Everyone is a customer

If you can only focus on one thing in your business, make it customer service. Not just to the paying customers--though treating them nice is a good thing--but to the internal customers as well. Who are the "internal customers?" Everyone. Every employee, driver to Director, is a customer.



Customer service is the key performance indicator. It shows (among other things) whether your company processes are running efficiently and links each job to the paying customer. Good things to know.

Tom Peters says:

we urge participants to make the level of customer satisfaction the primary basis for incentive compensation and annual performance evaluation for virtually every person at every level in every function throughout the organization. We also urge every organizational unit in every function to develop key quality measures. Progress should be posted on charts in every work space, and a quantitative goal report should be the first item of business at every staff meeting, regardless of topic.

The video explains how and why each person in the company is a customer, and a supplier. And a worker too, dang it. Each job has three phases: receive input, do work on the input then send the output to someone else. You are a customer when you receive and a supplier when you send, and a worker in between.

Measurement = Results

At the end of a frustrating--I hate technology, or it hates me--day all I have to show for it is a short video. But heck, the best things come in small packages, or that is what De Beers wants you to think.

The video is a brief introduction to measurement, the first tiny step in a series of videos, webinars, articles, podcasts, Web 2.0 gone wild. We will go from measurement to performance management to Balanced Scorecard. Why? Because if you can't measure you can't improve.

Brain Beats Brawn ... Usually

Taking a mental break from putting together a video series on performance management -- up soon, tomorrow me hopes -- I read Brains vs. Brawn by Geoff Colvin in the Sep 15 issue of dead tree Fortune (paper still beats digital for reading on the sofa, in the loo or horizontal anywhere).

Fascinating, all about the relative worth per pound of commodities and intellectual capital products. Not so much which is worth more: one expects small, high-ticket items cost more per pound than bulky, sold-by-the-boat-load (literally) commodities. The size of the contrast is still amazing though, that in 2000 hot rolled steel sold for 19 cents a pound and an Intel Pentium III 800mz chip sold for $42,893 on the hoof. Wow.

With all the attention recently paid to commodity prices, trending very high even with a recent softening, Colvin

suspected we were missing a countertrend: the even stronger rise in value of brands, technology, copyrights, and other purely human products.

Not so. Comparing the year 2000 baseline with today's prices, he discovered that "the true commodities, steel and gold, have risen hugely, about 170% each." Yet brain-heavy, intellectual-capital products haven't faired as well, with Viagra up the most at a 150% rise (puns intended). Most don't even come close: the chip test is stark. The far-advanced Core 2 Duo Extreme Edition chip has increased a mere 18%. Huh?

The closer a product is to the dirt from which it came, the more its price has risen, while if it has been upgraded and sweated over by hundreds of Ph.D. engineers, it is lucky just to have help steady. What on earth is happening?

First, obvious to anyone aware of what's happening outside the West, is there has been a huge increase in the amount of brainpower available, that as demand for brainy products have certainly increased, this increase has been dwarfed (snd made possible actually) by the 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of Chinese, Indian and non-OECD country engineers produced yearly. Throw a stone in Shenzen, Hsin Chu or Bangalore and you're likely to hit an engineer, 50:50 one with an advanced degree.

Thus the increase of demand and the increase of brain power--and the low capital needed in areas like brand building--have led to better and better design to meet the challenge of more and more competitors. This has depressed unit costs, or prices anyway.

Not so in commodities. The demand in the past decade for from-the-dirt products has far outstripped the supply. It takes time and money to even get permission for a new mine, let alone the time needed to start up, build the refinery and other infrastructure then ship the iron, copper, coal or gold.

Colvin contends that this is still just a cycle, that big demand/low supply high prices will slowly change, an equilibrium will be reached and prices will stabilize if not fall. Calling it a "once-a-generation" opportunity to cash in from commodities, he ends with the money quoye, that

A smart businessperson can always innovate, create a new brand, build a better prodcut. The game never stands still, but neither does it lead to an inevitable conclusion. That's why I'm still betting on brainpower.

