Response to: Police Shootings and Tampering
I have long been concerned about problems with our system of law enforcement in the USA. In recent years one good thing is that the problem is getting much more attention (the increasing militarization of police department however is a very bad trend that has gotten much worse over the last 10 years).
I strongly believe the former police chief of Madison, Wisconsin has very good ideas on what should be done. His blog has many useful ideas and he discusses Deming's ideas often. He also wrote a guest post for the W. Edwards Deming Institute blog: Quality Beginnings: Deming and Madison, Wisconsin.
Some of my previous posts on the topic include: Transforming a Management System – A Case Study From the Madison Wisconsin Police Department (2015), SWAT Raids – Systemic Failures? (2007), SWAT Culture (2013), Police Failing to Enforce Law If Lawbreaker is a Police Officer (2009), The Public Sector and Deming (2006).
Showing posts with label society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label society. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Friday, January 29, 2016
Ikea Business Model; and Growth and Society
comments on: Peak Stuff and the Hierarchy of Useless Things
"stock analysts" don't exist for Ikea. They have no stock holders. They are completely owned by a "charity."
But all you have to do is look at all the extremely highly paid executives in USA charities to see that charities often take on the form of corporations being run 1st to make executives happy and 2nd for other reasons (charitable in the instance of charities, education in the instance of large universities, profits of shareholders and all the other stakeholders in the instance of companies).
Another similar model you can view is tax evasion trusts set up by the rich which subvert the social contract. They have bought laws and regulation that allow them to set up trusts to benefit them, and/or their kids, and/or their grandkids and have those trusts treated beneficially for the rich, at the expense of society. Some argue Ikea has the same model, pretend it is a charity and use the funds primarily to benefit those creating the charity ("What emerges is an outfit that ingeniously exploits the quirks of different jurisdictions to create a charity, dedicated to a somewhat banal cause, that is not only the world's richest foundation, but is at the moment also one of its least generous"). In Ikea's case some amount does go for the "charitable purpose of Ikea": interior design.
The growth mindset certainly permeates Ikea, as it does public USA companies and "wall street."
> "not as much in the quality of customer experience"
This is so true. As a consumer, I find the customer experience painful much more often that it is good. Basically, the best it gets in the USA (for 95% of the companies) is when you don't have to interface with them at all. Then things are good. And I do think companies have made strides in removing the need to call to get things fixed... But oh my, when you do need them to actually get a hold of them the extremely bad experience is pitiful and truly far beyond pitiful most of the time. They setup extremely insulting processes that completely disrespect your time and humanity.
The horrible experiences when needing to deal with large USA companies is by far my biggest frustration of being back in the USA. As long as you don't have to contact them things are usually decent but I dread any time I need to contact one of them.
My father really liked Small is Beautiful by EF Schumacher which I think takes issue with the growth focus that permeates society (it has been decades since I read it) and instead wishes to focus on better lives not lives with more things.
Related: Kleptocrat CEOs and Their Apologists - Pretending to Listen to Customers Rather Than Actually Doing So - Why Pay Taxes or be Honest - Corrupt Looters at AIG
"stock analysts" don't exist for Ikea. They have no stock holders. They are completely owned by a "charity."
But all you have to do is look at all the extremely highly paid executives in USA charities to see that charities often take on the form of corporations being run 1st to make executives happy and 2nd for other reasons (charitable in the instance of charities, education in the instance of large universities, profits of shareholders and all the other stakeholders in the instance of companies).
Another similar model you can view is tax evasion trusts set up by the rich which subvert the social contract. They have bought laws and regulation that allow them to set up trusts to benefit them, and/or their kids, and/or their grandkids and have those trusts treated beneficially for the rich, at the expense of society. Some argue Ikea has the same model, pretend it is a charity and use the funds primarily to benefit those creating the charity ("What emerges is an outfit that ingeniously exploits the quirks of different jurisdictions to create a charity, dedicated to a somewhat banal cause, that is not only the world's richest foundation, but is at the moment also one of its least generous"). In Ikea's case some amount does go for the "charitable purpose of Ikea": interior design.
The growth mindset certainly permeates Ikea, as it does public USA companies and "wall street."
> "not as much in the quality of customer experience"
This is so true. As a consumer, I find the customer experience painful much more often that it is good. Basically, the best it gets in the USA (for 95% of the companies) is when you don't have to interface with them at all. Then things are good. And I do think companies have made strides in removing the need to call to get things fixed... But oh my, when you do need them to actually get a hold of them the extremely bad experience is pitiful and truly far beyond pitiful most of the time. They setup extremely insulting processes that completely disrespect your time and humanity.
