Après-carrière

58 ans, un nouveau départ : prof au secondaire !

We want to convince people who have spent a career at McKinsey or wherever that teaching is a cool and noble thing to do afterwards.

L'avantage du terrain

Je ne pensais pas que la foule pouvait avoir un grand rôle au baseball, jusqu'à ce que je prenne connaissance de ce qui se passe au Texas.

Litang va changer d'ici 2030

C'était en 2005, il y a déjà plus de 10 ans.  J'imagine que les choses ont changé depuis là-bas.  Et ça va définitivement changer d'ici 2030.

Je ne me tanne pas

La meilleure visualisation de données

Rabbit vs duck.

L'endettement pour la croissance

Entrevue avec un des protagonistes du livre/film The Big Short.

Where do we stand now, economically?
Well, we are right back at it: trying to stimulate growth through easy money. It hasn’t worked, but it’s the only tool the Fed’s got. Meanwhile, the Fed’s policies widen the wealth gap, which feeds political extremism, forcing gridlock in Washington. It seems the world is headed toward negative real interest rates on a global scale. This is toxic. Interest rates are used to price risk, and so in the current environment, the risk-pricing mechanism is broken. That is not healthy for an economy. We are building up terrific stresses in the system, and any fault lines there will certainly harm the outlook.

What makes you most nervous about the future?
Debt. The idea that growth will remedy our debts is so addictive for politicians, but the citizens end up paying the price. The public sector has really stepped up as a consumer of debt. The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is leveraged 77:1. Like I said, the absurdity, it just befuddles me.

Petit tour en Iran

Une destination potentiellement intéressante.

If you make your travel decisions based on what your friends and family say, you’ll probably never make it to Iran. This is a country whose politics are impossible to escape. For most travellers that will mean little more than some pre-departure questions about their sanity, but it can make getting a visa a challenge. Except for Americans, who must be accompanied, once in Iran independent travel is easy and, through the people you meet, rewarding and sometimes sobering. However you chose to plan your travel, a journey in Iran will change the way you see this part of the world. (Lonely Planet)

La complexité

 “I believe that we have to avoid being simplistic. I think we have to build resilience and make sure that our political debates are grounded in reality. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the value of theater in political communications; it’s that the habits we—the media, politicians—have gotten into, and how we talk about these issues, are so detached so often from what we need to be doing that for me to satisfy the cable news hype-fest would lead to us making worse and worse decisions over time.”

Longue réflexion d'Obama sur la politique internationale (via The Atlantic).

L'esprit d'équipe

Les pour et les contre du travail en équipe (via The Economist).

Companies are abandoning functional silos and organising employees into cross-disciplinary teams that focus on particular products, problems or customers.

[...]teams are hampered by problems of co-ordination and motivation that chip away at the benefits of collaboration. High-flyers forced to work in teams may be undervalued and free-riders empowered. Groupthink may be unavoidable.

The least that can be concluded from this research is that companies need to think harder about managing teams. They need to rid their minds of sentimental egalitarianism: the most successful teams have leaders who set an overall direction and clamp down on dithering and waffle. They need to keep teams small and focused: giving in to pressure to be more “inclusive” is a guarantee of dysfunction. 

Des rendements pas fameux

Les prédictions pour le rendement sur les placements ne s'améliorent pas (via The Economist).

Obama, la vision et le sport

I’m able to stay focused even when there’s a lot of stuff going on around me. [...] [Like Aaron] Rodgers in the pocket, in the sense of you can’t be distracted by what’s around you, you’ve got to be looking downfield. And I think that’s a quality that I have—not getting flustered in what’s around me. So there was never a point, even early on—even in the first six months, where we weren’t sure whether we were going to dip into another Great Depression, we weren’t sure whether the steps we were taking on rescuing the auto industry or stabilizing the financial system were going to work—there weren’t moments where I thought, “Sheesh, feels like we’re in over our head.”

---

One thing you learn as president is you’re not always going to perform flawlessly and you have to be able to put that out of your mind and then look at the next problem coming down the pipe. If I’m working out in the gym, sometimes I’ll go to NBA Classics and watch some of these old classic games— The lack of HD really hurts — you can barely see anybody.  It’s true—and the graphics at the bottom are terrible. But a thing that you’re reminded of, watching those old Bulls games, is Jordan had some stinker games in the playoffs. But he would get that out of his mind, and then the next moment comes and he’s right there. He could have a terrible game for the first three quarters and then suddenly go crazy the fourth. Or he might miss a free throw, and then the next play is he’s stealing the ball and hitting the game-winning shot. Part of what I try to do—not at the level that Jordan did on the basketball court, but part of what you aspire to as president or any of these positions of leadership—is to try to figure out how to be in the moment, make the best decision you can, know that you’re going to get a bunch of them right, but a bunch of times you’re also not going to get it exactly the way you want it.

