Las palabras más buscadas en este blog en el 2009 :-)

T.I.M.E. de fotos

Más información aquí

Un plan espectacular para estas vacaciones en Bogotá D.C. Diciembre 2009 - Enero 2010. Las fotos (humildemente) del suscrito. Gracias a Sebastian (te amo hijo) por la recomendación de visitar y caminar en y por el Jardín Botánico; por estos días, con mariposario incluído :-)

Sócrates, USA y The Economist

La entrada es de la edición de navidades de la prestigiosa publicación del UK: aquí, pero sin garantías de acceso :-(; se titula: Socrates in America - Arguing to death

Extracto introductorio:

"Socrates throws down a gauntlet from antiquity to America and all other democracies. How could Athens, which prided itself on its freedoms and had for decades not only tolerated but delighted in the stings of the man who described himself as its “gadfly”, turn on its greatest mind and condemn him to death when he was 70 years old? Had Socrates exposed a terrible flaw in democracy? Or had democracy responded to a mortal threat from the likes of Socrates?..."

El tema rodea pues la relación entre el individuo que se expresa y cuestiona su sociedad (aquella donde vive), y el gobierno de esta sociedad que puede resistir su voz o no puede resistirla y d e c i d e entonces callarla mediante la condena a muerte.... Pero se trata también de los perdidos significados de conversación y dialéctica:

"Socrates’s alternative was “good” conversation or dialectic. To converse originally meant to turn towards one another, in order to find a common humanity and to move closer to the truth of something. Dialectic, in other words, is decidedly not about winning or losing, because all the conversants are ennobled by it. It is a joint search... On a good day, Socrates’s conversations bore all the marks of dialectic. There was little long-winded monologue and much pithy back-and-forth. The conversation often meandered and sometimes Socrates contradicted himself. In the “Protagoras”, for example, he argues that virtue cannot be taught but in the “Meno” that it can. The conversations were at times humorous and invariably surprising. He hoped to bring all involved to a higher state of awareness..."

Y de la educación del "hombre público":

"Because Socrates wanted to win converts to this conversational culture he often chose young and malleable men who appeared tempted by the eristic rhetoric he believed democracy encouraged. For instance, Socrates tried hard to educate Alcibiades, the hedonistic and ambitious young man whose guardian Pericles was Athens’s greatest statesman. He also went for a long walk in the countryside of Athens (which he hated leaving) with a young man named Phaedrus in order, very gently, to make the youth see the hollowness of a rhetorician he admired..."

Léanse el resto y notarán qué poco ha cambiado el mundo (al menos el occidental) en 2.500 años; más aun, qué poco lo que en verdad somos capaces de inventar (el resto de los mortales) una vez la filosofía ha extendido su discurso sobre éste (sobre el mundo): el extenso - en el tiempo y el espacio - poder de los grandes filósofos :-); más aun, que campea aún, y sin pérdida de alientos, el ¿dilema? de la co-existencia y el co-desenvolvimiento de lo "público" y lo privado...

PS: nunca hay que tomar muy en serio lo que se publica en los períodicos y revistas; menos aún si son ediciones de fin de año; y muchísimo menos aún si aquéllo se usa para generar entradas en un blog :-) :-) :-)

Papi, ¿y qué es el gobierno?

R/ Una gavilla en la que entran unos pocos (muy pocos) de los buenos, que por supuesto poco pueden hacer; y un jurgo de malandros que harto hacen y dehacen para volver a hacer (seguir haciendo: de las suyas)

Nada de ésto sería de mucho lamentar si no fuera por el arrebato del poder (el poder arrebatado) en que pululan y la pantomima de lo que llaman "controles" al ejercicio de dicho poder; pero si es de mucho lamentar

Han sido la misma vaina desde Platón hasta nuestros días y desde la Conchinchina a las Galápagos

Hay (por suerte) también gobierno del esfuerzo privado (propio) y gobierno de sí mismo (el más propio), que nada tienen que ver con el anterior, que ha envilecido el término, y héchole equivalente a gobierno de lo "público" ("público" en el sentido de sandeces como "interés público", "opinión pública", "bienes públicos", etc.)

"It is worth remembering that the word “company” is derived from the Latin words “cum” and “pane”—meaning “breaking bread together”."

