The Conscious Manager

The Flying Professor -Part II: Before you leave home

2012-01-12T17:00:00.000-08:00

Part I listed often-overlooked things that when taken along make your trip comfortable, safe, and productive. Part II looks at tasks you’ll find helpful to do before leaving for the airport. As before, I do not get kickbacks from any products mentioned.

Twelve to 24 hours before departing for places exotic:

Upload your trip documents (plane, hotel) to TripIt.com. There is a security risk in letting LinkedIn colleagues know where you’re going (TripIt is tied to LinkedIn) – you never know who they’ll tell – but TripIt does automatically inform family and co-workers who need to know where you are and will be. It’s also a single-source repository for all your reservations, itineraries, and receipts, making tax and reimbursement tasks easier later on. And alibis too, I guess.
I have Snoozester.com send a robotic wake-up call to my bedside phone. Voluntarily getting up ‘n’ at ‘em at 3:30 a.m. is something my biorhythms just don’t let me do. Snoozester will repeat the call as many times as I’ve programmed. I generally choose Snoozester’s “pirate” voice; the sultry female voice doesn’t make me want to get out of bed. I can get additional free wakeup calls if you join as a result of my invitation. So if you want me to get this non-monetary kickback, send me your email address. Otherwise feel free to join directly at Snoozester :o(
Check the weather at your destination. Weather.com will tell you if it’s unseasonable, raining, etc. Easier then to avoid showing up with a less-than-useful wardrobe.
Check in for your flight using the airline’s web site. Objectively there’s not much point to this (unless it’s your best chance to choose the seat you want). You’ll still have to go through a rigmarole at the airport. But having the boarding pass in hand before leaving home gives a subjective sense of security, and they know you’re coming. If you’ve booked through airline A and your flight is operated by “partner” airline B, A’s web site won’t necessarily recognize your booking code. The sad truth is that airlines are not airlines any more, they’re just travel agents. The “partnerships” like Star Alliance are not truly integrated; they’ve linked tasks that are convenient for them, not for you. However, single bookings for multiple-carrier itineraries are something of an improvement over the past.
Charge your cell phones, your computer, and your Kindle. If you’re not first to arrive at your departure gate, early birds will be hogging all the electrical outlets.
Alert your credit/debit card issuers (and your credit union) that you’re traveling. Most have “travel alert” links on their sites, though they’re not obvious and you may have to go to the site map to find them. A catch is that the banks haven’t always installed the latest country lists in their drop-down menus. (USAA is a culprit, though they of all companies should know better.) You will have to phone the bank if the country you’re going to doesn’t show on the menu. You’ve got enough to do before you leave for Burundi; why go to all this trouble? If you don’t, the bank may assume a charge requested from Burundi is fraudulent; they’ll refuse the charge and start calling your home number to ask whether the card is stolen.
Record “away messages” (your cellular provider boringly calls these “alternative greetings”) on your office and cell phones. Assuming your US cell phone does not work overseas, as mine does not. My message says I’ll be out of cell phone range, won’t be able to answer v-mail for a week, if you’re okay with that then go ahead and leave me a message, otherwise send me an email, or for immediate help call .
Dehydration makes everything about traveling so much worse. Unless you enjoy buying bottled water on the concourse (or unless you travel first class, where they’ll bring you liquids at the twitch of your finger), take an empty water bottle and fill it from a drinking fountain or bathroom tap after you’ve passed security. Many airports even in undeveloped countries serve up potable water in their international airports. Caution: Secondary security check agents on US-bound flights may force you to pour out the water before boarding. Always worth a try, though.
Use Google maps, Mapquest, or Michelin to get and print out directions from your hotel to every person you have an appointment with during your trip. Once at your destination, you may not have time or facilities* to print them. Printed directions are also a check on the honesty of taxi drivers.

* Alternatively, carry a compact thermal printer. They are convenient but need 15v DC input for charging. This is more than they can draw from your laptop’s USB port, so make sure you also have a converter that turns 110 or 220v into 15v with the right polarity. And a roll of thermal paper.

The Flying Professor - Part I: Don't leave home without these

2012-01-01T20:27:00.000-08:00

Courses, speeches, and client meetings take me to faraway places, sometimes on short notice. Here are some hard-won tips about this kind of traveling.

Google "packing lists," and you'll find lots of advice about how to fill your entire suitcase. So I won't go there. Instead, this entry, Part I, lists essential items you might not think of. Part II will focus on trip prep – tasks to do before leaving home.

Preliminary note #1: Sometimes the destinations are places with high crime and/or extreme climate.

Preliminary note #2: This list is just from the goodness of my heart (!). I don't know whether the vendors have affiliate programs, and I won't make money if you click through from this blog.

Clothes and shoes

Travelsmith clothes, for men and women, are good-looking, breathable, immune from wrinkling, usually machine-washable, and have lots of secret pickpocket-resistant pockets.
Rockport walking shoes have steel inserts in the soles, and decent arch support. They are sufficiently rugged for light hiking but clean up well enough for business casual. (Sorry, no walking shoe suggestions for the ladies.)
2-tone dress shoes are da bomb. My black-with-brown-trim slip-ons go with brown suits or black suits (or blue or gray, natch), and save me from carrying an extra pair of shoes - or from having to plan, "This trip only gray suits, 'cause I'm only taking black shoes..." Look for them on Shoebuy.com or similar sites, or your local shoe store.
My Wolf River midweight hiking boots have survived fifteen years of hard use all over the world. Way comfortable. I've only had to replace the laces, though the heel is getting kinda thin now. I've not been able to find these on the web lately :-(
My Dad told me, always pack swim trunks, they're light and you never know when or where you'll be able to get in a swim. The advice has served me well. And you never know when your hotel will have a nice hot tub next to its pool.
I think you already know to take layers instead of a bulky coat if you're going somewhere (variably) cold.

Software and cloud stuff

Don't fail to install Prey on your PC or Mac. If your laptop is stolen, its camera will send a picture of the next user to Prey HQ. Yes, computers have been recovered this way!
Of course, put your presentation files on Dropbox. Even if you lose your laptop and all your USB drives, you can still access your file for that important presentation.

Hardware

Going to a country where your US cell phone doesn't work? Buy a Mobal phone. Charges slightly high when you do use the phone, but no monthly charges, nor any other charges, when you do not use the phone. You pay only for calls; this is not one of those deals where you pay for a whole month even if you make only one call. Nice service too, and the phones work in at least 99 countries.
A Kindle. Beats shlepping a pile of books! And keeps you from going nuts when you're hurtling through the air at 30,000 feet for 10-hours in one of those overgrown toothpaste tubes they're pleased to call an "airliner." (Yes, I know Amazon has an affiliate program, but I didn't use it in this link.)
Take an ethernet cord, and one of those double plugs that lets you splice two ethernet cords together. Hotel rooms without wireless may have Internet access through ethernet. However, if they supply a cord at all, it may be too short for you to work comfortably.
Electrical plug converters, natch.

Accounts and financials

Get a credit card featuring "no foreign transaction fees." The Marriott Visa card is a good one, and you accumulate generous Marriott points.
Carry a folder with all your frequent flyer cards, car rental discount codes, and hotel points program membership cards. Or print out all the numbers on a sheet of paper in your travel file. Reason #1, if your client books your flight, chances are they'll forget to enter your FF#. Reason #2, your travel plans may change - you're re-routed on another airline, or you miss the train and have to rent a car - so have those numbers handy. Oh, yeah, reason #3, if you're a premium member, there's usually a dedicated phone number where you'll get extra good service when you need to change those reservations.

Odds 'n' ends

After I got robbed in Peru, I bought a Magellan's VaultPro Max utility bag. Steel mesh in the strap and bag body mean the bad guys cannot cut through it. The secure shoulder strap is supplemented by a belt clip. Way cool.
Small USA and hometown gifts. I carry t-shirts, fleeces, ball caps, refrigerator magnets, etc.
Carry a spare bag just in case you can't resist shopping. The bag can be ultralight and collapsible, but should have a zipper closure so light-fingered locals can't reach in and snag your souvenirs.
Take photocopies of your passport. All kinds of possible uses. Allows you to leave the passport in a hotel room safe.
If you intend to participate in sports, take gauze, medical tape, band aids, ointment, and ibuprofen.

Let me know you find this list helpful. Bon voyage!

The National Debt: Digging deeper into why we’re digging deeper

2011-04-10T14:56:00.000-07:00

The US national debt is now at 100% of Gross National Product, in other words equal to what we produce in a year. Forty cents of every dollar the US government spends is borrowed. Horrible, cry the pundits! The government should behave more like a family with a budget, should know when to stop spending!

Let’s consider, though, that the average home-owning family takes on a mortgage equal to two or three times its annual earnings. (Before the crash, this number was five, not two or three.) In the US, it’s common for this family to spend 40% of its monthly income servicing the mortgage debt. So far, then, the government is acting exactly like a family – and a fairly responsible family at that, as we’re not even talking about families that abuse credit cards.

The bank lends to the family because the banker thinks the family will increase its productivity (and thus its income) over time, or at least remain as productive as it is currently. And just in case that turns out not to be true, the banker has built a risk premium into the interest rate on the mortgage.

Someone who panics about the US national debt, then, does not believe in America, does not believe our country will continue its historical trend of ever-increasing productivity. The people who yammer loudest about the national debt are those on the political right – usually the most flag-waving of patriots. What? When push comes to shove, these people do not believe in America after all?

Mysterious. Let’s see what’s behind it.

First, we’ll tie the loose thread I left when I mentioned interest rates. Are lenders gouging the US? If yes, it might be cause for panic. But interest rates are low worldwide following the crash, and lenders know that that if pushed to the wall the US could print more dollars, which are the world reserve currency. So no, interest rates are not the worry. Growth in debt is a legitimate worry, though.

Last night James Baker was on CNN with Fareed Zakariah. Baker said the US is broke, and debtors will colonize us like some banana republic if we don’t reform fiscally. He is wrong. Debtors will colonize us like some banana republic if we don’t get more productive.

In the 1980s Australia was in an economic mess, and the Australian Prime Minister trotted out the banana republic argument. Did Australia go the way of Nicaragua? No, Australia became more productive. Australians innovated and diversified their industries. They became less protectionist about the import and export of goods and people. They created an Oz that is a prosperous magnet for immigration and investment.

Anyway, why would Baker care? He and his – I don’t really want to be inflammatory, but OK, I will use the word fatcat – fatcat cohorts wanted NAFTA, the WTO, and more and more free trade agreements, and they got them. Why did they want them? It wasn’t because economic theory says protectionism (the opposite of free trade) is inefficient. It was so rich corporations and individuals could move (and invest) capital more freely around the world.

This enables them to hedge on taxes and hedge against the risk of the US becoming a banana republic offering low investment returns. That is to say, the fatcat cohorts do not care about America’s future. They don’t have to believe in it. They’ll make money regardless. They have no cause to worry about the US national debt.

I could say, “So much for patriotism,” but that’d be ranting. The right’s rage against national debt appears to be a smoke screen, perhaps a cover for further tax reductions for their super-rich overseers. It also conveniently obfuscates that we had a balanced budget under the Democrat Bill Clinton and that it was blown away by Republican President Shrub. Successful obfuscation might help a Republican presidential candidate in 2012.

In any case, the US does have a budget problem, and it’s more constructive to speak of what can be done about it. Baker told Zakariah it may no longer be in our “national interest” to have troops in Afghanistan. That’s marvelous, a Republican suggesting, however obliquely, a reduction in military spending. It would make a greater contribution to a balanced budget than anything Congress came up with this week.

My progressive friends advocate increasing taxes on the super-rich. Again, this makes a certain amount of sense. However, it does not get to the root of the problem, which is productivity.

The route to increased productivity – which lets us pay down debt – is innovation. We must find a way to induce the super-rich, and even the simply rich, to invest heavily in innovative ventures. Not in gold, not in real estate, but in inventor-entrepreneurs who will bring productivity-enhancing products and services to market. And the best place to make such investments is still the United States.

What form can such inducements take? Not an easy question. Tax credits mean nothing to people and companies that pay zero taxes to begin with. And the super-rich are traditionally more interested in conserving their wealth than in risking it. I invite your bright ideas.

I write from Peru, where we await the outcome of a momentous presidential election. The candidate with the greatest support among the rural and poor, Ollanta Humala, is great friends with Chávez of Venezuela. My educated Peruvian friends, many of whom came from poor families, understand Chávez’ Venezuelan model would be disastrous for Peru. They also understand that when the advantaged class in a highly unequal society does not produce, popular sentiment can propel a far-left candidate to the fore. There’s a lesson here for the United States.

Curmudgeon at Restaurant

2011-02-27T11:59:00.000-08:00

The Starbuck’s counterfolks know the only reasonable answer to their “Good morning, how are you?” is “Dunno how I am, haven’t had my coffee yet.” They nod sympathetically.

Restaurants, though, hire people who can cook and handle heavy trays; communication skills are not a job requirement. The following are real things restaurant employees say. After hearing their garbled grammar many times, I’ve fantasized about giving the following responses. Now, don’t y’all try this – it’s certain to result in staff spitting on your food before they bring it from the kitchen. You can share my fantasy, though.

Hostess: “How are you this evening?”

You: “Hungry, duh.”

Hostess: “There’s a short wait. Could I have a name?”

You: “Didn’t your mother give you one?”

Hostess [eventually]: “Your table's ready. Just let me grab you...”

You: “Don't grab me!”

Hostess: “... some menus.”

