Anthony Robbins: Unleash the Power Within, London, DAY 2

Cheering

A somewhat better day than yesterday. Robbins tells stories and elaborates on several life changing principals. The mass psychosis is still bugging me, but even I get carried away by the showmanship of Robbins. He is a master entertainer and knows perfectly how to build momentum in the room exploiting music, theater techniques and 12.000 hungry soles.

How to build momentum in your life?
Step 1: Put yourself in a PEAK state.
Step 2: What PASSIONATES you ? Choose to work in a field of your passion.
Step 3: Decide, Commit and Resolve! (Unleash your power!)
Step 4: Take immediate, intelligent, consistent and massive ACTION. (Do something immediately, urgency is power)
Step 5: Be S.M.A.R.T. (Choose Strategy, Measure your work, Assess whether it is giving you the emotional reward you wanted, Reinforce what works, Take new action.)

Question from an American Army General:
Why do marines loose their standards as soon as they leave the army ?
Robbins:
People’s lifes are a direct reflection of the expectations of their peer group.
Meaning: Choose your peer group, choose to work in or live around people with a higher standard than yourself. Only then you will grow. Your family should not be your peer group. Love your family, but choose your peer group.

Robbins on wealth:
If you want to become rich and wealthy (in all sorts of ways, not only financial), you need to become a teamplayer.

Biggest ‘secret’ of today’s session:
Proximity is Power.
Robbins explains using his own carriere as an example. His sessions, books and tapes tend to be bought and followed more by people from the entertainment world than people from the ‘haute finance’. Therefore it was easy to start a new venture in for example the movie or television world. Bringing one of his companies to the stock market however didn’t work out in the beginning because he had no contacts (no proximity) in that world. Only after investing time and money in introducing himself in the world of investment bankers it became easy to play the ‘financial’ game. Who you know is still the name of the game.

Emotional moments, a lot of them based on theatrical gimicks and
(film)music (Chariots of Fire, A Space Odyssee, Simply The Best ...)

Anthonny Robbins Unleash the Power Within Conference, Excel Center London, DAY 1

Took night boot from Ostend (Belgium) to Ramsgate (UK) and drove with my own car to London for Anthony Robbins conference. Took cabin on board, never done before, turned out to be wise decision, slept the full 4 hours on sea. Had to be awake to drive at LEFT side in UK.


Registration process: 1,5 hour waiting. Didn't like little flaws in organization.


Entering conference hall: again 1,5 hour waiting in another hall before doors are opened. Feel like cow amidst cattle. Conference starts too late. Lesson 1 for Anthony Robbins: how to learn to start on time. Off course: the man succeeded in selling 12.000 tickets. That's 12.000 people who have to be 'processed' and 'controlled'. But still, lessons could be learned from any average small town rock concert organizer.

First day of the conference. Mixed feelings. Atmosphere resembles 'networkmarketing' meetings a la NSA, Herbalife, NLP... or contemporary televised US church meetings. Loud music, especially music about winning and winners, 'powerful' images on screens (launch of rockets, -saw the space shuttle lift of at least 20 times-, numerous slam dunks of basketball athletes, ...), chanting on request, "say HA" on request, dance on request, clap in hands on request, "hug neighbour" on request...and 12.000 people who obey. An improvised intervention with a women in the audience turned bad after abrupt question with negative sexual connotation (interupting the woman outloud: "When was the last time you got laid?")(Saw several muslim women leave the conference room). Mass psychology. Absolutely not my cup of tea. I thought at a certain moment amidst 11.999 people in trance "if He would order us now to rob a bank, we would do it". He didn't ask us to rob a bank, he just said we had to walk on fire. And of course... we did.

Majority of 12.000 participants prepares to walk bare footed on burning coals.

Although the conference is not my thing, I must admit that the Man (God, the Messiah of superficial psychology) performed exceptionally well. From 13.30 till 23.00 he was on stage shouting, teaching, dancing, ...without break whatsoever. A performance only fit for top athletes.

A private picture of you and God backstage costs 1.500 Pounds.

