On Wednesday and Thursday 7-8 October, I’ll be speaking at the American Strategic Management Institute’s Performance conference in Chicago.

For more details, please click here, or go to the Events link above.

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Tortoise rescuer John Formby holds Freeway the tortoise Saturday, September 19 in Worthing, England. (photo by Billy Elliott)

From colleague and occasional Tenacious Blog contributor Heather Stagl comes a link today to a story out of London, where a motorist rescued a Hermann’s tortoise while it was crossing five lanes of the M25, the loop road around London.

Although it is likely that “Freeway” the tortoise, as he is now known, is someone’s pet, (since he has an embedded microchip), it is not yet known where he came from (since the chip is blank). Motorist John Formby spotted what he originally thought was a rock on the road, but when he saw it was moving, pulled off to effect the heroic rescue. Despite the fact that cars had been passing right over it, Freeway was unfazed. According to Formby, “it seemed very determined just to get where it was going.”Freeway is now living comfortably at an animal rescue center in Worthing, along England’s south coast, while staff try to find his owner.

Branding as the Tenacious Tortoise seems to be working. According to Heather, “I see tortoise stories everywhere now.”

Do you see tortoise stories everywhere? Please send links to info@tenacioustortoise.com.

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Loggerhead turtle, about one meter long

I don’t remember exactly when, how, or even why I first became enamored with turtles and tortoises. It’s probably been at least 25 years since I bought my first carved wooden turtle, and my collection of small handmade keepsake turtles grows by one or two every time my wife and I travel together. I’ve probably got over 50 of them now. But it’s less than an obsession for me, and I don’t have any live turtles as pets.

A video on Facebook caught my eye a couple of weeks ago. Shot at night in infrared light on Big Pine Key near our second home in Key West, Florida, it shows a “boil” – the nearly all-at-once hatching of baby loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) and their immediate and frantic scramble to the sea. The first few minutes after hatching are especially perilous for the little guys (who would easily fit in the palm of your hand) – they rely on star- and moon-light glinting off the ocean’s edge to find their way to the water before seabirds and other predators pick off these tasty morsels. Human development has threatened the loggerhead in multiple ways, including the presence of artificial light at nesting areas causing the hatchlings to lose their way to the ocean, along with entanglement in fishing lines and nets.

Loggerhead Sea Turtles were once intensively hunted for their meat and eggs, along with their fat which was used in cosmetics and medication. As a result, both its subspecies are now internationally protected. Local turtle protection organizations have sprung up near nesting areas around the world to locate and protect nests, ensure darkness and otherwise guide hatchlings to the sea, rescue wayward hatchlings, and monitor the survival of the species.

rescue in progress

Although they spend nearly their entire lives in the water, adult (and they don’t reach sexual maturity until around 35 years of age) loggerheads return to the beach of their own birth to lay their eggs below the sandy surface and above the tide line. The mother abandons the eggs and likely never sees or recognizes any of her offspring. But despite natural and human-caused threats, loggerheads have (at least until now) been very successful as a species; individuals loggerheads often live well past 100 years, and fossil evidence suggests that they’ve been around for about 200 million years. Not too bad for the little guys.

Human organizations behave like living things in some specific ways, and their drive for self-preservation is certainly among them. Individual organizations may outlive their human founders, but the long-lived human organization is the exception, not the rule. And I believe that the number one cause of organizational demise is a failure to understand and adapt to changing environmental conditions. The ecology of human organizations is as tough and unforgiving as the loggerhead’s post-natal scramble to the sea.

I continue to need to explain to friends and colleagues why I named my firm ‘Tenacious Tortoise.’ ‘Why would you want to chose an icon of slowness to represent your firm?’ they ask. But impatience and lack of determination seem to me to be the hallmark of organizations destined for an early demise. I chose Tenacious Tortoise easily and quickly when the time for naming came. I like the alliteration, and hope that it is easy to remember. But it is the tenacity of tortoises and turtles that is at the core of the idea of our firm – it is their single-minded determination to survive and prosper that we aim to capture, enable, and enhance in every client organization with whom we work.

Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to share the pictures and video.

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As I’ve started to sketch out some ideas for upcoming posts, I am painfully aware of the limited feedback upon which I can draw to select new topics. While Google Analytics is able to provide a daily validation that there is readership for the Tenacious Blog, the best validation comes from reader comments. When I hear from you, it helps me know which posts have been of value, and can inspire me (I hope) to better writing. So please comment whenever you can. Even just a word or two means a lot to me.

Writing a few hundred words every day has been challenging, of course, and some are cynical about the value of blogging itself. Blogging is a new kind of writing experience for me, and unlike others in my family, writing doesn’t come naturally. The editor in my head is constantly harping on my clumsy construction, my limited vocabulary, my propensity to substitute longer words for clearer ideas. But at least I am writing (nearly) every day.

Several weeks ago, I described the blogging experience to a friend as being like cooking (which I enjoy far more than writing) – you start with a set of ingredients, you do your best and serve up what you can, and hope for the best. Each day brings a fresh opportunity to create a masterpiece, and mediocre meals are soon forgotten.

The connection between blogging and cooking became much stronger for me with the recent release of the delightful movie “Julie and Julia.” Not only does it feature an outstanding (even for her) performance from Meryl Streep as Julia Child (the woman who changed the way America cooks), and sensual food shots, but Amy Adams as Julie Powell, perhaps the first blogger protagonist in a major film. Back in 2002, Powell decided to cook her way through all 500 plus recipes in Child’s classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking  in one year, and blog about the experience. Even if you’re not into food or cooking, the movie is a must-see, and certain to be part of next year’s Oscars.

That simple idea for a blog became a book, and now a movie. Julie Powell’s tenacity is an inspiration for me to keep writing. I hope you’ll keep reading.

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The passing of newsman Walter Cronkite, sometimes called “the most trusted man in America,” gives us pause to reflect on the scarcity of trust for our leaders.

Walter Cronkite and the Erosion of Trust

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A New Yorker article on the cost of providing health care may be the most influential in the health care reform debate. A summary and review of the lengthy article, along with a link to the original.

Required Reading in the White House

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A simple and possibly amusing example helps to illustrate that strategy is not just about describing desired outcomes; it’s about understanding the cause and effect relationship between objective behaviors.

Cause and Effect: The Building Blocks of Strategy

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A series of posts have approached the topic of strategy for the Information Technology organization. IT is almost always either an enabler or an inhibitor of strategy execution in an enterprise, and aligning IT and organization strategy is among the most pervasive challenges for strategy facilitators today.

The featured post:

Framework for IT Organization Strategy

builds upon several earlier posts that may also be of interest:

• Blockbuster vs. Netflix: A Case of Technology-Driven Strategy
• Strategy Execution Impossible Without IT
• Insatiable Demand for IT
• Impaired IT Means Impaired Strategy Execution
• The IT Change Agenda – Part I: Cost and Quality
• The IT Change Agenda – Part II: Agility and Innovation
• The Mature Information Technology Organization?

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One of my favorite topics is the application of the academic disciplines of Organizational Behavior to the practical challenges of driving strategic change. This post applies one important theory to the design of strategy in any organization.

Hygienic Strategy?

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In a post in early July, we noted that it wasn’t especially surprising that British Petroleum is backing away from its highly-visible efforts to lead development of alternative energy.

Beyond Petroleum? No, BP is Back to Petroleum

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