She seats you. The waiter brings glasses of water and asks for your order. He tries to upsell you: He wants you to have premium gin instead of well gin in your G&T; appetizers; wine; desserts; extra toppings on everything. This is not conducive to the relaxing evening you were hoping to enjoy. You raise an eyebrow.

Knowing his tip is at stake, the waiter is graceful enough to apologize. He reveals that the manager requires him to upsell. You sympathize. Nonetheless, it’s annoying. So,

Waiter: “If you need anything else, my name’s Dave.”

You: “And if we don’t need anything else, then what’s your name?”

Dave: "Oh. Ah, it's still Dave. How would you like your steak served?"

You: "By Salma Hayek, who's wearing a very small bikini, and we're in Hawaii, and..."

Dave: "Not a chance."

You: "Medium, then."

Dave disappears, eventually brings your dinner, disappears again. Knowing his name doesn’t help; you can’t find him.

Dave swings by, asks, "How's everything?"

You: "It's good."

Dave: "Great!!"

You: "Don't escalate it, Dave, I said it's 'good.'"

You know Dave wants to turn over your table, squeeze in one more sitting during his shift, and you wonder why he doesn’t serve you more quickly, which would advance your enjoyment and his income. Finally,

Dave [insincerely]: “No hurry with this bill, any time is OK.”

You: “How about 2015, I hear the economy will bounce back by then.”

Dave: “Ha, ha.” [Pointing at food I have not yet eaten] “Do you wanna box for that?”

You: “No, but I'll wrestle you two falls out of three.”

You lay down a credit card. Dave reaches for it.

Dave: “I’ll take care of that for you.”

You: “That’s really generous of you, Dave, thanks! I thought I was going to have to pay for it!”

At that point, if not before, another guy appears, stands next to your table. He’s probably a restaurant manager, though you don’t know him from Adam. He’s not wearing a uniform or even a name tag, and he doesn’t bother to introduce himself. It’s creepy. I mean, even Dave introduced himself.

Manager: “How is everything, folks?”

You: “It’s all right. Why? Are you considering eating here?”

Manager: “Ha, no, I eat here a lot, ‘cause I work here.”

You: “Oh, well, your vest is so threadbare I thought you were going to ask for our leftovers too.”

Manager [Concerned]: “Did someone ask for them?”

You: “Yeah, Dave wanted to fight me for them.”

Another half hour passes. Dave appears with your credit card receipt. This time he’s all smiles, wishes you a beautiful rest of your evening, makes a big deal out of placing red and white mints on the tray with the credit slip. Dave knows and you know that he knows and he knows that you know that now’s your opportunity to write a tip on the slip…

I greatly enjoy restaurants, just sometimes wish for the traditional silent waitrons who anticipate the diner's every need...

Conscious Manager workshops

2011-02-27T09:34:00.000-08:00

I have just posted a brochure describing five 2-hour workshops based on my 2003 book The Conscious Manager: Zen for Decision Makers. The workshops are:

Zen for Decision Makers
Preventing, Avoiding, and Resolving Conflict
Intro to Martial Art for Yoga Practitioners
Dreams of Technology
Quest for the Sword

They are all fun and unusual. If you have or know of an audience interested in these topics, do let me know.

Screwed! But, give hope a chance.

2010-04-10T22:25:00.000-07:00

An expansion of my short Facebook post.

To whoever's been sending me these scare-tactic, Tea Party, Palinite “big nanny government impending socialism” emails: Try this exercise.

Think of the last ten organizations that've screwed you over. How many were insurance companies, banks, airlines, the cable company, the cell phone company, the automobile dealer, or the plumber? How many were government agencies? Don't count waiting three hours at the DMV; that's an inconvenience, not a screwing.

If your score is more than 5 private-sector screwings, then put a sock in it, and give Mr. Obama a chance. It could mean government isn't our biggest problem.

No, I don't want to stifle vigorous political debate. That's what “give him a chance” means - you can spit out the sock pretty soon.

In the meantime, realize that the cable companies and banks just love it when bloggers and talk show hosts rant against government. It distracts people so nicely from what the companies
are doing to them.

In fact those companies are paying many of the bloggers and talkers. And the rest are dupes. Score yourself on this “screwed” quiz, and stop being duped.

The Dragons I’ve Eaten: Speculations on the Existence of Human Intelligence

2009-12-15T09:16:00.000-08:00

Carl Sagan conjectured that early diurnal mammals feasted on the eggs of nocturnal dinosaurs. He remarked whimsically that a modern breakfast of chicken eggs is among the few relics of our immemorial joust against the dragons. So I think he wouldn’t mind that I spoof his book’s title* for this nonsense column.

When you carve that other relic, the Christmas goose, be sure to ask your physicist guests whether they want light matter or dark matter. Gaah, can you get over the fact that they’ve lost more than 90% of the universe’s mass? (I'll need to lose some mass after holiday eating; maybe they can give me some tips.) “Oh no,” they say, “we’ve just misplaced it.” You reply, simply and politely, “Gravy or cranberry sauce?” (Your subtext being, “Or bullshit?”)

Speaking of cosmology (were we?), the just-out second book by the author of The Time Traveler’s Wife is, according to reviewers, not as good as the first. I wondered what the big deal was anyway. I travel into the future at the rate of about one day per day, and so do you. Some people don’t keep up, of course; the glaze in some of my students’ eyes is a giveaway. Then there are people who don’t twitter. Obviously “behind the times,” time-traveling at maybe 0.9 days per day.

Ah, you say, but what about going back in time? I can do that too, and my wife can verify it. Yesterday I left our house in the morning, headed for the university, but, because she insisted, I went back in time for dinner!

* Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Random House, 1977,

On cold calling, and asking a girl to dance

2009-10-22T06:53:00.000-07:00

Question posted on a social network: “I need to make cold calls in order to find a new job. I can’t make myself do it. How can I get over my fear of rejection?”

I had similar fears. (A long time ago!) A teacher asked me bluntly, “What the hell are you protecting?” I was OK after that.

Let me tell you what the teacher meant.

You can treat your ego like a new Porsche. So fearful of dings, bumps and scratches that you never drive it anywhere. If you do drive, you park at the edge of the lot, far away from your Porsche’s fellow automobiles. Or straddle two parking slots.

So. You never get any errands done, you never get the pleasure of driving the open road, you annoy people instead of constructively engaging with them, and you wonder why you spent all that money.

The first scratch on that Porsche is such a treasure! You don’t have to worry any more about getting that first scratch. Now you can enjoy your car.

OK, enough with the car analogy. Now we’re talking about your ego. What aspect of your self-regard is so precious that not bumping it is more important than getting a job? What part of it is so fragile that knocking it around will shatter it and prevent you from functioning? What part of it is so valuable that you’re tempted to spend a lonely life cherishing it, foregoing the pleasures of social interaction?

For 99% of us who are past high school age, the answer is “no part of it.” In no way is ego maintenance more precious than reaching out to other people.

It may take considerable introspection before you can fully realize this truth, within your own personality and life situation. But once you have realized it, everything becomes easier. Job hunting, meeting girls, meeting guys, asking the boss for a raise, making sales calls.

See my book The Conscious Manager: Zen for Decision Makers for more details.

Co-Blog

2009-08-25T14:15:00.000-07:00

I have started blogging also at ScientificBlogging.com.

Most management-related items will continue to appear here. If you're interested in the more scientific stuff, please check out the link above. Thanks.

Apollo 11: What a difference an A makes

2009-07-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

It’s 40 years this week since the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon. Analysis of the tapes shows that Neil Armstrong did say “small step for a man” – and not “small step for man” – though he said the “a” quickly and radio static obscured it.

As my small contribution to the space program, I’ll confirm that this can happen.

Evidence comes from a ski trip in Utah. After a day on the slopes, my sister’s family and mine repaired to a barbecue joint in downtown Park City. A waiter pushed three tables together to accommodate our group of nine.

As we enjoyed our meal, my niece Lara, then 18 years old, decided she wanted something. (What she wanted is lost to history; you’ll see why in a moment.) She walked over to her father’s place at the table and commenced to wheedle him. Playing the little girl, she sat in my brother-in-law’s lap and whispered in his ear.

At that moment, the maitre d’, not knowing they were father and daughter, passed by and remarked, “Do y’all need a room?” He said the “a” quickly, and general restaurant noise obscured it.

Hearing “Do y’all need room?,” brother-in-law replied, “No thanks, we’ve pushed some tables together.”

My sister was aghast. The other children were gagging themselves.

This has become a “family story,” recounted every Thanksgiving when we get together.

So there. It can happen.

An Exercise in Hidden Symbols

2009-07-13T23:31:00.000-07:00

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford tricked his wife with the phrase “hiking the Appalachian Trail.” She, and we, now know it meant “shagging the Argentinian lover.”

The (apparently) many who are still astonished by the common hypocrisy of family-values Republican officials didn’t (apparently) read my blog on why, from a primatological point of view, it’s not astonishing at all.

But ours is a nation, and theirs is a party, where denial of human evolution is also common. Maybe that’s why we are loath to learn from primatology.

I’m curious. Where and who is the third woman? That is to say, Sanford’s complex love life includes Mrs. Sanford, the Argentinian cutie, and who?

The hidden symbol: Make an acronym of Hiking the Appalachian Trail, and you get HAT. If you don’t know what a hat trick is, Google it. There’s a third woman somewhere.

Now let’s think about Sarah Palin’s unexplained (at least, unexplained to anyone’s satisfaction) resignation as Governor of Alaska. No, I don’t think Sanford and Sarah were getting it on together. Yet Sanford’s affair finished him as governor, and Letterman had just lampooned the mating practices of the Palin family. Did Sarah resign to pre-empt discovery of, or fallout from, hanky-panky of her own?

People who won’t believe they are related to monkeys seem uncommonly eager to make monkeys of themselves.

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Sostenibilidad

2009-07-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

Last night's commencement address at PUCP-Lima:

Queridos profesores, graduandos, padres de familia, amigos y huéspedes distinguidos.

Me place tener la oportunidad de felicitar a los graduandos y sus familias. Deseo decir que admiro las características de esta generación de graduandos. Ustedes jóvenes van a cambiar el mundo. Sus padres han trabajado duro para construir una vida cómoda para ellos mismos y para ustedes. Asi que también yo deseo que mis queridos graduandos tengan una vida cómoda. Pero ustedes van a abandonar el materialismo comprensible de sus padres, para servir el planeta y construir un futuro sostenible. Quiero ahora decir unas palabras sobre el tema de sostenibilidad.

Sostenibilidad. No hay una definición exacta. Probablemente no la reconocería si la viera. Debe ser una buena cosa, sin embargo. Pero algunos puntos de vista sobre la sostenibilidad son preocupantes, como se ve en estos tres ejemplos:

El decano eminente de una escuela de la ciencia ambiental hizo un sonido vulgar cuando le preguntaron sobre la sostenibilidad. Él contestó que la noción de sustentabilidad parece ir en contra de la segunda ley de la termodinámica. En otro extremo están los que desean reducir al mínimo el impacto de la gente en el planeta. Su subtexto implica la reducción al mínimo del número de gente en el planeta. Y en aún otro extremo están los economistas como Robert Solow, que creen que todo es sostenible, porque el mecanismo del precio modera substituciones de los insumos.

Sospecho que el decano tiene una vision demasiado literal, y también sospecho que los abogados de la tierra odian a la gente. Los teóricos económicos continúan ignorando los efectos externos que crean los problemas ambientales en el primer lugar.

También tengo que decir a Profesór Solow que no hay sustituto para el agua, por ejemplo, ni habrá en el futuro próximo; el agua no es como otros insumos económicos. (Incidentemente, mis estudiantes creen que la cerveza es un sustituto para el agua. Es una lástima que esta idea tan atractiva no es práctica.)

¿Hay un punto medio entre estos extremos, que sea constructivo y científicamente factible?

Nada de lo que hacemos es sostenible en el largo plazo. Dependemos de la energía solar (como el decano, sin duda, estaba pensando). El sol durará por millones de años. Mientras tanto, sin embargo, cada proceso social degrada la energía.

• “Sostenible” no puede significar simplemente “estático,” lo que significa el fin de la innovación, y el comienzo de la reglamentación excesiva en todos los ámbitos de la vida. El cambio climático (la parte que no es antropogénica) continuará en cualquier caso, y la sociedad y la ecología tendrían que cambiar y adaptarse.

• ¿Puede el termino "sostenible" significar "capaz de evolucionar de una manera constante y manejable?" No. Siempre hay Cisnes Negros, los imprevistos. El calentamiento global es sólo un ejemplo, y es uno que es más previsible que la mayoría.

• Los pensadores y los activistas impulsan a las compañias asistir no sólo a sus impactos financieros, pero también a sus impactos en la gente y en el ambiente. La “triple línea de base” - las personas, los beneficios, y el planeta – puede ser ésta sostenible? Pues, todos nosotros podemos adorarnos uno al otro, y vivir con poco impacto en el planeta, y aún ser golpeadas por un asteroide delincuente. Sólo a través de la tecnología podemos aspirar a reducir la probabilidad o las consecuencias de una colisión con un asteroide. Mejor tecnología facilitará este efecto. Una sociedad que no crea ninguna tecnología nueva, no es sostenible a largo plazo.

• A pesar de que muchas de las economías de subsistencia han durado cientos de años, y han sido interpretados por los escritores como nobles y felices, no podemos equiparar los regímenes de subsistencia con la sostenibilidad. Sin excedentes y "back-up," por ejemplo, tales economías son vulnerables a los cambios ambientales.

