The lazy employee revisited

For some reason, In praise of the lazy employee was one of my more popular postings. Now Fast Company is saying much the same thing in Hard Work's Overrated, Maybe Detrimental.

"Just listen to your heart" supports the Fast Company article at least as far as decision making goes.

The (un)Sustainable Commentator on growth

Just to keep the question series on growth going, here's what Wayne Maceyka is saying on The (un)Sustainable Commentator.

Check out Wayne's blog, too, and his extensive list of links in the right-hand column.

Questions on growth: a follow-up

After all of our good questions about growth, we've gone silent, so I was about to change topics. Then I saw The Growth Bubble on Tom Fiddaman's MetaSD and its link to Thomas Friedman's The Inflection Is Near?

It's a Friday night after a long week, so I'll leave it to you to make the editorial comments.

Sustainable Enterprise: the opportunity

If you're in or near the Portland, Oregon area or willing to travel to Portland, you might be interested in Willamette University's Sustainable Enterprise Certificate program. It consists of three two-day sessions: Understanding System Dynamics, Social Systems and Sustainability Success, and Creating & Implementing a Sustainability Plan. The first one starts April 2.

Check out their Web site, and sign up now!

The metric system and math skills

I once suggested that eliminating the use of the customary system of units in this country would help us learn and compete. Now Richard Slettvet, a local teacher, has made the same point in A logical way to improve math scores.

Is it time to act? Who will you engage?

Feel free to tell others about this post.

Questions on growth: a pre-evaluation

You've helped me accumulate quite a list of questions about growth, and I thank you. Here they are once again:

1. What if (aggregate) growth went to 0% forevermore? What would it mean to you, to your business, and to your personal life?
   
   
2. Do you think there's reason to believe growth could stay at 0% or below for a very long time? Is that of necessity either good or bad, or does its value depend upon our reaction?
   
   
3. Is it a good idea to try to keep growth positive? Why? Are there any downsides? Are there indeed any limits to growth, either in terms of annual growth rates or the overall size of anything?
   
   
4. As attractive as growth may be in the current worldview, systems ideas would indicate that the longer we try to keep growth going once we've exceeded the carrying capacity of the system (the planet), the worse the eventual and inexorable fall and the lower the eventual sustainable standard of living. If you favor continued growth, how will you overcome those seemingly inviolate systems limitations?
   
   
5. If the systems theories play out in the real world, how do we reasonably make the transition from our current state to a new, equilibrium state in ways that attend to people (social justice, the ability to procure what we need for life, the ability to make a difference or find purpose, etc.) and the natural environment (sustainability, the depletion of nonrenewable resources)?
   
   
6. Can we make such a transition a good thing and not a painful thing?
   
   
7. What do we owe our descendants? For how far into the future do we bear responsibility?
   
   
8. If these systems ideas have merit, what changes in mindset (in worldview) do we need to survive emotionally as well as physically? For but one example, negative growth has long meant failure for people leading businesses, but that could be the way of the future. Can we realistically change our mindsets and our systems so that satisfying needs (instead of generating growth) defines success?
   
   
9. In case these systems ideas don't apply in this situation (e.g., if technology can once again save us even in the face of decreasing energy supplies and rising population), can we design robust actions that work well in either eventuality? How do you answer Tom Fiddaman's questions about the sufficiency of technology?
   
   
10. Can the current economic "engine" be morphed into one based on such a radically different paradigm?
    
    
11. If we change to a different paradigm that's not built on growth, can we figure out how to get money into the hands of all who need it? Or will our reaction to low or zero growth be to trim people out of companies to keep the organizations viable while building unemployment?
    
    
12. Is an economy built on lending inexorably drawn to growth for survival?
    
    
13. How we to encourage understanding that quality of life can still improve while quantity of consumption decreases?
    
    
14. In light of the current economic crisis, how can we best protect the economy's life-supporting functions such food production, health care and ecosystem services amidst the chaos that will undoubtedly trim the less important financial and luxury markets?
    
    
15. What new national and international policies and institutions do we need to design in order to prepare for a transition to a steady state, or true cost, economy that recognizes the need for investments in natural and social capital as well as financial?
    
    
16. What would constitute the analogy of complex relationships those with "imaginary" components?
    
    
17. Will a state of zero net growth become a state of dynamic economic equilibrium, and will this new state actually make markets MORE efficient, and effective at elevating the state of the common man?
    
    
18. Why is our world so hung up on growth to begin with? How did growth get into our DNA? Has it always been there or is it just since the invention of the steam engine?
    
    
19. What do you do if evolution favors individuals or groups who aspire to growth?
    
    
20. What if the US and EU go green and China and Russia don't?
    
    
21. What if growth had to be -X% per year for Y years in order to reach a sustainable steady state (in material throughput)? How might social systems accommodate that peacefully?
    
    
22. What if technology has limited potential?
    
    
23. What would an evolutionary landscape that favored sustainability look like?
    
    
24. Can wealth can go up while the material flow goes down? How?
    
    

I've numbered them this time for easy reference. If you want to see who contributed each question, refer back to the original posting.

Now the next step: how would one go about answering these questions?

Before getting to the process, though, I'm curious how you think we would recognize a good answer. I don't expect that we'll all agree, but, rather than getting into a bunch of statements about our respective positions, I think we might learn more by first thinking about the criteria by which we'll evaluate potential answers.

I suspect our answers to that may be all over the map. As food for thought, I offer up the questions critical systems heuristics offers about motivation, control, expertise, and legitimacy. You can find one article by Bob Williams and Martin Reynolds on Bob's Web site: go to Systems Stuff and scroll down to the article called Critical Systems Thinking. You can see another introduction by Werner Ulrich here. He lists the questions starting on page 11, but you probably need to read the earlier pages to understand what it all means.

Once we have some idea how we'll evaluate potential answers (and how we think we should evaluate them), then we can think about picking approaches, methods, methodologies, or processes we think might be of use for each of these 24 questions.

So what do you think? How will you evaluate the answers to these questions? How do you think you should evaluate them?

Questions on growth

From time to time, I've posted some of my musings about growth. I had a related email discussion recently with a colleague, and one of my emails to him contained questions that I'd like to ask you, too.

We know the world's economies are currently experiencing hard economic times. Yet I wonder if thinking of this in terms of business cycles is the best way today. Jay Forrester has written, "Our greatest challenge now is handling the transition from growth to equilibrium".

If you think of the world in terms of business cycles, getting from bad times to good is a largely waiting game, assuming you've saved enough in the good times to carry you through the bad. Before refrigeration and long-distance transportation of food, that happened on an annual basis, too: you had to save enough food from this year's harvest to survive to next year's. Admittedly, some organizations are good at gaining ground during these periodic "yellow flag" situations, but many of us will just try to survive until the good times return.

If Forrester and others are correct and we're really moving from a long period of growth into an even longer period (possibly forever, at least in practical terms) of relative equilibrium, then dealing with those (equilibrium) times may require a fundamentally different mindset (as Cynthia McEwen and John Schmidt would remind us), not just a changed process.

• What if (aggregate) growth went to 0% forevermore? What would it mean to you, to your business, and to your personal life?


• Do you think there's reason to believe growth could stay at 0% or below for a very long time? Is that of necessity either good or bad, or does its value depend upon our reaction?


• Is it a good idea to try to keep growth positive? Why? Are there any downsides? Are there indeed any limits to growth, either in terms of annual growth rates or the overall size of anything?


• As attractive as growth may be in the current worldview, systems ideas would indicate that the longer we try to keep growth going once we've exceeded the carrying capacity of the system (the planet), the worse the eventual and inexorable fall and the lower the eventual sustainable standard of living. If you favor continued growth, how will you overcome those seemingly inviolate systems limitations?


• If the systems theories play out in the real world, how do we reasonably make the transition from our current state to a new, equilibrium state in ways that attend to people (social justice, the ability to procure what we need for life, the ability to make a difference or find purpose, etc.) and the natural environment (sustainability, the depletion of nonrenewable resources)?


• Can we make such a transition a good thing and not a painful thing?


• What do we owe our descendants? For how far into the future do we bear responsibility?


• If these systems ideas have merit, what changes in mindset (in worldview) do we need to survive emotionally as well as physically? For but one example, negative growth has long meant failure for people leading businesses, but that could be the way of the future. Can we realistically change our mindsets and our systems so that satisfying needs (instead of generating growth) defines success?


• In case these systems ideas don't apply in this situation (e.g., if technology can once again save us even in the face of decreasing energy supplies and rising population), can we design robust actions that work well in either eventuality? How do you answer Tom Fiddaman's questions about the sufficiency of technology?
  


• What other questions do you have?

Let me be clear: aggregate growth of 0% does not imply that there is no dynamism, no growth in the economy. Our need for certain products and services will increase, even as our need for others will decline. I'm only thinking of aggregate growth in posing these questions.

I have lots of questions and only tentative answers. Right now, I really am interested in seeing your questions, as I've seen the power of listing questions before trying to provide answers.

Later, we'll get to considering answers and how we might test those answers for reasonableness and usefulness.

Questions?

R in the news

If you're nervous about applying free software in your work, see what the New York Times had to say about R, the free statistics system. Thanks to Andrew Gelman for pointing out that article.

I'll highlight another free tool in my next posting.

Management Improvement Carnival: Annual Edition

John Hunter of Curious Cat has asked me to participate in the annual edition of the Management Improvement Carnival. I'm humbled to be invited and glad to participate.

The first station has to be Tom Peters' blog. I don't agree with everything he says, but I do find that he makes me think. Any of you who manage something are people, too. That's why my first link goes to his Christmas 2008. I share his sentiments, if not his bully pulpit. While I'm mentioning his blog, I'll also mention Repeat!.

The next station is MetaSD, the home of Tom Fiddaman and his Four Legs and a Tail. It's a good reminder of the leverage points we can seek in the systems in which we work as originally drafted by Dana Meadows, and it offers his notion that they don't necessarily compose an ordered list. Perhaps more importantly, it's a reminder that we need a mindset change to be successful in the world we're entering. Speaking of mindsets, Cynthia McEwen and John Schmidt of Avastone Consulting have published Leadership and the Corporate Sustainability Challenge: Mindsets in Action Report. While not a blog, that report does speak to mindset changes. Speaking of Tom Fiddaman, he has also posted My Bathtub is Nonlinear, an excellent reminder of the importance of grounding our assumptions in real data.

Times are tough, economically, and that's why I pick Paul Graham's Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy as the third stop. Don't do anything foolish, but don't think that the news from Wall Street necessarily predetermines your fate is the message, but he says it better than I. While I'm visiting non-conventional management sites, I'll stop at Elana Centor's Note to HR Folks: Hiring Over-Qualified People Is A Smart Strategy because you will need to hire again someday, if not today.

Speaking of saying things better, one of a manager's jobs is conveying information, and much of that information comes in the form of numbers and graphs. We do our organizations, our people, and ourselves a favor when we display such information clearly so others can make sense of it well. That's why the fourth stop in this carnival is at Andrew Gelman's An improved time-series graph instead of that notorious "spiraling down the drain" spiderweb. Follow the links, too, to see his earlier commentary. I'm a fan of Edward Tufte's approach to communicating information, and I'm a fan of the second graph in that posting. If you have to add drama, I like the third graph much better than the first, but I still think the second is the best of the three.

As important as data and statistics are, I'm reminded by xkcd's Decline that not everything we do, not even everything we do as managers, is best served by quantification and purely logical analysis. That brings me to Andrew Taylor's Not aloof and detached, but deeply, deeply human, a link to a Benjamin Zander TED presentation that, for me, brings together presentation skill and leadership in the service of his passion, music.

Finally, I'll take a view of another system we may not think of much, one that we very much need to be working well and one that may offer opportunities for some of us: food. Marilyn Holt's A Locavore Manifesto by Michael Pollan is a great education and reminder; click on the title of her post to get to the manifesto.

You may have thought I'd post about IT issues, about process improvement, or about systems or statistical analysis of management work. Those are indeed important, and I don't want to neglect them.

Yet I've found it helpful to start thinking at a high, systemic level to make sure I'm considering the important issues and to help me determine where I need more detailed information. While this, like most summaries of blog postings, can't claim to be as organized and logical as a book, I think it covers issues we need to concern ourselves about in business. From how we deal with people to the mindsets we bring to our work, from how to work in a tough economy to how to convey information, this covers a broad range. I closed with food systems because I wonder if we may be entering a period where the major systems we need for business—food, energy, the atmosphere and the overall environment—can no longer be safely taken for granted. That's why I think the desire and ability to view our challenges through a systems lens is particularly important as we enter 2009.

I'll conclude with with Tom Asacker's Nine Predictions for 2009, thanks to Tom Peters' Must Reading.

Follow-up:

To find the rest of the Management Improvement Carnival, check out these links:

• Management Improvement Carnival Best of 2008
  
• Got Boondoggle?
  
• Quality and Innovation parts 1, 2, 3, and 4
  
• Lean Blog
  
• Elegant Solutions
  
• Evolving Excellence
  

Were Bill and Dave right?

Much of the focus in righting the economic system seems to have focused on lending: fixing the effects of bad loans to get good lending going again so that companies and the economy can once again grow.

