Predictions and Prognostications

The trademark of a very good strategist is to know the big tangible picture and predict the future.

Click here to discover IBM's San Jose forecast of the future.

From the NYT, forecasters and policy makers predicted an economy recovery.

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

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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

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. ...

Strategic Decisions Without Borders (3)

Traveling costs are going up.

Video conferencing is on the rise

Your virtual team of project implementers are located at
different remotes. How do you get them to made decisions as a team?

If some teams cannot make decisions in close quarters,

what are the chances that they will make decisions
efficiently well at remote locales?

How do you get them to collaboratively operate as a team?

While technology connects people,

a good strategic decision-making process

is the key to a strategic success.
Do you have a process that can get people to
operate effectively as a team?

Since 2006, everyone are still focused on the matters of different locations, time zones, and culture. They do not know how to build a big picture as a team. They do not have a process to make decisions. Nothing has changed. Technology evolves. Jobs are continually being outsourced. Salary and bonuses for the worker-bees declines. Attention span decreases.

Most people continually think tactically. They do not assess the big picture and do not try to understand the premise of the "big picture" strategy. ... When people does not connect with the big picture strategy, one can expect bad things. ... Life goes on. ...

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Where In the World?

James Bain

September 1, 2010

More and more projects span different locations, time zones, even cultures. It only makes the project manager’s job more challenging. To succeed on such projects, you must learn how to improve your interactions with remote team members. Here are six suggestions.

Managing people and projects from across the hall is tough enough. Managing people and projects from different cities, states, time zones, or countries is infinitely more difficult. You might as well be on different planets. And, as the world economy changes, this remote sort of management is becoming more and more common. Whether your organization has a sales force spread around the country, an engineering group located across the state, or projects you might be building across town, the lack of opportunity to “run into” the other members of your team can be devastating to the team’s performance. While there are certainly some advantages to a remote workforce, its downsides must be recognized and either minimized or avoided completely.

The goal of most organizations and sub-organizations is to deliver something of value to their external customers, their internal customers, or both. As such, the difficulty of managing people remotely has a direct impact on both the productivity of the workforce and the quality and quantity of the end product or service. To operate at peak performance today, project managers must learn how to improve their interactions with remote team members.

Studies over the last five decades have held that motivational triggers exist at differing levels for each individual. The most basic of these needs, such as food, water and shelter are satisfied by means of a salary or wage and are not affected by the location of the worker. Middle level needs such as relationships, work conditions, and a sense of belonging are easier to satisfy when people work in direct contact with each other. In other words, remote employees are inclined to be dissatisfied with their work because it is more difficult to develop the necessary relationships.

There is limited “face time.” Fortunately, if those management hurdles are cleared, the highest level needs such as achievement, the work itself, recognition, responsibility and advancement, are not only possible, but often enhanced by remote working arrangements.

The key, then, is to take creative measures to ensure that remote relationships are built and nurtured. Many people have experienced that feeling that they think, act and speak in different languages than their spouse, children, or boss. They might as well be from different planets.

How can project managers make sure that they are on the same planet as their remote team members?

1. Start by agreeing on the outcomes you seek. Engage in true two-way communication. Be specific about the desired results of the work. Confirm that all parties understand the details of the desired results. Agree on a “get well” date. When will the project be finished? Remotely located employees have more flexibility in the “how,” but need to have fairly specific goals and objectives on the “what” and the “when.”

2. Get out of your office and go see your remotely located people. Whether you schedule your trips to your remote locations on a regular basis or a more haphazard basis is not critical. Visiting their turf, their offices, their project sites is! Back in the 1970’s this was called MBWA — Management by Walking Around. People want to see you so that they feel as if they have access to you and so they know that you care.

3. Institute a daily or weekly “How can I help you?” call. At an agreed upon time, if you and your remotely located people have not yet talked, part of your responsibility as a manager is to find out how you can help. This regular call will go a long way to building the trust that occurs more readily when they are just across the hall. Make this call one of your good habits.

