Erik on Software

Rave Run: Chesapeake & Ohio (C & O) Canal Towpath and Potomac River Waterfront (Georgetown)

Why a post on running within a blog that concentrates on business and technology? My first post in this series explained that one habit that I picked up on the road as a consultant over the years is always inquiring about local running paths while visiting unfamiliar locales for the first time. And I find running a pleasurable way to explore new places. Other posts have commented on how running has been a gift to me from an early age by helping me focus and providing stress relief. So in the spirit of a regular spread in Runner's World magazine called Rave Runs, I began a series of posts here to share interesting routes with other runners.

This past March, I was fortunate to visit Washington, DC for the first time. Unlike some other recent travels, such as to a Detroit area client this past month, I had time to check out the area for running opportunities ahead of time, and the Lonely Planet Washington DC City Guide made me aware of the Chesapeake & Ohio (C & O) Canal Towpath and Potomac River waterfront, which includes the recently expanded Georgetown Waterfront Park, a spot that over the course of my weeklong visit became one of my favorite landmarks for this course, which varied a bit but started from my stay at Avenue Suites Georgetown just east of Rock Creek.

The start of this course starts rather unassumingly on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, and can either continue west on M Street NW through the heart of the Georgetown shopping district, or south along the ramp for Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway NW. This latter variation is what I discuss here. The first morning I ventured out for a run, I headed through the shopping district. Although I continued my habit of running early, which not only misses all the shoppers and most other runners, I soon unsurprisingly found that I would much rather hit the trails at the beginning of my runs than the uneven historic cobblestone streets running through Georgetown.

While I may be accustomed to my daily runs on the crushed limestone of the Illinois Prairie Path and Great Western Trail in the Chicago area, however, I admit that the varied running surfaces on this course were interesting. The modern cobblestone paths at the entrance to this area, which includes a national historic park, are the first options that present themselves along this course, and provide a nice diversion when touring the waterfalls along the canal for the first time, but these paths are narrow, on uneven ground, and intersect with a number of streets continuing west. If you can plan accordingly, walking along these paths at the end of your runs is optimal because of the meditative water features.

While running surfaces vary, the width of each of the connecting trails is fairly consistently narrow. This narrowness can pose issues to the runner when considering the historic cobblestone streets, and during transitions of one type of trail to another, but once on the canal towpath, provided one is not traversing them during the day, these issues are minimized. In my opinion, the towpath that runs on either side of the canal is so narrow that it can understandably feel as though it was made for the individual, especially when lost in thought midway through a run. The only drawback here is that during the course of my runs these thoughts were only a stone throw away from falling into the canal, which might not seem possible given that the photos here were taken later in my stay as a retraced my route during daylight.

Georgetown Waterfront Park provides a short rendezvous with a boardwalk along the Potomac River, which provides a beautiful view of the Arlington, Virginia skyline before sunrise, and as you can see here, a chance to see rowing teams traversing the waters, at least after sunrise. The grounds of the park are pleasant, although my visit was during the Cherry Blossom Festival season of the year, so much of the vegitation had not yet surfaced from the colder months. Some runners may want to take note that the connection to the waterfront from the towpath is made via a staircase and underneath Whitehurst Freeway NW, which provides some lighting at night, but might be a bit disconcerting.

A series of stairways mentioned previously runs on either side of the canal towpath and makes the connection back to the Georgetown shopping district along and north of M Street NW. The last photo below is included here because I want to emphasize that not only are their varied running surfaces of interest to the runner, but varied inclines as well. While the waterfront and canal towpath are even running surfaces, regardless of which routes taken the runner will need to eventually take paths that are uneven, and in the case of the historic cobblestone streets at the top of the set of stairs pictured, a fairly steep incline. But most runners will likely enjoy this aspect of the course, and as a Chicago area native I can say that I most certainly did as well.

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Rave Run: Buffalo Bayou (Houston, Texas)

Rave Run: Ridges Road in Door County (Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin)

Personal Reading List: 2Q2013

My personal reading list for April, May, and June 2013.

