Lowell on the Yangtze

Apple employs 43,000 people in the U.S. and 20,000 overseas, all dwarfed by its virtual workforce of 700,000 employees of overseas contractors assembling the gadgets we have come to cherish.  Apple describes overseas manufacture as its only viable economic option, and I don't doubt that to be true.  

This information comes from a recent, excellent (oft-blogged) New York Times piece by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, “How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work.” To make the point, Duhigg and Bradsher tell the story of how the foreman of a Chinese factory roused 8,000 workers inside the company dormitories around midnight, provided them with a biscuit and tea, and within a half hour had them launch into a 12-hour day to implement a last-minute redesign of the Apple iPhone screen.  Within 96 hours the plant was producing 10,000 iPhones a day.  


As one observer noted, that’s breathtaking.

Apple and others argue the overseas migration of jobs is permanent, a function of competitiveness and the need to generate profits to reinvest in innovation.   That’s the pleasant way of saying it.   A less pleasant way was offered by an Apple executive who claimed, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.  Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”

Note that Apple has $97.7 billion in cash on its balance sheet.  Note also that Apple and other American companies have been dealing (or not) with complaints about working conditions in their supplier factories for years.  High suicide rates.  Underage labor.   Excessive overtime.  Crowded dorms.  Fires.  Explosions.  Hazardous waste.  Falsified records.  One Apple executive opined, “The system works for us.  Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

Reinforcing where the real trouble lies, however, another noted, “Right now customers care more about a new iPhone than conditions in China.” Wall Street backed that rationale in August when Apple became the most valuable company in the world based on market cap.



Not so very far from my front door is the city of Lowell, considered the epitome of the early American industrial revolution with its large-scale, mechanized production and cheap labor.   By 1846 Lowell’s mills were producing almost one million yards of cloth a week; until the Civil War it was the largest concentration of industry in America.  For the 19th century, Lowell was breathtaking.

The workers were mostly young women recruited from nearby farms and housed in large, supervised boardinghouses.  They came to Lowell for independence, for cultural and religious opportunities, and for money.  Many only stayed a year but when they returned home could possess bank accounts of $25 or more.

In return, the women worked long hours every day except Sunday.  Summer days might last 14 hours, with the workers on their feet every minute.  The factory bells sent them to work at 4:50 a.m., rang them out at 7 p.m., and called curfew at 10 p.m.  One wrote that they worked “to the obedience of that ding-dong of the bell--just as though we were so many living machines.”


The mills also regulated conduct outside of the factory, expecting, among other requirements, regular church attendance.  Women who did not conform were blacklisted, never to work in a city mill again.



A decade after the first mill opened, protests began.  


In 1837, Sarah Bagley entered the Lowell mills and, gaining a full appreciation for the conditions, organized the Lowell Female Reform Association.  One of the Association’s primary struggles was to win a 10-hour day, eventually petitioning the Massachusetts state legislature.

We, the undersigned peaceable, industrious, hardworking men and women of Lowell. . .toiling from thirteen to fourteen hours per day, confined in unhealthy apartments, exposed to the poisonous contagion of air, vegetable, animal and mineral properties, debarred from proper Physical exercise, time for Mental discipline, and Mastication cruelly limited; and thereby hastening us on through pain, disease, and privation, down to a premature grave. . .seek a redress of those evils.  

In countering the argument that the girls of Lowell had voluntarily accepted a 12-hour day, Bagley wrote, “Is any one such a fool as to suppose that out of six thousand factory girls of Lowell, sixty would be there if they could help it?”

I wrote part of this post on an iPad, so I’m far, far from casting the first stone.  I understand that a CEO's and company's overwhelming priority is to build value for shareholders. I also have experience--and a particular fascination--with large, interconnected systems where, when everyone optimizes his or her own segment, lots of other people get hurt.


Think about the rise of the iPad and iPhone: Apple wins, investors win, consumers win, America wins, China wins, Apple's suppliers win and--like the farm girls seeking a better life in the Lowell mills--the Chinese workers win, too. Right?


Every segment wins and a whole bunch of good people suffer.


If the workers were slaves we'd be outraged. Yet, when a laborer is simply trapped, used and abused--and not owned--it's easier to overlook the inconvenient truth.

This I believe: When conditions involve loss of human dignity, eventually something gives.  We can hope it’s the emergence of enlightened management, sound government and maybe even a rising middle class.  We can hope it happens sooner rather than later, and we can sometimes even help make it happen.



But it’s hard to think that treating workers like production units--which might yield momentarily breathtaking results--constitutes anything like a long-term national competitive advantage.  It didn’t in Lowell.  I doubt it will in China, either.

(With thanks to friend Rupert for a good lunch--and helping push this idea along.)

The Brilliance of Poor Penmanship

Please answer the following two questions:

It takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets.  How long does it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?  100 minutes or 5 minutes?

If a field of lily pads doubles in size every day, covering an entire pond on day 48, how many days does it take to cover half the pond?  24 or 47?

Got your answers?