Sí que algunas de estas consideraciones pueden sugerir un futuro oscuro e incierto. Sin embargo, si traemos a ellos el optimismo, el aprendizaje y la habilidad de gestión simbolizado por esta feliz noche de graduación, haremos un futuro brillante.

¿En qué escala de tiempo es realista hablar de sostenibilidad? ¿Cuales son los límites de cambio, en los que estamos dispuestos a decir que un sistema ha sido "sostenido"? Un número impresionante de fuentes coinciden que el tiempo realista son unas pocas generaciones. El Club de la Ciudad de Portland, el Consejo Presidental Sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible, Seattle Sostenible y otros dicen "para las generaciones venideras," "las generaciones presentes y futuras," "nuestros hijos y nietos." Esta opinión deja un margen razonable para modificar el plan cuando cambian las condiciones tecnológicas o ambientales.

Naturalmente, las investigaciones forenses revelarán algunos de los culpables en el cambio climático antropogénico. Pero el excoriado oficial de los Estados Unidos que dije que el clima va a cambiar con nosotros o sin nosotros, y que nuestro gran reto es la adaptación, estaba acertado. Debemos preocuparnos menos sobre identificar a los culpables, y más sobre mejorar e inventar estrategias de adaptación.

No creo que estas estrategias de adaptación pueden basarse totalmente en la medición y la valoración de los efectos externos. (Los intercambios de los derechos de carbono han sido escándalosos.) La privatización del servicio municipal del agua es contencioso. Si usted la encuentra preocupante, considere esta posibilidad más extrema: Usted exhala dióxido de carbono al respirar ... En un futuro desafortunado, ¿Vamos a tener que "pagar por respirar"? Tendremos que ser muy cuidadosos en el diseño de los regímenes sostenibles que no están basadas en los precios. Pero tendremos que diseñarlos.

De todos modos, la sostenibilidad es más viable como concepto cuando se define vagamente. En cualquier caso, no podemos predecir con certeza el impacto de un accion empresarial sobre las personas o sobre el planeta mejor que podemos prever el impacto de una actividad empresarial sobre las utilidades financieras. (Piense sobre una llamada de ventas a un cliente potencial, que puede o no comprar su producto.) En primer lugar, no sabemos suficiente la ciencia aplicable. En segundo lugar, la complejidad de las cuestiones ambientales, médicas, psicológicas y de predicción de fenómenos lo hace propenso a errores. En tercer lugar, los impactos sobre las personas, sobre los beneficios, y sobre el planeta van a interactuar el uno contra el otro!

Muy complejo, de hecho. Pero sus padres superaron los desafíos complejos y peligrosos también – la depresión económica, el nazismo, la amenaza de la guerra nuclear - y ustedes superarán el desafío de la sostenibilidad.

Como ustedes han deducido de mis observaciones, la superación de este desafío requerirá la innovación y la claridad del pensamiento - que ustedes aprendieron en sus estudios de MBA - y la resolución fuerte, que se debe hallar dentro de ustedes mismos. Ustedes están bien preparados. Expreso confianza en ustedes, y enhorabuena. Muchas gracias.

Odd Bits: Republicans and Credit Cards

2009-07-06T07:30:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of Higher Education headline: “NEW TOP REPUBLICAN ON HOUSE PANEL: WASHINGTON DOESN'T ALWAYS KNOW BEST. In his position on the education committee, Rep. John Kline of Minnesota says he will be guided by skepticism of government's role in higher education.”

In what other industry could you be paid – not fired – for publicly dissing your own job? Mr. Kline, you were sent to Washington to govern, so do your best at governing and quit whining.

In related news… Sarah Palin has stepped down as Alaska’s Governor. She has advanced the Republican goal of smaller government by taking herself off the payroll. Gotta admire that integrity.

How about those companies that want to renew your account in future years by automatically charging your credit card? Just try to cancel that arrangement. “No, sir, we can’t do that by phone, you’ll have to send a registered letter.” “Sorry, we can’t do that on this customer service line, you’ll have to call this special number” (which of course is not answered). Or you’re sent to a phone menu hell in which you can’t cancel without listening to 20 minutes of pitch for other products.

No, that’s not for me. I was happy with Mozy’s free file backup for my home computer, until I filled up the free storage limit. The paid version is cheap enough, offers megabytes galore, but is only available by automatic credit card renewal. No way. So I subscribed to IDrive, which backs me up every night and it’s pay as you go and so far so good.

Regulating the card lenders

2009-05-13T15:11:00.000-07:00

Received this letter dated May 2, 2009:

Dear Fred Phillips:

As your credit card company, we value your business and appreciate the opportunity to service your financial needs.

In a recent review of your account, we noticed that you have only used a limited amount of your credit line with us. We believe this may indicate that the line may be higher than required to meet your monthly spending needs and, as a result, your credit line has been changed to $**,***.00.

Chase is committed to maintaining the highest levels of customer satisfaction and we are always looking for ways to improve our products and services. If this change does not meet your current needs or you have questions about this change, please call us at 1-800-346-5538 and one of our advisors can assist you further.

Sincerely,

Cardmember Services

...to which I reply via this blog:

Dear Chase,

Due to your unexplained and seemingly random - but ever increasing - fees, and your abrupt reductions in service, I do not consider you a trusted lender. That is why I do not borrow money from you. And won't, if I can avoid it.

Incidentally, I opened this account with a bank that you later acquired. I never asked to borrow money from you, so don't you dare condescend to me.

Best wishes,

Fred Phillips

Crossing Over

2009-03-19T20:21:00.000-07:00

In 2007, for the first time, the majority of human beings lived in cities.

In 2008, the U.S. overtook France as the world's leading wine-drinking nation.

In 2009, for the first time, more people worldwide used the Internet for social networking than for email.

I’ve amassed a big collection of such “crossovers” here, with the sources for each. Why? Well, it has always been thought that these points are rather uninteresting; Modis and others showed that chaos can manifest at the beginning and end of an s-shaped growth curve, but that the middle – where these crossovers occur – are as steady and predictable as the day is long.

Hwang, Limprayoon and I will soon submit a paper showing that in many cases, these bland crossover points mask a true tipping point. It is the point where resistance to change – and the people who are influenced by the resistance – become a minority phenomenon. Innovation diffusion really is “touch and go” all the way to the midpoint.

Don’t care about that? Visit the collection anyway. The crossovers are fun to read, and the sheer number of them says volumes about our changing society.

Use the blog’s Comment area to let me know of other interesting crossovers you might be aware of.

A billion out of poverty

2009-02-24T21:15:00.000-08:00

Not to beat the dead horse of unfettered free markets (wow, did I mangle a metaphor, or what), but Joe Rightwing is still looking on Constitution Avenue, not on Wall Street, for the crooks who caused the global financial crisis. In the years since Reagan and Thatcher, Joe brays, a billion people have been lifted from poverty. A triumph of free-market capitalism! Let’s overlook the little matter of a worldwide banking crisis!

The purpose of today’s blog is just to point to one fact: Most of the billion who recently waved bye-bye to poverty are Chinese.

That’s right. Not citizens of a market democracy, not denizens of the sub-Saharan developing world, not even Russians enduring the Al Capone style pre-capitalism we Americans got through eighty years ago. Chinese. Chinese who live in the most regulated, government-owns-everything nation on Earth.

Not that I’d want to live there. And I don't begrudge. Just making a point. What do you say to that, Joe?

And oh, by the way, the number of U.S. residents living in poverty rose from about 23 million in 1973 to 36.5 million in 2006. The percent of Americans in poverty has remained constant at 12.3 percent over the same interval. Write to me if you’re curious about source for these data.

Stimulus package and the “American” automobile industry

2009-02-12T17:03:00.000-08:00

Will the stimulus package save the “American” automobile industry? Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render write that the cost of a Pontiac LeMans breaks down this way:

“About $6,000 heads to South Korea for the auto’s assembly; $3,500 goes to Japan for engines, axles, and electronics; $1,500 goes to Germany for design; $800 goes to Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan for smaller parts; $500 heads to England for marketing; $100 goes to Ireland for information technology; and the rest, about $7,600, goes to GM and its US bankers, insurance agents, and attorneys.”

In other words, the LeMans is barely American at all.

So why are GM and Chysler coming to our US government with hat in hand? Why don’t they demand handouts from the governments of Korea or Ireland? For that matter, why aren’t Ireland and Taiwan stepping up to hand billions to GM?

Actually, the German government is opening talks with GM’s local subsidiary, Opel, and the talks might lead to a bailout. So I can’t in fairness go all righteously indignant about that.

But I can reasonably be snarky about this: GM wanted all this globalization that led to the bleeding away of American jobs. If they’re in trouble now, why don’t they whine gimme-gimme to their precious World Trade Organization? A fine thing, to use WTO to marginalize the Congress and sovereignty of the United States - and then tell Congress they might or might not pay on Tuesday for a hamburger today.

In 1971, I worked for General Motors as a Junior Mathematician. (Yes, you read that right.) Never have I met people so out of touch with ordinary Americans. They had plans to build a car with windows that couldn’t be opened – only a slot to pay tolls through. They put our orientation group on buses to move us to another building 40 yards away; we trainees looked at each other in disbelief. It astonishes me that it took them another thirty years to go bankrupt.

When Toyota and Nissan became the quality leaders, GM said what me worry, Americans will buy American cars just because they’re American cars, doesn’t matter if they’re not very good cars. And GM was right – for a while. You can draw many messages from this story, but one of them is: Americans have already given GM their bailout, and GM blew it. Time to pack it in, General Motors.

Alan Watts was a hard act to follow, but I did alright.

2009-01-25T00:09:00.000-08:00

Each year I’m invited to lecture to our Organizational Psychology students on material from The Conscious Manager: Zen for Decision Makers. The lectures are well-received and I have fun with them.

Psychology has always big at our university; Carl Rogers, Victor Frankl, and Abraham Maslow have been faculty members here.

After my last lecture, a faculty old-timer remarked to me, “You know, long ago Alan Watts argued pretty much the same point you just did, and in this very room.”

Wow. What a rush to be a part of that tradition.

Just wanted to share the feeling with you.

Infrastructure 2.0: What will it look like?

2009-01-24T21:49:00.000-08:00

“Web 2.0” means more interactivity, user-generated content, optimized search and cross-connections, free software, and fees for service. The term emphasizes the contrast with the first wave of web activity, called “content-push” or Web 1.0, really just an electronic form of old-style publishing, with some hyperlinks thrown in.

Tom Friedman uses “Car 2.0” to describe Better Place’s electric car cum business model in which consumers buy miles on swappable batteries recharged using clean energy.

Sustainability 1.0 was "It costs money to be green." Sustainability 2.0 is "We can make money being green."

President Obama is about to launch massive infrastructure projects for economic recovery. Governors of every state have lists of “shovel-ready” projects that will absorb billions of federal money, no problem. But you can bet these projects are “Infrastructure 1.0.”

What will “Infrastructure 2.0” look like?

Like Car 2.0, Infra 2.0 will blend high technology with innovative business models, some involving public-private cooperation. Smart technology will be central to transforming the delivery of water, sewage, energy, telecomm, transportation, garbage disposal…

Look sharp, now, because if Obama doesn't spend the money in 2009, it won’t kick-start the economy. If we spend it on more Infra 1.0, the economy will end up even farther behind the 8-ball, in the long run. We don’t yet know what Infra 2.0 is, but we’d better figure it out quick.

Hit the ‘comment’ button and tell me your vision of Infrastructure 2.0.

The meltdown is my fault

2008-11-10T19:54:00.000-08:00

Joe Rightwing is still writing to newspapers, trying to blame the financial meltdown on the government. Like many of his fellow letter writers, Joe condemns the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which pressured lenders to help low-income people buy houses, as a market distortion. Without the CRA, Joe claims, the free market would have kept the economy as level as the Bonneville salt flats.

This is the height of silliness, for many reasons. First, the CRA did not force banks to give $300,000 mortgages to people who could only repay $100,000 loans. What’s that you say, Joe? There are no more $100,000 houses? Tell ya what: The government never prevented builders from erecting cheap houses. Builders don’t like to build them because they’re less profitable. That’s the free market at work.

I mean, really, Joe, this is the kind of “devil made me do it” excuse we wouldn’t accept from a six-year-old.

Second, the economy is cyclical whether it’s regulated or not.

Third, the Enron scandal was a wake-up call, and Joe, you didn’t wake up, didn’t even stir an eyelash. Six years later, Lehmann Brothers is gone too. Joe, now that you’ve been smacked on both sides of your head, smell the coffee: The free market is good, but people abuse the free market.

Mortgage brokers knowingly sold loans to unqualified buyers. (Economists call this “adverse selection.”) Middlemen securitized bundles of loans, could not even begin to measure the risk of a bundle (nor, therefore, its value), pulled a value out of where the sun don’t shine, and sold it to Lehmann Bros., who, forgetting the business cycle, bought the whole mess, lock, stock and barrel. If this ain’t abuse, beat me with a stick.

You don’t think regulation is needed, Joe? I quote Joel Bakan: "No one would seriously suggest that individuals should regulate themselves, that laws against murder, assault, and theft are unnecessary because people are socially responsible. Yet oddly, we are asked to believe that corporate persons… should be left free to govern themselves."

Joe, I’m sorry if I implied it’s only you whose been hit on the head. We’ve both been smacked. In fact, it was only a matter of time before somebody blamed business educators for this mess. And now, Joe, some of your fellow letter-to-the-editor writers have snarkily noted that most of the free market abusers have… MBAs.

