Before I get back to describing Immelman's model for organization and management based on tribal behavior, I thought I'd make a few observations from my trip to Japan.

The Japanese season of Hanami (cherry blossom viewing) is taking place in Tokyo this week. From a management perspective, this means an excuse to organize a morale boosting party for your staff. Here's how to do it. Select the junior-man (the Japanese have a word for this) from the office. At this time of year, he (or she) will be a fresh college graduate with a new suit, shiny shoes, and a stunned, deer-in-the-headlights, look about him. Dispatch this individual with a large tarpaulin to Ueno Koen (or another nearby park open after dark) with orders to stake out a territory and under no circumstances should he leave his guard post. If you're feeling generous then send a couple of his friends to keep him company, fetch water and sandwiches. It will be a long day of guard duty. Now have your assistant source a karaoke machine - probably from the cupboard under the printer and insure the batteries are charged ;-) and send someone trustworthy to buy the beer. Show leadership by leaving the office before 6.30pm and ask everyone to follow you to the park. Maybe let your hair down - loosen that tie a little - heck, maybe even take it off. [They're snappy dressers in Tokyo]. There will be a fun evening ahead for everyone - and the Japanese really know how to party and enjoy themselves when you put a microphone in their hands. Lastly, as a manager, it would be responsible to wind things up in time to insure that everyone can catch their train home.

So here is the problem with Hanami. It's not like the Emperor's Birthday - you just can't schedule it in your calendar. The cherry trees bloom when it suits them dependent on the winter weather conditions and the arrival of Spring. Yes, there is variation! The thing is, that to really be enjoying the spirit you have to hold the party under the trees whilst the cherry blossom is falling around you - not before and not after. The whole idea is to celebrate the fragility and shortness of life and its beauties. The window of opportunity is only a few days long each year.

So when the Anderson's (yep, that's me in the Asakusa Temple gardens last week with the junior carrier of the Agile Management gene code) go to Japan for Hanami, we have to make a guess - airline schedules are deterministic (more or less). So we book for the first week in April. And then we set our expectation that we will probably get to see some cherry blossom either blooming or falling but probably not both and maybe neither.

In our real home lives, we know how to deal with variation. We know how to set expectations appropriately. We accommodate variation like it was natural because it is. Why do we struggle to do so in our professional lives? So, did we get to see cherry blossom. Yes, we did! Did we see it falling? No, we didn't. Did we get to party under the stars, petals falling around us. Nope! Did our vacation meet specification? Yes, it did! Because that specification had variable expectations built into it.