Two Secrets to Success in the Service Industry

I recently came up with Two Secrets to Success (tm) for business owners in the home-service industry (electricians, plumbers, house cleaners, contractors, etc). A competent service provider who implements these two techniques will be GUARANTEED to make LOTS AND LOTS of money. The amazing thing about these secrets is that, even though almost nobody knows about them, they are so simple to implement. I personally certify that any service provider who uses these techniques will immediately have more business than they know what to do with!!

Since I am not in the home-service industry, however, I cannot take advantage of these secrets. As such, I am offering to divulge these secrets to you, for free, right here, in my blog.

Secret #1: When you say that you are going to show up at a particular time, show up at that time!

Secret #2: If, for some reason, you cannot show up at your scheduled time, let your client know ASAP.

If you follow these rules, you will be able to set yourself apart from the competition (because very few people seem to know about these rules it seems), you will get repeat business and referrals (which is the lifeblood of any service business), and, most importantly, you will make LOTS AND LOTS OF MONEY!!!!

If you do decide to use my secret, please feel free to send me a modest donation as a token of appreciation....

Don Imus Isn't the Only Bad Guy Here

By now, everybody knows about this whole Don Imus flap. He insults the Rutgers Women's Basketball team with some racist and sexist remarks. There is a firestorm of outcry. He tries to recant with a somewhat hollow apology, and then he is fired. Obviously, Mr. Imus was way out of line with his comments, and he probably deserves all of the criticism that he gets. However, I am even more upset with this supposed moral indignation shown by many of his critics.

Let me start out by saying that, for a time, I was a regular listener to the _Imus in the Morning_ show. During the mid to late 90's, his show was part of my wakeup and morning drive routine. At times, I found it to me an interesting show. For those who don't know, the Imus show is a mixture of political and media interviews, combined with bathroom humor which probably earned him the "shock jock" moniker. Very powerful and influential people from politics and the media were frequent guests on his show, and he had an interesting way of disarming his guests with his questions in such a way that they would lower their guard and maybe divulge facts that they wouldn't normally mention on your typical interview show.

That was, of course, the highlight of the show.

Mixed in to the high-brow stuff was a lot of content which I found to be questionable and borderline offensive. He would often launch into tirades laced with personal attacks against people who disagreed with him or slighted him in some way. I don't remember any specific examples of him being racist or sexist, but I do recall times when I felt extremely uncomfortable with his words. While these attacks might have been part of some attempt to bring humor to the show, I found them to be quite un-funny to say the least. Eventually, I grew tired of this aspect of the show, and I decided to tune elsewhere in the morning.

My point here is that Imus has always been "on the edge". While you can argue over whether or not he had stepped over the line in the past, he is certainly comes across as being an insensitive adolescent on the radio. Nevertheless, many powerful people in the media and politics still went on his show, and CBS radio and MSNBC continued to give him a forum for his words.

It seems very hollow for the very same people who supported and enabled him all of these years to all of a sudden distance themselves from Mr. Imus and the content of his show. That includes both his employers, and the guest who, by appearing on the show, gave their tacit approval to his insulting ways. They act so shocked and so moral now, but it's not like his show hasn't always been like this since back when I listened to the show. His show has been filled with insensitive remarks and tirades for a long time. It just so happened that this one caused a public outcry of epic proportions. Mr. Imus just happened to insult the wrong person and the wrong time, but it is not like he hasn't been insulting for his entire career.

I am especially disappointed at CBS radio who thought it necessary to fire him ONLY AFTER all of the bad publicity. He probably should have been fired years ago, and he most definitely should have been fired the moment those words left his lips. However, by firing him almost a week later, it is just an act of cowardice, in my opinion.

I hope that Mr Imus rides off into the sunset to retire on his little ranch in the desert. However, I have no doubt that somebody out there will give him a radio show (maybe on sattelite?), so I am sure we haven't heard the last of him.

