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A Complaint Free World. Drats.

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My purple bracelets from A Complaint Free World. arrived today. Darn.

They’re based on the simple idea that it takes 21 days to break a habit. You wear one, and decide to change the habit. If you relapse, you switch the bracelet to the other wrist and begin again. After you’ve gone 21 days without switching wrists, your habit is broken.

This sounds fine and dandy, but gosh darn it, the habit in question is complaining. I love complaining. I complain about how screwed up politics is. I complain about the work world. I complain about executive pay. I complain about my messy office. I complain about how much I complain. And then, I complain about that. Just this morning during Power Yoga (read my humorous yoga essay here), I was doing my deep breathing, my Vinyasa flow, and mentally rehearsing everything to complain about today.

And ARGH! I just realized that this very post is, itself, a complaint. Fortunately, I haven’t put the purple bracelet on… yet.

What will I do with all my new free time?

Wish Verizon IOBI would get a clue

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Use your product before selling it. Please!

Verizon’s IOBI service sounds nice: manage your phones from your web browser. It’s kind of cool. But they screwed up royally. The product likely cost tens if not hundreds of millions to roll out, and it’s clear no one bothered to try using it.

IOBI lets you change your call forwarding, call blocking, etc. remotely. How? You call a phone number and speak your commands. Sounds pretty sensible, eh? Very 21st century.

Too bad they clearly never tested it. IOBI has two show-stopping problems. First, you can register up to 3 phones allowed to call in to the 800 number to change forwarding. Again, sounds reasonable. I registered my cell phone, home phone, and work phone. But wait! I was traveling and lost my cell phone. Now, I’m totally unable to reforward my phones to the house where I’m staying, since I can only change my forwarding from a pre-approved phone. Why not just let me enter a PIN or password, like I can with every other service in the world? (And even if I call from an approved phone, they require a PIN, so it’s not like they don’t have the capability!)

To make matters worse, the system is only voice activated. Let’s see, a remote forwarding service. Where are people likely to use it from? Their cell phones. While walking down the street. With traffic, wind, and random noise in the background, not to mention a poor connection. I’ve found IOBI is utterly useless from a cell phone. Even when quiet, it often can’t understand me.

I’m amazed that these flaws—which are really show-stoppers—didn’t come up in user testing. It’s a nice service that just doesn’t work except under perfect conditions.

The icing on the customer service cake is that Verizon used to offer a touch-tone activated remote call forwarding that could be called from any phone. I used it for years and was quite happy. But that’s now a discontinued product, so my “trial” of IOBI eliminated any possibility of resuming my reliable, working service.

Chalk one up to progress.

Productivity has limits!

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Last night at my birthday party, a friend told me how his company insists he show up at work before 9 to make sure everyone’s productive. It seems we’re always trying to increase productivity. But this isn’t sustainable.

You see, productivity has its limits. Period. A woman can’t have a baby in six months by trying really hard. The process takes nine months. You can’t add a woman, hoping that two women working together can make one baby in four and a half months. The process takes one woman nine months.

Every task takes a certain amount of time to complete. If you’re manufacturing round metal paperweights, the metal has to be melted and then cooled. Those physical processes can only happen so fast without the metal breaking. We might be able to speed them up a little here and there, but at the end of the day, no amount of investment can speed the process beyond a certain point.

So it makes me wonder how we know when we’re as productive in an area as it’s possible to be? I have timed myself over and over, and I write about 400 words of finished draft per hour. My mood doesn’t affect it much, my typing speed isn’t the limit. That just seems to be how long it takes me to write a finished draft. Do I try to improve it, thus improving my productivity, or am I going as fast as possible already (since writing happens subconsciously), and I just relax and go with the flow?

It’s a question worth asking businesses, who often pour resources into misguided attempts at improvement, where the status quo is just fine on its own.

It’s also worth asking yourself. Some people look for their weaknesses and try to improve them. But your weaknesses may be just fine as they are. Maybe your time is best spent enjoying life, instead!

Why did a successful basketball team choose victimhood? Not Imus’s fault.