Me too. I live in one of the world's commodity powerhouses, Canada, self-described "hewers of wood and drawers of water." Life is sure good in many parts of Canada, potash from Saskatchewan, oil from Alberta (Oilberta to the rest of Canada), coal and other minerals from BC make for happy budgets. But the writing is on the wall, if we take the time to see it anyway.

Central Canada, Ontario and Quebec, are suffering: our manufacturing heartland, jobs are disappearing and ... no one quite knows. I live in Sooke Harbour, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, a rugged community built on logging and fishing. But there are few logs left, and, by all accounts, fewer fish. It's a beautiful spot, and tourism will help, but B&Bs and diners pay little wages, certainly not enough to replace a logger paycheck.

We, like the rest of Canada, have to shift, from digging in the figurative dirt to innovating in the intellectual marketplace. Like Colville, I think we have no choice but to bet on brainpower.

No substitute for flying.

Along with a "paper less office," IT improvements were supposed to eliminate (okay, reduce) the need for most business travel. Why suffer through airports, cattle-car seating, taxis and hotels to meet someone? In the new, broadband, Web 2.0 paradigm, business travel was to be passe; instead just fire up the video conferencing set up and wham, travel to the next floor rather than the next city or country to hold your meeting.

Heck, it is (supposedly) easier than that! No need to move from your desk or cubicle: just boot Skype or ooVoo or some other VOIP program and there, right there on your computer screen, was the one you wanted to meet with. So close you could almost swear you were in the same room.

Almost. Well, not almost, more like never. At least internationally--maybe New York to Cleveland VOIP offers crystal clear picture and sound, but in my experience Western city to Chinese/Indian city does not. When the connection works you get jerky, time-lapse video, and the sound, well, it's okay of you like talking to people at the bottom of a well, with echo, echo, echo.

Instead of a face-to-face conversation where you use both verbal and facial clues to make the back and forth flow smoothly, in VOIP you are constantly stepping on the other person's sentence. Or reverting back to a simpler time and archaic jargon: over.

Much as I like seeing the other person my choice is the regular telephone ... or flying. The moral is that if the meeting is critical, and getting all points aired and mutual understanding achieved, either get access (at both ends) to some professional, expensive video conference set up ... or fly.

The Daily Dick No.1

Today I introduce a new feature, The Daily Dick. An ongoing (but daily?) conversation between Dick, myself and the blog, a chance to chronicle the trouble, travels and travails (and triumphs, right Dick?) Dick lives through. Interesting times (meant not as a curse) too, weaving multiple time zones and multiple cultures into a profitable gig.

You will like Dick. I do. But then I have a thing for smart, intellectually curious, best-idea-wins, results-count-but-people-matter-too people. Don't meet enough of them.

Dick 1 finds Dick in well-known-city, India, hiring new and getting to know (month) old staff, both as individuals and examples of Indian culture. He's been away from home close to two weeks and he's tired. But still observant:

Daily Dick No.1
It can be very stressful running a start-up, and there are times when I wonder what I got myself into setting up this company. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen very often, but when it does all I have to do is look outside

and watch the workers who have been demolishing the building next door to our office to get a proper sense of perspective.

These guys are doing grueling and dangerous physical labor for less than US$2 per day without any real job security or safety net in the form of insurance. Most of them are working hundreds of miles from home, and rarely to get to see the families that they are working so hard to support.

Worse still, they don’t have any choice but to sell their physical labor because they lack the necessary education and skills for finding other work, and most of them will spend their lives grafting away on building sites.

Unlike these laborers, I was lucky enough to have the choice to create this company, and now I have made this choice I have the responsibility not only to make it successful but also to provide an environment in which the people who have chosen to join me can grow and develop themselves and their careers.

