Congratulations to Dr Kay Craigie N3KN who has just been elected as President of the ARRL and is the first woman to hold the position. I do hope that this will encourage more of the female members of the species to pick up the microphone.

There has been some talk in the amateur radio blogsphere about racism in amateur radio recently, but maybe I have been lucky because I have rarely heard it. Most radio amateurs get into the hobby because they want to talk to people in other countries and are in no way racist. Some of us are slightly xenophobic to some extent in that we are concerned about mass immigration and maybe discussions about how a whole town is now speaking Polish instead of English could be considered racist. It is not racism it is fear, fear of a loss of culture and identity and fear of being a stranger in the town you grew up in, unfortunately fear is a breeding ground for racists.

Sexism on the other hand is something I hear on a regular basis. My wife Helen is licensed, we sat the radio amateurs exam together. Sometimes the sexism works to her advantage. For example: When we do Summits on the Air activations usually she finds it very easy to get plenty contacts because first there are the regular SOTA chasers then there are those men who hone in on the female voice like flies around day old dung. Occasionally though there is the complete bigot like a certain drunk as a skunk Dave G0*** from Runcorn who came on to a net of our friends over Christmas and started by telling her she should “F*** off back to the kitchen” before getting more abusive. This idiot spent almost all Christmas and New Year on 145.500 playing music and asking stupid drunken questions. Hopefully he will have received a visit by now from Ofcom as I know a number of people complained and sent in recordings.

It is so easy to make and send in time stamped MP3 recordings to back up complaints these days that I would recommend that if you hear any sort of abuse you use this method, but contact the authority before sending them or they may never be examined.

The USA is leading the way here, they have a non-white President of the country and a non-male President of the ARRL and whatever we think of the politics or agendas of the incumbents it is a start, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I refuse to be politically correct on a lot of things but liberty and equality walk hand in hand. Freedom comes at a price and we must pay that price or suffer the consequences of our inactions. I grew up glad to be male, glad to be white and glad to be British, in the future I would hope we can achieve the situation where there is no advantage in being any particular race, colour or gender.

Saya dan kawan saya YC2ELX sudah sejak 1918 (tua amat) selalu bertengkar tentang satu topik ini yaitu cara menghitung kabel coax supaya match. Kabelnya sendiri dibuat match dulu sebelum disambungkan ke antenna dan radio komunikasi. Kami tidak pernah menemui titik temu. Masing-masing bertahan dengan argumennya sendiri, sebuah argumen yang didapat dari hasil penyelidikan secara langsung. Yaitu dengan memotong kabel coax RG58 sedikit demi sedikit lalu di test nilai VSWR dan test field strength. Hasil dari test itu menunjukkan nilai SWR yang naik-turun mengikuti suatu pola panjang gelombang. Diperkuat dengan hasil test field strength yang menunjukkan adanya pengaruh panjang kabel dgn kuat signal di titik receiver VHF 2m. Itu sebabnya ngotot YC2ELX bertahan dgn argumentasinya.

Saya juga melihat bbrp blog kawan-kawan pengguna radio amatir (belum tentu punya callsign radio amatir)  yang mengulas persoalan ini. Cuma dari caranya menghitung hanya membuat saya tertawa karena memasukkan konstanta dan variabel yang sebetulnya aneh untuk dimasukkan dalam perhitungan. Bahkan ada sebuah blog yang menulis beberapa cara penghitungan berbeda yang hasilnya juga berbeda. Teknik pemeriksaan juga ada beberapa macam yang sebenernya itu bukan teknik matching, tapi sekedar mencari pembacaan SWR yang rendah. Aneh lah pokoknya.

Sedangkan saya sendiri bertahan dengan pendapat saya bahwa kabel coax tidak perlu bersusah payah di match dulu sebelum dipasang. Karena sebagai sebuah saluran transmisi, kabel coax tidak boleh meradiasikan energi RF yang dihantarkannya. Sehingga jika terjadi proses radiasi itu, maka itu indikasi adanya problem (mechanical failure) pada kabel coax tersebut. Impedansi yang diterapkan di kabel coax adalah sekedar perpanjangan dari impedansi antenna di feed point nya. Sekedar mempermudah sambungan antara antenna dengan impedansi di mulut konektor radio komunikasi. Jadi ngga ada urusannya melakukan matching kabel coax.

Dan yang paling penting bagi saya (untuk bertahan di argumen ini) adalah topik ini tidak dibahas di buku-buku ARRL. Artinya ARRL tidak melihat adanya manfaat melakukan perhitungan matching panjang kabel coaxial. Tinggal diukur saja berapa meter butuhnya lalu potong di situ. Bahkan ARRL seringkali mengingatkan untuk menggunakan kabel transmisi sependek mungkin (untuk mengurangi loss) dan tidak menyuruh untuk di match dulu kabel coax nya.

Jadi kalo anda masih bertahan dengan argumen perlunya kabel coax di match dulu sebelum dipasang, rasanya anda lebih pintar deh dari ARRL. Hehehehe

The Magic Bullet (uh Packet) for Remote Computers- Wake Up on LAN

Problem/Challenge:

You have remote computers in you house, you don’t need to have them running all the time, but when you do need them you don’t want to have to go over to the remote location to turn them on.

How do you remotely turn-on a computer from power off state?

You can read a previous article on this site on how to turn a PC “Clunker” into a usable part of your home computer assets.

For example, using FreeNas and a clunker PC (a PC headed for the trash) with only a Hard drive and a CD-ROM drive (no keyset or monitor needed) you can turn this Clunker into a useful member of society.

For example, a home network can benefit, at least, from centralized NAS (Network Attached Storage).  Beyond this FreeNas can server up a Torrent service as well as FTP, iSCSCI, and a bunch of other useful network services that you can use on you home network.

My FreeNas runs in the basement.  I don’t need it to run all the time.  I don’t want to get hacked in to by people on the other side of the world, or this side of the world – for that matter, who have too much time on their hands.  Oh, and green.  Sure.  According to my Kill-A-Watt device that measures power consumption, my idle desktop PC consumes 60 watts of power doing nothing.

So, bottom line, when I want it (FreeNas to run) I want it.  And when I don’t want it – I don’t want it.

How to turn-on that PC running FreeNas in the basement without going into the basement?  Hmmm

WOL (Wake On LAN) to the rescue

WOL has been around for a long time.  From the 100,000 ft view, you send a “magic bullet” (no, not a kitchen device) packet down the wire to the powered off PC and “poof” it powers up.  How that technically happens.. you really don’t need to know or care.  You just need to know that its possible, and, easier than you (I) thought.  The key phase is “Wake on LAN” if you are google-ing.

KISS (Keep it simple)

There is plenty of freeware out that can WOL a PC.  Here is one of them – http://www.profshutdown.com/

You don’t need to install any software on the client PC – the PC that you want to wake up.  The WOL utility that  runs on a host PC that will send the “bullet” down the wire to cattle-prod the target PC is very small and simple.

The key is to have PC that has the WOL feature in the BIOS; not all PC’s have this feature. On the particular PC in the image above, WOL is enabled on the Power tab of the BIOS.  You might have to poke around your PC’s BIOS to find it.  No find – you are out of luck.  If you find it – good for you – enable it.

Then get the software.

The WOL utility from http://www.profshutdown.com is simple and easy to use.

This is the help page

I was able to get all this working in about 15 minutes.

Conclusion

You may have a PC in a remote location that you need to power-on from a distance.  The WOL (Wake on LAN) feature has been around for a long time and is a mature technology.  Some PC’s have this capability, and some do not.

There are plenty of freeware programs that you can use to fire the magic WOL packet down the wire of your local home network to Wake up a powered off (not sleeping) PC.  When you are done using the services of the remote PC, you can,  if you so desire shut it down (assuming you can login) without the worry of having to return to the PC at its physical remote location  to power it back up.

If you have a PC capable of WOL and you have the challenge posted above then give WOL a try.

Remote power-on of a home-networked PC from a physically distant location is  easier to accomplish than you might think.

Resources

NAS for Clunkers (FreeNAS)

http://www.profshutdown.com/

The following comes from the ARRL website…

ARRL sends Ham Aid Equipment to Haiti

Now heres something I did not know about but it does make sense…  It seems the ARRL has a program called “Ham Aid” which seems to send out Amateur Equipment out to disasters that are in need of communications assistance.  The logic as I see it in this is that repeaters that would of been on buildings are now in rubble.  Buildings that were housing EMCOMM equipment in case they were needed are now piles of rubble.  Anything stored in those buildings are now landfill…

Please click on the above logo to go to the ARRL website for the article on Ham Aid.

73bob

Making Whuffie in the Social Economy
Or, How to be a ravenous social capitalist

We seek a new beginning…

“We seek a new beginning”.  If you have seen the movie  Apocalypto then you know the significance of this phrase.  It refers to a new World – a fundamental paradigm shift.

A “new beginning” can come in many flavors.  In the strong sense, a  “new beginning” could mean  “a break into an apocalyptic end of the world”.  But it could also be a more subtle change.  And perhaps that change is happening now.

What could a new beginning look like? – or at least, what are the aspects of a new beginning?

The science fiction novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow has gotten some people thinking.  One of the people thinking is Tara Hunt.  Tara Hunt is a writer, author, and Marketing Consultant.  Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom got Tara Hunt thinking about Whuffie.

Whuffie

What are the aspects of the post apocalyptic world of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom?

The usual economic incentives have disappeared from the world. Whuffie has replaced money, providing a motivation for people to do useful and creative things. A person’s Whuffie is a general measurement of his or her overall reputation, and Whuffie is lost and gained according to a person’s favorable or unfavorable actions as judged by the community.

Whuffie recaptured the true essence of what used to be called money: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn’t starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could buy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really represented — your personal capital with your friends and neighbors — you more accurately gauged your success.

Here are a few more attributes of Whuffie

• Whuffie replaces money and is a constantly updated rating that measures how much esteem and respect other people have for you. This rating system determines who gets the few scarce items, like the best housing, a table in a crowded restaurant, or a good place in a queue for a theme park attraction.
• Material goods are no longer scarce, and everyone is granted basic rights that in our present age are mostly considered luxuries.
• Adhocracy is a type of organization that is an opposite of bureaucracy that has replaced corporations.

Most interesting, in the new world,  anyone’s Whuffie can be “pinged” at any time by any person.  Your Whuffie is public – it is never private.

So, the new economy of significance is the social economy.  The new coin of the realm of the social economy is Whuffie.

Rich or Poor in the New Economy of Whuffie

Are you rich or poor in the new social economy?  It depends on your “capital” in these areas:  (from Tara Hunt )
At any time, your wealth can be “pinged” (made visible) by anyone
These components go into the calculation

1. Connections
2. Reputation
3. Influence
4. Bridging capital – the number of connections you have across to different industries, social strata, etc.
5. Bonding capital – the depth of your close connections (how close and how much you could ask of your connections)
6. Access to ideas and talent through your connections
7. Access to resources through your connections
8. “Potential” access to further resources (more distant, but very legitimate)
9. Saved up favors (reciprocity is huge – which is why doing good stuff matter a lot with social capital)
10. Accomplishments (slightly different from reputation, it is the more fungible form of SC – resumes, awards, etc.)
11. Social Capital of those who you have relationships with (see – Bordieu’s ideas on the French elite)

The Gift Economy of Social Capital -
The more you give away, the more you have !

Whuffie, unlike financial capital (money) works by significantly different rules

Whuffie operates in a gift economy.  That is, the more (ideas, favors, bridging) that you give away the more Whuffie you get in return.  As these gifts circulate through the social community the more Whuffie they can generate for other members of the community insofar as other members of the community give away and enhance what they have received as gifts.

For example, passing a relationship through the community to someone else increases the social capital of the one who receives the knowledge and exercise of that relationship.  That relationship may be access to talent and access to further relationships and resources.  The person who now possess knowledge of this relationship has increased their social capital and can pass it on to others in the community thus increasing the total Whuffie and social capital of the entire community.

The opposite of a Rivalrous Economy

In the gift economy of Whuffie the more you give away, the more you get in return in the form of trust, respect, and reputation.  The more Whuffie you give away, the more there is within the community.  Whuffie multiplies itself the more it is distributed.  This is completely different than financial capital.  Financial capital is a rivalrous economy.  Social capital is it’s opposite.

The Convergence of Market (Financial) Capital and Social Capital

OK, so the idea of Whuffie is a fun concept.  But, it’s far more than a fun concept.  Whuffie represents something very real in the social networking world enabled by the internet and technologies the likes of Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, and anything else that enables and facilitates connections and social relationships within a community.

How do the concepts embedded in Whuffie break into the (real) tangible of world of finance and money?

Tara Hunt’s claim is that Market (financial) capital (money) and Social capital are parallel economies.

Market capital will flow from having high social capital.

How?

In your personal life

Suppose you were looking for a job.  All other things being equal it could very well be the case that ones accumulation of social capital can be the differentiators between you and someone else.  For example, you use your social capital as reputation, references, networked relationships,  and the ability to build a team and community to create a competitive advantage.  Your social capital can be the differentiators between you and someone else who does not possess this social capital.  Social capital becomes more important the higher up you are in an organization.

In business

Traditional marketing works by buying advertising.  No amount of advertising dollars can force a person to make a choice of one product or service over another product of service.  But, a person with social capital (respect, trust, and relationship and connections) can influence decisions.  In fact, a person with high social capital operating in an online social networked community can influence thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people.  The amount of traditional marketing dollars needed to reach such audiences is beyond the reach of most companies.

Companies are realizing that they can not buy(=money economy) their way into a large audience.  But that they do have access to large audiences in Web 2.0 via social networking.  To the extent that they bring social capital to these communities the more influence they have in these communities to influence buying decisions.

Convergence

Market capital and social capital will converge.  Social capital of businesses within Web 2.0 social networks can result in longer term customer loyalty which will result in more sales.  On-line communities are a strong source of consumer information on products and service that businesses can harvest for product or service innovation.  Online social communities can provide real time metrics of consumer behavior that have never been available before without expensive and time consuming “surveys” done by traditional companies.

Alternate measures of personal success (Wealth redefined)

Tara Hunt’s observation about the significant of Whuffie (social connections, social reputation, social influence, bridging capital, bonding capital, access to ideas and talent of others, access to resources through relationships, saved up favors, history of personal accomplishments, and the social capital of all those you have relationships) is only the start.

What are the other measures of wealth other than financial wealth in the market economy?

Traditionally, individual success has been measured by the accumulation of capital in the market (financial) economy.

But what are the alternative measure of success in economies other than a market economy?

