~synthesis~

impossible??

You are what you measure. What gets measured gets done. These and other phrases are taught in most business schools around the world -- if you want someone to do something, pay them based on getting it done.

In sales, it's commissions -- if you don’t sell, you don’t eat; outside sales, many use MBOs (management by objectives). The process is slightly different, but the effect is roughly the same. The key is designing the measurement to ensure the desired outcome.

When students are measured based on test scores, the skill created is not understanding the curriculum, but rather knowing how to pass tests (an unhelpful skill in the working world). More insidiously, if schools are paid based on standardized test scores, an easy was to improve is to expel the poor performers. Sure the numbers look good, but is that really the right outcome? Are we measuring the right thing?

You need money to live, you work to earn money; like students who learn test-passing but not curriculum, adults learn how to game their system, how to interpret and translate their MBOs into the greatest income at the lowest effort.

Health care is rife with “gaming,” and like any other player in this game, (some) doctors are no exception. I was listening to Marketplace recently, and their fascinating show on billing codes -- every patient-related activity has a code assigned to it, and doctors must map their work to these codes to then bill the insurance companies and get paid.

To “clamp down” on rising costs, the insurance companies are reducing the $/code - so if lancing a boil used to pay $100, it now only pays $90. The result? Increased payouts, and more sophisticated gaming. Not exactly the desired outcome.

According to the show, 2.2 people are employed to do billing for each doctor in America. They even have their own conference -- CodingCon, where they “equip medical coders, billers and related healthcare professionals with best practices and tools needed in correcting codes from the start, avoiding claim denials, maximizing productivity and increasing practice’s bottom-line.”

Or, “learn how to not only overcome the $10 cut on boil lancing, but also add $100s more to your bottom line.”

The Marketplace doctor’s codistas have increased his revenue by 70% ("hundreds of thousands of dollars per year”). A codista at a hospital discovered that instead of claiming knee surgery and rehabilitation under one code, they could discharge the patient from surgery and then readmit them to the physiotherapy clinic downstairs, thus billing against two codes, and making much more.

How big is this? An additional $360B (yes, BILLION) per year is spent on the whole coding process - a concept that was introduced to standardize care and lower costs... We reap what we sow.

Net -- the best way for a doctor, clinic, or hospital to dramatically grow revenues is not by providing better care, adding more doctors, or serving more patients; it is by hiring more coders, and sending them to CodingCon.

We are what we measure, and what we measure gets done.

What if instead of student test scores and attendance, schools were paid according to how well their graduates did after they left that school? (Click for more info.) Now principals, teachers, staff, unions, etc. have a common purpose: the more prepared their students are for the future, the more money they earn. You’d better believe they will work together to ensure that their students are prepared for elementary (if a pre-school), middle, high school; or college/university, and the workplace. Attendance and tests are a piece of the picture, but the key measure is student preparedness.

The (state of federal) secretary of education’s only concern is tracking how students do after they graduate (something they, and the census system already does). By eliminating tons of redundancy and complexity, we should be able to educate all public school students at half the cost of today, saving $2-300B/year.

What if instead of procedures, doctors were paid based on how healthy their patients were? (Click for more info.) The job of health care is not to perform procedures, it is to assure a healthy community. This measurement would save $2-300B/year in coding procedures and such.

It is possible to create centralized (federal) funding with autonomy at the point of execution. The key is to ensure that the recipient of funds does NOT control how their performance is assessed or reported. Create the right measures...

For both education and health care, we can accomplish this with existing measurement systems and existing funding mechanisms. Not only would we achieve better graduates and a healthier population, we would do it for as much as half a $trillion less.

These are but two examples - consider the 39-year long war on drugs (metrics: arrests and interdictions). The result is $billions spent jailing street corner dealers (3 years in jail @$33k/yr for a $200 transaction) and intercepting tons of easily and inexpensively replaced drugs, with NO corresponding drop in consumption (constant for the last decade). If instead the last 39 years had been spent helping addicts, the war might already be over.

To quote a man of immense wisdom: “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing."

bondage

I spent a few weeks during December/January visiting West Africa - it was a wonderful and enlightening experience. One day while driving on a beautiful road alongside the ocean approaching Luanda (in Angola), we noted how quickly the city is growing (we were stuck in traffic, looking at tons of cranes); how much opportunity there is; and how odd it is that one of the most expensive cities to live in in the world is actually in Africa. Who would’ve thunk it!

