Opinions on nearly anything

A few months ago the Republican party offered eight candidates for nomination in 2012.  Each has a solid record of achievement in related fields.  Every one has followed a trajectory of discovery, growth of popularity, public dismay and, for at least half, reentry and burnup.

Rather than focus on the need for a change in administration (from Democrat to Republican),  each candidate has chosen to trash the others running for office.  One conclusion we, the people who will ultimately have to choose the President for the next four years, may well reach is that none are worthy.

In the previous election, none of the candidates had significant executive experience.  We wound up choosing a candidate with no executive experience and scant governmental experience.  Some say that hasn’t worked out well.  However, a continued focus on the incompetency of the various Republican candidates may well result in our current President to be reelected.

While corporations are faulted for many things, some do a very good job of selecting senior executives.  One key requirement is that the individual has experience in a similar job.  Another requirement is that candidates have demonstrated the ability to “work and play well with others.”  A third requirement might be impressive and effective intellectual capability.  In sum, the process is to find those with the needed strengths.

Our elections seem to be focused on finding those who have fewest weaknesses and have made the fewest mistakes.  Of course, the criteria for determining what might be a weakness and what might be a mistake is very subjective and changes frequently.

Religion seems to be very important in this election.  Yet, our culture and values are tolerance of all but the most outrageous religions and clear separation of church and state.  Some of the candidates seem to have forgotten that . . . or worse, do not accept that basic premise.

We do live in interesting times.

As long as I remember, summer included nasal and respiratory allergies.   All sorts of treatments have been tried including injections intended to desensitize me to the allergens and dozens of prescription and OTC remedies.

Some helped a lot, some helped a little, some didn’t help at all.

Recently one struck back: Benadryl (diphenhydramine).

I had taken Benadryl for years.  It seemed to reduce the severity of the various allergens and was otherwise harmless.  Taken before bedtime it provided an extra benefit; falling asleep quickly.

A few weeks ago I noted that I often felt a bit foggy.  In computer technical terms, the “latency” of memory access seemed to increase.  It took longer, so it seemed, to recall some items.  With age exceeding the “three score and ten” mark several years ago, the fear rose that it wasn’t just a bit more absent-mindedness.

After some thought and research, I stopped taking Benadryl.  The immediate reaction was that the eyes and nose itched more.  I also found that I did not sleep as well.

With some reading and consultation with the pharmacist, I shifted to Sudaphed . . . a very few Sudaphed.  When I was in a second drug store a few days later, I consulted with a second pharmacist and received some very similar advice.

Wikipedia tended to confirm my self-diagnosis: :  ”difficulty concentrating, short-term memory loss, visual disturbances” were noted as typical reactions by some taking Benadryl.  Another source indicated that Benadryl in on the “Beers List.”  No, this isn’t what it sounds like.  The guy who first compiled this list is named Beers.  The list is of drugs and related items which should be avoided by “the elderly.”  Now I do not consider myself elderly . . . but I plan to be one day and might as well consider avoiding items on this list.

Today I feel that the former mental acuity is back.  Interestingly the very light dose of Sudaphed seems to be enough to allow me to tolerate the mid-summer allergens in the air.

I try to keep the learning process at full throttle.  This was a scary lesson.

We belong to a classic car club.  Most of the members are not comfortable with digital technology when it reaches beyond email, web surfing and simple finance activities.

Several years ago we set up a website and the webmaster did a super job of construction and maintenance.  Then he moved.  The web maintenance landed in my lap.  For the past several years I have done a monthly update.  It is inevitable that one of these days this site will need a major overhaul.

I have been doing some self-education on the current web tools, functions and hosts.  My web development tool has been a very old copy of Microsoft’s Front Page.  Since it is approaching 8 years old, I assumed that there must be a better, easier, more modern tool out there someplace.

And there are . . . dozens of them.  Being a very reluctant programmer, my choice would be a modern version of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get development tool.  So far, most of the tool reviews start by saying “HTML” and “Programming” in many places.  Not very user (to this user anyway) friendly.

Several reviews point to WordPress.  Some of my needs are to insert photos, .pdf documents and links.  Does WordPress support photos  insertion?

Yes, it appears to.

How about .pdf?

Just found a whole page on how to load and link a .pdf file . . . which should follow.

Replacing the Power Supply HP Pavilion Elite m9200z CTO Desktop PC -change power supply

Lets see if that worked.

Yes, that does too.