Health Care and Politics

Now that the Presidential Election cycle is starting up again in earnest, we will no doubt be bombarded with schemes on how we can "improve" our ailing health care system. Candidates will come up with all sorts of amazing ideas of how we can both provide coverage for everyone while at the same time reducing the cost of health care in this country:

I have a dream. I have a dream of a nation where health care is a right... just like our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I have a dream of a nation where the everyone will have access to all of the advanced medical procedures that this great country has to offer, without some insurance company telling them what they can or cannot have covered. I have a dream of doing this without raising the cost of doing business in this nation, so that our companies and employers aren't forced to move labor offshore due to rising health insurance premiums.

Of course, that is the type of snake oil which sounds good on the campaign trail but has about a snowball's chance in hell of happening. So you are going to provide better health care to more people while spending less money? Sounds like you are living in a dream world.

There is a metaphor in engineering known as the "tradeoff triangle". It is a triangle that has three sides labelled "schedule", "cost", and "quality". You have the ability to control two of the three sides. However, once you choose two of the sides, the third side is determined for you by the geometry of the problem. For instance, you can choose a schedule (ex: "I want it done by the end of next month") and a cost (ex: "I want it to cost less than $1 million"). However, if you do that, then your quality will suffer. On the other hand, if you want to choose a schedule and a quality level (ex: "Must work perfectly the first time"), then it will cost you a lot to meet such a schedule and level of quality. This is a classic trade-off when designing a system. Normally, a smart project manager will ask his users: "You can have schedule, cost, or quality. Pick two."

Health care has a similar tradeoff triangle: "coverage", "cost", and "quality". You can choose two of these properties, but once you do, the third is determined for you. If you want to give everybody the highest possible level of care, then you can expect that the bill for this will be very high. On the other hand, if you want to give everybody coverage for a reasonable price, then you might have to lower the quality by rationing health care. Unless there is some sort of miracle breakthrough, the fact of the matter is that you cannot give everyone high quality care at a low price. Something's gotta give!

Unfortunately, it is very tempting for politicians to promise just that when they are on the campaign trail. It is an appealing message that is certain to get votes. However, the discerning voter (which are very few and far between it seems unfortunately) will see through the smoke and mirrors to see this empty promise for what it is.

Battlestar Galactica Finale.... WOW!

I am not a big TV watcher, but there are a few shows that I have programmed into my Tivo. One of them is the Sci-Fi Channel version of Battlestar Galactica. This past Sunday was the season finale of Season 3, and let me just say that my mind nearly exploded by the time the end credits rolled across the screen!

First of all, let me just say that BSG is probably one of the BEST shows on TV, regardless of genre. Yes, it is on the Sci-Fi channel, yes it is set on a spaceship. Those two facts are enough for the majority of the TV-watching populous to ignore the show, including the Emmy voters. However, if you look past your prejudices, you will find a show that is brimming with great acting, innovative directing, and scripts which are thought-provoking in so many ways. Most impressively, unlike Star Trek, it is gritty and realistic and it doesn't have plot resolutions that hinge upon either time travel or pseudo-particle physics ("let's reconfigure the deflector dish to emit a tachiyon pulse at the resonant frequency of the big bang"). Most of the episodes deal with the struggles of individuals and societies dealing with the moral problems caused by a near-genocide of the human race. It is a human story that happens to be taking place in space. In fact, that sci-fi element of the show allows the writers to deal with contemporary issues without the baggage that would otherwise accompany a more "realistic" setting.

Now that I am done preaching to the unconverted, the rest of this post will talk about the aforementioned episode. If you haven't seen it yet, I would suggest that you skip the rest...

First, I will have to say that Lee's testimony at Baltar's trial was the high point of the episode. The past few episode's I really thought Lee got shafted by everyone. Here he is helping to make sure that the most hated man in the fleet gets a fail trial and a vigorous defense, which is certainly a noble, if misguided, gesture on his part. Nevertheless, his father, whom I used to admire, called into question his integrity, and his wife actually leaves him (and it is amazing that she chose that moment to leave him after all of his other transgressions). And don't forget about Roslin who used to adore young Lee like a son (and he may end up as her stepson when all is said and done), but who now probably will never talk to him again. Lee had been crapped on over and over again leading up to that moment, and finally he got his opportunity to stick it to everyone in very impressive fashion. After his speech, I would have voted "not guilty" too, just like his dad eventually did. I hope Papa Adama swallows his pride and apologizes to his son for doubting his honor and integrity.

