December 6, 2021
Good morning! Back in the old days this was The Feast of Saint Nicholas; stockings hung by the chimney, candy canes, shiny red apples, small toys, pomegranates, the whole vibe.
We’ve been enjoying 50-degree weather, green grass, and sunshine; quite amazing. No doubt somewhere nearby people are playing golf and/or working in their gardens. Oooops, wait… that was yesterday’s lead; we have two or three inches of snow and it’s three degrees (-18 F real feel). Did you watch the live Broadway theatre production of Annie last week, complete with an in-theatre audience? Like Jesus Christ Superstar, Grease, Rent, and other recent stagings of the live theatre-on-television genre, Annie was fun and was a reminder of soooo wanting to have the real thing. Harry Connick, sorry, was way unconvincing as Daddy Warbucks, even botched a line right in front of the whole world, but he hit every note smooth as silk.
Omnicron Variant
- One silver lining to the plague might be the number of people learning the Greek alphabet.
- But, whatever happened to Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, Nu, and Xi? Are those viruses lurking out there, too, and we haven’t been told?
- Central Minnesota has disconcertingly been at the epicenter of the plague in the Western Hemisphere for the last several weeks; no fun.
- Kudos to the health care workers — tens of thousands of them — who at great risk to themselves are unselfishly serving the human race, even as many resist.
- We are anxious to yield this uncoveted first place position to perhaps the North Pole… no, wait…
Releasing Maple Syrup Reserves
- And this just in: Canada has released its strategic maple syrup reserves — for real.
- While the United States worries about petroleum, Canada — our good friends to the North, well, actually, the vast majority of them are to the South — has released about 50,000,000 pounds of the luxurious sweet deliciousness many of us can’t live without.
- This recent release represents approximately fifty percent (50%) of all maple syrup reserves in Canada.
- Are there similar data available for Vermont?
- I would go long on the futures market, my friends.
- Do you think they used a 100% pure gold stake at Promontory Point?
- If they did, do you think they would have then stationed a guard there 24/7 for the next several years?
- Adjusted for today’s market price, the value of that 100% pure gold stake would have been in excess of $25,000.
- Oh, and if it truly was 24 karat gold, wouldn’t it have been nearly impossible to pound it into the ground given its malleability?
- Wouldn’t it have just pancaked under the weight of the sledge hammer?
- Any jewelers or goldsmiths among my readers? Weigh in, please.
The Challenges of Leadership
- Think the challenges associated with your leadership position are unique or new?
- None other than The Bard himself coined this insightful phrase in 1598, “Uneasy is the head that wears a crown,” (Henry IV)
- By the old school math that would be nearly 424 years ago when at least one other person on earth apparently had an understanding of the burdens of leadership.
- Three different works of art have stopped me in my tracks, produced goosebumps, left me speechless, and given me a sense of awe and wonder:
- The 4th movement of Ludwig Beethoven’s Symphony #9
- Michelangelo’s David in Fiorenza
- and perhaps most of all, Pablo Picasso’s Guernica in a room all its own at the Museo Nacional in Madrid.
- “Picasso used to be a great painter… now he is merely a genius.” (Braque)
- So good, so good… wait a minute, that’s that other guy…
The Problem with IT Departments and How to Solve It
- This deserves more than just a sound byte:
- “No man is an island. And the IT Department shouldn’t be one, either.
- Despite their mission, which often talks about driving corporate-wide innovation and digital transformation, chief information officers, as heads of these departments, are frequently reduced to running a metaphorical island. Just look at any organization’s structure, and you are very likely to see a rectangular box labeled IT, with its own management hierarchy and budget.
- But here’s the sad fact: Having an IT department is exactly what will prevent companies from being innovative, agiles, customer-focused, and digitally transformed.
- That’s because IT departments are for a bygone era and are ill-suited to the demands of a digital-first world. We all love to complain about our IT department — blaming the people in them and their leaders for living in their own worlds, and for being unresponsive to business needs. But our complaints are misguided. The problem isn’t with the people or the leaders. It’s with the whole idea of IT departments in the first place, which sets up IT to fail.” (Peppard, MIT Sloan School, 2021)