Yet, thanks to Justin Tilson, I discovered Chris Martenson's Crash Course. It makes the claim that debt is a key factor in creating growth and the problems of growth. I found the series interesting, but I wasn't in tune with his recommended solutions. They struck me a bit too much as "run for the hills" and not enough "here are some ways we together can craft systematic solutions." I should listen again to see if I get a different impression in a second pass, but I don't have the time. That's why I usually prefer well-written and -illustrated text to video—it's faster to read and faster to review—but that's just my personal preference.

Later, reading (or reacting to) James McCusker's Federal loan guarantees mean more jobs made me wonder: did Bill and Dave get it right on a more global scale than they perhaps realized?

What does that mean? If you know that I used to work at Hewlett-Packard and you recall any of the twentieth century history of high tech in the USA, you likely know that I'm talking about Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. In one famous case, which you can find described in multiple books, Dave returned from his stint working in the US Department of Defense to find that HP was about to raise money through significant borrowing. His reaction made it abundantly clear to a generation or two of HP managers that HP did not raise significant money that way; HP funded future growth out of current profits.

Putting McKusker's commentary, Martenson's ideas, and Dave's values together, I wonder if a focus on supplying real needs and growing through profits rather than growth for growth's sake and growth through borrowing would be better for businesses, better for the economies of the world, and better for people.

Incidentally, McCusker is in favor of more loans right now to get the economy moving again. With so many people out of work, I realize that something must be done and that interim measures may not match long-term solutions. I'm musing about long-term approaches here; how to get from here to there is a different matter.

What do you think?

PS: If you wonder what Dave's reaction to debt was, ask an HP veteran of the time, or check out Chuck House's and Ray Price's upcoming book; I'm sure it will mention it.

Heretics, skeptics, and cynics: your ideal business partners!

Art Kleiner has written The Age of Heretics, celebrating those who are loyal to our organizations but see reality somewhat differently. Günter Grass wrote Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke, celebrating, among other things, skeptics and questioners. Now the TP! Wire Service points to Working best: Cynicism not always workplace hindrance by Bill Repp of the Organization Development Group.

For more on the topic, see The importance of a focus on disconfirmation, Skepticism revisited, and Skepticism, numbers, and making sense.

Ideas from an integrated business and farming mind

Colleague Marilyn Holt runs a private M&A consultancy and runs a farm and writes. I've pointed to her blog before; today I want to point to a few more of her writings that some of you may find interesting.

First, she writes tips for Business Week. In these times, some of you might be interested in Increase Revenues While Decreasing Costs; you might find others you like linked from her blog.

Second, she also writes for EntreAlliance. She's just started a series called Seven Take-Away Lessons From a Failed Team. The first installment, Lesson # 1: Manage Your Brand, is the first of seven articles drawing business lessons from the recent McCain campaign for the presidency of the United States. Check it out!

More not good news

A bit over three years ago, I published Not good news; what do we do about it?, a story prompted by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

Today, Grist News published Planet Ahead, a pointer to the World Wildlife Fund's 2008 Living Planet Report. In short, we're continuing to live beyond our (or the planet's) means, and, at current trends (not consumption levels, as reported in Grist according to my interpretation), we'll need two planet's worth of resources by the mid 2030s.

While they don't reveal the details of their model, it seems by their admission (p. 22) that it does not incorporate feedback effects. Thus it may miss behaviors that could prove dominant and perhaps more damaging over time.

One challenge is that the degradation is largely invisible to many of us. For one, many of the factors they measure are not bought or sold, so normal market forces don't make them visible nor work to manage their use. For another, the degradation is largely confined to tropical regions, yet I suspect most of us reading this live in temperate regions and don't really observe those changes.

Yet, amidst that gloomy projection, there is cause for optimism. They speak of "sustainability wedges" as an approach to help us have our cake and eat it, too, or at least to grow energy services and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The report is 48 pages long, so I've just skimmed it. I think it's well worth the time at least to skim it to become better informed on the current state of the world and current trends.

What does that mean for us in business? What does that mean for us as citizens? What are your thoughts?

Dealing with risk and uncertainty

Times are uncertain. Risks seem high. We may feel that the price of missteps is high; we know it's hard to decide what steps to take.

In situations such as this, how do you make decisions in and for your organization? How do you plan effective actions? How do you solve the inevitable problems that arise?

The German psychologist Dietrich Dörner, author of The Logic of Failure, has made a career of studying why people make mistakes and what we can do to improve. One of his key pieces of advice is to use computer simulation to get insight about the situations we face so that we can make better decisions in real life.

Perhaps today's uncertainties are your signal that the time is right to apply more systemic approaches in your work and to ground your planning, problem solving, and decision making with simulation that takes into account factors important to your business. Perhaps it's time to test and rehearse your plans before you implement them.

That's what we've been discussing here, and that's how I help others. If you're concerned that your standard approach to business may need augmentation in today's world, perhaps I can help you, too. Drop me an email or give me a call. There's no obligation—only opportunity.

The Age of Heretics: a review

I'm writing about a new book today, but first I have a disclaimer: I know the author, Art Kleiner, because I was on an extended panel discussion he led on organizational heresy that resulted in a small section of The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations. He and I have kept in touch from time to time since then, and he provided me a review copy of this book.

There. That's out of the way.

Art Kleiner has published a second edition of The Age of Heretics: A History of the Radical Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate Management (J-B Warren Bennis Series). The executive summary: if you're in business, if you lead a business, if you consult to business, if you ever have thought of ways to make business work better, read this book!

Perhaps you read the first edition. So did I; I think I recommended it for the company library where I worked at the time and read it there. My recollection is that I liked that version, but I like this version so much more. Perhaps it's his new version; perhaps it's my added experience since I read that first edition (I no longer have easy access to check). Even if you read the first edition, read this one, too.

A heretic, in Art's view, is someone who simultaneously holds great loyalty to the organization to which they belong and a vision of a new truth the organization has yet to see. He has written about the evolution of organizational heresy by way of mini-biographies of archetypal heretics. There are too many for me to summarize, so let me simply refer to one as a way to whet your interest and to indicate what I think of the book.

I first discovered Chris Argyris's action science around 1992, about the time I began work with a group that eventually turned into a true high-performing work team. I had read The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization
and discovered reference to Argyris's work. As is often my custom when I read of new ideas, I like to find the original to learn more (perhaps I owe that to Dr. Malcolm R. MacPhail of Rice University, who would give extra credit in quantum mechanics for our reading related, primary research in its original language and writing summaries).

I picked up one of Argyris's books, probably about 400 pages long, and began to read. By the time I had read 50 pages, I had determined both that it was one of the most important books I had ever read and that I didn't have a clue how to apply its ideas. I kept reading.

At the same time, I was working with—managing—a team that had serious intra-group communications difficulties. I'd practice what I was discovering in meetings I held with them. Then I would come back to the book and try to discover where I had gone wrong. After a year or two of weekly meetings as experimental labs and after reading perhaps seven, eight, or more of Argyris's books, I discovered that the application of action science can facilitate breakthrough improvements in group productivity. I determined that action science has certain attributes:

• Action science requires great skills at discernment to see important incongruities in words that can help us improve our abilities to hold productive discussions in the presence of disagreements and even conflict. It also offers approaches to help us build our capabilities in discernment.
  
• Action science is a revolutionary approach that upends normal work cultures and offers the promise of real, revolutionary gains in productivity.
  
• There's an ethical principle that permeates action science. It's vitally important for each of us to find it and internalize what it means to us. That was, I think, central to my eventual understanding and use of action science.
  

Action science was perhaps the hardest material I've ever learned (even harder than some of the technical material I learned as an engineer). I think it was only the long, intense action research approach of reading, studying, reflecting, and doing (and often failing) that enabled me to comprehend and internalize it without a mentor or teacher.

Most books and articles I've read about action science (Bob Dick's and Tim Dalmau's Values in Action is a notable exception) attempt to make action science approachable, incremental, and easy to do. As important as some of those books are, I've come to the conclusion that those who see action science as anything but earthshakingly revolutionary and demanding of great personal courage and discernment have missed (or are hiding) the point.

Why this discussion? Because Art is the first writer I've seen who conveys that spirit in his description. He, like no other I've read, made that essence come alive. While you won't learn how to practice action science in the pages he devotes to Argyris's work, you may come away with a better impression of what it can do for you and for groups with which you work. Reading his words in conjunction with other material on action science may help you develop a deeper understanding and better practice of the approach.

Art did much the same for each of the heretics and their heresies throughout The Age of Heretics. He neither shied away from their warts nor downplayed the essence of their contributions. That has helped me put many past business and management developments into context, and that is why I recommend it so highly to you.

Now go read it!

The Creative Value Network

Ralph Windle has started a new blog. I'd like to welcome him and to feature his work, because I think he's focused on an important area: creating dialog, innovation, and progress at the intersection of the realms of science and the arts. Both groups (and more; the world doesn't lend itself to being divided into only two such groups, as classic as that grouping is) have much to offer the vital and urgent challenges we face, and the synergy of the two mindsets and the two sets of approaches could be vital for a number of reasons.

In times such as this, we have to work together to figure out our values and our priorities and to work together on the tough problems we face. I learned that over many years of work: you need to know your objectives, your goals, in order to make good decisions, and you need to involve all the people in the system if you want both a robust decision and a decision people will support. Robert Dugger made that same claim yesterday in a panel discussion called the "Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget Forum on Consequences of Federal Intervention in U.S. Markets" as presented on C-SPAN.

How does Ralph Windle figure into this? He and his Creative Value Network are focused on creating dialog among those in the sciences and the arts to foster innovation and creativity. Check it out, and join in the dialog; perhaps together you and the others can be part of making the world a bit (or maybe even a lot) better.

The Marblehead Letter

I've written about my musings on growth a number of times, even as I worried that my ideas might be controversial.

Now I've seen the Marblehead Letter, written by executives at a SoL conference in 2001, and I think those of you reading this blog might find it worthy of your time. Read both the full letter—it's only two pages long, and I think it states its questions better—and the summary, which hints at some of the signatories.

Note that the letter has questions, not answers, and note that the letter comes from people high in the ranks of major organizations.

I discovered this letter by reading Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society, courtesy of InBubbleWrap and 800ceoread. For various reasons, that's been a hard book for me to get through, but I'm persevering (and those of you who have a copy can tell the page I've reached by this blog posting). Perhaps I'll blog more about it when I finish it.

What do you think? It's comforting to know that others are considering similar questions to the ones I've been raising. Question 3 is exactly what I want to work on, but reading it brings two thoughts:

• You can't address that one question in a vacuum; you have to consider their other questions and still more (for example) in the process. It is a systems issue on multiple levels.
  
• I wonder if they didn't go far enough in question 3. They want to reconceive growth. I wonder if and how and under what conditions overall sustained growth is possible and good for us. If, in aggregate, it is not (and I have yet to see evidence that the systems mantra of "there are always limits to growth" is false), I want to help find a new and successful way forward. While we have to address the long-term situation, I'm more interested in helping us figure out how to make the transition from growth to sustainability, whether on an organizational, societal, or personal level.
  

Those of you acquainted with some of the literature on growth will realize that a stable system doesn't mean there is no growth. For example, in a business sense, some technologies, products, or services outlive their usefulness, and their companies shrink or perhaps go out of business. Other technologies, products, or services are needed in increasing amounts, and their companies grow. Equilibrium in the aggregate doesn't require equilibrium in the details.

While I'm optimistic we'll figure out a way to deal with this, I still think the issue of growth is an integral part of one of the two major problems we face as a people. From what I read, we may well have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet. If that be true, then these are important times, for the way we respond can likely have a major effect on the response of the systems in which we live, and the recovery of a system from overshoot can be harsh.

I really would welcome your comments on this.

Inspire your boss to great things

We all have bosses. We've all (hopefully) worked for really good bosses. We may have also had bosses who weren't nearly as good, at least in our eyes, and sometimes we're at a loss as to how we might deal with them.

James McCusker wrote Having image to live up to can inspire bosses. As he says, "[I]t's worth a try."

Of course, that presumes that the problem is "out there" with the boss, not with us. That's always worth testing.

Speaking of testing, if any of you have tried this approach that McCusker suggests, I'm curious how it worked.

Twittering away my life

Well, I'm not that into it, but I have started twittering. If you're a Twitter user, sign up to follow me, and I'll likely follow you, then, too.

Looking from the outside in...seven months and a trip later

Last January, Henrik Müller posted an article called "Amerika steht mit dem Rücken zur Wand" ("America stands with its back to the wall"). Now he's made a trip through the USA and written again in "Amerikas schwärzeste Stunde" ("America's Blackest Hour").

If you read German, check out the article, and let me know what you think. If you don't, here's the short version:

• The USA faces as serious a challenge as we've faced in years, perhaps as serious as the Great Depression.
  
• The difference between this challenge and many of the others since the Depression is that individual people are now impacted in real ways.
  
• While we have some number (he doesn't really guess how many) of tough years ahead of us, we have a way in our culture of getting through tough times successfully. He thinks our situation parallels that in Germany from 1993 through 2005, but he thinks we'll be more successful in breaking out.
  

If you do read German, feel free to add key points you think I missed. You can also read his comments in Google's translation.

