Not My Fault. Oh?

We've all heard this sorry chorus (and if we put on our Big Boy/Big Girl duds, we can admit that we've even said things like this):

• That's wasn't my job
• The customer didn't get me the information I needed
• I was drunk, but I wasn't the cause of the accident
• My hard-drive failed
• I have a slow metabolism
• It was the traffic
• It wasn't me.

We belong to a culture of decreasing accountability.

That's why this episode of This American Life stopped me from my Saturday night's reading. When he was 18 years old, Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng and More Than It Hurts You, killed a girl. He was driving--sober and straight--along a highway when she swerved her bicycle into the path of his car. There was nothing he could do to save her. He describes his "stomach-turning" behavior at points where he was more concerned about himself--how he might appear--than about the girl the car he was driving struck.

While there was nothing he could have done, Darin's story repeats this refrain: "the girl I killed." He's clear that, while her bike turned crisply into his lane, he was piloting the car that intersected with her and her bike. He was responsible, as the instrument of her death.

Life has become about "who did it" and "who's to blame," with biz owners, executives, sales reps, technicians, husbands, politician, and children taking sometimes draconian steps to avoid blame...or, better, to shift it to someone else. Jack Welch was lionized as a "genius" for his competitive stance "Be first or second in the market or begone." The detritus of Jack Welch's turn at the GE rudder gave us "rank and yank," an "HR system" based on the Vitality Curve wherein the top 20% get raises and promotions, the bottom 10% get the door and the middle 70% get to keep their jobs. To keep your job, one would have to be either in the first or second ranking. Those on the third rung are dispatched, regardless of their contributions. After several iterations, GE professional and execs, speaking privately, of course, have said that the chorus of "it wasn't me" is deafening, as people struggle to look better than their neighbor as the strongest players in the industry compete with their equally-stellar peers. The workplace culture has become increasingly toxic, with less collaboration, sharing of knowledge assets and mentoring? Who would want to be mentored if that mentor could "turn state's evidence" and become party to one's termination. HR staffers, under Welch's system, were reduced to ranch hands who conducted the annual culling.

I remember a course I took some years ago that served up a brutal take on responsibility. "Responsibility," they said "begins with being 'cause in the matter' of one's life." Here's the entire quote:

Responsibility begins with the willingness to be cause in the matter of one's life. Ultimately, it is a context from which one chooses to live. Responsibility is not burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame or guilt. In responsibility, there is no evaluation of good or bad, right or wrong. There is simply what's so, and your stand. Being responsible starts with the willingness to deal with a situation from the view of life that you are the generator of what you do, what you have and what you are. That is not the truth. It is a place to stand. No one can make you responsible, nor can you impose responsibility on another. It is a grace you give yourself - an empowering context that leaves you with a say in the matter of life.
-Werner Erhard

Claim no responsibility? You're a victim and have admitted that there's nothing that can be done.

Rubbish.

As a result of my participation in this program (drank the Kool-Ade as with a protein shot), I don't offer excuses--really stylized cover-ups--which are about me rather than a sincere apology and offer to make it right, which is about the person I'd fallen short with. No one has ever cared about my excuses and--here's the money shot--most of those excuses could have been avoided.

• Not your job? Tell the boss that there's a gap in the job design rather than letting it be a surprise.
• Missing customer info? Tell them so and that you won't be able to get then what they need in a timely way
• Drunk and talking to the police? Suck it up and blow, hard, into the Breathalyzer
• Hard-drive failure? Set up that backup you've been talking about and pretending wasn't a priority
• Got a slow metabolism? Move!
• Heavy traffic and you've got a meeting? Leave earlier. Most of us in Indy know where the trouble spots are on I465. Traffic is just an excuse.
• Not you? Who else, then?

In an instance I got to hear a leader take responsibility back. Their company had deleted my text messaging ability, then my picture messaging, and finally -- Poof! -- there went my ability to make phone calls. After serveral calls, several reps and several hours, it was finally corrected. Then, I got a call from those people's manager. He had listened to recordings of the calls I'd made and was completely chagrinned: "That's not the kind of service we're committed to." He said, baldly, "We dropped the ball and sucked up a whole lot of your time" and promised to retrain his staff and to credit my plan for the days of lost service.

I was so stunned I couldn't speak.

Full Episode: Darin's piece is about 9 1/2 minutes into it.

There Are Things Bigger than Us All

I saw this and couldn't stop weeping at the love and faith of these men and this big cat.



This is just right on so many levels.

