Jay Manifold

My Annual Duty

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heh

— is to remind us all of this anniversary. Slogan swiped from Rockwell ca 1978.

Post-Implementation Audit Review

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yes, it smelled good

of the rendezvous, that is. PIAR Items:

Issue 1

  • Description: Overcorrected for anticipated too-early arrival time.
  • Area of Improvement: Change Management
  • Root Cause: Assumed functional highway network. Ha!
  • Mitigation: Allow 2x as much time if going anywhere on the Edens or the Kennedy.

Issue 2

  • Description: Initially parked in wrong garage.
  • Area of Improvement: Documentation
  • Root Cause: Didn’t ask hotel operator for detailed instructions.
  • Mitigation: Ask next time.

Issue 3

  • Description: Missed rendezvous with Carl.
  • Area of Improvement: Communication
  • Root Cause: Didn’t check comments on planning post after early Saturday morning.
  • Mitigation: Graze (Midwesterners don’t surf) through the blog at T-2 hours. Exchange mobile phone numbers. Buy Carl a plate of barbecue.

Issue 4

  • Description: Wore Bill out walking too far.
  • Area of Improvement: Planning
  • Root Cause: Unduly elaborate itinerary.
  • Mitigation: Traveling-salesman algorithm; taxicabs (implemented).

Issue 5

  • Description: Appeared drab and uninteresting by comparison with other attendees.
  • Area of Improvement: Work Error (1959-present)
  • Root Cause: Couldn’t keep up with Bill’s knowledge of Chicago goings-on and economy/tax issues or Tatyana’s tales of camping trips on river islands in Siberia and eye for architectural/design details.
  • Mitigation: Surround self with boring friends, or just get a lot more people to show up next time so I can revert to lurk mode.

Best Practices (I did do some things right)

* yep, swiped it from Stephen Green, who I’m pretty sure swiped it from this

Rendezvous

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(Ref this earlier post.)

Saturday, 4 PM CDT, 171 W Randolph (lobby of the Allegro Hotel). Wear your official ChicagoBoyz attire for prompt recognition. Agenda:

  1. introductions
  2. walk to Millennium Park (3/8 mi E), take pictures
  3. walk to Blommer Chocolate factory (W to Canal, N to Kinzie, W 1 block; just over 1 mi from Millennium Park), take more pictures (this spot recommended by Jonathan)
  4. sunset, 6:04 PM
  5. eat someplace
  6. proceed to Buddy Guy’s Legends (E to Wabash, S to venue; 1 ¼ mi from Allegro); artist info

Forecast is for sunny and 60 ° F at midafternoon, winds ENE at 8 mph. Hit it!

Score!

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Yahoo! News/AP: “American Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago won half of the prize for the discovery of a mechanism called spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics.”

We are great and we are grand … we make bombs beneath our stands!

UPDATE: UofC news office release.

Quoted Without Comment

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From Goleman’s Social Intelligence, pp 120-121:

Unhealthy narcissists typically lack a feeling of self-worth; the result is an inner shakiness that in a leader, for example, means that even as he unfurls inspiring visions, he harbors a vulnerability that closes his ears to criticism. Such leaders avoid even constructive feedback, which they perceive as an attack. Their hypersensitivity to criticism in any form means that narcissistic leaders don’t seek out information widely; rather, they selectively seize on data that supports their views, ignoring disconfirming facts. They don’t listen but prefer to preach and indoctrinate.

An entire organization can be narcissistic. When a critical mass of employees share a narcissistic outlook, the outfit itself takes on those traits, which become standard operating procedures.

Organizational narcissism has clear perils. Pumping up grandiosity, whether it is the boss’s or some false collective self-image held throughout the company, becomes the operating norm. Healthy dissent dies out. And any organization that is cheated of a full grasp of truth loses the ability to respond nimbly to harsh realities.