I'm slowly making my way through Daniel Kahneman's brilliant new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, discovering all the ways we unintentionally sabotage ourselves.  The concept of fast vs. slow thinking--what happens when the wrong one emerges at the wrong time, or the kind of thinking you really need is just plumb tuckered-out--is endlessly fascinating.  This is not "left brain-right brain" pop psychology, either, but Nobel laureate material.

Coincident with reading Kahneman, I've also been bemoaning once again my hideous handwriting. I find my penmanship even more frustrating now that there are very cool apps for the iPad, like NotesPlus, that carefully translates all of my scribblings into (what is apparently) Hungarian.

As for the two questions above, they were given to two groups of Princeton students.  Everything was equal except one set of questions was neatly typed and easy to read, and the other set was in washed-out grey font the students had to work to read.

Of those reading the neatly typed questions, 90% got at least one wrong.  Of those struggling to read the washed-out questions, only 30% got at least one wrong.

Kahneman's conclusion is that those who were challenged cognitively to understand the problem were forced to think harder, and because of that, came up with the correct answer more often.

(There's another conclusion a Brown grad might make about a Princeton grad, but I'll hold on that one.)

If Kahneman's theory is correct, all the notes I've taken in my perpetual notebooks for the last 30 years should, upon re-reading, turn me into a flippin' genius.

By the way, if you'd like the answers to these questions, please send me a self-addressed, stamped envelope and I'll write them down for you.  I can't promise it'll help, though.

The Unexpected Turn (Roller Coasters, Past and Future)

Engineers who design roller coasters will tell you that speed is essential for a great ride, but it’s the unexpected turn that makes for a truly unforgettable experience.  That helps explain, for example, the success of Disney’s Space Mountain; it’s not the biggest or fastest roller coaster in the land, but being in the dark--where every turn is unexpected--can make for a memorable ride.

Such is true of the future.  We’re fixated on the speed of change, but it’s the unexpected turn that can be so memorable.  Everyone anticipated the PC becoming smaller, sleeker and smarter, but almost nobody expected the iPad.  Those of us who live in the pitch black of consumer technology’s space mountain really enjoyed that unexpected turn.

Anticipating the unforeseen is how futurists, technologists, stock-pickers, and sci fi writers make their mark.  All the vectors point right, but they anticipate left.

What works with roller coasters and the future, I’ve discovered recently, also works--somewhat unexpectedly--with the past.

One of my favorite movies of 2011 was Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.  Gil Pender, played by Owen Wilson, falls in love with Paris while his wife pines for Malibu, a good indication that their troubles are more than just geographic.  In the course of the movie Pender experiences the true magic of the city when, one midnight, he stumbles into a kind of time warp, stepping out into the 1920s with the likes of Cole Porter, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway.

That’s the first unexpected turn.  As an audience we’re suddenly thrust into a whole new time period, and Allen does it convincingly enough--though Hemingway is an absolute hoot, and Salvador Dali sees nothing unusual about time travel--that it takes a few minutes to adjust.

As Pender spends a series of evenings in 1920s Paris, he meets and falls in love with Picasso’s mistress, Adriana.  It turns out that she is also pining for the past, but the past of 1890’s Paris.   When they (and we) are suddenly transported to a night club peopled by Tolouse-Latrec, Gaugin and Degas, it’s like a second unexpected turn of the coaster, a double turn of history that is as enjoyable as it is preposterous.

I had a similar experience at Gettysburg battlefield a few years ago, stepping out of our 21st century world to immerse myself in a 19th-century battlefield.  In fact, Gettysburg is about as convincing as time travel gets.   But, just as I was feeling comfortable in the milieu of 1863, I strolled into the battlefield’s museum and encountered videos of the 1938, 75th-anniversary reunion of veterans at Gettysburg.  (The video is here.)

It’s something akin to an abrupt turn in the dark to return from walking Pickett’s Charge to suddenly see aged Yanks and Rebs, decked out in dress suits of blue and grey, shaking hands across a stone wall in Depression-era America.

Last week I read about the opening of the New York Stock Exchange’s impressive new building at 18 Broad Street in April 1903.  For almost two years the Exchange had been in hired quarters.  The ceremony that April day included thousands of visitors, ticker tape floating down from neighboring skyscrapers, and the Seventh Regiment Band playing popular tunes near the bank of telephone booths on the east side of the new building.  Around 11 a.m., J. Pierpont Morgan strode to the speakers’ platform, and after introductory remarks and the formal transfer of the building from the construction committee, the president of the Exchange, Rudolph Kempler, spoke. 

He reminded the crowd that they lived at a time when “every portion of the civilized globe is so linked to the other by means of modern scientific methods and devices of transmission that every important happening in any part of the world is almost instantly recorded in every city, on all the continents. . . .”  The mayor of New York, Seth Low, told the crowd that without the Exchange “the great improvements now contemplated by the railroads entertaining this city would be impossible.” (Low also served on the committee building the Brooklyn Bridge.)

The New York Times painted a wonderful old scene from the turn of the century when, suddenly, Kempler introduced William Alexander Smith, the oldest member of the Exchange--too old, in fact, to deliver his own address.  Kempler read for Smith, “When I entered the Exchange in 1844. . .I remember the dignified body of middle-aged gentlemen I found there, numbering less than 100, seated around tables with the cumbersome books in which they scrupulously recorded each transaction as made, and which was duly recorded by the Secretary upon the rostrum, which record, after being read, became binding upon the members.”

