~synthesis~

elemental learning

I received an email from Steven Volk a few days ago - he's a professor of education at Northeastern Illinois University who wrote an article entitled Why Go To School? In it, he speaks first on how today's schools treat students like widgets in a factory and are totally devoid of joy. Steven goes on to enumerate and describe the eleven elements that he believes are necessary for schools to do justice to their students:

1. Self; caring and empathy; peace and nonviolence; money, family, food, and happiness
2. Social responsibility; global awareness; environmental literacy; multicultural community; media literacy
3. A love for learning; creativity and imagination

This (with my ordering of his elements) makes for an interesting framing of what schools should teach. Makes a lot of sense.

School must provide a child with the ability to develop and build the atoms they will need to shape the molecules that will comprise their life. There are two kinds of atoms - basic and nuanced. The basics I've talked about before: the capacity to find information and sift through it; the ability to distill it into insight (which requires an understanding of the basics); and the skill to persuasively communicate new ideas. And the nuanced: we must help students know and embrace who they are; know and embrace the people and world around them as their own; and seek and desire the joy of learning and the pleasure of creating.

Let's say we make progress, and our high schools are able to graduate students with anything remotely resembling these atoms, what do we think will happen next? I ask because I also read this amazing article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In a nutshell, it says that the advent of the Internet led (albeit with a longer fuse than anticipated) directly to the demise of newspapers. It goes on to say that universities may well suffer the same fate, quoting one of my heroes:

Thirty years from now, the big university campuses will be relics. ... Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable. Peter Drucker, 1997

I totally agree. Tuition fees have risen dramatically, there is little oversight or cost control in the system (compared to a typical corporation), many professors are reluctant teachers, and in a model that celebrates anarchy (aka academic freedom), the concept of customer-centricity is largely foreign (exceptions include University of Phoenix, and it's peers). But this isn't their real problem.

Their real problem is that students entering high schools today are completely comfortable learning via iTunes U, or listening to Professor Walter Lewin's brilliant lectures at MIT Open Courseware. They may not all need formal university lectures to learn. Already university students increasingly attend electronic lectures. And when these students graduate, they will not look askance at students whose lecture bias was more electronic than personal. So the real problem will be compounded by the fact that employers a decade from now may be less interested in the academic accreditation when presented with a prospective candidate's e-portfolio, which so eloquently and persuasively demonstrates her work to-date.

It is then that the elements of learning will have reconstituted themselves. If the K-12 school system does its job well, and its graduates have been prepared with the atoms they need to create the molecules they will be, universities may end up holding a very different role in our society than they do now.

Perhaps this won't take a mere decade, and of course many universities will remain strong, but I believe the premise that is their undergrad cash cow will change dramatically. The elements of learning tomorrow will be very different from today. It's time to start preparing for this. University leaders should begin the retooling process now, or some may follow in the path of many of today's newspapers.

It's time to begin (re)creating the elements of higher learning.

private, public, pirate

I recently read Larry Lessig's post about the implications of ThruYou and how they're flaunting intellectual property rights. I also received an email pointing me to an article in the Austin Chronicle about Stephanie Klein whose life is as open a book as you'll find.

An interesting set of bedfellows? They do have things in common. They're about expression, they're about expression that might backfire if misused, and they are expressed in a medium where so much can be said so quickly by people who have so little to lose and so much to lose.

Seems pretty complicated...

Historically, a ton of content was produced, but not very much of it was published. What was published was vetted and reviewed, and funneled through a small group of people (editors/publishers) who were the gatekeepers to broad distribution. They also ensured intellectual property rights protection, mostly because they could be found easily and they had enough money to be lawsuit-worthy.

Then came the information and communication revolutions. First publishing became easy, and with Internet access, even free. Second, distribution/middlemen were largely removed from the equation - while they still exist, their impact as a percentage of the whole has shrunk dramatically. Third, with search engines, distribution is easier still, you can publish, with some work and a little luck, you will find an audience - all with little or no money expended. Though the returns are not really significant (witness my experience), they can be compelling depending on your strategy, and in aggregate, I presume better than traditional book publishing.

Implications? A ton of content gets published and is consumable by anyone who can find it. It's easy for someone to plagiarize other people's work and claim it as their own or just not attribute it. Copyright law does protect the original publisher, but let's face it, first you have to find it, then find the publisher, and then sue them, assuming there's something meaningful to sue for, and that your "authority" will have the power to get them to do the right thing. ("Authority" = does the plagiarist live in a place that recognizes and honors your authority to sue?) I have no data to back this up, but I would guess most web/blog publishers don't even explicitly protect their content (with Creative Commons, etc.).

