Mark W. Shead

Shawn from www.zoomstart.com left a comment here so I went and checked out his site.  It is definitely worth a read.  He covers a range of topics.  His discussion of how search engines implode, was an interesting read.  I particularly liked the post about how to make 300% return buying cereal. It reminded me of the guy who tried to turn in a bunch of Pepsi UPC symbols for a Harrier Jet.

Anyway, Zoomstart is worth checking out and possibly including in your RSS reader.  I definitely added it to mine.

I’ve been running a contest at Productivity501 to give away an iPod Shuffle. In the next few weeks I’m going to have a guest post over at Problogger.net that talks about how to run blog contests–especially on small blogs where the goal is to get more readers.

I’ve started getting emails from other people running contests to let me know about their giveaways as well.  Brock from Existential Ventures is giving a way a printer to his readers. You have to join his MyBlogLog community.  I haven’t done anything with MyBlogLog, but it looks like it might be a good way to run a contest.

The ideal contest is one where you reward people for reading your blog.  Normally you don’t have any way to see exactly who is reading your blog and no way to contact a winner.  That is why most competitions make you leave a comment, signup for an e-newsletter, or something else that will give the blog your email address.  I’m going to have to look into MyBlogLog as a way to run contests.

Good luck to Broc on his contest.  I hope it works out well for him.

Google has gained prominence by offering services for free.  They are now making use of the same infrastructure to offer business class services.  For $50 per year you can get a 10Gb email account.  That will hold a whole lot of email.

Along with their online wordprocessor and spreadsheet, this could be a pretty compelling option for small businesses.  If your staff never uses 75% of the features in Microsoft Word, the online Google versions are going to be pretty attractive.

Concepts of Leadership Leadership is a process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent. Leaders carry out this process by applying their leadership attributes, such as beliefs, values, ethics, character, knowledge, and skills. Although your position as a manager, supervisor, lead, etc. gives you the authority to accomplish certain tasks and objectives in the organization, this power does not make you a leader…it simply makes you the boss. Leadership differs in that it makes the followers want to achieve high goals, rather than simply bossing people around.

I thought this was a pretty good definition of leadership. I like how it focuses on creating an environment where people want to follow instead of slinging authority around to try to force people to do what you want.

“Managing by walking around” is a popular idea with managers, particularly those with no management skills.  The idea is sound–get out there and mix with the people you are trying to manage so you understand what is going on and can hear the issues they have.

This isn’t a bad thing, but some managers take this and make it into what I call “wet dog management”.  They come into a room and shake responsibilities and edicts at whoever happens to be nearby.  Then they go to another room and do the same thing.  There is no clear strategy to what they are wanting to accomplish.

I had this happen once when I was working as the IT director for an organization.  One of the vice presidents came in and asked me to take care of maintenance issues at another site.  I said I’d be happy to do it, but I thought it might make the maintenance department feel like I was stepping on their toes.  I just happened to be the nearest person when he thought of something he wanted to have done.  It wasn’t part of a strategy or even a reasoned plan, he was just shaking the letting the responsibilities fly to whoever was closest.

Just as management by walking around has some value if used correctly, so does leadership by walking around.  If you want to lead people, you can go a lot further by letting them see your example.  If you walk around and remain aloof, they will probably follow your lead.  However, if they see you getting involved with customers and practicing the principles you ask of them, they will be much more willing to follow your lead.

I was looking at some of the definitions of leadership online. It was interesting to see how useless some of them were. For example, from wiktionary:

leadership (uncountable)

1. (dated) The office of a leader.
2. The characteristics of a leader (one who leads).

Not particularly thought provoking. The definition of leader is a little better, but fairly disorganized.

On the wikipedia side, things are a little better. The entry for leadership is fairly substantial and seems to cover a lot of ground. Overall it reminds me of a collection of random notes, but there is quite a bit of information in there.

Robert W. Lane (the CEO of John Deere) made some good comments about integrity in a speech at Yale.

Many of you have some corporate experience. You have tested yourselves on the field of competition. You know the critical importance of passion, commitment, teamwork, perseverance and imagination. But without integrity—that moral compass to do what is right, not just what is expedient—these important traits lack a “bonding agent.” They require integrity to make them truly adhere to business goals.

You can read more of what he said here.

Eric at AdventureLogue posted a link to my article about why you can’t drink the water in Mexico. This is based on our experience living in Durango Mexico as well as some trips to Mexico City. Quite a few people really seemed to enjoy the article. I’ve been a little surprised at how popular it has been. I guess everyone has heard that you can’t drink the water South of the border, but most people don’t really understand why.

From other people I’ve talked to it is fairly rare for you to be able to drink tap water in most countries. I’m assuming that England and Germany and the larger countries in Europe have water that you can drink, but the largest percentage of countries have water that isn’t safe for drinking. It will be interesting to see if Mexico continues to develop and if the water becomes drinkable in the next 50 years.

I finally sat down and made a list of the pros and cons of living in Durango Mexico. For example on the pro side is that there are very nice people and housing is reasonable. On the con side is the fact that food is more expensive than other places and they have scorpions.

All in all though Durango a nice place for us to live right now.

We met with our private Spanish tutor yesterday.  It was a good meeting and she was helpful.  Even more helpful than the Spanish instruction was her explanation about some things that had been puzzling us about Durango.

We mentioned that the food prices seemed much higher than what we had been expecting.  She said this was because Durango doesn’t grow any of their own food.  Almost everything in the stores has to be imported from other Mexican cities.  She said they do raise cattle in the area, so beef is generally lower cost and high quality.  We don’t eat a lot of meat, so we haven’t noticed.

We talked about what the average salary was in Durango and she wasn’t sure, but she did say that the minimum wage was 42 pesos per day.  That is generally what unskilled labor is paid, so if you need someone to dig a ditch or something like that, you are looking to pay around $3.83 per day per person.  42 pesos seems pretty low when 1 kg of tomatoes cost 18 pesos.

In Durango Wal-Mart pays 500 pesos per week. I bet Wal-Mart in the US would love it if they could get employees for $45 per week.  Wal-Mart is considered a good employer here because they high younger people and work around their schedule so they can go to school.