What do you think? Maybe more importantly, where do you think we should be headed? What should business look like? How about the economy? How about society? How should we get there? Perhaps a return to 2006 isn't what we want or need for 2010. Feel free to add your ideas below.

Prediction, system dynamics, and Future-Fusion

Recently, I made the claim that we're better off focusing on adapting to the present than predicting the future. I've made similar claims in the past, too. I've even given one example in which predictions serve a useful purpose.

That's all a bit simplistic, of course. Even system dynamicists could be said to predict the future in a way: we show behavior over time we feel is more likely to occur (although we may warn people away from point predictions based on a behavior over time graph). In other words, I might suggest that your current policies could produce a boom and bust effect in your business, but I wouldn't want you to draw the conclusion that your business will grow another 172.3% by June 15, 2009 before taking a tumble that afternoon.

Because we all would like to know the future, I've experimented with blending system dynamics and Bayesian analysis to quantify the probability of a particular behavior pattern, for example. Of course, that probability is conditioned on both the historical data and the model being correct, which is a loophole big enough for a good-sized locomotive to run through: models are always incorrect. Still, I think this approach may give more useful insight in certain cases.

Now Kshanti Greene of Stottler Henke Assocates, Inc. has shown me a Bayesian tool they've developed called Future-Fusion, and I've been exploring it a bit. They are using Bayesian networks and the power of groups to get a better handle on what the future holds. Much as Data360 looks at the past, Future-Fusion attempts to look at the future. As of this writing, they've created four test areas which you can explore: the 2008 US presidential election, the Iraq war, corporate strategy, and energy. Try it out: learn how to use the system, see current predictions, and add your own (I think you only have to create a free account if you want to add your own predictions). Perhaps you'll learn something, and perhaps they will, too.

Kshanti has pointed out a recent addition to Future-Fusion that may intrigue some of you: time. They've enhanced their technology to allow limited dynamic execution of a network model, which begins to narrow the gap between Bayesian networks and system dynamics from the Bayesian network side, much as what I've tried has narrowed it from the system dynamics side. To try that out, go to the energy model, select a prediction (e.g., "Reduced SUV sales"), click "view graph," note the numbers, and then click "Next Time Step."

I think this is all still experimental in many ways, but it's a good opportunity to learn a bit about this technology by trying it out on real-life issues. I'll be curious what you discover.

Why are we here?

Why are we here in business, that is?

You can find lots of answers, and "making money" seems to crop up frequently, at least in informal conversations. Some of you know I used to work at Hewlett-Packard. At least at the time, it was governed to a large degree by "Bill and Dave stories": tales of how Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard responded in certain situations.

Today, thanks to Tom von Alten's note on Corporate blogging, I discovered Anna Mancini's blog called From the HP Archives… (she's the HP archivist) and this Dave Packard Quote.

Why are you in business? Why is your company in business? What is your contribution to society?

Bittersweet asphalt

No, it's not that I find asphalt bittersweet (I haven't tried tasting it). It's the news that I find bittersweet.

Five and a half years ago, I published Out of Gas: A Systems Perspective on Potential Petroleum-Fuel Depletion. In that column and in the accompanying simulation model, I suggested that delays due to debates over how to allocate shrinking petroleum stocks might hurt our ability to replace energy resources in a timely fashion.

Today, I read Asphalt shortage disrupts road projects. I'm sure you can find other examples, perhaps closer to your home, in which the imbalance in supply and demand of petroleum is leading companies to prioritize one usage over another, which can cause pain for the unfavored group.

Models such as this aren't designed to predict the future, at least in the sense that they tell you that a certain event will happen in a certain year. They're intended to give insights into the likely and potential ramifications of current and proposed policies, both formal and informal, that we've created. They're intended to help us test policies quickly, inexpensively, and at low risk, so that we can be more confident when we implement a policy in our organizations. They do not provide guarantees, but they can provide very useful and sometimes unexpected insights.

In which areas would you like to think more effectively about the effect your current policies could have on your organization's future?

How to act in tough times

We seem to be in tough economic times. (Did I hear "Duh" from the back row?) Tom Peters recently posted 26 Rules for Recessions. If your business is hurting, check it out. If it's doing really well right now, check it out anyway unless you're sure you'll never be hurting in the future.

I suspect those who think their business will never be hurting are mistaken, but they may not be open to this message today.

I suspect that you are an optimist with a grounding in reality, if you stick around here. I hope you're either not hurting or poised on the threshold of a transition that will help you succeed even more (see the second point).

If your business is hurting, or if it's doing well but you'd like to prepare for the next transition, whatever that is, let's talk.

Genesys can tell you if it's good enough for you

I've written a lot recently about the benefits of working without travel or commuting; I think this will be my last for a while. Genesys Conferencing has a calculator that can tell you how much you save by holding a remote, synchronous meeting instead of traveling to one place to meet. This fits nicely in the sequence of "It's good enough for ..." postings.

Naturally, this calculator is an ad for Genesys; I'll let them own the responsibility for the accuracy of their calculator. I do regularly work with their operators in meetings I moderate, and I will say that I've been pleased with their professionalism and friendliness.

How can I help you make your next meeting more productive, less expensive, and greener?

It's good enough for the whole Chorus

First it was Kate Lister, then it was Phil Woolas, then it was Fast Company, and now it's a whole Chorus. See how a small software company has become totally virtual.

It's good enough for Fast Company

I wasn't planning on continuing this thread, but Fast Company sent me a pertinent link this morning, predicting that "Within five years, technology will obliterate the need for business travel."

While I can conceive of video offering certain benefits, I wouldn't suggest waiting for technological solutions. Perhaps one of the most engaging and effective courses I've ever attended was the all-text-based email AREOL, put on by Bob Dick at Southern Cross University twice a year since 1995 (the year I took it). The key lies in the people and the process, not necessarily the advanced technology.

How can I help you today?

It's good enough for Phil Woolas

Yesterday I wrote about working without travel or commuting. Apparently Phil Woolas, UK Minister of State for the Environment, sees things the same way; he delivered a keynote speech at the Annual Climate Change Summit in Sydney while remaining in London.

What have you been doing to reduce GHG emissions, reduce fuel usage, and thereby improve productivity? I'm curious, and I'd welcome your comments.

By the way, it's my experience that you don't need a lot of technology to make working remotely successful; you just need to think and plan carefully how you'll be effective.

Why go to work today?

Why go, indeed?

Some time ago, I described why I think most of you have had me work remotely over the last eight and a half years and how that has helped you and society. Now Kate Lister makes similar points on The Oil Drum.

Environmental optimism: an example

Glen Hiemstra commented on my blog yesterday, and he also blogged about Al Gore's speech calling for a 10-year program to end the use of carbon-based energy sources for generating electricity.

Al Gore has presented a great example of environmental optimism on a grand scale, and he's done it in a manner I found challenging and uplifting, not depressing and defeatist. You've probably read about it by now, but I encourage you to watch the video.

Environmental optimism

If you've read my blog for a while, you may you wonder: why do I spend so much time talking about environmental issues on a business blog?

The answer is simple: business operates in the environment, and we have no choice in the matter. The environment seems poised to make a few changes right now. That seems fair; it's apparently doing it largely in response to changes we've made. In times of transition, there are usually economic winners and losers. We've seen that building inefficient SUVs is not a winning strategy now (or, presumably, ever again); I want to help you (and me) think about the areas in which we can win.

Which brings me to my main point: optimism. Sometimes I post items that could seem depressing; I think my previous posting fits that description.

There are two steps to change. The first involves becoming motivated, and the second involves doing something. Facing up to the facts, as best we know them, is arguably the first thing we have to do. As we continue to get new data (even as the fundamental message hasn't changed in a while), I think it's important to keep looking at the science so we base our actions on the best insights we have.

I happened to see Great Read! Important Read! in Tom Peters' dispatches from the new world of work. While I haven't read Amanda Ripley's The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why, the subject of his post, yet, I think the concept meshes well with my idea that we are the ones who can make a difference. We can do it through business, we can do it personally, and we can do it through our governments. I think it's important to push forward on all three dimensions and not to let difficulties in one of those three areas prevent us from making progress in the remaining ones.

Is that a call to become dour prophets of doom? I sincerely hope not. While I think we have to make changes soon, I think we can and should do it with cheer, energy, and a spirit of optimistic entrepreneurialism. That's one of the things I liked about teaching at Bainbridge Graduate Institute: everyone there had an upbeat, infectious approach to life, to business, to social justice, and to the environment. That's one of the things I like about Bernie DeKoven's Junkyard Sports: he takes trash that no one wants and turns it into the stuff of play. That's one of the things I like about the growing interest in wind power, photovoltaic arrays, and high-efficiency transportation: the business system is responding to a real need. I'll let you have fun and success finding (or, better, creating) more examples.

What do you think?

Alternative energy: not as easy as it sounds?

Five and a half years ago, Pegasus Communications published my Out of Gas: A Systems Perspective on Potential Petroleum-Fuel Depletion. If you try out the downloadable model (see the column for instructions), you will discover my concern that we wouldn't start soon enough or be able to move fast enough to replace petroleum. Such delays could have a significant, perhaps massive, impact on society and on our economies.

Yesterday Forbes published America's Best Places For Alternative Energy and noted SRI's estimates that we need "[r]oughly 4.2 billion solar rooftops, 3 million wind turbines, 2,500 nuclear power plants or 200 Three Gorges Dams" to replace the amount of oil we use annually and that "no single category of renewable energy is growing anywhere near the speed it needs to bear the full brunt of displacing carbon-emitting fossil fuels anytime soon."

So my simple concept model identified a problem that's substantiated by more research at SRI (and by our daily experience, for if alternative energy sources were fully replacing petroleum, would we see overall energy price increases?).

That's part of the message of Is predicting the future really worthwhile?. My simple model didn't predict the future.

• It did identify past patterns of action that could credibly lead to a problem.
• It did use information that's known reasonably well (quantities of petroleum, even admitting that we don't know reserves as well as we'd like, as well as something about the dynamics of petroleum discovery and use) and apply simulation to explore what ramifications those factors might have over time.
  
• It did allow one to try different scenarios to see whether one's conclusions were sensitive to assumptions. For example, does it make a fundamental difference if petroleum reserves are 25% higher than assumed? (No, it just changes the timing of the problem.)
  
• It did provide a test bed for exploring strategies to see which might be more effective.
  

More research (in this case, in the form of the SRI study) substantiates the nature of the problem and helps us understand its magnitude and timing.

What systems are at work in your organization, your business, or your part of the world that might lead to consequences you don't want? How might you test your ideas? What can you change that might lead to better results? How might you test those ideas?

Is predicting the future really worthwhile?

Predicting the future, also called forecasting, is a popular business activity. Some managers want to know what the future holds so they can plan to accommodate it.

Yet I'm reminded by The Oil Drum: Europe's The Fantasy World of the UK Government that our record in forecasting isn't so great.

In that report, the U.K. government published a prediction on May 7, 2008 that gave four oil price scenarios. In the highest of the four, the "high high scenario," the price of oil hits $107 per barrel in 2010 and stabilizes at $150 per barrel by 2015.

As of my writing this, upstreamonline.com shows crude oil spot prices ranging from $138.96 to $152.58.

In 58 days, we've hit the prices they forecast for 7 years in the future.

Instead of predicting the future and then designing a business system to work well if the prediction is true, wouldn't it be better to design a business system that responds appropriately to whatever the future brings?

Isn't that hard? Yes, but so, apparently, is prediction.

That's one of the goals of system dynamics: to give us models which we can test against multiple futures to see if our modeled business systems work as well as we'd like independently of the outside environment. Once we are satisfied with the insights we've gained from modeling, we can implement our real business system with higher confidence it will work as we expect no matter what the future throws at it.

If you'd like to talk about such adaptive business systems, give me a call.

Washington Small Business Fair

You live in Washington State, and you own or are thinking about starting a small business. You've got questions, and you'd like to get some of those answered for free.

In that case, put the free Washington Small Business Fair in Renton on your calendar for Saturday, September 6. I went years ago, and I found it well worth my time.

Music, leadership, and effective presentations

I've written about music before, I've written about Benjamin Zander and his presentation style before, and I've written about leadership before.

Now you can see all three topics together in Not aloof and detached, but deeply, deeply human, courtesy of TED and Andrew Taylor's The Artful Manager. It takes about 20 minutes, but stay with it; there are good messages all the way to the end.

Hiring is hard: do it well

Patrick Gray said it well in The IT talent crunch and why it’s the CIO’s fault: hire for the ability to learn for the future, not for the certifications of the past.

Higher oil prices help business

Last year, I made a rash generalization: "Riches can be made off the transitions from one status quo to the other." Now the Wall Street Journal has posted Green Products Gain From New Price Equation, listing a number of products that are gaining a significant price advantage over their competitors by virtue of being green in a time of rising oil-related prices.

Thanks to Grist for the tip.

Sustainable Energy Solutions

Recently, I wrote about a non-credit course called Sustainable Energy Solutions to be offered this summer by Bainbridge Graduate Institute, where I'm teaching this spring.

