The Way of The Strategist (1): Bill Walsh

Bill Walsh, one of the greatest innovators in professional football, the grand architect of the "West Coast Offense (WCO)" and the head coach of three Super Bowl Championship teams.

Following are some of my favorite Bill Walsh's strategic focal points:

• Developing and maintaining high but tangible standards of performance;
• Scripting a tactical gameplan for each and all endeavors;
• Focusing on tactical plays that are needed (The ideal ratio for plays practiced and plays needed is 1:1)
• Performing and producing effectively;
• Developing a team around a few good playmakers who are great leaders by example;
• Leading not lagging throughout the game (securing and maintaining the pole position) and
• Be properly prepared that there is no room for mental mistakes.

Trademarks

• Scripting the first 25 offensive plays of the game and implementing it
• Running one or two trick plays early in the game
• Controlling the clock while moving the ball forward
• Be Professional in private and public relations
  
• Winning with Class

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West Coast Offense Overview

• Bill Walsh originated it with the San Francisco 49ers.
• Short pass plays replace the running game to control the ball.
• A long specific process for the QB to pick-up all the reads and adjustments.
• The release of all five receivers into the pattern
• QB has progression read up to five receivers.
• Take what the defense gives you.
• Make the defense adjust to you.

Source: WestCoastOffense.com

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Paraphrased thoughts from Coach Walsh:

• "Preparation Precedes Performance."
• "Failure to prepare is to prepare to fail. ..."
• "Beat them to the punch."
• "Always replace a player (resource) a season sooner than a season later. ..."
• "Recover quickly once a mistake is made."

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Walsh_%28NFL%29
http://www.49ersparadise.com/biographies/walsh.shtml

The Way of Strategy (1): A Plan With Metrics is a Tangible Plan

The complete strategic leader usually creates value into their plan by inserting tangible performance metrics into each objective.

Deciding the metrics and choosing the specific approach toward the measurement and the tracking of the data are two of the most difficult tasks when building the plan.


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June 21, 2009

Corner Office

The Divine, Too, Is in the Details

This interview of Jacqueline Kosecoff, chief executive of Prescription Solutions, a UnitedHealth Group company, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. What’s your approach to leadership?

A. I think a good leader has to do three things. It’s almost like a three-act play. The first act is coming up with the concept for a product or a service to offer. And then you have to make sure that the entire team not just the executive management but the entire team believes in that concept and understands it.

The second job is execution, and good ideas aren’t as valuable as they might be until you make them into a reality. You often hear people say, The devil’s in the details. I think it’s the divine. And so a lot of time has to be spent making sure the execution works.

The third act is measurement; I’m a great believer in measurement. So before I begin the execution phase of any project, I sit down with my team and we ask ourselves: What are the metrics against which we’re going to measure our success?

We do two things: We measure where we’re succeeding, and where we succeed we celebrate. And we also measure where we’re not succeeding, and where that happens we ask ourselves, Can we go back and fix something? And if so, we do it. And if not, we make sure that we understand where we went wrong, put it into the corporate DNA, so the next project won’t have that flaw.

Another thing I learned was that when you’re involved in a large development project, projects often morph. And when people become advocates of their project, they change some of those metrics so that they can claim success when perhaps it’s not 100 percent legitimate to do so.

So creating the metrics up front, and having a discipline of saying, O.K., this is where we want to go, and if we don’t achieve it it’s O.K., we’ll try in another way to get there, is very helpful. Not just for me, but for the whole team.

Q. You run mentoring programs for women executives. Tell me about those.

A. I started out without mentors, so I’m acutely aware of the value of a good mentor. Often in a company, the people who are high-maintenance get all the attention, rather than the people who are high-performing and high-potential. So I try to make the mentoring program about the high-performing, high-potential people.

One of the things I’ve found is that women often don’t speak financial language as well as they need to in order to go to the next level. So, for example, a lot of our women executives never went on to get an M.B.A., and yet they’re in a big corporation where they need to understand financial matters. They’re a little bit reluctant to go to the guys, as it were, and say: Excuse me, I don’t know how to read a balance sheet. Could you teach me how?

So we actually had classes, taught by women, for women, on how to become financially literate. And people throughout the organization, from the board down, came to these classes. And then, after our earnings call, we would hold a little question-and-answer session: What did you not understand during the earnings call? What did you understand? What do you think I meant when I said this?