The other side of this is publishing so much about yourself that you essentially have no privacy. That might seem like a good idea at the time, but it is possible that anything you say can and will be used against you. There is amazing power to being completely out there, as Stephanie Klein has demonstrated. The sheer volume of content not only creates a large following (if you're good, as she is), but can also shield you from piracy if your style is well-known and distinct enough to be identified.

How is a person benefited by being this public? There's the exhibitionist dimension. There's also the part where your followers can a-la Wisdom of Crowds, provide you with insight or advice about your situations. There's notoriety of course. And clearly there's money in it too. Is it worth it? Is TMI a factor? Do I really want to know that much about anyone?

Apparently people do. Not only through blogs, but certainly through reality TV shows, as well as those "wonderful" Jerry Springer-type people.

Is this an American/Western phenomenon? How about this for an experiment: what if someone in say Sao Paulo, Brazil decided to completely plagiarize Stephanie's blog, translate it into Brazilian Portuguese (make sure the context was shifted to their city) and then publish it?

Do you think it would make money?

Do you think Stephanie has a right to any of that money?

Do you think the authors are obligated to attribute it to Stephanie?

Do you think if Stephanie were to find out and sued, that she would get anything for her troubles?

The last question will be asked often as the web grows in global economic relevance, and when everything that is seemingly "intellectual property" becomes freely sampled and distributed for anyone to see and few to control.

impossible is nothing

According to the Conference Board, about 40% of households will e-file their tax returns this year. Why isn't it higher? It saves the IRS $millions to have people e-file vs. paper-file. Why is it not 99%? Imagine how many trees we'd save just by not having to print all those forms and booklets and stuff? Imagine how much more efficient the IRS would be if it didn't have to transcribe the millions of manually-filled-out forms? Imagine how much less expensive it would be for the Feds to run the IRS!

Let's look at voting systems for elections. Why is this not fully-electronic today? How is it that India, a country that has a much less advanced infrastructure compared to the United States is able to conduct fully-electronic voting? Imagine how many trees we'd save, imagine how much complexity would be eliminated, imagine how many fewer lawyers we'd need! All of this plus we'd learn the results immediately! When the last polls closed, the results (the final results) would be published, and undisputed.

There are many other examples:

• Why does it take so much paperwork for a Veteran to receive their benefits?
• Why is it so hard for a family to apply for tuition assistance?
• Why is it so hard for someone who can't afford to feed their family to get meal-assistance?
• The list is endless.

Don't you wonder why this country insists on remaining in the dark ages so much? After all, this the nation that became something, the thing in a matter of 15-20 generations! It flaunted rules and traditions, challenged the establishment, was noisy, aggressive and passionate, and got it done!!

But then all of a sudden, laurels were found, and people insisted on resting on them. WTF? Why abandon that passion, energy, the feeling of never being satisfied with good enough?

Simple. We became comfortable. We became complacent. We did this because things were going so well (due to the work our predecessors had done), and we figured it would just remain this way no matter what - it was our birthright. Hah!

We forgot the hard work, sacrifice and passion it took to get here in the first place. And most critically, that if this country could do it, any other that wished to put in the hard work would do this and more.

Now all of a sudden, there's a sense of discomfort, that others have not only caught up, but surpassed.

The sense of entitlement, and resulting bureaucracy has led us astray. The effect of mind-numbing paperwork (while useful in keeping certain people employed and feeling like they had the biggest penises in the room) has resulted in hopeless inefficiency; process that take months or years to accomplish what should happen in minutes; and the reality of bureaucratic inertia arresting productive work, and impeding great outcomes.

Let us start somewhere. Why doesn't the IRS take the lead and say that they will only accept paper returns on an exception basis. That they will require that everyone who has an ATM card or a mobile phone or a TV must file electronically. (They will provide mechanisms that allow for that to happen at post offices, public libraries, other state-run facilities and even hospitals.) In the end, even doing this will save more money than it costs to process all the paper returns.

Why doesn't the FEC state that we will require a voting system like the one I described here??

Why doesn't the Veteran's administration say that we will automatically give every Veteran the benefits they're owed - no paperwork required? And so on?

Is it really that hard? I don't think so. Is it equitable for every citizen? No. So why not create exceptional solutions that specifically cater to those "edge-cases" vs. burden the whole system with it? That's a truly equitable solution.

From what I know of the IRS (I had the opportunity to work with it's then CIO about five years ago), this (even accounting for all the special accommodations I described above) would actually be a net cost savings to them; in conversations with people at the Department of Social Security, I heard similar words when talking about their processes.

Maybe it's time for President Obama to enact Patriot Act Part 2 - the American Redemption from the Tyranny of Paperwork.

Oh, and Mr. President: please just email the Act to Congress, and have them e-vote to pass it.

