~synthesis~

Energy Innovation

I was listening to an interview on NPR yesterday with an executive from Shell who said that energy independence is impossible, we just need to talk about reducing consumption. Questions arose. What is energy independence? What happens when you have it? What ought to be the right price to pay for this?

I think it is in Americans' nature to think: "if I see something I want and I can get it, unless someone stops me, I'm going to take it." That applies to buying bad mortgages, it applies to eating fast food, and it absolutely applies to energy consumption. We have big cars, big houses, big appliances and big appetites. This isn't true everywhere in the world, though I've seen it more and more in the Middle East and some Latin American countries like Venezuela.

When gas prices rose above $4/gallon, consumption fell. Instead of driving, more people tele-commuted, conducted e-meetings (vs. face-to-face), and braved public transit. People were even more thoughtful about home heating and whether they really needed to run the dishwasher right now. But when prices came back down, the old habits returned and consumption resumed.

There were hard times. People dependent on driving long distances suffered deeply. The American urban sprawl, was built that way because gas prices have historically been so low. When you travel through or live in Europe, you notice that gas prices are two to almost three times higher than here. Moreover, public transit is much more efficient and available, and everything is a lot closer to each other - you hardly need to drive.

The very nature of American urbanization puts us at a tremendous disadvantage compared to the European Union when it comes to the COGS of our products and services. Today, American workers are a bit more productive than their European counterparts, but one never knows how long that will last, and if that advantage erodes, the increased cost of fuel will make our products that much more expensive to sell and buy.

With few exceptions, public transit is abysmal in the US - first because we don't spend any money on it, and second because people mostly hate to use it. Let's change that! There is a large public transit allocation in the stimulus package, why not take this opportunity to change the game? First, all new public transit vehicles must be natural gas or electric powered, second, let's double gas prices again (for non-public transit consumption) with a tax whose proceeds are earmarked for pubic transit investments, and to expand transit coverage beyond city-centers. The results:

1. Lower CO2 emissions
2. Lower fuel imports
3. Cheaper overall transportation costs
4. A re-thinking of American city planning

I know this hurts the already-ailing auto industry because we'd be reducing their demand pretty dramatically, but maybe it's time to smell the coffee and realize that auto manufacturing has way too much capacity as it is, and is simply not sustainable.

Also - I haven't mentioned one very significant result from all of this. American ingenuity. I think when pressed, and when our backs are against the wall, creativity and innovation will occur - this country will produce the successor to the internal combustion engine. It will produce batteries that are (maybe even organic) smaller, have greater capacity and are more safely disposed of. It will design new forms of transportation that fundamentally change the very concept.

This is really what's needed. But to get there, our backs need to truly be against the wall - that's when the magic will happen.

Socialism America-style

I just read an article in the latest McKinsey Quarterly called A better way to fix banks. The title intrigued me, as did the subtitle: "Here’s a plan that could solve the toxic-asset pricing problem voluntarily—without requiring Uncle Sam to nationalize the whole industry—and make (pretty much) everyone a winner."

Sigh...

I thought McKinsey was better than this. The only people they care about are the large organizations - either the banks or the government. I should know better - they are, after all their customers, and by that definition, maybe it's true that their everyone was a winner.

What about the people??? What about the homeowners that are facing their share of the $1.5 trillion in toxic assets? What do we do about them, their homes, their families, and their livelihoods?

America has become a corporate welfare state - believing that preserving corporations is the only way to prevent economic doom. I assume the reason for this is the idea of helping individuals smacks of socialism (though the opposite is true) or welfare, and this country is "too proud" to allow that. While both sides of the political aisle claim to be anti-socialist, it hasn't stopped both from supporting corporate bailouts.

Socialism is state ownership of the organizations that produce and distribute goods and services. "quack"

Back to the toxic assets, I have to believe that not all of the $1.5 trillion is toxic. Some of those former homeowners could detox their debt if renegotiated. I wrote about the 70-40 Company a while back, where the Feds would buy debt that was close to default from the bank at 70% of its original value, and refinance the home to the homeowner with a 40-year fixed rate, principle + interest mortgage. In this way, the debt to the bank is no longer toxic - it is essentially insured at 70% of the original value.

The homeowner is happy because they get to stay in their house, now with a predictable, fixed-rate mortgage, and while their home has a lower value, at least they have one, and are in a position to keep it. The banks should be happy because their losses are capped, and the government is happy because they were actually helpful.

But this isn't all peaches and cream. Lest we forget, I wrote about the guiltiest culprits in the lending crisis. The rating firms (Fitch, Moody's and Standard & Poor's among others) rated all the derivative instruments that were composed of these toxic assets as being of high quality and reliability! What's been done about that? Have the Feds or the Treasury Department or the SEC even mentioned them?

A characteristic of a socialist state is the ability to mask its most egregious miscreants. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

F-Edu-reform?

Kalman R. Hettleman wrote an interesting article in the Washington Post about the five myths in education reform:

1. We know how to fix public schools; we just lack the political will to finish the job.
2. Teachers know best how to teach kids; policymakers should leave them alone.
3. The federal government meddles too much in the affairs of local schools.
4. Teacher unions are the enemy.
5. There's no place in education for politics.

He refuted all of these very well.

I read another article by Dave Clinefelter of Rethinking Higher Education on college tuition. Dave's first data point is sobering - median family income has risen by 5% over the last decade, but college tuition has risen by 65%. He cites many reasons for this, but the big one is that State funding has fallen off dramatically, and the schools can't keep up.

A key factor in both cases is how much local vs. state vs. federal involvement there is or should be in education.

