347-878-3837

Business

Here are articles on Business

More social networking?

My goodness. Now “Plaxo Pulse” wants me, and it insists on updating me daily that my friends and acquaintances added each other as friends, or poked someone, or whatever verbs Plaxo monitors. All I know is that if all these people actually picked up the phone to call each other instead of mucking around with Plaxo, they might actually have a real life. I continue to be utterly confused as to what the benefit of these sites are. In all my time on MyspaceFacebookLinkedInEtc., I’ve certainly reconnected with a couple of people and exchanged a few emails. At the cost of hours and days of time. If I’d spent that same time simply browsing my address book and picking up the phone, I would have reconnected with dozens of people.  (Who would then add me to their Friends list on Facebook. Hmm…)

Please, gentle readers, tell me what value you get from these sites. I must be missing something, I just don’t know what! (That’s why I’m missing it…)

I was right. I just love being right.

Cool! I love having my insecurities soothed by being right. And heck, it’s just plain fun to feel right.

I wrote a blog post in 2006: https://www.steverrobbins.com/blog/wells-fargo-do-record-profits-herald-disaster/

In it, I look at publicly available figures for Wells Fargo and conclude they’re doing really dumb things. Today Forbes had a story where those really dumb things collapse in the very predictable way.

Jeez… if I could see this (and I’m NOT a banking or finance person), why isn’t the Wells Fargo board de-voted, de-installed, and homeless? – Stever

The “Get-it-Done Guy” is now live!!

,

I’m extremely happy to report that my new podcast has launched! Check out:

The Get-It-Done Guy’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Work Less and Do More at http://getitdone.quickanddirtytips.com. You can subscribe via iTunes by doing this:

  1. Start iTunes
  2. Search the iTunes store for “Get it done guy”
  3. Choose “Podcast” from the drop-down list of result types at the upper left of the store pane (it probably says “All results” initially)
  4. Click on the Get-It-Done Guy’s icon

Cheers!

Stever

Will the Tragedy of the Commons doom social networking?

,

Is Social Networking a Tragedy of the Commons?

I’m starting to think so. They’re pretty cool. They let you share yourself and your life with your friends. You find out more about them, they find out more about you, you swap cool stuff. Life is good.

And therein lies the problem. Life is so good that everyone is saying, “Gee, let’s start a social networking sites.” So more start. Then the originals come up with cool ideas, plug-ins, upload-your-address-books, etc. so everyone will stay on those original sites. They make it really easy for all their members to invite still more members.

The Commons here is any given member’s free time to spend doing social networking. At this point, I’m on Friendster, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and some “friends” have uploaded my name to Plaxo and Cardscan, who are now clamoring for attention.

The problem is that I enjoy social networking, but six sites? Give me a break. I’m lucky to have 10 minutes a day for these sites. Unlike many of my 21st century counterparts, I like doing things in the real world(*), which limits my online time.

Sadly, I’m now at the point where I ignore many new friend requests. I ignore it when my friends send me a “vampire bite” or electronically “chest thump” me. It would be fun to play, but there’s just too much coming at once. Picking and choosing is a necessity.

As more and more players decide that building community is the way to go, people will either ignore new communities or will have to devote less and less time to more and more communities … thus making those communities more shallow and less satisfying.

Where will it end? I’m curious to find out. My guess is that over time, we’ll have a couple of major social networking sites. The smaller sites will die off, and a few specialized communities will stick around. But which will vanish and which will survive? If you’re smart enough to figure that one out, give me a clue so I can buy stock today.

(*) How ironic is this for a kid whose social life was exclusively online until age 16, in an era when no one was online, so I was endlessly teased about it.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

How can US car companies *still* not get it?

Have you seen this Reuters article on how GM is suffering record losses? It’s amazing that they attribute GM’s slump to “suffering from stalling U.S. auto sales, a slumping housing market and rising oil prices.”