Motivational course in London

I will go to London tomorrow to follow one of these extra-ordinary motivational courses of Anhony Robbins (picture). Actually I would never have gone there if it wasn't for this blog. Some 8 months ago a Google ad for a free management book appeared on this Impactroom blog. I was interested, changed server (never click on your own ads!), and applied for the free book. Not long after the application I received a friendly call from a company in Cyprus (!). They wished to check my address. Two weeks later I received the book. A few days thereafter I was called again to ask if I had received the book. I couldn't understand the dynamics behind this service. How many thousands of these books were sent around the world ? What was the catch ?? The book appeared to be from Anthony Robbins a name only vaguely familiar to me. The friendly man from Cyprus grew into being a keen salesperson for motivational courses from the author. My initial idea was to propose the Robbins organization to pay for a generic ad on this blog, but I soon discovered the mouse was asking the elephant over for tea. I learned that Accenture regarded Robbins as one of the world's most significant 50 management guru's. One reason why they were not so interested in taking a fixed ad :-) To cut the story short Robbins has been presented to me as the Messiah. Since I have been looking for my own private management God anyway, why not give him a try.

There is a leader in every manager. There is not a manager in every leader.

Just a thought while being sick at home fighting a virus.

Managers are born on the job. Leaders are born when they are seven.

(Just a thought)

Night Operations in Paris

The Wall Street Journal Europe works with a daughter company of "La Poste", the French Post, for sending copies via international mail to subscribers who live in far away areas, most of the time rural areas where our hand delivery companies can not operate cost-effectively. So it is perfectly possible that a subscriber in the far North of Sweden receives a newspaper copy that was printed in Belgium, transported to Paris, and forwarded to a far away area in Sweden via the International French Postal Services.

The cell responsible for the international press service for La Poste is embedded in a STP warehouse (STP stands for Société de Traitment de Presse). La Poste has 5 gigantic STP warehouses around Paris. More than 1,8 million pieces of mail are processed in these facilities every night (not all of them going outside France). To be able to follow part of the stream of outgoing mail, all blue boxes (see picture) carry an invisible RFID chip. Thanks to the chip La Poste can measure exactly which boxes left the STP centers at what time, on which trucks they were loaded or unloaded, and at what time and at which location they were returned again after having gone through the postal cycle. (It speaks for itself that such a RFID chip would revolutionize the way fathers stand in their households. From the day all household materials carry a RFID chip there will be no escape anymore from what has been perceived as typical female or motherly tasks. The excuse we don't know where to find 'the stuff at home' will cease to exist:-)

Garden Center Rijmenants

More than 1 year ago my son asked for a pond in the garden. Since I had no experience at all in this field we went to a big famous garden center in a nearby village. It is actually more than a garden center, it is a kind of mega superstore for the interior and the exterior. In the pond department we met Luc, a soft spoken man with a great knowledge about introducing a pond in your garden.

(picture: Luc in front of the new fish tanks at 'Rijmenants')

With the information we got from Luc we created a small pond at home. Because the children practice their sports on Saturday almost next door to the garden center, it became a habit to visit the center nearly every week to look for a new plant, fish, book or ornament. We saw Luc regularly, he became our prime 'pond-contact' for all our water oriented problems. We thought of him as a driven employee, loving his job, helping customers whenever wherever he could. Most of the time we met him while he was carrying plants, building stages for products, repairing stuff, or talking to customers. He invariably wears a green fleece or a simple t-shirt with the garden center's logo, as all other employees do.

Two weeks ago I learned one of the most important management lessons of this year. We were again at the Garden center. A new employee was working in the pond department. We had a problem with a filter we bought several months ago. I explained to the new employee a certain 'Luc' had sold me the machine. I asked if Luc could be called to help us ? The employee asked me several questions in order to try to find out which Luc I was talking about because according to him there were no employees with that name. A certain confusion raised during the conversation. "Listen", said the employee, "I don't understand where we are going here. The man you are describing seems to be Luc Rijmenants, the owner of the company, ..."Luc" is certainly not an employee." Then it was time for me to be confused. "We are probably talking about two different Luc's then I guess", I said, "since 'my Luc' didn't strike me as being the owner of this center".

Curious about his role in the Garden Center (it even bears his last name then: "Garden Center Rijmenants") I asked him last week if I had understood correctly he owned the place. "Correct", he said, "(hesitantly) ... I am the owner." Asked about the fact he always wears the same outfit as the other employees, he said: "I don't like to be seen as a tied up boss watching over my employees. I want to be on the floor in the middle of the customers and the other employees. I figure that if I also join my team in processing the 'ordinary' jobs (rack filling, stage building, ...) I am a better motivator than an anonymous boss on top of the pyramid. Plus, I will know than who they really are, what they think and feel. I always hope and think that my way of working on the floor and interacting with the clients serves the other employees better than a paper manual on customer service."

