American Export Economy
General Electric’s CEO Jeff Immelt gave a speech in Detroit on Friday announcing a new manufacturing plant. What he said went beyond the usual corporate-speak into the realm of essential truth.
Many bought into the idea that America could go from a technology-based, export-oriented powerhouse to a services-led, consumption-based economy – and somehow still expect to prosper. That idea was flat wrong. And what did we get in the bargain? We’ve seen a great vanishing of wealth. Our competitive edge has slipped away, and this has hit the middle class hard.
As a nation, we’ve been consuming more than we earn, saved too little and taken on far too much debt. Growth in research and development has slowed. Our country has made too little progress on some of the defining challenges of our time – like clean energy and affordable health care. Our budget and trade deficits have reached levels that are clearly not sustainable…
Recently my colleague Peter Loescher, the CEO of Siemens, extolled the importance of Germany as an exporting country. In my career, I have never heard an American CEO say that the United States should be leading in exports. Well, I am saying it today: This country ought to be, and we can be, not just the world’s leading market but a leading exporter as well.
As I have been saying, the consumer economy will not rescue us from this crisis. We have to become an export power again. And this transition has to come soon. Bob Herbert pointed this morning to a shocking study on labor underutilization (unemployed+part time employed+given up looking for a job).
“By May 2009,” according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, “the total number of underutilized workers had increased dramatically from 15.63 million to 29.37 million — a rise of 13.7 million, or 88 percent. Nearly 30 million working-age individuals were underutilized in May 2009, the largest number in our nation’s history. The overall labor underutilization rate in May 2009 had risen to 18.2 percent, its highest value in 26 years.”
If a year from now we still have 30 million underutilized workers the civil unrest could be exploited by demagogues of the right and the left. Take your pick. It could get ugly.
what depresses me is that the media outlets that should be reporting, commenting and analyzing this speech are in a f**king 24-hour all Michael Jackson BS reporting mode.
what depresses me is that the media outlets that should be reporting, commenting and analyzing this speech are in a f**king 24-hour all Michael Jackson BS reporting mode.
Something about Rome burning is appropriate here I think.
Only, much of the US and the rest of the world is burning, while the folks who largely brought us this mess are still in power and still calling the shots.
And, unfortunately, the guy who promised change has become co-opted by the forces he said he would change, and is now part and parcel of the problem.
My sorrowful disappointment is almost overwhelming and I truly fear for our country in ways I never did while w, cheney, chickhawk & co. were in power.
Betrayed, yep, that’s the word.
The facts that you are putting up, Jon, are simply irrefutable and yet where does it all take us??? The signs are certainly not good. The ways out seem to be totally obstructed by the entrenched power structure and power brokers. I can’t see prognosis isn’t a good for us at this point.
Something about Rome burning is appropriate here I think.
Only, much of the US and the rest of the world is burning, while the folks who largely brought us this mess are still in power and still calling the shots.
And, unfortunately, the guy who promised change has become co-opted by the forces he said he would change, and is now part and parcel of the problem.
My sorrowful disappointment is almost overwhelming and I truly fear for our country in ways I never did while w, cheney, chickhawk & co. were in power.
Betrayed, yep, that’s the word.
The facts that you are putting up, Jon, are simply irrefutable and yet where does it all take us??? The signs are certainly not good. The ways out seem to be totally obstructed by the entrenched power structure and power brokers. I can’t see prognosis isn’t a good for us at this point.
Don’t forget the well trained thousands upon thousands battle hardened and home from the recently discontinued war for what? Foreclosures and diminished opportunities? The sea change is coming – I just hope we as a country are willing to learn how to swim because otherwise we are awash.
Don’t forget the well trained thousands upon thousands battle hardened and home from the recently discontinued war for what? Foreclosures and diminished opportunities? The sea change is coming – I just hope we as a country are willing to learn how to swim because otherwise we are awash.
There’s obviously a strong correlation between this post and the last. Our domestic corporations gutted the core of our economy, and played a shell-game to hide the results.
Taking a look at the state of corporate marketing indicated the nature of the problems we face – all of which are centered firmly in DC. On K Street, to be precise.
Start with this recent piece from AdAge, which notes that the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) spot is, by and large, a dead-end job within major American companies – and that’s assuming that the company even gives the role C-level responsibility. Normally, they’re more like the class-clowns, something reflected most clearly in their average tenure (about 28 months). For a Master of Hype and Promotions, that may be about right. But is that all they’re supposed to be doing?
According the the classic Four P’s of Marketing (determining and aligning Product, Price, Position, and Promotion) you’d assume these guys would be inner-circle, with the successful ones on track to become CEOs. After all, identifying and striking the sweet spot between the 4Ps is a major responsibility, and one that actually does demand rare talent.
Specifically, the job calls for sharp tactical skills combined with a knack for long-range strategy, not to mention a gut feel for emotional connections with customers combined with a nuts and bolts awareness of hard disciplines like finance and operations. Fall short on any one of these fronts, and one of the Ps is not only going to suffer, its failure is going to render the rest irrelevant in the same way that one blown tire will stop the whole car.
So does it make any sense that people in this role should find themselves chronically sidelined? Not in a healthy market. And yet they are, which is a very bad sign.
Digging deeper, there’sthis: a report from the WSJ concerning the relationship between marketing departments and the R&D units. As you can imagine, a strong R&D unit with close connections to a good CMO is an essential component of a well run company (i.e. one with the 4Ps mastered).
Turns out the relationship is typically strained (to put it politely). More likely, it’s flat out dysfunctional. And the people in it know this is the case, with only 34% of mid-level managers describing the relationship as collegial.
But that’s not the reddest flag. For the truly alarming sign of danger, look to the senior level, were 69% of ‘leaders’ saw these relations as healthy and productive. Given that they treat CMOs like ass-clowns (to use a technical expression) this may not be surprising. But if your concern is with the basic health of our economic cornerstones, this level of ignorance, incompetence, and above all, sheer indifference is absolutely appalling.
It also raises a more disturbing question, which is what exactly are these guys up to if they’re so soundly ignoring the very essence of good business. To put it bluntly – how are they even in business?
The answer is indicated here, in a HuffPo piece that suggests the horrific level of influence that major industry has achieved in Washington. It’s no secret that the basic business models of banking, health care, energy, and education have all shifted from a service arrangement to a predatory and parasitic scheme (to wit, here’s a (behind the paywall) piece from Friday’s WSJ that points out the ‘profit problems’ that will result from proper disclosures on common banking products).
And yet, the economic rational for winning a protected predatory position from Congress totally overrides the benefit from doing proper R&D matched with competent, intelligent marketing – not when a study that Lessig is fond of quoting notes that the average ROI on lobbyists is 22,000%. That’s right, 22 thousand percent.
Frankly, there’s not a legitimate business model in the world that can compete fairly against members of the US Congress who decide that they’re going to sell their ‘constituents’ into economic slavery for the low low price of $0.005 cents on the dollar (I’m looking at you Max Bachus).
We are, in short, ‘governed’ by a not-quite-open kleptocracy in collusion with a political class striving to make itself permanent. Though particular members have divergent concerns, they’re all distinguished by one characteristic – unrelenting self interest and a systematic disregard for the common good. Short of outright treason, this is a terrible trajectory for private and public leaders alike.
And as with all forms of American corruption, it’s far more subtle and sophisticated than the Neanderthal stuff going on in places like Iran or Zimbabwe. It’s also what Obama was elected to change (even if the people doing the voting couldn’t quite put their fingers on the cause of the rot). So far he shows no signs of real willingness to use the bully pulpit to call out the impediments created by ‘representatives’ who see their constituents as a natural resource owned outright, and amenable to strip-mining.
I do appreciate what’s represented by the newly proposed Consumer Protection Finance Agency. But again, looking at the history of reform, we’re a long way from being able to say whether this is actual Change, or just another round of corpse-dressing – especially when the rest of his banking reform efforts just got gutted in total silence.
On the upside, I really do believe that American’s have a special advantage when it comes to the investigative, innovative, bottom-up disciplines that Marketing and R&D can be at their best. If we see health returning to these divisions, then we have cause for real optimism. But in the meantime, zombies appear to have the upper hand, and Obama seems to be on the fence. Of course, this may represent a very accurate assessment on his part about the forces arrayed against Americans, and the true extent to which Congressmen have become their agents. Regardless, he’s the President, and it’s his job to tell it like it is.
Not how it should be, but how it actually is. And if he doesn’t get the cooperation he deserves, he needs to start naming names while making a push for public financing of elections as a prerequisite to any real Change.
There’s obviously a strong correlation between this post and the last. Our domestic corporations gutted the core of our economy, and played a shell-game to hide the results.
Taking a look at the state of corporate marketing indicated the nature of the problems we face – all of which are centered firmly in DC. On K Street, to be precise.
Start with this recent piece from AdAge, which notes that the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) spot is, by and large, a dead-end job within major American companies – and that’s assuming that the company even gives the role C-level responsibility. Normally, they’re more like the class-clowns, something reflected most clearly in their average tenure (about 28 months). For a Master of Hype and Promotions, that may be about right. But is that all they’re supposed to be doing?
According the the classic Four P’s of Marketing (determining and aligning Product, Price, Position, and Promotion) you’d assume these guys would be inner-circle, with the successful ones on track to become CEOs. After all, identifying and striking the sweet spot between the 4Ps is a major responsibility, and one that actually does demand rare talent.
Specifically, the job calls for sharp tactical skills combined with a knack for long-range strategy, not to mention a gut feel for emotional connections with customers combined with a nuts and bolts awareness of hard disciplines like finance and operations. Fall short on any one of these fronts, and one of the Ps is not only going to suffer, its failure is going to render the rest irrelevant in the same way that one blown tire will stop the whole car.
So does it make any sense that people in this role should find themselves chronically sidelined? Not in a healthy market. And yet they are, which is a very bad sign.
Digging deeper, there’sthis: a report from the WSJ concerning the relationship between marketing departments and the R&D units. As you can imagine, a strong R&D unit with close connections to a good CMO is an essential component of a well run company (i.e. one with the 4Ps mastered).
Turns out the relationship is typically strained (to put it politely). More likely, it’s flat out dysfunctional. And the people in it know this is the case, with only 34% of mid-level managers describing the relationship as collegial.
But that’s not the reddest flag. For the truly alarming sign of danger, look to the senior level, were 69% of ‘leaders’ saw these relations as healthy and productive. Given that they treat CMOs like ass-clowns (to use a technical expression) this may not be surprising. But if your concern is with the basic health of our economic cornerstones, this level of ignorance, incompetence, and above all, sheer indifference is absolutely appalling.
It also raises a more disturbing question, which is what exactly are these guys up to if they’re so soundly ignoring the very essence of good business. To put it bluntly – how are they even in business?
The answer is indicated here, in a HuffPo piece that suggests the horrific level of influence that major industry has achieved in Washington. It’s no secret that the basic business models of banking, health care, energy, and education have all shifted from a service arrangement to a predatory and parasitic scheme (to wit, here’s a (behind the paywall) piece from Friday’s WSJ that points out the ‘profit problems’ that will result from proper disclosures on common banking products).
And yet, the economic rational for winning a protected predatory position from Congress totally overrides the benefit from doing proper R&D matched with competent, intelligent marketing – not when a study that Lessig is fond of quoting notes that the average ROI on lobbyists is 22,000%. That’s right, 22 thousand percent.
Frankly, there’s not a legitimate business model in the world that can compete fairly against members of the US Congress who decide that they’re going to sell their ‘constituents’ into economic slavery for the low low price of $0.005 cents on the dollar (I’m looking at you Max Bachus).
We are, in short, ‘governed’ by a not-quite-open kleptocracy in collusion with a political class striving to make itself permanent. Though particular members have divergent concerns, they’re all distinguished by one characteristic – unrelenting self interest and a systematic disregard for the common good. Short of outright treason, this is a terrible trajectory for private and public leaders alike.
And as with all forms of American corruption, it’s far more subtle and sophisticated than the Neanderthal stuff going on in places like Iran or Zimbabwe. It’s also what Obama was elected to change (even if the people doing the voting couldn’t quite put their fingers on the cause of the rot). So far he shows no signs of real willingness to use the bully pulpit to call out the impediments created by ‘representatives’ who see their constituents as a natural resource owned outright, and amenable to strip-mining.
I do appreciate what’s represented by the newly proposed Consumer Protection Finance Agency. But again, looking at the history of reform, we’re a long way from being able to say whether this is actual Change, or just another round of corpse-dressing – especially when the rest of his banking reform efforts just got gutted in total silence.