This is a huge responsibility, and it is one that I need to remain constantly aware of. Having chosen to go along this path and persuaded others to follow me on it, there’s no turning back.

Dick describes the always grueling and often gruesome reality of developing India and China, waves of menials selling physical and emotional hardship in a desire for a better life for their family. Selling it to the physical and emotional desires of the new middle class for a better life for themselves. What Dick is watching is the death of one way of life and the birth of another, the changing of a culture.

Birth can be pretty but is always messy, and death can be noble but is always disturbing.

And starting a company can be exhilarating but is always tiring. Good on'ya Dick. Welcome to the blog.

Start With The End

Building anything with software is hard, often frustrating, or is for me anyway. As it (program, website, whatever) does not exist and in the end is just zeros and ones well organized, it (the software project) can move, change, shift, endlessly.

Call it feature creep, defined by searchCIO.com as:

a tendency for product or project requirements to increase during development beyond those originally foreseen, leading to features that weren't originally planned and resulting risk to product quality or schedule. Feature creep may be driven by a client's growing "wish list" or by developers themselves as they see opportunity for improving the product.

Every time, I repeat, every time I worked with software developers, on client project teams I led or projects of my own, I suffered from, fought and, truth be told, caused feature creep. The ability to add this or tweak that is just too dang tempting to pass up.

What brings this on? The new website for this blog! What will it contain? Look like? How will video be treated? Photos? Templates? Webinars? What features will it have? Lots of unknowns for just this little project. How to decide the site design writ large then (the more important) how to control the process?

Start with strong leadership, Dick and the senior IT team he's assembled. Yet neither will be involved daily on such a small project, so the question remains: how to keep the project on the rails? Define the end before you start the job.

Received a document yesterday, a website development model, the "this is what we expect website projects to prepare before starting coding, and how we expect ."

We humans do what our managers (spouses, officials) pay attention to, what they reward us for doing and punish us for not doing. A necessary inital step though is measurement, for how else would the manager know what we've done/not done?

"What gets measured gets done," five simple words (from Tom Peters ... I think) that I have repeated ad nauseum (or at least ad headache) to clients. Yet before measuring one must know what the goal or end or objective is. Vastly simplified (yet still correct) the steps are:

Set Objective (the desired end)
Decide how/where/when/what to measure
Explain objectives and metrics to responsible person(s)
Measure
Analyze
Adjust
Repeat

This document goes a long way to achieving the software objective/specifications; it explains in detail what the site should look like, colors, fonts, layouts, and what features it should have, and the steps to follow to alter the specs. Once all parties sign off on it Dick and Acme now have a way to measure what gets done.

This is a kindergarten class in performance management, but hey, we all started in kindergarten. And heck, Robert Fulghum thinks kindergarten lessons are all one really needs to know. Maybe, but I still plan lots more on measurement (a squishy target I admit, but still one my future actions can be measured against).

Teaching is helping others surpass you

Nothing is more gratifying to a teacher than seeing students learn, to understand then use lessons taught to their benefit. True for managers teaching staff, professors teaching students and fathers teaching daughters. Yet one day the teacher must be prepared for the student becoming the master. Like what happened to me this morning.

Some background. I've talked writing and communication to my daughter since she was old enough to listen (and too small to escape). "Every day with you is a lesson," she recently told me. Somewhat chagrined, I asked her if she wanted me to stop. "No. No way," she answered, than with a little pause, "Well, maybe when my friends are around." I said I would (try).

Katya has talked about being on the school Yearbook Committee since she entered middle school (Grades 6-8), and now in Grade 8 she qualifies. Eager (something she must get from her Mom) she was first to put her name on the list, first to get the application form (this is Grade 8?) and hopes this morning to be first to submit a filled-in application form. If points were given for eagerness ...