Second, the whole thing with the music was just mindblowing. When they started quoting lyrics, I turned to my wife and said, "they are totally ripping off _All Along the Watchtower", which of course they were! I am still in shock that crazy Saul, Anders, and Chief are supposed to be three of the Final Five Cylons. I've had my doubts about Tori all along, so I wasn't THAT surprised about her. Personally, I am a little let down that the Final Five are just additional humanoid Cylons. I was hoping that there would be a more spiritual explanation for the Final Five. I thought they were going to be shared deities between the Cylons and the humans, or something like that. I didn't think that they would be actual Cylons. I was hoping that they would be misinterpreting hearing the song, and it didn't really mean that they were Cylons. However, I came across an interview with Ronald Moore which states that they are, in fact, Cylons. That, of course, means that Chief and Cally's kid is a hybrid, too, I guess. I am holding out hope that there is more to this reveal than what meets the eye, but we'll see. I have my own pet theories on the Final Five, but I will save those for another day.

Finally, we have the return of Kara Thrace, a.k.a. Starbuck. A few episode's back she appeared to meet with an untimely demise, much to the chagrin of her legion of loyal watcher-fans. Now, she returns suddenly to tell us that everything will be okay, she has been to Earth, and she will take everyone there. Obviously, this is quite a cliffhanger. What happened to Kara when she supposedly died? How did she end up on Earth? What the frak is going on here?! My own pet theory is that she is some sort of mind projection that Lee is seeing, not unlike the way that Baltar sees visions of Six. I would hate to think that the writers would pull some supernatural stuff to bring her back from the dead, or send her through some wormhole that convienently sent her to Earth. That seems too pedestrian for the writers of this intelligent show, so I hope they come up with something a little more creative than that.

Anyway, there is enough content in that last episode to keep we fans of BSG speculating for months to come. Certainly that is all that we will have to keep us busy since the next season doesn't start until 2008!

Promotion From Within - Pros and Cons

The company that I currently working for has a strong tradition of "promoting from within". What that means is that most (is not all) of the management and leadership positions are filled by internal candidates. The people who now hold leadership positions in the middle and upper ranks of the company often have 15, 20, and even 30 years of tenure with the company. When the company publishes bios of its leaders, it goes to great lengths to point out how each of these individuals started at the bottom as young pups and eventually worked their way up into the roles that they have today. For most of these folks, this company was their one and only employer during their working life.

I am something of an oddity within the ranks. Unlike most of my peers, I have spent a siginificant amount of time working for a variety of other companies before landing here (four to be exact). Even though I have five years of service with the company, I am still considered the "new guy" because I probably have the least amount of tenure of somebody at my level of experience. Recently, I was pondering whether my employers emphasis on seniority and longevity when it comes to advancement is a good thing. Selfishly, being a relative outsider, this policy hurts me in a way, but I am trying to separate my own situation from what it good for the company.

Obviously, perferring people with long tenure has its advantages. There is a certain continuity that comes from having people with a lot of years of service in leadership positions. By the time they get into those roles, they have a good understanding of the "nuts and bolts" of the company and how things work. This can only be an advantage when it comes to decision making.

In addition, people who have been around a long time have been acclimated to the "culture" of the company. While this concept of company "culture" might seem quaint, it does have a practical benefit. It does give people a sense of community - of being a part of something great than oneself. People with a long tenure develop an emotional attachment to the company. They "care" about the what happens to the company moreso than an outsider, and this feeling of attachment is only enhanced by the company's culture. Obviously, there is also attachment from the fact that most employees also own sizable chunks of company stock, so money is a big motivating factor.

