Work & Survival

2011-06-16T10:42:00.001-04:00

A wise person taught me years ago, that technology is meant to carry out our intentions. On a simple level, if I want to call a colleague, it is not my intention to call her office, her home, or her temporary location. It is my intention to call her. So, I say "call Helen", and technology simplifies the search and calls Helen, wherever she is.

On a more fundamental level -- technology is always connected to our intentions. That is both a moral and practical foundation.

Our humanity is always at play. In a world that truly appreciates diversity -- we should never inhibit the personal and professional development of anyone. That is a fundamental of a truly inclusive organization, community, or group of communities.

Here's a site that I have just learned about. There is an interesting correlation to education and the issue of community-based technology. We need to look at "communities of need" and not simply communities of greed. I know that sounds harsh. But when technology is only developed from a profit point of view, our humanity may be at question.
http://studentforce.ning.com/

Not trying to sound convoluted (though that is a something I find hard to avoid sometimes. :)Technology, and our intentions with the development and use of technology, strikes at our basic humanity. Always.

It is our responsibility to be active participants and not simply leave technology to the experts.

Sal Rasa

Really smart

2011-03-22T20:55:00.000-04:00

"The invention of the remote control changed the timing of the world"- Comedian, writer, director - Sid Caesar

Brain Research Supports Long-Term Teachings of Cis Berry

2011-03-15T09:22:00.001-04:00

I know that Cis will be modest about this. But this news from MIT, is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the deep research and new understanding regarding how our brain actually works.

What I am learning (and getting advice on), is that everything Cis has written about language, nuance and loss of nuance, literal imposition vs. inner voice and articulation etc., is supported by what scientists are discovering. Take a look at this brief article.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/brain-language-0301.html -- MIT Newsletter

Now, a study from MIT neuroscientists shows that in individuals born blind, parts of the visual cortex are recruited for language processing. The finding suggests that the visual cortex can dramatically change its function — from visual processing to language — and it also appears to overturn the idea that language processing can only occur in highly specialized brain regions that are genetically programmed for language tasks.

“Your brain is not a prepackaged kind of thing. It doesn’t develop along a fixed trajectory, rather, it’s a self-building toolkit. The building process is profoundly influenced by the experiences you have during your development,” says Marina Bedny, an MIT postdoctoral associate in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and lead author of the study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Feb. 28.

A Thought About the Irag War and Gratitude to Those Who Served

2010-08-19T16:40:00.002-04:00

Today, as we hear about American troops leaving Iraq, it's a time to deeply thank those who served. It is also, a time to reflect on the morality and humanity of our actions as a nation. Putting aside, incidental political bias and really looking at what we are doing.

Religions have always played their part in wars. I found the following statement to the Bush Administration to be a remarkably insightful plea from the oldest religious order of monks and nuns in the Catholic church. - Sal Rasa

This is the official position of Sr. Joan Chittister's religious order on the war in Iraq:

The following STATEMENT FROM BENEDICTINE MEN AND WOMEN arose from the meeting of Benedictine Presidents of Women's Federations and Men's Congregations of the United States held on October 12, 2002.
STATEMENT FROM BENEDICTINE MEN AND WOMEN

We Benedictine men and women, members of the oldest religious order in the Roman Catholic Church, are alarmed by President Bushâ€™s and the US governmentâ€™s steady movement toward an unprecedented pre-emptive attack against the people of Iraq. Born in late antiquity when marauding armies made all civilization vulnerable to violence, Benedictines adopted as their motto the Latin word Pax (Peace), and the central teaching in our 1500 year-old Rule of Benedict is that everyone, including every stranger, is to be welcomed as a blessing and treated as Christ. From that stance of reverence for the other, we state our opposition to a military attack on Iraq for the following reasons:

Â· A military attack against a densely populated country, already decimated by war and economic sanctions, will put millions of vulnerable civilians at risk of death and disease;

Â· The threatened military attack would follow over a decade of repressive sanctions that have already killed millions of innocent Iraqis, many of them children, who die of malnutrition, contaminated water, and a shortage of medication for treatable diseases;

Â· A military attack will not decrease but increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks against the US and any allies who join us, both by giving immediate incentive to existing terrorist cells and by drawing more resentful and desperate young people of Islamic nations towards terrorist ideology;

Â· A military attack now will further divert attention and resources from solving our domestic economic problems, which threaten millions of American families and individuals with the terror of hunger, homelessness, and unemployment;

Â· A military attack would needlessly put at risk the young men and women in the US military who would fight this war;

In saying this, we also recognize that Saddam Husseinâ€™s threats must be taken seriously. We realize that he did use chemical weapons against his own people in the 1980â€™s, when he was allied with the US. We believe that United Nations diplomacy must be used to resolve this ongoing problem; threats to attack serve only to destabilize the situation and make more likely the use of any weapons Iraq may have.

One of the main reasons given by the administration for going to war is that, as Americans, we must refuse to live in fear. As people of faith, we know that fear is a spiritual problem. Fear can only be overcome by confronting fear itself, not by eradicating every new object of fear. The answer to fear is not war but a deep and living faith.

Some of us Benedictines oppose all war as immoral, but all of us oppose this particular war as immoral. We will each do what we can to prevent it. As we gather each day for prayer in our monasteries, we pledge to join together in praying that peace will prevail.

--

For additional information contact:

Sister Mary Lou Kownacki, O.S.B.
Mount Saint Benedict Monastery
6101 East Lake Road
Erie, PA 16511

http://www.osb.org/amcass/peace0210.html

Let's listen to our heritage

2010-07-06T16:51:00.002-04:00

"He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the
Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new
Appropriations of Lands".

- The Declaration of Independence, referring to the King of Great Britain.

Looking back at Katrina seems like looking forward

2010-07-05T23:40:00.004-04:00

NOLA.com: Hurricane Katrina Archive

will take you to the original article and slide show.

Hurricane Katrina struck the New Orleans area early morning August 29, 2005. The storm surge breached the city's levees at multiple points, leaving 80 percent of the city submerged, tens of thousands of victims clinging to rooftops, and hundreds of thousands scattered to shelters around the country....

Do we really understand politics?

2010-02-02T23:43:00.003-05:00

"Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war." Maria Montessori

Is This Why I Pay Almost 3K Per Month for Two People?

2009-09-15T17:39:00.003-04:00

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/09/15/potter_pr/index.html

How corporate P.R. works to kill healthcare reform

Health insurers have become expert at using P.R. to get what they want. I got out before the latest round

Editor's note: Wendell Potter, formerly a communications officer for the private health insurer Cigna, is now the Senior Fellow on Health Care for the Center for Media and Democracy. He delivered the remarks below at the Center for American Progress.

By Wendell Potter

Knowledgeable and Clear Health Care Infomation

2009-08-19T01:01:00.005-04:00

Always compelling and open, this blog by Paul Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston is important to all of us right now.

RUNNING A HOSPITAL
THIS IS A BLOG STARTED BY A CEO OF A LARGE BOSTON HOSPITAL TO SHARE THOUGHTS ABOUT HOSPITALS, MEDICINE, AND HEALTH CARE ISSUES.

http://www.runningahospital.blogspot.com/

Please help others to read this and become more informed about critical decision making as a country and as families, patients and practitioners.

Sal

2009-07-07T11:40:00.002-04:00

Heard from a friend at the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) today, and was reminded of what the author Tom Wolf recently said regarding the current world economy and who we look to for influence.

Wolf said: "Wall Street is like Broadway. Nothing new happens there anymore".

Here's to the people at the RSC who work so hard to carry on the work of theatre. The way Shakespeare was, and is, always current.

Here's to the RSC's willingness to confront the search for truth, humanity and politics.

In today's world, they are a very old company brave enough to work in earnest.

Sal

Interesting Article About Facebook Use

2009-07-07T00:42:00.002-04:00

I am working with some grad students who make the point that much of what we so urgently here about now regarding networking issues is old news to them.

They wonder "why did it take so long for people to talk about this stuff?"

Sal

By RANDY COHEN
Published: July 1, 2009

My friend is a popular eighth-grade teacher. She has a Facebook account and has been “friended” by many of her students, who make their pages available to her. Consequently, she has learned a lot about them, including the inevitable under-age drinking and drug use and occasional school-related mischief like cheating on tests or plagiarizing assignments. Must she report any of this to the school, the police or the parents? The school has no policy for dealing with this modern problem. A.S., NEW YORK

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/magazine/05FOB-ethicist-t.html

What's New and Good and Bad

2009-05-11T00:26:00.005-04:00

Today, for the first time in the history of the work place, we have a small army of workers who are skilled at creating and using visual media. An arena that was previously held for "experts".

And, I understand that visual media dates back to the cave days. Every tribe has it's story tellers. Now, everyone has a pallet.

I was listening to a radio discussion about cruelty on U Tube. How people actually find humor in human suffering with certain videos.

One response regarding a video apparently showing someone in mental and physical torment was: "I did not even think the person was real".

This got me to thinking. I spend considerable time developing and observing social networks and social network analysis. It is becoming clear to me that the very same mechanisms for creating community also can and do build arenas totally absent of empathy.

This lack of empathy was a notion put forth by the commentator during his interview.

I also began to think that the ability to network is new, but then again, is it? And, it seems that many people, build networks, text one another and use abbreviated language to build a sense of home. A home that is theirs. Not their parent's home, or their relative's home, but their own home.

Historically, there are many references to arenas without empathy. In Ancient Rome for example, empathy was a vote by the aristocracy and a cry from the public for yes or no.

Our ability to network is deeper than the social marketing hype we are experiencing today.

It has something to do with our nature. And that, we must always recognize as good and capable of what is bad.
Post Options
Sal

Lost a friend this week

2009-04-30T00:20:00.004-04:00

Gerald Frisch died the other day. Jerry was the inventor of The Three Way Validation process.

Simply put, Jerry's process was developed long before technology would exist to accomplish what his system identified.

Jerry was committed to concepts like:

No proposals. Only Action Plans.

Helping CEOs discover if their intentions were really communicated and acted upon by managers, workers and associated communication strategies.

Jerry was in his early ninety's when he provoked me to attend several meetings with NYC hospital executives. He would leave these meetings with a clear notion of who was the real activist and who was the complacent buyer who would not act on anything valuable.

He started his career in the Armed Forces, went on to U.S. News and World Report and then formed his own company.

I learned a great deal from him. I will miss his difficult self and the challenges he gave me to keep up with his thinking.

Sal

A Great Deal is Being Missed in My Neighborhood

2009-04-08T01:48:00.002-04:00

Today, several imperatives exist to create ethical, meaningful and profitable business

Transparency of intentions and expectations. People need to understand what you are about and what’s in it for them, in order to engage during a stressful time.

Statements like “added value” can be interpreted as bromides unless there is some visible example of what you are talking about

In today’s networked environment, connecting to underlying issues and related community needs will support decisions to stimulate the buying of services. This must be understood as foundational and not theoretical.

Small businesses with BIG problems and Big businesses with many SMALL problems that will become enormous. Information, communication and transformation, using any media that creates a Network of useful change

In February, during The Ideas to Help NYC's Economy event sponsored by Crains, it was stated that re-vitalizing the economy of New York City is “dependent upon the development of small businesses…small business cannot make the mistakes of big business”. It’s true, we must support the small business community and we cannot afford the “big” mistakes.

There is however, a current and curious imbalance

Too many small businesses are closing, due to sudden and unusually high rent increases in areas like Greenwich Village. And, even before that terrible surprise occurs, these owners may not have had the finances or ability to have developed fundamental business plans.

In larger organizations, silos act like neighborhoods or fiefdoms, avoiding collaboration and resulting in lost ROI. A walk along Hudson Street in NYC, is an alarming example of businesses that are gone forever with a significant number of these properties abandoned for several years.

Interestingly, we now have a small army of experienced advisers who have no work. Included are business transformation, IT, financial services and web development experts. Small businesses represent neighborhoods in need. We are not connecting these work seeking experts with those neighborhood needs and the relationship to the larger economy.

Neighborhood degeneration is costly in every way

Financial, cultural and security issues are all at question. What’s missing and what I believe in offering, is a proven methodology based on rapid discovery with the ability to align intentions, strategy and results.

It’s not traditional or costly consulting. This approach helps to contemporize and accelerate the work of everyone who is involved. I am interested in getting business for myself and with my colleagues, by helping others find meaningful work, using a networked approach to help one another.

It's important today, to collect real data to dissect significant problems and provide actual communication steps that can be used immediately, to create measurable improvement.

Small businesses create conversations that define our commerce and culture

Today, I had several conversations with store owners who live for their family business. The conversations were deeply moving and totally relevant to the vitality of NYC's economy and life.

Sal

"It's noboby. Just the IT guy"

2009-03-31T23:50:00.005-04:00

A new Turner Broadcast television show called Trust Me, is set in a traditional Chicago big scale advertising company.

The show has a ring of giving life to a dinosaur and not really connected to today's business environment.

I though it was an ironic moment tonight, when I caught this comment.

The senior creative director was hiding his boss in the creative director's office. Seems that his boss had been sent home to calm down after an intramural altercation.

When a copy writer (and the show has some pretty solid work place stereotypes), asked the creative director - "who's in there?" - the response was : "Oh, that's nobody. It's the IT guy".

Now, that rang true. And maybe, the only moment of the show that did.

Out of touch dinosaurs in all industries, always give themselves away with the simple language of exclusion and silo behavior.

How many organizations still think of IT as the help desk?

While it is not uncommon to respect and even publicize the IT functions of a company, it's another thing to collaborate with IT to achieve business objectives and strategies.

I am not saying anything new. In fact, that's the point.

Sometimes, pop-culture TV is more insightful than intended.

Sal

2009-03-30T00:17:00.000-04:00

Olympus Medical Center (WA) gets approval for a $2 million GE Centricity practice EMR purchase. This board member must know hospital IT: "There are going to be changes. I just feel them. And I think all of them are going to cost money."

Posted on HIStalk today.

http://histalk2.com/2009/03/28/monday-morning-update-33009/

Health Care Innovation?

2009-03-25T23:30:00.006-04:00

Posted today, on http://www.histalk.com

"An OB-GYN sues a Utah hospital, claiming the CEO forced him out and that nurses falsified charts to make him look bad. He also claims he dictated a chart note that contradicted the nurse’s fraudulent changes, but the hospital deleted it from the EMR. The HIPAA audit trail should prove it one way or another, and surely the hospital won’t publicly claim that its systems don’t have one".

Interesting perspective on electronic medical records and security.

Sal

Companies Look to Provide Infrastructure Services

2009-03-13T01:09:00.003-04:00

Interesting announcement today from IBM about water. I wonder how this kind of innovation to "go on the offensive" can help organize issues in health care infrastructure? Like Electronic Medical Records. It does not take much imagination to consider "infrastructure" to connect with a different look at what the word means. Feeding mass data into network computing is the very heart of infrastructure in a networked economy.

Have a read. Interesting, that water is a primary survival need.

Sal

http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/bbdp/ibm-launches-water-management-services/381202?cid=12

SAN FRANCISCO -IBM Corp. wants to get really deep into water.

The technology company is launching a new line of water services Friday, hoping to tap a new sales vein by taking the manual labor out of fighting pollution and managing water supplies. IBM says the overall water-management services market could be worth $20 billion in five years.

The effort is part of a wider role IBM wants to play in infrastructure services, including automobile traffic and power grids. In each instance, IBM is trying to persuade utilities and government agencies to overhaul their computer networks and link digital sensors together for better insights.

For example, instead of a meter-reader from the power company traipsing through your backyard, IBM is banking that one day your meter and your neighbors' will feed data directly into the utility's computer network.

Same for water.

IBM says its new services will help water providers become more efficient in overseeing ever-more-precious supplies and responding faster to contamination and other emergencies.

The company has been working on a project called SmartBay with an Irish marine institute to develop sensors that are monitoring pollution, marine life and wave conditions around Galway Bay and transmitting data to researchers. Among the benefits, IBM contends, is that computers can track floating debris that pose a hazard to commercial fishermen.

This "smarter planet" theme is part of IBM's strategy to keep making money in the recession. The company's chairman and CEO, Sam Palmisano , said in a letter to shareholders this week that IBM will be aggressive in drumming up business in areas like managing traffic, power grids, water, food, health care and finance. He vowed the efforts will help Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM grow by getting early starts in areas that will need help for years to come.

We will not simply ride out the storm," Palmisano wrote. "Rather, we will take a long-term view, and go on offense."

Five Sites that Let You Experience the Real-Time Web Today

2009-03-06T23:32:00.003-05:00

"One of the most interesting trends on the Internet right now is a move towards a more real-time experience. We have seen a lot of discussion lately about how Twitter is leading the charge by creating a search engine for the real-time web, for example. However, there are also a good number of other services that already expose some of the promises of the real-time web. In this post, we will have a look at some of the most interesting ones."