The Garden Center Rijmenants celebrates its 26th birthday in September 2007. Luc runs the business with his wife. They have 26 full time employees and a turnover of around 5 million Euros a year. During the day Luc works in the center, after hours he follows up on the administration.

Children's Procession

I wouldn't want to turn this blog into a tourist site but I can't help pointing out events I see or witness and link them to a more 'managerial' view on life.

This weekend I was invited to a 'children's procession' in the béguinage of the city of Lier, Belgium. It was a walk back in time. The local community from and around the béguinage organizes every year a children's procession to celebrate the virgin Mary, which on its own sets of the festivities of the city's yearly fair. The fair will then last for 1 full month.

Only a few hundred people came to visit the procession, (I counted 4 American tourists, who clearly ended up in the béguinage by accident.) Even I had never heard about this procession while living only 25 km's from this wonderful small town. The event is an event of passion. All efforts are voluntary, although I can imagine the bearers of the catholic shrines are given beer and cheese by the church factory after the event.

With small notes in their hand people of the organizing committee try to create an event-like reality on the spot, by asking children and bearers to take certain positions on the street, to keep each other's hands, throw small colorful pieces of paper on the street with a certain grace, ask mums to accompany little daughters with fear, have spare bearers ready in the procession when shrines become too heavy etc etc... There is no rehearsal for these kind of events. Once the shrines and statutes are out of the church the event is on. Almost all visitors know somebody in the procession which results in a continuous as 'warm' perceived communication between visitors and performers.

It seems impossible to duplicate the undefinable form of cohesion between the groupmembers of the club that bears a shrine and transfer it to a workfloor environment. One shrine for example was carried by 5 members of the "Royal Brave Boat Fishers". The fact that the Club was granted to carry the "Royal" predicate means it is at least 100 years old. How many companies do we know are 100 years old ? What triggers these men to assemble once or twice a week ?

Anna Vinnitskaya Winner

Anna Vinnitskaya from Russia won the Queen Elisabeth Competition 2007 for piano this weekend and I regret I missed her performance on television last week. Her name surfaced regularly in the comments during the competition so I knew she was one of the favourites. I had hoped for a good result for the Belgian candidate, Liebrecht Vanbeckevoort, and indeed he managed to win the 6th prize, which makes him an official 'laureate' of the competition (the first 6 nominees, 'the laureates', are called by position and by name, the second 6 nominees are just called in alphabetical order).

All the finalists are between 21 and 29 years old. They can easily be compared with top athletes. I would love to be able to analyse their personal and interpersonal skills determining why they and no one else were able to reach the finale of one of the most prestigious music competitions in the world. Suppose I have an opening in my team, wouldn't it be wise to look for people with their kind of profile ?

(picture: RTBF)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOQC8Bu2YWc

Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition

from left to right: the 12 fimalists of this year's piano competition

Mr. Dumont François (France), Mr. Khegay Stanislav (Kazakhstan), Ms. Vinnitskaya Anna (Russia), Queen Fabiola of Belgium, Mr. Rashkovskiy Ilya (Russia), Mr. Piemontesi Francesco (Switzerland), Mademoiselle Mangova Plamena (Bulgaria), Mr. Vanbeckevoort Liebrecht (Belgium), Ms. Lee Miyeon (Korea), Ms. Kawamura Hisako (Japan), Ms. Vacatello Mariangela (Italy), Ms. Lim Hyo-Sun (Korea), Mr. Youn Hong-Chun (Korea) (Picture: Bruno Vessié)

I am not blogging as usual. Blame it to the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition of Belgium. Every evening this week 2 finalists out of 12 are performing in Brussels. This year it will be the 15th edition devoted to piano. The competition started in 1937 as the Ysaÿe Competition, in 1951 to be renamed after Queen Elisabeth. In the past the Queen Elisabeth Competition organised its competitions in a four-year cycle: Violin, Piano, Singing and a fallow year. I understood they will skip the fallow year in the future, making it work around a three year circle. The Queen Elisabeth Competition is open to musicians who have already completed their training and who are ready to launch their international careers.

