Monthly Archives: November 2016

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Organizational Behavior

Leave a comment

Regardless of type (e.g., charitable, corporate, social, government, etc.) organizations all share a set of common traits.  These influence the way the organizations members behave.

Heirarchy

This always exists in some form.  The structure could be pyramidical (most common) or relatively flat with shared authority and accountabilities.

The details of organization vary depending on type but ultimately there are rankings of authority (leaders, managers) and various other member levels.

Overall the relationships and authorities associated with the organizations members are defined .  This may be crystal clear or vague, either way, whether strictly defined or loosley defined a structure will exist.

Culture

The organizations leaders and managers, those recognized to have greater power, together with the organizations stated goals and objectives set the tone for how the members behave.

The Individuals

The organizational culture is further influenced by the capabilities and personalities of the entire membership of the organization.

Group Behaviour

The combination of the influences of the heirarchy (leadership structure, cultural and individual members personal traits) dictates the basic overall personality of the group (i.e, the group behaviour)

This ultimately impacts the organizations effectiveness.

When the combinations of structure, culture and individuality gel effectively, typically the organization itself over achieves. A key point here is no one factor alone can influence success.

For example having  effective leadership or an open and vibrant culture or a group of individual super people alone does not necessarily make for greatness.

Real success lies in the balance and integrated combination of all the above factors playing off each other like an orchestra.

Typically great leaders, skilled resoures or a stellar environment alone will not succeed unless the balance exists that binds them  and enables them to work seemlessly in concert.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Might makes Right

Leave a comment

My quote of the day calendar yesterday, had an excerpt of this  quote :

“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it”  – Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States.

This quote is taken from Lincoln’s Cooper Union address of 1860, three months before he was nominated as the Republican candidate for the Presidency.

Anti-Slavery

The speech was an emotionally powerful statement against the expansion of slavery, supported by well reasoned argument and logic.

My quote calendar simply stated “Right makes Might” attributed to Abraham Lincoln.  Taken out of context, that is removed from the surrounding sentence and associated goal of the full speech , I struggled to associate this phrase with a great leader like Lincoln.

Fortunately, research into the context gave me a different perspective and all made sense.  I was reminded how important both context and perspective are to assisting with interpreting spoken and written communications.

Historically I would view Lincoln as a collaberative leader who sought consensus.  Reversing the standard “Might makes Right”  which is an arrogant and self righteous proclamation,  is nothing short of brilliant.

Arrogant and Self Righteous -Not

In the context of a reasoned treatise on the evils of slavery, this statement fits for me.  While a bully might believe “Might makes Right” the reverse “Right makes Might”  is clearly more about standing behind your ideals than forcing your will on others.

This is all about using the power of “right” to make positive change.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Attention to the Details

Leave a comment

In todays digital world a high volume of communication is conducted through some form of digital messaging.  From e-mail, text messaging to video conferences we are bombarded with communication.

While I don’t pine for the days of paper documents and snail mail, the high volume of digital communications  resulting from the ease of transmission impacts the quality of responses.

Often, it is apparent from the response the message was only skimmed.  The recipients, many forging through hundreds of email messages each day, regulary reply without correctly addressing the question or issued raised.

On a number of occassions I am convinced the response, although in good faith, was based on very quick assumptions.  Bypassing the detail in the original communication, for reason of haste and efficiency just result in more digital messages.

A sense of Urgency

Snail mail and related communication forms typically do not have the same percieved urgency associated with them because the time to deliver and return the message is varible ( that is the transit time).

Expectations for speedy postal mail reponses, or even internal paper mail are not the same as that for email or instant messaging where it is possible to get almost instaneous response.

Volume and Percieved Urgency Impacts

The high volume resulting from the ease of crafting and despatching messages coupled with the unreasonable expections for speedy response (because it is possible) cause confusion, frustration and rework.

This is compounded by a real pet peeve of mine, multiple simultanous conversations.  These are initiated by the fact adding numerous recipeints to messages is easy and often every recipient has something to say and says it, writing in parallel.

 And the solution

Hold your finger off the keyboard.  If a digital communication needs more than an acknowledgement, it most likely requires a conversation, i.e., talking face to face, and should be treated as such.

I practice this rule of thumb personally and it works like a charm.  As a result my volume of digital communications is low and rework resulting from misunderstandings rarely occurs.

Give it a try.  Practice giving up email reponses for a week.  If a response is neede communicate to the other party directly.  I believe you will be pleasantly surprised with the results.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Selling Stuff

Leave a comment

Black Friday has become a North American retail phenomenum.  The premise is simply; retail revenues for the calendar year exceed expenses after black Friday.

From an accounting stand point retailers profit and loss statements move  from  red ink (losses) to black ink (profits).  Typically in the retail business profitability depends on robust holiday season sales.

In this context, I the holiday season is the annual public buying surge that occurs during November and December.  Sales during other months help keep the lights on and pay the rent, holiday sales spell profit.

Marketing Brilliance

Years ago, astute U.S. retailers noticed the biggest increase in sales started after thier Thanksgiving holiday.  This created an interesting marketing opportunity.

