With a tear in his eye (minute 5:15 in video)! Forever the hometown boy. I admire the segment of the program where the finalists distribute medals to the ball boys and girls.

From an IBM corporate post: “For Opel, the way the company treated people was its most important attribute. “Mutual respect and openness and honesty among people is what makes a company work well over time,” he said.”

Medals awarded on November 2, 2011 at dinner in Washington, DC.

My friend’s father was wounded in Italy fighting with the 442nd. The regiment consisted of Japanese-Americans, a majority of whose families were incarcerated at the start of WWII because of their Japanese ancestry and appearance. The boys wanted to show their patriotism and loyalty, fought hard to get a chance to fight and suffered the highest casualty rate of any regiment in the Army in Europe (13,000 served and awarded 9,000 Purple Hearts). There is only a handful remaining and the memories of their contributions are well faded.

Theirs is the most highly decorated unit in Army history. Their commitment to purpose and contributions to the freedom of our country are inspiring to recall at this moment.

“We also thank the government, which allowed us to serve in the U.S. Army to defend our country and to prove our loyalty to America,” Sakato said.

Especially when a senior executive is sentenced to a prison term or a former Board member passes away or when a icon of the industry passes away.

Our younger son was born tall and hasn’t stop since. He plays on the junior varsity basketball team with a strict regimen of four practice shots per month, maybe less. His preferred sport is lacrosse where he, in true form, is catching a big wave at an opportune moment. Just ask Nike and ESPN. Even though lax is a spring season sport, one can play organized lacrosse year-round: leagues include the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, complete with helmet, pads and crosse. BTW, lacrosse received its name when the visiting team, aka the French Priests, saw the Canadian Indians playing their village to village game and declared that their sticks looked like the ceremonial cross that the bishops carried. OK, so maybe FCA teams are not so ironic after all. And there is Fall Ball and Frosty Ball (winter,’natch) and post winter but before spring ball – not really, but it is kind of an endless season. Which brings me to the concept of traveling teams, those things I scoffed at and derided when other parents told me of their lost weekends driving around the state, region and even to interstate venues. I think some place north of someplace that I have never been to.

Right you are, comeuppance time. Or should I describe it as ‘I know that I cannot afford either a new bbq grill or a new lawn-mower, but how could I not seize the chance(s) to invest $700 for a weekend away in the heat, rain and chill to watch other miserable parents watch their children pretend to be on ESPN.’ Away tournaments are kind of attractive, at least one is not asked to cook-out or to cut the grass. But, on Mondays, I look forward to getting in the car on Friday for a journey to the away tournaments entitled Select or Showcase, cause this is where the scholarships to D-1, D-2 and D-3 schools are awarded. We’re not talking college, we’re talking divisions of college. I cannot tell if being 50th of 100 in D-1 schools is better or equal or worse than being in the top 10 of a D-3 school?! I do know this: athletic scholarships are the dope of college applications = get those 15 year olds thinking about life at 22 as soon as possible, complete with a $600 HD video package of how he performed at the Select Camp so that the other coaches can view junior’s talents on-line asap. I’d offer a sarcastic comment including Harvard or Michigan or other elite institutions, but they are all rushing into lax as fast as possible. Untapped revenue streams have to be tapped and women’s tennis is not the spring draw desired.

I never dreamed that a sport that I never dreamed of when I was young would occupy so much of my attention and disposable income. How about this: I’m a certified high school lacrosse ref. I mean, how else could I learn about this simple and complex game?! Run, shoot, score…with face-offs, creases, warding and slashing. Happily, it all happens in a hurry with lots of scoring. In short, not golf. I plan to use lax as my vantage point for the college application process. Once again indicating that even though most of us will never play a professional sport, there is no harm in making a business out it anyway.

I read this biography while flying back and forth to meet with senior executives of a Canadian Bank. On the late night flight to Raleigh, I sat next to a young, napping woman who awoke as the plane touched-down, checking her iPhone immediately. Wanting to share my thrill of the biography, I offered “if you like the phone, you’ll probably enjoy this biography.” She stared for a split second and replied, “Apple has changed my work completely. The products allow me to do my work.” “What do you do?”, I asked. “Designer. Used to work for Nokia but they never believed that design mattered first. Engineering came first. Now I work in Berlin and visit Raleigh to help with a local agency. Some of the founders of FROG (Apple’s own design firm) founded this agency.” (BTW, how Helmut Esslinger of FROG remembers Steve Jobs). “Oh,” mumbled the stunned Christopher, trying to imagine if in 45 seconds such an honest, spontaneous exchange of personal, public and historical information could ever take place between clients of other consumer electronics products.