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/five_sites_that_let_your_experience_the_real-time.php

Good Info Sent to Me Regarding Health Care Collaboration

2009-03-04T14:37:00.003-05:00

A Disruptive Solution for Health Care

As this nation looks to a paradigm shift in order to tackle our healthcare crisis (because what we’ve been doing over and over clearly isn’t working), it’s exciting to see that leading publications carry the same theme in their reporting on this critical issue that impacts all of us:
- It’s important to find a way to get people engaged in the process instead of being the subject of the process.
- There’s a belief that disruptive innovation, as happens over and over in business, can lead to significant wealth creation opportunities, this time, along with providing enormous societal value.
- People need to find holistic incentive.
- A collaborative approach to more consistent engagement is required.
- The lead event can’t simply be more consumerism; there has to be a desire to change behavior based on the construction of personalized knowledge first.
- There is no “pill,” but rather it’s about taking a systems-based approach to create the requisite new mental model in order to come up with a sustainable solution.
- Whatever is done has to be profitable, and it has to be profitable quickly.
- The solution has to be scalable.

The following sampling of content are just a few of the many articles, peoples, blogs, reports etc all circling around the same vision and understanding.

EthoSquare captures all of these in its discovery learning application with the launch of the Quality of Life Network.

A Disruptive Solution for Health Care - BusinessWeek – 23-February-2009
Full article: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2009/tc20090220_090975.htm

“The answers lie in understanding the concept of disruptive innovation, which explains how successful and dominant businesses can be completely upended by new players that enter the marketplace using markedly different business models. ... So if change is so difficult, how does an industry ever introduce greater quality, efficiency, and affordability? Disruptive innovations have been able to do this over and over in a myriad of industries by initially taking root and introducing change in areas of "nonconsumption."”

How to Make Electronic Medical Records a Reality - New York Times – 01-March-2009
Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/business/01unbox.html

““This is really not a technology problem,” observed Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s a matter of incentives and market failure.” ... But the technology is just a tool, one that needs to be used properly to improve health care. ...So the legislation states that physicians will be paid only for the “meaningful use” of digital records.”

Health-Care Technology: Patient Involvement Helps - BusinessWeek – 23-February-2009
Full article: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2009/tc20090223_182043.htm

“... getting patients involved in the effort, along with hospitals and doctors' offices, can lead to substantial benefits. The research, conducted by Harvard Medical School and two other institutions, shows that reminding patients to take a critical cancer test is actually more effective than reminding their doctors about the same test. ... Employers are showing an increasing interest in electronic records, too. ... Rather than putting all the emphasis on how physicians will use e-records, the focus also has to be on how e-records can be used to get patients more involved in their care.”

Health-Care Reform, Corporate Style – BusinessWeek – 29-July-2008
Full article: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_32/b4095000246100.htm

“ ... If on-site clinics are beloved by boss and worker alike, why aren't all companies building them? For starters, there has to be scale. Clinic managers say there should be at least 1,000 employees in a single location to make the economics work, and the majority of workers must sign up.”

Politics blinds us from seeing true expertise

2009-02-06T21:29:00.006-05:00

Recently, a plane was piloted to an emergency landing on the Hudson River in New York City. We all know the story.

The pilot is heroic in his ability, humanity and courage. So were the crew and the fantastic New Jersey and New York ferry boat captains who rushed without hesitation to what could have been a dangerous situation for them. None of these people, including the Coast Guard, Fire Department and Police arrived without profound ability and willingness to help people survive.

Yesterday, I heard that Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines offered the spectacular captain of the plane a job. Branson offered to pay this man twice the salary of any of Virgin's current pilots and invite him to be an astronaut in Virgin's developing space travel plan.

Now Branson is known to be a good man. However, I found this offer to be superficial and exploitative. The captain of the distressed plane is an expert on airline safety with years of learning, analysis and mentoring. Would it not be better to invite this man to help an industry?

Sometimes, I truly believe that we function in the work place from political agendas with limited vision. That politics and money cause us as leaders (in industry and humanitarian issues), to be matrixed within a faulty framework. Politics runs deep in our perception and behavior.

Aristotle said: "All men are by nature, political". The key in that is "by nature".

How is our nature changed or inhibited in a world where politics drains our imagination and puts us into categories of liked and disliked. When vaudevillians become critics of policy and human interaction while people listen and actually, believe them.

Can we see the reality of true expertise when it is in front of us? In today's environment, I believe vision becomes fractured. Not vision as visionary, but vision as simply seeing what is right in front of us.

Why hasn't this pilot been asked by our government to help the airline industry?
Instead, he gets a public relations offer that's based on a higher salary to continue flying, which demeans both his knowledge and experience.

America has lost an edge on innovation, relevant risk taking and pride of appropriate experimentation. We need to see where expertise is underutilized and who we need to include in the conversation.

Sal

Fad Or Future Second Life And Virtual Worlds

2008-12-18T07:26:00.001-05:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Fad Or Future Second Life And Virtual Worlds

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: 3d strategy)

Is Our Sense of Discovery Changing?

2008-12-18T00:13:00.002-05:00

Here's a thought starter that has me wondering. I am a great believer in what some people in organizations call "Collective Intelligence".

People who understand this, really do put the belief further than the consultant speak it hints at. It's truly significant when placed in an open environment. And, it is the continuous seed of innovation.

Lately, I have been using a derivative term that I call "Collective Instinct". Collective Intelligence is about knowledge and experience. Collective Instinct is what people believe can help to create knowledge and develop experience.

In some ways, we still think of discovery as science defined it centuries ago. Or, as lawyers view a critical process. And now, we often think of it as a collaborative moment or series of moments that may be defined by people thought of as technically proficient.

Another way we look at discovery is shared or communal experience. We look at product forums before we buy a food processor, car or laptop.

In the early days of the Greek theater. Citizens were funded to attend performances if they could not afford to attend on their own. One could not be a true citizen without the ability to know that theater was a way of the society talking to itself about itself. You had to participate to live fully and contribute.

Today, our collaboration and sense of discovery may reflect in some way, the kinds of silos often found in business organizations. Art, music, theater provide a different kind of sharing. One that business desperately and obviously needs to understand better. Sustainability is a deeper conversation than most organizations feel comfortable with. Our economy proves that.

The ancient Greeks defined economy as the ability to sustain the life of something for as long as possible.

All the best for sustaining during a difficult time.

Sal

Sounds Like the Future

2008-12-08T18:10:00.008-05:00

http://www.smule.com/

Have you seen or heard about this application for the iPhone?

"As an instrument Ocarina has been perfectly executed... This is how an iPhone app should be done." - TechCrunch

With this iPhone app, you can actually see where people around the world are using this musical device at the time you are using it. Your musical offering, reflected in some way, around the globe.

My long time friend and colleague, Rachel Allgood, could not wait to show me this and point out that the iPhone makes you think. For instance, what does this kind of application really mean. Rachel is one of NYC's great designers and business strategists. She created Isocurve to help clients actualize their true ideas. www.isocurve.com

When I experienced the application, several things came to mind. Medical emergencies and health care services are greatly supported by communal understanding. Like the iPhone Ocarina, one can easily imagine the powerful ability to immediately share critical information around the globe for people experiencing similar emergencies. Health care, terrorist threats, and even less traumatic episodes can be affected by immediate community understanding. Certified Diabetes Educators for example, have substantive experience to share. Instant networking can be very helpful to explore what many people are going through, as they are actually living through the events, creating mass solutions and customized help.

Innovations like "the retailing of medicine" and "home medicine" are also related. People will input medical data by remote control in order to have prescriptions, nursing assignments and assisted treatments arranged. Mass customization in the terms that the originator of that phrase intended. What a customer wants, when they want it.

There is also another interesting notion that may lie underneath this ability to see how many people around the world are playing the Ocarina. True, the iPhone is providing a fun and startling visualization. This deeper value however, is something that I have written about before.

In today's world, communication and implementation are often simultaneous. This gives an entirely different understanding of value chains and integrated supply chains. With the creation of E bay, we entered the distribution of goods and services from the buyer's perspective, not the manufacturer's. This was transformation based on continuous development. In this way, collective intelligence enables collective instinct to move into action. The iPhone Ocarina begins to sound like the future to me.

When I was a young boy, I loved going to the World's Fair in Queens NY. One thing I clearly remember, was an electronic game at the AT&T pavilion. I played it over and over. My memory tells me that the participant was pushing buttons on a display to distinguish sounds. The World's Fair was full of technology and talent. At that time, and for a long time, Bell Labs was creating two pattens a day.

Eventually, (and I could be making this up, but I think not), I realized that AT&T may have been collecting data on how people would be able to transform from rotary dial sounds to digital sounds when making phone calls. It was the beginning (1964), of the move to digital phones.

What does the iPhone Smule experience mean for you? It clearly is not just about the fantastic ability to see where people around the world are using the musical tones as you are.

Years ago, I produced several video's for AT&T on subjects like the democratization of technology. Doctors in the future for example, were shown using IM or video conferencing during emergency surgeries to share expertise.

Bell Labs also had other agendas. Good ones.

They wanted legislators to understand that in the future, freedom to share critical information at critical times would be imperative and expected. Consequently, they really did not want law makers establishing rules affecting future technology without respecting the need to understand more before creating such laws.

Well, Rachel is right as usual. The iPhone makes me think. And it makes me think about things I care about.

My imagination may be based on reality or not. But as one great philosopher said: "Reality, not the real is dependant upon care".

Sal

Interesting Conversation about Brands

2008-12-03T16:34:00.003-05:00

I placed this comment a few minutes ago responding to a good conversation on the memetic brand site. www.memeticbrand.com

Good discussion.

If we can assume that brand is about loyalty (traditional thought) and loyalty is about logic, then it is possible to consider collective intelligence as rationale for brand building.

In a networked economy (good and bad), decisions are often a collection of influences. Social Capital is deeply connected to trust. Trust is indeed measurable, but more important are the consequences when a lack of trust exists.

One great philosopher said: "Reality, not the real is dependent upon care".

Through social networking, it is possible to build a sense of trust and reality. One can begin to tell the difference between valuable interaction and hype.

Sometimes, I am reminded while networking, of my old neighborhood in Brooklyn New York where I grew up.

When a family had a trauma, meals would suddenly show up at their door. Somehow, the neighbors instinctively took up caring for the routines that the traumatized family could not pay attention to. It was collective instinct and implementation for the neighbors to react and be supportive.

I see much of this kind of supportive collective instinct and intelligence in collaborative spaces today.

What I don't see, is the acknowledgment to understand that brands are often very personal selections between millions of people.

Just think about the power of connecting that reality to sustainable and continuous improvement. And, to what that could mean to our worlds.

Sal Rasa

Mumbai attack coverage demonstrates (good and bad) maturation point of social media

2008-11-28T14:42:00.002-05:00

November 28th, 2008

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 11:21 am

http://blogs.zdnet.com/feeds/?p=339 ZDNET

The devastation in Mumbai has been top-of-mind and top-of-the-news over the last few days – with good reason. It’s also been the hottest trending topic on Twitter and covered widely as the latest disaster to be live broadcasted via tweet.

Sadly, the people writing about how cool it is that people are live tweeting the events in Mumbai are missing a huge point. What’s happening now — and what is happening in Mumbai — is bigger than all of us. It’s bigger than communicating via Twitter. It’s bigger than just reading blogs. This is where social media grows up.

Social media is providing the ability to report and take in unfiltered news in a more direct way than ever before possible and we’re doing it on a mass scale. It’s no longer just a toy for early adopters and Internet nerds; it’s taking its place as an influencer far beyond technology. There is, however, a downside: there’s very little way to know what is true and what is rumor. As fellow ZDNet-er Michael Krigsman said to me the night, “we’re trading off potential accuracy for immediacy.”

Solar Cooking: A Different View of Enviroment & Humanity

2008-11-13T23:48:00.004-05:00

http://www.jewishworldwatch.org/refugeerelief/solarcookerproject.html

If you have not heard about this innovation it's worth checking out.

Jewish World Watch is committed to protecting refugee women and girls from rape and other forms of violence, and helping them to rebuild their lives. Women and girls fleeing the genocide in Darfur, Sudan are placed in extreme jeopardy when undertaking the simple, but vital, task of collecting firewood for cooking fuel. We are reducing the vulnerability of these women by providing the Iridimi and Touloum refugee camps in Chad with solar cookers, and reducing their need to collect firewood. Our project protects these women and provides them with income opportunities that include: manufacturing solar cookers, training others to use the cookers and making carrying bags to increase the life span of the cookers. JWW is also developing other companion projects aimed to keep the women inside the relative safety of the camp.

When I heard about this I was moved and amazed at the simplicity and depth of this intervention/innovation.

It makes me consider how we are so disconnected to the earth and how to live, that we miss the humanism and the simple principles of our environment that can provide answers to our most vile problems.

We complicate even our most urgent needs as a society and we actually believe that basic solutions are too difficult to deal with.

My admiration to Jewish World Watch for this.

Sal

1920 U.S. Election

2008-11-05T19:28:00.002-05:00

Eugene Debs ran for President in 1920 as a socialist while serving 10 years in prison for opposing World War I.

Debs receives one million votes. President Harding invites him to dinner.

Sal

IT's biggest project failures -- and what we can learn from them

2008-10-25T01:47:00.002-04:00

When you look at the reasons for project failure, "it's like a top 10 list that just repeats itself over and over again," says Holland, who is also a senior business architect and consultant with HP Services. Feature creep? Insufficient training? Overlooking essential stakeholders? They're all on the list -- time and time again.

A popular management concept these days is "failing forward" -- the idea that it's OK to fail so long as you learn from your failures. In the spirit of that motto and of the Ig Nobel awards, Computerworld presents 11 IT projects that may have "failed" -- in some cases, failed spectacularly -- but from which the people involved were able to draw useful lessons.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Project+Management&articleId=9116470&taxonomyId=73

Conglomerate Posture During Economic Downturn

2008-10-23T11:25:00.008-04:00

http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/854855/WPP-orders-hiring-freeze-amid-client-spending-cuts/

WPP orders hiring freeze amid client spending cuts

by John Tylee, Campaign 17-Oct-08, 14:40

LONDON - WPP has reacted to the deepening financial crisis by ordering a freeze on all hirings until further notice.

In an e-mail to senior staff and seen by Campaign, the group, whose agency empire includes JWT, Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam and Grey, cites clients' decisions to hold back on marketing spend as the reason for its action.

A Subject We Cannot Ignore

2008-10-18T01:47:00.011-04:00

Rape Victim's words Jolt Congo - NY Times October 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/18/world/africa/18congo.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

This is a difficult story to read. I realize the difficulty lies in me (us), for the way we all have left this level of inhumanity up to others to take care of.

I went to see the movie "W" today. True to his words, Oliver Stone has not created a film that's driven by cheap shots.

I came away with an interesting feeling.

The movie was not about "W", but more about us. How we work to develop our democracy and how we often times, just let things happen. "Things" that affect the very fabric of our humanity.

We live in a time of "Talk Radio Show Consciousness" and that continues to divide us.

Interesting to me, that radio has always been a tremendous influencer of culture and beliefs. In fact, like the telegraph, radio was an early technology signal for safety when people are in trouble.

Sal

Multimillion-Dollar Men

2008-10-07T00:47:00.002-04:00

October 7, 2008 NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/10/07/business/20080929-payout-graphic.html

In the five years from 2003 to 2007, these Wall Street executives collectively took home more than $1 billion in pay

Once again, I am reminded of what the author Tom Wolf said last week:

"Wall Street is like Broadway. They are both anachronisms. Nothing new happens there".

Sal

Whers's the Money?

2008-10-04T01:34:00.004-04:00

The author, Tom Wolf said in an interview this week:

"Wall street is like Broadway, it's an anachronism. Nothing new happens there".

He went on to say, that more influence on the money comes from Greenwich Connecticut, implying home of the hedge fund world, I believe.

It's an interesting observation. I know he is right about Broadway. Think about the extraordinarily committed and gifted people working in that community. Skilled performers, producers, stage hands, designers, musicians, maintenance and security experts.

All that incredible human passion and commitment to create unusually expensive and often empty spectacles in a world where theater is today, so profoundly needed.

The theater historically, has always been a place for the society to talk to itself about itself.

What are we saying to one another today?

And, could there be a relationship between what we are not able to share openly, that puts us into a bankrupt sense of value at all levels. Affecting our health fiscally, mentally and ethically?

Sal

Internal Communications - The Continuing Myth

2008-10-03T14:44:00.004-04:00

Today, I answered a Linked In question about internal communications.

Here's what I said:

To provoke some response to your statement and hear from others, I will suggest a different point of view. And, it's one I believe in.

We should forget "internal" vs. "external" communications in organizations. The world does not work that way anymore. The boundaries are gone.

Content that bores people is the real danger. Content that excludes people because of traditional internal competition depletes ROI and destroys innovation.

People working in the food industry to develop new products forget their "secrets" once at home, where they face contemporary issues like child diabetes. They are customers as well as workers in a world where information sharing and learning are routine ventures on the Internet and within their social networks. Formal and Informal Networks.