This led us to contrast the differences in how business is done in Luanda vs the West. I recall this same phenomenon across much of the rest of Africa, in the Middle East, and some parts of Asia as well. For someone from America, business takes soooo much longer to get going, it moves at a glacial pace, and we feel totally out of the loop. It’s just plain “wrong,” and uncomfortably difficult to “manage.”

We long for the bang-bang-bang cadence so familiar in America.

Hearkening to my days in Microsoft’s HQ, there was an “indicator” that was used to measure process and progress; it doesn’t exist so much outside the West, which seems to throw many “Westerners” for a loop when they are over “there.”

Meetings.

Here in America, if you walk past a person’s office a few times and note that they’re always there and alone, you conclude they’re disconnected, ineffective, and not a team player.

This perception and the corresponding meeting-primacy-sensibility is modeled by the entire executive leadership (GMs/VPs and above) who are ALWAYS in meetings. Scheduling just 30 minutes requires at least two months’ notice - they’re that “busy.” (Doing what, I wonder?)

How much real estate might Western companies save by eliminating all the offices, and “storing” everyone in meeting rooms?? ‘Cause let’s face it, if you’re any “good,” you’re never in your office anyway.

My first job in the Middle East was for an American company. Before leaving the US, I was told that it is different "over there"; things were going to take much longer, business wasn’t going to close anywhere near quickly, and I was not be fooled, because even if progress was made in the first meeting, it wasn’t going to stick.

My first couple of meetings in the Middle East reflected this - the customer didn’t ever want to “get to it” or talk business. I kept looking at my watch, worried that our time would run out. I declined his offer of tea (not wanting to impose), and he seemed upset. My much vaunted Effective Meeting Skills were for naught. Being a good Western worker, I had another meeting scheduled right after, and had to depart abruptly, leaving an important customer with zero progress.

I reflected on this afterwards, recalling that the two customers I had met were much happier when I arrived than when I left. I also noted that “local” executives were much more available than expats, and that the locals seemed to have much lower stress levels that “we” did. Those who’d been around (particularly the locals) were much more effective despite hardly being in meetings at all, and the meetings they did have seemed mostly social and not “business,” but despite all this, their “numbers” were really good.

I reconnected with that first customer, keeping the rest of the afternoon free. We talked not at all about business, instead we drank awesome Turkish coffee and shared school and travel stories - I never once looked at my watch, instead just focused on getting to know him, and helping him get to know me. We met again a few days later, this time over food and did more of the same; we also talked about our families, and about our hopes and dreams for them.

A few days later, he invited me to his home for dinner - I was honored. I met his family, we ate amazing food and just (!) enjoyed each others company. After dinner, when the two of us were alone drinking coffee, he said this:

“Shafeen, we have gotten to know each other, you have met my family, I have learned about yours [I had no family there], and we are now brothers. We have a bond of trust, and I seek success for you just as you seek success for me.

“I also know that you’ve spent time learning my business, know what we are doing, how we are doing it, and how your company can help us do better.

“So my brother, tell me how should we do business, and let us make it so.” 

That last sentence left this unsaid: “because I know you have my best interests at heart and will only do what helps me, for we are family, and I trust you.”

An agreement was struck, hands were shaken, a partnership was forged. When stuff hit the fan, I was on it, and make sure we did right by our partner. We hardly met to check progress, etc., trust replaced that.

More than 15 years have passed, much has changed, but when he calls, I do take that call, enjoy hearing news of his family, share the same of mine. If the conversation includes a request, it will be done. Ours is not (and never was) a business affiliation, it was and is a relationship, one I hope will endure for many moons to come.

Returning to America was weird - meetings were about doing work, and most rooms had more than one clock. Process people drove the agenda, and people left with action items. “Effectiveness” was key, and a “productive” meeting was marked with dense slides, many charts, tables, follow-up activities, and, yes, the promise of more meetings. People are actually measured on how well they “show up” at meetings (not whether the business or customers were benefited, but whether they do good meetings)!!

It is said that matrixed management (still the vogue in the West) is a more efficient [I wonder if we really understand the meaning of that word] way to run a large organization. But fragmentation and zero-sum employee compensation models that come with it perpetuate mistrust among leaders and workers and across organizations. Meetings are the way to ensure your interests are protected.

Accountability, responsibility, and relationships have become corporate collateral damage.

The measurement model for most large organizations intentionally flaunts team performance for comparative individual achievement. I gain strength only if my teammates are weaker; my success requires them to fail; there is no “us.”