The horrible experiences when needing to deal with large USA companies is by far my biggest frustration of being back in the USA. As long as you don't have to contact them things are usually decent but I dread any time I need to contact one of them.
My father really liked Small is Beautiful by EF Schumacher which I think takes issue with the growth focus that permeates society (it has been decades since I read it) and instead wishes to focus on better lives not lives with more things.
Related: Kleptocrat CEOs and Their Apologists - Pretending to Listen to Customers Rather Than Actually Doing So - Why Pay Taxes or be Honest - Corrupt Looters at AIG
Sunday, July 05, 2015
Customer Service is Often More Like a Mugging Than Service
It is so frustrating to deal with most companies with monopolistic positions in the USA (which is a lot of them).
I find dealing with those companies a matter of being confronted by someone trying to pick your pocket while they both ignore and insult you and give you orders about what hoops you have to jump through if you want to stop one of the things they are doing to harm you.
Some are not that bad, I get water and garbage from the local county, they are actually the best service I get from a monopolistic provider. The electricity provider is just designed mainly to make their lives easy but they don't make it horrible to deal with them.
Getting broadband (Verizon and Comcast where I am) is horrible - dealing with them is exactly what I wrote above. Health insurance (and I don't even make any claims) is bad, and if I actually got any service I imagine it would be horrible dealing with the service providers seeking to rip you off and the paperwork being a nightmare.
I avoid dealing with the monopolistic providers as much as possible but you often are stuck. For example, I can (and have) only use sensible providers to get my mortgage, but then they are sold to service companies that are horrible and I have no say in the matter.
Much more than the costs taken by companies when they can buy politicians in order to allow the abuse of the market by dominant providers I abhor the pain of dealing with these companies as a customer and the constant vigilance required to protect yourself from them ripping you off. It is like being forced to commute in a packed subway with bought off police that allow pickpocket teams to work without interference.
Related: Worst Business Practices, Fees to Pay Your Bills - Customers Get Dissed and Tell - Incredibly Bad Customer Service from Discover Card - Don’t Let the Credit Card Companies Play You for a Fool
I find dealing with those companies a matter of being confronted by someone trying to pick your pocket while they both ignore and insult you and give you orders about what hoops you have to jump through if you want to stop one of the things they are doing to harm you.
Some are not that bad, I get water and garbage from the local county, they are actually the best service I get from a monopolistic provider. The electricity provider is just designed mainly to make their lives easy but they don't make it horrible to deal with them.
Getting broadband (Verizon and Comcast where I am) is horrible - dealing with them is exactly what I wrote above. Health insurance (and I don't even make any claims) is bad, and if I actually got any service I imagine it would be horrible dealing with the service providers seeking to rip you off and the paperwork being a nightmare.
I avoid dealing with the monopolistic providers as much as possible but you often are stuck. For example, I can (and have) only use sensible providers to get my mortgage, but then they are sold to service companies that are horrible and I have no say in the matter.
Much more than the costs taken by companies when they can buy politicians in order to allow the abuse of the market by dominant providers I abhor the pain of dealing with these companies as a customer and the constant vigilance required to protect yourself from them ripping you off. It is like being forced to commute in a packed subway with bought off police that allow pickpocket teams to work without interference.
Related: Worst Business Practices, Fees to Pay Your Bills - Customers Get Dissed and Tell - Incredibly Bad Customer Service from Discover Card - Don’t Let the Credit Card Companies Play You for a Fool
Sunday, December 14, 2014
It isn't Fair to be Judged for Performance Outside Your Control
My response to Simon Guilfoyle post
However, they are often beyond the control of individuals and even police departments overall (many other factors play a part - economic development, social services system, education system...).
Likely more directly relevant the measurement error is often so high that the figures have more to do with measurement than the actual outcome. And when the figures are being used to blame then it dramatically increases the likelihood the figures will be a poor representation of outcomes.
I would rather see more focus on outcome measures. We should also reduce incentives to misreport data (often blame related).
I think the issues you raise about the system being larger than the police can tackle alone should be a reason to INCREASE the view of the SYSTEM. The important system is LARGER than the police department. When we have institutional walls that break up the system we need to find ways to knock down those walls so the system can work together. Granted this seems nearly impossible given how much difficulty we have even just breaking down barriers inside tiny pieces of our organizations.
Nevertheless that is where the focus should be. We shouldn't decide the outcome measures are not fair given where we put organizational barriers. We should decide that we need to realize when we cut funding for x it drives bad results in section a. And when we allow y to retain fitfully outdated management practices that doesn't just impact their ability to succeed it likely creates lots of other problems all over the place.
