The Reflective Practitioner

That's interesting

I was at a seminar to day with Anne Huff when she mentioned an old article by Murray Davis. We’ll I’m always a sucker for a good reference, so I dutifully went and had a look at Google. The first reference it through up (which has a bit of summary of the article) provided enough information for me to get a copy of the original article.

So these are my notes on the article. Oh, I don’t intended to summarise the article (what’s the point of that), rather I want to get my thoughts down as to how this article helps my thinking on strategy-as-practice.

A theorist is considered great not because of the truth of falsity of what they say, but because what they say is interesting. So this article seeks to discover what is interesting. As an aside I recall that in other fields of (positivist) research, greatness has been defined not so much by interestingness but also by the elegance of the theory. I’m sure David Barry would have something to say here about elegance and aesthetics.

Anyway, back to the article by Davis. What is particular interesting to me (and here is the link to strategy-as-practice) is the idea that an interesting idea is one that shows that “What seems to be assorted heterogeneous phenomena are in reality composed of a single element” (Davis, 1971, p. 315). and that

Many natural and social scientists have made their reputations by pointing out that the appearance of a natural or social phenomena is an illusion and that what the phenomenon really consists of lies ‘below’ its surface. Their ‘profound’ insight is considered especially interesting when these theorists also assert that the ‘fundamental’ nature (‘depth structure’) of the phenomenon contradicts the surface impression, as, for example the seemingly continuous appearance of a table is contradicted by the discreet molecules of which it is actually composed.

Much of the dialogue in the Strategy-as-practice arena is about the relationship between the macro and the micro. And yet. And yet, I have never really been convinced that such a distinction is warranted. As yet, I don’t have much to support that — other ontological/epistemological stances such as Garfinkle’s ethnomethodology (1967) would adopt a similar stance to mine — but I need to find a way to justify my position within my ontological/epistemological stance.

Once the division between the micro and the macro is removed, then we can concentrate on (and here I flip back into the ‘old’ terminology) how the micro impacts the macro.

To end with, I think this article is useful in understanding why some articles really seem to work, whilst others just seem to say nothing of note.

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References

Davis, M. S. (1971). That’s interesting: Towards a phenomenology of sociology and a sociology of phenomenology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 1(4), 309-344.

Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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Abstract to Davis’s That’s interesting
QUESTION: How do theories which are generally considered interesting differ from theories which are generally considered non-interesting? ANSWER: Interesting theories are those which deny certain assumptions of their audiences, while non interesting theories are those which affirm certain interests of their audience. This answer was arrived at through the examination of a number of famous social, and especially sociological, theories. That examination also generated a systematic index of the variety of propositional firms which interesting and non-interesting theories may take. The fertility of this approach suggests a new field be established called the Sociology of the Interesting, which is intended to supplement the Sociology of Knowledge. This new field will be phenomenological orientated in so far as it will focus on the movement of the audience’s mind from one accepted theory to another. It will be sociologically orientated in so far as it will focus in the dissimilar base-line theories of he various sociological categories which compose the audience. In addition to its value in interpreting the social impact of theories, the Sociology of the Interesting can contribute to our understanding of both the common sense and scientific perspectives on reality.

Telecom - Customer Service of the year (Yeah. Right!)

I went to use the Jetstream usage meter to day, and instead of the usual terse message I got:

————————————————————————————————————————

Caught SCLMessage exception.

————————————————————————————————————————

DETAILS :
Source Module : IafTranslate.C
Source Line : 102
Message Symbol :
Message Text : error opening language map[./LanguageMap.txt] reason[No such file or directory]

Now I had this problem once before about 4 years ago¹. It was a nightmare because most of the people I talked to at Telecom thought the error message was being generated at my end. In fact it is an error message generated by the server at Telecom.

If only I could remember the fix².

Anyway, I dialed 123 (Telecom’s help-desk). After navigating my way through the menus the system eventually told me to go away (because I’m using someone else as my ISP).

But the fault isn’t with my ISP it is with Telecom.

So, I try 123 again and this time I try the good old 0 to get an operator. I get nice music for a few minutes. Then I get a few minutes of ring-tone. Then the line hangs up!

I try again. Same result. This all takes about 30 minutes.