Driving along that road as we approached Luanda, I saw once more that the non-Western approach, while seemingly frivolous and hopelessly inefficient, created relationships and trust and built bonds of accountability that resulted in success. It is unthinkable to betray the trust of a brother or sister.

Today I live in Seattle; my work requires me to inhabit a Western business fabric. I have more meetings than I’d like, and sometimes experience a sense of sadness as I realize how little this/our culture values us as people, and how much it values what others can do for us.

I think of my times in the "3^rd world," and wonder how long it will be before we 1^st worlders finally evolve...

team trumps

Jack Welch's Straight From The Gut is the management bible for many business leaders. Welch talks in the book about his 20-70-10 rule: no matter the company, 20% of employees are stars, 70% are adequate, and 10% need to be fired.

GE and others rightly put a lot of energy into hiring - the selection process is long, painstaking, and rigorous - in the hopes of recruiting the best. A good HR person will tell you that a successful team needs many different skills and experiences and personalities, and that the team's achievement is rarely based on any one person, but on the group's ability to achieve. Sadly, they fall short in advising you about how to hire this great team; instead they push only for superstars.

If you're only hiring one kind of "best," how do you then sustain success if you can only reward 20% of these ultra-ambitious "best" appropriately?

Many have adopted Welch's model; one company I know assumes that two out of ten are stars, and one is a dud. They have about 90,000 employees, which means 9,000 need to go; and with a fully burdened cost of $250k/year/employee, the 10%ers theoretically cost them $2.25 billion last year.

But this is a successful company, run by smart and capable people - I cannot believe that these 9,000 are truly that much of a drag. When "team success" is disincented in favor of individual success, we have a failure in leadership, not in employee quality. If the manager did a good job of recruiting and hiring, every member should be valued, not just the top 20%, and if there really is a 10%er, that is a critique of the manager more than the employee.

This might surprise you, but Welch, like most senior executives has a rather large ego (yes - it's true!). They achieved what they achieved because they are good at what they do and competitive as hell. The 20-70-10 model appeals to them and their egos. But once you grow beyond a sole-proprietorship, the team becomes more important than any one contributor - you could be the best chef in the world, but if the buyer bought crappy ingredients, or the servers are slacking off, or the cleaners aren't cleaning, your success is at risk irrespective of your talent.

This why Michael Jordan didn't win his championships until he had a great team around him, and why despite his enormous talent, LeBron James couldn't win a championship in Cleveland.

Short term success is possible in a climate where teammates must compete with each other, but pretty soon all these "great" and "ambitious" people realize that it's not worth it to claw at each other and they slack off. They re-prioritize their lives (remember "work-life balance"??), become less obsessed with work, and focus on their own lives. Now the gym memberships, vacations, long lunches, etc. become more important than shipping a product.

While the employees are getting healthier, the company is getting fatter; when teams perform poorly, output per unit declines, and more people are needed to achieve less.

With the right management approach, it is possible that that 90,000 person company could achieve the same revenues with 30,000 people. 60,000 X $250K = $15 billion incremental profit -- hmmm...

Measure and reward everyone based on how the team does; in most start-ups this happens naturally - their salaries are a small piece of the pie compared to the value of their stock options. The focus is on making the stock price rise, not on looking better than their peer. In large companies where the stock price is not rising as quickly, salary and bonus matter more - unless you reward people based on the team's performance, your message is "for you to succeed, your peer must fail." That's just wrong.

Prioritizing team success over individual success creates sustained and more efficient achievement.

Is this a management failure? A manager's job is to execute the wishes of their leadership. The leader's job is to orchestrate sustained success for their organization. Once you get to a certain size, managers are forced to be insipid sycophants.

The real 10%ers are leaders who can't transcend their own egos to prioritize the team over the individual.

awakening

The recent uprising in Tunisia was sparked (sorry) by the act of one person, it (very) rapidly expanded into a national uprising that resulted in the ousting of a long time President whose resounding electoral victories (he won his fifth election in 2009 with his lowest mandate - 89%) were always suspicious. Despite his close call in 2009, it was not until January 13 of this year that he announced that he would not seek reelection in 2014, and then realizing this was not enough, fled the country the next day. I'm willing to bet that in the 29 days following Bouazizi's immolation, former President Ben Ali had NO idea that that one seemingly inconsequential event would so quickly evaporate his once-powerful stranglehold on Tunisia.

That one man's desperate act would have gone unnoticed without the amazing communication capabilities, which even the poorest among us now enjoy, is a powerful testament to the world we now live in.