Q. Are there messages you find yourself repeating to the women you mentor?

A. The most common thing is to understand what job you want, because I think that often people want a job and they simply don’t understand what it involves.

Second, work is not going to get any easier as you get to the top, so be prepared for what it means to take on a particular position. It’s not just the skill sets that you have, but it’s also the time commitments, the stress you’re going to deal with.

And the third is, perhaps you can’t have it all at once. I think oftentimes the fantasy that’s held is that you can do it all; you can be a parent, and you can be engaged in the community, and you can be the C.E.O., all at the same time. And I think that helping people to plan a life that includes all that, but perhaps more serially, is a useful discussion.

Q. What feedback do you get from your direct reports that you’ve used in setting your own goals as a manager and a leader?

A. In recent years, if I had to distill what I’m hearing most, it’s the importance of listening and responding to people’s concerns. I’ve always thought communication was important, but the older I get the more I realize that you cannot communicate enough, and you need to answer people’s questions and their concerns directly.

I try to answer e-mail within three or four hours. Sometimes my response may be nothing more than: Got this. I’ll be working on it and get back to you. But I want people to know that I’m reading these things, I’m listening to them, that what they say is important, I heard it, I’m paying attention to it.

You may not be able to solve the entire problem at that moment, but just to let them know that you heard it, you understand it, that something’s happening, I think goes a long way to making people feel that there’s an environment of respect for their opinions, their needs, their concerns.

I also think it’s important, sometimes, to communicate no, and to say that in a very clear way and not to leave any ambiguity so that people continue to ask and ask and ask about a decision that’s already been made.

Q. How do you run meetings?

A. I don’t lead meetings. To the extent that it’s possible, I have others lead meetings. Every Friday, we have the senior leadership team come for about an hour-and-a-half operations check, and we have the checklist of items that we need to get to, and we will go through that list, but I will never lead that meeting. Each one of the executives leads the meeting it rotates in alphabetical order and we just go through the list.

First of all, it teaches them how to lead a meeting. It also sends a message that this meeting’s not for me, it’s for us. And it’s been my observation that at a lot of these operations meetings, everyone talks to the C.E.O., not to each other. It also teaches good meeting etiquette. People are much more, I think, respectful of how they behave in a meeting because they’re going to be leading the meeting one day.

We also begin every meeting by asking who needs to be acknowledged in the firm. Who in the company did something that’s extraordinary, and we need to acknowledge them. We decide who should send the letter, and what we should do for that person, and there’s usually about 5 or 10 people at every meeting that we reach out to and acknowledge. That’s how the meeting begins. It ends with any concerns that I have that I need to share with the team.

Q. Any other rules of the road for your meetings?

A. Not so much for meetings, but there are rules of the road for engagement. Silence is consent. If you don’t speak up in the meeting, you can’t later come back and say: I really hated that. I don’t want it to happen. Come to the meeting, let your feelings be heard, and a decision will be made.

Second is, assume positive intent. It’s one of the ways to sort of keep communication on the high road. Perhaps somebody was misunderstood, or they misheard something. You have to go back and ask for the context, and it’s very likely to be simply a misunderstanding. And if you listen, it can be resolved. And it tends to, I think, breed a lot more trust and respect among us if we use those rules.

Q. Let’s talk about hiring. How do you do it?

A. By the time a candidate comes to me they’ve been heavily vetted, and you can pretty much count on the fact that they’ve got the skill set that you need and they have the experience you need.

So basically what I do is I try and explore the person. One of the things I explore is whether they like our company, and that’s important because so often people will come in, particularly from the outside, and their modus operandi is: Everything you do is wrong. It was done better at fill in the blank, from wherever they left and so we need to adopt their methods.

It may be that they’re bringing great best practices to the company, but they have to do it in an environment that’s respectful of both companies.

So I look for people who are going to be able to bring new ideas into the organization in a way that will be quickly absorbed into the organization, rather than in an off-putting way.

I look for people with a lot of energy. I think in almost every environment you can think of, energy’s a very good thing. Passion’s a good thing, and I look for that as well. And I look for people that have integrity.

Q. And how do you get a sense of all that?

A. I usually ask: What was the thing that you’re most proud of in your professional career? And what was the thing that you’re most proud of in your personal career? And I listen very carefully to those answers. And finally, I ask them at the very end: O.K., you’re now sitting with the C.E.O. and you’ve been through all these interviews. What would you like to ask me about the company that you couldn’t have asked these other people? Are there any questions you have?