On the upside, I really do believe that American’s have a special advantage when it comes to the investigative, innovative, bottom-up disciplines that Marketing and R&D can be at their best. If we see health returning to these divisions, then we have cause for real optimism. But in the meantime, zombies appear to have the upper hand, and Obama seems to be on the fence. Of course, this may represent a very accurate assessment on his part about the forces arrayed against Americans, and the true extent to which Congressmen have become their agents. Regardless, he’s the President, and it’s his job to tell it like it is.
Not how it should be, but how it actually is. And if he doesn’t get the cooperation he deserves, he needs to start naming names while making a push for public financing of elections as a prerequisite to any real Change.
“We are, in short, ‘governed’ by a not-quite-open kleptocracy in collusion with a political class striving to make itself permanent.”
That’s it in a nutshell. Well said, Alex. Then there is all the noise from those many focused hard working well educated socipathic slicks trying to get those gigs or get next to those who got those gigs.
The topic of the relationship of marketing to R&D is worth a distinct thread of its own. That’s the street I live on.
No Product. No Market. No Sale. No Pay.
I was of one opinion about this when I was an R&D set of hands. Another when I was the liaison to Marketing and Proposals (failing to understand that last term is where many CMOs screw the pooch). Yet another as chief cat herder for an R&D group. It’s a complex relationship.
Rule 1 (never fails): The surest predictor of the outcome of the implementation of a sale is WHO analyzes the RFP before the bid process begins.
“We are, in short, ‘governed’ by a not-quite-open kleptocracy in collusion with a political class striving to make itself permanent.”
That’s it in a nutshell. Well said, Alex. Then there is all the noise from those many focused hard working well educated socipathic slicks trying to get those gigs or get next to those who got those gigs.
The topic of the relationship of marketing to R&D is worth a distinct thread of its own. That’s the street I live on.
No Product. No Market. No Sale. No Pay.
I was of one opinion about this when I was an R&D set of hands. Another when I was the liaison to Marketing and Proposals (failing to understand that last term is where many CMOs screw the pooch). Yet another as chief cat herder for an R&D group. It’s a complex relationship.
Rule 1 (never fails): The surest predictor of the outcome of the implementation of a sale is WHO analyzes the RFP before the bid process begins.
We got sold down the river, simple as that. Sold down the river by a bunch of racist greed heads who sold too many of us on the idea that the US would thrive as an exporter of intellectual property, not manufactured goods. Implicit in this was the idea that the little brown and yellow people of Asia were only good for their hands, not brains; we had the superior intellects of the Information Age. Hah!
So why can’t we be thinking about something closer to a steady-state economy that does not depend on growth, growth, growth? What if imports balanced exports? Or does this have to be a zero sum game where “they” lose and “we” win? Or vice versa as seems to be the case right now.
Where did the money go?
We got sold down the river, simple as that. Sold down the river by a bunch of racist greed heads who sold too many of us on the idea that the US would thrive as an exporter of intellectual property, not manufactured goods. Implicit in this was the idea that the little brown and yellow people of Asia were only good for their hands, not brains; we had the superior intellects of the Information Age. Hah!
So why can’t we be thinking about something closer to a steady-state economy that does not depend on growth, growth, growth? What if imports balanced exports? Or does this have to be a zero sum game where “they” lose and “we” win? Or vice versa as seems to be the case right now.
Where did the money go?
“And what did we get in the bargain? We’ve seen a great vanishing of wealth. ”
It hasn’t “vanished,” it’s been converted by the legerdemain of the Streets, Wall and K, into special value certificates that those magicians can use to buy and indulge whatever whim takes them to, in lieu of real money with actual present value. Because people with stuff to sell, especially high-end stuff, still believe that a “healthy line of credit” or “big corporate job” and an expensive suit or dress equate to a “person of worth” to whom they can “sell” that expensive stuff on the belief that some day there will be some real wealth to back up the paper front. Or at least more tax money from the future “growth” of the economy to make more real the enormous dumps of Funny Munny by the Fed and Treasury under those big green TARPs, and provide the wherewithall for another round of “stimuli” and “bailouts.”
This (Jon’s post) is looking a lot like “medical care” as practiced in the hospitals and nursing homes of this nation: Lots of intrusive, expensive and profitable diagnostics and ultimately futile procedures being applied to bodies that are on the point of death, or on the point of birth for that matter. Profitable, for the time being, for the “providers,” just painful and prolonging the death agonies for the moribund, or leading to fetal monitoring which via all those false positive responses and “medical reflexes” leads inexorably to unnecessary but well-compensated C-sections.
Rick, my hope is for your notion about finding a steady-state ‘meme” that doesn’t depend on the seductive cancer called “growth.” If we are individually and collectively concerned about the survival of the species (let alone puny little nations.) This cynic does not see that happening — rather, something that looks like “Soylent Green,” where the corporate types up in the top stories of the jungle canopy know the planet is dead, but continue to suck the last bits of vitality and “profit” out of what’s left of the species and the rest of the world.
All Pleasure To The People. Or at least the ones that “count.”
“And what did we get in the bargain? We’ve seen a great vanishing of wealth. ”
It hasn’t “vanished,” it’s been converted by the legerdemain of the Streets, Wall and K, into special value certificates that those magicians can use to buy and indulge whatever whim takes them to, in lieu of real money with actual present value. Because people with stuff to sell, especially high-end stuff, still believe that a “healthy line of credit” or “big corporate job” and an expensive suit or dress equate to a “person of worth” to whom they can “sell” that expensive stuff on the belief that some day there will be some real wealth to back up the paper front. Or at least more tax money from the future “growth” of the economy to make more real the enormous dumps of Funny Munny by the Fed and Treasury under those big green TARPs, and provide the wherewithall for another round of “stimuli” and “bailouts.”
This (Jon’s post) is looking a lot like “medical care” as practiced in the hospitals and nursing homes of this nation: Lots of intrusive, expensive and profitable diagnostics and ultimately futile procedures being applied to bodies that are on the point of death, or on the point of birth for that matter. Profitable, for the time being, for the “providers,” just painful and prolonging the death agonies for the moribund, or leading to fetal monitoring which via all those false positive responses and “medical reflexes” leads inexorably to unnecessary but well-compensated C-sections.
Rick, my hope is for your notion about finding a steady-state ‘meme” that doesn’t depend on the seductive cancer called “growth.” If we are individually and collectively concerned about the survival of the species (let alone puny little nations.) This cynic does not see that happening — rather, something that looks like “Soylent Green,” where the corporate types up in the top stories of the jungle canopy know the planet is dead, but continue to suck the last bits of vitality and “profit” out of what’s left of the species and the rest of the world.
All Pleasure To The People. Or at least the ones that “count.”
“And what did we get in the bargain? We’ve seen a great vanishing of wealth. ”
It hasn’t “vanished,” it’s been converted by the legerdemain of the Streets, Wall and K, into special value certificates that those magicians can use to buy and indulge whatever whim takes them to, in lieu of real money with actual present value. Because people with stuff to sell, especially high-end stuff, still believe that a “healthy line of credit” or “big corporate job” and an expensive suit or dress equate to a “person of worth” to whom they can “sell” that expensive stuff on the belief that some day there will be some real wealth to back up the paper front. Or at least more tax money from the future “growth” of the economy to make more real the enormous dumps of Funny Munny by the Fed and Treasury under those big green TARPs, and provide the wherewithall for another round of “stimuli” and “bailouts.”
This (Jon’s post) is looking a lot like “medical care” as practiced in the hospitals and nursing homes of this nation: Lots of intrusive, expensive and profitable diagnostics and ultimately futile procedures being applied to bodies that are on the point of death, or on the point of birth for that matter. Profitable, for the time being, for the “providers,” just painful and prolonging the death agonies for the moribund, or leading to fetal monitoring which via all those false positive responses and “medical reflexes” leads inexorably to unnecessary but well-compensated C-sections.
Rick, my hope is for your notion about finding a steady-state ‘meme” that doesn’t depend on the seductive cancer called “growth.” If we are individually and collectively concerned about the survival of the species (let alone puny little nations.) This cynic does not see that happening — rather, something that looks like “Soylent Green,” where the corporate types up in the top stories of the jungle canopy know the planet is dead, but continue to suck the last bits of vitality and “profit” out of what’s left of the species and the rest of the world.
All Pleasure To The People. Or at least the ones that “count.”
And Alex, I hope you have a wider audience than this space. You see and can describe and prescribe with accuracy and clarity. Thanks.
And Alex, I hope you have a wider audience than this space. You see and can describe and prescribe with accuracy and clarity. Thanks.
And Alex, I hope you have a wider audience than this space. You see and can describe and prescribe with accuracy and clarity. Thanks.
And Alex, I hope you have a wider audience than this space. You see and can describe and prescribe with accuracy and clarity. Thanks.
Mr. Bernanke somehow believes that he can magically circumvent creating economic product, which is always based on labor and goods it produces, by just hitting a button on his computer to add a few zeros to FED’s account in a coup of counterfeiting. This illegal act does not provide employment to anyone except Mr. Bernanke and not resulting in any economic product on the other end of this labor intensive operation. His academic theories, being tested on live human beings, will be proven wrong and disastrous soon enough. The prices will go where they naturally want to go. All FED can do is slow the process of decline, not arrest it – and that will only prolong this recession that has all the underpinnings of becoming another Great Depression.
- from National Deflation Association blog.
Mr. Bernanke somehow believes that he can magically circumvent creating economic product, which is always based on labor and goods it produces, by just hitting a button on his computer to add a few zeros to FED’s account in a coup of counterfeiting. This illegal act does not provide employment to anyone except Mr. Bernanke and not resulting in any economic product on the other end of this labor intensive operation. His academic theories, being tested on live human beings, will be proven wrong and disastrous soon enough. The prices will go where they naturally want to go. All FED can do is slow the process of decline, not arrest it – and that will only prolong this recession that has all the underpinnings of becoming another Great Depression.
- from National Deflation Association blog.
Mr. Bernanke somehow believes that he can magically circumvent creating economic product, which is always based on labor and goods it produces, by just hitting a button on his computer to add a few zeros to FED’s account in a coup of counterfeiting. This illegal act does not provide employment to anyone except Mr. Bernanke and not resulting in any economic product on the other end of this labor intensive operation. His academic theories, being tested on live human beings, will be proven wrong and disastrous soon enough. The prices will go where they naturally want to go. All FED can do is slow the process of decline, not arrest it – and that will only prolong this recession that has all the underpinnings of becoming another Great Depression.
- from National Deflation Association blog.
What is the world buying?
RFP = What They Are Buying
2 Models for Making Money Building Systems: Innovate or Build to Spec
Innovation is R&D costly. You lose if they are not buying.
Spec is contract costly. You lose if spec and contract process are not tightly coupled.
R&D is to technology what hits are to records: gambled development costs on high potentials in the initial release. The customer set self-selects by the product.
Spec is a process where the initial requests mapped to the deliverable form very long chains of negotiations to make decisions about code to be built. The payoff is selling into a sustainable product market because a spec market is also self-selected by common need in common form.
The gamble here is can you get the product to match the rate of change in the specification over the development time to initial release or does the final implementation cost spike the punch.
In both cases, marketing is caught trying to insist on new development to meet competitive perceptions and spec is trying to match the gap in the time from discovery to implementation.
So you get the unholy union of the spec building process and the marketing department.
Rule 2: Do not bid what you cannot demo.
One reason for the high cost of systems is enablers in procurement for technology to needs list instead of specification. Ask any agency for needs and you will get a large garbage bag of informative but very local requests. On the other hand, well-conceived specifications center the product in the product market just as that market will buy it.
Rule 3: Don’t procure what you don’t do.
What is the world buying?
RFP = What They Are Buying
2 Models for Making Money Building Systems: Innovate or Build to Spec
Innovation is R&D costly. You lose if they are not buying.
Spec is contract costly. You lose if spec and contract process are not tightly coupled.
R&D is to technology what hits are to records: gambled development costs on high potentials in the initial release. The customer set self-selects by the product.
Spec is a process where the initial requests mapped to the deliverable form very long chains of negotiations to make decisions about code to be built. The payoff is selling into a sustainable product market because a spec market is also self-selected by common need in common form.
The gamble here is can you get the product to match the rate of change in the specification over the development time to initial release or does the final implementation cost spike the punch.
In both cases, marketing is caught trying to insist on new development to meet competitive perceptions and spec is trying to match the gap in the time from discovery to implementation.
So you get the unholy union of the spec building process and the marketing department.
Rule 2: Do not bid what you cannot demo.
