PureSchmaltz

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New Dimensions Radio Broadcast

Here is a way you can hear my interview program with New Dimensions:

Listen to New Dimensions Internet Radio (NDIR).  Six hours of original programming including the current "flagship" program and gems of timeless wisdom from the extensive archives heard 24/7.  My Program #3074 will be airing on our new New Dimensions Internet Radio (NDIR) during the week of December 11, 2006.
www.newdimensions.org click on Listen to NDIR now!
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Why Project Managers Can't Manage Projects

Years ago, I worked on a project intending to build a financial management system using tiny message switching computers. One of the engineers assigned to reach this doomed destination confided to me that in theory the concept could work. “It’s like pulling a stagecoach with chickens, though,” he concluded. “You can do it, but the reins management will kill you.”
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Learning How

We've been learning how to repaint the house. 'Though we each had some experience with house painting before, this one's different. Really different.
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The Panhandler's Paradox

Well, I got my first rejection from my publisher this week. The next book I'd envisioned seems to focus upon an over-served topic (Change) and employs some culturally iffy messengers. Here's a taste. david Slip over here for more ...
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IntricateChoreography

Intricate choreography rarely succeeds. The impulses that encourage you to split resources between projects, tasks, and goals usually overlooks an individual’s true divisibility. Following two masters consumes more attention than following one. Slip over here for more ...
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The Lake Webegone Syndrome

Today's Washington Post features an article about personality testing:

Link Here

The eternal desire to hire only the best person for the job results in what psychologists call The Lake Webegone Syndrome, after Garrison Keelor's mythical Midwestern town where "all the women and strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." Of course, no population can be so skewed, yet the practice persists. The ldea being that if only one could successfully screen for traits, we'd have the best of all possible workforces. Slip over here for more ...

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The Mean Side of "Lean"

... from the MasteringProjectWork Yahoo Discussion Group:

Reading through the management journal summaries in the Economist today, I came across mention of this piece, The Darker Side of Lean, written by an American who worked inside one of Toyota's divisions for three years. Smells interesting. Slip over here for more ...

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Thinking Like A Computer

“The problem is not that computers might someday think like men, but that men will learn to think like computers.” Sidney J. Harris

In the early sixties, Heintz von Foerster founded the Biological Computing Laboratory at Champaign-Urbana. Over the following fifteen years, fueled by enthusiastic inquiry and heavy Defense Department funding, von Foerster attracted a remarkable collection of scientists to investigate how a computer might be engineered to think. It had been barely a generation since Turing had originally imagined how a machine might be enabled to reason, and this next step seemed, well, only reasonable at the time. Slip over here for more ...

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What Gnomes Know

Until recently, I didn’t believe in gnomes. My garden was a serious place, one of toil and concomitant results. I took pride in my accomplishments there, and never noticed my pride elbowing aside my joy.

During this time, I catalogued gnomes under the heading of “lawn crap”, which includes anything needing moved before mowing the lawn. I naively included gnomes with such vulgarities as lawn butts, those annoying plywood cutouts that, from a distance, are supposed to look like the bending over backside of fat people. But gnomes add a bit of whimsey to a garden. And gardening, being such serious business, needs whimsey. Slip over here for more ...

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Creating Currency

Part two of the planned six part series on Free Market Project Management showed up on the Projects@Work site late last week. Follow this link to see this piece.

http://www.projectsatwork.com/content/Articles/229538.cfm

I finished part four yesterday instead of watching the Superbowl. But then I've never watched a Superbowl. I don't think I've ever actually watched an entire football game. Doesn't hold my attention, doesn't have any currency for me.


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WiFi Wars

Interesting piece I came across this week. Compares the battles raging over the right for a community to provide high speed wifi with the monopolists' trying to prevent communities from creating municipal electrical cooperatives a century ago. While the battles rage, of course, Japan is building a universal wifi netword 500 times faster than our fastest. How much longer will we be content to float along behind the technological revolution?

Link follows:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0601.podesta.html

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Postcard From the Wedge - London, England

∆ >br>London, England

We were supposed to have a quick lunch meeting with the CIO, but a man three seats in front of us on the plane from Vienna had what appeared to be a heart attack, so our flight made an emergency landing in Frankfurt. Then we had to reclaim our baggage and rebook onto a later flight out of Dusseldorf, so we made a frantic call. Slip over here for more ...

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Postcard From The Wedge ∆ - Frankfurt, Germany

∆ >br>Frankfurt, Germany

I was sick. We’d carefully planned the workshop. I was the lead dog. Amy was playing backup.

So I had a responsibility to deliver on my commitment. But just before noon on the third day, feeling as though I had spent the morning trudging through chest-deep snow, I bailed out. Slip over here for more ...

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∆ Postcard From The Wedge - Vienna, Austria

Invited to present at the Changing Change Management Conference, our plane arrived an hour late.

I found my driver waiting for me just outside baggage claim. He held a sign, “Dr. (they call me doctor there) David Schmaltz”, so I approached him and identified myself. The man standing next to him held a similar sign, “Dr. (they call Amy doctor, too) Amy Schwab,” and Amy tried to explain that she didn’t need a separate ride. But her driver spoke little English, clarified that she was, indeed, Amy Schwab, took her rollaway, and headed for the garage. My driver and I followed.

We took separate cabs to the same hotel. Amy felt kidnapped.
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Ready or Not

The latest Projects@Work has a piece I wrote on New Orleans' Emergency Preparedness Plan. Take a look here: (Slightly annoying registration required...) http://www.projectsatwork.com/content/Articles/227527.cfm

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The Autistic Organization

Earlier this month, Amy and I took True North's Mastering Projects Workshop to Europe. One class, held at the London Chamber of Commerce facility, was booked into a training room next to a room where PRINCE2 certification training was happening. Amy, poking around before we started, came into our room to announce their presence, commenting that their sign said "SPOCE-Successful Projects Operating In Controlled Environments".

"Interesting," I noted, "We're doing a workshop focused upon creating successful projects in uncontrollable environments." We checked with the participants after they arrived to see if we had the right focus, and each said that they worked in an apparently uncontrollable environment. What possible utility, I wondered, would a workshop limiting creating successful projects to controlled environments have in the real world?
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