Blog of Jeff

People who know me realize that I have a strong dislike of mission and vision statements. I think they are greatly overrated as a management tool and that business consulting types have made a glorious racket out of making businesses feel they are the most important part of their entire strategic plan. They can be handy as a marketing tool but to think that every major decision an organization makes will be governed by the boundaries of a 25-word mantra is silly. Why would anyone think that it is possible to frame their entire strategic plan in a cute little marketing catch phrase? Also, in an era where flexibility is the most important business attribute, being locked into that catch phrase is evolutionary death.

I’ve been thinking about this more lately because of an interesting little study by Christopher Kayes from 2004 in the Human Relations journal. He looked at climbing deaths on Mt. Everest and how they can be attributed to breakdowns in organizational learning. Among two commonly recurring themes, leadership is a problem and goal oriented management is a problem, because they both get in the way of organizational learning. Following the leader and focusing on a narrow goal negatively affects a team’s environmental awareness and its ability to adjust. It’s easy to see how a strong, “we can do this” type of leader or a “climb this mountain” type of mission statement can end in disaster in mountain climbing. But the exact same lessons apply to organizations of all types.

A mission that works in one environment may be a horrible disaster in another. That’s why organizations need to be able to learn and adjust quickly and it is silly to assume that success is either due to a good mission statement or the lack of the same. Long term success takes a strategic plan that fits with current environment and the ability to adjust that plan when it is necessary. Anybody can get lucky in the short-term. Any leader can look like a genius for a few years. But organizations that blindly follow such a leader are just like mountain climbing teams heading to the peak. Just because a leader has scaled it a dozen times doesn’t mean he won’t get you killed this time. The inexperienced, low-ranking guy who notices that it is a lot colder at base camp than everyone expected is the guy who might save your life. If the team is willing to listen to him and willing to adjust its mission.

Republicans don’t trust him. Democrats don’t like him. But Connecticut likes having a well connected Senator, so they keep voting for him. It may be Connecticut’s intentional way of screwing the rest of the country. And he just announced his opposition to allowing health care reform go to the senate floor for a vote. Mind you, he isn’t saying he’ll vote against it. He’s saying he won’t vote to allow it to go the floor for a real vote. Such is the senatorial dance that they can block anything without actually voting against anything.

Of course, I’m talking about Joe the “I like Republican wars and Democratic unions” Lieberman. The only things that schmuck can be trusted to do are find an angle to stay in office and milk his office. It now looks like he’s jumping into the opening vacated by Senator Dodd to be the insurance company’s lapdog. Dodd is such a huge corporate sellout to the financial industry (as his election opponent keeps pointing out) that he is now willing to take on the insurance companies that have given him millions over the years just to show he’s not on their payroll (Despite a well established reputation as the Senator from Aetna …) Of course, he might not vote for the bill either; he’s just willing to let it go to the floor.

But anyway, this gives Lieberman the perfect opening to milk a new corporate constituency. The insurance companies come out against the current bills under consideration and the next day, Lieberman comes out against them also. He claims it is for budget reasons but the CBO is still saying that the public option (any variant under discussion) will save money. Of course, he’s also in the perfect position to get Obama’s attention as the new Olympia Snowe to be bought. See articles here and here.

It is absolutely clear that congress is run by professional politicians that don’t give a damn about good policy. They care about sticking around long enough to get power and money, so they can get more power and money. There are two huge obstacles to democracy in this country right now. Gerrymandering in the house and a lack of term limits in both houses. Those two things create the Lieberman’s, Dodd’s, and Hatches’ of the world. Most of these guys aren’t even partisan because they believe the crap coming out of their mouths. They do it because the road to the sweet committee positions lies in being the majority party and being a good footsoldier in that party. So, if policy A is good for their party today, great. If the same policy is good for the other party, forget it. The entire health care debate comes down to individual politicians trying to get good deals for their own self-interests and trying to make the other party look bad. That’s it. Sure, there are a few actually trying to have constructive dialogue and enact sound policy. But they are so few, that they might as well not be there at all.

