Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1319500
42 PCB007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2020 rection? You've got a problem. But if peo- ple are on the bus because of who else is on the bus, then it's much easier to change direction: 'Hey, I got on this bus because of who else is on it; if we need to change direction to be more successful, fine with me.' Second, if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away. The right people don't need to be tightly man- aged or fired up; they will be self-motivat- ed by the inner drive to produce the best re- sults and to be part of creating something great. Third, if you have the wrong people, it doesn't matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won't have a great company." By the way, Good to Great is Amazon's best seller in strategic business planning. If you haven't read this book lately, it's worth the time. It reminds us that the greatest enemy of being great is being good. And when it comes to hiring, being great is something to strive for—your business depends on it. PCB007 stances, you never really know if it's right until the new hire starts and you get months down the road. At best, you can be clear on exact- ly who you are looking for to develop a robust hiring process and help you get it right. Like a documented manufacturing process, hiring needs a documented process, as well. There are many resources available to develop such a process. Whatever your process is, it's better to invest an extra month or two to get it right because, in the long run, your return on investment will be much greater. The cost of failure is too costly. Jim Collins' book Good to Great, published by Harper Business, has some solid hiring ad- vice. He makes the point that who you hire is more important than what you hire. Here is an excerpt from his book: "The good-to-great leaders understood three simple truths. First, if you begin with 'who,' rather than 'what,' you can more easily adapt to a changing world. If people join the bus primarily because of where it is going, what happens if you get 10 miles down the road, and you need to change di- GPS isn't waterproof. The navigation system depends on radio waves, which break down rapidly in liquids, in- cluding seawater. To track undersea objects like drones or whales, researchers rely on acoustic signaling. But devices that generate and send sound usually require batteries—bulky, short-lived batteries that need regular changing. Could we do without them? MIT researchers think so. They've built a battery-free pinpointing system dubbed Un- derwater Backscatter Localiza- tion (UBL). Rather than emitting its own acoustic signals, UBL re- flects modulated signals from its environment. That provides re- searchers with positioning in- formation, at net-zero energy. Though the technology is still de- veloping, UBL could someday be- come a key tool for marine conservationists, climate sci- entists, and the U.S. Navy. Because radio waves quickly deteriorate as they move through water, subsea communications often depend on acoustic signals instead. Sound waves travel faster and further underwater than through air, making them an effi- cient way to send data. But there's a drawback. "Sound is power-hungry," says Adib. For tracking devic- es that produce acoustic signals, "their batteries can drain very quickly." That makes it hard to precisely track objects or animals for a long time-span — changing a battery is no simple task when it's attached to a migrating whale. So, the team sought a battery-free way to use sound. (MIT News) An Underwater Navigation System Powered by Sound