$18.69

Some of you noticed that I tried Google's AdSense service about three weeks ago, I'm now happily back to being ad-free. It was an interesting experiment, I tried to keep them unobtrusive, despite using three distribution mechanisms - the site, search and the feed.

As you've no-doubt guessed, I "earned" $18.69 over this time. I had intended to contribute another $18.69, and take the total $37.38 and donate it to a local charity which my employer would match, to get to $74.76. 

But even now I am unable to get to the money I earned - Google won't allow me to provide payment information - it says I must reach the $10 earning threshold first. I'm pretty sure that $18.69 is greater than $10, but I defer to the very bright minds at Google - they must know of a newer math.

Speaking of which, I read today that Google now owns 3% of the global ad market, which gives them something akin to Wal-Mart's (who has 4% of the worldwide retail market) economic stature. The author (Christa Quarles) went on to suggest that Google should next move into the more lucrative corporate IT provisioning business, where they can provide cloud-based services to companies (they currently have 0.1% share in this market).

I don't agree. For Google to branch out into this space, they would need a level of sales and marketing and support that IMO is inconsistent with their business model. Unless of course they have innovated a whole new business model. And even then, I think they should stay true to their core business.

It's telling that we are comparing the market might of Google to that of Wal-Mart. Think about Wal-Mart's market dictatorial capability. They tell their suppliers what they want and at what price, and the suppliers acquiesce. Google seemingly has the might to tell people (it's channel partners like me) that math as they understood it doesn't apply anymore, and I suppose I have to acquiesce too.

Have both organizations gotten too big? Here's an interesting thought - some of the more diversified companies have suffered the most unhappy fates in this current economic situation - from GE to Citi to GM to AIG. Isn't this a bizarre reversal? We're taught to diversify our portfolios to protect from specific reversals, but looking at this market situation, it looks like a bad strategy.

Or was it? One common denominator with these poor performers is that they all own a finance company (GE Capital, GMAC, etc.). I believe even Wal-Mart had explored the idea of creating a bank. If they'd all only been banks (no trading, insurance, etc.), they would have been subject to more stringent regulatory oversight, and perhaps never been able to get into this situation. But with their diversification, and current rules, at the highest level, they were able to choose which regulator applied to them, and of course they chose the most lenient, which gave them the most latitude.

I hope Google doesn't go into finance - it could be their kiss of death, especially if their new math is anything like the math that our friends at AIG, Citi, GMAC, etc. use. And it'd be a certainty that I'll never see my $18.69.

getting your ticket punched

Brian Dixon wrote a great post on the transforming role of education. As I read it, I asked myself - what is the most elemental reason that people get an education?

For parents, it's about structured, mostly free babysitting; though I suppose wanting more for your kids than you had and thinking that education is the path towards that might have some influence.

For the government, it's about capacity creation. Once we moved into the Industrial Age, it became clear that GDP growth was tied to capacity to scale output, which was tied to the capacity to create scalable output, which was dependent on educated people. Plus most politicians are lawyers, and despite Shakespeare's best efforts, they still live, are inexorably linked to their alma maters, and want to see them live on and be filled with students.

For the student... now there's an interesting question. In most cases, entering the education system is an involuntary act. At some point they get used to it, and then hopefully enjoy it, building a community of friends, etc. But why (at the most fundamental level) do students wish to be in school?

A part of it (especially today) is that children know we live in a capitalist/market-driven world. They know also that from food to clothes to cars to games to phones to whatever, the biggest impediment to getting what they want (besides parental and legal constraints) is money. Once they're old enough, as long as they operate within the rules of society, the main thing in the way of what they want (or think they want) is money.

Again - why school? Until the Information Age, the ticket to employment (and thence income) was an accreditation of some kind. The better the accreditation, the better the employment & wage. School was the most likely path towards this. Two things have changed in the last couple of decades - first the success of athletes and musicians that prompted some to believe they had a non-academic path to bling; and second, the success of creative Internet commerce (mostly by young people) where "accreditation" wasn't required - examples include the Million Dollar Homepage, and of course this Forbes list of teenage millionaires - most of whom were really smart, but seemingly didn't require school to get it done.

Notwithstanding the fact that these successes are the equivalent of winning the lottery, it still puts children in a place that deeply questions the need for school. This of course creates yet more pressure on schools to be a place that compels children to want to attend and remain.

Back to Brian, I was at his place of work (High Tech High) last week. It is an incredible school. There are many things that make it so, but two stand out for me - first that it is a joyous place, and second that every student that I met or saw exuded "I can be anything." This is a tribute to the philosophy of this school and its amazing teachers. I got to spend some time with Brian and Larry Rosenstock, CEO of High Tech High (HTH). We had a wonderful conversation, one that befitting the surroundings, spanned a gazillion topics. Of course I learned a ton, and emerged that much more inspired and grateful that I get to do what I get to do.  While we didn't talk about it, I believe Larry would sign up for the three measures of school success I suggested here.

