Power and Ideas

A test of any organization is bringing the people who have the ideas together with the people who have the power to transform the ideas into reality.

Too often, the powerful are too busy to spot rising issues or new approaches. Their days are packed.

The idea people have more time, but they are in the wilderness. They can conjure up brilliant strategies but without access their insight is as meaningless as the skill of a world-class card player who never gets near a gambling table.

The extraordinary leader is on the watch for ideas from the outskirts. Those remote territories may seem unlikely but they are grand locations for a clear and untarnished perspective.

Music Break: Candide

Bernstein conducts Bernstein: The Candide Overture.

Bean Ball

American Heritage looks at baseball's rough old days:

Early organized American baseball took two forms. New Englanders knew the game as “town ball” or the “Massachusetts game,” which featured base paths laid out in a square instead of a diamond, and a rule allowing fielder players to put out the batter or “striker” by “soaking” him (hitting him with a thrown ball before he reached base). Town ball flourished along the eastern seaboard. A group of young men in Philadelphia, who formed the Olympic Ball Club to play town ball in 1833, may have been the first organized baseball-related team in America. In 1838 the created and published rules aptly called their “constitution.”

McGlobal

While McDonald's has benefited from its global presence during the current recession, its worldwide advance began decades ago. And it's had some successful -- if amusing -- results: In Mexico, there are McMollettes, or English muffins topped with bean, cheese, and salsa. The McArabia features a chicken patty with garlic mayonnaise, vegetables, and Arabic bread. There's Vegemite on toast in Australia and Chicken SingaPorridge in Singapore. And don't forget the McAloo Tikki -- made with potato and vegetables -- and the lamb or chicken Maharaja Mac in India.



Read the rest of the Fortune article here.

Chinatown

The story behind an extraordinary soundtrack:

It isn’t unusual for movies to be rescored under pressure, but Goldsmith’s music for “Chinatown” is so well suited to the film that it’s hard to imagine that he knocked it out at the very last minute. The original score, written by the classical composer Phillip Lambro, was heard on the soundtrack of the version of the film that was shown seven weeks prior to the film’s release date at a preview in San Luis Obispo, a small town north of Los Angeles. “By the time the lights came up, half the audience had walked out, scratching their heads,” Robert Evans, the producer of “Chinatown,” wrote in “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” his 1994 autobiography. Concluding that Mr. Lambro’s “dissonant, weird, scratchy” music (as Mr. Towne would later describe it) was responsible for the film’s poor reception, Mr. Evans called in Goldsmith, and 10 days later “Chinatown” had a new score. Mr. Towne, who was present at the first recording session for Goldsmith’s score, later told a journalist that “you could see the movie come to life. It was like you couldn’t see the movie with the other score, and now you could, and I thought, ‘Omigod, we may have a chance.’”

Quote of the Day

When I went into motion pictures, the studios told us, "You absolutely cannot do television in any form anywhere. It's just a gimmick. It's going to pass away." Those may have been some of the stupidest remarks in history. But that's the way Hollywood thought in those days.

- Charlton Heston

17 Rules for Job Seekers

My post on 17 rules for job seekers is up at U.S. News & World Report.

Naked Fridays

Employment attorney and party pooper John Phillips on an English firm's decision to have "Naked Fridays":

In the U.S., however, don’t do this. Don’t suggest it. Don’t ask your employees if they’d be interested in it. Don’t bother getting legal advice. Rely on a lesser known American labor and employment law proverb that there is a fine line between having fun at work and a hostile environment.

The Unstimulating Stimulus

As unemployment rises ominously toward 10 percent and the economy continues to appear listless, leading economic voices have begun to call for a second fiscal stimulus. The first stimulus was controversial among economists; it seemed to discard a great deal of what had been learned about macroeconomics in recent decades. The calls for a second stimulus seem to discard logic altogether.


Read the rest of Phil Levy here.

Face to Face

Cultural Offering reminds us that all of the high tech cannot replace being in the room:

For clients I will take a personal meeting every time. The week started with a client lunch meeting. So much is expressed by a head nod as a concept is explained. The look a person gives when they have a question. A smile when they understand what you are saying. The conversation that starts and ends the meeting.