A Macro Approach of Strategic Implementation (1)

About three to five years ago, we heard about a major dilemma where a grand organization (Competitor A) was being outmaneuvered in the global marketplace by an upstart rival (Competitor B). This upstart was utilizing a combinational approach of the various strategic principles (from the Art of War and other strategic classics) and the "GO (weiqi) game" approach of encircling their opposition in their various business ventures.

Macro economic numbers tell us that the winning streak  of the Competitor B has been extended. We presumed that they are continually using this unique strategic approach.

We will comment on this topic later next year.

Questions for Our Reading Audience

If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing. - W. Edwards Deming

Here are nine questions for you to think about?

1. What is your compass for making strategic decisions?
2. Has your Big picture of profit opportunities enabled you to connected to the Big Tangible Picture of shifts and changes?
3. Are you able to manage multi-strategic situations and variables with no problems?
4. Do you prefer a simple strategic criteria or some sort of technology as your foundation for making good decision?
5. Better yet, does your technology properly support your decision-making process?
6. Lets presumed that your process has helped you maximize your profit opportunities. What is your current success rate?
7. Is your success number comparable to your competition?
8. Are you able to decide with fearlessness?
9. In summary, did we get you thinking?

Becoming Effective in a Complex World

Strategically, we all want to be effective. Being effective means that we can maximize our profits while minimizing our operating costs concurrently. It also enables us to (almost) to almost always be ahead of the competition and the market curve. The challenge is having the strategic process and the execution prowess to be effective, 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week.

Within the confines of our information economy, the world has become more fluid and quite dynamic. One point changes another and so forth. Suddenly, a major event alters the objectives and the approach of many at another point of our globe.

For example, a major political and/or economic occurrence that started from the shores of Asia now prevents a prompt delivery of a major item for a small company located in Washington state. Not only does it alters the economic state of their current and future objectives, the revenue base could be affected for many months.

Should this company have anticipated it? If so, do they have the leadership and the resources to counter the change? Is it better to respond or to react to it? ... It depends greatly on their strategic and situational experience.

You can comprehend the big picture from a top down view by doing the following:

• Recognize the current state of the terrain and the competitors within it;
• Examine the operational direction of the terrain;
• Analyze the reliability of the data; and
• Determine the strategic positioning of the terrain.

Identifying the ebb and flow and the causation of the big picture is also significant. It enables one to know where he/she stand within it.

There are more detailed steps to the Compass process. (We will touch on those steps later.)

Summary

If one can assess the strategic scope of your marketplace and the contending competitors within it, he/she would know the illusions and the reality within the terrain. By knowing the correct categories of market intelligence (the economic numbers, the logistic numbers, etc.) and assuring the veracity of the data, one can predict their strategic actions and their contingencies. The probability and the possibility of their strategic positioning becoming an advantage increases.

We will focus on this matter in a later post and in our future book.

Strategy Statistics (1)

"90% of strategies fail due to poor execution. ..." - Harvard Business School research

We believed that the origin of this problem begins in the poor understanding of the following three points:

• the "assessment of the market terrain" process;
• the "positioning of oneself through the planning and preparation" process; and
• the "influencing of the terrain and the competition within it.

One cannot plan and execute when he/she does not understand their market terrain and beyond. Do you agree?

We will discuss more about those big points in our future book.

The Abstract Behind The Compass Decision (1)

We have occasionally met with chief decision makers of all sorts and discussed about the different matters regarding to their views of what strategy is about. During the course of our conversation, we asked them about their strategic decision-making process . Some of them have told us that they have a tendency to implement their strategy regardless of the circumstances. They are rarely process-driven and feel that the concept of "assessing the big picture before acting" takes too long and that it is technically irrelevant. The only thing that counts is their ability to make things happen and lead their team to capitalist glory.

The Flaw Behind Their Strategic Decision Management Process

Due to a lack of complete information, they do not understand whether the grand situation is stable or chaotic. Their absolute focus is to understand of the immediate risk/rewards, not the risk consequences that are derived from the outcome of their decisions. .

A breakdown of different strategic decision-making styles

Regardless of their style of decision-making, we usually emphasized to them the importance of increasing their understanding of the big tangible picture before implementing any strategic moves. Conclusively, it usually leads to a better decision.