Q. And what are you listening for?

A. If they have no questions, then I worry that they’re not going to be able to speak up in a meeting. If their question is all about: Well, is the 401(k) funded? I realize that perhaps that’s not the right question to ask the C.E.O. If they sit down and they ask me something that’s hard for me to answer, I like it.

Q. What would you like business school to teach more of, less of?

A. I’ve never been to business school, so I would be very cautious about it. But I guess what I’d say is: more respect for content. There’s a lot of emphasis on the skills of business, like the principles of marketing and accounting. But businesses have content expertise as well, and I think it’s difficult to come into a company and sit down and begin to apply those principles without understanding the content of the company’s business.

Q. Are you a gadget person?

A. I am basically not a gadget person, but when I adopt a gadget I tend to be quite loyal, and I’m a BlackBerry user. One of the things I do that I don’t see my colleagues do too often is read the manuals. In my early days, we used to create software products, and I was constantly trying to figure out how to write manuals that were easy to use. So I became an aficionado of manuals. I actually read the manuals and I usually know that on Page 17 it tells you how to do X, or Y or Z. And whether it’s my car or the BlackBerry, or my GPS system, I read the manuals. Men aren’t allowed to do this, I think; women can read manuals.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/business/21corner.html?ref=business

Protect your Competitve Advantage

One thrives in this global economy by incrementally enhancing their "competitive advantage"

The two must important steps that most people misses are:

• Defining what is the advantage
• Determining the protection of the advantage.

Jiang Tai Gong book "Six Secret Teachings" emphasizes "the importance of protecting one's advantage" regardless of the situation.

King Wen asked Tai Gong:"How does one preserve the state's territory?"

Tai Gong said: "Do not estrange your relatives. Do not neglect the masses. Be concillatory and solicitous towards nearby states and control all that is under you. Do not loan the authority of state to other men. If you loan the authority of state to other men, then you will lose your authority. Do not hurt those of lower position to benefit those of higher position. Do not abandon the fundamental to save those that are inconsequential.

When the sun is at midday, you should dry things. If you grasp a knife, you must cut. If you hold an axe, you must attack."

"If at the height of the day, you do not dry things in the sun, this is termed losing the opportunity.

If you grasp a knife but do not cut anything, you will lose the moment for profits. If you hold an axe and do not attack, enemies will attack instead."

"If trickling streams are not blocked, they will become great rivers. If you do not extinguish the smallest flames, there is nothing much you can do when it turns into great flames.

If you do not eliminate the two-leaf sapling, you might have to use the axe to remove it in future." "For this reason, the ruler must focus on developing wealth within his state. Without material wealth, he has nothing with which to spread beneficence or to bring his relatives together.

If he estranges his relatives it will be harmful. If he loses the common people, he will be defeated. "

"Do not loan sharp weapons to other men. If you loan sharp weapons to other men, you will be hurt by them and will not live out your allotted span of years."
King Wen said:"What do you mean by benevolence and righteousness?"

Tai Gong replied: "Respect the common people, unite your relatives. If you respect the common people, they will be in harmony. And if you unite your relatives, they will be happy. This is the way to implement the essential cords of benevolence and righteousness."

"Do not allow other men to snatch away your awesomeness. Rely on your wisdom, follow the norm. Those that submit and accord with you, treat them generously and virtuously. Those that oppose you, break with force. If you respect the people and trust, the state will be peaceful and populace submissive." - T’ai Kung Liu-t’ao (Six Secret Teachings)

More on this topic can be found in Dr. Ralph Sawyer's Seven Military Classics of Ancient China.


June 23, 2009
Apple’s Obsession With Secrecy Grows Stronger
By BRAD STONE and ASHLEE VANCE

SAN FRANCISCO Apple is one of the world’s coolest companies. But there is one cool-company trend it has rejected: chatting with the world through blogs and dropping tidbits of information about its inner workings.

Few companies, indeed, are more secretive than Apple, or as punitive to those who dare violate the company’s rules on keeping tight control over information. Employees have been fired for leaking news tidbits to outsiders, and the company has been known to spread disinformation about product plans to its own workers.

They make everyone super, super paranoid about security,” said Mark Hamblin, who worked on the touch-screen technology for the iPhone and left Apple last year. I have never seen anything else like it at another company.”

But even by Apple’s standards, its handling of news about the health of its chief executive and co-founder, Steven P. Jobs, who has battled pancreatic cancer and recently had a liver transplant while on a leave of absence, is unparalleled.