Now to test the progress so far, I will close this session, fire up the iPad and see how it looks there.

Our community is super.  There are annoyances.  Right now we are approaching the election of a mayor and town council.  The issues of the town are relatively minor.  It has been well managed since incorporation just over a quarter of a century ago.

We have a vocal minority.  Right now the noise is very high about the imaginary imposition of property taxes.  The town has never had its own property tax.  State revenue sharing and sales tax revenue, combined with sound fiscal management has given us a surplus nearly every year, a healthy reserve, little or no unsecured debt and a good outlook for the future.

But the noise is high.

The following is a note recently sent to a local website of Town issues.

Every Council and Mayoral candidate has, in one way or another, distanced themselves from property taxes.  Some have chosen to develop phantom risks of stealth imposition of property taxes by the Mayor and Council, ignoring the Arizona State statutes which require citizen voting on such taxes.

As one of the commentators noted on the recent mailing regarding the anti-property tax propositions, these propositions, if passed, could deny the majority of the citizens to increase needed revenues.  Are propositions which deny majority rule something we want to support?

So there are several reasons not to support the property tax propositions.

But there is one more. 

Sound financial management includes matching sources of revenue to sources of expense.  A major source of revenue for the town is the sales tax.  The assumption of the fire protection by the town is a major expense.  So, we have burdened the merchants with the responsibility to pay for the residents’ fire protection. 

Road maintenance is a controversial topic too.  Do we have enough?  Should those cracks in the roads be removed?  If the answer is yes, then we would have to squeeze some more out of our merchants.  Maybe even allow them to have roadway signs to point tourists to their stores.

Suppose some area close by had some vacant retail space and the developer of that space decided to give new tenants a huge discount on their rent. 

Suppose further that the government of that town decided to give those new tenants a break on their sales tax.  Some retailers just might be tempted to relocate.  Fantasy?  Such actions have been going on between Phoenix and Scottsdale for years.

At that point we would be faced with the need to match revenue sources with expense items.  Residential property needs fire protection, police protection and well maintained roads.  Extracting money from the property owners means either property taxes or reverting to subscription service (a de facto property tax).

SAP lost a major lawsuit brought by Oracle.  The issue was improper use of information.

Mostly some egos will be hurt but the group with the largest ego will be the receipient of the $1.3 billion.  The Oracle annual revenue is nearly $25 billion.  SAP annual revenue is over $15 billion.  While a serious amount of money, it will neither drive SAP into liquidation or cause Oracle to spend any more lavishly.

I have no opinions of the merits of the case, but I do have some opinions on the two companies.  These opinions, generally negative, come from small interactions spread over the past 30 years spent as a consultant.

My first client:  After escaping the bonds of a Fortune 500 company I began to freelance in the early 1980′s.  A small company in Washington, DC (2-300 employees) was growing and needed to strengthen their information processing systems.  They thought I might be able to help them in this process. 

Oracle did a great job of selling the company on the virtures of their software, provided demonstrations and quoted a modestly outlandish price.  (We were prepared for an outlandish price so “modest” seemed good at the time.)

The company had already purchased some new IBM computers and intended to gradually phase out their old DEC systems.  These systems performed well but the software was limited in scope and needed upgrading.  The idea was to run the two systems (old DEC with custom softare and new IBM with Oracle software) side by side and gradually move from one to the other.

The functionality of the new Oracle software had been very carefully analyzed, an exhaustive list of required functions were defined, dozens of questions were asked and answered, the RFP and responding Proposal clearly stated the delivery date as December.  It was now August.  Oracle was awarded the contract.

When the client asked, a few weeks later, about the planned review of the pre-release software, the committed date became a tentative date.  More discussion of the next few weeks and it finally came out that the need funtionality committed for December would be available.  But only for DEC equipment.  The IBM compatible release would not be available until the next September.  The client was stuck.  They had spent the funds alloted for the transition.  Law suits would have consumed more finds.  Workaround plans were then top priority in order to keep the old system running for nearly another year.

To be continued . . .

A decade later SAP was bursting on the scene.   Some viewed their new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software as the solution to the growing need to have better control of manufacturing businesses.  Others viewed the SAP phenomenon as a cult.  SAP had everything.  Solid software, proven business models, good references and many of the other factors that senior management thought were needed to gain better control of manufacturing.  Many of my clients were mid-level operations managers.  They did not believe that the standard SAP business model built into SAP software was right for the client businesses.  Senior management’s answer was often “so change the business model.”  It was clear there was a deep disconnect and that some strong top management sales influence had created a mistrust by the senior managers of the operations level managers.  The SAP system and integration was incredibly expensive . . . if it worked.  If it didn’t, the cost was even greater.   From some informal statistics I gathered from attendees at a seminar series I taught, the odds of success was about 20%

Back to Oracle . . . 