Anyway, she showed me the form over breakfast, asking for my help. A firm believer in bullet points, I sketched some weasel sentence for her as way to introduce bullets, then went to shower. About 30 minutes later I saw the filled out form, read it and ... WOW! Here it is (click to expand):


This comes from a 12-year old? "Wonderful! Better than I could do," I told her. She demurred quite convincingly (another learned skill?) but I could tell she was pleased.

If you believe in progress the goal of teaching is helping students surpass your abilities. I must be a good teacher then.

So, if one day my writing improves, it could be my daughter ghosting for me. Now if only I could teach her to mow the lawn.

Poor Logic = Poor Decisons

I have this thing about poor logic. Arguments full of fallacies frustrate me. Every judgment, opinion and decision are but the conclusions of a set of premises, that I believe/think/suggest X because of these Y facts. The success or failure, the problems and solutions of individual lives, organizations, companies and countries depend upon the quality of the logic used to analyze the situation, whatever that might be.

Conclusions reached without any formal or systematic logical analysis can be good ("gut" decisions stem, after all, on an internal, below-the-radar logical process), and conclusions reached through vigorous use of logical analysis can be bad. Logic is not magic: it just improves your chances of reaching good conclusions. (More on my logical history below.)

Premise quantity and quality (relevant, acceptable) affect the quality of the conclusion: lots of good premises increases the chance of making a good conclusion; adding irrelevant, unacceptable premises, or not including premises that hurt your case, decreases the chance of making a good conclusion. Duh.

People in business often make the latter mistake, focusing just on the points for their case and minimizing--or not including--points that hurt their case. It is a very natural, very human thing to do, "putting your best forward" and all that. It can also be a very sneaky thing to do, a strategy focused strictly on winning the case at hand, not on what might happen in the future.

Why the screed about logic? Politics, of course; Republican arguments, again: a column by William Kristol in the NY Times, "A Heartbeat Away," specifically.

Mr. Kristol defends Sarah Palin's ability to sit in the Big Chair if tradgey happens (which BTW was John McCain's stated only test for his veep pick, pre-Palin that is). How? Because she is young, and there have been two other "young" Veeps who rose to the occasion, Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman, therefore Palin can rise as well. Huh?

Standardized, Kristol's argument is:

1. Palin is young
2. Teddy Roosevelt was young when he became POTUS after McKinley died
3. Harry Truman was young when he became POTUS after FDR died
4. Both Roosevelt and Truman "rose to the occasion" and became great presidents
C: Palin will also "rise to the occasion" and become a great president if McCain dies

Hogwash. Put in standard form makes it even more ludicrous. Using youth to put Palin's pre-VP background in the same class as Truman's or Roosevelt's beggars belief. Take a look at what other "qualifications" the two gents had when picked besides being generationally challenged.

Roosevelt:
* graduated from Harvard Phi Betta Kappa and magna cum laude
* wrote book, "The Naval War Of 1812," celebrated then and since as definite study of the conflict (still in print after 124 years!)
* New York Assemblyman
* Governor of New York
* Asst. Secretary of the Navy

Truman:
* served in army before and during WWI, citations for leadership
* county judge
* entrepreneur (with bankruptcy experience as well)
* twice elected US Senate (both tough races)
* Chair of high-profile Truman Committee during WWII, ferreting out military waste and fraud
* on cover of Time magazine

Compare these backgrounds with Palin's; the only thing the gentlemen and the lady truly have in common is their age. Yes, Palin was a mayor, and a governor, but can anyone seriously contend that two years of governing Alaska (through a time of budget surpluses) equate with two years governing New York? Or that the experience gleaned from her total time in office equals the foreign policy experience of leading a prominent war-time committee?

(Please, no culture/values/small town arguments: these issues may rightly be important to being a great president, but miss my point. I am arguing strictly on the experience that comes from making sense of extremely complicated systems/process/events and from managing nationwide groups or organizations with global interests--requirements that seem to be lifted straight from the President's job description.)