Gee, last time I checked, for the last twenty-frickin-seven years, American cars (and GM’s in particular) lag foreign imports in terms of quality, gas mileage, and style. Detroit just got done fighting legislation that would require them to meet, by 2020, the mileage standards Toyota currently gets.

Yet the news article persists in blaming external forces. Here’s my version:

GM has suffered record losses. After more than a generation of unimaginative, incompetent management, the company still ignores the importance consumers place on style, durability, quality, or gas mileage. As a natural consequence of producing an inferior product that doesn’t respond to market needs, people aren’t buying as many GM cars. The company calls this a “slump in sales,” though it could easily be framed as a consequence of GM’s own decisions. Rising oil prices (anticipated for over 20 years and a reality for the last six) motivate consumers to buy non-GM cars. Slumping housing prices further encourage people to drive existing cars longer, and buy higher-quality, longer-lasting, greater-mileage imports.

It was once said, “What’s good for GM is good for America.” Times change. Now, the best thing for America may be for GM to go under, freeing up its substantial resources to be redeployed more productively.

Is Love of Counting is the Root of All Evil?

,

The love of money isn’t the root of all evil; *arithmetic* is the root of all evil. More specifically, counting. And it could be ruining your life. Here’s the podcast. My full October 2007 newsletter on the dangers of counting can be found in my website’s articles archive at:
http://SteverRobbins.com/articles/is-counting-evil.htm.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Is Counting the Root of all Evil?

, , ,

Click here to listen to this article as a podcast.

The love of money isn’t the root of all evil; arithmetic is the root of all evil. More specifically, counting.

Don’t get me wrong; counting was a wonderful invention. It has its uses. We can keep track of kids: “Are all 5 kids here? Let’s see, 1… 2… 3… 4… where’s Billy?” We can keep track of time. “He’s working overtime in the salt mines, honey. Instead of 12 hours, he’s working 14 hours today. He’ll be home at … 9, 10. Yes, 10 p.m.” And we can keep track of money: “He gets paid $1.49/hour working overtime, so our bank balance will be $11.37 … $12.37 … $13.37 … $13.86 after Billy gives us his share.” In fact, they remind us over and over in MBA school that “What gets measured, gets managed.”

So where’s the problem? This is evil? This gave us the industrial-friggin’-revolution. This sounds great!!

We measure the wrong stuff

Well, the problem starts when we choose what to measure. We often measure what doesn’t lead to our goal, and expect the measuring to magically create the managing.

Want profit? Let’s count expenses. Tell all managers to submit weekly reports of their team’s expenses. Let’s call it a TPS Report, and count how many TPS reports people send, to make sure they’re doing their job (which has silently morphed from “running a profitable business” to “submitting TPS reports”). Well, whoopie. We’ve added a whole layer of useless counting, and then another layer to count who is and isn’t counting. Since we don’t actually know what to do with the silly TPS report, we slide further from profitability. We’re counting the wrong thing.

Or how about sick days? There’s a hoot. “You only get six sick days.” Nice. Like that’s controllable. If you’re sick for seven days, come on in and give it to everyone else in your department, so everyone has to take six days off. You can measure sick days, but the measure is useless.

Seemingly meaningful measurements … aren’t

Then we make up measurements that mean nothing and try to manage those. “Let’s rank our employees. Then we can fire the bottom 10%.” Sounds easy; isn’t easy. (Sadly, however, it is a much-publicized Jack Welch policy.) How much time will managers spend on this ranking exercise? Do they apply consistent standards that are directly related to the company’s goals? Do we fire the 10% of managers whose ranking skill is in the bottom 10%? Who decides that?

Ranking is hard. Really hard. In fact, in 1963, psychologist George Miller’s famous paper “The Magic Number 7 +/- 2” presented results showing people can make ranking distinctions between 5 to 9 items, and then we pretty much lose track. If you think you can accurately rank a 250-person department, you’re deluded and thus in the bottom 10%; it’s time to pack your bags.