(From GQ Magazine)

Listes 2015

Monde des affaires
Everyone Only Wants Temps - Le monde des emplois temporaires.

The Shape of Things to Come - Jonathan Ive et le futur d'Apple.

Tomorrow's Advance Man - Sur Marc Andreessen.

ZPM Espresso and the Rage of the Jilted Crowdfunder - Quand le crowd funding ne fonctionne pas.

Sony Hack (partie 2, partie 3) - Les dessous de cette histoire.

The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare - Impact environmental, les entreprises et la loi.

United's Quest to be Less Awful - United et le service à la clientèle.

The Last Days of Target - L'aventure de Target au Canada.


Voyages
From Afghanistan With Love - Le monde de la radio rencontre en Afghanistan.

Monsterwellen - Voyage maritime transpacifique.

Up in the Air: Meet the Man Who Flies Around the World for Free - Le système de fidélisation à la puissance 1000.


Sports
Letter for Camp Uneventful - Le camp d'entraînement des Royals suite à leur championnat.

Ron Rivera Discovers the Secret to Coaching by Throwing the Book Out - Portrait de l'entraîneur des Panthers.


Technologie

The Untold Story of Silk Road (partie II) - Les gens derrière la face sombre de l'Internet.

The Man Who Broke the Music Business - Ça commence par le piratage de CD...


Divers
When I'm Gone - Lettres d'un père à son fils.

Like Something the Lord Made - Article de 1989 sur les débuts de la chirurgie cardiaque.

My Lovely Wife in the Psych Yard - La maladie mentale et le mariage.

The Friend: Love is Not a Big Enough Word - Puissante histoire d'amitié.

Uncovering the Secret History of Myers Briggs - Qu'est-ce que c'est ce test au juste.

Why the Best War Reporter in a Generation Had to Suddenly Stop - Quand assez c'est assez.

The Hunt for El Chapo - Un article de 2014 sur un sujet à la mode en 2015.

How DEA Agents Took Down Mexico's Most Vicious Drug Cartel - Comment ça se passe au DEA.

Finding Raffi - Entrevue avec le populaire chanteur.

The Really Big One - Tremblement de terre à venir sur la côte ouest.  Watch out Vancouver.

A Father, a Dying Son, and the Quest to Make the Most Profound Video Game Ever - Quand le monde du jeu rencontre la mort.

The Rise and Fall of the Bombshell Bandit - Une jeune femme, gambler et voleuse de banques.

Le mythe du SuperBoss

It is time to call a halt on all this hyperactivity, before it gets out of hand. There is no doubt that many bosses have heavy weights resting on their shoulders. But are they likely to make these decisions better if they arrive at work exhausted and sleep-deprived? Working around the clock is probably a sign that you are incapable of delegating, not that you are an invincible hero. Frenetic multi-tasking—surfing the web while watching TV while listening to music—is a formula for distraction, rather than good management. And bosses who think of themselves as supermen and superwomen can weaken their companies. As Peter Drucker, a management guru, once pointed out, “No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organised in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.”

(via The Economist) 

Sabia et la complaisance

Quel est le principal défi de la Caisse de dépôt dans les prochaines années ?M.S. - C'est la complaisance. Il y a toujours un moment hautement dangereux dans une organisation. Laissez-moi vous raconter une histoire. Quand j'étais au CN, nous avons fait l'acquisition d'un chemin de fer américain qui s'appelle Illinois Central [en 1998] pour une variété de bonnes raisons. Mais une des raisons fondamentales, c'était que tout allait bien au CN. La privatisation avait été une réussite. L'objectif de cette acquisition était notamment de forcer nos gens à penser de façon nord-américaine, pas seulement canadienne. À la Caisse, c'est la raison pour laquelle je parle maintenant d'ambition, de compter parmi les meilleurs du monde, sans oublier la création d'une nouvelle filiale consacrée aux infrastructures. Parce que maintenant, le problème, c'est que tout va bien. C'est ça, ma préoccupation. Je pense que la grande majorité de nos gens ne sont pas complaisants. Mais c'est le danger. Et c'est la raison pour laquelle, en tant que pdg, je vais continuer à trouver de nouveaux défis pour encourager nos gens à aller plus loin, à faire mieux, car l'objectif est de bâtir une culture de dépassement, où nos employés ne seront jamais satisfaits.

Tiré d'une entrevue avec Les Affaires.