Just as I was settling into the world of J. Pierpont Morgan, the expanding railroad and the emerging telephone, I took the unexpected turn back to the New York City of the brand new telegraph, Washington Irving and Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Way cool, as they say around here.  A completely unexpected turn.  Another mild case of historical whiplash. Better than a roller coaster.  Heck, even better than a Woody Allen movie.

Still not as good as an iPad, though.

Bring Your Dog to the Vet, Stop for a Hamburger on the Way Home

A long time ago at a company meeting I tried to say something positive about productivity.  The revenue generated by each person in the company had grown dramatically over the past few years and I wanted people to know how much we valued their efforts.

In doing so, I made two mistakes.

First, in general terms, we’re all in favor of increased productivity.  In many ways our economic well-being depends on it.  However, what’s admired generally is not necessarily treasured individually, because productivity writ small often means that the value I’m providing you is growing faster than what you’re paying me.   Increased productivity down in the trenches feels like you owe me.

Second, I naively used the word “headcount” during that fateful employee meeting, as in “Our revenue per headcount has skyrocketed in the last 18 months.”  Headcount is a perfectly ordinary word that helps measure labor.  If you work 40 hours a week and I work 20 and someone else works 10, then it's easier to say that we have “1.75 heads” than we have “1.75 equivalent people.”

However, one person’s ordinary measurement is another’s insult.  A few minutes after the meeting a group of employees had gathered in my office to say they were hurt by being referred to as “headcount.”  I explained why I used the term, apologized, and removed it from my public vocabulary.

I know what the problem is, and it’s real: Once we turn something into a unit of measure, especially a unit of productivity, we devalue it.  Sometimes it loses its humanness.  Sometimes it loses its soul.

There was a good piece recently in the New York Times Review of Books about animal rights literature where I learned a new term: speciesism.  In simple terms, it means we value certain species of animals, like our pet cats and dogs, to the point where they become part of the family.  Meanwhile, other equally sentient animals--meaning creatures that can experience pleasure and comfort and fear and pain every bit as much as our cats and dogs--are treated brutally on our farms and in our slaughterhouses.  It’s discrimination based on species.

I bring my dog to the vet and on the way home stop for a hamburger.

What happens to cows?  They become head of cattle.  (Yes, heads, but that’s not the way cowboys say it.)  Units of measurement.  And pigs?  Pork bellies.  They get traded on a commodities exchange.

If the cows could get together and visit the farmer who just gave the speech about productivity, they’d probably tell him that they’d really rather be referred to as Bossie and Elsie and not “head of cattle.”  Just look up “head of cattle” on Google and you’ll see questions like “How many head of cattle can you have on an acre of land?”  That sounds an awful lot like a unit of production to me, and an animal that’s just lost its soul.

The great blight on America was slavery, when human beings were measured in terms of their productive value.  Even Jefferson wrote ugly when he realized he could enhance his wealth by having his slaves reproduce rather that acquiring new ones.  "[A] woman who brings a child every two years is more profitable than the best man on the farm."  That’s Jefferson applying a make vs. buy decision to human beings.  That’s a Founding Father illustrating vividly that turning  living creatures into units of production does as much to debase the  measurer as the measuree.

It’s Jefferson’s unintended gift to a world in which we measure everything.  We possess dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of sensors for every person in America.  A recent McKinsey study concluded that data being generated globally increases by 40 percent annually.  All that data encourages us to measure stuff and make it better.  Be more efficient.  Raise our productivity.  Increase the yield on our head of cattle.  Get more pork bellies for our dollar.  Improve our revenue per headcount, as it were.

It reinforces why “headcount” was so offensive all those years ago.  It also helps me understand why our youngest daughter is an avowed vegetarian.  Two good lessons, I think, to start the new year.

The Changing Christmas Tradition

It's possible this house has an artificial tree because a
live one is "too much of a hassle."

Have you noticed that nothing really stays the same?  Even tradition.  

Christmas Trees.  40% of U.S. households purchased live Christmas trees in 1991 and only 23% last year.  Baby  boomers stop buying live trees as they get older.  The latch-key generation never had a live tree.  Artificial trees from China have grown in quality and skyrocketed in demand.  In 2011, consumers will spend $1 billion on artificial trees and $984 million on real trees.  That's called a "tipping point."

Lights.  Does it seem to you that more and more houses are displaying more and more lights?  And, we've moved out of our white icicle obsession and are now seeing colors again?  Big inflatable snowmen?  Giant electronic candycanes?  Is it the impact of Youtube?  Trans-Siberian Orchestra?  Does it seem strange that we no longer want the hassle of a live tree but will crawl around in our bushes for a week after Thanksgiving stringing lights?

What if I'd told you in 1980 to "invest in companies making cheap plastic lights because every family in America will purchase one for every single window in the their home by 2011."  Would you have believed me?