4. Use technology to its fullest potential. Nearly, everyone is aware of e-mail. Videoconferences, on-line virtual meeting sites such as Second Life, and social networks like Facebook and Twitter, are excellent examples. While there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction, current technology can get you pretty darn close. This is also an excellent way to bridge the generation gaps that are developing in today’s workforce. If you are a baby boomer, learn to e-mail, text and maybe even Tweet your gen-X and gen-Y employees. They will appreciate the effort just as inhabitants of a different planet would appreciate you learning their language.

5. Walk a mile in their shoes. The construction business is a great example. The office personnel find it hard to understand the difficulty of working out of a hot dusty pick-up truck with paper spread everywhere, no place to fill out all of the necessary forms, and Burger King bags on the passenger seat floor. Develop a “day in the life” program. Set up opportunities for staff from different groups in your organization to spend a half or whole day job shadowing each other. The experience will help different functions understand the difficulties each group faces when working away from the “head shed.”

6. Care. Take the time to communicate with your people in any form available. It will help to build those relationships so necessary for job satisfaction. Start by asking your people about their lives, their work, their needs. Then shut up and listen. You’ll be surprised what you learn.

The rapidly increasing incidence of remote management can directly and severely impact the job satisfaction for your remote employees. Decreased job satisfaction has a negative impact on productivity and performance. The reality is that special measures must be taken to alleviate those issues. Using these tips will help you practice the first three rules of effective employee management: communicate, communicate, communicate!

James S. Bain, MBA, is an author, speaker, consultant, and coach. He is the founder of Focus on the 5, a division of Falcon Performance Institute, a consulting and corporate training firm focused on productive performance. Look for Jim’s soon to be published book, “Never Pass on a Chance to P- A Roadmap to Peace in Your Life.” For more information: www.falconadv.com.

Copyright © 2010 projects@work All rights reserved.

http://www.projectsatwork.com/article.cfm?ID=258496

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A properly-built team strategic decision process enables the project implementors to effectively utilize their technology in specific situations. Without a process, technology is only effective in limited situations.

Our Compass AE methodology is a strategic decision approach that emphasizes on advanced planning. It enables the project team to use our Tangible Vision module to plan their goal and their strategic overview. They are always collaboratively prepared for all situations. The team understands what are the specific priorities, the particular approaches and the contingencies for the different circumstances that could occur.

This process also allows them to make decisions regardless of the distance, the technology and the project culture.

In future posts, we will explain the beneficial values of Compass AE.

If you are interested in knowing more about Compass 360 Consulting services, please contact us at http://www.formspring.me/Compass360CG

The Art of Strategic Power

Regardless of the competitive settings, the strategic principle for applying strategic power (advantage) is the same.

In warfare, "strategic power" refers to the exploitation of strategic advantage through power. Whenever the enemies are in a situation where they can be vanquished and destroyed, you should follow it up and press and attack on them, for then their army will certainly crumble. A tactical principle from the Three Strategies states: "Rely on strategic power to destroy them."

- One Hundred Unorthodox Strategies

"Instead of “the hammer,” in the words of John O. Brennan, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, America will rely on the “scalpel.”

When the favored (with the strategical lead within a predictable setting), has the option to use a precision tool to extract the opposition. ... In chaotic settings, one usually use the blunt instrument in order to catch up.

Following are three general questions that successful strategists have always asked:

• Are my settings are predictable or unpredictable?
• Who is ahead and who is behind?
• Should I advance or retreat?

Those who are positionally competing in an intensive competition, should remember the following quote from Questions and Replies between T'ang T'ai-tsung and Li Wei-kung.

"According to Fan Li's book, 'If you're last use yin tactics, if you're first then use yang tactics. When you have exhausted the enemy's yang tactics. When you have exhausted the enemy's tactics. When you have exhausted the enemy measures, then expand your yin to the full and seize them.' This then is the subtle mysteriousness of yin and yang according to the strategists."

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.

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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

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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.

The Vending Machines Trend

In a previous post, we identified the vending machines trend as one of many "hot" trends.