Even if you can rank, can you use the rankings for action? We want to punt the bottom 10% of the company. We can’t really compare an accountant against a design engineer, so our fresh new Harriford MBA, Darren, suggests we eliminate 10% of each department. That will add up to 10% of the company.

But what if our 30 design engineers rock, while our 30 accountants all suck eggs? As a company, we want to fire six accountants (10% of 60 employees) and no design engineers. But firing 10% of each department means we leave three mediocre accountants standing, and three rockin’ design engineers out of work. That’s clearly wrong. But we get one benefit: we know Darren didn’t understand the logic of firing, so we know he’s in the bottom 10% and should be fired. Success! We have at least one confirmed cost savings from this exercise.

Measurement turns us evil

I know you’re asking: what in heaven’s name does this have to do with spirituality, morality, and/or the rest of our lives? (If you weren’t asking that, don’t worry, just go with the flow.)

Here’s where the evil comes in. We only measure so we can make decisions about those measurements and change our behavior. But we do this by judging the measurements as “good” or “bad.” When we’re measuring a “bad” trend, we panic. We’re afraid. We’re angry. We get frustrated, anxious, mean, jealous, violent, and nasty.

How do people act when they feel anxious, mean, jealous, violent, and nasty? Fortunately, we live in a Highly Evolved Society, so we meditate for five minutes, do some yoga, and we’re fine. NOT! Most people want to get rid of the bad feelings. Some fudge the numbers and play financial games. Think Enron. Some people hit something. Some people treat everyone around like crap. And some people blame.

Yes, they blame. They blame colleagues. “Sales are down! Sally distracted me so I lost the big prospect.” They blame loved ones. “I went over my sick day quota since I had to take Billy to treatment for his Black Lung disease.” They blame the government.”If it weren’t for the (Republicans/Democrats), (the economy/the occupation/global warming/life/love/happiness) would be better.” And they blame themselves. “I’m just a failure.”

All because they counted, then got emotionally wedded to the counting.

What counts and what doesn’t?

I’ve been talking so far about business, only not really. We count the wrong things in business, we count the wrong things in life. We go to pieces when our business counts go off-track, we go to pieces when our real-life counts go off-track. And remember, real life counts more. Where do you get caught in the counting?

Some of us count who’s done more housework, us or our spouse. Some of us count the dollars in our savings account. Some of us count what someone does to prove they love us. Some of us count how pious our neighbors are. It all turns into judgment, and from there, into emotion. When the counting is going the way we want, we think life is good. When the counting goes the other way, we get upset.

The upset is extra, though! It’s our reaction to the counting. The counting doesn’t cause the problem; it’s our stories about the counting that cause the problem.

Let’s fix this. Let counting be counting. Let emotion be emotion. All this score-keeping, counting, and measuring is made up. It’s all fantasy. It’s a convenient tool for making decisions. But it’s not real. And it’s certainly not worth turning yourself into an ogre, feeling horrible, and abusing yourself and your loved ones.

What if you count and discover your bank account isn’t high enough to send your kids to college? Don’t get upset. Use it as information and change your savings plan. But don’t beat yourself up. You can’t do anything for your kids that way, except set a bad example. Use the information to stay centered and work with the people you love to fix the situation.

What if you count and discover your spouse overcharged on the credit card? You can fly into a rage, or you can sit down with your spouse, love each other tremendously, and decide from that place how you’ll deal with the situation. I used the “fly-into-a-rage” method several times. It didn’t pay the bill, nor did it make me an attractive snuggle partner, even to our stuffed animals. The counting-as-information plus love-then-problem-solving works way better.

What if you count pounds, and discover you have more than you want? You can get depressed and eat a chocolate cake to help yourself feel better (Stever’s diet advice: learn to distinguish “sugar rush” from “feel better”). Or realize the number’s just information you can use to change your diet. If you’re going to diet, doing it from a place of fun makes it … well … more fun. And if you’re not going to diet, then at least enjoy the chocolate cake. But don’t let counting trick you into not-dieting, and also not enjoying the cake. That’s plain foolishness!