I dial 123 and this time I pretend to be a customer of Xtra (Telecom’s ISP).

The person who answers the phone is keen to tell me my Internet usage, but doesn’t want to take any details of the problem. Instead he says “That belongs to a different company, they’ll look at it tomorrow and get it working”. Yeah. Right. I’m filled with confidence.

I explain to him the problems I had last time getting it fixed. But no, he doesn’t want to do anything else (except mail me my usage).

Arrgh! It will be interesting to see if it is fixed tomorrow.

For those wondering about the Yeah. Right comment, it is a Kiwi reference to a series of commercials for a beer. As in:

“We’ll keep your CV on file”

“Yeah. Right”

Update to the story

Okay, I confess. I did try and circumvented the system — perhaps I should have talked to my ISP. And yes, despite the warnings on the site about enabling cookies — and I hadn’t — and yes, the problem was caused by a lack of cookies. But seriously, this has to be one of the silliest messages³ ever for saying “Turn cookies on”.

Having searched Google for the problem, it seems that not many people encounter this. I wonder why.

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Footnotes

¹ Eventually I found my original posting to the ADSL list that chronicles my first encounter of the problem.

² At the back of my mind I’m thinking, is this a problem with cookies - surely no error message could be that obscure.

³ The first time I had the problem they had never head of the error message and I had to figure out the solution myself. You’d think after all this time Telecom would have a better error message.

Getting thinss done

Chintaka has been gentle prodding me for sometime about the lack of activity here. I could comment on the amount of activity at his blog, but I won’t (smile).

He is right. I have been slow in doing anything here for awhile.

Well hopefully that is about to change. I’ve being reading David Allen’s book on Getting things done.

The system sounds straight forward enough. So, I’m going to give it a go. It will be interesting to see if I actually get more done.

On the way to finding GTD (as many people affectionately call it), I came across a rather interesting site called 43 Folders. The name comes from need 43 folders in order to have a perpetual tickler file.

Sudoku solver

This little widget solves Sudoku number puzzles.

Continue reading "Sudoku solver"

SuperPeds

A more detailed analysis of how much walking I’ve done.

Continue reading "SuperPeds"

Columbus Coffee

Milos, one of the students on the Auckland MBA sent out an email today saying that his new venture, a coffee shop, is opening today. So, I ventured out to 441 Queen Street where his Columbus Coffee shop is.

It’s a beautiful location, and the shop itself is well presented. I think he can do well there. What I like about Milos is the clarity that he often brings to his thinking. He has a clear plan of the stages he needs to go through to be successful (and I’d be surprised if he wasn’t successful).

I had a hot chocolate (I try to avoid coffee after 3:00). It was good — I hope the rest of the class finds time to sample his wares.

It was nice to catch up with him outside of the ‘cloisters’ of the University. It reminds me of the time when I ended up visiting Vodafone with Lisa. I wonder if it would be good to see more of the students in their own ‘worlds’ rather than just at the University.

Yet another check up

Another three months, another check up.

Lots of blood tests and a raft of diabetes tests (just in case). Everything is okay. What stands out is my HDL Cholesterol (the good stuff) continues to move up to 1.4 mmol/l from 1.2. This has made a big change to my Total/HDL ratio, which is now 2.9 — not bad. I credit that to my homemade muesli. Whoever thought I’d be ‘knitting my own muesli.

Blood pressure is pretty stable at 132/85 — but it could be better yet. More exercise and less eating is needed.

Overall, a big tick from Doc Budelmann.

Quick summary then

Total cholesterol	4.0 mmol/l	< 5.0
HDL cholesterol	1.4 mmol/l	> 1.0
LDL cholesterol	2.3 mmol/l	< 3.0
Triglyceride	0.8 mmol/l	< 2.0
Total/HDL ratio	2.9	< 4.5

Born free

Today we moved Hedgey down into the garden. I’ve modified his box so he can get out (and get back) if he wants to.

Hedgey, is the hedgehog we’ve been looking after for the past couple of months. I found him one lunchtime when I was out walking. Hedgehogs shouldn’t be out during the day, so I knew he wasn’t well. He was pretty mangey, and he stunk to high heaven.

