Big Productivity, Old Style

Joseph Paxton's famous "Emperor
Fountain" at Chatsworth

We live in the worlds of Big Business, Big Labor, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Data and, in the last decade or two, Big Productivity.  There’s an entire industry that’s taken shape in the form of Getting Things Done (“stress-free” productivity!), First Things First, Franklin Covey, 7 Habits, the 4-Hour Work Week, a hundred apps, a thousand courses, and a steady barrage of articles all instructing us on how to use our time more wisely.  I am certain, this year alone, to stumble upon a dozen articles with advice on how to clear my email inbox.  We are challenged with “contexts” in our daily tasks, selective ignorance, interruption prevention and avoiding open loops.  Special red files store our life goals, which must not be mixed with the light blue files containing this Friday’s tasks.  Even our trusty GPS reminds us to pick up toothpaste when we pass the CVS so as not to have to make a second trip.

So, it comes as something of a surprise when we discover anyone before modern times who could get anything at all done.  But get it done they did, and many (whom we rarely hear about) lived extraordinary lives filled with an endless series of accomplishments.  I've had chance meetings with some of these folks in my research over the last few weeks and, for no other reason than I like their stories, share them with you here.

If Your Board Were "The Avengers"

If your board of directors doesn't look like this, maybe it should.  As the summer blockbuster season begins, see my guest post over at the Ascent "Investing Edge" blog here.  (It's also featured at "Inside the Hive" on boston.com here.)

A Memorial Day Post: Some Memes of American History

I took this picture of hand rock in 1991.  It is the perfect
likeness of a human hand, somehow inscribed in the rock.

There are some stories in America that just have legs.

Take, for example, the tale of the Thompson Long Gun.

At the time of Middleborough’s incorporation in 1669 by English from nearby Plymouth, the local Nemasket and their ancestors had been living in the area for perhaps 12,000 years.  When conflict broke out between the colonists and Native Americans in the summer of 1675, Middleboro’s 75 English retreated to a fort built on the Nemasket River.

In early June 1675 a group of Nemasket appeared near a rock on a hillside on the opposite shore of the river.  For several days, the story goes, the Natives flung insults at the fort until Isaac Howland, famous for his marksmanship, was selected to fire an especially long gun brought by the commander of the fort, John Thompson.  As the distance between the fort and rock was about a half mile, requiring a trajectory more like artillery than a gun, nobody expected anything more than a startled reaction from the Nemasket and perhaps some peace and quiet.  

The Greatest Migration of All

Over on the Historical Society Blog, I've proposed another kind of "Great Migration" to the ones historians usually count.  But this one, it turns out, was just as important to George Washington as it is to today's technology executives.  It begins like this:

Ask an American historian to define the Great Migration and you’ll hear one of several answers. Most will describe the movement of 6 million African Americans from the rural South who headed north and west, from

A Jack Delano photo of migrants
heading north from Florida, 1940.

 World War I through 1970, seeking economic opportunity and relief from Jim Crow laws.

See here for more.

I Gotta Get Me Some New Weekend Reading

Honestly.  I used to love catching up on my stacks and posts of reading on the weekend.  Not so much lately, though. I feel like I’m seeing the same articles and hearing the same opinions over and over again. For example. . .

1. Peggy Noonan writes beautiful prose, and seems to hang out with some pretty interesting people. Why, then, does everything sound like this to me these days:

I went to the grocery store, like many Americans, to shop for mangoes.  Barack Obama hates mangoes.  We saw it in his polling numbers.  I had lunch this week with several conservative Senators who confirmed it.  I think we can all agree that the President is failing at mangoes.  

You know what?  We’re tired of Barack Obama hating mangoes.  It’s old.  It doesn’t play in middle America.  It gives our enemies in South America a reason to hate us.  In Washington we call it Obama-Mangoe fatigue.

You’ll find mangoes exhibited brilliantly at the new Bush library.  George W. Bush was one leader who knew how to deal with fruit.

Let’s be clear: Real Americans love mangoes.  I love mangoes.  The editors at the Wall Street Journal love mangoes. Many of us remember that Ronald Reagan loved mangoes, too, and sometimes had them for breakfast.

(For more of the same, see the latest here.)

2. Likewise, there’s a nightmare going on over at LinkedIn “Updates,” a series of posts apparently

solicited by the website from entrepreneurs in which they are asked to write about My Worst Mistake.  Think: "Tell me about your weaknesses" asked of people who honestly don't believe they have any weaknesses. The humblebrags have reached dizzying heights.  Here’s what the typical post sounds like:

Marathon Memorial 2

Before my meetings in Boston this morning I stopped by the Marathon memorial, which has been combined from two locations and moved to a very sunny Copley Square.  Things are healing. . .just a little.