Notes from the Productivity Industrial Complex

My friend, Nwokedi, suggested I read this (below). Like the diversity workshops that were legion during the 80's and 90's, productivity discussions tend to focus on what's in the best interest of companies and not in the best interest of people. To take a deeper cut at that, they tend to focus on "getting things done" but not as much on "getting the right things done." Even the Covey workshops. the self-appointed Gold Standard of the Productivity Industrial Complex, doesn't have much to say about how a lowly employee, having happily sorted their tasks into A, B and C priorities, can prevail upon their leader to moving the C items off everyone's list. As workplaces continue to contract, workers are doing more, but very little job redesign is happening.

I’ll include my thoughts inline with the quoted text:

Alternative Productivity’s Tenets (David Allen):

1. “Productivity” is an Industrial Era economics term that applies to factories, machines, and economies. When applied to people it often has a dehumanizing effect and negates both individual differences and unique talents.
   
   Lalita: Amen. I found myself concerned about the entire concept of "productivity." As an economic term, it refers to a ratio of outputs to inputs, like labor productivity as the relationship between results and the work that went into their creation. People aren’t machines and even a machine can’t simply be tasked to produce more without looking at upstream and down stream inputs and outputs as well as system capabilities. We are more concerned with equipment failure from being over-stressed than we are about burning out people.
   
2. If your productivity increases, but your pay stays the same, then you’re effectively taking a pay cut (same goes if you begin working longer hours for the same pay).
   
   Lalita: This is a conversation I have with consultants constantly. One bragged to me about his hourly rate. When I asked him to calculate how many hours he was working this billing cycle and how much money he was getting, he quietly began scribbling (“I’ll show you.”). You can’t imagine the look of horror on his face when he figured out that his effective hourly rate was one-fifth his rack rate. We had a long talk that afternoon that shifted his world.
   
3. The 40-hour work week hasn’t changed since 1940 and is ridiculously outdated.
   
4. If you’re consistently having trouble focusing, it’s often because you’re focusing on the wrong things (i.e. things you’re not passionate about or things that aren’t best suited to your skillset).
   
   Lalita: Trouble focusing may be a symptom of memory erosion as our plates get more and more full. People today have access, in one issue of the New York Times, to more information than was available to the average human being in an entire lifetime just a century ago. As hoards of new information are being fed in, other information is organized for long-term storage--even if that information is needed for short-term, immediate use. Add in stress, which has been proven to reduce retention and attentiveness, and it gets even...um, I forgot what I was writing about....*
   
   Frankly, we aren’t experiencing a focus deficit: we’re experiencing too much garbage on the plate with little leadership support to move it to the trash where it belongs.
   
5. Increased productivity should equal less time on the job. If you’re getting more done, you should get more vacation time.
   
   Lalita: Not sure how this follows as employers are able to set up, within legally-prescribed limits, any kind of work rules they choose. Besides, there is an important external driver pressuring leaders to produce more: stockholders. These “owners” are interested in one thing and than it increased revenue for their investment. Few leaders at the C-Suite level are willing to buck their boards or say “No mas” at stockholders’ meetings where initiatives are being put forth that will impact the footprint the job takes up in a worker’s life.
   
6. Most best-selling productivity gurus are working in the interests of large corporations and often advocate values and approaches that are not in the best interests of individuals.
   
   Lalita: Working in the best interests of companies? Not if these productivity gurus aren't tying their programs to retention. As people run out of bandwidth, they leave. In droves. Over a decade ago, HR strategists started seeing an increasing trend for “downshifting” where career climbers chose to shift career tracks to paths that would allow for more time to engage in other pursuits (see how I didn’t say “work/life balance”—a term I despise...but that’s another post).
   
   A rule of thumb for calculating the cost of turnover is to take an employee's salary and divide it by 30%. That, very roughly, is base cost of turnover for that one position. Add in a recruiter’s fee or executive signing bonuses, stock options or Golden Parachutes (like a prenupt for the C-Suite set) and the percentage continues to climb. In addition, it can take months for a newly-placed staffer to gain proficiency in a new corporate and departmental cultures and the expectations of the job.
   
   Then there’s the matter of proof. Most productivity workshops have never been vetted for validity (measures the right things) and reliability (measures consistently over time). They "work" simply because the guru has collected anecdotal information from participants that says so.
   
   Just a tad self-referential, no?
   
7. Increased productivity should result in greater carefree time, more vacations, and more time away from work. Most of the time, however, it does not.
   
8. We are living in a time and place that is more “productive” than ever before, but high levels of productivity aren’t making us any happier.
   
   Lalita: Please. “Productive” is not the same as “effective.” You can be doing a lot of things, but not the right things.
   