So, I picked him up and carried on walking to our local vets, Animalz. Once there I said, if he can be saved I’m happy to pay for the treatment and to look after him, if not then please put him out of his misery. They told me they would have a look and give me a call back.

The SPCA put me on to a wonderful women called Donette (I hope that’s how to spell her name). She looks after lots of ill hedgehogs. She gave me a lot of good advice and was always available on the phone. Thanks Donnet.

Any way to cut a long story short, he needed some Ivomec injections (to kill the mites); I had to oil and clean all the dead and mangey skin off him; give him antibiotics (because the mange-crust was breaking his skin open causing it to bleed).

After a couple of days of oiling and washing we could see his face and eyes. But he was underweight (350 grammes) and wouldn’t survive the winter — hogs need to be 600+ grammes to survive hibernation. Also, he lost a lot of his spines. I would guess about 90% of them.

At one stage he drove us crazy. Although hedgehog mites can’t live on people (for more than a day or two) they itch like crazy.

But that’s all behind us now. Today Hedgey (that’s the name the vet put on his medication) weighs over 800 grammes. He has the first wave of new spines coming through, and they are about 1 cm long now. So it’s time to let him go.

I wonder if he will ever come back.

Understanding strategic change: The contribution of archetypes

A romp through:

Greenwood, R., & Hinings, C. R. (1993). Understanding strategic change: The contribution of archetypes. Academy of Management Journal, 36(5), 1052-1081.

The abstract says:

We examined the concept of archetype, implicit in a number of contemporary approaches to the study of organizational design and change. Despite an emerging interest in archetypes, the concept has received inadequate investigation. The present article offers a basis for definition of the concept and sets down three assumptions, which we tested using data collected longitudinally from 24 organizations. We present a number of theoretical and methodological implications of the archetype approach to the study of organizational change.

I was reading an old article by Miller (1987) on the relationship between strategy and structure (or is it structure and strategy), and in my notes I asked the question “Is there a link between the notion of organisational gestalts”, which was very contemporary then, “and the idea of archetypes?” The answer, based on this article is yes. Organisational archetypes, configurations, and gestalts are all part of the same quest to study how organisations are transformed and develop—or to put it another way it is “a central thrust of organizational theory … the need to understand organizational diversity through typologies¹” (Greenwood & Hinings, 1993, p. 1053).

Anyway, as I’ve said elsewhere, “An archetype is … a set of structures and systems that reflects a single interpretive scheme” (Greenwood & Hinings, 1993, p. 1052). The article seeks to provide an understanding of large-scale change as an organisation moves from one archetype to another (as opposed to micro or incremental changes within the organisation).

Again, this article has a common heritage with other articles from these authors. For example, it relies on the article by Miller (1987) that started this current discussion—i.e. the three dimensions of decision making; rationality, assertiveness, and interaction—and Greenwoods & Hinings own work on tracks (1988).

One of the things that struck me in reading this article is the hypothesis that “organizations will develop structures and systems consistent with a single interpretive scheme” (emphasis added, Greenwood & Hinings, 1993, p. 1056). Why should this be so? Surely a firm could be developing multiple, contested structures and systems? Greenwood and Hinings bring together a number of ideas to explain why this isn’t the case. The ideas of best, dominant coalitions and shared culture are the main reasons given.

The second idea I took away from the reading is that an archetype would be specific to an institution—that is to say they would not be “generic” in nature. I always assumed that an archetype would be more like an ‘ideal-type’ of configuration.

From the point of view of writing an article I was struck that in a prestigious journal, such as the Academy of Management Journal, the fact that the results were ambiguous did not preclude the article from being published. That is good news.

References

Greenwood, R., & Hinings, C. R. (1988). Organizational design types, tracks and the dynamics of strategic change. Organization Studies, 9(3), 293-316.
Greenwood, R., & Hinings, C. R. (1993). Understanding strategic change: The contribution of archetypes. Academy of Management Journal, 36(5), 1052-1081.
Miller, D. (1987). Strategy making and structure: analysis and implications for performance. Academy of Management Journal, 30(1), 7-32.

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¹ We westerners seem to love to classify and clarify (to mis-quote 99 Red Balloons by Nina). And yet, and yet this form of knowledge making (as explemarfied by the 2 × 2 matrix) is often something academics look down upon.