Following is a list of questions that might provoke some thoughts:

• What is your view of the big picture?
• How do you use it to your advantage?
• What is your process to transform your assessment to a tangible plan?

We will further touch on this topic at a later post.

side note: We will discuss the matter of "when to make contingency moves" in our future book.

Strategic Decisions Without Borders (5)

We have always noticed that some of the so-called motivational-driven leaders have a tendency of focusing on inspirational speeches and their own (petty) causes. They rarely ever focus on the larger picture. Whenever they ever focus on a challenge, their solution is quite abstract, idealistic, vague and intangible.

These leaders are idealists who usually have not spend anytime assessing the big tangible picture. Regardless of the reasons, their decisions are usually political-driven, limited in scope and intangible in most cases.

The big picture of these non-strategic leaders is usually quite limited. In most cases, he or she does not have the "real" capability to make a sound strategic decision in five min. or less. They do not possess the aptitude and the attitude to either evolve and let the professionals do their job. ... He/she occasionally do not know the way of trusting. .It ultimately lead them to fail in the task of delegating. ...

In spite of the situation, are they willing to to put their reputation on the line if their decisions are wrong?

The Dao of The Strategist
The "true" strategy professional looks at "strategy" as one thing and many things. He or she observes the big picture from different angles and knows the various attributes that are involved (i.e., the time line, the spacing, the resources, etc.) . In general, the strategist gets the most out of the situation by knowing the full scope of the big picture. What is meant by the full scope is the advantages and disadvantages of the specifics behind the big picture.

This strategist only makes decisions when he/she knows the state of their informational picture.

Our Current Progress on The Book Project

We are currently debating on whether to include a section that introduces the black art of quantified estimates to our Strategic Assessment book project. Your suggestions are appreciated.

This section is based on the following quotes from the Art of War:

"Now if the estimates made in the temple before hostilities indicate a victory it is because calculations show one's strength to be superior to that of his enemy; if they indicate defeat, it is because calculations show that one is inferior. With many calculations, one can win; with few one cannot. How much less chance of victory has one who makes none at all! By this means I examine the situation and the outcome will be clearly apparent. " - AoW 1 (Griffith Translation)

What set of calculations have you used to assess the big picture of your business terrain? ... If you are not properly assessing the big picture, what good is your plan?

More to come.

Assess, Position and Influence (2)

A Counter Point For Every Offensive Point
Some believed that there is a counter play for every offensive play. That concept works as long as he/she is able to anticipate that move. Foretelling the move is the signature move of a very good strategist.

Regardless of the strategic situation or the called play, some believed that the strategic act of execution is the key. Other people think that the choosing the right approach at the appropriate moment is the answer. The key to that approach lies in the latter chapter of the Art of War.

Making the Strategic Decision
One usually prevails by choosing one of the following four strategic approaches at different stages of the competition:

• Take what the opposition offers;
• Dominate by the "Force of Will";
• Use the "Force of Will" approach to set up the deception (play-fake); and
• Use the "Take what the opposition offers" to set up the "Force of Will."

Assessing the configuration of the competitive settings and knowing the timing points for implementing those approaches are the keys to gaining strategic leverage.

The Basics of Assessing

1. Identify the strengths and the weakness of the terrain and the opposition within it.
2. Determine its tendencies.

Regardless of those steps, most people forget to examine whether the competitors are able to properly execute their plan from start to finish.

Recognizing the decisiveness of each chief decision maker (of each competitor) behind the execution is the key to the art of "quan" (weighing the factors)

This process of assessing strategic data is usually long and deep. The quantity of quality data (intelligence on the business terrain and the competitors within it) usually increases one's probability of succeeding greatly.

As a chief decision maker, do you know the relevant strategic assessment points that enables you to understand the big picture?

Without having the conceptual framework for strategic assessment, your strategic team is just guessing.

Dealing with Adversity (1): The Process

What works in the business world, does not always work in real life. In life, most people rarely get a second grand opportunity to climb the social-economic ladder of success.

Compass Rules:

1. Know the big picture before making a move

• Understand how things work and how things connects from an inside to outside view and from a top to bottom view
• Recognize the positive points and the negative points of the situation
• Test the decision with "what-if" situations.

2. Record your decisions.

• At the end of the project launch (or the business year), review your decisions.
  
