Entries from February 2009 ↓

This post to my work blog got some interesting feedback today so I figured I would do a rare cross post.

Dear IT Leadership: Please Lead

Cheers!

I’m going to go all out here and reveal my ignorance of general economic theory.  Anyone should feel free to bitch slap me back into reality.  But before you do be sure to read to the end to see what my real point on this is (’cause I’m gonna ramble for a minute).

Deflation has been widely cited as something to avoid, a negative.  What is it?

In economic theory, deflation is a general reduction in the level of prices below zero percent annual inflation. Deflation should not be confused with temporarily falling prices; instead, it is a sustained fall in general prices once inflation passed zero percent to the downside.  Since this idles capacity, investment also falls, leading to further reductions in aggregate demand. This is the deflationary spiral. (Wikipedia)

Haven’t we been seeing this is some sectors for years?  For example, the items no longer manufactured in the US — textiles, electronics, etc — those prices have fallen.  It’s idled capacity in the US, changed investment in the US and eliminated aggregate demand for US provided versions of these.

Yeah, I get that I’m contextualizing it, localizing it to a certain impacted area, which may certainly be abusing the concept of “deflation” a bit more than I should, but if we look at deflation and the deflationary spiral from within these localized contexts, can’t we argue that there are entire populations formerly tied to these now outsourced industries that have been in stuck in this for years, ever since off shoring proved useful?

So then here’s my (first) point on this.  If it’s fair to look at these already offshored industries as deflationary spiral microcosms, isn’t it fair then to also ask if some of the pundits flogging this particular demon are looking at it from within their own context?  And if so, isn’t it fair to also then assume we have to be ridiculously careful about how we look at this issue right now?

In other words, we have to be open to the idea that some of the people getting us hyped up over potential deflation are simply working in industries that no longer provide the value they once did.  Think auto industry.  Think financial advisers (and thanks Kate for your earlier insightful comments on the financial industry).

My second and final point on this is that the government — our government — of, by and for the people — should err here on the side of the people employed by these industries and not on the industries themselves.  Businesses will look out for themselves.

The government can spend a lot of (our) money putting industries on life support only to see them fail anyway.  Or, they can spend a lot of money on the people employed by those failing industries and see at least some of them make a healthy transition to whatever is next.  Spend the money on education — help people get degrees, help those with degrees get advanced degrees, help people through the inevitable change.  It will be hard.  Better now than later.

Wide spread, cross context deflation is certainly and issue to be wary of.  At the same time the government and the people need to look at industries that are still growing. We can’t simply raise the specter of “deflation” and start running around like chickens with our heads cut off.  It won’t work.

PS Full disclosure: I’m lucky enough to be in one of those growing areas, an industry radically transforming IT spend, so my perspective may be slightly skewed.  For those who aren’t — I’m sorry.  I know it’s tough out there.

People’s Gas stopped by last night.  At about 10:30p.  Yes, we had called them.  J had a headache, I noticed I was a little dizzy.  Our carbon monoxide detector hadn’t gone off, but those are the dots J connected.

So the two person crew got here — in less than their advertised average 25 minute response time.  We checked the front room.  Nothing.  We checked the basement.  Nothing.  We checked upstairs.  Nothing.

And then we turned on the oven.  And there was a small smell of gas and a couple of minutes later the crew’s detector started going off — way off.  Instead of the 10 parts per million they’re comfortable with, it went straight to about 200.

“That’s why you’re dizzy,” one of the guys said.

So the oven is off — disconnected.

Thanks for coming by Peoples Gas.

What have I been up to? I’ve been eating oatmeal.

I’ve had quite a bit of the Starbucks’ Perfect Oatmeal.  I wish I liked it more than I do.  At its best it’s passable.  But sometimes its watery, sometimes lukewarm.  Sometimes it comes with the nuts, sometimes not.  The price is decent, and I’m not morally opposed to instant oatmeal, but overall it seems like a pretty high risk affair.  Full disclosure: I still own some SBUX which may be coloring my experience.

I ate at the same diner in San Francisco, Cafe Mason, quite a bit late last month.  I would be eating there still if they produced their best on a consistent basis.  Instead, each breakfast was something of an adventure.  Will they have brown sugar?  Will the oatmeal be too watery?  Passable.

A couple of weeks ago I bought some McCann’s Fast Cooking Irish Oatmeal at WFMI.  So freaking good.  That’s it above.  You can see I’ve added some berries and brown sugar to it.  Fantastic.  Yes the berries were frozen and then thawed.  Like I said: I’m not opposed to instant.

But the absolute best oatmeal ever was the week before last.  I hotwired the Intercontinental on Howard.  One morning was insanely busy so I ordered room service, which is apparently cooked up by the staff of Luce their in house restaurant.  Let me tell you, if you have $25.02 to spend on breakfast, and you happen to already be staying at this place, I would recommend it.  Beautifully cooked, incredible fresh berries on top, perfect condiments — this list goes on.  That was some good oatmeal.  And although I’ve been referring to it at the $25 oatmeal, I should point out that it included some fantastic coffee and standard issue room service charges.  My only regret on this is that the second time I tried to order it — at 4a before heading to the airport — it wasn’t ready.  They couldn’t send it.

Two other entrants.  The Blue Mermaid’s oatmeal was average although it included currants which are a plus.  Maxwell’s was decent both times – currants, raisins, brown sugar — very decent.