However, the main downside of this emphasis on tenure is the danger that its leaders suffer from a "group-think" mentality. Because many of the company's managers "grew up" in the company, they have all been indoctrinated in the same point of view and the same way of doing business. New ideas aren't introduced into the intellectual ecosphere, and the ones that do get introduced might have a hard time of gaining traction. This can lead to the same old ideas being trotted out when their time has come and gone. After all, if you have only experience things in a certain way, then you will always tend to gravitate towards those same tried and true methods that you are familiar with.

The other issue with valuing tenure is that it tends to harm bright, ambitious people who might be otherwise qualified for leadership positions but who haven't built up enough equity in the company. In a true meritocracy, you would place the best person from the job in each position, regardless of their years of service. If you have some young go-getter who has management potential, why hold them back just because they don't have seniority. There should be a way to fast-track people like that without making them wait to pay their dues. Otherwise, that high-flier will end up leaving the company for a better position rather than wait for their turn.

At the risk of sounding vain, this is the situation that I feel like I am in. I see people above me who are in their positions because they have been around for a long time. Don't get me wrong. Many of them are good people. However, there are a few who have taken advantage of their longevity, to put it mildly.

How does a company balance the continuity that comes from valuing tenure without becoming an insular organization? Obviously, tenure should be taken into account because, all other things being equal, a person with seniority is preferred over someone who isn't. However, that should stop the company from also advancing people who might have less company experience, or even bringing in people from the outside in certain situations in order to benefit from cross-pollination. While I am not advocating totally de-valuing tenure with the company, I think there needs to be a healthier balance here to ensure that, for every position, you have the best person for the job doing that job.

Investing Made Simple - Part III: Inflation

It's been almost two months since the last installment in my "Investing Made Simple" series. In order to end the suspense which must be permeating cyberspace by now, I will unveil my third attempt to educate the masses in the art of investing. Today's article discusses the diabolical concept known as Inflation.

Simply put, inflation is the general increase in the cost of goods over time. It is measured by comparing the price of things at two points in time. The annual inflation rate is the percentage rise in the cost of goods over a one year period. For instance, let's say at beginning of the year a particular commodity cost $100. However, by the end of the year, that same item now costs $105. In this case, we can say that the annual inflation rate for that particular good is 5%, since it rose by that percentage over a one year period.

Obviously, different items will rise in price at different rates over a one year period. When economists calculate the annual inflation rate for the entire economy, they estimate it by examining the combined prices of a "market basket" of items. A "market basket" is a set of items that they feel that the average household will buy and consume over the course of a year. This includes food, clothing, gas, transportation, and so forth. Obviously, this is an approximation, but it does provide a useful view into how much prices are increasing.

The impact of inflation is that a dollar tomorrow is worth less than a dollar today.

This is a very important concept to understand when it comes to managing your money. What is means is that, over time, the value of the dollars in your wallet are eroding. Yes, a dollar is a dollar is a dollar, no matter how much time goes on. However, that dollar buys less and less every year. Consider that when I was a youngster, the price of a movie ticket was something like $5. Today, that same movie ticket is almost double that (moreso at some theathers!). When my father was a boy, that same movie was something like 25 cents (at least if you believe the stories that he tells!). It's not that dollars suddenly turn into quarters. It's that the world around them gets more and more expensive with each passing moment.

One of the goals of investment is to put those dollars to "work", in a manner of speaking, so that in the future they maintain their purchasing power. If things are getting more expensive at a rate of 3% per year, then unless your dollars are earning at least 3% interest, you are losing purchasing power. After a year, $100 worth of goods now costs $103, so if you have $100 today, then you will want to have $103 a year from now in order to make that same purchase. If you don't, then your $100 will be buying less than they were last year.

If 3% doesn't sound like a lot, then imagine what that 3% per year will be after 20 years. In the last installment of this series, I talked about the power of compound interest. Well compound interest can work against you when it comes to inflation. After a year, your $100 worth of goods now cost $103. After 10 years, it costs $134. After 20 years, it costs $181. If today you had $100 and you just stuck that money in a cookie jar, you'd still have $100, but because things cost more, you have lost money. On the other hand, if you invested that money at a modest 3% annual interest rate, you would have $181 so you can still buy the same market basket of goods.

