Okay, so today it was peanut butter and homemade strawberry jam(and heck ya, I'm going to try and get as much mileage out of the fact I *jammed* as I can).
This weekend was brutally hot here in Northern Cali. We were big, giant slugs. Took Avery to ice cream and a movie for her friend, Corinne's, 7th birthday. Afterward, Corinne and Avery went to swim at Sophie and Lila's house so I got to sit and chat with my friend Cathy and her husband for a couple of hours which helped pass the sweltering afternoon.
Avery went home for an overnight at Corinne's and I went home to take Vi to the movie store(ahhh, air conditioning). We picked out Inkheart and then went home to Dean who had thrown his back out jumping over the fence that morning to retrieve a ball. Dean's bad back led him to laying on the living room floor all day playing PS2. Woo. Vi and I ordered pizza. To make it fun, we ordered one with anchovies for Dean. That was our Saturday night.
Sunday morning, I got up and went to get Ave and then we went to church. I let Vi sleep in- also just in case Dean woke up and couldn't roll himself off the bed or something.
I spent the afternoon reading Harvard Business Review's Managing Through a Downturn. It was interesting reading but more academic than practical methinks. Maybe that was the point. One interesting thing the book pointed out was the inability of large, strongly branded companies to respond to checks in the market adroitly and how they often lost out to smaller up-and-comers who ran lean and HAD to respond to their consumers and the financial climate with innovation or they would just get crushed off. Google at one time got alot of attention for their policy on allowing workers to spend up to 20% of their time on special projects, new ideas... innovation. It's an interesting business question- how do you grow without becoming so big you slow yourself down? And once you get big, how do you continue to move flexibly? I guess part of the answer is that you corner the market on human capital in whatever business you're working on- get all the smart people and then hold onto them.
Anyhow- if anyone is interested in reading "Managing Through a Downturn" drop me a line, comment or call me and I'll pop it in the mail to you.
Went this morning and turned in our paperwork for the pool. I was too sick last week to take the kids swimming but now that they've had half an hour to digest their PB&J, that's where we'll be... for tthe rest of the summer.
happy 4th of July. Hope your family is well and you're having some fun. beams.
Posted by: melissa cole | Friday, July 03, 2009 at 11:18 AM