Some of you may have been interested but wished for a bit less expensive course, and BGI seems to have heard you: they've reduced the price of this course to $1,500. If you're interested, hurry and sign up; the class starts soon. Tell Jim Stretch that you read about it here.

The Toyota Communications System and sliduments

Presentation Zen says it all.

Is Linus Torvalds lazy?

You've read about lazy employees before. Now I read from Jason Stamper that Linus Torvalds has said, “Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.” Is he lazy—or simply effective?

Making a big difference

Business Week just published John Hagel and John Seely Brown's Changing the World from the Edge describing how University of California, Berkeley students are making a real difference in the world, this time in issues such as "energy efficiency, Third World poverty and disease, and sustainable housing, among others." By the end, they summarize lessons those of us in business might find useful. I like all three of their three lessons, and I'm looking for ways to apply them, too. If you have suggestions, comment here, or get in touch.

That's related to my recent posting called It's a new world in business education. In all these cases, strong change leadership is again coming out of universities and focused on making the world a better place.

Thanks again to the TP! Wire service for the link.

More on workweeks

I've written before about the lazy worker (a very popular posting), an ethical advantage to shorter work weeks, and how managers' jobs, done well, can make their employees' (and their) workweeks shorter.

In All In A Days Work on the Fast Company site, Dave Roberts writes of evidence that shorter workweeks and higher productivity may go together. What do you think?

Thanks to the TP! Wire Service for the tip.

It's a new world in business education

I began to notice that last winter, as I taught in the highly-rated Information School at the University of Washington, for they seemed very focused on the intersection of information, technology, and people issues, not just one or the other. I like that; it reminds us that people are closer to the goal than technology and that technology is (or should be) in service to people.

I'm noticing it even more this spring, as I co-teach at the also highly-rated Bainbridge Graduate Institute. BGI, too, is about intersection and synergy—in this case, the intersection of business and sustainability—as they integrate sustainability and business in every course they offer.

You can read more of the details on their Web site; I'll content myself to say it really seems true: people there have made and are making a difference both in business and in sustainability, they have a passion for what they do, and they like to have fun both as part of making a difference and as part of living. Associating with the faculty, the administration, and perhaps especially the students gives me hope for the future.

If you're interested in BGI, there are at least three ways that you can partake. They offer an MBA in Sustainable Business, which may fit some of you quite well. Others of you may find one of their two certificate programs to be more suitable.

This summer, they're starting a third option: a non-credit course called Sustainable Energy Solutions. In these times of seemingly never-ending increases in the price of petroleum and petroleum products, this course may be very timely for some of you.

The price of oil

I've written before that history provides another form of simulation: while it includes many confounding factors, it does offer important lessons for us.

Now Ugo Bardi has explored what might happen to the price of oil, based on what happened to a prior generation's non-renewable resource.

What do you think of his ideas? What impact might this have on the way you do business? On the way you should do business?

What is progress?

It's easy to think progress is measured by GDP, trade balances, or the number of things we have; that's what we read and hear about in the news. Yet there's an undercurrent that suggests such views have it all backwards.

The Glaser Progress Foundation has a program area devoted to measuring progress. Go there to see a video or hear an audio of a 1968 speech by Robert Kennedy suggesting that GDP measures all the unimportant things or to research articles they've assembled.

Thanks to Joost Bonsen's Maximizing Progress for the link. Thanks, too, to Cliff Havener and his Meaning : The Secret of Being Alive. I read that years ago, and I'm pretty certain he makes the point that Lord Kelvin was wrong: all the important things—love, peace, faith, art, ...—share the attribute that they can't be measured by numbers. I've looked, though, and can't find the reference; if anyone can provide me the page number, I'd appreciate it.

Food and fuel in the news

DrumBeat: April 25, 2008 offered two particularly interesting links.

First, Time offered How to End the Global Food Shortage, their suggestion on three actions we can take in the short term. I'm not sure I see a long-term solution there, for I sense that global population is still growing exponentially, while their solutions seem focused on taking current food production to a new level, not creating matching exponential growth in the production and distribution of food. Put in systems terms, I sense population is still driven by a reinforcing loop, while the three Time proposals seem driven by goal-seeking loops. The short-term effects do seem beneficial, as long as we don't forget the longer term.

Second, oil financier Matt Simmons has published more presentations. Check out The 21st Century Energy Crisis Has Arrived. Slides 9-10 should not be a surprise to any who took IMT 586 at the University of Washington last winter or who have worked the challenge on pages 212-213 in John Sterman's Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World with CD-ROM.

While you're there, also see his Are We Nearing The Peak Of Fossil Fuel Energy? Has Twilight In The Desert Begun? He does offer optimism, but only if we act well and only after some, um, "transitional" times. If anything, I wonder if his estimate of the rate of decline of production is optimistic, for, with the high raw demand for petroleum these days, I suspect we will deplete available reserves at a rather rapid rate.

Fooled by Randomness: some thoughts

I read and wrote about Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan some time ago; now I'm reading his Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets.

I'm struck by the application of his ideas to environmental and ecological issues. It seems as if we're placing most of our societal bets on growth, a bet that has played well for centuries. Given the current news, though, those seem like some of the investment bets Taleb describes as foolhardy. A prudent "investor" (citizen or business person) at this stage in the Earth's development might place most or all money on bets that can't lose much. Betting on the ability of the planet to absorb more growth, on nonrenewable energy sources to remain plentiful, or on technology to increase efficiencies sufficiently yet again seems like a risky bet, given the news of the day (and year and decade).

That's consistent with the precautionary principle; do check out THE YEAR IN IDEAS: A TO Z.; Precautionary Principle from The New York Times.

What do you think?

For more on Taleb's book, see words by Andrew Gelman, Wikipedia, and James Glassman.

Business, Earth Day, and other thoughts

After teaching at my first Bainbridge Graduate Institute Intensive, I am very impressed. The administration, faculty, and student body seem, in person, even more focused on and effective with both words in "sustainable business" than they say they are. I confess that this MBA program truly excites me, and I am glad to play a small part in its work.

That led me to think about business, business practices, and Earth Day tomorrow (there is another Earth Day that passed last month). A bit of looking turned up Nice Guys Don't Finish Last, a Business Week article that indicates that international executives seem to think being green helps them. You can see more in The Economist's report.

A bit more looking turned up Climate Counts, which promises to help us as consumers and as investors, think about which companies have made more strides than others. If you're in business, see their scorecard to think about various dimensions to climate impact. While we might quibble about the weighting of the various dimensions and the focus on climate alone instead of also including usage of nonrenewable resources, social justice, and other issues of corporate social responsibility, we can probably learn from reviewing their measures. Even though I think my overall footprint as a company is quite small, it's prompting me to make an assessment and to think about additional factors that I think might be important.

If you're looking for other thoughts for Earth Day, check out the Donella Meadows Archive at the Sustainability Institute. After being part of the team that did the research and produced the original Club of Rome report, she wrote the weekly Global Citizen, which you can peruse in that archive. There's plenty of food for thought there.

What suggestions and thoughts do you have?

Grow or die

The title is a rough quotation from an interview I read by a CEO recently. It doesn't matter who it was; it's a common business notion, I sense.

I understand the sentiment, really I do. There is a real fear that, if we don't grow, we'll be overtaken by those who do grow. Or that we'll become stagnant and stale.

Yet I'm mindful that, if we all grow, we'll surely die (or at least suffer), too. Read Limits to Growth, if you're uncertain about my statement. Note that "limits to growth" in that book is not a statement of an environmentalist's hope; it's a statement of fact. We will face limits to growth. We can choose the nature of those limits (or at least we have had the chance), but stop growing we will. You can't exceed the carrying capacity of an environment forever.

So, if it's true that we all (or most all) want to grow (our companies, our houses, ...), and if it's true that we will face (and are already facing) real limits to that growth, what do we do?

I've written about growth a number of times, but I admit that I don't have all or even many of the answers yet. Perhaps I'll find out more in the next few months, for I'm co-teaching a systems thinking course at Bainbridge Graduate Institute.

If you're not familiar with BGI yet, their vision is "To infuse environmentally and socially responsible business innovation into general business practice by transforming business education," and they've got a good reputation in this area.

As I did when I taught system dynamics at the University of Washington, I suspect I'll learn a lot here, this time with a distinct focus on sustainability and business. I'm really looking forward to this experience. (And, as I did last time, I will refrain from telling you anything that goes on in class unless I have explicit permission, but I may tell you a bit about how I grew.)

One way to lose focus

Losing focus can be so easy. I understand. When I was growing up, I used to play the horn and didn't stop until I was well into my twenties. When I focused on making music, I really enjoyed it, but, if I ever paid attention to the presence of an audience or the state of my performance, I would get lost in a mild case of the nerves. Professionals know how to deal with such things; I was not a professional musician.

In Unschlüssigkeit bei Toyota?, Paul Bayer wonders about Toyota's president Katsuaki Watanabe's recent speech at the Detroit auto show. He translates part of Chet Richards' Ford: Faint signs of life, in which Richards wonders if that's a sign that Toyota has taken its focus away from making the best cars to being the biggest company.

My purpose here is not to criticize (or even analyze) Toyota (or Ford or any other company); as Bayer notes, there are other explanations for Watanabe-san's speech that don't bode ill for Toyota. My purpose is to use those comments to note how easy it is to shift one's focus from that which brought success to the trappings of that success and the risk that such a shift might destroy both the success and its trappings.

System dynamics, black swans, and the management of business

I'm currently reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. While I intend to tell you more of what I think when I'm finished, I have an early impression, based on stories such as what he calls "Hume's problem" (or the turkey problem). That's a problem in which everything seems to be getting better and better, only to change direction suddenly and drastically for the worse. In his example, the turkey sees life as a daily succession of friendly humans offering food, only to have it cut short in a manner seemingly quite out of character for life as the turkey has perceived it. (As Taleb points out, it all makes eminent sense to the butcher.)

I think that's part of the reason for system dynamics as yet another tool for thinking and working. As Geoff Coyle points out in his System Dynamics Modelling: A Practical Approach, top management is concerned about things such as the consequences of actions, the likely future, and robustness against uncertainty (p. 15). One of the basic parts of the system dynamics approach is to challenge preconceived notions of the extent of the system causing the current situation: are we looking over a broad enough time span, are we including enough of the actors and actions, and are we paying attention to feedback effects (what Taleb calls recursive effects on p. xxii), where something we do today might come back and affect the situation we face tomorrow?

While there are no guarantees, that unfortunate turkey, had she had good training in system dynamics (or a competent system dynamicist at her side), might have been inspired to look at life over a 5-10 year time span, not just the few months she had experienced. That might have surfaced the fate that led to her demise as part of a regular pattern (albeit one that occurred rarely compared to her lifespan). Had she looked not only at the friendly human feeding her and the other turkeys eating with her, she might have noticed the butcher looking eagerly over the fence from time to time and asked about his role in her life. Had she realized the implications of those observations, she might have decided not to become quite so friendly with her "caretaker," she might have decided not to eat nearly as much (if she were scrawny, might her fate have been different?), and she might even have encouraged the other turkeys to join her in an escape attempt.

Now I don't think that the use of system dynamics conveys infallibility; in fact, that's why I'm reading Taleb's work, to figure out more places my insights may be fallible so that I can make them more robust.

Taleb advocates tinkering as a way to make progress; I see system dynamics as a way to tinker faster and think more effectively in support of your (and my) goal of more effective action.

While my comments may be out of the main focus of Taleb's thesis (system dynamicists tend to focus on the deterministic, not the random, even as they seek to help you be able to respond better in the presence of the random), I don't yet see them in contradiction. I offer them to you in the hopes they are of use to you. Now it's my (and your) task to try to disconfirm them; the longer we can't, the greater the likelihood there's something worth attending to!

If you want to tinker faster with the situation you find yourself in but don't want to risk your business each time you tinker, let's talk.

Thanks to Andrew Gelman for his posts that led me to Taleb's work.

Looking from the outside in...in English

Realizing that the majority of those reading this blog may not read German, I put together a quick summary of Henrik Müller's arguments to which I pointed last Friday.

In his most recent article, he claims that, in a somewhat healthy economy, we have three feedback loops that would stabilize our economy and dampen out our current problems:

• People and the government would spend more to stabilize consumption.
  
  
• Government would borrow more in order to support its temporarily increased spending.
  
  
• The Fed would lower rates to encourage consumption (and, presumably, investment).

He claims all three are at their limits here. He quotes an OECD number that says our savings rate is -1.0%, and housing values are dropping, so we have nothing left to spend.

He says our Federal budget deficit is only 3% of the GDP, and our debt, at 60% of the GDP, is 60% beneath the norm in Europe, so we could increase the debt to try to pull us out. Unfortunately, because we save so little, the only people who can buy that debt are foreigners.

Finally, while the Fed has room to lower the rate, he sees banks as ready to absorb any excess cash rather than loan it out, and he worries about inflationary pressures that may present, thanks in part to an ever-weakening dollar.

In the current political scene, he sees candidates pushing protectionist agendas and hope, while he sees our real hope as lying in global product and capital markets. In fact, the only good news he sees is that the devalued dollar has increased exports and that foreign governments seem ready to invest huge sums in US banks, and he's worried that we don't see that for the good news it is.

What do you think? If you read German (especially if you read it natively), what important points do you think I missed from the two articles?