Living and working in a networked society and economy has made the internal vs. external separatism archaic.

Wherever organizations still live to provide paternalistic communication structures, you will find an underachieving culture. Sometimes, that shows up in dollars and more often in not supporting human potential.

This is not to say that internal work and information sharing should not be organized. However, understanding what kind of organizational structure is dependent upon the kind of WEB 2.0 world we live in. And, the way these formal and informal networks can provide value.

People are far less tolerant of their E bay world not functioning than they are of the corporate communications methodologies that limit creativity and inclusion.

Understanding that phenomenon is a transformation worth investing in for companies.

Best of luck with your exploration.

Sal Rasa
im21 (innovation/measurement 21st. century)

Helping New Technologies Grow Into Businesses

2008-09-18T23:51:00.002-04:00

By JAMES FLANIGAN

Published: September 17, 2008 New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/business/smallbusiness/18edge.html?ref=smallbusiness

Connect was created 23 years ago to bring together people knowledgeable about business and investment capital with researchers at the universities and research institutes in San Diego.

“Bill Otterson created the culture here, telling scientists and research people to share ideas and then compete in the marketplace”

Great story about putting together people who might not easily share ideas.

"A community effort to ally scientists and financiers".

Building community is not a new idea. It's the communities that provide the ongoing innovation.

Sal

I've Seen a Real Picture of Change and Almost Missed Something Important

2008-08-30T22:01:00.007-04:00

I have not created a post for a while. A project has really taken my attention.

Yesterday, I completed the first edit of a video portrait of health care workers documenting their experience of learning to use Electronic Medical Records (EMR). Asking them questions about the last 18 months at their family practice centers and what's different. The entire project has been an intense team collaboration.

The conversations, responses and stories represent a transformation from thousands of paper charts to a shared information approach that creates a higher level patient experience. It is astounding.

To some organizations who have already adopted these practices, it may seem odd how long it is taking for others to do so.

However, even the most advanced users of EMR understand the need for further connectivity and knowledge sharing across boundaries and practice. It's a continuous improvement commitment. It is also a struggle for funding, board approvals and confronting many of the usual inhibitors to innovation.

I thought I understood why I was so captivated by this project. It's health care, the participants are highly dedicated and I keep learning about their realities and our expectations as patients.

But there was something I missed until I just relaxed and watched the tape this morning.

This is a compelling story of how doctors, nurses, admins and other providers deepened their everyday exchange. The video is a critical visualization of working differently and achieving different results.

The use of EMR (electronic medical records) demands that people work differently to get different results. It gives the patient a way of accessing consistent information across platforms, boundaries and institutions. And, it accelerates the practitioner's professional development.

EMR gives back the ability to highly skilled physicians and practitioners, the time they need to effectively use their skills instead of wasted time in routine or repetitive questioning.

In our current health care environment, we seldom realize how the system inhibits the best abilities of motivated and highly skilled professionals.

Technology to organize and move people from paper to the screen simply accelerates wide cultural change in a way that traditional consulting can never approach.

How many years have we heard about the paperless environment? These workers take it to a new level of commitment. One patient, one chart. Anywhere, anytime. That is their goal.

Health care workers are always driven by complexity, urgency and humanity.

Understanding the value of EMR is a revelation when you see and hear it from the communities of practice and need. The example should inform all of our business perspectives.

All the issues of privacy (which are most manageable) or concerns about less personal do not come close to seeing patients understanding their own situation more clearly than ever before.

And, the truth about medicine moving to a collaboration becomes exciting within the context of information when you and your health care providers need it. We all have more than one doctor and we seldom connect them to solve our issues quickly and safely.

I cannot do justice here of what I learned from creating this video. Please understand, I use video as data collection. Not typical corporate support material.

But I can say, much of the theory and experience that frameworks large scale business transformation and organization design goes out the window when a doctor describes how a patient who cannot read, now understands their current health state for the first time. The graphic display on the screen with the patient's test results etc. is viewed and discussed with the doctor.

Such an encounter maps a network of change from the doctor's activity to everyone who contributes to this technology that unites them.

I realized this morning, that this example is a poignant metaphor for much of what I have encountered with large organizations. Years of discussing change without the ability to clearly read and act.

For the health care professionals who have given me this incredible experience, I can only say thank you. And, I can continue to learn what their transformation means for all our work place transformations.

Sal

Measuring Culture?

2008-07-10T23:10:00.007-04:00

It is commonly believed in organizations that measuring culture is difficult or actually impossible.

Yet, experts press on. I just heard a pod cast discussing this concept.

There are new measurements like Density of Communication and others, that have developed from learning about social networks. They are useful and relevant.

I have thought about these cultural issues for years. But truthfully, I heard a VP of Creative tell me today, that "my clients are not interested in anything meaningful", as he sighed to let me know that he meant it.

Wow. This statement came from one of the smartest and most committed professionals I have ever met.

I thought about the culture he works in and what could be measured? His interactions or his sigh?

So here's a thought:

Should culture be thought of as something to measure?

In fact, culture is a living entity that actually exists as an ongoing reflection/measurement of our collective experience. What are organizations looking for?

What is it about organizational behavior that makes us think we need to abstract our life experience to align with non-real business concepts?

You know, the current business "buzz" that inevitably moves into the Bermuda Triangle. It's amazing how we rush to rally and conform to "acceptable" concepts while working for companies that are allegedly committed to Innovation. Is that a cultural trait? Is it measurable?

Here's another notion:

When we think of atoms, why do we almost believe that atoms exist as red and white plastic spheres that connect to one another? It's as if "the real" and "the reality" we have created are the same thing.

One great philosopher said: "Reality, not the real, is dependent upon care"

In some ways, I find business explanations sometimes confuse the real from the abstraction and few organizations take care to distinguish between the two.

In cultures that truly "take care" to be inclusive and recognize the human dignity of effort and contribution, there is little need to measure the culture. Rather, the effort is to support its life.

The ancient Greeks defined "Economy" as the ability to sustain the life of something for as long as possible.

It's no wonder why we believe that Power Point presentations are a reflection of what we conceive to be factual. Mental models are often mistaken for true cultural elements.

Actually, it's funny when I think about our image of what atoms are and how hard we labor for slides 1 through 23 to be reduced to 1 through 5. As if rearranging the plastic atoms will significantly change conditions.

Abstractions of our experience -- measuring culture and finding a way to create a work place that for all of us, is built on what is real. It's been an interesting day.

Sal

It's Upside Down -- Health Care That Is

2008-07-09T01:08:00.003-04:00

This is a serious subject and a perspective worth developing. I believe this to be true.

I intend to further investigate but from initial conversations with people smarter than me, the response is supportive.

I believe that the business of health care is directly related to a misunderstanding of Integrated Supply Chain logic. Consequently, the Value Chain is disturbed.

Simply put, the business models of hospitals, payers and support services are currently based on traditional supply management designs.

It's upside down. Traditional models rely on Demand Creation and Demand Fulfillment. Indeed, many of the hospital Performance Improvement Plans that I have seen, seem to me to actually be re-treads morphed from old world Automotive Sales Incentive structures.

That's anecdotal of course, but a strong impression nonetheless.

The key point is this:

In the world of health care and health care professionals, we do not want to increase Demand Creation. We want the opposite. That is, to literally reduce the need for services so that Demand Fulfillment becomes more focused on well being rather than treatment.

Our entire structure is wrong and demands a fundamental re-focus. Our Integrated Supply logic is out of sync with the realities of the health work place and the patient experience. This misalignment affects every contract that doctors, payers and institutions create to "do business" to provide positive Demand Fulfillment.

Issues like EMR (electronic medical records) become clouded in a supply chain environment that is confused. Rapid adaptation to technology is inhibited by silo behaviors and proprietary attitudes to protect time and money in a highly challenged professional environment.

It's this overarching supply model that institutionalizes certain behaviors. These behaviors actually inhibit businesses like emergency rooms, where connectivity to information and communication are vital to implement quickly and accurately.

This is not a knock at the health care professional. It is in support of their commitment and expertise. However, sharing information is not easy in these places. Ask the workers. Ask the patients (customers), and ask the hospital business developers if they really have a picture of their customers from the conventional surveys that are handed out. It's a value chain nightmare in many cases.

It's that serious and perhaps, that simple an insight to understand, that in health care today, we have an inverted Supply Chain bias that is literally killing us.

I am claiming this discussion and inviting thoughts. However, this is one concept I will not give up on easily.

Best,

Sal Rasa

Interesting View from the Nonprofit World

2008-07-07T13:45:00.005-04:00

There are a number of critical changes in the nonprofit world that are worth understanding for every work place. This 2007 survey has good information and measurements.

"Nonprofits are stronger than business and government on three
types of peer and top management actions — communicating about
the importance of ethics, setting a good example of ethical behavior, and peer
support for doing the right thing."

National Nonprofit Ethics Survey
Ethics Resource Center’s 2 0 0 7
An Inside View of Nonprofit Sector Ethics

http://www.ethics.org/ will take you to additional information and the survey.

Sal

A Conversation Today: Culture & Transformation

2008-07-02T01:05:00.003-04:00

Met with a good friend and colleague today. He asked for a list of thought starters on culture and transformation at the enterprise level.

Here's my response.

Culture & Transformation -Thought Starters

“I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game – it is the game.” L. Gerstner, former CEO, IBM

What experts and consultants don’t talk about when meeting a CEO.

· Today, there is no organization that has the time necessary to achieve the cultural changes they seek

· If it is true that “all politics is local”, then it is also true, that all significant business transformation is local and then networked

· Transformation on an enterprise level is dependent on identifying inhibitors to knowledge sharing, revealing the communication blocks and making work visible

Visibility = Accountability in effective silo busting activities

· It is possible to measure trust. Trust in people and trust in systems.

· Collaborative behaviors speed transformation across traditional boundaries

· The Change Management element is to put the executive into the mix. Not outside the mix, reviewing and providing approval

· Culture is a living entity. It is both powerful and fragile. Think of the Petri dish. Culture can be inhibited and even destroyed. Or, it can grow as it is supposed to.

· Changing the lens to view culture as continuous development professionally, and personally, is the power to transform the enterprise

· Web 2.0 provides us with the ability to organize critical conversations. It also changes fundamental roles and responsibilities. Stories help identify workplace realities.

· Alignment of key roles and responsibilities from the communities’ perspective is an imperative in today’s networked environment

· Time is on your side when a continuous improvement approach is enabled

Answering a Question

2008-06-28T01:41:00.005-04:00

Someone asked "whether social media/networking helps or hurts business?" on a social networking site a couple of days ago..

Here is my response:

In some ways, even asking the question becomes awkward in today's workplace.

However, you ask a perfect question for us to confront. Living in a Web 2.0 environment changes our perspectives on knowledge sharing and traditional OD frameworks.

"Conversations" become understood as critical. However, with Web 2.0 both meaningful transformation and speculative hype are possible. Tools like ONA (Organizational Network Analysis) and VNA (Value Network Analysis) are tremendously useful to create clearer pictures of a current state for communication patterns and role sharing.

Even when given this kind of scientific imaging, many companies remain the same, as if the information is "interesting".

We are always faced with the fundamental question of any technology advance. What are our intentions? It is a more important question than what is the value of the technology change.

The tools will continue to develop, but it is the intention that is always the best focus to achieve results.

I do not believe that many organizations have really sought to understand the complexity and abilities of Social Networking. The irony is -- that no one can stop it.

We can only learn the need to understand more. My reason for saying that even your question (though perfectly appropriate), may be awkward, is simple.

It's like saying we are at a family reunion but we don't want to admit there are new children in the flock.

Social Networking affects every business and community on earth. Whether we include or exclude critical conversations is directly related to our overall intentions.

Paternalistic communication modes still exist in many organizations but it's getting more difficult not to hear the new kids at play.

Whether social media/networking helps or hurts is up to the communities and what they really want. One can enjoy the sound of new kids in the family or be annoyed at having to share the room tone.

Sal

Innovation and Measurement - The US Economy

2008-06-01T00:47:00.017-04:00

This January 2008 report sent by a colleague, focuses on issues like:

Why is it important to measure innovation?

"While we recognize that the American economy is changing in fundamental ways—and that most of this change relates directly to innovation—our understanding remains incomplete. Indeed, data collection and measurement, while seemingly mundane, loom large in understanding these changes. Policymakers, investors, executives, managers, consumers, and researchers require accurate and complete information in order to make informed decisions. The centrality of the need to advance innovation measurement cannot be understated".

A Report to the Secretary of Commerce by The Advisory Committee on Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy January 2008

http://www.innovationmetrics.gov/Innovation%20Measurement%2001-08%20rev%20040908.pdf

Click above or cut and paste to see full PDF report.

Sal

Sports Analogies?

2008-05-06T00:07:00.005-04:00

I usually stay away from sports analogies when discussing the work place. However, professional sport is a work place.

Currently, two New York baseball teams are under great scrutiny for individual and team performance.

Fans are outraged at the lack of consistency and questioning everything from recruitment of new players to actual business models. Both teams, the NY Yankees and the NY Mets are currently building new stadiums.

The new stadiums are clearly geared for the "corporate high end private box" crowd as opposed to the everyday "fan". The business management teams will argue that these new arenas with fewer low cost seats, are really designed to help business in general and provide the average fan with a better view. The fans are not buying it.

What's interesting as well, is the sudden rising success of the Los Angeles Dodgers on the West Coast. It has been noted that Joe Torre, the former NY Yankee manager has helped to solve an in-house problem amongst players.

It seems that Joe, with his well known management style, has been able to bring together the younger athletes and the seasoned veterans. A long-term difficulty in the Dodger club house.

The current NY teams are also going through a difficult transition -- building very young players abilities in the face of a real baseball season in the big leagues. And, it is showing. Some believe it's prep time for the new stadiums. That this season is a "write-off" so that next year, really competitive teams will appear in a new money generating environment.

This is conjecture but good stuff for sports fans to argue. However, think about the players. Baseball represents a grueling travel and work schedule. More relentless than we, as observers, can imagine.

What does it mean when young gifted new comers have to work and align with seasoned vets? And, what does it mean to have to work with younger players who offer different views and experience.

Many people who are working in large organizations today, may not carry any of the baggage from the re-engineering days of their company's "journey".

And, research by organizations like Watson Wyatt articulate the rapid number of people turning fifty every day in the U.S. and how that will affect the productivity of organizations as we dwindle the number of workers with deep knowledge.

Two NY teams are suffering right now from a transition of power and lack of ability to adjust to a new composition.

I think about the "keywords" that professional resume writers place into the credentials of "older workers" just to get the resume passed the first line of software logic that sorts peoples' lives into relevant or not relevant.

How do we help understand the workers with knowledge and the workers with thirst for knowledge?

Actually, I don't see this as a sports analogy. Rather, as a U.S. loved activity like baseball, providing a glimpse into our work ethic and enjoyment. A function that baseball has always provided.

Sal

Have a Global Beverage?

2008-04-24T13:27:00.002-04:00

Today, Pepsi (second largest beverage company) announced improvement in quarterly earnings in spite of the rise in commodity costs. International sales were sighted as the financial thrust.

The bottling leg of Coca-Cola announced a significant drop due to high commodity costs.

Starbucks announced lower than anticipated quarterly earnings due to the U.S. consumer lack of spending.

I keep thinking about the hot dog vendors in Times Square who now take Euros.

Sal

Web 3.0 - Is It The Promise of Re-engineering?

2008-04-19T10:58:00.006-04:00

I was looking at some quotes regarding web 2.0 since I have become interested in pursuing what web 3.0 may offer us in the workplace.

Here's one from Auren Hoffman CEO, Rapleaf.

"We (the community) have time to create linux, which is amazing, we have time to create wikipedia, we have time to put reviews on yelp, and read and write blogs. We just have way to much time on our hands, maybe that was all time we were doing passive things watching TV, now all that passive time has become active time and we are creating stuff".

I found this quote interesting having spent several years working on large scale re-engineering efforts. How does this move to 2.0 and now 3.0 allow us to create "stuff" that's valuable?

1. Early Intranet development really enabled a power change. People began to understand that they could make decisions faster than management. Intranet created an ability to shift power and distribution of information while Internet enables a change in the distribution of labor, services and goods.

2. The move to "common process" was not easy and many organizations still have not realized the fulfillment of process/processes changes decades after their re-engineering

3. Knowledge Management thinking is changing as companies like IBM take a new look at "conversations"

Is web 3.0 the fulfillment of what re-engineering promised?

In a world where communication and implementation are often the same/simultaneous customer experience, what is it that we want from collaborative information sharing capability? What "stuff" are we talking about.

What do you think?

Sal

Some other good quotes:

Web 2.0 CEO Quotes From TechCrunch Video

http://blog.experiencecurve.com/archives/web-20-ceo-quotes-from-techcrunch-video

Report: Low Grad Rates in US Cities

2008-04-01T02:08:00.003-04:00

By KEN THOMAS, Associated Press

Posted: 2008-04-01 01:23:56

WASHINGTON (AP) - Seventeen of the nation's 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 percent, with the lowest graduation rates reported in Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland, according to a report released Tuesday.

