Ed's Workshop
A fitness center for Decision Makers and Risk Takers


  You are cordially invited to freely employ my provocative essays, stimulating talks, insightful marketing book and recommended readings. They cover business, engineering, philosophy and the human condition. You can use them to expand your perspective, strengthen your resolve, reduce unsightly hindsight and stimulate your sense of humor.

As with all fitness centers, when you use these resources wisely and apply them consistently, you'll look better, have more fun, and feel terrific!

 

www.dismountingourtiger.com
My Blog

New!   6/2012
Grover Norquist and his Pledge of Mass Destruction

He intends to push the Federal government off a fiscal cliff in 2012. Through his Pledge to Taxpayers, he controls a voting majority of 238 House Republicans and a blocking minority of 39 Senators. This tells how he did it, and what you can do to make a difference.

The outcome is still a cliff-hanger!


Introduction and Overview of a
talk given at MIT and the University of Maryland in November 2005.
Dismounting Our Tiger of Perpetual Growth
Modern economies require perpetual growth to produce full employment and to avoid collapse. This is not merely a convenient article of faith for politicians and neoclassic economists; it is a dangerous and unsustainable system artifact that undermines serious efforts at conservation of energy and natural resources, personal savings, balanced budgets or a sustainable human population. This talk describes factors which produce the artifact and public policies which would eliminate it.  
  

Executive Compensation, Parasitic Loads and Golden Parachutes 
Executives are generally paid too much and too soon. They have become a parasitic load which critically weakens large, older companies and reduces their competitiveness. 

A talk given to the Lamorinda Rotary on August 26, 2005
Beggaring our Children
How we've saddled our children with overwhelming financial liabilities and self-destructive cultural myths, and what we as individuals can do about it.  

Failure is not an option; it's a necessity
The biology of the human brain normally makes personal failure a precondition to personal growth and national disaster a precondition for rapid cultural and political change. 

Gems of Wisdom?
Personal observations about fundamental Issues including uncertainty, playfulness, boredom, term limits, democracy, saving others, God and nature. Example:

*
Fundamentalists are so frostbitten by the cold reality of an uncertain present that they retreat into idealized pasts, snuggle up to lifeless concepts of perfection and wrap themselves in moldy blankets of absolutes.

 

 


Life Cycles of Executive Teams
Is your goal to maintain a highly cohesive, highly effective management team? You're wasting your time! Read this thought provoking essay to learn why.

Do you Compete With or Compete Against?
Are your competitors valuable resources or enemies?

A Framework for Managing 
Use it to reach your objectives with greater certainty and less stress

Effective and Meaningful Jobs 
Sustain Profits, Growth, and Enthusiasm

The Computer as God? 
A High-Tech replay of the Protestant Reformation

Get Important Things Done On-time! 
Plan to do unimportant things

Standards, Innovation, and Survival
The role of standards in business successes and failures. 1983 in the computer business was 1923 in the automobile business.

Oct. 2004
Why I won't vote for George Bush  
I was a Republican for over 40 years and carelessly voted for George Bush in the 2000 Presidential election. I won't vote for him again.

This October 2004 essay criticizes his conduct of the war on terror, his fiscal recklessness, his campaign methods and his environmental record. This is not a personal attack but a considered analysis, supported by data, of his key decisions and course of actions. Questions, rational comments and challenges are welcome.

Brains, Evolution, Computers and Companies (.ppt) 
(a 2.4 mbyte file)

Correlative mappings of decision making and learning systems. Talk given on May 30, 2002 at MIT, Picower Center for Learning and Memory, Plastic Lunch.


Want a side-splitting comic for corporate events?  My son Tim Lee, is a biology PhD turned stand-up comic, whose comedy routine "Off the Charts" is a big hit at corporate meetings, college campuses and comedy clubs. See video clips on his web page.  He is available nationwide.
 

Informative, rousing, humorous talks for conventions, meetings, and dinners.
 
Confessions of a Recovering Entrepreneur:
A humorous and insightful look at one man's compulsion to start companies and how he learned, often the hard way, to retain a rich personal life and his family.

Failure is not an option; it's a necessity
How any path to success is paved with failure. Reasons not to hire people who haven't failed miserably. How failure breeds success and how success breeds failure. How nature uses failure to produce sustainable systems.

Management by Personal Strange Attractors:
A way to manage that is more human and far more effective than Management by Objectives. Introduces chaos theory into practical management situations. Audience participation, examples from project management, business, government, and the military. This talk has been given at the MIT club, Rotary, and SCORE meetings. SCORE comments included "most interesting speaker we've ever had."

The Scientific Significance of the Height of a Pile of Manure.
This talk was first given at Harvey Mudd in the early 1970's. It humorously explores key concepts of physics and of Western Philosophy. It suggests that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle may describe the most fundamental principle underlying all that is.

Contact Ed Lee to discuss presentations using these topics (or other topics designed to fit your event and audience) and to schedule dates.

 




Handbook of Channel Marketing
 
How to select, motivate and manage the people and organizations who sell your high-tech goods and services: Direct, Rep, Distributor, VAR, OEM, Systems Integrator, and Retail sales organizations.

A key reference book on business-to-business selling. Written for CEOs, entrepreneurs, managers, and sales professionals.  (213 pages) 

Outline

Free: Handbook of Channel Marketing (pdf)   (a 1.9 mb file)
 

   

Ed Lee

* Entrepreneur: founded two successful electronics companies and two other "learning experiences"
*
CEO (1972-1989) of Pro-Log Corporation
Industrial Computers and PROM programmers. Pro-Log was acquired by Motorola in 1997.
*
Workshop leader and public speaker
* Author
*
Electrical engineer with 23 US Patents
* MIT Graduate
* Detailed
Resume.

E-mail: edwinlee@alum.mit.edu
Telephone: (541) 383-2106
1617 N.W. Albany Ave., Bend Oregon, 97701

     

This web page is at: www.elew.com
06/26/2012