If the Tea Party movement ever actually decides to throw all the bums out and promote term limits, sign me up. I don’t care who is in congress as long as they are not allowed to stay more than 12 years. No more being bought and sold by special interests, no more years of wheeling and deeling for committee positions, no more congressional pensions. Our founding fathers would be confused by a lot of things in the modern world, but more than anything, they would probably be flabbergasted at professional politicians. Politics was supposed to be a low-paying, serve your country, miserable job, from which you would soon go home in a few years. You weren’t supposed to get rich doing it or spend years there. You weren’t supposed to want to be there. Now it is filled with power-mad egomaniancs who can’t imagine being anywhere else, just like Joe.

Obama’s administration is now pushing for more regulation of the banking sector That’s something that Europe has been asking us to do, and recent high bonuses have probably sparked enough populist anger to make it politically possible.

In general, I do support some regulatory changes. But there are some major questions that need to be answered first. Elliot Spitzer has pointed out a couple of times that there were plenty of regulations already on the books that could have been used prior to the financial crisis but they were not. The reason they were not used appears to be the conflicts of interests between our nation’s financial leadership (Federal Reserve Bankers, SECC senior officials, Secretary of the Treasurer, etc.) Tighter regulations may help, but there is a good chance they won’t unless the inherent conflicts of interest between high level financial minds chosen from Wall Street and their buddies still on Wall Street. Those guys are getting picked because they were really good at gaming the system while on Wall Street, which doesn’t necessarily mean they are committed to fixing the system.

There’s also the issue of whether it is wise to invest more power in the Federal Reserve, which has almost zero transparency to the public. Hardly anyone in the country knows what it does, how it does it, or how to measure its effectiveness. Most Americans that can articulate anything about the Federal Reserve generally think that their job is to reduce inflation and as a long as we don’t have inflation, they must be doing everything right. But the Reserve’s role and responsibilities in our monetary policies are much greater than just controlling inflation.

As I was perusing the internet tonight, studying mankind’s accumulated wisdom, knowledge, and culture, I came across a religious story that desperately needs the Dan Brown/Ron Howard/Tom Hanks treatment.

In 1983, a holy relic was stolen was stolen from a Roman Catholic church in Calcata, just north of Rome. The case was never solved and conspiracy theories about Vatican involvement remain to this day. (Doesn’t this scream Da Vinci Code?)

What was this holy relic? Why, it was Jesus’ foreskin, of course. Detailed story here.

This story also reminds me of hearing Will Ferrell’s declarations of “By Odin’s Beard!” in one of his movies. Can’t you just see him changing it up to “By Jesus’ Foreskin!”?

Usually, doctoral research articles are pretty boring, especially the methodology part. But one recent article finally made must read status, even making me want to jump straight to the methodology section. In the journal, Evolution and Human Behavior, volume 28, there is an article by Geoffrey Miller⁎, Joshua M. Tybur, and Brent D. Jordan from the University of New Mexico Psychology Department. They researched the effect of the ovulatory cycle on lap dancers who gave 5,300 lap dances. Even a discussion about T-square formulas can’t make that boring.

Summary finding: “Normally cycling participants earned about US$335 per 5-h shift during estrus, US$260 per shift during the luteal phase, and US$185 per shift during menstruation. By contrast, participants using contraceptive pills showed no estrous earnings peak.” That’s crazy. That comes out to a low of $17 per hour and a high of $67 per hour. We’re talking about an increase of $50 per hour!

The actually cool research piece of this study is that it is the first time that this solid of a link between women’s cycles and men’s behavior. It could be pheromones, it could be the women actually feeling and behaving differently, it could be from a lot of possible causes. But something actually makes men give bigger tips. The theoretical possibilities and implications for more research are big. Are women more likely to get raises from male bosses if they ask while ovulating? Or get hired at all? Win a big sales account? Should women actually schedule most of their important events accordingly? How do women respond to the cycles of other women? And on the male side, is higher tipping an easy thing to trigger or is it actually indicative of a major psychological reaction by the man. And where is the closest conference that has doctors Miller, Tybur and Jordan presenting, because that conference is probably awesome!

