The Department of Homeland Vetting

I propose the creation of a new Government Department - the Department of Homeland Vetting.

Its sole purpose would be to conduct annual ethics audits of all those in powerful government positions. The department would closely look into

• Outstanding (delinquent) Tax Issues
• Pending or current personal litigation
• Immigration status of any personal staff
• Criminal convictions
• Lobbying ties and and significant business investments
• PAC Donations received
• Previous sexual harassment and/or discrimination claims
  

And if you didn't pass the annual vetting - you're OUT.

Am I the only one who's getting concerned about the very high average of nominees for cabinet positions and senate seats who can't seem to pass these tests? How many unpaid taxes and ethics violations are out there among the legislators who weren't considered?

In the past 2 weeks, Caroline Kennedy, Tim Geitner and now Tom Daschle have been caught up in vetting controversies, unrelated to political ideologies or competency.

And these are the people who are considered worthy of nomination!

Perhaps the DoHV should conduct an annual vetting of Congress, our Executive Branch, State Governors and State Legislators.

At least it might get them to pay their taxes on time!

If I get too many traffic tickets the government won't renew my driver's license. Yet we allow ethics violators and those who have long overdue income tax obligations to run our country.

And of course, it's not just Washington. Look no further than Wall St. for examples of private sector moral and ethical ineptitude.

Is it too much to demand that our leaders have an ethical compass?

Amanda's Posse

Meet Amanda (not her real name).

Daddy's little girl isn't just helping out with the chores. She's an archetype. On the surface, she's mimicking her parent's behavior helping to keep her home neat and clean.

Thirty years ago, the weight of the family vacuum cleaner would have prohibited her from doing it at all.

And sixty years ago, she'd be using a broom and dustpan (probably with unsatisfactory results).

But technology advancements are allowing her to accomplish tasks that once could only be done well) by those with far more practical experience.

Imagine how she'll change the way work gets done, once she hits the workforce. This interesting article at readwriteweb details how the generations are using the Web and related technologies.

Extrapolate some of the findings of this article to our little girl as she enters the workforce. On day 1, when most of us would be figuring out where the washrooms are, she'll arrive at work with

• 5,000 Facebook friends
• A mobile phone with 1,000 contacts, 750 Productivity apps (and one click access to call all her Facebook friends)
• A high degree of comfort with advanced web search techniques.
• A practiced ability to multitask that's beyond our current comprehension, honed by more than a decade of handling many different text conversations at once.

She'll be able to research any problem quickly, find out how others have handled it, get opinions from experts and colleagues alike and do it without really having to think about it.

You won't just be hiring Amanda, you'll be hiring her posse.

Image credit: www.theblogfathers.com

Do you have a Hovercraft?

I enjoy the recent Orbitz (the travel company, not the gum) commercial, where an average guy watering his yard is interrupted by a landing of the Orbitz Hovercraft.

The pilot emerges to hand the guy a refund check, because after he booked his flight, the prices dropped and he was entitled to a refund for the difference.

"Why didn't you just mail it?" the confused homeowner asks.

"Because we have a Hovercraft!" is the reply.

And so it got me thinking. How many work processes exist because they can?

Painfree Computing

Next week, I'm starting an internal I.T. program called Painfree Computing.

It's designed to eliminate some of the causes of end user frustration. This is going to be a long journey, but in the end I know it'll be worth it.

Our eventual goal is standardization, standardization, standardization. And to accomplish that, we're going to have a LOT of conversations with our user community before we reach the promised land.

But our team needs a mindset change as well. We don't always make things as easy as we could for our users. Too often, processes which should be improved, are ignored and evolve into a "us vs. them" or "they should have known better" discussion. Unfortunately that doesn't prevent the problem from re-occurring.

Out team spends a good portion of our day looking at other business processes like quoting, order entry, field service, testing etc and while that's all good, we sometimes fail to see that we have operational improvement opportunity in our OWN backyard.

Over time, we'll take a look at the entire computing process from the time our users show up in the morning and hit the on button, to logoff at night. We're going to look for ways that boot time can be reduced, all custom applications will automatically be updated to the latest version, software suites will all be patched to the same (current) level, systems will be backed up automatically to the network, remote access will look, act and feel the same as if our users were in the office.

I.T. processes, like Bug fixes will contain workflow to automatically notify us when new bugs are reported by our user community and auto notify our users when they are fixed.

Stuff will just work.

At least that's the plan!

New Year's Resolution

It's that time of year again...

Instead of vowing to lose weight, or exercise more, I've decided to take on a real challenge - to adopt the same attitude Randy Pausch had for the last year of his life.

He's an inspiration.



And if you haven't see Randy's last lecture...

Until We Meet Again....

This week our company may have to bid farewell to a good customer of 25 years.

We don't want to. He's making us.

We believe we make some of the best products in our industry. (We're number 1, by long shot in all our markets). For one of our products, the "industry life expectancy" is about 15 years. No one services their product beyond that timeframe (except us, if we can still obtain original parts).

Our customer has been using our product for a decade longer than that.

Fact is, that it's time to replace, not to repair. The original replacement parts for the device were discontinued by our vendor almost ten years ago. There are no original replacement parts in existance.

In these trying economic times, our intrepid customer has found a third party supplier who will manufacture replacement parts (but for some strange reason won't install them). Instead he suggests that WE install 3rd party parts in OUR equipment.

For many reasons, this isn't a good idea.

1. We don't want to assume ANY liability for untested parts made by someone else.
2. We know the 3rd party vendor's quality on other parts (and they are inferior to ours).
3. They could potentially cause a cascade failure of other components.
4. We don't want to put our good reputation at risk.
5. Probably the best reason of all - we don't think the 3rd party parts will work and the customer could be throwing good money away.

It's like a patient arriving at the hospital with an artificial heart he purchased somewhere and asking YOU (the surgeon) to install it, so he can save some money.

Not very likely.

No logical argument will work. Our customer feels that he is being let down or worse yet, "forced" into making a replacement purchase - all because a third party competitor, unrealistically got his hopes up.

And so, it is with heavy heart that we say goodbye to our good customer - at least for now.

After he learns his lesson with our competition, I'm pretty sure, he'll be back.

Business Lessons from an old Sea Captain

It's now time to develop next year's business plan. For many of us whose fiscal year coincides with the calendar year, the planning process begins in October and takes many weeks of negotiation before finally being agreed to.

This year is especially challenging. With the U.S. and World Economy in the tank, you can already hear the excuses from around the company.

"Next year, we'll be lucky to match this year's sales". And, if the naysayers win the argument, it will be a self fulfilling prophecy.

Because you'll be playing defense. You'll try not to lose orders to the competition, instead of winning orders. The "poor economy" excuse will be your emotional safety net. Your team will start rationalizing results against even poorer performers. We may suck - but not as badly as (insert competitor's name here).

In trying times, business leaders need to take a lesson from Sea Captains. In rough weather, experienced Mariners turn their ships into the waves. They take adversity head on. To do otherwise could result in being broadsided by a wave and risk capsizing the vessel.

This year we aren't making plans to protect this year's sales, we're making plans to grow them.

Our captain is steering the ship into the waves.

We're focusing on our opportunities around the world. We're adding to our sales team. We're improving our sales processes. We're mining for gold within our tremendous customer database. We're finding ways to improve and cement our relationships with key customers and partners.

We have all hands on deck.

And we'll survive the storm.