I think education should not be funded locally or at the state level - it should be all federal. If for no other reason than a state's local economy should not prevent any student from getting the best possible education. The second reason - a child should not be penalized for living in a state where the education leaders are ...not clear thinkers. Third, if students who graduate (whether to go into tertiary education or the workforce) are compared nationally, standards (curriculum, assessments, etc.) should be described nationally, and be consistent across the country - an even playing field. Finally, salaries for educators should (with regional cost-of-living accommodations) be equal across the country.

I'm not however saying that the Feds should tell teachers how to teach. Instead they should define the outcomes that schools are expected to create, and then develop standards that judge the quality of schools relative to each other based on the quality of their graduates. As I wrote before, I believe we must know what the goal is and that you are what you measure.

By the same token, I don't think that all teachers are prefect or even universally effective. I wrote about a number of teachers that don't seem to have their students' best interests at heart - I don't think that is acceptable either.

This is controversial, I know. Many believe that education is a local issue, should managed by those that can accommodate the unique requirements of their locale, and that it should be funded at the local level. I don't agree. This is too important to be random, to be left in the hands of those who are might take a whimsical approach to education, or bow to tough budgetary times. It is not acceptable for our schools, teachers and most critically, our students to be compromised.

The audience matters most

A good friend of mine, Jack Timmons, sent me this parable today:

A disappointed Coca Cola salesman returns from his Middle East assignment. A friend asked, "Why weren't you successful with the Arabs?" The salesman explained: "When I got posted to the Middle East, I was very confident that I would make a good sales pitch as Cola is virtually unknown there. But, I had a problem I didn't know to speak Arabic. So, I planned to convey the message through three posters...

• First poster: A man lying in the hot desert sand...totally exhausted and fainting.
• Second poster: The man is drinking our Cola.
• Third poster: Our man is now totally refreshed.

And Then these posters were pasted all over the place. "Then that should have worked!" said the friend. "It should have!?" said the salesman. "But I didn't realize that Arabs read from right to left!!"

A powerful lesson for all of us :-). Marketing is the conduit between the customer and the company. It needs to understand both really well and be able to build a lasting bridge between them.

A public speaking coach once told me that great communication is not about you getting across what you wanted to. It's about understanding your audience, their interests and needs, and giving them what they need. His metaphor for this is single people at a bar or party; the "successful" ones are those that are most compelling to their target audience, not necessarily the best looking, dressed, etc.  

Marketing succeeds when the message resonates with your audience, not your management (who are often far from the target audience). But in most large corporations, we find ourselves in the situation where we are required get buy-in from the execs before going out with a campaign. And all-to-often, the execs feel like they need to add value by providing input on creative, sometimes to the point of totally polluting what was once a great thing.

One way to overcome this is to have already done in-market testing with the target audience, and reviewing that as well as the objectives of the campaign with the executives, and then further explaining their role (not to critique the content, but approve the strategy), and if they persist, use the research to defend your approach based on what resonates with the audience.

Anticipation

 

UPDATE: Seth Godin just wrote an amazing blog about what marketing should be. Well worth a read.

The role of marketing in business has grown in prominence over time. Within marketing, advertising has had its rise and fall. Today it plays a smaller role than it did a generation ago. I don't watch very much broadcast TV, but one show that's definitely on my DVR is Mad Men. It captures what we all imagine advertising was like in the 1960s perfectly.

In that generation, advertising was the king of marketing. The creativity and ingenuity of being able to shape people's perception, and most critically, desire, in a world with limited access to the audience was huge. Companies paid top dollar to get the best advertisers, and it was worth it. The clip above from the season 1 closer of Mad Men is a great example of this.

Seth Godin, a brilliant marketer, also talked about this in a recent blog entry. But his piece is about more than that, it argues that marketing can and should be the place where innovation happens in a company.  I agree.

I see marketing as the point at which customer insight, market trends, creativity, advocacy and the company's business and product strategy meet. If done well, it is where vision can help craft strategy, and where the product is shaped and messaged to accelerate desire, adoption and advocacy.

But sometimes marketing isn't in at the beginning and is forced to be creative in finding ways to wrest success from the jaws of defeat.

Here's my favorite example of this. Back in the 60s (I think), tomato sauce was called "catsup," and the definition of great catsup was its low viscosity (i.e. it poured really easily, was very thin and watery). Along came Heinz, whose tomato sauce was thick and highly viscous; it took a looong long time to pour (remember they had glass bottles back then - no squeezing). Problem - the scientists and product people had created something that was the opposite of "good" in the market's eyes.

The marketing team came up with a brilliant campaign (I'm sure they'd also read the Art of War, specifically where Sun Tzu says "if your enemy likes to fight in the valley, fight him in the mountains"). They created a campaign that began with the idea that slow was good - it was a shootout where the Heinz bottle outlasted the other, more watery brands. Then, the pièce de résistance - based on Carly Simon's Anticipation, they created a series of brilliant commercials like this one. Their tag line: "it's sloooow good" - brilliant.

The result - Heinz completely redefined the category, and everyone else was left in the dust. Their dominance over this market lasted decades, and continues today.

Now that's marketing...

Strategic Entrenchment

About ten years ago, after a mind-numbing series of meetings at work, and in a fit of frustration, I became convinced that "the best predictor of future failure is past success." The conversations were about how to get ready for tomorrow, assuming today is going well, but growth from today's businesses won't be sufficient to meet tomorrow's growth objectives.

Invariably, when one is in a meeting like this, the most closed-minded people are those with the deepest attachment to the "today" businesses. It's a damned shame, since before they got to be "today," they were creative, innovative, anti-establishment people who wished to shake things up and make a difference. But now, their cognitive dissonance makes them completely closed to new ideas that might cannibalize the fruits of their labor. The worst part of this is that they're in charge now.