The report, issued by America's Promise Alliance, found that about half of the students served by public school systems in the nation's largest cities receive diplomas. Students in suburban and rural public high schools were more likely to graduate than their counterparts in urban public high schools, the researchers said.

Nationally, about 70 percent of U.S. students graduate on time with a regular diploma and about 1.2 million students drop out annually.

"When more than 1 million students a year drop out of high school, it's more than a problem, it's a catastrophe," said former Secretary of State Colin Powell, founding chair of the alliance.

His wife, Alma Powell, the chair of the alliance, said students need to graduate with skills that will help them in higher education and beyond. "We must invest in the whole child, and that means finding solutions that involve the family, the school and the community." The Powell's organization was beginning a national campaign to cut high school dropout rates.

The group, joining Education Secretary Margaret Spellings at a Tuesday news conference, was announcing plans to hold summits in every state during the next two years on ways to better prepare students for college and the work force.

The report found troubling data on the prospects of urban public high school students getting to college. In Detroit's public schools, 24.9 percent of the students graduated from high school, while 30.5 percent graduated in Indianapolis Public Schools and 34.1 percent received diplomas in the Cleveland Municipal City School District.

Researchers analyzed school district data from 2003-2004 collected by the U.S. Department of Education. To calculate graduation rates, the report estimated the likelihood that a 9th grader would complete high school on time with a regular diploma. Researchers used school enrollment and diploma data, but did not use data on dropouts as part of its calculation.

Many metropolitan areas also showed a considerable gap in the graduation rates between their inner-city schools and the surrounding suburbs. Researchers found, for example, that 81.5 percent of the public school students in Baltimore's suburbs graduate, compared with 34.6 percent in the city schools.

In Ohio, nearly 83 percent of public high school students in suburban Columbus graduate while 78.1 percent in suburban Cleveland earn their diplomas, well above their local city schools.

Ohio Department of Education spokesman Scott Blake said the state delays its estimates by a few months so it can include summer graduates in its calculations. Based on the state's methodology, he said Columbus graduated 60.6 percent of its students in 2003-2004, rather than the 40.9 percent the study calculated.

By Ohio's reckoning, Columbus has improved each year since the 2001-2002 school year, with 72.9 percent of students graduating in 2005-2006, Columbus Public Schools spokesman Jeff Warner said.

Warner said the gains were partly because of after-school and weekend tutoring, coordinated literacy programs in the district's elementary schools and bolstered English-as-a-second-language programs.

Cleveland's current graduation rates are also higher than the statistics cited in the new report, school district spokesman Ben Holbert said.

Spellings has called for requiring states to provide graduation data in a more uniform way under the renewal of the No Child Left Behind education law pending in Congress.

Under the 2002 law, schools that miss progress goals face increasing sanctions, including forced use of federal money for private tutoring, easing student transfers, and restructuring of school staff.

States calculate their graduation rates using all sorts of methods, many of which critics say are based on unreliable information about school dropouts. Under No Child Left Behind, states may use their own methods of calculating graduation rates and set their own goals for improving them.

The research was conducted by Editorial Projects in Education, a Bethesda, Md., nonprofit organization, with support from America's Promise Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The alliance is based on a joint effort of nonprofit groups, corporations, community leaders, charities, faith-based organizations and individuals to improve children's lives.

On the Net:

America's Promise Alliance: http://www.americaspromise.org/

World-Wide Traffic Jam

2008-03-15T09:53:00.010-04:00

I was in a NY taxi yesterday afternoon when all traffic was halted by the police. We were on the West Side Highway, next to a heliport and a short distance from the former World Trade Center.

It took a minute to register and then I realized that George Bush was leaving NYC following his economic address to NY Business people and a visit to private fund raising event.

While waiting, the taxi driver began to talk about politics. This rather distinguished man explained that he is fluent in five languages. He recently returned from Afghanistan, employed as a translator by a division of one of the largest corporations working in the that part of the world. His contracted salary was $140,000 for a year. He stayed two months and left saying "it was not worth what I would experience there".

When talking about people and violence he said:

"It's very simple, so simple that I don't understand why people do not get it. There is an entire generation of people who have never known life without war. They don't even know what it means to sleep".

The police opened up the West Side Highway once the huge motorcade passed. We moved on and continued to talk as we drove past Ground Zero.

Sal

You Never Know What's in Ice Cream

2008-03-08T23:13:00.006-05:00

I happened upon a film about the history of ice cream this evening on the Sundance channel.

It was fascinating to listen to:

1. Ben & Jerry, the well known American entrepreneurs who began their empire at a gas station.
Jerry described how after all the years of effort, struggle and success, the eventual public company board of directors decided they had no choice but to sell the company. Unilever now makes the ice cream. Jerry said that he had no say in the decision.

2. The daughter of the Russian immigrant who invented Hagen Daz ice cream. Her father's vision was to create a higher end better product that people would pay for. His creative name for the product was intended to sound Danish. There is no logical construction in the Danish language for the Hagen Daz trademarked logo with the two dots above the name. Many people already know about this story and that Hagen Daz was born in the Bronx, NY.

His daughter said she never could have imagined the size that her company has become. However, Hagen Daz is now distributed by Nestle. The sad thing she said, was that these organizations "own the ice cream market in the U.S." It is unlikely that today, innovative or independent efforts can compete at that level or do what her father was able to do and grow such a business.

And a curious bit of information that only makes my imagination wonder.

According to this documentary, Margaret Thatcher, prior to taking the U K's highest office was a chemist. Her work focused on ice cream and what is called "over run" in the industry. Over run is code for adding air to the recipe in order to reduce cost and quality but sell more. Apparently, Ms. Thatcher was good at adding more air and worked hard at it.

I can't testify to the facts of the documentary and I may research, but I sense some interesting connections in this mix of a social confection.

Just enjoyable to think about and save the calories. Maybe.

Sal

IBM Opens New 3D Virtual Healthcare Island on Second Life

2008-03-08T11:41:00.005-05:00

Maybe, we all will benefit the more we consider health care to be a business? Certainly, companies like IBM understand their role (and growth potential) in an industry marked by a need for re-engineering in the deepest sense.

I am once again reminded of the interview with a Genome researcher who believes the first people to benefit from her research will be the Software community.

This announcement from IBM is an interesting use of social networking and scenario testing among other things. Smart people using an innovative marketing device that can radiate value.

Sal

Here's the IBM press announcement.

ORLANDO, FL - 24 Feb 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) debuted at HIMSS®08 its newest island in Second Life: IBM Virtual Healthcare Island.

The island is a unique, three-dimensional representation of the challenges facing today’s healthcare industry and the role information technology will play in transforming global healthcare-delivery to meet patient needs.

The island supports the strategic healthcare vision that IBM released in October 2006, entitled, Healthcare 2015: Win-Win or Lose-Lose, A Portrait and a Path to Successful Transformation. The paper paints a picture of a Healthcare Industry in crisis – of health systems in the United States and many other countries that will become unsustainable by the year 2015. To avoid “lose-lose” scenarios in which global healthcare systems “hit the wall” and require immediate and forced restructuring, IBM calls for what it defines as a “win-win” option: new levels of accountability, tough decisions, hard work and focus on the consumer.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/23580.wss

Interesting Post on a Health Care Blog

2008-03-06T01:15:00.003-05:00

----------------------------------------------------------
A Creative Way to Engage Physicians

Kenneth H. Cohn, M.D., MBA, FACS
www.healthcarecollaboration.com

In response to a frequently asked question, "How can you engage physicians who do not want to have anything to do with the hospital?" a physician colleague responded:
"If they do not want to have anything to do with you, ask them why not!!.....that is a definable set of reasons and (mis)perceptions you might have to dig out of them, realizing that you might not like and may not want to hear what they say, but once understood gives you something to work with."
This approach is a variation on taking the first step: admitting that we do not have all the answers and seeking feedback that may hurt because we take personal pride in our efforts to care for patients.
Some times, it takes unconventional approaches to obtain breakthrough results, as the following story illustrates:
Leon Bender, President of the Medical Staff at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, was frustrated with physician hand-washing compliance. So, infection-control staff who caught physicians washing their hands gave physicians $10 Starbucks cards, which increased compliance from 65% to 80%. A breakthrough came at a meeting of physician leaders, when the epidemiologist at Cedars Sinai cultured physicians' hands, photographed the bacteria on the Petri dishes, and turned the photograph into a screen saver on every computer in the hospital that physicians used to obtain clinical information. That graphic depiction of bacteria increased physician hand-washing compliance from 80% to nearly 100%, where it has remained for several years.
Dr. Bender noted, "With people who have been in practice 25 or 30 or 40 years, it's hard to change their behavior. But when you present them with good data, they change their behavior very rapidly." (Dubner and Leavitt 2006).
The distinction between what physicians and nurses principally do (care for patients) and what administrators principally do (finance, operations, marketing) is blurring. Recent decisions, at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) not to reimburse hospitals for complications, such as catheter acquired urinary tract infections, decubiti, and falls that occur in the hospital, compel us to put aside significant differences in background, training, and outlook and place patients and families at the center of our joint universe.

Reference
Dubner SJ, Leavitt SD. 2006. "Selling Soap." [Online publication, accessed 12/8/07]. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/magazine/24wwln_freak.html?_r=1&ex=1160020800&en=0c4817f1e4d7f211&ei=5070&oref=slogin#

EMR Pushback

2008-02-29T10:54:00.004-05:00

Here's another perspective on this important health care topic.

Sal

"Bruce Landes, MD, is a confirmed skeptic when it comes to electronic medical records. But he insists he is no technophobe. “I am not a Luddite,” Landes says, working up some steam on a topic he knows well. “Physicians are people who have been through the development of CT, MRI and robotic surgery. We are not afraid of technology, but we are afraid of bad technology.”

By that he means EMR technology. Landes is the president and chief executive officer of Southwest Physician Associates, a Dallas-based independent physician association that encompasses some 1,300 physicians, most of them in small practices with fewer than five members. Like their peers across the country, these physicians primarily use computers for their practice management functions—the scheduling, registration and billing functions that are the lifeblood of their small businesses. But they have resisted adding clinical documentation to the technology mix, relying instead on paper charts".

Published by Health Leaders Media

http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content/92119/topic/WS_HLM2_TEC/EMR-Pushback.html

(Just About) All Innovation is Local

2008-02-27T10:13:00.003-05:00

"At an innovation conference in Mexico in November of 2006, the Colombian journalist Alejandro Santos reminded us, in his eloquent summary, of the advice that the great Leo Tolstoy gave to prospective writers: "Describe your village, and you will be universal." Santos illustrated Tolstoy's maxim with the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose world-renowned novel One Hundred Years of Solitude takes place in Arataca, the small river village of his childhood.

In other words, to come up with a successful innovation, capable of being appreciated by people around the world, you need something very compelling to offer those global markets. And where do you find such innovative, compelling ideas? Sometimes the answer is in world-class research labs. But often, the best new ideas are found in those areas that you know best—right around you".

AlwaysOn Daily [enewsletters@alwayson-network.com] February 27, 2008

Change Comes From Unexpected Places - Maybe

2008-02-22T16:48:00.009-05:00

I recently heard an interview regarding genetic medicine where an expert researcher posed a provocative notion regarding the initial benefactors of her work.

She said, the investigations would be very helpful to our health. However, we need to understand, that much of our well-being still remains within our ability to control and provide good decision making based on solid information.

This researcher went on to suggest that the people who will benefit first from genetic data and inquiry, will be software developers and providers. It's about business as much as it is about health.

No surprise, that in a health care system that seems to inhibit EMR (electronic medical records), there are many reasons that may be driving such lack of integration. Unlike the automotive parts world, sharing of information is difficult. Automotive information connectivity is excellent.

We all know it's not only about privacy and that statement is not meant to be cynical. However, wellness involves a complicated set of continuous agreements between patients, medical experts and payer communities. And, the creation of new and different roles and responsibilities for health care workers.

We don't have the tolerance for a two week replacement of a front bumper. However, we easily agree to wait for appointments and medical records that take too much time to be helpful.

Here's an announcement that demonstrates where representative change is being accelerated.

Google To Store Patient Medical Records SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 21, 2008 AP

Pilot Project Could Involve Up To 10,000 People; Concerns Surround Security Of Information

"Google Inc. will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that's likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the Internet search leader.

The pilot project to be announced Thursday will involve 1,500 to 10,000 patients at the Cleveland Clinic who volunteered to an electronic transfer of their personal health records so they can be retrieved through Google's new service, which won't be open to the general public.

Each health profile, including information about prescriptions, allergies and medical histories, will be protected by a password that's also required to use other Google services such as e-mail and personalized search tools".

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 21, 2008 AP

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/21/health/main3856412.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_385641

Boundaries: Fixed & Not Quite Fixed

2008-02-21T10:51:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was an interesting day in America.

In one day, we experienced:

1. A Lunar Eclipse

2. Firing a missile to destroy an orbiting satellite so it would not plunge upon the earth

3. The Georgia State government pushing ahead to re-define the borders of Tennessee and Georgia to augment water availability during a time of environmental crisis

4. The New York Times reporting a current presidential candidate may have had a questionable relationship with a lobbyist

Sal

Innovation and Survival

2008-02-18T11:57:00.023-05:00

We often think of innovation as an "initiative". What company does not pursue/embrace it from a corporate policy point of view?

Innovation was not born in the boardroom or invented by analysts. It is the foundation of our need and ability to survive. And that, is not a negative concept.

Yesterday, I was watching a report on the Current television channel regarding the deadly cyclone Sidr, that affected people in Bangladesh and other areas, in 2007.

It is not unusual to have cyclones occur in this area. Sidr was unusual in size however, and this time, the consequences are different for a number of reasons.

A young architect in Bangladesh, has innovated to deal with the sudden crowding issues of "climate refugees" and accelerated warming tendencies in the Himalayas that are causing flooding. All of this complicates the terrible results of the cyclone.

"Climate refugees" is a new term for many of us.

In response, the architect has helped to build schoolrooms on boats in selected waterways.

His point is: "To live with the water". He is going forward to say that an entire educational system can exist on water and so can farms and other services.

Children are now effectively working in these water schools in a place that remains devastated in many ways.

In Flood-Prone Bangladesh, a Future That Floats

September 28, 2007 by Voice of South

http://voiceofsouth.org/2007/09/28/future/

Like a scene out of the 1995 post-apocalyptic movie “Water world,” in which the continents are submerged after the polar ice caps melt and the survivors live out at sea, the boat schools and libraries are a creative response to flooding that scientists largely agree has been worsened by global warming.

Melting glaciers in the Himalayas are already causing sea levels to rise here, and scientists say Bangladesh may lose up to 20 percent of its land by 2030 as a result of flooding. That Bangladesh is among the most vulnerable countries on the planet to climate change is a tragedy for its 150 million people, most of whom are destitute.

The need for a Bangladeshi Water world, experts say, has never been more urgent.

“For Bangladesh, boats are the future,” said Abul Hasanat Mohammed Rezwan, an architect who started the boats project here and who now oversees it as executive director of the nonprofit Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, a name that means self-reliance. “As Bangladeshi citizens, it’s our responsibility to find solutions because the potential for human disaster is so huge. We have to be bold. Everyone loves land. But the question is: Will there be enough? Millions of people will have nowhere to go.”

http://current.com/items/77475961_real_life_waterworld will give you an overall picture of the devastation.

What does innovation seem to mean in your work environment?

Best,

Sal

A Note Aboute Music and Health Care

2008-02-15T23:35:00.017-05:00

Recently, I have been able to speak with some experienced doctors about innovation in their workplace and what they see as critical to improving health care. Some of these doctor talks occurred during December and January, in busy hospitals, when my wife was in need of their skills and compassion.

The doctors seem to focus on breaking silos that inhibit communication. It's a cultural issue they say, that starts in medical school, while targeting specialization and hopefully, being recognized for expertise with documented work.

This "cultural issue" seems to permeate the way hospitals and other health care environments actually work. Teams of great expertise that cannot easily connect. And, it seems some are conditioned not to share information from early on in their careers. Don't get me wrong. I am on the side of these doctors. In our current system, I don't believe anyone enjoys the full benefits of their tremendous abilities. Including the doctors.

This perspective also joins the issues of technology. Lack of shared platforms and the somewhat partitioned software development that has inhibited talking across working boundaries.

More than one person referred to Michael Porter's book, Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-based Competition on Results.

When talking about innovation, several doctors suggested that medical staffs have a fundamental confrontation. "They must remember why they exist". And that's not easy in today's overworked and insurance directed workplace. Innovation is layered with payer requirements, certain incentives and the need to constantly deal with an overwhelming volume of information, work, and not enough people to help. Recognizing what's innovative is a risk.

However, innovation is critical to improvement, as this recent NY Sun interview points out.

"First of all, what we're doing is we're trying to maximize our innovative ability. We don't only give care, we try to develop better care tomorrow".