Related: Be Careful What You Measure - Millennium Development Goals
It’s also necessary to acknowledge that multiple variables affect crime rates; factors such as economic cycles, substance abuse, the weather, societal influences, changes in legislation, and so on. None of these are directly within the gift of the police to influence. Also, what about where the police cause an increase in reported crime by having the temerity to find someone carrying a weapon? Surely proactive problem-solving should not be discouraged on the basis that finding hitherto unreported criminal offences is incongruous with an over-simplified crime reduction narrative...I would say many of the examples are outcome measures of the system - which is a better measure than is often used.
However, they are often beyond the control of individuals and even police departments overall (many other factors play a part - economic development, social services system, education system...).
Likely more directly relevant the measurement error is often so high that the figures have more to do with measurement than the actual outcome. And when the figures are being used to blame then it dramatically increases the likelihood the figures will be a poor representation of outcomes.
I would rather see more focus on outcome measures. We should also reduce incentives to misreport data (often blame related).
I think the issues you raise about the system being larger than the police can tackle alone should be a reason to INCREASE the view of the SYSTEM. The important system is LARGER than the police department. When we have institutional walls that break up the system we need to find ways to knock down those walls so the system can work together. Granted this seems nearly impossible given how much difficulty we have even just breaking down barriers inside tiny pieces of our organizations.
Nevertheless that is where the focus should be. We shouldn't decide the outcome measures are not fair given where we put organizational barriers. We should decide that we need to realize when we cut funding for x it drives bad results in section a. And when we allow y to retain fitfully outdated management practices that doesn't just impact their ability to succeed it likely creates lots of other problems all over the place.
Related: Be Careful What You Measure - Millennium Development Goals
Thursday, October 09, 2014
Ebola Spotlights Poor Health Care and Security Systems
response to: Ebola & Systems: Can We Do Better? Can We Learn? What Comes Next?
But the most serious to me, is we have unrealistic proposed processes for dealing with an epidemic. This is potentially catastrophic but I know of no serious efforts to find realistic strategies. I am sure there are plenty of smart people working on things in isolation. But I do not have confidence in the expectations of how well those processes will be followed.They seem very susceptible to likely failures - such as people breaking quarantine (the idea that you don't endanger society for your own whims is not held by enough people - and the government does a pitiful job of dealing with this year after year).
That the government is all of a sudden going to start following the scientifically prudent actions that, after ignoring them and participating in encouraging security theatre for years (moving towards decades now) is very questionable. You can't encourage society to ignore science for decades and then expect they will respect scientifically necessary processes when the failure to do so will be catastrophic (such as in a deadly epidemic). Maybe you will get lucky and society will, but that is a very risky gamble.
The huge amount of waste on security theater and trying to spy on everyone and classifying (gag orders, "national security letters…") their actions to hide them from public ridicule and disgust would be much better spent on things that will actually make us a safer society.
I don't think the answers are simple, but if we don't take seriously how critical it is to plan better to cope with epidemics we will be sorry. And the money in the billions is there to do so - all we have to do is stop spending money on the atrocious things the Department of Homeland "Security" is spending money on now.
There are risks that are real and large (include health care risks and terrorism risks). But with so much bad behavior by government that erodes any sensible confidence government is focused on the rights and safety of citizens creates a horrible climate for coping with real risks to society. Government that doesn't demonstrate honesty, openness, a respect for the law and the people is creating exactly the wrong climate to cope with real security risks.
The science seems pretty clear that ebola is not going to be a series epidemic in the USA. But something else may well do so and we are pitifully prepared to cope with it. We continue to increase the odds of such an event with very bad antibiotics practices and foolishly failing to take vaccines creating the perfect conditions for epidemics.
Thankfully certain aspects of our health care system make coping with disease like ebola a problem that can be dealt with effectively. But the systemic problems are huge and ill suited to a real large scale crisis. And the pitiful behavior of government over the last 10 years gives no indication they are focused on sensible security that will help citizens.
Even worse though is how poorly we (as a global society) dealt with the initial conditions in Africa as well as our continuing efforts now. We had poor processes in place. We didn't commit funds early enough. We got behind and are not doing enough now. Lots of people are taking heroic action in Africa but without good processes it isn't enough.
Additional comment I added on the original blog post in response to another comment.
What the USA's role should be in helping people outside the USA is indeed a tricky question.
Even if you take the position those in the USA don't believe other people are worth protecting (which I don't believe) just a purely selfish government with an understanding of science and epidemics understands the risks of external disease vectors.
Just like those failing to use vaccines create a risky health system that everyone suffers from when things go bad, ignoring disease until it strikes your body is a bad way to protect yourself.