One reason for the high cost of systems is enablers in procurement for technology to needs list instead of specification. Ask any agency for needs and you will get a large garbage bag of informative but very local requests. On the other hand, well-conceived specifications center the product in the product market just as that market will buy it.
Rule 3: Don’t procure what you don’t do.
In case there’s any remaining hope that we Americans have learned anything from recent events, here’s what Realtors TM have to contribute to “the recovery:”
Home sales down? Kill the appraiser.
How dare these people who, like the bond raters, are supposed to filter out some of the “irrational exuberance” from “the recovery” lead-in to back-to-the-Bubble fun&games? Let’s just do away with the function! Yeah, that’s all we need!
len, what IS the world buying? Oil and food and consumer toys and weapons systems? What else? You can’t eat code or run your car on it or keep the rain off your head. No matter how good you do the 4 Ps or respond to the RFPs. “Making money building systems–” isn’t that approach to “growth” a big part of what got us into trouble in the first place? Looks like outfits like Bear Stearns were pretty good at defining “needs” and building the “systems” that made derivatives look then, and apparently still look, like the way to “make money.”
But of course as a lowly medical care worker, what do I know?
In case there’s any remaining hope that we Americans have learned anything from recent events, here’s what Realtors TM have to contribute to “the recovery:”
Home sales down? Kill the appraiser.
How dare these people who, like the bond raters, are supposed to filter out some of the “irrational exuberance” from “the recovery” lead-in to back-to-the-Bubble fun&games? Let’s just do away with the function! Yeah, that’s all we need!
len, what IS the world buying? Oil and food and consumer toys and weapons systems? What else? You can’t eat code or run your car on it or keep the rain off your head. No matter how good you do the 4 Ps or respond to the RFPs. “Making money building systems–” isn’t that approach to “growth” a big part of what got us into trouble in the first place? Looks like outfits like Bear Stearns were pretty good at defining “needs” and building the “systems” that made derivatives look then, and apparently still look, like the way to “make money.”
But of course as a lowly medical care worker, what do I know?
In case there’s any remaining hope that we Americans have learned anything from recent events, here’s what Realtors TM have to contribute to “the recovery:”
Home sales down? Kill the appraiser.
How dare these people who, like the bond raters, are supposed to filter out some of the “irrational exuberance” from “the recovery” lead-in to back-to-the-Bubble fun&games? Let’s just do away with the function! Yeah, that’s all we need!
len, what IS the world buying? Oil and food and consumer toys and weapons systems? What else? You can’t eat code or run your car on it or keep the rain off your head. No matter how good you do the 4 Ps or respond to the RFPs. “Making money building systems–” isn’t that approach to “growth” a big part of what got us into trouble in the first place? Looks like outfits like Bear Stearns were pretty good at defining “needs” and building the “systems” that made derivatives look then, and apparently still look, like the way to “make money.”
But of course as a lowly medical care worker, what do I know?
So lets assume for a moment the US want to be an exporter again. What about all those nations that by now have taken up that role? Do you think they feel like they should import stuff now. And with what are the supposed to pay? Considering the IMF, World Bank and WTO have done their utmost to rob these countries of their resources at no price at all.
And another thing here is you want to fix the economy by producing stuff, when, right now, one of our problems is that there is an overabundance of stuff. Things nobody needs that don’t help along society but waste valuable resources that we can’t get back. So the US is supposed to turn inot China or what?
Seriously if anybody wants to fix the economy thinking has to change on a deeper level than that.
So lets assume for a moment the US want to be an exporter again. What about all those nations that by now have taken up that role? Do you think they feel like they should import stuff now. And with what are the supposed to pay? Considering the IMF, World Bank and WTO have done their utmost to rob these countries of their resources at no price at all.
And another thing here is you want to fix the economy by producing stuff, when, right now, one of our problems is that there is an overabundance of stuff. Things nobody needs that don’t help along society but waste valuable resources that we can’t get back. So the US is supposed to turn inot China or what?
Seriously if anybody wants to fix the economy thinking has to change on a deeper level than that.
So lets assume for a moment the US want to be an exporter again. What about all those nations that by now have taken up that role? Do you think they feel like they should import stuff now. And with what are the supposed to pay? Considering the IMF, World Bank and WTO have done their utmost to rob these countries of their resources at no price at all.
And another thing here is you want to fix the economy by producing stuff, when, right now, one of our problems is that there is an overabundance of stuff. Things nobody needs that don’t help along society but waste valuable resources that we can’t get back. So the US is supposed to turn inot China or what?
Seriously if anybody wants to fix the economy thinking has to change on a deeper level than that.
Things are going to get ugly no matter what. The 900-pound elephant in the room is China. The 700-pound elephant right next to it is India. They have both experienced phenomenal, and therefore unsustainable, growth in the last 20 years, largely by exporting to us. If we suddenly switch to being a net exporter, a whole lot of Chinese and Indians will lose their jobs, and the unrest shifts there instead of here. Kaboom.
The root cause of our trouble, I believe, is too many people. As China and India increase the number of cars in the world from one billion to three billion (that’s the projection I read recently), the whole global warming thing, and other damage to the environment, will spiral out of control. As the world continues to dump its trash into the Pacific Ocean, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will eventually wash up on the shores of California, and even more importantly, the oceans will start to die.
That will make importing and exporting woes look mild in comparison. Yet we will continue to do foolish things in the name of short-term economic stability until it really is too late.
And there will be those who will stand on the coast of California, wave an arm out to sea, and say, “That vast floating sea of garbage that your eyes think they see–it’s a myth propagated by liberal fascists. It does not exist. You are divorced from reality!”
Things are going to get ugly no matter what. The 900-pound elephant in the room is China. The 700-pound elephant right next to it is India. They have both experienced phenomenal, and therefore unsustainable, growth in the last 20 years, largely by exporting to us. If we suddenly switch to being a net exporter, a whole lot of Chinese and Indians will lose their jobs, and the unrest shifts there instead of here. Kaboom.
The root cause of our trouble, I believe, is too many people. As China and India increase the number of cars in the world from one billion to three billion (that’s the projection I read recently), the whole global warming thing, and other damage to the environment, will spiral out of control. As the world continues to dump its trash into the Pacific Ocean, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will eventually wash up on the shores of California, and even more importantly, the oceans will start to die.
That will make importing and exporting woes look mild in comparison. Yet we will continue to do foolish things in the name of short-term economic stability until it really is too late.
And there will be those who will stand on the coast of California, wave an arm out to sea, and say, “That vast floating sea of garbage that your eyes think they see–it’s a myth propagated by liberal fascists. It does not exist. You are divorced from reality!”
Things are going to get ugly no matter what. The 900-pound elephant in the room is China. The 700-pound elephant right next to it is India. They have both experienced phenomenal, and therefore unsustainable, growth in the last 20 years, largely by exporting to us. If we suddenly switch to being a net exporter, a whole lot of Chinese and Indians will lose their jobs, and the unrest shifts there instead of here. Kaboom.
The root cause of our trouble, I believe, is too many people. As China and India increase the number of cars in the world from one billion to three billion (that’s the projection I read recently), the whole global warming thing, and other damage to the environment, will spiral out of control. As the world continues to dump its trash into the Pacific Ocean, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will eventually wash up on the shores of California, and even more importantly, the oceans will start to die.
That will make importing and exporting woes look mild in comparison. Yet we will continue to do foolish things in the name of short-term economic stability until it really is too late.
And there will be those who will stand on the coast of California, wave an arm out to sea, and say, “That vast floating sea of garbage that your eyes think they see–it’s a myth propagated by liberal fascists. It does not exist. You are divorced from reality!”
Tell it to the Pope, Dan…
Tell it to the Pope, Dan…
Tell it to the Pope, Dan…
Tell it to the Pope, Dan…
Before folks get too despondent, take a look at this.
It’s an op-ed the LAT ran a few days ago on why California can’t be governed. I know that sounds even more depressing, but it’s actually very optimistic piece, for three reasons.
One, it’s an excellent breakdown of the dysfunction’s primary sources. Two, it illustrates very clearly how the interaction between these factors is what produces the effects we actually see. And finally, it notes that this conception – parts and whole – is gaining serious traction in very influential quarters. If defining the problem correctly is half the solution, this looks like major progress.
California may well, as the piece suggests, simply wipe the current political class out of Sacramento. And given California’s historic role as harbinger for the rest of the nation, the way we sort our own and very acute dysfunction could feasibly precipitate change at the national level.
I know Prop. 8 got all the headlines at the time, but in retrospect, I think Prop. 11 is going to be seen as the real point of cultural inflection. But that was the kind of all-too-rare fundamental change that takes time to work its way through the system. So right now, it’s dark before dawn, and all that.
And Len – I totally get how hard it is to get the Marketing / R&D interplay right. Like I said, it’s a job that calls for serious talent, not to mention real backing from the rest of an executive team. My concern is with how few organizations are even bothering to try. It suggests that the natural incentives which should be determining where companies focus their efforts have been profoundly warped.
The choices that most companies make are probably entirely rational. It’s the governing layer to which they’re responding (and thereby reflecting) that’s so totally out of whack.
But again, there’s cause for hope – and it isn’t in DC.
Before folks get too despondent, take a look at this.
It’s an op-ed the LAT ran a few days ago on why California can’t be governed. I know that sounds even more depressing, but it’s actually very optimistic piece, for three reasons.
One, it’s an excellent breakdown of the dysfunction’s primary sources. Two, it illustrates very clearly how the interaction between these factors is what produces the effects we actually see. And finally, it notes that this conception – parts and whole – is gaining serious traction in very influential quarters. If defining the problem correctly is half the solution, this looks like major progress.
California may well, as the piece suggests, simply wipe the current political class out of Sacramento. And given California’s historic role as harbinger for the rest of the nation, the way we sort our own and very acute dysfunction could feasibly precipitate change at the national level.
I know Prop. 8 got all the headlines at the time, but in retrospect, I think Prop. 11 is going to be seen as the real point of cultural inflection. But that was the kind of all-too-rare fundamental change that takes time to work its way through the system. So right now, it’s dark before dawn, and all that.
And Len – I totally get how hard it is to get the Marketing / R&D interplay right. Like I said, it’s a job that calls for serious talent, not to mention real backing from the rest of an executive team. My concern is with how few organizations are even bothering to try. It suggests that the natural incentives which should be determining where companies focus their efforts have been profoundly warped.
The choices that most companies make are probably entirely rational. It’s the governing layer to which they’re responding (and thereby reflecting) that’s so totally out of whack.
But again, there’s cause for hope – and it isn’t in DC.
Before folks get too despondent, take a look at this.
It’s an op-ed the LAT ran a few days ago on why California can’t be governed. I know that sounds even more depressing, but it’s actually very optimistic piece, for three reasons.
One, it’s an excellent breakdown of the dysfunction’s primary sources. Two, it illustrates very clearly how the interaction between these factors is what produces the effects we actually see. And finally, it notes that this conception – parts and whole – is gaining serious traction in very influential quarters. If defining the problem correctly is half the solution, this looks like major progress.
California may well, as the piece suggests, simply wipe the current political class out of Sacramento. And given California’s historic role as harbinger for the rest of the nation, the way we sort our own and very acute dysfunction could feasibly precipitate change at the national level.
I know Prop. 8 got all the headlines at the time, but in retrospect, I think Prop. 11 is going to be seen as the real point of cultural inflection. But that was the kind of all-too-rare fundamental change that takes time to work its way through the system. So right now, it’s dark before dawn, and all that.
And Len – I totally get how hard it is to get the Marketing / R&D interplay right. Like I said, it’s a job that calls for serious talent, not to mention real backing from the rest of an executive team. My concern is with how few organizations are even bothering to try. It suggests that the natural incentives which should be determining where companies focus their efforts have been profoundly warped.
The choices that most companies make are probably entirely rational. It’s the governing layer to which they’re responding (and thereby reflecting) that’s so totally out of whack.
But again, there’s cause for hope – and it isn’t in DC.
Before folks get too despondent, take a look at this.
It’s an op-ed the LAT ran a few days ago on why California can’t be governed. I know that sounds even more depressing, but it’s actually very optimistic piece, for three reasons.
One, it’s an excellent breakdown of the dysfunction’s primary sources. Two, it illustrates very clearly how the interaction between these factors is what produces the effects we actually see. And finally, it notes that this conception – parts and whole – is gaining serious traction in very influential quarters. If defining the problem correctly is half the solution, this looks like major progress.
California may well, as the piece suggests, simply wipe the current political class out of Sacramento. And given California’s historic role as harbinger for the rest of the nation, the way we sort our own and very acute dysfunction could feasibly precipitate change at the national level.