There is no openness to the idea that future success might come from an altogether different direction, and while it might cannibalize existing, better us than our competitors.

This type of entrenched (some might call it constipated) thinking seems to permeate the large organizations that I've encountered in my life. As I wrote here, the bigger you get, the more distant you become from the things that mattered when you first started, building great products that customers want, and focusing on customer service.

In the case of my employer, this intractability led directly poorer versions of products for our customers (where in some cases they actually preferred the older generation to the new one).

This doesn't just apply to engineering and product development, I've seen the same behavior in marketing and planning organizations who insist on using a certain planning method or marketing framework because it worked once for them back in 2007, and got them promoted. It's akin to a student writing essays only in the format they used in grade 7 because they got an "A" on it, and can't understand why they got a "D" in grade 9.

I'm absolutely not saying that the old way is always the wrong way. I'm just saying that being open to new ideas and opportunities can lead to even better outcomes.

In many cases, the entrenched thinking leads to what Clayton Christensen referred to as "disruptive innovation." The incumbent is so committed to their existing path and product vision that they are simply blind to the possibility of someone fundamentally altering the game. Examples of this from Christensen's book include the mainframe to the mid-range to the PC, or tape drives to disc drives to flash memory, etc. This also happened to Microsoft with Netscape (Internet Explorer) and Linux (Windows), movie theaters with the advent of video cassettes and VCRs, to catsup when Heinz came out with Ketchup [this, IMO is one of the most brilliant marketing strategies ever employed, I will write about this tomorrow], and there are many other examples.

In all cases, the prior success of the "today" leaders simply shuts them off to innovations out of left field that in the end dramatically disrupt their engines.

What then can the leaders of today do to prevent this type of situation? It's very hard to be told your baby is no longer beautiful, nor is it reasonable to expect the "parent" to listen to these nay-sayers. Though one of the best examples of bucking this trend would be Apple and their willingness to cannibalize their amazingly successful iPod line with the iPhone and Touch, or to abandon PowerPC technology for Intel. These were bold moves, that flew in the face of "conventional" thinking, and you have to applaud Apple's management for that.

One approach to helping companies stay open to new ideas, while making sure they extract maximum return from existing events, might tie back to that blog entry Size Does Matter.

What if there was also a policy that once a successful business line in the main company hit a certain profitability and had achieved a specified return (say 200% of the original investment), it was required to spin off 20% of its employees and fund that "start-up" with 5% of the profits for 2-3 years? The start-up is  charged with beating the incumbent and taking down the mother-ship. If after those 2-3 years there are no promising results, the start-up is on its own. But if it succeeded, the parent company would have a choice of bringing them back in-house, or sticking to the program as defined in Size Does Matter, and creating a whole new revenue stream, while milking the last drop out of their cash cow.

How many of us would not jump at the chance to form a whole new group for a well-funded "do it the right way this time"??  I know I would.

Fool me once, shame on me...

Imagine you are the parent of a 12 year old child (Rob), who last week asked you for $500 to buy a Wii with WiiFit. And since you had begun to notice that Rob was a tad more inactive than usual, and wanted to encourage some physical activity, you agreed and off Rob went to get Wii'd up.

Two months later you walk by Rob's room and notice that the Wii's just sitting there and looks trashed - game player is broken and the WiiFit mat doesn't look like it's ever going to work again. You're a bit upset, and when all you get from Rob is "I don't know," you resist the urge to get angry and think to yourself, "OK, I've learned my lesson and will never give in to him again."

But Rob's not done - "I don't know" is followed by a request for a $3,000 custom Cervelo bike to ride to school, since "um... like my grades are like going to submarine if I like don't get one."

What's your reaction? (Or better said, do you freak out, and take $500 out of the kid's Christmas budget to pay for recently-trashed Wii, or just ground the kid for a month?)

I'm pretty sure I'd do both, plus I'd make the kid like walk to school in the rain, but that's just me.

Turns out Rob was actually Siamese twins who have now visibly separated, and "Rob" became "Rick and Bob."

And instead of $500 to buy a Wii & WiiFit, it was $17.4 billion, and instead of $3,000, they're now asking for $22 billion more, and like the trashed Wii, the $17.4b has resulted in ...like nothing.

WTF?

One has to give Rick and Bob credit for having the stones to come back to mom/dad (the Capitol) with this bold an admission of abject failure - we used up $17.4 billion in a matter of weeks and nothing's changed. And on top of that the rocks to ask for another $22 billion to stave off immediate death, and then the boulders to also state that despite the whole $39.4 billion bailout, they will still have to terminate 50,000 people!

Wasn't the reason for bailing out the auto companies in the first place to avoid massive layoffs? I may be wrong on this, but I'm thinking 50,000 is a pretty massive number of people?

I've written twice about what we should do instead of bailing out the car companies, and what they could do when presented the opportunity to declare bankruptcy. But we, it seems are hell-bent on just throwing money at the problem.

Sadly, the real blame doesn't rest with Rick and Bob - the idiot twins. That honor belongs in the hands of one Nancy Pelosi. Who is quoted as saying she was hopeful the plans would help lead to the "transformation of our domestic automobile industry into a viable, technologically advanced, and globally competitive manufacturing force."

I'm guessing not even Rob's parents would have been so stupid as to give him the $3,000 bike, what's more they would have punished Rob for having trashed the $500 Wii that he bought! Instead, Nancy seriously believes that giving Rick and Bob another $22 billion is going to result in a completely revitalized automobile industry? Can you say "track record?"

Maybe Nancy needs to lower her Crystal Meth intake or go to Walter Reed to have them reattach the cerebrum that she accidentally threw into the recycle bin during National Be a Moron Week.

