How to get real productivity? Do it right the first time!

This past week, I just took notice of the amount of time that my wife and I spend following up, chasing down mistakes and trying to have them corrected, listening on the phone to on-hold music as we waited for a customer service representative, or their supervisor when we couldn't get the issue resolved. My wife talks about how she loses hours and hours a week just correcting what other people haven't done right in their jobs, and when watching her, she is right. This past week, I took on some of these items and I found a pool guy who didn't come this week, but unless we report it, we will get charged for the visit, which means a preemptive phone call from me and us watching the bill next month. A waiting for a repairman who never showed and then called three days later to schedule something this week instead of last. Dealing with UPS who decided to not deliver a package on time that I needed and having to chase that down, and now wait for the refund and if I don't get it then have to follow up in ten days to ensure that it goes through. Chase down, figure out what is wrong, find out that someone didn't do their job right or thoroughly and take our time to get it all right. I imagine a world where everyone did their work right the first time, there was a belief that customer service was not perfect unless they never had to be called. How different things would be! I suspect that if we could attack this level of productivity loss that we would not only see a big pick up in our ability to manufacture more efficiently, but we would also return to a place where consumers trusted and believed in products. That in itself could impact consumer confidence. It is time to look at this problem. It starts with CEO's and Boards honoring their consumers and customers with a commitment to get it right the first time!

What Has Happened to U.S.?

In the past two weeks we have seen two instances that has made we wonder, "what has happened to us?" First, the President of the United States takes time out of his schedule to speak directly to he kids in our schools about the importance of education, hard work, and focus. And what do we get? We get school districts and parents who politicize the issue and deny their children the opportunity to hear the President deliver a message that could be the one that shapes and motivates their education and eventual career decisions. Don't we want every child in America to sit at their first grade desk knowing with all of their heart that they could someday be the President of they put their hearts and mind to it? So, what is the message we are sending when we keep our children from being exposed to the President? I don't care if you agree with the politics of the President or not, he is the President of the United States and he is owed and has earned, if only through obtaining the office, the respect that when he speaks, we should stop what we are doing and listen. I am far from being a person who has agreed with any President on all things but regardless of their foibles and positions, if my President speaks and/or calls on me, then I listen and respond. A week later we have an elected Congressman, Joe Wilson, from South Carolina, yelling out "You Lie!" in the middle of the President's joint session of Congress. When I heard it live, I thought I had misheard. I rolled back the TIVO and there it was. In that moment, I felt sorry for our country and was just as embarrassed and ashamed for Mr. Wilson. To hear people later support his outburst only hurt more. We are not a government where we call for lack of confidence votes. We have a President, like him/her or not, for four years and it is our responsibility to not always agree, but to support and do what we can to make things better. Calling our President a liar, or denying him access to children, is not constructive in any shape or form. So, tonight I wonder what has happened to us, what has happened to our U.S.?

Where The Jobs Are...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the percent of labor change from December 2007 through June of 2009. The problem with the numbers are the trends and the messages inside the data. The shrinking sectors are dominated by loss of jobs in manufacturing, building and production. All the areas where we "make" anything have been decimated and my belief is that those jobs are gone and not coming back. The auto industry has lost 35% of their jobs from the production of auto vehicles and parts. Do any of us believe those jobs are going to come back? When we start building cars again, the hope is that we will do so with greater efficiency and productivity, which in itself will keep the jobs from coming back. The bigger alarm in the data is the growing sectors being led by home and health care services (+8.6%), oil and gas extraction (+8.6%), Federal Government, except the US Postal Service (+6.5%), Ambulatory health care services (+4.8%), and offices of physicians (+4.1%). This just can't be right. We are gaining and creating jobs in the areas that are the ones that we are already bloated and trying to get back under control; health care, non-renewable energy, and government (read deficit and out of control budgets). This seems to be the worst of the worst, losing jobs where we need to be competitive and creating GNP and instead adding jobs into service and sectors where the cost of doing business is already strangling us. Add more healthcare jobs without understanding efficiencies and it will only take longer to dismantle the problems. I have supported larger government where I felt it was important to meet the needs of those who cannot (truly) take care of themselves. But, an inability to manage costs is not a good enough excuse to add more wood on the woodpile. We better hope that we we see the BLS chart flip upside down in the next 5 years or what was bad will become catastrophic.

When There Were Three..

