What If?

I am not a believer in elaborate conspiracy theories. When the far left wackos tried to make the case that George Bush was intentionally ruining America, I laughed. I also laughed when the far right wackos accused Bill Clinton of outlandish intent. I am confident that Clinton would have pulled the trigger when he had Osama in the crosshairs had he known what was to come. Bush was not a conservative president. His decision to push for TARP1 was a disappointment. Both of these presidents made mistakes. I believe that each came to work each day with the intent of doing good. Neither approached their day thinking of how they could screw up the country. Intentions were pure. Approach, strategies, and sometime their decisions were flawed.

I am having an increasingly difficult time maintaining this mindset under the current presidency. Obama’s programs and decisions are very difficult to explain. While I would agree that he is doing nothing that he did not communicate during the campaigns, the totality of his spending and certain decisions that border on the irrational make his intent hard to square with the well being of America. So if his intent is not to improve America, what is it? Let me pose a hypothetical.

Let’s start with Gulf War 1, Desert Storm. Despite Hussein’s threats of how, if invaded, he would turn the country red with American blood, the truth was far different. The Iraqi army was decimated. The short-lived war was a clinic in proper battle strategy, planning and execution. The American losses were in the low hundreds (even lower except for a lucky SCUD strike), while Iraqi losses were in the hundreds of thousands. Trenches dug to slow American armor became mass graves for the Iraqi army. Aircraft pounded, softened and demoralized a poorly equipped Iraqi army that surrendered in mass. It was a turkey shoot for the better trained and equipped coalition forces.

Militant Islamic, such as Osama bin Laden and his fanatic ilk, certainly would have notice the vastly superior military might of the USA. It no doubt became apparent that battling America head on would never be a successful strategy. So without a military option, they would only have individual terrorist acts as a tool to defeat America. America is an expansive country with millions of people. They would never be able to inflict significant damage to American civilians on American turf. Even if they tried this approach, the resilience of the American people would have risen to defeat them. They were left with no feasible strategy to defeat America through violence. So what if they moved in a completely different direction, such as attacking the US economy? How could that be done? After all, America’s military might is a product of its economic might. Just as American defeated the USSR during the cold war, if you cause the collapse of the American economy, you defeat the military. You would also demoralize the American people as their wealth and way of lives evaporate.

The attacks of 9/11 were definitely terrorist attacks, but what if the true intent was not to generate terror, but instead to collapse the US economy? The twin towers were the hub of our capitalist system. The actual damage from the attacks did close our markets for a week. The architect of 9/11 may have thought their attack was enough to cripple the US economy. However the behemoth economy, largest in the world, could recover. While personal wealth did suffer, (and continues to), the markets rebounded and began a slow recovery. The 9/11 terrorists had vastly underestimated what would be required to kill our economy. So they went back to the drawing board.

Next they decided on a play taken from the communist playbook. The USSR had long worked to place their agents into high positions within the US government. The CIA had Aldridge Ames, and there were others. During the cold war, rumors of communist congressmen and other high ranking officials abounded. McCarthyism was a product of these rumors. The damage caused by a single communist agent in a prominent position would be massive. If Islamic terrorists could recruit a rising star in American politics that also happens to be Muslim, they would have a weapon that would potentially bring down the US economy. What if Barrack Obama was that politician they found and recruited?

Beyond their wildest dreams, this Chicago community organizer gains an important ally in the mainstream media and begins a climb to the state house, the Senate, and finally the Presidency. The potential of this attacker could be greater that a nuclear bomb in every major US city. As president, the strategy is developed. First, relieve the pressure overseas by pulling troops out of the country the terrorist use as home base. Second, disembowel the intelligence community by removing every tool (Patriot Act, Guantanamo) that has proven successful in identifying Al Qaeda members and their plots since the attacks of 9/11. And finally, take the kill shot by running the US debt load to unsupportable levels. With a quadrupling of the yearly deficit and a doubling of the overall debt, this one act has the potential of bankrupting US credit. If we cannot get loans, we cannot fund the military. Without the military we are venerable to many outside enemies.