Just Fade Away: A Memorial to the Boston Marathon Victims

I was in Boston on Saturday morning to attend a meeting just a block away from one of two "makeshift" memorials to the Marathon bombing victims.  This one had sprung up from the ground at Berkeley and Boylson streets.  I took a walk over to see it.

Boylston was still cordoned off and deserted except for a half dozen lab technicians hard at work a quarter mile away, small white-coated shapes across an eerie urban landscape.

Historians have watched the rise of these stunning, organic, "makeshift" memorials over the past few decades.  (Michael J. Lewis of Williams College has a particularly good essay on the topic here.)  They make powerful if fleeting statements, not unlike the memorials that arise on Facebook or other social media sites.  This particular one at Boylston was very sad and very moving.  Lots of people visited--fittingly, many runners who apparently stopped by as part of their Saturday morning workouts--and everyone to a person was quiet and most respectful.

What's particularly healing for me about this sort of makeshift memorial is that, while it will disappear soon enough, I will never cross Boylston Street again without seeing it in my mind's eye.  I don't know if it can ever crowd out the other awful images, but it's not a bad start.

Ironically, the most lasting monuments of all are sometimes those that just fade away.

Living in Fear of Google Glasses

I’m a gadget guy.  I loved my first Palm Pilot so much I bought it four times: once new, and each of the three times I accidentally left it in the seat pocket of my last flight. Those of you who go back a few years with this blog know of my adoration for the HP-12C, and the Tassimo.  I also had a fleeting affair with the Kindle, which I left for a younger iPad.  And I sleep with my smart phone on my bedside table, despite dire warnings to resist.

So, I feel comfortable with my gadget "bona feedays."

But I say all this as preamble to my new found, profound fear and loathing of Google Glass, and in particular, Google glasses.

My fear comes from the sure knowledge that once placed on the bridge of my nose they will never come off.  In other words, after I've experienced augmented-reality then I'm afraid reality will seem lacking.  That is a terribly depressing thought, since I have gotten to mostly understand and kind of like reality.  I am able, after all, to find a head of lettuce in a grocery store without little red arrows and coupons appearing before my eyes--just like I could once find my way with a paper map.   Yet I know, if the GPS isn’t on (even between home and work) it feels like a black hole in the middle of my dashboard.  Google glasses will place that black hole in the middle of my reality.

The nice thing about Google glasses is
they also make us beautiful.  No extra charge.

My loathing comes from the price of Google glasses.  Not that price--I’m sure they’ll be affordable, probably even free.  It’s the price of having my brain and emotions placed in the feeding trough of global advertisers.  Did I look at the Colgate and then the Crest?  For how long?  Which did I choose?  They can fix that.  

Just imagine Google and P&G and the Chinese military crawling around inside your head all day.  Just imagine your life last May 28th from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. being subpoenaed for a court case. All I can picture is Malcolm McDowell with toothpicks propping his eyes open and being made to feel nauseous whenever Beethoven plays.  I do not want that happening to me or my droogs.  As it is, once I post this online I’m going to start getting ads on gmail for toothpaste.

I have never, ever understood people who go without TVs, computers, or smart phones.  I have never had much sympathy for Luddites.  But that may change.  As long as technology was rummaging around in my bookshelves, music collection and kitchen cabinets, I was ok; once it gets into my frontal lobe, it might be time to resist.

Why History Students Should Love Big Data

My latest post over at the Historical Society Blog begins like this:

Spring 1976. Wilson Hall, Brown University. The late, great Professor William McLoughlin has just informed his 85 students in “American Social and Intellectual History” that they are to write their first paper. All he has given us is the title: “The Age of Jefferson and Adams.” We groan. Then he adds: “Keep it to three pages or less. Double-spaced.” We smile. Three pages? How hard can that be?

That was, for me anyway, the beginning of Big Data.  See here for more.

Today I Broke the Four-Minute Mile

This morning I ran four miles, part of my training for a June half-marathon.  It was very cold and very windy, typical March weather for my town, which used to be in New England but apparently has been relocated this winter to 150 miles east-northeast of Juneau, Alaska.

Anyway,  I pushed the “start” button on my trusty Runkeeper app and discovered it could not find the GPS satellite.  This is not uncommon, especially this close to the Arctic Circle; my car GPS often shows me driving through my neighbor’s bedroom and across the pond near our house.  Usually if I wait a minute or two I’m ok and my app is happy.

For those of you who don’t use a running app, I can highly recommend Runkeeper.  It does a fantastic job keeping time and distance, except for the mean lady who keeps whispering in my ear telling me how slow I’m running.  

