Pretzel Logic

I understand the theory of supply and demand. Pretty much all of us do. I used to teach it to fifth and sixth graders when my daughters were in school. I brought in donuts, gave each class member an envelope stuffed with Monopoly money and auctioned off the donuts.

To simulate real life conditions, not everyone had the same amount of Monopoly money in their envelope. Some students were relatively rich, others were relatively poor. There also were not enough donuts available for all the students. That illustrated too many people chasing too few goods and services.

The first donut auctioned off for a measly sum – maybe five dollars. I’d hand over the iced confection to one smiling student while the others salivated. Invariably, everyone wanted the next donut for the same price the first sold for. But alas, there were even fewer goods now, so I said I wanted more money for the next one. That made a lot of the “poorer” students drop out of the bidding. I’d sell the second donut for a princely sum and thereby demonstrate the forces of supply and demand. As the supply of donuts dwindled, prices rose.

I would eat a donut myself and watch the student’s eyes widen as they understood the impact on supply. I gave one to the teacher as “payment” to my supplier for use of her classroom. The students got creative. One group, working as a team, pooled their funds, bid for and won a donut then shared it, each taking one bite. Another time, I auctioned off the empty box just for the crumbs it contained.

But now I’m getting off track. My point is this: while supply and demand pressures are simple with donuts in a classroom full of hungry elementary students, it’s not quite so easy with gasoline prices and thirsty vehicles.

I just spent $75 to fill up my truck with gasoline valued at $3.14 a gallon (should have done that three days ago when it was “only” $2.99). As gasoline prices rose for the summer driving season, I also read that oil prices decreased about three bucks a barrel.
I was confused. How could that be? Raw material prices fall, finished product prices increase. Oil prices go up, gas goes up. Oil prices go down, gas goes up. Heads I win, tails you lose.

Since oil prices are speculative of future demand, it seemed that a drop in oil should equal an automatic and noticeable drop in gasoline prices. But, not so.

That’s where the complications arise. Oil is not gasoline. It has to be refined. Apparently, several refineries are offline as a result of fires and other problems. And that during the start of peak driving time for vacations. In fact, raw oil prices could be dropping because of the shutdown refineries since speculation may be that less convertible oil will be needed in the next several weeks.

So, we have a diminished supply of gasoline at a time when the demand for the precious fluid is on the rise. And prices rise. Just like they did for my donuts.

The thing is, I didn’t really have just one box of donuts. I brought in enough for everybody. I just chose not to disclose that or my supply and demand illustration would have been useless.

So, oil companies: we get it. Now bring out the donuts for all of us.

The Block

Whether it's the yips, the jitters, a slump or the shanks, we've all experienced something like it. You're off your game, out of the zone. You have to pull out of it or give up. A bad case of writer's block is no different. And when matters get complicated by spending time writing html code instead of stories, well, it just doesn't help.

While I needed to spend time with a web site redesign (thus the html bogey in this story), I do admit it was a convenient way to avoid having to assemble words. Bad thing was, once I completed my web project, I found I was plagued with the block. I couldn't think of anything to say. I stared at my blog and nothing came to mind.

When I quit smoking eighteen years ago, I didn't cut down, didn't use the patch or chew nicotine gum, and I didn't get hypnotized either. I quit cold turkey. Threw it all away and never looked back. And, as a very wise person recently reminded me, sometimes the only way around a problem is through it.

So through it I went. Gimme the ball coach, head down, follow my blockers, into the end zone. I had forgotten that some of my most productive writing time is when I am not writing at all. I know that doesn't make sense at first, but it's like this: I walk most evenings. Three miles. It is a great time to let my mind wander where it will, associate freely and see what happens. Generally, about two-thirds of the way through my jaunt, I come up with a story. Or two. Three if I'm very lucky that night.

Last night I was very lucky. Up until last night, I had forgotten to relax. Forgotten to focus. I had my mind on business too much and that stifled my creativity. So I quit thinking business and started to wander, to associate. And I got through the yips. The writer's block is gone for now and I'm ready to take up the keyboard once more. It may not make me a better writer, but at least I'll write.

A Star No More

Sometimes nouns can become so popular and recognizable we can hardly resist the urge to give them wings by adding a couple of extra letters and turning them into verbs. For example, you can be easily be punk'd or spammed and, even without the extra letters, you can Google something or email someone.

We could probably assemble a lot more of them, but that's not where I was going with this post. I wanted to mention just one such noun-to-verb transformation that entered the vernacular in 2006: you can now be "plutoed." In fact, the American Dialect Society (who would have thunk there was such a social organization) selected "plutoed" as its 2006 Word of the Year.

To be "plutoed" is "to demote or devalue someone or something." And that is exactly what the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union did to the ex-planet, Pluto, when they decided the puny sphere failed to meet its definition of a planet.

It was not disclosed how tight the balloting ended up, but plutoed did squeeze out a victory in a runoff against "climate canary," which was defined as "an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe on the horizon." Interestingly, the American Dialect Society also considered: murse (man's purse) and flog (a fake blog that promotes products). Try using all those in a sentence.