So what do you think? Are Obama’s actions those of a man trying to improve the USA, or that of an attacker?

The $600 Root Beer Float

Earlier this year, I upgraded my wireless phone to a HTC Touch Pro. It was an order of magnitude improvement over the old Palm Treo. Not long after I had purchased it, Terri and I stopped at a favorite eatery for dinner on the way home after work.



When we left the restaurant, Terri topped off her drink for the drive home. Terri was drinking root beer. When we got in the car, Terri committed an irrational act by placing her cup of root beer in the cup holder between the two front seats. Everyone knows that cup holders in a car are intended to hold a person's cell phone, not beverages. As we left, I removed my cell phone and placed it in its proper spot, the cup holder. Since it was dark, I did not notice anything unusual.



A few hundred yards down the road, Terri reached for her root beer and took a swig. The first sign of a problem was when my cell phone bumped into her nose. She immediately let me know of the problem. I yanked my new HTC from it's carrying case and popped the battery out as I drove with my knees. After pulling into a nearby parking lot, I inspected the damage. It was bad. The entire phone was wet and appeared to have been fully immersed in the root beer. The red stickers on the battery and in the phone that signal liquid damage were both activated. Things were grim, but I still had hope.



When I arrived home, I carefully disassembled the phone as much as I could and gently used a blow dryer to dry all components. I then put it all together again and turned it on. No joy. Instead, the phone began to continually vibrate, and the camera flash came on and remained on. I turned everything off and conceded defeat.



I never purchase product protection insurance because I know the odds are against me. More often that not, the manufacturer is the only one who comes out ahead in that deal. But for some reason, I had bought the insurance for my new phone. One call to the insurance company and a new replacement phone was on its way. My cost, $50 versus $600 without insurance.



The insurance plan requires you to return the broken phone once you receive the replacement. Out of curiosity, I turned the root beer damaged phone on before mailing it in. It worked! The inside of the screen was root beer stained, but otherwise all functions seemed to be working.



Regardless, I felt fortunate that I replaced my phone for far less than retail price. I continue to work with Terri on the purpose of cup holders.

Bathroom Campers

Over the past 8 years, myself and many of my co-workers have endured multiple lay offs and ever increasing workloads. Quality of work life has suffered drastically. We all cope in different ways. Some resort to the gym or walking. I think I have discovered how others are coping with the stress. I believe they have taken on a survivalist mentality, and have holed up in the company restrooms. I base this on my observations.

I am now 53 years old, drink coffee all morning and diet Pepsi all afternoon. The result of these three facts is that I visit the restroom often. I probably average one visit per hour. What I have noticed is that the same shoes are visible under many stalls over multiple visits. I must conclude that some of my co-workers are hiding out.


The only reason I can conceive of is that it has become their happy place at work. Nobody can stop by for a chat about their projects. The desk phone goes unanswered. If they doze off, nobody notices. They must feel it is a safe harbor in an increasingly frantic environment. It is also a place that management does not have the nerve to monitor or measure ... yet. That is until now. I submit for your consideration, a new and innovative program for performance management and corporate fund raising.


I think we can all agree that employees are not especially productive when they are in the restroom. We can use that fact as the basis for evaluating relative performance on our teams. If our staff were required to badge in and badge out of the restroom, we would receive the necessary metrics. With this information, we can Pareto chart our employees to find those who are significantly different than their peers. Who is in the top quartile of frequency and/or duration? Who is in the bottom quartile?

For fairness, we can normalize the measures by developing formulas that consider age, typical bowel habits (TBH), and urination frequency of the average person (UFAP). All new terms and acronyms added to the corporate lexicon. The wealth of data would become the basis of new performance evaluation criteria. Managers would be able to rank their team using non-performing bathroom time. It could become a better performance system that what is typically used today. Coaching would sound like this:

• Stan, I would like to see you lower your bathroom dwell time by 50% next year.
• Mary, I want you to work on holding it a little longer. We find that many of your bathroom breaks occur during the last half hour of the day. With just a little effort on your part, you could wait until you get home and raise your performance grade by one level next year.
• Wally, your non-productive bathroom time is the highest in the organization. If that continues, I am afraid that we will need to let you go.

