ChicagoProud’s Neighborhood

As I was walking down on Wacker Drive last summer this little truck caught my eye. Has Everyone seen the movie yet? The Dark Knight is o.k., worth the price of admission.

You know now that gas is about $ 4.35 a gallon, just jumping on the old bike in the garage is not that bad of an idea. Now the old bike that I have hasn't been on the streets for something like 26 or 25 years. I think it might be time for me to invest in a new Bbicycle, maybe something made in the 21st century. Well, this might be a good place to start my bike hunt.

I suspect these two words are VERY related, although the relationship is not clear from the etymological explanations given here:

jealous 
c.1225, from O.Fr. gelos (12c., Fr. jaloux), from L.L. zelosus, from zelus "zeal," from Gk. zelos, sometimes "jealousy," but more often in a good sense ("emulation, rivalry, zeal"). See zeal. Among the ways to express this are Swed. svartsjuka, lit. "black-sick," from phrase bara svarta strumpor "wear black stockings," also "be jealous." Dan. skinsyg "jealous," lit. "skin-sick," is from skind "hide, skin" said to be explained by Swed. dial. expression fa skinn "receive a refusal in courtship."
"Most of the words for 'envy' ... had from the outset a hostile force, based on 'look at' (with malice), 'not love,' etc. Conversely, most of those which became distinctive terms for 'jealousy' were originally used also in a good sense, 'zeal, emulation.' " [Buck, pp.1138-9]

zealot 
c.1300, "member of a militant 1st century Jewish sect which fiercely resisted the Romans in Palestine," from L.L. Zelotes, from Gk. zelotes "one who is a zealous follower," from zeloun "to be zealous," from zelos "zeal" (see zeal). Extended sense of "a fanatical enthusiast" first recorded 1638.

Its sprawled out, resting. Second time I see the squirrel chillin' like that.

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A valid and important question concerns the state of the art in the science of management in America.

There have been high and low points in the progress of management from country club to science. We are part of the way there. The overall arc of progress over the last two hundred years has been in respectable directions. We have embraced and given some status to entrepreneurs, allowing that the entrepreneurial business should be run differently from others. A step further is the lesson that many have read about and a handful have learned, which is that the agility and savvy of the entrepreneur are good for larger businesses too.

The cyberneticists turned into the operations researchers, and they begat the folks who researched and applied great tools like the Plan-Act-Check-Fix cycle, and the notion of positive and negative feedback loops. The cult of total control gave way to the pragmatic view of control within limits. A few figured out that control - another way of saying that you don't want to flush money down the toilet - requires good information, and that drew in what the AI folks and semanticists were saying about knowledge and representation of same. Then you have to ask questions about who actually has the knowledge to do and fix the work processes, and the researchers who made the greatest strides were the geniuses who said what the managers did not want to hear. That is, the workers know a lot of shit and the manager would do better to shut up, go out on the floor, listen and learn.

Pretty soon, we had a mini-war between the people actually doing the management in American companies and the people who knew the most about it. The latter - the eggheads and egalitarians - were banished to developing nations like Japan. There the bright and rational management scientists were given a chance to Plan-Act-Check-Fix (that four-stroke engine appeared everywhere and everywhere with a new name) and holy camoly, Japan started to really cook.

Competition got stoked up and took off like drag racers. Competition drove a lot of back-and-forth stealing and renaming of ideas. It also, however, stimulated a lot of innovation and hybridization. Soon you had heartland red-white-and-blue managers speaking the lingo of kaizen and kanban, and you had Japanese workers thinking about (oh the heresy) starting their own companies. It was tumultuous and productive.

Read the cool books and it sounds all empirical, exciting. There are handles on complexity; there are useful strategies for pitting problems productively against each other; there are plugs to the brain drain; there are clear distinctions between good and bad managers.  Looking at the best ideas that are out there almost makes managing a company look manageable.

Still, if you look around, work around, talk around, read around, you still find most American companies are run by bosses (in the worst sense of the word). Dilbert is less a comic strip more a dagger in the real fat gut of a very dysfunctional boss and plebe culture.

It perhaps can be said that we are rich in ideas, but impoverished in praxis. Like science. We have labs and professors and grants and patents and Nobel Prize winners galore. But the average Joe and Jane know shit about the difference between data and shinola; between a hypothesis and a null in the ground.  It is something like that with management. We are swimming in a chlorinated pool of inspirational and scientifically tested techniques, but hell if we know why none of them are being applied. Go into the CEO's office and you find all the titles talking about measurement, responsiveness, keeping the best people, using the best practices, reading the future, thinking strategically, and empowering those who actually do the work and make your profits.

But where is that CEO? Golfing with the board. Chatting up the politicians. Sucking down all the perks. Looking at themselves in the mirror and seeing a real American hero.

There is again now a war between those who are in position to KNOW about good management and those who are in a position to maximize their personal gain by VIOLATING good management. As correctly stated in an opinion piece by an egghead, "The behavior that became so widespread and toxic at Enron is not unique to Enron. Many executives (not to mention those who engage in other competitive endeavors) are fixated on exploiting rules to their advantage, instead of thinking about how best to build a sound business while complying with the principles that underlie the legal rules. And this is where they often lose their way." [http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5456.html]

Anyone reading the papers in the last few years has been assaulted with stories about massive business failures. Bubbles everywhere. Collapses of giants. Scams turning into bailouts. Storied and celebrated business brands crashing and burning, coming down around the heads of the very managers who ate the guts out of the place like termites.

What is the current state of the art of American management? As measured empirically?

Ford. Chevy. Chrysler. Fannie. Freddie. Bear Stearns. WorldCom. Enron. Arthur Anderson. KPMG. New Century. The American Red Cross. AIG. Tyco.

You all know the list. You all can add to the list. You probably work for some firm who is going to be on the list sooner rather than later.

Yes yes yes. The story outlined here is negative. You might say it is in the CHECK part of the think-do-measure-fix cycle. Not checking, not recognizing failure, would not be good management, would it?

In deference to the pollyanna reader who does not tolerate critical statements, the issue can be rephrased in terms of alternatives. Which is better - to manage like Detroit did, or to manage like Detroit didn't? What should and must be done if the bubble-style school of management is to be replaced by something more rational, more healthy, more successful, more scientific, and more responsible?  

As another alternative (or corollary) question, it may be useful to ask what the rest of the world knows, sees, learns and thinks about American business management. Add to the recent epidemic of 'bubbles' the management disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it gets very difficult to avoid a painful answer.

Where, then, will the developing nations of the world (including the Islamic ones) look for leadership in strong, effective, visionary and stable business management? To the USA? Not likely.

Business, it might be aptly said, is about the future. Study the past, read the future, fix the present.

"So our new energy policy is: I have a cocaine problem. I'm out of cocaine. What's say we turn the kids' rooms into cocaineries."
Jon Stewart
on The Daily Show 6/26

"Killing the Constitution is the president's job. The court's job is to overturn elections."
Stephen Colbert
on The Colbert Report 6/26

   1. Sight:I find the sight of mountains very pleasing to the eye.
   2. Smell: I just love the smell of fresh baked bread.
   3. Taste: The taste of cheesecake is simply heavenly!
   4. Sound: The sound of music puts me in a positive mood.
   5. Touch: I just love the feel of cat's fur.
   6. My sixth sense tells me the rest of this week is going to be raining (take that any way).

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