   You and I both know people who, during meetings, answer phone calls and respond to or send emails. By not focusing on the people in front of them, meeting durations balloon as topics are started and stopped over and over again. In addition, there’s the little matter of credibility. Doing everything else at a meeting but conducting the meeting is seen as incredibly rude, impacting future promotional opportunities and damaging key relationships.
   
   Measures of effectiveness can easily been found in most process improvement initiatives with a clearly-defined outcome stated in advance and work to reduce variation around that stated goal. Not so in productivity workshops, which tend to operate at the tactical level rather than the strategic.
   
9. Productivity should be designed around our lives, not the other way around.
   
   Lalita: Productivity should be designed around systems of increased effectiveness inside a value chain which should connect to desired outcomes which should connect to the strategic mission of the department, the business unit and the company.

10. The workforce is laboring for more hours and for less pay, taking fewer vacations, and generally burning out.
    
    Lalita: Yup. In another entry I scribed, I detailed the differences in vacation for the major developed nations. The US leads the pack of industrialized nations in the lack of vacation time: That’s less than France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Japan and Canada. A whopping 26% of US workers take no vacation at all. Many who do, spend more time with their Blackberrys than they do their families, fearing that if they’re too disconnected (1) people will figure out that they’re expendable and (2) the workload when they return will be insurmountable.

11. The best way to increase productivity is often to quit a lot of things.
    
    Lalita: Good idea, but most leaders are unwilling to insist on job re-design or to challenge their leaders on the best use of their staffers’ time.

12. Productivity often poses as the self-development genre but it is not. Self-development and productivity are two very different things. What is best for us as individuals is often bad for productivity.
    
    Lalita: Huh? People development and the resulting impacts on productivity are connected.

13. The societally scripted routes to success via productivity are failing us.

14. Products marketed towards busy people (e.g. “Productivity for Busy People,” “Cooking for Busy People,” etc.) only serve to reinforce the problem and often glamorize, excuse, and support the unnecessarily busy life and cult of hyper-efficiency.
    
    Lalita: Is there really something “sexy” about scurrying about like a rat in a maze? Really? Telegraphing that you can't get meaningful work done in a humane way is glamouous? Indeed.

15. Hacks, tweaks, tricks, etc. have emerged from a productivity hobbyist culture, are largely insufficient at solving bigger life problems, and often do not increase productivity. These hacks etc. are vestiges of the largely "techie" demographic of the early (but self-reinforcing) blogosphere.

16. Early to bed, early to rise does not necessarily lead to greater productivity. Contrary to several blog posts advocating early rising as a means to greater productivity, the practice of early rising can actually be harmful.
    
    Lalita: Cookie-cutter fixes assume that we’re all the same and have the same requirements. Not so. I get some of my best writing done late at night. Telling me to go to bed at 10 would have me running out the door with my hair on fire. However, an early bird who’s staying up late, can benefit from supports to get to bed at their earlier bedtime.
    
    In a conversation with a fledgeling business owner, he asked me my opinion about something his "coach" (a marketing consultant who had decided--damn the skillset--to hang out a shingle as a business coach) had said. "Lalita, he told me to play business development CD's in my car while I'm driving." When I asked him what he really liked to do while driving he said "Listen to music." Guess what I told him to do? And I'm looking for his "coach" to suggest he stop treating his clients like they're all him.

17. More technology often leads to decreased productivity.

18. Hyper-focusing on productivity often gets in the way of the messy, circuitous, and discursive routes of personal development.

19. When most people speak of productivity in the office, they’re usually speaking about a specific kind of productivity: cubical-land, desk-job, information-worker productivity. The methods used to produce this kind of productivity often do not generalize to other contexts.

20. No productivity system can put you in a zen like, meditative, or mind like water state. A calm, focused, and meditative mind leads to greater productivity, but productivity systems cannot create a mind like water.

21. Too much productivity can turn you into a real tool.

22. Massive value creation often happens during times when no work is ostensibly being accomplished and productivity levels are ostensibly nil.

23. What makes people productive varies considerably from person to person.
    
    Lalita: Huzzah! Truer words have not been written. Task -related productivity is the "booby prize." Figuring out the right things to do and then getting the barriers out of the way so we can focus on the most effective ways of doing those things--that's the juicy cherry.

24. Productivity is often a necessary evil: if you dislike your job, you’re going to need a water-tight productivity system in place to keep you on task.
    
25. Productivity should be designed around lives, not the other way around.

Randy Pausch, Author of "The Last Lecture," Has Died at 47

Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon professor of computer science died today of pancreatic cancer at 47. He died in Virginia, having insisted on moving so that his wife and children could be closer to beloved family members after his death.