There is also a fund raising dimension of the strategy. Today, corporate fund raiser campaigns often auction off a preferred parking space to the highest donor. This can be extended to the restroom. Imagine auctioning off a stall. The winner would own decorating, naming and exclusive use rights to their own commode. Naming could get imaginative. Paul's Stall, and Pete's Seat immediately come to mind. What better way to reward those that contribute to their community while encouraging a sense of ownership.


Any new program with a reach this far into corporate practices would require a significant level of governance. I have a possible solution. The company parking lot security people - those who boot cars that park in short term parking or reserved spaces - could take on the added role of restroom patrol.

The first order of responsibility would be to enforce ownership rights. Those in a reserved stall would be required to show ID and a title. If found using an unowned reserved stall, the perp would be sent home for the day. The second violation would be grounds for immediate dismissal.

The second order of responsibility would be to monitor duration for all stalls. Parking lot security would visit each restroom on the half hour and chalk the shoes of each stall dwellers. If they return the next half hour and see the shoe and floor chalk lines still match up, they would assume the inhabitant of the stall is having a medical problem and break in to check on them. If they find anything other than a medical problem, a ticket would be issued. Tickets would be consider disciplinary written warnings and fold into the performance management criteria.


I may be on to something here.

Management

I just realized that I have reached a milestone. It was 10 years ago that I was promoted to manager and allowed to hire 3 direct reports. Since then, I have developed a management style that can be summed up with a few management principals. Please indulge me by allowing a blog on the subject. My management principals are:

1. The team you are part of is more important than the team you lead. If you are not leading your team to deliver on your manager's objectives, your team is at risk. They will become irrelevant and broken up, reassigned, de-prioritized, or even laid off.


2. Your team should operate as well when you are gone as they do when you are in the office. If you are required to get a day or week's work accomplished, you team is not self-sufficient, empowered, or have a sense of ownership.


3. Managers should be evaluated by how few phone calls they get. A manager peer and friend once told me his goal is to avoid every phone call by either anticipating and satisfying the needs of his customers, or clearing defining, communicating and fostering a clear sense of ownership for every member of the team. He went further and said that he knows when his phone quits ringing, its time to look for a new job. He was one of the better managers I have known.


4. A manager's primary role is to ensure that everyone on his team is pulling in the same direction. A well articulated vision of team responsibility, goals, and tactics to achieve the goal will encourage self-sufficiency and unleash innovation. Every team member should understand how their role supports the team's objectives.


5. A manager should take credit for nothing and give credit for everything. A manager should not be receiving awards. If they do, they are either not leveraging their team or taking credit for the work of their team. A manager should make sure that every accomplishment is communicated upward and the responsible team member is clearly identified in the communications.


6. The manager serves the team, not the other way around. A manager's job is to enable their team. The best enabler of a team will solve the problems that create obstacles to their team's progress. A manager of 10 must enable his 10 team members to produce like 11 or more. If they do not, the manager is not earning their own wage.

There are 2 kinds of managers. I have had both, and been both. The first is the Expert Manager. This type of manager usually rises through the ranks as an expert in a certain discipline. Along the way, their leadership recognizes potential and promotes them to a manager position.

Expert managers tend to lead in a command and control style, much like the military. They dictate what should be done and become their team's primary problem solver. Self-sufficiency and innovation suffer. Individual development can also suffer as the team relies more and more on their manager to solve problems and provide the answers. Expert managers find they rapidly become overwhelmed. All of the team's workload is funnelled through them. The manager either does the work, or assigns each specific task to a subordinate. They sometime dictate to the team member how to perform the assignment. Team members do not develop a sense of empowerment or ownership. They simply wait for the next assignment with instructions.

The second type of manager is the Generalist Manager. The Generalist manager can lead virtually any team since their style does not require subject matter expertise, or a deep technical background. The Generalist starts his tenure of team leadership with a thorough inventory of the skill sets, strengths, weaknesses of each team member. He then couples that with the big picture vision his team plays within the larger organization. As requests come in, he develops a sense of ownership with the team member most suited to deliver. Elegant delegation is a key skill used to communicate the desired result and ancillary requirements without dictating the specific steps to follow. This gives the team member some latitude in developing their own solution that meets the desired result. Innovation, ownership and empowerment can be the product of such a style.