I admire young people who are able to meet ultimate goals or perform at exceptionally high levels. There is a clear line between hard work and talent. However there is a more blurry line between being talented and being a genius. Where ends the talent, where starts the genius ?

There are a lot of comparisons to be made between the world of managers and the world of musicians. More about this later on.

Looking for Martial Arts Managers, Black Belts or more

I am looking for managers with a certain degree (preferably black belt or higher) in judo, jiu jitsu or other martial arts for an upcoming international management survey. Please use the comment buttons to contact me.
(pictured: judo: ippon seoi nage)

High Performance Groups in the Organization

The Hudson Highland Center for High Performance performed research among 600 US and 2000 knowledge workers outside the USA and found that one of the biggest differentiators between high-performing and non-performing workgroups is that the leaders of the high performance groups protect their group from the larger company "so that we can do our work". (Annunzio, 2004)

New job ?

Thus far this was the strangest day of the year. I received independently two job offers today. The first job offer came remarkably enough through this blog. An intriguing Adsense ad-by-Google showed up on this blog last week. Normally you can not click on the ads on your own blog (Google might kick you out of the Adsense program you committed to). I switched to another server to be able to open and read the ad. Without telling too much (signed an nda), it involved blogging knowledge and a certain affinity with Europe. I was surprised (I am not a 'blog professional' so to speak) to be invited by the future employers and over an excellent swordfish lunch they explained me about their plans. All very, very interesting stuff.

When I came back to the office another department head of The Wall Street Journal had sent me a cryptic e-mail mentioning a 'possible opportunity' for me. We met, I received some more explanation, and again, without telling too much, it indeed could be a rare opportunity for me. If I would accept, my working life will completely change; I even would be working more in the environment of the content of this blog.

More about all this the coming days, I have a lot to think about.

55 Management Guru's

Author Carol Kennedy published her fifth edition of 'The Guide to Management Guru's" in January of this year. The book gives an excellent almost academic overview of the most important business minds of today. She listed the guru's alphabetically, which serves her purpose of portraying the playing field, although it is not as much fun as the Accenture management 'power list' :-)
Truth is, it is probably one of the better management books of 2007.

Here follows the list of what she considers the major management guru's of today:

1. Adair John: Action-Centered Leadership: how task, team and individual overlap.
2. Ansoff Igor H: The theory and practice of strategic planning.
3. Argyris Chris: Developing individual potential within the organization: single and double-loop learning.
4. Barnard Chester: Managing the values of the organization.
5. Belbin Meredith: Complementary roles in team-building.
6. Bennis Warren: "Managers do things right. Leaders do the right thing."
7. De Bono Edward: Lateral thinking: "the generation of new ideas and the escape from old ones."
8. Burns James McGregor: Leaders who transform and empower their followers.
9. Chandler Alfred D: Structure follows strategy in organizations.
10. Christensen Clayton M: The power of disruptive innovation
11. Deming W. Edwards: The key to quality: reducing variation
12. Drucker Peter: Originator of modern management thinking
13. Fayol Henri: Five foundations stones of modern management
14. Follett Mary Parker: 'Responsibility is the great developer'
15. Gantt Henry: The key tool for managing projects
16. Ghoshal Sumantra: Transnational management and the 'new moral contract'
17. Gilbreth Frank and Lillian: Efficiency through studying time and motion
18. Hamel Gary: Core competencies of business processes
19. Hammer Michael: The radical redesign of business processes
20. Handy Charles: The future of work and organizations
21. Herzberg Frederick: Motivation and job enrichment
22. Hofstede Geert: The causes of cultural diversity
23. Humble John: Management by Objectives as a practical methodology
24. Jaques Elliott: Psychological factors in group behaviour and the 'midlife crisis'
25. Juran Joseph M: Company-wide quality cannot be delegated
26. Kanter Rosabeth Moss: The 'post-entrepreneurial' corporation empowering individuals as a force of change
27. Kaplan Robert S. and Norton David P: The balanced scorecard system of performance measurement
28. de Vries Kets Manfred: Psychoanalysing the organization
29. Kim Chan W. and Mauborgne Reneé: Value innovations and 'blue ocean' strategy
30. Kotler Philip: Marketing as a management science
31. Kotter John P: Leadership and organizational change
32. Levitt Theodore: Understanding the true role of marketing
33. Likert Rensis: How leadership styles link with business performance
34. McGregor Douglas: Theory X and Theory Y: authoritarian vs participative management
35. Maslow Abraham: The 'hierarchy of needs' in motivation
36. May Elton W: Human relations in industry and respect for individuals
37. Mintzberg Henry: How strategy is made and how managers use their time
38. Ohmae Kenichi: Lessons from Japanese global business strategy
39. Pascale Richard T: Continuous renewal in organizations
40. Peters Tom and Waterman Robert H: The 'excellence' cult and prescriptions for managing chaotic change
41. Pfeffer Jeffrey: Key success factors in managing people
42. Porter Michael: Strategies for competitive advantage, both national and international
43. Prahalad C. K: Finding rich markets by serving the world's poor
44. Revans Reg: Managers educating each other through 'action learning'
45. Schein Edgar H: The 'psychological contract' between employer and employee
46. Schonberger Richard J: Each function in a business seen as a 'customer' of the next in the chain
47. Schumacher E. F: 'Small is beautiful': the human scale against corporate 'giantism'
48. Senge Peter M: Systems thinking and the learning organization
49. Sloan Alfred P: Decentralizing big corporations
50. Stephenson Karen: Mapping and managing human networks
51. Taylor F. W: Scientific management and the 'one best way'
52. Toffler Alvin: A world in flux and the rise of the 'prosumer'
53. Trompenaars Fons: Managing cultural differences for business success
54. Weber Max: How individuals respond to authority in organizations
55. Welch Jack: 'Maximizing the intellect of the organization'

