Managing in Turbulent

Times: Leading Your

Employees through

Uncertainty

A.J. Hyland, Carl Dill,and Jim Wanner,

I. Think Positive

Even the worst of times can present

certain opportunities.

II. Save Money and Morale

If you’re faced with cutting costs, look

at trimming things your employees and

customers won’t miss, but don’t rule out

more drastic solutions.

III. Must-Have Qualities for

a Leader’s Support Team

Staying cool, anticipating problems and

being willing to work harder in tough

times are essential characteristics for

your executive team.

IV. The Golden Rules of

Communication in Tough Times

Be honest, be clear and be quick to

keep employees updated.

V. Essential Take-Aways

If you have a clear plan to deal with

changes caused by upheaval in the

marketplace and you effectively communicate

that plan to the staff, you will

be in a good position to survive and

even thrive in turbulent times.

Sweden is the show case to the green revolution we ought to go for. In less than a decade Sweden has turned around their dependence on fossil fuels and has achieved their goals set for ecological living.

Political priorities for the Ministry of the Environment of Sweden.

The Ministry of the Environment works to achieve sustainable development. The riches of nature must be used in way that will enable us to hand over a world in balance to our children and grandchildren. Priority areas in the Government´s environmental policy are action to respond to climate change, support for technology with minimal environmental impact and ensuring that the Baltic and the Skagerrak and Kattegatt are living seas. Market economy institutions, economic instruments and research and new technology are important tools in the work of the Ministry.

Four strategic challenges have priority:

• Building sustainable communities
• Encouraging good health on equal terms
• Meeting the demographic challenge
• Encouraging sustainable growth.

I would love to see the developments achieved in the city of Malmo. I had the chance of having a glimpse when I last was on a cruise in the Baltic seas. I saw a field of wind powered generators.

MALMO’S GREEN SOLUTIONS

Wind, solar power and underground aquifers

Developers comply with green space factor and green points

Water features enhance biodiversity and quality of life

Car use reduced by good bus service, pedestrian areas, cycle paths

On-site recycling facilities – rubbish is separated

This week’s Newsweek is discussing the issue of : The Greening of the Corporation and 10000 delegates from the world over were also discussing the same issues in Poland this week.

Quelques années de cela, j’ai eu l’occasion d’assister à une conférence par Kjell Nordstrom, professeur à l’Institute of International Business de la Stockholm School of Economics. C’était dans le cadre de la convention annuelle des franchisés SPAR.

Seul le talent fait danser les capitaux. Plus question de continuer à faire des affaires de façon traditionnelle : place au business funky.

La technologie, les institutions et les valeurs en sont chamboulées. Elles constituent la triade d’énergies à l’origine du changement, s’influençant mutuellement et créant un village mondial chaotique en proie aux tribus et aux fusions.

Ces forces motrices sont en train de mettre en place un monde connecte original. Alors préparez vous à l’e(motion-nel)-commerce.

Depuis Norstrom et Ridderstrale ont publie un livre

Je vous conseille de lire le livre, à défaut, lisez un critique du livre qui résume en onze pages, excellemment bien les idées des auteurs.

The Nexus of Time and Space

My reading today brings me to the works of Paul Virilio who studies Time and Space and the notion the society is making out of these elements in the future. Our paradigm of Time and Space are evolving at a great speed because of technology. To be everywhere, whilst being anywhere at any one time seems to be the essence of the day.

Internet and the speed of technology bring the world to us in any instant: one can be aware and lives the world events through the internet portable phone. Our mindset has to change, we are becoming more ‘zappers’ and yet more reachable. Our minds and attention could well be everywhere and yet we are reachable.

As much as the speed of technology frees us from lag time of receiving information, it imprisons us in its overflow of data. More data to select from, may mean sharper and more precision in our analysis. Do we discern better and take better decision? Having the skills of Zapping have to be reinforced by a sharper skills of focusing.

Living the Here and Now

Paul Virilio’s thesis:

The war model

Virilio developed what he calls the ‘war model’ of the modern city and of human society in general and is the inventor of the term ‘dromology’, meaning the logic of speed that is the foundation of technological society. His major works include War and Cinema, Speed and Politics and The Information Bomb in which he argues, among many other things, that military projects and technologies drive history. Like some other cultural theorists, he rejects labels – including ‘cultural theorist’ – yet he has been linked by others with post-structuralism and postmodernism. Some people describe Virilio’s work as being positioned in the realm of the ‘hypermodern’. This description seems most apt, as Virilio works very much with the concepts and artefacts of modernism. He has repeatedly affirmed his links with phenomenology, for example, and offers humanist critiques of modernist art movements such as Futurism. Throughout his books the political and theological themes of anarchism, pacifism and Catholicism reappear as central influences to his self-proclaimed ‘marginal’ approach to the question of technology. His work has been compared to that of McLuhan, Baudrillard, Deleuze & Guattari, Lyotard, Ellul, and others, although many of these connections are problematic. Virilio is also an urbanist. He still lives in Paris.