• Social capital is a sociological concept used in business, economics, organizational behavior, political science, public health and the social sciences in general to refer to connections within and between social networks. The  core idea is  “that social networks have value. Just as a screwdriver (physical capital) or a college education (human capital) can increase productivity (both individual and collective), so do social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups”.
• Cultural capital refers to non-financial assets that involve educational, social, and intellectual knowledge provided to children who grow up in non-wealthy but highly-educated and intellectually-sophisticated families. Such children are often the offspring of well-educated artists, writers, teachers, ministers, and college professors, who make little money, comparatively speaking, but are socially and educationally savvy, especially when it comes to obtaining financial aid that will allow their children to attend elite private schools and universities.
• Human capital refers to the stock of skills and knowledge embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value. It is the skills and knowledge gained by a worker through education and experience.  Many early economic theories refer to it simply as workforce, one of three factors of production, and consider it to be a fungible resource — homogeneous and easily interchangeable. Other conceptions of labor dispense with these assumptions.
• Organizational capital is a procedure implemented by businesses to complete work. Working practices such as Just In Time, accounts payable processes and Total Quality Management contribute to organizational capital. Buildings, equipment and vehicles are considered as capital assets which businesses buy to receive a financial return on the investment. Similarly, if a business implements new working practices or administrative procedures, its aim is to increase efficiency to receive a financial return.

Conclusion

Emerging in society, made visible and achievable through the internet and the social networking phenomenon, is this idea that the accumulation of social capital is becoming more and more important.  Your personal “worth” may be measured more by Whuffie than by an account in a traditional bank.

That is, personal worth as reputation, influence, bridging capital across social strata or industries, bonding capital and the depth of connections and relationships, access to ideas and talent, reciprocity as saved up favors, and potential access to further resources more distant but legitimate may become more and more what individuals are measured by.

So what is so new about this?

One could say, “big deal”, we always knew that social relationships were important.  What is new is the enabling technology of the internet that allows one to make a “local” or “neighborhood” perspective “global”.  That is, your Whuffie on the Internet is “ping-able” by any of the 1.7 Billion Internet users with access to a search engine.  At the time of this writing the internet penetration is 25% of the world population.  So, 1 in 4 people in the world can “ping” your Whuffie right now.

The future is now in some Fortune 500 companies

Leading edge global Fortune 500 companies are deploying internal social networking and collaboration systems to their global workforce.  Everyone in the corporation is placed into the social collaboration community.  Participation in the social network is measured across multiple dimensions and can become part of the criteria on which individuals are evaluated.

So, who do corporate executives pick for high profile strategic projects?  Whuffie matters. Clearly, individuals who have high social capital – able to influence people (gain commitment from people), have a high reputation (trust/integrity), have bridging capital (able to form strategic alliances among corporate partners), have access to ideas and talent, and have depth to all these social relationships and alliances are going to be rewarded.

Best thing is that you don’t have any choice in the matter of participation.  You can’t opt-out of the social economy.  A “ping” to a individuals Whuffie that returns no results – speaks volumes of that persons wealth in the new economy.

Resources

The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business

More on the book – http://themediastudy.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/book-report-the-whuffie-factor-by-tara-hunt/

Tara Hunts Consultancy- http://citizenagency.com
More Tara Hunt – http://www.horsepigcow.com
and “I’ll take an extra helping of TH”  to go  - http://www.thewhuffiefactor.com/

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom – free MP3 and text – http://craphound.com/down/

Video -

An experiment in the new economy…

The Whuffie Bank – http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2168857

http://thewhuffiebank.org

TechCrunch on the Whuffie Bank
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/15/tc50-meet-the-whuffie-a-new-currency-thats-based-on-your-online-reputation

What it takes to “buy” an audience in traditional media advertising -
Ad rates for a 30-sec spot on Television from 2007 -
http://frrl.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/whuffie_2007_ad_age_tv_price_survey.pdf

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

The Accidental Billionaires:
The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal

“The girls were both Asian, pretty, and a little overly made up for a lecture like this.  The tallest of the two had long sable hair pulled back in a high pony tail and was wearing a short skirt and a white shirt open one button too far down the front.  Eduardo could see wisps of her red lace bra wonderfully offset by her tan, smooth skin.  The other girl was in an equally short skirt, with a black leggings combo that showed off some impressively sculpted calves.

Both had bright red lipstick and too much eye shadow, but they were damn cute – and they were smiling and pointing right at him.

Well, at him and Mark.  The taller of the girls leaned forward over the empty seat and whispered in his ear.
“Your friend – isn’t that Mark Zuckerberg?”
Eduardo raised his eyebrows.
“You know Mark?”  There was a first time for everything.
“No, but didn’t he make Facebook?”

Eduardo felt a tingle of excitement move through him, as he felt the warmth of her breath against his ear, as he breathed in her perfume.

“Yeah. I mean, Facebook, it’s both of ours – mine and his.”
“Wow that’s really cool,” the girl said.  “My name is Kelly.  This is Alice.”

Other people in the girls’ row were looking now.  But they didn’t seem angry that the whispers were interrupting their enjoyment of Bill Gates.  Eduardo saw someone pointing, then another kid whisper something to a friend.  Then more pointing – but not at him, at Mark.”

When Mark Zuckerberg became more interesting than Bill Gates

There is a first time for everything.  The scene quoted above is set at a lecture at Harvard University.  Bill Gates is at the podium speaking.  But, according to the story, more interesting than Bill Gates is a student – Mark Zuckerberg.  And who is Mark Zuckerberg?  One of the co-founders of Facebook.    The story above, is the way things were in 2004, at least, as told by Ben Mezrich in the book: The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal.

The Accidental Billionaires has gotten nearly universal bad reviews at Amazon.com.  The common consensus of Ben Mezrrich’s book is that it is mostly a work of fiction.  In fact, you get what you get.  And, if you read the first page of the book, Ben tells you as much  – “The Accidental Billionaires is a dramatic, narrative account based on dozens of interviews, hundreds of sources, and thousands of pages of documents, including records from several court proceedings.” Noticeably absent from Ben’s book is a direct contribution by Mark Zuckerberg.

Whatever the real facts of the founding of Facebook, sometime between a 2004  article in the Harvard Crimson by staff writer Alan Tabak and 2008 - 4 short years later - Mark Zuckerberg, a “socially inept computer geek”, became a billionaire.

The Harvard Crimson in 2004

On February 9,2004 from the Harvard Crimson

Published on Monday, February 09, 2004
Hundreds Register for New Facebook Website
Facemash creator seeks new reputation with latest online project

By ALAN J. TABAK
Crimson Staff Writer

When Mark E. Zuckerberg ’06 grew impatient with the creation of an official universal Harvard facebook, he decided to take matters into his own hands.  After about a week of coding, Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com last Wednesday afternoon. The website combines elements of a standard House face book with extensive profile features that allow students to search for others in their courses, social organizations and Houses.

“Everyone’s been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard,” Zuckerberg said. “I think it’s kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week.”

As of yesterday afternoon, Zuckerberg said over 650 students had registered use thefacebook.com. He said that he anticipated that 900 students would have joined the site by this morning.

“I’m pretty happy with the amount of people that have been to it so far,” he said. “The nature of the site is that each user’s experience improves if they can get their friends to join it.”
…
Zuckerberg’s site allows people with Harvard e-mail addresses to upload their pictures and personal and academic information. Just as with the popular website Friendster, which Zuckerberg said was a model for his new website, members can search for people according to their interests and can create an online network of friends.
…
Zuckerberg said that the most innovative feature of the site is that people can search for other students in their classes so that they can branch out to form friendships and study groups.

“If you’re in a class where you don’t vknow anyone and want to ask somebody for help, this is a way to find out the names of people in that class,” said thefacebook.com user Roberto C. Acosta ’05.

Zuckerberg said that the extensive search capabilities are restricted by a myriad of privacy options for members who do not want everyone to be able to look up their information.
…
While Zuckerberg promised that thefacebook.com would boast new features by the end of the week, he said that he did not create the website with the intention of generating revenue

Now skip ahead four short years and the kid that had no intention of creating revenue with Facebook is named to the list of Forbes richest americans.  At age 23, Zuckerberg is worth 1.5  Billion dollars.  ( Read it )

Forbes 2008  - Mark Zuckerberg #785

Tech’s newest golden boy founded addictive social networking site Facebook in February 2004 from his Harvard dorm room.

Left school for Silicon Valley later that year; scored initial $500,000 investment from PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. Venture firms soon swooned, among them Accel Partners and Greylock Partners.

Today Facebook boasts 66 million active users. Estimated annual sales: $150 million. Expanding beyond being a college-only message system and photo album; now courting users to 55,000 different high school, business and city networks.

Problems with privacy: installed “News Feed” in 2006; program automatically alerted users’ friends to changes they made to their profiles. Outcry over privacy concerns led company to backpedal; Zuckerberg issued apology. Similar controversy ensued after release of Facebook Beacon late last year; program automatically alerted friends of activities on selected outside sites, including eBay and Fandango.

Microsoft bought 1.6% stake for $240 million last October; deal led many to suggest the company is worth $15 billion. Some analysts—and even a few Facebook investors—suggest the company’s value is far lower.

Not good enough – Mark moves up from #785 to #158 on Forbes400  roster of richest Americans.

Forbes 2009 – Mark Zuckerbery #158

Youngest member of The Forbes 400 guiding addictive social networking site Facebook through slumping online ad market.

A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal

But, somewhere between the article in the Harvard Crimson in 2004  and Zuckerbergs rise to billionaire status, there is a tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal.

What exactly that story is, the facts and the events that transpired?  Well, that is the memories of the aggregate of participants.  Writing the history of Facebook is a historians task of sorting out fact from fiction in primary and secondary sources.

In parallel with Ben Mezrich’s book, as a “dramatic, narrative account“, there are a large  number of attempts to tell the story in less prosaic format.  One such story appeared in Rolling Stone.

Highlights from the 8 page Rolling Stone article cited at the end of this posting

The Skinny on the founding of Facebook (from Rolling Stone June 26, 2008)

The courses didn’t help him much with his personal life. Sitting alone in his dorm room that night in 2003, Zuckerberg had just been jilted by a girl. He started drinking and once again sought solace in the realm that never let him down. Logging on to his blog, he created an entry titled “Harvard Face Mash: The Process.” His plan was as simple as it was vindictive: create a site called Facemash.com, hack into Harvard’s directory, download photographs of his classmates and post them online next to photos of farm animals to rate who was more desirable.

He began like any other hurt schoolboy. “Jessica A— is a bitch,” he wrote. “I need to think of something to take my mind off her. I need to think of something to occupy my mind. Easy enough, now I just need an idea.”

At 11:09 p.m., invention was in full swing: “Yea, it’s on. I’m not exactly sure how the farm animals are going to fit into this whole thing (you can’t really ever be sure with farm animals . . .), but I like the idea of comparing two people together.”

Zuckerberg wasn’t the only student at Harvard exploring the Web’s potential for bringing people together. All over campus, students were thinking up ways to use this new tool to make online the personal connections that seemed to elude them in real life.

“Networking is a time-honored practice at Harvard, going back to FDR,” says Lawrence Summers. “It was waiting to happen. It was a wave of the next Internet thing and a group of very talented, social people. All innovators are great adapters to social need.”

Ten months before Zuckerberg launched Facemash, a Harvard junior named Divya Narendra had come up with the idea of creating a social network aimed at college students.

Narendra went to two of his dormmates, identical twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and told them he had an idea for an online community for Harvard students, with access granted only to those with a college e-mail address. The twins instantly recognized the idea’s potential.

Throughout 2003, Narendra and the twins worked on the site, hiring several fellow students to help them code it. But by that fall, the site still wasn’t finished. Then, in November, the entrepreneurs, who’d heard about the rise and fall of Zuckerberg’s Facemash, decided to contact the programming prodigy and catch some of his computing heat.

According to Zuckerberg, he enlisted one of his closest friends, Eduardo Saverin, who shared his dorm suite, to think about how to incorporate the site.

On January 12th, while he was still ostensibly working for Harvard Connection, Zuckerberg e-mailed Saverin and told him the Facebook site was almost complete and it was time to discuss marketing strategies. They each agreed to invest $1,000 in the site, with Zuckerberg owning two-thirds of the company.

Unencumbered by class work, Zuckerberg plowed ahead with his new project, isolating and exhausting himself. Facebook launched on February 4th, 2004. “If I hadn’t launched it that day,” he told the Crimson, “I was about to just can it and go on to the next thing.”

But Zuckerberg’s burgeoning success online did little to stop him from burning those closest to him in real life. After school ended, he packed a bag and took a plane to California. In his eyes, Silicon Valley was “sort of a mythical place for a startup.” Taking a leave of absence from Harvard, like Bill Gates before him, Zuckerberg moved to Palo Alto in the summer of 2004. His goal was to take his extraordinarily popular Website to the next level. He and Saverin each agreed to invest another $20,000 in the operation. While Zuckerberg was in California, Saverin stayed behind in New York. That decision would prove ill-advised.

In July, Zuckerberg and Saverin had a mysterious falling out. Zuckerberg has filed a lawsuit, claiming Saverin jeopardized the company by freezing Facebook’s bank accounts.

Saverin countersued, claiming that Zuckerberg never matched his $20,000 in seed money and, further, used that money for personal expenses.

That summer, Zuckerberg transferred all intellectual-property rights and membership interests to a new version of the company in Delaware. The value of Saverin’s stock was unhinged from any further growth of Facebook, and Saverin was expunged as an employee.

Not long after the incident, Cameron Winklevoss ran into Saverin in a bar in New York. Saverin, Winklevoss said in a deposition, apologized to him.

“Sorry that he screwed you,” Saverin allegedly said. “Mark screwed me, too.”

“He’s young — and I’m nervous about that,” says Kara Swisher, a columnist who writes about Silicon Valley for The Wall Street Journal. “How many people has he burned, and he’s only 24? Even if he’s not culpable, the number of people he’s had problems with at a young age is remarkable — and not in a good way.”

[From Issue 1055 — June 26, 2008]

What to learn from all this…

The story of the  two Asian girls at the Harvard lecture who found the socially inept Mark Zuckerberg more interesting than the lecture by Bill Gates may be fact of fiction.  Nonetheless, it could have happened and it makes a good story.

What is certain is that between 2004 and 2008, Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire – and others did not.  Along with Mark becoming a billionaire, the Facebook user community grew from several hundred users at Harvard to 350 million users globally.

Is success so much about randomness, luck, and chance?