Last night I watched CBS' tribute to Walter Cronkite. Not only did it remind me of how fast time and technology has moved but it also brought back many emotions from when I was a boy and my Father would gather my brother and me around the TV each night to watch the news together. My Father was in radio and television and we not only got the lessons of what was happening in current affairs but also we were instructed on how to ensure that our southern Indiana twang was eliminated so that we had the same accent as Mr. Cronkite. He represented the middle of the country without having to say that he was from there. With no accent at all he made everyone feel comfortable. It became ritual in our house to be at the TV when he broadcasted. Long before he retired we would handicap who would take his place; which seemed at that time nearly impossible to imagine. Would it be Eric Severeid (too old), Roger Mudd (too stiff), Dan Rather (too much of a field reporter, not an anchor). These were our conversations as we as listened for the nightly body count coming back from Vietnam and wrestled with the messages coming from the anti-war movement and later the Watergate trials. It seemed that we could not trust government so we trusted the media. There were only three people to trust after all and one of them garnered the most trust of all. This was when journalism had a code and you had to report, discern, write and justify to be able to say something. And so, Walter Cronkite became the one person we all could trust. It will never be that way again. There are too many talking heads and anyone can write anything they want and countermand enough to cast doubt on what anyone says. I am sure that there are those now who trust the government more than they trust the media. Scary. Walter Cronkite set a standard to gain his trust. He did this on the shoulders of Edgar R. Murrow and others before him. Today, few have a reason to stand on the shoulders of Walter. The nightly news is not watched by many and the soundbites that we receive are so far from the whole truth that we believe little of what we hear anyway. When there were three I know we didn't get the whole story and I know we didn't see the whole picture. But when there were three we sat at our televisions together and watched and discussed the news as a family and those memories will always make me have positive memories of Walter Cronkite.

Nice To Do's Have To Stop

Late last year and earlier this year we read many accounts of the financial institutions who had received TARP funding, then sending their employees off on what appeared to be unnecessary boondoggle trips. In particular, AIG got slaughtered in the public perception because of an incentive reward trip for their salespeople who exceeded plan. As we all know, perception is reality for many so these things must be managed. But, I do find it curious that from the President on down we point our fingers at what we perceive to be frivolous private sector spending while we spend the taxpayer’s money on all kinds of programs that don’t seem to make sense. When you work inside of a company and you aren’t going to meet your financial plan, you begin cutting costs quickly and you kill unnecessary spending and expenditures. The government doesn’t do this. Today I read about the problems with recent space launch. Since we have gone into this recession I have watched multiple space shuttle launches occur. Can someone please tell me why when we are hemorrhaging money and reaching a trillion dollar deficit that we are continuing to launch the space shuttle? Is it because these space missions are instrumental in solving our priority problems; the economy, education, energy and healthcare? The government needs to start being practical and making some practical decisions that any of us would make if we were running our own business or household finances. We have to be willing to have the courage and resolve to tell the kids that we can’t go to Space Mountain this year, because we just can’t afford it. C’mon Congress. C’mon Mr. President. Let’s be practical for once and put away the impracticalities of launching space missions when we don’t have the money to do so. It’s a nice to do, not a have to do and we can’t afford the nice to do’s….at least not right now.

In Our Time...1933, 1954, or 2009?

As we were going through some of my Father-in-Law, Aldo Preti's belongings, I ran across his college yearbook from Fordham University; "The Maroon", circa 1954. For fun I thought I would read what the college aged editors had to say about what was happening in the world at that time and how they saw themselves fitting into society. These were the children born in the 1920's growing up in the Great Depression and they wrote about what they had seen in their lifetimes...so far. I quote from, "In Our Time" by Maurice R. Berube and John J. Oldfield:

"In the land where the business of government was business, the failure at Wall Street cut short the the wildest spree upon which America had embarked. The boom had busted, flaming youth flickered out and the Great Depression ushered in the Big Hangover. 'For the first time in history', Will Rogers, remarked, 'a nation had the distinction of going to the poorhouse in an automobile'.

-Roosevelt Inaugurated-

The year 1933 marked the beginning of a new era in the growing up of America. The nation for the past four years had suffered the worst peace time catastrophe in its history. The soup line saw the demise of the Republican Party's twelve year rule and the Democrats installed their first President since Wilson. In March 4, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated 32nd President of the United States, and he boldly announced that the only thin America need fear was fear itself.

The soaring rate of unemployment was met by the new Administration with rapid and drastic measures. Forty-eight hours after Roosevelt's inauguration, Congress enacted in its famous 'hundred-day' session to enact far-reaching social and economic reforms. Countless relief agencies and statutes were created to offset the dark shadow of of peril and panic...the W.P.A...P.W.A....T.V.A....C.C.C....A.A.A....N.R.A....gave rise to a new type of 'alphabetical government'.

-The New Deal-

Roosevelt's regime undertook a program of economic planning which it preferred not to call a revolution but a new deal. As Mark Twain had pointed out in the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 'When six men out of a thousand crack the whip over the other fellows' backs, then what the other nine hundred and ninety-four dupes need is a new deal."

Roosevelt's three 'R's", Relief, Recovery and Reform, took the form of subsidies, guaranties, public works, encouragement of labor unions, and deficit spending. In the planned economy was a new concept which superseded the Jacksonian principle of governmental non-intervention in business. Highly experimental, the New Deal was bound to be controversial. Its harsher critics confused it with Socialism.

About the only thing that drew no fire was the repeal of prohibition. The progression of the New Deal met with with the violent opposition of such extreme programs as the Townsend Plan and Upton Sinclair's Epic Plan.