How Dr. Pardes Learned, the Hard Way, To Run a Hospital

Dr. Herbert Pardes now oversees a hospital system that includes 11,673 beds and employs about 82,000 doctors, nurses, and other employees.

By ELIZABETH SOLOMONT, April 20, 2007 http://www.nysun.com/article/52864?page_no=2

Like Dr. Pardes, the doctors I spoke with connected this need for a cultural change (which will take time),with overall performance improvement, and getting in better tune with the patient. They were talking about deep re-engineering on a social and bureaucratic level. And, the ability for people to share knowledge.

Today, medical staffs have to constantly meet new co-workers and achieve over and over again. They are not really conventional teams with time to hear theories about motivation and organization. They are more jazz than that. And I use the term with respect for the art form.

When thinking about how complicated it is for health care workers to participate as teams today, these conversations make me think about music.

Musicians have the abiltity to share experience and offer it to others spontaneously. Timing and discovery. Jazz, is an important collaboration of moments where preparation and instinct meet. Jazz musicians, like health care professionals, work very hard to reach a level of dexterity that allows them to listen and respond. They practice all the time.

Here's a thought.

When a classical orchestra begins their performance, the audience is first engaged in the tradition of witnessing the musicians “tuning up”. The oboist plays a concert A and each section of the orchestra sounds a note to join in sync and prepare to play. It is expected and necessary. It is a part of the preparation that the audience expects.

When a jazz “Big Band” begins a performance, the tuning ritual is quite different. The musicians actually tune with one another during the first song.

The tuning for a jazz band is the discovery of one another’s sound. This collaboration leads to continuous innovation that results in the virtuoso soloist moments, that are also discoveries. These moments are not random. Just the opposite. Journeymen musicians regularly collaborate with the staff players of renowned band leaders like Basie and Ellington. These musicians understand their responsibility to preserve the integrity of the leader’s vision (the compositions and arrangements).

The innovations during Big Band performances arise because the players have a fundamental understanding of why they exist and what their collaboration is to accomplish.

What’s underneath these conversations with doctors is interesting.

In the complicated set of relationships that hospitals have with doctors of different specialties and self interests (as well as payer demands), the medical staff does not have time for ritualistic “tuning”. Why they exist as a medical staff and how they might collaborate to produce continuous innovation may be lost, as the doctors suggest.

We can all influence this for the better.

Sal

Wisdom, Wherever You Can Find It

2008-02-15T22:33:00.001-05:00

While keeping up with the news this week, I happened to come across this quote.

"It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen".: Matt Groening, The Simpsons
US cartoonist & satirist

A Great Memory of a Gifted Person

2008-02-14T00:50:00.011-05:00

Kirk Browning
We remember Kirk Browning at work: "...and dissolve..." The shot would be climactic, or full of tension. It would set up an expectation that flowed from the music. Then would come the payoff: the next shot that seemed to arise organically, naturally; and the path from one shot to the next was illuminated by that gentle, soothing voice, caressing the transition: "...and dissolve..."; and sometimes we would all join in, six or eight people in the TV truck, all crooning along with our Maestro: "...and dissolve..." NY Times February 13, 2008 from several of Kirk Browning's friends and colleagues. I was fortunate to have once worked with Mr. Browning. We filmed The Gospel at Colonus for a PBS Television special that Mr. Browning directed. The stage production was an extraordinary version of the original Greek Oedipus text, set in a modern day Gospel service. The work was conceived and directed by Lee Breuer and the music composed by Bob Telson. I spent several years working on this project before PBS became interested. The ensemble included Morgan Freeman and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497914/fullcredits#cast Will give you more information on the wonderful cast. On the day we were to film at a university theater, the fire department arrived to pronounce the stage unworthy for the performance unless we were able to make a number of safety changes. When the fire department asked me if we had a small cast, I had to tell them that we had an ensemble of more than sixty people. Several woman were pregnant and four of the performers were blind. It was a morning of impossibilities to prepare for the scheduled filming. I was the production stage manager and assistant director to Lee Breuer and responsible for the live staging logistics. Mr. Browning spoke to me with a sense of collaboration and equality that was overwhelming with his spirit of going forward. He loved the work and intended to transpose the original stage performance onto television with integrity and vision. Not an easy achievement with the Lee Breuer present, recognized as one of America's greatest theater artists. Somehow, we made the needed changes to be able to perform. We also faced a collaboration of two large teams from two different worlds. Stage and television. When we began filming, with a full audience ready, something went wrong on the headsets we were assigned for communication. In my headset, I could here all the channels. This made it almost impossible for me to call the lighting, audio and special effects stage cues. I could here everything that was going on in the mobile truck where the television cues were being directed by Mr. Browning. It was a potential constant collision of numbers and visual results. My cues also affected the safety of the performers as there were moving parts to the stage. Somehow, and I believe, because of his state of being and how he viewed complicated situations where people needed to collaborate, I got through it. His team helped me, as I helped them move through the performance. The show was nominated for an Emmy as Best Public television Special of the year. My time working with him was brief and I do not mean to exploit his name. I simply want to remember his style and how collaboration is really connected to the respect one has for people and their work. That, I can honestly say about the experience of working with Mr. Browning -- as brief as it was. Sal

Who Determines Knowlege Flow?

2008-02-12T22:46:00.003-05:00

In the work place, we are very accustomed to discussing information sharing and knowledge flow issues.

Knowledge Management is a category that some experts now argue to be obsolete. It's also one of those business terms that to me, dehumanizes our ability to communicate.

Here's an interesting vote going on at Harvard, regarding free publishing. Interestingly, the starting point is the faculty of the arts and sciences.

At Harvard, a Proposal to Publish Free on Web

By PATRICIA COHEN

Published: February 12, 2008

Publish or perish has long been the burden of every aspiring university professor. But the question the Harvard faculty will decide on Tuesday is whether to publish — on the Web, at least — free.

Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs.

Although the outcome of Tuesday’s vote would apply only to Harvard’s arts and sciences faculty, the impact, given the university’s prestige, could be significant for the open-access movement, which seeks to make scientific and scholarly research available to as many people as possible at no cost.

“In place of a closed, privileged and costly system, it will help open up the world of learning to everyone who wants to learn,” said Robert Darnton, director of the university library. “It will be a first step toward freeing scholarship from the stranglehold of commercial publishers by making it freely available on our own university repository.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/books/12publ.html?em&ex=1202965200&en=3c9b158889f51870&ei=5087%0

The Retailing of Medecine Takes a Step Up

2008-02-07T12:19:00.000-05:00

Wal-Mart Expands In-Store Clinics

By MARCUS KABEL,

Posted: 2008-02-07 08:29:48

(Feb. 7) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will open its first in-store medical clinics under its own brand name after leasing space in dozens of stores to outside companies that operate the quick-service health stops.

Wal-Mart plans to open 400 cobranded walk-in clinics by 2010. "The Clinic at Wal-Mart" will jointly bear the names of Wal-Mart and its partners and have an identical look, prices and record keeping system.

What Happens to the Value Chain?

2008-02-01T00:59:00.000-05:00

Isuzu Leaving the US Passenger Vehicle Market in 2009

Isuzu Motors America, Inc. will discontinue distributing new Isuzu passenger vehicles in North America effective 31 January 2009. The discontinuation of passenger vehicles results from the prospective cessation of production by GM of the Ascender sport utility vehicle and the i-290 and i-370 pickup trucks.

It has always been our intention to remain in the US market. However, we were unable to secure any commercially viable replacements for these vehicles.

—Terry Maloney, president and COO

Although Isuzu will cease supplying passenger vehicles in North America, it will continue to stand behind its customers and dealers. Specifically, Isuzu will continue to honor all product warranties and roadside assistance programs and will maintain its owner-relations call center.

In addition, to assure long-term service to its customers, Isuzu will be offering all current, US Isuzu vehicle dealers the opportunity to continue on as service dealerships for Isuzu.

30 January 2008 http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/01/isuzu-leaving-t.html

From Sal: Like Shakespeare, there is always a story within the story. What does this announcement tell us about the Integrated Value Chain that Isuzu counted on? Indeed, what part of that chain did not really deliver? There are dealers who say they were caught totally by surprise. And, what gap in the chain will be left for the auto business and the U.S.?

I had the privilege of working with Stephan Garelli several years ago, for some interesting IBM work.

Each year, Professor Garelli, a senior consultant to the International Management Development Center (IMD) in Switzerland, publishes the World Competitiveness Yearbook. The book analyzes and ranks different countries for characteristics like technology or ease of doing business.

In addition, he states several categories that will affect business in the next year. Several years ago, Garelli added a dramatic category for the first time. Vulnerability.

I wrote Garelli and asked him why he added the category of "Vulnerability" to his list.

Here is his response:

Dear Mr. Rasa,

I am indeed highlighting the fact that vulnerability is a key concern for CEOs today. The outsourcing policies that we have seen during the past decade have lead to a value chain that is leaner but longer. It means that every company is now confronted with a multiplication of partners to work with. As a consequence, the level of complexity has increased and also the level of vulnerability. In the latter case, it means essentially that if a link of the value chain is exposed to a breakdown, it can stop the entire value chain. Even a small business partner can stop a larger company from operating.

I hope that this will be useful.

Any thoughts?

Sal

Communicaton and Implementation

2008-01-30T00:54:00.000-05:00

I have been focusing on Health Care lately with good reason. Both personal and in the larger sense.

A consistent theme through my work is to understand how communication has changed in the work place. Seems odd to even suggest that a category as fundamental as communication can change.

What changes is our need. And, the technology or manner that we use to communicate.

When I was a young stage manager, I had a profound experience. I had prepared an Opera House stage for one of the greatest legends in jazz. A great artist and person.

Following rehearsal, I asked the crew to rearrange some lighting, believing that I was helping this virtuoso musician . The crew responded with equal respect and gladly made the changes, even though they were not easy to complete.

Minutes before curtain, as the audience waited, I brought the pianist to the wings, ready to go on.

He looked at me and said "Sal, you moved the piano further to the center of the stage". Yes, I replied, eager to tell him of my decision to change the lights.

Sadly, he looked at me and said: "I can't walk that far without a cane and I did not want the audience to know that".

It was a lesson immediately placed in my heart, as he bravely made the journey to play the piano.

Communication and implementation are often a simultaneous event in today's work world. It is something that the customer has taught us. It simply is necessary in the kind of environment we live and work in.

The lesson I learned that night is one I am still trying to understand. Intentions can be good and implementation complete. But somewhere, in fact always, lies that fundamental need to communicate. Often, it's about critical issues that we just don't see.

Sal

While We Were Watching the Florida Primary

2008-01-30T00:31:00.000-05:00

California Senate Panel Rejects Health Coverage Proposal

by JESSE McKINLEY and KEVIN SACK

Published: January 29, 2008 NY Times

SAN FRANCISCO — In a blow to universal health care coverage in California and possibly to its prospects nationwide, a State Senate committee on Monday rejected a sweeping plan by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that would have offered insurance to millions of uninsured residents.

The Senate Health Committee defeated the plan 7 to 1, with three abstentions, as Democrats and Republicans alike said they found it too nebulous and potentially too costly for a state facing a $14.5 billion deficit.

“This bill is not only not perfect, it is flawed,” said State Senator Sheila James Kuehl, Democrat of Los Angeles and chairwoman of the committee, who voted against it.

Mr. Schwarzenegger, who had seemed resigned to the plan’s defeat in recent days, sounded a determined note on what he had viewed as a major policy initiative of his second term.

“I am someone who does not give up, especially when there is a problem as big and as serious as health care that needs to be fixed,” Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said. “One setback is just that — a setback.”

The loss in California, the nation’s most populous state and often its most influential, bodes poorly for universal health coverage, an issue that just a year ago appeared to have found its moment. Besides Mr. Schwarzenegger, the governors of two other populous states, Pennsylvania and Illinois, proposed ambitious health care plans in 2007. But in the end, nothing of national significance was passed.

Drew E. Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies health policy, said the vote in California reinforced the need for action in Washington.

“California’s failure, after coming so close, underscores the lesson that too many states don’t have the political will or resources to reform health care on their own,” Mr. Altman said. “Thus the need for a national solution.”

Mr. Schwarzenegger’s proposal was modeled largely on a Massachusetts plan, which requires individuals to have insurance, prohibits insurers from denying coverage on the basis of age or health, and uses government subsidies to make insurance affordable for low-income workers.

But last Wednesday, as the California Senate committee heard testimony on the bill, Massachusetts announced that spending on its health care plan would increase by $400 million in 2008, a cost expected to be borne largely by taxpayers.

Shortly after the vote, Assemblyman Michael N. Villines of Fresno, the chamber’s Republican leader, praised it as a rejection of “a massive government-run health care scheme.”

On the Democratic side, there were concerns about the so-called “individual mandate,” which would have required all Californians to carry and pay for insurance, except those in economic hardship.

The vote comes as Mr. Schwarzenegger faces a dire financial situation and has proposed a spending cut of 10 percent for most state agencies.

Jonathan Gruber, a health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was commissioned to advise Mr. Schwarzenegger and the Legislature on the health proposal, said it “was pretty clearly doomed by the larger fiscal deficit.”

How the California vote affects the issue’s national profile remains to be seen. A New York Times/CBS News poll taken this month showed that 7 percent of those questioned thought health care was the country’s most pressing problem. Over all, it ranked third after the economy and the war in Iraq.

The California bill looked to have a chance when it passed the Assembly in December. But it faltered badly in the Senate, particularly after a report from the state legislative analyst last Tuesday raised questions about its long-term financing.

Senator Darrell Steinberg, Democrat of Sacramento, was one of several to express frustration that the Legislature had failed to draft a passable bill.

“When this bill fails,” said Mr. Steinberg, who abstained, “what’s next?”

Jesse McKinley reported from San Francisco, and Kevin Sack from Atlanta.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/us/29health.html?ref=health

Thinking About Health Care Workers - This is an older blog

2008-01-24T01:14:00.000-05:00

Now & Then

"Our Industrial Credo was the precursor to what is known today as the Johnson & Johnson Credo. Written by General Robert Wood Johnson in 1943, the year in which the Company announced its intention to become publicly traded, Our Industrial Credo was based on Johnson's first documented statement of a company's social responsibilities, Try Reality" - J&J, Our Credo History http://www.jnj.com/our_company/our_credo_history/index.htm
.
I find it fascinating, that in1935, in a pamphlet titled TRY REALITY, Johnson asked his contemporary industrialists to accept what he called "a new industrial philosophy". He believed this "to be a corporation's responsibility to customers, employees, the community and stockholders".

What Do You Suppose That Pamphlet Might Suggest for Today's Reality?

In today's dynamic and often virtual workplace, how do we assure people what the original Credo required and intended for employees in our contemporary workplace?

And, who would be the "industrialists" that Johnson would speak to now?

A 1948 version of the Credo promised workers that:

"They must have a sense of security in their jobs. Wages must be fair and adequate, management just, hours reasonable, and working conditions clean and orderly. Employees should have an organized system for suggestions and complaints. Supervisors and department heads must be qualified and fair minded. There must be opportunity for advancement — for those qualified and each person must be considered an individual standing on his own dignity and merit".

I am writing this at 2 AM. Where's the Credo when I need it?

Back to the Hospital

2008-01-24T00:19:00.000-05:00

I am looking to health care institutions that have a bias for change.

My wife had to return to the hospital a second and third time since December 23rd. A different hospital than the first visit.

Bottom line:

Once again, expert and dedicated emergency room staff. However, they suffer from staffing issues, payer requirements and slow to evolve - EMR (electronic medical records).

The patients suffer as well.

1. My wife's medication in the ER was delayed by what seemed at least 2 hours. Reason: The nurse in charge had left. The nurse attending my wife had been recruited from the cardiac floor because of the ER being understaffed. The cardiac floor is not on the same computer platform as the ER. The attending nurse could not work the program. There may be legal reasons for the cardiac to be separated. However, this arrangement did not work when we needed it to work.

2. After waiting 12 hours or more to be admitted, my wife went to a room after midnight. The ER nurse (who had volunteered to stay for extra hours), simply took her to the room herself. There was no one available to transport her. Having been sleep deprived for days, part of the reason for admitting Maggie was to help her to get rest. She wound up in a room with a woman in a state of dementia who yelled and talked, rarely stopping, and had been doing so for days.

3. Medications that were ordered and confirmed 4 times in the ER were not ready or indicated when she was admitted twelve hours later. Not one meal served to her in all her stay reflected the "lactose intolerant" indication that was critical to maintaining her much needed calorie intake.

This is a very good hospital in NYC. Their medical staff is outstanding. Information flow and the the need for a business model change are clear.

ERs are businesses. This particular hospital has been mandated by its Board of Directors to break even this year. They see the need for a business model change - ( I think they do).

"They spent 3 million dollars on software upgrades this year. Why can't I connect on the same platform. I don't even know how to access the vitals from the ER triage which is down the hall" - My memory of what the cardiac nurse told me during her frustration working in the ER. "I can't do my work".

