Lately, Match.com has been sending me invitations to communicate with single people in my area.
The Internet is a wonderful thing. I receive so many lovely invitations. This one I think is unnecessary. I already know many single people and always make an effort to say hi to them. If they want to talk about it, I’m happy to let them know how much I enjoy being married. But maybe married life isn’t for everyone, so I don’t like to push it on them.
AB — 4 July 2016
Here’s a piece of business advice: Wherever you go, whatever you do, always act in such a way as to raise the bar.
In business, we frequently focus on competition. In the darwinian ideology, life is supposed to be about competition, and that idea often gets transferred into business. In reality, though, I think cooperation is more important in the way both life and business work.
Cooperation is much more fundamental to getting things done, and I think even competition can be seen in a way as a form of cooperation, in that when we compete, we make each other better by raising the bar.
ARB — 6 September 2013
I recently wrote a piece for Industry Market Trends about how U.S. manufacturing could be affected by the rising U.S. dollar — see “Rising U.S. Dollar Could Put a Damper on Manufacturing Exports.”
In my original story, I included a brief primer on what is meant by a “strong” or “weak” currency. My editor didn’t think our readers needed to know about that, but I found it hard to track down a coherent explanation of this, so I just wanted to publish here some very basic information about a topic that I found confusing. Here’s what I originally wrote:
On the face of it, one might think a “strong dollar” is a positive thing. Strength is good, right? Higher value is good, right? But that’s not necessarily the case in the world of foreign exchange. When we talk about the rising dollar, we mean that it is rising in value, or getting stronger, against other currencies.
For example, as of this writing, one U.S. dollar (USD) buys about 98 Japanese yen (JPY). In 2011, one USD was worth about 76 JPY. The dollar now buys more JPY than it did in 2011, so we would say it is stronger. However, ten years ago, the dollar was at about 110 JPY, so you could say that long-term the USD is weak against the yen.
The U.S. dollar is also measured by the U.S. Dollar Index (USDX), which is a “basket” of foreign currencies, including the Euro (EUR), the JPY, the British pound sterling (GBP), the Canadian dollar (CAD), the Swedish krona (SEK) and the Swiss franc (CHF). As of this writing, the USDX is between 81 and 82. Ten years ago, it was around 104, which means that long-term the dollar is weaker. However, in 2011, the USDX stood at around 70, so that the more recent trend is a rising dollar.
The IMT article goes on to explain how a rising dollar can affect manufacturing by making exports from the U.S. more expensive in other countries.
— ARB, 30 July 2013
Today on his popular blog, Boing Boing, science-fiction author Cory Doctorow published an abysmal experience he had yesterday with United Airlines on the final leg of his U.S. book tour. I’m not going to repeat his account, but it is sadly typical of the experiences many of us have with big-company customer service.
In a nutshell, United Airlines screwed up and the customer service representative dealing with the problem refused to do the right thing for the customer. I’ve had similar experiences time and time again, and it is the primary reason that I am constantly searching for providers of all kinds who will treat me better than the communications company, bank, technology provider, regulated utility, retailer, or government agency I am currently stuck with.
Usually when I get mistreated by a big company I don’t blame the customer service rep who refused to help. I assume that that person is stuck with the rules, training, supervision, and other constraints imposed on them by their company. I try to avoid blaming the rep, but I always encourage the person to pass along to his or her masters the reason for my dissatisfaction with their company. Most big companies have people who sit around a table and discuss why their customers leave them, and I always have hopes that if enough feedback filters up from the front line, it might make a difference in the way the company treats its customers.
In short, my message to big companies is: Empower your front-line people to do the right thing for your customer.
ARB — 2 March 2013
I love the proverb, “What gets measure gets managed.”
This principle often gets applied to business situations. It can mean that simply examining an activity changes the activity by forcing you to pay attention to it. It can also mean that producing measurements about the activity gives you a handle on it, a way to improve it. If you start adding up your sales volume every month, it gives you a basis for saying, I’m not generating enough revenue, I need to do more selling.
But I’m interested in knowing the source of that quotation. It often gets attributed to management expert Peter Drucker, but I’ve never seen an actual reference that proves he said it.