Current marketing trend reports told us that that the vending machines will be a way of life for the lower-income regions.

The key to maintaining this sales appeal is having interesting products that the majority of the masses would immediately need and want.

Here is an idea for dispensing gold.

Interesting Compass Points

• A store of automated kiosks should cost less than an employee
• It is near perfect for the consumers who expected immediate gratification
• 86 percent of North American consumers were more likely to do business with companies offering some sort of self-service. (NCR Corporation's 2008 report)

The Dao of Competition: Is Winning Everything?

q: Is sports another extension of life?

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March 31, 2010

Coaches Finding No Tolerance for Losing

By PETE THAMEL

INDIANAPOLIS — Three years ago, when Royce Waltman was fired as the coach at Indiana State, he gave a memorable and prophetic news conference at the Missouri Valley Conference tournament.

He opened by thanking the university administration for handling his dismissal with “the deft touch of a 20-mule team.” He continued with a statement so honest and salient that it resonated deeply as the college coaching carousel spun again this week.

“If you get fired for cheating, you can get hired right back again,” he said. “If you get fired for losing, it’s like you’ve got leprosy, so young coaches need to bear that in mind. Cheating and not graduating players will not get you in trouble, but that damn losing. ...”

Waltman, 68, might have lost too often, but he could see the future. He has not been rehired as a head coach, instead working as a part-time assistant at Roncalli High School here.

But this week’s coaching changes brought Waltman’s sentiments to life: Holy Cross fired Coach Sean Kearney after one season on Tuesday for losing too much. And Texas-El Paso hired Tim Floyd, who resigned at U.S.C. in the wake of allegations of N.C.A.A. rules violations. U.S.C. vacated 21 wins and imposed a one-scholarship ban because of what happened under Floyd’s watch. Over lunch at a sports bar here on Wednesday, Waltman sipped a beer and reflected on his 2007 news conference. “It wasn’t a bitter statement,” he said. “I still believe it. I would think that events would bear that out.”

In the nonscholarship Ivy League this season, Penn and Dartmouth fired their coaches at midseason. Cornell Coach Steve Donahue said that in his first 10 years in the Ivy League, he could recall only two coaches being fired.

The Patriot League, of which Holy Cross is a member, offers scholarships but fancies itself as similar to the Ivy League in mission and academic ideal. Holy Cross hired Kearney in June after Ralph Willard left to become Rick Pitino’s top assistant at Louisville.

Kearney inherited a team picked to finish first in the Patriot. It finished 9-22, 5-9 in the league, and advanced to the semifinals of the conference tournament.

Holy Cross Athletic Director Dick Regan did not return multiple calls seeking comment. But in statements reported by The Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, Mass., he made it clear that the reason for Kearney’s dismissal was his record.

“What this really says is basketball is very important to us,” he told the newspaper. “I see the ability to win the league championship next year, and I felt I had to do whatever it took to get to that point. There’s a gap in life between what you would like to do and what you think you have to do, and this was one of those latter situations.”

Kearney, reached by telephone on Wednesday, said he was fired for losing. He will be paid the remaining three years on his contract, a sign that there were no off-court issues. “I’m just very disappointed that I was not able to finish this out,” he said.

Around the country, coaches and administrators were baffled by the move. Another Patriot League coach, Fran O’Hanlon, who has coached at Lafayette for 15 years, was irate.

“Someone’s career was just destroyed in a lot of ways,” he said. “Short of a felony, I can’t imagine what could have prompted something like this. I’m just upset with the whole thing. I’m upset. It’s not my school. I’m not running Holy Cross, but I certainly don’t like the way this whole thing was handled.”

Kearney’s old boss at Notre Dame, Mike Brey, spent a lot of time on the phone pitching Kearney to Regan when the job was open. Brey said he did not get a good feeling in dealing with Regan and questioned his ability as an athletic director.

“I was nervous about him going there,” Brey said of Kearney, “but obviously it was a great opportunity for Sean.”