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I’ve written before on taking responsibility for your actions. It’s also key to take responsibility for your REactions.

The flap over Imus’s racial slur is amazing. Yes, he used a phrase that was offensive. But what’s amazing is the incredible, over-the-top display of utter hypocrisy and self-deprecation that’s come from everyone else involved in the controversy.

We may not like to admit it, but Imus used a phrase straight from gangsta rap culture. That culture is primarily created and driven by the African-American community. They write and produce the songs, they sell the songs, they buy the songs. They play the sounds millions of times. Everyone makes money, and no one seems to care at the societal consequences. Even with Imus’s comment, the rest of the media has ironically repeated it two thousand times, thus driving home the association between his comment and the basketball team, in case anyone might have missed it first time around.

But the most horrible part about this episode is the stampede as everyone lines up as a victim. A TV anchor commented, “These wonderful athletes had their victory ruined by a racist slur…” Excuse me? How did 3 words from Imus ruin their victory? They have free will. They can choose to focus on their victory, and it becomes a victory. Or, they can choose to focus on Imus’s slur, and their life becomes a slur. If they choose to ignore the achievements they’ve trained for for years, and instead let one radio DJ’s comment set their entire tone, that’s their choice.

This is your choice, too. When someone insults you, makes a bigoted slur, or puts you down, you can choose how to respond. Respond from a place of victimhood, and that’s the life you write for yourself. Respond from a place of confidence and power, and that script is yours, as well. It’s your choice; choose wisely.

(African-American journalist Jason Whitlock addresses the issue in a nice article.)

Mind the (credibility) gap…

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This isn’t exactly a business topic, but an article caught my eye about people who get scientific degrees based on traditional science, then use their credential to lend support to non-scientific groups. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/12/america/web.0212create.php

If someone gets a legit scientific degree from a major institution, should they be allowed to trumpet that connection when presenting teachings that the institution would consider invalid? The article addresses creationists who get degrees in, for instance, geophysics. For example, Billy Bob gets an MIT degree in geophysics, even though his religious beliefs are creationist. So basically, his dissertation represents quality thinking about a topic he doesn’t believe in. But now that he has a degree from MIT in geophysics, he starts going out saying, “The world is 5,000 years old. MIT geophysics PhD Billy Bob says so.” He’s using the MIT degree to endorse a position that is utterly NOT endorsed by the institution granting the degree.

I’m offended by this, but at the same time, people routinely use their degrees to gain credibility without telling their audience where their views deviate from the views held by the degree grantors. Consider a physiology PhD whose public personal, Dr. So-and-so, is considered an expert in mental health (when her “Doctor” title has nothing to do with mental health). It just usually isn’t as extreme as someone preaching the very opposite of their degree.

… and what if his religious beliefs are right? Many scientists have had unpopular beliefs that ran against conventional scientific thinking of their time, only to be vindicated later when it turned out that a paradigm shift was needed.

It’s a tough problem, and the integrity of our ability to believe credentials depends on it.

“Bomb hoax” hoax undermines our real emergency response ability

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Ok. I can’t keep quiet about this any longer. It’s driving me nuts. I just read a story titled $2 million US settlement in Boston TV ad bomb hoax. This is a fine example of how the wrong words can do damage, even when intending to inform.

“Bomb hoax” implies intent to deceive people into believing a bomb was present. People who engage in hoaxes (“perpetrators”) aren’t nice people. Just the phrase smears the characters of the men who placed the ads around Boston.

In a real bomb hoax, someone calls a building and says “There’s a bomb!” In this ad campaign, they put boxes with lighted cartoon characters around the city, where they stayed unmolested for a couple of weeks before being noticed. The same boxes in a dozen other cities produced only calm amusement. That doesn’t sound much like a bomb hoax.

A more accurate headline would be, “$2MM paid to Boston to compensate for ad mistaken for bomb.” Or, if you want the language to correctly specify who did what, “Turner pays $2MM to compensate for Boston Mayor and Police mistaking ad campaign for bomb.”