Looking from the outside in...

One of the things that doing enough system dynamics work teaches one is the benefit of perspective. Sometimes when you're in the middle of something, it's hard to see the forest for the trees. Standing back a ways and, just for a moment, trying to drop any emotions that are tied up in one's current situation can give one better insights.

That's what system dynamics modeling can often do: change a situation in which you're an intimate part to a situation you and your colleagues can look at with a bit of perspective. It also gives you the ability to test ideas on the model before you test them on the real situation.

When we can't get that perspective ourselves, either because of time limitations or because we can't figure out how to do it successfully, reading or hearing what others say about us can sometimes provide us similar perspective. Sure, those outsiders may not understand our situation as well as we do, at least in the details, but they may help us find a better perspective into which to place our more detailed understanding.

If you live and work in the USA, you've no doubt read much about our economic situation recently. I've suggested before that it's healthy to see how others see us. Recently Henrik Müller of the German business magazine manager magazin posted an article entitled Amerika steht mit dem Rücken zur Wand ("America stands with its back to the wall"), a follow-up to an earlier and more data-filled Nach der Orgie ("After the Orgy"). If you read German, or if Google Language Tools suffices, I encourage you to read these articles. He may not be correct in all his assessments, but he may give a better perspective than the headlines in the nightly news about sub-prime mortgages, foreclosures, and other problems. Certainly his earlier article does something I like to see: he gives graphs of at least some key data over a five-decade span, which is more useful for seeing patterns and gaining perspective than merely seeing what has happened this century.

How do your mental models compare with his? What are you doing in your company to adapt? What should you be doing?

Testing the speed limits

In the Fall 1990 Sloan Management Review, Christoph-Friedrich von Braun published "The Acceleration Trap," calling into question our focus on shorter time to market. He later published the related The Innovation War (Prentice-Hall International Series in Industrial and Systems Engineering) (a book still on my reading list).

Tom Peters blogged about it (briefly). Brice Dattée and Dr. David FitzPatrick published The Acceleration Engine: Pattern of Technological Development, a mathematical exploration of the topic from a slightly different perspective. Barry L. Bayus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wrote an interesting review of his book. Eugene Garfield wrote another review. Alexander Kandybin and Martin Kihn quoted von Braun's work in The Innovator's Prescription: Raising Your Return on Innovation Investment in strategy+business.

His words haven't been accepted universally, as anyone in a wide range of industries may attest to once they leave work at 9 or 10 in the evening. On the more literate side, Preston Smith wrote From Experience: Reaping Benefit from Speed to Market. It was the subject of a debate (Die Innovationsfalle) at the 2001 CeBIT.

If von Braun is right, there's another risk to growth besides running out of natural physical resources: there's running out of time. It's analogous to an addiction: we need to keep getting more and more of the substance in question (reducing time to market, in this case) to remain satisfied. If we can't maintain our "supply," we crash and go into withdrawal.

In this case, the risk von Braun pointed out was the limit to how short one can make product cycle times and the risks to any financial success that's built on steadily decreasing time to market. Perhaps we can eventually cycle through product generations faster than our customers will accept them (do you want to replace the computer you bought yesterday with a new generation today and then do it again tomorrow?). Perhaps we'll begin to hit physical limits to speed (zero time to market would seem to be a very hard limit to exceed). If we try to break through that limit, whatever it is, and fail, we lose the business benefits we've been sustaining based on constantly improving time to market in the past.

I'm sure many of us are tempted to say, "We don't know if there's a limit or not; we should push forward as hard as we can, and we'll let the real world tell us if there are limits." Unfortunately, if von Braun is correct, hitting those limits won't mean a leveling off; it will mean a crash, and that could have a ripple effect that none of us will enjoy.

Does this mean I'm against reducing time to market or cycle time in general? No. There are many places in our organizations where reducing delays can help, likely including the delay from a customer perceiving a real problem to being able to obtain a product or service to address that problem. Without thought and testing, though, it's hard to make generalizations.

I perceive that time to market reduction is like growth: neither serves as an eternal, prime goal, but each may have its place in at the right time and in the right situation. I do encourage you to do your own reading, think about it, and draw your own conclusions.

How do you know if it's the right time and situation for you? If you'd like to explore ways to discern whether now is such a time and this is such a situation for your organization and how you might create policies that further your goals, let's talk.

A rash generalization

Friend and colleague Jay Forrest and I talk about what I find to be interesting ideas from time to time. Stimulated by an idea he once told me, I've assembled this rash generalization:

• Income (living wages, one hopes) gets made off the production that's both necessary to support the status quo and possible because of the status quo.
  
• Riches can be made off the transitions from one status quo to the other.
  
• Some disasters are made off the mistaking of a transition (from point X to point Y) for a never-ending trend (from point X ever upwards at a constant CAGR) and the effort we expend to try to make it so even after we've passed that situation's limits to growth.
• Other disasters are made when we envy the growth others exhibit and try to force our steady-state situation to match their growth.
• Disasters may take time to materialize. Part of the art of business is recognizing turning points and responding appropriately.

What do you think? Where is your business?

Leadership and systems thinking

Colonel George E. Reed, director of command and leadership studies at the United States Army Way College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, has some interesting things to say about leadership and systems thinking in his article by that name.

His ideas seem related to many of my posts on systems thinking as well as my post on the lazy employee.

Thanks to the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog and the Ackoff Center Weblog for the pointers.

Focus on the patterns, not the events

If you've ever seen the video that accompanies The Beer Game, there's something eerily familiar in the news about real estate in the USA. (Disclaimer: The video I saw was a VHS tape with a PBS segment on a previous boom and bust cycle in real estate. I can't promise the current DVD contains the same material.) Despite 50 years of knowing that the principles of feedback control theory apply to human and organizational systems, we still create systems with poor information feedback that get us into the ecstasy of boom times followed by the despair of busts.

What does this mean to us, assuming we're not directly impacted by current real estate woes? Where do you see the potential for boom and bust in your world? How do you know? How do you test your hunches?

I can't tell you when you'll experience a bust, but I can help you discover how you can design a business or organizational system that is less likely to experience such boom and bust cycles.

Incidentally, if you'd like to play The Beer Game but don't think you have an opportunity, check out the online version.

Finding a consultant - remotely

In less than a month, Facilitated Systems will have been in business for eight years. I've worked with people in Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Americas, and yet I've rarely seen a client, for I work mostly from my office.

In today's world, that has distinct advantages. For those of you not used to working remotely with a consultant, I'll list a few:

Responsiveness

If I came to your site to work, I'd likely save up tasks until I had half a day, a full day, or perhaps several days of work at once (depending upon how far away you are), because it's more economical. That's a delay for you.

If I work remotely, you can get my attention in the size chunks you need: minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months. The delay from asking a question to getting an answer drops; if I'm available when you call, you'll start getting help immediately. If you do have to wait, the wait will likely be shorter.

Speed

You can get my help now, without waiting for me to fly, drive, or take a train. If I'm working on someone else's tasks, you need to wait for me to finish those. That's where responsiveness kicks in: if it's appropriate, you may well get some of my time starting today, rather than having to wait until I have full days available.

Lean

If I'm traveling, I'm not working for you. Sure, I try to work on planes when I can, but there is much to the travel experience that represents pure muda. Moving me to you is the essence of transportation and waiting waste.

Cost

If there's no travel, you don't pay for travel. Simple.

Carbon friendly

If I'm not traveling, I'm not generating as much CO₂.

Petroleum friendly

If I'm not traveling, I'm using less petroleum.

Congestion friendly

If I'm not traveling, I don't add to traffic congestion.

Resources

If you need a team, assembling a remote, distributed team from my contacts world-wide to help you brings all these benefits in spades.

How did I discover this? You folks taught me. When I started out, I expected to spend significant time in a car or on a plane, even as I expected to do some of my work remotely using the phone, email, and other online tools. With rare exceptions, you who hired me were quite happy to have me sit here and work there. As times have changed over the last eight years, your insights seem wisely prescient.

Some tasks do require a consultant at your site. I've done that, I will do it again, and I do enjoy working together with you in person. So call if you think that's what you need.

I have also discovered that it's possible to share ideas, build trust, work on problems, and make a joint contribution without being there in person. If that's what you seek, call me, too.

Which serves you best?

Transitions

There was a statement in the article about the lack of water in Atlanta that gives me pause:

Scientists have warned of impending disaster.

And life has, for the most part, gone on just as before.

The evidence seems clear that we on this planet are likely facing major transitions in the way we live. Yet, until this year, I still sensed a basic assumption that life would go on as it has been, that we could accommodate all of these transitions without changing the way we do business or the way we live in any significant way. Perhaps technology would save us, perhaps others around us (government, business, utilities) would save us from having to make hard choices.

I don't think that's prudent. Whether we think of it as business risk management or business continuity planning, we need to think of what these changes might do to our businesses and our societies, and we need to make the appropriate preparations.

What will your business do if some of these predictions come to pass? What will my business do? Here's an Australian view.

Oil

Yesterday I wrote about water; today it's oil. The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) just concluded a conference in Houston, and The Oil Drum has published a series of reports:

• Houston ASPO - the Workshop day
  
• ASPO Houston: Day 1, part 1
  
• Houston ASPO Day 1 part 2
  
• Houston ASPO Day 2 part 1
  
• Houston ASPO Day 2 part 2
  
• ASPO Houston - a comment
  

It's also been covered in the news.

If you're not careful, you can get to feeling depressed by reading all this, or you can get overwhelmed, decide it can't be as bad as this, and ignore it. I don't think either are useful. Perhaps one way out is to listen to an interview with T. Boone Pickens' at ASPO. He clearly thinks we've passed peak oil, and yet he's not gloomy and depressed. He does point out some of the adjustments we'll need to make in business and in our personal lives (e.g., natural gas for transportation instead of heating while we search for alternatives).

What's your take on all this? If these sorts of changes come to pass, will they affect our businesses? How? What are we doing in our businesses to prepare for the sort of shocks mentioned here yesterday and today? What can we do? What should we do? What opportunities do these changes open up?

Water

Climate change is in the news, as is peak oil. On Sunday, the New York Times reminded us that we need to think about water, too. In The Future Is Drying Up, Jon Gertner has taken an in-depth look at water and the American West.

If you think this pertains only to the American West, check out Monday's Atlanta Shudders at Prospect of Empty Faucets, also from the New York Times. As the BBC's Why world's taps are running dry points out, it's a global issue, too.

Why did I tag this business as well as environment? Because business will be affected, and business can make a difference.

A simple way to evaluate a company's potential

Quoting from Darci Riesenhuber's quoting of Tom Peters on the Top Peters! blog: "LOOK AT A DAMN PICTURE OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS IN THE ANNUAL REPORT ..."

For a bit more explanation, see "Firms With More Women on Boards Perform Better Than Those That Don’t." Yes, I know: correlation and causality are different things. I suspect that the changes in a company's culture that would be necessary to get more diversity on a board are also those that would drive the changes that would lead to the reported results.

Other data, anyone?

What moves us forward?

What moves us forward? According to a recent article in the NY Times, The Unsung Heroes Who Move Products Forward, it's the creation of innovative processes and infrastructure.

Thanks to the TP! Wire Service for the tip.

Project management revisited

I've written about project management before multiple times. A new tool has become available, and so I thought it time to provide an update.

Project management was part of my professional life as an engineer from the start. My first manager took a course in Netzplantechnik and had me manage my design project using a paper PERT chart. At my second company, mainframe computers produced PERT data in tabular format, which I found far less user-friendly but certainly more voluminous. At my third company, I discovered and used MacProject, one of the friendlier and more intuitive project management programs I have seen.

Yet my third company also introduced me to process management and continuous process improvement. I started in manufacturing engineering and heard many a statement about improvement being continuous, having no end. I saw and participated in the great strides such approaches could make, even as we did run specific projects to accomplish specific objectives.

When I returned to a product development organization as R&D productivity manager, I struggled with what I saw as a project vs. process dilemma: projects seemed to be closed systems on far too many levels to be the unifying organizational approach. While certainly highly useful, they didn't seem to capture the reality of the world nor enable the strides I had seen a process focus capture. My manager was patient, reminding me of the business advantages of a project orientation that focused on achieving a specific goal with specified resources over a specific time frame.

With a few more years to reflect on the process vs. project issue, I now see the ideal as both-and, not either-or. To manage a business, there are many times when we are best served by dedicating fixed amounts of resources and schedule to achieving defined goals, and those call for projects and project management. Yet, to be competitive and to make a sustainable contribution requires a steady focus on getting better, a focus that isn't limited by a project release (or completion) date. I discovered an early statement of the idea of blending a project and a process focus in Experiences with Defect Prevention in the IBM Systems Journal from 1990, and I applied their notion of an action team to a project that reduced the prototyping time of printed circuit assemblies by 83% ("Emphasis on Business, Technology, and People Cuts Turnaround Time at Hewlett-Packard's Lake Stevens Division," National Productivity Review, Winter 1998-99).

I've updated the Project Management section of my Links page for new software that has become available. While GanttProject and TeXProject are still useful (TeXProject more for those who use LaTeX regularly), there's a newcomer to the scene: OpenProj™ by Projity. Some see that as a possible adjunct to OpenOffice.org; others see it as a tool that works with Microsoft Project files.