La entrada es de The Economist y el título de esta nuestra entrada extractado de allí: Una necesaria, por lo que hace justicia, defensa del mundo de los negocios y de la gente (inversionistas, empleados, managers) que día a día se esfuerzan allí para hacer de la vida de todos una tarea menos ardua, al tiempo que se cuida del planeta, pues allí si se sabe que no tenemos otro para habitar, allí si se sabe lo que significa largo plazo...

Extracto 1:

"[B]usiness is a remarkable exercise in co-operation. For all the talk of competition “red in tooth and claw”, companies in fact depend on persuading large numbers of people—workers and bosses, shareholders and suppliers—to work together to a common end. This involves getting lots of strangers to trust each other. It also increasingly involves stretching that trust across borders and cultures. Apple’s iPod is not just a miracle of design. It is also a miracle of co-operation, teaming Californian designers with Chinese manufacturers and salespeople in all corners of the earth. It is worth remembering that the word “company” is derived from the Latin words “cum” and “pane”—meaning “breaking bread together”..."

Extracto 2:

"[B]usiness is an exercise in creativity. Business people do not just invent clever products that solve nagging problems, from phones that can link fishermen in India with nearby markets to devices that can provide insulin to diabetics without painful injections. They also create organisations that manufacture these products and then distribute them about the world. Nandan Nilekani, one of the founders of Infosys, put the case for business as well as anyone when he said that the computer-services giant’s greatest achievement was not its $2 billion in annual revenue but the fact that it had taught his fellow Indians to “redefine the possible”..."

Innovando en la raíz de la innovación

La entrada es de Om Malik. Es un hecho que hasta ahora no ha sucedido mucho... aunque tampoco es poco lo avis(t)ado. ¿Qué queremos más allá de restablecer lo perdido, por ejemplo a quien no vé o no puede moverse?, ¿en qué estamos interesados más allá del "soldado universal" u otros ad efesios de destrucción por el estilo?, ¿qué nos satisfacería suficientemente como para proceder a cambiarnos a nosotros mismos por algo-alguien otro (s) y no conservar el alguien-uno que nos trajo hasta aquí?, ¿somos capaces, y aptos, y harto astutos, como para e v o l u c i o n a r n o s?, ¿por qué sería-estaría en el c e r e b r o la clave de una dicha evolución satisfactoria?

La imagen (cortesía de GigaOm) ilustra estos los primeros movimientos de una innovación al "órgano innovador"

T.I.M.E. de música

Dejando constancias sobre el rock (el mío):

1-El cuarteto de los mejores músicos: The Beatles (los LP Abbey Road y Sgt. Pepper como muestra). Aquí y aquí

2-El grupo de las canciones más pegajosas: The Rolling Stones (Angie y Can't get no satisfaction como muestra). Aquí y aquí

3-La mejor banda rockera de todos los tiempos: Led Zeppelin (Rock and Roll y Whole Lotta Love como muestra). Aquí y aquí

Integrity: just honour your word...

La entrada es de HBS working knowledge, su autor Michael C. Jensen

Hacer lo que se dice, decir lo que se hace: correspondencia entre la palabra y la acción; tal sería lo que nos hace COMPLETOS, TOTALES, ÍNTEGROS...

"Executive Summary:

"An individual is whole and complete when their word is whole and complete, and their word is whole and complete when they honour their word," says HBS professor Michael C. Jensen in this interview that appeared in Rotman: The Magazine of the Rotman School of Management, Fall 2009. Jensen (and his coauthors, Werner Erhard and Steve Zaffron) define and discuss integrity ("a state or condition of being whole, complete, unbroken, unimpaired, sound, in perfect condition"); the workability that integrity creates for individuals, groups, organizations, and society; and its translation into organizational performance. He also discusses the costs of lacking integrity and the fallacy of using a cost/benefit analysis when deciding whether to honor your word. Key concepts include:

-The personal and organizational benefits of honoring one's word are huge—both for individuals and for organizations—and generally unappreciated.

-We can honor our word in one of two ways: by keeping it on time and as promised, or if that becomes impossible, by owning up to the parties counting on us to keep our word in advance and cleaning up the mess our failure to keep our word creates in their lives.

