Labor Day weekend 2013 is upon us as is also the statistical peak of the hurricane season. Somehow the coincidence befits the times as it may well be a different type of statistical peak for labor. The Labor Department defined …
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Five years ago this last Monday, Katrina struck along the Gulf Coast. Its aftermath still lives with us, the 9th Ward in New Orleans still devastated with diminishing hope. The Katrina experience was transformative along many dimensions. It graphically illustrated the execution rigidity borne of planning and responsiveness that comes from leadership gained through cronyism and political machines. Lives were lost and value was destroyed in an experience that put light on our soft underbelly. In fact, 1836 people died and 135 were missing and financial losses exceeded $108 billion. The aftereffects from looting, violence, and losses to the economies would fill scores of books. It reshaped the local economy, created a diaspora of resources and cast doubts globally about our values.
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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
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The 9.0 earthquake that devastated northern Japan continues to have severe aftershocks. They are shocks in what clever physicist would ascribe to a type of space-time. It’s not about Star Trek stuff, or the time travel that fantasies love to use, but rather how one type of event starts a whole series of other events along a different type of path, affecting a different space at a different time, but connected. These types of other events are very real “butterfly effects” where a small change in one place can cause a whole bunch of changes downstream. Believe it or not, that earthquake has changed our lives, our businesses, and our collective futures.
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The yearly onset of winter has been a critical milestone in our history, life for that matter, on this planet. It triggered severe constraints in access to food, travel, safety and the quality of life overall. Travellers who needed to get across mountain ranges had to make tough choices, and often make winter quarters and postpone travel until the thaws. Even in war, some armies huddled in winter and fought from early spring to late fall. Today, winter continues to constrain and often reminds us that our advancement and technology can be humbled by severe weather. Those in the tropics see a different face of nature, the tropical cyclones and monsoons.
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Thanksgiving 2010 is upon us. It nears the end of a year replete with catastrophes, wars, economic and political upheaval. The media successfully amplified issues, created pain and panic disguised as news, and pundits freely demonized others without restraint. Yet, above this soup of sadness are life, dignity, and the love we are capable of demonstrating. We hope that this Thanksgiving begins a better year and launches renewed opportunity and reminders of all that is good about life, …, personally, professionally, or collectively, as enterprises.
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“Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” Dwight D. Eisenhower
How much depends on the yearly business plan? For many, it triggers budgets, funding, capital approvals, sanctioned projects, operating targets, salaries, product launches, support activities, hiring, office renovations, perks, …, lots of movement and a myriad of decisions, hopes, dreams, and nightmares. It is often the summary of what we expect, maybe wish or hope, to happen, commit to do, and the outcomes that the world of business should see, translated into the language of finance.
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L’Envers et l’endroit (Betwixt and Between) is a phrase coined by the French Algerian writer and philosopher Albert Camus in one of his essays. It captures our current dilemma in the Gulf with the forces at play, wrestling with a series of positions, all supportable from different perspectives, in a tug of war wherein winners will all become partial losers before it’s over. A federal judge in New Orleans (not a trivial point) has blocked the current moratorium on deep water offshore drilling in response to the economic damage that local drilling operators are experiencing. The relationships between economic forces and judicial behaviors are nothing new to any region, and the ethics of the action are not in question. It is an example of the power of the lens we put on an issue and the persuasiveness of a point of view. The lens can create a bias for what we consider or discount in the decisions we make.
Judge Feldman wrote that the Obama administration had failed to justify the need for such “a blanket, generic, indeed punitive, moratorium” on deep-water oil and gas drilling. “The blanket moratorium, with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger,” he wrote.
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I heard someone on the news use the term “oil tsunami” to describe the river of oil currently sweeping across the gulf and the devastation it is delivering to those in the water and on shores. It is an interesting analogy in imagery, but it misses the big point, this growing glob of pestilence was triggered by man, by many people making a whole bunch of choices and decisions. The complexities of how it began and the complexities on how it may one day end are still unraveling. The forces of nature that have been unleashed still defy our technology, techniques, and even our collective confidence. Sadly, it does illuminate a darker side, not new, about the economics of the process. Responsible economists articulate the importance of incorporating the impacts of externalities into decision making. What that means is that what we do can have an adverse impact that transfers the burden, costs, and consequences of dealing with the mess to someone else. In the broadest sense, the total costs of what we do are bigger than our accounted costs and subsequent prices we charge.
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“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin. It is very specific about who or what survives, yet the more significant message is the meaning that “if you are not responsive to change, you will not survive.” There is ample anthropological evidence providing insights into how the differences we see between peoples may have evolved. It becomes more fascinating when I see birds that share a common ancestor with dinosaurs. Much of the same applies to organizations, governments, cities, businesses, religions, and even management systems. Management systems contain the DNA and resources that define how an organization operates with the intent of thriving and surviving to thrive another day.
Your couch. It is mine.
Im a cool paragraph that lives inside of an even cooler modal. Wins
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