8 Management Lessons from Paul the Octopus

The world's most famous octopus may  have retired from the arduous task of predicting football games' outcomes, but he still has some lessons for managers. On the one hand, his high profile job is now done, but on the other hand, he leaves behind some perfectly sensible management principles. As far as the other four hands  and two legs are concerned (according to scientists, an octopus has six arms and two legs), he will use them doing what he likes best: entertaining children.

So what did we learn from Paul?  Here are some of his lessons:

¡Viva la Roja! and Viva South African pride!

The FIFA World Cup was an extraordinary event in many ways.  Not only did it produce a winner that had never won a World Cup before (from two finalists who had never done it), but it was held in a continent where it had never been held before. 

Many thousands of words have been written about how successful South Africa had been as hosts - and about the surge of national pride and togetherness that it brought.  Most of us are hoping that the same spirit will continue.  For a few days the "What now?" question will reflect the national psyche and then we'll have to address the "What's next" question in all seriousness. If somehow we can put the same energy behind education, the arts, science and especially also job creation and delivery of services as we did behind staging a successful world cup, we could keep those flags of pride flying high.

Meanwhile, I bet never before in the history of mankind has so much Rioja (the red wine that immediately says "Spain" to me) and cerveza been consumed by so many supporters of la Roja (literally "the red ones") in so little time. Or headache tablets on the morning thereafter.  And who would blame them?  As one of my favourite teams from the start, I was supporting them during the later stages of the tournament and was delighted that they won.  Having lived in Spain for a while many years ago as a young girl, there was a personal link - especially since I started watching football on TV in Spain on a small black and white set in my tiny apartment in Calle Capitan Haya in Madrid.  I became a fan of Real Madrid and have

Intermittent Internet driving us crazy

There's been a problem with local Internet service for many people using a range of ISPs due to part of the SEACOM cable being damaged.   Very frustrating not to know when you will be able to send/receive messages or reach your own or other websites.

Anyone reading this and who may have be suffering from this issue, may want to read the stories here (from Moneyweb) and various items on My Broadband , especially this one.  There is also this informative article by my friend  Christopher Szabo.

Starlit Ponderings July 2010 - Looking for Links

I was multitasking – working and listening with one ear to one of the FIFA World Cup matches on the radio - when my concentration was interrupted by the little voice that says “time you wrote the Ponderings for this month.” Well of course the inevitable happened – I started thinking about a link between the big celebration of the Beautiful Game here in South Africa and what I think of as the Beautiful Science.

First to the rescue was Albert Einstein. Since I am working on updating my talks about his life and work, I am reading yet another biography and from thoughts about space, time and gravity it was one quick mental jump to thinking that the world’s football lovers had been drawn as if by some strong force of gravity to South Africa.