2009 January | Your source for all Hedgehog information

Sonic Heroes: A Battle Won

January 26th, 2009 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Computer Games

Damian Cross asked:

Video game players around the world would not hesitate to offer a quick response when asked about Sonic the Hedgehog. The blue blur character from Sega of America made it’s debut in June of 1991 with a game title called ‘Sonic Games’. The Sega mascot was a quick hit, and seemed to do what it was designed to do, and that was to rival with Nintendo’s Mario character in the video game arena. Shortly after the release of the first game title the team at Sega moved to expand. Sonic the Hedgehog hit it’s peak in 1994 with the release of several game titles for Sony’s Playstation 2, and the emerging Xbox from Microsoft, which was gaining in popularity. Sonic fans everywhere enjoyed playing Sonic Adventure DX and a new pinball game called Sonic Pinball Party. Then came the first Sonic game title from Sega since 2001, in the shape of ‘Sonic Heroes’.

The preliminary screenshots of Sonic Heroes raised many expectations of what promised to be the best Sonic the Hedgehog game ever. Enticing images of blue skies, checkered hills, and the implementation of alternate routes that players could include in their strategy to complete the game, where all highly expected attributes. Additionally, some more avid players hoped for this release to be the entrance of Sonic into the world of 3D gaming. However, game fans everywhere where deeply disappointed after receiving what has later been labeled one of the worse instances of Sonic the Hedgehog ever made. Many of the issues with previous games where not addressed, such as camera problems in perspective and unresponsive controls, which resulted in a high amount of failed attempts during game play. Considering the game sends the player back to the start line after a failed attempt, it should not come as a surprise that the game produced it’s share of angry gamers. The overall structure of the game delivered and extremely difficult challenge to young sonic fans. Surprisingly enough, Sonic Heroes ended up selling very well, taking sixth place in the United Kingdom. A year after it first came out, the game title still maintained a top ten position in worldwide rankings.

It seems that Sonic fans have overlooked this shady episode of the blue blur as another step in the adventure. It was around this time frame in the year 2000, that Sega took a shot at the game console market with the introduction of the Sega Genesis console. Short lived and retired, Sonic fans seem to have forgotten all about it, along with the unresolved issues of Sonic heroes. The spiky blue blur continues to grow in popularity despite the obstacles, reaching over 20 million fans all over the world.

Leadership Formation and Level 5 Leadership!

January 25th, 2009 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Leadership

Bob Calkin asked:

In his book “Good to Great” Jim Collins headed a research team to look at what drives average organizations to take a great leap and become great. The research concluded that a crucial component of greatness is a group of leaders with a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. These leaders who Collins describes as Level 5 leaders channel their ambition away from themselves into the larger goal of building a great company. All of the companies in the study that went from good to great had Level 5 leadership in key positions, including the CEO, at the pivotal time of transition.”

However, Collins couldn’t answer a critical question; how to develop Level 5 leadership?

“I would love to be able to give you a list of steps for becoming Level 5 but we have no solid research data that would support a credible list”

The inner development of a person remains a “black box”. In this article we will attempt to suggest ways that you can unlock the black box of great leadership. Our key is a set of capacities that we call awareness and communication capacities.

Collins’ Five Level Leadership Hierarchy

Level 5 – Level 5 executive

Builds enduring greatness through paradoxical

combination of personal humility plus professional will

Level 4 – Effective Leader

Catalyzes commitment to and vigorous pursuit of clear

and compelling vision; stimulates the group to high

performance standards

Level 3 – Competent manager

Organizes people and resources towards effective and

efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives

Level 2 – Contributing team member

Contributes to the achievement of group objectives;

works effectively with others in a group setting

Level 1 – Highly capable individual

Makes productive contribution through talent knowledge,

skills and good work habits

Each higher level builds on the lower level so that the Level 5 leader incorporates all five levels. A Level 4 leader incorporates all level apart form Level 5 and so on.

Collins’ model is a fine first look at leadership and this model can be significantly improved by locating it within an integral approach. You can learn about the integral approach by clicking here. In what follows we assume that you will be familiar with the terminology of the integral approach.

An effective leadership formation program needs to be able to help people form the awareness and communication capacities that are the key to reaching Level 5 of Collins’ model.

In addition to each of the companies having Level 5 leadership at the crucial times there were a series of steps the leadership of the Good to Great companies implemented.

Getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus

The first step these companies took was to hire the right people. Collins talks about this as getting the right people onto the bus and the wrong people off the bus, or alternatively re-positioning someone to a place within the organization that suited their talent. Once the leadership had the right people on board and in the right positions they set about deciding about their future direction.

Confronting the brutal facts, (but never lose faith) <

Each of the Good to Great companies faced up to the brutal facts they confronted. In order to achieve this critical step three awareness capacities are critical. These three awareness capacities are:

1. Treating everything that arises as an opportunity to learn;

2. Accepting unconditional responsibility for the choices made;

3. Achieving emotional mastery;

Treating everything that arises as an opportunity to learn is about accepting the provisional nature of all of our beliefs and being ready, in the face of a better argument, to modify and change our views. This is not something that many people find easy to do, who, when their view is challenged experience it as a threat and will defend their point of view “to the death.

A striking feature of Level 5 leaders was their willingness to accept full responsibility for any mistakes they made and to use the experience as an occasion to learn. Level 5 leaders at the same time were quick to attribute success to luck or to the exceptional capacities of the people involved rather than massaging their own egos.

The Good to Great companies also never lost sight of faith in their capacity to find a way forward. This is about the healthy management of emotions and feelings. People who can manage their emotions are able to distinguish between the feelings of the emotion and honour those feelings, but at the same time recognise the reasons that lie behind the feelings. They are then able to take steps, by using the energy of the emotion, to deal with the reasons. They use their emotions as reliable indicators of the steps they must take. It’s part of facing the brutal facts.

The hedgehog concept (Simplicity within three circles)

The hedgehog concept is an intriguing title for one of the steps in moving from Good to Great. Collins draws upon a parable created by Isaiah Berlin who contrasted the hedgehog and the fox. The hedgehog had a simple strategy and tactic to stay safe, while the fox had all the cunning and guile in the world, but the fox could not outwit the hedgehog. Collins makes the point that all the Good to Great companies were hedgehogs. They all developed a ‘hedgehog concept” that formed the basis of their business plan.

The hedgehog concept is made up of three circles:

1. Understanding what they could best in the world at doing?

2. What is the driver of their economic machine?

3. Do all the people in the organization have passion for what they do?

The hedgehog concept emerges at the intersection of these three circles.

In integral terms understanding what they could be best at, and appreciating the importance of the economic driver are properties of the Lower Right quadrant. Even though this is an easy concept to understand it took each of the Good to Great companies a long time and much soul searching to develop their hedgehog concept.

The issue of passion is a property of the Upper left quadrant and is a reflection of the people in the organization being aligned with the vision and objectives of the hedgehog concept. Articulating the vision associated with the hedgehog concept is very much a task for leadership.

A culture of discipline

A pre-condition for moving from Good to Great is having an integral mode of communication. An integral mode of communication presupposes a culture of discipline, and a culture of discipline depends upon the consent of the people within the organization. It’s not something that can be imposed from on high. A culture of discipline depends upon the formation among the people in the organization of the awareness and communication capacities that we have already mentioned.

The importance of a culture of discipline means that people do not need to be managed. This recognizes the reality of the modern business regime that depends upon knowledge work. All knowledge work involves a residual space within the systems and processes of Lower Right quadrant where the workers must exercise their own judgement and discretion. This requires a disciplined approach and one that recognises the broader aims and objectives of the organization consistent with the hedgehog concept.

Technology accelerators

Jim Collins makes the point that technology can accelerate progress but it can never on its own be the basis of moving from Good to Great. Organizations need the discipline to evaluate technologies in terms of whether the technology can enhance the hedgehog concept. In many cases the judicious use of technology helped the Good the Great companies to be the best in the world at what they did.

The flywheel

Jim Collins makes the point that viewed from the outside the Good to Great companies appear to suddenly take off. Closer examination reveals that there is a relatively long transition period where the foundations are laid for phenomenal growth and take off. A great deal of work goes on in the take off period requiring discipline and facing the facts balanced by having the faith that ultimately success would follow.

The organization’s vision

Prior to the Good to Great project Jim Collins collaborated with Jerry I Porras in researching and writing “Built to Last”. This project dealt with the qualities required to build an enduring great company. After the completion of the research for “Good to Great”, Collins saw “Good to Great” as a prequel to “Built to Last”. All the Built to Last companies had been through a Good the Great build-up and breakthrough.