So that’s where I am.  I’m looking for suggestions if you have any.

I’ve been more active over on the work blog this last week than I have been here.  In case you’re interested:

* Cloud Converter, an open source toolkit I created for migrating objects from dirt bound databases to the Salesforce.com cloud, has a bunch of new features.

* I shared some Salesforce.com Metadata Lessons Learned based on my experience working with them.

* I posted a Salesforce.com Upsert Code Sample that I hope other people find useful.

* I picked my Top Five and a Half Amazon Web Services / AWS Factoids based on a couple of days spent on it.

Finally, I’m back on Twitter and have been announcing these as I go.

That’s about it.  Back to blogging about oatmeal, dogs & Christmas lights.

If you, like me, found yourself listening to NPR Weekend Edition on Saturday, you might have heard the story Are Executives Worth Their Compensation? NPR spoke to Harvard’s Rakesh Khurana (who really needs to update his blog) about the state of things.  I have three responses.

First, Khurana talks about the problem of substituting value extraction for value creation.

He says:

There’s no distinction any more that we make between value creation — that is the creation a products, goods and services that create long term sustainable value — versus value extraction which you can do in a lot of short term ways.

I don’t disagree with this.  But I think he missed a point. The key challenge today isn’t necessarily creation or extraction, it’s realization.  Let me illustrate what I mean with a couple of examples.

Example One – “Create” could be something that earns a patent — for example, Amazon patented the 1-click order.  Extraction might be gathering a licensing fee from companies who want to use it (or suing other people who want to use it without paying a feel).  Realization would be the connecting this technical capability with another situation that would benefit from it.

Example Two – “Create” could be something that earns a copyright — for example, a song.  Extraction would then be either selling recordings of the song or selling the rights to sell recordings of the song.  Realization would be combining this song with something else to create something new and interesting.  Think De La Soul’s “The Magic Number”.  Think any song that uses sampling.

A good executive is able to connect the dots in interesting ways, combine creations in a way that helps them realize their value.  For example, I can write software, but software in a vacuum is pretty pointless.  A good executive will understand the software, understand the problem it solves and how it solves it, and proceed to spread the good news to potential beneficiaries so that it becomes more than it was.

That’s what I mean by realizing value.  It’s a step between creation and extraction, something that combines the best elements of both.  What an executive gets paid for this — that’s beside the point.

Second, Khurana also goes down a rat hole suggesting that businesses should do things because they’re good for society.  I don’t disagree that enterprises can behave in ways that either benefit or harm society, but I do think it’s important to keep in mind that each element will generally do what’s in it’s own best interest and that “should” almost never works.  Enterprises will look out for themselves and should continue to do that.  Society simply needs to do the same.

Whether or not society does that sufficiently right now is open to debate.  My own thought is that we’re out of balance with society not looking out for itself as much as it should.  In theory, we do that together, with tools called “government” and “laws”.  If, as is the case with the financial system, we as a society haven’t looked out for our common interests enough, we have only ourselves to blame.

Before moving on I should also point out that blaming ourselves doesn’t mean we fail to take corrective action now that we understand the problem.  I would argue that this potential for corrective, retroactive action — that’s just another risk that the financial houses exposed themselves to.  That’s part of the game.

Third, Khurana talks about the importance of executives coaching their team.  I totally agree with this.  It is incumbent on any leader in any organization — for profit or not — to build the next generation.  Good call.

OK, now I can go back to work and stop thinking about this for a while.  Have a great one!

The Valentine’s Day Dog, originally uploaded by ReidCarlberg.

The Lovely J brought home a little stray pup. Not a pup exactly but close. White. Fluffy. Lost.

Cute.

One of my current challenges is context leakage: one part of my life bleeding over into the other.  This is a new challenge for me.  I have two hypotheses as to why.  But, first, some context.

But even before we get to that — that picture above, San Francisco in the early morning, from the Hilton on Kearny, has no relation to the rest of this article.  I just like it.  Feel free to keep that in mind.

I blog (obviously), I Tweet (a little less than I used to), I have a work blog, I’m on Facebook, I share photos on Flickr, and I’m Linked In.  There’s a lot more flotsam out there when it comes to social networking, and there are many people far more connected than I.

But still, when someone from work asks that I post a work link to my Facebook account, I don’t know what to do with the request.  Just like I don’t generally post about foster dogs or my son to the work blog, I’m hesitant to go the other way.

A good friend of mine started her 25 Things list saying that she lives her life in a pretty open way.  I feel the same — I don’t have any problem with people from Skyline High School in Idaho (which I attended for one year) knowing what I do for a living, and I don’t have any problem with people at work seeing a picture or two hundred of the cutest kid on the planet.

So, if cross knowledge doesn’t concern me, why does cross posting?

Hypothesis one: cross posting increases the noise.  Keeping a context clean reduces it.  People who want to know what I think of Force.com will go one place, people who want to know what I’m up to on the Christmas light front will go someplace else.  Noise elimination–or, alternatively, focus–is a huge challenge.

Hypothesis two: cross posting feels like an attempt to extract value from one context and add it to another.  Value extraction.  Sounds like mineral extraction which takes me to coal which takes me to strip mining.  That’s a little extreme, but you get the idea.

“Community” — a somewhat nebulous concept that all this social networking is supposed to enable — requires context.  Those who create communities — the clearer the context of their community the stronger it will be.  Context leakage has the exact opposite effect.

And that’s a problem.