applied strategy in leadership, teams, projects & communication

For YEARS now, I have been having trouble with Microsoft Word (all versions) crashing on my Macs (all versions of hardware and Mac OSX) whenever I quit the program.

I would get an error dialog box prompting me to report the error (fat lot of good that seemed to do), and then it would restart Word again, open my file back up, and then I had to shut down all over again. Basically, shutting down Word would always take two runs at it.

I spent a bit of time trying to figure it out, but just couldn’t solve it. I thought it had something to do with the “normal” template, and I thought I had it solved at one point, but then it was back. Along the way, I thought that a common denominator was older docs in previous Word versions, and although I think this was somehow the case, I couldn’t figure out the issue. Frustrating.

This morning, after having it happen to me again, I did a bit of research and finally figured out that it was related to issues with Endnote (bibliographic software – you’ll know if you have it), and some weird stuff that it does, even when you think that you have uninstalled it. I wasn’t using it anymore, but there was some remnant left over on my system.

Anyways, I basically went through my system deleting all remaining files and folders, and especially the reference to Endnote which was still sitting in my Word startup folder, and hey presto!  All sorted.  No more crashing.  Woo hoo!

And, an interesting and very pleasant side benefit has been that suddenly my Word is running a LOT faster.  It loads faster and everything about it seems a bit zippier, and it now closes nice and smoothly with no crashing. Finally fixed.

There is a simple reason why Apple is on a serious rise at the moment, and it’s all about the experience…  the experience of buying their products, the experience of using their products, and the experience of what happens when you have a problem.

I recently noticed that my iPad had developed an interesting issue with a rubber seal beginning to pop out of the edge of the screen in the bottom corner.  It wasn’t much, but it clearly wasn’t normal.  And then, I happened to also note that my iPhone had begun to show a bit of a yellow patch on the screen.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t normal either.

I made an appointment and went into the Genius Bar of the Perth Apple Store to get them checked out.  Fifteen minutes later, I walked out with replacements to both devices, and all I had to do was plug each of them into my Macbook Pro to get everything back and happening.  Boom.  Done.  No arguing, no hassling, no issues.

I love that.

Now, if only my current (note how I say “current”) phone provider could get their act together, things would be just right…  my current dispute with them over some erroneous global roaming charges feels like a personal re-enactment of the beach scene in Saving Private Ryan.

Anyhoo, kudos to the Apple Store people.

This is so lame, I can’t believe it passes for serious science… talk about massive leaps in assumptions and conclusions!  The same thing drives me nuts about a lot of palaeontology guesses about critters of old.  We find a piece of bone and build a whole creature from the smallest piece of the puzzle.  Ridiculous.

It’s been a couple of weeks of frustrating internet problems, with constant drop-outs and calls to our internet provider.

There’s nothing more irritating that going through the doofus “turn-your-unit-off” type routines, when you know all along that nothing has changed and that the problem is not on your end.  Had the same trouble last year.  You tell them that you know  little bit about this stuff and you’re pretty certain that it’s not your problem, but they have their procedures to follow so you go round and round checking this and that, etc. etc., etc.

Finally, I pushed them to exhaust all their support flowcharts and order a physical check on our line. Reluctantly, they finally agree to have this done as a last resort, and we get a call today from a Telstra guy to confirm that our line had “multiple faults” and he was surprised we were getting ANY internet at all.  What we were getting was apparently a bit accidental.  Not to mention frustrating.

So, all fixed, and finally we’re back to normal.  Only wished we could have skipped the half-dozen support calls and just gotten to the bottom of things last week.

This whole Charile Sheen meltdown in the most public way (including his new webcast/video and Twitter) is kinda like watching a train wreck in slow motion.  You want to look away but you just can’t.  Wow!

It’s intriguing to watch a guy who seemingly has/had everything just go into a rapid spiral and become a laughing-stock in the biggest way (nothing like going viral on the internets).  One minute you feel a little sorry for the guy, and the next you just wonder how such a loser got to be so popular, ever.

Some interesting contrasts to be made between Conan O’Brien and Sheen.  One went into a spin after being badly dealt with by a large media empire, but somehow managed to take the high road and end up in a very different place.  In a media world, I don’t think it’s easy to play and win against the massive power these empires wield, even if you are just and right, and Conan is a very smart guy to have ended up just smashing it in their faces through his simple and focused Twitter stream which kept to the high ground on the issues.  His talk at Google is a masterful example.  You can’t help but love the guy.

Sheen, on the other hand, does not come across as either smart, loveable or anywhere close to being in the right, and the media machine and the public are enjoying thumping him like a big stupid pinata, and I’m sure there’s more to come because I don’t think Charlie is smart enough to leave the room quietly and come back later (after all, we’re quick to forget)…

I’ve actually consciously tried to avoid following too much of his story at all, and yet I find myself confronted with the ongoing saga everywhere you go on the net.  Good thing our attention span in the media world doesn’t go beyond a few weeks at the most.

… for winter!