On-line Shopping.  My wife returned from a shopping excursion recently and said it was busy, but not as crazy as it's been in past years.  The retail numbers this season--projected up almost 5%--are excellent.  My conclusion: We are, for the first time, seeing a visual impact from on-line shopping.  Perhaps the information highway will one day make the mall safe again. 

Traditional Delivery.  If somebody is winning besides Amazon, it would have to be FedEx, UPS, and maybe even the US Postal Service--which will still lose more than $5 billion this year.  As on-line shopping continues to grow, I wonder if the Post Office will begin to look like every other retailer: 40% of its revenue and all of its profit will be made in the six weeks before Christmas?  A thought: Stop raising the price of a first class stamp when we all have email, and dominate the last mile with cheap delivery of my holiday boxes. 

Outsourcing.  Fifteen years ago we ran out of an electronic component because of Chinese New Year and it caught everyone off-guard.  Now, companies have to plan their Q1 inventories around this Chinese holiday.

Cards.  I can't tell what's going on yet.  We're definitely getting and receiving less, but we're still receiving from folks we keep in touch with via Facebook--the very folks I thought we'd lose first.  On the other hand, we're getting more and more mechanized cards, untouched by human hand.  Which is, I suppose, like a Facebook posting.

Like I said, I can't yet divine the trend except that the Post Office is losing, and so is Hallmark.  

Christmas Music.  Rock artists think that re-recording The Little Drummer Boy is a good thing.  It isn't.  Mel Torme made enough money from The Christmas Song ("chestnuts roasting. . .") that he could have retired on that single song.  "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" and "Winter Wonderland" are both vintage 1934.  "White Christmas" was 1942 and for the next decade, songwriters invented the modern Christmas canon: "I'll Be Home" (1943), "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (1944), "Let It Snow" etc." (1945), "The Christmas Song" (1946), "Here Comes Santa Claus" (1947), "Sleigh Ride" and "Blue Christmas" (1948) and "Rudolph" (1949).  The 1950s were fertile as well, from "Frosty" to "Silver Bells" to "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" to "Jingle Bell Rock" and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree."  Then, things went sideways.  Vince Guaraldi was a bright light in the Dark Ages, but the ages stayed pretty dark with the melancholy "Do They Know It's Christmas" (1984).  Lately, we've had to rely on Mariah Carey.

I saw a chart the other day (pasted above) showing that most of the 20 most-played Christmas songs were all written in the 1940s and 1950s, proof that the Baby Boomers were trying to recreate their childhoods every year.  I say: Write something worth listening to and we'll beat a path to your download!

Sports.  And Christmas.  Christmas and Sports.  Football on Christmas Eve. Basketball on Christmas Day.  How did THAT happen, anyway?  And don't even get me started on the bowl games.

On the other hand, if we were really hung-up on a traditional American Christmas, we'd be roaming the town getting roaring drunk and harassing the rich neighbors, as I wrote about here in 2008.  Maybe Mariah Carey, cheap candles and an artificial tree or two aren't so bad after all.

Merry Christmas!

Who Cares if a Tablet is a PC?

I took issue with Marketing Myopia a few posts back--at least regarding its characterization of the railroad industry--and thought it time to make amends.  (After all, an icon is an icon.)  It’s clear that Ted Levitt identified a central truth in Strategy when he wrote that how we define "the business we're in" can create or destroy opportunity.

The drama playing out now is in the personal computer world.  It centers around whether a tablet, like an iPad, is a PC or something else, something entirely new.  

Before his death, Apple’s Steve Jobs said, no, a tablet was not a PC--that, in fact, we were entering a post-PC world.  Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer disagreed, saying that the tablet was absolutely, positively a PC.

On the surface, it seemed like just another Apple-Microsoft lover’s spat.

Ironically, if the tablet is measured as part of PC sales, as the British research firm Canalys holds, then sometime next year Apple will knock H-P off its perch as the number one PC-maker in the land.  Conversely, if the tablet remains a separate beast, then the PC industry looks moribund and on the backside of its lifecycle.

Who really cares?  Not Apple, which is going to sell tablets no matter what we call them.  Not Canalys, which has to make the decision once and just be consistent in its reporting.  Not companies that rely on Canalys because they can, presumably, add and subtract columns and sum the world anyway they wish.  And not most of us, who will buy what we need based on what it does, not its strategic definition.

But--there is one group who really cares: the employees of Microsoft.  Steve Ballmer undoubtedly knows that, and it explains why he’s taken such a emphatic stand on what seems a secondary issue of product definition.

More than 90,000 Microsoftians arise every morning, part of what is still an immensely powerful, profitable company.  If they choose to believe the tablet is something different from and post-PC, and their business is to optimize Microsoft’s traditional PC profit flows, then employees become one giant milking machine.  Their only goal is to cash in on a 30-year investment.  The PC market may be falling, but there’s a lot of money to be made before the fat lady sings, and there’s nothing ignoble about a milking strategy.

However, by defining the tablet as a PC, Steve Ballmer gives his worldwide team the opportunity not only to optimize the old, traditional platform, but to take everything they’ve learned and apply it to an entirely new platform.

Which kind of morning would you like to arise to, for the next decade, were you working at Microsoft? Which kind of future would you appreciate were you an investor?