At HTH, I saw students wanting to be in a place where inspiration provokes outcomes, where the outcomes are meaningful, and where everyone (faculty, staff and students alike) thinks: "we can, we must, we will." It is this type of inspiration that every student needs, the inspiration to not merely seek the quick, easy win or a free ride, but instead the path of challenges, team work, and accomplishment - that's the ticket.

fiscal prozac

Stimulus packages are near top-of-mind for almost every person on the planet who has access to CNN. I have also fallen victim to this and written about it on a number of occasions. Two posts (one, and two) prompted a lot of discussion (my gratitude to Bob S. for sharing his economist’s perspective).

Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

We need to see 10 trillion dollars (yes, $10T!) of flow through the American machine annually (GNP) to have a solid economy with “full” employment. At its worst, our GNP had fallen to $7T. The goal of the stimulus packages at the highest level is merely to throw money at the problem. It turns out that it matters less where the money goes, as long as there’s more money flowing. As long as cash flows into the system, expansion happens.

What about the bank bailouts? When you borrow money, leverage is created – you’re spending more than you have, and the banks are too. They convert their deposits (counting on most loans to be paid back on time) into debt, at a greater than 1:1 ratio. In other words, they can lend more money than they have, because they’ve done the due diligence (theoretically!), to know that they are issuing loans to credit-worthy people.

Why not just lend like mad and use the leverage to bridge the $3T gap? Because there's not enough motivation to borrow. In tough times, we all naturally become more conservative, spend less, even start saving in case of an even rainier day ahead.

That’s where the stimulus packages come in. They create immediate cash flow, hopefully directed at driving demand and consumption of goods and services so that people start spending, cause movement in the economy which spurs borrowing, etc.

This is the theory. And hopefully the very bright minds “in charge” get it done, and done right. Money it seems is the ultimate anti-depressant.

But this isn't all peaches and cream.

First, and this is more of a nit. It just rubs me the wrong way that so much money is going to fund what is clearly political pork barrel pandering. There should be more integrity in the system and a sense of social accountability that is sadly missing among those that got elected.

Second, and this is my big one. Have you seen anything that leads you to believe that banks will be better lenders this time around?

We’ve seen bad judgment, which of course provokes Congress to write laws preventing that specific behavior. AIG gives out bonuses to many of those that caused their problems in the first place; GMAC advertises multi-year interest-free loans to anyone as long as they have a pulse; I still get 5-10 credit card, and 3-4 mortgage re-financing solicitations a week.

I’m sure there are examples where banks have cleaned up their acts, but the leadership that caused bad lending remains mostly in place; regulatory oversight hasn't changed enough. International or multinational regulations haven't changed either. Here's a site that reports on regulatory changes - no mention of real or substantive change.

In the main, it looks like the feds are on the right track to improving the economy, except for preventing it from happening again, or even something as simple as disciplinary actions against those that caused this in the first place.

Oversight anyone?

strength and honor

Leadership and teaching excellence seem to have a lot in common. Is a great teacher a great leader? Is a great leader a great teacher?

Pete Reilly wrote about what it takes to be great in front of the class, and suggested three things (my paraphrasing):

1. Be grounded; be confident, open and connected to your audience
2. Remember you are serving your audience, not vice versa
3. Have the courage to be open and passionate.

In almost the same breath, I read about sustainable careers and why business school may not be worth revisiting. Dana (the author of Investoralist) states five reasons why she would not go back to business school again (my paraphrasing):

1. Graduates aren't fit to give business advice
2. Business schools create masochists [<-- :-D]
3. "I wouldn't trust me with your money"
4. We lost our senses of humor
5. Every gig is transient, take what you can and move on

Ironic.

If you have five minutes, both blogs are well worth a read. Together, they punctuate something I've felt strongly about for some time. Leadership requires much more than training. Business schools can do a disservice to their customers by giving graduates the impression that they are immediately able to lead and create success. Teachers colleges likewise don't appear to train teachers to lead.

Clayton Christensen once told me that MBA programs teach people to make decisions based on the rear-view mirror. Everything is inferred from the past, and based on a highly procedural, structured, methodology. This does not a leader make. No doubt that there are many talented leaders who have MBAs, but I don't think it was the MBA that made them so - they had that before they enrolled.

In both teaching and the corporate world, experience can give you the confidence to be adept in front of a room, but it doesn't ensure leadership. It seems that one is taught how to use authority versus leadership. We all know that authority is about power. And power (and its abuse) are why we still and likely always will need workers' rights laws and unions. It is also why some students don't get to learn.

Extending what Pete and Dana said, I say leadership is about vision, courage, commitment, empathy and inspiration.