Is success so much about randomness, luck, and chance – being at the right place at the right time with the right skills and the tenacity to pursue and refine a vision.  Mark Zuckerberg just happened to be the person – and Facebook, the opportunity.

One could ask the same question about Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak and the personal computer revolution of the 1970’s.  Were these folks of particular genius or where they just in the right place at the right time while the inevitable confluence and convergence  of technology, unmet need, events, and idea assembled before them as if  it fell from the sky and landed at their feet before them.

Did they have a choice in the matter?  Was the computer revolution going to happen no matter what – and Gates, Allen, Jobs, and Wozniak just happen to be the “unlucky” folks that were destined to carry it through – not by choice but by circumstance?  And, through any means possible – “the end justifies the means”.

An Accident… – waiting to happen

The “Accidental” in “Accidental Billionaires” – the title of the book,  might be the exact right term.  From the article in the Harvard Crimson… “While Zuckerberg promised that thefacebook.com would boast new features by the end of the week, he said that he did not create the website with the intention of generating revenue.”

“There is a new kind of Internet Emerging…”

Maybe it was “in the air”. But the fundamental change that Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and other social networking sites brought about was a new way of looking at the Internet.

It was the fall of 2003, and the World Wide Web was just beginning its love affair with social networking. That month, Fortune wrote, “There may be a new kind of Internet emerging — one more about connecting people to people than people to Websites.”

Connecting people to people rather than connecting people to websites was the fundamental change in the global internet perception.  This fundamental change was endorsed by the 350 million people on Facebook.

The cost of entrepreneurship

If there’s going to be another Bill Gates,” says former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, “Mark is as close as anyone.” And like Gates early in his career, Zuckerberg is facing serious allegations that his creation was based on ideas he stole from others.

In a lawsuit one judge describes as a “blood feud,” three fellow Harvard students claim Zuckerberg fleeced their idea after they hired him to code a social-networking site they were creating. “We got royally screwed,” Divya Narendra, one of the students, has testified. And in April, another classmate, Aaron Greenspan, filed a petition to cancel Facebook’s trademark, claiming he invented an online facebook months before Zuckerberg. Greenspan, who has compiled reams of e-mails chronicling his months of communication with Zuckerberg, bristles at equating the Facebook prodigy with Microsoft’s founder. “Gates was shrewd, calculating and insanely competitive, bordering on autistic,” Greenspan writes in his self-published autobiography. “Mark was inarticulate and naive.

A great entrepreneurial story & Accidents in History

Fact or “a dramatic, narrative account“, Ben Mezrich’s book is a good story.  Take a read.  If anything, Merrich’s book can be a springboard to investigating the primary sources – if you so desire.  If one reads these primary sources, the founding of Facebook really is a story of sex, money, genius, and betrayal.

Is Mark Zuckerberg  a model of entrepreneurship to be emulated?  Maybe.  Perhaps if you are in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and “a new kind of internet is emerging” drops from the sky and lands at your feet – maybe you don’t have a choice in the matter.  You have to do what you have to do – no matter what.

Accidents do happen.  A recent casualty of such an accident was Mark Zuckerberg – number 158 on the Forbes roster of the richest Americans.  According to Mezrich, the motivation for thefacebook at Harvard was -  “They just wanted to meet some girls…” Mark Zuckerberg is an “Accidental” Billionaire.

Resources

Facebook – The Book -
The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal

The Battle for Facebook.  Article from Rolling Stone – ( Cached copy here )
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/21129674/the_battle_for_facebook

60 Minutes Interview (Video) with Mark Zuckerberg – “Mark Zuckerberg is said to be worth $3 billion for founding the social networking Web site Facebook. Lesley Stahl talks to the man whose $15 billion company could be the next Google.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3706601n

At Web 2.0 Summit.  Interview (Video) with Mark Zuckerberg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAOOLKQFyoY

Fast Company – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg: Hacker. Dropout. CEO.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/115/open_features-hacker-dropout-ceo.html

Betrayal and Settlement – Facebook paid up to $65m to founder Mark Zuckerberg’s ex-classmates

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/12/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-ex-classmates

Where In The World Is Eduardo Saverin?

http://larrycheng.com/2009/06/15/where-in-the-world-is-eduardo-saverin

Facebook Timeline – http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?teline

Judge Ends Facebook’s Feud With ConnectU

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/judge-ends-facebooks-feud-with-connectu

Social Networking Statistics -
http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2008/08/Social_Networking_World_Wide/%28language%29/eng-US

Facebook – The Movie – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network

The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English

“Danger, Will Robinson”

Be careful what you say – it might not mean what you think it means.  For those in the United States that “conversate” with new found friends or business colleagues in the United Kingdom or Australia what you think you are saying might not mean what you think it does.  And what they say, in the UK or in Australia, to you, might  not be, at all, what they mean.  Even though they are using common English words.

The decorum of this web site prohibits me from revealing the  faux paux in interpretation made in a business conversation between myself and a colleague in the UK.

Lets just say that he told me that he was “going to wake up his wife”  in a British sort-of-way.  But “wake up my wife” were not the words he used. (See reference section to look up the phrase)

This encounter netted me a gift from the UK - The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English

The best defense is a good offense

A tag line for The Concise New Partridge Dictionary… is “A veritable Madame Tussaud’s of the vulgar language”.  Not that we are advocating coming up to speed on vulgar language – but, you may find yourself in a situation where had you known the “multi-cultural” interpretations of common English phrases you may have avoided embarrassing situations.  So, “To be forewarned is to be forearmed”

The Concise Dictionary has an introductory section on the use of slang.  These are thirteen reasons the dictionary provides for why we use slang.

Thirteen reasons for the use of Slang

And slang is employed for one (or two or more) of thirteen reasons:

1. In sheer high spirits; ‘just for the fun of the thing’.
2. As an exercise in wit or humour.
3. To be ‘different’ – to be novel.
4. To be picturesque.
5. To be startling; to startle.
6. To escape from cliché’s and long-windedness.
7. To enrich the language.
8. To give solidity and concreteness to the abstract and the idealistic, and nearness to the Observations on slang and unconventional English xvi distant scene or object.
9. To reduce solemnity, pain, tragedy.
10. To put oneself in tune with one’s company.
11. To induce friendliness or intimacy.
12. To show that one belongs to a certain school, trade or profession, intellectual set or social class. In short to be in the fashion – or toprove that someone else isn’t.
13. To be secret – not understood by those around one.

In Defense of Slang

Words at War: Words at Peace

For over a century, there have been protests against the use of slang and controversies on the relation of slang to the literary language or, as it is now usually called, Standard English. Purists have risen in their wrath and conservatives in their dignity to defend the Bastille of linguistic purity against the revolutionary rabble.

The very vehemence of the attack and the very sturdiness of the defense have ensured that only the fittest survive to gain entrance to the citadel, there establish themselves, and then become conservatives and purists in their turn.

Any term that prevents us from thinking, any term that we employ to spare us from searching for the right word, is a verbal narcotic. As though there weren’t too many narcotics already

Words are very important things; at the lowest estimate, they are indispensable counters of communication.

Selected Radio-Related Slang

from The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English

you can find a list of British Slang from another source here.

Got one you can’t find here – add it to the comments to this post

afterburner noun a linear amplifier for a citizens’ band radio US, 1976

ancient Mary noun an AM radio US, 1976

angry nine nickname during the Korean war, an AN/GRC-9 radio US, 1994

antenna platoon noun during the Vietnam war, a platoon with an unusually large number of radios assigned to it US, 1989

back door closed adjective describes a convoy when the final vehicle is looking out for any police interest. Citizen band radio slang US, 1976

barber shop noun in trucking, a bridge with a low clearance. Citizens’ band radio slang US, 1977

barefoot adjective  2 (of a car or truck) lacking one or more tyres US, 1941. 3 (of a citizens’ band radio) operating without a power booster US, 1976. 4 in craps, said of a bet on the pass line without odds taken US, 1983

batphone noun a police radio; the police personal radio system. Inspired by comic book crimefighter Batman’s utility belt UK, 1977

bear meat noun a speeding vehicle without the benefit of citizens’ band radio communications. Easy prey for BEAR (the police) US, 1976

big juicer noun a powerful, all-night AM radio station US, 1976

bluejack verb to send an anonymous one-way message to a mobile phone enabled with ‘Bluetooth’ radio technology UK, 2004

bluesnarf verb to steal personal information from a mobile phone enabled with Bluetooth™ radio technology. A compound of the Bluetooth brand and SNARF (to take, to grab) UK, 2004

body lotion noun a drink. Citizens’ band radio slang UK, 1981

bucket mouth noun in trucking, a trucker who monopolises conversation on the citizens’ band radio US, 1976

collect call noun a citizens’ band radio message for a specific named person US, 1976

concrete wheels noun a citizens’ band radio transmitter situated in a building. Citizens’ band radio slang UK, 1981

cradle baby noun a novice citizens’ band radio user. Based on the initials CB US, 1976

Dagenham dustbin noun a Ford car. Citizens’ band radio slang. Dagenham in Essex is the best-known as the major manufacturing base for Ford cars UK, 1981

eyeball noun 1 a meeting between two shortwave radio operators who have only known each other over the radio US, 1976.

feeler noun 1 a finger UK, 1831. 2 in poker, a small bet made for the purpose of assessing how other players are likely to bet on the hand US, 1967. 3 a citizens’ band radio antenna on a truck US, 1976

fiddle and fire noun in the car sales business, a radio and heater US, 1953

flapper noun 1 the penis in a flaccid state US, 1980. 2 the ear US, 1933. 3 a radio antenna US, 1976

footwarmer noun 1 a linear amplifier for a citizens’ band radio US, 1976. 2 a walking plough CANADA, 1954

furnace and organ noun a car radio and heater US, 1959

gangbang noun  5 a group of friends talking together on citizens’ band radio US, 1977.

gate jaw noun in trucking, a driver who monopolises conversation on the citizens’ band radio US, 1976

Gibson girl noun an emergency radio used when a military aircraft is shot down over a body of water US, 1943

glory card noun a licence from the Federal Communications Commission to operate a citizens’ band radio US, 1976

God slot noun a regular position in a television or radio broadcast schedule given over to religious programmes UK, 1972

ham noun 1 an amateur shortwave radio operator and enthusiast US, 1919.

hamburger helper noun 1 crack cocaine. The drug bears some resemblance to a brand name food product US, 1994. 2 a linear amplifier for a citizens’ band radio US, 1976

ham patch noun a telephone connection enabled by shortwave radio ANTARCTICA, 1997

Hanoi Hannah noun a composite character on Radio Hanoi who broadcast during the Vietnam war with a target audience of US troops and a goal of lessening troop morale US, 1967

hash and trash noun background noise during a citizens’ band radio transmission US, 1976

heater noun 1 a revolver. The term smacks of gangster films US, 1926. 2 a linear amplifier for a citizens’ band radio US, 1976.

hillbilly operahouse noun a truck with a radio US, 1971

jaw-jack verb to chatter loudly and with no purpose; hence, to talk on citizens’ band radio US, 1962

jigger noun 1 a bank robber US, 1950. 2 a lookout during a crime US, 1925. 3 an illegally constructed radio receiver. Prison usage AUSTRALIA, 1944.

juice man noun 1 a usurer, loan-shark, illegal lender US, 1961. 2 an AM radio disc jockey who broadcasts on a powerful, all-night station heard by truckers US, 1976. 3 an electrician US, 1923

kicker noun 10 a linear amplifier for a citizens’ band radio US, 1976

latrine lips noun a citizens’ band radio user who employs a vocabulary that is considered foul or obscene US, 1976

magic numbers used as a farewell. Referring to 73 and 88, citizens’ band radio code for ‘good wishes’ US, 1976

monster net noun during the Vietnam war, the secure radio network connecting radios in the field and headquarters US, 1990

Nazi go-cart; Nazi go-kart noun a Volkswagen car. Citizens’ band radio slang remembering that Volkswagen were German manufacturers before and during World War 2 US, 1976

nickel’s worth noun a five-minute conversation on a citizens’ band radio. Five minutes was once the longest conversation allowed at one time US, 1976

OM noun a male; a partner; a husband. An abbreviation of ‘old man’. Frequent usage by shortwave radio operators, carried over into citizens’ band radio slang US, 1976

our friend with the talking brooch noun a uniformed police officer. A reference to the police radio worn on the uniform’s breast UK, 1992

OW noun a wife, a girlfriend. Citizens’ band radio slang, abbreviated from OLD WOMAN UK, 1981

persuader noun 1 any weapon, the more deadly the more persuasive UK, 1796. 2 a whip, as used by a bullock driver or a jockey AUSTRALIA, 1890. 3 a linear amplifier for a citizens’ band radio US, 1977

pository yes, affirmative. Citizens’ band radio slang US, 1976

pound noun 1 a five-dollar note US, 1935. 2 a five-year jail sentence US, 1967. 3 an ‘s’ unit (five decibels) in measuring the level of a citizens’ band radio signal US, 1976.

pregnant rollerskate; pregnant skateboard noun a Volkswagen ‘Beetle’ car. Citizens’ band radio slang US, 1976
radio noun a prisoner who talks loudly and without paying attention to who might be listening US, 1976

redneck radio noun citizens’ band radio US, 1977

rubber duckie noun a short, flexible, rubber-coated vehicle-mounted radio aerial. A jokey reference to ‘Rubber Duck’ as referring to the HANDLE (a citizens’ band radio identity) of the hero of the film Convoy, 1975 UK, 1981

rubber lip noun a citizens’ band radio user who monopolises conversation US, 1976

seat cover noun an attractive woman. Citizens’ band radio slang US, 1976

skate jockey noun a driver of a small car, especially a sports car. Citizens’ band radio slang, combines ‘skate’ (small car) with another form of ‘driver’ US, 1976

skunk juice; skunk juicer; skunk junker noun an illegal linear amplifier for a citizens’ band radio US, 1976

slammer noun  6 an illegal linear amplifier for a citizens’ band radio US, 1976

slider noun 1 an electronic device that allows operation between authorised channels on a citizens’ band radio US, 1976

socks noun a linear amplifier for a citizens’ band radio. From the term FOOTWARMER (a linear amplifier in a truck) US, 1976

splashover noun a signal leaking from one citizens’ band radio channel to another US, 1976

superslab noun a major road. Citizens’ band radio slang, elaboration of SLAB US, 1976

talking handbag noun a portable radio UK, 1996

thumb job noun a hitchthiker; the act of hitchhiking. Citizens’ band radio slang US, 1976

tiger in the tank noun a linear amplifier for a citizens’ band radio. From the 1960’s Esso advertising slogan ‘Put a tiger in your tank’US, 1976

Uncle Charlie noun 1 used as a representation of the dominant white culture in the US US, 1963. 2 among truckers using citizens’ band radio, the Federal Communications Commission US, 1976. 3 the Viet Cong US, 1985

ungowa; ungowa bwana yes, affirmative, OK. Citizens’ band radio slang US, 1976

Van Gogh noun a trucker operating with a citizens’ band radio. A trucker without a citizens’ band radio is said to be driving ‘without ears’, and hence the artistic allusion US, 1976

wallpaper noun . 3 a postcard acknowledging receipt of a citizens’ band or ham radio message US, 1976

windjammer noun 1 a person who talks too much US, 1949. 2 a citizens’ band radio user who monopolises conversation US, 1976.