An ideal husband

Lisa and I went to see Oscar Wilde’s An ideal husband at the Maidement Studio. A very enjoyable romp through the mores of Victorian England. A solid performance.

It was nice to see Miriam Sharpe playing Lady Chiltern—I think we’ve previously seen her in Summer Shakespeare

The set was pretty good — I liked the leaves — and I enjoyed the way the stage was “set” as the audience came in.

The only thing I don’t understand is why the direct/stage manager/set design had his name capitalized (or not) as patrick graham, instead of Patrick Graham. Answers on a postcard to …

Frameworks revisited

I’ve just had my feedback from the MBA class Integrating Strategy. Everyone one seems pretty happy except one person who gave me very low ratings. I struggled to make sense of this disparity until I read the comments that the student had made.

• Robust framework
• Some of the cases are so vague
• Lecturer should have a framework for each/most cases. Most of the time/cases we did not have any focus during class discussions.
• Business case competition organization was a complete disaster

I struck out the last comment, because that wasn’t really about the course.

SO, I’m left wondering why I didn’t manage to connect with this person, and more importantly why they they didn’t feel there was nearly enough frameworks for them.

For my part, I thought I had given a structure to the discussion (which mirrored in many ways how I had tackled the case, and hence my framework). However, the approach I took was no better than some of the approaches the class took. I wonder if that person wanted something more like the 7s framework.

Clearly, with this person I failed to get my message across — every case is unique, there is no simple framework (or small set of frameworks) that you can routinely apply to understanding either a case or, more realistically, a business. What is necessary is the analysis of each situation, determining the critical issue, and then some creativity to address the issue (okay, this is rough paraphrase of Kenichi Ohmae, 1982 — but it probably isn’t enough of a framework for this particular student).

Each firm is unique, and therefore the choice of model needs to be based on judgment and ones own strengths, rather than a ritualistic application of a standard solution.

Interestingly, I’ve been reviewing a book for Wiley this week, and that would be my main criticism — it tries to provide a stock solution/approach for strategy. Such an approach is fine at an undergraduate level, but it doesn’t stand up in the face of MBA students who have to make sense of such models in live settings (i.e. for practitioners).

So, I’ll have to go back to the drawing board and see how I can get my message across more clearly and more convincingly.

p.s. I wonder why they didn’t draw on the numerous models and frameworks from the Mintzberg et al (2003) text book if they wanted more frameworks.

References

Mintzberg, H., Lampel, J., Quinn, J. B., & Ghoshal, S. (2003). The strategy process: Concepts, contexts, cases (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Ohmae, K. (1982). The mind of the strategist: The art of Japanese management. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Why people come to this site.

I was looking at my web logs and the statistics that are produced for this site, and I was curious why people come here. As you probably know, when you use a search engine such as Google or Yahoo information is passed about the site that refered you (Yahoo or Google) along with the search terms that were used.

So what patterns do I see? Well firstly, some people come here looking for information on strategy cases — I presume they are looking for some insight that they can use in their class. Ican’t be certain if they are staff or students, but from the IP/DNS entries, I suspect they are students. Cases such as Swatch, and Karl Zeiss Jenna from the de Wit & Meyer text book appear frequently.

There are another group who seem to be looking for information on Mike’s Bikes. If anyone is interested I have “sure fire” strategy for winning the first three (and sometimes more) rollovers. Alas, the downside is that it hard to continue that winning into rollovers five and six. As Ken Simmonds often states, anyone can increase profit by sacrificing the future value of the company.

Finally, a few people looking for Prof. Nigel Haworth also end up here too. I wonder what they want to know about him. Isn’t his university web page enough?

My Web Sites on MSN

Sometime ago I created a Passport account. In doing so a web folder was created in My Network Places. It appears as a file called My Web Sites on MSN.

All well and good.

Now I have an iPod and I keep a copy of my_”C:\Documents and Settings_ as I figure all my documents, etc are stored there. Alas, every time I plug my iPod in to a Windows PC it finds the web folder and stars prompting me to connect (using Passport) to the MSN network — and in doing so it blocks the correct mounting (and unmounting) of the iPod. This happens despite me telling Windows not to do anything with the disk drive that is the iPod.