The Wall Street Journal, night operations in Italy

16.00h (Mon 14-05-2007) : Italy, Milan station

The "Mandarin Duck", a Eurostar Train, will take me to Rome.

20.30h: Arrival Rome trainstation.
(Every big Italian railwaystation suffers from an explosion of flatscreens. There is no
flatscreen-free-pilar to be found anymore.)

Our new distribution team in Rome, Emilianpress, will take me to the printplant in Carsoli.
Second to the left, owner Daniele. Tonight I will accompany 'Goldy-Singh' (or Massimo for his friends), far left, on his distribution tour.

23.00h: printplant in Carsoli, 78 km from Rome:
waiting for "good copies" of The Wall Street Journal
to come from the press.

00. 20h: mailroom in the printplant:
IESE stickers are glued manually to the newspaper.
'Goldy-Singh' and I will leave printplant around 01.30AM.

01.55h: First stop: printplant Lito Sud.
The loading dock of Lito Sud is a connection point for dozens of drivers and different newspaper titles. Wall Street Journal copies are passed around to drivers from the TAV cooperative, who in the first place come to Lito Sud to collect one of the biggest local Roman newspapers, Il Messaggero.


02.25h: Second stop: HDR.
Certain copies for Fiumicino airport are dropped of.


02.55h: Third stop: Galetti:
Delivery of another batch of copies for Fiumicino airport.

03.00h: Fourth stop: IMC:
Delivery of a third batch of Wall Street journal copies for Fiumicino Airport.


04.30h: Rome Center: I will go to my hotel in the center of Rome,
but 'Goldie-Singh' still has some deliveries to attend to.
He will finish his tour around 10 AM.
(view from balcony of my hotelroom).


14.00h (Tuesday 15-05):
Taxi from Rome center to Fiumicino airport


17.30h: somewhere above the Alps: flying from Rome to Brussels

Following Wall Street Journal copies from Zurich to Milan

Wall Street Journal Europe has a new partner in Italy. My team is following up on the transition in the field. Most of our Italian copies however are printed in Zurich, Switzerland. I have the pleasure of driving from Zurich to Milan overnight with Sadat, a 26 year old driver, who left his job at DHL 1 month ago to come and join our Swiss distributor securing each night the 4 hour drive from Swiss to Italy. To illustrate that globalisation goes hand in hand with immigration, he explains that he originates from Macedonia, lives in Switzerland, speaks Swiss German with his young wife and child, but speaks Albanian with the rest of his family because that is actually his mother tongue. Even more in detail, his sister, Raimi, who got him his new job, working nights in our Swiss printplant as a mailroom responsible, now carries a Serbian name after marrying a Serbian man. And yes, he thinks Kosovo should be a state on his own.