John Feinstein is the author of the book, “The Last Amateurs,” which follows a year in the Patriot League. On Wednesday, he credited Regan for being honest about the impetus behind the decision to fire Kearney — not winning enough. But Feinstein said the firing after one season was a bad harbinger.

“It says nothing good about the school or the league or the state of college basketball,” Feinstein said.

Feinstein recalled a conversation with Father John Brooks, the former president of Holy Cross, who said that the league’s decision to give scholarships was a “slippery slope.”

On Tuesday, Boston College parted ways with Al Skinner, who had reached the N.C.A.A. tournament seven times in the past 10 years but was 15-16 this season.

Norm Roberts, credited with cleaning up an N.C.A.A. mess at St. John’s and stabilizing the program, was also fired last month for not winning enough.

Brey, his voice dripping with sarcasm, said he could not wait to attend a 9 a.m. meeting of the National Association of Basketball Coaches here on Thursday.

“What kind of message does this send?” Brey said. “I’m beaten down, man.”

Waltman, the prophet, shook his head as he talked about the state of college basketball. But his message came across: Cheats prosper and losers get leprosy. Something a young coach might think about.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/sports/ncaabasketball/01coaching.html?hpw

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"Winning isn't everything. The will to win is the only thing. - Vince Lombardi

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winning_isn't_everything;_it's_the_only_thing

Notes from the Virtual Desktop Strategist

What is a Gadget Play?

A specific category of tactical plays that is designed to deceive the opposition in certain situations.

The Essence of the Gadget Play

It does not normally win games. However, the successful execution of this type of play could shift the emotional momentum of the competition and the crowd.

When should One Call a Gadget Play?

Whenever one is confidentially in during the preparation and practice of the play.

Compass Rule: The amount of time that it takes to plan and prepare (for the execution of the play) is inversely proportionally to the amount of time it takes to implement it.

The Key to Quick Decision-Making

Compass Rule: The effectiveness of one's decision is based on their view of the big picture.

Do you know your big picture? What are the attributes behind your big picture? If you don't know, talk to us about it.

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New coach puts vast experience to a special task

Ron Kroichick, Chronicle Staff Writer Wednesday, March 17, 2010

It's tempting, after some quick research, to suspect new Cal special teams coordinator Jeff Genyk is something of a gunslinger, throwing caution to the wind in his approach to college football. Genyk finished his run as Eastern Michigan's

head coach, after all, with a wild 56-52 victory over rival Central Michigan. Check out quarterback Andy Schmitt's numbers on that November 2008 day - a Division I record 58 completions in 80 attempts for 516 yards.

One week earlier, Schmitt went 50-of-76 in a loss to Temple. So the Bears are going to fake punts with abandon and run crazy reverses on kickoff returns? Well, maybe not. Those eye-catching numbers aside, Genyk strikes a measured and analytic tone as he dives into spring practice with the task of upgrading Cal's special teams. He also brings an uncommon background to Berkeley, more than the usual assortment of stops on the coaching ladder.

Start with this: Genyk has an MBA from Western Michigan and another master's degree (in education and social policy) from Northwestern. He worked in private business for nine years before starting his coaching career and spent last season as an ESPN analyst, working ACC games while also starting a consulting business and doing some motivational speaking. Few special teams coaches, for that matter, list five years as a Division I head coach on their resume. Genyk's stay at Eastern Michigan did not exactly unfold as planned - he was fired after posting a 16-42 record - but the experience shaped the way he will perform his job at Cal.

"It certainly should bring the ability to be decisive," Genyk said after the Bears' first workout Thursday at Memorial Stadium. "Maybe not always correct, but I think anytime you have five years of college head-coaching experience, it really allows you to make quick decisions. You can be decisive with yourself, the players and the staff." His decisiveness also comes from personal experience. Genyk was a quarterback and punter in his playing days at Bowling Green, and he handled special teams for the final eight of his 12 seasons (1992-2003) at Northwestern.

Genyk, in other words, should have some credibility when he counsels Cal's kickers and punters. "It helps not only that I did the actual task, but probably more importantly that I've coached it for so long," he said. "So when I put together their drills and their practice plan, hopefully it makes sense to them."

