Monday, December 3, 2007

The 3 Management Styles

After attending an agile workshop, I came to a conclusion that there are 3 management styles:

 1- Traditional: which is based on the famous watefall approach. It is structured, sequential with a clear start and end. It is suitable for strategising and long term planning with a year as a basic unit.

2- Agile: which is shorter in nature, allows shifting of objectives when needed and always aligns itself to new initiatives. 30 days is a normal duration although shorter could be considered.

Both of the above methods neccessitates the face-2-face synchrnous meetings.

3- Wiki: is a new concept I like to start investigating. It is based on the famous Wikinomics book. Its premises is a derivative of the Agile Management, however, the teams may or may not know each other and they work in an asynchronous modes. The parameters needs to be identified.

Saturday, July 7, 2007

The Bottom Line of the Conflict in Lebanon

What is happening in Lebanon? here is my theory:

First, you need to know little bit about Steven Covey's theory of paradigm. He believes there are 3 paradigms: dependent (always rely on others), independent (rely on oneself) and interdependent (become productive by interacting with others, even those they differe with).

Lebanon struggle is a struggle between entities of the three types:

(1) Dependent: Amal, Syrian Socialists, Franjieh, Baathist are dependent. They cannot make their own decision. Always they have to follow someone else for their survival. Among them, Amal has a potential of being indepedent, but unfortunately, Berri is a fox who prefer to appear following Hezbolla/Syria because of fear.

(2) Independent: Hezbolla and FPM are independent. They truely believe they can achieve what they want without dependence on anybody. Even financially, Hezbolla can survive even if Syria and Iran stop supporting them! The problem with the independent is that they believe in "my way or the highway". They cannot tolerate or understand those who differs with them for they have a strong conviction that their way is the only truthful way.
(3) Interdependence: The 14 of March guys have evolved to become Interdependent! If you look at all parties of 14M you will find that each one hates the guts of the other (Sunni against LF, Druze hates Sunni's and Maronites, The democratic left hates the Future Movement capitalists! Jumayel hates Jeajea, etc...) but they decided to collaborate driving strength from their differences. This is interdependence.

In my opinion, the 1975-2000 civil war was the evolution of Lebanon from "dependent" to "independence". The present struggle is evolving from  "depednent" to "interdependent". If 14M prevails, Lebanon will grow in culture and history. If they lose, the evolution will be delayed.

In the same token, the US with Bush Administration is dependent. Europe is independent. Most of the Arab countries are dependent... except for UAE, where interdependence has been practiced since 1991 in Dubai, and 2005 in Abu Dhabi.

A Year in Review

it has been almost a year since I contributed to this blog. I have been contributing to other blogs, especially the one I communicate with my son. I felt I need to write something to this one for future discovery.

During this year, many things happened:

(1) I started losing weight without dieting. It is either I am fatally ill, or Louise hay's theory works. During this year, I was able to overcome feeling guilty. One complexity down, few hundred to go. But since I did that, I started losing weight although I am eating normally! Are they related? is it coincidence? Louise says "No" why reason says "yes"

(2) My wife and I felt the prosperity of Canada. We bought another house for $850K. This was a major step that made us understand the brilliant Canadian way of living. The value of both houses on the mortgage side is 1.2M, while their market value is 1.5M! So, we made a profit of $300K in spending more! Brilliant.

(3) Another characteristic of Fort Mac is the boom factor. The mortgage payment of both of our houses is $6400/month. We rented the first house for $3500 and the second one has a potential of renting the basement for $2500. So, practically, we bought both houses for $400 per month... it is the beauty of Canadian economy and the boom of Fort Mac, or as they call it here, Fort McMoney!

(4) My wife's business is booming. The first year, she made around $25,000. The second year, it reached $60,000. Now, it has approached $80K. Canada is a great place.

(5) My son is growing in wisdom. He mazes me. I am convinced that if we protect our children from ourselves (as parents) we create wise children. it is a paradox, but for some reason, it is working with my son. 80% of his knowledge is created by himself (not from school, society or family.) By himself. To date, I taught him 3 things: How to be independent, how to be a life-long learner and how to make cappuccino with our new "push one button to make cappuccino" machine. I am so proud of him.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Airoplane Mussings

Today I flew from Fort M acMurray to Calgary with Air Canada... during the flight, I decided to meditate using Kabalah "2" method... I was not able to visiualize the "2" completely although the shape was there... so the trial continues...

During the meditations, many ideas surfaced which makes sense. I will write them down for preservation:

1- I should create a weblog called "Forluay" which will capture my thoughts that I like to pass on to my son... at the same time, I will try to use the cyberworld to wiki with him... it could be a site where I can give him some hints about life.... I am working on creating the weblog as I type this post....

2- I though about the Wiki-age and its impact on creating a new educational paradigm which depnds on mass collaboration and wikinomics...

3- Is it time for education to focus on the future? Instead of teaching the past, the new educational paradign should focus on encoraging students to "re-create the future."

4- The idea of "delete your Bookmarks" as book/set of activities that prepare the new thinking methodologies which relies on "knowledge on demand" rather than "memorizing concepts!"

5- Develop set of criteria fo the Wiki-age
and how since 1985, the world evolved from Information -> Knowledge -> Digital -> Wiki-age!

I got to Calgary and the GPS on the Acer's computer was excellent... it made me reach the Hotel with only one wrong turn... impressive!

Till the next post

-al