Resources

Dangerous British Slang – http://frrl.wordpress.com/files/2009/12/britishslang.pdf

But then again …  Whats normal???

The house is starting to look the way it did before…The Christmas Tree will come down this weekend and my daughters will go back to snarling at each other.

Radio wise I will try and continue on with my NTS Schedule and it does give me some sort of purpose not to mention something to blog about on a “slow news day…”

But more importantly I am learning that there is no such thing as poor band condtions.  These NTS Nets seem to meet on a daily basis and get the job done.  There are days that we might have to use a few more relays when the band is not the best but we do communicate…  We have backup frequencies set up on different bands with a protocol for what to do if you don’t hear anyone and we do still manage to communicate…

Now the general amateur population usually has a low opinion of the NTS when you compare it to email, phone and other modes that they claim are a lot quicker and more efficient…  But we seem to be able to do something that most amateurs can’t figure out how to do…  We communicate on a daily basis at our assigned times no matter what the band conditons…

On a regular basis representives from the Ontario Phone Net meet up with representives from the 2nd region net and pass traffic in and out of Ontario,  In addition Ontario meets up with New York State twice a day to handle traffic if needed.

If I want to brag about NTS I normally do it on the Ontario Phone Net Blog which is at:

If you want more information on the NTS check out the RAC Website or the ARRL Website  by clicking on the American NTS Logo or the Canadian NTS Logo (above the OPN Banner) or drop me a note…
In passing …or as a final comment…  I spent a lot of time cleaning up and checking all the empty boxes and I still can’t find that Yaesu FT 950 I thought Santa was going to bring to me…  If it showed up at YOUR QTH by mistake let me know and I’ll heard right over and pick it up…

73bob

A Savage Factory:
An Eyewitness Account of the Auto Industry’s Self-Destruction

On the week of Christmas I took a trip to my local bookstore.  On the new books table I saw this book - A Savage Factory: An Eyewitness Account of the Auto Industry’s Self-Destruction.

Since this was the week of Christmas I thought this would be an uplifting book for the holidays.  I grabbed the book and headed for the bookstore coffee shop. With a  Christmas Grande peppermint mocha in hand, and finding a nice overstuffed chair, I was ready to take a look-see at A Savage Factory.

Unlike a Dickens novel, there is no happy ending to this book.  A Savage Factory has numerous descriptions of the Ford factory that would match that  of a Victorian workhouse and stories of disdain for the working poor that Dickens so often attributes to some of his characters.

After about an hour of reading I decided that this book needed a much closer look than the time allotted by the grande mocha.

Many themes in this book

At the time of this writing, there are 33 reviews of this book at Amazon.com.  You can read those reviews for yourself here.

There are many themes running through this book.  The most prominent, of course, is the deplorable conditions at Ford’s largest transmission plant which was located in Sharonville Ohio.  The deplorable conditions are not only the physical working environment of the plant but also the relationships among management, hourly employees, and the UAW (United Auto Workers).  The relationship among these three entities could easily and accurately be described as an ongoing war.

The book is filled with profanity, racial insults, and grotesque descriptions of working-class people.  The author apologizes for this in the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book:

I want to explain to readers that the foul language and racial remarks were put in the book simply because I want A Savage Factory to be a true and accurate account of the degrading and demeaning way that Ford Motor Company talks to, and about employees and customers.  This is the actual language used at the Sharonville Transmission Plant during my tenure as a first line supervisor, and paints an accurate picture of normal verbal communication between managers, foremen, hourly workers, and UAW.  I apologize for any offense taken by my written account of actual conditions at the plant.

You can read the reviews of  A Savage Factory at Amazon.com to get an idea of the primary content of this book .  Less visible are some other themes running through the book.  One overarching theme is that of “economic bondage”.  None of the reviews at Amazon makes mention of this.

Economic Bondage

The book is 219 pages long in 14 chapters plus an Epilogue.  As I was reading the book my opinion of the book and the author  (Robert Dewar) changed as I read from chapter to chapter.  Perhaps the book is not so much about Ford Motor Company and the Ford Transmission Plant in Sharonville as it is a subtle treatise on the Economic Bondage encompassing all the characters in the book.  It is economic bondage of different types – but economic bondage nonetheless and everyone is caught up in it.

In the Prologue to the book:

I always believed, as I had been taught, that Americans are “free”.  But schools do not teach us about economic bondage.  Being free is more than a political concept.  Independence from oppression is not cheap and they don’t teach that in school either.

My quest for economic freedom took me from a tar-paper shack in the bituminous coal fields of Western Pennsylvania to the largest transmission factory in the world.  The story I share with you is true.  Only the names of the people have been changed.

Robert Dewar started out as a kid working in the coal mines, went to college to earn a BS and MBA then worked at Procter and Gamble (P&G) as a manager.  Dewar  went through the full P&G management training at P&G and ran the Duncan Hines operation.  So how did he end up at the Ford Motor Company Transmission Plant?

Dewar ended up at Ford after “being separated” from P&G by mutual agreement.  Dewar spends more than a few pages describing the “bondage” at P&G.  The bondage at P&G was nothing like the factory floor experience of hourly workers at Ford but a different kind of bondage.

You won’t find out about this P&G bondage until Dewar gets to the section where he describes his trip to Rollmans Psychiatric Hospital.  Dewar drove them – checked himself in -  after an escalation of the war among management, hourly, and the UAW where he suffered a sort of mental and physical breakdown.  Dewar calls P&G folks “Proctoids” when he describers his past work experience to the psychiatrist at Rollmans”

A Proctoid is a man who turns his entire life over to the company to mold and shape like a wood carver tuns a block of wood into a piece that he wants it to become.  He lets P&G control his entire existence.  He is America’s version of Soviet Man.  His career path is not determined by how much he knows or how hard he works; its determined by how good a Proctoid he becomes.

A Proctoid always wears the P&G uniform.  He has closely cropped hair, perfectly in place.  He always wears a white shirt, never a colored shirt.  He has a a narrow tie.  He may or may not wear a vest, but he most certainly wears an expensive suit, always dark and never light, usually pin stripe.  He always wears expensive wing tip shoes, always shined.

The corporation has interned you in economic bondage.  They control your live life every bit as much as the Soviets controlled the lives of their bureaucrats.  Their method of control is money, not terror.  The higher you climb, the tighter the grip they have on you.  Economic bondage is as brutal as political bondage, but we don’t know it because we think we are moving up.

Dewar spends 3 pages with a vivid description of Proctoids.  It goes on and on.

Arbeit Macht Frei (“Freedom Through Labor”)

The real key to the underlying theme of “economic bondage” within A Savage Factory are the pages devoted to the conversation of Dewar and the psychiatrist at Rollmans.  This section consumes all of chapter 8 (p 115-127).  Although it seems contrived, the psychiatrist at Rollmans agrees with Dewar and takes it up a notch.

Dr. Weinstein slowly shook his head, as though he was beginning to understand me.  Then he rubbed his chin and said, “Ford Motor company reminds me of another place where people were treated like cattle and controlled by fear.  It was a place much worse than Sharonville.  Yet it shared a disturbing number of characteristics with Ford.  Do you know what place it was?”

I shook my head no, and Dr. Wwinstein continued.

Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp.  Of course Ford is not throwing people into gas ovens, and you can walk out any time you want.  Yet the method used to control people have uncanny similarities to methods Ford uses.  Also, the physical environment of a Ford plant is , in many ways, no better than the facilities at Auschwitz.

Let’s look at the tormentors at Ford.  I am speaking of your managers.  Are they inherently evil men?  The answer is, like the SS at Auschwitz, some are and some are not.  But they are all caught up in the system.  Like the SS men, they do as they are told and that is how they survive.  Now lets look at the hourly workers.  Who are they?  Do they not share some of the similarities with the inmates in a concentration camp?  Of course they do.  They have families to support.  They want to earn as much money as they can for their families.  They do not risk death, as the people at Auschwitz did, yet they risk a kind of death.  That is, their economic security can be taken from them, and that can be as emotionally devastating as a death.  So, they allow themselves to be controlled, even degraded, and no doubt, hate every minute of it.

Comparing the Ford Plant at Sharonville to a Nazi death camp seems a bit much.  Read more about Arbeit macht frei

Again, Freedom Though Labor

So why is Dewar at the Ford Transmission Plant at Sharonville working at a job he detests?  Dewar is at Ford after being separated from P&G in order to make enough money to start his own business and have the freedom to call his own shots and control his own paycheck.  When asked about his intentions by upper management at Ford, he tells them straight out that he took the job at Ford because Ford paid the highest wages for the position he sought and that he would leave after earning enough money to start a business.

Conclusion

A Savage Factory is a great book.  You will read about the Red Dog Saloon – a hidden makeshift bar setup by the hourly workers among the cavernous stacks of rejected transmission parts.  There is the trailer in the Ford parking lot that “gives comfort” to the hourly workers – Grace’s bordello.  And of course, the Coffee Pot wars – Big Mo selling coffee to 5,000 workers on the midnight shift on the qt until management found out and used a hilo to transport Big Mo’s stand into the the dumpster dousing his magazines with gasoline and setting them ablaze.  Dewar was threatened with an “industrial accident” by one worker and another worker brought a gun to work to “blow him away”.

Certainly the central theme of A Savage Factory is the Ford Factory.  Equally interesting is the authors own personal journey out of “economic bondage” from the coal mines to an MBA education, through a self-described “corporate bondage” at P&G, to Ford Motor Company, and finally the end goal of owning his own business.

One could ask, has Dewar really achieved “freedom” by owning his own business or has he just exchanged one type of economic bondage for another type of economic bondage?  Dewar wants to own his own business to “call the shots” – to be in control – to have “freedom” – and control his own paycheck.  Will he ever be in control?  Or, is it an illusion of control of your own destiny?

Do people who own their own business really have freedom?  Owning a business one may have just as much freedom as the hourly workers at Ford.  For a small business similar to that which Dewar owns, it’s the environment that  “calls the shots”; the competitors call the shots; his suppliers call the shots; as do the customers and a host of other factors.  One is free only to react – not free to determine a destiny.  (Read Porters Five Forces Model)

Arbeit macht frei

The phrase Arbeit macht frei translated “work makes you free”  has an interesting history.  This phrase appeared over the gates of some of the Nazi death camps. At Auschwitz it was placed there by Major Rudolf Hoss, commandant of the camp. ( See http://www.spectacle.org and http://www.spectacle.org/695/arbeit.html )

He seems not to have intended it as a mockery, nor even to have intended it literally, as a false promise that those who worked to exhaustion would eventually be released, but rather as a kind of mystical declaration that self-sacrifice in the form of endless labor does in itself bring a kind of spiritual freedom.

For all those that work endless hours at their own business is it really “freedom” to own your own business rather than working for corporate America?  Or has this particular form of economic bondage (business ownership) brought about a different form of freedom?  A freedom that can only be had by continued work to make Arbeit macht frei the most accurate phrase ever uttered.  If so, then what is meant by labor and freedom have become transformed into their polar opposites.

A Savage Factory.  Highly recommended.  While you are attending to the primary story of the Ford Sharonville Plant don’t ignore the equally interesting story of the authors personal journey out of economic bondage – as far as freedom of economic bondage is possible.

Resources

From the authors web site – http://asavagefactory.com

Why I wrote “A Savage Factory”

I worked at a Ford Motor Company transmission factory in Cincinnati when auto plants were a cross between an insane asylum and a battlefield, and the quality of American cars was an international disgrace. I have an MBA and simply could not believe the incompetence of management in the auto plants. I soon began to feel that the days of the U.S. auto industry were numbered, because Ford cannot run a factory like it is still 1930, the auto industry cannot treat employees and customers with disrespect and insensitivity, and the Big 3 cannot sell poor quality cars in a competitive global auto market.

I wanted to give people a long, hard look behind the dirty gray walls of auto factories so they could see, up close, the conditions in the plants where their cars were built, and the kind of management that was destroying an industry. So I kept a daily journal of my experiences. I made copies of telltale internal documents. I made an extensive collection of defective parts that were routinely assembled into Ford C-4 automatic transmissions. Later, as defective parts began to fail, 200 people would be killed, 1400 injured, and Ford Motor Company would become the only corporation in American History to be charged with reckless homicide. Ford would also receive the largest recall in automotive history – 23,000,000 vehicles with defective transmissions. The only thing that saved Ford from bankruptcy over this massive recall was the Reagan Administration removing the authority of the government to order mandatory recalls.

When I wrote this memoir of my years as an auto plant foreman and general foreman, my intent was not to do harm to the automobile industry. The last thing that I want to see is a collapse of the Big 3 and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. So why did I write this personal memoir?

I wrote it because I do not believe anything will change until we look closely at what we are doing wrong. Only then can we change and do things better. I believe stongly that the current troubles in the automobile industry have little to do with the villains identified in the nightly news: poor fuel efficiency, poor design, or unfair competition from foreign imports. I believe that we are losing the global auto war in the factories where the cars are built.

Old MGM short (10 minutes) about ham radio.  I’m guessing maybe from the 1950’s?

The November 14/21 Technician License Class held at the American Museum of Radio & Electricity concluded today with the administration of the ARRL/VEC exams.  A number of other individuals came in to take Tech and higher exams.  Of the 22 people who attended class on the 14th, 18 returned for the second class, and 17 of those passed the Technician exam.  Thank you to the instructors; N1BA. AC7KY, KK7LK, AC7UM, and AE6K; and to the museum for the wonderful facility and hospitality.  Thanks also to the VE team which showed up IN FORCE, making it an easy day for the liason (yours truly).