Which 90,000 people are going to have more fun?

Defining the tablet as a PC doesn’t mean Microsoft will be successful, just as the railroad wasn’t successful just because it defined its business as “transportation” and competed with cars and planes.  And, it will inevitably mean more investment, riskier investment, and lower margins.  However, without the definition being broad and flexible and opportunistic, there’s no chance to compete in the new world at all.

I’m still of the opinion that when commentators discuss the Big 4--Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook--they are missing the fifth key player, one that will be around innovating for many years to come.  Defining the tablet as a PC isn’t a Steve Ballmer vs. Steve Jobs spat; it’s an essential element in keeping Microsoft relevant and competitive.

Only My Second R-rated Post

My first post "rated-R for mature themes" was here, back in June 2008.  It was about selling stuff people wanted but weren't allowed to admit they wanted.

My second post, this time "rated-R for holiday violence," is the display window of Town Cutler on Nob Hill in San Francisco.  We were walking by the other day and someone in my group gasped and another grimaced and another started laughing.  Then I heard my wife say, "Just don't put it in your blog."

That's all the encouragement I needed.

Middle (Aged) Management

Just another way we've become the Sandwich Generation. . .

Revisiting Swarm Intelligence

I was at a very pleasant business dinner the other evening with three smart gentlemen discussing everything from the presidential election to cold chain regulatory trends.  I mention these topics only because what happened next, and what happens every single time, occurs regardless of the table's combined IQ.

The waitress appeared and asked (what is apparently) the hardest question known to mankind: “Would anyone like dessert?”  In our case this “sudden group decision” turned four intelligent adults into four blithering idiots, twitching and staring at their laps.  Fortunately, one of our number had his PhD and recovered long enough to order a single slice of chocolate chunk pecan pie with four forks--a brilliant solution to an otherwise intractable problem.

I wrote about this phenomenon here in the context of swarm intelligence, the idea that dumb little ants running around in circles can come together in a group that is able to build complex structures, defend its turf, and write monographs about black holes like Stephen Hawking.

Ants.  Bees.  Birds.  Bacteria.  Swarm theory is an accepted theory.  My theory is essentially the opposite: All too often, people who are otherwise smart, ethical, good human beings come together in a group and become absolute jackasses.  Rush hour.  The Kennedy administration in The Best and the Brightest.  Enron.  Ordering dessert.

In fact, I call it “Dessert Intelligence.”

You might think that the falling IQs around ordering chocolate chunk pecan pie are all about politeness and deference.  In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell informed us that certain cockpit crews are so deferential that they crash their planes.  I call that stupid.

Recently, we’ve had some really menacing, very sad instances of Dessert Intelligence.  A local high school basketball team imploded over a reckless group hazing incident.  Oklahoma State fans rioted after their team’s victory.  Students at Dean College were expelled after participating in a group assault.  Penn State football--need I say more?

I don’t know where this phenomenon falls in academia--economics, sociology or psychology--but having brilliant people study Dessert Intelligence (preferably not in groups) seems to be especially important.  After all, the greatest single technological innovation in the last generation allows us to create and network groups faster and more efficiently than at any time in human history.

Three lessons here: First, guard your IQ in crowds.  Second, the Web really might be the technological embodiment of the great dessert question, making us all stupid. (Think: Flashmob-robbery, singing babies going viral, and Kim Kardashian being the number 1 search term in 2011.)  

Third, it's not such a bad idea to bring a PhD to dinner.

The "All 22": A View from 50,000 Feet

Every play in every NFL game is filmed by the League from multiple angles, ReedAlbergotti tells us in the Wall Street Journal.

On its way to accumulating about $4B in annual broadcast rights, the NFL is willing to sell virtually every angle it films except one.  It’s called the “All 22” and its taken from a vantage point that shows the entire field, what every player does on every play.  “NO ONE gets that,” an NFL spokesman said.

Who ran, and which way?  Who blocked and where?  Who didn’t do his job?  Which coach got out-coached?    How is the game plan unfolding? Without the All 22, it’s impossible to adequately analyze a game.   Most of us see only a fragment of what’s happening on the field, and that includes the experts who are explaining the action to us.

In other words, access to the All 22 makes everyone a whole lot smarter.  The NFL knows that and apparently doesn’t want to put up with a better-informed fan base.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was an All 22 angle for your life?  For your family?  For your job?  A military general might find his on the side of a mountain, overlooking the field of battle.  A parent may find hers from a single, unexpected discussion with her teenager.  A fractured family might find their All 22 in the gathering after a funeral.  A CEO may find his or hers from a customer visit, a lunch with employees, preparation of a business plan, a visit from a peer CEO, or a great board meeting.

The air is way too rarefied to hang around long at the All 22, 50,000-foot level, and there are (mostly unpleasant) words to describe people who try.  On the other hand, you must find a way to visit from time to time because there are also (mostly unpleasant) words to describe people who spend their days in the details and their lives in the weeds.

What we know is that the NFL won't sell its All 22.  Coming from one of the great financial and business successes of our generation, that should be a clue, no?