The Bears have some work to do on special teams, shortcomings that prompted the dismissal of Pete Alamar shortly after the team's Poinsettia Bowl loss to Utah. Most noticeably, Cal ranked ninth in the Pac-10 in kickoff coverage last season and 10th in field-goal percentage (.625, 15-of-24).

That last stat clearly rankled head coach Jeff Tedford. Vince D'Amato and Giorgio Tavecchio had their moments in 2009, but they were each only 2-of-6 on kicks between 30 and 49 yards.

"Jeff has a good background with kickers and punters, and that's something we really needed," Tedford said of Genyk. "... I think coaching our kickers is going to be a big deal. He's got a plan for those guys, and they're going to improve every day." Genyk added, "Both those kids have a great desire to get better.

Physically, they have the talent to be very good. I think they need to get mentally stronger. You're going to miss a field goal and you may pull a kickoff out of bounds. How do you respond after that? That's what I'm working on."

E-mail Ron Kroichick at rkroichick@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/17/SP5M1CF289.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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The Profile of a Strategic Leader

Therefore a skilled commander seeks victory from the situation and does not demand it of his subordinates. ... He selects his men and they exploit the situation. ... He who relies on the situation uses his men in fighting as one rolls logs or stones. Now the nature of logs or stones is that on stable ground they are static; on unstable ground, they move. If square, they stop; if round, they roll. Thus, the potential of troops skillfully commanded in battle may be compared to that of round boulders which roll down from the mountain heights. - AoW, 5 (Griffith translation)

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Mike Montgomery a thinking man's coach

Vittorio Tafur, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, March 6, 2010

(03-05) 21:55 PST -- The consummate coach can take the five guys on his basketball team and beat you, and then take your five guys and beat his five guys. In the case of Mike Montgomery, he can build a power at Stanford and then years later find himself cutting down the nets for archrival Cal.

"Your job as a coach is to put your players in a position to be successful," Montgomery said. "Regardless of the situation."

Even if you're at Stanford, which has the most severe academic restrictions of any major-conference program. Or at Cal, where he coaches a freewheeling style very different from what he had on the Farm, with big centers down low.

Last Saturday at Haas Pavilion, Montgomery's Bears locked up the program's first conference regular-season title in 50 years, this after his Cardinal ended a 36-year Stanford drought in 1999.

"I'm sure it seemed weird to some people, going to work for your archrival, but the bottom line is he gets paid to do a job," said Utah State coach Stew Morrill, a close friend and former assistant of Montgomery's. "And boy does he do it well."

Cal athletic director Sandy Barbour put a scare in the rest of the Pac-10 when she brought in the gun for hire two years ago. And Montgomery's put some more notches on his belt. The Bears are 20-9 heading into today's game at Stanford and have all but sealed a second straight appearance in the NCAA Tournament - after finishing ninth under coach Ben Braun in 2007-08.

"It's very pleasing to see this group of seniors grow like they have, together," Montgomery said. "We're playing well right now."

Montgomery, 63, draws little attention to himself.

He was asked if he had gotten any phone calls congratulating him on Cal's title.

"No, people know me," he deadpanned. "Over the years, they know it's better to let me be."

Montgomery is happy for his players, who have been getting slaps on the back in the community.

"I think everybody's excited. A lot of people waited a long time and probably were fearful of being let down again," he said. "When we finally won, it was probably a load off a lot of people's minds. It's been pretty positive."

Winning approach

On Monday, Montgomery showed his players a videotape of all the things they had been doing well lately, from making the extra pass on offense to helping out teammates on defense.

Senior guard Patrick Christopher ate it up.

"Coach sees the glass as half empty most of the time," Christopher said. "So when he pours a little bit of water in there, it gets your attention."

Montgomery is admittedly a no-nonsense type on the court - " I want things done right," he said.

When he came to Berkeley, his resume - he now is 11 wins shy of becoming the 34th Division I basketball coach with 600 - demanded the Cal players' attention.