And they’re right. Mea culpa, Joe. I’m a professor, and my ex-students did this.

At the 2002 meeting of the AACSB, the agency that accredits business schools, I waited anxiously for its officials, or any faculty speakers, to mention the word “ethics.” None did. The only speaker at the three-day conference to bring up ethics was a luncheon presenter, the CEO of Tupperware. (There you go, Joe, I’m not anti-business. I make a point to note that in the close wake of Enron, it was a businessman, not an academic, who first said something was amiss ethics-wise.)

AACSB’s 2008 meeting was similarly light on angst about the mortgage crisis. But it was in Honolulu, where it’s difficult to get too worked up over anything. A few months later, the INFORMS conference – the gathering of operations researchers – focused on technical reasons why the financial engineering models didn’t work. Not on the ethics of using them when doing so was clearly inappropriate.

At least at the University of Chicago there’s some disagreement about whether to name the new economics research institute after Milton Friedman. At least there’s that.

The upshot is that business faculty are not exactly hammering away at this in MBA classes. How can we prepare the next generation of business leaders if we do not make it clear in every accounting, finance, O.R., marketing, and strategy class that responsible users of the free market cannot tolerate certain behaviors?

University faculty cannot make students or graduates act ethically. But if pressure to act ethically does not begin in b-school, it’s a lot less likely that it will begin later. MBA graduates were the ultimate cause of this crisis, but business professors were the proximate cause.

Fellow faculty members, repeat after me, and make sure Joe hears you: “The meltdown is my fault.”

What’s love got to do with it? California’s Prop 8

2008-11-09T18:09:00.000-08:00

"The noblest motive is the public good." - Seal of the County of San Diego

Proposition 8, banning gay marriage, passed last week in California. I’m sorry it did. Here’s my view of the heart of the issue.

The public’s interest in marriage has two, and only two, pieces. Marriage is a vehicle for conserving capital – that is, for people to get themselves out of poverty or to keep themselves out of poverty – and it is a vehicle for the secure raising of children. These pieces foster a stable society with fewer people on welfare or in prison.

It seems clear that a lasting marriage can serve both pieces regardless of the spouses’ genders.

A voter considering only the public interest, therefore, would have cast a ballot against Prop 8. All other arguments, of which we heard many in the run-up to the election – love, hate, civil rights, homophobia – were red herrings. Or would be, if the only consideration were the public interest.

But it wasn’t. People are entitled to vote their fears and their intolerance, and they did, and they won.

For someone aiming at the “heart” of the issue, I’ve been awfully analytic. What’s love got to do with it? I’m wary of letting love into the realm of public interest. Demagogues use love of family and love of country to swindle young people into going off to war. Let’s leave love to individuals, and their hearts.

Crowds – Wisdom or Madness?

2008-10-22T05:44:00.000-07:00

What are we to make of The Wisdom of Crowds (2005) by New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki? After all, we were brought up on Charles MacKay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. The two books are at odds with each other.

First published in 1841 and popular ever since, MacKay’s work has stood the test of time. It introduced the notion of mob psychology, noting that cool rationality is much more likely to show itself in individuals – and disappear in larger groups. MacKay put forth the Dutch tulip bubble and the Salem witch hunts as examples.

Surowiecki uses contrary examples – including the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire audience polls – to show that crowdsourcing can work. The idea has caught on. Companies now crowdsource their new product development! (Look here and here for examples.)

Well, MacKay and Surowiecki can’t both be right, can they?

The Founding Fathers distrusted crowds. That’s why we live in a republic and not a pure democracy. The idea that crowds could be right seems to stem from John Brunner's 1975 novel Shockwave Rider and is widely implemented today in what economists call “prediction markets.”

This somewhat interesting notion got a black eye in 2003 when DARPA rolled out its “Policy Analysis Market,” which appeared to allow anonymous people to bet on terrorist attacks. Widespread public disgust was the main result.

Moreover, if markets (that is, mobs) could predict, then a horse with nine-to-four odds at the track would actually win about four of every thirteen races against a similar field, and this is demonstrably not true. (The historical database for horse races is far vaster than any for 21st-century artificial predictive markets!)

Did Surowiecki and the economists forget that Shockwave was a work of fiction? Ah, but careful readers see Surowiecki hedging his claim: "Under the right circumstances [emphasis added], groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them."

What are the right circumstances? A French mathematician burdened by the name Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794) proved that a large crowd is likely to be right about a simple yes-no question only if each individual in the crowd has a greater-than-even chance of getting it right. That is, only experts should be polled. Condorcet offers no advice on how to qualify experts. Or how to find them.

So, is it MacKay or Surowiecki? To be sure, two heads are better than one. And small work groups in an organization can outperform individuals. (We’ve all been through that tiresome demonstration on our HR training days.) But two to six people ain’t a crowd…

There are two phases in every decision: divergence, which means generating alternatives, and convergence, in which all but one of the alternatives are cut away. Crowds are good at divergent creation of ideas – the more the merrier – but when it comes to deciding (a word that means “cutting away”), I see no signs of mobs doing better than small groups or singles.

Just look at the bankers who rushed to buy securitized mortgage instruments, or voters in the 2004 presidential election. MacKay takes the day!

p.s. I’ve treated this subject in turgid academese, in a paper called “Change in Socio-Technical Systems: Researching the Multis, the Biggers, and the More Connecteds.”

There’s a bailout someone's longin’ to see...

2008-10-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

To the tune of Ella Fitzgerald's "Someone to Watch Over Me":

There’s a bailout someone's longin’ to see

Citibank... sure wants to be

The one for Wachovia

I'm a little lamb who’s borrowed heavily

Prompt payer of bills, sure tried to be

Now Hank Paulson walks all over me

(release)

Although he may not be the man some

Would expect to pay the ransom

To my house he carries the key

Won’t you tell him please to put on some speed

Follow my lead, oh, how I need

Someone to watch over me-ee

and Wells Fargo - Wachovia.

Followups: Maladjusted Republicans, Tax & Spend for Prosperity, and Antarctic Icebergs

2008-09-01T20:26:00.000-07:00

Last week I ventured that voters who cling to simple answers to hugely complex questions are mentally ill. It would be more proper to say mentally maladapted, according to former American Psychological Association executive director Bryant Welch. Welch’s new book State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind notes that the world was once simpler, and we are still adapted to that world – not to this one. Moreover (and this is the main point of his book), we are ready, nay eager, to allow self-interested parties to manufacture false but simple explanations that we can buy into. Of course he really means only one Party, and its name starts with R.

The book is reviewed in Miller-McCune Magazine. (I recently discovered this free, non-profit journal of public issues, and like it a lot. You can subscribe here.) The reviewer punches a bunch of holes in Welch’s thesis – and to be sure, a psychotherapist can’t make a living curing mental pathologies unless there are plenty of pathologies out there, and some therapists are not above inventing new ones from thin air. But Welch’s main argument survives the review, holes and all.

In my last entry I also recommended former U. of Wisconsin president John D. Wiley’s editorial attributing Wisconsin’s dismal economy to its business leaders’ knee-jerk “reduce taxes” answer (no matter what question is asked). Maybe Wiley should send them to Welch for therapy. Anyway, now here comes John E. Schwarz, Professor Emeritus at University of Arizona, whose Washington Post op-ed reasonably asks “Why is tax-and-spend worse than borrow-and-spend?” His reasonable answer: It’s not worse, it's better. It’s not only more moral (because it doesn’t take food out of our children’s mouths) but it’s also better economically. Schwarz shows that job creation has been far greater under Democratic administrations for the past 50 years. No, they were not all government jobs! They happened because government invested in expensive and risky new technologies, entailing R&D costs that no single company would pay for. The results were commercialized, creating high-paying private-sector jobs. Without increasing the National Debt.

Schwarz’ column generated a lot of comments on the Post’s web site. One cited all the innovations that came out of RCA and other companies. Yeah, buddy, that was then and this is now. Private companies wanted global capital liberalization, around the turn of the century, and they got it. The FTAs have bitten them in the ass. Now they’re in a hypercompetitive environment that won’t allow them to spend on R&D. Another commentator claimed AT&T would still be churning out innovations if the government hadn’t busted it up. Hoo ha!

In this month’s AARP magazine, Shirley Streshinsky writes about the 2007 wreck of the cruise ship Explorer on an Antarctic iceberg. As it happens, my faculty colleague Dr. Bob Flood was on the Explorer.

A business professor, Bob studies Antarctic wildlife as a hobby. He was moonlighting as a guide on the Explorer. Bob told his harrowing survival-at-sea story to Radio Scilly (“one of the UK's smallest radio stations”). The MP3 file of his radio interview is fascinating. And scary. Find it by clicking through this site.

“Just like a third-world country”

2008-08-22T21:02:00.000-07:00

In 1985, the Australian Prime Minister used this phrase to suggest what his country would be if it didn’t get its economic development act together. Australians were insulted by the notion, but they did heed the Minister’s call. In 2008 Australia is a prosperous nation.

In 2000, I used the same phrase to try to spur Oregon’s ED efforts. I use the two letters to mean economic development, but those of you who read it as erectile dysfunction aren’t far wrong. Oregon’s economy is still limp.

This month, the former president of University of Wisconsin at Madison, John D. Wiley, uses the phrase’s shock value to jolt the cheeseheads. His important editorial is in Madison Magazine.

Wiley attacks the staff of his state’s biggest industry association for insisting that the answer to every question is “cut taxes,” even as the association (and everyone else) watches Wisconsin’s education system deteriorate. Wiley compares Wisconsin to other states, including neighboring Minnesota, and shows clearly that the most prosperous states do not have the lowest per-capita tax burden.

This reinforces the more international analysis I did for Review of Technology & Economic Development in ’05: “The U.S., under its current small-government ideology, is seeing its sick go without costly drugs, and its K-12 education system decline. The Scandinavian countries – the most highly taxed and regulated on Earth, and the bane of small-government dogmatists – are highly innovative and entrepreneurial. That Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway are innovative, congenial places to live illustrates what this journal has long noted: Economic development is served by having a healthy, educated populace.” (This paragraph also appeared in Social Culture and High-Tech Economic Development: The Technopolis Columns.)

I spent today with management guru Ian Mitroff, a colleague at Alliant International University and at Technological Forecasting & Social Change. We discussed the Obama and McCain conversations at Rick Warren’s church. Obama thoughtfully described complexities, while McCain told simplistic stories. McCain walked away with the day. Having evolved in simpler times, we are hard-wired to love linear narrative – even when it’s wrong. Inter-connected complexities leave us behind.

I advanced the notion that insisting on simple answers in the face of overwhelming evidence of a problem’s complexity can only be viewed as a mental illness. Our Dean at Alliant, Jim Goodrich, voiced a counterpoint, that it’s a common cop-out for academics to hide in complexities. Both are true - and all three of us agreed that it is the job of the thoughtful person to make a complex story understandable (as Wiley does very well in his editorial) if we want large numbers of people to act.

If we don’t, then only a handful of people will be willing to take action. The remainder will fall asleep, and it will be our fault.

So, shock phrases like “third-world country” are not enough; what’s needed is a compelling narrative of a complex situation. I did eventually provide one for Oregon’s ED sticky wicket, in an appendix of the City Club of Portland’s report on the Portland Development Commission. Still not enough! Though the report got significant press coverage, the appendix was lost in the noise. We have to keep telling the important stories. (Another thing academics are not good at.)

So far, Obama has conveyed only that he’s an admirably thoughtful guy. He hasn’t yet shocked us (though his wife did, briefly), he hasn’t yet rhetorically cut to the heart of his complex ideas, and if he can find a way to tell the important stories, he has less than three months to tell them.

But Obama needs to be liked, and John D. Wiley doesn’t. This gives Wiley more latitude in storytelling. Maybe Wisconsin has a better chance than the country at large, come November.

John Edwards’ affair

2008-08-11T15:52:00.000-07:00

USA Today laments that politicians don’t learn from history. The very leaders who denounce another politician’s extramarital affair, the newspaper says, eventually commit the same act.

No, it’s not that they don’t learn from history. It’s that we don’t learn from primatology.

Apes vie to be the alpha male for one reason only: to spread their genes widely. To get laid a lot. And you don’t get much more alpha than President of the United States. Why people were surprised by the behavior of Kennedy or Clinton (or Gary Hart or Gary Condit for that matter) is beyond me.

As the lady sang, “… that’s why I fell for… the leader of the pack.”

Is Harvey Dent Barack Obama?

2008-07-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

A handsome newcomer is the only hope for change, for leading Gotham away from criminal chaos. But his dark side emerges, revealing “Two-Face,” arch-enemy of the people.

So it was with Obama, the turning point being last week’s Senate vote on FISA, the reprehensible Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Barack had sworn to filibuster the vote; in the end he rolled over and stuck it to the American people.

I’ve lost all interest in the guy.

And let’s not forget Hillary Clinton, who in an act of astonishing irresponsibility all but suggested that someone should shoot her opponent. (She referred to the late campaign turning point when Robert Kennedy was assassinated, implying that anything could happen and she could still end up the Democratic nominee.) I held my breath all day on the anniversary of the Robert Kennedy shooting (June 5), hoping Barack was hiding in a basement somewhere.

If some crazy had obliged Hillary, it would, truly, have been the end of America. That Barack made it through the day gave me faith. But then came FISA.