A few years later I was helping a fast growing IT services company.  Oracle was marketing the company very agressively to become an Oracle “partner.”  What this meant was the if we sold a third party an application using some of the Oracle software we would receive a discount on the Oracle and then be allowed to resell it at list price.  The big “catch” in this was that we had to buy a bunch of prepaid credits for Oracle software.  “But wait, there’s more!”  To make these sales really easy, Oracle would provide “help” in our sales efforts including supplying us leads and being part of the sale and analysis team developing proposals to clients.

Supposedly driven by a reorganization within Oracle, the leads were never supplied and the few attempts to have Oracle help us on developing the leads we generated proved to be collossial failures.  The “help” just never materialized.  Neither did many sales.

More recently . . .

A client was looking to purchase a huge billing software package.  The two most qualified suppliers were SAP and a smaller, highly focused company specializing in the specific business area of my client.  The SAP proposal team did a very poor job of responding to the requirement.  The client was ready to award the contract to the smaller company . . . and then . . .  A senior exec of the smaller company notified the senior management of my client that there were about to accept an offer to be purchased by Oracle.

But that is another story.

My use of email and reference sites stretches back to near the beginning of on-line time.  I recall using GE Timesharing in the 1960′s, “The Source” (predecessor to Compuserve) in the 1970s and many more long forgotten tools as they became available.

Today was the first time (that I know of)  I was the direct victim of a colossal hack.  Clean living (or, more likely very conservative use and a bit of luck) was the most likely cause of this long string of good fortune.

We have owned a classic American automobile for nearly 20 years.  It was great fun.  So much fun that we were numb to the vast sums it took to keep it reliably on the road.  Several years ago we noted that the fun was waning.  A few months ago we decided that we should sell it.  A few weeks ago we listed it on AutoTrader and eBay.

Yesterday afternoon I received a call from a fellow in Northern California asking about the car.  I described it, he asked questions and I thought I had answered them fully and accurately.  A key question is price.  I told him what my price was.  He asked if this was as listed on Autotrader.  I said yes.

Then things became a bit weird.  He asked if I would be around on Friday afternoon.  From his location the time to drive to our home would be about 12 hours.   I becan to understand his intent. He intended to start from Northern California in a couple of hours and drive nearly straight through. 

This fellow was in his sixties, maybe even his seventies.  “Wow” I was thinking, that is really something.  I would have done something like that 20 years ago but certainly not today, no matter how nice the car seemed to be.

So, roughly 18 hours after his first call I received another call from him.  He was now nearing Phoenix and asked for more specific directions.  Two hours later, roughly twenty hours after his first call, he had driven from near Sacramento to our driveway.

He looked the car over, he drove the car, then he looked the car over again.  I could see he was planning to buy the car.  Wow!  It is usually more difficult to sell a high-dollar, classic car.

He again asked about the price.  I told him it was as advertised and specified the amount.  Big Frown!  He then said that the Autotrader price was about 1/7th that amount.  More Frowning!  By both of us.  I believe we were both thinking that when something seems to good to be true it probably is.   

So I said, “lets go look at Autotrader.”  And we did.

I could have fallen out of my chair when the Autotrader ad showed the 1/7th price.  I called the Autotrader sales person who had helped me set up the ad.  He checked the current ad and he checked my inputs.  I had specified the right price, not the 1/7th right price.

He then explained that the Autotrader site had been hacked.  A bunch of bogus emails were sent to advertisers (including me) saying that there was a message from Autotrader and gave a url.  If you went to the url, or maybe just opened the email, it gave the hacker the ability to hack your ad.

I had looked at the message on my iPhone and only remember looking at the preview.  In any case, apparently that was enough for the hacker to gain control of my ad.  Other damage may have been done but at the very least the price was reduced by a factor of 85%.

The potential buyer stormed off.  He had spent 14 of the prior 20 hours driving, would have to do it again to get home and probably will spend close to $400 out of pocket.  I felt foolish, angry and disappointed since I though sure this would be a sale.  Plus I really felt sorry for the potential buyer.