I certainly hope she's not a parent.

Wow!

Today is a great day - as you might have noticed with the new graphic on the left, this blog was named one of Time.com's 25 best of 2009!

Thanks to all of you for reading, commenting, and inspiring. Congratulations to the others who were also chosen. I'll do my best to keep this up.

Thank you again

Stimulate Profound Learning Outcomes

What recommendation would you give the President if he asked for your views on how best to energize our economy? I'm assuming The Big O has all the time in the world, and does in fact read this blog! So here goes, starting with the program musts:

• Must have an immediate impact
• Must be something that has a pre-defined and fixed end
• The economy must continue to flow and remain energetic once the stimulus stops
• It can not be something that ought to be in the budget anyway (i.e. investments that should be sustained over time)
• It must have the effect of being inspiring as well as provoke optimism and a belief that it's not time to "hunker down" and save for a rainy day
• It should not be prone to abuse and fraud

I've written recently about the stimulus package here and here, and then before that had written about two ideas that I'd come up with on the mortgage crisis and then about Detroit Big Three. I still like these, and they fit the criteria.

What about tax-related approaches? A lot of attention goes towards cuts or rebates - and I was generally skeptical about that, but then read this and this, and wondered if I was wrong. Digging a bit deeper, I found this and this. Conclusion: there is no conclusive evidence that a tax cut or rebate will create a positive stimulus to the economy.

But - are we over-thinking this? What's the one thing people are most worried about right now? The one thing that makes them want to save and not spend? The one thing that creates the fear of "what happens tomorrow?" Unemployment - if you feel like your job is here to stay, that your cash flow is predictable, then I think spending will follow, and economic vibrancy is the result. How do we create meaningful, sustainable jobs without bloating the government?

Combining my recent post on the learnings from Japan, where the greatest ROI from their stimuli was from Education investments (174% growth), with this post from Eduwonk, which pointed to this excellent analysis correlating jobs at risk with education level, and now add this entry I wrote last year called Redefining Learning. It suggests that the earlier children are engaged in learning, the better. It also says that teacher-to-student ratios should be highest in early years - from age zero to ten or twelve, and then go down from there. And, we know that investing in Education is goodness all around.

Based on all of this, we should:

1. Redefine public school-eligible ages to begin from the second year (age 1+) through to the eighteenth year (age 17+)
2. Specify teacher-to-student ratios going from 5:1 to 30:1, growing with the students' age
3. Redefine curriculum and assessment standards based on existing research
4. Establish teacher qualification standards and certify teachers colleges
5. Determine the physical classroom and teacher capacity that will be required to service our population 25 years out; this will feed into post-secondary requirements as well

The stimulus package should:

1. Construct new schools **all physical assets in schools should be federalized - they own, provision and maintain all public schools in the country **
2. Expand Teachers' College capacity to accommodate new teacher requirements for the next 25 years
3. Develop a national curriculum with corresponding assessment standards
4. The States (who now don't own and maintain the schools) will hire the new teachers and staff
5. The Stimulus will bump up State funding for staffing
6. The Feds will commit to maintaining schools and State education funding through budget cycles

Implications

Daycare centers will be redundant, but all these jobs just transfer to the new model. Parents of young children will find their "operating costs" are lowered dramatically as the public system covers what was daycare, they will have the time to at least get part-time jobs, and their ability to make ends meet should improve. There will be a surge in employment for construction (which will taper off over time), teachers colleges will grow, we will lower unemployment, and of course the ranks of teachers will double (3 million additional jobs), adding tremendously to the goodness of our country and our children.

What are we waiting for?

Size does matter

When does a company get too big? For most companies, success is defined as rapid, profitable growth. But at some point, the company becomes unwieldy, hires more HR, lawyers and "operations" people than ever imagined, and starts to erode the essential sensibility that made them what they are.

The bigger and more mature an organization gets, the more inwardly focused it gets. (Yes, there are exceptions, but in the main, I think I'm right.) When you start out, and are an unknown underdog, you can't afford to care about anything else but your customers, and building and shipping your product. You are incredibly responsive to the market and your customers, because you'll die if you aren't.

But at some point, you become more focused on yourself, your perception, your opinions, than you do your customers or your products. It's not to say that lip service isn't paid to the customer and the market, but let's face it, even that is a more self-aggrandizing gesture. You take yourself so seriously that now the PR department has a deciding voice in policy.

And if you're looking for the sure sign that you're there: it's when people in the organization get measured on internal awareness campaigns, and actually spend real money advertising to the employees about some little program that only that team cares about.

Another impediment growth was articulated extremely well in this article by Scott Anthony. He talks about how companies raise the bar for successful innovation. In a survey of Fortune 100 companies, some stated that $1 billion was the minimum market opportunity they would target. In other words, innovations that could not demonstrate a $1b revenue opportunity did not qualify for consideration! How do you know? Who knew that you'd be this big when you were starting out, so how are you able to discard opportunities so arbitrarily? Finally, are you really going to believe a forecast a bunch of MBAs wrote based on historical trends and analysis? How often are they right?

It seems that to grow, one must have the willingness to think small, and adopt the rules that encourage an open-minded view of innovation, change and opportunity.

Seth Godin, another very smart guy wrote this really interesting piece recently, in which two paragraphs  connected with me:

Ideas that spread, win. Sometimes ideas get changed in transmission, and sometimes those changed ideas spread even farther and with more impact than the ideas that came before them.

In business, if you lock down ideas, make them difficult to change and spread and have impact, you fail. If you accept the fact that change is real, that there is competition for your ideas and that amplifying the good stuff works, you can grow and thrive.

He's absolutely right. This is a critical element of sustainability, and is ignored often at the organization's peril.