To get to starting point in Zurich I have to fly from Brussels to Zurich, followed by a train from Zurich to Will, followed by a city taxi to the outskirts of Rickenbach.

Wall Street Journal and Barron's arriving at a retail depot in Milan at 4 AM after an exhausting 4 hour drive from Zurich.

Boomerang professionals

Nickname used to describe US managers of Indian origin who are asked to go back to India to work as an expat in their home country after having earned their stripes at a Western company.

It seems there is a hugh demand for ambitious global managers in India. Indian recruiters from prestigious search firms are looking for expatriate talent. A word of warning though: to flourish as a foreigner in India, "your really have to be psyched for it; it is a love-hate place," says a Goldman Sachs topmanager stationed in India.

Management Guru Listing: 50 Management Guru's

Below list was created by Accenture in 2003: Accenture used the term 'business intellectuals' for the following 50:

1. Michael E. Porter
2. Tom Peters
3. Robert Reich
4. Peter Drucker
5. Peter Senge
6. Gary S. Becker
7. Gary Hamel
8. Alvin Toffler
9. Hal Varian
10. Daniel Goleman
11. Rosabeth Moss Kanter
12. Ronald Coase
13. Lester Thurow
14. Charles Handy
15. Paul Romer
16. Henry Mintzberg
17. Michael Hammer
18. Stephen Covey
19. Warren Bennis
20. Bill Gates
21. Jeffrey Pfeffer
22. Philip Kotler
23. Robert C Merton
24. C. K. Prahalad
25. Thomas H. Davenport
26. Don Tapscott
27. Malcolm Gladwell
28. John Seely Brown
29. George Gilder
30. Kevin Kelly
31. Chris Argyris
32. Robert Kaplan
33. Esther Dyson
34. Edward de Bono
35. Jack Welch
36. John Kotter
37. Ken Blanchard
38. Edward Tufte
39. Kenichi Ohmae
40. Alfred Chandler
41. Janmes MacGregor Burns
42. Sumantra Ghoshal
43. Edgar Schein
44. Myron S. Scholes
45. James March
46. Richard Branson
47. Anthony Robbins
48. Clayton Christensen
49. Michael Dell
50. John Naisbitt

Compared to the list of 2002 Accenture decided to drop David Teece (49) and Don Peppers (50) in favor of Paul Romer (the new number 15) and Malcolm Gladwell (the new number 27).

Management Guru Listing: 50 Management Guru's

Below list was created by Accenture in 2002: Accenture used the term 'business intellectuals' for the following 50:

1. Michael E. Porter
2. Tom Peters
3. Robert Reich
4. Peter Drucker
5. Peter Senge
6. Gary S. Becker
7. Gary Hamel
8. Alvin Toffler
9. Hal Varian
10. Daniel Goleman
11. Rosabeth Moss Kanter
12. Ronald Coase
13. Lester Thurow
14. Charles Handy
15. Henry Mintzberg
16. Michael Hammer
17. Stephen Covey
18. Warren Bennis
19. Bill Gates
20. Jeffrey Pfeffer
21. Philip Kotler
22. Robert C Merton
23. C. K. Prahalad
24. Thomas H. Davenport
25. Don Tapscott
26. John Seely Brown
27. George Gilder
28. Kevin Kelly
29. Chris Argyris
30. Robert Kaplan
31. Esther Dyson
32. Edward de Bono
33. Jack Welch
34. John Kotter
35. Ken Blanchard
36. Edward Tufte
37. Kenichi Ohmae
38. Alfred Chandler
39. Janmes MacGregor Burns
40. Sumantra Ghoshal
41. Edgar Schein
42. Myron S. Scholes
43. James March
44. Richard Branson
45. Anthony Robbins
46. Clayton Christensen
47. Michael Dell
48. John Naisbitt
49. David Teece
50. Don Peppers
    
    
    
    

Selection criteria for a top managing editor

The Wall Street Journal, the second biggest newspaper in the US (after USA Today) has a new managing editor, Marcus Brauchli. Very openly, Gordon Crovitz, executive vice-president Dow Jones, laid out the criteria that were used to find the suitable candidate. Almost all the below criteria could be used in a search for any top manager, whether working in a newsdepartement or somewhere else.

