Category Archives: Public Policy & News

Elon’s Modern Day Tower of Babel Event

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So Elon bought Twitter this week, fired most of the staff (except the people who have been writing the most lines of code, and if you work in software engineering you know what a genius idea that is), alienated a bunch of potential 2023 advertisers, and then alienated them more by threatening to publicly shame them.

It reminds me of the Tower of Babel story, where ancient leader Nimrod (according to Jewish-Roman history) decided to build a tower so big that it would reach all the way to God. (How big? About 3x the height of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, which is pretty big at 2722 ft, just over half a mile tall.) Apparently God didn’t like that, so he decided to bust up the party by making people unintelligible to each other.

A literal Tower of Twitter. Image Source: https://sf.curbed.com/2020/5/13/21256351/twitter-building-headquarters-work-home-employees-sf

According to the mythology (which actually appears in many traditions), the reason God made the decision to magically and instantaneously create several languages was that the people were getting too powerful. Because they could communicate and coordinate, they were relying on each other to accomplish great feats (namely: building a giant tower) rather than putting their faith in their deity to help them overcome differences and achieve unity.

It’s pretty easy to see what role Twitter (powered by its Translate Tweet button) and Mastodon are playing.

The only thing I’d love to know is… in this modern drama of social media evolution, who’s playing God?

The U.S. Constitution is a Quality System

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In 2008, I defined a quality system as:

…your organization’s blueprint: it identifies your business model and processes, provides details about how your people will work together to get things done, and establishes specifications for performance — so you can tell if you’re on track… or not.

https://qualityandinnovation.wordpress.com/2008/10/18/quality-system/

By this definition, the U.S. Constitution is a quality system — just like ISO 9001, or any system developed using the Baldrige Criteria, or a system for strategy execution based on Hoshin planning and other lean principles. The Constitution defines the blueprint for how power will be distributed (among the three branches of government, and between the country and the states), provides details about how the branches will work together and what principles they will abide by, and establishes clear standards for performance right up front:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

https://constitutionus.com/

(The preamble is the Constitution’s quality policy.)

But even though I’ve been working with (and researching) quality systems since the late 90s, I didn’t see the connection until yesterday, when I read some excerpts from the Don McGahn case. McGahn, who was subpoenaed by the House of Representatives to testify in the Trump impeachment hearings, was instructed by the White House to disobey the order. He asked a court to decide whether or not he should be made to appear. Federal District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a 120-page response, called on the characteristics of the Constitution that make it a quality system to make the determination:

…when a committee of Congress seeks testimony and records by issuing a valid subpoena in the context of a duly authorized investigation, it has the Constitution’s blessing, and ultimately, it is acting not in its own interest, but for the benefit of the People of the United States. If there is fraud or abuse or waste or corruption in the federal government, it is the constitutional duty of Congress to find the facts and, as necessary, take corrective action.

Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives vs. Donald F. McGahn II – Civ. No. 19-cv-2379 (KBJ) – Filed 11/25/2019

This pattern should be really familiar to anyone who’s worked with ISO 9001 or similar quality systems! After your company’s processes and procedures are put in place, and your performance standards are defined (for products as well as processes), you implement a monitoring system to catch any nonconformance that might arise. Then, after root cause analysis, you implement a corrective action to improve the impacted process.

In the U.S., those nonconformances are fraud or abuse or waste or corruption or even injustice that one person (or entity) experiences at the hands of another. You can take up the issue with the courts, which will (in many cases) interpret the laws, implement countermeasures, and potentially lead to larger-scale corrective actions, like new laws.

How can you tell if the quality system defined by the Constitution is working? Evaluate it against the performance standards. Is justice taking place? Is there domestic tranquility, adequate defense, and general welfare? If not, then the structure of the quality system (e.g. the Amendments) should change to better enable the desired outcomes.

Although the system is imperfect, it does — by design — support continuous improvement that incorporates the Voice of the Customer (VoC). This is done through Congressional representation, carefully selected juries of peers, and NGOs that research and advance specific interests.

So the next time you’re wondering whether your ISO 9001 system adds value, ask yourself… does the U.S. Constitution add value? I think you’ll conclude that both can provide a necessary foundation.

