No Man Is An Island

No Man Is An Island

by Allen Laudenslager

An emotionally satisfying poem, but what the heck does it mean to business? It means that your business, in too many ways to list, depends on the businesses around it and on your suppliers and customers.

A climate of success helps you to succeed while a climate of collapse makes it much more likely that you will fail. We have uncountable examples of towns that relied on a single economy. The farm and market towns of the midwest that were supported by the small family farms died with the advent of industrial farming.

Those large farms were operated by so few workers that all those support businesses that made the town exist weren’t needed.

We know of cases where small stores closed thru the loss of business diverted to big box stores. Part of the problem is that the profits from a local store tend to stay in the community while the profits from big box stores tend to be aggregated in the financial centers of big cities.

This phenomenon constitutes a cash drain that eventually strips that small town of its cash and unless there is a constant influx of fresh cash then the community goes broke and the residents leave for richer ground.

If the cash is in the financial centers then that is where the cash gets spent and that’s where the jobs are. As the people collect where the money is those small towns slowly die out. Just like the gold rush ghost towns when the gold ran out.

We are witnessing the same thing on a national scale. As more and more products are made in far-flung places the cash is being transferred from the developed nations to the developing.

The key here is that people who don’t have jobs can’t buy your product no matter how cheaply you can make it.

I can buy a life jacket for around 12 bucks but what is its value? If I don’t go out on the water I wouldn’t buy it at any price. When the boat sinks I might pay $100 for that same life jacket. If I don’t have even a single dollar, then I CAN’T buy that life jacket even if the boat is sinking under me.

The point to all this is that if you minimize your worker's profits to maximize your own, then they have less to spend with you. While it’s true your workers can’t buy enough of your product to keep you in business that money does circulate.

If your workers can’t buy from the local burger stand, the people who work in the burger joint can’t buy your washing machine or dish soap.

Every job you and your industry transfer to some far-away factory is one less local customer for your product. And when that transfer is to chase that last fraction of a percent of profit but is making your potential customer base smaller, are you really coming out ahead?

Once again, you are absolutely correct when you say that your business can’t make that big a difference and by yourself you are right. Add your choices to all the others making the same kind of decision and we have the current lingering recession.

Living proof that recessions are a self-generated self-fulfilling phenomenon. If business cut employees and/or salary/benefit packages than employees spend less and there are fewer sales.

Reminds me of an old Kingston Trio song, Desert Pete:

“You’ve got to prime the pump, you’ve got to have faith and believe

You’ve got to give of yourself before you’re ready to receive.

Drink all the water you can hold, wash your face, cool your feet,

Leave the bottle full for others, Thank you kindly, Desert Pete”

Data Informed Decision Making (DIDM)

Data Informed Decision Making[1]

by Allen Laudenslager

It feels somewhat ghoulish to write about the recent Amtrak train derailment near DuPont, Washington, but at this stage of the investigation, the information is quite disturbing.

There's a news clip of the mayor of the adjacent city of Lakewood, WA questioning some of the safety decisions and the risk to the community. While as a lay observer the mayor did not attempt to predict the exact nature of the possible accident his concerns proved to be more accurate than the “professionals.”

While hindsight is always 20-20, as decision makers it’s instructive to look at a decision-making process to find the failure point. By failure point I mean the place in the process that some other factor than the data changed the decision-making process.

Where did the data give a clear indication that the community concerns about an accident were either groundless or has such a small chance of happening that the potential loss of life was an acceptable risk?

It appears, from the available information, that at some point in the data-informed-decision-making process the data was modified by cost considerations. As we have seen in so many high-profile accidents as far back as the Challenger space shuttle disaster “other considerations” than the data drove the decision.

Every organization has cost constraints and has to make decisions limited by what they can afford. We could build cars that would allow the passengers to survive any crash BUT they would be wickedly inefficient and no one could afford to buy them. Tradeoffs will always be necessary.

The big problem with this particular decision-making process is that the outcome was predetermined. The premise was “We will start this route and within this budget.” Then came the big failure – the people designing the system were told: “If the numbers don’t support the outcome, recalculate until they do.” The only way to adjust the numbers on an engineering project is to take out some parts. Removing a nob on the dashboard of a car saves some cost of parts and some cost of assembly reducing the cost to manufacture. Keep taking out parts or features until you reach the cost goal.

So far that is a normal design process. The issue, in this case, was that the only place to cut costs was safety and with the hard decision that “We are going to do this” there was no place for the introduction of the possibility that the project was not economically viable. There was no place for the concept that if we can’t afford the safety protections it shouldn’t be done at all.

There is a well-understood concept in gambling that it's not the odds that matter, it's the consequences. Many of us are willing to risk two bucks on a vanishingly low chance of winning the $250 million dollar Power Ball but would be completely unwilling to risk $10,000 on the same odds. We feel comfortable with the extremely high risk of losing simply because two bucks is a small consequence while a ten thousand is too big to risk.