Some hospitals are innovating with EMR and integrating patient information across the board. From patient management, the doctor and the payer to create a more efficient and successful hospital stay. These hospitals are trying to do something that is not conventional in health care today. To share information, accountability and be more inclusive in an effort to work differently and achieve better results. Look for those hospitals. It will pay off when you need them.

In business, we have learned the hard way, to understand usability testing, tool development based on what communities of practice need, and when to challenge the best advice of consultant applications.

Emergency care is a business.

Here's an interesting article on businesses and health care. It's not necessarily on point directly for what I have been discussing. However, it's obvious, that hospitals cannot do this alone. That re-engineering is a concept that must be dynamic in this arena. Without communication and stuck in silo and specialty practice behaviors, the incentive to communicate is not always there.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/next-can-ceos-cure-cancer.html

Health care and communication. The continuing issue.

Useful Information on Health Care

2008-01-06T22:51:00.000-05:00

It's important that I not seem naive or negative about my comments on health care today. We are all in this together and the health care workplace is in need of not only change, but support.

One long time nurse and teacher (while she was describing her own health crisis and how her students became her help) said to me:

"Health care workers need to know that they are cared for too".

This information was sent by a colleague.

http://www.hschange.com/

The mission of the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) is

to inform policy makers and private decision makers about how local

and national changes in the financing and delivery of health care

affect people. HSC strives to provide high-quality, timely and

objective research and analysis that leads to sound policy decisions,

with the ultimate goal of improving the health of the American public.

For example:

http://www.hschange.com/CONTENT/913/#ib2

Sal

I Am on the Side of the Health Care Professional

2008-01-05T11:50:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to be clear about a previous post and troubling hospital experience that I described.

I firmly believe that we have a nation of health care professionals whose skills and intentions are not fully understood or implemented in our current system.

Ask a doctor how deeply the current payer system inhibits their use of knowledge and experience. And, take a closer look at why dedicated workers' morale is at issue.

There are great areas of innovation in our system however, and this is encouraging. Mass General's Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine for example. http://www.mbmi.org/about/whoweare_staff.asp

I am no expert. That is the point. Let's work to allow the experts to practice, support younger minds to develop and patients to become more articulate and accountable.

This week's New England Journal of Medicine announcement that one is safer to have a heart attack in an airport or hotel rather than a hospital is an example of speed to react. Communication within hospitals is a major issue.

We cannot pretend that our system is "the best in the world" when it is not. The study focuses on equipment. Tools, whether they are technology based or mechanical are meant to carry out our intentions.

Communication and ease of transferring knowledge and information is fundamental. Electronic Medical Records require a significant cultural change and business transformation. While there is all this discussion regarding privacy, it was difficult to transfer the records of my wife's emergency stay in one hospital to her doctors and the hospital where the surgery occurred. Turns out to be a fax permission form that had no security really and a burdonsome process for action.

"Most hospitals rely on traditional defibrillators, which can be more cumbersome and time-consuming, and usually require a doctor. But newer defibrillators, which cost about $500 each and can be found in many airports and hotels, are much faster and easier to use. Because they are fully automated, the machine decides whether a shock is needed, and quickly administers it — so that anyone can use it quickly."

One article I read about this study suggests that Casinos are safer places to have a heart attack than a hospital. Casinos always communicate. They literally and figuratively almost always know where their money is at any time. It is no surprise that they can respond to a heart attack faster than a hospital can.

PS: The hospital where my wife had the surgery that seems to have resulted in a pneumonia called today to see how she is doing. Today is January 5th. The surgery was December 21st. They had no idea of what had occurred and how she needed to be treated at another hospital in emergency. In spite of having visited the surgeon several days ago and informing him on December 26th. Normally, this hospital calls one day after the surgery.

When I asked the surgeon if this kind of pneumonia was common during surgery he said "it is very common, well not very common".

My question to him is: How are you measuring what is common? You have not reported this to your hospital. Where is the data to support your response. What seems common to me, is lack of communication and consistent reporting of incidents.

New England Journal of Medicine heart attacks in hospitals

http://www.abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=4080507&page=1

Why Hospitals Are Dangerous Places for Heart Attacks - Jan 3, 2008

Sal

It Always Hits Home

2008-01-04T23:43:00.000-05:00

I have avoided this blog recently. The recent holiday season was difficult. With all the reading, research and personal experience regarding today's health care -- things hit hard over the last few weeks.

My wife, after having a fairly routine outpatient knee surgery on Dec. 21st, found herself on Dec. 23rd in an ambulance.

There is still confusion but the consensus seems to be that during the surgery she suffered pneumonia from what is called an aspiration.

The staff effort in the emergency room was diligent. There were other complications and they were able to sort out what was going on with expertise and understanding. However, I also had to work with them to make certain that they did not make quick assumptions to what might be a more complicated scenario.

Interesting, that when I apologized to the nurse for my assertiveness on arrival when I noticed a certain dismissive summary too quickly from two staff members, the nurse actually thanked me.

"I was proud of what you said to the admitting team. They needed to hear it and they will treat her differently now".

The short of it is that communication from this strong ER effort to other staff members was awful. Some verbatim that I heard.

"When I go to get the labs, sometimes I take the pictures myself because they are asleep up there" - Resident Doctor

"This used to be a really good hospital. It's not anymore" - Nurse

"That's not the right dosage. I am supposed to write that prescription" - Doctor upon discharge who had participated in the ER.

"We will keep her in the ER for as long as possible, because she will not get the same care once she goes upstairs (admitted)" - Nurse and long time employee

These are only a few of the morale, implementation and work routine hazards we experienced.

It goes deeper. Guarantees to connect and exchange information with my wife's primary doctors was never done.

I did find staff sleeping when they were on specific assignment to caring for the patient. Yet, there was never a question about the motivation or commitment of the health care workers. Something more dense is affecting their ability to perform.

We are all needing to help this situation.

Sal

Incentives & What They Can Encourage

2007-12-20T00:11:00.001-05:00

The reimbursement system “tolerates and even financially rewards poor performance by hospitals that fail to prevent hospital-acquired complications,'’ write the report’s authors, Dr. Heidi Wald and Dr. Andrew Kramer, health care policy researchers at the University of Colorado at Denver. - December 19, 2007, NY Times Making Hospitals Pay for Their Mistakes

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/making-hospitals-pay-for-their-mistakes/

In our work place we do not often think of incentives as something connected to fundamental issues. They often become clever or simplistic solutions to what are truly fragmented apparent issues instead of deeper needs.

This article sites specific examples of how incentives in hospitals may actually create harm. It is worth looking at for an understanding of a more pervasive issue. The above url will also give you some blog responses that disagree and some that do not.

The article suggests that in most businesses, such reward for poor performance does not occur. However, I suggest that hospitals as businesses are presently emanating many other business models. And, that the use of incentives in many companies today (often driven by an outdated mentality), deserve a closer look.

Once again, health care, the well-being of an organization and its ability to communicate are connected for all of us.

Sal

Designing the 'Care' into Health Care

2007-12-14T10:09:00.000-05:00

"Improving the user experience could inspire people to tap into the system more regularly to help stave off more serious illness"

This article comes from an interesting perspective. Taking a look at what the patient is looking for from a designer's perspective. User centric needs is a subject that e-business advocates have understood for years now. Interesting to see the same fundamental logic put to a discussion of health care. Worth reading.

"To a designer's eye, efficiently providing for a basic need is indeed the fundamental issue. But it should be possible to go beyond rudimentary solutions to achieve the overall objective of a healthy population by also addressing an essential question: What does the individual want and need from the experience of health care?"

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/nov2007/id20071121_967757.htm

Communicating Today & A Personal Note

2007-12-12T09:37:00.000-05:00

"The application of technology has reduced differences among the productivity of transformational and transactional employees, but huge inconsistencies persist in the productivity of high-value tacit ones. Improving it is more about increasing their effectiveness for instance, by focusing them on interactions that create value and ensuring that they have the right information and context than about efficiency. Technology tools that promote tacit interactions, such as wikis, virtual team environments, and videoconferencing, may become no less ubiquitous than computers are now. As companies learn to use these tools, they will develop managerial innovations smarter and faster ways for individuals and teams to create value through interactions that will be difficult for their rivals to replicate. Companies in sectors such as health care and banking are already moving down this road". -

Eight business technology trends to watch

James M. Manyika, Roger P. Roberts, and Kara L. Sprague

December 2007, McKinsey Quarterly

This observation from the McKinsey authors is certainly true as they advise executives to understand that "Technology alone is rarely the key to unlocking economic value: companies create real wealth when they combine technology with new ways of doing business".

Technology is meant to carry out our intentions and that requires our ability to communicate clearly. In health care, a complicated world of the urgent and the measured use of skill and expertise, too much today gets in the way of connecting peoples' abilities and peoples' needs.

I have written before of my brilliant uncle, the business man and social innovator. Just before Thanksgiving, on the evening of his 97th birthday, he died. Still brilliant and provocative and knowing. His pacemaker replacement had been successful but with some complications. Painfully, I will always believe that a major complication was the contractual relationship that the facilitating hospitals had to complete the surgery and aftercare. He just stayed in the hospital too long with too much transportation from one place to another for simple tasks to be performed.

Communicating in today's world often means implementing at the same time. For my great great uncle, this was something he clearly understood.

Sal

Communication Today & A Personal Note

2007-12-12T09:35:00.000-05:00

Walking On Eggshells

2007-11-10T00:55:00.000-05:00

It's not uncommon in dysfunctional families to hear the phrase "it's like walking on eggshells" used to describe the difficulties of communicating with one or more family members who tend to control or even terrorize free exchange.

Sometimes, its subtle and sometimes, the process is brutal. However, feeling that the truth is dangerous or painful, rather than expected, permeates the everyday wellness of everyone involved.

In today's workplace, where there is assertion of being global, diverse and inclusive, there is often an undercurrent questioning of what is really true.

Sensing that geo-political references and "other influences" may actually be driving certain organizational behaviors today, tend to put unspoken pressures on people. We work to achieve objectives and don't always feel able (free) to talk about what's on our minds.

Now this may seem dramatic. But is it? In a world economy, driven by network centric information, brokered by players who have sometimes obscure value chain relationships, where are the places to speak freely?

Issues like outsourcing are often spoken about as inhibitors and conversely, as natural growth patterns by the same organizations when they need to define or defend decisions accordingly.

Confusion, as part of a working strategy, is not so unusual.

Walking on eggshells. It's something that people practice in places they don't quite trust -- yet don't feel ready to leave.

So, they learn to live with it and walk gently.

Does this sound familiar to you?

Health & Care - Are They 2 Seperate Thoughts?

2007-10-06T00:52:00.000-04:00

I paid a visit to my uncle today. He is in a nursing home which is serving as a re-hab center following two recent surgeries to replace his twenty year old pace maker. My uncle will be 97 years of age in a few weeks. He is brilliant and witty and wanting to go home.

I have written about him before. He has been an extremely successful entrepreneur and community leader. Recently, he offered an opinion on people who resisted change in the workplace, saying that in business, "change makes people aware of you".

Today, my uncle seemed a bit weary of the now seven week stay in one facility or another. What's really troubling -- is that he has done quite well with his two, very detailed surgeries. It's the travel from one facility to another for the follow-up needs that have been difficult. And its the waiting, based on one doctor's schedule, for one piece of awkward equipment to be removed that is taking its toll.

My uncle waits. The staff waits and the family becomes more frustrated for this one moment of aggregated understanding to approve a simple action that will give him some relief.

Sometimes, it seems as if the intelligence we have built inhibits the very objective of our expertise and our skills.

It's as if my uncle's health and his care are two separate entities right now, caught in an overcomplicated health care system.

The irony is that in his "local" hospital his name is on the wall because he helped contribute to building that institution. Of course, he was concerned when he was first told that he would need to go to a much larger hospital for surgery. However, when I visited him in the more complex hospital , I marveled at how the medical team had managed to maintain his comfort level and intimacy of treatment. It was testimony to their professionalism and their core values.

But now, valuable time and patience (his and his family's) have been lost, mostly due to schedules and additional transportation. One has to wonder what causes these unfortunate hold-ups.

In an earlier blog, I wrote about the simple truth that we can get information for any part of any automobile faster than we can get information about medical records in most cases.

While there are reasons to argue for this medical gap, information and implementation go together in health care.

Old schematics for how to organize hospital patient treatment are based on doctor's schedules and shared cost structures between the hospital and the doctor.

These agreements are long overdue for re-structure. Of course, this is only a single thread in a complicated story. However, it did not look so complicated this afternoon.

PS: Later this morning, I hope to call my long time friend and mentor in the UK, who is bravely traveling and continuing to work while in need of some serious orthopedic surgery. She is waiting in the U.K. health care system to be told when she can have the operation.

Sound familiar to a family experience in your life? Welcome your comments.

Sal

2 Interesting Health Care Stories In One Day

2007-10-05T00:26:00.000-04:00

Microsoft Offers System to Track Health Records – NY Times 10-5-07

Microsoft is starting its long-anticipated drive into the consumer health care market by offering free personal health records on the Web and pursuing a strategy that borrows from the company’s successful formula in personal computer software.

Microsoft announced HealthVault, an online platform where personal electronic health records can be stored.

The platform allows patients to share medical information with doctors and hospitals.

The venture by Microsoft, which is called HealthVault and was announced yesterday in Washington, comes after two years spent building a team, expertise and technology. In recent months, Microsoft managers have met with many potential partners, including hospitals, disease-prevention organizations and health care companies.

The organizations that have signed up for HealthVault projects with Microsoft include the American Heart Association, Johnson & Johnson LifeScan, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the Mayo Clinic and MedStar Health, a network of seven hospitals in the Baltimore-Washington region. The partner strategy is a page from Microsoft’s old playbook. To make its operating system, Windows, the dominant platform for personal computers, Microsoft persuaded other companies to build on its technology, and it helped them do it.

“The value of what we’re doing will go up rapidly as we get more partners,” said Peter Neupert, the vice president in charge of Microsoft’s health group.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/technology/05soft.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1191557955-tS2/OkL+ExNjTfcQu/x47A

More Doctors in Texas After Malpractice Caps – NY Times Oct. 5, 2007

Four years after Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment limiting awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, doctors are responding as supporters predicted, arriving from all parts of the country to swell the ranks of specialists at Texas hospitals and bring professional health care to some long-underserved rural areas.

The influx, raising the state’s abysmally low ranking in physicians per capita, has flooded the medical board’s offices in Austin with applications for licenses, close to 2,500 at last count.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/us/05doctors.html?hp

I have been away for a while working on a health care project and frankly, thinking a great deal about what we can really do to help one another in our workplace.

Please feel free to comment.

Sal

Someone of Age to Influence The Future Workplace

2007-08-28T00:45:00.000-04:00

An 80-Year-Old Poet for the MTV Generation

By MELENA RYZIK
Published: August 27, 2007

MtvU, the subsidiary of MTV Networks that is broadcast only on college campuses, will announce today that it has selected its first poet laureate. No, he doesn’t rap. And it’s not Bob Dylan, or even Justin Timberlake.

It is John Ashbery, the prolific 80-year-old poet and frequent award winner known for his dense, postmodern style and playful language. One of the most celebrated living poets, Mr. Ashbery has won MacArthur Foundation and Guggenheim fellowships and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.”

Excerpts of his poems will appear in 18 short promotional spots — like commercials for verse — on the channel and its Web site (mtvu.com, which will also feature the full text of the poems). In another first, mtvU will help sponsor a poetry contest for college students. The winner, chosen by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, will have a book published next year by HarperCollins as part of the National Poetry Series.

“We hope that we’ll help discover the next great poet that we’ll be talking about for years to come,” said Stephen K. Friedman, the general manager of mtvU, which broadcasts at 750 campuses nationwide.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/27/books/27laur.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Mistakes to Learn From - Datability Minus Ego

2007-07-26T01:06:00.000-04:00

Just a few years ago, it would have been astonishing for a foundation, particularly one as traditional as Carnegie, to publicize a failure. Today, though, many of the nation’s largest foundations regard disclosing and analyzing their failures as bordering on a moral obligation.

“There’s an increasing recognition among foundation leaders that not to be public about failures is essentially indefensible,” said Phil Buchanan, the executive director of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, which advises foundations. “If something didn’t work, it is incumbent upon you to make sure others don’t make the same mistake.”

New York Times, July 25, 2007 Foundations Find Benefits in Facing Up to Failures
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/us/26foundation.html

Foundations seem to be making advances lately that other organizations have talked about but not really enacted.

Have you seen instances of collaborative behaviors, changes in jurisdictional attitudes or organizational transformations that are putting foundations in the avant of accelerating cultural shifts?

If so, please join in.

Sal

Near Misses

2007-07-17T23:18:00.000-04:00

"If the airspace is totally under the control of the air traffic controller, there is a tremendous sense that Big Brother is watching on radar and that the pilot doesn't really have to look out the window."