His academic achievements are many--he was co-founder with Don Marinelli, of Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center and started the Building Virtual World course which he taught for a decade. He was a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator and a Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellow and did sabbaticals at Walt Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts. He authored or co-authored five books, including the book, The Last Lecture; over 70 articles and was the founder of the Alice software project. He topped the list of the World's Top-100 Most Influential People (Time magazine).

Aside from his academic credentials, his relationship with his wife, Jai, and his children, his other crowning achievement was his entry for Carnegie Mellon's Last Lecture series, "Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams." In August, 2006, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a mean-spirited disease that is both pitiless and merciless as it eats up the life of the person afflicted with it. By August, 2007, he was told that it had mestastisized and that his time was short. Instead of putting his affairs in order and going on his last vacation, he went to the classroom. Here's his lecture.

Watch it, get your hands on the book, plaster on a broad smile about the beauty of your dreams and then get to work.

Some of my fave nuggets from The Last Lecture:

• "The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They are there to stop the OTHER people!" — from The Last Lecture
• "...when you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering you to tell you anymore, that's a very bad place to be. Your critics are the ones telling you they still love you and care." — from The Last Lecture
• "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." — from The Last Lecture
• "It's not about how to achieve your dreams, it's all about leading your life. If you lead your life in a right way, karma will take care of itself. And dreams will come to you." — from The Last Lecture
• "We're not going to talk about spirituality and religion. Although I will tell you that I have experienced a deathbed conversion. I just bought a Macintosh." — from The Last Lecture
• We cannot change the card we are dealt, just how we play the hand." from The Last Lecture

Starbucks to Shutter 600 Stores. Is "Your" Fave on the List?

In a cost saving move, Starbucks is shuttering 600 stores (click here for the national list), with job losses totaling in excess of 12,000. Long the ubiquitous coffee retailer, the java giant has noted that (1) McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts has been "eating their lunch" winning coffee tastings and now offering free wifi and confortable louges and (2) the retailer is no longer "special" with the now-jettisoned breakfast sandwiches, increasingly dirty stores, inconsistent brew and stores on every corner. In an effort to getting back to its core business and core market, returning Starbucks head roaster, Howard Schultz, has high hopes for the newly-reengineered, post-closure chain.

I'm sure that this is not the only changes the coffee retailer will be making in the near term. After the beans settle, I'm certain there will be other store closures. What has long bothered me about $tarbuck$ is that it says it is "really selling an experience." OK, but in truth they're using the Walgreens hedgehog (read Good to Great for an explanation) of ubiquity--being everywhere. Hell with the experience. Me? I would have closed those stores in Targets--the ones next to the pizza stands and bedraggle stoppers--and any other location that didn't have the customer feel "special." Because in not doing so, McDonald's, which is now offering free Wifi and cafe lounges, will continue to eat up their market share.

Just as an interesting point of reference, LA lost only two stores to my home city's (Indianapolis) seven, three are stopping operations in Sacramento and a whopping 10 in San Diego. Makes me wonder which set of miscreants was asleep at the switch to have green-lighted the opening of so many stores past the saturation point, particularly in overly-caffeinated San Diego. Even a fouth grader could look at market trends and see that Starbucks had been in trouble for quite some time--that market share would drop off the moment a cuppa joe cost more than a gallon of gas. Hope they get their marching papers soon.

As many of you know, I'm not a fan of RIF's as a way to "clean up" bad business decisions. As an executive coach focusing on business and people strategy, I know that workforce reductions should be the last resort after having made careful decisions along the way. You wouldn't want a doc who was amputation-happy, now would you? Didn't think so. Neither would one want company leaders who, ignoring reports of organizational "pain" (increased competition, declining revenues, changes in purchasing patterns), opt to make workforce cuts to clean up their messes without working to ensure that they've gotten to the root of the malaise.

Oh and promise not to cry if you see your store on the list.

Cross-posted at Smaller Indiana and American Values Alliance

Rush Appears on The Colbert Report. Lalita Dies in Peace

Gerck! Thud. So this is what heaven looks like. Awfully quiet.

OK, so I'm not dead, exactly. But I am pretty blissful. After waiting patiently (not really) for most of the week, I got to see Rush perform for the first time on television in 30 years on The Colbert Report.

Love this group. Their cataloge of songs and amazing wall of sound perforances have them ranked fifth behind The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Kiss and Aerosmith in most consecutive gold and platinum albums by a rock band. They performed Tom Sawyer (here's an earlier version). Had it been Free Will, I might have melted into a puddle with a few smouldering dreadlocks on top.

