Ged Carroll

Blog

  • Good To Great by Jim Collins

    Jim Collins

    Jim Collins, the author of Good To Great has been researching and writing about what makes companies successful since 1988, though there are points made about this and the similarity of the work done by Tom Peters at McKinsey. Peters eventually turned the outputs of that research into the book In Search of Excellence.

    From this research Collins has written a series of books:

    Good to Great was Collins’ sophomore book published in 2001. I was curious to see how it stands up in the 20 years since publication.

    What’s the book like?

    Amsterdam

    Collins has written a surprisingly accessible book that at the same time demonstrates an academic rigour to the underlying research. A good chunk of the book is an epilogue, frequently asked questions and referenceable materials at the back.

    Each chapter is comes with a summary page and Collins makes good use of visuals to convey his ideas.

    Synopsis

    Collins bases Good to Great around seven ideas.

    • ‘Level 5’ leadership. Collins had a management maturity capability model, the top level on ‘level 5’ was a leader who left their ego at the door with personal humility but professional will. They tend to be work horse rather than race horses. I found this particularly interesting as research that my first agency used to tout showed how a CEO’s visibility or fame had a positive correlation with rising share price, indicating that investors are probably buying on the wrong signals
    • Getting the right people on the bus. The right people comes before vision, strategy, tactics, structure. ‘Who’ before ‘what’. Rigor but not ruthlessness drives people decisions. All of this was based around three principles: 1/ If in doubt, don’t hire. Instead keep searching. 2/ Act when a people change is needed. 3/ Put the best people on the best opportunities. The right people thrive in a culture of vigorous debate in search of the best answers and then stand united behind the collective decisions, regardless of political or personal interests. The right people are your most important asset. You need self motivating people rather than having to work to motivate them
    • The Stockdale Paradox. Retain faith that you will succeed in the end. Regardless of the difficulties. And at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality. Whatever they might be. An honest determined effort is required to find the truth of a situation. 1/ Leading with questions, not answers. 2/ Engage in a dialogue and debate, not coercion. 3/ Conduct autopsies, not blame. 4/ Build ‘red flag’ mechanisms that turn information into something that cannot be ignored. Dealing with problems head on. Leadership doesn’t begin with vision, it starts with confronting facts head on and dealing with their implications
    • The ‘hedgehog concept’. Focus at the interception point between: 1/ What you are deeply passionate about. 2/ What you can be the best in the world at. 3/ What drives your economic engine. It is an iterative process. This becomes the one big thing that you focus on.
    • A culture of self-discipline. Great results over the long term depends on a disciplined culture. It requires people who adhere to a consistent system, but also gives freedom and responsibility within the framework of the system. Discipline means focus, ignoring once in a lifetime opportunities that dont fit within the business focus. Stop doing lists are as important than to do lists. This reminds me of why Apple never put an FM radio in an iPod or iPhone.
    • Technology as accelerator. Technology isn’t a fad that they follow, but apply carefully selected technologies that meat their focus. A classic example of getting this wrong is the way Micro Focus pivoted to cryptocurrency and ended up being bought by rival Open Text. Instead the attitude to technology is down to thoughtfulness and creativity. Contrary to every marketing campaign I did during my first decade in agency life, technology by itself is never a primary cause of greatness (or decline).
    • Good practices are cumulative and compounded in nature. Collins talks about the flywheel effect, the momentum energy required to get it moving requires consistent pressure, but once it gets moving subsequent pressure means that it moves the flywheel at a much faster rate

    Where Good To Great didn’t age well

    The example of Wells Fargo standing out as an exemplar jarred with me. Wells Fargo is cited as a prime example of a great company, but there are examples of a number of cracks in its culture over years

    • Allegations of higher costs charged to African-American and Hispanic borrowers on sub-prime loans which resulted in fines and damages paid totalling 175 million dollars
    • Failure to monitor money laundering
    • Price gouging on overdraft fees
    • National mortgage settlement, the second largest civil settlement in U.S. history
    • Race discrimination in hiring practices

    Good to Great limitations

    Good to Great focuses on American companies, there doesn’t seem to be a consideration of how national culture may have an impact on the firm. Where does China’s wolf culture or Samsung’s punishing culture fit in the kind of model that Collin’s proposes in his book? I don’t know the answer but its a topic worth exploring in a more global business environment. I think that its particularly interesting because Collins’ work has been widely read by Chinese business people, yet their ‘great companies’ look very different to the corporates that Collins cites as good to great in nature.

