Archive for November 2008
November 30, 2008
I started the month in New York City, and ended it with a fantastic Thanksgiving meal surrounded by great friends. November is always a great month, with it's long holiday, the change in the seasons, but the absence of the December pressure cooker.
The most unique thing about New York is just the sheer size of it. The buildings are enormous, the people walk faster, and the city seems to exist independent any particular person. People have lived in this area since the 1600's; the city was there long before you and will be there long after. It's just the way it is; it's not personal. Each city has a personality, and the personality of New York seems to be indifference.
For those still traveling, have a safe return trip home, and I'll see everyone in three short weeks for Christmas. It's almost upon us!
10:13 am | Comment (0) | Print | Categories: Adventures, Holidays
November 24, 2008
Apparently for the Washington Post, a $23,000 retreat for 46 government employees was too much.
Raw Fisher of the Post writes in an article titled Where's Firing Fenty When You Need Him? that "...the unbelievable gall it takes to mount such an expedition, especially as the city faces a nine-figure budget shortfall, is certainly worthy of some mayoral attention, in the form of a symbolic firing or two."
His problem seems to be that because we're facing a budget deficit, treating hard-working employees to some team-building is out of line.
He didn't take them to the Ritz. Nor did he order caviar and wine for his staff. He spent $500 per employee, or even less if you count him (which would make a theoretical 47 people). In an era of $500,000 retreats on the taxpayer dime (a.k.a. AIG), $23,000 for some leadership training and some team building doesn't seem that out of line.
There are certainly wastes in the DC government budget worth pursuing. This isn't one of them.
4:54 pm | Comment (0) | Print | Categories: Washington, DC
November 22, 2008
Though DC's public transportation system is fantastic, it does have some shortcomings, especially if you want to get beyond the beltway and explore. With that in mind, I wanted to find a car that was sporty but not useless for errands, and I think I've found that in this one.
The car had 22 miles on it at the dealership, and I've expanded that to 240 miles or so. Though I won't drive much during the weeks, I'll probably add miles during the weekends (I estimated about 1,000 miles a month at most).
So expect me to color in more of the states on my travels page...starting with today's adventure to West Virginia.
5:28 pm | Comment (5) | Print | Categories: Adventures
November 15, 2008
All around the country people are nervously holding their collective breath, hoping that there's no "next shoe" in the economic slowdown. In Washington, the talk is about cautious optimism that Federal budgets are not slashed, and that interest groups continue spending. But so far, Washington has been spared the horrific economic storm.
Why?
For the last six months, that answer could be attributed to the election. Most entities were spending or had committed their spending for the election cycle far before the downturn cut into budgets. For candidates and issues using Washington firms, their fundraising largely survived because of the point in time the downturn came about.
But I also believe that Washington (or at least the part of Washington I work for) is insulated based on what it does. We don't generally serve large companies that are subject to the whims of consumer spending. Instead, the majority of my work is focused on interest groups, corporate law firms, Federal compliance issues and the like.
Interest groups are going to be impacted but will still focus on the web as a means of inexpensively getting their message out. So there is no great decline there.
Law firms and corporations that wish to influence policy will continue spending, as it is almost a necessity. They cannot halt lobbying on, say, energy reform, for fear that it will pass before the economy comes back and they'll be left out.
If we served small shops or, say, carmakers, we could possibly face a downturn. But I think the larger Washington technology community will weather the storm. The largest part of our focus is on those groups who either want to get their tasks accomplished regardless of the economy. They will spend less to be sure, but will not halt spending entirely; I believe this will largely protect Washington from the onslaught of the economic downturn.
10:12 am | Comment (0) | Print | Categories: Economics
November 9, 2008
Assume that the map will temper over the next thirty years but here's the map if the election were decided by just 18-29 year olds (who will be the core voting bloc in 20 years).
11:13 am | Comment (4) | Print | Categories: Election '08
November 6, 2008
This piece by Umair Haque of Harvard describes better than any words I could write the lessons learned by Obama's victory. Enjoy.
Obama's Seven Lessons for Radical Innovators
It's a momentous day for America - and the world. Barack Obama is poised to take the reins of the Presidency.
So how did this unlikeliest of candidates do it? How did Obama utilize radically asymmetrical competition to shatter Washington's toxic, bitter 20th century status quo?