To make the shift from a company with sustained great results to an enduring company Collins recommends applying the central concepts of “Built to Last”. This is to discover the organization’s vision for the future consisting of core values and purpose beyond just making money, what he calls the core ideology, and combine this with the dynamic of “preserve the core/stimulate progress.

In addition Collins argues that a central point of Built to Last was to develop what he calls a good BHAG. This is an abbreviation for Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Therefore building a vision involves:

1.Discovering your purpose for existence as an organization beyond just making money;

2.Discovering your core values;

3.Working out a good BHAG with a time frame of 10 to 15 years;

These tasks are pre-eminent leadership tasks and any credible leadership formation program needs to be able to help leaders work through these three steps. The leaderships’ tasks is to the articulate the vision and align that vision with the aspirations and hopes of the people within the organization.

Finally Collins asks the question Why Greatness? He offers two reasons:

First it is in fact easier to seek greatness using the tools provided than trying to manage mediocrity. Managing mediocrity involves a great many hassles and takes a great deal of energy. Forming the conditions for excellence takes less energy and generates positive reinforcing momentum.

Secondly if your people are doing something they care about (if the people in the organization have passion for what they are doing, a component of the Hedgehog concept) then they are going to want to excel at what they are doing.

All of the qualities required for a leadership formation program are contained within the CMI leadership formation program that you can learn more about by visiting our site.

The Ultimate Sonic Flash Games Online

January 24th, 2009 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Video Games

Damian Cross asked:

The Spiky Blue Blur character, known to most as Sonic the Hedgehog has grown to ever so popular dimensions this last decade, with over 10 million copies sold of his game titles each time a new one is released. However, with the fast and furious development of Flash, an application developed by Macromedia in 1996, becoming cheaper, faster and easier to use, Sonic has now invaded our computer screens with a plethora (did I say plethora?) of animated games for everyone to enjoy. Websites are spawning everywhere claiming to have the latest Sonic games available to play online, absolutely free. What which are the best games? And where can I find them? One could search the web for popular terms, or maybe ask around in gaming forums for a few tips.

As a humble Sonic enthusiast, I could say that the most popular sonic game to play online would be ‘Sonic Smash Brothers’. This title was made in flash for the internet only, and was received with great enthusiasm by fans. With over 300 thousand searches each month, Sonic smash brothers has gone ahead of the sonic games competition hands down. It is a 10 mb download on a flash platform, which the player would play on the screen. The setting is very similar to the one sonic fans have already become familiar with, with a few innovations here and there. Great sound effects and a unique plot provide the user with a game that is both, entertaining and new. But with this aside, the flash game platform provides sufficient ease for internet developers to change things around and come up with all kinds of variations for sonic games. For example, there is ‘Sonic in Angel Island’, depicting the classic and traditional jumping through loops, collecting rings, and infamous running speeds. For those who appreciate a much lower paced adventure, there are games such as Sonic Dots, a classic pacman theme with sonic and friends as the featured characters. The fun does not stop there, sonic variations available in the internet include amenities such as scene creators, where the player gets an opportunity to design the background, obstacles and such of the game they wish to play. In the latest fad, sonic the hedgehog has joined forces with Mario and friends in games like Sonic Lost in Mario World. As the title describes, gamers get a chance to see what it would be like to play a Sonic Game in a Mario setting. Can’t help to see the irony in this, since it was the Mario character from Nintendo that sonic the hedgehog was made to commercially compete with when he was created.

Today, Sonic and friends get ready to hit the stores, joining forces with Mario in a game title called “Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games”. Two developer teams of 100 people each are at work to bring out the best of these celebrities to the Nintendo game console. Hoping to be released in time for the winter Olympics in Vancouver, as an avid Internet player I would also watch out for any free previews available online.

Sonic the Hedgehog is Still Going Strong!

January 8th, 2009 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Computers

Robert asked:

In recent years the gaming industry has exploded into mainstream culture and has intertwined itself into the fabric of everyday life. The success of gaming can be traced back to the classic systems of the 90’s, the glorious days of Nintendo and Sega. Yet we all know that the weight of a consoles success always depends on that one defining game. When picturing this perfect synergy of a console and that one game most people will point to Xbox and Halo. Yet everyone who grew up in the 90’s knows that this synergy started way back, when Sega and Sonic the Hedgehog meshed together so perfectly.