I know Prop. 8 got all the headlines at the time, but in retrospect, I think Prop. 11 is going to be seen as the real point of cultural inflection. But that was the kind of all-too-rare fundamental change that takes time to work its way through the system. So right now, it’s dark before dawn, and all that.
And Len – I totally get how hard it is to get the Marketing / R&D interplay right. Like I said, it’s a job that calls for serious talent, not to mention real backing from the rest of an executive team. My concern is with how few organizations are even bothering to try. It suggests that the natural incentives which should be determining where companies focus their efforts have been profoundly warped.
The choices that most companies make are probably entirely rational. It’s the governing layer to which they’re responding (and thereby reflecting) that’s so totally out of whack.
But again, there’s cause for hope – and it isn’t in DC.
Charting US post-bubble economic policy is why Obama was elected. Nothing else is a close second. It’s the key to our long(er)-term survival. We know this on so many levels.
You don’t need to be an economics, finance or marketing type to know something is terribly wrong. The service economy isn’t a sustainable growth model. It’s a scam; re-cycle and skim at every level.
That hollow feeling, that sense of hopelessness and quiet desperation is present at all levels, particularly among younger workers without the benefit of an education and those approaching retirement without a safety net.
Everyone has their own hopes for our new President. For me, it “jobs, Jobs, JOBS” or more specifically, redefining our country’s economic policy.
Earlier this year I spoke with an electrical engineer at a high-end audio firm about shifting a greater proportion of their manufacturing operations overseas. In recent years, he’s been responsible for establishing their overseas manufacturing base of operations. He described it as a “necessary evil” because of the vast disparity in domestic and overseas labor costs.
Although there’s no denying that disparity what typically doesn’t get its just due is the cost associated with inferior quality that’s still associated with overseas production (at least in his line of work and specialized production).
Add to that language and culture barriers, currency, and time zone differences and he and many colleagues in related industries would revert to domestic production in an instant. The fly-in-the-ointment is how to level the playing field with respect to manufacturing costs, specifically labor costs.
How many social ills and imbalances would be eradicated if @ 10% of the service sector were converted to manufacturing? This is THE change many associated with an Obama election. It’s the backdrop for everything else.
Charting US post-bubble economic policy is why Obama was elected. Nothing else is a close second. It’s the key to our long(er)-term survival. We know this on so many levels.
You don’t need to be an economics, finance or marketing type to know something is terribly wrong. The service economy isn’t a sustainable growth model. It’s a scam; re-cycle and skim at every level.
That hollow feeling, that sense of hopelessness and quiet desperation is present at all levels, particularly among younger workers without the benefit of an education and those approaching retirement without a safety net.
Everyone has their own hopes for our new President. For me, it “jobs, Jobs, JOBS” or more specifically, redefining our country’s economic policy.
Earlier this year I spoke with an electrical engineer at a high-end audio firm about shifting a greater proportion of their manufacturing operations overseas. In recent years, he’s been responsible for establishing their overseas manufacturing base of operations. He described it as a “necessary evil” because of the vast disparity in domestic and overseas labor costs.
Although there’s no denying that disparity what typically doesn’t get its just due is the cost associated with inferior quality that’s still associated with overseas production (at least in his line of work and specialized production).
Add to that language and culture barriers, currency, and time zone differences and he and many colleagues in related industries would revert to domestic production in an instant. The fly-in-the-ointment is how to level the playing field with respect to manufacturing costs, specifically labor costs.
How many social ills and imbalances would be eradicated if @ 10% of the service sector were converted to manufacturing? This is THE change many associated with an Obama election. It’s the backdrop for everything else.
Charting US post-bubble economic policy is why Obama was elected. Nothing else is a close second. It’s the key to our long(er)-term survival. We know this on so many levels.
You don’t need to be an economics, finance or marketing type to know something is terribly wrong. The service economy isn’t a sustainable growth model. It’s a scam; re-cycle and skim at every level.
That hollow feeling, that sense of hopelessness and quiet desperation is present at all levels, particularly among younger workers without the benefit of an education and those approaching retirement without a safety net.
Everyone has their own hopes for our new President. For me, it “jobs, Jobs, JOBS” or more specifically, redefining our country’s economic policy.
Earlier this year I spoke with an electrical engineer at a high-end audio firm about shifting a greater proportion of their manufacturing operations overseas. In recent years, he’s been responsible for establishing their overseas manufacturing base of operations. He described it as a “necessary evil” because of the vast disparity in domestic and overseas labor costs.
Although there’s no denying that disparity what typically doesn’t get its just due is the cost associated with inferior quality that’s still associated with overseas production (at least in his line of work and specialized production).
Add to that language and culture barriers, currency, and time zone differences and he and many colleagues in related industries would revert to domestic production in an instant. The fly-in-the-ointment is how to level the playing field with respect to manufacturing costs, specifically labor costs.
How many social ills and imbalances would be eradicated if @ 10% of the service sector were converted to manufacturing? This is THE change many associated with an Obama election. It’s the backdrop for everything else.
<>
Workplace safety and the cost of healthcare have a lot to do with labor costs. Sometimes OSHA requirements are overkill, but mostly not. Developing nations (especially those will zillions of ‘human resources’) don’t worry as much about worker safety. Get corporations to lobby for a better healthcare system (we’ve had that discussion on this here blog before). Also, environmental regulations add to the cost goods manufactured here. I don’t think we should abandon those, but we can’t force other countries to make them a priority either. And, unfortunately, too many Americans still look only at the dollar cost of an item when considering its value. I’m happy to pay more for something from a company who is repsonsible to its workers and the environment, but many aren’t or simply don’t think about it. I’d like to see that change (or change more quickly).
<>
Workplace safety and the cost of healthcare have a lot to do with labor costs. Sometimes OSHA requirements are overkill, but mostly not. Developing nations (especially those will zillions of ‘human resources’) don’t worry as much about worker safety. Get corporations to lobby for a better healthcare system (we’ve had that discussion on this here blog before). Also, environmental regulations add to the cost goods manufactured here. I don’t think we should abandon those, but we can’t force other countries to make them a priority either. And, unfortunately, too many Americans still look only at the dollar cost of an item when considering its value. I’m happy to pay more for something from a company who is repsonsible to its workers and the environment, but many aren’t or simply don’t think about it. I’d like to see that change (or change more quickly).
Here’s a good example of R&D + Marketing working well together (It’s from FIAT, and is what just won the Grand Prix at the Cannes ad fest this year).
Roman – I suspect that if you want to see this kind of integration between material and message in more and more things, then all those barriers that your engineer friend described are going to start looking increasingly high.
If the US is looking for a way back into the Actually Making Things game, then extensive prototyping and custom design + build may be where it begins, with only the most commodified operations taking place in the lowest-cost markets.
Here’s a good example of R&D + Marketing working well together (It’s from FIAT, and is what just won the Grand Prix at the Cannes ad fest this year).
Roman – I suspect that if you want to see this kind of integration between material and message in more and more things, then all those barriers that your engineer friend described are going to start looking increasingly high.
If the US is looking for a way back into the Actually Making Things game, then extensive prototyping and custom design + build may be where it begins, with only the most commodified operations taking place in the lowest-cost markets.
Here’s a good example of R&D + Marketing working well together (It’s from FIAT, and is what just won the Grand Prix at the Cannes ad fest this year).
Roman – I suspect that if you want to see this kind of integration between material and message in more and more things, then all those barriers that your engineer friend described are going to start looking increasingly high.
If the US is looking for a way back into the Actually Making Things game, then extensive prototyping and custom design + build may be where it begins, with only the most commodified operations taking place in the lowest-cost markets.
Alsex, that’s what I do…extensive prototyping, custom design and build. It’s on a nano scale, but it results in products that should outlast my clients and myself. Stuff that lasts adds to wealth. Stuff that doesn’t rips us all off.
Alsex, that’s what I do…extensive prototyping, custom design and build. It’s on a nano scale, but it results in products that should outlast my clients and myself. Stuff that lasts adds to wealth. Stuff that doesn’t rips us all off.
Alsex, that’s what I do…extensive prototyping, custom design and build. It’s on a nano scale, but it results in products that should outlast my clients and myself. Stuff that lasts adds to wealth. Stuff that doesn’t rips us all off.
Alsex, that’s what I do…extensive prototyping, custom design and build. It’s on a nano scale, but it results in products that should outlast my clients and myself. Stuff that lasts adds to wealth. Stuff that doesn’t rips us all off.
Alex,
The link doesn’t work.
Alex,
The link doesn’t work.
Alex,
The link doesn’t work.
Sorry – here’s take 2: http://www.fiat.co.uk/ecodrive/#ecodrive/intro
I have to admit, the tone of the ad is a bit cloying to my ears, but that’s subtle stuff that could be improved with a different soundtrack and a better voice over. assuming you can get past that, I think you’ll see what I mean.
Sorry – here’s take 2: http://www.fiat.co.uk/ecodrive/#ecodrive/intro
I have to admit, the tone of the ad is a bit cloying to my ears, but that’s subtle stuff that could be improved with a different soundtrack and a better voice over. assuming you can get past that, I think you’ll see what I mean.
And that’s what everyone wants to do.
Have you read Working? (Studs Terkel). He makes this point exactly.
I suspect it will take 100 years from the time of publication for management classes to figure out that the very essence of their craft is detailed in that book.
And that’s what everyone wants to do.
Have you read Working? (Studs Terkel). He makes this point exactly.
I suspect it will take 100 years from the time of publication for management classes to figure out that the very essence of their craft is detailed in that book.
“You can’t eat code or run your car on it or keep the rain off your head.”
You can’t get the gas for the car or the umbrella without it anymore unless you make them yourself. If you haven’t noticed, the world runs digital now and there is no going back.
My question is exactly, what are they buying and how are they buying it. I gave you a trivial example of systems procurement because until you understand it, you won’t see where the waste is occurring. You think you do, but you don’t. That’s the power of smoke and mirrors. The systems thinking some despair of is not the root of the problem; the root of the problem is too many taking too much for too little return. Greed, sloth, all the seven. We can lament that all we like but systems engineering is there to get around those and when performed competently, it works. What I am laying out as Alex gets is just how incompetently it can be done yet be all shiny brilliant on the surface. I simply wanted to shine a light into the corners of procurement that make it possible for incompetence to thrive by application of misplaced skills. See Madoff. See quota-driven Equal Opportunity hiring. See No Child Left Behind. As long as the MBA is trained to use a model where fall-off in quarterlies are met by layoffs and process planning is a substitute for RFP-analysis, expect this downward trend to continue.
Alex and Rick: That is the innovate/R&D model. As far as profits go, it works for small shops with low overheads and simple systems that relative to customer perceptions of costs are big ticket items. Compared to the infrastructure projects, the complexity of building guitar filters is quite simple no aspersions cast. It doesn’t work well in a large systems procurement with mains and subs unless a well-disciplined integration model is in place and then beware of the requirements creep between marketing and Best and Final Offer where all of the results of the analysis are thrown away to meet a projected winning cost and to satisfy local perceptions of needs that aren’t justifiable in shrink-wrap markets.
But if you look at the trade balances, that is not where the gaps are. We’ve screwed up by not manufacturing commodities as our lifestyle made us increasingly uncompetitive. California is the sad example of what happens when a culture driven by unrealistic expectations fueled by the Hollyweird archetypes of success and worldly well-being collide with the savagery of supply and demand in markets where we can no longer dominate supply and fail to meet demand.
This is where Carter was at when Reagan told America that reducing expectations was not the American Way or American Destiny. No stupider decision was ever made by the American voter than to buy into Reagan’s shining city on the hill.
“You can’t eat code or run your car on it or keep the rain off your head.”
You can’t get the gas for the car or the umbrella without it anymore unless you make them yourself. If you haven’t noticed, the world runs digital now and there is no going back.
My question is exactly, what are they buying and how are they buying it. I gave you a trivial example of systems procurement because until you understand it, you won’t see where the waste is occurring. You think you do, but you don’t. That’s the power of smoke and mirrors. The systems thinking some despair of is not the root of the problem; the root of the problem is too many taking too much for too little return. Greed, sloth, all the seven. We can lament that all we like but systems engineering is there to get around those and when performed competently, it works. What I am laying out as Alex gets is just how incompetently it can be done yet be all shiny brilliant on the surface. I simply wanted to shine a light into the corners of procurement that make it possible for incompetence to thrive by application of misplaced skills. See Madoff. See quota-driven Equal Opportunity hiring. See No Child Left Behind. As long as the MBA is trained to use a model where fall-off in quarterlies are met by layoffs and process planning is a substitute for RFP-analysis, expect this downward trend to continue.