The folks at Autotrader had a bigger problem.  There are dozens of automobile sales sites (eBay, cars.com, yahoo, edmunds and many other smaller, local or regional sites).  eBay has the slickest interface and is easiest to use.  I suspect it has the greatest  audience.  My ad on eBay hasn’t been hacked.   I suspect the Ebay shields and firewalls are more robust.  Also, eBay fees are primarily based on the vehicle selling.  A hundred dollars out of the sales price is a lot less noticable than $100 up front as it is for AutoTrader.

The real cost will be born by AutoTrader.  Such hacks could put them out of business.

For the past 33 years I have subscribed to the Harvard Business Review.  It is a great magazine.  The content is typically in tune with the business issues and the material is well written.  The authors have credibility.  Those are just some of the reasons I keep the subscription going.

What is not done well by HBR is change.  When I first subscribed, the table of contents was on the front cover.  Great placement (for me anyway).  I could skim the contents before I even removed the magazine from its packaging (as I recall it has always been delivered in a clear wrapper).  Now the table of contents is strewn from page 7 through 16 (in the November 2010 issue), mixed with full page advertising.

So now there are lots of messages trying to gain my attention: the contents, IBM, Northern Trust, British Airways . . . and Chevron.  I suppose this is intended to be similar to a webpage where the content in intermingled with the advertising.  The trouble is that paper pages do not hyperlink well.

As a long time reader, I know I’ve seen dozens of articles with the message “make it easy for your client to work with and/or buy from your company.”  Well I think I am an HBR client and I find the old format (table of contents on the cover) far more effective in leading me to the stories of interest.  And I guarantee that I see the many advertisements on my way from the front cover to the articles

What specifically triggered this posting has been my attempt to resubscribe to the magazine this year.  As is always the case, about the time the check (or credit card payment) for the current year clears, the blast of messages begin that are intended to coax me to subscribe for the next year.

My subscription ends in September.  I ignored the March, May and June requests to renew but in July I received a postcard offerring 15 months of service for the yearly fee.  That sounded good . . . so I returned the postcard, thinking that it would be almost 2012 before I would have to think about renewing my subscription.

In September I read the magazine within a few days of receiving it.  As has been my practice for most of the 30 plus years, I then set about capturing the specific articles of interest to save separately from the stack of magazines.  In the early times this involved making paper copies.  Twenty years ago a scanner entered my network and scanned copies replaced the paper copies.  Sometime in the past decade HBR provided subscribers the ability to download copies of articles.  Downloading was a lot better than paper copies or scanning from the magazine.

Well, in September I could not download many of the articles. 

As call to HBR and I was told that my subscription was for paper only.  “Last month I could download . . . what changed?”

“You subscribed to our paper only service.”  “How did I know that I did that?”  “It was on the card you used to renew your subscription.  There are three types of subscriptions now:  paper only, online only and paper plus online.”

Great, I said, “. . . change my subscription to the online only option.”  “Oh, we can’t do that.  We can cancel your subscription and you can renew with one of the other options.”  “At the 15 months for 12 months fee?” “No, just 12 month for the 12 month price.” “Oh, . . . ok.”  So in a few days I subscribed for the online only version.

A few days ago I received a paper copy of the October issue.    A few days before that the refund showed up on my credit card statement.  Still no charge for the electronic version.  Still no ablility to download certain articles.

I know I have read at least 25 HBR articles which point out the need to align the marketing with the selling, with the fulfillment, with the processes . . . and with the product.

I’ll bet the folks doing the HBR fulfillment haven’t.

We are avid readers.

Our den has two full walls of bookshelves.  Our guest room has six large bookcases.  Our office has a half dozen more bookcases.   Three or four years ago these were nearly all filled.  Since then we have been carefully giving away and donating books to a variety of friends and charitable organizations.  Our thought was that this action would allow room for more books.

But, within the past three or four months we have nearly stopped buying traditional books.  I started the movement by subscribing to Audible.com and purchasing roughly two dozen audio books each year.  These make the commute into Phoenix far more tolerable and I have learned a lot.  Plus, I am sure my mental health has benefited from the avoidance of talk radio.

But, the abrupt change happened just a couple of months ago.  My spouse is the very avid reader.  Barnes and Noble usually provided four to six books per month.  Other sources added a few more.  Now Barnes and Noble may be heading for bankruptcy or some other major reorganization.  Sales are down.  We contributed to that decline.

