Never Turn Your Back On The Ocean

Never Turn Your Back On The Ocean

There is an old Hawaiian proverb that says "Never Turn Your Back On The Ocean".  The people of Hawaii have a tremendous respect for the Ocean and it's beauty, but also for it's tremendous power.   One minute you may be relaxing in the sun enjoying the sun and surf, and in the next moment you can find yourself swept out to sea.  The calm of the Ocean is hypnotic, lulling you into a sense of security and safety beside this enormous body of water, but when you least expect it the Ocean can turn and delivery a powerful blow with an unexpected wave that has the power of significant destruction. I was reminded yesterday of the concept of "pre-acting" in a post by Daniel Burris on LinkedIn (3 Keys Leaders Can Use to See the Future).  Burris is the author of a fantastic book called Flash Foresight which provides a terrific framework for looking into the future and leading forward...
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The Offshoring Leadership Dilemma

The Offshoring Leadership Dilemma

In a world that has gone mad for productivity in service-based industries, we are seeing more and more repeatable operations jobs either automated or sent to low cost service centres like India.  Now, as those low cost centres continue to grow and develop the capabilities of their workforce we are seeing more and more movement up the knowledge chain of these "low-cost" resources. In the software industry the trend to oursourcing of junior development and QA tasks started several years ago.  Initially the trend was to write some specifications, ship them off to India, and then expect to receive back a solid working product on schedule and at a fraction of the cost that you would have paid had you done the work domestically. Most companies quickly discovered that there was a gap in leadership and quality with the work that was done overseas and brought back the leadership and design tasks, leaving the somewhat repeatable tasks of coding and testing in...
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