• The vision to discern a path both compelling and meaningful.
• The courage to stand for something, and to be decisive.
• The commitment to remain a believer when it's hardest and you're in the doldrums, but more importantly to stand in front of, beside and behind everyone who works for you.
• The empathy to care for (really, to love) the people you work with and know and relish that each is, and contributes uniquely.
• The inspiration to exceed your grasp and the ability to infect others to do the same.

There's more I'm sure, but if these aren't there, leadership isn't there either.

I'm reminded of Gladiator, and Maximus' speech to his soldiers before the battle at the beginning of the movie:

Three weeks from now I will be harvesting my crops. Imagine where you will be, and it will be so. Hold the line! Stay with me! ...What we do in Life echoes in Eternity.

This guy was a leader and a teacher. Maybe Business Schools and Teachers' Colleges should consider building an arena...

the out-behave manifesto

The concepts of integrity, transparency and accountability (ITA) are sprinkled throughout this blog. But they are just words, and can be used freely by anyone with no commitment to real action or outcomes.

I proffered the idea of out-behaving yesterday as way for companies to demonstrate their ethical chops with changed outcomes. How might it happen? Let's start with some truths:

1. You are what you measure. Measure the right things and you can provoke the right behavior.
2. The only reason you go to work is because you get paid. That is the one thing that if they stop doing, you stop going.
3. Stuff flows downhill. In any organization, whatever the leaders are measured on is what their people are measured on.

In the beginning of green, companies that chose to act did so knowing that while it was the right thing, costs would initially be higher than returns. They felt in their hearts and stomachs that green was a societal imperative, and that others would come around. They engaged the world on this basis, sacrificing the perception of being less-profitable for the reality of being more right. So too must the out-behave community act.

This could get really complicated, so let's start with one simple premise. Participants must demonstrate their "ITA-ness" by tying behavior to compensation, by believing that sustained success for any commercial venture is based on the sustained success of its customers, and paying their people accordingly. This is not to say that everyone gets the same pay, just that performance is measured as a blend of organizational and individual success, but biased to organizational success. Everyone must be committed to the higher purpose of sustained customer success.

Employment contracts (including for union-supported workforces) should be written this way. Everyone (management and workers alike) should be paid based on the ITA of sustained customer success. Sustainability can be achieved (as suggested here) by creating a compensation schemes that look at impact over time. This leads to longer employee tenure, and more critically the powerful idea that the customer needs to be better over time for the company to be better.

Tying compensation to corporate performance means that in good times, everyone benefits. In tough times, everyone feels the pinch. But the company is also helped because its people costs move with the times. Unlike companies today, where no matter how bad sales are, salaries don't change, and the company spirals more quickly as a result of ever-declining sales not being matched by some decline in costs. This model makes the ITA company that much more resilient.

The out-behave model might lead to lower salaries in hard times, but it's less likely to lead to the same amount of layoffs. If the market acts properly (this is a stretch), then prices would fall as well, so while you might be taking home less, you should still be able to afford to live (albeit more frugally), and know that your job is more than less secure. There are no guarantees. Instead you have greater risks (your salary is no longer predictable) but also greater rewards (you do well when we do well). Some employees won't like this and will vote with their feet.

While implementing ITA in a company should be top-down, the directory of ITA companies will be a grassroots artifact. It will grow organically, perhaps starting with Craig's List, blogs, twitters, Facebook, and general media buzz, and then coalesce into a structure that makes sense based on how people wish to consume it. It should be given the time to develop and proliferate naturally.

In the end, this first implementation of ITA is not radical as much as it is customer-success-centered. Can it be done today? Yes - look at any small business in the world. Large companies just need to think and act small to be successful.

the new green

Following on inspired minds that want to grow, and some feedback I received, here's a corporate viewpoint.

Maybe it's the optimist in me, but especially now when trust in corporations is so low, companies must not only assert a vision that is inspiring, but also make it a public mission to live up to, and be held to a standard of performance.

The green movement started this way. A few saw the light and began to behave in a new way. Green funds were created, VCs for green start-ups were formed, etc. When it began, most were skeptical. Cynics said that green was more expensive - organizations that were green would be less profitable; they/it would never succeed, it was just a fad.

Despite this and no major legislation (outside of emission controls), green continues to be a strong and powerful force. Our government is now investing in green; new companies are touting their commitment to green every day, hiring green "czars," moving into green(er) buildings; green-specific industries have sprung up; even students now more than ever use green and social responsibility as criteria by which to judge potential employers.

Green is a largely self-policed or socially-policed phenomenon based on the idea of good and environmentally-sensitive behavior. Can it be repeated?

Companies that step forward and demonstrate their integrity, transparency and accountability could be the ones where customers choose to shop, whose shares investors choose to buy, in whom people choose to believe.