Alex and Rick: That is the innovate/R&D model. As far as profits go, it works for small shops with low overheads and simple systems that relative to customer perceptions of costs are big ticket items. Compared to the infrastructure projects, the complexity of building guitar filters is quite simple no aspersions cast. It doesn’t work well in a large systems procurement with mains and subs unless a well-disciplined integration model is in place and then beware of the requirements creep between marketing and Best and Final Offer where all of the results of the analysis are thrown away to meet a projected winning cost and to satisfy local perceptions of needs that aren’t justifiable in shrink-wrap markets.
But if you look at the trade balances, that is not where the gaps are. We’ve screwed up by not manufacturing commodities as our lifestyle made us increasingly uncompetitive. California is the sad example of what happens when a culture driven by unrealistic expectations fueled by the Hollyweird archetypes of success and worldly well-being collide with the savagery of supply and demand in markets where we can no longer dominate supply and fail to meet demand.
This is where Carter was at when Reagan told America that reducing expectations was not the American Way or American Destiny. No stupider decision was ever made by the American voter than to buy into Reagan’s shining city on the hill.
“You can’t eat code or run your car on it or keep the rain off your head.”
You can’t get the gas for the car or the umbrella without it anymore unless you make them yourself. If you haven’t noticed, the world runs digital now and there is no going back.
My question is exactly, what are they buying and how are they buying it. I gave you a trivial example of systems procurement because until you understand it, you won’t see where the waste is occurring. You think you do, but you don’t. That’s the power of smoke and mirrors. The systems thinking some despair of is not the root of the problem; the root of the problem is too many taking too much for too little return. Greed, sloth, all the seven. We can lament that all we like but systems engineering is there to get around those and when performed competently, it works. What I am laying out as Alex gets is just how incompetently it can be done yet be all shiny brilliant on the surface. I simply wanted to shine a light into the corners of procurement that make it possible for incompetence to thrive by application of misplaced skills. See Madoff. See quota-driven Equal Opportunity hiring. See No Child Left Behind. As long as the MBA is trained to use a model where fall-off in quarterlies are met by layoffs and process planning is a substitute for RFP-analysis, expect this downward trend to continue.
Alex and Rick: That is the innovate/R&D model. As far as profits go, it works for small shops with low overheads and simple systems that relative to customer perceptions of costs are big ticket items. Compared to the infrastructure projects, the complexity of building guitar filters is quite simple no aspersions cast. It doesn’t work well in a large systems procurement with mains and subs unless a well-disciplined integration model is in place and then beware of the requirements creep between marketing and Best and Final Offer where all of the results of the analysis are thrown away to meet a projected winning cost and to satisfy local perceptions of needs that aren’t justifiable in shrink-wrap markets.
But if you look at the trade balances, that is not where the gaps are. We’ve screwed up by not manufacturing commodities as our lifestyle made us increasingly uncompetitive. California is the sad example of what happens when a culture driven by unrealistic expectations fueled by the Hollyweird archetypes of success and worldly well-being collide with the savagery of supply and demand in markets where we can no longer dominate supply and fail to meet demand.
This is where Carter was at when Reagan told America that reducing expectations was not the American Way or American Destiny. No stupider decision was ever made by the American voter than to buy into Reagan’s shining city on the hill.
If you want to see another place where our wealth has gone, just spend a day at your local landfill dump. Disposable products impoverish us all as we feed our addiction to them.
Why shouldn’t something like a dining table last for at least six generations?
And I do not need a new and improved version of MicroSoft Word or Excel…
If you want to see another place where our wealth has gone, just spend a day at your local landfill dump. Disposable products impoverish us all as we feed our addiction to them.
Why shouldn’t something like a dining table last for at least six generations?
And I do not need a new and improved version of MicroSoft Word or Excel…
If you want to see another place where our wealth has gone, just spend a day at your local landfill dump. Disposable products impoverish us all as we feed our addiction to them.
Why shouldn’t something like a dining table last for at least six generations?
And I do not need a new and improved version of MicroSoft Word or Excel…
If you want to see another place where our wealth has gone, just spend a day at your local landfill dump. Disposable products impoverish us all as we feed our addiction to them.
Why shouldn’t something like a dining table last for at least six generations?
And I do not need a new and improved version of MicroSoft Word or Excel…
Kind of gets to the heart of the old “rules vs. judgment” debate, no? If all you have is rules, but no judgment, your system is going to fail because we have yet to predict every possible outcome for a given situation…hell, most of the time we’re lucky to isolate 50% of the variables (I’d expect).
Kind of gets to the heart of the old “rules vs. judgment” debate, no? If all you have is rules, but no judgment, your system is going to fail because we have yet to predict every possible outcome for a given situation…hell, most of the time we’re lucky to isolate 50% of the variables (I’d expect).
Kind of gets to the heart of the old “rules vs. judgment” debate, no? If all you have is rules, but no judgment, your system is going to fail because we have yet to predict every possible outcome for a given situation…hell, most of the time we’re lucky to isolate 50% of the variables (I’d expect).
Kind of gets to the heart of the old “rules vs. judgment” debate, no? If all you have is rules, but no judgment, your system is going to fail because we have yet to predict every possible outcome for a given situation…hell, most of the time we’re lucky to isolate 50% of the variables (I’d expect).
Precisely Rick. Part of that once again is systems thinking. Ever see a design that shaves 2% of the cost off manufacturing but reduces reliability by say 20%?
This is what marketing does to design where every component added is in terms of the ‘sales lifecycle’ (time to next sales opportunity). Commission sales are at fault there. Enuff said.
What I like about your guitar and electronics designs, Rick, is their cleanliness. You don’t add junk that adds no value unless the customer demands it and in your production units, none at all. As a result, your stuff doesn’t fall apart under stress because a two cent part failed where you should have used a ten cent part but had to shave 8 cents for commission and a shinier case.
That’s the right kind of systems thinking.
It isn’t enough that America sells stuff again. If we want to beat the Chinese and Indians, we have to beat them the way Mercedes beats Ford and Ford beat GM: we have to sell reliable stuff, good stuff, stuff that lasts. It may cost a little more or we may have to live a little less, but it pays.
Precisely Rick. Part of that once again is systems thinking. Ever see a design that shaves 2% of the cost off manufacturing but reduces reliability by say 20%?
This is what marketing does to design where every component added is in terms of the ‘sales lifecycle’ (time to next sales opportunity). Commission sales are at fault there. Enuff said.
What I like about your guitar and electronics designs, Rick, is their cleanliness. You don’t add junk that adds no value unless the customer demands it and in your production units, none at all. As a result, your stuff doesn’t fall apart under stress because a two cent part failed where you should have used a ten cent part but had to shave 8 cents for commission and a shinier case.
That’s the right kind of systems thinking.
It isn’t enough that America sells stuff again. If we want to beat the Chinese and Indians, we have to beat them the way Mercedes beats Ford and Ford beat GM: we have to sell reliable stuff, good stuff, stuff that lasts. It may cost a little more or we may have to live a little less, but it pays.
Precisely Rick. Part of that once again is systems thinking. Ever see a design that shaves 2% of the cost off manufacturing but reduces reliability by say 20%?
This is what marketing does to design where every component added is in terms of the ‘sales lifecycle’ (time to next sales opportunity). Commission sales are at fault there. Enuff said.
What I like about your guitar and electronics designs, Rick, is their cleanliness. You don’t add junk that adds no value unless the customer demands it and in your production units, none at all. As a result, your stuff doesn’t fall apart under stress because a two cent part failed where you should have used a ten cent part but had to shave 8 cents for commission and a shinier case.
That’s the right kind of systems thinking.
It isn’t enough that America sells stuff again. If we want to beat the Chinese and Indians, we have to beat them the way Mercedes beats Ford and Ford beat GM: we have to sell reliable stuff, good stuff, stuff that lasts. It may cost a little more or we may have to live a little less, but it pays.
Rick, I think that trend started really snowballing when “housewares” turned into “home fashions”…you know “fashion, a form of ugliness so intolerable we’re forced to change it every six months” (I think that was Mark Twain or H.L. Mencken)…except now it’s every three months…or less.
Rick, I think that trend started really snowballing when “housewares” turned into “home fashions”…you know “fashion, a form of ugliness so intolerable we’re forced to change it every six months” (I think that was Mark Twain or H.L. Mencken)…except now it’s every three months…or less.
Oh and my dining room table is over a hundred years old. It was old when Mom took it from the old stone house where I was born. It will be older when my daughter gets it. It will still be polished.
Oh and my dining room table is over a hundred years old. It was old when Mom took it from the old stone house where I was born. It will be older when my daughter gets it. It will still be polished.
Oh and my dining room table is over a hundred years old. It was old when Mom took it from the old stone house where I was born. It will be older when my daughter gets it. It will still be polished.
Oh and my dining room table is over a hundred years old. It was old when Mom took it from the old stone house where I was born. It will be older when my daughter gets it. It will still be polished.
So I’ve been reading all these free Victorian eBooks (thanks gutenberg.org) and I’m seeing some interesting parallels. The novels/essays I’ve read talk about cheap, machined goods being not so cheap in the long run and other household economy type issues. Same issues, just different technologies. I’m honestly thinking we’re just in sort of some fin du siecle malaise at warp speed here. Shorter wavelength; bigger ups and downs. I should be hitting ‘retirement’ during the next roaring 20s
.
So I’ve been reading all these free Victorian eBooks (thanks gutenberg.org) and I’m seeing some interesting parallels. The novels/essays I’ve read talk about cheap, machined goods being not so cheap in the long run and other household economy type issues. Same issues, just different technologies. I’m honestly thinking we’re just in sort of some fin du siecle malaise at warp speed here. Shorter wavelength; bigger ups and downs. I should be hitting ‘retirement’ during the next roaring 20s
.
So I’ve been reading all these free Victorian eBooks (thanks gutenberg.org) and I’m seeing some interesting parallels. The novels/essays I’ve read talk about cheap, machined goods being not so cheap in the long run and other household economy type issues. Same issues, just different technologies. I’m honestly thinking we’re just in sort of some fin du siecle malaise at warp speed here. Shorter wavelength; bigger ups and downs. I should be hitting ‘retirement’ during the next roaring 20s
.
Whoops! Should’ve known…the fashion quote came from Oscar Wilde!
Whoops! Should’ve known…the fashion quote came from Oscar Wilde!
Whoops! Should’ve known…the fashion quote came from Oscar Wilde!
I have a hard time seeing how commission-based sales (which focus the attention of the sales person on the sales person) are going to survive in a world where collaboration – both inside an organization, and out – becomes an increasingly important source of value.
Your other point, about the small scale on which good design + build can survive, is what I find really interesting to watch. Yes, it’s limited now, but I keep thinking that massive connectivity can change this dynamic dramatically.
Not sure, but definitely hoping.
I have a hard time seeing how commission-based sales (which focus the attention of the sales person on the sales person) are going to survive in a world where collaboration – both inside an organization, and out – becomes an increasingly important source of value.
Your other point, about the small scale on which good design + build can survive, is what I find really interesting to watch. Yes, it’s limited now, but I keep thinking that massive connectivity can change this dynamic dramatically.
Not sure, but definitely hoping.
I have a hard time seeing how commission-based sales (which focus the attention of the sales person on the sales person) are going to survive in a world where collaboration – both inside an organization, and out – becomes an increasingly important source of value.
Your other point, about the small scale on which good design + build can survive, is what I find really interesting to watch. Yes, it’s limited now, but I keep thinking that massive connectivity can change this dynamic dramatically.
Not sure, but definitely hoping.
“I have a hard time seeing how commission-based sales (which focus the attention of the sales person on the sales person) are going to survive in a world where collaboration – both inside an organization, and out – becomes an increasingly important source of value.”
Because the means of cooperation is based on a formal process of document exchanges and meetings that have contractural validity. I’m choosing words carefully. I don’t believe that will change as much as one might want even given electronic media. They do this for money not egoboo. Commission based sales are rotten because the pit R&D against Marketing at the personal level. They rot cohesion by pitting motivations against each other on the same team as far as the customer is concerned. Aging deceitful in pain managers (guys and girls like me) can use that in a negotiation. If you are 30 and don’t work toward consensus, you are evil. If you are 50 and aren’t avoiding treachery, you are stupid.
“Your other point, about the small scale on which good design + build can survive, is what I find really interesting to watch. Yes, it’s limited now, but I keep thinking that massive connectivity can change this dynamic dramatically.”