So, no Barack, no Hillary, no Democrat to bring responsibility back to America. And don’t even mention Republicans. Is there no one we can turn to? Maybe only Batman…

And while we’re on politics… Three months before a presidential election, the press is all “Looks like we’re winning the war in Iraq.” Can you say “Duh, surprise”? Do you remember that the press is “embedded” with the troops, meaning there is no truly independent coverage of the conflict by US media? Did you notice the Iraqi president has asked us to leave his country by a certain date, so winning and losing doesn’t mean anything anyway? And finally, do you recall that there isn’t any “war,” that there ain’t no war unless Congress sez there is, that Congress is the only folks who can declare war, and that Congress has not declared war?

p.s. Here's another take on Barack as Harvey.

Cross-referencing my blogs

2008-07-27T11:31:00.000-07:00

The Conscious Manager. International perspectives on management, technology, media, and personal growth.
Technopolis Times. Resources for technology-based regional economic development. Technopolis Times encourages networking and alliances that help grow new and established technopoleis. This blog is the new home of the Review of Technology and Economic Development newsletter.
MsM Partners' Conference Blog. Annual research and business forum for Maastricht School of Management's outreach partners, representing more than 30 countries.

I've also become Consulting Editor for the Management of Technology and Innovation area at Elsevier's Scirus Topic Pages. The blogs and Scirus will sometimes refer to each other.

The Future of Management

2008-07-16T07:07:00.000-07:00

I heard strategy theorist Gary Hamel speak at the AACSB conference. Hamel said management schools are doing everything wrong. I found more detail about Hamel’s views in his book The Future of Management (Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, Massachusetts ©2007).

In my classes, I (Fred) have been teaching that the most successful companies have made innovation systematic. Hamel goes further; he says innovation must be systemic, permeating the daily activities and attitudes of every employee – and not just in R&D or product development departments. Fear of change has been banished, the potential of every employee to contribute ideas and energy has been nurtured and realized, and organizational charts and structures change at the drop of a hat.

In this regard, Hamel likes Whirlpool, Toyota, Google, and a few others. Here are key passages from his book:

(p.31) While Whirlpool's innovation efforts have been widely reported, a competitor would find it hard to duplicate what is now a deeply engrained innovation system – for the same reasons it would be difficult to pick apart Toyota's multifaceted management advantage.

(p.34) Management innovation follows a power law: for every truly radical idea that forever changes the practice of management there are dozens of others that are less valuable and less influential. But that's no excuse not to innovate. Innovation is always a numbers game: the more of it you do, the better your chances of reaping a fat payoff.

(p.36) Many executives doubt that bold management innovation is actually possible. Strangely, managers are unsurprised when science advances by leaps and bounds, yet seem unperturbed when the practice of management fails to do the same.

(p.38) If management innovation has been mostly incremental in recent years, it may be due to a lack of daring in the choice of problems to tackle. Ask yourself, has your company ever taken on a management challenge that was truly unprecedented, where you couldn't rely on another company's experience as a guide? General Electric has. In 2006, chairman Jeff Immelt set his colleagues the goal of growing GE's top line at twice the rate of global GDP growth, net of acquisitions. No company of GE's size has ever managed this sort of growth, yet that didn't deter Immelt from taking on the challenge. If the problem is big enough, progress of any sort will be valuable, even if you never find a "solution." I once heard former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz draw a distinction between "probems you can solve" and "problems you can only work at." As a seasoned diplomat, Shultz knows that some problems, like ethnic strife, global poverty, and terrorism, defy once-and-for-all solutions. Yet he also understands that when you're up against problems of this scale and significance, even modest advances can yield big dividends.

(p.102) What makes Google unique, though, is less its Web-centric business model than its brink-of-chaos management model. Key components include a wafer-thin hierarchy, a dense network of lateral communication, a policy of giving outsized rewards to people who come up with outsized ideas, a team-focused approach to product development, and a corporate credo that challenges every employee to put the user first.

(p.103) [Google top execs] Brin and Page understand that in a discontinuous world, what matters most is not a company's competitive advantage at a single point in time, but its evolutionary advantage over time. Hence their desire to build a company that is capable of evolving as fast as the Web itself.

Hamel’s oft-quoted aphorism: Organisations used to require intelligence, obedience and diligence from an employee – but they could get that from a cocker spaniel. Today’s organizations need employees to display passion, creativity and initiative.

I liked Hamel’s book, despite some bloopers:

Hamel appeals to Francis Fukuyama’s largely discredited “end of history” notion.
His reference to the “college student who spends less on an airline ticket to Fort Lauderdale than he'll spend on booze over spring break” is sadly out of date…
His statement that “the law of diminishing returns kicks in and at some point the ratio of progress to effort starts to sag” doesn’t accord with learning theory as I understand it – and as Hamel notes, organizational learning is what it’s all about.

The main take-away for management educators is that we should be teaching how to create corporate culture. A good idea, but most new MBA grads are in no position to create culture. On the contrary, they tend to be overwhelmed by the prevailing corporate culture two weeks after starting their new jobs, or the second time their passionate, creative initiative is punished, whichever comes first. In this regard, Hamel’s advice is reminiscent of the Microsoft helicopter joke. (If you haven’t heard it, ask me.)

Still, it’s food for thought. And at least, business schools might seek out companies that are sympathetic to this new view, and point our grads in their directions. Or, we might emphasize Hamel’s ideas in executive ed courses. I look forward to discussing these ideas with you; enter your comments on this page.

GRADUATION SPEECH, LIMA, PERU, JUNE 2008

2008-06-21T19:33:00.000-07:00

Flew down to South America to speak at PUC-Lima's MBA/DBA commencement, and to give a couple of lectures the next day. After the speech (you'll see why, if you can read this), several students asked if I would pose for a photo with their mothers. The speech took off on a letter I wrote to The Economist earlier this year.

Queridos profesores, graduandos, padres de familia, amigos y huespedes distinguidos. Me hace muy feliz de estar aquí con ustedes una tercera vez y de felicitar a otra clase de graduandos y a sus familias.

Les traigo saludos de Maastricht School of Management. Los países en todo el mundo continúan acercándose a MSM sobre las colaboraciónes para los programas de grado, y MSM ha establecido nuevas colaboraciónes este año. Se puede ser orgulloso que su grado es uno que inspira confianza por todo el mundo. Este año MSM ha publicado dos más volúmenes en la serie del libro de textos del MBA que mencioné en la graduación del año pasado. MSM trajo el congreso anual de la Asociación Internacional del Desarrollo de Gerencia a su país vecino, Suriname. Este congreso comienza hoy en Paramaribo y continúa con la semana.

En este podium hace un año, comenté a propósito de la responsabilidad social corporativa, CSR. Ahora quisiera volver a ese asunto, ofreciendo una vista simple del CSR, y observando sus implicaciones para sus carreras, estimados graduandos.

Porque sus padres y madres están presentes esta noche, quiero implicarlos en mi declaración. Me ayudarán a dar vuelta al CSR, un tema que otras personas ven como cuestión compleja y polémica, en un concepto directo y realizable:

Antes de que las corporaciones piensen en hacer el bien, deben parar el hacer el mal. Para efectuar el CSR, los ejecutivos necesitan solamente hacer lo que les dijeron sus madres: Repare sus propios líos, y refrénese de tomar lo que pertenece a la otra gente.

Antes de que las corporaciones piensen en hacer el bien, deben parar el hacer el mal. Cada derramamiento de aceite limpiado en el costo público, cada soborno para destruir una aldea para excavar una mina, decepciona a una madre en alguna parte. (Si Mamacita es economista, ella llama de estos actos los “efectos externos negativos.”)

Antes de que las corporaciones piensen en hacer el bien, deben parar el hacer el mal. El soberano carga una corporación en la expectativa de cierto beneficio social, y en la expectativa que la ley será obedecida. Es hasta la corporación simplemente al honor del este contrato.

Como cualquier buen concepto en ciencia de gerencia (o cualquier ciencia), el principio simple destapa complicaciones. Por ejemplo, los gobiernos son flojos en hacer cumplir los términos de cartas corporativas, y las corporaciones pasan mucho dinero para preservar esa situación.

Otros ejemplos - como la crisis actual de la hipoteca que originó en los Estados Unidos - ilustran que el reto real no es tanto el comportamiento de una compañía individual, pero la relación entre los sectores, por ejemplo, entre el negocio y el gobierno. Esto es, para mí y mis estudiantes, un tema fascinador e importante para la investigación.

Dije que ataría esta discusión a sus carreras. Para ocuparse eficazmente de relaciones entre sectores, es aconsejable trabajar en sectores múltiples. Intente trabajar durante algún tiempo en industria, y entonces en empresas sin fines de lucro. Quizá también para los militares, para la prensa, o para un NGO. La experiencia en sectores múltiples ahora es un requisito frecuente para los situaciones del alto directivo en cualesquiera de ellos.

El consejo adicional de la carrera se encuentra en las declaraciones recientes de dos hombres famosos.

El teórico bien conocido de la estrategia Gary Hamel dijo que las organizaciones del pasado requerían de un empleado inteligencia, obediencia y diligencia - pero (él dijo) podrían conseguir eso de un perro de aguas cocker. Las organizaciones de hoy necesitan que los empleados exhiben creatividad, iniciativa, y pasión.

Arthur C. Clarke, autor famoso de 2001: A Space Odyssey e inventor del satélite de comunicación, murió en marzo de este año, a la edad de 90. La revista The Economist dice que las visiones cósmicas de Arthur C. Clarke le dejaron con poca paciencia para aplicaciones más humildes como las políticas y la economía. Ésos, Clarke escribió, fueron sobre el “poder y el dinero, ni una ni otra cuyo debe ser… la preocupación primaria de hombres maduros.”

Por supuesto como los graduados de MSM y del CENTRUM ustedes han dominado las herramientas del negocio y de políticas, y las utilizarán para alcanzar objetivos moralejas, y quizás incluso cósmicos. Pero ambos caballeros, Sr. Hamel y Sr. Clark, están sugiriendo que los patrones y los empleados necesitan crecer, para hacer seres completamente adultos y sociales, para hacer frente a los desafíos del mundo de hoy.

Sé que sus profesores serán orgullosos como ustedes hacen exactamente esto. Y no olviden: Escuchen a sus madres! Gracias, y otra vez, enhorabuena.

Professor Puts His Body on the Line for Management Education

2008-05-31T19:04:00.000-07:00

Or as my sister put it,

“Oh Gawd... Take Dramamine.
P.S. Are you CRAZY????”

I took some students to San Diego's High Tech Night at the Opera earlier this month. At the reception before curtain time, I won the grand prize in a drawing - an aerobatic flight with telecomm entrepreneur and stunt pilot Rory Moore.

Rory founded CommNexus and other companies. His story is here.

The flight was this morning.

I'm still alive, and did not need the airsickness bag. Had a great time, flew the plane a while, white-knuckled it while Rory turned rolls, loops, loops with half rolls, and something called a hammerhead (you don't even want to know what that is).

I wonder whether my two whole minutes of parachute training would have benefited me, had the unthinkable eventuated. Anyway, ‘twas a gorgeous day to fly up the coast past Pacific Beach, La Jolla, and Del Mar. Here’s film taken from Moore’s plane (on another occasion, not by me) as it flew inland.

In Which I Make an Excuse, and Ask a Favor

2008-05-25T23:45:00.000-07:00

Sorry for my long absence from this page. My excuse: many travels in April (Newport Beach, Honolulu, Chicago, Palm Desert), a 3-week non-serious but inconvenient illness, and too much work. Still working on the work – was invited on short notice to be commencement speaker and to lecture in Lima, and have become a consulting editor for Elsevier’s Scirus pages. Have had to turn down, for the time being, further invitations to teach in Malaysia and Guatemala.

Cleverly managed to miss only two tango lessons during this period, at the price of infecting my beautiful teacher with the bronchitis. She’s forgiven me.

Meanwhile the world goes on, and leaves no shortage of things for me to comment on. You can help me on two remaining projects, and if you do, I can return sooner to the kind of blogging you expect here.

Project 1: An edited book on entrepreneurship and innovation for MBA students in developing countries. About half the chapters are in hand; I need volunteer authors for the remaining chapters. Email me if interested. Much appreciated.

Project 2: Events ranging from the Exxon Valdez oil spill to today’s mortgage crisis have evidenced not only failures of companies and institutions, but failures or absence of mechanisms for coordination of institutions. What dropped between the cracks of the State of Alaska, Exxon Corp., the Alyeska Corporation, and the feds made the difference between a possible recovery from the disaster and the cleanup that never happened.

Mortgage originators, bundlers and securitizers, investors and regulators constructed a shell game in which no one was accountable and (mixed metaphor coming!) the fox guarded the henhouse.

Enron, Andersen, the SEC and Congress? The Pentagon’s untraceable payments to contractors for unknown deliverables? Further examples aren’t hard to find.

Here’s how you can help, as I write non-blog articles on the topic of inter-institutional relationships in a hyper-connected world:

1. Are accountability and foxes in the henhouse the central issues here? Can you suggest others?

2. What are possible solutions that have to be looked into? Term limits in Congress? Better checks and balances? Still more campaign finance reform? More regulation of corporations? Criminal penalties for creating moral hazard?

Think out of the box and send me the results, which I will acknowledge gratefully in any publications. Thanks.

Authenticity at Work (and Famous Folks, installment #2)

2008-04-03T06:16:00.000-07:00

“B,” one of my faculty, whose field is diversity and inclusion in the workplace, gave a seminar the other day. He talked about authenticity – when you are respected and “included” at work, you can be yourself, thus bringing all your abilities to the aid of your team and your task.

Sounds good, and it reminded me of two instances – one that supports B’s idea and one that doesn’t.