Color Key: Special Notes, Currently Queued, Completed Reading. Updated throughout the Quarter.

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Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, Penguin Books, 2007.

Common Errors in Statistics and How to Avoid Them (Fourth Edition), by Phillip I. Good and James W. Hardin, Wiley, 2012.

Core HTML5 Canvas: Graphics, Animation, and Game Development, by David Geary, Prentice Hall, 2012. By invitation from Amazon Vine.

Drools Developer's Cookbook, by Lucas Amador, Packt Publishing, 2012.

The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business, by Rita Gunther McGrath, Harvard Business Review Press, 2013. By invitation from author Rita Gunther McGrath. Copy provided by Harvard Business Review Press.

Gold and Iron: Bismark, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire, by Fritz Stern, Vintage, 1979.

Instant Drools Starter, by Jeremy Ary, Packt Publishing, 2013.

Introduction to Decision Analysis (Third Edition), by David C. Skinner, Probabilistic Publishing, 2009.

JavaScript: The Good Parts, by Douglas Crockford, O'Reilly, 2008.

Leadership Conversations: Challenging High Potential Managers to Become Great Leaders, by Alan S. Berson and Richard G. Stieglitz, Jossey-Bass, 2013. By invitation from Amazon Vine.

Lonely Planet Germany Travel Guide (Seventh Edition), by Andrea Schulte-Peevers, Marc Di Duca, Anthony Haywood, Daniel Robinson, Kerry Christiani, and Ryan Ver Berkmoes, Lonely Planet, 2013. By invitation from Amazon Vine.

Parallel R, by Q. Ethan McCallum and Stephen Weston, O'Reilly, 2011. 

R Graphics Cookbook, by Winston Chang, O'Reilly, 2013.

R in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference (Second Edition), by Joseph Adler, O'Reilly, 2012.

Pro Bono: IEEE Chicago Section Statistician - Part 1

Over three years have past since my last post here on my pro bono efforts outside of the workplace. My latest pro bono contributions over the last few months have been working as Statistician for the IEEE Chicago section. The Statistician role is new for the section, and works within the Membership Development team.

Much of my time to date has been spent working to get familiar with the data that is currently available on our membership. The SAMIEEE database uses Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 11g. Unfortunately, my early efforts to obtain programmatic access to the database via IP address and port was not successful, so I create rough data sets via the web front end that OBIEE provides and then export for analyses.

At a high level, my CSV exports from OBIEE are imported to PostgreSQL, and then I use the R language with a package called sqldf to perform analyses. Traditional SQL statements can be run against database tables in this manner as though they were R language data frames, making it much easier to work with data for someone such as myself who is adept at SQL as a technical architect.

My plan is to get into more detail regarding the specifics of my setup in later posts. As part of this first post, I want to share the first visualization I created for the IEEE Chicago section a few months ago. A heat map showing the top 26 technical interest profile subjects (TIPS) of active IEEE Chicago section members, created using the above technologies along with specialized R language functions such as heatmap().

The Membership Development Chair has since used this visualization as part of his marketing efforts associated with trade shows, as part of his presentation on our membership. Creating this heat map was fairly straightforward. Although working with the R language environment and language is not intuitive for someone who specializes in Java, getting the right data to create this visualization was really the hard part.

While the TIPS list might not need an explanation, since it is essentially a list of technical interests in which members have shown interest, notice the labels for the three columns. Data was queried and sorted by primary interest, which indicates whether a member actually performs regular work in the area, followed by some work in the area, and some degree of interest, the least significant category of the three.

Traditional engineering concerns may comprise the bulk of the top 26 technical interest profile subjects (a somewhat arbitrary number that I chose, although the break off as to whether a subject made it to the heat map was set at 50 members in the regularly work category), but I found it very interesting because of my profession that Software Engineering was the top regular work subject, and one of the top subjects in the some work category. And Computer was the top subject in the interested category.

Working as Statistician for the IEEE Chicago section, my goals are to work with the Membership Development Chair to meet his immediate needs, as well as explore some ways that we can use the data to help understand our members. In other words, look at our membership at both an aggregate and individual level. In my opinion, some of the best insights will likely come from an investigation of the data at a more granular level, and then determine how findings might apply to the aggregate.

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Pro Bono: Taproot Foundation - Project Manager (Draft Direction)

Pro Bono: Taproot Foundation - Project Manager (Delivery & Assessment and Closing)

Treadmill Maintenance: Control Board Replacement

A couple years ago, I wrote my first blog post in this treadmill maintenance series on how to replace the rear roller of my Smooth Fitness 5.25, which blew out a day before what was literally the end of my three-year warranty. It so happens that on Christmas Eve a couple months ago, my treadmill stopped working. After turning on the treadmill, everything seemed to power up normally, but the roller would not start turning.

The folks at Smooth Fitness told me that the symptoms pointed to the need for the control board to be replaced. I searched for other potential remedies to no avail, because at the cost of $280, roughly a quarter the original cost of the treadmill, this was a significant expenditure. But I also did not want to purchase a new treadmill unless absolutely necessary, so I made the order.

During the order taking process, it was mentioned that control boards were on back order until the end of January, partially due to a recent company reorganization that apparently involved new owners. Of course, I had no choice in the matter in terms of supplier, although running outdoors during Winter season in Chicago was not immediately appealing.

My inquiry as to whether a guide to replace the control board would be included with the shipment resulted in a response that it will only involve four screws, and if needed I could make a call to Smooth Fitness for assistance. I assure you that there are more than four screws just to remove the cover of the treadmill, and that there are actually three screws to hold the control board in place, so I do not know where the number of four originated.

Removing the cover will reveal the control board, situated in the right corner when facing the treadmill at its head. If you were on the treadmill belt in a position to run, the location would be in the upper left corner, but all the photos here were taken with maintenance in mind. After five years of usage, the inside of the treadmill was fairly clean, although it gathered some dust after waiting an additional month for the order to arrive.

The shipment included the actual control board with three screws and two connectors, and it was very heavy for such a small part, so I was not looking forward to ever needing to return it due to the probable high cost of shipping it back. As the folks at Smooth Fitness had communicated, no instructions came with the shipment, but after comparing the old control board attached to the treadmill with the new control board, it appeared as though the most critical task would be to keep track of cables connecting the treadmill and control board.

In a matter of minutes, the swap between the old and new control boards was completed, but after powering up the treadmill, it was apparent that something was wrong. The digital display did not populate correctly, and the treadmill belt ran without abandon, running at apparently the highest speed the treadmill is capable and not permitting speed adjustment via the treadmill dashboard.

I have joked in the past that engineering may have been my original undergraduate field of choice, but I had never been interested in mechanical engineering. Chemical engineering was the specialization I had chosen, and I later moved to software engineering as occupation, so moving parts was never my strong suit and I realized that it was probable I had done the work here incorrectly, but after a couple attempts with the same result, I shelved the effort for a couple weeks and endured an increasingly colder Winter season.

After finally having some time to repackage the control board for shipment back to Smooth Fitness, I thought I would try one more time. I might not be mechanical, but I am also a German who does not give up at anything very easily. One aspect about the new control board that bothered me was the two connectors that came with the shipment. First, there were two, and the control board only seemingly needed one, and second, why were these needed when I could just use the old one?

In comparing the control boards, I noticed that the original control board in the above photo was apparently missing a pin for where the single connector was to be put in place. At first, I had thought that I broke off a pin because original release of the connector was rather difficult and I had needed to apply some force to remove it. But this did not end up seeming likely.

In taking a second look at the new connectors, and comparing the original and new control boards, I quickly realized that the number of pins had decreased from six to five. After replacing the original control board connector and powering up, everything immediately started working correctly. The start up sounds that I had heard hundreds of times were all restored, the dashboard display populated correctly, and speed adjustment and inclining and declining all worked correctly.

The remainder of this post shows the location of the other connectors with which you need to keep track while swapping control boards, because some of the connection points on the control board are simply not used. The first photo below shows the placement of the main connector that has been discussed, which has a black cable, followed by photos which show single red and black cables side by side, and blue and white connectors that are separated by an unused connection point.

To make this process easier, especially because your control board might be different, I recommend first making note of all cables that connect the control board with the rest of the treadmill. Looking at the overhead photo of the control board above, this assessment is not very difficult to perform, because most of the cables that protrude from the treadmill in general are cables involved with disassembly and reassembly. A couple treadmill cables awkwardly extend over the control board, but are not directly connected to the control board itself.

Before you replace the treadmill cover again, you will probably want to screw on the new controll board to the treadmill, all of this work of course taking place while the treadmill is unplugged from an electrical outlet. While extensively testing to make sure everything was working, I noticed that the control board did not budge at all due to the tight quarters in which it is located, but fastening it back is probably a good idea. Just make sure you do so as one would do during any assembly involving screws or nuts and bolts. Partially tighten all of the three screws to make sure placement is correct before fully tightening all of them. Again, these are very tight quarters and the tolerance level is very low.

This post concludes in very much the same way as the first in this series. The end result of my control board replacement is that the entry level Smooth Fitness 5.25 that I purchased five years ago is operational and fully functional once again. One very positive aspect of the break down, back order wait, and trial and error process is that my fears of running during the heart of Winter season in Chicago have been alleviated for the first time in many years.

And remember, what is often true for car warranties is apparently true for treadmill warranties: issues tend to arise as soon as accompanying warranties end. And as was the case with my control board, which was no longer under warranty, break downs appear to take place like clockwork. The rear roller needed replacement two days before the end of my three-year warranty, and my control board needed replacement almost exactly five years after original purchase. As always, would love to hear about similar experiences from other treadmill owners.

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Treadmill Maintenance: Rear Roller Replacement

New Book Review: "Infinite Shades of Grey"

New book review for Infinite Shades of Grey: Advanced Consulting, by Ian R. Hunter, 2012, reposted here:

One of the best consulting texts from an in-the-trenches been-there-done-that perspective, unlike some other texts in this space that are often a bit too formulaic to provide practical advice to consultants or aspiring consultants. While the content that the author provides here goes well beyond what the title and preface suggest, the book revolves around the premise that during a consulting engagement, "the process used and the potential solution should never be defined in black and white, but in infinite shades of grey".

A few years ago, I read a book by Roger L. Martin entitled "The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking" (see my review), in which the philosophy of Bob Young, co-founder and former CEO of Red Hat, is shared through several quotes. Hunter would agree with Young, who is quoted as saying not only that "there is always more than one way to succeed in any given situation...whatever we adopt as our first answer is bound to be wrong", but that "customers are not always right...customers lie or they are wrong."

Hunter comments that "there is an old adage that the customer is always right. Nonsense. The customer is talking to a consultant because they don't have the answers." Prior to this assertion, the author explains that "black and white (and the world of absolutes) can never properly define a client's problem, the process used to solve it, or the solution itself. Inexperienced or bad consultants see the problem, process, and solution in black and white."

"They know exactly what is wrong, exactly how to fix it and exactly what needs to be delivered. Most of the time, they are wrong and some of the time they are really wrong. The world is filled with bad consultants." The author furthers this thought by writing that "when you investigate a grey problem, you ask more questions, you dig deeper, and you look for not a single but many potential causes of the problem. When you utilize a grey process, you are flexible and adaptable, and this allows you to be open to more possibilities and minimize preconceptions."

This work is broken down into 28 different easily digestible areas of discussion relevant to independent consultants and those working in consulting firms. The content could use some editing, but this is a self-published work that might not have made its way through typical channels otherwise, due to the frankness that I especially appreciate as a consultant. And the "top tips" that the author provides throughout the book (and lists in his concluding chapter), show that Hunter is down-to-earth.

Other than the preface and the chapter entitled "Why are there Infinite Shades of Grey?", I also especially appreciated the chapters "Being in Demand and Understanding Your Value", "Increasing Your Value and Your Compensation", "Understanding Grey and Building a Relationship with Your Client", "Integrity and Ethics in IT Consulting", and "Tips for Your Personal Success". The author has over 30 years of consulting experience, and the numerous personal examples he provides (many of which are also entertaining) are sure to help readers relate.

In the last chapter listed above, the author argues that the technical consultant should be viewed as a pie sliced into four pieces, comprising technical knowledge, behavioral skills, business knowledge, and sales and marketing knowledge, and that most commodity consultants really only participate in a quarter of the pie (technical knowledge). After explaining what helps transform the commodity consultant into a value-based consultant, however, Hunter follows up by writing that "technical knowledge will always be the largest part of what you do and who you are, and it is up to you to figure out the best way to develop" it, the only portion of the pie that this book does not discuss. Well recommended.

Counterpoint: "Trojan Horse Consultants"

 

My first counterpoint blog post here, on a recent article entitled "A doctor's note for virulent consultants", provided a point-by-point rebuttle of why the author's arguments fall flat in the face of reality. In the words of the author, consultants are like viruses because viruses cannot exist alone, viruses can mutate into different strains, viruses multiply, all living things are susceptible to viruses, and viruses endure.

In demonstrating why these arguments fall flat, I actually used his words against him, and argued that consultants may be like viruses, but not for the reasons he mentioned. And now this cartoon appears with a single sentence in its caption. And a thousand words in the form of a graphic. Where are most of these additional words to be found? The fortress or the wooden horse?

In an essay on the virtues of consulting, one might say that these additional words are to be found in the fortress, concentrating on faulty clients. In contrast, one might say that consultancies are not needed, and pose hazards to organizational health. And so these additional words might be found in the wooden horse. But perhaps the unspoken might be found in the backdrop environment of both the fortress and the wooden horse.

And who pulled the rope affixed to the wooden horse? Was it someone who has since departed? Was it someone who has since hidden in the wooden horse? Or was it someone inside the fortress? And will the door to the fortress actually fit the wooden horse? Or will the inhabitants of the fortress need to accomodate for its size?

Asking questions that lead to results is part of my job as a consultant. An inadequate amount of good questions is what tends to quickly lead to inaccurate assumptions. Of course, in this case I am asking rhetorical questions because this blog post is not a two-way dialogue unless readers post comments. One of the questions that remains in this discussion is "Why is negativity seemingly directed at consultants?" Or asked in a different way, "Is the negativity on display really directed at consultants?"

The assumption here is that the message being communicated is negative because of the reluctancy implied by the castle guard. And of course, the Trojan Horse was the avenue by which the Greeks entered the uninviting city of Troy. By his statement, the castle guard is seemingly familiar with this story, with the contents of the wooden horse at the gate a known unknown.

In the context of business, however, the castle guard can represent any within a host of corporate individuals, and the fact that they are wary implies that they have had past, negative experiences with consultants. Unfortunately, such experiences can happen. Even if these are far between, isolated incidents can obviously have an enduring effect on the part of an executive or individual contributor.

There are various reasons for such negative experiences, and I would like to think that the vast majority of experiences my clients have had with me as a consultant have been positive. The Sixth Law of Pricing in Gerald M. Weinberg's "The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving & Getting Advice Successfully" says "If they don't like your work, don't take their money", and even though I have not been at liberty to make such a call, the philosophy is compelling.

Most of the unsuccessful consulting engagement scenarios I have witnessed were the result of strong human elements. There is a reason why the cartoon included here includes only human elements, and not the actual problem to be solved. It has been rare when technology was at issue, even though technology tends to continually come up in conversation surrounding these issues. Human factors involve both consultants and clients, and even though the industry tends to focus on communication between these two elements, it can be common within each of these elements as well.

One individual at a client with whom I engaged a couple years ago expressed that expectations of client management had changed once the presence of my colleagues and I had arrived. Essentially, what they had communicated was that they felt management had taken an about-face and that regardless of what they had been asked to do in the past, they saw the new direction being taken as some type of discipline they had to endure.

Of course, this was not the case at all. While I have certainly witnessed consultants who do not know what they are doing, the history of consulting demonstrates that the industry has evolved over time to the point where consulting firms are the knowledge bearers that travel between clients to help solve business problems using best practices that they have assembled over time for which clients are sometimes not equipped.

Unbeknownst to many, modern organizational structure itself is a product of consulting firms. So if viewed from a system perspective, the 80% that research has shown is needed for maintenance of a system is just as important as the 20% of resources dedicated to its initial construction. Client firms run their businesses, and the intended purpose of consulting firms is to step in along the way. But if your firm has a castle guard such as the one depicted in this cartoon, do not simply ignore their hesitation. A corporation is a team, and all input is important.

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Counterpoint: Defining Big Data

Counterpoint: "A doctor's note for virulent consultants"

New Book Review: "Team Geek"

New book review for Team Geek: A Software Developer's Guide to Working Well with Others, by Brian W. Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman, O'Reilly, 2012, reposted here:

Arguably the best text on the software development process that focuses on the individual contributor within the context of a team. When I initially discovered this text, I was wary whether it would have anything to offer, and if so, whether it would cater to new development staff or seasoned professionals, but after a reading I am convinced that Fitzpatrick and Collins-Sussman have something to offer regardless of technical career stage, and even offer significant insights to managers who are willing to learn.

After discussing the myth of the genius software developer, the authors present their thoughts on a healthy team culture, followed by discussions on effective team leadership, working with difficult people, using organizational manipulation to get things done effectively, and user engagement. At first glance, the discussion on user engagement might seem out of place, but my consulting experience has shown that this aspect of the software development process is important, and the authors tie it in very well.

The best part of this text is that Fitzpatrick and Collins-Sussman, both at Google at the time of writing this book (they have worked with each other at three jobs, and also written three books together), simply tell it like it is, and offer no fluff. Some of the topics that the authors touch are not really found anywhere else to any significant degree, and I hope that a signficant portion of the software development profession has a chance to read what they have to offer at some point in the near future.

Judging by the number and distribution of dog ears resultant from my reading of this text, the strength of the content is consistent throughout, unlike many other texts in this genre which tend to offer good content up-front, but then taper off over the course of the second half. While the reward for this quality will result in this book sitting alongside the best of the best on my bookshelf, it also adds difficulty to the review process, because I do not have the space for a "The New Yorker" magazine review here, so I offer a few quotes that will hopefully increase potential reader interest.

In Chapter 1 ("The Myth of the Genius Programmer"), the authors recount their speaking engagements over the past six years, and point out the distinctive trend in the types of requests they were getting for Google's open source Project Hosting service, which revolved around hiding specific code branches, hiding new open source projects until they are ready to be seen, and deleting code version history.

"The key motif here is insecurity. People are afraid of others seeing and judging their work in progress. In one sense, it's just a part of human nature - nobody likes to be criticized, especially for things that aren't finished. This attitude tipped us off to a trend within software development. Insecurity is actually the symptom of a larger problem." The resultant discussion then leads to their presentation on the foundation that all healthy interaction and collaboration is based (humility, respect, and trust), and point out the following important maxim: "Don't equate your self-worth with your code quality."

In Chapter 2 ("Building an Awesome Team Culture"), the authors discuss an important aspect that is all too often ignored in books of this genre: team culture. "Calm, easygoing cultures built on respect are more vulnerable to disruption by aggressive people than aggressive cultures are vulnerable to disruption from more easygoing people. Easygoing cultures need to be aware of this and not let the aggressive newcomer take over, typically by refusing to engage this person in an aggressive tone. In some cases, one or more of the more senior team members may have to meet the aggressive newcomer head-on to prevent her from harming an easygoing team culture."

In their discussion of the team leader in Chapter 3 ("Every Boat Needs a Captain"), the authors address risk in their presentation of team leader as catalyst. "Risk is a fascinating thing - most humans are terrible at evaluating risk, and most companies try to avoid risk at all costs. As a result of this, the usual modus operandi is to work conservatively and focus on smaller successes even when taking a bigger risk might mean exponentially greater success."

"One thing we often say at Google is that if you try to achieve an impossible goal, there's a good chance you'll fail, but if you fail trying to achive the impossible, you'll most likely accomplish way more than you would have accomplished had you merely attempted something you knew you could complete. A good way to build a culture where risk taking is accepted is to let your team know it's OK to fail."

Chapter 5 ("The Art of Organizational Manipulation") contains one of the many important take-aways from this book. "As an engineer, try to focus your energies on launching products over just about everything else. Shipping things gives you credibility, reputation, and political capital more than just about anything else in a company. Launching your product is a high-visibility event that shows you've accomplished something."

"As tempting as it might be to spend a ton of time cleaning up your code base and refactoring things, we've learned from experience that if you dedicate more than half of your time to this kind of defensive work, it's hardly valued at all and you'll find yourself in the somewhat embarrassing position of having nothing (politically) important to show for your time. This is not only a good way to get no recognition, but it's also a good way to get your product canceled."

New Book Review: "Playing to Win"

New book review for  Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, by A. G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin, Harvard Business Review Press, 2013, reposted here:

The content of this book focuses on the transformation of Procter & Gamble (P&G) between 2000 and 2009, and discusses the approach to strategy that led to this transformation, leading to a doubling of sales, a quadrupling of profits, and an increased share price of more than 80 percent during that decade. The authors discuss that although many good strategic choices were made, the company also had its share of disappointments and failures. And most importantly, "no strategy lasts forever".

In my recent review of "Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation (Second Edition)", by Kees van der Heijden, I mentioned that one of the best takeaways from what the author writes in that book is that "strategy is a highly dynamic area, full of fads and fashions that come and go", and that "copying ideas that 'work' for others is unlikely to be a winning strategy", because "success can only be based on being different from (existing or potential) competitors". The retrospective that Lafley and Martin provide in Appendix A would agree with these conclusions.

As explained by the authors, "strategies need continual improvement and updating", because as the authors have found, "competitors have copied P&G's strategies - on innovation, on branding, and the like - to an extent that renders P&G's resultant strategy less distinctive and decisive", and this is the challenge moving forward. In reflecting on its 175-year-plus history, the authors remark that "winning through distinctive choices is the always-and-forever job of every strategist", and if management continues to search for unique where-to-play and how-to-win choices that set the company apart, they should be able to further the success of the company.

Earlier in the text, the authors explain that many leaders tend to approach strategy in one of the following ineffective ways: (1) they define strategy as a vision, (2) they define strategy as a plan, (3) they deny that long-term (or even medium-term) strategy is possible, (4) they define strategy as the optimization of the status quo, or (5) they define strategy as following best practices. The authors argue that what really matters is winning, and that the play book discussed in this book, which provides five choices, a framework, and a process, is what is needed to win.

According to the authors, strategy is the answer to five interrelated questions: (1) What is your winning aspiration? (2) Where will you play? (3) How will you win? (4) What capabilities must be in place? and (5) What management systems are required? In chapters 2 through 6 of this book, the authors explain the nature of the choices to be made, provide a number of examples of each choice, and offer advice for making the choice given a context. These five choices comprise the "strategic choice cascade", the foundation of their strategy work.

In subsequent chapters, the authors present the "strategic logic flow" framework, designed to direct thinking to the key analyses that inform any strategy, and the "reverse engineering" methodology, designed to make sense of conflicting strategic options. In the former, there are four dimensions to be considered: (1) the industry, (2) customers, (3) relative position, and (4) competition. In the latter, which contrasts with traditional approaches to generating buy-in, there exist seven steps that involve exploring different ways forward and a wider variety of possible strategic choices.

As a consultant, I especially appreciated Chapter 1 ("Strategy = Choice"), which sets the stage by defining what strategy is all about, Chapter 7 ("Thinking Through Strategy"), which walks through industry analysis (segmentation and attractiveness), customer value analysis (channel and end consumers), analysis of relative position (capabilities and costs), and competitor analysis, and Chapter 8 ("Shortening Your Odds"), which explains that what is needed to find a winning strategy is to explore "what would have to be true" rather than "what is true", helping foster teams working together rather than battling one another, and surfacing differences and resolving them.

In addition, I appreciated the "Dos and Don'ts" sections at the end of each chapter, which clearly summarize the material from a practical context, as well as the strategic lessons learned side bars following these sections at the end of most of the chapters. At some level, I find the frankness that the authors share in these sections akin to how David H. Maister talks about his experiences in "Strategy and the Fat Smoker: Doing What's Obvious But Not Easy" (see my review), especially with regard to what Martin has to share at the end of Chapter 8 ("Shortening Your Odds"). Well recommended.

New Book Review: "R in Action"

New book review for R in Action: Data Analysis and Graphics with R, by Robert Kabacoff, Manning Publications, 2011, reposted here:

Quite a few texts on R have entered the marketplace over the last few years, so my decision to go with this text about a year ago was based on my survey of a number of reviews others have written for this and other books in this space, along with my personal experience with other Manning publications such as "Spring in Action", "Java Persistence with Hibernate", and "Hadoop in Action". In general, my experience working through this book has been pleasant, so I personally do not understand some of the complaints that other reviewers have made about the content that Kabacoff provides here.

That said, however, be forewarned that as with other texts, you should not expect to find all of your answers about R in this book. In my opinion, Manning publications are typically written in a format that fits well with the agile learning method with which I have grown accustomed during my consulting career. The author introduces topics along the way, sometimes more piecemeal that I would like, but his style forced me to explore other resources for more detail, bringing familiarity to other available resources. The number of plugin statistical packages for R has grown exponentially over the years (there are now over 2500), for example, so no book, not even "R in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference (Second Edition)", which I purchased recently, should be expected to be a one-stop shop.

This text quickly brought me up to speed with R language basics working with data sets, and introduced me to specifics with regard to R statistical methods and visualizations. Using R 2.15.0 for Windows, starting with the small data sets the author provides with which to run his examples, as well as sample data sets that the R language itself provides, I soon found myself working with larger data sets that the City of Chicago makes publicly available via its website, followed by using R at work. Your comfort level will be greater or lesser depending on your experience working with data.

As someone new to R, but not new to working with data, I especially appreciated the first five chapters that encompass the first of four parts in the book ("Introduction to R", "Creating a Dataset", "Getting Started with Graphs", "Basic Data Management", and "Advanced Data Management"). Like it or not, but as with any language, most data work revolves around first getting it into the correct format. After these first five chapters, the author walks the reader through basic graphs and statistics, followed by intermediate methods such as regression and analysis of variance (ANOVA), and advanced methods such as generalized linear models and more advanced graphics than was covered earlier in the book.

Personal Reading List: 1Q2013

My personal reading list for January, February, and March 2013.

Color Key: Special Notes, Currently Queued, Completed Reading. Updated throughout the Quarter.

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Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, Penguin Books, 2007.

The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum, by Temple Grandin and Richard Panek, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. By invitation from Amazon Vine. Advance Reader's Copy. Uncorrected Proof.

Core HTML5 Canvas: Graphics, Animation, and Game Development, by David Geary, Prentice Hall, 2012. By invitation from Amazon Vine.

Gold and Iron: Bismark, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire, by Fritz Stern, Vintage, 1979.

Infinite Shades of Grey: Advanced Consulting, by Ian R. Hunter, 2012.

Introduction to Decision Analysis (Third Edition), by David C. Skinner, Probabilistic Publishing, 2009.

JavaScript: The Good Parts, by Douglas Crockford, O'Reilly, 2008.

Lonely Planet Washington DC City Guide (Fifth Edition), by Karla Zimmerman, Lonely Planet, 2012.

Parallel R, by Q. Ethan McCallum and Stephen Weston, O'Reilly, 2011. 

Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, by A. G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin, Harvard Business Review Press, 2013. By invitation from Amazon Vine. Advance Reader's Copy. 

R in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference (Second Edition), by Joseph Adler, O'Reilly, 2012.

Team Geek: A Software Developer's Guide to Working Well with Others, by Brian W. Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman, O'Reilly, 2012. By invitation from Amazon Vine.