Not necessarily. Connectivity is not affectivity. IOW, communities of interest form and close around the topic of interest. Think of the challenges a self-selecting organization such as the W3C has in coordinating the results of working groups. No matter what you do, consensus-based cooperation is slow. Here is one of the market cycle gaps I was describing earlier. As a result of these, cooperation is jagged and connectivity doesn’t change that except to lower the barrier to an initial meeting. It is significant but it settles in annealing fashion in some optima and stays there unless disrupted. As I said last winter, context is friction. The reason small scale works for R&D even if within a larger scale is because the numbers and types of connections are limited. Shorter paths; faster understanding. IOW, the speed of light is not the speed of understanding. The message on the wires is not the decision. No matter what you do, somewhere in the network you are process-bound.
“Not sure, but definitely hoping.”
It’s an old story from Demming. What you have to pay attention to is the process and not in the sense of always fixing it but in making sure it is staffed by the right people as well. Particularly when you start a project of any kind, the initial set of people make an incredible difference to the outcomes. Connectivity just gets them off the airplanes and if the tools are sharable, improves record keeping. Then it comes down to the time resources available across individuals in the team.
You can’t push string unless you starch it.
“I have a hard time seeing how commission-based sales (which focus the attention of the sales person on the sales person) are going to survive in a world where collaboration – both inside an organization, and out – becomes an increasingly important source of value.”
Because the means of cooperation is based on a formal process of document exchanges and meetings that have contractural validity. I’m choosing words carefully. I don’t believe that will change as much as one might want even given electronic media. They do this for money not egoboo. Commission based sales are rotten because the pit R&D against Marketing at the personal level. They rot cohesion by pitting motivations against each other on the same team as far as the customer is concerned. Aging deceitful in pain managers (guys and girls like me) can use that in a negotiation. If you are 30 and don’t work toward consensus, you are evil. If you are 50 and aren’t avoiding treachery, you are stupid.
“Your other point, about the small scale on which good design + build can survive, is what I find really interesting to watch. Yes, it’s limited now, but I keep thinking that massive connectivity can change this dynamic dramatically.”
Not necessarily. Connectivity is not affectivity. IOW, communities of interest form and close around the topic of interest. Think of the challenges a self-selecting organization such as the W3C has in coordinating the results of working groups. No matter what you do, consensus-based cooperation is slow. Here is one of the market cycle gaps I was describing earlier. As a result of these, cooperation is jagged and connectivity doesn’t change that except to lower the barrier to an initial meeting. It is significant but it settles in annealing fashion in some optima and stays there unless disrupted. As I said last winter, context is friction. The reason small scale works for R&D even if within a larger scale is because the numbers and types of connections are limited. Shorter paths; faster understanding. IOW, the speed of light is not the speed of understanding. The message on the wires is not the decision. No matter what you do, somewhere in the network you are process-bound.
“Not sure, but definitely hoping.”
It’s an old story from Demming. What you have to pay attention to is the process and not in the sense of always fixing it but in making sure it is staffed by the right people as well. Particularly when you start a project of any kind, the initial set of people make an incredible difference to the outcomes. Connectivity just gets them off the airplanes and if the tools are sharable, improves record keeping. Then it comes down to the time resources available across individuals in the team.
You can’t push string unless you starch it.
“I have a hard time seeing how commission-based sales (which focus the attention of the sales person on the sales person) are going to survive in a world where collaboration – both inside an organization, and out – becomes an increasingly important source of value.”
Because the means of cooperation is based on a formal process of document exchanges and meetings that have contractural validity. I’m choosing words carefully. I don’t believe that will change as much as one might want even given electronic media. They do this for money not egoboo. Commission based sales are rotten because the pit R&D against Marketing at the personal level. They rot cohesion by pitting motivations against each other on the same team as far as the customer is concerned. Aging deceitful in pain managers (guys and girls like me) can use that in a negotiation. If you are 30 and don’t work toward consensus, you are evil. If you are 50 and aren’t avoiding treachery, you are stupid.
“Your other point, about the small scale on which good design + build can survive, is what I find really interesting to watch. Yes, it’s limited now, but I keep thinking that massive connectivity can change this dynamic dramatically.”
Not necessarily. Connectivity is not affectivity. IOW, communities of interest form and close around the topic of interest. Think of the challenges a self-selecting organization such as the W3C has in coordinating the results of working groups. No matter what you do, consensus-based cooperation is slow. Here is one of the market cycle gaps I was describing earlier. As a result of these, cooperation is jagged and connectivity doesn’t change that except to lower the barrier to an initial meeting. It is significant but it settles in annealing fashion in some optima and stays there unless disrupted. As I said last winter, context is friction. The reason small scale works for R&D even if within a larger scale is because the numbers and types of connections are limited. Shorter paths; faster understanding. IOW, the speed of light is not the speed of understanding. The message on the wires is not the decision. No matter what you do, somewhere in the network you are process-bound.
“Not sure, but definitely hoping.”
It’s an old story from Demming. What you have to pay attention to is the process and not in the sense of always fixing it but in making sure it is staffed by the right people as well. Particularly when you start a project of any kind, the initial set of people make an incredible difference to the outcomes. Connectivity just gets them off the airplanes and if the tools are sharable, improves record keeping. Then it comes down to the time resources available across individuals in the team.
You can’t push string unless you starch it.
“I have a hard time seeing how commission-based sales (which focus the attention of the sales person on the sales person) are going to survive in a world where collaboration – both inside an organization, and out – becomes an increasingly important source of value.”
Because the means of cooperation is based on a formal process of document exchanges and meetings that have contractural validity. I’m choosing words carefully. I don’t believe that will change as much as one might want even given electronic media. They do this for money not egoboo. Commission based sales are rotten because the pit R&D against Marketing at the personal level. They rot cohesion by pitting motivations against each other on the same team as far as the customer is concerned. Aging deceitful in pain managers (guys and girls like me) can use that in a negotiation. If you are 30 and don’t work toward consensus, you are evil. If you are 50 and aren’t avoiding treachery, you are stupid.
“Your other point, about the small scale on which good design + build can survive, is what I find really interesting to watch. Yes, it’s limited now, but I keep thinking that massive connectivity can change this dynamic dramatically.”
Not necessarily. Connectivity is not affectivity. IOW, communities of interest form and close around the topic of interest. Think of the challenges a self-selecting organization such as the W3C has in coordinating the results of working groups. No matter what you do, consensus-based cooperation is slow. Here is one of the market cycle gaps I was describing earlier. As a result of these, cooperation is jagged and connectivity doesn’t change that except to lower the barrier to an initial meeting. It is significant but it settles in annealing fashion in some optima and stays there unless disrupted. As I said last winter, context is friction. The reason small scale works for R&D even if within a larger scale is because the numbers and types of connections are limited. Shorter paths; faster understanding. IOW, the speed of light is not the speed of understanding. The message on the wires is not the decision. No matter what you do, somewhere in the network you are process-bound.
“Not sure, but definitely hoping.”
It’s an old story from Demming. What you have to pay attention to is the process and not in the sense of always fixing it but in making sure it is staffed by the right people as well. Particularly when you start a project of any kind, the initial set of people make an incredible difference to the outcomes. Connectivity just gets them off the airplanes and if the tools are sharable, improves record keeping. Then it comes down to the time resources available across individuals in the team.
You can’t push string unless you starch it.
So there is a way to push string. I suppose that explains all the starched collars in the IBM of yore.
And yes, the right people matter more than anything. One of the more difficult lessons I’ve learned is that when it comes to predicting success or failure, it’s not about what’s on the table, it’s what’s in the chairs.
What I find compelling about the world that’s developing is that it offers the promise of allowing a small group of the right people to have an effect that would, in a less connected time, require a bureaucracy that would swiftly become its own imperative.
I’ve seen – first hand – what happens when a top-heavy organization larded with middle management enters a cycle of terminal slam-and-ram with the sales department. Inevitably, the company develops a reputation for over-promising and under-delivering that’s very hart to escape – not to mention a culture focused on the travails of very iffy politics and their constant drains on productivity.
The thing I’m focused on now is developing a network-centric organizational structure that allows a group to (a) engage in a process of rapid-prototyping, and (b) scale when and where they find traction.
I was always impressed with the way a commercial production could have 100 people on a set, all working with a phenomenal degree of coordination and efficiency, even though only one or two were actual employees of the production company itself (the director, and – if they were around, the executive producer). Everyone else, from the producer on down, was an IC. And typically these people wouldn’t trade their careers for staff positions unless they absolutely had to.
Of course, the norms and conventions that governed admission to this labor pool and regulated its operation took a century to develop – and that was on top of traditions that had developed in theaters then opera houses starting centuries earlier. But the point is, it can be done. And given the new velocity of change (which actually seems to have accelerated within the recession), there’s no reason to think that broader evolutionary trends can’t tend in that direction as well.
So we’ll see.
So there is a way to push string. I suppose that explains all the starched collars in the IBM of yore.
And yes, the right people matter more than anything. One of the more difficult lessons I’ve learned is that when it comes to predicting success or failure, it’s not about what’s on the table, it’s what’s in the chairs.
What I find compelling about the world that’s developing is that it offers the promise of allowing a small group of the right people to have an effect that would, in a less connected time, require a bureaucracy that would swiftly become its own imperative.
I’ve seen – first hand – what happens when a top-heavy organization larded with middle management enters a cycle of terminal slam-and-ram with the sales department. Inevitably, the company develops a reputation for over-promising and under-delivering that’s very hart to escape – not to mention a culture focused on the travails of very iffy politics and their constant drains on productivity.
The thing I’m focused on now is developing a network-centric organizational structure that allows a group to (a) engage in a process of rapid-prototyping, and (b) scale when and where they find traction.
I was always impressed with the way a commercial production could have 100 people on a set, all working with a phenomenal degree of coordination and efficiency, even though only one or two were actual employees of the production company itself (the director, and – if they were around, the executive producer). Everyone else, from the producer on down, was an IC. And typically these people wouldn’t trade their careers for staff positions unless they absolutely had to.
Of course, the norms and conventions that governed admission to this labor pool and regulated its operation took a century to develop – and that was on top of traditions that had developed in theaters then opera houses starting centuries earlier. But the point is, it can be done. And given the new velocity of change (which actually seems to have accelerated within the recession), there’s no reason to think that broader evolutionary trends can’t tend in that direction as well.
So we’ll see.
“…the company develops a reputation for over-promising and under-delivering ”
That is precisely what happens. That is why Rule 2 is so important and so often broken. That way the guy from Rule 1 can prove to him/her self that the RFP response is accurate instead of relying on rumor and sales brochures.
An astute colleague of mine put it this way: “Your most important job is promise control.”
Understand that even in these network-enabled systems, we’ve been evolving toward a talent management game similar to the old studio systems. Watch the outcomes of those beltway investigations into head hunting inside competitors.
Nature or nurture always finds a scarcity to exploit. As I’ve said here and in a Harvard publication, two scarcities cannot be automated away: talent and novel ideas. So the game evolves towards managing those. The idea of the Internet as we talked about it pre-web was a system of systems for amplifying the scarcities. It seems so Panglossian now.
“…the company develops a reputation for over-promising and under-delivering ”
That is precisely what happens. That is why Rule 2 is so important and so often broken. That way the guy from Rule 1 can prove to him/her self that the RFP response is accurate instead of relying on rumor and sales brochures.
An astute colleague of mine put it this way: “Your most important job is promise control.”
Understand that even in these network-enabled systems, we’ve been evolving toward a talent management game similar to the old studio systems. Watch the outcomes of those beltway investigations into head hunting inside competitors.
Nature or nurture always finds a scarcity to exploit. As I’ve said here and in a Harvard publication, two scarcities cannot be automated away: talent and novel ideas. So the game evolves towards managing those. The idea of the Internet as we talked about it pre-web was a system of systems for amplifying the scarcities. It seems so Panglossian now.
“…the company develops a reputation for over-promising and under-delivering ”
That is precisely what happens. That is why Rule 2 is so important and so often broken. That way the guy from Rule 1 can prove to him/her self that the RFP response is accurate instead of relying on rumor and sales brochures.
An astute colleague of mine put it this way: “Your most important job is promise control.”
Understand that even in these network-enabled systems, we’ve been evolving toward a talent management game similar to the old studio systems. Watch the outcomes of those beltway investigations into head hunting inside competitors.
Nature or nurture always finds a scarcity to exploit. As I’ve said here and in a Harvard publication, two scarcities cannot be automated away: talent and novel ideas. So the game evolves towards managing those. The idea of the Internet as we talked about it pre-web was a system of systems for amplifying the scarcities. It seems so Panglossian now.