Initial conclusions upon finishing the biography: 1) why doesn’t Apple’s iBooks let one gift an eBook as I’d give 10 away today?! 2) Steve Jobs was weird and weirdly unique and there will never be another like him — and this is not all bad. How’s that!? from a fanboy. As my Apple friend informed me, “yes, there has definitely been a shift at the company over the past three weeks and maybe we can use the change to better operationalize some of the success and processes as we are bursting at the seams with systems catching up to creative and physical output.” 3) it’s up to us to carry-on in some manner, in some small way what Steve Jobs accomplished in so many significant ways. Of course, behaving different is hard. Maybe I should try it.

Over the past 18 months of speaking with banking executives of many sizes and risk profiles, nearly all react positively to the Simon Sinek description of why Apple is so successful…because they know Why they do things; they know what they believe. Below is an excerpt from the biography where Tim Cook offers his description of what Apple believes in.

“We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products, and that’s not changing. We are constantly focusing on innovation. We believe in the simple not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution. We believe in saying no to thousands of projects, so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us. We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot. And frankly, we don’t settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the self-honesty to admit when we’re wrong and the courage to change. And I think, regardless of who is in what job, those values are so embedded in this company that Apple will do extremely well.”
Tim Cook Apple CEO pg 488 Steve Jobs by WalterJacobson.

Mourning is over. Time to get busy.

19 October 2011 Remembrance Celebration at Cuppertino Campus

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” Stanford Commencement 1995 (he did not graduate university).

Steve Jobs voice-over in 1997. Released commercially with VO by Richard Dreyfuss.

Mr. Jobs made no secret of his focus on design; in a Jan. 24, 2000, interview, Fortune magazine asked if it was an “obsession” and whether it was “an inborn instinct or what?”

“We don’t have good language to talk about this kind of thing,” Mr. Jobs replied. “In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.” From 10/8/2011 NYT article.

Final statement of personal mourning: The Onion had it right, nearly perfectly so. It’s funny, I don’t care who you are (thx 2 LTCG).

“Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple Computers and the only American in the country who had any clue what the fuck he was doing, died Wednesday at the age of 56. “We haven’t just lost a great innovator, leader, and businessman, we’ve literally lost the only person in this country who actually had his shit together and knew what the hell was going on,” a statement from President Barack Obama read in part, adding that Jobs will be remembered both for the life-changing products he created and for the fact that he was able to sit down, think clearly, and execute his ideas–attributes he shared with no other U.S. citizen.”

Time to get busy in honor of this important man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sOlqqriBvUM
Jobs speaking about NEXT.

New York is overwhelming which is why everyone from everywhere is eager to see it. Over the 8 days in my Hilton pied-a-terre, I visited the Statue of Liberty, shared the same corners of Mid-Town as the President of Iran, toured the USS Intrepid Museum as well as the opening of IBM’s Think and MOMA’s Talk to Me exhibits in addition to a birthday party at BowlMor, several delicious dinners and sights of fashion and individuality that I could not see in a lifetime in Durham. Yet, I was completely amazed by the falafel truck owner who sold 1,000s of meals per day to nearly every market segment imaginable: tourists, school groups, financial execs, visitors, hometowners, even other food-truck vendors. The lines were so long, like 150 people, that I asked a chowing-down limo driver “what is he serving?!” He replied, “the lines are usually longer…all of the way down the block.” OK! The Unstoppable Power of a Good & Well-Executed Idea. Over a couple of days, I observed this food-truck’s supply chain of mini-vans and cars bringing to him vats and cartons of chick-peas and tomatoes and utensils. Meanwhile, Kodak is down to its last couple of hundred million because it never figured-out how to compete with the digital camera marketplace that it invented (you could look it up).