"Coach has had great teams in the past," senior forward Theo Robertson said. "Everything he says has worked and is proven."

"Obviously we needed some type of direction from Coach," senior point guard Jerome Randle added. "He put us in the right spots on the court to be successful."

/// The key is to explain to the players how an individual effort can improve the overall team result and how it can benefit each individual player.

A chess match

Montgomery considers the game a chess match, and clearly enjoys pre-game strategy sessions and late-game management.

"He is one of the most logical coaches there is," said Butler athletic director Barry Collier, a friend and former Montgomery assistant. "I know that's not going to win many points in a sexy contest."

Besides being an excellent evaluator of talent, Montgomery breaks the game down to a simple formula - if you shoot a higher percentage than you allow, limit turnovers to 10 a game and out-rebound your opponent, you win.

"In a world of chaos, he has unbelievable common sense," Morrill said. "It's a wonderful attribute. He never panics and is able to sort things out."

With the Bears, he's sorted out a roster that is more suited to shooting jumpers than scoring inside.

"We're not big and strong," Montgomery said. "Even if I wanted to be that kind of team, we can't be. We've gone with what we do best. And we've gotten better defensively and fundamentally."

He's given Randle, Christopher and Robertson the freedom to pull up for three-pointers on the fast break and has made peace with the fact that center/power forward Jamal Boykin prefers shooting 15-footers to playing with his back to the basket.

"One of the greatest things he's done is that he's allowed us to play our game," Boykin said. "He's never said, 'Don't take that shot.' He's allowed some unconventional players to still be creative, under his basic structure."

/// Focusing on one's strengths usually create a state of predictability for the well-prepared opposition.

Sister schools

Montgomery is not a flashy guy - the Long Beach native calls himself a homebody who prefers to curl up in a chair - and that helps explain why he is currently wearing a Cal sweater, with some Stanford ones still in the closet.

"There are places where it's national championship or nothing, and the graduation rate is not a factor," Montgomery said. "I don't think I would be very happy at those places."

There are obviously many things that differentiate Stanford, a private university, from Cal, a public school, and the cultures on the two campuses, but they do have similar values when it comes to academics and athletics.

The Cardinal hadn't finished higher than fifth in more than a decade when Montgomery arrived on the Farm in 1986.

"At Stanford, they didn't really feel like they could win," Montgomery said. "It didn't seem to be in the cards. 'This is what we are.' "

Were.

From 1986 to 2004, Montgomery led the Cardinal to 12 NCAA Tournament appearances, including the 1998 Final Four.

"One of the best things Mike did at Stanford was convince everybody nationwide that there is no excuse for not being a great student and a great basketball player," Collier said. "That's a testament to his ability."

After Stanford

Montgomery left Stanford to try his wares at the highest level, the NBA. He was 68-96 in two seasons with the Golden State Warriors, learning for himself how much more power the players wield than the coaches.

"The whole dynamic changes," he said.

He then worked as a television commentator for two years but was anxious to jump back into the college ranks when Barbour came calling.

"He is an expert at his craft," said Barbour, who was never concerned that Montgomery had become synonymous with Stanford. "But even more importantly, he has a passion for creating something special on behalf of the institution and the young men in the program."

Montgomery got to coach at a Pac-10 school that he respected, got to keep living in the Bay Area and got to work with his son, John, the Bears' director of basketball operations.

And simply, he got to coach. That's what Mike Montgomery is, after all, a coach.

"I like the way the game fits together," he said. "At the same time, it's made up of people with dreams and aspirations. And the bottom line is how you blend the different types of personalities into the same mind-set. That's where the challenge comes in."

Montgomery file

-- 589-264 record (236-123 in Pac-10, fifth all-time)

-- First coach in Pac-10 to win title with two different teams

-- Five Pac-10 titles

-- One Final Four and two Sweet 16 appearances

-- 12 straight 20-win seasons

-- 11 straight appearances in NCAA Tournament

E-mail Vittorio Tafur at vtafur@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/06/SPQ31CBG3M.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle