Tunnel vision? Brunel's Thames Tunnel and project narratives

This is a fascinating paper. How large projects are viewed. And when we talk large, I am talking very large, heading into the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars of revenues and/or costs. How you look back at them is fascinating. But the abstract first

Looking at historical projects has much to offer our understanding of project management, for both research and practice. However, there are important challenges in how alternative narratives about such projects are reconstructed and related to each other. To explore these challenges, this paper uses the example of the Thames Tunnel project, completed under the direction of Marc Brunel in 1843, and reputed to be the first tunnel to be built under a major river. In telling the story of the project, we focus on five alternative discourses: technico-rational; practice; networks of people, things, and ideas; politics; and society. The common response to such variety is either to attempt to construct an overarching meta-narrative, or to explore the differences as a way of highlighting the localized and contingent nature of knowledge about projects, or adopt some intermediate position somewhere on the spectrum between these two extremes. Instead we seek a different route grounded in a sociology of knowledge that
acknowledges simultaneous, provisional, and contested processes of division and stabilization in the ways that epistemic communities constitute knowledge through their own narratives and practices. These have implications for the stories that are told about project management and,
crucially, the activities and interests that both shape and are shaped by such narratives.

when one is leading these, the narrative is very important, one has to have control over the narrative. the impact of these projects live very long on and if they go belly up, then the organisation will rarely do any more of these.

This article talks about one of my hero’s, Isambard Brunel and his father and how they used the first tunnel excavation machine to build the Thames tunnel. I wont go too much into this, but some lessons learnt for me. Keep an iron grip on the overall architecture of the project, without the methodology in place, the project dribbles away and dies. The methodology is what keeps the business benefits on stream, these come on board much after the project has been completed. People will forget the project manager but the benefits keep on accruing long after, but if the architecture is wrong, then it will go wrong very quickly.

Second is that shit happens. Very frequently as Brunel found out. And one has to balance these frankly minor blowups against the overall architecture. If conceptually the architecture is fine and its just a minor blowup then one goes ahead…people will drop off, resources will be reduced or increased, stuff keeps on happening..

fun times but one has to be insanely confident to keep driving this, keep the big picture in one’s head and keep driving..

St. Peter's Basilica

This church has quite a lot of personal links to me son. It has the grave of saint Peter, one of the most astounding and amazing men. Fascinating history. His fierce courage faith drive ambition is extraordinary. 

Second is the fact that one of my heros, Michelangelo worked here for many moons. What a man. Renaissance man indeed. A painter, sculptor engineer poet and and and. What amazing skills and experience son. 

Then the sheer architectural beauty of this building. Architecture is painting with bricks and mortar and sometimes much more difficult. This extraordinary building is truly beautiful. Shows a wonderful confluence of art architecture Etc etc. 

Then there is the history. A very large part of the world's history was driven from this building son. Popes and people who desired Christianity's blessing influenced events across the world. 

And then you have the faith of billions of Christians who came here to worship and pray. The stones literally hum with emotions. 

You were tiny when we took you there in your little pram. We asked for Gods blessing for you under Michelangelo's dome and Bernini's magnificent pillars. Do go there again son with your wife and your children and ask for blessings again. 

Love

Baba

St. Peter's Basilica - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Basilica

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Splashing around in KL’s Monsoon

As soon as I got free in KL, I left to go take some photographs..and then there was torrential monsoon rains. I got royally wet and I loved it. You ask me, how did I feel? Well, this photo describes my feeling…

Funding Jihad via benefits

The United Kingdom went into conniptions of outrage and disbelief…when Anjem Choudary claimed that would be Jihadi’s should claim what he called as Jihad Seeker’s Allowance. I quote

The scrounger, who rakes in £25,000 a year in benefits, had been filmed by The Sun urging fanatics to live off welfare payments as they plot holy war.

He also ridiculed Brits who work in 9 to 5 jobs and called for world leaders, including David Cameron and Barack Obama, to be assassinated.

Yesterday dad-of-four Choudary, 45, said his comments had been “misconstrued” and claimed the Jihad Seeker’s Allowance call was a “joke”.

He insisted: “I was talking about the economic system in Islam. I was talking about how in Islam basic needs would be provided and how things would be different from what we see nowadays in Britain.

“As a joke in this talk to lighten the atmosphere I said ‘Jihad Seeker’s Allowance’. What I say in a lecture in a joking manner when I’m talking about the economic system should be taken in the context.

 

and then I read this about the Swedish Terrorist bomber.

Stockholm suicide bomber Taimour Abdulwahab received more money from the Swedish state than from his terrorist financiers, including a 54,000-kronor ($8,550) payout made after he bled to death in his failed terror bid.

All told, Abdulwahab received nearly 750,000 kronor ($119,000) from the Swedish National Board for Student Aid (Centrala studiestödsnämnden, CSN), the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper reports.

Consequences of Plastic Bag Bans

now i always thought that banning plastic bags was a no brainer, no? they are disgusting and end up creating crappy landscapes such as this.

 

I guess i shouldn't have been surprised that this happens. The law of unintended consequences, eh?

 

Most alarmingly, the industry has highlighted news reports linking reusable shopping bags to the spread of disease. Like this one, from the Los Angeles Times last May: “A reusable grocery bag left in a hotel bathroom caused an outbreak of norovirus-induced diarrhea and nausea that struck nine of 13 members of a girls’ soccer team in October, Oregon researchers reported Wednesday.” The norovirus may not have political clout, but evidently it, too, is rooting against plastic bags.

Warning of disease may seem like an over-the-top scare tactic, but research suggests there’s more than anecdote behind this industry talking point. In a 2011 study, four researchers examined reusable bags in California and Arizona and found that 51 percent of them contained coliform bacteria. The problem appears to be the habits of the reusers. Seventy-five percent said they keep meat and vegetables in the same bag. When bags were stored in hot car trunks for two hours, the bacteria grew tenfold.

That study also found, happily, that washing the bags eliminated 99.9 percent of the bacteria. It undercut even that good news, though, by finding that 97 percent of people reported that they never wash their bags.

Jonathan Klick and Joshua Wright, who are law professors at the University of Pennsylvania and George Mason University, respectively, have done a more recent study on the public-health impact of plastic-bag bans. They find that emergency-room admissions related to E. coli infections increased in San Francisco after the ban. (Nearby counties did not show this increase.) And this effect showed up as soon as the ban was implemented. (“There is a clear discontinuity at the time of adoption.”) The San Francisco ban was also associated with increases in salmonella and other bacterial infections. Similar effects were found in other California towns that adopted such laws.

Lilavati

I saw a copy of this book by Bhaskara II which Emperor Akhbar had asked to be commissioned in Farsi at the Mughal Exhibition in the British Library in London. It was beautiful. But the story resonated with me and I quote from the wiki site

His book on arithmetic is the source of interesting legends that assert that it was written for his daughter, Lilavati. A Persian translation of the Lilavati was commissioned in 1587 by Emperor Akbar and it was executed by Faizi. According to Faizi, Lilavati was Bhaskara II’s daughter. Bhaskara II studied Lilavati's horoscope and predicted that she would remain both childless and unmarried. To avoid this fate, he ascertained an auspicious moment for his daughter's wedding and to alert his daughter at the correct time, he placed a cup with a small hole at the bottom of a vessel filled with water, arranged so that the cup would sink at the beginning of the propitious hour. He put the device in a room with a warning to Lilavati to not go near it. In her curiosity though, she went to look at the device and a pearl from her bridal dress accidentally dropped into it, thus upsetting it. The auspicious moment for the wedding thus passed unnoticed leaving a devastated Bhaskara II. It is then that he promised his daughter to write a book in her name, one that would remain till the end of time as a good name is akin to a second life

now that’s a dad for you…

and while researching this, came across this place in Rajasthan..what a shame its falling to pieces..

How mentors help..

A great article on how mentors help..I will just quote a bit

How Are Mentors Valuable to You?

Mentors are helpful because, in addition to expertise in their field, they have a network of business professionals and, most importantly, they are willing to share what and who they know. People who mentor are likely to have had mentors at some point who helped them understand their industry better, hone their strengths or sharpen skills.

The mentor/ mentee relationship is a symbiotic relationship. "It is important to remember that this is a two-way relationship. While you are looking to benefit from the mentor, you are also looking to help the mentor," says Imad Lodhi, a veteran of IBM and the outsourcing industry.

While many times the mentee seems to get the better part of the deal, the person doing the mentoring gets something out of it, too. He or she can directly impact another person's life for the better. "By helping another person succeed, you help create a brighter future for all of us, and gain the satisfaction of knowing that you have made a difference in someone's life," Lodhi says.

That said, mentees should also do what they can to help their mentors. For example, a younger mentee may be more knowledgeable about building an online brand or being a social influencer. Sharing your knowledge is one way to contribute to the relationship.

I have the privilege of having some great mentors and the reverse as well. This week, had a good session and met up with several new mentees and students. I asked my friends, what is a group of mentees called and these were some of the suggestions:

• telemachi
• mentos (womentos as well..)
• mentees gmbh
• coo
• cuddle
• consultation
• tutelage
• gurus
• classment

heh, nice one, but it is nice to be in this kind of a relationship and help them..

Solitude and Leadership

Kannu

Here's an interesting lecture. Focus. Discipline. Some of the interesting aspects that we miss out on. I'm guilty of the same. Too much multi tasking. 