The reality is that life has risks and there will always be the possibility of a catastrophic failure. The problem, in this case, was cost considerations were allowed to color the decision-making process to artificially minimize the risks and to artificially inflate the chance of success.

All because the decision makers began with the idea that “we have to create this service at all cost!” The cost, in this case, being at least 3 people dead and 72 passengers and crew injured.

Perhaps if the decision makers had truly understood that the possibility of an accident was far less important than the results of an accident they would have stopped the project until the (obviously in hindsight) necessary safety precautions could be included.

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[1] “Data-Informed-Decision-Making" (DIDM) gives reference to the collection and analysis of data to guide decisions that improve success. DIDM is used in education communities (where data is used with the goal of helping students and improving curricula) but is also applicable to (and thus also used in) other fields in which data is used to inform decisions. While data based decision-making is a more common term, data-informed decision-making is a preferable term since decisions should not be based solely on quantitative data. (Wikipedia)

Working Spaces

Working Spaces
by Bryan J. Neva, Sr.

Growing up in a large family in a small, three bedroom, one bathroom home, we never got much privacy or personal space. If we wanted that we'd have to go outside for awhile (weather permitting). We'd do our homework on the kitchen table with the TV on while mom cooked dinner. But that was normal for families back in the 1960s and 70s.  So it wasn't a big deal for me to go from that to an even more crowded, confining, communal environment when I served in the navy.

Wanting some alone time, I would search all over the ship just to find a little space where I could hide out for awhile and read a book. Once I found a lighted, watertight escape-way and used that quite often until we got a warning message from the 6th fleet headquarters about a sailor who did what I did but died of asphyxiation after he mistakenly sealed the watertight hatch behind him and ran out of oxygen. Oops!

My first professional job out of college had an industrial, open space working environment similar to a classroom with metal desks lined in rows. The boss had his own private office at the head of the classroom. (Managers were the only ones entitled to a little privacy.) It was noisy with a lot of needless conversation and banter. It was hard to get anything done or hope for any sort of privacy. The only quiet space I could find was in the dimly lit CAD room where I'd work on engineering drawings or other projects if the room wasn't too busy.

Recognizing that studies have found a strong correlation between working spaces and job satisfaction, firms in the 1990s and 2000s began to improve working spaces with the introduction of cubicles and teleworking. These provided quieter, more private working environments. 

Cubicles have their own drawbacks though as workers feel they're working in a sterile, isolated matrix. It's kind of like Orwell's novel "1984" or the film "Gattaca" with "Big Brother" watching our every move. Many firms that favor cubicles typically practice "warm body management": that is, if there's a warm body sitting in a cubicle, breathing air, exhaling carbon dioxide, and creating heat, they must be productive. It's dehumanizing as workers feel they're just a unit of production or a rat trapped in a maze searching for a piece of cheese.

The drawback with teleworking is that you have no face-to-face interaction with colleagues. The only thing you can do is work. Long-term teleworkers have discovered that working from home can be really lonely and career limiting as they miss out on friendships and networking opportunities. The dirty little secret about teleworking is that you actually work harder and longer than if you were in an office. Research has shown that people who telework are 15% more productive than people who work in open spaces and cubicles. Nevertheless, about three-quarters of U.S. firms still prefer to use open spaces and cubicles.

Searching for the optimal working space that will maximize the productivity, success and overall job satisfaction of their employees, some firms have discovered a simple concept that has been right in front of the whole time: giving all workers, not just managers, a private office complete with four walls, a door, and maybe a window. Studies have found that between 50% and 60% of all workers in open spaces and cubicles are dissatisfied with their working spaces while only 16% of workers with private offices are dissatisfied. 

Many progressive start-up firms today are experimenting with modified versions of open communal working spaces. They try to make the working environment more like home with free drinks, snacks, breakfast, lunch, ping-pong, foosball, video games, workout facilities, and beer after work. Workers can lounge around on comfortable sofas, easy chairs, or sit at a table to perform their work. No one is assigned a permanent desk to work at. The idea being that if they make the working space fun and more like home then workers will be more productive or maybe even work much more than 40 hours a week. Many employees at high-tech, silicon valley firms practically live at work. Work and life become integrated.

So what's the best working space? It all depends on what you're trying to accomplish, the type of workers you have, and your budget. The cheapest most productive working space is teleworking. The least productive is open spaces followed by cubicles. Although still less productive than teleworking, private offices are far more productive than open spaces and cubicles but are the most expensive of all the working spaces. But each of these working spaces has their own place. Where team interaction and collaboration needs to be high, open spaces would be preferable. When you want to minimize noise and distractions, cubicles, private offices, and teleworking would be preferable. 

Problems arise when firms use a one-size-fits-all strategy for working spaces where only managers are accorded the privilege and prestige of a private office. But if a manager needs high interaction with his team, then why put them in a private office? When private conversations occur they can just use a conference room. 