Plus when rich countries like the USA show disregard for people living elsewhere that drastically increases terrorism risks. Coping with that by allowing frustration to grow feeding crazy people's use of terror and then trying to spend hundreds of billions on weapons and the like is a lousy strategy.
It isn't like this is some shocking idea. Pretty much everyone that studies this understands that link. In the Bush administration they talked a lot about it and did some things especially with Karen Hughes. But even forgetting any terrorism concerns or humanitarian feelings, allowing dangerous virus and bacteria to infect lots of people (anywhere in the globe) is hugely dangerous for rich countries health. It is just a hugely foolish (looking at it completely selfishly and even when doing that ignoring positive externalities of action and negative externalities of inaction) to stand by while dangerous epidemics grow.
I believe the first reason to act is because all people matter, not just those inside your border. But even for people that don't care about that the completely selfish reasoning means not acting is foolish. And an understanding of disease makes it obvious you need to act a long time ago. Yes after failing to act more sensibly for a decade or more we should have acted drastically a few months ago. But even that would have been too late. Though actually for Ebola from a 100% USA selfish perspective it might not be too late - because it is likely like to become a huge problem in the USA. But something similar easily could and we have failed to prepare (which in this instance means failed to make sure the larger global health system is much better able to cope).
2nd update, good video by John Green on the subject:
So how did this happen? Bad processes? Bad planning? THR had received Ebola information before Duncan arrived. But, they didn’t put the pieces together and they sent him home.There are many bad processes involved, sadly.
What’s your take on this situation? Can we get better at anticipating problems and improving workflows, processes, and systems in advance? Can we learn from each other to avoid having to all make the same mistakes? How can we better protect caregivers, first responders, and the public? Or are we just not very good at systems and processes… at being proactive?
But the most serious to me, is we have unrealistic proposed processes for dealing with an epidemic. This is potentially catastrophic but I know of no serious efforts to find realistic strategies. I am sure there are plenty of smart people working on things in isolation. But I do not have confidence in the expectations of how well those processes will be followed.They seem very susceptible to likely failures - such as people breaking quarantine (the idea that you don't endanger society for your own whims is not held by enough people - and the government does a pitiful job of dealing with this year after year).
That the government is all of a sudden going to start following the scientifically prudent actions that, after ignoring them and participating in encouraging security theatre for years (moving towards decades now) is very questionable. You can't encourage society to ignore science for decades and then expect they will respect scientifically necessary processes when the failure to do so will be catastrophic (such as in a deadly epidemic). Maybe you will get lucky and society will, but that is a very risky gamble.
The huge amount of waste on security theater and trying to spy on everyone and classifying (gag orders, "national security letters…") their actions to hide them from public ridicule and disgust would be much better spent on things that will actually make us a safer society.
I don't think the answers are simple, but if we don't take seriously how critical it is to plan better to cope with epidemics we will be sorry. And the money in the billions is there to do so - all we have to do is stop spending money on the atrocious things the Department of Homeland "Security" is spending money on now.
There are risks that are real and large (include health care risks and terrorism risks). But with so much bad behavior by government that erodes any sensible confidence government is focused on the rights and safety of citizens creates a horrible climate for coping with real risks to society. Government that doesn't demonstrate honesty, openness, a respect for the law and the people is creating exactly the wrong climate to cope with real security risks.
The science seems pretty clear that ebola is not going to be a series epidemic in the USA. But something else may well do so and we are pitifully prepared to cope with it. We continue to increase the odds of such an event with very bad antibiotics practices and foolishly failing to take vaccines creating the perfect conditions for epidemics.
Thankfully certain aspects of our health care system make coping with disease like ebola a problem that can be dealt with effectively. But the systemic problems are huge and ill suited to a real large scale crisis. And the pitiful behavior of government over the last 10 years gives no indication they are focused on sensible security that will help citizens.
Even worse though is how poorly we (as a global society) dealt with the initial conditions in Africa as well as our continuing efforts now. We had poor processes in place. We didn't commit funds early enough. We got behind and are not doing enough now. Lots of people are taking heroic action in Africa but without good processes it isn't enough.
Additional comment I added on the original blog post in response to another comment.
What the USA's role should be in helping people outside the USA is indeed a tricky question.
Even if you take the position those in the USA don't believe other people are worth protecting (which I don't believe) just a purely selfish government with an understanding of science and epidemics understands the risks of external disease vectors.
Just like those failing to use vaccines create a risky health system that everyone suffers from when things go bad, ignoring disease until it strikes your body is a bad way to protect yourself.
Plus when rich countries like the USA show disregard for people living elsewhere that drastically increases terrorism risks. Coping with that by allowing frustration to grow feeding crazy people's use of terror and then trying to spend hundreds of billions on weapons and the like is a lousy strategy.
