6.2 - Take me out to the ball game...

Box 4.5 discusses how Trujillo broke the baseball game experience into 3 main themes: business, community, and drama.

What drew my attention was the point that culture may often be highly subjective. Just as artifacts represent a company's actions, culture of a company may be perceived very different to different people. Call me un-American for not valuing the experience, but I've never liked going to ballgames. Despite liking sports in general, I've always found baseball to be relatively boring. As a result, I know my perspectives of the culture of attending a baseball game will be strikingly different than the man next to me... painted head to toe in home team colors, yelling at the top of his lungs, and waving a foam hand with a sense of reckless abandon.

Not sure what my point is other than there are many instances where a company's culture may be viewed in different lights.

6.1 Flair

Chapter 4 also brings up artifacts. I'm not sure why artifacts stick out in my mind... probably because they remind me of the movie Office Space.

One of the important aspects that the book covered is that "artifacts are more visible than values." This phrase stood out since it made me think about the way that artifacts and a company's culture complement and contrast each other. Artifacts are described as "manifestations of the deeper levels of culture." While this is no doubt true, I think another interesting facet of artifacts is the way a company will manipulate them as a tool to create culture. Some artifacts may be used in efforts to grow a pre-conceived idea of an optimal culture; however, the success is often not always guaranteed.

So while artifacts are often regarded as the results of a company's culture and doings... they may also be a foundation.

5.5 - Project ideas, con't.

The more I think about project proposal ideas, the less sure I am of what I want to do. My last blog covered a general idea that I found interesting. It's easy for a company to say they want to have quality employees who work to provide the best products/service to their customers... but the real issue is how they carry this overarching idea to fruition. The problem I'm seeing is that it's such a broad scope and I'm not sure how to narrow it down while keeping my original focus intact.

Another idea I've been tossing around is researching information overload and the different manners in which companies (and individuals) deal with the problems caused. This is a very prevalent and interesting topic for most MBA students. As information sources continue to grow, this problem will continue to grow. I'd like to research the current practices deemed most effective and proposed solutions which hold merit.

5.4 - Project ramblings...

In BusLaw, our professor told us that we can try as hard as possible to prevent lawsuits... but it's impossible to shield a company 100%. Instead, we should concentrate on doing the right thing, training people the right way, and creating/following the right processes. If we do these things, most lawsuits should be mitigated.

Likewise, company's character may be reflected through various artifacts. Poor character may be easily found and exposed to the public. Reputations takes time to build... but only a few bad cases to destroy.

I think this would be an interesting direction to go for my project. My initial thought is to focus on how companies design and implement processes to generate positive reputations from both internal and external perspectives. It's interesting to me how a company may choose different methods of creating a corporate culture and having that carry forward to its customers. The thoughts

5.3 - Survey Monkey

Among data gathering techniques discussed, are surveys. While surveys may provide a quick blanket method of gathering tangible data, the shortcomings are also well known. Several are covered on page 449.

In undergraduate studies, I did a psychology project on surveys. We asked a series of 10 rather private questions. We did so through different methods - oral surveys, written surveys (private, when sitting next to others), online surveys. The results were tabulated and we assessed how people answered. The results supported our hypothesis - different research methods produced different answers. Some differences were slight, others more pronounced.

I learned (and followed up with research on similar studies) that there are many aspects of surveys which produce different results. My own experience with surveys is less than enthusiastic... I think of surveys as more of a nuisance and something I rarely ever take the time to answer thoroughly. Probably the most irritating aspect was one of the worst college professors I've had. He handed out our semester-end surveys and jokingly said "write what you want, I'm tenured." Besides being irritated as heck at the comment, I felt my input was futile and didn't care to give the survey much effort. I'm sure most of us have had times where we just put anything to get a survey over with...

5.2 - "the golden gripe"

P.441 discusses when a message begins to represent a symptom of a problem. The example used is of upper level management creating committees, then ignoring their recommendations. The gripes of committee members being rejected may damage company culture.

When working in networking, we had a series of customer complaints of network interruptions. Our tests showed nothing, but upper level management was eager to show progress and set up a regional template team to revamp configurations and standardize things. We met for weeks and restructured templates. When it came time for implementation, all the individual sites refused to use them. The customer complaints have subsided a bit with management's promises, so they ignored our complaints. Weeks of overtime work for nothing... very frustrating. :(

5.1 - Reputations

P.439 discusses on how a company's reputation may be built from multitudes of interactions over time.

This rings true from my recent experiences helping a friend's fledgling business. It takes years to build a solid reputation and much less to undermine your efforts. For 3 years, my friend has worked to put customers first. On one occasion, he shipped out an order before leaving on vacation. He sent an email saying he would be out of town for a week and copy/pasted the tracking number. There was a problem with the shipment and the customer never received it... so despite being notified that my friend was on vacation... proceeded to leave messages and send multiple emails.

