Bamboo Innovator

It’s complicated: Management thinkers disagree on how to manage complexity

It’s complicated: Management thinkers disagree on how to manage complexity

Nov 23rd 2013 |From the print edition

THERE can be few better places to talk about complexity than Vienna. This was the capital of the most complicated political organisation yet seen: the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was also the centre of some of the most convoluted cold-war spy games. On November 14th and 15th hundreds of management enthusiasts converged on the Austrian capital to debate the subject. They had little interest in the complexities of the Habsburgs or the cold war. They were preoccupied instead by two points: that business is more complicated than ever before; and that managing complexity is at the top of businesspeople’s agenda. Read more of this post

‘Overworked people become hopelessly inefficient’

November 24, 2013 1:58 pm

Unfair demands on your free time

By Rhymer Rigby

We all know that the line between work and personal time has become blurred. But how do you cope with a boss or organisation that makes constant demands on time that is clearly yours?

Where do I begin? 
First, you need to be on solid ground. “If you’re doing an outstanding job, you’ll be able to say ‘I’m going home on time because I’m hitting all my targets,’” says Fergus O’Connell, author of The Power of Doing Less. Jane Barrett, founder of the Career Farm coaching consultancy, adds: “Do a bit of due diligence – are these hours the norm in your industry?” Read more of this post

The leader as a driver in the great race for good results; Gone is the time-wasting focus on why something happened and finding who is responsible. When something isn’t going well, a “high-octane leader” will probably completely skip the “why” and root cause analysis, and instead ask and get answers to a series of questions that keep the race car (team) moving forward and adjusting their approach as the car continues. Everything is about what can and will be done

The leader as a driver in the great race for good results

James Engel
senior executive director and director 
The Centre of Excellence at The APMGroup.
November 25, 2013 1:00 am

Let’s have a race – a race for business results. The winner gets increased profits, market-share and growth in the Asean Economic Community (AEC) marketplace; the loser, a lot less. You, as a leader, are the driver. Your team is the car. The racetrack is your strategy. The finishing line is achieving your key performance indicators (KPIs). Now imagine that the “fuel” is supplied by your mouth and ears. Remember, you can have the best race car in the world, but without fuel, you’re going nowhere.  Read more of this post

Blood, sweat and tears; How the Napoleonic wars made Britain

Blood, sweat and tears; How the Napoleonic wars made Britain

Nov 23rd 2013 |From the print edition

Britain against Napoleon: The Organisation of Victory, 1793-1815. By Roger Knight. Allen Lane; 678 pages; £30. Buy from Amazon.co.uk

THE role of Britain in the world was transformed by the Napoleonic conflict. By the time France declared war in 1793 the British empire was in decline; it had lost its North American colonies a decade earlier. But after Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 Britain emerged as the world’s pre-eminent superpower. How did it overcome its previous setbacks to inflict a crushing defeat on Napoleon’s France? Historians have tended to explain this in terms of military and naval strategy. But “Britain against Napoleon”, a new book by Roger Knight of the University of Greenwich, argues that Britain was just far better at organising its war effort. Read more of this post

Clarity of purpose, values vital for leaders

Updated: Monday November 25, 2013 MYT 7:14:58 AM

Clarity of purpose, values vital for leaders

BY WONG WEI-SHEN

PETALING JAYA: The Iclif Leadership and Governance Centre aims to help individuals find their purpose in life and values, among others, at the upcoming Leadership Energy Summit Asia 2013 (LESA). “I strongly believe that genuine leadership transformation is only possible when there is clarity of purpose and values together with a deeper understanding of human consciousness,” said Iclif chief executive officer Rajeev Peshawaria in an e-mail interview with StarBiz. Read more of this post

From Tickle Me Elmo to Big Hugs Elmo: nearly two decades of Christmas toy dominance

From Tickle Me Elmo to Big Hugs Elmo: nearly two decades of Christmas toy dominance

By Roberto A. Ferdman @robferdman

November 22, 2013

Christmas time is Elmo time. The lovable red monster from Sesame Street has been one of the most popular gifts in the US nearly every year since 1996. And his dominance reveals a lot about the state of the American toy industry. Each year’s Elmo is a different interactive incarnation. The latest, Big Hugs Elmo, has been declared one of this year’s hottest toys on every list known to US moms: Toys R Us’s, Target’s, etc. It follows in the steps of, to name just a few, Rock ‘n Roll Elmo, Chicken Dance Elmo, Hokey Pokey Elmo, TMX Elmo, Let’s Rock Elmo, and the bestselling Elmo of all time, Tickle Me Elmo. Read more of this post