And what if you count and discover you’re not as rich as Darren, despite your superior skills? Or you’re not as rich as the goal you set at age 23? You can call yourself a failure and jump out of a plane without a parachute. That’s one solution. But maybe you can notice that a number is just a number, while you’re an entire human being who has much more to offer than a number.

Counting is optional. If you stop counting and look around, you just might find you’re warm, dry, full, and reading the web. And that’s not such a bad place to be. So count only when it’s useful, don’t take it too seriously, and feel good either way. Move your attention from counting to living. Put your attention on the things that make you feel happy, joyous, and grateful. If you must count, count those, and every day, count a little higher. It’s your life, and only you can make your counting count.

Overload is built in to our economy. Poor us.

A post popped up on Inspiration Nation  discussing the article on Overwhelm I wrote in 2005. If you haven’t tried it, I also created a free companion email overload assessment to figure out how many sushi dinners worth of time you’re sacrificing to the Great Gods of Email Overlaod.

The overload situation hasn’t improved since I wrote the article. The 40-hour workweek is widely considered to be a thing of the past. Corporate profits continue to reach all-time highs, so we’re definitely making more money. But so what? Wages are flat or, if you adjust for inflation and higher energy prices, falling. Why does a “good economy” matter if we have to give up our free time and relationships for a falling standard of living? The outgoing MBA graduates I occasionally coach assume they’ll have no life in their pursuit of … the good life?

I’m very puzzled. I’m puzzled that we’ve been so thoroughly trained to confuse buying stuff with happiness (and the two just don’t equate). I’m puzzled we believe it makes sense to give up time with friends and family so we can earn enough to … take time off and spend it with friends and family. And I’m puzzled that even when we are being more productive, we aren’t more outraged that the benefits of that productivity are accruing to people who already have so much money they can’t possibly use any more.

It’s puzzling. And it’s a world we’ve made for ourselves. And if we want change, we’ll have to change it ourselves.

I think it’s a natural progression of our underlying economic system. Our success measures are all growth measures: economic growth, profitability growth, productivity growth. As long as we require yearly growth, it has to come from somewhere. We must get more productive to have productivity growth, and corporations must retain a greater percentage of that gain each year to produce profit growth. That means cutting back on little expenses like healthcare or payroll.

There’s nothing wrong with a nice, stable business that makes a consistent profit year after year, but somehow, we’ve decided that’s not enough. Which is a shame, because thanks to our imperative of growth, many of us have less and less of a life each year.

How can we spend more time as our ‘heroic selves’?

Every year, I staff Otherworld, a yearly adventure weekend that lets participants spend a weekend adventuring as their “heroic selves.” As a participant, Otherworld was one of my funnest weekends ever. As a staff member, it’s been fantastic as well.

This year, I was a “Companion.” I traveled with a group of adventurers, making sure they didn’t fall off a cliff, supplying power bars when needed, etc.

By the end of the weekend, I was beaming with pride for my group. Whenever they came across a group having a challenge, be it combat, a locked treasure chest, or not having enough Royals to pay for lunch, they leapt to the rescue. It’s not required by the adventure, nor is it rewarded.

It struck me afterwards at how powerful it was, watching a group that were genuinely living with a heroic, generous spirit, while still keeping to their own quest and taking care of themselves. I see this so very, very rarely in my daily life. It seems like our culture is one of “take care of #1.” Sure, we provide a market economy and some resources to do it, but there’s really no sense of “we’re in this together.”

Spending a weekend with my group’s heroic selves really inspired mine.

In real life, my current heroic venture is helping to mentor a Junior Achievement group of high school students in creating and running a business. It’s a 2-hour commitment, once a week, for 12 weeks.  By the time I’m done I will have spent a whole day (24 hours) this year being heroic. That’s about 1/4% of my time spent heroicly.

How much of your time do you get to spend as your heroic self? Any ideas for how to increase that number?