• Learn from it.
• Focus on improving your strategy and your execution

3. Gain as much relevant experience as soon as possible

• Experience results
  

#

Here is an interesting article on recovering from failure

In summary, one learns the following:

1. What does not kill you, will only makes you strong;.
2. The key to being strong is learning from that experience; and .
3. It is better to know the big tangible picture and the exceptions before making a strategic move.

"While the amateurs learn the rules and tricks,
the professionals always know the big tangible picture
and the exceptions to the situation before making a strategic move. ..."
- a paraphrase from a nameless strategist

Do you know the big tangible picture and the exceptions to the rules of your terrain and beyond?

"In planning never a useless move;
in strategy, no step is in vain." - Chen Hao

How can someone properly plan anything relevant when he/she does not know the big picture? What are the chances of him or her succeeding with that plan on the long run?

Strategic Decisions Without Borders (4)

Following is another view on making strategic decisions:

The following article makes a significant point on strategic decisions.

Compass360 Consulting believes that knowing the rules are ok. Knowing the state of predictability within the "Big Tangible Picture" is the key to knowing when a specific rule is valid

#

October 22, 2006

Digital Domain

It's Not the People You Know. It's Where You Are.

By RANDALL STROSS

FIBER networks cross the world. Data bits move at light speed. The globe has been flattened, and national boundaries obliterated. Yet in Silicon Valley, the one place that is responsible more than any other for creating the network technology that supposedly renders geography irrelevant, physical distance is very much on the minds of the investors who provide venture capital.

Meet the "20-minute rule" that guides fateful decisions in Silicon Valley. Craig Johnson, managing director of Concept2Company Ventures , a venture capital firm in Palo Alto, Calif., who has 30 years of experience in early-stage financings, said he knew many venture capitalists who adhered to this doctrine: if a start-up company seeking venture capital is not within a 20-minute drive of the venture firm's offices, it will not be funded.

Mr. Johnson explained that close proximity permits the investor to provide in-person guidance; initially, that may entail many meetings each week before investor and entrepreneur come to know each other well enough to rely mostly on the phone for updates. Those initial interactions are fateful. "Starting a company is like launching a rocket," Mr. Johnson said. "If you're a tenth of a degree off at launch, you may be 1,000 miles off downrange."

Capital and attention are lavished on entrepreneurs in the Valley as in no other place. Ten years ago, when Dow Jones VentureOne began a quarterly survey of where venture investments landed, one-third of all deals in the country went to the San Francisco Bay Area. Since then, the same share of deals has gone to the same place, almost without variation. Most recently, in the first six months of this year, Silicon Valley still pulled in 32 percent; the region with the second-largest total, New England, was far behind, at 10 percent.

The latest wave of innovation, embodied in Web 2.0 companies, is centered in Silicon Valley. Joshua Grove, a research analyst at VentureOne, said that 43 percent of Web 2.0 deals this year were in the Bay Area, the formal category for the Valley. These included three of the four largest financings: the $25 million that went to Facebook, $14.5 million to Zimbra and $12 million to Six Apart.

How well is the Valley doing in incubating this newest crop of start-ups? Ask the investors at YouTube, who are celebrating Google's $1.65 billion deal for a company that was all of 19 months old. Or look at Google's own record of growth: building a market capitalization of $141 billion in only eight years.

YouTube and Google share the same source of venture financing: Sequoia Capital, situated among the venture capital firms clustered in a handful of blocks in office parks along Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, near the Stanford campus. Google's other source of venture capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is nearby, too.

Why so many of these firms, which form the world's most concentrated source of capital for new ventures, originally collected in that particular spot, rather than, say, outside the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or the California Institute of Technology, is not important; what is important is that this is where they happen to be today.

Sequoia makes its preference for the 20-minute rule almost explicit, telling applicants whose companies are at the "seed stage" (receiving less than $1 million) or "early stage" ($1 million to $10 million) that "it is helpful if the company is close to our offices" because they "require very frequent contact."

Kleiner Perkins has only one office, the one in Menlo Park. Sequoia has reached out to entrepreneurs more considerately, providing five offices. But only one of the five, the one in Menlo Park, is in the United States. The others are in China (two), India and Israel.

If you have a brilliant idea for the New New Thing and want Sequoia to provide its funds and blessing — using the same golden touch provided not long ago to Google's founders — you would be much better off in Beijing, where Sequoia has an office, than in Boston, where it does not.