Thinking Inside the Box

Many years ago we had a shareholder who would visit from time to time to offer advice.  I valued these visits, though I’m not sure I always completely understood the counsel I received.  In particular, I was told on a periodic basis that I should “put it in a sock before I put it in the bag.”

I thought perhaps my shareholder friend, a native Norwegian who emigrated to America after WWII and made his fortune, was simply mistranslating some Old World advice. Maybe the word for “sock” in Norwegian was, well, I don’t know.  But not “sock.”

Anyway, he always said it in such a way, sort of with a wink, that I was embarrassed to inquire further.  I felt by asking I might violate some sacred code of the Sock and Bag Guild.

I was reminded of this advice the other day by none other than Peter Drucker, writing about people attempting to fix problems by innovating in all the wrong places.  

In the early 1950s, ocean-going freight was in big trouble.  Costs were rising, ports becoming congested, deliveries slowing and air freight looking better all the time.   The industry was innovating by trying to build faster vessels that required less fuel and smaller crews, all good ideas.

The game-saving innovation was launched quietly enough in April 1956 when a trucking entrepreneur placed 58 containers aboard a ship headed from New Jersey to Texas.  “Containers” means “big metal boxes.”  In took ten years, but in 1966 a Sea-Land ship carried the first international shipment of containers.  By 1975 vessels and ports were being built to accommodate thousands of big metal boxes.

We now think of this as “the container revolution.”  You might think of it as blueberries on your cereal in January, or maybe just an extraordinarily better standard of living.  It all came from metal-benders, guys who were losing jobs and prestige to technology innovators even as they were changing the world.

The secret to the innovation, of course, was decoupling two activities traditionally done serially but, with a simple metal box, now done in parallel.  While the ship was sailing, all of the packing could be done on land.  The result was ships spending 75% less time in port, a 60% reduction in shipping costs, and a five-fold increase in volume over three decades.  

There are some interesting lessons here.  Sometimes the simple solution has the greatest impact.  Low tech can rock.  Look to tough competitors (like truckers) for profitable solutions.  Never overlook process.  Peter Drucker is still worth reading.

The most important lesson for me, however, was finally making sense of my old shareholder’s advice.  Even though I was never, ever sure if I successfully “put it in a sock before I put it in the bag,”  I am now completely convinced that I should always “put it in a box before I put it in the boat.” 


Maybe that's what he meant all along.

Golf Finally Listens to Me

About five years ago I expressed my affection for golf with the post, A Modest Proposal to Fix Golf.

For those of you (like me) who are disinclined to read anything about golf, I made a case for improving the sport dramatically by offering four simple and straightforward rule changes.  

1. Shorten every course from 18 to 11 holes.
2. Place a forecaddie on every hole.
3. Time every hole; if you’re on the green when the buzzer sounds, pick up your ball, add two strokes and get the heck off. If you're not on the green, add three and keep moving.
4. Players with higher handicaps pay less.  (My logic: suffering should be a bargain.)

You may have noticed that the United States Golf Association has failed to adopt any of my proposals.  However, I was highly gratified to learn the other day that they have--in an apparent act of reckless abandon--amended nine principal regulations from the Rules of Golf, much like the church slightly adjusting three or four of the Ten Commandments.   

You can assume that these changes, like my proposals above, will strike at the very heart of the playing experience.

In Adam Schupak’s Change 267 Years in Making, we learn that the most earthshattering of the nine are these two:

1. No longer will a player be penalized a stroke if the wind moves his ball while his club is near it, and 

2. If he or she smooths the sand before playing a shot from a bunker, and in doing so does not gain an advantage, that’s O.K., too.

Do you get the drift? The other seven are equally monumental.


"This was not a knee-jerk reaction," said Thomas Pagel, the USGA's director for the Rules of Golf.  


Ya think?


I would be remiss if I did not remind you serious golfers, Mike and Steve, that these changes do not take affect until January 1, 2012. Until then, keep your club under control or suffer the little gusts of wind at your own risk.


Incidentally, I take full personal credit for these changes, no doubt inspired by my call to eliminate the last seven holes of every golf course in the world--though admittedly, they are a small start.


But in golf, as I learned long ago, you should take each and every tiny victory you can get.

Spare Me Your Vision

If you’ve ever launched a business, you’ve been faced with the task of writing a Vision statement and a Mission statement.  One does one thing, the other does another, and I can never keep the two straight in my head.  But I do know that having a clear idea of what the business should look like three or five years down the road--what I call the “end state,” which I can keep straight--is awfully important to running a successful enterprise.

Now, if you’ve ever run a business, and published a Vision and Mission statement to the team, you have undoubtedly run into this situation: Some consultant will meet your team, perhaps at an offsite training, and report back to you that, regretably, nobody but nobody knows the Mission and Vision of your company.

You can gnash your teeth and beat your breast, knowing that you have been diligent in spreading the gospel.  Maybe, however, there’s something else going on.

I’m a New England Patriots fan, and every Monday Coach Bill Belichick is interviewed on the radio about Sunday’s game.  Belichick is, without a doubt, the worst interview in sports.  He reveals nothing.  When the Patriots play badly he says, “We didn’t make enough plays to win.”  When they play well he says, “We made enough plays to win.”  If you are looking for some kind of erudite exposition of the game, you’ve come to the wrong interview.