It isn't like this is some shocking idea. Pretty much everyone that studies this understands that link. In the Bush administration they talked a lot about it and did some things especially with Karen Hughes. But even forgetting any terrorism concerns or humanitarian feelings, allowing dangerous virus and bacteria to infect lots of people (anywhere in the globe) is hugely dangerous for rich countries health. It is just a hugely foolish (looking at it completely selfishly and even when doing that ignoring positive externalities of action and negative externalities of inaction) to stand by while dangerous epidemics grow.
I believe the first reason to act is because all people matter, not just those inside your border. But even for people that don't care about that the completely selfish reasoning means not acting is foolish. And an understanding of disease makes it obvious you need to act a long time ago. Yes after failing to act more sensibly for a decade or more we should have acted drastically a few months ago. But even that would have been too late. Though actually for Ebola from a 100% USA selfish perspective it might not be too late - because it is likely like to become a huge problem in the USA. But something similar easily could and we have failed to prepare (which in this instance means failed to make sure the larger global health system is much better able to cope).
2nd update, good video by John Green on the subject:
Monday, December 23, 2013
Hopefully Other Countries Will Save Us From USA's Attempt to Sell Us Out to Aid Big Political Donors
The Trans-Pacific Partnership has been atrocious. Essentially the USA has been strong arming other countries into secretly selling out their citizens to provide benefits to large USA political donors. The Obama administration has once again done the opposite of being the open and honest organization candidate Obama promised.
The hopes of stopping the corruption of the USA political system, in this case, wrests with other countries protecting their citizens (and the citizen's of the USA from the corrupt practices. Vice President Bidden seems particularly focused on paying off his donors and friends with this horrible treaty. The USA administration realizes the selling out the innovators and rights of citizens for large political donors is so toxic it would likely not survive if there was the transparent government candidate Obama promised.
The TPP should be stopped. I would not trust politicians that don't speak out against it publicly now. Politicians have become adept at hiding what they promote behind secrecy and misdirection. Many are hoping they can hide behind the secrecy around the trampling of innovators and citizens in the TPP to pay off their donors while claiming the appose the horrible policies of the TPP. If they are not speaking out now, all they are doing is taking advantage of the secrecy the Obama administration has made its policy for trying to hide government action that harms the country from public view.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership being pushed by Washington is nothing more than a corporatist power grab by William Pesek.
Related: Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation - The People We Elect Recently Are Dramatically Falling Us - Cash for Votes subreddit (political corruption) - Why Copyright Extention is a Very Bad Idea
The hopes of stopping the corruption of the USA political system, in this case, wrests with other countries protecting their citizens (and the citizen's of the USA from the corrupt practices. Vice President Bidden seems particularly focused on paying off his donors and friends with this horrible treaty. The USA administration realizes the selling out the innovators and rights of citizens for large political donors is so toxic it would likely not survive if there was the transparent government candidate Obama promised.
The TPP should be stopped. I would not trust politicians that don't speak out against it publicly now. Politicians have become adept at hiding what they promote behind secrecy and misdirection. Many are hoping they can hide behind the secrecy around the trampling of innovators and citizens in the TPP to pay off their donors while claiming the appose the horrible policies of the TPP. If they are not speaking out now, all they are doing is taking advantage of the secrecy the Obama administration has made its policy for trying to hide government action that harms the country from public view.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership being pushed by Washington is nothing more than a corporatist power grab by William Pesek.
American lawmakers and civil liberties groups have complained for some time about the opacity surrounding the treaty's terms. Mild grousing turned into outrage last month after WikiLeaks did what Barack Obama's White House refuses to: share portions of the document with the public. The draft of the intellectual property rights chapter by Julian Assange's outfit validated the worst fears - that TPP is a corporatist power grab.The root cause of this situation is the corrupt USA political system. At a bit less abstract level the TPP seeks to worsen the deadly diseases of the broken patent and copyright system (and also worsen the broken health care system). The TPP is an attempt by those that understand systems thinking to mold the system in secrecy to benefit those giving USA politicians lots of cash. We can only hope that other countries are not willing to do the bidding of the USA in this case (though the USA is willing to provide incentives and threats to allow it to deliver for those giving USA politicians cash).
Rather than heed the outcry, the US doubled down on secrecy, refusing to disclose more details.
Hasn't the US wondered why so many of east Asia's most promising democracies have avoided the treaty? The popular excuse for why Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand aren't among the 12 TPP economies is that they aren't ready or are trapped by their own timidity. A better explanation is that their leaders realise that truly transparent and accountable governments, to borrow Kerry's own words, shouldn't be leading their people into the unknown.