The link between quality and structures in the U.S. government was also noted by Tim J. Clark in this 2008 article from the Indianapolis Star, entitled “People working together can make a more perfect union.” He notes that ‘The aim of the American system of government is to enable “We the People” to work together to make progress – not toward a “perfect” union, which would be impossible – but rather toward a “more perfect” union’ and explains how this aligns with Deming’s philosophy.

Why FEMA is Monitoring Waffle House this Weekend

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This article originally appeared on the Intelex Community on 9/14/2018 at https://community.intelex.com/explore/posts/why-fema-monitoring-waffle-house-weekend Sometimes the most informative metrics show up in the strangest of places. Case in point: with a hurricane making landfall today in North Carolina, and the prospect for catastrophic flooding over the weekend and into next week, emergency managers are mobilizing for action – and if you’re in the path of the storm, you may be doing the same. Have you started monitoring the Waffle House Index? The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has. Originally devised by W. Craig Fugate, former FEMA Director, the Waffle House Index is based on the observation that the popular 24-hour breakfast chain has historically been unusually well prepared for disasters. Part of their business model is to be the spot for emergency personnel to rely on for their coffee and nourishment – a valuable role when power crews, rescue teams, and debris removal workers are working long, hard hours. To do this, they make sure all employees have disaster training and stock all their restaurants with generators, and have a reduced menu specifically to be offered in the aftermath of a disaster. Over time, this even led to a more formal partnership between the organizations. FEMA first responders are known to set up initial operations in Waffle House locations. Waffle House now reports the status of each location to FEMA after a disaster to facilitate data collection. The Waffle House Index is a red, yellow, or green marker placed on a map wherever a Waffle House location is found. Under normal conditions, the marker is green. If the restaurant has shifted into emergency operations and is offering their limited menu, the marker is yellow. If the marker is red, that means that the Waffle House is closed – either the site itself is damaged or destroyed, emergency staff can not reach the site, the emergency generators are down or out of fuel, or there is a food shortage. When FEMA sees one or more reds, they know an area is in particularly bad shape – and they’ll need to help. What can you learn about risk-based thinking from the Waffle House index? Three things: first, that you can (and should) look outside your organization for risk indicators that might help you make better (and faster) decisions, particularly when those risks are activated. Second, that you should explore crowdsourced risk data as a source of up-to-date information. And finally – if Waffle House is closed, there’s a serious problem.   Additional Reading: McKnight, B., & Linnenluecke, M. K. (2016). How firm responses to natural disasters strengthen community resilience: A stakeholder-based perspective. Organization & Environment, 29(3), 290-307. Walter, L. (2011, July 6) What do waffles have to do with risk management? EHS Today. Available from https://www.ehstoday.com/fire_emergencyresponse/disaster-planning/waffles-risk-management-0706

Perception of Value & Today’s Cryptocurrency “Crash”

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Artist’s rendering of Bitcoin. THERE ARE NO ACTUAL COINS THAT LOOK LIKE THIS. Don’t ever let anyone sell you one.

Today, many cryptocurrencies lost ~35-50% of their value. Reddit even posted contact information for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline in /r/cryptocurrency, knowing how emotional investors were bound to be today. Bitcoin, which was nearly $20K in mid-December and has been hovering near $14K this past week, dropped nearly $4K and almost sunk below the $10K milestone. I usually track the price of Bitcoin at http://bitcointicker.co, which can show the posted prices from several exchanges (web locations where people go to buy and sell, like Ebay). There are hundreds of cryptocurrencies and many of them dropped in value today.

Why did the prices drop so much on Tuesday? Here are some likely influences:

Market prices are usually driven by supply and demand — for example, if there aren’t that many lobsters available in a particular area at a particular time, and you go to a restaurant hoping to order one — you’ll pay a premium. But that price is also influenced by the quality of the product, the image of the product, which influences your perception of its value. Quality reflects how well something satisfies stated and implied needs or expectations.

Value, however, is quality relative to price, and influenced by image. And people are not always rational: they’ll pay a premium for image, even if the value of a product isn’t particularly high. Just think of all the Macs on display at schools, coffee shops, and airports. Price is related to value… usually, price goes up as value goes up.

