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What really matters

It is with great sadness that we note the passing of Randy Pausch. If you haven't watched his last lecture, then here it is again. Randy knew what mattered most. All of us who were touched and inspired by his courage, good humor, and wisdom, appreciated being reminded of what is most important. So today, if you have not already done so, be sure to tell the important people in your life how much you love them.

To the Pausch family, deepest condolences. The world is a smaller place today.

What does the economy mean for small business?

We live in some interesting economic times. According to a report in the April 14, 2008 issue of Fortune, the current slowdown differs from previous slowdowns in one key way. Usually, the economy drags down the markets. Not this time. This time, the markets are dragging down the economy. I’m not an economist, so I can’t really explain how this market-economy relationship works. But the take home message is one that I got loud and clear.

It seems that this sort of slowdown has a sobering precedent. The last time it happened in the US was 1929.

It was in 1929 that the stock market melted down. The result was the Great Depression. Not many folks alive today remember the Great Depression and those that do were forever changed by it. If know someone who recycles, reuses, and buries money in Mason jars, you are probably looking at someone with a memory of the Great Depression.

One thing that really hurt folks back in 1929 was that when their banks failed, they lost everything. Banks still fail, y’all. According to the FDIC, three banks failed in 2007. In just the first three months of 2008, three more have failed. Global investment bank, Bear Stearns, tanked recently and got propped up by a buyer with some help from the Feds. And a big one is teetering on the edge: E*Trade just about went under a few weeks ago. According to published reports, the FDIC expects between 100-200 banks will fail over the next two years.

Yes, if your bank is federally insured, your deposits (up to $100,000) are considered safe. In fact, one report I read painted a somewhat rosy picture of bank failure. The quoted FDIC source said that if your bank goes under, probably some other bank will buy it and you won’t even notice. If there’s no buyer, then the FDIC is supposed to issue you a check within 48 hours. But imagine the drain on the FDIC insurance if many banks all go under at once. Will you really get a check in a few days? What happens to you in the meantime?

Regardless of pending bank failures, what the economic news means for the small business owner is that hard times lie ahead. Prices will be going up and spending will be going down. Consumer confidence is dropping like a rock. Personally, I’m taking a hard look at my own numbers and making decisions about how to invest my time, money, and energy very strategically. I’ll continue to do marketing. Because no marketing means no business. Additionally, I’m really looking at how to build better relationships with my fellow business people. It’s good to have friends—friends who can help each other out when times get tough.

Maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe I lost my confidence in the government’s ability to respond after Hurricane Katrina. Maybe I’m being all doom in gloom. But I know one thing, I’m convinced that having all my funds in a single financial institution is a bad idea.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go buy some Mason jars and a shovel.

Alex the Parrot Dies

Sad news from the world of science today: Alex, the African Grey parrot who made headlines with his ability to learn all sorts of information and use it constructively, died. For a parrot, he was rather young: only 31 years old. He died of apparently natural causes.

I had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Irene Pepperberg, the research scientist who trained and studied Alex, many years ago. Pepperberg is a petite, very attractive lady with a ready smile. She told me about the fun and frustration of her work. For one thing, her colleagues (some of them, anyway) found her results so out of line with their own perception of animals that they accused her of all sorts of things. One even asked, apparently in all seriousness, if she had ruled out ESP.

The truth of the matter is that animals have greater cognitive and emotional abilities than people may want to believe. Perhaps the resistance comes from the fact that we humans visit all sorts of suffering on other creatures. To imagine that those same creatures have emotions and think, in some manner, the way we do would put ethical treatment of animals into a whole different realm. Or so I imagine.

In any event, what Pepperberg and Alex demonstrated is that animals have cognitive abilities that allow them to process information in ways similar to our own. The difference between us and them is how we communicate what we know. Parrots can learn to speak the same language as the humans around them do, and African Greys are particularly gifted in that respect. So when Pepperberg taught Alex to speak English, she did so with the purpose of learning about how he used his mind to think. He could add and subtract, understood the concept of zero, identify shapes and colors. He understood concepts like less and more. He used language appropriately.

There is a famous story that Alex learned how to say ‘I love you,’ and used the phrase with several people but not Pepperberg herself. Pepperberg was leaving Alex at the vet’s office on one occasion and Alex called out to her “Wait! I love you!” It was the first time he’d ever said ‘I love you’ to her; she said it almost broke her heart. Reportedly on the last evening of his life, Alex said to Pepperberg, “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”  We should all be so lucky to be told goodbye in such a way by someone we’ve worked with and loved for thirty years.

Bye-bye Alex. We’ll miss you.

Real Hero

Tommy Foust didn't think, he just acted. Yesterday, Foust, a 17 year old life guard and high school senior, pulled a woman from her car seconds before it was hit by not one but two trains in rapid succession. I suspect that like many emergency personnel, Foust wasn't aware of making decisions. He simply did what his training taught him to do. He saved a life.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the kind of decision making that Foust used when he leapt into action. You can read it here.

 

Kudos to David Armano at Logic + Emotion for his eye witness account.