Related: Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation - The People We Elect Recently Are Dramatically Falling Us - Cash for Votes subreddit (political corruption) - Why Copyright Extention is a Very Bad Idea
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Twice the Cost, Significantly Worse Results - The Sad State of Health Care in the USA
Why Is the United States So Sick?
The newest part of the breakdown is how even the massive spending in the USA has not been successful in even keeping the USA at a mediocre level compared to other rich countries. It was maybe arguable the results in the USA were no worse than average 20 years ago. It is getting impossible to make that claim today. Twice the cost, significantly worse results. Eventually you would think people would get tired of excuses.
Americans die younger and experience more injury and illness than people in other rich nations, despite spending almost twice as much per person on health care. That was the startling conclusion of a major report released earlier this year by the U.S. National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.Not so startling if you have paid attention the last few decades. The deadly disease of excessive health care costs (with, as Deming noted, the bad results that come from poor systems that are bloated with cost, waste and poor quality) has been a huge problem for decades.
The newest part of the breakdown is how even the massive spending in the USA has not been successful in even keeping the USA at a mediocre level compared to other rich countries. It was maybe arguable the results in the USA were no worse than average 20 years ago. It is getting impossible to make that claim today. Twice the cost, significantly worse results. Eventually you would think people would get tired of excuses.
The poorer outcomes in the United States are reflected in measures as varied as infant mortality, the rate of teen pregnancy, traffic fatalities, and heart disease. Even those with health insurance, high incomes, college educations, and healthy lifestyles appear to be sicker than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.Related: USA Spends $7,960 Compared to Around $3,800 for Other Rich Countries on Health Care with No Better Health Results - Can We Expect the Health Care System in the USA to Become Less Damaging to the Economy? - Measuring the Health of Nations (USA ranked 19 of 19 rich countries) - CEOs Want Health-Care Reform (2009) - posts on the health care system on my management blog
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Evaluate the System for Not Just Absolute Failures But Also Consistently Bad Ethics
Thoughts sparked by: The NCAA and Auditing of Processes vs. Enforcement of Rules
I agree that the current process is not working. I am not totally sure the answer is to make things more binary however. One of the problems with legalistic thinking is it attempts to make everything black or white. There is a great deal of grey.
The basic problem it seems to me is the schools basically want to get away with all the bad behavior they can that can be argued doesn't quite rise to the level of clearly provable violation. If they can do something clearly wrong, but hide it that seems fine with them. It isn't being ethical or being fair that those taking the most cash from the schools (the executive leadership, including boards, and college coaches, including assistants) care about. That is the core of the problem. The system is also setup to encourage unethical behavior. And that feeds on itself, driving away those that are not suited to work in a system where ethics hamper your ability to succeed.
I think we may benefit from accepting that bad behavior is grey and when we see lots of dark grey you get punished a lot.
When we see lots of white and this tiny bit of black where two silly violations are found we treat that as what it is - a system that is largely working but a couple special causes need to be fixed up.
A problem with this is many people want to get away with doing bad stuff that technically can maybe be seen as possibly not absolutely prohibited. Then they want to be able to have ignored that they are largely running a dark grey to black system when they can be shown to have clearly violated specific rules.
This attitude is a horrible example that our educational institutions are giving students. Talking about how students should be ethical when they act while the schools are being unethical and trying to get away with ever single thing they can without tripping over into provable violations.
Related: Shining light on the actions of those in power - Peter F. Drucker on a Functioning Society - The Moral Consequences of Your Decisions
I agree that the current process is not working. I am not totally sure the answer is to make things more binary however. One of the problems with legalistic thinking is it attempts to make everything black or white. There is a great deal of grey.
The basic problem it seems to me is the schools basically want to get away with all the bad behavior they can that can be argued doesn't quite rise to the level of clearly provable violation. If they can do something clearly wrong, but hide it that seems fine with them. It isn't being ethical or being fair that those taking the most cash from the schools (the executive leadership, including boards, and college coaches, including assistants) care about. That is the core of the problem. The system is also setup to encourage unethical behavior. And that feeds on itself, driving away those that are not suited to work in a system where ethics hamper your ability to succeed.
I think we may benefit from accepting that bad behavior is grey and when we see lots of dark grey you get punished a lot.
When we see lots of white and this tiny bit of black where two silly violations are found we treat that as what it is - a system that is largely working but a couple special causes need to be fixed up.
A problem with this is many people want to get away with doing bad stuff that technically can maybe be seen as possibly not absolutely prohibited. Then they want to be able to have ignored that they are largely running a dark grey to black system when they can be shown to have clearly violated specific rules.
