Metrics versus atmospherics

As the political world reacts to the 'stunning' upset of Scott Brown's senate election in Massachusetts the media is full of talking heads saying "the people have spoken" and this marks the turn around point for Republicans. They say it is the beginning of the end for the Obama presidency. But on closer inspection Scott Brown won his senate seat with a majority of little more than 100,000 votes. That equates to 1.7% of the Massachusetts population or 0.04% of the US population. Does such a marginal change in the political landscape merit such hype?

Planning for the New Year

"Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump,  bump on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.  It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it, and then he feels that perhaps there isn’t."

A. A. Milne

As we start a new year invariably our thoughts turn to New Year resolutions and how we are going to make this year better than the last.  In management if you have not already started working on your 2010 plan (most large organizations will have started this process in September of the previous year) then it is not something you should put off for much longer as the window of influence for the year is rapidly shrinking.