It kind of gives you a warm feeling to see a demoted planet rise from its own ashes to become a Word of the Year, doesn't it? Looks like it was the Astronomical Union that ended up getting plutoed.

A Bank for the Frugal

I came across some news on the wire about the Tightwad Bank closing in Tightwad, Missouri, population 63. You can read more about the closing here in an article I wrote for YourPanorama. Granted, most of the accounts at that branch were probably small and only set up for the novelty of having checks that read: Tightwad Bank. It's like something you would expect to find in a game of Monopoly. In fact, I can picture the bank president with a white mustache, top hat and cane.

After I wrote the article, I started to wonder how many of those Tightwad checks were actually cashed. Especially if they were written for smaller sums. Bank patrons were sure to have saved money just by issuing Tightwad checks to individuals because the novelty was certainly passed along. I once recall reading an article stating that Pablo Picasso always paid his bills with checks. Why? They bore his signature, which meant the savvy investor would never cash the instrument, preferring instead to keep it for the value of the signature alone.

So why not the same thing for a Tightwad check? I'm not naive enough to think the value of such a document would equal that of a famous painter's signature, but there has to be some level of value there. The test is whether it is enough to outweigh the amount of the check. Something to consider if you are in possession of a Tightwad check.

UMB, current owner of Tightwad Bank, cited economic reasons for the closure and went on to say they were corralling costs. That may be the case if UMB accountants and auditors looked only at the raw data: number of accounts, value of deposits, average deposited per customer. Accountants and auditors tend to look at the world that way - very dryly.

But take a look beyond that initial dry set of stats. Try to see what describes the number, not just states it. What I mean is considering how long a deposit stays at the bank. If checks aren't being cashed, a specific deposit should sit there a longer time. And that means, well, money in the bank.

Banks like deposits that sit there a while. That's because the money doesn't really just sit there. It gets invested, or it gets loaned to other customers. Either way, the bank makes its money from interest earned on the loans and investments. So, if a banker doesn't have to pay out a sum because a check is not cashed, the result is dollars that stay out there collecting more interest.

Seems to me UMB had a golden opportunity in the Tightwad Bank. One that should have been celebrated and promoted instead of shut down. Accounts were established at the bank from all over America, so the marketing efforts could have been nationwide. Tightwad t-shirts and coffee mugs could have fetched additional revenue along with the well known checks. Maybe even a bronzed figure of a hand gingerly rubbing two pennies together would have adorned fireplace mantles and office desks all across our country. Who cares if each customer only had a small deposit on hand. Isn't a million one dollar deposits the same as a single one million dollar deposit?

Instead, the Tightwad Bank will be no more come January 31. Another missed opportunity based on static numbers trying to describe a dynamic world.

Visions of Christmas Past

As was certainly true for most young boys and girls in their single digit years, Christmas for me was a colorful and mysterious event with its own compliment of scents, tastes, sights and experiences to awe and amaze.

From our home in northwest Indiana, we made an annual Christmas journey to Chicago by South Shore, an electric passenger train. Cars painted a dull orange would take us directly to downtown shopping, depositing us right at the doorstep of Marshall Fields. Only after careful consultation with the Sears Christmas catalog were my brother and I ready to make the trip. We understood that Santa brought a great many things our way, but we also knew Mom and Dad supplemented what was in Santa’s sack. So, Ron and I made lists of all the toys we could possibly want and included a few extra knowing that we could not get everything we desired, and knowing it didn’t hurt to hedge our bets a little. Then, at some point, Mom, Dad, Ron and I whisked off to Chicago, ostensibly to see all the store displays but there was more to it than that.

Ron and I were very much dazzled and preoccupied by the animated Christmas displays luring shoppers to store windows. It was like nothing else we had seen before. Electric trains journeyed around magical towns occupied by elves that slowly moved their heads and arms. Mechanical toys that went far beyond our imaginations filled the windows and made us want to revise our Christmas lists with a couple of lengthy addendums. By the end of the day, Ron and I were so tired we hardly took notice of the sacks Mom and Dad carried with them as we boarded the South Shore for the trip back home to Indiana. They had done a little Santa work while we soaked in the lights, the sounds of traffic, the crush of shoppers.

At home, we alternated each year between an artificial tree and live ones we purchased at a grocer in town. But one year Dad took Ron and I to a farm to cut a live one ourselves. I think we ended up going to a farm that belonged to somebody Dad worked with. I can remember snow on the ground, not much, just a dusting but it started to snow again while we were picking out a tree to take home. For someone as tall as a seven year old, the Christmas trees looked big and they were difficult to see around. There was a shuffling among the trees and I looked over to see two horses make their way into the clearing we occupied. They didn’t stay long but it was an impressive sight to a city boy.

We ended up taking home two trees that day. One big one for the living room and a smaller one for the room Ron and I occupied. We were proud of that tree. It was the first time we had one of our own. I can recall drifting off to sleep to the twinkle of Christmas lights and the scent of pine needles.