There are other solutions, especially for online collaboration. eProject offers a well-known commercial solution, and Projity offers its Project-ON-Demand™ SaaS. PHProjekt is a free alternative.

Whatever tools you pick, it's most important to think. As I related in the first links above, paper and pen with good project management approaches can work quite well; complex tools with poor approaches may get you nowhere (of course, complex tools may be necessary to manage the complexity of large projects). Certainly get the basics of project management down, but keep an eye out for new ideas such as critical chain theory (a decade old now) which may help you do better, and integrate project and process approaches in ways that serve your organization well.

Incidentally, chapter 11 of the novel Critical Chain by Eliyahu Goldratt is available online.

Scenario planning

Scenario planning is a business process we got largely from Royal Dutch Shell. If you just read The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World, you should know things haven't stood still. Martin Börjesson has a very good reference site worth checking out.

If there's one thing I've learned about scenario planning, it's that it's a literary and creative process, not a mechanistic one. Those scenarios that offer the most value, that help me think the most, are also those that qualify as true stories, not as mechanical selections of various events.

Management style

Recently I discovered A love affair with micro-management,
courtesy of the TP! Wire Service. That led to The ins and outs of corporate control and Why Companies Love Micromanagers. The basic premise is the same: managers are increasingly hiring micromanagers, and that is hurting their companies.

Then, this morning, I read Dear Boss: You're a jerk; see you in court, an Associated Press article about states giving workers the rights to sue their superiors for creating abusive work environments. Perhaps you've seen that in your news, too.

Years ago, there was emphasis on theory X, theory Y, and, eventually, theory Z as ways to manage. Theory X was seen as the way to get poorer results, but these news stories seem to be saying it's making a comeback.

I'm curious: do you see this trend in your organizations? If you're a manager, what's your approach to management? Why did you pick it? How is it working for you, your organization, and the people who report to you?

If you're managed by others (that should be most everyone), which approach is used by those you report to? Why did they pick it? How is it working for you, your organization, and those to whom you report?

For each case (many of you are, no doubt, in both situations at once), would adjustments to the current style be an improvement or not? If so, is there anything keeping you from experimenting with a change?

Rehearsing

I often help people with presentations, and I've noticed that those who rehearse seem to be those who do better. Now Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen has done an excellent job of explaining the creative process of presenting ideas to others in his Steve Jobs and the art of the swordsman.

Note the two keys to presentation success:

• Intense rehearsal in a team setting
  
• Absolutely no attention to technique or form in the actual presentation
  

Reread Garr's comments, if you need to, and note comments such as, "...once we allow our mind to drift to thoughts of success and failure or of outcomes and technique while performing our art we have at that moment begun our sure decent." [sic]

How can we possibly get through a presentation while following the second key? By following the first key until we have internalized what we want to say, how we want to say it, how others will hear it and respond, and what we can do if something goes differently than we expect. Then we have to rehearse it some more.

As someone once noted, we often rehearse something until we get it right. That means we may have done it wrong 20 times and right once; which do you think will stick with us better?

I think the same thing applies in other areas of our professional lives, and I think Dietrich Dörner and Harald Schaub might agree. That's why I wrote A somewhat unified view of decision making: to suggest the importance of spending time wrestling with what we do at a time that's apart from the actual doing. Whether we use computer simulation, scenario planning, role playing, or something else, the opportunity to rehearse what we do professionally before we do it and to learn from what we actually do afterwards to improve for next time is exceedingly valuable. And it's the cyclic action learning that helps us improve and helps keep us from getting fixated on a bad idea.

If you're still thinking of presentations, check out Garr's presentation tips.

Washington Small Business Fair

If you live in Western Washington (in case you don't, that's the part of the USA's Washington State that's west of the Cascade Mountains) and run a small business, check out the Washington Small Business Fair coming up on Saturday, September 8. It's eight hours of good, free information.

Is business getting worse?

Bloomberg says "CEOs See `No Clear Signs' of Crisis as Woes Intensify." Are things really getting worse, even as people put smiles on their faces, as that article seems to indicate?

We obviously won't know for a while. Even if things get worse for some companies, others will likely do okay, and some will thrive (or, if things go well, others will likely do okay, and some will suffer).

To a large degree, the key is being good at responding to what happens, not simply what happens. We get good by being lucky, by thinking clearly, or by having been in this situation before and having learned (or by some combination of those). While I have no help for you in the luck category, there are myriad approaches to thinking clearly, and I've tried to touch on a few in Making Sense With Facilitated Systems.

You might say that there's no way to experience the future before you get there (the third alternative). As Dietrich Dörner and Harald Schaub point out, that's not necessarily the case. Simulation (system dynamics, usually) is a way to explore challenges we might face in the future and to learn which strategies are likely to be more successful.

How are you preparing for the challenges you might face? If you'd like to talk about some of the possibilities, drop me a line.

Multi-Skill Pay System Design and Implementation

Okay, that sounds like a real exciting workshop, doesn't it? Yet if you've ever fostered the development of a high-performing team, you might have wondered how you can reward people who are now doing so much more than they did in the past.

Bob Gilbert, of whom I've written from time to time, is leading a workshop by that name at the University of North Texas Center for Work Teams annual conference on September 25, 2007. I first met Bob when he was the plant manager at the Rohm & Haas Bayport plant, and I had organized a tour of plants with innovative work systems in the US Southwest for manufacturing management at my company. While I haven't heard this presentation, I'm confident it will offer much of value.

While you're there, check out cellist Benjamin Wolff's The Art of Teams: Lessons in Self-Direction from the World of the Arts. I'm not familiar with his work, but I like the idea of linking art and business.

Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems

Jay Forrester's (new: link to several of his papers) Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems (new URL) is another classic worth reading and re-reading. The article offers food for thought, not final answers. If you start, I encourage you to keep going to the end (I'm saying that, because I know it's 28 pages of text and everyone's time is short). As a bit of encouragement, here are two quotations. First, from p. 24:

Figure 8 shows the world system if several policy changes are adopted together in the year 1970. Population is stabilized. Quality of life rises about 50 per cent. Pollution remains at about the 1970 level. Would such a world be accepted? It implies an end to population and economic growth.

Then, on page 27, he writes, "Our greatest challenge now is handling the transition from growth to equilibrium."

Start at the beginning to get the context for both quotations, and see what you think by the end. These are important issues; don't blindly accept his admittedly somewhat preliminary ideas (see section XI), but don't blindly reject them, either.

Thanks to the HPSIGWiki for the reminder.

Small Giants: the American Mittelstand?

Recently I mentioned Bo Burlingham's Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big. I've finished reading it, and I can recommend it as a good book for those interested in business, passion, and purpose.

Small Giants gives 13 very good examples of companies that have held onto their visions of doing something special and making real contributions and who have managed to succeed in getting rewarded for it along the way. As Burlingham says near the end, Germany's Mittelstand has been described as the backbone of the Germany ecoromy. He's "not sure we can say that small giants are the backbone of the American economy, but they certainly are its heart and soul, and they are setting a new standard for excellence on Main Street."

To spark your interest, here is a list of his small giants:

• Anchor Brewing
  
• CitiStorage
  
• Clif Bar
  
• ECCO
  
• Hammerhead Productions
  
• O.C. Tanner Co.
  
• Reell Precision Manufacturing
  
• Rhythm & Hues Studios
  
• Righteous Babe Records
  
• The Goltz Group
  
• Union Square Hospitality Group
  
• W.L. Butler Construction
  
• Zingerman's Community of Businesses
  

Read the book to find out what makes them special and to get ideas that may help you lead your company.

Seeing things from another's point of view

There are many good policies that generally help us. One policy is to see things from other people's points of view in addition to our own. It's all too easy to get wrapped up in our own views of the world, believing that what we ourselves see, what we feel, what we think, and how we react must be universally true. It's not.

No matter how much I know that, it still sometimes takes effort to get out of my frame of reference and see things as others might. If I'm working by myself and don't need additional insights, perhaps that's okay. If I need to learn or to work or interact with others (which accounts for most of what I do), it's in my best interest to be able to see things from their view, too, and to be able to reflect on the differences. (Sure, I can try to force things to be my way, but I'll likely build up a stock of resentment in others by such coercion, and that resentment may end up making things harder for me later.)

Another useful policy is to make things more concrete. We often spend much time talking high up on the ladder of abstraction. We're taught that in school, as teachers try to help us see patterns where we once just saw chaos. It can make for efficient conversation when we all know we're talking about the same thing, but it can also make for misunderstanding, confusion, and either unnecessary conflict (when we don't realize we agree) or lost learning (when we don't realize we disagree).

Earlier this week, Brad Trnavsky put both of those together in a field that many of us find challenging: sales. His Creating Feature / Benefit Statements That Work is a good reminder of the importance of seeing things from the other person's point of view, and he gives a concrete example to make sure we understand.

Brad just joined the blogosphere this month. Welcome, Brad!

Manche mögen's heiß

"Some like it hot"—that's the title of a new study by Deutsche Bank Research about the effects of climate change on business out through 2030. To learn more and to find out who they think some of the business winners and losers might be (maybe you can position yourself to capitalize on some of these changes!), read the article by the same name from manager magazin. Better yet, read the full report.

For an English-language view, see the Grant Thornton International Business Report 2007 on energy and the environment.

A few comments to these essays:

• Sometimes it seems as if the people who talk about this issue are environmentalists who, some may fear, don't understand business. These two reports are part of a growing wave of business-oriented efforts to deal with climate change, peak oil, and their impacts. As Grant Thornton says, their report "highlights the incompatibility between continued rapid growth in the global economy and the sustainability of the environment...."
  
• The DB Research report is much more detailed than the Grant Thornton one, but it's also more geographically focused, looking mostly at Europe. However, if you live elsewhere, their report may prompt your thinking about the opportunities and risks in your region. The Grant Thornton report is generally at a higher level and more global. Read them both to get a fuller picture, both of what we may face in business and what thought leaders in business are thinking today.
  
• The DB Research report explicitly takes a ceteris paribus approach. A system dynamics approach might well eliminate that restriction and provide added insights. While one rarely succeeds in system dynamics when "modeling the system", it's certainly feasible to pick a problem, as they've done, and to model it as part of making sense of it and of testing solutions.
  

Incidentally, I realize that one of these reports is in German. I wish it were easy for everyone to read it, and I wish I could read good reports done in languages I don't know. While Google Language Tools, other automated tools, and multilingual friends and colleagues may help in the short term, I think it's important that we in the USA work multiple languages into the educational system at all levels. We can do it because it's a good thing to do, we can do it because it helps us communicate with those who speak or write in other languages, or we can do it because we realize that English may not always be the common language for business as it seems to have become today, and we want to treat others who have English as a second language today the same way we hope they'll treat us tomorrow if their language becomes the dominant language of trade and commerce.

Why are we headed there?

Yesterday I posted a rather dark story about what we could be facing. As with any system dynamics model, it's showing the likely effect of the modeled policies; it's not predicting the future. (There is a difference; call if you'd like to chat about it.)

If that message is so dark, why don't we see much action to change our course? (Admittedly, we're beginning to see more action now.) The Oil Drum published Living for the Moment while Devaluing the Future, an essay exploring just that question. For a more academic approach, see Larry Karp's Global Warming and Hyperbolic Discounting, an article referenced at the bottom of The Oil Drum article (now on my reading list—I've only had time to skim it so far).

I think these ideas are important to understand and explore as we try to craft a "soft landing" from our ecological overshoot.

I think they may also be important to us in business. We get used to constant discount rates, because that's what we use. Do our customers and our bosses (they do have similar roles in our lives) really think that way, or do they do hyperbolic discounting, too? Would it it make a difference which they use? Would that difference imply we should act differently than we do?

Improving math education: a conjecture

When I lived and worked in Germany, I noticed to my surprise that my engineering colleagues couldn't do fractions. They had no concept of whether 9/16 was bigger or smaller than 35/64, and they couldn't easily solve "simple" problems such as

  3          5
  -  +  ------------
  4     4 +    2
             -----
             4 + 3

Of course, they could figure out that 9/16 is 0.5625, that 35/64 is 0.546875, and that the former is thus bigger than the latter, but they wouldn't immediately convert 9/16 to 36/64 and see it was bigger.

When I expressed my surprise, we discovered that they never studied fractions in school. We decided the only likely reason US students studied fractions in elementary school was to be able to deal with inches, gallons, and the like. From vague recollection, I must have spent the better part of a couple of years in elementary school arithmetic studying fractions plus memorizing how many feet in a mile, pints in a gallon, and teaspoons in a cup (not to mention conversion factors from those units to metric). By comparison, my European colleagues had to learn a set of metric prefixes, the names of basic units of measurement, and the universal conversion factor of 10 (just to show there's a Wikipedia page on almost anything!).

As it's often written that students in other countries are often, on average, well ahead of US students in math skills and that such a gap makes us less competitive in world markets, what if we switched to the metric system (or, more precisely, the International System of Units)? Would that make a year or two long hole in math education that could be filled in with more advanced topics? Would that help us in the USA catch up?