It's convenient for venture capitalists to have entrepreneurs close by, but the reverse is true, too, said Allen Morgan, a managing director of the Mayfield Fund, which manages $2.3 billion in venture capital and is also on Sand Hill Road. Mr. Morgan made the case by pointing out that a prospective entrepreneur would, on average, need to have three to eight meetings with a venture fund before he or she was successful, but would have to go through a similar process with 5 to 10 firms before finding the one that approved the funding request.

Even if the process goes smoothly and requires only 15 meetings — the fewest possible, given the lowest range of possibilities — and even if most of those meetings are set up in advance, the time consumed in getting to Sand Hill Road, even using local highways, can be significant. The problem is that much worse when, as often happens, a meeting is called with just an hour or two of notice. "If you live in Santa Clara, it's doable," Mr. Morgan said. "If you live in Dubuque, it's not."

Entrepreneurs who live in Silicon Valley also find the technical talent they need faster than they can in any other place; they pay more for that talent, but speed is the sine qua non for success. Seth J. Sternberg, the chief executive of Meebo, an instant-messaging company in Palo Alto that is backed by Sequoia, described Silicon Valley with the fervent appreciation of a recent transplant from New York, where he had suffered three separate bad experiences with start-ups, none of which had attracted venture funding.

The ecosystem in Silicon Valley, Mr. Sternberg said, includes "incredible techies, who live here because this is the epicenter, where they can find the most interesting projects to work on." The ecosystem also includes real estate agents, accountants, head hunters and lawyers who understand an entrepreneur's situation — that is, emptied bank accounts and maxed-out credit cards.

"In New York, it would be extremely difficult to find a law firm willing to defer the first $20,000 of your legal fees," Mr. Sternberg said. "Here, we got that. It's a pretty standard thing in Silicon Valley."

On the East Coast, a business plan contest at the Harvard Business School in 2004 prompted one M.B.A. graduate, Arijit Sengupta, to found BeyondCore, a software company, in his apartment in Boston. Mr. Sengupta, who earlier had earned a bachelor's degree in computer science and economics at Stanford, was determined to develop a finished product and to acquire customers by the oldest method of all: bootstrapping, or starting a business without outside capital.

He did end up needing Silicon Valley for something else: technical talent that would be willing to accept equity in place of any salary. Six weeks ago, he moved to Silicon Valley to recruit more people like his chief technical officer, who has been working full time since Jan. 1 for equity only.

"Elsewhere, if people in a large organization think you have potential, they offer you a job, trying to save you from the uncertainties of a start-up," said Mr. Sengupta, who himself has worked at Oracle, Microsoft and General Motors. "In Silicon Valley, they say, 'Can I join you?' "

Mr. Sengupta now has six "employees" working for BeyondCore without salaries. Only in Silicon Valley, he said, do "people have confidence that if you act on great ideas, the money will come."

• Rule of Global Capitalism: People only follow successful endeavors. They usually support "perceived" winners.
  

Predictions of the Valley's demise have become a perennial, said Mr. Morgan, the Mayfield venture capitalist. "Every five years, Time or Newsweek runs a story: 'Silicon Valley is Dead,' " he said. "But Silicon Valley is bigger and more vibrant and better at creating companies than it has ever been."

Silicon Valley is not "bigger" in a literal sense. In fact, it remains geographically contained by the Santa Cruz Mountains on one side and San Francisco Bay on the other. The physical features of the place help explain the Valley's vitality.

MR. JOHNSON, the venture capitalist in Palo Alto, noted that the greater Los Angeles area also has a pool of talented engineers (working at aerospace companies like Lockheed, Northrop and Hughes) and great universities (notably Caltech and U.C.L.A.) and plenty of money to invest. "But in Los Angeles," he said, "people are scattered across a wide area; everything is more spread out."

It's harder for entrepreneurs to meet with one another and with investors, he added. And that means connections take longer, deals move slowly, fewer companies are formed. "Like a gas, entrepreneurship is hotter when compressed." he said.

Why, one might ask, must relationships be built only by physical presence? Why, if the phone does not serve well, cannot the newest generation of videoconferencing gear — which provides stunning video to accompany sound — save the various participants from the vexations of getting together in person?