These hot, humid days are very un-Perth-like. This is not fun anymore. I’m looking forward to some cold, rainy days.

That’s all.

I recently discovered, quite by accident, that the Google search for my name brought up my blog at the top of the list (which is kind of nice), but also revealed that somehow the description text accompanying the blog link was a bunch of spam crap relating to certain well-known pharmaceutical products which generally form the bulk of what resides in my spam folders.

The situation was a little embarrassing because the search was conducted by a work colleague who was goofing around looking up names, and came across my “fame”.

Can’t quite figure out how to get rid of it yet.  Somehow, something has been hijacked, even though I can’t find any evidence of it anywhere.  Weird.  Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Probably serves me right for not updating this blog much in the past year or so…

I’m someone who firmly believes in the important of leadership in almost every sphere of life, and so I tend to pay a lot of attention to leaders and leadership in all sorts of places.  I’ve been watching our recent election and its fall-out with a great deal of interest, and I think there’s a lot to be gleaned from what has been happening in the last week.

My first observation is that Julian Gillard looks and sounds like someone desperate to stay in her job, and even if she manages to somehow cobble together a minority government, I don’t think it will work out.  Her desperation to stay in the job can only lead her to make some compromises she will regret later.  I’m sure there will be others who see it differently, but Labor is suddenly talking about all kinds of things they were definitely not thinking about before the election, stuff which smells like expediency and whatever-it-takes to stay in power.

My second observation is that Tony Abbott has, in contrast, seemed at ease and not desperate at all to do whatever deal will get him the top job.  I think this has been very smart, and in the long run he will prevail, in my view.  It may take several months and an inevitable re-run election, but I think he will end up leading the country.  If he does pull together a minority government , I think it’s going to be on very different terms to Gillard, and I think it would have more hope of succeeding.  But, there is no doubt in my mind that a Gillard minority government will fail, based on the way they are going all out to court the Independents.  Abbott has seemed calm and collected, and has portrayed a principled sort of air in the mad scramble, and I think it will pay off for him.

My third observation is that the Independents have screwed themselves over by having no strategic view at all of their potential influence in the Australian political process.  Instead, from a public perspective, they have quickly shifted to looking like a bunch hucksters cashing in on an accidental bit of power they have, and they look anything but principled as the week has progressed.  I think there is very little chance that whatever deal they strike with Labor would end up being stable and effective because it’s going to be built off Labor just trying to get back in whatever it takes, and as soon as possible Labor will shaft them because nobody likes to be shoved into a corner.  The Independents could have actually spoken of some really big picture things they wanted changed in the political process, but instead they have quickly sunk to looking very political and the essence of the very problems our system has.

I’m sure others will have differing views, but this is what I’ve been noticing.  It’s frustrating to watch, and demonstrates afresh how rare great leadership really is.

I’ve recently been following a bunch of stuff being written about the privacy debate raging on in certain segments of the media, and along with reflecting on my own “public” life, it’s got me thinking a lot about just how much you really want for everybody to know.

Some might argue that we’ve moved into a new space of laying it all out there for the world to see, but I’m not sure I buy that or want that, either for myself or others. I don’t have it clear in my head yet, but I’m beginning to suspect that maybe there are parts of our inner lives that are meant to exactly that… a personal space, not for public consumption.

Are you doing what matters most right now?

I hate that question, but it is such a critical question to ask and answer honestly.  Too often , the answer is “no”.  We fritter a huge chunk of our day away on absolute rubbish, activities which add no value at all to our lives.

I hate that question because I, like many people, have the incredible knack of staying busy and filling my day with a bunch of activity, but sometimes finish out a day and wonder what the heck I actually accomplished that would be worth writing home about.

So, how do you make sure that you’re being productive, and not just busy?  Here’s my best quick thoughts:

1. Plan out your day, don’t just let it unfold.  Just letting things happen as they happen is a sure recipe for being busy but totally non-productive.  It’s so obvious, but I’m amazed at how many people don’t start each day out with a game plan, a list of key objectives that need to happen.  Personally, I’m a huge advocate of 90 day goals, and creating structure in my life to stay focused on the big picture.

2. Constantly be asking yourself whether you’re doing what matters most right now.  I used to do some consulting work at a government department years ago where some of the folks would wander over to check out what I was doing, and there was an older lady there who was kind of like an old boarding school matron who would yell at them like kids and tell them to go and sit down and do their work.  I was always a bit shocked at how she kept them from being distracted, but they obviously needed it.  And sometimes we all need that…  and that question pushes us to go back to our desk and do what matters.

3. One of the great steps you can take to getting stuff done in your life is to intentionally stop doing some other things.  Sometimes our most important list isn’t our to-do list, but rather our not-to-do list, killing certain activities and habits which drag our time and attention away from what matters most.  And social media is sometimes one of our biggest enemies.  The key task in our age is to filter all the crud coming into our lives and figure out what is actually worth taking in and what is worth not spending any time on at all.

As with much of life, if you don’t take control of it, someone else will.

Right, I’m off to get some stuff done… :-)