Just as videos go viral, so do the words of an irate customer. The customer went on two industry-oriented forums and started bad mouthing the lack of communication and disrespect he felt at the hands of my friend, going as far as insinuating that he had been ripped off. Of course, the posts were slanted to make it appear as though my friend was purposely ignoring the customer's calls/emails. Many people jumped on, saying "omg, that's absolutely horrible customer service... I'd never purchase or recommend anyone to purchase from them".
While the matter was cleared up, the customer publicly apologized, but the damage was already done. It takes so much to build up a reputation, and so little to bring it down...

4.5 - "Too Much Information" -Duran Duran

Chapter 3 discusses a section on flow of information and the difficulty in determining the right amount of information that's useful to an employee.

Through my blogs, I've expressed a general distaste for large corporations, superfluous information passed around, and useless meetings. Information control is a great way of saving wasted time, effort, and money; however, it is much easier said than done. No matter who conducts an analysis, different people will have different perspectives on what information is valuable and pertinent. As such, it seems that we are doomed to swim in a vast sea of CC's, bulletins, and FYI's. :(

The book mentions the development of [i]knowledge management[/i], but for the reasons listed above, I fail to see how any person or group of people may adequately determine what is "quality information". At least it'd be a step in the right direction...

Any thoughts on the matter?

4.4 - Efficient vs. Effectiveness

On page48, the book begins to outline Chester Barnard's perspective on effectiveness and efficiency. When Bernard discusses the extremes of quadrant 1 (low effectiveness & efficiency) and quadrant 4 (high effectiveness & efficiency), the first thing that came to mind was our department meetings vs. client meetings.

Our department meetings definitely fall into the low effectiveness and efficiency. Meant to get everyone on the same page, team members begrudgingly show up at 9am Monday morning to discuss how their projects are going. A large majority of the information regurgitated is redundant since it mimics our project tracking software. Anyone that needs to know about a project is already in the loop. Likewise, politics tend to show up as team members begin arguing about completely asinine an inconsequential details. Most participants sit on their laptops ignoring what's going on... sometimes typing up a bus244 blog. We waste 1-1.5 hours of our workday, leave annoyed, then repeat the process the next week.

In client meetings, there is a completely different approach. Meetings are conducted very cleanly and information is outlined in a detailed format. Both parties are interested in the relevant subject matter, so every minute is used judiciously. Because each party has much to benefit and much to lose from the deal, the end result is often highly efficient and effective.

4.3 - My furniture is where??!

I thought I'd share my experiences with the most commonly stereotyped "bureaucratic job".... a government job. :)

It was a memorable summer... my first real job. I was working in an army base in Hawaii in the housing office. Due to scheduling issues and time of shipment, roughly 70% of incoming service members arrived on the island with their household belongings still in transit. This shipping process would take 2-4 weeks on average. On a given in-processing, a soldier would have to stop at up to 10 offices to get all their assignments and living arrangements set up. Often, our office was the last stop.

My job was to tell these already disgruntled soldiers that their stuff would not be here for weeks and ask if they'd like to use our complimentary furniture rental service. This crappy furniture included beds from WWII (1940's)!!! Needless to say, they were not happy and I often took the brunt of their frustrations. My typical process would be to take the soldier's furniture request down to a piece of form paper, then input it into the computer. I'd then print it out on 4-ply paper, sending 3 sheets off to different departments - warehousing, housing, and processing. When a delivery was done, I'd have to confirm proper quantities, then re-print 4 sheets to schedule a pick-up on a given day.

Through the layers of processes and paperwork, it was relatively efficient. Less than 1% of processing had errors. The bureaucracy in place kept things very organized and things got done. Unfortunately, there was a tremendous amount of redundancy and no one seemed to be happy with the arrangement... workers disgruntled and soldiers frustrated with the whole ordeal.

Ultimately, while the process was effective enough, the bureaucracy had one major flaw. There was no vehicle for change. Process was so set that the only metric of success was efficiency. It was readily apparent to all involved that the system (or set of many systems) must be revamped; however, it never happened. In-processing needed to be synched with cargo shipment so rental furniture was not needed. It frustrates me to even write this, thinking of how bad a system can be put together through many add-ons and ill-fitting band-aid solutions. Once again, the principles of bureaucracy are noble and effective in nature, but need to be implemented with a sense of flexibility to adapt to situations.

4.2 - Bureaucratic mumbo jumbo

I never knew the origins of the concept of bureaucracy. Truth be told, I never cared. Turns out, it's more interesting than I thought. Reading Weber's perspectives, I can see how it's well-intentioned. There are many inherent strengths throughout Weber's points; however, implementation has proven to not be so straightforward.

Most notable of my dislikes of what many would consider a bureaucratic process is the concept of the problem ticket. When we have a problem with our computer, we open a problem ticket. We can't just call deskside support directly... no, that'd be too convenient. Instead, we log on to an archaic web interface, filling out literally 2-3 dozen boxes of information. This form is then sent to a queue in Brazil. Hopefully (but not always), Brazil operations team sends it to the proper queue back in San Jose. This team then fills out accounting forms for which deskside personnel will take care of which tickets and at what time. Deskside workers rarely show up on time, not due to lack of effort, but because one employee with a hard problem pushes their entire schedule back. After fixing a problem that takes less than 5 minutes, the deskside person needs to fill out a long form stating specifically what was the problem and what the solution was. The form then gets routed back to the ticket initiator, then finally back to the deskside person to close it out. A couple total man-hours of work for less than 5 minutes of actual work.