Mr. Jobs received the liver transplant about two months ago, according to people briefed on the matter by current and former board members. Despite intense interest in Mr. Jobs’s condition among the news media and investors, Apple representatives have declined to address the matter, reciting with maddening discipline only that Mr. Jobs is due back at the company by the end of June.

Mr. Jobs was actually at work on Apple’s sprawling corporate campus on Monday, according to a person who saw him there. Company representatives would not say whether he had returned permanently.

Even senior officials at Apple fear crossing Mr. Jobs. One official, who is normally more open, when asked for a deep-background briefing about Mr. Jobs’s health after the news of the transplant had become public, replied: Just can’t do it. Too sensitive.”

Secrecy at Apple is not just the prevailing communications strategy; it is baked into the corporate culture. Employees working on top-secret projects must pass through a maze of security doors, swiping their badges again and again and finally entering a numeric code to reach their offices, according to one former employee who worked in such areas.

Work spaces are typically monitored by security cameras, this employee said. Some Apple workers in the most critical product-testing rooms must cover up devices with black cloaks when they are working on them, and turn on a red warning light when devices are unmasked so that everyone knows to be extra-careful, he said.

Apple employees are often just as surprised about new products as everyone else.

I was at the iPod launch,” said Edward Eigerman, who spent four years as a systems engineer at Apple and now runs his own technology consulting firm. No one that I worked with saw that coming.”

Mr. Eigerman was fired from Apple in 2005 when he was implicated in an incident in which a co-worker leaked a preview of some new software to a business customer as a favor. He said Apple routinely tries to find and fire leakers.

Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president for marketing, has held internal meetings about new products and provided incorrect information about a product’s price or features, according to a former employee who signed an agreement not to discuss internal matters. Apple then tries to track down the source of news reports that include the incorrect details.

Five years ago, Apple took its obsession with secrecy to the courts. It sued several bloggers who had covered the company, arguing that they had violated trade-secret laws and were not entitled to First Amendment protections. A California appeals court ruled for the bloggers, and the company had to pay $700,000 in legal fees.

Apple also sued a blog called Think Secret and settled the case for an undisclosed amount, but as part of the settlement that blog shut down.

Regis McKenna, a well-known Silicon Valley marketing veteran who advised Apple on its media strategy in its early days, said the culture of secrecy had its origin in the release of the first Macintosh, which competitors like Microsoft and Sony knew about before it was unveiled.

It really started around trying to keep the surprise aspect to product launches, which can have a lot of power,” Mr. McKenna said.

He added: But what most people don’t understand is that Steve has always been very personal about his life. He has always kept things close to the vest since I’ve known him, and only confided in relatively few people.”

Apple’s decision to severely limit communication with the news media, shareholders and the public is at odds with the approach taken by many other companies, which are embracing online outlets like blogs and Twitter and generally trying to be more open with shareholders and more responsive to customers.

They don’t communicate. It’s a total black box,” said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray who has covered Apple for the last five years.

Mr. Munster said he jokes with other colleagues covering the company about how Apple routinely jams the frequencies,” or gives them misinformation to throw them off the scent of a new product or other news it hopes to keep confidential. Four years ago, he said, a senior Apple executive directly told him the company had no interest in developing a cheap iPod with no screen. Soon after, the company released just that: the iPod Shuffle.

For corporate governance experts, and perhaps federal regulators, the biggest question is whether Mr. Jobs’s approach has led to violating laws that cover what companies must disclose to the public about the well-being of their chief executive.

On that key issue, the experts are divided. Some believe Apple did not need to disclose Mr. Jobs’s liver transplant because Mr. Jobs was on a leave of absence and had passed responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the company to the chief operating officer, Timothy Cook.

Other governance experts argue that the liver transplant now makes one of Apple’s assertions from January that Mr. Jobs was suffering only from a hormonal imbalance seem like a deliberate mistruth, unless Mr. Jobs’s health condition suddenly deteriorated. Of course, no one knows enough to say definitively.

Most governance experts do seem to agree on one point: that the secrecy that adds surprise and excitement to Apple product announcements is not serving the company well in other areas.

In this environment, where transparency is critical, the more information you give the marketplace the better,” said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. For a technology company that views itself as innovative, it’s a little odd that they are getting a reputation for lack of transparency.”

