New Promotion, Former Peers

Rowan Manahan has a great post on supervising former peers, which has to be one of the toughest chores ever faced by a supervisor.

Anti-Anti-Americanism

Good stuff:

An ad from Britain on "A World Without America."

[HT: Instapundit ]

Quote of the Day

It might be termed the Law of Triviality. Briefly stated, it means that the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in adverse proportion to the sum involved.

- C. Northcote Parkinson

Making Libya Competitive

Libya has been invaded...by consultants!

Harvard competitiveness wizard Michael Porter (not pictured above) and a team are advising the government on how to make the nation more competitive.

Business Week has the details on what has to be one of the biggest challenges ever faced by a consulting team.

One revealing item: 51 percent of the labor force toils in the public sector.

Will It Work?

If you want to learn humility, make predictions.

That's one of the messages in this brief interview that Guy Kawasaki conducted with Michael Raynor.

An excerpt:

Question: What is the explanation for Toyota’s success?

Answer: A big part of it was being well-positioned for the oil crisis of the mid-1970s. Toyota was influenced by its origins in the Japanese market, where size and fuel economy mattered, and in the U.S., it was focusing on the second car market, where the need for low prices similarly rewarded smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. When the oil crisis hit, Toyota happened to have products that were much better suited to the suddenly-changed environment.

As Louis Pasteur said, “Fortune favours the prepared mind,” so this bit of luck would have been useless to Toyota if it made inferior cars. But of course customers quickly noted Toyota’s vehicle quality. This reflected its tradition of manufacturing excellence, of defect and cost reduction and quality improvement, a system that is known today as the Toyota Production System, or TPS.

By the way, Toyota has been selling cars in the US since the mid-1950s. They’re #2 and threatening to become #1, but it took fifty years. GM overtook Ford as the #1 automaker in the early 1930s, less than twenty years after Alfred Sloan created GM. Toyota’s accomplishment is remarkable, but it took a long time.

JetBlue's Blues

Writing in City Journal, Nicole Gelinas has some thoughts on what’s been happening with JetBlue. An excerpt:

In fact, the entire industry’s laserlike focus on low fares is a big reason why airline profits are often razor-thin in a good year, and, over the long haul, nonexistent. And JetBlue’s particularly low fares force competitors—who’ve usually been around a lot longer and thus have to pay for things like pensions that JetBlue doesn’t have to worry about yet—to push their fares down, too. The older airlines solve this problem by declaring bankruptcy once in a while, pushing costs onto three groups: workers, who get lower-than-agreed pensions; the federal government, since the government must make up for some of the pension shortfall; and shareholders, who lose the value of their stock.

Neeleman promises that JetBlue will regroup from last week’s chaos by designing new rules to compensate future stranded customers. Further, the company probably will reimburse last week’s beleaguered travelers at a much greater rate than the government requires, which might help counter some of the bad press the company has earned. Naturally, Neeleman also said JetBlue will invest in its communications system to avoid future disarray.

But all of those costs should result in higher fares at JetBlue, creating an excellent opportunity for the next JetBlue: an upstart airline that comes out of nowhere and offers crazily low fares, which it can do only because it has no legacy costs and chooses to underinvest in its vital infrastructure. Given a choice, if history is any guide, customers will vote their short-term interest, taking the lower fare and leaving theoretical problems to the future.

Update: JetBlue is doing damage control.

When Persuading: Shout "Fire" Instead of "Police"

It's a common problem: a supervisor has an employee who is an obnoxious, arrogant, saboteur whose technical abilities may be strong but whose people skills are an F Minus.

Members of upper management, however, do not have to deal with the character on a daily basis. Their exposure, in fact, has probably been filtered by the supervisor in an effort to keep the troll from causing embarrassment or insult. The supervisor may also be operating with the assumption that he or she must "handle" the situation without burdening anyone upstairs. This reluctance may be tripled if the supervisor hired the problem employee and fears any review of that poor decision.

If the supervisor tries the following arguments to persuade upper management to support disciplinary action against the saboteur, here's how management may respond:

"The employee is rude and disrespectful." He's never been rude to me. Are you doing something to trigger this?

"The employee is incompetent." That's not what you indicated when you gave him "Meets Standards" performance evaluations. You deal with him.

A flaw in the above approach is the supervisor is calling "Help, Police!" when the better cry is "Help, Fire!"

For years, security professionals have noted that you are more likely to get prompt assistance if you shout "Help! Fire!" instead of "Help! Police!" A cry for the police causes many people to hunker down, hide, and hope that someone else will solve a problem that may endanger them if they give assistance. A cry for assistance with a fire causes concern that the problem faced by the crier may spread to the listeners. Self-interest argues in favor of intervention. That's why the following arguments have a greater chance of getting management to help the supervisor:

"This employee's disruptive conduct is going to trigger a bunch of grievances from the co-workers." Hmm. If that occurs, it will land on my desk and the question will arise of how we backed up our supervisor.

"The law department believes that we must take action to correct or remove this employee." If the lawyers are involved, I can't fob this off on the supervisor.

"The employee is bringing down the team." That may affect productivity. My numbers won't look good.

In short, the supervisor will be more effective if he or she can show how upper management will be affected and that it is in upper management's best interest to back up supervision.

This doesn't discount the impact of idealistic arguments. I've seen plenty of times when those have carried the day. They should be accompanied, however, by points that show how the audience will be directly harmed if this or that course is not adopted.

Think Fire, not Police.

Unconventional Advertising: Hammer & Coop

The advertising execs have apparently concluded that the only thing better than a Mini-Cooper is a Mini-Cooper ad disguised as a mindless mini-series.

Check out Hammer & Coop.

It's not up to the Flea Market Montgomery ad (What is?) but it has its moments.

[HT: Adrants ]

Quote of the Day

The world is a dangerous place to live - not because of the people who are evil but because of the people who don't do anything about it.

- Albert Einstein

Customer Service: The Weakest Link

We all have one of these.

Phil Gerbyshak relates a customer service disaster. An excerpt:

Phone rings once and someone at the restaurant picks up:

Pizza phone boy: "Hello."

Hungry Customer: "Hi is this [insert chain here]?"

PPB: "Uh huh."

HC: "I ordered a pizza 45 minutes ago. Can you tell me if it's left your store yet?"

PPB: "Uh yeah. What's your name?"

HC: "Gerbyshak. Phil Gerbyshak."

PPB: "Our driver broke down. He's got your pizza."

HC: "So my pizza is in some delivery driver's car? Do you have any idea when I'll get my pizza."

PPB: "Uh, hold on." hands phone to Pizza Restaurant Manager.

Read the rest here.