But solitude is important and I'm happy you are self confident enough to be comfortable with being alone. People rush about wanting to be social but if one is comfortable, has books, they have all the company they need. 

Love

Baba

"Solitude and Leadership" by William Deresiewicz [Send Me a Story]

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A speech on the value of being alone with your thoughts, delivered to the plebe class at West Point.

Solitude and Leadership
On the enduring value of being alone with your thoughts.
William Deresiewicz | The American Scholar | Apr 2010

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The lecture below was delivered to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October 2009.

My title must seem like a contradiction. What can solitude have to do with leadership? Solitude means being alone, and leadership necessitates the presence of others—the people you’re leading. When we think about leadership in American history we are likely to think of Washington, at the head of an army, or Lincoln, at the head of a nation, or King, at the head of a movement—people with multitudes behind them, looking to them for direction. And when we think of solitude, we are apt to think of Thoreau, a man alone in the woods, keeping a journal and communing with nature in silence.

Leadership is what you are here to learn—the qualities of character and mind that will make you fit to command a platoon, and beyond that, perhaps, a company, a battalion, or, if you leave the military, a corporation, a foundation, a department of government. Solitude is what you have the least of here, especially as plebes. You don’t even have privacy, the opportunity simply to be physically alone, never mind solitude, the ability to be alone with your thoughts. And yet I submit to you that solitude is one of the most important necessities of true leadership. This lecture will be an attempt to explain why.

We need to begin by talking about what leadership really means. I just spent 10 years teaching at another institution that, like West Point, liked to talk a lot about leadership, Yale University. A school that some of you might have gone to had you not come here, that some of your friends might be going to. And if not Yale, then Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and so forth. These institutions, like West Point, also see their role as the training of leaders, constantly encourage their students, like West Point, to regard themselves as leaders among their peers and future leaders of society. Indeed, when we look around at the American elite, the people in charge of government, business, academia, and all our other major institutions—senators, judges, CEOs, college presidents, and so forth—we find that they come overwhelmingly either from the Ivy League and its peer institutions or from the service academies, especially West Point.

Why women leave science?

One explanation: ;

And another

"The Girl Who Tried to Save the World"

Son

What an great story about a girl who saved the world in her special way. 

She is an extreme example of what I call as people who refuse to work to society's usual somnolent standards. Most folks are vegetables son, only concerned with their immediate family and friends. That's all. Which is ok. Each have their own views and rights to do what they want out of their lives. 

But every now and then, a great soul like this come along and blows you away (no pun intended). They have maniacal energy. They do not respect boundaries. They achieve huge things. 

Very impressive son. Dream big things and never let anybody say no. Make it happen. 

Love

Baba

 

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The life and death of Marla Ruzicka, a young aid worker in Baghdad.

The Girl Who Tried to Save the World
The life and death of Marla Ruzicka, a young aid worker in Baghdad.
Janet Reitman | Rolling Stone | Jun 2005

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On the afternoon of Saturday, April 16th, Marla Ruzicka sat in her unarmored Mercedes, talking on the phone with her friend Colin McMahon, a reporter in the Baghdad bureau of the Chicago Tribune. She’d had a “great” round of meetings in the Green Zone, she told McMahon, and was just leaving the fortified compound in the hopes of squeezing in one last meeting before the end of the day. The Green Zone, which sits on the west bank of the Tigris River, used to be the heart of Saddam’s empire, and now houses the U.S. Embassy, the Iraqi Parliament and other offices of the new Iraqi government. Outside of the Green Zone, in Baghdad itself, the security situation changes hourly. A route that was safe at noon could be unsafe at 1 p.m. A neighborhood that was peaceful at dawn could be in flames by lunchtime.

A petite, blond, twenty-eight-year-old humanitarian-aid worker from Northern California, Ruzicka knew the volatility of Baghdad as well as anyone. She was virtually the only American aid worker in the Iraqi capital. She was the founder of a small nongovernmental organization called CIVIC — the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict — which assisted families whose lives had been ripped apart in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Passionate and driven, Ruzicka worked seven days a week, eighteen hours a day, driving around the city with her Iraqi colleague Faiz Ali Salim. The two spent most of their days compiling data on the number of civilian casualties in Iraq, which Ruzicka then used to lobby American officials to compensate the victims’ families, often arranging for wounded children to be evacuated in order to receive medical treatment in the United States. It was revolutionary work — virtually no other aid group or worker has negotiated with the U.S. government on behalf of civilians injured in American military actions — but it was exhausting. Ruzicka, who had begun to demonstrate some of the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, was preparing to leave Baghdad the next day for a vacation in Thailand and then a long rest back in the United States. Leaving was difficult. “This place continues to break my heart,” she wrote to a friend in London earlier in the month. “Need to get out of here — but hard!”