Anyway, I’ve deleted the file My Web Sites on MSN and now I no longer get Windows demanding that I login to Passport.

At one stage I thought that perhaps Microsoft was spying on the music that I had installed on my iPod. But, of course, they weren’t.

Some problems in market distribution

In his classic article, Arch W. Shaw explores Some problems in market distribution (Shaw, 1912). He describes how production is only one half of industry; having produced the product it needs to be distributed. The choice of method to distribute the product needs careful consideration. Selling direct to customers, using one’s own salespeople, using wholesalers, and other intermediaries all have an impact on the value that the producer receives that the consumer receives and that the middlemen receives.

In many ways Shaw’s model of distribution pre-dates Porter’s value chain (Porter, 1980) or value system in showing how organisations are linked together. It is often assumed that the most value is obtained by those people who are closest to the customer. For example a farmer growing coffee beans in South America gets very little value for his beans compared with the price the final consumer pays for a cappuccino. Where, in this chain of distribution, is the most value being appropriated by the various middlemen?

This does not always mean those his best to be selling direct to the customer. Sometimes this is wholly impractical or cost inefficient. Using the example above, is it realistic for the farmer growing the beans to sell his produce to the end-user i.e. the coffee drinker? The same is probably also true for the manufacture of baked beans does a consumer actually what I baked beans as a distinct purchase from the producer, or would they rather purchase than baked beans as part of a collection of products at the same time at the supermarket? Similar examples can be found for when it is best to sell through wholesalers, distributors, or other middlemen.

Shaw also makes the point that the needs and wants of such middlemen are almost always different to those of the end consumer; they have different conceptions of what is valuable. For example a wholesaler may only be interested in selling a product if they believe it is in some demand at the right price by retailers. Whereas retailers may only be interested in selling the product if they believe that the consumer values the product over other products.

As an aside, Shaw’s article is also interesting in explaining the development of modern distribution systems.

References

Porter, M. E. (1980). Competitive strategy: Techniques for analyzing industries and competitors. New York: Free Press.

Shaw, A. W. (1912). Some problems in market distribution. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 26(4), 703-765.

Still walking after all this time

I still walking — which is good. The daily graph was getting a bit busy, so I thought I’d do a monthly summary, showing the last year.

The red line shows my average during the period, and the top of the blue bar represents my goal. At the moment I’m trying to get the months to display in the correct order.

And this is the walking I’ve done in the last month.The Bottom of the blue band is my minimum target. If I don’t make that, I feel I’ve not achieved the goal at all.

Besides walking I play squash once a week with my brother, and I do boxing training twice a week. It all helps.

PS: The graph is built automatically using JPGRAPH from data stored using MySQL. The whole thing is glued together using PHP.

Frameworks

As part of the Integrating Strategy course that our MBA students do, we did a case McKinsey & Company: Managing knowledge and learning. As part of “doing” the case I thought it would be interesting to use McKinsey’s own 7S framework to look at the case (see below). My purpose in using the 7S framework wasn’t as an exposition on its usefulness as a tool (I thought we had got beyond that), but as a little bit of playfulness to enliven the dicussion.

Well it seems that at least one person has taken this the wrong way saying “I wish we had this [framework] 12 weeks ago. This course hasn’t been about applying frameworks (or cookie cutters, as they often become). Each firm’s situation is unique, and too many people forget that when they try and do strategy — Ken Simmonds and I have made a serious attempt to get away from a formulaic approach to strategy. Instead with tried to get people to think about what is going on in the particular situations we have encountered. I guess that I didn’t get that across as well as I had hoped in class.

Hooked on audio books

We are only allotted a certain amount of time to do what we want to do. There will never be more than 24 hours in the day. But sometimes, I feel like there isn’t enough time.

For some time I’ve been saying I’d like to do more reading. Of late most (all) of my reading has been linked to my research and teaching. There has been little time for “recreational” reading.

That was before I got my iPod and before I found out about Audible. Now I’m hooked on buying and downloading audio books. The beauty of audio books on the iPod is that you can listen as you are walking from place to place. Now I can get through two or three books a month extra — it doesn’t sound like much, but it really makes a difference.