In the early 90s at the IC2 Institute, a team gathered to write a follow-up proposal to the Air Force. We decided to sit at a table in the upstairs gallery. As the group trooped through the gallery door, “G,” a woman in the group, was chatting about a sociologist who’d showed that when a business meeting happens at a rectangular table, people tend to sit across from someone they’re sexually attracted to. Lost in her academic mode, our teammate wrapped up this story just as she sat at the table across from E, another fellow in our group. No irony, no embarrassment, she was just oblivious.

A charming lack of self-consciousness on her part, and an interesting demonstration that academics don’t always connect highfalutin’ peer-reviewed research to their own daily lives.

Other team members, however, did notice what she’d done. They stifled giggles, rolled their eyes comically, shot meaningful glances to each other. One, standing behind G, enjoyed a big, silent belly-laugh. E was amused and struggled to contain himself.

This was a group that was willing to communicate on many levels, and felt easy doing so. They were also, apparently, committed to not ridiculing G, a good (and very attractive and very married) colleague who brought great expertise in the area of the proposal.

As we settled down to business, communication flowed freely, leading to an idea and a proposal that won a three million dollar grant from AFOSR.

2nd instance: My daughter Gina was writing a school report on the old bluesmen of Texas. She showed me one of her source books. I noticed an error in the book.

“Gina, these two captions are reversed,” I said. “This photo is Mance Lipscomb, not that one.”

“How do you know?” she reasonably asked.

“I knew Mance Lipscomb.”

“Daddy, you didn’t.”

Ah, but I did. Mance performed at the old Armadillo World Headquarters back around 1971. The man had no flash at all; he just sat in a wooden chair at the front of the stage and played great music. Mance was entirely authentic. He was used to playing on his front porch with friends and visitors, playing a bit, chatting a bit, sipping some lemonade. That style didn’t change when he sat before an audience of hundreds.

In that spirit, I wandered up to the stage to ask him to play a particular song. Well, he said, he knew a version of the song that might not be familiar to me, and he’d got it from a different source than Robert Johnson had, and.… His reply was turning into a lengthy discourse.

I had a ball, standing there conversing with Mance Lipscomb. The four hundred people behind me were getting mighty irritated; they wanted the show to go on.

Authenticity is great, but sometimes we have to adapt to circumstances. How, I wonder (and you might, too), could Lipscomb have continued to show his true self, and at the same time respect the fact that people paid for tickets and expected a “show”?

Encounters with Famous Folks

2008-03-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

I'll indulge in this from time to time. Today's entry is sparked by reminiscences of plane flights. On one such, when my kids were small, we sat in the back of a Chicago-Austin flight. The woman across the aisle chatted me up because she was enamored of half-Asian children (like mine). Turns out she was Mari Michener, spouse of the famous writer James Michener. "You must come over for tea," she said. "Give me your phone number."

Weeks went by.

Dena, the wife of a colleague of mine, worked as secretary to James Michener. "Mari always says she's going to invite people to tea," Dena said, "and then she never calls them."

Michener willed his art and documents to the University of Texas. In the UT museum's basement there must be a card with my old phone number on it.

In those days I travelled frequently to Washington D.C. Congressman John Jenrette and his wife Rita had just become notorious for having, um, done it on the steps of the US Capitol. (A DC tour agency, and later a comedy troupe, were named "The Capitol Steps" in honor of the couple. Or the coupling.) Four or five times on Southwest flights out of DC I found myself just a few aisles away from the comely Rita. Never got any work done on those flights. Rita and my fertile imagination kept me thoroughly distracted.

War: Q & A

2008-03-07T03:42:00.000-08:00

Another reader query from the archives of The Conscious Manager bears on the war and the election.

Q. Why does war exist, and is war always bad? Do we fight because it is the right thing to do, like self-defense / prevention of harm? Or do we fight because we want something out of it, like getting enjoyment from anger and jealousy? If you had the chance to kill a ruthless dictator that could care less about peace, and you could kill him with one good sniper shot and get a clean getaway and no one knew that you did it, would you do it? Also, I grow suspicious of people who want peace and then create conflict, not peace, from their actions. -J

A. J, we're going to dispense with goods and bads, and deal with "ises." Humans evolved, and evolution doesn't cut us much slack. If we were constituted differently, we might not have evolved and survived as a species. So men complaining about war may be like women complaining that men only think about sex; if either thing were different, we might not be here. (I am aware, of course, that those who've died in war aren't here.)

The two, not surprisingly, are related. Bonobos, critters that look like chimpanzees, don't have war. They defuse conflicts by grooming each other and having sex. There aren't many bonobos left. Chimps solve conflict by fighting. Then the winners have sex, that being the "something they get out of it." One strategy is better for procreation, the other better for protection, and a population needs both procreation and protection. There aren't many chimps left, either, but that's because of human-caused loss of chimp habitat, and there are (I think) more chimps than bonobos.
Is the same true for humans? A news article in early 2003 noted that fully 12% of the current human population are direct descendants of Genghis Khan and his siblings. So historically, young men were motivated to go to war if it represented their only chance to "marry." Old men preferred to die in "glorious" battle because it beat the alternative, which involved having other people chew their food for them. That is to say, old age was not a pleasant affair before modern medicine, and some preferred to avoid it.
Today, some youngsters join the armed forces, even when war looms, because it's the only route out of a bad neighborhood and a life of poverty. (Actually not the only route: Selling drugs gets you out of poverty, affords the same probability of dying young, and you don't have to take orders from no stinkin' sergeants.) Others are duped into it, believing their elders' bullshit about glory and justice.
Suppose we could only stop a genocide by going to war. All other things being equal, most people would like to see fewer deaths rather than more. All other things, though, are almost never equal, and I would tend to suspect decisions based on body-count arithmetic. In any case, each person must choose his own battles. We have a volunteer army, but they don't get to vote on where they will fight and where they won't. It might be worth letting them do that! Phil Ochs said, "It's always the old who lead us to the war, always the young who fall." So it's like abortion, which is similarly tragic: I don't like abortion and I don't like war, but I'm not going to tell women - or men - what they may or may not do with their bodies.
This is a tough one. I was raised to see preventing further genocides as a duty, and as a young man I was crushed to see the U.S. fail to act on that principle, for instance in Cambodia or Rwanda. You're a movie fan, J; go see The Killing Fields. Should future such situations arise, I might well decide to rally others to a rescue mission, knowing violence might result but dedicating myself to miminizing it. In wars of old, non-combatants suffered in serious, but indirect, ways: via famine, rape, pillage. In today's wars, innocent bystanders are far more likely than before to be killed directly. This can happen in myriad ways, from mined rice fields to mis-aimed missiles to cross-fires in urban warfare. I hope young people desiring to go to war will consider the near-inevitability of killing civilians, and think twice and perhaps decide to stay home in Peoria.

You mention Pearl Harbor, which was a famous failure of U.S. intelligence. I'll go so far as to say all war is a failure of intelligence, planning, strategy, communication, or preparation. If a threat is developing against you, you should, just as in aikido, assemble overwhelming force at your opponent's weakest point. You tell your opponent what you're going to do should he not stand down, and then do it. This is how a mission should be defined and executed.

Even military commanders who have mastered intelligence, planning, strategy, communication and preparation get caught by ego. They escalate force beyond what's needed for the mission, responding to "insults" and stooping to vengeance. Others don't understand mission at all. I heard a recent speech by a general, who began, "My job is to kill people." He could as easily and more accurately have said, "My job is to protect Americans and that may unfortunately involve killing people." That guy should lose his job before he does any more damage.

There have been isolated human cultures that, like bonobos, shun war. When threatened, they have hired mercenaries or allowed deviant insiders to fight on their behalf. The fighters were then exiled when the conflict ended - if the village survived - so as not to contaminate the peaceful society. There are, in the modern world, far fewer isolated cultures. The characteristic, if not the people themselves, may die out.

So you're right that untrained pacifists may do more harm than good. Their attitude that violence never settles anything is naive. As Robert Heinlein noted, violence settled Hitler's hash pretty good. Work on yourself first, then work for peace! As an aikidoist, you are peaceable but skilled at forestalling conflict and applying minimum necessary violence. You position yourself in ways that communicate your strength and your intention, but you never "attack first." You don't interpose yourself between someone you want to protect and someone attacking her - except at the moment a blow is being struck - because it's unlikely that you understand what's really going on between them.
For the same reason, you would not assassinate even a despotic leader in cold blood. (Another hypothetical social experiment: Suppose all international conflicts were customarily settled by assassination. Leaders would know before running for election that this is what would happen to them if they piss off another country. This would put a different complexion on politics, n'est ce pas?) You give everyone every opportunity to fix up their karma, until and unless they launch another attack. Only then is matching violence indicated - but if you are unprepared for their next attack, shame on you. -FP

Another reader question, on a lighter note, this one from last week. I'd been talking to my friend Jim on the phone, when the doorbell rang. I answered the door, and told him I'd call him back...

Q. I heard a female voice say, "Are you the man of the house?" and then you hung up on me. I can't wait until you blog about that... -Jim
A. Jim, there was a really pretty girl at the door. She wanted to sell me a gallon jug of organic cleaning gunk for $100. In fact, she took out a toothbrush and attacked the oil stain under my motorbike, and the grease smears on the bbq grill. Little did she know that all the stuff I'd left in storage in Oregon four years ago was due to arrive in San Diego the next day... There's now no room in my garage or spare room for a mouse, let alone a gallon jug. So, I had to disappoint her.
The next day I checked the grill and the bike. The gunk had dried, leaving the stains pretty much as they had been before. So, lucky that I had resisted her sales pitch. Which included a low-cut blouse and tiny short-shorts - tactics we tend not to teach in business school. -FP

Sweet but Crude

2008-02-14T21:55:00.000-08:00

Hallelujah, three of the companies we love to hate got their come-uppance this week. Starbucks has given the boot to T-mobile, and a court has ordered Ryanair to pay thousands to the new Mrs. Sarkozy in compensation for unauthorized use of her image. (The judgment favored Hubby Sarkozy also, but he accepted only one Euro in damages.)

Over the years I’ve written twice to Starbuck’s corporate to complain about T-mobile. It’s eerie to think about how something one has written may – or may not – have affected the outcome of events. (I just had a similar experience with Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, which I’ll tell you about on another occasion.)

As Starbucks’ CEO is now trying to turn the company around, both of my epistolary thrusts return to relevance. First, bad wireless service wipes out the consumer loyalty won by good coffee. Second, don’t ignore the b-school concept of core competence: My credit union, correctly claiming competence in banking but not in brewing, charges checking fees and gives me free coffee. Starbucks is good at coffee, doesn’t know spit about wireless networking, and so should charge for java and not for wireless.

I’ve already talked the VP of one small hotel chain into dumping T-mobile. (It’s not eerie when you know you’ve influenced events.) Again, the core competence argument: Why use a phone company for Internet service? If you want to give your guests good service, find a company that specializes in Internet. Next on my list is the Hyatt chain, which contracts with T-mobile for wireless and doesn’t know how much bad will it’s generating.

A couple of years ago on the Euroblog I said all I have to say about Ryanair. When you reach the Euroblog page, hit control-F and enter the search term “weeze” (sorry, I neglected to put an anchor there).

Oh yes, I said three companies… Hugo Chavez has cut off Exxon-Mobil’s supply of Venezuelan crude oil. If you’re still mad about the 1989 Exxon-Valdez spill in Alaska (or the fact that the company still hasn't paid cleanup costs) consider that vengeance is sweet… but crude.

Electoral Dance

2008-02-09T20:41:00.000-08:00

Questions from readers! (I love it.)

Q: Clinton, Obama, McCain... your take?

A: David Brooks’ New York Times column today made it clear even to a dense marketing professor like me: Clinton is selling a product, Obama is selling an experience.

Obama is to Clinton as the Mac is to the PC, as The Body Shop is to Walgreen’s.

Thus Barak Obama is more in tune with modern times. He’s also more likely to get young people excited about politics. Both valuable characteristics.

I have a suspicion about Hillary. GW Bush eviscerated checks and balances in our government, and created an imperial presidency. Sometimes I think Hillary looks at the imperial presidency and thinks, "I want one of those."

I personally like Obama better – though Hillary thinks faster on her feet in a debate – but the real question is: Who can better defeat McCain?

I hear the reactionary Republicans are ready to throw this presidential election rather than support McCain. They’ll let the Dems have this one. They’ll retreat, regroup, and rebuild strength for 2012. But we can’t count on the GOP taking a dive; we gotta make sure the Republicans get outta the White House now.

John McCain is by far the least objectionable of the Republicans. Trouble is, he’s old, and he will choose a running mate from among younger Republicans. His VP candidate could be one of these neocon jerks who don’t know that they’re all washed up now, and s/he may well end up President if a victorious McCain is later incapacitated.

So is Clinton or Obama better able to prevent this? This question can be answered only be detailed, precinct-by-precinct research in districts that may swing to the Republicans. The Clinton and Obama campaigns have (I hope) done this research, or maybe the Democratic Party has. They ain’t sayin’. I certainly don’t have access to such research, so: I’ll vote for the Dem, whoever it may be.

Q: What brought on the tango passion?

A: Saw it, thought it was beautiful, took the odd introductory lesson (in Portland, then in Maastricht, then in San Diego) without learning much over a span of four years. Finally, business travels eased up; I would be in the same city for four consecutive Tuesdays! I signed up for the 4-week beginner sequence last month. Now I’ve graduated, and have started taking the “Salon 1” sequence.