President Hosni Mubarak is reeling from roughly the same kick in the groin, and wondering, "what the hell just happened?" Emboldened by these acts, the oppressed from Morocco to Pakistan are rising against their leaders; leaders who until very recently lived under a wonderful shelter of power, wealth, and comfort without accountability. These regimes (even the faux-democracies) have wielded power over their citizens (many of whom live in poverty) for generations without repercussions. How will things change?

I think there are three lessons to be learned - first, politics or leadership is a delicate balance between the application of power and serving the citizens. Second, the right (and ability) for people to assemble may not be pervasive, but it is unstoppable. Third, be careful what you wish for, lest it come true.

Politics - citizens expect that leaders will be somewhat heavy-handed; they also expect public safety, employment, the opportunity to feed, clothe and shelter their families, and in most places, education and health care. We are all willing to suffer, but there is a breaking point. The Middle East reached it recently; we saw it in Sudan with their referendum; it affected the dissolution of the Soviet Union; and caused America to declare her independence from Britain.

Are Western states immune? Nope - the Wars on Terror + the Patriot Act combined with severe domestic belt-tightening have created unrest across America and Western Europe. The difference in the West is that politicians give away more than they should to win, where in the East, they suppress the populace more than they should to remain in power. But either way, in the end, the people suffer.

I think sustainable leadership requires adherence to three absolutes - Integrity, Transparency, and Accountability. There can be no compromise. Once you cross this delicate line, you are either perceived as insipid (President Jimmy Carter) and lose respect, or as despotic (almost every other example of government gone bad) and subject to revolt. Most governments will use misdirection (Wars, etc.) to keep their citizens in line and resistance at bay, until they get found out.

Assembly - the Communication Revolution is upon us and there is no turning back. Anyone has the capacity to create and share and associate, though its implications are not fully grasped by all. Even the American government was caught off guard by the speed with which things progressed in Tunisia and then spread to other countries. Birds of a feather are able to find like-minded people, convene and create movements in ways that were not possible even five years ago. Once tightly-held secrets (Wikileaks) are also fair game. Governments simply can't keep up.

Wishes - the Egyptians want Mubarak ousted - he is why they live in poverty, suffer high unemployment, and a high cost of living, etc. They want free and fair elections to choose their next government, believing that once Mubarak is gone, Egypt will once again flourish and all will be better. I feel sorry for the eventual winner of the elections - the world markets are in crisis, oil and grain (and hence most food) will be more expensive due weather, this turmoil and the economy; and let's face it - the situation in Egypt (or anywhere else) is not caused solely by its leader - most of the contributing factors that caused these problems still remain, and are very difficult to fix. The next leader may not fare any better.

The world is holding its breath to see what happens in the Middle East - from economics to diplomacy to war, changes of this magnitude to the status quo will have gigantic repercussions. Bouazizi may have ended up doing a huge favor to the Ben Alis and Mubaraks of the world - they will leave (with $$ tucked away in offshore accounts), their successors will inherit the messes they presided over, and the citizens will need to start over.

But there is something to celebrate - rising against despotism is a good thing. Self-determination is a good thing. I hope the citizens of these countries will look inwardly to realize that they are now responsible for their destinies, that they can no longer blame "the man," and that they alone have the ability to create viable economies, and ensure the health, safety and well-being of their families.

curativity

Being charitable is an essential part of humanity. The definition of society is a community formed to (among other things) help those who can't help themselves. Humans are inherently giving beings.

According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, as of August 2010, there are 980,000 nonprofits (that filed IRS returns; there are 1.6 million registered .orgs) in the United States alone; they earned $1.74 TRILLION, and have $3.89 TRILLION in assets. That's an average of $1.78 million in annual revenue, and $3.98 million in assets per organization.

Obviously the "big" foundations skew these numbers with their $multi-billion endowments, but still - $5,637 per American resident was donated in this last (economically tough) year. Impressive.

About a year ago, I received an email from Paul about giving - what's the motivation, why do people do it, etc.? Most people give money to relieve guilt or to (as Paul put it) "make a spectacle of themselves." You only have to look at how philanthropic organizations solicit money - guilt is the essential ingredient in .org marketing. Almost every advertisement or solicitation you see will in some way make you think, "there but for the grace of God go I."

In good times, this works well - those who have respond, and help those that don't. Tough times are often (sadly) also marked with major disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc.), and in these times, people will rally in support of these causes, taking money away from their normal nonprofits, and their beneficiaries can be left with nothing.

