That Zombie Time of Year

FunWorld Men's Complete 3D Zombie-Adult

There's always a lot that happens around Halloween. However, this year, there seems to be a few more zombies out on the streets. Here are some I saw while I was out in Denver.

CSCMP 2013 Conference

Just had the privilege of attending the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Council for Supply Chain Management Professionals. I really enjoyed my time there. Perhaps, it's my Liberal Arts bias, but I thought the final speaker, Mike Rayburn, was fantastic. Not only was Rayburn an amazing guitar player , but he did a great job illustrating three points.

1. What if you could...
2. Write music that you can't play.
3. Be your own virtuoso.

Rayburn convinced me of the value of being the best. Though showing what he could do with the guitar, play all the part to Bohemian Rhapsody at once, he showed me the value of pushing my abilities to the next level. And, each of his three points were ways of stretching yourself, just a little more. 

His first point, "What if you could," was a way of disarming the "we can't do that" mentality. He said, "that's great, I agree that we can't do that.... but what if we could? How would we go about that?" It was just a way of setting limitations aside and thinking differently.

His second point, "Write music you can't play (yet)," was about setting goals that you can't reach. Everyone can find 10% improvement by working a little more or making things a little more efficient. But orders of magnitude of improvement are only made by thinking differently and setting big goals. 

His third point, "Be a virtuoso," was all about being the best at what you do. Make a commitment to be the best.

Zen and the Art of Supply Chain

I came across a Forbes article on LinkedIn, and I started to comment, actually left a comment, when I realized this would be a great concept for a job post. And, since the article left a bit wanting, and I had the first comment on the CSCMP board, I figured, why not, my blog could use a post.

The article spoke about Zen and Supply Chain. This idea touches on a couple books for me (1) Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and (2) David Allen's Getting Things Done. Taking those two books into mind, I wrote the following.

Supply chain is kind of like yoga for business. You want to use every part, and you want each part to be in shape and flexible. And you want to add muscle, but you need to keep stretching your capabilities to do that. A good combination of Lean and Strong helps a company react correctly to unforeseen events. Similarly, the old zen proverb state that you should react to things as a pond reacts to a rock thrown into it, equal to the force applied. A large bolder makes a big splash, but a pebble is barely noticeable as it hits the water.

 And, I really think that about sums Supply Chain up. The water comes from Allen's organizational mantra and the application of Supply Chain is really just Pirsig's logic that Zen can be applied to anything. And yoga might have been a bit more influenced by Drs. Oz and Roizen and my own personal practice.

The Outline of Doom

One of my professors in college (way back in 2002) was a huge practitioner of outlining. He suggested going through an entire book, writing down all the headings in a Word Document and then proceeding to fill in those headings as you read through the book. And, he made us do it twice. While this was a very effective method for understanding the contents of a book, I never did it again. Mainly because life stops when you get that involved with anything. While I've blogged about books, journaled about books, written letters to an author after every chapter of a book, I've never retried this very time tested version of outlining until today.

I've developed an interest in Business and Process Analysis. During my MBA, my class got really into SCOR Analysis, which is a way of reviewing supply chains. While my group used the method extensively for our project, I wanted to go a little more in depth. So, I ordered a similar book that would fit my particular field a bit closer, the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK Guide). 

There is nothing Earth shattering about either of these two methods. They are simply ways of aligning thought processes between multiple people, across multiple cultures. If you already know how to think, getting a grasp of these communication skills, not necessarily any particular method, makes doing business, engineering, supply chain, or whatever a whole lot easier.

However, fitting my creative mind into a structure is like pounding a square peg into a round hole, so I got the book. And now, after years of resistance, I am about to do that time honored outlining method and hope it works just as well as I remember.

Managing contacts

There are lots of ways that I've managed contacts: Outlook, Excel, LinkedIn, Facebook, Lotus 1 2 3... Lately, I've taken to putting contact information in as many places as possible and hope that some combination of my Hotmail account and my iPhone can put all these contacts into some sensible order. There is simply no good single method for keeping track of changing contacts.

So, I'm thinking about going back to the Rolodex. No use constantly updating devices, like Val in Stone Soup. Just flip to the right page and pull up the contact info for one of the 5 people you actually talk to. But the world doesn't work that way, anymore.

What's the alternative? Gardening. Just sort of let things go wild. Pull the weeds (spam) and prune the trees (massive organizations) and hope the data sync takes less than an hour or four.