Where’s the value of cryptocurrency? A Bitcoin does not, on its own, have any inherent value — just like a dollar or a Euro (a “fiat currency”). But the prospect of an asset that will increase in perceived value — where you can buy low, hold (sometimes just for a few days), and sell high because there are lots of people willing to buy it from you — will have perceived value. Hundreds of early adopters — or “Bitcoin millionaires” — are getting people excited about the prospect of making small investments and reaping huge rewards. That this has happened so recently lends a mystique to ownership of cryptocurrencies and Altcoins (or “alternatives to Bitcoin,” like Ether) in addition to the novelty.

Value is attributed to things by people, and cryptocurrencies are no exception. The quality of the currency itself, and the technical solidity of the platform upon which one is based, isn’t really tied to the cryptocurrency price right now — although this will probably change as knowledge and awareness increases.

Is this the end of Bitcoin? That’s doubtful — there are too many innovators who insist on exploring the technological landscape of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, and lots of investors willing to fund them. In the meantime, there are unlikely benefits: because cryptocurrencies are not yet mainstream, a “crypto crash” is not as likely to ripple through the whole economy (no pun intended) like the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. But if you do decide to buy cryptocurrency, don’t invest any more than you can afford to lose.

Quality in Unexpected Places: The Weather!

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doug-tree-bloom(Image Credit: Doug Buckley of http://hyperactive.to)

Many thanks to Sean Goggins, my favorite sociotechnical information scientist, for sharing this example of quality in an unexpected place on Facebook. As a meteorologist, I love how quality and productivity can be linked to one of my favorite sciences:

Central air hasn’t made us comfortable, so much as made us uncomfortable in a different way.

The experience isn’t simply unpleasant. It comes with a real financial cost.

To find out just how much, Cornell University researchers conducted a study that involved tinkering with the thermostat of an insurance office. When temperatures were low (68 degrees, to be precise), employees committed 44% more errors and were less than half as productive as when temperatures were warm (a cozy 77 degrees).

Cold employees weren’t just uncomfortable, they were distracted. The drop in performance was costing employers 10% more per hour, per employee. Which makes sense. When our body’s temperature drops, we expend energy keeping ourselves warm, making less energy available for concentration, inspiration, and insight.

— by Ron Friedman in “Want More Productive Workers? Adjust Your Thermostat,” 9/17/2012

Stimulating Innovation Culture through Higher Ed Reform (Part II)

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(Image credit: Doug Buckley of http://hyperactive.to)

<– this is continued from Part I

I have ONE very subjective and utopian proposal for how we could adapt the system of higher education in the US to more effectively achieve these outcomes. The nice thing is, this particular proposal could be implemented by one university at a time. It is totally based on my own dream – a system that I think would have been VERY COOL had it been in place 20 years ago when I started college – and a system that I could still see myself taking advantage of NOW for getting even more education.

It is the EMERGENT UNIVERSITY DEGREE concept.

(Note that I haven’t vetted this idea against business plans, cash flows, faculty load balancing, or other peoples’ opinions. Just a dream that hopefully will stimulate ideas for those who read this. This is 100% stream of consciousness rambling for fun!)

Imagine this kind of world: You decide you want to “go to college”. There is no “admissions” process because you don’t have to commit to a particular path or a particular major or a particular institution. You just get to start taking a class or two (on a first-come-first-serve or space-available basis) and see where it leads. Or maybe you take one or two of those online courses with a zillion students in them, just to see if you can do it and if you LIKE it. A gateway drug, if you will, to getting more education.

You don’t take any classes you don’t want to take, but some classes might require prerequisites, and so you will need to complete those before completing the classes with material you really want to learn. You take a class as many times as it takes you to achieve a particular minimum performance level… or not. You could also take a class a second or third time to qualify at a higher level of performance (same idea as getting a Six Sigma Green Belt, then moving on to get the Black Belt). If you are having a hard time achieving the required performance, then you have a choice: stop taking the class, and start exploring OTHER paths that would get you a degree, or keep taking the class as many times as you need to in order to learn the stuff. (Yes, that could get costly… but that’s reality. In an organization that’s trying to innovate, it might take a multitude of tries to get somewhere… and that organization will need to decide exactly how much time and effort it wants to spend on that innovation process.)

You log in to your “educational management dashboard” that shows you what courses you’ve taken, where you can rank which ones you really enjoyed and have been able to develop a level of proficiency or a level of mastery. Every time you complete a course, the system examines your performance and provides you with a roadmap for 1) what “degrees” you could hop out of the system and claim NOW, and 2) what paths of varying lengths are available to you to complete other degrees. Some degrees might require 30 credits. Some might require 150 credits. You get to pick how much time and effort you want to invest.