Both styles can be effective, and both can blow up in the manager's face. I have found that Generalist managers are usually the ones that go on to higher positions. Very few corporate officers can claim a deep technical knowledge in the area they lead. They must learn to rely on their subordinates to be the experts. A true and unfortunate fact is that Expert Managers can also become too valuable to promote out of their current position.

Generalist managers usually cannot perform the work conducted by their staff. For that reason, coverage and contingency planning can occupy much of the generalist time. A lazy generalist manager can be seen as incompetent. When they blow a project, the boom can be very loud.

I started my management career as an Expert Manager. I was good at identifying process issues and re-engineering processes to be more effective. I typically described what I wanted my team to do, and dictated how each person would support that end. I soon found that I was a very busy guy. I felt that I had to be at every project meeting. Soon I could take on nothing new. On an especially overwhelming day, I applied to move out of my comfort zone and into a new organization.

I got the job. I knew nothing of the world I was entering. The result was that I was no longer able to be an Expert Manager. I began to make the shift to Generalist. I began relying on my team. My role is to help them be effective at what they are already good at. Not only did I become more effective, the team did also.

I remain proud of the teams I have led. From that first team of 3 members to my largest team of 35, each have been innovative and highly productive. They remain productive whether I am in the office or not. I receive personal gratification when they succeed. I am also blessed with such a capable team. One advantage of yearly lay offs is that all the survivors are very capable. There isn't any dead wood left in the organization. Of my current staff of 29, 6 either have been managers or are capable of doing my job. The rest are subject matter experts in their field.

We are ready for whatever Ericsson has for us.

A Good Day

I previously posted a description of an extremely bad day in my life. In the interest of equal time, I thought it might be interesting to describe what a good day in Terri and my life would look like. A particular day came to mind that did not relate to weddings, births or other positive life events. The day I will describe has occurred many times while on vacation.

This particular day occurred during one of our vacations to North Carolina. We love the time we spend along the Outer Banks. Sunset Beach , an area just north of Myrtle Beach, is a favorite vacation location. The beaches are wide and flat, the seafood is great, and the golf courses are plentiful. The day I remember most was the last day spent on one particular vacation about 3 years ago. It is also the last time we were there.

It started how all days do while vacationing in Sunset Beach. We played golf. We always rise early to get a good tee time, so we were probably on the first hole by 8:00. There is very little competition for early tee times in a resort community. I suspect that we played The Pearl, since we usually save that challenging course for the end of our golf vacation. Since we go off early, we usually walk off the course around 11:00 AM.

From golf we always go to a local breakfast stop called the Sunrise Cafe. We always have breakfast there since Terri loves their strawberry pancakes. By the end of our vacation, the waitresses know us. I normally get a bacon omelet. It is not on the menu, but I asked and they supplied. I guess that non-menu items do not have preparation standards because their omelets contain more bacon that I have found anywhere else. I suspect the next time we are there, bacon omelets will be on the menu and will contain only 2 strips of bacon. Nothing stays the way you remember it.

From the restaurant, we head back to the condo we rent while in Sunset Beach. A quick change into swimwear prepares us for the beach or the local pool. On this day we decided to just lay about, nap and read on the beach. We rarely swim in the ocean, preferring instead to walk in the surf and enjoy the cool sea breeze. After a couple hours there, we return to the condo to clean up and get ready for the evening activities.

Each evening while in Sunset Beach, we have dinner at a restaurant in Calabash, North Carolina. Calabash is a small town with a reputation for good seafood. The myth goes that Jimmy Durante stopped in Calabash while on the vaudeville circuit and was served by a local waitress he named Mrs. Calabash. From that point forward, he recognized her on his radio program by saying good night to Mrs. Calabash. Jimmy was far before my time, but I do recollect his signature sign off.

