Why is there no Chinese Football team at the World Cup?

The China team is so bad it can barely beat middle schoolers
http://mobile.shanghaiist.com/2009/04/17/how_terrible_is_the_chinese_footbal.php

but seriously why so terrible? It’s not cuz they don’t have the resources, just look at how much they spent on the olympics. It’s not because Asians are too short or physically unfit just look at South and even North Korea or Japan. That leaves politics and economics. The CFA is under the Chinese State Council while also being supposedly a nonprofit with profit seeking subsidiaries like the China Superleague. This leaves it vulnerable to mixed mission and profit motives, thr nowhere land for effective organizations!

Concept of Leverage

Was chatting with Eric today and thought his idea of leverage was really interesting. Basically, the idea is that operationally there are three types of leverage in increasing order of potency: rules, tools, people. Interestingly we seem to always gravitate toward the least potent form of leverage to solve our problems by throwing people at it. However, people are often the source of the problem due to their inconsistency, irrationality, etc etc. Interestingly in medicine similarly to other industries, we have tried to solve the problems of poor quality and increasing costs by throwing more people at it when in fact what we might need are better rules in the form of evidence based checklists and procedures and tools in the form of diagnostics that would help to risk stratify patients.

The Best ____ are the Best people

Who knew one could learn something about being a good venture capitalist, healthcare delivery scientist, doctor, leader from former NBA player Chris Webber?

I was listening to the ESPN preview Lakers-Celtics game 1 (whoo hoo) and I heard Webber say “the best coaches are the best people” referring to Doc Rivers, coach of the Boston Celtics who believed in his team when they didn’t believe in themselves and has coached a #5 seed to the NBA finals against conventional wisdom.

This is so true about so many things related to leadership. Its about caring about the end state not promoting oneself that makes good leaders who they are. I have absolutely learned this from the key leaders I have had the pleasure of working with and the ones I gravitate towards are the ones who combine being a genuinely good person with a track record of effectiveness in the organizations they lead: Jim and Steve leading a University, Errik and Tillman running a biotech firm and others have all show amazing track record with being genuinely good people and its these people that I hope to be like someday.