Archive for the Ideas Category

An Offer They Can’t Refuse

December 3, 2011 by fbk.

Well, my track record remains intact.  Once again, I have supported a Presidential candidate who then got out of the race early.  Last election cycle, I got so frustrated with my power that I turned it to evil uses.  I endorsed Hillary Clinton to get rid of her.  Then I forgot about my puissance, and after McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate, I worked for his campaign.  We all know how that turned out.

 Still, this is a truly awesome power.  While I may not be able to help a favored Presidential candidate, perhaps I can help my financial situation.  So, Newt, Mitt, John Huntsman, etc., how much will you pay me NOT to endorse your bid for the Presidency?  Conversely, how much will you pay me to endorse, and therefore totally destroy, someone else’s Presidential bid?

Let the bidding war begin!

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How to Get Elected

November 12, 2009 by fbk.

I’m going to change my name to “None of the Above” and run for President in 2012.  You?

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The Barbarians are Rising

February 4, 2009 by fbk.

“I’m sorry, Prince Edvard. You had a wonderful civilization here on Marduk. You could have made almost anything of it. But it’s too late now. You’ve torn down the gates; the barbarians are in.” – Lucas Trask, Space Viking, H. Beam Piper

***

“Don’t you? You were there; you saw what’s happening. The barbarians are rising; they have a leader, and they’re uniting. Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don’t understand civilization, and wouldn’t like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and who don’t appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what they can understand of it–luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?”

Trask nodded. “And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they’re going to grab the controls. Zaspar Makann says they can, and he’s the Leader.” He poured a drink from a decanter that had been looted on Pushan; there was a planet where a republic had been overthrown in favor of a dictatorship four centuries ago, and the planetary dictatorship had fissioned into a dozen regional dictatorships, and now they were down to the peasant-village and handcraft-industry level. “I don’t understand it, though. I was reading about Hitler, on the way home. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zaspar Makann had been reading about Hitler, too. He’s using all Hitler’s tricks. But Hitler came to power in a country which had been impoverished by a military defeat. Marduk hasn’t fought a war in almost two generations, and that one was a farce.”

“It wasn’t the war that put Hitler into power. It was the fact that the ruling class of his nation, the people who kept things running, were discredited. The masses, the homemade barbarians, didn’t have anybody to take their responsibilities for them. What they have on Marduk is a ruling class that has been discrediting itself. A ruling class that’s ashamed of its privileges and shirks its duties. A ruling class that has begun to believe that the masses are just as good as they are, which they manifestly are not. And a ruling class that won’t use force to maintain its position. And they have a democracy, and they are letting the enemies of democracy shelter themselves behind democratic safeguards.”

– Conversation between Otto Harkaman and Lucas Trask, Space Viking, H. Beam Piper

***

H. Beam Piper’s Space Viking is, unfortunately, the novel for our time.  “The barbarians are rising; they have a leader, and they’re uniting.”  We’ll soon reach over 50% of the people who pay no taxes, but instead, receive largesse from the public bourse.  We are in the position of Rome, though, not Marduk, as in this novel, or Germany in the 1940’s.  If we go fascist, there is no external power strong enough to pull our chestnuts from the fire.  Most of the other soi-disant “free” countries are already halfway to National Socialism themselves.  Rather than face down a United States that goes down this path, they will be more likely to join us in giving all power to the UN, just as most of the European states, although not the people, have ceded their authority to the European Union.

We had a wonderful civilization here in the West, especially the United States. We could have made almost anything of it, and did do much with it, raising living standards around the globe with our ingenuity and free trade. But it’s too late now. We’ve torn down the gates; the barbarians are in charge.  Beam Piper saw it coming more than forty-five years ago.  I suppose it isn’t hard to see for a student of history.  I’ve seen it coming, too.  But it’s different when it’s on your doorstep and knocking to come in rather than being held at bay in a kennel in the yard.  Can we hope for a Reagan to emerge?  Can we hope that there might only be need for a Reagan, as there was with the Carter years?  If not, we’re more likely to need a Washington, and they are even more scarce than Reagans in the history of this country.

Read the book.  You can buy it, or check Project Gutenberg:  http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20728

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How Much Can We Learn?

July 30, 2008 by fbk.

One of my favorite topics is how organizations adapt.  I think there will be an excellent chance to watch forced adaptation in progress with the franchisee-run Bennigan’s and Steak & Ale restaurants. 

When a parent organization dissolves, but several children are left, there is heavy pressure for speciation.  Years ago, an international organization went into receivership.  It had many local chapters, where the members wanted to continue their local activities.  One of the chapters bought the name from the creditors of the parent organization.  Several others changed their names slightly, incorporated as independent organizations, and continued.  Some affiliated with other large organizations.  Over time, developments continued.  Some chapters kept the original focus.  Some others went defunct.  Still others changed focus.  One of the chapters that became independent, over the next several years, moved its focus from business strategy to public sector strategy.

Another example would be when AT&T was broken up.  What were the long-term effects?  For me, my current local and long-distance carrier is now AT&T.  There were name changes along the way: AT&T ==> Michigan Bell ==> Ameritech ==> SBC ==> AT&T.  While some of the children might still be running loose, many of them consolidated into the same entity.  Of course, the Ma Bell breakup wasn’t natural, in the way that Bennigan’s and Steak & Ale could be seen as natural.

In the Bennigan’s / Steak & Ale situation, I expect several responses from the independent franchisees:

  • Affiliate with another chain, such as TGIF or Applebee’s,
  • Try to continue to operate independently, perhaps combined with a name change,
  • Some might try to band together as an association to save the Bennigan’s and Steak & Ale names from the liquidating corporation.
  • Where operations were marginal, this might be a final impetus to go under as a business.
  • Other miscellaneous strategies that I haven’t thought of, perhaps.

