deming’s adoption of an SOPK model — an interactive system which, as a whole, embraces an appreciation of systems, understanding variation, theory of knowledge, and psychology. His work propelled him toward new ways of … Continue reading
Water Buffalo and Top-up Management
I can’t help but believe that the faltering state of the U.S. political, economic, and social enterprise comes as a surprise to only the most naive among us. Maybe I’m the naive one, but I’d like to think that most … Continue reading
Leadership and the Principles of War
The principles of war are fundamental truths governing the prosecution of war. Their proper application is essential to the exercise of command and to the successful conduct of military operations. These principles are interrelated and, dependent on the circumstances, may tend to reinforce one another or to be in conflict. Consequently, the degree of application of any specific principle will vary with the situation. Continue reading
Seven Deadly Sins of Leadership
US – China Balance of Trade – 1997 to 2004 (July and counting)
Here are 7 sins that leadership often commits: aimlessness, management by results, carrot and stick people management, fuzzy systems management, divided responsibility, worker training worker, and steady state thinking.
Below are … Continue reading
Why Three Sigma?
(Read a more extended discussion of 3-sigma in my sticky post, “What’s so Special about 3-Sigma?”) Continue reading
Putting People to Work
Your enterprise is the system of knowledge shared by your organization’s members. Facilities, tools, equipment, materials, and capital are only useful to the extent that your enterprise’s leaders, managers, and workers know and apply theories and methods that put these … Continue reading
Deming’s Seven Deadly Diseases of Management
Lack of constancy of purpose
Emphasis on short term profits (Overreaction to short term variation is harmful to long term success. With such focus on relatively unimportant short term results focus on constancy of purpose is next to impossible.)
Evaluation of performance, … Continue reading
Deming’s 14 Points
1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt a new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken … Continue reading
Boiled in Alphabet Soup
(The “boiled frog syndrome” refers to the observation that when a frog is thrown into a pot of boiling water, he will jump out. If, on the other hand, he is placed in a pot of cool water that is … Continue reading →