The search for the ideal working space continues with firms experimenting with different models. And with a new generation of workers will come innovative new ideas. I suspect that in twenty years working spaces won't look anything like they do today. Nevertheless, firms need to answer one big rhetorical question when they choose what type of working spaces they want for their employees: are you trying to get the most out of your employees or are you trying to get the best?

New York Times Opinion | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Who’s Winning the Culture War? Corporate America

By DAVID A. HOPKINSDEC. 27, 2017

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Protestors against the Republican tax bill in Westfield, New Jersey, this month.CreditBryan Anselm for The New York Times

At the 1992 Republican National Convention, Pat Buchanan famously declared that American politics had become a “cultural war.” In the years since, social issues and identities have become more important in dividing Democrats from Republicans.

Traditionally, the two parties fought mostly over economics. But now cultural issues like abortion and gun control divide Americans more sharply along regional lines than economic policies. One impact of the rise of the culture war in the 1990s was to reorder the popular coalitions of the parties — for example, by attracting evangelical Protestants to the Republicans while propelling secular voters toward the Democrats. This also redefined their geographic constituencies.

But while it has been fueled by widening divisions over social issues within the American electorate, this regional realignment has left a much larger imprint on the direction of federal economic policy than on the nation’s prevailing cultural zeitgeist.

You might say that the winner of the culture wars is neither Democrats nor Republicans. In legislative terms, American corporations have claimed the biggest victories so far.

The growing sectional divide — the coasts and a handful of Midwestern and Mountain West states vote blue, while voters in the culturally conservative heartland of the South and interior West largely vote red — is magnified by winner-take-all electoral rules that concentrate representation in the hands of local partisan majorities. The Alabama Senate race was an exception, but this largely produces a stable arrangement of “red” and “blue” states and districts that seldom deviate from their normal partisan alignments regardless of the individual candidates seeking office.  

On balance, the trend of rising geographic polarization has worked to the advantage of Republicans in both houses of Congress. The Republican Party has captured more seats in culturally conservative red America than it has relinquished in culturally liberal blue America, allowing it to control at least one legislative chamber in all but four years since 1994 after six decades of near-permanent minority status.  

Senate Republicans especially benefit from the equal representation of thinly populated states in the nation’s midsection, which once regularly elected moderate Democrats like Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Tim Johnson of South Dakota and Max Baucus of Montana but increasingly favor Republicans in congressional races. Red states now substantially outnumber blue states; in the 2016 election, Donald Trump carried 30 states to Hillary Clinton’s 20 despite his loss in the national popular vote, while the outcome of every Senate race matched the state presidential result — a foreboding sign for the future fortunes of Senate Democrats.

The contemporary geographic coalitions of the parties primarily reflect the nation’s roiling cultural conflicts, but the representatives chosen via today’s electoral map are equally polarized over economic policies — and it is pocketbook issues, not social matters, that dominate the business of Congress. Increasingly unfettered by a declining bloc of dissident party moderates from the Northeast and Pacific Coast, ascendant red-state Republicans have prioritized an ambitious conservative economic agenda encompassing regulatory rollbacks, repeal of the Affordable Care Act and substantial cuts to federal taxes — like the tax bill passed last week — and entitlement programs. Departures from this small-government approach, such as the No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D programs enacted during the George W. Bush presidency, have fallen out of fashion among post-Tea Party Republican leaders increasingly devoted to the pursuit of ideological purity.

Political analysts often argue that the rise of the culture war has had an acrimonious effect on American politics by expanding the battlefield of partisan disagreement to include a set of policies that provoke moral fervor, like abortion and gay rights, or activate fundamental personal identities such as religion and ethnicity. These divisions, they suggest, do not lend themselves to negotiation and compromise as readily as differences over economics, where horse-trading and difference-splitting are more feasible solutions.

But the growth of cultural conflict has polarized Democratic and Republican politicians on economic issues as well, by providing the two parties with increasingly distinct and insulated electoral constituencies, and bitter debates over health care and tax reform have generated just as much partisan rancor in the current Congress as any other policy domain.

The numerous Republican victories in congressional elections during the past 25 years have not managed to prevent the cultural change that has occurred over the same period, from declining religious observance and increasing support for same-sex marriage to the decriminalization of marijuana and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Cultural conservatism remains essential to defining the Republican Party’s regional base, but its substantive fruits can be found more in the implementation of conservative economic measures than in the repeal of liberal social policies or reversal of leftward social trends.

Despite a 2016 campaign waged largely on cultural themes, the Republican tax bill represents the biggest legislative accomplishment of the current Congress — and, quite possibly, of the entire Trump administration. Though Mr. Trump once presented himself as a populist enemy of Wall Street, and though many corporations have come to adopt liberal positions on issues like immigration, gay rights and affirmative action, big business and wealthy individuals stand to benefit the most from tax cuts approved by congressional majorities elected on the basis of right-of-center cultural views.

That is why the true winner of today’s culture war is corporate America.

David A. Hopkins is an associate professor of political science at Boston College and the author of “Red Fighting Blue: How Geography and Electoral Rules Polarize American Politics.”

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