Given consumers obvious proclivity to increase thier amount of shopping around this time of year; what a great time to give them added incentive.  That is increase the percieved value of shopping right after Thansgiving.  Hence Black Friday sales.

So were born, Black Friday sales. It is important to remember the merchants are not giving away the merchandise and the goal here is still profit.

Driving Volume

Obviously inreased volume allows merchants to lower margins, assuming they move more stock profit can be constant or depending on the volume increase, even better.

Remember there is a base operating cost retailers pay regardless of sales volume.  Once the volume needed to covered those costs is reached the rest is at a much higher margin.

Thus enciting consumers to buy large amounts in a short period is a smart strategy. Black Friday histeria is a tactic to do just that.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

A litiguous Society

Leave a comment

In North America (particularly in the US) there is a belief that if someone wrongs you they should be sued for damages.  For example, three big tabaco companies have  just launched their appeal of a $15 billion class action they lost in June 2015.

For gain or for Redress

The right to sue is basically an opportunity to use legal proceedings to address a wrong for which there appears no other course.  The intent of this process was never to create material gain.

Rather, the idea is to ensure our society has a fair and equitable way to right a wrong.  This entails first determining if a “wrong” has occurred.

If the courts determine this to be the case the corrective action is to first ensure fair and equitable compensation for losses incurred.   Secondly, and this does not always apply, a punishment or penalty can be assessed.  This remedy is intended for grevious and harmful abuses.

The System Subverted

Unfortunately this logical and reasonal approach to correcting both harmful and wrongful behaviors has been subverted by greed.  This is evidenced by two practices associated with this type of litigation.

  1. Lawyers leverage the opportunity for huge fees by engaging in class action law suits (often on a contingency basis with higher risk and reward) not to help the litigant but to earn money for themselves, often at their clients expense.
  2. The public at large will often leverage any perceived opportunity for financial gain when the chance arises, not because they feel wronged but rather for the financial windfall.

I believe the call of riches has morphed a process for fairness into one of potential enrichment.  Unfortunately, the goal now is often to “win the lotteryr” as opposed to correcting a misdeed.

The $15 billion dollar settlement won by smokers who died of cancer or suffered other ill effects of cigarettes is prime example of this.

The smokers whom freely bought and used the cigarettes, could not avoid knowing the health risks (it’s stated clearly on the package for more than 25 years) . Yet somehow the tabbaco companies are responsible for their misfortunes.

Seriously!

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Beware the Smart Meter

Leave a comment

Edmonton Power Corp (Epcor) is switching all the meters for customers serviced in Edmonton with smart meters.  One of the new meters  features is remote power disconnection.

A convenient feature

The ability to “open”or “close”the circut to your house remotely from a central office is probably nice for Epcor.  Maybe not so much for the delinquents that can now be cut off without a site visit.

Hopefully there is some notice involved.

As well these meters let Epcor monitor your power consumption hourly and so are building a very useful data store. This monitoring apparently enables Epcor to identify power outages sooner.

Of course sharing this data with the actual user so they can make intelligent decisions about their usage is not on tap.

Heavens, personal usage data might result in us changing how much power we use, perhaps even use less.  Good for the environment but not so much for Epcors bottom line.

When technology goes wrong!

You might be wondering what triggered this post about smart meters.  If you had the thought there was a personal story in here somewhere you would be correct.

We came home from a vacation late Monday and I had booked an extra day off (Tuesday)  to unwind ( We had attended our only son’s wedding after all -nuff said about needing an unwind day)

On Tuesday at a little after 3:00 pm our power went out. For some reason, instead of just waiting for it to come back I decided to check Epcors web site, to my surprise there were no outages reported.

So I called Epcor, making a long story short, they sent out a crew who advised our smart meter had a fault (apparently there have been a few of them).

I guess the meter decided on it’s own, even though Epcor had not requested it, we were a bad risk and shut down our power – that is it went into “open” mode while still reporting to Epcor that it was “closed”.

So much for the smart meter informing Epcor, in fact this was just the opposite.  I sure hope we did not get one meter replaced with another faulty one.

Oh the pain

So a power outage yesterday fixed by a temporary bypass followed by a power outage today for a permanent fix.  My multi router, server, switch and smart technology infrastructure all require power and did not appreciate the interruptions,  to say the least.

To Epcor I say upgrading to the latest technology is great but power is critical in a cold dark place like Edmonton, so please, make sure the equipment works before installing it.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Technology, Weddings and Traveling with Toddlers and Babys

Leave a comment

With great apologies to my loyal audience, my blog has been inaccessible via the internet for week and a bit.  Relative to technology, I have learned over the years, never change anything.

My home computing infrastructure is extremely complex and fully undocumented.  This is something I probably would not recommend for organizations with some desire for stability, but hey, for me on my own, I will figure it out.

And so it begins

Last week on remembrance day I improved the speed and capability of a networked multi-media receiver and in doing so disabled my entire local area network.  Change is good – hmmm!