Integrity, transparency and accountability (ITA) are not where a company will out-innovate or out-perform their competitors, but rather where a company out-behaves. This could also be where a company creates market advantage, where they can capitalize on the perception of mistrust and outshine the rest to be recognized as having a management ethos and discipline that can be trusted, that won't be rapacious, that will be open and honest and accountable. This could also be a really effective marketing strategy, one that results in (like Whole Foods) market and price advantage.

There will need to be a way to judge performance, and ensure actively good behavior. Could it, like green, be a more socially-driven vs. regulation-driven mechanism? I hope so.

My gut says companies that out-behave are more sustainable than those that don't. They are potentially better long-term investments because they are less likely to get caught out, but will be able to capitalize on the those that do, capturing market share, talent, etc. when the ill-behaved are outed (AIG, GM, Madoff, etc.). Imagine if there was an ITA-compliant directory of companies from which you could choose your insurance, banking, investment provider, or where you could buy your car, etc. Would you go there if you just found out that you'd been "Madoff'ed"?

They, like the tortoise, will get there in the end, perhaps with less flash than the hare, but with a stronger and more sustainable business.

It's different spin on inspiration and vision, one that could be table stakes for tomorrow's companies because society (and not necessarily regulation or law) wants and expects good behavior.

inspired minds want to grow

Inspiration is a wonderful word. Someone recently reminded me that it is a word that provokes beginnings. I suppose that's true, but I say it has more juice than that. It's a word that helps you through the middle, it is what nudges you forward when things are particularly difficult, and it helps you cross the finish line with strength. 

It is powerful, and has powerful implications. Statements that have inspired me include:

• We will put a man on the moon and return him safely home before the end of this decade. John F. Kennedy, 1961
• I have a dream. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963

They share this amazing sense of movement, and progress, and impact. They cause you to act.

What is the "corporate" equivalent? I like GE's old one: "We bring good things to light." It made me want to go work for them and help make good things happen. I also like Microsoft's original "A computer on every desk and in every home." People thought they were crazy - there would never be a day when everyone had a computer! But in just one generation, one billion people across this planet have or have access to a computer; that's just incredible!

Neither JFK nor MLK lived for very long after proclaiming their vision. The moon landing did happen as specified, and equality is closer than before; though I suspect that it would be closer still if King had not been assassinated.

Visions move people. But they do something even more powerful - they shape decisions, especially difficult decisions. Trade offs that might have been difficult are made easier because the outcome, the vision is so disproportionately valued.

When inspired, participants separate themselves from the fray to become a part of something. Inspired minds do want to grow; but more than that, they naturally coalesce, they come together, push each other, and become "us" and not "me." "It" has power.

If I were starting something, I would invest a ton of energy, demand that my best people fight, argue, and yell and scream to develop the most profound expression of our intention possible. I would do this knowing that every ounce of energy invested here would (if done well) pay off a thousand-fold with amazing, brilliant, wonderful results.

There's one that you might remember from just a few months ago... "yes we can."

101

The last post was my 100th. It took me almost exactly five months to get here - #1 was posted on October 6. This is an incredible medium, and I'm grateful and honored to be a part of it.

A confluence of happy circumstances found me a finalist for best new blog in the Weblog awards, and then came Wonkette and Rumproast whose enthusiastic support gave me the win. I assume the editors at Time found ~synthesis~ through the Weblog finals.

The result has been nothing short of amazing. :-)

I have learned a lot, but three things stand out:

Respect the audience

Respect the medium

Respect the idea

Thank you all for reading and especially for participating...

oversight or insight?

I once heard that governing is about doing as little as possible, making only the most subtle changes, allowing the machine to operate as naturally as possible. The premise being that something as large, interconnected and complex as a whole country (or planet) has more moving parts than any human can grasp, and big, hasty changes invariably lead to unintended consequences.

The American tax code is a great example. Every new law has a number of amendments attached to it because the legislators didn't think the original through, and then needed to react to loopholes they inadvertently created. The end result is an incoherent system, with no clear strategy or intent, and a massive and wasteful administrative process.

The last few months have caused many to demand greater regulatory oversight, be that antitrust, prisoner treatment, stem cell research, banking, automobile manufacturing, health care, or education. There's just one thing we know for sure that applies in all these cases. The government is the wrong place to manage it. They are not equipped with the insight, expertise, or management experience; they are utterly susceptible to external influence (lobbyists, lust for power, etc.); and finally as lawyers, they are incapable of simplicity and succinctness, the absence of which is of course the petri dish in which all loopholes and bad behavior are cultivated.

So if it's not about legislating oversight, what other options are available to the government? What do they have at their disposal? Well, other than a bunch of soldiers and tanks, it boils down to money - either giving it to someone or taking it away (taxes).