Amazon helped a lot.  A Kindle entered our household a couple of months ago.  Our son, an avid Kindle user for several years did a lot of coaching and showed us ways to obtain free books.  Also, the books which usually cost from $15-$20 in the paper format, are about 2/3rds that amount in Kindle format.

In addition, my iPhone now has a Kindle reader loaded and I find it a useful and convenient way to spend wait times reading books.  (I had tried earphones and listening to audio books when not in the car but found it uncomfortable and inconvenient.)

By my count, since the Kindle arrived only one paper book has been purchased.  Even more ominous is the lust I am developing for an iPad.  It should handle digital books (also audio) plus replace my 8 pound laptop for most uses.

Schumpeter’s creative destruction, up close and personal.  Sorry B&N.

Every few weeks the CEO of a local company has an article in the Sunday Business section of the Phoenix Republic.  The format of most of the articles is a short business question and a very thoughtful answer by the CEO.

But, I think the article discussing the best analogy for sales and marketing was quite inappropriate.  I hope the sales and marketing at the company does not follow the models described in the article.

Two alternative models were described: Fishing and Hunting.

Hunting involves finding potential game by stealth, tracking them down then killing the game.  Very macho.  Very win-lose.  Very zero sum.  Tough on the game too.

Fishing involves more strategy, stealth, study.  You don’t go hunt down a fish, you attract the fish.  Much more elegant.

But, in both cases the animal or fish winds up very dead, usually dressed and then cooked and eaten.  Some of the time rare specimens wind up stuffed, preserved and mounted on the wall.

As a potential client of a company I don’t particularly feel good about becoming a meal or an ornament as an outcome of being a client.  Granted, I have often had that feeling after a particularly ugly transaction.  In those cases I made sure to avoid the company in the future.  (Let me tell you sometime about a purchase of a major software system from one of the “leading” vendors.  It was not clear whether I had the role of deer or bass but I sure felt like I contributed to someone’s lavish meal.)

Sales and marketing would seem to be more attractive if positioned as a win-win proposition.  I buy your product at a reasonable price and it performs so well that my business or personal life is enhanced.  You received a good price and your business and personal life are also enhanced.

Tell me about your hunting or fishing stories and then tell me where I fit in the story.  At that point I will decide whether to buy from you or someone else.

Tony Hayward, the much maligned CEO of BP went to a yacht race. 

Three months ago this would not have been news nor would it have created the firestorm of criticism it has over the the past few days.

Hayward is wealthy (52 ft yachts aren’t Walmart merchandise).  Hayward is not an American (no problem there either, except his potentially career-ending business crisis is trashing a lot of American property).  Hayward and his boss Svanberg apparently have little understanding of the culture of those being affected by the series of blunders BP has made in the Gulf of Mexico.

While we colonials have some subtle class awareness, compared to England and most European countries we are severely class challenged.

It was probably “ok” in Hayward’s and Svanberg’s value system to take a day off while their well dumps another million gallons of crude oil in the Gulf and go to a yacht race.  After all, his boat was competing.  Spending a few hundred thousand dollars (pounds) to fly from Washington, DC to England, to the Isle of Wight on the corporate jets/helicopters is how the upper class does things in that part of the world. 

Contrast the reaction to Obama going a few miles down the road for a golf game with some of the Military brass.  Lots of flack.

And then there are the “small people.”  Some of the outrage to Svanberg’s repeated use of this term has to do with the ”lost in translation” effect.  But the major blunder was the insensitivity to the US culture.  Use phrases in the US that hint at class distinctions at major personal risk!  It is ok to call yourself “one of the little people,” but use the phrase to refer to others in that manner virtually assures contempt and dismissal.

England and much of Europe have distinct classes.   Royalty, Knights, Duchesses, Princes . . . and other class titles abound.  We scoff at such distinctions.  In the European value system, taking a day off to go to the yacht races is ok if you are a captain of industry facing a crisis.  Our value system would define the role of the crisis manager (Hayward’s supposed role) as working around the clock in the Command Center, fueled on coffee and sandwitches delivered every few hours.  Sleep (find an empty desk).  Relaxation (take a walk around the building).  Get your life back (that starts three weeks/months after the oil leak is proved to be fully contained)

The management of this crisis seems to be relatively amateurish.  Far less damaging crises often have far more structured and effective command and control procedures. 

Maybe Hayward and Svanberg should watch Apollo 13.

Or maybe the portion of BP responsible for the Gulf operations should be temporarily nationalized (by the US) and a real crisis management team be installed.