I don't know. I recognize that it's a challenging problem, and there is no silver bullet, not even in my idea. I would be curious to know if anyone has evaluated this approach.

Contribution

Yesterday I wrote about the power of narrative, as inspired by Andrew Taylor's posting. In searching for a link for my article, I discovered a powerful message about contribution in the last half of Presentation Zen's Two Questions: Why does it matter? What's your contribution?, the part I had skipped before. It builds on the three questions meme I wrote about previously, but it uses art to do it in a powerful fashion.

Watch the Benjamin Zander video from start to finish. Yes, it's just over six minutes long. Yes, some of it is probably promoting the speaker. Listen to it anyway; the message is important. If, after listening to it, you're not sure of its application to business, check out the "Fields of Interest" part of Hewlett-Packard's 1966 corporate objectives (scroll to the bottom).

No such thing as a free (or even cheap) lunch

We read in the papers of biofuels replacing petroleum. Now the Financial Times reports that food prices are experiencing their biggest increases in 30 years ("Fears over food price inflation"), fueled by expanding use of biofuels, climate change, and growing prosperity in India and China.

Maybe conservation will have to play a bigger role compared to substitution than we may have thought (or at least than we act as if we thought).

Business outlook for the next six months

If you read German, check out manager magazin's Deutschland hui, Irland pfui, a report on the Ifo-Institut's forecast for the last half of 2007. If you don't, you can try Google Language Tools, but it translates "Wirtshaft" as "restaurant," valid in some contexts but a bit humorous here.

See their Economic Facts and Figures for more information and Ifo World Economic Climate remains stable for their version in English.

I like the Ifo Business-Cycle Clock in Ifo Business Climate Germany. It reminds me of the phase plane plots I draw from MCSim simulations, and it can be of similar use in communicating insights.

A leisurely snapshot of the USA

How do we in the USA relax? How has that changed over the past few decades? Normally I try to write from a more global perspective, but today's link specifically refers to the USA. Perhaps those of you outside the USA will find it helpful (or amusing) to learn and ponder a bit more about us. Perhaps some of you will comment here, leaving similar information about the culture and nation in which you live.

David Touve and Steven Tepper of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University have put together "Leisure in America: Searching for the forest amongst the trees." It may seem out of date in some cases (it talks about MySpace and IM but doesn't mention Twitter; then again, it was published in April 2007 :-), and it may lack a bit of statistical rigor (I don't know if differences it cites are statistically significant), but it seems interesting if sometimes paradoxical (which may be an apt description of us as a culture).

If that's who we are, what does it mean for you and your enterprise (in all senses of the word), no matter the field?

Thanks to Andrew Taylor and The Artful Manager for the link and for more information he gives about the related conference.

Patents: they're listening

...well, perhaps not to me, but the US Congress is apparently listening to ideas about how to reform the system that Wired says is "broken." Wired took readers' suggestions to Congress May 15.

For an update, see Patent Overhaul Bill Moves Forward in Congress.

Who are you? What do you do? Why does it matter?

Who are you? What do you do? Why does it matter? Those are the questions posed in Presentation Zen's Two Questions: Why does it matter? What's your contribution?, taken from Marty Neumeir's The Brand Gap: Revised Edition (2nd Edition).

Much like the recent two words exercise, those three questions sound useful. Here's my quick attempt:

Who are you?

See http://facilitatedsystems.com/about.html.

What do you do?

I help people solve problems, test strategies, make sense of confusing situations, work more effectively in groups that are spread around the globe, and have more productive discussions to improve and speed problem solving and decision making. I help organizations work smarter.

Sometimes I do this by using computer simulations (system dynamics) as a testbed for new ideas. Sometimes I use approaches such as action science, which, at its core, is a way to test assumptions about conversations we have at work. Sometimes I simply help you have productive dialog so you can progress towards your goals, no matter whether you're in the same room or distributed around the globe. Sometimes I use other systemic approaches.

Why does it matter?

You lead an organization, you work in an organization, or, for most of us, you do both. People have joined your organization (you joined your organization) to accomplish something they couldn't accomplish alone. Perhaps it's as simple as supporting themselves and their families. Perhaps it's to save the world or to make life easier for certain people (your customers) or to make life possible for certain people. Assuming you're working for an ethical cause (and I suspect that includes everyone here), that's a big deal, and you should feel good about it. Your organization bears responsibility towards the people you serve and the people who have joined you in your cause, and you, no doubt, want to live up to that responsibility.

Perhaps you're doing it as well as can be done, but most organizations, even the best ones, in my observations, have weak spots somewhere. Perhaps company executives have high goals, but they're not sure how to link those to effective actions. Perhaps the company experiences recurring problems, and people aren't sure what causes them or how to fix them (or even that they are fixable). Perhaps strategies are set and plans launched without much testing to see if they fit reality or are likely to be successful. Perhaps executives wish people would step up and take more initiative, while others wish the executives would listen to what's really going on. Perhaps you and your colleagues sit 5,000 km. apart, and you worry that you aren't as effective as you could be if you only sat in the same building.

That's why what I do matters. I help organizations, perhaps yours, fix some of those problems. You do the work and retain control; I shine the flashlight and help you see insights that might help you.

Here's my question to you: where is my brand gap? As Neumeier says, brand is what you say it is, not what I say it is. It's your "gut feeling" about what I do.

You see me and my company, my work, from the outside, while I see it from the inside. What do you see as my brand? Why does (or should) it matter? What are the strengths I didn't mention? Where am I failing to live up to what I see as my brand?

That's not a rhetorical question. As risky as it may seem, I want your answers. Either comment here, send me an email, or give me a call. Listening is one of the key ways companies learn, and I think unstructured listening such as this may be far better than a survey for this question.

Oh, and how would you go through this exercise for your organization?

Bo Burlingham on size

I've written about growth a number of times, and my articles on growth have scored high in the list of popular essays here. Now Bo Burlingham has written a book called Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big. Business Week interviewed Burlingham in Resisting the Temptation to Grow. He has given examples of companies that have made explicit decisions about growth and decided that growth didn't serve their interests or that of the people they serve.

After reading the excerpts, I've put a copy on hold at my local library.

Who will be the next to write about company size?

Tested alternatives

Just two words. That seems related to the "just three words" game that has caught on in some online work as a way to stimulate interaction and ideas.

Gary Harpst, CEO and founder of Six Disciplines, LLC, advocates a two-word approach to strategy as a way to get focus.

In that sense, what does Facilitated Systems do? Gary said it took him 18 years to get to that level on one business he ran, so I may not succeed at a final answer today. What would I say in two words?

Tested alternatives.

I think that's it. I don't make your decisions for you; those are your responsibility and under your control. I provide ways to help you and others come up with and test solutions to your problems and challenges. Sometimes what you need are systemic approaches to addressing issues. At other times, you may need help creating an environment in which productive conversations can take place, whether the problem is reluctance to talk about certain important topics or the challenge of working with people spread around the globe.

Is innovation overrated?

Innovation builds strong business. I think most would agree with that statement. It's just the old "The early bird catches the worm," which many of us have heard since we were small, recast in professional words.

Most, except perhaps Utz Schäffer and Manuela Stoll, the authors of the study reported by manager magazin in Innovation lohnt sich nur selten (Innovation is only seldom worthwhile). Schäffer and Stoll, of the European Business School, discovered no statistical relationship between a company trying to structure the market in which it operated (innovation) and business success, while 43% of business success could be statistically attributed to adaptation to the market.

While I haven't read it, Stoll appears to have presented her results in Success in Changing Environments.

Thoughts?

Tom Peters on size

Tom Peters thinks that the size of companies isn't the goal. As growth is a change that leads to increased size (growth is the flow, size is the stock), his posting seems consistent with my reflections on growth.

What is the goal? Chris Nel and John O'Leary have some ideas worth considering.

Does sustainability in business mean companies have to die?

I've written about growth and sustainability from both a business and an environmental perspective. Now John O'Leary posted a note on the Tom Peters site that blew me away with a suggestion that was both obvious and unexpected: sustainability means that companies die. It's the sustainability of the economic system, not of the company, that matters.

That's obvious in your garden and in the forest. Older trees eventually die to give way to the younger trees. Last year's tomato plants are pulled and composted, and this year's crop is planted.

As sequoias may last for centuries and tomatoes last a season, different companies have different lifespans. We shouldn't uproot a healthy sequoia seedling after a season, anymore than we should try to keep that tomato plant producing into the next century.

And there are indeed challenges. When companies fold, people have to find new work, and that doesn't always happen at favorable times. When companies fold, we may lose access to products and services that provide part of the support for our businesses or our lives. We have to think well about how to deal with such transitions.

Yet a key factor in enabling births in an environment with finite capacity is deaths. A key factor in enabling growth in companies and opportunity for people may well be to allow companies to die with dignity.

Thoughts?

Ethics

We all bear responsibility for our own ethical behavior. Period.

That said, when we are in positions to direct others' behavior and when our actions can be shown to lead to less ethical behavior, we have a signal to act. I've written before about the challenges long hours at work can make and about the benefits of having a few lazy employees. Professor Sandy Piderit has written about it.

Now Deloitte & Touche USA LLP has published Deloitte & Touche USA LLP Survey Finds Strong Relationship Between Work-Life Balance and Ethical Behavior.

Is it as simple as having everyone in your company work 40 or perhaps 37 or 35 hours a week? No, it's clearly not that simple. Customers deserve the goods and services they paid for. Employees and the community need jobs, and we can't provide secure jobs if we sacrifice all our productivity gains and more to shorter hours. Unforeseen, short-term crises do arise. Besides, the length of the workweek clearly isn't the only factor affecting ethics in the workplace. As I said before, that's ultimately up to each of us.

But it does mean that there's yet another factor to put on the side of the scale that weighs against longer hours. It does mean that decisions aren't as simple as the calculation that "if 40 hours a week are good, then 80 must be twice as good." We as managers and consultants do bear responsibility for thinking about such things and for balanced decisions that take these factors responsibly into account.

Part of thinking responsibly is thinking skeptically, so I encourage you to provide any disconfirming evidence you might have. I'm not looking for anecdotes ("Sam only worked 30 hours a week, yet he stole more paperclips last year than you could believe!"), for I'm sure they exist. I'm looking for valid studies and good, statistical reasoning.

Thanks to Chief Learning Officer magazine for pointing this out.

Thinking about large

Chris Nel has an interesting essay on the tompeters! Dispatches From the New World of Work blog called Purpose beyond Profit.

Whether your organization is large or small, I encourage you to read this and take some time to think about it.

I sense some sort of connection to my More on growth from a year ago, although there is a distinct difference.

Inverted KM

I'm certainly no knowledge-management (KM) expert, but I had occasion to recall Connex, an old Hewlett-Packard KM system today. As I understand KM systems, they generally attempt to capture isolated organizational knowledge and make it more broadly available throughout the organization.

Connex worked the other way. Instead of capturing knowledge, it captured information about experts. If you needed information about subjects X and subject Y, and you had reason to need it from someone who spoke German, you could query Connex and find the name and contact information of any experts who fit that profile.

That seemed easier for the experts, for they didn't have to take the time to write up their expertise without knowing whether it would ever be used. They didn't have to work to make their tacit knowledge explicit, either.

It seemed advantageous for the people needing knowledge, too, for, instead of getting a canned response that might not precisely fit their situation, they'd be able to discuss the matter with the expert and, hopefully, tailor a solution to their particular problem.

What I found really attractive was the social dynamic upon which it was founded. In a KM system, experts might feel as if they were passing along to others what made them unique and valuable. Instead, by listing their profiles with Connex, they enhanced their reputations while benefiting others in the company.

With a bit of searching, I discovered that Connex is not necessarily unique; Motorola has its Compass program, and IBM has its Blue Pages Plus.

Data: fundamental premises

About twenty years ago, I created a slide I called "Fundamental Premises" in reaction to what I saw at the time as an excessively eager approach to data collection in a particular manufacturing environment.

I rediscovered it recently. Here are its five points:

1. One should only take data for a specific purpose; the quantity of data necessary for maintaining historical perspective and a report card is far less than we presently take;
   
2. The value of the flow of information is epsilon less than the value of the flow of products, and the same attention should be paid to making both flows simple, easy to understand, and defect-free;
   
3. Nothing beats talking to people for basic communications, but limited data helps to expand the capability of people to analyze a situation;
   
4. Data collection is almost never free, although the costs are often well hidden;
   
5. Manual data collection may be more valuable than computerized data collection (much as we have learned that manual, Kanban-oriented shop floor control may be preferred to computerized systems); for one thing, it is arguably easier to verify the accuracy of many kinds of data when manually collected and plotted.
   

While the original was an unnumbered list, I've added numbers to make commenting easier.

How might I modify those premises today?

Seemingly contrary to what I wrote in points 3 and 5, I do understand that automated data collection can be valuable, and I do understand that data helps us avoid subjective biases (even as talking with people helps us avoid missing important insights). I've described elsewhere a case in which people on a production line failed to report the most common problem they saw; when the problem was pointed out to them because it was evident in recorded data, they said, "Oh, that's not a problem; it happens all the time." Triangulation is important, as is paying serious attention to the data, not just letting a computer draw a few conclusions and accepting those conclusions without further thought.