Here are the lyrics to this song, written over two decades ago. Almost prescient as it contrasts who a boy is perceived to be and who he actually is. People I meet tell me that, in their business dealings, they're not who they "really are." I have to ask them, when are you going to give that up and just "do you?"

Tom Sawyer

A modern-day warrior
Mean mean stride,
Today's Tom Sawyer
Mean mean pride.

Though his mind is not for rent,
Don't put him down as arrogant.
His reserve, a quiet defense,
Riding out the day's events.
The river

And what you say about his company
Is what you say about society.
Catch the mist, catch the myth
Catch the mystery, catch the drift.

The world is, the world is,
Love and life are deep,
Maybe as his eyes are wide.

Today's Tom Sawyer,
He gets high on you,

And the space he invades
He gets by on you.

No, his mind is not for rent
To any god or government.
Always hopeful, yet discontent,
He knows changes aren't permanent,
But change is.

And what you say about his company
Is what you say about society.
Catch the witness, catch the wit,
Catch the spirit, catch the spit.

The world is, the world is,
Love and life are deep,
Maybe as his skies are wide.

Exit the warrior,
Today's Tom Sawyer,
He gets high on you,
And the energy you trade,
He gets right on to the friction of the day

What the Auto Industry Can Learn From Apple

David Murphy

Like hundreds of thousands of people across the country, I stood in
line last weekend at the Apple Store in Newport Beach, Calif., to buy
the new iPhone 3G for my daughter after three unsuccessful attempts at
nearby AT&T stores.


Witnessing this exuberant demand for a new product made me
wonder if this feat could be repeated in other categories, such as the
auto business. What would an automaker have to do to seduce consumers
to stand in line to buy a hot new car? Here are some lessons from the
iPhone:


read more at Ad Age

GM CEO Promises to Restructure to Improve Company for the Long Haul. I Hope He Means It.

This morning on NPR, I heard a report from GM CEO, Rick Wagoner. GM is restructuring to try to react to tightening market conditions. Last month, the auto manufacturer announced that it was shuttering 4 assembly plants and selling off or retiring many of its truck divisions including the Hummer brand. Today, they announced that they are trying to generate over $10 BB US through cost-cutting measures that include a 20% reduction in its 40,000-strong salaried workforce and the dramatic scaling back of salaried retiree healthcare benefits.

Wagoner admitted to trying to move the company into a position where it could do more than survive the current economic downturn (though this was an immediate and tantamount concern). He also discussed wanting to position the company (through RIFs and other cost-saving measures) so that it could move quickly and decisively when conditions began showing signs of improvement. This last bit was what struck me from the interview. Given the fact that the downturn coincided with the emerging move to cap greenhouse gases and reduce the proliferation of “petrol pigs,” Wagoner was right to want to use this unfortunate time on our economic landscape to advance the company.

You can listen to the report here. You can also go to the main link (if the one provided doesn’t open up the report).

The Happenning.....

Ladies and gentlemen....it's finally happening.

Analysts Say Apple's Disciplined Marketing Is Behind Trend, not Just Vista 'Debacle'

Wonder If He Got a Gold Pen (or a gold mine): Bill Gates Retires from Microsoft

Today marks Bill Gates' last day in his office digs at Microsoft. And while he will continue on as advisor and Board Convener (if we can add EVOO to the lexicon because Rachael Frelling Ray uses it over an over and over, we can come up with gender-neutral language), he'll focus his energies on his foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

A Computer in Every Home

Gates et al (see the picture of the original 11 Microsoft employees) didn't create the personal computer. However, their efforts were energized by their commitment to have a PC in every home. Mr. Gates wanted to facilitate communication between computers so that they spoke a common language and could easily pass information from one computer to another. Decades later, this vision helped to inspire MIT's One Laptop Per Child project, which seeks to put a computer into the hands of the world's poorest children (see Seymour Papert's groundbreaking Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas).

The Evil Empire
Not so happily, Microsoft was involved in one of the largest anti-trust suits in the nation for its anti-competitive and exclusionary practices. In May 1998, the U.S. Justice Department charged Microsoft with having operating practices that helped it maintain its monopoly in personal computer operating systems and Internet browsing software. This from NPR:

"The evidence presented in court today demonstrates that Microsoft used its
massive monopoly power to harm competition and to harm consumers," said Joel
Klein, head of the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division, outlining the
government's case against the company in 1998.