“…the company develops a reputation for over-promising and under-delivering ”
That is precisely what happens. That is why Rule 2 is so important and so often broken. That way the guy from Rule 1 can prove to him/her self that the RFP response is accurate instead of relying on rumor and sales brochures.
An astute colleague of mine put it this way: “Your most important job is promise control.”
Understand that even in these network-enabled systems, we’ve been evolving toward a talent management game similar to the old studio systems. Watch the outcomes of those beltway investigations into head hunting inside competitors.
Nature or nurture always finds a scarcity to exploit. As I’ve said here and in a Harvard publication, two scarcities cannot be automated away: talent and novel ideas. So the game evolves towards managing those. The idea of the Internet as we talked about it pre-web was a system of systems for amplifying the scarcities. It seems so Panglossian now.
“So there is a way to push string. I suppose that explains all the starched collars in the IBM of yore.”
Exactamundo. Office discipline, long rows of desks with a fellow in the front watching them, narrow ties, white shirts and all the frivolity of a graveyard = enforced straight-line buttoned up thinking. Think this way: when Cheyenne Mountain is locked and sealed, it is referred to as “buttoned up”.
When you can waste anything but time and communications of highly detailed information that has to be passed as losslessly as possible (all values have the same shared semantics), a buttoned up office culture is the way to go: or you have to button up the automation.
That is why XML docs can still have DTDs and don’t always need schemas. It’s a question of how tightly you want to couple.
The coupling curve over time across widely distributed resources is a fascinating theoretical topic. It’s part of the challenge you have to meet in your network-centric organization with its just-in-time contracting for services.
“So there is a way to push string. I suppose that explains all the starched collars in the IBM of yore.”
Exactamundo. Office discipline, long rows of desks with a fellow in the front watching them, narrow ties, white shirts and all the frivolity of a graveyard = enforced straight-line buttoned up thinking. Think this way: when Cheyenne Mountain is locked and sealed, it is referred to as “buttoned up”.
When you can waste anything but time and communications of highly detailed information that has to be passed as losslessly as possible (all values have the same shared semantics), a buttoned up office culture is the way to go: or you have to button up the automation.
That is why XML docs can still have DTDs and don’t always need schemas. It’s a question of how tightly you want to couple.
The coupling curve over time across widely distributed resources is a fascinating theoretical topic. It’s part of the challenge you have to meet in your network-centric organization with its just-in-time contracting for services.
George Guilder, who is wrong about some very fundamental things, did make one very good point when he noticed that the organizations, cultures and societies that do well (i.e. survive and thrive) are the ones that build their moral systems around scarcity – being wasteful with anything in cheap and easy supply, while preserving and protecting whatever is rare and expensive.
Trouble starts when environmental or circumstantial shifts make what was once abundant scarce, while cheapening the things that used to be expensive. It’s a rare moral or cultural code that can adapt to change like this without imploding.
The media trades, which benefited from a monopoly on attention derived from the high cost sof duplication and very limited access to distribution channels, are a near-perfect example of this change in action. Suddenly, everything is available everywhere, all at once, and for free. Attention, on the other hand, is in very short supply. And the more focused it becomes, the more difficult it is to capture.
So that’s a problem for a lot of people. The challenge is developing management structures (and the essential supporting ethos) that are actually aligned with this new scheme of abundance and scarcity.
George Guilder, who is wrong about some very fundamental things, did make one very good point when he noticed that the organizations, cultures and societies that do well (i.e. survive and thrive) are the ones that build their moral systems around scarcity – being wasteful with anything in cheap and easy supply, while preserving and protecting whatever is rare and expensive.
Trouble starts when environmental or circumstantial shifts make what was once abundant scarce, while cheapening the things that used to be expensive. It’s a rare moral or cultural code that can adapt to change like this without imploding.
The media trades, which benefited from a monopoly on attention derived from the high cost sof duplication and very limited access to distribution channels, are a near-perfect example of this change in action. Suddenly, everything is available everywhere, all at once, and for free. Attention, on the other hand, is in very short supply. And the more focused it becomes, the more difficult it is to capture.
So that’s a problem for a lot of people. The challenge is developing management structures (and the essential supporting ethos) that are actually aligned with this new scheme of abundance and scarcity.
George Guilder, who is wrong about some very fundamental things, did make one very good point when he noticed that the organizations, cultures and societies that do well (i.e. survive and thrive) are the ones that build their moral systems around scarcity – being wasteful with anything in cheap and easy supply, while preserving and protecting whatever is rare and expensive.
Trouble starts when environmental or circumstantial shifts make what was once abundant scarce, while cheapening the things that used to be expensive. It’s a rare moral or cultural code that can adapt to change like this without imploding.
The media trades, which benefited from a monopoly on attention derived from the high cost sof duplication and very limited access to distribution channels, are a near-perfect example of this change in action. Suddenly, everything is available everywhere, all at once, and for free. Attention, on the other hand, is in very short supply. And the more focused it becomes, the more difficult it is to capture.
So that’s a problem for a lot of people. The challenge is developing management structures (and the essential supporting ethos) that are actually aligned with this new scheme of abundance and scarcity.
George Guilder, who is wrong about some very fundamental things, did make one very good point when he noticed that the organizations, cultures and societies that do well (i.e. survive and thrive) are the ones that build their moral systems around scarcity – being wasteful with anything in cheap and easy supply, while preserving and protecting whatever is rare and expensive.
Trouble starts when environmental or circumstantial shifts make what was once abundant scarce, while cheapening the things that used to be expensive. It’s a rare moral or cultural code that can adapt to change like this without imploding.
The media trades, which benefited from a monopoly on attention derived from the high cost sof duplication and very limited access to distribution channels, are a near-perfect example of this change in action. Suddenly, everything is available everywhere, all at once, and for free. Attention, on the other hand, is in very short supply. And the more focused it becomes, the more difficult it is to capture.
So that’s a problem for a lot of people. The challenge is developing management structures (and the essential supporting ethos) that are actually aligned with this new scheme of abundance and scarcity.
I should refine the bit about attention as a force – noting that it can be mapped into Cartesian space, with x, y, and z values representing how focused or scattered attention is, how long it stays focused, and the number of people focused (to differing degrees) on any given object. And though time is already included in this scheme, you can obviously add another temporal layer by tracking fluctuations in the attention of a group.
Working within a continuum that starts with a broad base of general, low-level interest, and proceeding to intense creative and analytic focus on the past of a small group, a project can result in an overall shift in the sustained intensity of focus within the larger group.
I suppose there’s a fifth dimension here as well, which tracks the effect of this shift in attention on some tangible aspect of reality.
I should refine the bit about attention as a force – noting that it can be mapped into Cartesian space, with x, y, and z values representing how focused or scattered attention is, how long it stays focused, and the number of people focused (to differing degrees) on any given object. And though time is already included in this scheme, you can obviously add another temporal layer by tracking fluctuations in the attention of a group.
Working within a continuum that starts with a broad base of general, low-level interest, and proceeding to intense creative and analytic focus on the past of a small group, a project can result in an overall shift in the sustained intensity of focus within the larger group.
I suppose there’s a fifth dimension here as well, which tracks the effect of this shift in attention on some tangible aspect of reality.
I should refine the bit about attention as a force – noting that it can be mapped into Cartesian space, with x, y, and z values representing how focused or scattered attention is, how long it stays focused, and the number of people focused (to differing degrees) on any given object. And though time is already included in this scheme, you can obviously add another temporal layer by tracking fluctuations in the attention of a group.
Working within a continuum that starts with a broad base of general, low-level interest, and proceeding to intense creative and analytic focus on the past of a small group, a project can result in an overall shift in the sustained intensity of focus within the larger group.
I suppose there’s a fifth dimension here as well, which tracks the effect of this shift in attention on some tangible aspect of reality.
Look, all you guys are fighting the tides of new wealth… rich Chinese, rich Indians, finally some rich everybody else.
The new trick is getting ALL the rich to live here. Because we have the best stuff for the rich – best education, best medical, best freedoms, best tax laws, best of everything the new mobile rich will seek.
Also, service jobs are FINE jobs. Choose between cutting hair or working in a steel factory… most young Americans know which one is a better job. Stop poo-pooing stuff that’s not manufacturing…
Just what’s the GE guy with his hand out to Obama gonna say anyway? I mean jeez, talk about yesteryear.
Look, here’s the thing – you old guys all bitch and complain about “too much consumption” – and frankly it is a good thing less consumption of hard assets that must be recycled, so that we’ve reached a point where more and more of our dollars go to things like cable tv, broadband, cellular… and not manufactured shit – that’s a good thing.
Look we don’t like $600 hammers for sure right? – so why are you pretending we all should buy a $60 hammer, so some guy in your neighborhood can make a living making hammers? IT MAKES NO SENSE.
Even more to the point, what does make sense, that as our society advances, we spend a greater percentage of our income on the margins of things for silly improvements – like Viagra for all you old men – you sure think thats an important advancement right? More spending on health care as a % of earning is just a symptom of progress.
As a single example, Facebook is doing marvelous wonders in aiding social constructs with digital bits. It makes society better. Microsoft makes society better. Google makes society better. Fed Ex makes society better.
Its like Floyd’s barbershop in here man, c’mon guys lighten up.
Look, all you guys are fighting the tides of new wealth… rich Chinese, rich Indians, finally some rich everybody else.
The new trick is getting ALL the rich to live here. Because we have the best stuff for the rich – best education, best medical, best freedoms, best tax laws, best of everything the new mobile rich will seek.
Also, service jobs are FINE jobs. Choose between cutting hair or working in a steel factory… most young Americans know which one is a better job. Stop poo-pooing stuff that’s not manufacturing…
Just what’s the GE guy with his hand out to Obama gonna say anyway? I mean jeez, talk about yesteryear.
Look, here’s the thing – you old guys all bitch and complain about “too much consumption” – and frankly it is a good thing less consumption of hard assets that must be recycled, so that we’ve reached a point where more and more of our dollars go to things like cable tv, broadband, cellular… and not manufactured shit – that’s a good thing.
Look we don’t like $600 hammers for sure right? – so why are you pretending we all should buy a $60 hammer, so some guy in your neighborhood can make a living making hammers? IT MAKES NO SENSE.
Even more to the point, what does make sense, that as our society advances, we spend a greater percentage of our income on the margins of things for silly improvements – like Viagra for all you old men – you sure think thats an important advancement right? More spending on health care as a % of earning is just a symptom of progress.
As a single example, Facebook is doing marvelous wonders in aiding social constructs with digital bits. It makes society better. Microsoft makes society better. Google makes society better. Fed Ex makes society better.
Its like Floyd’s barbershop in here man, c’mon guys lighten up.
Morgan…we have the best medical? You’ve got to be kidding. We have doctors who prescribe death to pop stars. We have a system that results in our being behind at least thirty other nations in terms of infant mortality and life expectancy. What’s your metric for health care? Oh…wealth…that’s it… Tell it to Michael Jackson’s fans… And FedX doesn’t do as good a job on exporting packages as does the US Postal service working cooperatively with the postal services in many other countries.
And I’d like to see a world where everyone is cutting each others hair…but I don’t want that as my world.
Morgan…we have the best medical? You’ve got to be kidding. We have doctors who prescribe death to pop stars. We have a system that results in our being behind at least thirty other nations in terms of infant mortality and life expectancy. What’s your metric for health care? Oh…wealth…that’s it… Tell it to Michael Jackson’s fans… And FedX doesn’t do as good a job on exporting packages as does the US Postal service working cooperatively with the postal services in many other countries.
And I’d like to see a world where everyone is cutting each others hair…but I don’t want that as my world.
Morgan is kidding. He’s always kidding. That’s what he does. It’s funny stuff, right?
Yeah, and it would be funnier if he and a bunch of his ilk didn’t believe it…
“…attention as a force ”
Yes. Both directed and misdirected but it is only potential unless acted on.
“tracking fluctuations in the attention of a group”
Track multiple memberships as well. That provides for the connectors, the worm holes among the little universes of local force. Also note that groups migrate. A few not inconsequential members of the elder markup tribe are my Facebook friends. These clusters cohere despite the identity space which is why OpenID, etc., are very important.
An illuminating model here is coherence and the notion that attention fixes events into spaces that both define and perturb these clusters where intension emerges from directed and misdirected attention.
Yes Rick we have the most advance health care in the world. Not the most socialized. Not the most everyone gets to wait in the same long line.