Mr. Morgan of Mayfield scoffed at the suggestion of virtual meetings as a feasible medium of establishing trust in business. He said that if the matter were important — and human beings were involved — he believed that there would never, ever be a replacement for face-to-face meetings.

• Compass Rule: Regardless of the distance, trust is the first step toward any relevant cooperation.
  

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: digitaldomain@nytimes.com.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/business/yourmoney/22digi.html

Assessing with Relevant Data (1)

Here is a situation where the professional made a poor decision that lead to negative social feedback.

Ruminations from The Compass Desk

When assessing situations, the professionals usually prefer to utilize specific data that encompasses facts and statistics. Without this ideal set of completed intelligence, one usually guesses.

We occasionally present our views in terms of "probable possibilities." ... Retrospectively, it makes the lives of our associates slightly easier.

Side note: We are considering adding an section of our strategic assessment book on the topic of assessing strategic situations regardless of the completeness of information.

Pragmatic Practices (5): Understanding the Importance of Time

The successful strategist always acknowledge the importance of time. ...

While the upper crust wear the watch (or the chronograph) as a status symbol, the successful strategists wear it as a reminder of whether they are in control of our time-lined ventures. They have realized all of their relevant objectives are time-driven.

Hearsay tells us that a person without a chronograph is a person with no acknowledgement of time or anything relevant, just themselves. ... Do you want that person in your alpha team? ... Be aware of those people who do not observe the importance of time. ...

Competing in the Global Economy: Are You Driven?

Old money is comfortable. ... Some are soft as tofu and lazy as a summer breeze. Some are trust fund babies. Others got lucky through various positions and connections. Some creates the opportunities. Other find the opportunities. Most just wait for it. Generally, they barely understand the game of global evolution.

Interestingly, there are people who do not have the old money, but act like them. They are always dreaming that they will be a success because they feel that they put in the huge amount of time with their perception of "above average" amount of targeted effort. (When comparing their perception of "above average" amount of targeted effort to that of the the successful, the reality is that the effort is a minuscule of what is really required.)

Then, there are those who have the competitive drive to understand the capitalist's game of risk, uncertainty and volatility while comprehending the big picture of the real world. ... They live, drink and eat their work, 24/7.

We have always admire those who possessed this drive to make it happen.

Focusing on one's objective while minding one's big picture is one skill that many people do not have. Ensuring that the big picture connects to the big picture of the real world's is the another.

Regardless of those skills, how driven are you? ... What is your definition of the big picture? ... Is your big picture tangible? ... Does it connects with the global picture? What is your definition of the global picture?

If you can't honestly answer any of those five questions, you need to deliberate whether your strategy and your strategic decision model is quite working. If you are competing in a terrain of chaos and uncertainty, do you really know if you are ahead or behind the competition?

A Brief Update on Our "Strategic Assessment" Book

Someone recently asked us about our book's launch date. We are currently adding more interesting case studies and more test cases.

For the newbies, our book is focused on our interpretation of the various strategic principles from the Art of War and other Chinese strategy classics. It will show the connection between those principles with another popular set of western business principles.

We will also discuss the unique concepts of our Strategic Assessment process and show a comparison of our strategic assessment process to the popular (but partially-efficient) SWOT approach.

It also encompasses the rules of strategic assessment from various viewpoints. We will post more information on our book endeavor as it reaches the completion stage.

If you have any questions and comments, please contact us at http://www.formspring.me/Compass360CG

Thanks for your patience and support.

Failure to Plan is to Plan For Failure (2)

This past weekend, I watched the San Francisco Forty Niners played the Seattle Seashawks. It totally amazed me to see that the San Francisco's offensive coordinator had a difficult time, relaying a play to their quarterback.

There were other operational snafus that are too embarrassing to talk about. I usually expect most professional strategists to plan and prepare themselves with extreme precision.

You can read more about this situation, here and here

When the news media offered various strategic and tactical suggestions to the professional coach It is time for someone to commit professional seppuku.

Here are some of their tips:

• Take offensive coordinator Jimmy Raye out of the booth and put him on the sidelines where he can transmit the play directly in to the Smith's helmet. Plays must come in from the sidelines and not the booth, so Raye relays the call to quarterbacks coach Mike Johnson who then sends it to Smith. Should Raye take to the sidelines, the middle man is eliminated.

