Brown Motion

In hindsight of course of the epiphanies I had back when. Silicon Valley has a lot of me too culture.  No one should work from home.  We need to tear down the walls (of the cubicles that is).  These are some of the (moronic) dictats of not too long ago. These were fueled by greedy capitalist leaders who were either lacking in their own mental capacity to do original thinking or were being sycophantic to an extent because a then so and so tech leader said so and they had the FOMO. Both to me then sounded silly if not outrageous.   Some leaders and managers decided having people work remote was a recipe for disaster since you might lose productivity and still spend on that resource.  Well - if you cannot trust your employee to make a rational decision, then shame on you.  Get rid of these employees or better yet get rid of yourself since you cannot run a (for profit) business on mistrust. Same with the walls.  While Dilbertian comedy is som...

To breakdown the island into numbers seems anti romantic but sometimes it helps to get your arms around it - how romantic. So some you might and some you might not - know - It is one of hundreds of islands that make the Indonesian Republic 8 degrees below the equator It is about 2,220 sq miles which is half that of the Big Island of Hawaii (which if you drive it is a round trip of under five hours) - not so in Bali - one point to another can take a day (roads are narrow and congested) It houses close to 5M people most of which clutter around the eastern part since the western thirds is a national park  Housing and constructed buildings tend to be shorter than the tallest temple in town so nothing over five stories was visible for miles making for tightly packed homes that house more than one family in the compound.   Typically Balinese families stay as joint families.   They have a family temple right on the edge of their home and visible from the road. Th...

When you visit a place you see and smell and touch things that gives you a first hand look into how a place operates.  So it was with Japan. We spent about 9 days and visited around 15 places or cities.  We traveled almost exclusively by train(s) except when we used our own two feet or took a bus because it was the wise thing to do. So here are some observations from yours truly - It is by and large a clean place.  I mean really pristine where there is less of humanity and where there is a ton (e.g. Tokyo downtown) it is swept up clean.  People like most civilized societies do not throw trash out at random except receptacles designed for said purpose.  There are not many trash cans come to think of it except at railway stations and outside 7-11 convenience stores which are ubiquitous. Very little homelessness or pan handlers (even less than San Francisco and the latter is a rich city by any measure). Not too many gun toting police were visible unlike i...

Lot of good speakers are available on the management talk circuit.  They perhaps outnumber Hollywood glitterati - in fact some of them provide counsel to said glitterati.  Recently I attended one such event hosted by a well known American company that specializes in lecturing on Business Performance Enhancement. They have speakers on hand that were former business leaders and have a wealth of real life experiences to share with the eager crowd. Some of the topics covered today included TRUST or the effect of having this virtue in an organization and how it enhances collaboration and profitability while reducing cost and waste. What I did find ironic is that this was being delivered to an audience made of American management resources half of who must be divorced as a matter of statistical certainty. The word pre-nup (contract used as a way of avoiding either party in a divorce to get taken to the cleaners)  was coined in this same culture but yet we were...