But now I'm wondering - why do I need to grow at all? Why does a company have to keep getting bigger to succeed? Is it possible to stay small and be successful? What if a company (even a public one) decided that it was no longer seeking revenue growth, but feels instead that it's making enough money and that improving its products, processes and services but remaining relatively the same in size is success enough?

What if the employees of this company were happy with that as well? They didn't all want to be CEO, they didn't all need to earn that much more money, they were content with the status quo...

OK - that's just absurd - human nature will not allow this.

Since we can't live in this Zen-infused complacency, how does an organization sustain success? How about combining the views of Anthony and Godin while maintaining a sense of smallness?

What if we were able to build a company whose employees were shareholders, and where innovation and change were embraced. But when an innovation began to flourish, they did three things:

1. The company sold off 60% of the new business, retaining a large but non-majority stake
2. Recouped the cost of its R&D, etc. and hopefully made some profit from the 60% sale
3. Allowed employees related to that business the option of staying or leaving

The effect on their organization would be a new revenue stream added to the investment portfolio, but no commensurate headcount or physical asset growth. If the spin-off did well, they benefited; if it didn't, they didn't lose, since the sale of 60% was implicitly profitable, plus they'd get to write off the 40% that was still on their books.

In the end, the company's performance would be based on their ability to maintain the business they started, and with their culture of open-minded change, the ability to spin off as many profitable innovations as possible, creating new revenue streams, employee growth opportunities, and happy employees and shareholders.

Size does matter, but happiness and success don't require you to be biggest one on the block...

UPDATE:
Pierre de Vries wrote this brilliant entry a couple of days ago (I wish I'd read it before I wrote this). In it he describes the four stages of evolutionary transformation and rebirth (my words) as: "exploitation or growth, a mature conservation phase, a catastrophic release, and finally reorganization leading to new growth." This is conceptually very aligned to what Anthony and Godin talked about as well a most viable alternative path to the one I suggested above. A cycle of continual reinvention might be a very natural and effective way for organizations to avoid bloat and stay vibrant and engaged.

Imbeciles at play

Athletes using steroids ...who cares???

Why are Congress, State authorities and the media so obsessed with these ridiculous issues? Surely there has never been a time in the history of America where its lawmakers had so little real work to do that they needed to conduct congressional hearings (spending millions of dollars) on whether professional athletes used chemicals to improve their performance?? Duh!

I'm the first to acknowledge that athletes are role models, and children are easily influenced and will follow in the steps of their idols. BUT - if that's true, why would you publicize the fact that some of the best, most successful and most admired athletes did something bad? Is it not reasonable to assume that a child will look at A-Rod or Barry Bonds or Jose Canseco or whomever and say - hmmm... these guys became mega-super-duper-stars, made TONS of money, drove amazing cars, had all those beautiful women throwing themselves at them, etc., etc., and what's the one thing I remember about how they got there? Steroids!

So what will that child do???

Yep, you guessed it. A quick search yielded these (1, 2, 3) articles on steroid use among teens, and in the last article, correlating it directly to Barry Bonds' usage of steroids through BALCO.

By showcasing and publicizing these athletes, by Congress sticking it's nose in the problem, and by Attorneys General in various states getting involved (because of course there are no other crimes and criminals in their states), all we've done is glorified the effect of steroids, and provided children who are always looking for a quick fix an easy way out.

This is emblematic of our society. It's hard to find a day when the media doesn't exalt bad behavior, or some idiot (witness the media following Joe the Plumber during his trip to Israel) making a fool of themselves. The media will tell you that that drives viewership or readership, and that's why they do it.

Isn't or shouldn't our media adhere to a higher standard? Why is it that in this country more people exalt bad behavior than good? In fact, the only consistent acknowledgment of good behavior in this country is directed at soldiers, fire fighters and police officers. Can you think of the last time you saw someone other than these (doubtless very deserving) communities be recognized in the mainstream?

Have you for example seen Nobel Laureates or even Space Shuttle crews get this kind of recognition? Has anyone (other than Obama during the campaign) been lauded for being smart in your memory? Is it any wonder that our children wish to blend in at school (never be exceptional), and seek the quick, easy path to success (sports, music, selling drugs), versus going to school, getting an education and getting a great job?

Look at the ethic of most of the children in the countries referenced in this entry (from India, China and Africa). I went to school in Tanzania for the first few years of my life. In our school (as with most schools in the "third" world), every child aspired to sit at the front of the class. Why? Because that's where the smartest children sat, and that's where we all wanted to be. When I got to North America, being smart was not just uncool, it would get you beaten up!

Instead of opening investigations and hearings on the use of steroids in baseball, Congress should keep its eye on the ball, and recognize and applaud the great things that smart and successful people do in this country, and show our children the very direct correlation between education and economic success.

Learning from our Friends

I just saw an article a friend posted on Facebook about stimulus effects in Hawaii, which referenced this article in the NY Times, both are well worth a read.

I learned three things from the Japanese stimulus experience and these two more local articles one and two. First - let's not give away rebate checks - they have a minimal if not net negative impact.

Second - if you chose to support infrastructure in your stimulus package, only invest in projects that have a sustained employment impact (i.e. roads only create jobs only as long as you're building them, but a school or a hospital can create jobs and support the economy long after the the fund for construction is depleted).

Third, in Japan, for every Yen invested in road-building projects, they saw a 137% growth in GDP (or a 37% ROI, due to the temporary jobs + reduction in travel time). For social services and elderly pension payments, they saw a 164% growth, and for schools and education, the impact was 174% growth.

Assuming the American economy would respond similarly, it's pretty clear that our infrastructure investments in this stimulus package should focus on pensions, social services, schools, and education.

