Dana’s blog

Lately, a friend of mine has been reading a lot of Drucker. Drucker originated the term “knowledge worker” and knowledge work. I’ve been meaning to learn about and read up on Drucker’s work in this for a while.

The idea of a “knowledge economy” and such concepts are becoming increasingly mentioned in the mainstream US media as the United States faces increasing labor competition on a global scale. It’s been a rallying call to improve education so that middle class Americans will be able to compete on a global scale. The low transportation costs of “information” and “knowledge work” seem to imply significantly more competition in the arena of knowledge as we start competing in Thomas Friedman’s “Flat World”.

Maybe I’ll write about some of those in future blog posts, here though are…
… 7 quick ideas on the nature of

Screenshots from my desktop…

In case you can’t read the titles, it’s:
“Criticizing Pastor, Obama Assesses Race in America”
and … “Clinton to Fly to Michigan in Push for Re-Vote”

Whereas Obama responds to soundbytes and divisive attacks by giving the most intelligent and honest speech in our generation, Hillary goes to Michigan to try and steal an election.

Click here to listen to Obama’s speech.

… the first indication was when I saw Mean Girls and had to remind myself that Lindsay Lohan was not legal ( I was only 2 years older, but still).

The latest indication is the fact that Ashley Alexandra Dupré is also younger than me (she’s 22). In case you don’t recognize the name, she is the prostitute known as “Kristen” who by having Elliot Spitzer as a client brought down the great “ethics crusader”.

Among Spitzer’s accomplishments – besides going after Wall St. – included the prosecution of a sex tourism agency that arranged for Americans to go to Asian countries to pay for sex. He was the first one to prosecute such a case where the arrangements are made in the US, but the prostitution takes place overseas. He also cracked down on human trafficking for sex slavery. His work against corruption and sexual exploitation should be lauded, despite the great irony of his hypocrisy.

In case you’re interested, Ashley also has a myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/ninavenetta …

A final question: will this help her business?
Probably not (at least not through prostitution). Unlike other businesses where winning over famous or notable clients might attract others, I’m having trouble imagining that would work here.

If she can get a book deal, however, she might consider a career change.

… analysts on the Clinton campaign!

Everyone knows that if management consultants were to quit their jobs and join political campaigns that they could “add a lot of value”. A former Associate who started with me at BCG and my old roommate who was also in strategy consulting did just that. They both currently work for Obama. Although I don’t think I’m going to quit my job and join the Obama campaign, I have to admit that sometimes I’m quite jealous of my old roommate. He has the chance to bear everything he’s learned as a consultant within the data/analytic group of Obama’s campaign. Instead of maximizing profits for an unnamed corporation, he’s maximizing votes for the best politician of our generation.
Now it’s obvious how consulting skills could come into play in a political campaign. Many of the same skills that get honed in the consulting world are have analogues in the political campaign world. Instead of “customer segmenting”, there’s “voter demographics”. Instead of “sales force effectiveness”, there’s the question of how to manage an army of volunteers and training them to do functions like voter registration, caucusing, and mobilizing voters to get to the polls on election day. The list goes on…

Read on to see what role i-bankers have to play (hint: league tables)