Mr. Kristol's argument is another example of starting with the conclusion (Palin is not a bad pick) then finding facts to support that ... warping them if necessary ... and conveniently not including other facts that don't offer support.

A better approach--one I wish to read--would be to argue why the qualities she does have meet all the requirements of the job, i.e., objective as well as subjective requirements. Just nouns and verbs, no adjectives. Finally, this is NOT an argument against Sarah Palin per se, just a plea for better logic.

I sure think better logic is needed.
_______________________
My Logical History
My first logic class was from Mark Battersby (Capilano College, 1979-80) in a course titled "Logical Self Defense," from the book of the same name. First day he warned us that this course would "make all your friends and family hate you." How's that for piquing interest!

He was right: once you learn what the red herring and post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies (and many others) are, well, you find them everywhere! It is exciting, a skill you want to use, but students (me) take it too far, analyzing and correcting friend and family arguments. Students (me) soon get shunned or slammed: friends do not want to hear about problems in their arguments, and telling your father he is making a straw man argument is a losing proposition ... especially if true.

Wishful Thinking = Good Leaders?

Does Acme need Dick? Why should Dick be the leader? Dick is multi-cultural, well-educated, a highly-experienced manager. Not many of us compare to his qualifications; most of us don't have nearly such an impressive CV. A touch cerebral at times, an overpowering intelligence, I wager many would have trouble relating to Dick. Why not choose someone else, someone we can more easily relate to perhaps.

Maybe a small town mayor who likes to fish, hunt and play basketball. A hockey mom say, who struggles to balance family life and career. A good, god-fearin' woman, tough but with lipstick.

Okay, Acme is a corporation, not a democracy, and until it goes public Dick rules by force majeur, overwhelming force: while too cultured to put it this way, he would say to dissenters, "It's my way or the highway." But the principle is identical: what do I/you/we want in a leader?

As an investor or shareholder (hypothetically speaking) I want the top job to go to someone who has both relevant experience and a proven track record in this specific field, in other words, is qualified to get the job done. Someone like Dick.

Do such "qualifications" guarantee Dick will get the job done? Nope. No way. Decisons based on analyzing qualifications are not necessarily right, but are more frequently right. And there's the rub.

As I tell my logic students, logic is all about probability, not certainty. If you want certainty go to church. Logical analysis writ large can only make conclusions more likely right, can increase the odds of being right. No small feat that, for, as gamblers know, win 51% of time and you'll be rich.

This is in no way an argument against Governor Palin: only by actually assuming and carrying out the job of VP (or P) would we know if she could do the job. My point is not against the person, it is against the process. Oh yes, and against hypocricsy, but I'll get to that.

Okay, I live in small town (Sooke, pop. 9,000 give or take). We need a new Fire Chief. As this decision could have a direct bearing on whether my house burns down or not I am somewhat interested in who we select. While I hope we choose someone who has good communication skills and can "relate" to the community at large, this is not highest, or even high, on my list. I want someone who has shown s/he likely can do the job.

I want us to choose someone with relevant fire-fighting experience, someone who has shown they can motivate and manage a team of firefighters. I would turn down an accountant with extensive accounts receivable experience, no matter how big a team of accountants s/he led. The demands on each position, fire chief and accounting manager, are just too different.

Could the accountant be a great fire chief? Certainly, is it possible, just not likely. Not something you'd like to bet your mortgage on. Would you let a dentist perform brain surgery on your child? No? Why not? They both are medical professionals and, by my extensive experience with "specialists," I'd wager dentists are easier for most people to relate to than brain surgeons. I'm just not sure the dentist drill is the right tool for brain operations, and that's the point.

The Republicans chose the wrong tool for the VP job.

Even a true GOP sycophant can't say Palin's scant executive experience makes her "qualified" for the demands of the modern VP position (let alone qualified for the Big Chair itself). Certainly I see no way to argue that Palin's name was the result of a long, detailed analysis of job needs and qualified possible candidates. She might do a good job, but you would not want to bet your country on it ... unless you had to.