The most critical part of the story is the organization Obama built. Though conservatives are still arguing that Obama has little executive experience, nothing could be further from the truth.
Barack Obama is one of the most radical management innovators in the world today. Obama's team built something truly world-changing: a new kind of political organization for the 21st century. It differs from yesterday's political organizations as much as Google and Threadless differ from yesterday's corporations: all are a tiny handful of truly new, 21st century institutions in the world today.
Obama presidential bid succeeded, in other words, as our research at the Lab has discussed for the past several years, through the power of new DNA: new rules for new kinds of institutions.
So let's discuss the new DNA Obama brought to the table, by outlining seven rules for tomorrow's radical innovators.
1. Have a self-organization design. What was really different about Obama's organization? We're used to thinking about organizations in 20th century terms: do we design them to be tall, or flat?
But tall and flat are concepts built for an industrial era. They force us to think - spatially and literally - in two dimensions: tall organizations command unresponsively, and flat organizations respond uncontrollably.
Obama's organization blew past these orthodoxies: it was able to combine the virtues of both tall and flat organizations. How? By tapping the game-changing power of self-organization. Obama's organization was less tall or flat than spherical - a tightly controlled core, surrounded by self-organizing cells of volunteers, donors, contributors, and other participants at the fuzzy edges. The result? Obama's organization was able to reverse tremendous asymmetries in finance, marketing, and distribution - while McCain's organization was left trapped by a stifling command-and-control paradigm.
2. Seek elasticity of resilience. Obama's 21st century organization was built for a 21st century goal - not to maximize outputs, or minimize inputs, but to, as Gary Hamel has discussed, remain resilient to turbulence. What happened when McCain attacked Obama with negative ads in September? Such attacks would have depleted the coffers of a 20th century organization, who would have been forced to retaliate quickly and decisively in kind. Yet, Obama's organization responded furiously in exactly the opposite way: with record-breaking fundraising. That's resilience: reflexively bouncing back to an existential threat by growing, augmenting, or strengthening resources.
3. Minimize strategy. Obama's campaign dispensed almost entirely with strategy in its most naive sense: strategy as gamesmanship or positioning. They didn't waste resources trying to dominate the news cycle, game the system, strong-arm the party, or out-triangulate competitors' positions. Rather, Obama's campaign took a scalpel to strategy - because they realized that strategy, too often, kills a deeply-lived sense of purpose, destroys credibility, and corrupts meaning.
4. Maximize purpose. Change the game? That's 20th century thinking at its finest - and narrowest. The 21st century is about changing the world. What does "yes we can" really mean? Obama's goal wasn't simply to win an election, garner votes, or run a great campaign. It was larger and more urgent: to change the world.
Bigness of purpose is what separates 20th century and 21st century organizations: yesterday, we built huge corporations to do tiny, incremental things - tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things.
And to do that, you must strive to change the world radically for the better - and always believe that yes, you can. You must maximize, stretch, and utterly explode your sense of purpose.
5. Broaden unity. What do marketers traditionally do? Segment and target, slice and dice. We've become great at dividing markets into tinier and tinier bits. But we're terrible at unifying them. Yet Obama succeeded not through division, but through unification: we are, he contended, "not a collection of Red States and Blue States -- We are the United States of America".
Obama intuitively understands a larger truth of next-generation economics. Unified markets are what a world driven to collapse by hyperconsumption is desperately going to need. We're going to need not a hundred different kinds of razors - and their spiralling costs of complexity and waste - but a single razor that everybody, from the slums of Rio to the lofts of Tribeca, is overjoyed to use.
6. Thicken power. The power many corporations wield is thin power: the power to instill fear and inculcate greed. True power is what Obama has learned wield: the power to inspire, lead, and engender belief. You can beat people into subjugation - but you can never command their loyalty, creativity, or passion. Thick power is true power: it's radically more durable, less costly, and more intense.
7. Remember that there is nothing more asymmetrical than an ideal. Obama ended his last speech before the election by saying: "let's go change the world." Why are those words important? Because the world needs changing. A world riven by economic meltdown, religious conflict, resource scarcity, and intractable poverty and violence - such a world demands fresh ideals. We must mold and shape a better world - or we will surely all suffer together. As Obama said: "we rise or fall ... as one people."