Focusing on the highest yield opportunity (Education), let's say we're going to spend $100 on Education in the bill. I'd like to give the first $50 to the States to hire new teachers, but the Feds can't employ teachers, plus it's not a stimulus activity - it's an ongoing cost. So I'd do a trade with the States:

The Feds will spend $35 to build new schools; $25 on teacher professional development and expanding Teachers Colleges; $25 on improving school infrastructure; and $15 on 21st century assessment and curriculum development and distribution. Each State that wishes to take advantage of this must hire teachers equal to 50% of the benefits they will get from the package. They must further commit to paying those teachers in years to come via their normal budgetary process (i.e. no hiring temps). The Federal budget would make sure this happened because they would condition budgetary education funding based on this.

Similarly, the Feds could put more money into the pension pool, but that seems to be a longer-term solution. Instead, I'd put 75% of the funds into construction of housing projects for the elderly, and the remaining 25% into elderly care training programs affiliated with community colleges around the country.

I despair about all the money in this budget that's going towards road repair (very short-term impact), and stuff like broadband - minimal job creation now or in the future.

I hope there is room in the process going forward (like with TARP) to redefine the use of the stimulus package so that it is at least informed by some of the experiences others have had.

A Heathy Earmark

Harvard Business Publishing's recent Daily Stat was one of those that amazed; it quotes a McKinsey report that 34% (yes, more than one-third!) of Americans are considered obese. This represents over 100 million people! Worse, this has doubled since 1980; so in the last 30 years, the number of obese people in the United States has gone from below 50 million (bad) to more than 100 million (horrible).

I wrote about preventative health a little while ago, where I related that we spend $2 trillion on health care in this country.  Someone who is morbidly obese (40+% Body Mass Index) is part of the fastest growing segment of the obese (mind-boggling) requires about $7,500/year in health care costs, almost twice what a non-obese adult costs. If we were to go back to the obesity rates of 1980 (just below 17%), we'd save the country $60 billion! That's on top of the $40 billion that Americans spend on trying to get thin in 2004. I'm guessing it's higher now.

In many cases, obesity is involuntary, due to medical causes. I figure (and I'm just guessing) that accounts for 15-20% of the population. Which leaves 80+ million people who are able to do something about their weight, and avoid the fate of being unhealthy, having a poor quality of life, and maybe even being unhappy.

Most of the 80 million people are adults; they are set in their ways, and would struggle mightily to alter their lifestyles and diets to regain their rightful shape, though this is not to say they shouldn't try. But I bet there are at least 15 million children who are obese or morbidly obese in this country, and for most of them, habit is not a problem. They can be helped.

What can be done? How can it be done at scale?

One obvious place to start would be the schools. And there, three things come to mind:

1. Improve the quality of food in the cafeterias and vending machines - only natural, healthy food allowed.
2. Change the rewards that teachers give students for doing good work, no more candy or sweets.
3. Require extensive physical education curriculum, and make it mandatory for all grades in every semester - every student must get exercise for at least an hour/day.

Each of these can easily be implemented, and end up saving money! The problem is, they will cost the education system money but save the health care system more. While this creates a net positive effect, the problem is that the education system is already strapped, and are over-budget already, and simply can't afford to add new dietary programs and physical education classes.

Well, can the health care system (public and private insurance carriers, etc.) just pay to do these three things in all public schools in the country? Think of the PR boost they would get, the amount of focus this would get in the national ethos, and hopefully how it might inspire those not in school to also evaluate their lifestyles? Remember that they'd actually come out ahead by doing this.

Imagine

Imagine if kids didn't need to bring lunch from home because a healthy lunch was available at school. Imagine if each child graduating from secondary school could run a 10K, play a team sport or do something else that demonstrated their fitness.

Imagine that after graduating, young people hate the idea of not exercising every day, and abhor junk food? I know that some restaurants (if you can call them that) would not be happy, so be it. Imagine a situation where we didn't have the incidents of diabetes, obesity, heart conditions, cholesterol problems, etc. that beset so much of this country today!

Now imagine if despite doing all of this, the nation's economy was made stronger because we were spending less on health care, and our citizenry was healthier and more productive?

That's something worth fighting for.

How does one lobby Congress to put earmarks for education diet and fitness in health care bills?

Tomorrow's players

Nothing binds two countries more than economic interdependence. When you have a financial relationship, certain things naturally happen:

• You pay more attention
• You learn more about each other
• You are more vested in the other's destiny, therefore you care more about their well-being
• You are very unlikely to want to harm that which can feed you
• You are more likely to understand each other better than before the relationship

Some interesting data. According to this article in the Economic Times (part of India Times), the trade between India and China from 2002-2006 has grown at 50% year-over-year. This compares to 25% growth with any other country. India is one of China's top ten trading partners, and trade is growing fastest among the ten with India. Finally, trade has grown from about $5 billion in 2002 to $37 billion in 2007, and is forecast to be $75b in 2010 (assuming a conservative 25% growth), $113b by 2012, and $225b in 2015.

In another issue of the Economic Times, we learn that trade between India and the whole continent of Africa has grown from $5.2b in 2002 to $26b in 2007, and is forecast to grow to $150b by 2012.

The growth rates with both trading regions (China and Africa) is nothing short of phenomenal.

Two more things to ponder:

1. Together, these three regions represent 3.43 billion people, or just over 51% of the world's population.
2. In 2012, the trade between India and China and India and Africa will be $263b, up from $10.2b ten years prior.

In comparison, the combination of NAFTA (Canada, USA, Mexico) and the European Union represent a population of 942 million people or just under 14% of the world's population, and US trade with Canada, Mexico and the EU was $1.375 trillion, which is obviously bigger than $263b.