This attitude is a horrible example that our educational institutions are giving students. Talking about how students should be ethical when they act while the schools are being unethical and trying to get away with ever single thing they can without tripping over into provable violations.
Related: Shining light on the actions of those in power - Peter F. Drucker on a Functioning Society - The Moral Consequences of Your Decisions
Friday, May 17, 2013
14 Plus Potentially 14 More Years for Copyrights Has Become 120 Years
Our Intellectual Property Laws Are Out of Control
The copyright and patent systems must serve their public purpose or encouraging innovation and creation. The current system does the opposite. The system is doing great harm to our society (likely more harm than anything other than the broken health care system). We need to fix it. Sadly we keep electing fundamentally corrupted politicians that act mainly to serve those paying them the most and who have shown little interest in what benefits the country.
Related: New Deadly Diseases for Business - Bad Government, Closed Access - links to articles on the deadly disease of our broken patent and copyright system - Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation
Thomas Jefferson opposed all government-granted monopolies, but James Madison argued that while monopolies generally are bad, there is a place for patents and copyrights. In the end, the Patent and Copyright Clause (Article I, Section 8) empowered Congress "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."Sadly, we continue to damage society to provide government granted monopolies to large campaign contributors. And we allow our legal system to be subverted by companies threatening to subject others to abusive litigation. We should fix the system to work for society instead of against the interest of our society. It is even worse that the USA continues to pressure foreign government to adopt solutions those paying USA politicians lots of cash want, at the expense of the citizens in those countries.
The idea was that innovators would be rewarded with a short-term monopoly on their work. Afterward it would enter the public domain, hopefully sparking further creations or discoveries. In the early days the Constitution's "limited times" were quite limited: 14 years for patents; 14 years, plus a potential 14-year renewal term, for copyrights. And patents were strictly scrutinized to ensure that they represented real inventions. (Jefferson himself, when he was secretary of state, served as a patent examiner, so important did he consider this task.)
Nowadays the limited times aren't so limited. Copyright has been extended to the life of the author plus 70 years; corporate works (with no living person as "author") get a 120-year term. Patents are good for just 20 years, but there's far less scrutiny to ensure that they represent something truly new—a lot of "nuisance patents" are filed to provide bargaining chips rather than to protect actual creativity. Also, influential companies often get Congress to extend their own patent rights through special legislation. Does a century-plus exclusive right encourage invention more than a 28-year exclusive right? It's doubtful.
The copyright and patent systems must serve their public purpose or encouraging innovation and creation. The current system does the opposite. The system is doing great harm to our society (likely more harm than anything other than the broken health care system). We need to fix it. Sadly we keep electing fundamentally corrupted politicians that act mainly to serve those paying them the most and who have shown little interest in what benefits the country.
Related: New Deadly Diseases for Business - Bad Government, Closed Access - links to articles on the deadly disease of our broken patent and copyright system - Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation
Monday, July 23, 2012
Are We A Few Heros or a Society
Drucker Institute tweet: "Does government tax policy “prevent and penalize” entrepreneurship? Weigh in!" On their post: Who Really Built This Blog Post?
Even worse for entrepreneurship though is the poorly designed system where 1 employees medical expenses can cause serious damage to small companies. And the poorly designed system that makes it difficult to get coverage for previous conditions - which greatly increase the cost (in risk) of changing jobs, starting your own new business…
The recent reforms did help some, but it is an extremely small step after 3 decades of failures and making things worse. There is so much more that needs to be done. The costs and uncertainty related to health care are likely the most critical problem for entrepreneurs. Another contender is liability costs (yet another one of the decades old deadly diseases).
The next contender is the broken patent and copyright system (which I think of as one of the new deadly diseases - along with excessive executive pay). I would put all of these far ahead of tax system issues for entrepreneurs. The biggest thing government can do is fix the 3 deadly diseases I mentioned above. People like Jobs (and Wozniak), Henry Ford, Larry Page and Sergey Brin are extremely valuable to a society. They make great contributions. Thinking they are therefore the reason for Apple, Ford and Google's success is ludicrous. They contributed. They contributed a lot. Dump them in Mali when they were born and they would not have created those companies as adults.
Saying that society doesn't play a huge role is false (a failure to understand systems thinking). Saying governments role is the same as societies also shows a poor ability to reason. The good things that Jobs, Gates, Bezos... are related to government in some ways but are much much more related to the entirety of growing a business in the USA. Inside those companies many others helped make the organizations a success.