-By failing to honor our word to ourselves, we undermine ourselves as persons of integrity, and create "unworkability" in our lives.

-Integrity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for maximum performance.

-There are unrecognized but significant costs to associating with people and organizations that lack integrity."

Si todo ésto de verdad es así, el ámbito menos ÍNTEGRO que tenemos en nuestros días es el de la política; un "medallón" nada sorprendente por cierto...

Management jobs, Jobs-To-Be-Done

La nota es de The Economist: agencias de empleo temporal para cargos de gerencia (y los respectivos ejecutivos). No es una exoticidad, no es tampoco cuestión de moda, ni mucho menos carece de justificación; aquí ejemplos de los Jobs-To-Be-Done que resuelve el "producto":

Extracto 1:

"The trend raises two obvious questions. Why would a company choose to hire a part-time boss? The boardroom is, after all, one place where you need a measure of continuity. And why would a high-flying manager accept a temporary job rather than holding out for a permanent one? Groucho Marx once quipped that he would never join a club that would have him as a member. The world of temporary managers is surely full of people who possess his exacting standards without his self-awareness.

Companies tend to employ temporary executives to cope with a crisis: the chief executive mucks things up or decamps to a rival, or the chief financial officer turns out to be innumerate. Traditional search firms can take six months or more to fill a sudden vacancy, not least because they only look at people who already have jobs. Temporary talent agencies can fill a gap in a couple of weeks. BTG provided the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm, with a boss for a packaged-goods firm it owns when it needed one in a hurry. It has also provided chief financial officers at the drop of a hat for such tech firms as Internet REIT and Axcient."

Extracto 2:

"Another common reason to take on managerial temps is to tackle a short-term problem without acquiring a long-term obligation to an expensive executive. Companies only go public once. So why hire a permanent chief executive when you can hire a temporary one who has a long track record of taking companies public? The time it takes to launch a new product is shrinking as fashions shift more quickly and product cycles get shorter. So why not bring in a group of temporary managers who will disappear as soon as the goods hit the shelves? When Fox Mobile wanted to develop new screensavers and videos for its phones, for example, it hired a temporary creative director."

Extracto 3:

"The new talent companies boast legions of people with MBAs from the best business schools and spells working in the best consultancies and banks. Some have no doubt been forced to take up the temping life after being downsized in the recession. Temping carries quite a stigma, judging by how few firms or executives admit they are resorting to it. But there are reasons to embrace the new regime, which allows senior managers to work part-time, in effect, and pick and choose the jobs that appeal. Firms such as Eden McCallum and Axiom Legal, which offer freelance consultants and lawyers for hire respectively, and which were both founded long before the recession, provide professionals with a respectable way to control when and how much they work. The growing demand for temporary executives simply extends the same opportunity to senior managers."

Extracto 4:

"Advocates of temping also argue that the traditional market for managers—and particularly for chief executives—is hopelessly inefficient. A growing number of companies have been hiring bosses on the open market. Yet nearly 20% of those bosses depart within 18 months. Temporary talent agencies can give their customers a chance to “try before they buy” as well as filling the job immediately. BTG reports that a quarter of the bosses that it has put in temporary jobs have been offered permanent positions."

T.I.M.E. de poesía (Gonzalo Rojas)

Latín y jazz

Leo en un mismo aire a mi Catulo y oigo a Louis Armstrong, lo reoigo
en la improvisación del cielo, vuelan los ángeles
en el latín augusto de Roma con las trompetas libérrimas, lentísimas,
en un acorde ya sin tiempo, en un zumbido
de arterias y de pétalos para irme en el torrente con las olas
que salen de esta silla, de esta mesa de tabla, de esta materia
que somos yo y mi cuerpo en el minuto de este azar
en que amarro la ventolera de estas sílabas.

Es el parto, lo abierto de lo sonoro, el resplandor
del movimiento, loco el círculo de los sentidos, lo súbito
de este aroma áspero a sangre de sacrificio: Roma
y África, la opulencia y el látigo, la fascinación
del ocio y el golpe amargo de los remos, el frenesí
y el infortunio de los imperios, vaticinio
o estertor: éste es el jazz,
el éxtasis
antes del derrumbe, Armstrong; éste es el éxtasis,
Catulo mío,
¡Tánatos!