The problem for pilots is that as they approach major airports, they must concentrate on the controllers' signals, diverting their visual attention from the skies. Concludes the report, in a considerable understatement: "A way must be found to resolve this very real dilemma." - Charles Spence, spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association

Time Magazine, July 2007
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,916714,00.html?promoid=googlep

The article in Time is called Sky Jams. The reference from Charles Spence dates back to 1979.

Here's my point. Business travel is a concern for all of us and the recently reported "near misses" at congested airports have revealed a complicated set of issues.

Infrastructure, long out dated computer tracking technology and lack of appropriate investment are key components to near misses.

Taking a breath from the reality of this situation, it becomes obvious that the overall metaphor for business practices in M&A situations, innovation initiatives and cultural accelerations may indeed, suffer the same set up for near misses.

Human interaction often comes into play at the last moment to counter the loss of updated measurement criteria, communication realities and networking abilities.

Just as the pilots have to look to the "controller's signals" and not out the window at what really exists -- is it possible that we have created the foundation for people in position to routinely make decisions without a clear picture of what they are facing?

Near misses. Has this become an accepted way of doing business rather than taking the time and money to update what is needed to be able to view a genuine current state?

At this point, the technology and the human interaction are more than available for the update.

Sal

Two Helpful Perspectives on Network Realities

2007-06-26T16:01:00.000-04:00

Patti Anklam has just published Net Works A Practical Guide to Creating and Sustaining Networks at Work and in the World.

I have worked with Patti and have learned a great deal from her. The title is an honest description of what her committed work offers.

Another associate, Bruce Hoppe, publishes a vital blog.
http://connectedness.blogspot.com/

Bruce is on to critical issues like the visualization of networked information and much more.

Sal

Some Things Change & Some Appreciate Watching

2007-06-26T15:46:00.000-04:00

We all have heard about, participated or become curios about Social Networking issues affecting the workplace.

Organizational Networking Analysis (ONA) mapping and Value Networking Analysis (VNA) are two current tools used for understanding either the roles or the content sharing that exists between communities.

Enough time has passed with significant work and substantive data to really affect the organizational design of today's companies.

Yet, it remains to be seen who has actually approached what a Network Based Organization looks and acts like.

If you have any examples please let us know.

Sal

My Uncle's Insight

2007-05-15T00:42:00.000-04:00

I went to visit my uncle the other day.

Well past his 95th birthday, this man has had a wonderful career as a businessman, community activist and entrepreneur. It's become a pleasant ritual for me to take him some cannoli (his favorite desert) and to ask his advice on work and other worldly issues.

Talking about the cannoli, I was describing to my uncle how the Italian bakery owner was telling me that each time he does some new construction work at his bakery it seems to increase his business. My uncle laughed. By the way, if I were to state my uncle's name, just about every New Yorker would recognize it since one of his projects was to establish a landmark New York Gourmet marketplace.

Anyway, my uncle laughed and said "it was always a principle of mine in business to understand that change makes people aware of you".

He re emphasized this when I said to him that I often work with people who are concerned or fixated with change. He just said, "it only helps".

Sal

Interesting Counterpoint Articles

2007-05-15T00:26:00.000-04:00

Front page of the NY Times. Two articles about the changing workplace and the world of transportaion.

A Corporate Divorce on the Cheap
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/business/worldbusiness/15daimler.htm
Daimler, now free of its struggling U.S. partner, can look ahead to a promising future as a stand-alone maker of trucks and luxury cars.

By MARK LANDLER
Published: May 15, 2007
STUTTGART, Germany, May 14

Nine years after they exchanged vows at a huge, lavishly choreographed news conference in London, Daimler and Chrysler signed their divorce papers Monday at a sparsely attended briefing in an auditorium at an aging Mercedes-Benz factory here.

As bookends, the two news conferences vividly illustrated the dashed dreams of the Daimler-Chrysler marriage.

And published yesterday.

VENICE

For more than a thousand years, Venice has had gondolas but never a female gondolier. But now there is Alexandra Hai.

By Dave Yoder for The New York Times

As Alexandra Hai plies the canals, many people shout encouragement. She won the right to run a hotel gondola but not to be called a gondolier.
After a decade of struggle, Ms. Hai has won the right to be a gondolier — sort of. A court recently allowed her to paddle around the canals of Venice, but only for the residents of one of the city’s hotels.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/world/europe/14venice.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies

2007-05-08T22:35:00.000-04:00

This survey is from UNESCO and was prepared by Mary Rundle and Chris Conley, Geneva Net Dialogue.

I keep reading it to understand more about what we are all experiencing.

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001499/149992E.pdf

Sal

The Inarticulate Innovator

2007-05-02T14:53:00.000-04:00

I have written about this notion of the Inarticulate Innovator before. However, it is a concept that deserves repetition because this is an idea that is born from neglect.

In many communities and organizations, there are people who have real ideas and innovative notions to offer, but for some reason or another, do not easily choose to articulate.

I am a talker. And, I most assuredly have inhibited others at times. Group behaviours do that on a regular basis. If the ability to communicate is a real indicator of a community or an organization's overall health (mentally, physically and financially) then, it is imperative to find and encourage the Inarticulate Innovator.

In the work place this can become very debilitating for people. It can also become very liberating and healthy when recognized.

Give a click on Comments and join in.

Sal

Communities of Need

2007-05-02T14:41:00.000-04:00

“What we're doing is we're trying to maximize our innovative ability. We don't only give care, we try to develop better care tomorrow” – Dr. Herbert Padres, The New York Sun, April 20, 2007

http://www.nysun.com/article/52864

This article tells an important story about a doctor of immense experience now leading a complex hospital environment in New York City. His background is in psychiatry.

However, his reality now resides in dealing with the fundamental issues that patients, bureaucracies and practitioners are facing everyday. The need to discover roles and responsibilities that will make sense in a world that has more format than responsive form when it comes to survival and the ability to provide skill, care and knowledge.

Take a look and see what you think. In the work place, it is common to use terms like "Communities of Practice" and Communities of Interest". I suggest, that we are all in some way members of Communities of Need. And, that includes the great institutions like hospitals searching in earnest for their working relationships.

By the way, this article was given to me by Gerry Frisch, founder of (GFA) Gerald Frisch Associates, with expertise in validating commuunication in organizations.

Mr. Frisch is working today, as I write this and targeting hospital leadership as potential clients. Mr. Frisch will not mind my commenting, that he has just entered his nintieth year of productivity. And, as a professional and recent succesful hospital patient, he brings an interesting perspective on Communities of Need.

Give a click on Comments and please, join in.

Sal

Language & Creating Distance

2007-04-24T23:23:00.000-04:00

This is a very serious subject and one that takes time to discuss.

However, we are currently being hit with a number of influences/explanations that seem to approach such a critical discussion with a limited and perhaps, purposeful set of visions.

Closed or private languages can be both exclusionary by design and liberating by experience.

Just as we hear an argument right now in the "Infotainment" world about Hip Hop language vs. the style of Talk Show hosts, and what represents freedom of speech vs. abusive behavior, it seems to me, that a fundamental point is being missed.

The pointing of one supposed offense vs. another is camouflage.

Language, like living communities can morph into "Gated Communities". Places where ideas, behaviors and exclusionary activities separate people. In these places, the antithesis of freedom of speech exists because freedom of thought is reduced by the power of exclusionary beliefs and consequential activities.

Sometimes, these beliefs are seemingly justified because of a need to survive by demonstrating the realities and pain of long time exclusion.

Sometimes, beliefs can be built by fear alone that is unfounded. When there is no true balance for vision (and here, I mean the word vision as the ability to see what is in front of us), danger is indeed, possible. We have all lived with that danger and understand much of it. Discussing it however, seems difficult for us.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said that "pain is a private language". Artists give us a glimpse into that privacy, which is an extraordinary experience and a very human one. That is one reason that censorship is not even a debate. If it were, we could never have allowed Shakespeare to have written the volumes of work he accomplished with his irreverent and volatile language.

Language can create distance. And, we can drive agendas to cover our own accountability in the work place by describing what others say.

One of the most revealing words we tend to hear is the simple, but dangerous word -- "they". Nothing is more declarative in these so called debates then when I here: "they say" or, "why can they say etc. etc."

Please Click on Comment and join in.

Sal

Safety In The Work Place

2007-04-20T16:45:00.000-04:00

I cannot join the crowd and try to say something meaningful about the Virginia Tech tragedy this week.

However, I can say that this terror touched my own family. My wife's family, has several students at Virginia Tech and also two recent graduates who remain closely networked. They are safe today. My wife's niece speaks clearly about her ongoing appreciation of the culture, community and leadership that her school represents to her. And, how odd she finds the questions she sees being positioned in the news.

It is not for me posture or try to publicly understand a complicated and deeply disturbing scenario of one person who has affected so many people.

So, what I will say and what I will continue to try and focus on in my work, is very simple. The ability of an organization or a community to communicate is a true indicator of the overall health of that community. This includes, the drivers, physical, mental and fiscal health of the community or organization.

While it's hard to argue with this kind of statement. I am not certain, that it's so easy to recognize without understanding more deeply, the fundamental realities of communication.

Please click on Comments and join.

Diversity & Freedom of Speech In the Work Place

2007-04-11T00:12:00.000-04:00

A great deal of talk this week in America, about freedom of speech.

How this freedom is used and the ramifications when people are offended by remarks made by radio or television workers. They may be "celebrities", but they are indeed, workers. And so, the issue develops quickly, as to firing or punishing the offender for the remarks.

Here's a perspective:

1. Freedom of speech is not only about the ability to say what you choose. In an open society, freedom of speech represents the ability to carry on conversations that share knowledge, question the status quo and enlighten opinion.

Consequently, languishing in adolescent like apologies and self serving constructs for what one has said, are useless. Looking at, and confronting what gives credence to an underlying atmosphere of divisiveness and bias as acceptable, instead of tasteless and damaging to everyone, is far more valuable.

2. Diversity in the work place really does allow us all to understand different perspectives. It's astounding in this day and age, to see just how non-diverse radio, newspaper and television infrastructures and their broadcast facing personnel organizations remain out of date.

Consider this definition of Diversity in The Work Place. Diversity Represents the Removal of Anything That Inhibits the Professional and Personal Development of People at Work.

Now, place that definition against what you are hearing this week about remarks regarding racial and gender statements and what people are suggesting should be done. Firing, censoring etc. are actually symptom based solutions. Perhaps, appropriate for consideration and perhaps, not really appropriate in terms of freedom issues.

What if, we reject hearing the next pathetic apology and start getting to what really makes this such a continuing story in America right now. And, anywhere in the world?

By using this definition of Diversity in the Work Place perhaps, we can see if there are not better alternatives to using Free Speech and reach more meaningful and relevant points of understanding than statements like "I am a good person who said a bad thing".

What are the accepted languages of separation and why?
What makes for a growing history of disdain as entertainment?
How dangerous is Infotainment when people cannot place it in context for real decision making?

Please click on Comment and respond.

Thanks,

Sal

Building Other Kinds of Work Places

2007-03-31T12:04:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I met with someone I have trusted and respected for many years. His work as a learning expert has always been driven with integrity and care. I was interested to hear about his work in School Reform, something he has been involved with for several years.

We talked for hours and frustration drove through the passion and commitment he cannot avoid in anything he works at. Here's one thing he mentioned that I heard, that I hope I am overstating. However, I fear that I am not.

He said that "...if a child does not learn to read by the 6th grade or by nine years of age, it's pretty much decided in our school system , especially if it's a boy, that child will be going to jail. And, budgets and the building of jails in the U.S. are based on the metrics of that expected population". Whether this is fact or his view and experience, I am not certain. But I trust his knowledge.

Now, my mind was racing back to a conversation with a brilliant graduate student in a technology and design course that I had guessed lectured at about five years ago. I remembered him telling me that he wanted to bring his family from India to New York. And, that while he wanted to do very innovative work, he could not refuse the job offers he was getting to create deep programming on school testing standards. He related to me that he felt the kinds of programming he would be involved in might set metrics and standards that would be in place for a long time based on the political will and intentions of the initiatives in place.

Prisons are an industry. Another workplace that often drives the economy of a town, city and related state systems.

However, like the aging workforce, where a startling number of people turn fifty years old every hour of everyday, according to studies by organizations like Watson Wyatt, prisons too, are experiencing an aging population. Not just the muscle bound exercise yard constituency, but a population needing a host of different responses to their realities.

If the danger of the aging workforce to large organizations means a loss of people with knowledge (and it does), causing these organization a dangerous inability to meet productivity requirements in the very near future, what does this aging prison population mean to the economy of their work place?

Once again, I am thinking about the way the ancient Greeks defined economy. As the ability to sustain the life of something for as long as possible. Not about money.

Are we providing for the next generation of prison populations figured by metrics via another form of Demand Fulfillment? And, more cynical, by Demand Creation?

I am not suggesting this as a foolish conspiracy axiom. What I am suggesting is:

Children at any age want and need to change.

It is natural and expected.

What is not natural is to predict that children cannot change. And, therefore, by using these kinds of proposed metrics as indicators of human reality, we can move ahead on the budget agendas in hundreds of offices around a country that is based on free decision making with a dreadful plan and unlimited consequential adjournments supported by fabricated statistic determinations.

Please click on Comment and join in.

Sal

Produce, Profitability & Rhetoric

2007-03-24T15:26:00.000-04:00

This article in the NY Times Business Section today, tells a world of stories. In the U.S., we are hammered with volatile language everyday, with talk radio and television rhetoric about immigrant labor, global sourcing and related issues.

The Times article is called "The Labor of Raising Fresh Produce". It's an interview with the chief executive of Del Monte Produce (thought of as a classic American brand). His name is
Mohammad Abu-Ghazaleh.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/24/business/24interview.html

Q. In parts of the country in the latest harvest, crops went to waste because of a labor shortage. Do you struggle with finding enough workers?

A. This is a challenge, something that we have to work on. We have a big operation in Arizona, where we produce melons in the spring and fall. And we use a lot of labor in the fields for picking and packing. This, of course, is a situation where we have to live with the new wages that have just been passed on by Congress. And also the issue of having access to labor from Mexico. This is an issue that the whole industry is dealing with. Our prices to the consumer haven’t been raised to handle this increase in labor costs. The additional costs will have to be passed on to the consumer. We won’t be able to absorb the costs for a very long time.

Q. When you recently reported your fourth-quarter and full-year earnings, you said that 2006 was your most challenging year. Why?

A. Higher costs from energy. That affected packing and plastics and logistics in every way. Prices for everything went up, and all of a sudden. At the end of 2005, when we projected for 2006, we never expected energy and fuel prices to shoot up by 50, 60, 70 percent. Also, the dollar has weakened over the past year. And the currencies in our producing nations have shot up.

Q. How will you turn things around in 2007?

A. We closed operations that were not so profitable, like some potato operations and onion operations in North America, and sold some others. We also closed some pineapple operations in Hawaii, where costs were extremely high. We will see benefits from these actions. We are also working on some pricing, like with bananas, in North America.

Q. Where do you see the most opportunity for growth this year?

A. We are focusing on our new markets, Middle East and Africa. Countries like the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, where we have a successful poultry operation.
In Africa, we are focusing on North Africa; Algeria is a strong market in particular. We have just opened a state-of-the-art plant for processed meats in Jordan, and we will market the products throughout the whole region.
We are also now entering into ice creams in Europe. We are experiencing high growth rates in volumes, and we are intending to expand that into new markets as well.

And this from me, Sal.

In the U.S., the average life expectancy of a migrant farm worker has been consistently placed to be under 50 years old for many years now, from sources like the Center for Disease Control.

And this, from http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/migrants.html NOW, Bill Moyers and PBS.

Children who work on farms are governed by different rules than those in any other occupation. They can start work at age 12 if accompanied by a parent. Child farm laborers can also work longer hours.

According to the General Accounting office more than 100,000 children and teens are injured on farms each year.

The Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs has found that half the youth who regularly perform farm work never graduate from high school.

Back to Sal.

Some will view this post as "liberal" in nature and just more rhetoric. Others may see it as cynical or even as a clue to what makes a country trustworthy of financial investment and forgo the humanity angle.

Economies are driven by "foreign" investments and cash flow especially at times of war when cash is critical. The trade offs for cash flow are often surprising to the non-initiated.

To understand the geo/economic/business decisions that are made and to connect the dots between the NY Times article and what people in the produce workplace really experience requires a deeper discussion than the nonsense we are fed everyday.

We are all powerfully involved as owners, managers, consumers and laborers of the food work place.

I am exhausted from the useless family type arguments about politics while this work place embodies the very survival instincts of everyone in a world where distribution is so blatantly unfair.

And, it's become just too easy to accept the conversation of the food industry. Starvation in our cities and country sides around the world is commonplace at the same time we think about what's for dinner as some political agenda is radiated through an infotainment format.

What formats do you believe affect our perception of these kinds of issues? Radio? Television? Print? Internet? Conversation? Social Networking?

