Be a Tiger?

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As most of the world knows, Tiger Woods was back playing golf for money this weekend.

Sunday, I was at the airport waiting for my flight and found myself watching the finish of the Masters tournament with a bunch of other folks outside an airport bar. With about two hours to go in the tournament, the [...]

“Oops” UI of the Week

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I was filling out an online form today when I came to this section:

It says Mailing Address in big red letters. Then it says Mailing Address in bold black letters. The cursor goes automatically to the first edit box.

So what do I — and I suspect most other folks — start typing? My mailing address, [...]

Suprise Inspections

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Does your company “take the pulse” of employee satisfaction once a year, or perhaps twice? Does it do so at regular, scheduled times?

Do all the managers scramble in the six weeks ahead of the survey to provide “morale” or “motivation”? (And do half of them spell it “moral”?)

Does it work?

The same goes for employee feedback [...]

The Blinder Side

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My kids are watching The Blind Side as I write this. I’m sort-of watching and writing, but I saw it some months ago when I took my nine-year-old son to see it in a tiny (75-seat) theater in Friday Harbor in Washington’s San Juan Islands.

(The island in the San Juans where we have a place [...]

“The Worst Abuse of Microsoft Excel Ever”

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A NYTimes article on analyzing video of basketball games contains the delicious quote, ” ‘It’s probably the worst abuse of Microsoft Excel ever,’ said Kevin Pauga….” Pauga is apparently referring to the use of Excel rather than a database to track all the stats associated with every play of every possible opponent in college [...]

Found: The Most Cynical Project Management Post of the Year (So Far)

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I was floored this morning when I came across this post about project sponsors. Some choice excerpts:

The problem with project sponsors is that they have got to where they are by climbing a very dirty greasy pole. They now have a privileged aerial view of the executive landscape…. The slightest hint or whiff [...]

Headline: Project Management Book Breaks Project Management

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I found the following subject line on a mail in my inbox yesterday:

PMBOK Breaks Project Management

The PMBOK is the grandiosely titled Project Management Book of Knowledge from the Project Management Institute (of which I’m a member).

Wow, I thought, someone else thinks formulaic, by-the-book-only project management can be as much a problem as a [...]

Who Wrote Shakespeare's Plays? Drawing a Lesson in Management

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There has long been academic debate as to who wrote the work attributed to William Shakespeare.  (The word “academic” is important; see below.)

Most recent attention has focused on Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. There is a whole cottage industry devoted to these so-called Oxfordians. I won’t go into all their arguments, but here’s a [...]

Google Voice (Mail)

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One of my business lines is tied to Google Voice. Today I got a voice message that was automatically transcribed by Google.

I’m impressed.

It wasn’t perfect, but the subject matter was very abstruse. However, it nailed all of the normal-speech parts of the conversation.

Based on experience, my guess is that most voice messages are fairly straightforward. [...]

Ten Good Things New in PowerPoint 2010

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I’ve been working with the Microsoft Office 2010 beta for a few months. Like many, I’ve been wondering, what do you do to enhance products that are already chock-full of features?

PowerPoint struck me as a tough one to add value to; I’m a regular speaker who builds very complex graphics-based slides, and PPT 2007 has [...]

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