McCain chose Palin for reasons other than her qualifications for likely VP success: he chose her because he had to, had to shake up the polls, had to secure and energize the GOP base. Since the surprise choice he and the GOP polls have done back flips trying to find reasons to prove the already-decided result. The reasons (comparing needs with qualifications) did not drive the result, the result (we choose her as the candidate) drove the almost-desperate search for reasons.

Out of the many possibile fallacies, I think this is best described as wishful thinking, that:

1. I (McCain, Republicans) stand to gain from believing P.
2. Hence, I (McCain, Republicans) should, prudentially, believe P.

Now I can hope all I want to that the dentist will operate successfully on my child's brain tumor, and, as I will benefit from believing it, I of course will try my best to believe it. But don't you think I'd have a better chance believing if it was brain surgeon, not a dentist? And that if I could choose, I'd choose the dentist for cavities, not cranium.

I've racked my cranium and can't think of an area outside of politics (and faith) where we happily indulge in wishful thinking. We insist on an experienced fire chief, we (or Americans, maybe not Canucks) would sue the dentist as soon a drill touched scalp. The only time we let the unqualified do something is when we have no better choice.

Says something about the state of the GOP, both that they had to do something special to get back into the race and that Palin was the best special they could find.

Next (?) time I'll broaden the point to the anti-expert bias of the Republicans in particular, and Western society in general. Best said by Nietzsche himself,

Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.

In defense of the barely-qualified-for-VP Palin the GOP used an anti-expert, anti-qualifications argument, going so far as the quintessentially-cosmopolitan Giuliani saying questions about Palin stemmed from Democrats thinking her town was not "cosmopolitan" enough.

Can't you just see dressed-in-drag Rudi (the video with the Donald is priceless) settling down in Wassalia, in moose fur perhaps. With lipstick.

Now that is cosmopolitan.

Fine, back to business. I hope I've made the point (long winded as usual: sigh) that we select people for position based on their suitability for carrying out the duties of that position, of their likelihood of being successful in the specific postion. Like much in life, decsions are situational, i.e., based on the specifics of the situation at hand. One size does not fit all.

As an investor/shareholder (hypothetical remember) in Acme I care very much that we have Dick in charge, and that Dick selects new hires based on the merits, that is, on their suitability for the job, not the cut of their jib or preference in fur. I want Acme to make me money.

I would hope that Republicans want their Prez and V-Prez to make them safe, rich and healthy. At least that is what I want in a leader. And as Prime Minister Harper just dissolved Canada's parliament this morning, I will get a chance to vote for leader on October 14.

Oh joy. Just for a minute I wish one of the contenders wore lipstick. I'd settle for a sense of humor.

Ideology and Pains From The "Gut"

The worst thing to be in a Political Science department is apolitical: ideologues on both sides understand each other, and even grant grudging respect, but neither understand "neutrals," nor do they trust them. How can you trust someone when you don't know what s/he will do?

Being fiercely apolitical likely had more to do with my standing among professors and classmates than anything else (though my "Success Without College" T-shirt probably came close). I always sat by myself in seminar rooms, and no discussion was complete until everyone turned and looked at me, waiting for ... heresy, at least to one side.

It is a complicated and often confusing world we must make sense of, and I understand the comfort one can get from a set of rules and principles that simplifies and explains everything. Order from chaos, truth instead of uncertainty, answers not questions, it is like putting on warm socks: all-enveloping comfort. What's not to like?

Nothing, as long as you don't mind being a lemming, occasionally following your idea off the cliff.

Allowing anything, idea or person, to do your thinking for you is a losing strategy. Comforting, at least until you hit the valley floor. Every time a person gets wedded to an idea or way of looking the world, and shapes reality to fit that idea or perception, s/he is guilty of abdicating personal responsibility for ... life? Results? Making the world better?