Of course, what is impressive about New York is all of the things that you can do and still be disappointed by what you didn’t do or even know that there was to do. The more that I visit, the more that I realize how segmented is its geography and neighborhoods. Mid-Town is far from East Village, although only a $15 cab ride; 6th Ave and 53rd is a long way from Pier 82, although only a 25 minute walk. Seeing one’s world through the eyes of a visitor is recalibrating. We, me with my Swedish and Lithuanian guests, hustled on Sunday morning for the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. First, underground on the #1 train to the base of the Island, aka Battery Park. Out of the subway tunnel into the open space of the Park; into the Homeland Security tent then on board a jam-packed ferry to the Statue of Liberty. That one has to nearly undress for security purposes in order to visit the Statue could be thought provoking. Happily, the symbol of America’s premise elegantly inspires as we discussed the chaotic and had-to-be dangerous journeys that awaited the immigrants for whom Ellis Island and the Statue meant so much in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. My Swedish friend mused ‘why did we select Minnesota as our rallying point?! Couldn’t they have chosen Florida?!” Last week, Hewlett-Packard fired and hired its 4th and 5th CEOs in 6 years now favoring the former CEO of eBay. Perhaps there is an auction in the works.

We were all impressed by the size and capabilities of the USS Intrepid, a World War II vintage aircraft carrier. More impressive to my corporate guests was that this enormous and enormously complicated ship was built in about two years. Such a feat combines examples of motivated teamwork, fearful necessity and bottomless budget. During our own planning discussions, we laughed a couple of times about ‘getting it (our tasks) done’ in less time than the construction of the Intrepid.

Our Innovation Workshop concluded with a visit to IBM’s Think Exhibit at Lincoln Center. This venue intends to celebrate IBM’s Centennial, promote its interconnection with the global economy and to relate itself to the simply brilliant and brilliantly simple discoveries in astronomy, medicine and communications over recorded history. I’m stuck recalling a video clip of President John Kennedy announcing The Moon Program at Rice University.

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

Could you imagine, don’t you wish that we would exhibit such political conviction and collective fortitude in the face of the challenges and opportunities of our time by asking not what our country can do for us….

This launch page lay-out with buttons that take users directly to desired content has become ever more popular. The metaphor seems to be an “app comprised of apps.” This app developed for the office of minority recruiting at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

This project was especially satisfying because of the nature of the client’s work, namely broadening the appeal of science, and the validation of Blue Pane Studio’s client focus: scientists. It is a thrill to provide – design and develop – the newest software for this important community within our economy. Instead of forcing scientists to grind through grant proposals and the procurement processes incumbent with large, public entities, we work with their existing budgets, confident that if we deliver on schedule with compelling projects that we’ll earn respect, trust and sponsorship. So far, this formula works. The possible reduced profit margins are exceeded by the satisfaction of helping to introduce new productivity tools to organizations who know what to do with them.

I’m often, too often, asked ‘where’s the money or business value in Social Media or Web 2.0 or the games that the younger people play?’ Next week, I’m contracted to organize a four day Innovation workshop for a successful Swedish Bank. The draw for their visit is the popular and interesting Finovate Conference (no presentations, only demonstrations). I suppose that a joke could be that someone needs to innovate a correct way to hold an ‘innovation conference.’ In the notes below, I try to prepare my clients for our discussions so that we will perceive our meetings as but an important step in the on-going dialogue-relationship-friendships that must be established if we are actually to influence changes in their enterprise. I feel that this is marginally self-serving and for that, I apologize. On the other hand, I could take you through a couple of dozen slides….

16 Sept 2011 Good morning,

It’s a beautiful Friday in New York City, the final weekend of summer so the City is in a happy mood.

I’m the IBM executive responsible for the relationship with Tuck Business School. Tuck is part of Dartmouth College, located in Hanover, New Hampshire and known for a hands-on approach to its business classes.

The Center for Digital Strategies convenes an executive roundtable three times per year with IBM as a participant. Attached is the Tuck Enabling Innovation report. If you scan this doc, I believe that you’ll find a couple of thoughts that may apply to our own discussion next week. Of course, valuable innovation is not about ideas, but about execution.

On Sep 15, 2011, at 1:39 PM, Christopher Perrien wrote:

Hello all,

I’m enroute to New York this afternoon as I have briefing with a South Asian bank tomorrow. I look very forward to meeting each of you and promise that I will do my part to help make our time together both productive and memorable.

Like each of you, I’ve participated in numerous briefings of all flavors over my career; most wear us out with the parade of presentations that seemingly have no interconnection and do not in purposeful ways link to our jobs and companies and decisions. “Death by Powerpoint” is the cynical phrase. The second challenge to off-site meetings is that we have to return to on-site where “the Tyranny of the Urgent” trumps our fresh thinking and sincere desire for incremental change.

I realize that you know what needs to be done to keep the bank healthy in an unsettled economic climate; as well, you have many ideas for how to better connect the bank to its clients and to its employees. Our discussions and the uncommon venues of next week may offer new ways for understanding each other and may renew our excitement for taking on the challenges of institutional change.