Virilio’s predictions about ‘logistics of perception’ – the use of images and information in war – (in War and Cinema, 1984) were so accurate that during the Gulf War he was invited to discuss his ideas with French military officers. While Baudrillard infamously argued that the Gulf War did not take place, Virilio argued that it was a ‘world war in miniature’.

The integral accident

Technology cannot exist without the potential for accidents. For example, the invention of the locomotive also contained the invention of derailment. Virilio sees the Accident as a rather negative growth of social positivism and scientific progress. The growth of technology, namely television, separates us directly from the events of real space and real time. We lose wisdom, lose sight of our immediate horizon and resort to the indirect horizon of our dissimulated environment. From this angle, the Accident can be mentally pictured as a sort of “fractal meteorite” whose impact is prepared in the propitious darkness, a landscape of events concealing future collisions. Even Aristotle claimed that “there is no science of the accident,” but Virilio disagrees, pointing to the growing credibility of simulators designed to escape the accident — an industry born from the unholy marriage of post-WW2 science and the military-industrial complex. A good example of Virilio’s integral accident is Hurricane Katrina and the disastrous events that followed, which brought the eyes of the world upon a single nexus of time and place. From his article on Katrina, “Ah ouai, ce méchant vent, vent qui siffle, siffle. Tout le monde regarde, c’est sur toutes les chaînes, c’est l’émission dont le monde parle. Et c’est tellement, tellement mouillé la bas.” Roughly translated, “Oh yeah, that nasty wind, wind that blows, blows. The whole world is watching, it’s on every station, it’s the program the world is talking about. And it’s so, so soggy, down there.”

Dromology

‘Dromos’ from the Greek word to race (Virilio 1977:47). Meaning: the ‘science (or logic) of speed’. Dromology is important when considering the structuring of society in relation to warfare and modern media. He notes that the speed at which something happens may change its essential nature, and that that which moves with speed quickly comes to dominate that which is slower. ‘Whoever controls the territory possesses it. Possession of territory is not primarily about laws and contracts, but first and foremost a matter of movement and circulation.’ Source

Logistics of perception

In contemporary warfare logistics does not just imply the movement of personnel, tanks, fuel and so on but also implies the movement of images both to and from the battlefield. Virilio talks a lot about the creation of CNN and the concept of the newshound. The newshound will capture images which will then be sent to CNN, which may then be broadcast to the public. This movement of images can start a conflict (Virilio uses the example of the events following the broadcasting of the Rodney King footage). The logistics of perception also relates to the televising of military maneuvers and the images of conflict that are watched not only by people at home but also by the military personnel involved in the conflict. The ‘field of battle’ also exists as a ‘field of perception’.

War of movement

For Virilio, the transition from feudalism to capitalism was driven not primarily by the politics of wealth and production techniques but by the mechanics of war. Virilio argues that the traditional feudal fortified city disappeared because of the increasing sophistication of weapons and possibilities for warfare. For Virilio, the concept of siege warfare became rather a war of movement. In Speed and Politics, he argues that ‘history progresses at the speed of its weapons systems’.

La Journée porte ouverte de l’APM et la conférence du Professeur Michel Maffesoli a été un vrai régal. Les notes de satisfaction des adhérents étaient supérieures à 4.75/5. Le thème de son exposé était : le changement des valeurs sociétales.

Je donnerai volontiers à ceux qui le souhaitent une copie de mes notes de son brillant exposé. Un sociologue de grande réputation, il nous à partager son analyse du changement des valeurs sociétales. Il aime bien dire que la post modernité, c’est son fond de commerce.

C’est quoi la sociologie ?

La sociologie est une science qui cherche à comprendre et à expliquer l’impact du social sur les représentations (façons de penser) et comportements (façons d’agir) humains. Ses objets de recherche sont très variés puisque les sociologues s’intéressent à la fois au travail, à la famille, aux médias, aux rapports de genre (hommes/femmes), etc.