    In conclusion

    Collins has created useful management book for departments as well as large corporates, which explains why it has been published in so many languages including Spanish and Chinese. What is less apparent in Chinese corporate culture is how influential the book has really been.

    You can find my updated list of professional reading materials here and further book reviews here. Lastly, more on Good to Great here.

  • Google Maps + more stuff

    Google Maps

    The Wall Street Journal explores the history and technology behind Google Maps. The mapping equipment decrease in size over time is particularly interesting to see. The origin of Google Maps starts with a PC app developed the Rasmussen brothers. Jens went on to help found Apple’s map application as well. What quickly becomes apparent when you look at the camera and mapping equipment is the lack of designing for operator comfort. Even these are produced in commercial amounts, the Google Maps camera and LIDAR equipment still looks and feels like an engineering student project. Google Maps is now 17 years old from launch. It spurred a large amount of development on what was termed ‘where 2.0‘.

    The impact of where 2.0 in our world today can be seen in local recommendations from Siri on your smartphone to the Institute for the Study of War, which has created the defacto map for what’s happening during the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.

    Aquafresh fortune-telling

    Grey Japan based the campaign on a behavioural insight. During COVID, Japanese toothbrushing habits changed. While brushing your teeth morning and night was common within the Japanese lifestyle prior to COVID; the emphasis has also slowly shifted to brushing in the night and less in the morning.

    Aquafresh Japan fortune teller

    The campaign asked Aquafresh users to upload a photo on Twitter showing the toothpaste applied to their toothbrush. They would then receive their fortune-telling results from the famous Japanese fortune teller Johnny Kaede based on the colour and shape of the toothpaste on the brush.

    Brabus Invicto

    German Mercedes tuner and the sultans of bling Brabus have got into the armoured G-Wagen business with the Invicto. I am not quite sure who it will be marketed to since the security sector is already well catered to by the likes of Alpha Armoring. But if you need a team of armed bodyguards to rollout and deploy rapidly on the Kings Road in Chelsea, be reassured Brabus have the gun truck for your ex-special forces types.

    The engineering and manufacturing processes that go into making the vehicle is very interesting. It contrasts with the process that Jankel uses for its Land Cruisers. The main challenge I see is the large number of pieces that Brabus has to use compared to Jankel’s hot forming process.

    Lyle Goldstein on U.S. Strategic Challenges

    Goldstein is a director at a dovish US think tank and formerly taught as the US Naval War College. I don’t necessarily agree with Goldstein since I view the challenges that the west faces more apropos to the Axis powers, rather than the cold war.

    Manulife Hong Kong

    Manulife insurance for personal injury and health costs is what this ad is using. The actors are famous in the Hong Kong film industry and the ad uses tropes from police and spy films.

  • Land surfing & more things

    Land surfing

    Riding The Wave Into China’s Latest Hype — Land Surfing | Jing Daily – land surfing is what a lot of people would know as a long board in skating. I first came across them 20 years ago, when I used to know a dreadlocked German photographer who got around London on one. South Korean app developer Ko Hyojoo, brought style and strong Instagram game to long boarding. From her style cutting and spinning on her board, I can see where land surfing came from. She has collaborated with a lot of fashion brands, getting an international profile with her land surfing.

    Films like this one from Vogue in 2016 blew long boarding / land surfing up across Asia. I have former colleagues from Hong Kong who took up land surfing in the winter as they missed the feeling of water-skiing which they did some summer weekends.

    It was only a matter of time before China’s Taobao culture picked up on the idea of land surfing.

    China

    Tencent turns from buyer to seller in investment pivot | Financial Times – interesting that the print version of this quotes an anti-monopoly official on background and it looks more like a government shakedown in China

    Consumer behaviour

    The Professional Try-Hard Is Dead, But You Still Need to Return to the Office | Vanity Fair – It’s Malcolm Gladwell waxing emotional about how much he loves return-to-office and pleading, “Don’t you want to feel part of something?” as if the man has never heard of, like, recreational softball. It’s Mark Zuckerberg reportedly getting mad about an employee asking if Meta Days (extra vacation days introduced during the pandemic) are still on this year because, shouldn’t the pleasure of working for Meta be enough? It’s any number of investor-type herbs who’ve been warning about how quiet quitting will cause you to lose out on x dollar amount of earnings later in life