Back to the numbers, I'm most shocked by the almost one million nonprofit organizations - surely there aren't this many societal issues that Americans alone wish to address? Surely there aren't a million Americans who are skilled at managing philanthropic organizations? And ...surely there aren't a million+ people/potential employees skilled at eliminating societal problems??

Most nonprofit founders have either personally experienced, or observed a "problem" first hand, and are now compelled to do something about it. This is a great thing - the motivation to help others not suffer as much as you did or saw is truly heartwarming.

But as an old friend once said, in business as in life, you must put the right tool in the hands of the right person. The wrong tool in the hands of the wrong person creates unwanted results: if you give a dentist a jackhammer, dentistry will not occur (!).

We give because we care; we give because we feel guilty; we give because we can. But how do we know the ones to whom we are giving "can"??? What's the assurance that these 980,000 nonprofits have the ability to not just make a symptomatic difference in the moment (palliative care), but actually do work that creates real and sustainable improvement, that eventually eliminates the need for that nonprofit altogether?

There is no assurance - this is the problem. Rarely do the people that form nonprofits have the skills and experience to solve the problem. They may not even have the skills or aptitude to effectively operate a nonprofit. More often than not, their core skills are empathy and fund raising. These are both important, but not enough to get the job done. This is where the whole point of giving is at risk.

You might be asking yourself "what's wrong with hiring the people that can do the job?" Nothing! Except - most people who have the expertise/talent/experience to contribute to the solution and can afford to work for a pittance are already trying to set up their own .orgs! Hence the almost one million separate organizations! Irony abounds.

To Paul's question, I think this is why people make their giving visible - they recognize that motivating others to give is the only real difference they can make.

To the question of how you fix it - how to make giving curative and not palliative? I suggest two acts - first - raise the bar so that actually setting up a nonprofit is incredibly difficult. Second - the big foundations should use their marketing muscle to showcase successful interventions (ones that create sustainable improvement); and then show givers how they can contribute their time and money to helping proven interventions scale through the existing channels vs. setting up their own .orgs. "This is working - here's proof - help make this work in more places!"

Happy New Year everyone - here's to a curative 2011!

the matrix

In the movie, The Matrix is a simulation - a world constructed by an artificial intelligence that is powered by the energy of its human captives. The humans are deceived into believing that they live normal, contributing lives, all the while they're alone in pods having their energy leeched; until one of them - Neo - is freed by a band of underground revolutionaries that believe him to be the "One" (note the anagram) who will defeat the Matrix and free humanity.

In the real world, the earliest reference to the matrix I found was JR Galbraith in 1971. This matrix is an artifact of man, and was intended to help make organizations more efficient. The idea is simple - optimal performance lies in being functionally-integrated vs. vertically-integrated. The specialized teams (Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Design, Research, etc.) will provide their services across product lines, allowing the company to benefit from deep skills and experience by specialty, and the employees to benefit from clearer career paths and professional growth. Makes sense.

Matrix-managed organizations can be more effective and successful if the leaders are able to transcend their team and prioritize the company's success vs. their own. At the top, there are methods like balanced scorecards and dashboards to create an aggregated management view, but it can be difficult for a "line" executive to stand out, and demonstrate their value, ability, and achievement.

How are line executives evaluated? If the organization (like most companies) uses a zero-sum performance model, then the people are measured against each other, despite their work being very different (e.g. Sales is compared to Marketing, Engineering, Design and HR). Sales creates value in a very different way than Marketing, so if Sales exceeds their quota, and Marketing delivers outstanding campaigns, then which manager "wins"? Surely self-interest will prevail, and Sales will want to look better than Mrketing so that it is viewed and rewarded more favorably, which means that in addition to Sales creating value for the company, it has to do it in a way that also shows it to be more valuable than Marketing.

Smart managers will develop their own scorecards to showcase their value (define their own rules of success); if they're "really" smart, some of their metrics will try and take credit for others' success, and thereby increase their odds of a better performance review, and relatively greater recognition and reward.

If a matrixed organization by its nature creates competition between line executives, then why would the C-suite expect there to be cooperation between these competing teams? Look on Monster.com and you'll see a ton of job descriptions that specify the ability to "influence people without authority," or "operate effectively in a matrixed environment," or "work well in cross-team settings." These skills are in demand because managers recognize the value of talent that can get "sister" teams to support and contribute to their activities and success.

A second skill in demand (so much so that it often becomes a discrete role or even a discrete function) is "orchestration." These are the people that develop processes and systems (reports, performance management processes, etc.) that look across organizations to "formalize" horizontal perspective and oversight. In other words, their job is to build patches between the separate horizontal functions.