On this night we probably went to the Grapevine and had their huge crab cakes. We might have gone to the Seafood Shack, or one of several bay side restaurants. The food is always superb and comes with local recipe hush puppies and a cole slaw that contains dill pickle for a distinctive flavor.

We finished our evening and vacation with a stop by a local ice cream parlor. We sat on the front porch of the establishment in rocking chairs, eating our ice cream and watching the sun set over Sunset Beach, NC. I remember my thoughts at that time. I thought how much I liked it there, and wondered when I would return. We planned to return the next summer, but did not due to health issues. We did not return this year, opting instead for a trip to Destin with my brother and sister in law. So there is always next year. One thing is a certainty. We will return.

My Summer Project

I had the mistaken impression that when you buy a new house, your projects diminish. I was wrong. Instead, I find my self tackling projects I would never have considered in the past. My current project is a good example. Our home is located next to a common area and retention pond for the neighborhood. The area adjoining our lot is a large undeveloped space that has not been maintained after our developer went bankrupt. So taming this space has become my summer project.


The area was uneven and completely covered by waist high weeds and grass. Terri and I were afraid that nasty critters would take up residence in the lot and occasionally visit our yard. I did spot a copperhead in our yard late last year, so there was evidence to support our theory. So this Spring, I got busy with an approach that would require the entire summer and fall to execute. First, I hired my son-in-law to clear out and level the area. That was completed in June and enable me to keep the weeds and grass manageable with weekly mowing.


The next step was to use Round Up total vegetation killer to kill the noxious weeds and grasses. I completed that in July. The summer heat helped me get a complete kill of all vegetation. It now looks like a desert area. During the same period I began to scavenge rocks from developing areas in my neighborhood. I would haul the rock home and dump it in a drainage area created to carry water from my lot to the retention pond. I have hauled several tons of rock so far and am close to having enough.

So this past weekend, I took the next step by verticutting the entire area and sowing a tall fescue grass seed. My hope is that our wet year will continue through the fall as I refuse to water the area. It is a gamble, but a great year to take that gamble. My goal is to have a good stand of desirable grass by November. I am posting a picture of the current state, and will post updates as the area changes.

Stupidest Mistake Ever

The year was around 1976 or 1977. I was dating Terri and working at Association Services Limited, a property management company. My role was maintenance of clubhouses and common area lighting for several Home Owner Associations. I relied on tools to do my job.

The job required that I drive to many locations each day. My current car was a 1969 candy apple red GTO convertible. It was a great car, a real classic muscle car, but also a gas guzzler. Even though gas was cheap then, a lot of miles in a guzzler started me thinking of a more economical car. I soon found an old powder blue Toyota Corolla station wagon with well over 100k miles. It was on its last legs. But it was cheap to operate and with the rear seats folded down had plenty of room for what ever I might need to haul to the job site. I traded the GTO in for the Corolla, (close, but not my stupidest mistake).

One summer evening, Terri and I headed out to the drive-in movies. We chose the Corolla over her ugly green Ford Pinto. I backed into a parking spot so the rear hatchback would face the movie screen. We opened the hatchback and enjoyed nice space to either sit in the back, or lay back over the folded down rear seats. The only impediment to our comfort was my tool box. I set the tool box down under the rear bumper.

Midnight or after, the double feature was over so we pulled the hatch shut and climbed in the front seat to head home. I drove off leaving the tool box in the drive-in parking lot. It was 15-20 minutes later that I remembered them and returned in search of my livelihood. They were no where to be found. Several hundred dollars in tools were lost.

Since I could not afford to replace them, before work on Monday I bought or borrowed a couple screwdrivers, a crescent wrench and a hammer. That would be my suite of tools for weeks. Over the next birthday and Christmas, I was given tools from relatives that knew of my need. But for 6 months, I performed my handyman role with a limited set of tools.

I did however learn a great deal from the experience. I learned how to improvise when faced with jobs that could not be performed with screwdrivers, a single wrench and an hammer. I also learned to protect the tools of your livelihood. Today those tools are my laptop computer and smart phone. I do not know how I would function with out either, but would probably improvise a solution.