Critical Path

Abstract from Critical Path

The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected. We may be brothers after all.

One thing we know which man may one day discover: Our God is the same God.

He is the God of man and His compassion is equal for the red and the white.

The white too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes.
Contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.

That destiny is a mystery, for we do not understand when the buffalo are to be slaughtered, the wild horse tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires.

Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone.
The end of living and the beginning of survival.

We have learned in the last decade that aggression is a secondary behavior of humans -

that when they get what they need, when they need it, and are not overwhelmed, they are spontaneously benevolent; it is only when they become desperate that they become aggressive because what they have relied on is no longer working.

Income Tax & Wealth

Income tax did not disclose capital wealth. It disclosed only the declared income of the wealthy.

The rich get richer and the poor get children.
The rich get their buildings built for a song and people them with many servants for another song.
Nobody ever knew what the wealthy really had.
The wealthy seemed to be just fantastically so.

The Banking Poem

Oh, our parents forgot to get married.
Our parents forgot to get wed.
Did a wedding bell chime, it was always a time
when our parents were somewhere in bed.

Ye banker, ye broker, ye joker,
Three prominent bastards are thee, tra la,
Three prominent bastards are thee!

As the children of the cop possess the flattest kind of feet,
As the daughter of the floozie has a waggle to her seat,
My position at the bottom of society I owe
To the qualities my parents bequeathed me long ago.

My father was a married man and, what is even more,
He was married to my mother - a fact which I deplore.

I was born in holy wedlock, consequently by and by.
I was rocked by every bastard who had plunder in his eye.
I invested, I deposited, I voted every fall,
And I saved up every penny and the bastards took it all.

At last I've learned my lesson, and I'm on the proper track,
I'm a self-appointed bastard and I'M GOING TO GET IT BACK.

Oh, our parents forgot to get married.
Our parents forgot to get wed.
Did a wedding bell chime, it was always a time
when our parents were somewhere in bed.

Ye banker, ye broker, ye joker,
Three prominent bastards are thee, tra la,
Three prominent bastards are thee!

Source:

Richard Buckminster Fuller
Adjuvant Kiyoshi Kuromiya
Critical Path, 1981
St. Martin's Press, New York.

Good-to-Great & Built to Last

Jim Collins wrote the book, "Good To Great" to illustrate the management hype - the cult of the superhuman CEO.

His research explains how a good company, mediocre companies, and even bad companies are able to achieve enduring greatness.

Jim started his writing with the caption: 'Good is the Enemy of Great'.

This is some of what he wrote:

We expect that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that "they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats - and then they figured out where to drive it."

The old adage "People are your most important asset" turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset 'if you got the wrong people' (emphasis added). The right people are.

Few people have the culture of discipline.. and... when you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance.

Good-to-great companies never use technology as the primary means of igniting transformation. Paradoxically, they pioneers the application of carefully selected technologies.

Good-to-great CEOs didn't talk about themselves. They'd talk about the company and the contributions of their executives and would deflect discussion about their own contribution.

""The comparison leaders did just the opposite. They'd look out of the window for something or someone outside themselves to blame for poor results, but would preen in front of the mirror and credit themselves when things went right.""

Does this statement sounds familiar to you? How often did you read this statement in our daily press and news? It is just unshockingly believable in our society and governmental system.

Jim continued: 'The great irony is that the animus and personal ambition that often drive people to positions of power stands at odds with the humility required for Level 5 Leadership. The term Level 5 refers to the highest level in a hierarchy of executive capabilities that was identified in the research. Level 5 Leaders are modest and willful, humble and fearless. They are ambitious to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves."

Jim conclusively summarized up his research of the Good-to-Great companies:

• To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
• Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructuring will almost certainly fail to make the leap.

"Some of the key concepts discerned in the study will fly in the face of our modern business culture and will upset some people," Jim commented.

The book is a good read. But I would suggest that, for those who had not read his earlier book, 'Built To Last', it would be better to read that first.

Built To Last is a fantastic research project for Stanford University Graduate School of Business by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras who took 18 exceptional top companies and studied each in direct comparison to one of its top competitors.

In the Author's note (2002 Edition), they wrote: "Creativity often sprouts from frustration. Built to Last is not fundamentally about building to last. It is about building something that is worthy of lasting - about building a company of such intrinsic excellence that the world would lose something important if that organization cease to exist. It's about a Global Visionary Company with timeless core values and purpose beyond just making money.

Those who built the visionary companies wisely understood that it is better to understand "who you are" then "where you are going" - for where you are going will almost certainly change. It is a lesson as relevant to our individual lives as to aspiring visionary companies and most of all, relevant to our governmental system of administration.