Consequently, I’m taking the opportunity to “read” things for which I would normally not have time. For example, I’ve just finished The life of Pi, and I thoroughly enjoyed The white Russian (Thanks for the recommendation Leone). Of course, sometimes I drift back into research mode, and so I’m currently listening to Jack Welsh’s biography Jack: Straight from the gut.

The quality of research "packages"

I’m a bit of a market research participant junkie. Whenever, I’m at home and they (market researchers) ring up and I fail the qualifying questions (say, for not being the person with the next birthday) I’m always disappointed. I enjoy doing surveys because they tell me a lot about what businesses are thinking. So, I’m usually happy to participate. I also like to give the researchers some feedback on their survey instrument—in fact I’m not shy about doing that at all.

As it happens, in my in-tray I requests from two different New Zealand tertiary institutions who wish to survey the students in the Auckland MBA program. The difference between the two “packages” is striking.

The first package is well presented. The covering letter, participant information sheet, and the survey itself are well presented, with problems. The documentation clearly explains what is required and answers all of the questions I have about the research and the researcher. They survey instrument is well constructed and (based on my own experiences) will get a fairly good return rate, and allow some robust analysis. In many ways, it is everything a solid piece of research should be (from the participants’ point of view). Generally, I feel very positive towards this researcher and their research.

The second package is not well presented. The participant information is missing; and so, many important questions, such as “how long will this take?” are not addressed. There are errors in the grammar and syntax of both the covering letter and the survey itself. The survey reads like a fishing trip and request quite sensitive information from both students and me. Some of the questions are quiet weak, e.g. “What are the criteria for your school to choose best quality MBA students and faculty?”—this is really two questions, and it is making a whole raft of assumptions which can invalidate the question.

Unlike the first package, the second package makes one question the professionalism of the researcher, and I’m left feeling unsure about the researcher—there is an issue of trust here—which makes me tentative about agreeing to the research especially when the sensitive nature of the questions are considered. Do I really want to tell someone like this the answer to “How would you design a strategy for your business school to compete with others in New Zealand?”

Wagamama

The movie Tampopo, spawned a restaurant in London called Wagamama (and that in turn spawned a cookbook). If you’ve seen the movie, then you won’t be surprised to find out it’s a noodle house. And now there is one in Auckland.
Lisa and I went there for lunch, and despite the queue it was well worth it. The menu was full of tempting dishes – it was hard to choose what to have. However, I ended up having a chili chicken ramen (which was super — I the soup base was particularly good), and Lisa went for the hottest dish on the menu—according to the waitress—the spicy chicken itame.

Despite being busy (we had to queue for five minutes) we were still in-and-out in under 30 minutes.

The seating is what the Americans call “family style”, you sit at long tables with whoever else is there.

A great lunch. I recommend it.

MBA Reunion

It’s been 10 years since I graduated with my MBA from the University of Auckland. When I was doing the MBA there were two streams. One stream was called the Management MBA, the other stream was known as the Executive. There were two differences between the two groups. Firstly, the MMBAs had an avarage age of abotu 35, whilst the EMBAs where about 10 years older with an average age of 45. The other difference was that in the second year the EMBA had to write a four point 4 (1 term) thesis, whereas the MMBAs did courses instead.

Well the EMBAs organised a reunion for this evening — and very kindly invited any of the MMBAs who wanted to come too. So six of us turned up. There was me (of course), John Brunton (who acted a liason with the EMBAs), Sandy McCaulay, Hamish Stevens (and partner), Greg Batkin, and Lynne Richardson.

It was really nice to catch up with everyone, but it was a disappointment to me that there weren’t more MMBAs there (our class actually numbers 40). However, we did manage to exchange a lot of gossip about everyone.

It was very moving when the EMBAs were talking about one another, the way they remembered the three people in their class who have since died. That particular event has yet to hit our (younger) class.

As an aside, the reunion was held at Pontoon. I had beetroot carpaccio as my entry, roast chicken with kumara mash as my main. Food and service was competent as ever from Pontoon.

In my role with the Auckland MBA program, I’m supposed to be organising a reunion later on in the year. I hope I do the same sort of high quality job as the EMBAs achieved.