Maybe you have no clue what you want to do with your life. Excellent – this system is just for you! You can start taking classes that you think you’ll enjoy, find out whether you do or not, and then your educational management dashboard will help you analyze what you liked and what you’re good at – and get you through the system with an appropriate degree.

You can also forget about worrying about grades, because there’s no penalty for failure other than you get more information about what you’re not good at, or what you might not like. Once you “pass” a class, the instructor is basically saying “yeah, I think they figured out how to do this stuff and I’m confident that they could move forward into something else that requires this as a foundation”. Because the degree program itself is emergent, your “failure” just steers you into another direction that fits you better.

But no, NO!!! you say. I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to be a dentist. My family expects me to be a dentist, and if I don’t pass these classes and become a dentist, I am done with!! OK, if you want it that badly, then do what you need to do to develop a minimum proficiency and move forward. Or, use the additional information as ammo to show everyone else “look – my dashboard advised me that this is not where I need to go – and since I care about stimulating innovation and enhancing our country’s competitiveness, then I’ll pursue my recommended calling according to the dashboard…” or something like that.

This kind of system would also encourage education just for the sake of education. Say you “start college” but then find out it’s not for you. There’s no stigma in “dropping out” because you have your portfolio of past performances that you might still be able to use to convince an employer that you’re capable of certain skills that they need! Want to complete general education courses? Great, you can get a general education degree in addition to your specialization degree – but you get to make the choice whether you want to be “well rounded” or not.

Student loan debt also becomes less of a problem this way – because you get to choose just how much you invest and over what time horizon. You can stop at any time, and still get to carry your work with you. Want the social, cultural and networking benefits of a traditional university? Then go that route, and do what’s being done today.

I think the underlying concept of this emergent university degree is that YOU get to decide how much you want to learn, and you are not penalized for changing your mind at any time – for pursuing what your developing skills and interests direct you towards, rather than what is prescribed at the beginning of a very long multi-year process.

A kind of educational system like this would train us to be perpetually open to opportunities and possibilities – and celebrate failure or lack-of-interest in a subject as gaining a very important piece of new knowledge, that will bring us to the opportunities we are most aligned with more quickly.

Stimulating Innovation Culture through Higher Ed Reform (Part I)

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(Image credit: Doug Buckley of http://hyperactive.to)

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could create an innovation culture in your organization by just bringing people in who have already been enculturated into that way of thinking and being? I think it’s possible. (I propose one potential design in the follow-up to this post, Part II.)

Pretty much every week I read articles about how the higher education system in the U.S. is broken. (That is, how it needs to be overhauled and reformed, how the educational system is not enhancing our competitiveness as a nation, or how it’s too expensive compared to the value it provides graduates, especially in a down economy.) This week, I read Wildavsky & Litan’s Huffington Post article that outlines how bureaucratic processes and accreditation are getting in the way of implementing innovative educational business models.

I also see a lot of articles bemoaning the struggle to create a culture of innovation in many organizations, and every one of these seems to tie back to processes and practices that could potentially derive from a student’s experience in the higher education environment. For example, Edward Hess (currently an Executive in Residence at UVA’s Darden School of Business) recently wrote an article in Forbes encouraging organizations to adopt a culture that supports innovation:

Innovation is the result of iterative learning processes as well as environments that encourage experimentation, critical inquiry, critical debate, and accept failures as a necessary part of the process…

…innovation requires a mindset that rejects the fear of failure and replaces that fear of failure with the joy of exploration and experimental learning.

So the solution is EASY: we need to 1) model iterative learning processes in education, and 2) enculturate our students to accept – and appreciate! – failures and false starts as a totally necessary part of the process. Only here’s the problem: the message we’re reinforcing as parents, as educators, and as citizens is that failure is bad. Work hard, study hard, press forward, get A’s! Don’t use your education to learn more about what turns you on and what you want to contribute to the world. Just make us proud of you, and bust your butt so you can get a high paying job. Whether you like it or not.

This is not productive and not enjoyable for many, many students. It promotes fear and drains out a lot of natural love for learning new things.

Click here to see my imaginative and utopian proposal for a new system –>

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