permalink.gif 2003-11-28

permalink.gif Looking for leadership in all the wrong places

Fri Nov 28 16:16:47 GMT 2003  Permalink 

Fingerprints of Unhappy Companies All Look the Same.

John R. Brandt writes the column Brandt On Leadership for Industry Week. His latest article Come On, Get Happy, is another gem. Brandt says,

It never ceases to amaze how completely the managers and employees of unhappy companies -- whether actively failing or merely mired in mediocrity -- can convince themselves that their troubles are unique.

Invariably, I'm told that their predicament is due to: difficult market conditions beyond their control; wholesale customer defections based on currency fluctuations or unfair trade; a particularly toxic or strangled culture that prevents change.

Please.

Brandt claims all unhappy companies look alike sharing five fingerprints:

  1. A belief that employees are dangerous and lazy.
  2. A conviction that customers cannot be trusted.
  3. A focus on policies, not principles.
  4. An obsession with today, not tomorrow.
  5. Leadership in all the wrong places.

Brandt does a good job elaborating on each of the five fingerprints. Take a look. While you're there, see if you recognize any of those fingerprints for your company or project.
[Reforming Project Management]

I just love Hal's blog.  Every post is a gem.

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permalink.gif More MovableType tricksyness

Fri Nov 28 16:07:44 GMT 2003  Permalink 

Okay so I am trying to customise a MovableType template and have hit a snag.  I can include my customisations to the edit_entry.tmpl using the directive and this works okay.  However I need to put a dynamic url into the included HTML, the Url coming from a configuration file supplied with our tool.  And this is where I am having problems.

There doesn't seem to be a way of doing this from the template language that I can find (please tell me if i'm wrong) so my next idea was to write a simple MT plug-in to return the Url for me.  That way I could include the plugin to my template and all would be well.

Except it looks like MT doesn't interpolate custom plugins when processing the editing template.  I just see the tag (I tested with the example) embedded in the output, not the content it should represent.

This seems like such a simple thing to want to do.  Can anyone help me?
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permalink.gif So Bush has Kool-Aid too

Fri Nov 28 09:58:59 GMT 2003  Permalink 

You know, I can't imagine a more courageous thing for a US President to do than going to visit Iraq on this Thanksgiving.

[The Scobleizer Weblog]

It is exactly this kind of statement that makes me very afraid of what harm America is going to inflict upon us all over the next 5 years.
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