There is no doubt these skills are necessary and valuable; there is no doubt that specialization is a good thing - the better you are at something, the better you are at it. There is also no doubt that a well-run matrixed organization can be more efficient than the alternative. Why then is there so much angst/difficulty/stress about getting things done, being more agile, and being more responsive to the changing market in matrixed organizations? How do we make the matrix work?

I think it's simple, and the movie can teach us something. To prevail against the AI and win humanity's freedom, Neo and the resistance had to set aside local priorities and ego and work together towards the common purpose. Their measure of success was freedom for all people, and the price of failure was death (or re-absorption into the matrix). First, it was easy to keep score; and second and most critically, the penalty for failure and the rewards of success were shared equally by all participants. That's what kept them motivated, and what helped them persevere when things looked most dire.

Organizations (matrixed or otherwise) are more successful and stronger when everyone's success is based on the company's success; and the knowledge that if the company fails, everyone takes it on the chin. Everyone's success should be a function of the company's success, and everyone should similarly know what it's like to lose.

For example, we will all get a share (equal amount or percentage of salary) of "profits" when we succeed (no other bonus), and get no bonus when we fail. The rule should be applied universally and irrespective of whether you did all the work, but your colleague in the next cubicle did nothing but watch YouTube videos all day. This will put all sorts of positive pressure on the company and its people - to want everyone to be productive (and "help" or "encourage" those that aren't); to hire well (so critical); and of course to work across teams (I need to help Sales, and Marketing and Design so that the company is successful and that we in Engineering helped make us so).

In the end, it's not whether you work in a matrix (or The Matrix), but rather how you get compensated. A matrixed approach will not guarantee success, but the right measurement scheme will.

Shared vestedness begets participation, which begets teamwork, which begets shared success.

e pluribus unum

"Out of many, one" was the translated motto on the Seal of the United States of America. It is a brilliant phrase, and speaks to the one nation formed of first 13 and eventually 50 states, to the principle of democracy shared by all Americans, to the idea that so much more unites Americans than divides them, to the idea that in being one, we are greater.

This was so from 1776 to 1956, when Congress officially replaced it with the motto "In God We Trust." Just a little bit ironic, especially today that a conceptually pluralist society chose to embrace a monotheist declaration isn't it?

We are human (I suppose Congress-people are as well, but I could be wrong). We each have strengths and weaknesses (not sure they have many strengths). How we deal with them is what makes us more or makes us less; our response, our actions are the true measure of who we are.

In changing the motto, Congress chose to shift accountability, to pass the buck. When management faces their shortcomings, what do they do? I think most embrace Congress' proven skill at passing the buck.

My last post was about the mistake America is making in seeking to measure teachers based on student performance. The meta point was that merit pay doesn't work in most team settings; it pits members against each other, and measures them based on their relative achievement - your "success" requires others in your team to "fail."

Merit is the easiest way to pay people - it is not equitable, but is perceived to be. It does not create a true team, but most MBA and HR-types will argue that it does. There is no e pluribus unum-ness with merit, unless your interpretation is "I emerged from the hoard and am the one." It requires you to not care if the team wins or loses, just as long as you win. Here's the other thing - in normalizing performance, you also normalize roles.

By normalizing roles, contrary to Jim Collin's Good to Great, you don't try to get the right people on the bus, you try and get the same people on the bus. That might be OK for certain jobs, but it's not realistic for most work done today. Having a team filled with like-minded and similarly-abled employees isn't ideal in today's competitive and complex world. Is it any wonder that there is so little innovation and creativity in the workplace?

These same MBA and HR-types will argue that merit is also the way to manage the herd and weed out poor performers. Hmmm... recalling the Congressional buck-passers, isn't merit management's way of compensating for their own recruiting, hiring and management failures? If managers were effective, the right employees would have been hired, perform optimally, work together, and achieve greatness as a team. This is exaggerating to make a point, but it might still resonate for some of us.

Passing the buck isn't just about normalizing the workforce. It's also about trying to get by without making tough decisions or more appropriately, deferring tough decisions to others. Steve Lohr wrote an article in the NY Times last week about the economics of elitism where he reflects on Steve Jobs' rule over product development at Apple. Lohr says: "They are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out — not cramming every feature that came into an engineer’s head, an affliction known as “featuritis” that burdens so many technology products."

As engineers, rather than ex pauci plures (out of few many), they chose e pluribus unum - out of many minds and ideas and approaches, they would make rather than defer the difficult decisions; they would design based on the ideal, and not the compromise.

