Patton Quote on Getting Results
"If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you'll be amazed at the results." - George Patton
News of the Day: Cards Win Game 6 and Obama White House Ties to Lobbies
The St. Louis Cardnals won a thrilling come-from-behind Game 6 in the World Series on David Freese’s 11th Inning home run. Twice, the Texas Rangers had the Cardinals down to their last strike only to see the Cards somehow rally. The Game is already being touted as one of the greatest thrillers in baseball history.Also interesting are little headlines like the one on today’s cover: “Top Obama ‘Bundlers’ Hold Close Ties to Lobbies.” It is oftentimes small stories like this that are just the tip of the iceberg, and lead to much greater, prolonged times of crisis for a White House. Seldom to crises like these blow up on the scene. They are often shrouded in secrecy, and it takes weeks, or sometimes months, of journalistic digging to uncover the full extent of the wrongdoing. This is not to say this is a crisis for the White House, it is simply an interesting observation, and something to watch.
News of the Day: Steve Jobs (1955-2011)
It is fitting that I first learned of Steve Jobs’ death while reading on my iPad. A “Breaking News” alert popped up on my screen. As I reflect on the impact of his life on Global Business, Technology, and Culture, I am truly left without words.
I remember when the first Macintosh computer was introduced in 1984. I was a student at Arizona State University, and the Apple folks setup a display in the Memorial Union with a few Macs available for students to try. The Mac was appealing, but it quickly gained a reputation as a toy compared to the true business machines, the IBM PC running MS-DOS. My only brushes with a Mac over the next two decades would be brief. It was always the “art” guys who seemed to gravitate towards the Mac. The rest of us clung to our PCs, first with Windows 3, then Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, and finally Windows 7.
It wasn’t until 2009 that I finally gave in to common sense and moved into the Mac world. The killer feature that made this possible for me was the move to Intel machines that could double boot into either Mac OS X or Windows. This allowed me to make the transition slowly. Today, in 2011, I am writing this article on my Mac using beautifully crafted Mac software and an operating system that just works.
I think the final A-ha moment for me was in April 2010 when I stood in line to purchase my iPad. For years I had followed from a distance the tablet PC niche within the Windows World. I had always longed for a tablet PC, but the cost was so prohibitive for a computer that seemed underpowered, too heavy to carry around, and had a battery life of two or three hours. Still, tablet PCs were “it” for me.
Then I purchased an iPad, and I saw clearly for the first time the stupidity of tablet PCs.
Jobs and Apple had created a completely new device that did everything the tablet PCs could not. It was light. It was attractive. It had a long battery life. It made sense. That’s the thing I finally realized about tablet PCs. They didn’t make sense. Why try to take a keyboard/mouse-centric operating system like windows and port it onto a tablet? It simply doesn’t make sense. The iPad, on the other hand, made perfect sense. This is when I became an Apple fanboy.
Thanks, Steve.
News of the Day: Labor Day 2011
Labor Day is the official end of summer and the beginning of fall. Weather and politics have dominated the news this past week. Hurricane Irene caused major destruction along the East Coast of the U.S., with most of the damage caused by flooding in New England. Tropical Storm Lee drenched the Gulf Coast States with 10-20 inches of rain. In Texas, wildfires raged uncontrollably. Texas is experiencing its worst drought in decades.Labor Day is also when presidential politics take another step up in intensity. With the Iowa Caucuses currently four months out (the date is open to change), the GOP race is still wide open. Newcomer Rick Perry is quickly gaining the edge in many polls, while Sarah Palin continues to hover around the edge. Palin is like a Category 3 hurricane out in the Atlantic. Hurricane watchers and the media are paying close attention, but it is still too early to tell if she will make landfall. President Obama continues to struggle with finding a voice in the on-going uproar over jobs and the economy. In many ways he looks more and more like Herbert Hoover trying desperately to overcome the economic tsunami that continues to pound the global community. So many factors are simply out of his control.