Sal

What's In An Aspect Ratio?

2007-03-23T23:31:00.000-04:00

What changed in our buying behaviors that drove us to wide screen computer and television screens? When and why did our preferences move from square to rectangle?

Wide screen was radical only a few years ago and thought to relate only to certain technologies like High Definition imaging.

Painters have always created to have us sense the image beyond the dimensions of the canvas that we see in front of us. Stage directors always attempt to create a realm beyond the stage we see.

Is it possible that today, since we are hammered with repetitive images on television and computer screens, that wide screen may offer us a sense that more exists beyond the repetition we see and hear?

Or, is wide screen a true example of Demand Creation? Something that has been initiated for us to embrace and buy?

Perhaps, gaming and a sense of bringing home what people once had to go to a movie theater to experience, provides us a sense of safety and control of the entertainment and information we encounter. Often, the information we get on our screens is intolerable from a human point of view and yet, it becomes almost like Teflon in the way we don't quite feel or acknowledge the experience of receiving it.

What is this change to wide screen? This stretch of image. What do you think it represents?

Sal

How Do We Co-Design Development?

2007-03-02T15:36:00.000-05:00

"Everywhere you find innovation today, a community is involved."– Patricia Seybold, author of Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company's Future (Collins, October 2006).

">http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/111/ears-wide-open.html?partner=rss>

Check this article out for the fundamental reality that in today's environment the workplace and the marketplace are often one and the same.

Sal

Now & Then

2007-02-24T01:36:00.000-05:00

How Do We Maintain The Workplace?

2007-02-22T23:16:00.000-05:00

"28B going to colleges ...

Prosperous alumni helped make 2006 a record fund-raising year for colleges and universities, which hauled in an all-time high of $28 billion - a 9.4% jump from the year before.

Stanford's $911 million was the most ever collected by a single university. It was followed by Harvard, which raised $595 million, then Yale ($433 million) and the University of Pennsylvania ($409 million).

Last year, the top 10 fund-raising universities collected 16.3% of all gifts, or $7.2 billion, compared to 14.7% in '05. The top 20 institutions accounted for more than a quarter of all fund-raising." - New York Daily News, February 21, 2007
http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/499640p-421292c.html

Recently, I spoke with a person important in my life, whom I had not seen for a while.

She told me that she is currently teaching in a middle school in Brooklyn NY, that is dedicated to students whose education has been disrupted by illness, war or poverty. I was amazed how much this school is accomplishing with the limited resources they are able to pull together.

What do you think invigorates and drives the future of our workplace?

Sal

Can We Re engineer The Workplace for Today's World?

2007-02-20T23:59:00.000-05:00

Job Corps Plans Makeover for a Changed Economy - NY Times, February 20, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/washington/20jobcorps.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

“Once you could go into the Job Corps and get a G.E.D. and go out and make a living,” said Esther R. Johnson, a career executive in the Labor Department with a doctorate in education who took over the corps last March. “You can’t do that anymore.”

This article actually has some hopeful insights, as well as some harsh realities about today's environment for young people who are not easily included in the general offering of opportunity in the U.S.

It set me thinking about how acceptable the concept of re engineering is for corporations. Yet, the idea of re working the workplace, to meet today's realities, seems less of a possibility somehow.

Recent thinking about re engineering unions for example, or looking at public education from individual needs as opposed to a "commodity" approach, seem to echo lessons learned from large organizations.

A number of well known companies nearly lost their identity and existence before understanding that they had really lost their ability to reach the customer before re configuring their efforts.

Starting simple, while building understanding works well. Focusing on something achievable where people will learn together, what they could not learn alone, is fundamental.

This effort to makeover the Job Corps and contemporize the potential of that long standing (and successful in many ways) initiative seems very interesting.

"Dr. Johnson wants the Job Corps to aim higher, helping graduates into careers with a bigger paycheck.

To do that she plans to lengthen the average stay for many graduates beyond the current 11.4 months, improving their reading, math and vocational skills. She also wants trade courses to connect more closely with college programs and emerging industries, and she thinks the corps must double the number of graduates, now just 10 percent, who go on to higher education".

My guess is that even more may be achieved if this is really set in motion.

Do you have examples of complex issues where focusing on simple, but meaningful objectives would help jump start a significant effort?

Look forward to hearing from you.

Sal
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What Makes Work Valid?

2007-02-18T20:23:00.000-05:00

I had the privilege and adventure to have worked with Lee Bruer, a true innovator, writer and director. One night, Lee said to me:

"I love working with amateurs and I love working with professionals. It's the people who are in between that drive me crazy".

Who Decides What's Work and What's Just Curiosity at Play?

Often, I encounter conversations with people who have valuable contributions but little belief that their contributions are "legitimate" because they are not part of a recognized workplace.

The article referenced below on crowdsourcing begins to put an interesting picture on how different industries search for a diversity of thinking and lower cost product development and product availability. While companies may use crowdsourcing for their purposes, I like to think about this to help realize that no one owns our ability to work. To think. To innovate. - Sal

From the article:

Technological advances in everything from product design software to digital video cameras are breaking down the cost barriers that once separated amateurs from professionals. Hobbyists, part-timers, and dabblers suddenly have a market for their efforts, as smart companies in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd. The labor isn’t always free, but it costs a lot less than paying traditional employees. It’s not outsourcing; it’s crowdsourcing.

Pharmaceutical maker Eli Lilly funded InnoCentive’s launch in 2001 as a way to connect with brainpower outside the company – people who could help develop drugs and speed them to market. From the outset, InnoCentive threw open the doors to other firms eager to access the network’s trove of ad hoc experts. Companies like Boeing, DuPont, and Procter & Gamble now post their most ornery scientific problems on InnoCentive’s Web site; anyone on InnoCentive’s network can take a shot at cracking them.

The Rise of Crowdsourcing - WIRED Magazine, Issue 14.06 - June 2006
By Jeff Howe http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html?pg=3&topic=crowds&topic_set=

Do you have examples of work that you believe in but just don't consider "legitimate" unless it's defined by an organization? - Sal

The Loss of a Fine Actor

2007-02-16T13:37:00.000-05:00

Last week, I read that Ian Richardson had died.

I first met Ian when I was a young man, working at the Brooklyn Academy of Music or BAM, as it is called. I got the job resulting from a challenge by a teacher, Jane Ward, in a grad course on repertory theater. She was annoyed that I would spend so much time talking about "experimental" theater when she said I had no real knowledge of the "legitimate" theater.

In her frustration, she offered to hire me as her assistant for two weeks at BAM, where she was the Production Stage Manager. An extraordinary woman, Jane has influenced the creation of a number of America's arts institutions. I took the two week job and remained working there for nine years. It was that compelling a workplace.

Like many workplaces, I spent more time there than I did with my own family. It was at BAM, that I would first learn about working across and beyond the traditional boundaries I was conditioned to expect.

Because of this experience, I find many current conversations about "world-wide work teams" to be missing a fundamental understanding of what it means to work together and learn as you go. To build something from nothing and accept that things will change as you build.

When it came to staging a performance at BAM, everything was about collaboration or nothing got done. Leadership often moved to where expertise resided and where it was needed. Not from the hierarchy alone.

New relationships started with an empty stage. Some productions with a year of planning and others with only a week or two.

All the relationships were accelerated with the arrival of actors or dancers, and technicians from all over the world to begin set up. And, this also included local communities who found a home for their original cultures to showcase their traditions. Some of these relationships would last a lifetime.

I will never forget those inevitable Monday mornings, when a visiting company had just moved out on Sunday. The next day, the resulting rows of empty dressing rooms always created a very real feeling of loss that cannot easily be described.

Ian Richardson was one of the Royal Shakespeare Company's lead actors when BAM brought the first full scale RSC productions from the UK to Brooklyn.

This was at a time when the venerable old Brooklyn theater had just survived being demolished and turned into a parking lot.

It was also a time of the strong political dis ease of the Viet Nam war as we were painfully adding new words like AIDS, to our culture.

Many of the performances were important reflections of that time. Theater was providing a significant voice and this profound workplace was a living microcosm of what we were all experiencing.

With visionary leadership, much courage and a shared drive across functions, BAM remains today, one of the world's great performing arts centers.

Skilled stagehands and wardrobe crew worked endlessly as office staff, ushers and artists all understood we were building something together.

Long before phrases like "On Demand" were invented, centuries of stagecraft traditions acknowledged fundamental audience realities. There was no way to avoid the expectations of a waiting audience in a theater rich with the history of fine performers and meaningful performances.

As part of the team to bring the first RSC productions from Stratford-upon -Avon to Brooklyn, I got to meet Ian Richardson and others, who would help shape my work expectations for a very long time.

While millions of audience members will remember Ian from the stage, screen and television as always perfectly voiced, dignified and handsome, I will have the lasting influence of several quite talks with him about work.

I was twenty-one years old when we met and full of arrogance and passion for what I believed, and still believe -- theater has always been a way of society talking to itself about itself.

I had no inhibition to giving my theories to this accomplished actor. A man who could rivet an audience with a selected moment of extended pause as strongly as he could with a beautifully articulated monologue.

We had two conversations that I remember quite clearly. One was about sleep. Another , about working to experiment.

Sleep was difficult for him, he told me. People I am sure, did not easily see in his perfect demeanor and voice, the hours of rehearsal, learning and commitment to his craft that someone working at his level, carries with them everyday. He was afterall, an actor.

During the other conversation, he gave his kind encouragement to a kid who perhaps, talked a bit too much about experimental theater work, as I drove him to a CBS Sunday Morning television interview, on a day when Ian had very little time to himself.

This is how I remember his words. And if I am mis quoting him, I am not sure, that he would mind.

"Keep doing your experimentation, it's too difficult in our world (referring to the arena of a large world renowned theater company) to easily try new things, and it's important to all of us".

It was not until I read the sad news last week, that something made me realize that here was a man whose entire carrier was predicated on collaborating with others. Whose craft was based on making work visible and whose workplace was a stage that extended to others. Yet, he always appeared somewhat singular. Individual.

In Some Way, I have Missed Somethig Fundamental

That Ian, when he was exhausted and talked to me about sleep, was also saying, that we are all part of our workplace, in a way that we should appreciate and care for more deeply than we take time to.

Another Lesson I Keep Missing

We team for strengths and weaknesses and that is appropriate.

Maybe that's why people in organizations have to work so hard to reach collaborative behaviors? Because, it's in the collaboration that we reveal our individuality. And perhaps, our vulnerability. Our humanity.

It is amazing to me when I recall all the effort, collaboration and excitement it took to have that audience in Brooklyn walk into the Opera House and see the Royal Shakespeare Company perform. And, to understand that this was a relevant and meaningful representation of theater in a current world, much the way Shakespeare used history to reflect on what his real world political and societal conditions imposed on his time.

It was powerful to see Ian Richardson on that stage, perfectly positioned in his workplace, in a neighborhood he had never seen before. Playing the role of Richard, a King, at a time when the very neighborhood BAM occupies was and still is, placed in the continuing struggle between the powerful and those in need.

Well, the memories may be mine, but the connections belong to all of us.

I remember, a fine actor who was kind to me.

I trust that I have not used his good name too much for my own purpose and that there will be benefit in posting this story.

Sal

Making Work Visible

2007-02-16T13:13:00.000-05:00

"The whole company prizes visibility"...

The ‘Toyota Way’ Is Translated for a New Generation of Foreign Managers - NY Times, February 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/business/worldbusiness/15toyota.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

“For Americans and anyone, it can be a shock to the system to be actually expected to make problems visible,” said Ms. Newton, a 38-year-old Indiana native who joined Toyota after college 15 years ago and now works at the North American headquarters in Erlanger, Ky. “Other corporate environments tend to hide problems from bosses.”

This Part is From Me (Sal)

In The 21st Century Intranet, Jennifer Stone Gonzalez wrote in 1999, that the singular most important communication issue we faced was "to make work visible".

Today, many Intranets still carry a tone of an electronic magazine with a paternalistic sense of command and control communication. And, it goes beyond Intranets, to really creating collaborative ways to communicate. But it's not really about technology. It's about our intentions and what we expect the technology to enable.

Intranets that are used, move decision making faster than traditional management roles allow. In addition, true collaborative frameworks put executives into the mix instead of outside the mix, simply reviewing and approving. Customers simply don't have time for that anymore. And that switch in the mix becomes a change management element that's real, not theorized.

Old models, where work is not visible and collaboration is not supported, tend to keep the management and continuous development as separate entities, as if the customer world is subject to the company's analysis.

But Toyota sounds different in the above referenced article and aware that different audiences see and hear the same messages differently.

“There is a sense of danger,” said Koki Konishi, a Toyota general manager who heads the (Toyota) institute. “We must prevent the Toyota Way from getting more and more diluted as Toyota grows overseas.”

Communication and Implementation - What's the Difference Sometimes?

This is part of our contemporary issue of concurrent communication and implementation. Speed of information is often speed to customer. And, that's not easy to grasp from either a cultural or operational point of view. It is easy however, to relate to if you are on the other side, as a customer or partner with expectations.

How visible is your work? How acceptable is it to have work made visible in your workplace?

And please understand, this is not just about big organizations.

We are all in this together.

I am especially hoping to hear from people who teach, work at home, engage in research or partner in our diverse workplace.

Sal

Work & Survival

Really smart

Brain Research Supports Long-Term Teachings of Cis Berry

A Thought About the Irag War and Gratitude to Those Who Served

Let's listen to our heritage

Looking back at Katrina seems like looking forward

Do we really understand politics?

Is This Why I Pay Almost 3K Per Month for Two People?

How corporate P.R. works to kill healthcare reform

Knowledgeable and Clear Health Care Infomation

Here's to the RSC's willingness to confront the search for truth, humanity and politics.In today's world, they are a very old company brave enough to work in earnest.

Interesting Article About Facebook Use

What's New and Good and Bad

Lost a friend this week

A Great Deal is Being Missed in My Neighborhood

"It's noboby. Just the IT guy"

Health Care Innovation?

Companies Look to Provide Infrastructure Services

Five Sites that Let You Experience the Real-Time Web Today

Good Info Sent to Me Regarding Health Care Collaboration

Politics blinds us from seeing true expertise

Fad Or Future Second Life And Virtual Worlds

Is Our Sense of Discovery Changing?

Sounds Like the Future

Interesting Conversation about Brands

Mumbai attack coverage demonstrates (good and bad) maturation point of social media

November 28th, 2008

Solar Cooking: A Different View of Enviroment & Humanity

1920 U.S. Election

IT's biggest project failures -- and what we can learn from them

Conglomerate Posture During Economic Downturn

A Subject We Cannot Ignore

Multimillion-Dollar Men

October 7, 2008 NY Times

Whers's the Money?

Internal Communications - The Continuing Myth

Helping New Technologies Grow Into Businesses

I've Seen a Real Picture of Change and Almost Missed Something Important

Measuring Culture?

It's Upside Down -- Health Care That Is

Interesting View from the Nonprofit World

A Conversation Today: Culture & Transformation

Answering a Question

Innovation and Measurement - The US Economy

Sports Analogies?

Have a Global Beverage?

Web 3.0 - Is It The Promise of Re-engineering?

Web 2.0 CEO Quotes From TechCrunch Video

Report: Low Grad Rates in US Cities

By KEN THOMAS, Associated Press

World-Wide Traffic Jam

You Never Know What's in Ice Cream

IBM Opens New 3D Virtual Healthcare Island on Second Life

Interesting Post on a Health Care Blog

EMR Pushback

(Just About) All Innovation is Local

Change Comes From Unexpected Places - Maybe

I recently heard an interview regarding genetic medicine where an expert researcher posed a provocative notion regarding the initial benefactors of her work.

She said, the investigations would be very helpful to our health. However, we need to understand, that much of our well-being still remains within our ability to control and provide good decision making based on solid information.

This researcher went on to suggest that the people who will benefit first from genetic data and inquiry, will be software developers and providers. It's about business as much as it is about health.

Pilot Project Could Involve Up To 10,000 People; Concerns Surround Security Of Information

"Google Inc. will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that's likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the Internet search leader.

Boundaries: Fixed & Not Quite Fixed

Innovation and Survival

In Flood-Prone Bangladesh, a Future That Floats

A Note Aboute Music and Health Care

Wisdom, Wherever You Can Find It

A Great Memory of a Gifted Person

Who Determines Knowlege Flow?

At Harvard, a Proposal to Publish Free on Web

The Retailing of Medecine Takes a Step Up

Wal-Mart Expands In-Store Clinics

What Happens to the Value Chain?

Isuzu Leaving the US Passenger Vehicle Market in 2009

30 January 2008 http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/01/isuzu-leaving-t.html

Communicaton and Implementation

While We Were Watching the Florida Primary

California Senate Panel Rejects Health Coverage Proposal

Thinking About Health Care Workers - This is an older blog

Now & Then

Here's to the RSC's willingness to confront the search for truth, humanity and politics.

In today's world, they are a very old company brave enough to work in earnest.