Trouble shooting through the long weekend including hardware purchases (improvements all) I actually improved things even further and fixed it all.

NOT!

Off to the Wedding

Thinking all was repaired I flew off (literally) to my favorite son’s wedding (also our only son) and booked into a suite with my daughter, son-in law, wife and two grandchildren.

While being in a hotel suite with a baby and a toddler can create interesting moments for shy retiring grand parents, like my wife and I, a lot of fun interactions with the children ensued.

We even shared child care duties with our son (he’s preparing for post marriage child care duties) while the parents went out and partied.

While away, I discovered although I could access my web server without difficulty from my own LAN, not so when on another network.  So musings was offline for a week.

Of course being away I could not trouble shoot the problem.  I fixed it this morning when again physically present and able to coax the infrastructure with sweet talk (and contrary to popular believe I do actually know what I am doing).

Coming back

Our daughter booked the same return flight as us so we could enjoy more time with the grandchildren.  Oh joy.

Actually, it was a joy and the real pleasure came with the fact the baby sitting behind us (belonging to someone else) made more noise the whole flight than both our angelic grand children put together.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Law of Diminishing Returns

Leave a comment

A colleague shared his thoughts with me  today on the law of diminishing returns.  That is the point at which profits or benefit gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested.

In this model,  profit or benefit rises at an exponential rate to the inflexion  point and then the yield curve flatens.  Thus the effort and time to achieve the same benefit experienced in the exponential growth phase is much more.

Applying the Law to Happiness

In a given context my own experience completely supports the law of diminishing returns (it’s called a law rather than a theory because it has been proven mathematically)

Mathematical proof, though,does not apply to emotional measures such as happiness and this is where my collegue and I differed.  He attempted to apply the model to diminishing happiness with financial returns.

That is, financial gain or benefit drives a larger increase in your personal happiness before the inflexion point is reached.  After that a much greater ruturn is needed to raise your happiness.

Happiness is a chice, not a creation

While I understand the law of diminishing returns as applied to operational or manufacturing processes, I am not convinced it can apply to levels of emotional well being.

For example, I have definitely observed personally that 100 auto workers output is not 10 times that of 10 workers.  It is not a linear relationship and that fact can be mathematicaly proven.

Happiness however is not manufactured or created.  You choose wether you are happy or not together with the associated level of magnitude.

While your  knowledge, material wealth and personal stature  may well influence the level of happiness you choose to feel, it is still ultimately entirely your choice.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Fear and Hope

Leave a comment

The reaction to the results of the recent U.S. fascinate me.  I include mu own emotions in this analysis.  As Spock, the unemotional Vulcan from the fictional TV series Star Trek, would say -Fascinating.

Start withFear

In the run up to the election I was fearful that Trump would win.  Of course I was not alone in this with many news stories supported this.  And of course talk about flight to Canada as a safe haven.

Followed by Hope

The day after the election I found myself strongly feeling hopeful.  President elect Trumps post victory actions seemed positive.  My self talk focused on the thought “It’s going to be alright”

In fact it might even be better than that other candidate, what was her name again (Hilary something)?  These trade agreement changes and tax cuts could be a good idea.

These blatent optimism is not mine alone with many of my collegues espousing this approach.  This is all about living in the moment.

The electoral contest was up in the aircreating an unknown void filled by worry and fear.  (Actually a very common circumstances)

Remove the unknown and voila, hope and optimism abound.  The underlying facts become less important in the face of certainty.  Worry no more, the die is cast.

One Caution

“Don’t worry it’ll be fine” is a great sentiment.  Optimism and hope certainly are more likely to lead to good outcomes that fear and worry.

That being said, there is a risk of too much optimism allowing the bad to get worse.  Remember, optimistic or not, be on guard.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Perspective

Leave a comment

An individuals perspective is simply your point of view, that is, your attitude toward or way of regarding something or some situation.

Pespective can be objective or subjective depending on the underlying facts, or even a combination of objective and subjective inputs, in the case of a complex assessment.

Right or Wrong?

Perspective can drive conclusions and in extreme cases this can result in diametrically opposite analysis with both parties thoroughly convinced they are correct.

For example, during the US civil war that began in 1861, a persons perspective on slavery was largely driven by geography (North or South).

Southerners viewed slavery as an economic necessity that was morally and ethically acceptable.  The residents of the Northern states did not hold this view and a serious and violent conflict resulted.

In this case, the perspective was based on the situation.  The type of farming industry in the south  (cotton plantations and such) thrived due to the climate.  These type of crops were less viable in the climates of the Northern states so did not grow there.

Also the sales of these crops were low margin and relied heavily on manual labour.  Without the relatively inexpensive labour achieved through the practice of slavery the industries profitability would be severly impacted.

This issue was not prevelant in the Northern states (industry leaning more toward manufacturing), and so their perspective of the moral question around one human enslaving another was totally different.

Conflict Resolution

Understanding the complexities of perspective, giving consideration to  their role in creating a conflict and using this knowlege to achieve a peaceful resolution for all parties can be an effective tool in your facilitation tool kit.