BTW, Fortune is on our side as the extended weather forecast in New York is favorable, cool in the evenings (by American standards) and warm by day (by anybody’s standards). Fashion Week will end tomorrow so the City should still be looking good and in good spirits for your arrival. Tony and I tried to hold one of our sessions at the NYC Fashion Institute of Technology but they were fully booked for next week. I feel that our industry should look broadly and especially at changes in retail distribution for clever ideas that may apply to banking. Lots to think about next week!

On Sep 14, 2011, at 7:50 AM, Christopher Perrien wrote:

Good morning from North Carolina,

Since I wanted to encourage you to think about the potential of video, I planned to make a short, related video then realized that sending a big file to Sweden may not be worth it. So, here is a photo of me in my home office as I write this note to you. I’m a jazz fan (a poster of Louis Armstrong is on the left side of the photo over my right shoulder) as New Orleans is my hometown. I find that business and jazz composition have much in common. There is a baseline or beat and thematic objective, but pretty much the musicians are on their own to challenge and to complement one another within this framework. All innovation requires boundaries.

For the past 18 months, I’ve encouraged my clients to watch this video by Simon Sinek which describes How Great Leaders Inspire Action. His references are Apple Computer, the Wright Brothers and Dr. Martin Luther King. It is brilliantly simple without being simplistic. I marvel at his provocative question of Why is Apple Computer consistently successful with no advantage in funding, access to talent, hardware & software components? Mr. Sinek’s presentation was first offered at a TED Conference. BTW, he is a biologist by training.

Speaking of jazz: there is plenty in New York. If you’d like to spend an evening in club or two, this can be arranged with pleasure. Here is a link to a performance on a late night television show from New York where two forms of American music, jazz and country-gospel, come together in vibrant harmony. Only view this if you want to get your feet moving.

On Sep 13, 2011, at 11:55 AM, Christopher Perrien wrote:

Me again,

I cannot believe that Djokovic exhausted Rafa in the US Open final! What a spectacular and confident performance! What he improved over the past year were small elements of his game which he totally controlled: his fitness and his serve, especially his ball toss so that opponents were not able to guess the direction of his serve. Incremental change can make big differences in performance and achievement is a lesson that I learned from this.

PARTICIPATION is the secret of social media. Just that simple. Not a tool such as Facebook or Twitter or a specific app on a smartphone. We’ve all grown-up, were educated, were / are measure in a world of Knowledge is Power, but it is hard to know something – at least for a long time – that is not easily known by others thanks to the speed of the Internet. Sharing Knowledge or helping others To Know is the opportunity. Younger generations and, certainly, our children understand this concept without evening knowing that they know this.

I suggest that we spend some of our time next week discussing what would changes in participation look like and feel like across the bank.

Or we could hire a crowd of “financial doctors” to tell us how to get smaller as did a large US bank. I don’t think I’d be interested in attending that party. Here is the related article.

cp

On Sep 11, 2011, at 7:51 PM, Christopher Perrien wrote:

Hello all,

I don’t know if you are tennis fans as I am and I am inspired by the victories of Novack Djokovic and Samantha Stosur even tho Roger Federer, my hero, was defeated. I’m less fond of Serena Williams, btw.

Novack showed supreme courage and a bit of reckless spirit as he faced two match points on Roger’s serve. His go-for-it shot so stunned Federer that he could not recover over the next four games which Djokovic won to take the match. Stosur has won only three titles in her career, including the longest match played between women at the US Open- and that was this year! Now she is the first Aussie champion in nearly 40 years.

Despite being on the cliff of defeat, Novack decided to lose with his strongest shot and ended up the victor; despite the image of never playing to her potential in the important matches, Samantha envisioned a different result and defeated Serena handily.

Certianly, life is not sports and banking is not about miracle moments. Yet both have opportunities where courage after hard work is rewarded. I hope that after our discussions next week that we will be on a path to realize new opportunities for the bank or opportunities for a renewed bank.

Here is a link, http://www.economisttalk.com/bmw, to a recent BMW series of dinners on Innovation and Technology. A related quote that appeals to me:

“Change starts with the individual. Imagine people in positions of leadership seeing themselves as more than heads of a company, but seeing themselves as leaders of societies.”. Diana Glassman, Founder and Owner, Integration Strategy. I feel that your banking culture understands her statement more than most might understand it.

Tomorrow, I’ll send a note revealing the secret of social media.