In the HR world, Microsoft's use of its own recently-downsized staffers to return immediately to work...and do exactly what they'd been doing before, working in temp roles indefinitely, gave us a new term--"Permatemp"--and had HR departments scrambling to create policies to routinely release temps before they set down roots (or expectations) and limit their opportunities for direct hire.


Bill's Second Life


While he's ramping down from his former day job at Microsoft, Mr. Gates will shift his efforts so that he will be spending only one day a week at MS and the bulk of the rest of his time at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses on eradicating poverty, illiteracy and diseases such as TB and malaria. And having traveled and consulted in malaria and AIDS riddled parts of southern Africa, I can tell you this: Maslow was right when he said that higher order needs become subsumed by efforts to handle lower order, hide-bound safety needs.

Africa and other parts of the developing world will simply not be able to add their unique contributions to the world if the people have to keep burying their children.

For all the promise and challenge of Mr. Gates' tenure at the helm of Microsoft, his has been a story of vision and passion.

Absolutely brilliant!

One thing I like about Dyson is his age...it's very good to see more baby boomers in the public eye doing progressive, innovative stuff.

Back to the product. as he mentions light yet strong, I remember my very first design project at the Caribbean School of Architecture. Actually it was a design challenge to see who could make the strongest bridge out of balsa. I forget who won, but I learned so much from that project it has stuck with me to this day. So anyway, check out the video!

James Dyson on Engineering and Design

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Mourning a Comedian: George Carlin Dead at 71

Learned that George Carlin--stand-up comedian, philosopher, actor, writer--has passed away in Vegas this past weekend. How very sad to lose someone so terribly funny.

I remember when I 'd first heard George Carlin. I was a child and he was appearing as a guest on some children's show out of Chicago. He was doing a children's version of the Hippy Dippy Weatherman and I remember shifting my noggin back and forth--like a dog trying to make sense of some strange sound: Look at the strange adults...wonder what they're talking about.

His use of language and slant on American society and politics were legend with his "Seven Dirty Words" which challenged the government's right to control what was said in the public airwaves. To say his humor could be "black" just doesn't quite capture it--his humor was smouldering tar.

Momma Needs a New Pair of Shoes...

...but where the hell am I going to buy them?

In a stunning accounting of the fallout of this recession in the retail sector, Donald H has listed a staggering 2,179 store closings for this year. Here's a partial list:

1. Ann Taylor closing 117 stores nationwide A company spokeswoman said the
   company hasn't revealed which stores will be shuttered. It will let the stores
   that will close this fiscal year know over the next month.
2. Eddie Bauer to close more stores - Eddie Bauer has already closed 27 shops in the first quarter and plans to close up to two more outlet stores by the end of the year.
3. Cache closing stores - Women's retailer Cache announced that it is closing 20 to 23 stores this year.
4. Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Catherines closing 150 stores nationwide The owner of retailers Lane Bryant , Fashion Bug , Catherines Plus Sizes will close about 150 underperforming stores this year. The company hasn't provided a list of specific store closures and can't say when it will offer that info, spokeswoman Brooke Perry said today.
5. Talbots, J. Jill closing stores - About a month ago, Talbots announced that it will be shuttering all 78 of its kids and men's stores. Now the company says it will close another 22 underperforming stores.The 22 stores will be a mix of Talbots women's and J. Jill, another chain it owns. The closures will occur this fiscal year, according to a company press release.
6. Gap Inc. closing 85 stores - In addition to its namesake chain, Gap also owns Old Navy and Banana Republic. The company said the closures - all planned for fiscal 2008 - will be weighted toward the Gap brand. [ ... ]

The list of top-flight brands shuttering some or all of their doors amazed me, particularly with the running commentary from the news pundits and economists on whether or not we're in a recession.

Some of my fellow consultants who butter their bread in the retail industry have been singing the blues for quite some time. Now I can see why.

Monday Morning Melodies

Look out the window, people. It's going to be a lovely day!

Bill Withers ("Lean on Me"), A Lovely Day

NBC Luminary, Tim Russert, Dies at 58

Garland and I turned on the TV, just to start catching up with the day's news when we learned that NBC journalist and political bright light, Tim Russert, had just died. Mr. Russert was the host of "Meet the Press" and a news executive who ran the Washington Bureau. He was at is office when he succumbed.

He loved politics as well as public policy and he was interested in everything. An astute interviewer, he was known to pin his guests down to get to the root of the topic as it impacted the life of the nation or our society. Courteous and genuinely kind, he brought something useful as well as interesting. Mr. Russert was the premier interviewer in television news.

He was one of Time's 100 Most Influencial People for 2008. I can't agree more. It was from Meet the Press as well as NPR that I learned to love the news. He cause me to move from skeptical to more thoughtful about the news. He knew he'd hit the lottery in life and he wanted to share his winnings with us.