I raise this subject now because of the US election reality show. I'm a Canuck so can't vote, but as I see the US when I look out the window (across the Strait of Juna de Fuca) I feel I can have an opinion. And my opinion is, are the Republicans nuts?

I'm not a Democrat, just a democrat. While I easily quote fluff like the Anarcist's creed, that "The change of rulers is the joy of fools," I believe my vote counts, and that it is my duty to make it an informed vote.

One of the most useful ideas about leadership comes from philosopher Peter Koestenbaum, specifically his Leadership Diamond (also here and here; used in sports as well) explained in his book, Leadership: The Inner Side Of Greatness. It is a book John McCain should read.

I will explore the Leadership Diamond in much more details later: for now just a quick summary and one excerpt. The concept behind the diamond is that there are four critical aspects (called "strategies") to achieving leadership greatness: vision, courage, ethics and reality. The excerpt is about the latter, reality, is that:

A realistic leader always responds to the facts, for realism means to have no illusions ... Realism means that you are competent, that you are in command of the hard facts of the business. Realism ... is a commitment to obtain extensive information and maintain a stance of aseptic objectivity. [It] stands for detachment, research, facts and calculations.

There, the problems of the Bush years explained in one paragraph: the Bushies read the words then did the opposite. Too much going by the "gut," too much "knowing" and not enough objectivity. And don't get me started on performance. "Good job Brownie" sums it up.

America is in a mess. Income inequality is at a level not seen since the 20s (here, here and here) and the middle class is farther way from the Leave It To Beaver fantasy family than ever (even in Alaska). Ozzie and Harriet simply would not recognize America now. Something has to be done.

I watched damn near the entire Republican convention (I should get out more), and heard damn few arguments based on "detachment, research, facts and calculations." Reforming the senate and congress are laudatory (and needed) goals, but ending earmarks and pork barrel projects hardly will help those struggling in the 20th income percentile.

Would Obama be a good president? Who knows? There certainly are valid questions about his experience, or lack thereof. Would McCain be a good president? Again who knows? There certainly are valid questions about his temperament and decision making. (I will leave alone the point that he has equal or less "executive experience" than Obama.)

One thing I always look for in a leader (client, friend, spouse) is someone who thinks their way through an issue, who is open to facts and dissenting opinions, who chooses an action only after deciding doing it is the best current choice. I run from people who say they "know" the answer, "know" the "right" thing to do. People who "know" give me the heebee jeebees. I look for people who think, not know.

Here the conventions did answer one thing: Obama thinks and McCain knows. Just like Bush II, and we all know how that has turned out. Has there ever been a group so poorly managed as the US has been for the past 7+ years?

As this is a business blog, the Business Dictionary defines ideology as

A system of ideas that explains and lends legitimacy to actions and beliefs of a social, religious, political, or corporate entity.

To this I add beliefs in plans, strategies and tactics. Few things in business hurt more than falling in love with your (or your boss's) idea, and closing your eyes to any datum that contradicts your preferred, pre-chosen reality.

Certainly an entrepreneur (like Dick) has to have an all-encompassing idea, yet believing in your idea when others doubt you is different than closing your eyes to facts. The two Steves had an idea, a personal computer, and believed in it even when all the "experts" scoffed. As Apple grew the idea didn't change because it didn't have to: the market was ready for a personal computer.

I am not sure the market is ready for a Pit Bull with or without lipstick. Does anyone seriously think that the anti-science teaching of creationism will help the US compete with the schools in India and China pumping out legions of engineers?

Does anyone seriously think that making decisions based on gut instinct is what America needs? I mean, it didn't work for Coca-Cola and the New Coke. I think the stakes are a tad higher here.

Focussing on process gives me cold fries.

How does a company ask for creativity and initiative from employees while at the same time ask them to follow business process and SOPs? Does not the latter contradict the former?

My wife and I discussed that point yesterday driving home from the fair (talking on topics like this may be the reason why no one wants to drive with us) but to no conclusion. My fault: I just couldn't think clearly. One too many times on the Hurricane perhaps?