In such a world, forget about a short-lived, often meaningless "competitive advantage". It's a concept built for the 20th century. In the 21st century, there is nothing more asymmetrical - more disruptive, more revolutionary, or more innovative -- than the world-changing power of an ideal.
Where are the ideals in your organization? What ideals are missing - absent, bankrupt, stolen - from your economy, industry, or market? What ideals will you fight and struggle for - and live? Because the ultimate problem with industrial-era business was, as Wall Street has so convincingly demonstrated, this: there weren't any.
That seventh lesson is the starting point for tomorrow's radical innovators - because it's the thread that knits the others together. And it's where you should start if you want to use these seven rules to start building 21st century institutions - whether businesses, non-profits, social enterprises, or political campaigns.
As a young brown American, I couldn't be more deeply or powerfully inspired by the "defining moment" of an Obama presidency. Yet, the seeds of a new challenge have been planted by that victory: for us to harness the lessons of his quiet revolution - our quiet revolution - to seed many, many more.
Source: Obama's Seven Lessons for Radical Innovators ~ Harvard Business Publishing, 11/5/2008
1:42 am | Comment (1) | Print
November 5, 2008
At 11:00 PM Eastern time, the polls closed in California.
Then the party started.
Fireworks could be heard all around DC, as people celebrated the victory of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
A spontaneous party at the White House wouldn't have been more fitting if they'd brought a rail along, as locals and tourists alike celebrated one thing: that change is coming.
Elsewhere, Democrats picked up 5 seats in the Senate and a jaw-dropping 18 seats in the House, with 3 and 10 races undecided in the two chambers. These supermajorities undoubtedly mean that legislation to help struggling home owners is on the way, as is health care reform, pension reform, and government reform.
The numbers are still being calculated, but it's expected that turnout will be higher in this election than any other in history. Obama's wins in states like Virginia, North Carolina, and even in Indiana, an always-early patch of red each election, will change the map for a long time to come and expand the number of battleground states that must be defended.
Congratulations to Senator Obama. It was a long campaign and we welcome you here in Washington.
9:21 am | Comment (0) | Print | Categories: Election '08
November 1, 2008
From the headline everyone should have guessed that I'm spending the weekend in New York, New York. Indeed I am. I'm roughly halfway through my trip, so here are the details of what I've done so far...
The morning started with a 4:30 am wakeup, and a trip to Union Station for an early train into the city. It was a sold-out train, which isn't quite like a sold-out airplane, but was certainly encouraging for passenger rail. I got into the city around 9:50 am, and immediately headed to the Empire State Building (to be fair it was also the first thing I saw upon emerging from the train station).
After a trip to the top, I headed over to Madison Square Park (not to be confused with Madison Square Gardens) where I enjoyed some of the fine food at the Shake Shack located in the park. The food was *exceptional* - even better than In N Out, perhaps.
After that, I headed to Union Square Park, about a mile away and then to my hotel to check in. Grabbed a shower and laid down for a minute, which turned into two hours (apparently I was tired)! Since Chris Shiflett had recommended a place called Bar Q for dessert, I planned to head to SoHo for dinner and stop by Bar Q. But Maggie Nelson, a friend of mine from PHP Appalachia, had other ideas.
The plan was to have dinner at a restaurant in midtown (SoHo is around 15th St.) so I grabbed a cab back to midtown. But plans changed at the last minute, so I had to get back on the subway and head downtown for dinner at a different restaurant. But, I must say the food was worth it.
After dinner, we headed twenty blocks over to a movie theater where we saw Burn After Reading (which I totally ruined by pointing out all the flaws, since its set in DC). We enjoyed the time, and it was great to see friends in New York and have people to hang out with.
So, what's on tap for tomorrow? Who knows! Tomorrow is the New York Marathon, and I may find a few brunch places that were given to me as good ideas. Then, when I get back to DC I'll post a more through analysis of New York and the trip, along with photos.
For those of you observant enough, you'll see that I've removed the election information from the menu bar and added a link to my travels. I travel often, and here I'll begin putting information about where I go and when. There's also a map to see what states I've visited in any given year. Feature requests are always accepted.
So, I guess all that's left to say is, Live from New York it's Saturday Night! ;-)
Updated at 11/3/2008 @ 11:42 am Corrected spelling errors...never blog after having a drink with friends... ;)
6:01 pm | Comment (1) | Print | Categories: Adventures, Travel