1. Integrity is the first requirement and is non-negotiable. Marcus has complete personal integrity and is absolutely committed to the integrity of the Journal and our news operations.

2. Independence: As you know, there are frequent pressures put on the Journal; you should also know that only Paul Steiger knows about some of the pressures that are exerted and shields you from them. Our managing editor must be able to keep the Journal independent from pressured applied by CEOs, politicians, government officials and others. Likewise, the managing editor must ensure that we never follow accepted wisdom or are guided by the opinions of any "media class." In an era of pack journalism, this is a real challenge-and for the Journal this is a great opportunity even more to stand apart and often alone.

3. A managing editor must be a great journalist. You can catch up on Marcus's clips at your leisure, but let me highlight that being a great journalist now means not just the traditional standards for news excellence, but also how we tell the stories and give the news, analysis and interpretation to our readers however, whenever and wherever they want it. Just as none of you any longer is just a "newspaper" journalist, the next managing editor must lead the Journal in all its forms, print, online and through digital channels yet to be invented.

4. The managing editor must connect intimately with readers and online users. Marcus showed during Journal 3.0 that he truly understands how very different our readers' needs are today than even a few years ago. The print Journal must move to even more differentiated, "what does the news mean" and only-in-the-Journal coverage, while the Online Journal must become even more the place for what's happening right now.

5. The next managing editor must have effective newsroom leadership. Marcus has an excellent record as a change agent, whether Journal 3.0, the repositioning of the overseas Journal as compacts, the global news desk or the speedy system. In an era of change, we must embrace change; Marcus will be a change agent, as Paul was before him.

6. Finally, the next managing editor must interact well with other news departments and with other functions across the company. Marcus has worked at Newswires and at the Journal, in Europe, Asia and the U.S. He's also worked very productively with our advertising, circulation and other business departments, always protecting church and state.

POS Material with some Humour

Trader Monthly

Dow Jones Jon Housman, the former managing director of The Wall Street Journal Europe took a bite out of the magazine market last year. He started publishing the quarterly Style Journal, a luxurious free insert in the newspaper, and he made a deal with Doubledown Media to co-publish Trader Monthly in the UK. Trader Monthly is a beautiful glossy magazine coming out every 2 months. The most recent issue came out this week in the UK, keeping me and my team busy with the distribution and transportation set up from Belgium where it is being printed to London where it is being distributed.

Most startling article in this issue for mere mortals as myself is the astonishing list of what the best 100 Traders earned last year. The top earner in the UK is even from Belgium !! Pierre Lagrange, 44, works for GLG Partners. His estimated income: 295 -396 Million Euro.

(Pierre Langrange, Noam Gottesman and Jonathan Green joined Lehman Brothers in 1995. They ran multi-strategy hedge funds. A few years later they left Lehman to found their own company GLG (Gottesman, Lagrange, Green)(in which Lehman still holds a 20 % stake).

However this is nothing to what the number 1 Trader earned last year: John Arnold.

Arnold (33!!!!!) works for Centaurus Energy. His estimated income: 1.108 - 1.478 Million Euro.

Arnold created Centaurus in August 2002 with $8 million of his own money. That is 8 million dollar he earned at Enron which he joined in 1995 out of college. He was credited with booking $750 million in profits for Enron in 2001 by trading natural gas contracts (he was 26 at the time). His reward: an $8 million bonus, the largest bonus paid to any Enron employee in 2001.

Arnold started Centaurus with his bonus and three employees trading out of a single large room with a kitchen. Centaurus amassed $1.5 billion in assets since then. Today, the company employs 36 people, including a full-time meteorologist. It has been closed to new investments for two years now.

Russell Crowe Style Journal in The Wall Street Journal Europe

Friday the 13th

Again our quarterly glossy magazine, Style Journal, had to be inserted in The Wall Street Journal Europe newspaper. My team was dispersed over Europe to follow up on the nightly operations. It is a complex set up because the magazine is printed centrally in 1 printplant (in Belgium, Antwerp!). From there the magazines are shipped to our 10 printplants (all over Europe and Middle East) to be inserted. Leaving from the 10 printplants the copies finally will end up in 75 countries.