Last night I started a new book, Harvard Business Review on Entrepreneurship (I should probably get out more), and there, on page 27, were the words (the answer) that I wanted:

Telling empolyees how to do their jobs ... can stifle initiative. Companies that require frontline employees to act quickly and resourcefully might decide to focus more on outcomes than on behavior, using control systems that set performance targets for employees, compare results against objectives, and provide appropriate incentives.

Focus on result, not process, that is the key. It is where all training should start, at the end. Employees must understand 100% what the desired result is (and why), and only then be trained on the current process that achieves the result.

Regarding creativity and initiative, the key word is current, the key concept being that changes to the current process are allowed as long as the desired result is achieved, as long as customers (internal and external) are happy with the result. The "desired result" becomes the boundaries within which change is allowed.

It sounds easy, but isn't. Here is an example I scribbled on a ripped brown paper bag while sitting outside a MacDonald's in Hsin Chu ("new bamboo," literally) in Taiwan 15 years ago. (I have the brown paper scrap in front of me. Not only should I get out more, I should throw out more.)

MacDonald's served more than hamburgers in China, it also served systems (I think it changed China more any political movement, but that is a story for another day). Staff were always well trained: to do the complicated cooking, supplying, monitoring, filling, requesting ballet, staff had to be well trained!

My turn. I ordered my meal, double cheese burger, medium fries and ice tea. The young counter girl understood (I ordered in Mandarin after all) and began to pick and serve my meal. Ice tea on tray: check. Fries on tray: check. Burger on tray: whoops, not ready yet. I saw all this and told her I wanted my fries and burger "together," going so far to explain that I did not my fries to cool down while they sat on the tray waiting for their burger partner.

No way. There was no way she was going to do that! Why? Because she had been trainied to pick and place meal items as they were available, period. Fries were available, so pick and place now; burger not available so wait.

Not wanting cold fries--I could see the burger was still minutes away from ready--I tried again to explain the result I wanted, to a blank face (the true great wall of China, the Chinese mask). I eventually talked to the shift supervisor--I really like hot fries!--who, grudgingly, put my now near-cold fries under the warming lights, basically to help them stay at that nice near-cold temperature. I digress.

The problem, repeated all over Asia, is that staff are trainined in process, not result. Often extraordinarily good at following complicated "how to" procedures, yet unable to alter the process even a little bit if such is needed to satisfy a unique customer request.

The MacDonald's problem (it still happens) is mistaking process for result: staff are only trainined in process, whereas the true goal of the process is not that all steps are slavishly followed but that the right result is achieved. In my cold fries example, the desried result is a satisfied customer, munching happily on hot fries. To achieve that result the young employee had to have been allowed to be creative and to show initiative, to pick and place my ice tea immediately (thanks: it was hot!) but to wait until burger was ready to pick and place fries.

That only happens when training begins with students understanding the desired end result, and then trained to achieve that, not simply to follow the process rules.

Back to Dick and Acme. He and I have discussed setting measureable SOPs, then training new hires to follow such. All well and good, but not enough. Along with the "do these steps" training must be effort to explain the desired end result, and that the current process is just the best way Acme has so far to achieve it.

If this is so bloody obvious--it should be obvious--why don't companies do it? Because of the difficulty in measuring end results, especially subjective, "customer happy" results. It normally, almost always, is easier to measure adherence to procedure, far easier.

Sigh. I know this from experience. Back in the day I struggled (and succeeded, often anyway) to measure customer end-result satisfaction. I hope my next book, Douglas Hubbard's, How To Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business, will give me more insights into this difficult but critical step.

Oh yes, MacDonald's and cold fries. I still like hot fries but have given up trying to get the counter person to change their process. Instead I now look to see which burgers are being wrapped and I order them, thus getting hot fries and a hot burger. Marvelous.