Exam statistics:

Number of exams given:  42

Number of individuals: 30

Technician grants: 19

General grants:  7

Extra grants: 2

OF NOTE:  One fellow passed all three tests; walking in unlicensed and leaving as an Extra class.  Two other folks passed both Tech and General.

Well its Saturday morning and after having my first coffee of the day I’m trying to decide the plans for the west of the weekend.

I’m still fighting the “cold from hell” and before you ask ….  Yes its just a cold and its not “THE FLU or THAT FLU” but it sure has been hanging around for a while.  It arrived last Saturday evening and has been with me ever since.  Not enough to knock me off my feet but just enough to annoy me and it shows no signs of leaving.  The biggest annoyance is that I can’t go over to one of the Public Health Clinics and get my H1N1 shots as they don’t want sick people at the clinic.

So seeing as I don’t want to get any worse and no one wants to see a person who is coughing with a runny nose and raspy voice as they don’t want a cold or “THE FLU” it looks like a quiet weekend in the shack…  This is not a bad think when you think about it…

Today is the start of the ARRL Sweepstakes (SSB) contest and the main purpose of the contest is to try and contact all 80 ARRL.RAC sections and go through a very long exchange.  If you manage to contact all 80 sections then its called a “Clean Sweep:”I really doubt my chances of a  “Clean Sweep” but as with any contest I set my own goals to challenge myself and as a way to measure my success in the contest.

This time the goals are:

Work all Canadian Sections

Work at least 30 US Sections

Make more contacts on 15m and 160M

Have FunI always add the Have Fun disclaimer cuz if it ain’t fun then why am I still doing it for?

Now as I don’t usually take any contest that seriously I’m not sure how many of the above goals I will meet but if I can devote 8 hours or so I figure I should be close to whats needed.

In addition to my contesting plans there is also remembering my NTS Commitments and so I will be visiting the 2nd Region Net (2rn) a few times along with the Ontario Phone Net.

The New York Public Operation Net (NYPON) on 3.925 at 1700hrs with the New York State Phone Net at 1800 with the 2nd Region Net at 1830 on 3.925 all get visits as well.

So between the “Sweeps” and my regular NTS commitments it should be a good weekend as long as the band holds out…  Hope to hear you on the air sometime…

73bob

A survey of 2,500 Human Resources and Training Executives…
Or, getting HR to hit mark on talent management

BOSTON, May 6, 2006 — Coaching a performance problem, communicating performance standards and other tactical initiatives are the most common components of leadership development programs, according to a study by Novations Group, a global consulting organization based in Boston.

What is the analysis of the survey data?  And, most importantly, what is so unusual about the result?

First, the survey question and the results from 2,500 HR respondents.

Which of the following management situations or initiatives are addressed by your organization’s leadership development program (please select all that apply)?

Coaching a performance problem	71.9%
Communicating performance standards	69.1%
Coaching a development opportunity	68.7%
Conducting a performance appraisal	66.8%
Handling conflict situations	65.9%
Communicating vision and strategy	59.4%
Selecting the right employee	58.1%
Diversity & Inclusion	55.3%
Gaining commitment to goals	49.3%
Managing priorities	48.8%
Change management	45.2%
Acting on feedback	44.7%
Teaching a skill & delegating responsibility	39.6%
Influencing internal resources	34.6%
Managing a virtual team	27.6%

And why is this a curious result?

This is interesting empirical data.  The survey asked about leadership development programs – not management development programs.  Why is a leadership development program focused on management activities and  responsibilities?

There are a couple of candidate explanations for the survey results.

But first, from an empirical perspective – as understood by constituents – what is expected of leaders from followers?  Consider leadership in terms of non-authoritarian leadership.  That is, what are the attributes of people (leaders) that constituencies will willingly follow.  The key is the term “willingly follow“.

This takes us beyond the sphere of hierarchical organizations into the realm of democratic political systems where constituency groups are not compelled to follow a leader.  There is application to both organizational and political behavior.

The Kouzes-Posner Empirical Research on Leadership

This is from James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner

We began our research on what constituents expect of leaders more than twenty-five years ago by surveying thousands of business and government executives. We asked the following open-ended question: “What values, personal traits, or characteristics do you look for and admire in a leader?  In response to that question, respondents identified several hundred different values, traits, and characteristics. Subsequent content analysis by several independent judges, followed by further empirical analyses, reduced these items to a list of twenty characteristics (each grouped with several synonyms for clarification and completeness).

From this list of twenty characteristics, we developed a survey questionnaire called “Characteristics of Admired Leaders.” We’ve administered this questionnaire to over seventy-five thousand people around the globe, and we update the findings continuously. We distribute a one-page checklist and ask respondents to select the seven qualities that they “most look for and admire in a leader, someone whose direction they would willingly follow.” We tell them that the key word in this question is willingly. What do they expect from a leader they would follow, not because they have to, but because they want to?

The results have been striking in their regularity over the years, and they do not significantly vary by demographical, organizational, or cultural differences

The Opportunity

What happens when you take 25 years of empirical research by by Kouzes and Posner of over 75,000 individuals  on leadership – from a constituency point of view – and bump this up against what is being taught by HR and training executives – or at least the 2,500 surveyed by Novations? Are they aligned?

Not to put too fine a point on this but lets be clear.  Are company and organizational talent management system creating a group of people (as leaders) that employees or organizational members will admire and willingly follow?  Or, are these talent management programs focused on something else?  And if so, what and why are these leadership development programs teaching what they teach?  What is driving the curriculum being taught?

If the answer is no – that is, if HR talent management programs are teaching what is irrelevant to what is empirically discovered to be successful leadership qualities, skills and competencies then, well, we have quite an interesting situation that bears further investigation.

The Kouzes Posner Research -
The five behavioral practices of exemplary leadership

Based on the 25 years of research, Kouzes and Posner came up with these 5 behavioral practices of exemplary leadership.

1. Clarify values and set the example – model the way.

In order to clarify values and set the example leaders first have to have principles and beliefs.  In a certain sense, this is an exercise in self-inspection.  To the extent that people do in fact “act” (have a behavior)  they do have some set of values, beliefs, and principles – whether consciously articulated or not.  The task is to make these explicit.

After  these values have been discovered  one must have the capability to articulate them. In short, communication skills.

Beyond the articulation of principles and beliefs leaders need to establish and maintain credibility.  One establishes credibility by acting on those values.  That is, action gives a voice and credibility to these values, principles, and beliefs,  in a way that simply articulating these values in speech or writing can not.

No one will believe an individual as a leader until they demonstrate a commitment to your values.  That is, model the way.  Actions  – behavior and judgment – have to be consistent with the values that the leader has articulated in speech of writing.

2. Inspire a shared vision of the future possibilities and enlist others in that vision

The Kouzes-Posner research shows that leaders must be able to envisage , project, and articulate a future for the organization.  Equally important constituency groups  must be able to see themselves in this future.  The leaders vision of the future must be inspirational in order to achieve buy-in and commitment from the constituency.

To be inspirational the vision must be able to show the greater opportunities that await and how this vision is unique and differentiates your organization from all the rest.  High performance behavior within an organization can be achieved by instilling passion and pride in achieving the vision.  In order to achieve this, what leaders envisage for the future must resonate with the constituency base.

3. Challenge the process by searching for opportunities to innovate, grow, and improve by experimenting and taking risks

Challenging the process sometimes means challenging the way things are done – especially when the way things are done has placed an organization in a state of stagnation or decline.  “Repeating the past” does not play well in a dynamic external environment.

The Kouzes-Posner research found that successful leaders create a climate for the recognition of good ideas and support for those ideas.  Successful leaders create a climate for experimentation and risk taking without the stigma of failure.

In some cases success breeds failure.  Why?  In a nearly continuous stream of successes one has less of an opportunity to learn from failure – or the organization is not taking enough risks -  or it operates in a a non-competitive environment.  In many cases, people and organizations “are made” by adversity, setbacks, and successful recovery.

Failure can breed success through careful analysis of failure, repositioning, new strategy, better execution – or whatever the results of the analysis show  if individuals and organization have the tenacity and commitment to carry through on careful analysis of product, service, or organizational failure.

Organizational leaders can create a climate of experimentation within a workforce where there is fear of risk and failure by reframing.  For example, reframe  uncertainty as adventure; fear into resolve; and risk into reward.

Successful leaders champion change – change not for the sake of change in the service of innovation.  No organization can stand still for long and continue to be competitive.  Customers will grow weary of products and services that can not adapt to the changing external environment or competitive challenges.

Finding new and better ways of doing things, developing new products, services, or systems should be a continuous and ongoing process in any organization.  Challenging the process is not only an internal endeavor.  Challenging the process  also involves looking outside the realm of familiar experience at the ways other organizations operate – borrow and refine what works – discard what does not work.

Bottom line – always and continuously challenge the current process to look for new opportunities.

4. Enable others to act by fostering collaboration, building trust and strengthening everyone capacity to deliver on their promises.

One could summarize this a few different ways: “empower people to act” and “mobilize people”.

The Kouzes-Posner research found that successful leaders learn to trust people, relinquish control, and enable others to act.  There are a couple of old expressions that come to mind – “every brain in the game”  and “no one of us is smarter than all of us”.

To realize the power of groups of people leaders need to facilitate relationship and collaboration among individuals.  They need to instill a sense of cohesiveness and self-determination along with shared creation, shared responsibility and personal accountability to the collaborative team.  Leaders need to facilitate competency development across the team and also ensure there is a diversity of complementary skills and perspectives.

These combined allow people to not only develop and demonstrate the belief that they can make a difference for the better but that they can in fact realize the vision though empowerment, relationships, collaboration, and competency development.

5. Celebrate values and victories recognizing contributions of other celebrating values and victories

People that make the commitment and put in long hours need recognition to sustain the effort.  Successful leaders expect the best and provide personalize recognition in return.  Public recognition of personal achievement builds a community through celebration.  Successful leaders perpetually look for people doing things right an reward it.  A community of achievement is sustained by telling stories of personal, group, and organizational accomplishment.

Leadership Training and Talent Management

Hitting the mark

So lets look at the survey results of 2,500 HR and Talent Management Executives.

When asked the question:

Which of the following management situations or initiatives are addressed by your organization’s leadership development program (please select all that apply)?

This is an analysis of the responses as above.  Color coded in red are the items relevant to the results of 25 years of accumulated research across 75,000 individuals as reported by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner

Now one can see what is curious about the responses.

The top 5 skills and competences taught in leadership development programs – as reported by 2,500 HR respondents – have noting to do with the skills and competencies that Kouzes and Posner discovered as leadership attributes.

Only 59.4% of respondents say they teach “Communicating Vision and Strategy” as part of leadership development.
“Gaining commitment to goals” – 49.3% – less than 1/2 across 2,500 respondents surveyed.
“Change Management” (challenging the process and institutionalizing this) – sadly 45.2%
“Influencing”  (motivating) – 34.6%

The misalignment

So why the mismatch between what is being taught in leadership development programs and the result of the Kouzer-Posner research?

Here are some thoughts

1. The survey question clearly states “leadership development program”.  The survey results show that leadership training programs are really teaching management skills and competencies.  Why?  If leadership programs are driven by needs as observed in actual organizational situations then management in those organization is not fulfilling their roles. Why?  One possibility is that individual contributors have been promoted to management roles without being prepared with the skills and competencies needed for that role.  The result?  Leaders are focusing on what should be handled at the management level. That is, based on organizational need, leaders have to take on more of a management role than a leadership role to fill the vacuum in the layer below them
2. As a result of the above, leadership programs in those organizations are diminished.  How?  Training for leaders is heavily weighted toward dealing with tactical operational problems not focusing on strategy and vision – that is, the skills, competencies, and time comittments as discovered by the Kouzes and Posner research.

This did not escape the notice of Novations:

BOSTON, May 6, 2006 — Coaching a performance problem, communicating performance standards and other tactical initiatives are the most common components of leadership development programs, according to a study by Novations Group, a global consulting organization based in Boston.

A good deal less frequent are key strategic skills such as communicating vision or delegating responsibility, reported Novations, which surveyed more than 2,500 senior HR and training executives throughout the U.S. and Canada.

In fact, the top five leadership development initiatives are entirely operational in focus.

What is disappointing is the relatively low emphasis given to the strategic dimension. At the very core of developing new leaders is getting people to look beyond the tactical stuff and to engage on the bigger issues.”

And on individual contributors being promoted to management without the necessary skills to effectively manage and act as a local leaders

In order for individuals to advance from individual contributor to manager they need to be taught the full suite of skills needed to act as a local leader, not as just an expert. And too often people are promoted to a management position and don’t let go of their old job.”

All this plays into the idea of “clogging the leadership pipeline”.  Making the mistake of promoting individual contributors without the necessary management skills pushes the role of management to leaders which have to execute the skills (tactical and operational) due to  the absence of management skills by the errant promotion of individual contributors.

So, if “leaders” have to be trained to take over management duties then that diminishes the relative amount of time they can spend on focused leadership activities discovered by Kouzes and Posner.

Conclusion – one possible remedy

One solution to this organizational situation is reclassification.  That is, every employee is placed in a job role based on the skills, competencies, time commitments, and behaviors that they actually demonstrate by observation on the job against rigorous job analysis and descriptions.

An organizational decision to do widespread reclassification can take its toll.  But sometimes, significant transformation of an organization can be an effective way to restore a corporation or organization to competitevness in a dynamic competitive marketplace.

Read the actual experience of Forced Ranking here.

Novations is a global talent management consultancy.  So, based on their research of the 2,500 HR talent management executives it looks like they have some good leads to follow up on and a good story to tell if they leverage the Kouzes-Posner and similar research.

References and Related Postings

How to NOT derail your corporate or organizational career

Managing Your Career – When IQ and Expertise are not enough:Or, why you need Emotional Intelligence to get ahead

From Loading Dock to CEO in 6 painful steps. Or, Navigating the Leadership Pipeline

Developing your Leadership Pipeline – Harvard Business Review December 2008

The Secret to GE’s Success: A Former insider Reveals the Leadership lessons of the World’s Most Competitive Company (Hardcover) by William R. Rothschild

The Leadership Pipeline: how to build a Leadership-Powered Company by Drotter, Noel, Charan

The Leadership Challenge, 4th Edition by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner

Forced Ranking – Behind the Scenes

I gave this one the once over and filed it when it came through my email last week, but the recent storm of postings and comments elsewhere got me to look it over again.  On October 20th the FCC issued Public Notice DA 09-2259 warning that no one in a paid emergency services position may operate on the ham bands during drills or other non-emergency operations.  While the lawyers will have to argue over the definition of “pecuniary interests”, the FCC is sending a clear message that they see Amateur Radio as a hobby, not an emergency communications service.  We talked about this issue in past classes where dispatchers and other government employees received their ham licenses.  We assumed that it was ok for these folks to use amateur radio on shift, as long as it was not their primary job responsibility.   DA 09-2259 says we were wrong.  If you are an emergency services employee you can not use the ham bands for drills or other related activities while you are on the clock unless there is a bona-fide emergency, OR you have received a dispensation from the FCC.  Keep an eye on this one.