La sociologie naît dès lors non seulement de la volonté de décrire la vie sociale mais également d’apporter des réponses aux troubles sociaux. « elles répondent toutes, peu ou prou, à la même question : comment mettre fin à l’évidente crise sociale que traverse l’Europe ? »

Comment la sociologie est utile pour un entrepreneur ?

L’entrepreneur à travers la sociologie comprendra les phénomènes de société pour mieux exploiter son cible. Déjà ,plus d’une fois dans le passé, j’ai eu l’occasion de participer à des conférences sur la prospective et lire sur les tendances ‘Megatrends’.

Cela explique le pourquoi d’un discours d’un sociologue aux adhérents de l’Association Progrès du Management.

Qu’aurais je retenu ?

ce qui serait à l’état émergent

Le passage d’une épistémée à une autre prend au moins 50 ans. Depuis les années 50 ou 60 il y a saturation des valeurs de travail, de rationalisme, d’ utilitarisme et dans la temporalité. Les indices recueillis par Michel Maffesoli grâce à ces centre d’études en France, au Brésil et au Japon permettent d’émettre des hypothèses sur ce qui est émergent.

Quatre mots clef :

-  création
-  corporéisme
-  esthétisation
Рpr̩sent

En tout cas, Maffesoli me fait encore tourner la tête. Ma réflexion continue….

A la conférence de Michel Maffesoli du vendredi 5 décembre j’avais une question sur la temporalité.

Maffesoli parle d une Saturation de la temporalité : plus de projet, de demain (no future). C’est ici et maintenant (carpe diem). Un élément primordial qui sera lourd de conséquences.

Il continue plus tard en disant que le présentéisme est comme source d’ une invention du futur.

Mes bien-aimés, il y a une chose que vous ne devez pas oublier : pour le Seigneur, un seul jour est comme mille ans, et mille ans sont comme un seul jour. Deuxième lettre de saint Pierre Apôtre 3,8.

Ne sommes-nous pas plus près de l’eternel ou Le passé, le présent et le futur seront unifiés ? Comte Sponville disait que seul le présent compte. Nous avons un regard du passé qu’au présent, de toute manière ce qui est passé est bien passé, et le futur est incertain. Il nous reste que le présent.

Les deux journees passees avec  le Prof. Michel Maffesoli continuent a habiter mon esprit. La densite et profondeur de ses propos sont envoutantes.

Préparer ‘la route au Seigneur’. La lecture de l’ Evangile ce matin, m’évoque la préparation que je dois faire pour accueillir le Seigneur. IL vient pour nous sanctifier pour partager son message d’amour. A Sa première venue il y a 2000 ans, malgré ses annonces à l’humanité, IL m’a pas été reçu…Il est née dans une étable, incognito… Nous savons qu’IL reviendra ou plutôt nous comparaîtrons devant Lui.

Est ce que cette fois, serai je préparé ? Jean Baptiste m’a donné la recette de la préparation : ma conversion pour le pardon des pêchés. Je me reconnais dans ma condition d’homme avec ma faiblesse en toute humilité. Je me dois de faire le vide de mon ego. Je me dois de me vider de mon moi pour être rempli de Toi, mon Seigneur, mon Sauveur.

A Ta première venue, par la voix de Matthieu ( M25) Tu m’a dit que Tu es toujours présent à travers mon prochain. A notre prochaine rencontre avec Toi, Tu me demanderas : j’avais faim, m’as tu donné à manger ; j’étais malade, m’as-tu visité ; J’étais dans la peine, m’as-tu consolé ?

Ayant été baptisé dans l’Esprit Saint, j’ai le courage de reconnaitre ma faiblesse et de t’implorer la force et le courage de Te servir par mon prochain.

Seeing our island from the perspective of a Newzelander is an interesting experience. I invite you to read a press article written by Heather Ramsay last thursday. Apparently there are resemblances between Mauritius and New Zealand !

I have also learnt from the article the links between Tasmania and our dear island.

In 1642 Abel Tasman called at Mauritius on his way to “discovering”
Tasmania and New Zealand, but despite these parallels, it doesn’t take us long to realise that Mauritius isn’t an Indian Ocean version of home.

This morning I had the visit of a toastmaster’s friend, Gerard. He told me how he was enthused by his attendance to the Port Louis Toastmasters session, the previous evening. He had the task of evaluating a great speech by his friend Darlene who spoke on her new found love: the Toastmasters club. He was taken aback by the high level of the speech that he lost his ability to evaluate.