I know I haven't looked at US trade with Africa, India and China, and recognize that there are a lot of other factors at play here.

But considering the relative economic potential of the populations of the Western countries vs. that of the Africans, Indians and the Chinese, and the fact that India's trade with these two regions has grown 26 times in ten years, one can't help but think that India's got a lot of upside, and that the economic potential of their population (plus of course those of their very large trading partners) is growing at an incredible rate.

If this growth continues, I wonder what the economic potential India will be a decade from now? Greater than the US? I don't think it'll be that high, but here's one thing that I think will happen - in ten years, more Americans will move to India to improve their lot in life (find jobs, etc.) that will come to American shores. This behavior has already begun as more and more people come here for an education and now rather than stay, go back.

I think Africa, China and India's futures are much more tied to each other than otherwise. If they do end up becoming good friends, establishing connections more reflective of Canada/US relations, the West is in for a pretty humbling time.

If at the same time, America looks upon the rest of the world with arrogant disdain (as I discussed in this post), it is inevitable that as others rise and the gap between have and have not shrinks, they will not admire, or wish to befriend this particular "have" as much as others have in the past. It is good that the sitting President seems more about joining with the world than owning it.

Thank goodness that Vice President Cheney didn't run for President. If he had won, I imagine we'd be calling him Kim Il Cheney [apologies to Koreans everywhere], and building a DMZ between us and Mexico, Canada and everyone else. And when as the sun rose in the East, those nations would be that much more motivated to spank America.

Our job should among other things be to focus on building stronger, friendlier, and more symbiotic relationships with this triumvirate (and everyone else of course) representing more than half the planet.

Drawing the line

I subscribe to eSchool News, and find most of their issues have something of interest, but I never expected to see this subject line: eSN Today: Porn charges for 'sexting' stir debate in my inbox!

Sexting is where teenagers use their cell phones to take and distribute nude pictures of themselves. And because there are laws governing the distribution of obscene materials, prosecutors are charging teenagers for both sending and receiving these materials. The charges can include felony obscenity or child pornography, and might result adding "sex offender" to the person's hopefully confidential juvenile record.

First, based on this search, I had no idea this was such a big thing (375k results). Second, it never occurred to me that a minor distributing pictures of themselves could constitute child pornography, though it does make sense (separating the two acts - taking the picture, and distributing it). Third, how does a kid get arrested for receiving a text message?  Finally, it got me thinking about the approach that officials have taken to discourage it, and how well similar approaches have worked for other "bad acts."

It has generally been difficult for the adults to effectively police the kids, or find the right deterrent. More often than not, the attention given to the act (and the adults' negative views) results in more frequent occurrences that are more effectively hidden from older eyes. The risk only adds to the allure.

Where to draw the line? It is illegal for minors to drink, smoke, drive, and I'm sure many other things. It is also illegal for minors to have consensual sex.

How effective have these laws been? Do you think that the laws have resulted in deterring these behaviors? Did they stop you?

What's next? Will the police start arresting minors who masturbate and charge them with statutory rape? Will there be a harsher penalty for repeat "offenders"?? Will there be any minors left to roam the malls? What will they do to while away the days in their jail cells? What will all those poor child-molesting priests do? [OK - that last one was in bad taste - apologies.]

Is there a better way? What if we erased the line altogether?

I'm thinking about countries I've visited where there isn't a child drinking problem. In France and Italy for example, adults don't seem to share America's angst. Their minors drink wine at the dining table with the family, and have for generations. Their open-mindedness towards this has not only resulted in this not being an issue, but because children are taught "how to drink" at a young age, and don't view it as a novelty or illicit in any way, there are dramatically less incidents of alcohol abuse in children in these countries vs. the USA.

Let's look at Finland, where most friends and families routinely sauna together. In their culture, it is a faux pas to wear clothing in a sauna. So the naked body has no novelty value for children in Finland - they see it all the time. I'm guessing that sexting is not a problem in Finland.

Now let's look at the potentially horrific societal effects of having a glass of wine with dinner in Italy or France, or sitting naked in a sauna with people of either gender in Finland - wait a minute, there aren't any! The French and Italians do not have higher alcoholism or liver problem rates than Americans. And the Finns don't have higher child pornography or child abuse rates than America!

Maybe it's time for America to erase the lines, before all our teenagers are arrested for felony masturbation.

Sticky Guns

I assume the phrase "stick to your guns" has to do with soldiers remaining at their post and trying to kill the bad guys despite the declining odds, and not some weird fantasy some "stimulated" people might have:)

OK - back to reality.

I recently read a couple of posts in Godless Liberal Homo's blog (<-- a most awesome blog name!), and got to thinking about the Holocaust, the Catholic Church's views on this + their point of view on the role that their leaders (like Richard Williamson) must play.

Notwithstanding an absolutely unambiguous denial of the Holocaust, Williamson was returned to the Church. I wasn't born, or in Germany during WWII, and can't personally attest to it, but from what I've seen, there was a whole lot of evil that occurred in that place at that time against everyone who was viewed as not part of the Master Race. In fact, I'm pretty sure I would have been among those that got nuked.

But our hero, Richard Williamson, is once more thrust unto the breech, and now carries the title of Bishop, which conveys upon him the role of "teaching the faith and ruling the Church." I bet he's got one of these stickers to the left on the door of his natural gas-powered oven.

His convictions I presume are part of his/the faith. Which implies has been entrusted to guide people who seek "truth" based on his principles, convictions, and beliefs. What's more, the effect is multiplied, since a Bishop outranks a Minister, he will run a bunch of churches, influencing the voice of all those that will minister to the members of each of these churches, and their brethren.

