Old brass for new

Posted on 31 August 2009 by SJPONeill

An interesting starter on The Strategist yesterday – I tend to not do much blogging on the weekend due to being at the tight end of the Telecom ISP straw, no broadband for us, and coping with visiting family, TTT and builders – my response to which is below (with typos etc corrected).

“If there is ONE enduring lesson, it is that none of this is new – bits and pieces may fade in and out of favour but the basic themes endure…IMHO the writings of Clausewitz, Jomini, Napoleon (interpreted perhaps through the Maxims), etc are as topical today as they ever were…what we are constantly seeing, just as the leadership ‘manuals’ discussed the other week, is old (but still good) brass being polished up and presented as new…

Principles and rules are not necessarily things that relate to right/wrong or good/bad in a moral sense but are examples of distilled wisdom (Sun Tsu being an example of watered-down viffle-vaffle) and guidance that one is not bound to follow but which should be disregarded with care and caution…

So far as MBA v leader officers, maybe there should be an accompanying correlation between states of war/peace at the time that each type had precedence – I would argue (as I did on the CAC COIN blog last week if anyone is interested) that when the rubber hits the road and actual war breaks out, metrics-focussed leaders are a rare breed indeed. They may have a number-crunching staff but that is management and neither leadership nor command…

…of course, you need real war to prove that…”

I really feel quite strongly on this one as I connect it with the ongoing thrust towards metrics where such things do not exist and can not be accurately or honestly invented. If we invest resources in training the military to develop and then apply their professional judgement based upon their training and experience, then why do we persist in trying to second-guess them through a consultants and analysts lacking that very experience and judgement?

Maybe this resource would be better applied to metricising the Reserve Bank or other agents of the Government who seem equally dependent on chicken entrails or training and experience to predict the future and develop policy and courses of action.

What we really need is less number-crunchers and more command and leadership…a drive towards developing an ethos and culture based upon leadership and comand in those agencies still focussed (very Third Wave-like) on management and metrics…

Mancave update: left it up on jacks last night after an uneventful move – didn’t blow over or get washed away in last night’s storm.

Warning for South Island drivers: be on the look out for an old blue Bedford flat deck heading south on SH1 – Carmen has her first truck delivery job and is heading for Gorrrre this week…Update: This is now hurtling across the wastelands of the Canterbury Plains at speeds approaching 60km/h

New Acquisitions

Posted on 28 August 2009 by SJPONeill

OK, let’s get this one out in the open, well away from the closet…yes, it’s true, I like playing with toys – not just big boys’ toys like power tools etc (and in all honesty, most of them are Carmen’s!) and well over the guns thing now, but toys…model planes, tanks, ships, spacecraft, whatever – if it’s different in shape or markings or something, I’ll probably like it…

So yet another package arrived this week, much to Carmen’s ongoing disgust and eye-rolling (Honey, are you ever going to finish one?), all the way from the Ukraine and inside were (have a look at the Papermodelers site while you’re there):

Orel 1/100 Zhelezniakov I really love these big Russian river monitors – big and ugly and lots of guns…

orel 43monitor cover

Orel 1/33 Pe-3 This was just a stocking filler to maximise the postage costs but it still big and different and comes with guns and bombs…

orel pe3 cover

Orel 1/33 Ilya Murometz This has always fascinated me – at a time when most other nations were trying to get planes with one engine and a couple of hand grenades for payload in the air, the Russians were doing this. It strikes me just now that this would look good alongside the latest Russian 4-engined bomber the mighty Blackjack which I also have in 1/33 – now if only someone would do a Pe-8…

orel ilya cover

Have a look and maybe be enlightened – it’s something else I do…. there’ve been some really interesting entries on both the CAC COIN and Strategist blogs this week, regarding the core elements of leadership and what makes an army great. Although I have given a lot of thought to this subject (which may or may not be evident in my posts in these blogs), I’d like to expand further on the topic here but this will need to wait until the weekend when I have a little more time on my hands to structure my thoughts…

On the home front, the rimu spiral is in and looks great – although the current geography of the house makes it a little difficult to get a good picture of it – will be a lot easier once we (Carmen) chainsaw the front door out…Feral the Cat loves it probably because the dogs don’t…The man-cave move started today so will hope to see progress when I get home tonight…have visitors and twins this weekend…uh-oh…

PS Scale Model Expo 2009 is on in Wellington 5-6 Sep – go and have a look…

Less talk, more do…

Posted on 25 August 2009 by SJPONeill

Interesting discussion today at The Strategist on leadership….and another from Saturday on the ideal recruit for any organisation: less NCEA and more common dog….maybe we should send half our lawyers and HR specialists off to the third world (they could also take the three Maori seats now spare in Auckland with them so they could take turns sitting down) so they can pass on all their accumulated knowledge (which should take until tea time) but once they are there, we should leave them there are seem how quickly common sense breaks out to fill the gap…Perhaps if we were a bit more subjective and asked a few more questions based on gut feeling, there would be less court cases like that creep who got sent down forever in Christchurch yesterday?

And on the topic of doing more, the stumps are all gone (the old-fashioned way – no blasting allowed within 20 metres of the house) and the man-cave site is all good to go for the weekend now – so it will probably snow!! Feels like it at the moment…