    Design

    In Pictures: People flock to bid farewell to 79-year-old Hong Kong bakery’s neon sign, ‘a piece of Yuen Long history’ – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP 

    Economics

    Pinochet’s economic policy is vastly overrated – Chicago school takes a kicking

    *The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left* – Marginal REVOLUTION 

    Gadgets

    The Extraordinary Sony PCM-3348HR Digital Multitrack Recorder – still probably one of the best ways of doing digital recording in a studio environment

    Health

    Telehealth made America’s ADHD crisis worse | Quartz 

    Hong Kong

    Pro-China media slam ‘minority’ of Hong Kong mourners in wake of Queen’s death — Radio Free Asia – Hong Kong historian Hans Yeung, who now lives in the U.K., said Hong Kongers’ nostalgia for colonial times was a complex emotion. “The reason we are seeing these mourning activities is that the current way of governing is different from the way it was in Hong Kong more than 20 years ago, and the emotions that result from that difference between the old and the new,” Yeung told RFA. “It’s not necessarily the idea that we miss colonial times because things were so good back then, but because the current government is so poor,” he said. Yeung said some mourners were too young to remember an era in which the Queen’s portrait was in every classroom, and TV stations shut down every night with “God Save the Queen.” He said younger people likely have read about Hong Kong before the 1997 handover to Chinese rule, and drawn their own conclusions

    Ideas

    Simple models predict behavior at least as well as behavioral scientists – we analyzed data from five studies in which 640 professional behavioral scientists predicted the results of one or more behavioral science experiments. We compared the behavioral scientists’ predictions to random chance, linear models, and simple heuristics like “be- havioral interventions have no effect” and “all published psychology research is false.” We find that behavioral scientists are consistently no better than – and often worse than – these simple heuristics and models. Behavioral scientists’ predictions are not only noisy but also biased. They systematically overestimate how well behavioral sci- ence “works”: overestimating the effectiveness of behavioral interventions, the impact of psychological phenomena like time discounting

    We Spoke With the Last Person Standing in the Floppy Disk Business – Eye on Design – interesting analysis on technology adoption

    deaInnovation

    American workers need lots and lots of robots 

    Ireland

    Mass hoppers’ giving us anxiety, say Irish priests | Ireland | The Guardian – I had missed this story completely when it was originally published in 2020. Performance anxiety while performing online mass. My Mum and Dad still use a service so that thy can get ‘mass from home’

    Materials

    Brabus’ Armored Invicto G-Wagens Are Insanely Over-Engineered 

    A UN agency okayed the first major sea floor mining project — Quartz 

    Security

    Ukraine’s hackers: an ex-spook, a Starlink and ‘owning’ Russia | Financial Times 

    How China Has Added to Its Influence Over the iPhone – The New York Times – More than ever, Apple’s Chinese employees and suppliers contributed complex work and sophisticated components for the 15th year of its marquee device, including aspects of manufacturing design, speakers and batteries, according to four people familiar with the new operations and analysts. As a result, the iPhone has gone from being a product that is designed in California and made in China to one that is a creation of both countries. The critical work provided by China reflects the country’s advancements over the past decade and a new level of involvement for Chinese engineers in the development of iPhones. After the country lured companies to its factories with legions of low-priced workers and unrivaled production capacity, its engineers and suppliers have moved up the supply chain to claim a bigger slice of the money that U.S. companies spend to create high-tech gadgets. The increased responsibilities that China has assumed for the iPhone could challenge Apple’s efforts to decrease its dependency on the country, a goal that has taken on increased urgency amid rising geopolitical tensions over Taiwan and simmering concerns in Washington about China’s ascent as a technology competitor.

    Yandex Taxi Was Hacked, Causing Traffic Jams In Moscow 

    WeChat warns users their likes, comments and histories are being sent to China — Radio Free Asia 

    US$40,000 bounty offered for Malaysian fugitive ‘Fat Leonard’ convicted in navy bribery case 

    Taiwan

    China using ‘cognitive warfare’ to intimidate Taiwan, says president Tsai | Taiwan | The Guardian 

  • Chinese mercenaries + more things

    Chinese mercenaries

    Chinese mercenaries have been around longer than the belt and road. You can come across Chinese mercenaries protecting in the border areas of China such as the warlord regions of Myanmar. But now Chinese mercenaries are increasingly linked with the Belt and Road Initiative. China claims that it isn’t building an empire in Africa, across the former Soviet Union and Sri Lanka. Yet all of the private security companies that Chinese mercenaries work for are state owned. The Chinese mercenaries come out of the PLA, the PLAN marines and the PAP. That doesn’t mean that they are well trained or even well disciplined and they exist in a Chinese legal vacuum.