This morning, though, I fell in love with that lady.  Here’s why.

Big Data and School Closings

We are suffering yet another dump of snow in the Boston area this morning, just as we were beginning to see the first signs of lawn and patio.  Schools are cancelled up and down the eastern part of the state.  Last night, as I watched our youngest daughter work the Web, I was reminded again just how much things have changed in the last generation.

When I was in high school (always a bad way to begin a paragraph, I admit, but. . .) When I was in high school and a winter storm approached, the radio was our best and sometimes only source for no-school news.  We would stay glued to WBZ where an announcer started with the "As" and worked his way to the "Zs."  If we were listening for, say, Dighton-Rehoboth, and happened to tune in at "Eastham" or "Easton," we were done for 20 or 30 minutes until the list recycled.  Some schools might call in at 5 a.m., some at 5:30 a.m. and yours at 6 a.m., which meant real vigilance in being present for each recycle of the "D" schools.  TV would sometimes help but it seems like there was less local news competition and less chance of a local affiliate bumping a network show for "big storm" ratings.  Today, big storms are apparently the best advertising and ratings-boost a local station can have.

5 Reasons Why Someday Every Business Post Will Start With a Number

You may have noticed: We’ve entered the “Age of the Numbered Advice Article.”  They are upon us like a plague.

Here are just a few I found on-line this morning (or made up, though you’ll have to decide which is which):

3 Issues CMOs Need to Address Now
8 Ways to Beat Projections (and Still Go Home at 5)
3 Steps to Making A+ Hires
4 Mistakes Every Entrepreneur Should Make Before They’re 22
2 Killer Ways to Be More Creative
6 Reasons to Use 20 Font In Silicon Valley
12 Certainties That Will Transform Every Career

The best of class in this category are what I call the “Hall of Famers," designed to present controversial lists which generate response and debate.  It’s what happens in Cooperstown every year; there are no rules, so all that’s left is debate.  This leads to posts like:

White if By Land, Black if By Sea?

I pity all of those reporters at the Vatican, having to wait in the rain with nothing to report for interminable periods of time.  The newspeople connected to stations here in Boston have resorted to describing in magnificent detail the color of the smoke rising from the temporary chimney, the smoke designed to signal whether a new pope has been elected (white) or not (black). 

“Let me tell you what happened with Pope John Paul II,” one said this morning on the radio.  “Grey to dark to darker to slightly grey. 15 minutes!  It had us all fooled!”  (It reminds me of my last post about telecommuting at Yahoo!; even if the world is dull, we still demand that our news and our newsmakers be lively.)

In 2012's Weathermakers to the World, we describe another environmental phenomenon associated with the Sistine Chapel, one put in place almost exactly 20 years ago.  It was a good reminder for me as I researched the book that, while “air conditioning” is almost always discussed in terms of human comfort, the modern art of “conditioning air” plays a critical role in historic preservation.  In fact, if the technology had not been invented and perfected in the 20^th century, it’s more likely than not that only cardinals would ever see the inside of the Sistine Chapel in the 21^st century.

Just When Did Silicon Valley Go Hollywood?

Wow.  If Justin Bieber hadn't had a lousy 19th birthday in London, the only thing I would have read from my LinkedIn “Influencers” last week was about Marissa Mayer and Yahoo!.  You may have heard: she stopped all telecommuting at the company, at least for now.  Like Buddy Bolden, she called her children home.  He to dance.  She for a little tap-dancing, one might guess.

Innocently enough, I thought it was just a policy change at Yahoo!, probably temporary or to be redefined later.  I was not even sure why it made the news, much less buried me in articles.  These kinds of decisions happen everywhere, all the time.  But mercy, was I ever wrong.   It turned out not to be a policy change at all, but an event.  A Silicon Valley event. The blogosphere erupted.  My Influencers influenced mightily.

Stressed Much? You're in Good Company

If you're feeling stressed you're in good company--all the way back to the American Revolution.  My latest guest post for the Historical Society blog is here.

Purchasing Worker Loyalty

The Mount Hope Finishing Company and village
of North Dighton, Massachusetts, in 1924.  Some
believed it was just one big, integrated factory.  

This is a story about employee benefits, lots of benefits.  More benefits than Google’s free transportation and gourmet lunches or Evernote’s housecleaning services or Genentech’s last-minute babysitters.  And it’s also a story about what employers might expect in return for all those benefits.