Matter, people, our very world tends towards entropy - it is easy to accede to chaos. The tougher path is to resolve to be one, to be a team, to make a choice.

antitrust

Does human nature dictate that we don't trust each other? It seems that way. While it is true that communities can form and have each others' backs, the vast majority of society seems bent on believing and expecting the worst of its people.

This is why we have police officers, FBI/CIA/DEA/NSA/TSA/XXX agents, a vast military machine, and even a division at the US Department of Justice that focuses solely on corporate antitrust. Schools have metal detectors, airports have ridiculous security procedures - it goes on. As a politician, you have to show that you are tough on crime, promoting your prosecutorial record (or in some states how many people you've put on death row). Have you ever heard a politician campaign on the fact that they have less people behind bars, and claiming it to be a good thing?

As an aside, it's interesting that American (I can't speak for other countries) enforcement officers are measured on their conviction rates vs. their prevention rates. Success is putting more people behind bars vs. preventing the crime from happening in the first place. Implication: the whole system is conditioned to look for wrong-doing (perhaps even creating wrong-doing to succeed) vs. preventing it.

Surely this can't be a productive way to live? This mentality permeates the corporate space as well; with few exceptions, almost every large (> 500 employees) company I've ever worked with or for has a layer of politics and mistrust between departments. In some cases it's the arrogance of not wanting to take a dependency on "them" to do something, so you create your own redundant process; in other cases, it's a belief (not inaccurate) that compensation/recognition is a zero-sum game that requires me/us to do better than him/them - for me/us to win, he/they have to lose. The team matters less than the individual.

Whatever it is, companies as much as societies believe the worse of themselves, and design and manage to that expectation of untrustworthy behavior. Look at HR models, regulatory compliance rules and trainings, corporate overhead, and you'll find that much of that is rooted in the expectation of betrayal.

But there are exceptions, my thanks to Axon for sharing this statement of Netflix' Freedom and Responsibility culture. It speaks volumes about their approach, but it's also interesting that it took 128 pages to tell the story. I wonder if one statement might have sufficed:

"We hired you because we believe in you, share your passion for doing great things, and feel your belief in us. All we ask is that you always keep our shared goal for greatness at the front of your mind and do the right thing."

Is it possible that if I trust you, you will feel empowered by that trust and allow the better angels of your nature to prevail? We do this in places like airports where we ask a stranger to watch our bags for a minute. Parents do this when entrusting their children to babysitters. Team sport athletes do this because they know they have to act as one and trust in each other in order to win. Netflix does this.

What will it take to do it more broadly? I think it boils down to one thing - the imposition of a shared accountability. This might not stop all untrustworthy behavior, but from what I've read of organizational behavior and crowd theories (like Wisdom of Crowds), it is possible to move the needle towards less oversight but better outcomes through self- and team-policing. Look at most smaller organizations, and especially those where each employee has some kind of equity stake in the company and you see this how well this can work. Is it possible that size does matter? That once you hit a certain size trust just begins to fade? I can't believe this (that's the Pollyanna in me, I know) - I think we can design organizations and even communities that are pro-trust.

It's a matter of will.

fallacious panacea

The world of education is complex, nuanced, fraught with incumbency, and a worst-case scenario for its stakeholders because unlike say astrophysics, everyone feels justified in claiming domain expertise because they went to school or have kids who are now in school.

So when new ideas are proffered, it's very easy to jump on the bandwagon with conviction; be dismissive with conviction; or find effective ways to impede change with conviction. Sadly the last has the most "authority" and most resonant effect - the first two are just words.

I came across three readables this morning. First - Andrew Rotherham's pointer to the Moskowitz-Weingarten debate on Harlem charter schools vs. the AFT. Second, David Warlick's post on a response to this May 2007 article in the New York Times on the failure of 1:1 school laptop initiatives. Third - Mike Hourahine's post on how IT leaders can be an inhibitor to technology usage in education.

The debate was interesting, at issue is how a top-down union negotiating approach can lead to slow-downs at the school or class level, and provide a shield for teachers to be less accountable and have room to "just say no" to change. The union prefers the status quo, but did offer the olive branch of creating a special contract for charter schools, which I think might be really interesting, and a potential camel's nose under the tent opportunity.

The NY Times article damns 1:1 laptop initiatives in schools because they're seen to be ineffective (no differentiated learning outcomes), too expensive (initial and ongoing costs), and result only in bandwidth availability problems (excessive porn surfing). Jeff Utecht's response to this is a great read and enumerates some of the things that also occurred to me as I read the NY Times article.