    There is more connecting China to its empire with these Chinese mercenaries than there was for the army fighting under Clive of India for the East India Company a few centuries before. Task and Purpose goes into the subject of Chinese mercenaries in more depth.

    China

    Honda, Mazda plan to relocate supply chain makers from China | DigiTimes 

    Inside Missfresh’s hunt for investor cash ahead of collapse | Financial Times – probably one of the best comments on this article – Missfresh is only one of a number of Chinese domestic startups that sought US investors, as their own domestic private investors were unwilling to invest. For a Chinese investor, they always consider when and if the CCP may want a piece of the business, or worse take action against the promoters and management. for non performance. The lighter loss being financial and. the greater loss, life.

    China’s Growth Sacrifice by Stephen S. Roach – Project Syndicate – Japanization of an increasingly debt-intensive, bubble-supported Chinese economy. An overly leveraged Chinese property sector fits this script, as does the debt-fueled expansion of state-owned enterprises since the 2008-09 global financial crisis. For China, this became the case for deleveraging, well worth the short-term price to avoid the longer-term stagnation of Japan-like lost decades. Finally, a major reversal in the ideological underpinnings of governance is also at play. As the revolutionary founder of a new Chinese state, Mao emphasized ideology over development. For Deng and his successors, it was the opposite: De-emphasis of ideology was viewed as necessary to boost economic growth through market-based “reform and opening up.” Then came Xi. Initially, there was hope that his so-called “Third Plenum Reforms” of 2013 would usher in a new era of strong economic performance. But the new ideological campaigns carried out under the general rubric of Xi Jinping Thought, including a regulatory clampdown on once-dynamic Internet platform companies and associated restrictions on online gaming, music, and private tutoring, as well as a zero-COVID policy that has led to never-ending lockdowns, have all but dashed those hopes – China was on a rocket ship that it couldn’t control, it is now trying wrestle back control at the expense of growth

    Apple’s VP of Corporate Development Resigns from the Board of Chinese Ride-Hailing Company Didi Global – Patently Apple – looks as if Chinese government regulators likely removed Apple from the board

    Economics

    Yes, sanctions on Russia are working – by Noah Smith 

    Eurostar to axe direct trains from London to Disneyland Paris over Brexit | Eurostar | The Guardian – “We have taken the decision not to run the direct Disney service … in summer 2023,” it said. “While we continue to recover financially from the pandemic and monitor developments in the proposed EU entry-exit system, we need to focus on our core routes to ensure we can continue to provide the high level of service and experience that our customers rightly expect.” – not enough demand from the UK and too much hassle to run

    What’s Hollowing Out the US Workforce? by Michael R. Strain – Project Syndicate – ‘forced’ early retirement is hollowing out the workforce

    Energy

    South Korean shipbuilder bets on methanol-powered vessels in decarbonisation push | Financial Times 

    Finance

    Losses at Klarna quadruple as costs rise and credit losses grow | Financial Times

    Health

    The growing evidence that Covid-19 is leaving people sicker | Financial Times

    Chartbook #148: Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? How China, Cuba and Albania came to have higher life expectancy than the USA. 

    Ideas

    Marco Meyer & Mark Alfano, Fake news, conspiracy theorizing, and intellectual vice – PhilPapers – interesting how a lack of intellectual humility leaves one vulnerable to fake news and conspiracies

    Covey’s 7 habits | Later On 

    Why political backlash is worth fighting – The Face – interesting idea of The Big Backlash as a concept

    Innovation

    The Economics of TSMC’s Giga-Fabs – by Jon Y 

    Japan

    Kishida turns Japan’s energy problems into nuclear opportunity | Financial Times 

    Korea

    K-style — the rise and rise of Korean pop culture | Financial Times 

    Legal

    Apple’s VP of Corporate Development Resigns from the Board of Chinese Ride-Hailing Company Didi Global – Patently Apple – looks as if Chinese government regulators likely removed Apple from the board. Apple was responsible for the largest single investment in Didi Chuxing

    Luxury

    Top Richemont investors set to vote against activist’s plan to shake up board | Financial Times 

    The timely trend for wearing two watches | Financial Times 

    Materials

    Why is China so Obsessed With Food Security? | The Upheaval – really interesting read. China’s scarcity thinking predates the Ukraine conflict by a considerable amount of time

    Retailing

    ‘No Muslim delivery person’: Food delivery app Swiggy faces backlash over customer’s request – via The Independent: Indian food delivery app Swiggy is facing backlash for not issuing a comment after a customer allegedly asked the service to not send a Muslim delivery personnel.

