Much of my focus recently has been on my own consulting business. I've been learning a lot, but it hasn't all been all that relevant to the other stuff on this blog. Rather than avoiding discussing things, I've decided to reorient the blog a bit to focus on my current activities.

I'll be posting some learnings/primers here soon.

-btc

In recent years I've focused my project management practice on so-called "adaptive" styles. These styles, which include techniques known as "agile" and "extreme" as well as many others, are different from tradition PM methods in that they set out from the premise that the future is to a large degree unknowable and unpredictable, and thus the old practice of creating large master plans that try to anticipate conditions years (or in some industries, merely months) in the future is a futile effort.

Instead, these adaptive methods presume from the start that you have to think small, focus on the things you know, work on increasing your knowledge as you work, and be equipped to deal with significant change as it comes along. These methods are based on the notion that the world will control you, not the opposite and that "controlling change," as traditional project managers expect to is a pipe dream.

LAX, and Los Angeles in general need to get with the reality, as this piece suggests. Planning beyond the limits of what's known is a waste. Holding the most important business asset in the region hostage to our inability to perfectly predict the future business, economic and political climate for years to come is only ensuring that we stand still while somehow hoping and waiting for the perfect plan.

There isn't a perfect plan. There's only what you know today, and it's plenty for the airport to work on even in the absence of a grandiose masterplan. Get started.

OK, posted a day late, I was away...

In the LA Times on Sunday, Robert Rodriguez comments on the plauge of suicides in Korea.

...even though they've constructed a hyper-modern society, South Koreans continue to live by rather traditional rules based on family status and shame rather than individual happiness. Chang said that as long as people's economic prospects were improving, they were willing to ignore the unfairness of the system and the rigidly hierarchical nature of South Korean society. But now the competition is too much, and the prospect of being economically static is causing psychological uneasiness. But instead of fighting to change a system that has them working harder and harder for less and less, South Koreans are having fewer children and killing themselves trying to keep up with the Kims.

I found this one interesting because it highlights a point that I think many promoters of technology as the solution to everything forget. Societies are frequently not quite ready for the implications of the new technologies made available to them. The impacts of this vary from non-adoption, to a backlash against the technologies after they are adopted, to more serious social implications. George Gilder was torpedoed in the early part of this decade by his refusal to acknowledge that societal acceptance of technologies and other advances simply could not keep up with Moore's law. This is a lesson worth remembering.

On the same page, Niall Ferguson points out the futility of providing aid to those who are not responsible in the first place:

EVER BEEN HAD? Last year, the United States Agency for International Development gave Ghana $22.5 million in food aid.

Last Monday, that same country began a 12-month celebration of its independence from British rule, which was granted 50 years ago, on March 5, 1957. The total budget for these festivities, which commenced with an all-night party in Accra, is said to be $20 million.

It's probably worth remembering this point as we now start talking about providing aid to those who took on debts they couldn't possibly pay back. Actually, we should have thought about it before we decided that an "ownership society" based on unpayable debts was a good idea and enouraged lenders to put out these crazy loans.

the LA Times Business Section talks about retailing and merchandising as a lost art, and suggests that today's retail CEOs often don't have what it takes. My friend Jeff Macke probably agrees:

As more retailers went public over the last 25 years, they became increasingly cautious. With eyes locked on the bottom line, companies began hiring outsiders who were good with numbers and operations but didn't know much about how to get the right clothing on the racks.

"To really run your business and make it work, you've got to get the right merchandise into the store," Cohen said. But today, he added, "financial guys," not merchants, call the shots.

And yesterday, a story about the decreasing lag between theatrical and DVD releases:

Despite slower growth recently, DVDs remain a lucrative gravy train for studios, which believe they must accommodate consumers demanding quicker access to films and myriad choices. In addition, studios can piggyback on the awareness their expensive marketing campaigns have built by releasing DVDs sooner.

But exhibitors fret that moviegoers will shun going to a theater if they know a movie will be available shortly on video. In four years the average period between a film's theatrical and DVD releases narrowed by an entire month, to four months and eight days.

My own feeling is that the entire entertainment industry still has its collective heads stuck in the sand. People's expectations about entertainment and how they will consume it are changing fairly radically, and even more so if you consider the younger and most desirable audiences. Yet studios, movie theaters, and others continue to debate how to maintain the revenue models and distribution of yesteryear. Sorry, it's changing. For some, it'll mean their businesses are gone. For others it'll mean change or die. For yet others it will mean new businesses that didn't exist before. Deal.

-btc