In Toastmasters, the evaluation speech itself is a “think on your feet” exercise. As an evaluator, you have to make the evaluation speech immediately after. Thus the evaluator has very little time to prepare the address and to deliver in a flowing yet structured, meaningful, pertinent and interesting manner. The thinking  has to be fast and the fluency of the delivery polished. The speech has to have an introduction, a body and a conclusion whilst being executed within the allowed time alloted.

Here is a four point’s tip on building an evaluation speech which I borrowed from a seasoned speaker:

1.Think brevity

Be aware that your audience values you getting to the point. They value complex ideas

being explained simply. Everyone suffers from information overload. If you don’t get to

the point, you’re adding to the overload.

2.Think structure

Place some kind of framework into your communication so that your audience can see

you are organized and have thought about your answer. You have focused your answer

into something digestible, something an audience can absorb. It forces you into brevity

and clarity.

3.Think threes

Strong verbal messages require focus. They also require substance. One item is not

enough. Seventeen items is too many. Three items is enough for you, and your audience,

to retain. Three items forces you to focus on what is really important. It also focuses your

audience on only having listen to three. Remember your audience’s attention span.

4.Think movement

Demonstrate your mental ability to be logical, and to move your audience through that

logic.

Some ‘think on your feet’ techniques:

What if someone asks a question to which you do not know the answer?

Mr. Davies advises that if you really don’t know the answer, say so.

“Our research clearly shows that people expect and value honesty and directness. They

don’t like waffling … Just acknowledge that you don’t know, but promise to get back to

them — and then get back to them.”

How do you buy time if you just need a moment or two to gather your thoughts?

“Usually, people know the answer but get flummoxed, pressured and have a hard time

recalling what they know,” Mr. Davies said. “One strategy that will buy you time

involves instantly taking your questioner back in time, to review what happened.

“For example, you are cornered by your boss to discuss your group’s sales performance.

You can quickly frame a response by grouping all the details into what affected past

sales, your targets for present sales and your strategies for increasing future sales.”

Mr. Davies has people prepare for his workshops by bringing a list of the 10 questions

they most hate to answer. For bosses, these often include: Why haven’t you given me a

raise? For sales people, one of the most hated questions is: Why should I buy your

product when the competition sells it for less?

Anticipating questions that might be asked helps you respond to the tough ones when

they do arise, he said. As an opening Think on Your Feet® exercise, workshop

participants are invited to assume the role of a famous person, and field the types of

questions that person might be asked.

For instance, a person playing the late prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, might be asked to

justify his decision to drive an expensive German sports car.

A hint from Mr. Davies: Fuddle duddle is not an acceptable answer.

On the dawn of 17^th August 1744, the Saint Geran , a majestic vessel under the command of Captain Delamere appeared in the North of the island. It was its first trip in the region.

Six months earlier, that is, on the 24^th March, several passengers boarded the vessel at the port of Lorient, along with cargo which included windmills ordered by Mahe de Labourdonnais for Villebague Sugar Estate, situated near Pamplemousses.

All of a sudden, at two in the morning, the ship was violently shaken. The alarm rang. Everybody, some still asleep, rushed outside on the deck. They were terrified by what they saw. The main mast was broken, crushing the lifeboats under its weight. Merciless waves had split the vessel into two. The passengers knelt to pray, the crew made a raft, which rapidly sank with its victims.

There were only nine survivors inspired by the tragic plight of these lovers, Bernardin de Saint Pierre wrote “Paul et Virginie” in 1787.This novel which vents the charms of the tropic has become over the years, the symbol of love and fidelity.

C’est un navire dont les Mauriciens ont toujours partagé avec fierté les secrets, surtout quand Bernardin de Saint Pierre l’immortalisa dans son roman « Paul et Virginie «.

Armé de 23 canons, avec un tirant d’eau de 600 tonneaux, il fut lancé à Lorient le 11 Juillet 1736 le capitaine Laurent du plessis lui fit prendre la mer pour son premier voyage de Lorient à Pondicherry le 11 novembre 1739. Par la suite, il fut commandé par le Capitaine Porée de la Toche.

Le Saint Geran devait faire naufrage le 17 août 1744 au Nord de l’île de France, aujourd’hui appelée Maurice. Ce fut le Capitaine Richard de Lamarre qui accompagna le SAINT GERAN vers son destin, avec à son bord un équipage de 149 hommes, 13 passagers, ainsi que plusieurs esclaves.