Mike Hourahine (presently the CIO for Appleby College in Oakville, Ontario) advocates that trust and freedom don't result in widespread anarchy and prolific porn surfing in schools, and that CIOs should instead be much more open to change, know what their schools really need, and what teachers and students are really doing, vs. being the perpetual naysayer.

When something new is proposed for education, everyone has an opinion, most have a visceral reaction, and everyone feels compelled express themselves. But to Jeff's point, few if any take a strategic view, and in my view, apply discipline to the questions of what, why and how:

• What is our overarching mission? Achieve quantum improvement in learning outcomes for all students.
• Why will this help us get there sooner? It can allow broader access, and deeper and richer understanding and application of the concepts.
• How will we ensure success? By integrating this within learning, adapting the pedagogy, curriculum and assessments to account for this change, ensuring adequate teacher professional development and preparation time to make the change worthwhile, and adjusting our benchmarks accordingly.

The what/why/how is not specific to laptops, it is about any change (it could be new text books, a new cafeteria menu, new crossing guard uniforms, whatever). But if the system and its people are bent on preserving the status quo (which is why "why" is so critical), then no matter how great the potential is, any success is purely accidental.

Out of the gate, 1:1 laptops were burdened with high expectations and very little preparation. Given this, the best case outcome was simple mechanization (from slate to blackboard to whiteboard to PowerPoint), no change to learning, just a slight improvement in process. There was no alteration of curriculum, teaching or assessments to account for the laptops, it was just thrown into the schools.

Technology has the potential to cost-effectively allow more people access to compelling content in a form that is best suited to their learning style. I think those who push it away are doing it for the wrong reasons, just as those that advocate it without a plan are doing it for the wrong reasons.

But the big failure was even more critical - the addition of computers came with no specific expectation of improved performance for the school, teachers or students. We all know that we are what we measure, if you don't expect improvement and raise the bar, you will not see better results. If instead they said - "we are investing $X in equipment and process change, which is Y% of our school budget, and we expect Z% improvement in learning outcomes." Even if Z was a small number, people would have rallied around it and tried to achieve or exceed expectations.

We must involve students (the customer), learn how they interact with their world today, understand how they learn, what they like, and incorporate that in the teaching process. We should recognize that no tool is a panacea, that open-minded, passionate and creative teachers will trump any technology, and that no technology will overcome a closed, uncaring, and tired teacher. Finally, we should be prepared to adapt to new tools as students evolve, 'cause they will, and we should be prepared.

Student teaching?

Scott McLeod wrote recently about student-delivered professional development. Really insightful and right on regarding the use of technology and the students' proficiency therein.

I think there's a huge opportunity for students to participate (for credit - academic or community service) in training both educators and the community on the use of technology.

I would add Big Idea #6 to Scott's entry.  Why not also have students help with teaching content approaches and technique? I wrote earlier about how the students aren't learning as well as we'd like, and wonder if we're not involving them enough in the process?

One of my favorite examples of student-inspired learning is Pokemon (ok - so this isn't real learning - or is it??).

Most Pokemon aficionados that I know mastered the game in about six months. Mastery implies a full understanding of the Pokemon vocabulary, ecosystem, evolutionary paths, strengths and weaknesses of each character and appropriate strategies with which to select the right Pokemon and win battles, etc.

Moreover, each child also learns to interact with their peers, learn tricks and technique from each other, and of course battling to achieve supremacy in the game.

Finally, for particularly tough battles, students need to also do research online to uncover cheats that they can use to achieve status.

How did Nintendo build such an amazing learning environment? They started with a premise, built examples, tested it extensively with children, and then released the product. Each iteration of Pokemon is equally tested, children are involved in helping create scenarios, outcomes, etc., as well as providing insights on game play, use of vocabulary, etc.

It seems to me that Big Idea #6 should equally involve students, they should be co-creating the curriculum, participating even in defining learning outcomes, and then being active in refining the content to ensure that the learning outcomes are achieved. I recently met Marja Brandon, head of the Seattle Girls School. She is a visionary.  Among other things, the eight grade class at her school actually does this - the curriculum for that year is co-created with the students. 

Her students are out-performers (routinely excelling in AP classes once they move on from SGS), and equally importantly - don't just walk, but run to school because they love it so much. This is a wonderful school, and I hope to write much more about it in the days to come, but if you live in the Seattle area and have a daughter who is going into grade 5 or 6, this school MUST be on your list to evaluate, and I'm certain will be at the top of that list.