• Put the numbered plays on a wrist band and instead of communicating a long play such as "X call, hustle 2, I right slot, two man counter easy," three times, Raye simply calls out a number that Smith cross checks on his wrist band with the play that's being called. So then Smith is the only one communicating the entire play, which saves time and confusion.

• Make a set time when Smith eschews the call coming in and simply calls his own play. "We've talked about that," Smith said. For example, if Smith doesn't get the play with 24 seconds left on the clock, he then calls the play himself.

• Putting the play-calling, at times, completely into Smith's hands. That's not something Smith would like to do all the time. "I have to do a lot already," he said. "That's why we have an offensive coordinator."

Post Updated: More on poor logistics

49ers coach Mike Singletary said "I smell a rat" as he stood by his offensive coordinator, Jimmy Raye. He just doesn't have time to weed out the unnamed sources of a Yahoo! Sports story that said Raye struggles to get plays called in and sometimes garbles it all up. ... Raye said this about the miscommunication that led to three burned timeouts and a delay of game Sunday:

"It's my responsibility. I bear all the responsibility for the way we operate on offense. I'm the leader. It's my watch. I have the responsibility for the things that occur where it concerns the offense."

"I think it's important that all of you understand that this game has a human element to it. Of the games that were played last week, I would dare say that there was anyone in the position I'm in that was flawless. So, what could I have done better? I could have maybe had a better plan. I could maybe have made some better decisions. Hopefully the ones that I made were the correct ones. You hope they play out that way. Because of that there are any number of things that you always think back on when you lose that you could have done better. And if you don't, then you probably shouldn't be in the game."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ninerinsider/detail?entry_id=72480

Post Updated: More on poor logistics (09/27/2010)

In any economy, inadequate performance mean immediate execution.

49ers Fired Raye

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/27/SPNJ1FKBFO.DTL

///

All championship bounded teams are usually properly organized and prepared to perform all of those above points with their eyes closed. ... Should the San Francisco Forty Niners have perfected that practice before the season began? ... Can anyone tell the Forty Niners fans what is wrong with this picture?

Compass Rule: Trust a strategist who carries more than enough lead in his pencil.

Compass Analysis: Returning to the drawing board means the strategic designer does not understand the big tangible picture from a top down view.

Any organization who thrives in this global economy, usually have a team of professional (process-driven) strategists who can stay focused on the current objective while understanding the state of the big picture.

Now, observe your team and identify who are the focused team team members. Ask yourself, are they getting the job done?

The Dao of Strategy: Making Decisions

In our world of multi-synchronous ebb and flow, some of us are operating in a grand setting that is embedded with a balance of simplicity and complexity and aligned with multiple cycles of order and disorder.

How does one decide on the various situations that allows him or her to capitalizes on opportunities while mitigating risks.?

Instead of asking about what should a good decision be about, lets ask some unique questions regarding to the skills of making a decision:

• Is your decision based on connecting the current objective to the big tangible picture?
• What is in your big tangible picture?
• How many variables can you hold in your head?
• Do you have the process that enables you to make decisions?
• Do you have the will to work through the process of making a decision?
• Are you able to see the outcome of a decision in term of risk/rewards and risk/consequences?
• Can you make decisions under extreme pressure?
• Can you implement your decision effectively?

Retrospectively, how many of those skills do you possess?

Are those skills embedded in your conscious?

Remember that each implemented decision does not build your character. It reveals it.

Compass Situation: Stay on Course or Look ahead and Maximize on New Opportunities

The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China tells us that the successful strategic implementers usually prevail by knowing their settings in terms of their competitive terrain, its cyclical influences and the involving contenders. The dilemma occurs when most of the competitors do not know how to stay on course and/or when to adjust.

Compass360 Consulting believes in the principle of focusing on finishing the objective efficiently while knowing the big picture. However knowing the Compass situation rules and the approaches for stepping off the game board are the keys to success. Retrospectively, do you know when to stay focused on the target and when to capitalize on new opportunities without losing your momentum?

It begins by understanding the "Big Tangible Picture (btp)!?" ... So, what attributes are in your "Big Tangible Picture?" Are you able to focus on your objective while mindfully aware of the ."Big Tangible Picture?"