Normal accidents

In the wake of the horrifying collapse of the interstate bridge in Minnesota this week, lots of people are asking why. Last night, Nancy Grace of CNN (who is anything but graceful) demanded to know “who to blame.” However, asking why and casting blame are rarely useful and often completely pointless. Additionally, despite our desire to believe otherwise, events like this one are actually normal, expected,  and inevitable. Large accidents, while rare, are part of an predictable cascade of events, the entropy that all systems suffer from as they lurch toward decay. Collapses like the I-35W bridge are the result of an array of parts and forces, a complex interaction of metal fatigue, time, and motion.

Charles Perrow, author of Normal Accidents, pointed all this out over twenty years ago. As Laurence Gonzales put it when he summarized Perrow’s conclusions, “…accidents are made up of conditions, judgments, and acts or events that would be inconsequential by themselves. Unless they are coupled in just the right way and with the right timing, they pass unnoticed.” While the transportation engineers shake their heads and grieve over signs they may have missed, the fact remains that bridges are impermanent structures.

To say that a particular aspect of a structure might fail and cause an entire bridge to collapse is paradoxically counterfactual and completely accurate all at once. There are literally thousands of bridges all over the world that possess their own symptoms of corrosion and carry the germs of their ultimate demise. Every single bridge the world over has a non-zero probably of failure--which is to stay, it might drop unexpectedly. And yet most don’t and won’t.

In the end, tragedy, like human suffering, is part of our universal condition. There is no why. There are no convenient scapegoats on which to heap blame. All complex systems (human society, bridges, space shuttles) are prey to what physicist Per Bak called the sand pile effect. Like sand in an hour glass, systems settle at some steady state just this side of the brink of collapse. Mountains do this, so does everything else. Boulders remain stationary, then roll without warning, having finally passed the threshold of balance. Tiny pebbles that tumble down beforehand are actually tiny systems failures that indicate that gravity and time are behind the scenes, rearranging molecules and plotting the leveling of massive peaks.

The collapse of the I35W bridge was a known risk. It was predictable although no one, save God, could tell how or why or when. And no one ever will.

Condolences to our Colleagues at Virginia Tech

It is with great sadness that we learned of the events on the Virginia Tech campus yesterday. We send our deepest condolences to the families, students, and professors who were affected by this tragedy.

Peace be with you,
Tara and Teri

Level 5 Leadership

An interesting story hit the news today. Lead-authored by Jean Twenge, the study finds that college-age students are “more narcissistic” than in earlier studies. The consequences of inflated egos are “decreased interest in emotionally intimate bonds and lashing out when rejected or insulted.” In short, arrogance. The opposite of arrogance is humility.

Humility isn’t often touted as a great strength or accomplishment of great leaders. However, truly great leaders are not the most charismatic, visible, or demanding ones. Quite the opposite. Great leaders (as defined by monumental success of the sort Jim Collins talks about in his books) are often self-deprecating, soft-spoken, and humble. Collins classifies such leaders as “Level 5.”

Here’s a sampling of what Level 5 leadership looks like:

• “Humility plus will.” This amounts to knowing that you don’t hold all the answers or possess The Truth. It also means you’re not a door mat. Level 5 leaders possess great strength that allows them to stand their ground without being tyrannical.
• Ambition for the other rather than the self. Level 5 leaders are extremely ambitious, but not strictly for selfish gain. Instead, Level 5 means being committed to a goal far greater than themselves. In essence, this is a commitment to leaving a legacy and simultaneously recognizing your own mortality.
• Credit giving and responsibility taking. Arrogance wants all the credit and none of the responsibility (it’s also pretty adept at throwing blame). Level 5 leadership, however, is typified by a willingness to give credit to others generously while standing strong when responsibility has to be shouldered.

In Good to Great, Collins suggests that Level 5 leaders are more born than made. I’m not sure I agree. I would like to believe that anyone, if possessing of sufficient will, can subjugate their egos and learn to practice the graces of Level 5 leadership consistently and well. The first place to start is to see yourself as you are. Another way to do that is to see yourself as others see you. That’s what we’ll tackle in tomorrow’s post.

Peace be with you,
Tara

Help Find Jim Gray

Jim Gray, one of computer science's greatest minds, went missing at sea a few days ago. Having just finished Deep Survival, I am convinced that Jim Gray has a good chance of being found alive (read my review of Deep Survival here).

Unlike other search efforts, where only trained professionals can help, this effort allows everyone with a computer to participate in a meaningful way. Here's how, go to Werner Vogel's blog to read up on the search technique. Then hit the Amazon Mechanical Turk site to view images and submit comments on possible images of interest. You'll need an Amazon account to participate.

Mt. Hood Climber Search

You may have heard about three climbers lost on Mt. Hood. Many of the searchers are volunteers who risk their lives to help. The search costs money. Lots of money. If you're looking for an organization to support this Christmas please consider Portland Mountain Rescue or Corvallis Mountain Rescue Any donation is greatly appreciated.

This is the second large scale winter rescue operation in Oregon this year. The Kim family was assisted by Eugene Mountain Rescue. You can support their efforts by contacting emr@eugenemountainrescue.org