Jack Welch – On Differentiation: Or, making winners out of everyone

On Differentiation by Jack Welch

If there is one of my values that pushes buttons, it is differentiation.

Some people love the idea; they swear by it, run their companies with it,and will tell you it is at the very root of their success. Other people hate it. They call it mean, harsh, impractical, demotivating, political,unfair—or all of the above.

Obviously, I am a huge fan of differentiation. I have seen it transform companies from mediocre to outstanding, and it is as morally sound as a management system can be. It works.

Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak.

Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean.

UNDERNEATH IT ALL

A company only has so much money. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest. When all is said and done, differentiation is just resource allocation, which is what good leaders do and, in fact, is one of the chief jobs they are paid to do. A company has only so much money and managerial time. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest. They cut their losses everywhere else.

If that sounds Darwinian, let me add that I am convinced that along with being the most efficient and most effective way to run your company,differentiation also happens to be the fairest and the kindest. Ultimately, it makes winners out of everyone.

DIFFERENTIATION DEFINED

One of the main misunderstandings about differentiation is that it is only about people. That’s to miss half of it. Differentiation is a way to manage people and businesses.

Basically, differentiation holds that a company has two parts, software and hardware. Software is simple—it’s your people. Hardware depends. If you are a large company, your hardware is the different businesses in your portfolio. If you are smaller, your hardware is your product lines.

Let’s look first at differentiation in terms of hardware. It’s pretty straightforward and a lot less incendiary.

Every company has strong businesses or product lines and weak ones and some in between. Differentiation requires managers to know which is which and invest accordingly.

To do that, of course, you have to have a clear-cut definition of“strong.” At GE, “strong” meant a business was No. 1 or No. 2 in its market. If it wasn’t, the managers had to fix it, sell it,or as a last resort, close it. Other companies have different frameworks for investment decisions. They put their money and time only into businesses or product lines that promise double-digit sales growth, for instance. Or they invest only in businesses or product lines with a 15 percent (or better)discounted rate of return (DCRR).

Now, I generally don’t like investment criteria that are financial i nnature, like DCRR, because the numbers can be jiggered so easily by changing the residual value, or any other number of assumptions, in an investment proposal. But my point is the same: differentiation among your businesses or product lines requires a transparent framework that everyone in the company undestands. People may not like it, but they know it and they manage with it.

In fact, differentiation among businesses and product lines is a powerfu lmanagement discipline in general. At GE, the No. 1 or No. 2 framework stopped the decades-long practice of sprinkling money everywhere. Most GE managers in the old days probably knew that spreading money all around didn’t make sense, but it’s so easy to do. There’s always that pressure—managers jockeying and politicking for their share of the pie.  To avoid warfare, you give everyone a little slice and hope for the best.

Running your company without differentiation among your businesses or product lines may have been possible when the world was less competitive. But with globalization and digitization, forget it. Managers at every level have to make hard choices and live by them.

THE PEOPLE PART

Now let’s talk about the more controversial topic, differentiation among people. It’s a process that requires managers to assess their employees and separate them into three categories in terms of performance: top 20 percent, middle 70, and bottom 10. Then— and this is key—it requires managers to act on that distinction. I emphasize the word“act” because all managers naturally differentiate—in their heads. But very few make it real.

Top 20%

When people differentiation is real, the top 20 percent of employees are showered with bonuses, stock options, praise, love, training, and a variety of rewards to their pocketbooks and souls. There can be no mistaking the stars at a company that differentiates. They are the best and are treated that way.

Middle 70%

The middle 70 percent are managed differently.  This group of people is enormously valuable to any company; you simply cannot function without their skills, energy, and commitment. After all, they are the majority of your employees. And that’s the major challenge, and risk, in 20-70-10—keeping the middle 70 engaged and motivated.

That’s why so much of managing the middle 70 is about training,positive feedback, and thoughtful goal setting. If individuals in this group have particular promise, they should be moved around among businesses and functions to increase their experience and knowledge and to test their leadership skills.

To be clear, managing the middle 70 is not about keeping people out of the bottom 10. It is not about saving poor performers. That would be a bad investment decision. Rather, differentiation is about managers looking at the middle 70, identifying people with potential to move up, and cultivating them.But everyone in the middle 70 needs to be motivated and made to feel as if  they truly belong. You do not want to lose the vast majority of your middle 70—you want to improve them.

Bottom 10%

As for the bottom 10 percent in differentiation, there is no sugar coating this—they have to go. That’s more easily said than done; It’s awful to fire people—I even hate that word. But if you have a candid organization with clear performance expectations and a performance evaluation process—a big if, obviously, but that should be everyone’s goal—then people in the bottom 10 percent generally know who they are. When you tell them, they usually leave before you ask them to.

No one wants to be in an organization where they aren’t wanted. One of the best things about differentiation is that people in the bottom 10 percent of organizations very often go on to successful careers at companies and in pursuits where they truly belong and where they can excel.

I learned it on the playground

That’s how differentiation works in a nutshell. People sometimes ask where I came up with the idea. My answer is, I didn’t invent differentiation! I learned it on the playground when I was a kid.

When we were making a baseball team, the best players always got picked first, the fair players were put in the easy positions, usually second base or right field, and the least athletic ones had to watch from the sidelines. Everyone knew where he stood. The top kids wanted desperately to stay there, and got the reward of respect and the thrill of winning. The kids in the middle worked their tails off to get better, and sometimes they did, bringing up the quality of play for everyone. And the kids who couldn’t make the cut usually found other pursuits, sports and otherwise, that they enjoyed and excelled at.

Not everyone can be a great ballplayer, and not every great ballplayer can be a great doctor, computer programmer, carpenter, musician, or poet. Each one of us is good at something, and I just believe we are happiest and the most fulfilled when we’re doing that.

REASONS TO HATE DIFFERENTIATION—AND NOT

So here are the criticisms of people differentiation. Some have truth in them, but more often than not, they don’t! Here’s what I mean:

1. Differentiation is unfair because it’s always corrupted by company politics—20-70-10 is just a way of separating the people who kiss the boss’s rear from those who don’t.

It is true, without question, that at some companies, differentiation is corrupted by cronyism and favoritism. The top 20 percent are the boss’s head-nodders and buddies, and the bottom 10 percent are the outspoken types who ask difficult questions and challenge the status quo. The middle 70 are just ducking and getting by. That happens and it stinks, and it is a function of a leadership team lacking in brains or integrity or both.

The only good thing I can say about a merit-free system like this is that eventually it destroys itself. It collapses from its own weight or has to change. The results just won’t be good enough to sustain the enterprise.

Luckily, cases of “differentiation abuse” can generally be prevented by a candid, clear-cut performance system, with defined expectations and goals and time lines, and a program of consistent appraisals. In fact, differentiation can be implemented only after such a system is in place, a process that we will discuss more specifically in the chapter on people management.

2. Differentiation is mean and bullying. It’s like the playground in the worst possible way—weak kids are made into fools, outcasts, and objects of ridicule.

I’ve heard this one a hundred times, and it really drives me crazy because one of the major advantages of differentiation is that it is good and fair—to everyone!

When differentiation is working, people know where they stand. You know if you have a strong shot at a big promotion or if you need to be looking for other opportunities, inside or outside the company. Maybe some information is hard to swallow at first, and yes, “bad” news often hurts, but soon enough, like all knowledge, it’s power—in fact, it’s liberating. When you know where you stand, you can control your own destiny, and what is more fair than that?

Corollary: I’m just too nice to implement 20-70-10.

Usually, people with this complaint about differentiation assert that differentiation, as a managerial system, does not value people who add intangible things to a business, like a “feeling of family” or“humanity” or “a sense of history.”And we all know of organizations that continue to employ under performers for a long time mainly because they are really nice individuals.

I fully understand not wanting to manage out somebody nice.

But the fact is protecting under performers always backfires. First of all,by not carrying their weight, they make the pie smaller for everyone. That can cause resentment. It’s also not what you could call fair, and an unfair culture never helps a company win; it undermines trust and candor too much.

The worst thing, though, is how protecting people who don’t perform hurts the people themselves. For years, they are carried along with everyone looking the other way. At appraisals, they are vaguely told they are“great” or “doing just fine.” They are thanked for their contributions.

Then a downturn occurs, and layoffs are necessary. The “nice”under performers are almost always the first to go, and always the most surprised, because no one has ever told them the truth about their results, or lack thereof.

The awful thing is that this often happens when the underperformers are in their late forties or fifties; they’ve been carried along for most of their careers. Then suddenly, at an age when startingover can be very tough, they are out of a job with no preparation or planningand a kick in the stomach they may never get over. They feel betrayed, and theyshould.

As harsh as it may seem at first, differentiation prevents that tragedy because it is based on performance measures that really count. That’s whyI believe you are never “too nice” to implement 20-70-10, only too cowardly.

3. Differentiation pits people against one another and undermines teamwork.

Try telling that to Joe Torre!

The New York Yankees function perfectly well as a team (much to the dismay of Red Sox fans like myself, I might add) with a highly transparent system of differentiation in place. Stars are lavishly rewarded; under performers are shown the clubhouse exit. And if that’s not enough to make a system of differentiation perfectly clear, the players’ salaries are very public! You can have no doubt that differentiation is going on when some team member smake $18 million a year, and others wearing the same uniform make the MajorLeague minimum of $300,000.

And yet everyone pulls together for the team to win. Alex Rodriguez love sthe thrill of hitting a grand slam home run, but I’m sure it feels a lot better to him when the Yankees win. In July 2004, Derek Jeter made the catch o fthe year, diving into the stands and coming up with a black eye and a cut face,a photo of which graced every newspaper in New York. A  lot of the pain had to be relieved when the Yankees won, coming from behind in the thirteenth inning,in one of the great baseball games of all time.

In business, there probably would be pandemonium if companies started publishing everyone’s salary, and I’m not advocating that here. And yet, people always seem to know what their coworkers are making, don’t they? That’s why they get mad when everyone on a team gets rewarded the same way when only a few people have done the work. They feel cheated and wonder why management can’t see the obvious—that not every team member is created equal.

Differentiation rewards those members of the team who deserve it. By the way, that annoys only the under performers. To everyone else, it seems fair. And a fair environment promotes teamwork. Better yet, it motivates people to givetheir all, and that’s what you want.

4. Differentiation is possible only in the United States.

I wish I could implement it, but because of our cultural values, the people in mycountry simply won’t accept it.

I have heard this critique of differentiation since its earliest days at GE,when one of our managers explained that 20-70-10 couldn’t be implemented in Japan because in that culture politeness was valued far more than candor. Since then, I have heard the national-culture excuse from people in hundreds of companies in dozens of nations. Recently, managers in Denmark told us that their country values egalitarianism too much for differentiation to be widely accepted. We’ve heard that case made in France too. A manager at a meeting in Amsterdam told us last year that there was too much “Calvinismin Dutch bones” for the system to work in the Netherlands. I guess the manager believed all rewards come only in Heaven, if you’re chosen to get there! And in China we heard that differentiation is a long time coming because in most state-owned enterprises—still more than 50 percent of the economy despite market reforms—many of the best jobs and rewards go to the most loyal members of the party whether they are the most talented or not.

Basically, I think the excuses we hear about differentiation’s cultural obstacles are just that—excuses. At GE, we couldn’t have a company where differentiation existed only in our U.S. for differentiation and performance appraisal did in Ohio. Once we made the case we linked it to a candid system, it worked as well in Japan as it operations. First of all, we just believed too much in differentiation’s effectiveness. But we also knew that having differentiation only in the United States would have been unfair and confusing,especially for the businesses with both U.S. and global divisions, and for the people who moved around the world for us. We decided early on that we would push through differentiation everywhere we did business, dealing with whatever cultural issues that confronted us.

5. Differentiation is fine for the top 20 percent and the bottom 10 because they know where they are going. But it is enormously demotivating to the middle70 percent, who end up living in an awful kind of limbo.

Again, an element of truth in this complaint. The middle 70 percent is the hardest category to manage in differentiation. The biggest problem comes with the individuals in the top tier of the 70 percent because they know they aren’t a whole lot different from the top-20 performers, and often a whole lot better than the bottom tier of their own “guard.”And yes, that can be enervating, and sometimes talented middle-70 people leave because of it.

The silver lining to this difficult situation is that the existence of a middle 70 forces companies to manage themselves better. It forces leaders to scrutinize people more closely than they would ordinarily and to provide more consistent, candid feedback. It pushes companies to build training centers that really make a difference. For instance, before differentiation, our Crotonville, New York, training center was often used in the 1970s as a warehouse where businesses could afford to send their under performers. It wa slike a way station on the road to early retirement.

The rigor of 20-70-10 helped us change that. We turned Crotonville into a place where the top 20 and the best of the middle 70 talked about ideas,debated our approach to business, and got to know and understand one another a lot better. And since senior management spent several hours with each class, it also gave us a rough idea as to just how rigorously differentiation was being practiced in the field.

Another piece of silver lining is that while being in the middle 70 percent can be demotivating to some people, it actually revs the engines of many others. For the people in the top 20, for instance, the very existence of  amiddle 70 gives them yet another reason to pull out all the stops every day.They have to keep getting better to keep their high standing—what a rush that can be! After all, most people want to improve and grow every day.

For a lot of people in the middle 70, getting better is energizing too.Getting into the top 20 gives them a tangible goal, and having that goal make sthem work harder, think more creatively, share more ideas, and, overall, fight the good fight every day. It makes work more of a challenge and a lot more fun.

DIFFERENTIATION

I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but the world generally favors people who are energetic and extroverted. That’s also something you learn young, and it’s reinforced in school, at church, at camp, in clubs, and usually at home too.  By the time you get to work, if you are still shy and introverted and somewhat low in energy, there are professions and jobs where those characteristics are advantageous. If you know yourself, you will find them. This criticism of differentiation, which I hear now and then, is not really about differentiation, but about society’s values.

I might add that in business, energetic and extroverted people generally do better, but results speak for themselves, loud and clear. Differentiation hears them.