#

"It ain't what you do it's the way that you do it, that's what gets results" - Jazz musicians Melvin "Sy" Oliver and James "Trummy" Young

#

June 20, 2010

CHESS

A Player Steps Up His Game and Wins the National Open

By DYLAN LOEB McCLAIN

Chess players often talk of the creative aspect of chess — the role of imagination in conceiving strategies. Sometimes the desire to execute an original plan can overwhelm even the desire to win.

Mikhail Tal, a former world champion, wrote in his autobiography that he had lost more than a few games because he had chosen a “beautiful” combination, only to discover that he had miscalculated.

To borrow a baseball metaphor, a grand slam for a chess player would be to play brilliantly, win the game and defeat a strong opponent when there is a lot riding on the outcome.

# Side note: In competitive baseball, most championship-contending teams usually win on early, middle and late inning's rallies of singles and doubles, not on infrequent streaks of home runs. #

That is what Timur Gareev of Uzbekistan did in the final round of the National Open in Las Vegas last Sunday. He trailed Varuzhan Akobian, a grandmaster who lives in California, by half a point, so he needed to beat Akobian to capture the title. After he did, he said the game wasone of his “sexiest ever,” according to the United States Chess Federation’s Web site.

Akobian chose the Tarrasch Variation of the Queen’s Gambit Declined. It was an aggressive and risky choice, particularly given the stakes, but perhaps he thought that his opponent would be unprepared.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/crosswords/chess/20chess.html

The Sign of the Times: The Robots Trend is Here

In a past post, we spotted the vending machines trend as one of many "hot" trends. What we forgot to tell you is that the real money is in the area of robotics. ... Various Global 1000 companies have already positioned themselves to control this niche. The key for the up and coming entrepreneurs is to search deep into the configuration of their terrain and find the various micro terrains that might provide a strategic benefit to a mass of future clients who have cold, hard cash.

Our Compass Assessment of the Robot Trends(abridgment):

Alpha Moment: The implementation of robotics is here.

Benefits:

• A faster and efficient service that provides low operational costs and a fast delivery cycle while ensuring quality
• The option of charging a nominal fee for those who require the "human touch" service.

Challenges:

• Customers who prefer the "human touch" .

Drawbacks:

• Customers who can't afford the "human touch" services might take their business to somewhere else. The question is whether the number of consumer options for that specific group of clientele are limited to a few companies?
• The possibility of more unemployed people.

Efficiency/Flexibility:

• The trend of robotic customer service will be utilized all over the globe and will be quite efficient on the long run.
• With good artificial intelligence constructs, we expected the robotic technology to be quite solid.

#

What if there's no fix for high unemployment?

By Martin Ford, contributor June 10, 2010: 12:08 PM ET

FORTUNE -- There seems to be little doubt that unemployment is going to remain stubbornly high -- quite possibly for years to come. There's also mounting evidence that a good part of that unemployment is really structural in nature: The skills and capabilities of many experienced workers are simply no longer demanded by the market.

In manufacturing and in many clerical and administrative occupations, computerization and automation have left many formerly middle-class workers with few viable career options. Is it possible that we're creating a future in which jobs are going to be harder and harder to create?

While most economists would probably acknowledge the role that advancing technology has played in the elimination of many middle-skill jobs, few, if any, seem prepared to give any serious thought to where that trend is likely to lead in the future. History shows clearly that the overall capability of information technology accelerates over time -- roughly doubling every two years according to the widely-accepted "Moore's Law." If that trend continues through the next decade -- and there is every reason to expect that it will -- we can anticipate that the computational power available to be focused on automating jobs of all types will increase by a factor of approximately 32. A change of that magnitude isn't something to take lightly. Imagine that your monthly mortgage payment increased by 32 times -- say from $2,000 to $64,000.

As technology continues to accelerate, the number and types of jobs that can be automated is certain to expand dramatically. It's not just factory workers that can be replaced by robots and machines: Rapidly improving software automation and specialized artificial intelligence applications will make knowledge worker and professional occupations requiring college educations and advanced skills increasingly vulnerable.

Consider that this month HP (HPQ, Fortune 500) announced thousands of layoffs while also touting that it's making investments in technology and automation to increase "efficiencies" in the years to come. It is far from the only company to have made such a pronouncement in recent years.