It starts in the little Massachusetts village of North Dighton in 1901 when 26-year-old Joseph Knowles Milliken, “J.K.” to his associates, examined an old abandoned mill beside the flowing waters of the Three Mile River, 15 miles upstream from Mount Hope Bay.  The village surrounding the mill seemed as sad and dilapidated as the rundown facility itself.  Seizing opportunity, however, J.K. established within six short months a cloth finishing mill to support the booming textile trade in nearby Fall River, New Bedford and Rhode Island.  Mount Hope Finishing was profitable from day one and its estimated need for 175 employees would eventually balloon to 1,400.

To remain successful, J.K. Milliken required copious and sure amounts of two essential raw materials, water and skilled labor.  At capacity, the mill required ten million gallons of clean water every day, and the young entrepreneur was successful in securing water rights for some 25 miles upstream.  It was in the securing of labor, however, that J.K. Milliken would leave his mark.

Extending far into the distance, the Three Mile River flowing behind it, the Mount Hope
Finishing Company would become the largest cloth bleachery under on roof in America.

After This, Nothing Will Be the Same

Remember Dick Fosbury?  In 1967 he was ranked the 61^st best high-jumper in the world.  At the Olympics in Mexico City the following year he cleared the bar at 7 feet 4.25 inches and won the gold medal.  He did it with a style so different from the traditional “western straddle” that it came to be called the Fosbury Flop.  People laughed.  Even some of his coaches watched in disbelief.  One newspaper described it as going over the bar “like a guy being pushed out of a 30-story window.”

Today, you cannot find a world-class high jumper who doesn’t do the Fosbury Flop.  One moment it was one thing; the next, it would never be the same.

I was pondering these kinds of events as I wrote my post on Henry Leland (The Prophet of Quality)--how suppliers and competitors could not believe what he was able to do with quality and interchangeable parts in 1908 on that British test track, but afterwards, if they did not do it as well, they could not compete.

Here’s a small one with big implications:  In 1970 or 80 or 90, if someone stood up on an airplane and started causing trouble, most of us put our head down in our books and let the flight attendants handle things.  Now, after 9/11—one of the silver linings, I suppose—if someone stands up on a plane and starts causing trouble, the entire plane stands up and duct tapes him or her to a seat.   There’s no hesitation.  We’ve learned the hard way that there’s no protection like self-protection.  One day changed everything.

In Memory of David Rossi, 1957-2003

Dave with our baby, who is now 17.

It was ten years ago today we lost David Rossi.  Only the good die young.

Dave studied Chemistry at PITT, and I had the great misfortune of living with him right after graduation, right around the time PITT won the national championship, the Pirates won the World Series and the Steelers won the Super Bowl.  We roomed together for a couple of years in New York City, and in our first year at HBS.  Dave introduced me to the HP-12C, to Isaac Payton Sweat, and to the advice from his summer of reading nothing but Louis L'Amour that you shouldn't carry a knife unless you're prepared to use it.  Dave convinced me one night over beers that Harry Truman was the only person in history who ever could have really ruled the world, right after WWII when he had the Bomb and the Army and the wartime economy.  (If I ever go back to get my PhD in History, that'll be my thesis.)  He also shared with me his irrefutable theory of dating by the numbers, which I wrote about in 2007.

The Prophet of Quality

Henry Martyn Leland was quality before quality was cool. Born near Barton, Vermont, in 1843, this mechanically-gifted farm boy soon fled the fields and proceeded to assemble a stellar “mechanic’s resume,” roughly equivalent today to someone having worked for IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Apple and Google.   Starting as a machinist in a company that manufactured power looms for America’s booming textile industry, he was employed during the Civil War at the cutting-edge United States Armory at Springfield, Massachusetts, moved to the world-renowned Colt Revolver Factory in Hartford, Connecticut, and spent time with Brown and Sharpe Manufacturing Company in Providence, one of the finest toolmakers in the world.  By the time he arrived in the automobile industry at the turn of the twentieth century, and specifically as general manager of an upstart brand called Cadillac, he had emphatic views on what made for manufacturing quality.

Leland must have cut quite a figure, more like a Biblical prophet than entrepreneur and mechanic.  He was full-bearded, slim and angular, cantankerous and autocratic--a God-fearing boss who opposed drinking and smoking, and held regular prayer meetings in his factories.  I don’t know if he ate locust, but he strikes me as John the Baptist with a set of calipers tucked in his hairshirt.

Thanks For Your Vote!

I appreciate your vote in the Backroads contest  but must have come in a very close 4th.  (I coulda had class.  I coulda been a contender.  I coulda been a somebody. . . .)  Anyway, back to my day job.

As we slip into yet another New England weekend threatened by snow, I'll leave you with some of the hot, dusty pictures from our 2012 canyon trip that I like even better than the contest entry.