Suddenly, deep in the night, Ron and I were startled awake by strange noises that seemed to be emanating from our tree. It was a popping sound, the source of which was not clear until morning. Only then did we realize that the tree had been set up too near a heat register. Anytime the house needed to be warmed, pine cones on the tree opened up and seeds sprang forth, ready to produce a sapling. Difficult to do on hardwood floors but the pine persisted, evidently convinced spring had arrived.

I haven’t even begun to tell you about singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” to Grandma, or Dad as Santa, or any one of a thousand other wonderful Christmas memories. But this blog entry can only cover so much. I’ll leave the rest for other times because I am certain I will never forget.

Missing the Point

As a young production supervisor, one of the myriad training classes I was required to attend was produced by a company called Kepner-Treghoe. I don't know if they are still in business, but I'll never forget that class: problem solving. We were taught how to separate the symptoms we observed from the actual problem. That way we could attack the real issue instead of stomping out fires that never seemed to go out. The concept was simple and straight-forward. We were given the tools needed to go after real problems armed with real solutions. It all made sense and I actually used some of those techniques throughout my career.

It's relatively easy to miss the problem at hand and go off tilting with windmills like some modern day Don Quixote. We do it all the time. And, granted, much of the time it is very difficult to separate the real problem from the symptoms that annoy us.

But once in a while the problem glares at us so intensely it is difficult to miss, whether we've had any formal training or not. Take, for example, the recent events in Las Vegas. The city council in its collective wisdom decided to pass an ordinance barring the feeding of indignants in city parks. Suddenly, it was a criminal act to feed even one hungry person in a Las Vegas city park. An indignant, as defined by the wording of that ordinance was a "person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive assistance" from the government or under state law.

Interesting, huh? What exactly does that mean? What do people who are "entitled to apply for or receive assistance" look like? Reminds me of an ad I saw once that showed two people standing next to each other. One was dressed in a nice suit, the other had long hair, a tattoo and a full beard. The ad asked us to identify the drug user. Of course, the ad was meant to challenge our pre-conceived notions. The guy in the suit was fingered as the drug abuser.

Maybe the law enforcement officials of Las Vegas should have simply heeded the word their mayor, Oscar Goodman who said, "certain truths are self-evident. You know who's homeless." Well, that cleared things up, right? Talk about pre-conceived prejudices.

Thankfully, just three days before Thanksgiving, a U.S. District Court judge declared the ordinance unconstitutional because it targeted a certain segment of the population.

The point of me telling you all this is to examine the real issue here. Was it feeding the hungry? I don't think so. Las Vegas has long been trying to deal with its homeless population. The problem is not feeding those less fortunate anymore than it is to blame litter in city parks on the same class of people. The problem is that the homeless exist at all.

If we attack anything else, we are only attacking symptoms. And my Kepner-Treghoe training tells me that as long as we go after symptoms, the problem causing them will never go away. I know it is a grand, noble and extremely difficult task to house and employ the homeless. But preventing those who care from providing a meal is not going to make the problem of homeless people in Las Vegas disappear.

I don't have an answer to this problem for Las Vegas or anywhere else. I wish I did. But I will suggest this: if it is too difficult for the Las Vegas city council to identify what really needs fixing, I would be delighted to lend them my dusty old Kepner-Treghoe training manual.

A Matter of Trust

Sometimes we do things just because we’ve always done them the same way and because it’s just too difficult to change. But if we take a moment and examine those things from a different vantage point, the folly glares back at us and, suddenly, it’s not so undesirable to change after all.

For example, there are countless hours spent in countless organizations across the globe developing elaborately worded policies just to make sure people dress properly for work. I’ve seen some of those policies. They spell out every detail from skirt height to whether jeans can have holes in them. These policies attempt to define the difference between “blue” jeans and jean-like materials and even the size and shape of pockets. And those are the ones written for professional people with one or more college degrees.

Now, I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I have learned a few things about people in my years as a manager. Like how 90% of employees really do want to do a good job and would just like us to define what a good job is, then stay out of their way and let them get it done. The other 10% don’t belong in our organizations anyway and we should be trying to ease them out – quickly! The fallacy in what managers end up doing is spending 90% of their time chasing after the ten percenters and virtually no time with the 90% who will work with little or no supervision at all.

A couple of times in my human resources management career, I was lucky enough to work for companies that were havens for progressive thinkers. They applauded outside the box thinking and trusted me enough to try new approaches to managing people.

It was great when one of those companies nodded when I ditched our eight page dress code policy and replaced it with the following two sentences: “We trust our employees to dress appropriately for the type of work they do considering their contact with customers, employees and investors. We reserve the right to question attire we feel is inappropriate and address concerns with those individuals on a case by case basis.” That was it, except of course for my signature.

It worked so well I used the same memo with the same language at two other places I managed, one of which had spent around thirty hours of time over several months wrestling with dress code language. In all that time over three organizations, we only had one person whose attire we had to question. She agreed, went home, changed and that was that. Amazing things can happen when you trust your employees.

My point is, managers should try to adjust their thinking and shift their energies toward the ninety percent of employees who want to get the job done. Spend time with them, develop their skill levels, coach them, expect good things from them, write policies geared toward them, trust them, recognize and reward them. The other ten percent? Maybe you should try sending them to your competitors.