I don’t have the time or funding to study the long-term effects of this liquidation on the market and the adaptive strategies it engenders, but perhaps someone else does?

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IT and Accounting Departments

December 13, 2007 by fbk.

I’m out to change the world, again.  I’ve decided that my goal for the next ten years is to eliminate all accounting and IT departments in America.  Both are departments based around functions, being techy or good with numbers.  I want to see departments built around true business processes, departments with one primary output.   Instead of “Accounting,” let’s see a department of Monitoring, Measurement, and Management.  Instead of just measuring the money and being involved in three or four pieces of different processes, let’s have a more holistic view that measures quality and suitability as well as profitability.

And, instead of having a bunch of support departments based on functions, like HR, IT, Facilities, etc., why not have departments that deal with support in stasis and in adapting the corporation.  The problem with an IT department in most modern organizations is that its fingers are in everything.  Most large corporate changes wind up funneled through the IT department.  Need a new purchasing system, or even an ERP?  Give the project to IT.  But most IT people eat with their fingers and speak a foreign language known as GEEK.  Ask most IT folks what the impact of a project to the business is, and they’ll give a blank stare or spew technical facts and figures.  Give an IT project manager an opportunity to change the business, and the solution is usually hardware and software.  What about the people?  What about training?  Do we need to change the facilities?  Oy!

Yes, I know there are many good IT project managers who really do understand the business and all of the “soft” issues with change, but running changes out of an IT department is usually asking for trouble.  If you are adapting the organization, there ought to be multiple views: people (HR), technology, etc.  And that ought to be in an adaptation department.

So, take all of those support departments, moosh them together, then split them into departments for maintaining stasis and for adapting the organization.

There’s more to my thoughts than this, but accountants and IT professionals should be forewarned: I’m out to change your lives and organizations.

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Politics and Poetry

November 3, 2007 by fbk.

Reading back in the blog, I saw one of my first posts and the reference to Lyn Nofziger.  I used to read his wonderful blog wherein he often had silly doggerel poetry about politics and events of the day.  It wasn’t meant to be serious.  He certainly never considered himself a serious poet with those bits and pieces.  But I think that kind of thing is more likely to be remembered and appreciated than most of the serious poets working, just as Ogden Nash is a bigger part of the popular poetic culture than many who took themselves more seriously.

There aren’t many like Lyn that I know of.  I have seen poems in National Review.  And of course, there is the incomparable F. R. Duplantier with his Politickles.  But there aren’t too many out there who seem to be having fun with light verse at the expense of their political opponents, at least not on the Republican and Libertarian side.  Since we at the Attila the Hun School of Political Science do not bother reading the liberal magazines too much anymore, we may be missing a new trend there.  But traditionally, combining liberal politics and poetry comes out more earnest than fun.  So, where have all of the light verse artists gone?  Have they all gotten serious?  Are they just in the deadly drought of media attention deficit?

I think I’d welcome a candidate who had a twinkle in his eye and a limerick on his lips to counter some opponent’s windy gustations.  Maybe it’s even time we had a Poetry Party of America?  Maybe that would get more people engaged in politics if the candidates would have to frame all of their debates in verse, preferably limericks?  It could start a whole trend with new parties representing different streams and subgenres in poetry.  Someone might have the next Presidential nomination all “rapped” up.  Maybe we could put the stress in the language and get it out of the politics?

This started to be a post about politics alone and how I seem to feel less engaged with politics this year.  It migrated and twisted and turned, but in a sense, it did get there.  Would a metrist get me more engaged this year?  Perhaps not.  But it might give us all a bit more levity and leavening in this extended political season to make it more bearable.

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A Vision of the Car-Buying Future

July 8, 2007 by fbk.

The problem with cars is the leadtime for product design, engineering, and manufacturing.  From the time a designer gets an idea for a shape of a car to that car’s hitting the showroom is practically forever from today’s standards.  If I want to slip an idea to one of my designer buddies, it might see the light of day in a few years.  Years?  We live by the millisecond these days.  I can’t wait years!  So, were I king of the world with a magic wand, how should it work?

 My first thought is that we are in an age of wealth and customization.  While some folks want relatively cheap cars turned out through mass production, why does it have to be that way?  Do we need a designer to tell us we can have only this set of cars?  Computerized design software has become very sophisticated, and will likely continue to get better.  What if we could have a high-end design computer in the showroom?  What if we could design any shape of car, within reason?  Want a shark’s dorsal fin on top?  Why not? 

Of course, if you design the shape of the car, you’ll need certain information in return, like given other specifications, the likely gas mileage, the human and cargo capacity, performance specifications.  It should give you back the information necessary to see if you might want to make it more aerodynamic, put in a larger or smaller engine, or a larger or smaller chassis.  The engine and chassis and such might come from a limited number of options, just as you either have air-conditioning or not.  But the body shape and interiors might be much more customizable.  And, once you have the design that looks like you want and meets the numbers you need and can afford, perhaps a holographic projection could show you what it would look like and how it might seem to be in it.

Once you’ve come up with an acceptable design, what should happen?  Maybe the showroom has a highly versatile and automated assembly plant attached?  You press the confirm button on the screen, your financing is checked, and then the car is built as you wait.  Maybe you have to wait a couple of hours, or even come back the next day?  But since I have my magic wand, I’m of the opinion that you should be able to drive out of the showroom within a couple of hours.

Is this practical with today’s technology?  Probably not.  But the faster and closer that car manufacturers come to providing this sort of experience the more that manufacturer will come to dominate the market.  This is the breakaway future for the car companies.  It isn’t in transforming the development cycle from years to fewer years, but from years to hours.  They cannot reach the goal unless they see their business as being a very different concept than it is today.

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