If you want the best people on your team, you need to face up to differentiation. I don’t know of any people management system that does it better—with more transparency, fairness, and speed. It isn’t perfect.

But differentiation, like candor, clarifies business and makes it run better in every way.

Wrapping your mind around SWR – the perfect match

Last night I was listening to a couple of guys try to wrap their minds around SWR.  Very interesting.

New hams are seemingly after “the perfect match”.  An antenna tuner will make your radio happy but it provides no improvement to the natural resonance of the antenna nor the line losses of the transmission line.

And really, is a 2:1 or 3:1 match really that bad?  At a 3:1 match (depending on line loss) with a 100W transmitter you may only lose 20 watts in reflected power.  What is the difference between 100 Watts and 80 Watts at the receiving station?

On a modern radio, 1 S-Unit is 6DB.  A doubling of power is 3 DB.  So, to move an S-Meter at a receiving station 1 S-Unit one would need to quadruple the power.  So, given this, your 3:1 SWR taking your 100 W down to 80 W is not going to make any detectable difference – as long as your tuner keeps your solid-state rig happy by fooling it into thinking SWR is 1:1

Tim “the Toolman” Taylor

As Tim “the tool man” taylor would say “more power”.  There is another option to meretriciously reducing losses – and that is “more power”.  Nothing like adding a linear to deal with losses.  Doesn’t that achieve the same end goal of getting the power out?

Those that want to “wrap their minds” around SWR -we have the “perfect match” in the resources section.

Resources

http://frrl.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/understandingswrbyexample.pdf

http://frrl.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/lowswrfortherightreasons.pdf

http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/qsl-transmission-line2.htm

http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/qsl-swr.htm

CANDOR – THE BIGGEST DIRTY LITTLE SECRET IN BUSINESS

Jack Welch,  former CEO of General Electric

I have always been a huge proponent of candor. In fact, I talked it up to GE audiences for more than twenty years. But since retiring from GE, I have come to realize that I underestimated its rarity. In fact, I would call lack of candor the biggest dirty little secret in business.

What a huge problem it is. Lack of candor basically blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got. It’s a killer.

When you’ve got candor—and you’ll never completely get it,mind you—everything just operates faster and better.

Now, when I say “lack of candor” here, I’m not talking about malevolent dishonesty. I am talking about how too many people—too often—instinctively don’t express themselves with frankness.

They don’t communicate straightforwardly or put forth ideas looking to stimulate real debate. They just don’t open up. Instead they withhold comments or criticism.

They keep their mouths shut in order to make people feel better or to avoid conflict, and they sugarcoat bad news in order to maintain appearances. They keep things to themselves, hoarding information.

That’s all lack of candor, and it’s absolutely damaging.

And yet, lack of candor permeates almost every aspect of business.

In my travels over the past few years, I have heard stories from people at hundreds of different companies who describe the complete lack of candor they experience day to day, in every type of meeting, from budget and product reviews to strategy sessions. People talk about the bureaucracy, layers,politicking, and false politeness that lack of candor spawns. They ask how they can get their companies to be places where people put their views on the table,talk about the world realistically, and debate ideas from every angle.

Most often, I hear that lack of candor is missing from performance appraisals.

In fact, I hear about that so often that I always end up asking audiences for a show of hands to the question “How many of you have received an honest, straight-between-the-eyes feedback session in the last year, where you came out knowing exactly what you have to do to improve and where you stand in the organization?”

On a good day, I get 20 percent of the hands up. Most of the time, it iscloser to 10 percent.

Interestingly, when I turn the question around and ask the audience how often they’ve given an honest, candid appraisal to their people, thenumbers don’t improve much.

Forget outside competition when your own worst enemy is the way youcommunicate with one another internally!

THE CANDOR EFFECT

Let’s look at how candor leads to winning.  There are three main ways.

First and foremost, candor gets more people in the conversation, and when you get more people in the conversation, to state the obvious, you get idea rich. By that, I mean many more ideas get surfaced, discussed, pulled apart,and improved. Instead of everyone shutting down, everyone opens up and learns.Any organization—or unit or team—that brings more people and their minds into the conversation has an immediate advantage.

Second, candor generates speed. When ideas are in everyone’s face,they can be debated rapidly, expanded and enhanced, and acted upon. That approach—surface, debate, improve, decide— isn’t just an advantage, it’s a necessity in a global marketplace. You can be sure that any upstart five-person enterprise down the street or in Shanghai or in Bangalore can move faster than you to begin with. Candor is one way to keep up.

Third, candor cuts costs—lots—although you’ll never be able to put a precise number on it. Just think of how it eliminates meaningless meetings and b.s. reports that confirm what everyone already knows. Think ofhow candor replaces fancy PowerPoint slides and mind-numbing presentations and boring off-site conclaves with real conversations, whether they’re about company strategy, a new product introduction, or someone’s performance.

Put all of its benefits and efficiencies together and you realize you justcan’t afford not to have candor.

SO WHY NOT?

Given the advantages of candor, you have to wonder, why don’t we have more of it?

Well, the problem starts young.

The facts are, we are socialized from childhood to soften bad news or to make nice about awkward subjects. That is true in every culture and in every country and in every social class. It doesn’t make any difference if you are in Iceland or Portugal, you don’t insult your mother’s cooking or call your best friend fat or tell an elderly aunt that you hated her wedding gift. You just don’t. What happened at a suburban cocktail party we attended recently is classic. Over white wine and sushi rolls, one woman standing in a cluster of five others started lamenting the horrible stress being endured by the local elementary school’s music teacher. Other guests chimed in, all agreeing that fourth-graders were enough to send you to the insane asylum. Fortunately, just before the music teacher was canonized,another guest entered the conversation, saying, “Are you guys crazy? That teacher gets fifteen weeks off a year!” She pointed to the doctor standing in the circle, who had been nodding away in agreement.“Robert,” she said, “you make life-and-death decisions everyday. Surely you don’t buy this sad story, do you?”

We are socialized from awkward subjects. Talk about killing polite chitchat. The new guest sent everyone scattering, mostly toward the bar.

CANDOR JUST UNNERVES PEOPLE

That was a light hearted example, of course, but when you try to understand candor, you are really trying to understand human nature. For hundreds of years, psychologists and social scientists have studied why people don’t say what they mean, and philosophers have been reflecting on the same subject for literally thousands of years.

A good friend of mine,Nancy Bauer,is a professor of philosophy at Tufts University. When I ask her about candor, she tells me that most philosophers have come to the same conclusions on this topic as most of us laypeople do with age and experience.

Eventually, you come to realize that people don’t speak their minds because it’s simply easier not to. When you tell it like it is, you can so easily create a mess—anger, pain, confusion,sadness, resentment. To make matters worse, you then feel compelled to clean up that mess, which can be awful and awkward and time-consuming. So you justify your lack of candor on the grounds that it prevents sadness or pain in another person, that not saying anything or telling a little white lie is the kind,decent thing to do. But in fact, Nancy says, classic philosophers like Immanuel Kant give powerful arguments for the view that not being candid is actually about self-interest—making your own life easier.

Nancy tells me that Kant had another point, too. He said that people are often strongly tempted not to be candid because they don’t look at the big picture. They worry that when they speak their minds and the news isn’t good, they stand a strong chance of alienating other people. But what they don’t see is that lack of candor is the ultimate form of alienation.“There was a huge irony in this for Kant,” Nancy says. “He believed that when people avoid candor in order to curry favor with other people, they actually destroy trust, and in that way, they ultimately erodesociety.”

I tell Nancy the same could be said about eroding business.

FROM THEN TO NOW

The make-or-break importance of candor in U.S. business is relatively new, actually. Up until the early 1980s, big companies like GE and thousands of others operated largely without it, as did most companies regardless of size.These companies were a product of the military-industrial complex that grew up after World War II. They had virtually no global competition, and, in fact,companies within industries were so similar to one another that they could often seem more collegial than competitive.

Take the steel industry. Every three years or so, union workers acrossseveral companies would demand higher pay and benefits. The steel companies would meet those demands, passing their increased costs on to the automotive industry, which would pass their increased costs on to the consumer.

It was a nice party until the Japanese arrived at the door with their average-quality, low-cost imported cars that within a few years became high-quality, low-cost cars, many of them made in nonunion U.S. factories.

But until the foreign threat spread, most American companies had very little to do with the kind of frank debate and fast action that characterizes a candid organization. They had little use for it. And so countless layers of bureaucracy and old-fashioned social codes of behavior led to a kind often forced politeness and formality throughout most organizations. There were very few overt confrontations about strategy or values; decisions were made mostly behind closed doors. And when it came to appraisals, those too were conducted with a kind of courteous remoteness. Good performers were praised,but because companies were so financially strong, poor performers could beware housed in a far-flung department or division until retirement.

Without candor, everyone saved face, and business lumbered along. The status quo was accepted. Fake behavior was just a day at the office. And people with initiative, gumption, and guts were labeled troublesome—or worse.

You would predict, perhaps, that given all its competitive advantages,candor would have made a grand entrance with the Japanese. But Japan didn’t make it happen, nor did Ireland, Mexico, India, or China, to name a few of the big hitters in the global marketplace today. Instead, most companies have fought global competition through more conventional means:layoffs, drastic cost reductions, and in the best cases, with innovation.

Candor, while inching its way in, still remains a very small part of the arsenal.

IT CAN BE DONE

Now for the really bad news. Even though candor is vital to winning, it is hard and time-consuming to instill in any group, no matter what size.

Hard because you are fighting human nature and entrenched organizational behaviors, and time-consuming, as in years and years. At GE, it took us close to a decade to use candor as a matter of course, and it was by no means universal after twenty.

Still it can be done. There is nothing scientific about the process. To get candor, you reward it, praise it, and talk about it. You make public heroes outof people who demonstrate it. Most of all, you yourself demonstrate it in anexuberant and even exaggerated way—even when you’re not the boss.

Imagine yourself for a second at a meeting where the subject is growth and how to get it at an old-line division. Everyone is sitting around the table,civilly talking about how hard it is to win in this particular market or industry. They discuss the tough competition. They surface the same old reasons why they can’t grow and why they are actually doing well in this environment. In fact, by the time the meeting ends, they’ve managed topat themselves on the back for the “success” they’ve enjoyed“under the circumstances.”

Inside your head, you’re about ready to burst, as you tel lour-self, “Here we go again.I know Bob and Mary across the room feel the same way I do—the complacency around here is killing us.”

Outside, all three of you are playing the game. You’re nodding.

Now imagine an environment where you take responsibility for candor. You, Bob, or Mary would ask questions like:

“Isn’t there a new product or service idea in this business somewhere that we just haven’t thought of yet?”

“Can we jump-start this business with an acquisition?”

“This business is taking up so many resources. Why don’t we get the hell out of it?”

What a different meeting!  What a lot more fun, and how much better for everyone.

Another situation that happens all the time is a high-growth business with a self-satisfied crowd managing it. You know the scene at the long-range planning meeting. The managers show up with double-digit growth—say 15 percent—and pound out slide after slide showing how well they are doing.  Top management nods their approval, but you’re sitting there knowing there’s a lot more juice in that business. To compound matters,the people presenting the slides are peers of yours, and there’s that age-old code hanging in the air: if you don’t challenge mine, Iwon’t challenge yours.

Frankly, the only way I know of to get out of this bind—and introduce candor—is to poke around in a nonthreatening way:

“Jeez, you’re good. What a terrific job. This is the best business we’ve got. Why not put more resources into it and go for more?”

“With the great team you’ve put in place, there must be ten acquisitions out there for you. Have you looked globally?”

Those questions, and others like them, have the power to change the meeting from a self-congratulatory parade to a stimulating working session.

TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

Now, you may be thinking, I can’t raise those questions because I don’t want to look like a jerk. I want to be a team player.

It is true that candid comments definitely freak people out at first. In fact, the more polite or bureaucratic or formal your organization, the more your candor will scare and upset people, and, yes, it could kill you.

That’s a risk,and only you can decide if you’re willing to take it.

Needless to say, you’ll have an easier time of installing candor in your organization if you are closer to the top. But don’t blame your boss or the CEO if your company lacks candor—open dialogue can start anywhere.  I was speaking my mind when I had four employees at Noryl, the smallest, newest unit of a hierarchical company that had a very dim view of straight talk.

It is true that candid comments definitely freak people out at first.

My bosses cautioned me about my candor. Now my GE career is over, and I’m telling you that it was my candor that helped make it work.  I was too young and politically clueless to notice at the time, but I was covered because our business was growing by leaps and bounds.

If we had the guts to be candid, it didn’t feel that way at the time—we didn’t know enough to know what candor was. It just felt natural to us to speak openly, argue and debate, and get things to happen fast.If we were anything, it was crazily competitive.

Every time I got promoted, the first cycle of reviews—be it budgets or appraisals—was often awkward and unpleasant. Most of the new team I was managing wasn’t used to wide-open discussions about everything and anything. For example, we’d be talking about a direct report at a personnel review, and in conversation, we would agree that the guy was really awful. His written appraisal, however, made him look like a prince. When I challenged the phoniness, I’d hear, “Yeah, yeah, but why would we ever put that in writing?”

I’d explain why, making the case for candor.

By the next review,we’d already be seeing candor’s positive impact with a better team in place, and with each successive cycle, more and more people made candor’s case with me.

Still, it wasn’t like I was singing with the whole chorus.

From the day I joined GE to the day I was named CEO, twenty years later, my bosses cautioned me about my candor. I was labeled abrasive and consistently warned that my candor would soon get in the way of my career.

Now my GE career is over, and I’m telling you that it was candor that helped make it work. So many more people got into the game, so many voices, so much energy. We gave it to one another straight, and each of us was better for it.

It’s really very simple—candor works because candor unclutters.

Yes, yes, everyone agrees that candor is against human nature. So is waking up at five in the morning for the 6:10 train every day. So is eating lunch at your desk so you won’t miss an important meeting at one. But for the sake of your team or your organization, you do a lot of things that aren’t easy. The good thing about candor is that it’s an unnatural act that is more than worth it.

It is impossible to imagine a world where everyone goes around saying what they really think all the time. And you probably wouldn’t want it anyway—too much information! But even if we get halfway there, lack of candor won’t be the biggest dirty little secret in business anymore.

It will be its biggest change for the better.

Managing Your Career – When IQ and Expertise are not enough

Or, why you need Emotional Intelligence to get ahead

The natural career progression

There is a natural progression in one’s career.

Generally, one starts out as a Individual Contributor, moves to Manager, and then to Leader.

From Self to Team to Organization

The transition along the continuum from Individual Contributor to Leader is a move of the focus of self to team to organization.