But Belichick says something so often it’s almost humorous: “We just need people to do their job.”  It's a kind of mantra for him.  When his players are interviewed they will often deflect a question by saying “Coach just needs me to do my job.”

Just do your job.  That’s what one of the smartest, winningest coaches in the history of football tells his players: Just do your job.  Is there a game strategy?  Of course.  Belichek knows it, as do his coaches.  I assume he discusses it with his team during the week.  But he doesn’t ask his players to memorize the strategy, or be able to recite it.  That’s his job.  When he creates the game plan each week, that’s his job.  And, when his wide receiver runs five steps, cuts left and looks over his inside shoulder for the ball, that’s his wide receiver’s job.

Just do your job.  That’s how the Patriots win.

There’s a reason your team doesn’t know the Vision and Mission by heart: It doesn’t help them do their job.  I promise, if it did, they would know it cold.  It’s not that they don’t want to know it, of course, or be reminded, or recognize that they’re contributing to it.  They just don’t need it memorized to do their job.

In the mid-1980s I was managing cable TV properties in Illinois.  These were the go-go days of cable when we were opening up new neighborhoods and people were chasing the cable TV truck down the street hoping to schedule an installation.  One day I got into it with one of our key suppliers--their fault, no doubt--and they withheld shipment of some important material we needed for installs.  We went from dozens of happy new customers a day to none, and the phones began ringing off the hook.

Finally, on a Friday, I solved the problem and, in a show of support (or punishment, depending on your perspective), asked our management team to be in the warehouse bright and early on Saturday morning to help assemble product for the installers and get them on the road quickly for special weekend installs.

There we were, putting together installation packets, when Jeff, the Warehouse Manager came over.  “Thanks,” he said, “for helping out.”  I beamed.  What a great GM I was.  “But,” he added, “if you did your job, you wouldn’t have to do mine.”

That message stuck, big time.  (It’s 28 years later and I still remember.)

All of which is to say, if you are running a business, your job is Mission and Vision and End State.  Figure it out.  Make sure the team is working toward it.  Go ahead and sell it internally from time to time.  Do your job.

But your Customer Service Manager is supposed to make customers deliriously happy.  Let him do his job.  Your VP-Sales is supposed to sell tons of stuff.  Let her do her job. 

Mission and Vision have their place, but Bill Belichick is right.  One critical secret to success is simple: Just do your job.

Another Kind of Leadership

We've been reading a lot lately about Steve Jobs' leadership style, and for the last generation about guys like Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Richard Branson and even Donald Trump.  In most cases, the purpose of leadership appears to be about creating something useful, maybe beautiful, and inevitably profitable.

Last weekend I attended the girls cross-country banquet at our local regional high school.  The student population at the school is about 1,400.  When the girls run meets, they typically run against teams of 18-22 girls.  In some cases, more like 8-12.  A really big team would have 35 runners.

Our girls cross-country team this year had 127 runners.   They were all at the banquet whooping it up, singing, accepting varsity letters and gifts and saying unbelievably nice things about one another, their coaches and their parents.  And they were hugging.  (There's a lot more hugging in high school these days than there used to be when I attended.  In fact, this is how much hugging I remember: none.)  Today, female high school cross-country runners apparently hug all the time.

The coach of the team is in his 36th year.  There's something about what he does, the way he does it, and the way he inspires the team that attracts 5 or 6 times the number of girls that other, comparably-sized schools attract.  And for a sport that involves running long, hard distances one day, and hills another, and track workouts another, and a 6 a.m. Tuesday workout if you didn't beat your best time at the meet on Monday--these girls are unbelievably happy.

This coach will never be on the cover of Wired, or featured in Business Week.  We will never read about his "10 immutable rules of leadership."  He exercises a kind of leadership that isn't about profit.

But it's the kind of leadership of which, I am certain, we could use a lot more.

It turns out the girls won the state tournament in their division this year.   But even if they hadn't, you just needed to sit through a little bit of the banquet to know that it would have been a very good year anyway.

Engineering Explained

My father was an engineer.  My wife is an engineer.  I have been working in engineering cultures for years.

This is the first time any of it made sense.  Thank you to my friend at sursumcorda.  I now possess the "Theory of Everything."

Better than String Theory, no?

When Commoners Innovate

In my last post, I suggested that there were four basic kinds of innovation in the world arrayed along an axis of significance and an axis of chance.

At one extreme we have entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Henry Ford who intentionally and majestically innovated in ways that had long-term, significant impact on the world.  Smart, Big Impact.  They are to the far right on the innovation distribution curve, the ones who earn their way there.

Next door, we have the smart folk who stumble upon a "big idea" that develops into a world-beater, like Facebook or Google.  Lucky, Big Impact.  They are also at the far end of the distribution curve, but the one marked "Luck."  (And "Rich," too.)

Then, of course, there's the lucky and "smaller impact" innovations--like the Slinky.  There are thousands of those tiny improvements that invade and enrich our lives.