    Meta is teaming up with Jio for grocery delivery via WhatsApp — Quartz 

    Security

    Snowden: US asked British spy agency to stop Guardian publishing revelations | NSA | The Guardian – I am surprised that the former head of GCHQ has been allowed to cover so much in his memoirs

    Storing data on floppy disks? Japan tells bureaucracy time to stop – Nikkei Asia – it also makes sense keeping data off the internet

    ‘On a par with the Russians’: rise in Chinese espionage alarms Europe | Financial Times – the bigger challenge for China will be the contagious mistrust that this will build

    Hackers, Spies and Contract Killers: How Putin’s Agents Are Infiltrating Germany – DER SPIEGEL 

    Singapore

    Software

    France Catches Tax-Dodging Pool Owners With AI Tool – Bloomberg 

    Vietnam

    In Myanmar, Vietnamese firms learn the political risks of backing the junta — Radio Free Asia – interesting that Burmese consumers are boycotting military-owned businesses including MyTel – a mobile carrier that VietTel has a major stake in. Also: Vietnamese firms have begun investing abroad, and, in particular, have sought a place in the 5G marketplace, especially in markets where there is residual fear of China’s communications giant Huawei. – Also: Vietnamese conglomerate THADICO, which has invested in Myanmar Plaza, the largest modern mall and office space in Yangon, ran afoul of the local population when the plaza’s security attacked civil disobedience protesters in November 2021. This led to a sustained boycott that hit the plaza’s 200 retail units hard, compelling the firm to publicly apologize

    Web of no web

    Why a Pixar-Invented Protocol Is the ‘HTML of the Metaverse’ – Slashdot 

  • Middle Earth playlist + more things

    Middle Earth playlist

    In Deep Geek through his Middle Earth playlist goes in depth into the world that JRR Tolkien built around The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings. Christopher Tolkien added to the world through his work compiling and editing his father’s manuscripts. Keeping track of it all is a huge undertaking and Tolkien fans often disagree over nuances. Hence, the Middle Earth playlist acts as a sort of audio CliffsNotes analogue to all things Tolkien-related.

    Ahascragh races

    The Ahascragh of my memories is a one-road town with a petrol station slash local garage and tractor repair workshop, pub and one or two general stores. It was the local market town closest to the farm where my Dad grew up in Galway. By comparison it barely merits the name of town compared to the local urban centre Ballinasloe. This TV news section is from 1977. This seems to be encouraging child jockeys and raising money for the local GAA club.

    Big Trouble In Little China

    Big Trouble In Little China has a number of problematic aspects to it, but is saved by its efforts to honour the Chinese and Hong Kong cinema that went on before. It’s one of my guilty pleasures as I am a big John Carpenter fan.

    Cadbury Lunch bars

    Cadbury South Africa promoted their Lunch Bar using a character called Tumi who is the ultimate side hustler.

    According to Dan Parmenter who was the creative director on the project

    So, we created the story of Tumi, a streetwise hustler who has a couple of different vocations and even owns his own small business. His streetwise nature means that even though he’s managed to snag a part as an extra in a war film, he’s still not shy of a bit of his own shameless self-promotion.

    Dan Parmenter

    Sir Michael Caine reads Kipling, Neeson reads Yeats

    Sir Michael Caine reads Kipling for a UN campaign.

    Liam Neeson reads Yeats for RTÉ

    Generative machine learning algorithm animation

    Using StableDiffusion algorithm to create a video that explore our past, present and future. It has a charm to it that reminds me of old stop motion animation.

    Alan Dulles

    Alan Dulles talks about the role of intelligence and regime change in foreign states in this old film. It is interesting that the film starts off with a modern Soviet tank that the CIA managed to acquire through theft. Dulles was the head of the CIA during the early cold war. He was responsible for coups in Iran and Guatemala. His career finished with the Bay of Pigs.

    https://youtu.be/ZZQ54yqtlRw