Amidst the horde of new prophets, the raucous voice of Huey Long was the loudest, with his "Share the Wealth: plan. The immense popularity that the dictator-like Long commanded indicated the desperation of the American people....The Louisiana Kingfish was removed as a threat to democracy by an assassin's bullet on September 8, 1935.

-Returned by a Landslide-

The New Deal retained the public's approval as evidenced by the resounding Rooseveltian victory of 1936 over the Republican's colorless Alf Landon of Kansas. 'Life, Liberty, and Landon' won only two states in the election, prompting James Farley's celebrated comment, 'As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.'

The severest critics of Roosevelt reform work were 'the nine old men in the ivory tower of the Supreme Court', as the president saw them, who systematically nullified the liberal legislation of the New Deal's first phase. Believing he had a mandate from the people in the election of 1936, Roosevelt promptly set about to countermand the court's behavior by championing his famed and most controversial proposal to date...'the court-packing plan.' The proposal lacked Congressional support. The court, nevertheless, was to heed political tradewinds and reverse its stand. The NRA was perhaps the most important law junked by the Court, but it reappeared substantially in the Wagner Act of 1935, which protected the worker's right to organize. Encouraged by the government and stimulated by hard times, the stock of organized labor prospered both in membership and influence. under the leadership of a bushy-browed Pennsylvanian, John L. Lewis, the C.I.O. was created for unskilled workers in mass production industries. It rivaled its parent, the A.F. of L. in membership.

-Social Consciousness-

It was only natural then, for the flavor of the American life in the thirties to be hued with a deep-felt social consciousness...the legitimate offspring of the depression. The credo of such rising young intellectuals as William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, John Steinbeck, James T. Ferrell, and Clifford Odets embodied this acute social sense. Steinbeck's, 'Grapes of Wrath', dealing with the 'Okies' hard-hit by the Dust Bowl, produced a tremor which paved the way for relief. Caldwell's 'Tobacco Road', a novel concerning the depravity and squalor that characterized poor economic conditions, was so popular that its dramatization smashed the previous record for long engagements set by 'Abie's Irish Rose' in the twenties. Even Tin Pan Alley was impressed by the 'forgotten' man's burden and spoofed depression blues with such tunes as 'Brother, Can You Spare a Dime, In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town, and Hallelujah, I'm a Bum."

- Economic Security a Goal -

Hollywood mass produced the gangster film which implied that crime as a by-product of slum conditions. The depression brought home the fact that, in a complex interdependent society, there was need for economic effort. 'No man can go it alone' says Ernest Hemingway's hero in 'To Have and Have Not.'

There was no corner of life in America that did not feel the ramifications of economic wretchedness. Our generation, not yet of the age of reason, saw our parents stamp in our minds the moral that the bluebird of happiness was to be found in economic security.

Although our parents were somber, Hollywood diverted then with Greta Garbo and Clark Gable, while we discovered pert little Shirley Temple, the new edition of America's sweetheart....

...The Great Depression considerably altered the pattern of American life bu forging an indelible imprint on the American psyche. Everyone was socially conscious, and more significantly placed economic security as the Holy Grail to be sought. The instability of our economy ingrained in young America's mind the idea that the only thing to be feared was not fear but future economic collapse."

If you read this far, you should have been struck by the similarities of their time and our time. Does history truly repeat itself? It sure appears to do so.

Post script: Maurice R Berube went on to be a Professor at Old Dominion and an author of nine books. John J. Oldfield became the Vicar of St. John's Church in the Bronx and authored one book.

Look Down...The Moving Sidewalk Is About To End

These past few months have been about spending time with my wife's family as her Father, Aldo Preti, went through a nearly year-long terminal illness and died this past Saturday morning. We bury him today in St. Raymond's cemetery within 10 blocks of the same place he was born, raised, lived his entire life and died. In this day and age, it is a remarkable thing to see this level of consistency and continuity in their lives. As I reach the age where grandparents are gone, some long gone, and parents are now dying, I am reminded of my own mortality and the precious moments that I have that can so easily be taken from me. As I was flying back to NYC this past week after a quick flight home to SFO, I was on a moving sidewalk at JFK and I heard the words of the automated voice speaking to me; "Look down, the moving sidewalk is about to end". As I slowed my step and made sure that I was balanced, I looked down and found that the moving sidewalk was not really ending, but it was surely ending for me. The metaphor of life and death was right there in front of me, and of all places at JFK. I was reminded how important it is to take the time and look down to be sure that relationships are secure and strong, that commitments are steadfast, that friendships are consistent and dependable, that loved ones know that they are loved, that hugs and kisses are plentiful and come with ease, that God is never more than my silent prayer away, that moments, actions and words are deliberate and thought through before taken or spoken, that my mind is open enough for the recognition of beauty, art and emotions of the moment. That today I am making the most of the time I have left on the moving sidewalk of life before it ends for me.