Meet the accountant behind Yogurtland who is bringing California’s frozen yoghurt craze to Australia

Nassim Khadem Reporter

Meet the accountant behind Yogurtland who is bringing California’s frozen yoghurt craze to Australia

Published 25 November 2013 09:42, Updated 25 November 2013 11:58

Yogurtland Australia chief executive Paul Siderovski: “The Australian market’s ripe to adopt the US frozen yoghurt craze.”

It was only a matter of time before Australians jumped on board with California’s frozen yoghurt food craze. Yogurtland, the frozen yoghurt company that started in Fullerton, California in 2006, came to Australia in January. The international franchise chain of frozen yoghurt stores now has more than 200 locations across Australia, the US, Guam, Mexico and Venezuela. The company’s target is to expand beyond 550 stores by 2015 and 1000 stores by 2017. Read more of this post

How Larry Bird built the Pacers into a title contender

How Larry Bird built the Pacers into a title contender

Phil Richards, USA TODAY Sports2:05 p.m. EST November 22, 2013

In 2004, the Pacers appeared poised a title run with a young, talented nucleus. Then came the brawl. But Indiana is back. Larry Bird and Donnie Walsh tell the inside story of the rebuild.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Indiana Pacers President Larry Bird rebuilt franchise in wake of 2004 brawl, fractured roster

Hall of Fame player’s biggest moves came in 2010, 2011, in adding Paul George and others

Bird had help in veteran executive Donnie Nelson, and both look back on how it happened here

Larry Bird’s gut told him it was time. The Indiana Pacers had lost seven of their past eight games, but that wasn’t the stretch Bird was looking at. He was looking ahead. He saw a stretch of 10 games and figured coach Jim O’Brien could win at least seven of them. Read more of this post

How Martin Gilbert, the City’s original bogeyman, pulled it out of the fire again; You wouldn’t bet against Aberdeen’s controversial chief executive Martin Gilbert

How Martin Gilbert, the City’s original bogeyman, pulled it out of the fire again

You wouldn’t bet against Aberdeen’s controversial chief executive Martin Gilbert

9:00PM GMT 24 Nov 2013

If Martin Gilbert had a personal share price, it would have wrong-footed the best money managers in the world. Last week the boss of Aberdeen Asset Management nimbly snapped up Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP) for £660m, his 40th acquisition since founding the group 30 years ago. As a result, Aberdeen will leap-frog the 200-year-old Schroders to become not only Britain’s biggest fund manager but the largest investment house outside America. The shares leaped too; Aberdeen, which only joined the FTSE100 last year, is up 41pc in 12 months. Read more of this post

Keynes’s new heirs: Britain leads a global push to rethink the way economics is taught

Keynes’s new heirs: Britain leads a global push to rethink the way economics is taught

Nov 23rd 2013 |From the print edition

FOR economists 2008 was a nightmare. The people who teach and research the discipline mocked by Thomas Carlyle, a 19th-century polemicist, as “the dismal science”, not only failed to spot the precipice, many forecast exactly the opposite—a tranquil stability they called the “great moderation”. While the global economy is slowly healing, the subject is still in a state of flux, with students eager to learn what went wrong, but frustrated by what they are taught. Some bold new projects to retune economics aim to change this. Read more of this post

All about Adam: A furious—and political—debate about the origins of mankind

All about Adam: A furious—and political—debate about the origins of mankind

Nov 23rd 2013 |From the print edition

THAT old-time religion is strong in America. To take just one measure, for decades more than 40% of all Americans have consistently told Gallup pollsters that God created humans in pretty much their current form, less than 10,000 years ago. They are embracing an account of man’s origins promoted by Young Earth Creationists who lean on a painstakingly literal reading of the Scriptures, swatting aside the counter-claims of science (fossils are a relic of Noah’s flood, they argue, and evolution is a myth peddled by atheists). In a recent poll 58% of Republicans and 41% of Democrats backed creationism. The glue that underpins such faith is the principle of Biblical inerrancy—a certainty that the Scriptures are infallibly and unchangingly true. Read more of this post