Apple’s stock dropped $2.11 to $137.37 on Monday amid a larger market sell-off. And the company did, in fact, have something to reveal: it said it had sold a million units of its new iPhone 3G S over the weekend, well above analysts’ forecasts.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/technology/23apple.html


Following are the two questions that you should always ask yourself:

• "What is your competitive advantage!?"
• "What is your approach for protecting it?"

Risk Management: A View from The Seven Strategy Classics of Ancient China

During the act of assessing or planning, he or she must always consider the risk factor.


"One who abandons what is nearby to plan for what is distant will labor without success. One who abandons the distant to plan for the nearby will be at ease and attain lasting results." - Huang Shek Gong, 9


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June 16, 2009
Settling for Par: Pros More Likely to Play It Safe
By ALAN SCHWARZ

When PGA Tour golfers from Tiger Woods down to the greenest rookie draw back their putters this week at the United States Open, their scorecards will be sabotaged by a force as human as it is irrational: risk intolerance.

Even the world’s best pros are so consumed with avoiding bogeys that they make putts for birdie discernibly less often than identical-length putts for par, according to a coming paper by two professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. After analyzing laser-precise data on more than 1.6 million Tour putts, they estimated that this preference for avoiding a negative (bogey) more than gaining an equal positive (birdie) known in economics as loss aversion costs the average pro about one stroke per 72-hole tournament, and the top 20 golfers about $1.2 million in prize money a year.

Contrary to most academic studies involving sports, at which athletes typically scoff, a handful of the tour’s top putters did not dispute this finding. Simply put if not putt they admitted to being spooked enough by bogeys that they will ultimately cost themselves strokes to avoid them. Call it the bogeyman.

Par putts just seem to be more critical because if you miss you drop a shot if you miss a birdie putt, it doesn’t seem to have the same effect, said Jim Furyk, one of the tour’s best putters.
Added Justin Leonard: When putting for birdie, you realize that, most of the time, it’s acceptable to make par. When you’re putting for par, there’s probably a greater sense of urgency, so therefore you’re willing to be more aggressive in order not to drop a shot. It makes sense.

Of course, it makes no sense at all: each stroke counts as one on a scorecard, whether for eagle or triple-bogey on any particular hole. The goal is to finish with the fewest strokes, regardless of what each might be artificially termed. All else being equal distance from the cup, one’s proximity to the lead or cut, the course difficulty and so on putts should be handled the same way.

But they are not, according to the study of almost 200 tour professionals from 2004 through 2008. Using data the tour regularly records on every ball’s green location accurate to the nearest inch, the professors found that birdie putts were made about 3 percent less often than otherwise identical putts for par. (In effect, players tell themselves before birdie attempts, Let’s just get close, rather than, I have to make this.) Given that players typically attempt nine birdie putts per round, this cost each golfer about one stroke per tournament which can translate to hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money.

The professors, Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitzer, seemingly anticipated every But what about? reflex from golf experts. The tendency to miss birdie putts more often existed regardless of the player’s general putting or overall skill; round or hole number; putt length; position with respect to the lead or cut; and more.

As would be expected, the difference decreased on routine short putts and also decreased very far from the hole, where the chance of making the putt is small to begin with. It peaked on putts from about 6 to 12 feet. Even Woods, roundly considered the best putter ever, exhibited the trait at roughly the tour average.

The finding may become significant among behavioral economists, many of whom have suspected that the loss aversion found through contrived experiments might not be demonstrated by actual, expert competitors vying for high stakes. The paper is being submitted this week for publication in an economic journal.

Even experienced professionals playing for high stakes are not rational, Pope said. Tiger Woods, the model of perfection and what an economist would think of as a rational agent, even he exhibits these biases. And if he exhibits these biases, why not business leaders? There are a lot of applications. Rather than resist any insight from ivory tower academics, several golfers admitted to handling identical birdie and par putts differently and appeared somewhat amused at being found out. Geoff Ogilvy, who made par putts 4.1 percent more often than birdie putts from the same distance, said: A par putt seems more final. It shouldn’t make any difference, should it? And Paul Goydos, who showed the effect at 4.4 percent, said it probably affected him even more on putts for eagle.

If I’ve got a 25-footer for eagle, it seems like I’m more conservative than with a 25-footer for either birdie or par for whatever reason, Goydos said. I think the worst thing you can do is three-putt for par on a par 5. That’s one that drives me more crazy than anything else. Maybe that’s why I’m at the very bottom of the tour in eagles made.
But just as quickly as pro golfers admitted to their costly habit, they dismissed the idea of being able to do much about it. Stewart Cink, who showed a 3.3 percent effect, said that try as he might, he would never be able to convince himself that every putt is the same.