Check out this video of Yo-Yo Ma, and see if it doesn’t do something for you

too.

There’s another one you must see, but YouTube won’t let me embed it in this

page. Right-click this URL and tell your browser to open in a new window: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEe2j43X-Ms.

Like aikido, tango is a worldwide community that welcomes sincere strangers. (I was welcomed at a tango bar in Lima last summer - here's their poster - even tho I had no skill then.) Like aikido, tango is a lifelong endeavor in which you can improve slowly and surely without end. I love aikido and still do it, but I confess that as I get old and creaky, getting slammed into the aikido mat a couple hundred times a day is no longer my idea of a good time. So you see, there’s method in my madness.

The CEO's Mom

2008-01-25T20:02:00.000-08:00

The Economist magazine's special section on corporate social responsibility was kinda unenlightened. Today I sent this letter to the editor:

SIR - Your January 19 Special Report confused corporate social responsibility (CSR) with philanthropy. As the Google.org example illustrated, giving away money is to a great extent the job of corporate foundations. The foundation is governed separately from the profit-making entity and does not relieve the latter of responsibility for good behavior in its own sphere.

Executives don’t need “a broader understanding of the world in which they operate” in order to effect CSR. They just need to do what their mothers told them: Clean up their own messes, and refrain from taking what belongs to other people.

Before corporations think about doing good, they should stop doing bad. Every oil spill cleaned at public expense, every bribe for a permit to wipe out a village and dig a mine, disappoints a mother somewhere. If Mom is an economist, she calls these acts “externalities.”

You claim jobs and wealth created by corporations outweigh these negative externalities. Good to know we’ll have cash in our pockets as carbon emissions-driven climate change ends civilization!

You did zero in on the bottom line of CSR: The sovereign charters a corporation in return for an expected social benefit. It is easy at this pass to imagine voters demanding either performance or revocation of charters. Charterless companies, like rusty freighters, will then shop for flags of convenience. We shall see what customers buy from companies chartered in third-world backwaters.

FRED PHILLIPS
San Diego

The writers missed the main point: State governments are lax in specifying and enforcing the terms of corporate charters, and corporations spend quite a penny to preserve that state of affairs. The governments, for their part, are addicted to the taxes and fees that flow from having a business incorporated locally, and they're aware that if they refuse a charter, the corporation can shop around other states and countries.

Double Trouble, Toil & Strife, Too Many Choices in Your Life

2008-01-20T18:25:00.000-08:00

(One from the archives...)

My heart goes out to earnest Karen Olson ("Too Many Choices?" Utne Reader, June 2003, p.61 ), who is overwhelmed by everyday choices. Karen fears that each choice irrevocably defines her identity, and defines the points on which others will judge her. Karen wants freedom, but cannot separate the ideas of freedom and choice. She is highly conscious of the symbolic aspect of decision making, for instance, the correlation of consumer choice with economic class. She mentions her "struggles and anxieties."

OK, Karen, I understand you may have been deliberately naive, in order to provide a setup for the issue's subsequent, more profound articles about making choices. Nonetheless, here is my advice for you, drawn from my book The Conscious Manager: Zen for Decision Makers:

You are smart enough to know your identity has nothing to do with consumer choices, and it's only a handful of buttheads on Madison Avenue who are trying to convince you otherwise. So first, find out who you are. How? As my book's subtitle suggests, meditate! You will find out who you are. You will realize you do not need to struggle. You will understand that anxiety doesn't help. You will worry less about what others think. Your mind will be free.

A member of the Japanese imperial family - whose every waking moment was strictly scheduled - once remarked that she pitied those who must constantly make choices about how to spend their time. Such choices, she noted, distract one from the perfect freedom of mind that ritual behavior makes possible. Her sentiment is similar to that expressed by Buddhist monks imprisoned in China; behind bars, their choices are limited, but their minds are not.

With a clear identity and a free mind, you can attack Step Two: Decide on a mission. Perhaps yours is to make the world's best magazine even better, or to raise your children in a loving, educational environment. As a consequence of identity, clarity, and mission (this is Step 3), all your daily decisions will spring forth spontaneously. You will be a conscious manager, making choices with greater speed, less anxiety, and fewer regrets.

As for the symbolism of making choices, please note the wisdom in "The Greening of Tony Soprano" (same issue, page 74), to wit, "Sometimes a duck is just a duck."

Cluster Bucks

2008-01-13T21:01:00.000-08:00

If you’re an economic development wonk, this column is for you. (Others, ‘scuse me.) It proves that spontaneous growth clusters do happen, and don’t need to cost much. Note especially the part about "knowledge and a shared sense of possibility and empowerment are every bit as valuable as money."

The New York Times recently gave me credit for being godfather to the Northwest Education Cluster. I love this group. While piles of politics, coveys of consultants, and bales of bucks have failed to produce robust entrepreneurial clusters in the industries that Oregon officially targets, NWEC took off and has thrived for five-plus years – at the cost of a few pizzas.

NWEC now comprises more than forty companies. Pearson has paid a half billion dollars to acquire one of them (eCollege), and others are raising out-of-town capital at an impressive pace.

Fine, committed people bought those pizzas, and were key to NWEC’s success. More about them below. Various Oregon magazines called to ask me about NWEC, and the following is a digest of the resulting interviews.

How did NWEC get started?
I had met investment banker Kelvin Ng socially, through the BudoDojo and the Harvard Club. In August 2003, he wanted to get Portland's education companies together, and asked Dr. Niki Steckler and me to emcee. I arranged a room at the Oregon Graduate Institute, added my education industry contacts to Kelvin's, and ordered some pizzas. Kelvin brought along Jim Snyder, who has been leading the group ever since.

What was your role?
I think the value I added was in mapping a way forward in the event that the group found value in meeting with each other. I also suggested the right questions to ask, to determine whether that value was there. (Jim still has a flow chart of all this in NWEC’s web archive.) It was Kelvin’s idea to call the meeting, but “just to see what will happen.” So, Kelvin’s initiative and mine complemented each other nicely. We decided not to force matters; if sparks flew, we’d host more meetings. If no sparks, we would enjoy the group’s company for an evening, and then forget about it.

As it turned out, there were sparks. We had more meetings at OGI. Bill Kelly, LaVonne Reimer, and Mona Westhaver injected a lot of energy into the early meetings. My company donated and hosted the group’s first web site. Subsequent developments played out actually much as the flow chart prescribed.

What did it take to get started?
To my knowledge, NWEC has received no direct government support – though some state education-related agencies participate – and in fact, not a whole lot of financial support from anyone. It is thus a good example of a decentralized, spontaneous, networked initiative for knowledge-based industry and economic development. My European friends are amazed that this can happen; in Europe, most such things are instigated by governments. But it is possible because when it comes to cluster formation, knowledge and a shared sense of possibility and empowerment are currencies every bit as valuable as money.

Your new book is on this topic. What is it about?
It is called Social Culture and High-Tech Economic Development: The Technopolis Columns (Palgrave-Macmillan 2006; European readers can get it direct from Palgrave here). The title pretty much describes what it is about, and it draws heavily on my experiences in Austin and Portland (and other places where I’ve consulted) encouraging technology-based regional development. I highlight the Northwest Education Cluster in the book, and Portlanders will recognize local figures and names. Ralph Shaw, Pierre Ouellette, and Chet Orloff contributed chapters. Some chapters are columns I wrote earlier for The Oregonian and the Portland Business Journal. Engineering the right social interactions among NEC members and between NEC and the larger community were key to the cluster’s success.

Had you been involved in anything like this before?
I’d been a founder and board member of the Austin Technology Council, which quickly grew to more than 400 company members. ATC’s founding had been preceded by several conferences at the IC2 Institute, all of which raised enthusiasm about software and tech cooperation in Austin. I wanted to see whether we could quick-start NWEC without all the preliminaries, and it proved to be a “yes.”

I’d used a DARPA grant to launch the Northwest Advanced Display Forum (NADFOR) in 1998 as a networking organization focusing on the business and strategy issues of the Northwest’s display industry. Eventually, we gave NADFOR to SID (the Society for Information Display), an international organization which until that point had dealt with technical issues only. But NADFOR, too, was a model I referred to when looking ahead to possibilities for NWEC.

I’ve consulted on new business incubation, in many countries. I helped the Portland Development Commission plan the incubator near Portland State University, and talked the Beaverton city council into starting the incubator which became the Open Technology Center.

Were there other success factors?
Oregon continues to attract educated people who are passionate about education. They are obvious employment targets for education companies, and obvious candidates to become education-related entrepreneurs. They don’t want to leave Oregon, so the companies have to come here and/or stay here.

Naturally, NWEC does what clusters do: meet for knowledge sharing and social networking, and connect with universities, governments, and other cluster initiatives in the region. Technically of course NWEC is an industry association, representing companies in a nascent cluster.

Where VCs used to shun companies with “assets that could walk out the door tomorrow,” that is now changing. This means an enterprise with smart, committed, creative, relatively immobile people can now attract venture capital. A number of these companies also have proprietary code assets, but educational software is still not a mass market, nor one that commands high markups. Perhaps slow but sure growth, without the pressure for investor liquidity, is a success factor.

Why did you push in this area....why this particular project?
At that time in Portland, and I suppose still today, there was a lot of thrashing about concerning biotech, the off-shoring of semiconductor jobs, and so on. It absorbed a lot of energy and press attention, but I noticed there were several industries quietly thriving: outdoor clothing and gear (Columbia Sportswear and others), knives and small tools (Leatherman and others), running shoes and athletic wear (Nike and others), and education-related businesses (eCollege and others). Of course, flat panel displays were still thriving in Oregon as well, and several kinds of software companies. NWEC was an opportunity to help one of these unsung, embryonic clusters give itself a boost. It was a satisfying way to make a real difference when the biotech etc. initiatives were still just yakking.

Companies we've talked with say the vast majority of their revenue comes from outside the state of Oregon. Any speculation as to why this is the case? Do budget woes in Oregon education have something to do with it?
There are only 3 million people in Oregon. The vast majority of everything happens outside Oregon. Oregonians are passionate about education, but not always rich enough to pay for it.

The Oregon Business Plan Summit very much emphasized the importance of a strong education system, for benefiting the local economy and competing globally. Could this fuel companies within the education sector?
The Oregon Business Plan has been in development for at least five years now. What changes have been seen in Oregon education? Look at the (non-NWEC) companies involved in OBP. Have they lobbied to raise school taxes? Announced ongoing commitments to make significant gifts to school districts? I’ve been away and I’m uninformed, but I’d guess the answers are none, no, and no. The universities should partner with the NWEC companies and the school districts to write federal grant proposals for research and technology transfer. Our Congressional delegation would surely help with this.

I refer you to Jim Snyder's guest column in Education Week this month (Jan. 08). The NW Ed Cluster's national profile grows.

Peru Travelogue 2007

2008-01-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

We got in just after the labor riots, and got out just before the monster earthquake and the meteorite strike. For once in my life, good timing.

Lima, truth be told, is not a prime tourist attraction. It has an attractive historic square, with perhaps the world’s only cathedral that is located on an Avenida de los Judeos. Lima's "colonial balconies" have been restored and are a point of architectural pride.

What made it great was being tied into the local network, courtesy of my students at the CENTRUM business school of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Peru. César Ferrada took me to the famous restaurant José Antonio, located in a house that used to be Ferrada's father-in-law's home. Another student's mother is head docent at the Museo Arquiológico y Antropológico. She gave us an expert guided tour. Here's a photo of Hyon at the museum gift shop; note the photographer's reflection at right. Three MBA graduates, Lillian, Claudia, and Marina, hosted us at Dama Juana, a dinner show at the Larcomar mall in the Miraflores district. And of course the aikikai folks in Lima were most hospitable. Hotel Picoaga in Cuzco is owned by the cousin of one of still another of my students in Lima; this netted us a fruit bowl, a bottle of wine, and a nice room in the historic part of the hotel rather than the cramped modern section.

It has never rained in Lima in recorded history. Frequently there’s a heavy mist, but that's it. Plants have learned to eat the mist. The air in Lima is heavily polluted.

In Cuzco, there wasn't much air at all; it's over 11,000 feet high, more than twice as high as Denver. Above Cuzco, at Inca ruins called Saqsaywaman (pronounced 'sexy woman'), we saw people playing volleyball and soccer at an elevation of more than 12,000 feet! I was out of breath after just bending over to tie my shoe.

The Spanish were so eager to eradicate Inca culture that they made Cuzco more Spanish than Spain. The Inca's stonework was better, though, than anything the Spanish could muster. You can see the perfect joining. You can't see the 3-D interlocks and metal cores that made the walls impervious to seismic shock. An engineering marvel. As for Inca science, the Milky Way is so bright at 11,500' altitude, the Inca astronomy/astrology was based not on the patterns of stars but on the light and dark patches in the Milky Way.

We toured the Sacred Valley of the Incas. This is the valley of the Urubamba River, which forms part of the headwaters of the Amazon. Terraced fields as we go over the mountains (sometimes up to 13,500') from Cuzco to the Sacred Valley. Though it's southern winter (and the dry season in Peru), the weather is pleasant because we're so close to the equator. There was definitely snow at higher altitudes - and there were definitely higher altitudes – but glad to say we didn't go up there. There are poppy fields in the valley. We're already drinking too much coca tea, to battle the altitude sickness. Now poppies? Ooh, this is dangerous...