In summary, inflation has the effect of eroding the value of your money. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. Therefore, unless your extra dollars are earning interest, you will find that the dollar sitting in your wallet will end up buying less than they did in the past.

The Iraq Paradox

It isn't a stretch to say that Iraq is the biggest foreign policy issue facing the United States today. In fact, it wouldn't be outrageous to say that Iraq is one of the biggest domestic policy issues facing the U.S. today. The question facing the new Congress is what to do about Iraq. Do we "cut and run"? Do we set our exit criteria? Do we prepare to stay there for the long haul? Or do we just make Iraq the 51st state and be done with it?

In my opinion, Iraq was a huge mistake that will tarnish the Bush legacy for generations to come. Regardless of whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, you have to admit that the Bush administration's actions leading up to the war were highly questionable, bordering on impeachable. Whether or not they manipulated or fabricated that intelligence data is up for debate, but AT BEST they were incompetent in the way they interpreted this data. To compound their mistake, they have changed their tune to say that the justification for war was to topple a dictator and bring democracy to the region. That, of course, is ridiculous given the fact that there are so many other dictators to whom we have turned a blind eye. It is clearly a lame attempt to hide the fact that their original justification didn't pan out.

After reading the above paragraph, you probably think I am some sort of bleeding heart liberal or something. However, I consider myself to be a libertarian who was once a registered Republican but who is now unaffiliated with any party. What I really am is a person who calls them like I see them, regardless of the party involved. If the situation had been reverse and it had been the Clinton administration who began this war, you can be darn certain that Republicans would be standing on every street corner screaming about how morally corrupt the Democrats are for dragging us into this conflict based upon a questionable justification. If you think otherwise then you are a part shill or just plain ignorant.

As an aside, the biggest problem I have with politics today is that politicians, for the most part, seem more concerned with positioning themselves and their parties as the "good guys" and the other party as the "bad guys". If one party said "black", the other would immediately come out with a stern rebuke of "white". If the party came out the next week with a press release of "white", the other would change their tune and sing the praises of "black". Ocassionally, one party will come out with some diatribe about how politicians have to put aside the rhetoric and come together for the good of the country. Usually, though, that message is spoken by the minority party who desperately wants to become relevant again. A few years down the road when they are the majority again, those high-minded ideals of inclusion and such are thrown out the window. The whole thing is quite sickening.

Anyway, back to the main point of this posting, which is Iraq. As much as I detest the war and how we got involved in it, I am faced with a problem. On the one hand, this is a war that we shouldn't have gotten ourselves into in the first place. On the other hand, now that we are at war, "cutting and running" seems like it would do more harm than good at this point. That is what I call the "Iraq Paradox" - we shouldn't be there in the first place but now that we are there, we have to stay.

If the U.S. were to leave Iraq, there is no telling what type of chaos would fill the void that we would be leaving behind. Without our troops policing the country and propping up the government there, it is possible that factional fighting would break out between the Shiites and Sunnis. Afters years of oppression under the Sunni minority, it isn't beyond the realm of posibility that the Shiites will take the opportunity for some payback. It is also possible that Iran would step in and install a fundamentalist regime sympathetic to them, or even invade Iraq outright. It is possible that Al-Queda would take advantage of the chaos and set up a base of operations there. The bottom line is that the situation would be unstable and the outcome of that instability would likely leave the region worse off than when the U.S. first invaded. For all of Saddam's faults (and they were many), he was "the devil we knew" and he was pretty much contained within his own borders. Now that he has been toppled, "the devil we don't know" may end up being worse and we may not be able to contain that devil.

So what is the solution then? In the near term, I think we are obligated to keep a military presence there until some sembalance of law and order can be established that has at least a decent chance of filling the power vacuum. How long will that be? Who knows? However, "cutting and running" right now doesn't seem like it would do anyone any good.