You can’t fool yourself, Cink said. But this is one of the reasons why we use sports psychology, and we try to have a preshot routine so we do the same thing, approach every putt the same way. It’s not always glamorous, and it’s not always possible in reality. The psychological preference to avoid a perceived penalty (losing a stroke relative to par) rather than go for a perceived gain (gaining a stroke) has some benefit.

Golfers tended to leave their conservatively stroked birdie putts slightly closer to the cup than more aggressively missed pars leading to their making their follow-up shot more often. But that temporary gain was far outweighed by the overall cost in strokes. The birdie-versus-par effect varies in ways that many golfers would instinctually predict. The tendency to make similar birdie putts less often than pars becomes less prevalent with each tournament round as players are judged more against one another than against par.

The elite tour players generally show less of the trait than marginal ones. And the difference decreases as a player sees himself or his partners handle a particular green. But the effect is always there, even if a good reason for it is not. A 10-footer for par feels more important than one for birdie, said Goydos, a two-time winner on the tour. The reality is, that’s ridiculous. I can’t explain it in any way other than that it’s subconscious. And pars are O.K. bogeys aren’t.

Larry Dorman contributed reporting.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/sports/golf/16study.html?em



Those who are positionally competing in an intensive competition, should remember the following quote from Questions and Replies between T'ang T'ai-tsung and Li Wei-kung.

"According to Fan Li's book, 'If you're last use yin tactics, if you're first then use yang tactics. When you have exhausted the enemy's yang tactics. When you have exhausted the enemy's tactics. When you have exhausted the enemy measures, then expand your yin to the full and seize them.' This then is the subtle mysteriousness of yin and yang according to the strategists."

The Dao of Strategic Assessment (27): Assessing One's Grand Settings

Assessing the potential alliances and the opposition through the use of Sunzi principles is quite simple.

Gathering "complete" intelligence on the contenders (not the pretenders) is the first step.

The next step is assessing the intelligence in terms of the "Public View", "The Functional View", The Field View", The Organizational View" and the "Definite View

While analyzing their past history and current actions from those different views can be quite taxing, transforming the intelligence into a top-down plan is the greater challenge.




If you like to know how to transform assessed data into a top down strategic view, please contact us at service [att] collaboration360 [dott] com.

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Everyone's on hand

It was pretty stuffy at Wednesday's news conference introducing incoming Police Chief George Gascon -- maybe it was all the egos in the room.

Apparently no one wanted to be left out: City officials nearly outnumbered members of the media at the packed event in the mayor's office. And we couldn't help but notice that most of those elected officials -- some of whom have traded harsh words lately -- have their sights set on higher office.

Of course, Mayor Gavin Newsom is looking to move to Sacramento, and numerous people in attendance are thought to be angling to replace him: Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Bevan Dufty, City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Assessor Recorder Phil Ting (who shares a political consultant with Newsom and got a special shout-out towards the end from the mayor).

Michael Macor
The Chronicle Incoming Police Chief George Gascon
gets a warm welcome from the whole city family Wednesday.

But ambition doesn't stop at San Francisco's borders: Attorney General candidate and current District Attorney Kamala Harris was front and center. And her right hand man, Chief Assistant District Attorney Russ Giuntini (who may be looking to become the city's top prosecutor) was also there.

Also in attendance were Board President David Chiu, supervisors Carmen Chu, John Avalos, Eric Mar and David Campos, Public Defender Jeff Adachi (who's gearing up for a budget fight).

Appointed officials were on hand too, including Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White, Police Commission President Theresa Sparks, Police Commissioner David Onek, Bill Siffermann, San Francisco's juvenile probation chief and Kevin Ryan, director of the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice.

And, of course, Police Officer's Association president Gary Delagnes, who never fails to give a great quote. Case in point-- when Delagnes was asked what challenges Gascon will face, he had this gem: "Politics. San Francisco (is) unlike Los Angeles or any other city in America. To learn the players on the police commission, to learn the players on the board of supervisors, the mayors office, the command staff, the media," Delagnes said. "He's got to see where the knives are coming from and the knives are coming from day one. They already started today."

Posted By: Marisa Lagos (Email) | June 17 2009 at 03:30 PM
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?blogid=55&entry_id=41905
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?entry_id=41905