I was following the ops in the German printplant. A fantastic experience because the energy of hundreds of people comes together in one timeslot from 11PM till 2 AM. On top of that, our German printplant is in hands of an extremely professional Turkish Media Group. Although it is a modern sophisticated German company based in Frankfurt, the operation is 100 % Turkish. With their continuous investments in new machines and technology they almost always find a solution to our increasingly complex requests.

I am glad to say that in none of the 10 printplants a Friday the 13th scenario unraveled.

Mission Statement - NASA

Short, bold, beautiful, a mission statement and a vision only NASA can carry. First Vision I come across that dares to say the company is an investment in the future of the home country.

NASA Mission Statement

• To advance and communicate scientific knowledge and understanding of the earth, the solar system, and the universe.
• To advance human exploration, use, and development of space.
• To research, develop, verify, and transfer advanced aeronautics and space technologies.

NASA Vision
NASA is an investment in America's future. As explorers, pioneers, and innovators, we boldly expand frontiers in air and space to inspire and serve America and to benefit the quality of life on Earth.

Cambridge wins!

Cambridge won the 153rd Boat Race against Oxford today, in a time of 17:49. Experts had predicted a bigger margin for the crew with five returning Light Blues and two world champions on board. Oxford, though, started well and held off the Light Blues for the early part of the Race. Cambridge recovered, got into their rhythm and were a length ahead by Barnes Bridge.
Cambridge now lead the overall series by 79-73 (with one dead heat since 1829) and their win today prevented Oxford, winners in 2005 and 2006, from registering a hat-trick.
The 2008 Race will be on Saturday March 29th at 17.15.

Oxford versus Cambridge: Saturday April 7, 2007: 4.30PM

The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have been battling against each other on the water since March 12, 1829. Two students, 1 studying at Cambridge, Charles Merival, and the other one, Charles Wordsworth (nephew of the poet William Wordsworth) studying at Oxford, challenged each other to row four-and-a-quarter miles on the river Thames. The race became known as the Henley Royal Regatta (although the students abandoned Henley for London for their second encounter).

Some highlights :

- Wins: Oxford : 73 wins - Cambridge : 78 wins - One dead heat in 1877

- Oxford has won four of the last five encounters

- Course record: 16.19 mins (Cambridge in 1998)

- Sinkings: Three (Cambridge in 1859 and 1978, Oxford in 1925)

- 1829: First race

- 1856: First annual race

- 1912: Both crews sank - a few weeks before the Titanic

- 1924-36: Cambridge win a record 13 in a row

- 1954: 100th Boat Race

- 1976-85: Oxford win 10 in a row

- 1984: Cambridge boat sinks after ramming a barge before even under starter's orders

- 1987-92: Oxford make it 16 wins in 17 years

• Each year, the loser of the previous year's event challenges the winner to a new race.
• In the early years of the Boat Race, the crews wore no distinguishing colours.
  However, in 1836 Oxford selected dark blue , the colour of their stroke-man's college (Christ Church), and Cambridge adopted the "duck egg blue" of Eton.
• Seven million people in the UK are expected to watch the race on television, worldwide more than 500 million people will follow the race.
• In 1981 Sue Brown became the first woman to participate in the Boat Race (cox).
• Three time Olympic gold medal winner Matthew Pinsent rowed for Oxford in 1990, 1991 and 1993.
• In the history of the race there has been one dead heat. "Honest John" Phelps, the judge on the finish, was asleep under a bush as the crews arrived. When awakened and asked the result, he said "Dead heat to Oxford by four feet"
  

Oxford won the 152nd Boat Race in 2006

Difference Between Leaders and Managers (12)

Leadership is about a sense of direction. The word 'lead' comes from an Anglo-Saxon word, common to north European languages, which means a road, a way, the path of a ship at sea. It is knowing what the next step is… Managing is a different image. It is from the Latin 'Manus', a hand. It is handling a sword, a ship, a horse. It tends to be closely linked with the idea of machines. Managing had its origins in the 19th century with engineers and accountants coming in to run entrepreneurial outfits. They tended to think of them as systems.
But there are valuable ingredients in the concept of management that are not present in leadership. Managing is very strong on the idea of controlling, particularly financial control, and administration. Leaders are not necessarily good at administration or managing resources.

John Adair (Interview Director Magazine, November 1988)