Certain individuals do have an amazing ability to create successful systems. Again they can't do it themselves. They need other people. Granted a few of these leaders are extremely special. 95% of CEO's are decent at their jobs (or even not that good at their jobs) but replacing them with any of hundreds of other people would make little difference. But those CEO's all think they are more like Steve Jobs - they are not.
President Obama, speaking to an audience last Friday, said the following: “Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.” In response, Romney, highlighting the line “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that,” has called Obama’s words “insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America.” To insinuate “that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn’t build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn’t build Papa John’s Pizza,” Romney added, is “wrong.” ... What do you think: What’s the best way for the government to foster entrepreneurship?I think far worse than any of the taxes is the extremely bad job that has been done with the health care system. Deming noted this as one of the 7 deadly diseases over 3 decades ago and it is in much worse shape today. Costing twice as much as other rich countries with no better results is bad. Since the costs are so large they are huge barriers to entrepreneurs.
Even worse for entrepreneurship though is the poorly designed system where 1 employees medical expenses can cause serious damage to small companies. And the poorly designed system that makes it difficult to get coverage for previous conditions - which greatly increase the cost (in risk) of changing jobs, starting your own new business…
The recent reforms did help some, but it is an extremely small step after 3 decades of failures and making things worse. There is so much more that needs to be done. The costs and uncertainty related to health care are likely the most critical problem for entrepreneurs. Another contender is liability costs (yet another one of the decades old deadly diseases).
The next contender is the broken patent and copyright system (which I think of as one of the new deadly diseases - along with excessive executive pay). I would put all of these far ahead of tax system issues for entrepreneurs. The biggest thing government can do is fix the 3 deadly diseases I mentioned above. People like Jobs (and Wozniak), Henry Ford, Larry Page and Sergey Brin are extremely valuable to a society. They make great contributions. Thinking they are therefore the reason for Apple, Ford and Google's success is ludicrous. They contributed. They contributed a lot. Dump them in Mali when they were born and they would not have created those companies as adults.
Saying that society doesn't play a huge role is false (a failure to understand systems thinking). Saying governments role is the same as societies also shows a poor ability to reason. The good things that Jobs, Gates, Bezos... are related to government in some ways but are much much more related to the entirety of growing a business in the USA. Inside those companies many others helped make the organizations a success.
Certain individuals do have an amazing ability to create successful systems. Again they can't do it themselves. They need other people. Granted a few of these leaders are extremely special. 95% of CEO's are decent at their jobs (or even not that good at their jobs) but replacing them with any of hundreds of other people would make little difference. But those CEO's all think they are more like Steve Jobs - they are not.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Acknowledging Failure and Learning and Improving
The Importance of the Knowledge Distillery by Kevin Meyer
Acknowledging failure is important. We have created situation where success and failure are reduced (in seeking to reduce failure). But we also just ignore failure when it happens. Doing that doesn't eliminate failure it just eliminates the incentive to improve.
I completely agree our desire to avoid failure or even criticism is a big problem.
Related: Failure: Honda’s Secret to Success - Creating a Nation of Wimps
We often lower standards so that we avoid having to face failure. I have failed plenty of times. It isn't some horrible result. Learn and more on. Don't just pretend you don't fail because failure is seen as something to be stigmatized. You will have more success by challenging your self, accepting and learning from failure than you will by avoiding challenges and failures at all costs.
Obviously depending on the consequences of failure you should adjust your strategies. If the consequences are really bad then use strategies that are very unlikely to fail.
Shielding people from failure is a sign you don't respect them. If I respect someone I know they can accept failure and I don't have to treat them like a little kid.
Failure is important. Teaching kids to learn from failure even more so. Maybe you're simply not cut out to be a dodge ball athlete. Best if you learn that early. Modern society generally moves in the same direction. Instead of trying to just create equal opportunity, there is a tendency to want to create equal outcomes - to cushion or even eliminate the impact of difference, or even failure.
Acknowledging failure is important. We have created situation where success and failure are reduced (in seeking to reduce failure). But we also just ignore failure when it happens. Doing that doesn't eliminate failure it just eliminates the incentive to improve.
I completely agree our desire to avoid failure or even criticism is a big problem.
Related: Failure: Honda’s Secret to Success - Creating a Nation of Wimps
We often lower standards so that we avoid having to face failure. I have failed plenty of times. It isn't some horrible result. Learn and more on. Don't just pretend you don't fail because failure is seen as something to be stigmatized. You will have more success by challenging your self, accepting and learning from failure than you will by avoiding challenges and failures at all costs.
Obviously depending on the consequences of failure you should adjust your strategies. If the consequences are really bad then use strategies that are very unlikely to fail.
Shielding people from failure is a sign you don't respect them. If I respect someone I know they can accept failure and I don't have to treat them like a little kid.
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