I still stand by point 2 and the related point 4. Most of the organizational systems in which we work can be understood as feedback systems, and information feedback is a key determinant of system behavior in such systems. I would suggest that system dynamics can be a tool to help determine what data is important. That data feedback necessary to make the system dynamics model work well may be just the data needed to make the real system work well.

I'd largely stand by point 1, too. It's tempting to squirrel away all the data we can take and then have it just in case we need it. The problem comes in point 4; it costs time and money to ensure we're getting the data we think we're getting. If we don't need particular data, we're tempted to not worry about its accuracy as much. Then, later, if we do decide we need it, it may be hard to determine what it really means or how accurate it really is, and we may make bad and costly decisions by relying on data we only think we have.

What are your fundamental premises regarding data and its use in organizations?

Improving business, and a Management f-Laws discount reminder

telegraph.co.uk just published
"Anti-guru of joined-up management," an interview with Russ Ackoff. One section, in particular, caught my eye:

The idea that you can improve a business by focusing on just part of it is plain wrong, Ackoff says. In fact, it's more serious than that: attempted "improvements" can actually make everything else worse.

"There is futility in doing things in isolation," he says. "You can actually destroy a system by improving just a part of it.

One of these days, I may describe here what I view as one of my biggest successes—and simultaneously a failure—and explain what I would do today if faced with the same situation. Suffice it to say that it was an excellent improvement of one part of a system that, unfortunately, didn't have much of an effect on the overall business. A better way, as I see it today, would have involved more of a systems approach.

That Telegraph interview also serves as a reminder that readers of Making Sense With Facilitated Systems can receive a discount on their purchase of Ackoff's, Herbert Addison's, and Sally Bibb's new book, Management f-Laws.

Accountability, systems, and loop gain

For some time, I've been thinking about this subject; it's time I mention it here.

For organizations that want results, I see a real problem with a focus on accountability.

I have no problem with taking responsibility for one's work. I have no problem with organizations wanting results.

I do see problems with management uping the ante and, under the flag of accountability, raising the rewards for good work and the penalties for bad.

That sounds vaguely problematic, as if I'm condoning poor work. I'm not; I'm actually encouraging better results. Let me see if I can explain.

Some years ago, I did a system dynamics exploration of a problem with a particular organization's ability to manage their expenses. A system dynamics exploration is a simulation-based investigation to find the reason for a problem and offers a platform on which potential solutions can be tested.

I described the project in an article in National Productivity Review ("Pipeline Inventory: The Missing Factor in Organizational Expense Management"), and I later published a bit more technical explanation of the computer model online. The project worked well; we reduced the organization's problem by about 95%.

There was one parameter in the model that represented how much managers would change their behaviors based on data they saw in real life. For a while, I couldn't figure out what to call it except perhaps a fudge factor. I set it to make the simulation results representative of real life.

Then it dawned on me: that variable represented management pressure, which I think might be another word for accountability as it's sometimes used today. If management pressure is low and you overspent your budget last month a bit, you might have a discussion with your boss, and you will try to adjust your spending next month to compensate. If management pressure is high, your boss may call you in and yell at you a bit, threatening your next raise, your current salary, or perhaps your job. Unless you are ready to be hunting for a job, you'll underspend by a lot next month to ensure you don't face that tirade or those threats again.

What's the matter with that, you say? Well, if you looked at the model output, you'd see that the manager who underspent more drastically because of management pressure accumulated an unsatisfied backlog of purchasing needs—all the computers, software, and other things needed to achieve the organization's goals. When the pressure was finally off because the budget was again balanced, that manager tended to buy all those needed things, putting the budget back in the red. You can see the results on page 6 of the article.

The model shows a most interesting lesson. In a poorly designed system, high management pressure (high externally-imposed accountability) made things worse, while low accountability actually made things better. In a well designed system, management pressure really didn't matter so much; one could view the level of management pressure to be applied as a matter of personal preference. As I suspect management won't always have a perfect system in place, lower management pressure may still be in order just for those cases when the system has unrecognized or unacknowledged problems.

Stated this way, it sounds positively Demingesque: the focus should be on the process (the system) and not on the individuals, if you want to achieve success. Management's primary job is to create systems that work well, not to push people to do well.

I still haven't mentioned loop gain, but this essay is getting long. I'll cover loop gain, how these ideas may generalize to other situations, and perhaps how one might go about creating such systems at a later date.

Thanks to Michael Patton for kicking off a conversation on evaltalk about David Weinberger's The Folly of Accountabalism that prompted me to write up these ideas.

Management f-Laws for you

Russell Ackoff, Herbert Addison, and Sally Bibb have just published Management f-Laws: How Organizations Really Work. To whet our appetites and give us a way to make a more informed decision about whether we'd like the book, they've put an excerpt online. If you read it, I suggest you start with the Frequently Asked Questions on the second page of that PDF file: note that Ackoff's and Addison's laws are on the left of each page, with Bibb's comments on the right. Without realizing that, you might get a bit of cognitive whiplash, as they don't always see eye to eye.

I haven't read the full book, but I have read the excerpt. My initial impression is that this is one of those books that might help us think. Ackoff, Addison, and Bibb have stated strong, pithy positions on various aspects of business life, and they all expound on them briefly. Don't be fooled by the shortness of the commentary, for this book doesn't give answers; it starts a dialog that you can continue as you ponder each f-Law, deciding what your take on the subject might be and what you will do in response to what you've read.

This posting is for you, because you can get a discounted copy of the book just for reading Making Sense With Facilitated Systems. Caroline Milner of Triarchy Press wrote me after seeing my blog posting on a classic Russell Ackoff paper to offer you, the readers of Making Sense With Facilitated Systems, a 10% discount on your purchases of the book. Simply enter triarchy-ten in the promotional code field of the order form (you'll find that on the checkout page). I'm pleased to be able to pass this along to you faithful readers. To you who just happened to land here for the first time, you're very much welcome to the discount, too, and I hope you return and join in our conversation.

I haven't made offers such as this before. I did think seriously and even check in with a friend before posting this, for I don't want to give you reason to question my judgment or credibility based on perceived self-interest. I finally decided that transparency was the key—letting you know pertinent behind-the-scenes information. I haven't received anything from Triarchy Press for making this offer (except that I guess I qualify for the discount, too). If you do have any any feedback about this offer, please let me know by commenting here or by emailing me directly.

While I haven't read the full book yet (it was published less than three weeks ago, and my reading list is a bit lengthy), I think it's a good deal: it's a new book by Ackoff and colleagues in a field squarely aligned with this blog's theme of making sense. If you get to read it before I comment on it here, I invite your comments about Management f-Laws.

Going to the source: the IPCC AR4 SPM

One way I often try to make sense of things is to go to the source. Perhaps I got that habit from Professor Malcolm MacPhail, who taught me quantum mechanics as well as electricity and magnetism years ago. He would give a bit of extra credit if we'd read and summarize original journal articles, often written in German, on a topic related to what we were studying.

What I learned was that those articles could be interesting and revealing. While later summaries and expositions might shorten the tale, correct early misunderstandings, or smooth out the language, the originals often had a directness that helped. They might offer more data. They might explain things as if no one yet understood them, thus making it easier for me, who was just learning. They might help me see where later writers had veered from the original and why. It's all a matter of triangulation.

When I encounter a new idea, I still often try to find original work in the field. Even if those articles are harder or longer to read, skimming them may help me understand explanations and summaries I read elsewhere. They may help me gain a depth of understanding missing in popular summaries. They may also help me decide how much credence I will give to those explanations and summaries.

You've probably read of the IPCC AR4 SPM in the news. That's the Summary for Policymakers from the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report (obvious, right?).

You can see the original of that document as well as others' assessments. I imagine RealClimate will continue to comment on it in future days, and I look forward to commentary from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Ocean and Climate Change Institute as well as from others. I encourage you to at least skim the 21-page original. If you want to dig even deeper, check out the publications, presentations, and graphics on the IPCC site, and then check out other credible scientific and other writing on the matter.

I tagged this note as business and growth as well as environment, because I think the ramifications of human-activity-induced climate change we have seen and will continue to see will impact us on a business level as well as a personal level.

The green impact on business

Do environmental issues impact your business? Will they soon? (Should they already?)

Read how environmental issues are impacting the fashion and apparel business in Can Polyester Save the World? from the January 25, 2007 New York Times.

What do you sense when you read that? Fear of economic disaster as concerns about the environment or even potential regulations hit yet another industry? Or opportunity, as you can address the challenges of outfitting people with more environmentally-friendly clothing that provides them enjoyment and you profit?

For examples of folk who see the opportunities, see Business 2.0's Go Green, Get Rich. If you see an example you don't really like, think about the previous paragraph again: do you take that as a problem or as an opportunity?

Does your company work online?

Perhaps you do Webcasts, or perhaps you use a Wiki.

Did you know that companies like IBM and ABN-AMRO use Second Life?

Now IBM is announcing new social software for business. Thanks to the TP! Wire Service for the tip.

Business plans for start-ups

I've written about effectuation as a viable alternative to business planning for start-ups. Now the Wall Street Journal says much the same thing. Thanks to the TP! Wire Service for the lead.

An outline of a pitch

We all have occasion, perhaps frequently, to tell someone else about what we're doing. Entrepreneurs spend key time selling their companies to venture capitalists; now Bill Reichert has given an outline some of you might find useful. Thanks to the TP! Wire Service for pointing this out.

Music lessons (for organizations)

Years ago, I was the director of the World-Famous, Award-Winning Will Rice Chorus*, one of several** very good a cappella choruses at Rice University. We were perhaps a rather unusual group; you could hardly convince this all-male chorus to sing anything that wasn't composed in the 17th or 18th centuries, although we did manage to enjoy at least one somewhat dissonant Credo by Harald Genzmer.

After singing in the chorus for three years, I became director for two. As usual, we prepared seriously for concerts and especially for our annual Rondelet contest, rehearsing every Wednesday night at 10 p.m. all throughout the year. As concerts and contests approached, our rehearsals lengthened, and we'd add extra days each week.

The night of my first competition as director arrived. We had three pieces totalling 10 minutes of music. Most of the performance went quite well, but one (Johann Sebastian Bach's Sicut Locutus Est from his Magnificat in D, BWV 243, as I recall) went horribly wrong. As an a cappella group, we had no instrumental accompaniment to guide our intonation, and, at one point, part of the chorus wandered miserably off-pitch. Being new to conducting choruses in contests, I wasn't sure what to do, so I kept on keeping on. The chorus (there were perhaps 60 or more of us) did a great job of looking professional, but you could see the terror in some singers' eyes. We might be facing a musical train wreck.

Then one section (the basses, I think), which had had a few measures of rest, came back in strongly and on pitch. Succeeding entrances by other sections followed suit, and we finished strong—strong enough to win the competition. As one judge said, being able to recover was at least as impressive as not having stumbled at all would have been (that said, I would still rather we had done it as well as we did in rehearsals).

What's the lesson for business and organizations? Don't stumble, if you can help it, but, if you stumble, you can recover. In most situations, you aren't alone, even if you're the CEO (or director) of the organization. While you sometimes may find that people in the organization fail to execute your plans as you hope, you may also find that people in your organization jump in when your plans have holes and who carry you through the rough spots. In other words, we're all human, and we can all help each other if we have the right conditions.

What was key to getting into a position where we could recover? First, we worked hard preparing so that people knew their roles (parts) well. We paid attention to our rehearsal results and learned from our successes and our failures. Everyone in the organization knew they could tell any of the rest of us, including me as director, things we could do to make the music (the results) better. If something went awry in one area, others could help out because of their abilities and confidence.

Second, there was a desire to do well (to win) that was forged in healthy competition, those hours of preparation, a love of the work (music) we were doing, camaraderie, and a refusal to give up.

Third, there were pauses (rests in the music) to let the various groups take in the big picture and re-orient themselves (in this case, to the proper pitch) so that they could start the recovery.

Fourth, there was trust and refusing to intervene inappropriately (to micro-manage). The doofus in the front waving his hands (that would have been me, the director) didn't jump in too quickly to "fix" things. He happened to trust the guys in the choir to fix the intonation (or perhaps he was too paralyzed by the fear that we'd collapse, but it worked anyway), and he kept focused on keeping the timing and expression together, giving the guys in the chorus the opportunity to fix the intonation.

Finally, there was, no doubt, a bit of good luck.

If you lead an organization, what lessons can you draw from this story?

In most cases, we are fortunate to have others around us to help us over the rough spots, whether we're the CEO of a corporation or the director of a musical ensemble, if we make it possible for them to help. There is at least one category of person who wields incredible individual power—think of the power of a pipe organ under the control of one person's ten fingers and two feet. Friend and colleague Drew McManus of Adaptistration has reposted a classic holiday train wreck, where the power of the organist is all-too-painfully—and all-too-humorously—evident. Listen, groan, and chuckle.

* We earned the "award-winning" label for winning most (I think) of the annual Rondelet choral competitions, but why "world-famous"? One of the professors associated with our college sent us a postcard wishing us good luck from his European sabbatical, so it's clear our fame spanned the globe!

** The Jones College Chorus was traditionally our strongest competitor, with the Brown College Chorus often very close behind.