As an Individual Contributor one works on individual tasks and projects – it’s basically a solo effort; the focus is on self.  A key differentiator between an Individual Contributor and a Manager is the ability to delegate .  A successful Individual Contribution is measured by personal achievement and successful completion of individual tasks assigned by someone else.  A successful manager is measured by the success of the team.  Leaders are measured on the success of their organizations.

From Today to Fiscal Year to the next 5 years.

The transition along the continuum from Individual Contributor to Leader is a movement of focus of longer and longer time-frames and from tactical to strategic.

An Individual Contributor works on tasks in a time-frame of today, tomorrow, and the next day – tactical.  Managers focus on time-frames of this quarter, next quarter, and this fiscal year – tactical.  Leaders focus on direction setting for next year, three years from now, and perhaps five years from now – strategic.

Are the traditional transitions similar to this enough to get you to the CxO positions in major corporations?

IQ and Expertise is not enough

In 1995, a researcher Daniel Goleman wrote this:

I have had to wait till now before the scientific harvest was full enough to write this book.  These insights are so late in coming largely because the place of feeling in mental life has been surprisingly slighted by research over the years, leaving the emotions a largely unexplored continent for scientific psychology…

… What factors are at play, for example, when people of high IQ flounder and those with modest IQ do surprisingly well?

I would argue that the difference quite often lies in the abilities called here emotional intelligence…

Goleman and others did a ton of empirical research to find out what differentiates star performers from average or mediocre performers in a variety of organizations.

In recent years, we have analyzed data from close to 500 competence models from global companies (including the likes of IBM, Lucent, PepsiCo, British Airways, and Credit Suisse First Boston), as well as from healthcare organizations, academic institutions, government agencies, and even a religious order.

To determine which personal capabilities drove outstanding performance within these organizations, we grouped capabilities into three categories: purely technical skills such as accounting or business planning; cognitive abilities such as analytic reasoning; and traits showing emotional intelligence, such as self-awareness and relationship skill.

To create some of the competency models, psychologists typically asked senior managers at the companies to identify the competencies that distinguished the organization’s most outstanding leaders, seeking consensus from an “expert panel.”

Others used a more rigorous method in which analysts asked senior managers to use objective criteria, such as a division’s profitability, to distinguish the star performers at senior levels within their organizations from the average ones. Those individuals were then extensively interviewed and tested, and their competencies were methodically compared to identify those that distinguished star performers.

Whichever method was used, this process resulted in lists of ingredients for highly effective leaders. The lists usually ranged in length from a handful to up to fifteen or so competencies, such as initiative, collaboration, and empathy.

Analyzing all the data from hundreds of competence models yielded dramatic results. To be sure, intellect was to some extent a driver of outstanding performance; cognitive skills such as bigpicture thinking and long-term vision were particularly important.

But calculating the ratio of technical skills and purely cognitive abilities (some of which are surrogates for aspects of intelligence quotient, or IQ) to emotional intelligence in the ingredients that distinguished outstanding leaders revealed that EI-based competencies played an increasingly important role at higher levels of organizations, where differences in technical skills are of negligible importance.

In other words, the higher the rank of those considered star performers, the more EI competencies emerged as the reason for their effectiveness.

When the comparison matched star performers against average ones in senior leadership positions, about 85 percent of the difference in their profiles was attributable to emotional intelligence factors rather than to purely cognitive abilities like technical expertise.

Emotional Intelligence is 85% of the difference for star performers

The key takeaway from Goleman’s work is this:

“When the comparison matched star performers against average ones in senior leadership positions, about 85 percent of the difference in their profiles was attributable to emotional intelligence factors rather than to purely cognitive abilities like technical expertise.”

Goleman’s empirical research has raised the awareness in the corporate world of ones “personal psychological attributes” (Emotional Intelligence) and how they affect (or predicts) performance to the point that EI is included in leadership training programs and is made an element for the basis of career advancement decisions.  Goleman holds that EI can be taught.  I am not sure I fully agree with that.

Managers and Executives that derailed their careers

There are many studies of why people derail in their careers – Check out our posting – How not to derail you corporate of organizational career

Along the dimensions of Emotional Intelligence, based on research cited by Golman, these are the reasons why people derail their careers:

1. Self-Control. Those who derailed handled pressure poorly and were prone to angry outbursts.  The successful stayed composed under stress, remaining calm and confident – and dependable  – in the heat of crisis.
2. Conscientiousness. The derailed group reacted to failure and criticism defensively – denying, covering up, or passing on the blame.  The successful took responsibility by admitting their mistakes and failures, taking action to fix the problems, and moving on without ruminating about their lapse.
3. Trustworthiness.  The failures typically were over ambitious, too ready to get ahead at the expense of other people.  The successes had high integrity, with a strong concern for the needs of their subordinates and colleagues, and for the demands of the task at hand, giving these higher priority then impressing their own boss at any cost.
4. Social Skills. The failures lacked empathy an sensitivity, and so were often abrasive, arrogant, or given to intimidation of subordinates.  While some where charming on occasion, the charm was purely manipulative.  The successes were empathic and sensitive showing tact and consideration in their dealings with everyone, superiors and subordinates alike.
5. Building bonds and leveraging diversity. The insensitivity and manipulative manner of the failed group meant that they failed to build a strong network of cooperative, mutually beneficial relationships.  The successes were more appreciative of diversity, able to get along with people of all kinds.

Conclusion

So how do people move from Individual Contributor to Manager to Leader in Corporate America?  Well, it’s a number of transitional stages.  You can read our posting on the The Leadership Pipeline to get a generic model and framework that is prevalent in many companies.

But, don’t underestimate how much your Emotional Intelligence will count in promotion and career advancement decisions.  Research shows that the higher you get in an organization the more Emotional Intelligence will matter more than technical and cognitive abilities.

Resources

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Emotional Intelligence – The Competencies:

PERSONAL COMPETENCE

SELF-AWARENESS

1. Emotional Awareness– People with this competence:
Know which emotions they are feeling and why
Realize the links between their feelings and what they think and say
Recognize how their feelings affect their performance
Have a guiding awareness of their values and goals
2. Accurate Self-Assessment — People with this competence:
   Are aware of their strengths and weaknesses
   Reflective, learning from experience
   Open to candid feedback, new perspectives, continuous learning, and self-development
   Able to show a sense of humor and perspective about themselves
   BLIND SPOTS: Blind Ambition-need to win or be right at any cost
   Unrealistic Goals- sets overly ambitious, unattainable goals for group
   Relentless Striving- compulsively hardworking at expense of all else, vulnerable to burnout
   Drives Others-pushes others too hard, takes over instead of delegating
   Power Hungry- seeks power for own reason rather than for company
   Insatiable need for recognition- addicted to glory-takes credit for other’s work and blames them for mistakes
   Preoccupation with Appearance-needs to look good at all costs-craves material trappings
   Need to seem perfect-enraged by or rejects criticism, can’t admit mistakes
3. Self Confidence –People with this competence:
   Present themselves with self-assurance; have “presence”
   Can voice views that are unpopular and go out on a limb for what is right
   Are decisive, able to make sound decisions despite uncertainties and pressures

SELF-REGULATION

1. Self-control –People with this competency:
   Manage their impulsive feelings and distressing emotions well
   Stay composed, positive and unflappable even in trying moments
   Think clearly and stay focused under pressure
2. Trustworthiness and conscientiousness –People with this competency:
   Trustworthiness--Act ethically and are above reproach
   Build trust through their reliability and authenticity
   Admit their own mistakes and confront unethical actions in others
   Take tough, principled stands even if they are unpopular
   Conscientiousness –Meet commitments and keep promises
   Hold themselves accountable for meeting their objectives
   Are organized and careful in their work
3. Innovation and Adaptability –People with this competency:
   Innovation – Seek out fresh ideas from a wide variety of sources
   Entertain original solutions to problems
   Generate new ideas
   take fresh perspectives and risks in their thinking
   Adaptability – Smoothly handle multiple demands, shifting priorities, and rapid change
   Adapt thier responses and tactics to fit fluid circumstances
   Are flexible in how they see events

MOTIVATION

1. Achievement Drive –People with this competency:
   Are results-oriented, with a high drive to meet their objectives and standards
   Set challenging goals and take calculated risks
   Pursue information to reduce uncertainty and find ways to do things better
   Learn how to improve their performance
2. Commitment –People with this competency:
   Readily make sacrifices to meet a larger organizational goal
   Find a sense of purpose in the larger mission
   Use the group’s core values in making decisions and clarifying choices
   Actively seek out opportunities to fulfill the group’s mission
3. Initiative and Optimism –People with this competency:
   Initiative: Are ready to seize opportunities
   Pursue goals beyond what’s required or expected of them
   Cut through red tape and bend the rules when necessary to get the job done
   Mobilize others through unusual, enterprising efforts
   Optimism: Persist in seeking goals despite obstacles and setbacks
   Operate from hope of success rather than fear of failure
   See setbacks as due to manageable circumstance rather than personal flaw

SOCIAL COMPETENCE

EMPATHY

1. Understanding Others –People with this competency:
   Are attentive to emotional cues and listen well
   Show sensitivity and understand others’ perspectives
   Help out based on understanding other people’s needs and feelings
2. Developing Others –People with this competency:
   Acknowledge and reward people’s strengths and accomplishments
   Offer useful feedback and identify people’s needs for further growth
   Mentor, give timely coaching, and offer assignments that challenge and foster a person’s skills
3. Service Orientation –People with this competency:
   Understand customers/clients needs and math them to services of products
   Seek ways to increase customers’ satisfaction and loyalty
   Gladly offer appropriate assistance
   Grasp a customer’s perspective, acting as a trusted advisor
4. Leveraging Diversity –People with this competency:
   Respect and relate well to people from varied backgrounds
   Understand diverse worldviews and are sensitive to group differences
   See diversity as opportunity, creating an environment where diverse people can thrive
   Challenge bias and intolerance
5. Political Awareness –People with this competency:
   Accurately read key power relationships
   Detect crucial social networks
   Understand the forces that shape views and actions of clients, customers, or competitors
   Accurately read organizational and external realities

SOCIAL SKILLS

1. Influence –People with this competency:
   Are skilled at winning people over
   Fine-tune presentations to appeal to the listener
   Use complex strategies like indirect influence to build consensus and support
   Orchestrate dramatic events to effectively make a point
2. Communication –People with this competence
   Are effective in give-and-take, registering emotional cues in attuning their message
   Deal with difficult issues straightforwardly
   Listen well, seek mutual understanding, and welcome sharing of information fully
   Foster open communication and stay receptive to bad news as well as good
3. Conflict Management –People with this competency:
   Handle difficult people and tense situations with diplomacy and tact
   Spot potential conflict, bring disagreements into the open and help to de-escalate
   Encourage debate and open discussion
   Orchestrate win-win solutions
4. Leadership –People with this competency:
   Articulate and arouse enthusiasm for a shared vision and mission
   Step forward to lead as needed, regardless of poeition
   Guide the performance of others while holding them accountable
   Lead by example
5. Change Catalyst –People with this competency:
   Recognize the need to change and remove barriers
   Challenge the status quo to acknowledge the need for change
   Champion the change and enlist others in its pursuit
   Model the change expected of others
6. Building Bonds –People with this competency:
   Cultivate and maintain extensize informal networks
   Seek out relationships that are mutually beneficial
   Build rapport and keep others in the loop
   Make and maintain personal friendships among work associates
7. Collaboration and Cooperation –People with this competency:
   Balance a focus on task with attention to relationships
   Collaborate, sharing plans, information and resources
   Promote a friendly, coooperative climate
   Spot and nurture opportunities for collaboration
8. Team Capabilities –People with this competency:
   Model team qualities like respect, helpfulness, and cooperation
   Draw all members into active and enthusiastic participation
   Build team identity, esprit de corps, and commitment
   Protect the group and its reputation, share credit

Julian G4ILO comments on his blog about an article called “I’ve got my hobby back” and subtitled “CQ100 is an option for hams that can’t get on the bands” published by none other than the ARRL. Pardon me he says, but I thought the first “R” in ARRL stood for “Radio.” By encouraging the idea that unless you can put up outside antennas you’d be better off playing fake ham radio on the Internet the ARRL is doing the entire hobby a disservice. Let’s hope the government agencies don’t get wind of this or someone may start to wonder why we need all that valuable spectrum space at all.

Julian seems to have walked firmly up to the hornet’s nest and given it a damn good kicking and I must say I agree with him 100%. There is nothing wrong with CQ100 but the way the thing work is all a bit silly.

I have heard one or two regular nets using it (or something similar) on 80m when the band was a bit dead to keep those on the reception fringes in the loop and I have heard stations come on to 20m who arranged a hook up over either CQ100 or Echolink so these services do have their place in real radio too.

If you think that maybe you might one day hook up and get into an interesting QSO with a DX station that you might never hear again. These VOIP services give us the chance to finish a conversation that was lost to fading signals.

Personally I have only ever bothered with Echolink for the purpose of listening in to distant repeaters when things are quiet on the ten or so bands I usually monitor. At least that does not have a daft radio style interface and most users don’t pretend they are on the radio when the make a direct link.

I occasionally rant on about how repeaters are not real radio and often I am using a repeater at the time, it can be fun. It usually happens when some idiot tells me I am 5/9 – Duh! No the repeater is 5/9.

The truth is real radio or not repeaters and VOIP can be fun and the whole idea of any hobby is to enjoy ourselves. What worries me more is the divide and conquer syndrome; There so many different aspects to amateur radio that we become thin on the ground as we all practice our personal areas of interest. If we lose some to Echolink, some to CQ100 and some to D-Star etcetera soon the bands will start becoming a desert like 23cms. You at one time used to struggle to find a space on two metres on either FM or SSB in my area now you struggle to find a contact.

Join us for SKYWARN Recognition Day

The Huntsville Alabama, National Weather Service Forecast Office will be participating in the 2009 SKYWARN Recognition Day. This event started by the National Weather Service and the American Radio Relay League, celebrates contributions to public safety made by volunteer SKYWARN participants.

During this event, SKYWARN operators at NWS offices around the nation make contact with amateur radio operators nationally and around the world. Contact will be attempted with as many participating NWS offices as possible via amateur radio. We will operate under our call sign – WX4HUN.

Please read the full article on their web site …
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=hun&storyid=42812&source=0

This could be a great opportunity for some of us to get to know their station better, as well as for them to get to know some of us better…

If nothing else we should all try to check in and make some contacts for them.
Thanks /;^)