I ate alpaca steak (tasty), but did not try the other local delicacy, guinea pig. In the Cuzco cathedral, there is an old painting that pandered to the locals by depicting the main dish at the Last Supper as... guinea pig, the food of the Inca kings. The locals didn't know rodents aren't kosher and that the painting thus could not be accurate.

In the stores, alpaca clothing is scattered on tables and shelves, but vicuña scarfs and sweaters are in locked cabinets. Much more expensive, and you can see the difference in the quality of the wool – vicuña wool seems to glow with its own light.

Amazing Inca constructions at Ollantaytambo. If I wanted to get away from it all and write a book, I'd go to Ollantaytambo. Cute modern (well, post-Inca) village with B&Bs. Internet access might be a problem though, and I can't write without my Internet...

Now to the most famous sight in Peru. We found it well worth the trip, but unless you're a hard-core climber, you'll see your fill in a half day. Machu Picchu was abandoned before the Spanish arrival, about 500 years ago, and we don't know why. These are not ruins; they are complete buildings, with only the thatch roofs missing. When M-P was "rediscovered" in 1911 (actually, there were a few families living here then), the terraces were overgrown. Now a small herd of llamas - "Inca lawn mowers" - keeps things neat.

No one could explain why it is the women in this country who wear top hats. Men wear wool caps with ear flaps.

Haragei: A story of Beppu

2008-01-03T17:08:00.000-08:00

The Conscious Manager: Zen for Decision Makers featured stories of the weird and wonderful, and readers have asked for more. Here we go…

My wife had asked me to bring her chabako, traditional tea boxes, from Japan. My host in the city of Oita agreed to take me on a chabako quest, before delivering me to the Oita aikido club that evening. Because the boxes were more likely to be found in Beppu, the neighboring hot springs resort town, we climbed into Keiji’s car and were soon navigating the narrow streets of Beppu.

(Nomao map of Beppu)

“The allies never bombed Beppu during the Pacific War…unfortunately,” Keiji remarked.

“Why do you say ‘unfortunately’?” I asked.

“They bombed Oita very obligingly,” he replied, “and we got to rebuild it with nice, wide streets, good for driving cars. But it was a dirty war, and the American pilots knew they would need a bath afterward. So they kept the bombs away from Beppu, and it still has these damn narrow streets. By the way, isn’t this a lot of trouble to get a tea box for your ex-wife?”

“Keiji-san, I’m sorry if I was unclear. This is for my wife. I don’t have an ex-wife.”

Keiji said, “Neither do I…unfortunately.”

By the time I could control my laughter, we had arrived at an old-fashioned tea retailer. The tea merchant explained that his deliveries came in ordinary cardboard boxes – but if we drove up another three narrow streets we would find a merchant who still received the old-style tin-lined wooden boxes. Keiji and I thanked him and turned to leave, but the tea merchant continued to talk, saying that he would close a few minutes early because on Tuesdays he always went to train at the Beppu aikido club.

Keiji, a thoroughly modern Japanese who worked in an Oita government office, was shocked. Japanese shopkeepers do not make unnecessary small talk with casual customers. Moreover, not many people practice aikido, even in Japan, and I could almost hear Keiji thinking, “What are the chances…”

In fact, the odds of one aikidoist randomly finding, in a small town on Japan’s far-southern island, another aikidoist who happened to be an impolite chatterbox were vanishingly small. I was surprised too. I checked my clothing for telltale aikido logos, finding none.

Finally, Tea Guy ran out of steam and stood there with a “what am I saying?” look on his face. Keiji put him out of his misery, explaining that the visiting gaijin with no ex-wife was an aikidoist too. Tea Guy was relieved and satisfied; this obviously had been haragei, Japanese telepathy, and was therefore completely reasonable.

Keiji was shaking his head over the incident well into the next day. It’s not that he did not believe in haragei; rather, he was shocked only by the shopkeeper’s chatty breach of social etiquette.

Remember to enter the contest: Propose a title for the follow-up to the Conscious Manager book. Post your entry in a comment on this page, or email info(at)generalinformatics.com

Coming: Pirate Analog TV Stations

2008-01-01T09:51:00.000-08:00

We baby boomers get what we want. That’s why there are so many classic rock stations on the radio.

No technophobe or Luddite me; I’m a computer power user and an e-commerce guerrilla. But I just have no patience with digital television. Find three remotes so I can switch from my kids’ DVD connection to cable? Not worth the bother. Play with wires, connectors, and downloaded upgrades before I can start an X-box game? Forget it; I have only one free hour for games, so let’s reach into the closet for the Monopoly set. Yes, the version with a cardboard playing surface.

The nice thing about analog TV is you can just switch it on and switch it off.

Why are we about to lose analog TV? “To free the public’s spectrum for other uses.” OK, digital transmission uses less spectrum than analog, but most of us get TV via cable anyway. So those “other uses” won’t include much TV. Well, it turns out that the spectrum will be auctioned to wireless providers. But we don’t know what the wireless providers will use it for.

After the FCC’s 2007 decisions on consolidation of news ownership, are you going to trust them to let out our spectrum in the best public interest?

In any case, baby boomers remember Pacifica radio (not to imply Pacifica isn’t still here – it is) and other pirate radio stations, some originating from ships at sea. Baby boomers rule, simply because there are a lot of us.

Expect bootleg analog TV stations any day now.

Down with Lean, Flat Organizations

2007-12-31T19:49:00.000-08:00

Flat organizations lead to burnout and neurosis, not nimble efficiency. The important issue is empowerment, creativity and initiative, not efficiency. Let’s fall out of love with flat organizations.

Compare, for example, Dell Corporation and Southwest Airlines. Dell deserves great credit for its successes, but basically the company has had one good idea: custom-assembled (but otherwise commodity) PCs coming out of a lean supply chain, made efficient by the World Wide Web. This idea and its offshoots are at the end of their life cycle. Dell has discovered it doesn’t want individuals to order computers from its web site after all, because customers are not as susceptible to up-sells when they are not speaking with a live salesperson. Dell has similarly discovered unexpected competition from Apple, which has churned out product innovations at a steady clip and has moved customers beyond the desktop and laptop.

In the process, Dell has become known as a pressure-cooker workplace. Smart, amiable young people go to work at Dell and emerge as nervous wrecks. Their sacrifices have not kept Dell’s stock price anywhere near its historic peak. This is not exclusively a Dell problem. Lean organizations, by virtue of eliminating layers of management and work-in-progress inventories, are more communications-intensive than any historic enterprises. Emails arrive at a pace that forces managers to be modern equivalents of Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory.

Southwest Airlines is only somewhat lean (it never embraced the efficient hub-and-spoke route system), but its employees are empowered. Any employee at any level may have an idea and run with it, even spend money on it. Was the employee’s idea a good idea? The company worries about that later, after the customer’s problem has been solved. Almost uniquely in the industry, Southwest is solvent, it attracts creative employees whose ideas ultimately save the company money, and its fares have remained reasonable. It is among the few airlines that customers actually enjoy flying.

Most companies, of course, debate ideas before they are implemented. Here’s a research project that would advance organizational science: One employee has an out-of-the-box idea. How many people should s/he “run it past” before the idea is spiked, or massaged into bland uselessness? What is the magical length of a communication chain, below which an idea can turn into a useful experiment, and above which initiative is (inadvertently or not) punished?

Many companies use the "skunkworks" strategy, but no one has investigated when, why, and at what scale skunkworks work. Management grad students, take this one up.

Launch: The Conscious Manager Blog

2007-12-28T12:09:00.000-08:00

Welcome to this page. I’ll be posting essays on management, technology, media criticism, and personal growth, from dateline locations worldwide. (Home bases are San Diego, Austin, and Maastricht.)

Why blog?

· First, I want to stay in touch with the loyal readers of my 2004-06 Euroblog, and make the Euroblog available to anyone who might enjoy it. It contains travel writing, photos, and political commentary from four continents.*

· Second, I’ve got some new books in the works, and I ask your feedback on excerpts that I’ll put here. I’ll run a contest to let you propose a title for one of these books.

· Third, readers of The Conscious Manager: Zen for Decision Makers (the book published by General Informatics in 2003) write to me with questions. It will be convenient, and helpful to a greater number of people, to publish the answers here.

Now I’ll introduce myself, my books, my links, and so on. And at the end of the column there might be room for a short essay of the kind I’ve promised.

I am a Professor at the Marshall Goldsmith School of Management at Alliant International University in San Diego. (I’ve been Vice Provost for Research at Alliant.) I also have professorships at Maastricht School of Management in the Netherlands, and at Pontificia Universidad Católica in Lima, Peru. I enjoy being a professor on three continents!

Before I get chronological, two important items:

I’ve trained in aikido for 35 years, and I’m moderately famous as an aikido teacher. I wrote the original Conscious Manager book to integrate my day job (executive management) with my life in Zen martial art.

I’ve recently become Senior Editor of Elsevier’s international journal Technological Forecasting & Social Change. (Added on January 8, 2011: I am now Editor-in-Chief.) This raises the profile of my op-ed and conference-panelist commentaries on trends in technology and management. When I’m inspired to such commentaries between conferences and newspaper gigs, I’ll blog them here.

Back to chronology: I spent the late ‘90s and early naughties at Oregon Graduate Institute as dean of its management school. Until 1995, I was Research Director at the IC² Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. (Before that, I worked in the market research industry for a dozen years.) I’m still a Senior Fellow at IC².

I’ve traveled for these universities throughout East Asia and western Europe, and to Mexico, Peru, Suriname, Egypt, Kuwait, Cyprus, and Tanzania. And have traveled still farther afield on vacations…

I’ve made some original research contributions in management science and applied statistics, and have won a bunch of awards for research and for promoting entrepreneurship. I authored the textbook Market-Oriented Technology Management: Innovating for Profit in Entrepreneurial Times (Springer Verlag, 2001; Amazon has just made it available in Kindle edition), and more recently a book on high-tech economic development, Social Culture and High-Tech Economic Development: The Technopolis Columns (Palgrave, 2006).

High tech economic development remains a passion. I consult on it for municipal and regional governments and NGOs, and sporadically edit Review of Technology & Economic Development – you can find back issues of RTED at Technopolis Times, my web page on the topic. In the same vein, I was a founder and former member of the Advisory Board of the Austin Technology Council, and was also a Board member for the Software Association of Oregon.

I’ve been married to Sue Phillips since 1979. One of our daughters is in law school in California, and the other is still in college at the University of Texas at Austin. Come May 2008, all four of us will be UT graduates. I attended UT and Tokyo Institute of Technology, earning the Ph.D. at Texas (1978) in mathematics and management science.

OK, here’s the contest:

The Conscious Manager: Zen for Decision Makers has just come out in e-book edition (pdf format) via Lulu Press. At $11.25, it’s more economical than the paper edition, but more risky to read in the bathtub.

Moreover, I’ve got enough chapters for a sequel. CM2? Son of the Conscious Manager? No, those won’t do. Send me your suggestions for a title for the new book, either as a comment on this blog page or via email at fp (@) generalinformatics.com.

And send your questions about conscious management – I’ll try to answer them in this space.

And here’s the essay. Austin’s city council and the courts have just approved the conversion of Northcross Mall to a Wal-Mart superstore. I sent this letter last year to the San Diego Union-Tribune (the U-T, not to be confused with UT, which is a university in Texas!) when the same question arose here in California:

Dear Editor,

Your June 1 editorial in favor of Wal-Mart ignores the consensus of researchers: Economic growth depends on an influx of creative, young, college-educated people, and they are attracted by a city’s quality of life and distinctive culture. Any developer or retailer who makes San Diego look more like Omaha or Wilmington is an enemy of our city’s future.

Economic developers encourage the “traded sector” that brings money into San Diego from outside the city. (London, Paris, Tokyo, Milan, and New York are tourist shopping meccas – but not because they have Wal-Marts.) Two things create "destination shopping.” They are upscale boutiques and department stores, and a vital mix of small shops.

Researchers laud small-business entrepreneurship as another font of local economic growth, and independent retailers are an important part of the mix. In the Netherlands, many cities restrict store-opening hours to eleven per day. This has the effect of allowing one-person retail businesses to survive under conditions that are not profitable for big-box stores. Yes, prices can be high, but this is offset by the flow of tourist dollars into the shopping districts of Maastricht and other Dutch cities, and the resulting higher wages.

The U-T wants us to believe that Wal-Mart stores benefit the poor. Let’s look at that on two fronts, jobs and consumer prices. Yes, big-box stores can employ local youth at or near minimum wage. If the alternative for these youth is gang crime, then great. However, gang neighborhoods are not the areas most chains are looking to locate in. It is family-wage jobs that create community wealth by generating multiplier-effect jobs, and create stable communities by allowing parents to support families. Minimum-wage jobs without family-wage jobs do not constitute economic development.

As for prices, communities can organize food-distribution co-ops at prices that beat Wal-Mart’s.

Wal-Mart doesn’t just eliminate competing retailers. The University of Southern California's Stefan Schumacher notes that “by squeezing suppliers to cut wholesale costs, [Wal-Mart] has hastened the flight of U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas.” Who picks up the health care and unemployment costs of out-of-business American retailers and manufacturers (not to mention Wal-Mart employees working without benefits)? Right: It’s not Wal-Mart, it’s you and me, the taxpaying public.

Thus, big-box stores are not reducing costs, but are externalizing them – making society pay for things that used to be business expense items. Goods may be cheaper in the short run, but a deteriorating social fabric and community economy will cost more in the long run – and fixing them will be a public expense. Can you say “race to the bottom”?

* If you like to read travel blogs in reverse chron order, the final installment of the Euroblog is here, and you can click to earlier entries.