The unemployment pendulum could stop swinging

Yet even economists who think unemployment will be high for five or more years hold onto principled but ill-defended beliefs that unemployment will eventually return to normal levels, just because it always has. But what if this time, something's really different? Technology isn't going to stand still while we wait for the job market to recover. As jobs of all kinds get automated at an increasing pace, it may turn out to be extraordinarily difficult to find our way back to an acceptable unemployment rate.

0:00 /4:02Romer: 'We are adding jobs'

Skeptics will rush to point out that while advancing technology eliminates jobs, it also creates new opportunities and new employment sectors -- so there should be plenty of new jobs to pick up the slack. This process of "creative destruction" is indeed inevitable, but the reality is that innovation often wipes out jobs in more traditional, labor-intensive industries, while creating new ventures that rely heavily on advanced technology and employ only a few people.

Consider Blockbuster (BBI, Fortune 500), which employs a large workforce at thousands of retail stores. Compare it with Netflix (NFLX), with a much smaller number of employees in a just a few highly automated distribution centers where DVDs get sent out and received. That's not all though: The trend is relentless. Netflix customers are already able to stream video directly to their computers or televisions, and there can be little doubt that the Internet is going to be the way movies get delivered in the future. Guess what that means for the workers who are now shipping DVDs through the mail?

Automation is going to hit every industry

As both hardware and software evolve, virtually every employment sector will be increasingly -- and simultaneously -- susceptible to automation. That's a very different story from past technological advances. In the last century, mechanization destroyed millions of jobs in agriculture, and that resulted in a transition to factory-based employment.

More recently, manufacturing automation and globalization were the forces behind our shift to a service-based economy. This time around, we're unlikely to have the luxury of such a sector-by-sector impact on employment: Automation is going to hit hard nearly everywhere.

If structural unemployment increases, there will be very few safe harbors. Today, workers whose skills become obsolete often end up in the jobs of last resort: low-wage service positions at employers like Wal-Mart. The problem is that those jobs won't be there forever -- and certainly not in the numbers required to sustain us.

Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) for example, is one of the biggest proponents of RFID, an inventory tracking technology which reduces the need for human supply-chain management. (It was also once reported to be considering using robots to perform nightly store inventory, a claim the company has denied.) As automation technology becomes more capable and more cost-effective, its eventual introduction into the retail stores, warehouses and offices that now employ tens of millions of workers is inevitable.

Increasing unemployment and falling consumer confidence would very likely result in stagnant or even falling aggregate demand, raising the risk of a deflationary spiral that might be very difficult to reverse. Social safety nets like unemployment insurance would come under unprecedented pressure, and governments would see dramatically increased demand for services even as tax revenues plummeted. Governments would have little choice except to borrow even more -- making the sovereign debt problems that are already tormenting the developed world just the tip of the iceberg.

The solutions to this mess are politically unthinkable by today's standards. Think about it: Jobs are the primary way that purchasing power gets delivered into the hands of consumers. Consumers without incomes can't drive the economy. If jobs at all levels are destined to evaporate in the face of broad-based automation, radical intervention -- and perhaps even a fundamental rewiring of the way the economy works -- may ultimately be our only alternative.

Mainstream economists are, of course, completely oblivious to such a potential scenario. They remain confident in elaborate mathematical models and assumptions that were put together in the last century -- often on the basis of economic data collected decades ago, when information technology was still in its infancy. What if those assumptions turn out to be just plain wrong?

--Martin Ford is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author of The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/10/news/economy/unemployment_layoffs_structural.fortune/index.htm

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gettowork/detail?entry_id=54118

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gettowork/detail?entry_id=65580&type=jobs

--

Our research tells us that robotics will play a relevant role in our global settings. We expected more bottom to lower-middle tier retail businesses to utilize robotics-like devices for various types of customer service.

Side note: In the information technology profession, virtualization software, outsourced labor and a improved project process has currently taken away many middle-tier professional positions from the U.S. job market. We believed that most of those jobs are not returning to the United States

To some people, life can be considered as a zero sum game. While someone wins, another person or a group of people loses.. However, every crisis creates another opportunity. The key is to assess the grand tangible picture with the purpose of identifying opportunities. Then, position oneself by basing their planning and preparation to the strategic assessed situation. Finally, implement the tangible gameplan with the competitive intelligence-driven influence.