This blog post will serve as an ongoing investigation of this quotation and might be updated from time to time as new information comes to light.
Here are some popular forms of the quotation:
“What gets measured gets managed.”
“What doesn’t get measured doesn’t get managed.”
“What gets measured gets done.”
“To measure is to know.”
However, I haven’t been able to find any reliable reference that traces any of these forms to Peter Drucker or any other original source. It’s possible that these are nothing more than memes that have caught on and keep getting passed around.
So far, the most likely source of this idea, if not in any of these popular forms, is William Thomson, the Scottish physicist also known as Lord Kelvin. According to the Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety, by Jeanne Mager Stellman (page 1992), Kelvin said in his May 3, 1883, lecture on “Electrical Units of Measurement” (Popular Lectures, Vol. 1, page 73):
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.
That might be the best we can do in tracking down the source of this bit of management wisdom.
Some people probably think it doesn’t matter whether we get these kinds of things right or not. But in his story about researching this same Lord Kelvin quote, James Heywood of patientslikeme makes some good points about the value of checking primary sources.
ARB — 2 Dec. 2012
I’ve discussed this question before over on ThomasNet Green & Clean — see my piece “The Climate Change Controversy — What’s It Really About?”
However, I’m meditating on a somewhat different way to articulate it. I should say that I don’t think this controversy is essentially about science. I’m not persuaded by ill-informed or politically motivated assertions, but I don’t use terms like “hoax,” “anti-science,” “pseudo-science,” or “denialism” in connection with the argument.
My current thinking is the following:
The climate change controversy is about a high-stakes struggle between science in the service of eco-socialism and misinformation in the service of free-market fundamentalism.
I’m engaged in an ongoing development of my thinking on this topic and will no doubt circle back to it. But I just wanted to pin down that idea.
ARB — 2 Nov. 2012
Just a note that I have written a post over at Tools for Thinkers with brief reviews of some of my favorite books about intelligence and how to improve it if you so desire. I review books by Tony Buzan, Jeff Hawkins, Daniel Golemen, and Joshua Foer. See “Some Great Books About Intelligence.”
ARB — 2 Nov. 2013
I thought this was an interesting and useful infographic highlighting the growing U.S. solar manufacturing business. Right now, it shows a $5.6 billion industry that imports $3.75 billion, for a $1.9 billion trade surplus.
I wrote something about the growth of the solar industry recently for ThomasNet Green & Clean — see “How Will U.S. Army Energy Initiatives Affect Expansion of Solar Energy?”
AB — 15 September 2011
Here’s an interesting infographic from Publicis Healthware International, a healthcare-focused communication firm based in Italy. I think this is interesting and potentially useful for marketers of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and products and services directed at physicians — it gives some idea of how physicians are using social/professional media and identifies some of the trusted communities where they might be reached.
In an accompanying article, Publicis writes that
The proliferation of small and large communities is the result of physicians’ increasing need to share ideas and discuss clinical cases with colleagues in every part of the world.
The article categorizes physicians’ online social media (although “social” doesn’t necessarily express the purpose of these communities) in three ways:
AB — 7 September 2011
What I keep hearing is that businesses don’t want to expand, take risks, or hire new people because they don’t know what direction the economy’s going to go. Supposedly this fear turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy, because most businesses are thinking the same way and nobody’s willing to get moving to generate more business in the economy.
I have to think that this represents an opportunity for businesses large and small that are willing to get off their butts and start doing something. While the competition is busy wringing their hands, you can be out gaining market share.
While the competition is skimping on their marketing budget, you can expand yours and gain more visibility in the marketplace.
While the competition is afraid to take risks and try new things, you can invest in some product development and market testing to get a new product out on the market at a discount rate.
Since the competition is afraid to hire new employees, you are in a position to hire someone good at a reasonable rate. What about taking on a part-timer? A paid intern? A promising young person with little hard experience? A bright, creative, diligent worker who only has a high-school degree? An older person who might appear “over-qualified” on paper but would love to have a great job working for you?
AB — 2 September 2011
A Thinking Person, a.k.a. Cogit8R 