With all of the recent buzz surrounding Sarah Palin’s new book “Going Rogue” I thought I would post a little something about the importance of ALIGNMENT within an organization. This is NOT a post about my thoughts on the book…or my thoughts about Mrs. Palin (although I am sure I could post something VERY interesting)…it is really about the nature of preventing rogue behavior within an organization improve communication and overall results.
Recently I went kayaking in the Long Beach marina and while I was paddling around I admired the row-boats that passed me by with about a dozen or so “rowers” listening to the captain of their ship calling out when to row. It was clear with each stroke the team intently LISTENED and followed in synchronization with their row propelling their boat faster and faster. This is a clear example that alignment within an organization takes a leader, listeners, and a common goal. If you want to go faster everyone must all row in one direction toward a common purpose, listen to their leader, and look to the finish line with purpose!
Alignment is more than just rowing in the same direction. For example, I have personally experienced great things happening when emotion is paired with intellect. I like to call this alignment of the right brain and the left brain. When creativity and passion are aligned with business and strategy one can be unstoppable. Sometimes this type of alignment occurs within a group or even better within one person.
Alignment is critical to success and it is what I strive for each day within myself and with my teams and company!
Basically, someone goes out and hides something in public and posts the coordinates online. You are then supposed to go to that website, get the coordinates and put them into your GPS (hand-held GPS, not your car navigation).
The coordinates get you pretty close to the item (or “cache” as it is called) and you have to use the clues they post online to find it.
The caches ranges in size from a small matchbook to a big ammo box. Inside you’ll always find a log where you can put your name, and in the bigger ones people leave little knickknacks and toys. It’s great for kids because they can trade one of their old toys for a toy that is inside. Some caches even have stuff for grown ups like movies (my buddy got a Willow DVD out of one).
Geocaching is a great hobby for technical geeks like me who like to “figure things out” and for families who want to spend time together outdoors.
So far, me and my family have found 48 caches in and around our city. How about you? Are there any other geocachers out there?
If you live in Southern California, then you’ve probably heard about the Orange County Great Park which is being built on the former El Toro marine base in the Irvine/Lake Forest area. This park is going to be huge at about 2x the size of Central Park in New York.
The OC Great Park is going to be eco-friendly, which we love to hear at EMG. They will be recycling materials from the demolition of the old marine base to build new roads (concrete from runways), bridges (redwood from old hangers) and more. Other green initiatives include recycling water, renewable energy (solar power), habitat restoration and energy efficient transportation options throughout the park.
Phase One has just been announced and is going to be completed sometime in 2011 with many features available in 2010. The best part for us EMGers is that this phase is going to include part of the sports complex which includes soccer fields, as well as a bigger field for general use (football anyone?). Future phases will include tennis courts, baseball fields, skate park, and even a bowling green. This will be a great place to spend our lunches.
I even read an LA Times blog post that said that next year will be Wild River’s last season (for real this time) and that a new water park might open in the great park in 2011.
The preview park is currently open where you can take free rides in one of the world’s largest tethered helium balloons. It’s definitely worth a trip if you haven’t been yet.
I’ve been using Google Wave for a few weeks now. In case you somehow haven’t heard of Google Wave before, here is a description from the website:
Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
In simple terms, I see it as a dynamic message board. It’s an interesting idea, but I haven’t been hooked on it yet. It doesn’t feel conducive for everyday use. I definitely do not see it replacing email or IMing anytime soon, like some suggest will happen. Seems more for specific group projects or interest groups.
Even then, you have to be able to wrap your head around the concept and features in order to be able to use it and I think the general public might be turned off to it before they get past the learning curve.
One of the hardest things at first is that you don’t have any friends when you first join. Two things to help:
1) When you join Google Wave, you should get a wave in your inbox from Google that allows you to invite some friends.
2) In the search box, type “with: public” without quotes so you can browse and join public waves. (see below)
I just got a bunch of invites and sent it out to a few people here at EMG. Maybe I’ll have a change of heart once I start using it in a business setting.
This past week I had the pleasure of attending the Day Ignite 2009 Customer Summit in Chicago (10/28 - 10/29) as a Day Partner, care of Earthbound Media Group (my employer and Day Partner). Topics covered ranged from the upcoming Communiqué (CQ5) 5.3 preview (which I’ll comment on momentarily) to running CQ5 in a Cloud environment to the new Microsoft Sharepoint Connector - and much much more! At the conclusion of the conference, we were treated to dinner and a show at the Chicago House of Blues - Foreigner! It was pretty neat!
The first thing that I want to share is the David Nuescheler’s Top 10 list of new features in CQ 5.3:
Recently I went kayaking in the Long Beach marina and while I was paddling around I admired the row-boats that passed me by with about a dozen or so “rowers” listening to the captain of their ship calling out when to row. It was clear with each stroke the team intently LISTENED and followed in synchronization with their row propelling their boat faster and faster. This is a clear example that alignment within an organization takes a leader, listeners, and a common goal. If you want to go faster everyone must all row in one direction toward a common purpose, listen to their leader, and look to the finish line with purpose!
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