Making smart choices about where to spend these incredibly vast sums of money is not easy. We don't have to look farther than the first batch of TARP "grants" to know that the best laid plans of mice and men... I know we've been having an amazing discussion in the comments section of this post, but I still think as a matter of policy, the government should use money to motivate behavior that shapes results that matter, outcomes that are sustainable, and impact that is largely self-policing.

What can they to do motivate the right outcomes? I think we spend more time wondering about the how than the what, and in the case of the Feds, I don't think they should ever focus on the how - they simply don't have the time to know enough. Instead, let them focus on the whats.

With education, which what do you want? (!) Is it as simple as more and better graduates?

In banking, which what do you want? How about decision-making that demonstrates accountability of results 3-5 years hence (i.e. commissions/bonuses paid based on results in the future).

In taxation - a simple way of equitably collecting what's needed with no room to move - maybe a flat tax?

In transportation - people safely getting from A to B. The government should only pay for that outcome. Why is it concerned with the how?

This is an incredible over-simplification, I know. Being purely outcome-driven, and allowing the free market system to decide everything might not be perfect. But deciding (legislating) everything and being purely process driven isn't right either.

So I prefer the idea that the government should do as little as possible legislatively and as much as possible economically to motivate (and incent) outcomes, leaving the "how" to the marketplace.

Imagine for example if the TSA had not been formed, but instead the FAA had created an X-Prize
that built a system that ensured that people and baggage boarding an airplane did so with maximum safety and minimum intrusion.

I bet we would never have to take off our shoes, or wait in ridiculous lines as poorly-trained people attempted to look authoritative.

Scalable Angst

Seth makes a great point - only paying lip service to customer service has dramatic effects. If those you dis are passionate about their angst (and who isn't upset and motivated when slighted in some way?), the ramifications of your misdeed/poor service/etc. can be significant.

I talked about the Communication Revolution a while back, which when combined with the pressure to sense, respond and then adapt makes for a tough challenge for those that think bad customer service or bad product experiences or whatever can easily be swept under the rug. Our world makes it possible for someone to vent their angst to hundreds and thousands in minutes. Fixing that can be very expensive.

As Seth points out, it's expensive to staff appropriately for good customer service, but the cost of not doing it is often higher. It can be compounded if other customers end up leaving as a result of a damaged reputation, which also makes it harder to find new ones. We live in a fickle world, and unless you wish to re-recruit your customers every time, earning and assuring loyalty can be difficult. Customer service is worth it - in the short and long run.

Sadly, there are cases where the angst aught to scale, but doesn't; situations where people are sufficiently inured to an issue, that they simply don't engage. This is sad. Military action has become boring to Americans. President Obama's decision to expand American presence in Afghanistan has gone virtually unnoticed. The result of this decision will be more deaths, American and otherwise.

What will be achieved with the military action? That's not clear. It is worth noting that America empowered the Taliban to evict the Soviets; now America has her soldiers in that same country, opposed to the people that we helped create in the first place. This is wrong.

It is expensive (and difficult) to accomplish successful and sustainable foreign policy; the cost of not doing it is absolutely higher. The picture in this post represents the next thousand words in this entry.

photo:  www.aaronhuey.com

Mega-Negawatts

A negawatt is a watt of power that wasn't consumed. It's a powerful (sorry) concept, and could be a great way to motivate consumers to reduce household energy usage.

The bane of a utility's existence is unanticipated demand - either negative or positive. The former means that they purchased power that was unconsumed. The latter is worse. If the demand for energy exceeds supply, then to meet demand and avoid brownouts or blackouts, the utility desperately needs to buy energy on the spot market, often at a premium, and of course the cost is passed on to the consumer.

Therefore the perfect world for a utility is steady, highly predictable energy usage curve. That gives them ample time to know what they need, when they need it, and then make sure that their buyers or suppliers are able to procure at the best-possible price.

But freak weather conditions, systemic failures (downed power lines, damaged equipment like transformers, etc.), human failures (mistakes, bad decision-making, etc.) can cause unanticipated outages, and require dramatic and expensive steps.

There are wholesale markets where a utility can sell excess energy or buy emergency energy. Assuming you bought your energy at reasonable wholesale prices, it seems likely that you stand to earn a pretty solid return on investment by selling it to a "needy" buyer.

How does this relate to negawatts? This is the cool part. Imagine if you were able to instrument your home so that all power consumption (small and large appliances, heating/cooling, lights, computers, etc.) was managed via a simple browser-based application that you could access from anywhere (think of a schematic of your home and you can turn things on/off, schedule activities, laundry, dishwasher, lights to vacation mode, etc.).