Sonic the Hedgehog, known as that speedy blue ball of fury, was first birthed by Sega as its “mascot” of sorts. Sega eventually saw the potential of the blue hedgehog as a hit game series and released the first installment in 1991. Sega rode on the coattails of their prodigy as Sonic soared through loops and jumps on TV screens across America and sub sequentially turning Sega into a leading video game company.

From 1991 to 1994 Sega churned out three hit titles starring Sonic and a fourth with Sonic sharing the spotlight with his pal, Knuckles. Sonic barrel rolled out of his 2d home and set foot into a lush 3D environment, in Sonic Adventures for Dreamcast, and never looked back.

Sonic’s creator, Sega, decided to drop out of the hardware market in 2001 and allowed Sonic to step into the consoles of its former competitor, Nintendo. After seeing major success on the Nintendo platform, Sega decided to also allow Playstation and Xbox the privilege of selling the Sonic series. In 2006, Sonic the Hedgehog found his series in the form of a star, a part of the honorable “Walk of Game”. Almost two decades and 7 console generations after its initial debut, Sonic the Hedgehog is still going strong, with a new hit game on next-gen consoles, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Be Hedgehog Aware!

January 5th, 2009 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Nature

The Works asked:

Very tidy gardens are NOT friendly places for hedgehogs. If you leave a small corner behind or under bushes where leaves and other garden debris accumulates, a log pile with space inside hedgehogs will be attracted and inclined to stay. If this area is literally a sheltered corner in the fencing it may also serve as a good place of a hibernacula, a nesting place for the winter.

Supplement their normal share of slugs, snails, beetles, worms, caterpillars etc. with regular snacks of good quality tinned cat or dog food. This will encourage them to stay. Please do NOT feed them bread and milk - this will only upset their stomachs. In the winter leave food out whenever you see evidence of hedgehog activity in the garden

Water is also essential, especially in extremes of temperatures, but it can also be a hazard if you have a pool with a long drop to the water\’s surface and smooth lined sides. Suitably placed stones near the edge will help he situation (and incidentally frogs, newts and toads too!). Alternatively, a piece of small mesh chicken wire anchored in the earth and trained down the side of the pool will act as a climbing net.

Other hazards to hedgehogs are:

PESTICIDES!

This includes slug pellets! Whilst hedgehogs will not eat the pellet they will be poisoned by eating slugs that have. There are alternative methods of slug control and a resident hedgehog is one of them! Also growing success products are safe.

FIRES!

Pile up leaves and cuttings for burning in one area, then move them to the point at which you are going to burn them immediately before doing so (and be careful with the fork!) Piles of garden rubbish make attractive homes for hedgehogs, especially in the autumn and winter. November 5th bonfires are a particular problem here!

MOWING & STRIMMING!

Getting into those odd corners with the strimmer can do more than cut the grass. Long grass in protected places is a favourite place for hedgehog families to spend the daylight hours.

NETTING!

Nets for fruit, tennis, football etc. can trap hedgehogs very easily. If you have to use netting, check it daily at least.

HOUSEHOLD RUBBISH!

Cans, yoghurt containers, plastic cups etc and the plastic rings from packs of cans can get trapped over hedgehogs\’ heads! Part of their success in evolution is that they are opportunists and omnivorous eaters. Their inquisitiveness means they will literally stick their noses into anything that might provide a meal! Open containers of oil, paint or other hazardous substances are also a problem.

In more rural areas, cattle grids are also a hazard if they are too deep for hedgehogs to climb out of. A simple ramp of bricks or stones (possible with a piece of wood) in one corner is a simple solution to this problem.

Appreciate your resident hedgehog, but please do not be too possessive. Ensure that there is a means of escape from the garden, especially in a small town or village garden. For full physical and mental health, a hedgehog needs to be able to roam, to seek mates, and fine food, but making your garden as attractive as possible will increase the chances of it sticking around.

Should an amorous pair of hedgehogs snuffling and grunting in their mating dance disturb your night ‘s sleep, then rejoice! It is one of the best signs you can have to indicate you have an attractive garden!

Archive for January, 2009

Sonic Heroes: A Battle Won

Leadership Formation and Level 5 Leadership!

The Ultimate Sonic Flash Games Online

Sonic the Hedgehog is Still Going Strong!

Be Hedgehog Aware!

Resources

Subscribe Feed

Meta

Author

Pages

Categories

Archives