It also goes to show that for all the civilized veneer, we’re probably still a lot closer to instinctive animals that we like to believe.

So President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It seems like I really ought to have a strong opinion about this, but somehow I am feeling really indifferent about it. It isn’t the horrible insult to humanity that it was to give the award to Kissinger or Arrafat, but it isn’t exactly the well deserved awards of Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, or Lech Walesa either.

It seems sort of like an award for potential. If he closes Guantanamo, if he successfully prevents Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, if he gets North Korea engaged in diplomacy, if he successfully puts Iraq on the road to being a solid member of the international community, if he keeps Afghanistan from falling apart, if he gets Pakistan to truly engage the terrorists in their country, if he improves Israel-Palestine relations, if he improves health care in the US, and/or if he moves the world along on environmental issues, then he would absolutely be deserving. Any of those things would be Nobel Peace Prize candidacy material. Getting rid of don’t ask, don’t tell would also be a solid human rights move. But he hasn’t successfully done any of those things yet. And it remains to be seen if he will accomplish any of them. On the surface, it seems really weird to give a man who is running two wars and possibly preparing to escalate one of them, any sort of peace prize. You would think the peace prize would go to someone leading a country, in you know, peacetime.

I think the best observation on the issue came from a viewer of Lou Dobbs. The viewer emailed a comment noting the irony of President Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize on the same week he refused to see one of the world’s most notably peaceful men, the Dalia Lama, because of concerns that it might upset the Chinese. Considering all the people who could have won the peace prize that risk their lives every day to make the world aware of Chinese oppression, particularly in Tibet, this award for President Obama feels awfully hollow. He won the award in the same week that he was showing how little courage we have in our dealings with China.

But, on the plus side, it means some foreigners like us again. Sure, they’re weird Norwegians, but considering the last 10 years, we can’t be too picky about who likes us. So, all in all, I give the news an emphatic, “ehhhhhh.”

William Saletan’s blog about artificial hymens is an interesting mix of dark humor and insanity. The basic idea is that the Chinese have invented a neat little $30 bag of fake blood that lets a woman bleed like she is a virgin. In some countries, that’s a neat little kinky sex toy. In some countries, it can be the difference between life and death, due to certain religions’ belief that a woman must bleed on her wedding night. Either from sex or from a rock, either one will do.

The Egyptian piece comes from the following quotes from an Associated Press piece, “Sheik Sayed Askar, a member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood who is on the parliamentary committee on religious affairs, said the kit will make it easier for Egyptian women to give in to temptation. He demanded the government take responsibility for fighting the product. … Prominent Egyptian religious scholar Abdel Moati Bayoumi said anyone who imports the artificial hymen should be punished. “This product encourages illicit sexual relations. Islamic culture forbids these relations except within the confines of marriage,” Bayoumi said. … “If this thing enters Egypt, the country is going to go to waste. God protect us,” commented a reader on the Web site of Egyptian newspaper Al-Youm Al-Sabie.”

Normally, it is multi-million dollar American movies that are threatening to destroy civilization. I can understand feelings of imminent cultural collapse when they are directed at Tom Cruise. But any country that can be brought down by a $30 Chinese sex toy really ought to go ahead and collapse now, so we can go on with life in the rest of the world.

This is also a great reminder of how moral relativism can fall really, really short. Cultural norms such as an afternoon siesta are fine. I’ve got no problem with a culture that naps. But beating and killing women on their wedding nights should be universally condemned. But it’s not, because the UN human rights council is a complete farce and nobody wants to tell another culture that their practices are barbaric, primitive, and unacceptable in the civilized world. (They have feelings. They are sensitive. They have such a long and proud history of killing women. We need to support them and nurture them until they learn better. Plus they sell us oil.) It’s also another issue that all those millions of peaceful, law-abiding moderate Moslems that we are always hearing about never stand up and address. We have plenty of wacko Christians around also but we also have no problem calling them wacko. And we certainly don’t let them kill their spouses on their honeymoons.

It is also a reminder that Egypt is one of the US’ best allies in that part of the world. With friends like these …