The Mayor, Governor, and emergency response people kept saying that “in a post-9/11 world, [Turner] should have known” that police and bomb units would mistake glowing cartoon characters for bombs. That’s absurd. In a post-9/11 world, police and bomb units should be well-trained to notice something wrong, investigate it, quickly identify what is and isn’t a threat, and only shut down the city if there’s danger.

I live in Boston. It took the city’s emergency response team a couple of weeks to discover brightly-lit ads that were designed to be noticed. Is this supposed to make me feel more secure? Once they noticed the ads, it took them hours to figure out the difference between a light-bright and a bomb. And in an oft-overlooked postscript, while investigating the cartoons, they found two real pipe-bomb hoaxes that they’d not have found if they weren’t looking for the Turner ads. Oh, boy. I feel like they’re really keeping me safe in a post-9/11 world. Not.

Our emergency response team screwed up, big-time. They’ve successfully shifted the blame using words like “hoax” and “perpetrator” so they needn’t take the responsibility for their slow response, their extraordinarily inept discovery of the real situation, and their missing the real hoax pipe bombs. Now, they’re showing the same lack of skill in identifying and fixing their contribution to the problem. All so they needn’t say “we screwed up.” I only hope they perform better if we ever have a real emergency.

Other than pure profit, why would anyone pretend fast food is glamorous?

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In an article on Reuters, Steven Anderson, the National Restaurant Association’s Chief Executive, has asked that an ad starring Kevin Federline as a fast-food worker leaves the impression that “working in a restaurant is demeaning and unpleasant and asking the commercial to be dumped.”

Does Mr. Anderson really think the commercial will hurt people’s opinions of fast-food jobs? Does he think we consider working in a burger joint to be a fun, exciting, high-growth, deeply meaningful job? Perhaps he thinks we all secretly envy the kid behind the counter for their excellent benefits, great health insurance, stellar hourly wage, and wonderful team environment.

Get real. Steve, we don’t think fast-food jobs are glamorous. Kevin’s commercial will not be shattering anyone’s fantasies. Except maybe yours. Your industry depends on filling these crap jobs so the CEOs can make their million-dollar bonuses. Why don’t you spend six months behind a McFastFood fry machine. Then tell us with a straight face that service jobs in fast food are anything other than low-paying, demeaning, unpleasant dead-end jobs.

Meanwhile, let Kevin’s commercial air. At least it will give us something to laugh about while we sit in our comfy chair, awaiting our fast-food obesity-driven coronary.

The answer to CEO pay: yes, make them pay…

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In a recent New York Times article on CEO pay, the reporter closely examines pay practices where companies use peer groups to justify CEO pay. But they don’t disclose who those peers are, allowing CEOs to inflate their pay by carefully choosing the peer group.

That all sounds fine and dandy, but I must ask: what difference does the peer group make, even if it’s chosen well? There is this bizarre assumption that CEO pay should somehow be linked to what other companies pay. What absurdity! That argument would suggest that if it’s the norm to vastly overpay executives (which it is), then a company should overpay their CEO for doing a job that just isn’t worth what they’re being paid.

“But that’s the market price for a CEO. we HAVE To pay that or we can’t hire a good CEO.” Bull-pucky. Startups and small businesses routinely find CEOs who will work for relatively low salaries because they’re devoted to the company or industry. IF they do well, their stock is worth something, but only if they truly do well. (Many F500 company CEOs think so little of their own skills they find it necessary to backdate their own options.)

Shouldn’t we use the same criteria for Fortune 500 CEOs? In fact, why not have prospective CEOs pay for the job? After all, the jobs are in very short supply, carry huge prestige and status, and give the job holder the unprecedented opportunity to test their skills and ideas on a scale 99.9999% of the human race can never know.

So there’s my solution to CEO pay: have the CEOs pay for the job. You’ll quickly weed out all but those who have an intrinsic care, interest, and passion for the job. It’s not at all clear to me that you’ll get a lower calibre of candidate–only different. So let’s give it a try. Then we can recapture all the money and time we’re spending examining CEOs and putting together niggling little disclosure policies and do something useful with our time instead.