Here's Mr. Russert's last go at Meet the Press before leaving for his last vacation with his beloved family. Classic Russert.

The Incredible Shrinking Laptop

I'm willing to admit it: My laptop weighs a ton. It's like lugging around a two year old.

Give me a second. I'm going to weigh this thing...Oh, God! Sixteen pounds with my laptop, cables, backpack and the one or two books or mags I generally carry. My cat doesn't even weigh a whole five pounds. And at three and a half years strong, it's getting long in the bluetooth (could have resisted, but didn't). So, I'm looking for a computer--an ultramobile workhorse. Even now, I'm away from my desk as I post this, waiting for a meeting.

Vista worries me as it should. It was a poor roll out with device drivers not supported and other bits of Microsoft Weirdness (meaning, they beta test on paying customers). Except for the fact that my laptop (the HP Pavilion with the crystal clear screen and six hour battery life) is a Windows box, I'd gleefully get another. I just cant risk the squirrely Vista operating system.

So, in looking for a small computer, I'm working from a set of criterion that will be hard to get in one box:

• Solid operating system
• Works with my existing software (Quickbooks, Office Pro including Visio)
• Facilitates podcast creation
• Small form factor
• Easy to read screen
• Moderate cost
• Did I already say solid operating system?

Trouble is: we're not quite there yet with the UMPC's (computers with less than three pounds). Here's what I'm looking at.

The MacBook Air, at $1,800, is the leader cost-wise. Though it's got the more solid Mac OS, it seems a bit like a Sony Vaio without the optical drive, fixed battery (instead of replaceable ones) and mono speakers. Might make a better bookmark than high-functioning computer, though I know Yorkali will read this with a disapproving glance.

The 1.6GHz chip is a little bit, well, pokey, but the heat output is low enough that you don't have to consider wearing a codpiece to use it (though us girlie types love the heat on cold days). It's got a full-sized keyboard and integrated 802.11n with solid performance.

So, unless I really need to put my computer in a manila envelope or use it at a murder weapon (you can swing it like an unwieldy hatchet), it just doesn't quite seem like a workable solution.

Then there's the offerings from HTC. One is the Shift, which is powerful enough to run most business applications, including Windows Vista, and has SnapVUE, a feature that lets the operator view common information apps (like calendar and email) without powering the machine up. It includes Sprint WWAN for connectivity, had lots of imput options and two resolutions and a full QWERTY keyboard. However, that keyboard is small (but OK for my little paws), has poor battery life and I've heard that the fan is kind of noisy. Oh, and that leather thingy on the bottown can't be removed as far as I can see. It's kind of a weird little tablet computer hybrid between smartphone and laptop.

HTC's other offering, the Athena Advantage, at first look, is like carrying around a brick. Still, it's geared towards playing media, working with documents or emails and web browsing easy. The screen is crystal clear (as you can see even from the image) and integrates Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. Shunning Vista, it runs on Windows Mobile 6. It has a built-in camera and a full keyboard. Note to self: this kind of keyboard doesn't work well for women with nails that extend beyond the tips of the fingers, making it hard to strike the keys. The speakerphone is said to be weak and though it can be used as a phone, I double-dog dare you to try it. You'll be in therapy by the end of the day (though you won't be able to use the Advantage to call for help). The Advantage costs around $1.599.

Asus as a new ultramobile, the Eee (nope, didn't stutter). It's tiny and relatively cheap at about $600, though an earlier Linux version suffered from short battery life , cramped keyboard and skimpy memory, the Eee 900 has a slightly bigger screen, touch pad and longer battery life. Still, there's not as much storage space as with the Linux version.

Tornado Kills Four at Iowa Boy Scout Camp

In this morning's news, I watched a report on the aftermath of a Tornado that killed four at an Iowa Boy Scout camp. Over 40 were injured. I watched one boy, an older Scout, speak of radioing into his Scout leader to figure out what to do and how he ran to offer first aid and support to those who were injured and offered to help with the recovery of bodies from a flattened shelter.

I watched in horror and admiration.

I used to be a Girl Scout Executive at a council just north of here and one of my biggest fears involved exactly this--a storm in the midst of the night, with a camp (Talitha or Sycamore) full of girls, the phones out and....

OK. You get the picture.

In all the things we hear about our children--obesity, sullen anger and disrespect, low test scores, fearful futures--I'm heartened to hear about children who are everything we hope for.

Cross-posted at the American Values Alliance

Do not forget this day....Apple's iPhone is twice as fast for half the price.