Now imagine if your electricity provider comes to your neighborhood or apartment building and makes you this offer: if all of you wire up your homes (per the paragraph above) at a cost of say $2-300 per house (not horrible), we'll periodically contact you and ask you to lower your energy consumption for a number of hours. And if you as a community are able to do this, and hit the "number" we need, we'll sell the energy you save (negawatts) on the spot market, and share the profits with you.

Ideally, it would be possible to recover the $2-300 initial cost in a matter of months. And now all the future savings are upside. And because you can more closely monitor your usage, connect to your home via the Internet (even with your phone) to make adjustments, or even just to adjust your thermostat to optimize energy usage, you can really make a difference. The utility could also set the "rebate" model so that the bigger the community that participates, the more you get back from them. This creates a dynamic where all the neighbors are interested in each others consumption and maybe even "helping" to make sure everyone toes the line.  Community guilt as it were:-).

The utility company will love this because they can use this motivation to flatten the curve of their overall energy usage; better instrumentation allows them to more accurately predict consumption; and finally, getting the community behind them and participating actively, results in everyone working together to lower our overall energy footprint.

Negawatts - we should all convince our utility companies to do this - it could be a really great way to effective, grassroots energy conservation.

Dichotomies abound

President Obama said many things in his Feb 24 speech. Here are two passages that I found interesting (my italics, and the quotes  came about a minute or so apart):

And though all these challenges went unsolved, we still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government, than ever before.

In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election.

...

The concern is that if we do not re-start lending in this country, our recovery will be choked off before it even begins.

You see, the flow of credit is the lifeblood of our economy. The ability to get a loan is how you finance the purchase of everything from a home to a car to a college education; how stores stock their shelves, farms buy equipment, and businesses make payroll.

Whoa! First, borrowing too much is what caused all this; and then to get out of it, we have to start lending and borrowing all over again!  The very thing that caused the economy to tank is what we need to do to un-tank it? I'm not an economist, but that doesn't seem right does it? I know you can use fire to stop forest fires from spreading, but this is like going shopping to prevent people from buying stuff.

Now let's say this actually does make economic sense. I have two questions:

1. How confident are we that lenders won't do the exact same thing they did before, since they know that they're judgment-proof and will get bailed out anyway? (Yet more irony that the Feds will have to borrow $$ to do this!)
2. Has America gotten smarter in the last six months? Is the citizenry now impervious to those moronic ads? Did we spike the fluoride in the water supply over the holidays?

Because if the answer to these questions is "no," then what makes us think that the result will be any different this time?

A data point: the highest poverty level for a family of four in the United States is $26,500, which is in Alaska (amazing BTW that the poverty level in Alaska is $5,000 more than that average in the "lower 48").  Let's say we triple that and round up to get to $80,000. Now what if the Feds said that as of today and through the rest of this calendar year, we will stop withholding Federal tax from every household that earns $80,000 or less?

Maybe the ceiling needs to be higher (say $100k), or whatever the right number is to equal the amount of money we were going to spend on this stimulus anyway.

How much more "cash flow" might this create?

I know this doesn't help small businesses who need credit lines to help with cash flow, and we clearly need to solve this.

But for the consumer, I wonder if this might do more than enabling bad lenders...

Sense, respond, adapt

The good old days. It's not that they were that good, it's just that in hindsight and since we survived it, we feel a fondness for it. The past is also safer because it's known and understood; the future is obviously neither.

I was reading Seth Godin's latest this morning. We are also in the midst of the Communication Revolution. The implications of this combined with what Seth wrote are huge.

Survival is about agility. The mantra has to be: sense, respond, adapt. Most large (and sedentary) companies will be able to live for a while based on sheer inertia. But that only lasts so long. The automobile industry has run out of momentum. Because things are moving so much more quickly due to the Communication Revolution, there's more friction to arrests the inertia. Move fast or stop moving altogether...

The airline industry learned it too; during the fuel crisis, Southwest Airlines was least scathed, because they had sensed future oil issues, responded with a hedge strategy, and adapted to the new world more successfully as a result.

Apple has done this twice. When they recognized that they were no longer Apple Computers (long before they announced this) but Apple Inc., they ramped up their Apple Store strategy and became a retail force, connecting directly with their customers. Fantastic move to sense that the consumer was becoming more empowered and conscious of their own image; they responded, and adapted. The second time is happening now. It's their recognition of the value of iTunes and that it and the App Store are their new channel to the consumer. I think the ripple effects and impact iTunes and App Store will have are going to be massive, and surprise a lot of people.

Organizations that are naive enough to believe the market will wait patiently while they attempt to extract every possible drop of milk from their cash cows, are in for a much quicker reckoning with reality.

But those that look at change and like the Aikido master, are able to take its inertia and redirect it to their advantage are the ones that will thrive.

Sense ~ Respond ~ Adapt