Finally, there's the quadrant where most of us Commoners, innovation's hoi polloi, are expected to innovate each and every day.  Indeed, one of us may have a huge idea from time to time and escape over the border to the northern quadrant, and we might have an accumulation of small innovations that add up to something big.  We might also get hit by the lucky stick.  Still, as Commoners, it's unseemly to aspire beyond our caste.  We need to practice smart innovation, and we need to do it everyday.

Quintessential Commoner Innovation: The Better Mousetrap

Build one, to misquote Emerson, and the world will beat a path to your door.  It turns out that the mousetrap, with 4,400 patents approved (and many more disallowed), is the most frequently invented device in U.S. history.

What says "innovation of the hoi polloi" better than a new idea for a mousetrap?

At this time of year we get mice in our basement.  So, last weekend, I found myself in the local Co-op scoping out the many ways mankind has invented to capture (crush and kill) the common field mouse.

As you can see, there's a virtual treasure trove of devices, including a plastic owl, something called "Havoc," a "rodent station" and even some 20th implements of destruction.  (Note the Deer-X in the middle, reinforcing my belief that deer are simply rats with long legs and short tails.)

Behold the innovation!  "TomCat" kills mice with a black-looking thing,  "Home Defense" with some white-looking things, and "RatMax" looks like a French pastry.

I don't know what "Mouse Magic" does, but it gets innovation credit (in my book, anyway) for repelling mice at the same time offering them "no escape."  (That is going to be one confused mouse.)  And, to the right is our old friend, the conventional trap that trips itself about half the time.  Below that, something that eliminates the dreaded "nasty nest."

Finally, we have traps that look like camouflaged door stops.  That will certainly fool the mice in my house.

None of these innovations will change our lives, but all of them are the product of a person--or more likely, a group of R&D and marketing people--working hard to innovate around the basic mousetrap.  And truthfully, there are differences that matter--we don't use poison because we have pets, and we don't want little creatures suffering, and no way am I going to have a mouse stuck on glue for five days withering away because I forget to check the trap.

With all those conditions, I did find the perfect trap and, since Saturday, have caught three mice.  So, Commoner innovation can rock.

Commoner Innovation: A Model

In June 1985 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, four experienced jazz musicians---sax, piano, bass and drums--were brought to an auditorium and told that, in about an hour, they would be performing a live concert consisting of three complete sets.  None had ever played together (a so-called "zero-history" group) and they were not allowed to rehearse or use sheet music.

It's not quite NASA trying to solve the problems of the Apollo 13, but it must have been one pressure-filled hour.  Needless to say, the concert was a great success.  Here's what happened:

1. Together, the four men had 200 years of experience.  They quickly figured out what songs they knew, and in which keys they all felt comfortable.

2. They chose a leader, someone to call the tunes and the key, and to engage with the audience.  They also agreed on certain conventions--for example, the piano would start each song, there would be no dragging (intentional slowing of the beat), and solos would be ended by a full resolution of the current chord.

3. They decided that each would solo in each selection, and the soloist could call the time and level of complexity before turning the song back to the group, or to another soloist.

4. They relied heavily on nonverbal cues in the first set--especially lots of eye contact--which lessened dramatically by the third set.

5. The leader started with a simple song, "Sunday," that allowed for a relatively limited range of musical choices.  The second song, "You Took Advantage of Me," had more potential for invention and the third song, "Misty," even more.

6. At the close of the third set the group invented an entirely new song on the fly, "Twin Cities Blues."

Some Possible Conclusions for We Commoners

My guess is that at least some of the mouse-catching innovation I saw in the Co-op last weekend played out in R&D and Marketing groups a little bit like the successful 1985 jazz concert.  If so, what can we learn about how we Commoners might innovate?

First, innovation can spring more easily from a group that shares a common vocabulary and data set.  The richness of experience becomes a plus, not a constraint of  "tradition trying to innovate."  In fact, think about a situation where a talented but young and inexperienced player is inserted into the group: options for invention decrease significantly.  (Maybe why our young MBAs get a bad rap sometimes.)

Second, there's a leader.  An innovation group needs direction.  If one isn't chosen, one emerges anyway. Ixnay on the atflay.

Third, they all knew the unwritten rules of the game, and specifically agreed on others that might be unclear.

Fourth, everyone got to solo.

Fifth, they didn't try to conquer the world in the first song.  They went easy, innovating in small and comfortable ways until each began to understand the other.

Of course, with most innovation groups in most companies, the story continues, with constraints driving invention.  Our jazz group had to deal this time with no sheet music and no rehearsal.   Suppose we bring them back together and ask them to compose three new songs, but this time give them a practice session.  Suppose we introduce a new instrument into their band.

The jazz model is limited in comparison to the constraints that could be placed on a team trying to innovate the next mousetrap--make it for a nickel, use only paper, catch two mice with one trap, etc.--but it provides some useful lessons for how your next group of Commoners might organize, relate and evolve.

We may be trapped in the lower right quadrant, but we can still have some fun while we're there.

P.S.--My choice: "Home Defense."  Clean, no suffering, no poison, and forces me to bait with peanut butter (and sample a little while the jar is open).  Still, I may have to ask for that electronic owl for Christmas. . .