Today’s message is pretty simple: Apple is going for iPhone market share in a big, big, way.

Daring Fireball


If you have money in any form, buy Apple stock...now. This isn't just some Mac fan boy reveling in the afterglow of another great Stevenote,  but someone who has gotten an intensely acute view of the immediate future.

Apple will be the next great global tech company.

Forget who has the greater share of the PC market. That metric is for saps! If Apple has it's way, the baby on the breast in Sub-Saharan Africa will be wielding a glossy black brick of 3G goodness.

My friends, Windows was just the beginning, Dell... a passing fancy. Jobs knows that these guys are beaten even though Apple currently only has a sliver of the global computer market. But for those who saw Monday's keynote, remember the image of the 3 legged stool at the very beginning.  One of those legs is about to get very FAT.



While very few people worldwide can afford a computer, the real pool of black gold that is waiting to be tapped is mobile phones. Apple has realized that it's global dominance is tied not to beating up on Vista but spreading it's design DNA pollen globally on the back of the iPhone not the iMac. Apple's global roll-out strategy for mobile market dominance is nothing short of the same poetry with which it designs, builds and markets all of it's other products. Study how they did this with almost every product since Steve returned to Apple. It's simplicity is deviously disarming.

Create the market before you sell the product.

Make the consumer start sucking vigorously on the teet long before the milk is even there. How did they do this? Design, create and sell to the market segment with the most disposable income. Establish the product as a must have for the rich. Once the halo of I-gotta-have-it is sufficiently bright around the product (hence justifying it's existence) you sell it to everybody else for a song  (pun intended). By this time you have made back your R&D money the back of the richest of the rich. You are now going for the jugular that's throbbing with the real life blood of revenue. The Mass Market. You have achieved critical mass in global mind-share now all you have to do is put a couple cracks in the glass ceiling of price and watch global dominance flood the earth. It is a small world after all.

So forget this old metric of PC market share. The mobile market is where the real moola is at. Cell phones are the platform of the future and every IT company worth it's salt knows this. But no one has a product like the iPhone. And for a long time no one ever will. Apple is just too many design cycles ahead of the rest of the field. So while the rest of the world copies this gleaming brick of techno-lust, Steven "Plainview" Jobs is drinking their milkshake. And his big fat straw is the iPhone.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Monday Morning Melodies

It's going to be that kind of week. I'll need super powers to get it all packed in. I've got a little more than two months and I've finished my Masters, while operating my little empire, maintaining my relationship, supporting my widowed Dad and keeping the spiders at bay (they decided to move in when it started to pour a while back).

I need my Wonder Twin.

Here are two version of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" sometimes known as the theme song to Inspector Gadget, a show my brother, Rodney, and I used to watch when we shared an apartment the first time I was in grad school. We love this show and I love these versions of the Grieg classic.

LNB #053: Help! I Need Someone!

I remember seeing the Beatles' movie, Help! when I was a kid. Love the lyrics, which are so brilliant:

(Help) I need somebody
(Help) Not just anybody
(Help) You know I need someone
(Help)

When I was younger, so much younger than today
I never needed anybody's help in any way
But now these days are gone
I'm not so self assured
Now I find I've changed my mind
I've opened up the doors

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won't you please, please help me

In case you don't know the song (like, you're a Namibian goatherd), here it is.

I can almost hear the strains of this song on the phone when prospects call me to ask, sometimes convolutedly, for help ("I really don't need help, but if I did, what could you do for me?").

Where I see businesses get into trouble is knowing when to ask for information and when to pay for it. According to the SBA, businesses fail for several reasons, chief of which are lack of planning, capital and other resources. In this biz environment, operating without the key information needed is almost criminal, given the massive amounts of information available on the Net.

Michael Gerber, author of the The E-Myth Revisited, spoke of "working on your business, not in it," staying out of the tactical weeds and into the strategic mission and vision. To do this, Gerber spoke of the importance of creating systems that tied directly into those strategic aims. Burning daylight poring over website after website, looking for information defies our ability to be strategic and our ability to get the most out of our time. The Wild Hunt for information, particularly when you need it to be right and you need it right now, can be the greatest of all cul de sacs.

This week, we hear from Jim Patton of J Patton Consulting and his Prepaid Legal affiliation. What Jim offers is a business service that, for a monthly fee, allows members to pose real-life problems to legal, accounting and other professionals and get real life answers. One example he gave was the business owner who needed to let an employee go. That owner posted the question in the service and got back a checklist for terminations that allowed him to stay fair, square and legal.

Be sure to grab a copy of a copy of The Dip as well.

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