How the Vatican can be sanguine about this? The Church's argument against abortion or birth control is that it is murder, and they don't sanction murder (Thou shalt not kill). But isn't Bishop Williamson violating the essence of this Commandment by denying the killing of millions of people? Doesn't reinstating him imply that the Church agrees with his views?

What's next? Will the Vatican decide to ordain a physician who performs abortions?

Talk about sticky guns!

I presume they readmitted the Bishop because they wanted to inject more conservative opinions into the fabric of the Church. The effect though, is to basically flaunt one of the Ten Commandments and call into question any related "arguments" based on that Commandment (like proscribing abortion, birth control, etc.), which puts the Church on a whole different footing.

I am not religious so I don't know how this type of dichotomy gets resolved, and this one seems pretty glaring. As the leadership in the Vatican thinks through this, I wonder if they will back out, or find a way to spin this to mitigate the harm? And if they are able to spin this to neutral or positive, I've gotta say, I'd want to hire their marketing team!

I wonder what Charlton Heston would think of all this?

Can we talk?

Wordnet defines "Revolution" as "a drastic and far-reaching change in ways of thinking and behaving."

I like the world revolution - and use it often in my vernacular. Today I was thinking about some of the revolutions we've all experienced.

The Industrial Revolution (IR) began in the 18th century, and marked the point when the growth of mechanical work began outpacing the growth of manual work. The technologies that shaped IR were the steam engine, iron founding and textile manufacturing. The business model was centralized, patent-based monetization, where few were granted IP rights, and they built huge economic machines. Resulting innovations in transportation (rail, ship, automobile) caused the effects of the industrial revolution to go global, albeit over a generation or three.

The Information Revolution (IR2) began in the mid-20th century. It was marked by the connection of easily-stored content to widely-available distribution. The technologies that shaped this time were reduction in storage prices, improved data transmission through telephony, TCP/IP for networking, the massively widespread use of PCs, and the invention of the World Wide Web and Internet (thanks to Al Gore of course). The business model shifted from big to small, from centralized to decentralized, and most critically away from just Western centers of power. The value of IP waned compared to the value of awareness and "eyeballs", which when combined with much lower costs of entry into the "network" resulted in more content being available to more people with almost no effort on the publisher's part. Moreover, banking had evolved to the point where people almost anywhere in the world were able to buy things from anywhere else, thereby monetizing their content. The proliferation of PCs combined with the availability of phone lines that could handle data (via modems to start) made this revolution go global in a matter of decades.

The next revolution (which we are now at the beginning of) is the Communication Revolution (CR). It is marked by the proliferation of mobile telephony; search engines (which is really the transition between IR2 and CR); and non-verbal communication modes (SMS, data, email, etc.) and Internet access via cell phones.

In each Revolution, the infrastructure required to participate is progressively smaller. In fact, having a lot of infrastructure actually impedes and steepens (is that a word?) the on-ramp to the next Revolution.

Moreover, the generations that were born in these latter revolutions have very different preconceptions and approaches to doing things. They live in a world that is steeped in "polyphonicness" - and they're comfortable there. They don't feel the need for communication to replicate face-to-face experiences <-- this is a big one IMO. There is no need to simulate a live meeting for effective communication; each has value and impact, but one doesn't supersede the other. They're also less about persistent fidelity (i.e. highest definition audio/video, immersive feel, etc.) and more about efficacy and fitness for purpose. The concept that I needed to talk to you now, found you, in eight words communicated my message, you acknowledged, and we're done, is very efficient and without the burden of "building a relationship first". This can be done via simple text messaging; no need for a Video Conferencing Room that costs $50,000 and requires three admins, five technicians, an owners' manual, four remotes, and all that crap.

With the proliferation of mobile phone systems, this Revolution has begun even more quickly (a decade?). But CR isn't about blurring boundaries (that happened with IR2). This is rather about blurring time.

Standardization --> Discoverability --> Transparency & Immediacy

IR was about standardization through mechanization (you can have any color you want as long as it's black). IR2 was about publishing and sharing. CR is about not being able to hide (or more poetically, being no longer being cloaked in a veil of time, place, and knowledge).

Everybody talked about "Internet time" back in the day, well we're now in cellular time, Dorothy. I don't even need to wait to boot up my machine and open a browser. If I want to know what's going on somewhere, I can call and find out, if I want to talk about something, I can call and share. But I can also Twitter, text, blog, send pictures, etc. - all in real time.

This is the revolution, and its implications are profound.

Most organizations today have a clearly-defined a protocol and hierarchy. This structure creates latency. They simply don't have the ability to respond in real time to real problems or opportunities. In the CR world, MBAs are a hindrance - they take too long and obsess overly about historical patterns and writing reports.

The concept of a sense-and-respond organization does not yet exist. The Communication Revolution is pointing this out every day as we learn about the bungling acts of corporations and governments. In the past, they would have had the time to manage the conversation, control the message, and have a measured response or be able to hide it. Now they look like buffoons with their heads cut off.

We need to build a business model that embraces sense/response; it needs to have measures, discipline, and an infrastructure that's able to accommodate what CR requires. This capacity is a priority for survival in this Revolution and for whatever is coming next. The leaders of this new model are very much not the leaders to today's corporations or government.

I was reading this MSNBC article today and was freaked out at the thought that Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer or Robert Gates don't use email for work! So if you want to communicate quickly to them, you need to write a memo, print it, and deliver it to one of their minions who will (if the mood strikes) find a way to get it in their hands at some point.  Holy SH*T! This is how we run a country?

The industrial revolution created mechanical speed, the information revolution changed space (specifically, the distance between points in space), and the communication revolution changed time (sense and response time).

Are you ready?