But when you have the money to spend, and want the best care the world has to offer, you come here. And that is a core advantage this country has – we shouldn’t lose it.
The same goes with education.
I’ll say it again, we want to be the place where the world’s rich live. That’s what we want to be.
Morgan, you are out of your ever lovin’ mind. You are for health care and education for the rich and young only, and screw everyone else. I’ll take a more socially responsible way of life, thank you very much. Your “numbers” only work for the top 10% of American society. I guess the rest of us…the dirty blue collar masses…only exist to prop up your executive class of Wall St. geniuses.
I’ll tell you this, nobody that I talk to in Australia where I spend a fair amount of time would want to live under the American health care system. They are better educated, too, on average. But you don’t want a better average because you might have to mix with a lower class of people, I guess.
I don’t want to be in the place where the world’s rich live; too many of them have atrocious taste and too many are assholes. I want to live where it’s nice, the air is clean, and I can hike or bike or just hang out in natural beauty.
Yeah Rick, that’s not going to happen here.
“On average” is a giant scam – it means for hudrends of millions of Americans (the ones paying the bills) they get less than they get now. Say what you mean, you want guys making $125K year to get the same shitty care that people making in $25K in Australia get.
Dude. Waiting in lines for healthcare is what happens in other countries. Waiting for MONTHS = Australia, Canada, Britain.
Look, I spent a good amount of time here, explaining what this country needs is a basic services system JUST LIKE THE VA SYSTEM for the Medicare folks and the poor.
That’ll be JUST LIKE what everybody gets in foreign systems. Just like Australia, just like Britain, just like France. Our poor will have care JUST LIKE in the foreign countries you love so much.
What we don’t need is to take the huge % of people who like the current care they get and PUT THEM ON A LINE, just to be “fair.”
Try and actually respond to my points – it makes you more interesting.
Interesting discussion. My deflated 2 cents worth:
I like the mention of that 100+ year old dining room table, right alongside what sounds, to these 60-plus-year-old ears, like the kind of jargon that went along with the dot.com thing and other neo-irrational exuberances.
I know, us old farts from the Old World just don’t understand all the new synapsasizing that’s going on, this new acceleration of everything, the flattening of everything, and how all of us are going to have to find our own way into the Brave New World or just die.
Pardon me for asking, in all this wonderful matching of R&D and Marketing and 4-Ps, and doing away with the millstone of middle management and Big Organization, where the cognoscenti in that New part of Industry are planning to be instantaneously reactive to “demand” of some sort: Where’s that “demand” going to come from? There was demand from venture capitalists and people who were going to make their fortunes by issuing or buying in on IPOs for flat, responsive businesses that were going to produce the code-based Wave of the Future. Like there was and continues to be “demand” for CDOs and other derivatives, and “Flip That House” is still very much on the air.
What happens when all the folks who are going to make LOTS OF money out of instantly responding to “demand” for dining room tables, having done all the R&D work (along with “spec” for a myriad of other potentially “demanded” stuff), being ready instantly to “scale up” and all that, run up against the number of people who already have a 100-year-old dining table that works reasonably well for them? It may not be as close to the undifferentiated, properly priced Platonic Ideal of a table, but you can put your plate and fork on it and sit there with your family (however configured) and share a meal. And with an official 9.5% US unemployment and unofficial number maybe twice or thrice that, and not a whole lot of Real Wealth being created (as opposed to the trading and repackaging and recirculation of Funny Munny), where are all the Agile people going to be paid the wherewithal to have some food to put on that plate?
Looks like once again the cow has jumped over the field called “need” right straight to the moonbeam labeled “want.”“What are they buying and how are they buying it.”? Exactly, indeed. How can you “buy” something if you can’t “pay” for it in any coin that the manufacturer accepts? Virtual oatmeal does not stick to the ribs.
I also like the mention of “scarcity” becoming a driver in What To Do Next. In Florida we have a flood of developers with money or credit to burn, buying the legislature’s and governor’s recent imprimatur on killing the last little vestiges of growth planning and management, including destruction of the mechanism for allocating the other scarce resource here – water. No more power of the permit to keep developers from paving and condomizing and New Communitizing, free of impact fees and free to create new political clusters to DEMAND access to water for their monoculture lawns, decorative fountains and swimming pools. How, in the basically greed-driven “meme” of systems-think, will the thing that usually goes along with scarcity, famine, be averted?
Living systems have billions of years of fine-tuning homeostatic processes to keep organisms alive. Unless you accept the notion of a Great Inventor, all that was done empirically via “natural selection.” Many organisms manage to achieve a meta-stability of population as part of an ecology. Humans have little to none of that part about sustainability to rein in their impulses to pleasure-first. What in the New Systems-Thinking World will be acting as any kind of negative-feedback regulator driving in the direction of sustainability? Keeping in mind, of course, that old bit about “Who cares? Eventually the Sun is going to vaporize the Earth anyway, so why shouldn’t I play the grasshopper instead of the ant?”
If you already got a 100-year-old dining table and a bunch of other “quality” stuff that lasts and lasts and has already used up pretty much all the scarce resources it’s going to, how much more “stuff” do you need?
Just asking, of course.
And Morgan, I think you are just about 180 degrees out on all kinds of stuff. I get VA health care and I do not STAND ON LINE. I at least know people who have lived with and benefited from “socialized medicine” in other countries you named, and for some reason their experiences are just totally inconsistent with your mental construct. I am a nurse, and if you think there’s anything magic or even above-average about the “Greatest Health Care In The World” you think we got here, you need to go stand in line for psych services. And try not to pick up a case of MRSA or VRSA or resistant TB while you’re waiting.
“What in the New Systems-Thinking World will be acting as any kind of negative-feedback regulator driving in the direction of sustainability?”
Costs. There is no new systems thinking. There is a lot of bullshit that passes for systems thinking but the real thing has ‘energy budget’ as a top item. You can’t sell what they can’t afford and you can’t give them what they already have. Just a few examples:
1. The cost of the server farm
2. The ever rising costs of third party provided content (not music, but maps) where the costs of that content are easily seen and there is no alternative.
3. The costs of advertisements and marketing which aren’t free on the web either.
Obama didn’t win with a grass roots campaign. He won with grass roots donations + those sizable contributions from Wall Street which he chose to hide by refusing public funding which he had by bypassing the government. IOW, he won by spending lots and lots of money.
The 100 year old table has value that can’t be bought elsewhere: 50 years worth of scars from my family every one of which I value which is why my mother-in-law was not allowed to get her mits on it to “clean it up”.
Both points were not mentioned but totally implied. Thanks for articulating.
Regarding potential energy vs. kinetic – that’s exactly the point. With the disintegration of the closed system of distribution where all costs were recaptured through exchange of discrete and limited copies, successful approaches will need a new source of economic power to cover their costs and profit requirements.
The object of the game is to determine – in advance – what sort of actual change (i.e. what release of kinetic energy) can be precipitated through the concentration of potential energy, which is what you find in a situation where many people are focused on either the same thing, or on complementary pieces of a larger whole. Assuming you can do this well, you’ve got the basis of something to bank on.
In the old order, distribution and marketing were the end games. Assuming you could get enough butts in enough seats, your costs would be covered. In the new order, you have to push the point of economic exchange downstream another step, and recapture your invested costs based on what people do after they sit down.
Needless to say, not every form of media has a measurable downstream effect – or at least not one with with any economic value. That tilts the playing field against endeavors that are purely ephemeral.
Regarding multiple memberships – yes again. The assumption is that any system will start small and focused, then expand greatly to encompass a broad base of engagement, a small subset of which will go on to engage in some economically productive activity.
It’s unlikely, in the model I see, that the activity of this small and final group would cover all costs of engagement with the broader audience used to find them. However, the process of engagement – as a cultural event – is something of interest to advertisers (and I use that term in the loosest possible sense), and represents a convergence of interests.
I know this probably seems very abstract, and the rough idea is further along than the ability to articulate succinctly. But it’s nice to see that you recognize the importance of the pieces.
JTM – If we all end up with great 100 year old tables, I’d say that creative energy should move on to something else.
It’s important recognize that ‘demand’ is not necessarily for products. Madison Ave. may have a hard time understanding demand for anything that doesn’t come stamped with a UPC, but any human will tell you that the the scope of what matters is far broader than what you can find at Wal-Mart and Target combined.
When it comes to the kind of kinetic energy I cited above, it’s probably best that it not be focused on the strictly commercial. Rather, it should be something with broader importance that supersedes commercial interests, and which commercial interests can benefit from when people start moving in a given direction.
What’s really interesting here is that the criterion for selection that people use may not be strict utility. When promotion is aligned with a broader shift, you can see the how becoming as important as the what.
Consider your example with the developers. Obviously, home builders can take a serious and productive interest when big changes in residential practice start to unfold. But if the broader framework is focused on sustainability – and has a hard and transparent metric for measuring it – then the jackass trying to sell McMansions with 10,000 square foot laws to the residents of Phoenix isn’t going to find that deliberate alignment with the broader shift offers a very good ROI.
At the same time, his competitor with truly sustainable designs can benefit mightily if he’s seen to be in friendly orbit with the larger and independent forces of cultural relevance and measurable influence.
Yes, one of the points of “the 100 year old table” is that we don’t need a new one, and perhaps those who might make new ones should do something else…or what about that future we were promised with more leisure time? A near-steady state economy would not need as much crap being produced…we’d have more of those “durable goods” that we “need”, and the durable goods would be…more durable. In a society that had products that last two to five times longer than the current average, what might we do? Enjoy ourselves more?
Morgan, we all wait in line anyway…for approval from the insurance companies, to make appointments, for all of it.
I’m all for the 4 day work week myself. Once you hit a certain level, time is more important than money (unless you’ve got an unhealthy need for money).
Also, in spite of all the geekery, it’s not an obsession with technology for the sake of technology. My feeling is that the right amount is the minimum needed, because all tech – no matter how advantageous – carries transaction costs.
As soon as you have more than you need, the extra transaction costs become pure inefficiency.
6.8 billion humans, and counting, all with “needs.” At the very least, the first tier or three of Maslow’s hierarchy. A relative few with “ambition,” and a ton of “wants,” for an infinite set of “things” that appeal to that ol’ debbil limbic system.
My wife and I use about 100 gallons of potable water every two weeks, make a big chunk of our electrical power via solar cells, and do a bunch of other stuff that people like Madoff and Bernanke and the rest would characterize as “freier” behaviors. As in “Sucker.” Across Tampa Bay from where I live, there’s a “successful real estate developer” who figured out “regulatory capture” of zoning and land use systems and Funny Finance on the way to a 20,000 sq.ft. “home” with 4 or 5 acres of “gardens” and fountains and pools and yard, and his establishment and his people burn through about a million and a half gallons of drinkable water every year. “Because,” as he put it, “I can afford it.” Yeah, maybe, thanks to perverse rate structures and maybe some illegal connections to the mains, and fools like me that don’t live the large life, whatever that means. While lots of people in these parlous economic times are choosing not to pay the water bill since the money’s needed to buy mac-’n-cheese at the Dollar Store, and maybe electricity enough to run the air conditioning that keeps them from cooking in their own rented or in-foreclosure quarters. And “they” are still building and selling “lot-crusher” McMansions around here, no doubt many of them to that part of the species that provides the buzz to the other part that comes from cocaine and other hard drugs, including the endorphins that help people believe in Bernie Madoff and his magical mystery powers in the realm of High Finance.
I have to retain my observation that humans don’t have as a group the mental and emotional tools to find a path to meta-stability and sustainability. They don’t have a model, as it were, or at least not one that has the spiritual power to overcome selfish individuality. No “hive mind,” especially not one shaped by millenia to produce a stable but buddable community like a bee colony or hive. But I would like to see and maybe contribute to some efforts to define a complex of ways of thinking and acting that might lead us in actual real paths of righteousness.
Building “really good” fighter/attack jets including their missiles and mil-spec electronics packages, and building on double-entendre technologies like some of the fool-around-with-DNA stuff and “autonomous battle robots” and such-like, and all those “maps” that will facilitate further exploitation of all kinds of resources for personal gain, ain’t gonna do it. Though a not inconsiderable number of people, individuals as part of little or larger groups, will “find money” in the process, so they can “live large,” and die before there is any chance of retribution for whatever horrors they loose, one of those little bits of negative feedback that might help keep the most of us alive. Like the “fate” of Bernie Madoff in his three-squares-and-a-flop, universal health and dental care, padded cell in the federal fat farm facilities. Who will be plotting new scams from there.
Here’s an interesting addendum – Jacques Valle speaking briefly about the physics of information (via Sputnik Observatory).