Looking at this process, it is easy to see the noble intent. We open a ticket to properly note what the problem is and not cause confusion. Rather than deskside fielding calls, Brazil operations team acts as a dispatcher to facilitate this process so deskside may focus on their job. Deskside's scheduling forms are a method of accounting for their work and claiming labor against the specific department who use them. Finally, both the originator and deskside personnel need to fill the forms to ensure a proper resolution has taken place and a paper trail in place in case of any future discrepancies...

Yes, in each instance, it makes sense. Yet, all together, it makes for a horribly inefficient system that slows things down. I got confused a couple times just typing this out! Not only do we lose the man-hours dealing with the processes, but also the downtime of machines waiting to be serviced... while the ticket is being routed from queue to queue. Weber has noble thoughts, but bureaucracy is difficult to implement well.

Don't get me started on my government job...

4.1 - Structure clash

Physical organizational structure is an integral part of business; however, there are often times where drawing these lines impede progress. In addition to clearly defined departmental structure, our work takes assorted workers from across the corporation and groups them into "regional teams" and "global teams". These teams would meet to work on overarching projects and creating templates for technical consistency. Likewise, our managers also tried to instill a sense of collaboration among workers and open sharing of information and resources.
It all sounded great in theory... in practice, it was (for lack of better words) crap. While the ideals were in place to share resources and work together, the accounting systems were archaic and every department needed to show xx amount of work hours per project. Managers refused to let employees work on cross-department projects unless it was done in overtime(salaried, so no extra pay). In essence, the metrics in place that gauge a manager's effectiveness and accountability directly negated the spirit of cooperation they tried to preach.

IMHO...

Since I've started using online communication, context and emotions have been a persistent issue. Decoding context has definitely progressed through adoption of emoticons and slang.

What I still have problems with is determining how to interpret and/or portray level of emotion. It's easy to show happiness as :) & very happy as :D However, there are many slangs that are just overboard. People use ROFL, LMAO, or LOL anytime something funny is posted. This ranges from very mildly amusing & trying to be polite... to absolutely hysterical. In a way, these slang terms seem to dumb down emotions into generic stereotypes. The general idea is there, but the subtle nuances are absent.

IMHO, as we continue the trend towards online and remote communication technologies, we must also find additional methods of bringing the humanistic traits into our conversations.

Email Schizophrenia

In keeping with the theme of information overload, I took a count of my mutliple email identities...

Just for basic email purposes, I have to maintain a minimum of 3 accounts. One for pure work stuff. One for emails with close friends/family. One for ordering stuff (since this accrues more spam) and for things like my ebay account, etc. I had to setup another email account for this class. I have another two for my family's business and my friend's business that I help out with. That's 6... and I have a few other lesser used ones such as my personal website email, etc. It's hard enough trying to keep my work email clean without performing maintenance on all the others.

While the power of increased communication is undeniable, it'd be interesting to see how much time is wasted on dealing with this overdose on a daily basis... whether redundant information, spam, misdirected emails, useless meetings, pointless conference calls, etc.

The Firm Handshake

Commenting on a fellow classmate's blog, I realized that the advent of communication advancements have not restricted my human interaction much. I still try to conduct much of my business in person, hang out with friends, etc. I also realized that this was a conscientious decision on my part. I purposefully look to foster human interaction. In the old days, business was conducted with a sense of purpose, good relationships, and no substitute for a firm handshake. While I embrace many of today's technologies, I've found that many relationships have become superficial in nature. In my opinion, a face-to-face meeting solidifies a business relationship and loyalty far more than half a dozen emails.

Communication trends show less and less human interaction, which actually makes me sad. Things like gas prices affect this, curtailing business travel. Instead of meeting face to face, it's an email or phone call. There are countless aspects of communication advancements that are beneficial, but I believe this particular example is a step backwards. It appears that we are trading a handful of strong meaningful business relationships for dozens of average relationships.

Sometimes more communication is bad...

Critical Mass Theory

Critical mass theory focuses on the number of users necessary for a communications media to become successful. This has shown to be a sound theory, evidenced in the exponential rise of users once a communications media method has reached critical mass... whether in telephones, faxes, emails, myspace, etc...

I'd like to share my experiences with what (I guess) would be called "diminishing returns theory" of communication media. In my work, there are several people on a team and cross teams that I communicate with regularly. To work quickly with these people, we all installed Yahoo Messenger. This worked well since we could communicate instantly without other people interrupting our work. Months pass and people get added slowly. Soon, my list has 40 employees on there. Trying to get work done and people message ask me the most random questions. It finally got to the point where I retired my yahoo ID and set up a new account.

Basically, critical mass was really low since it was a matter of convenience. The whole point was to be able to talk to key personnel while working on critical projects and avoid others who would either get in the way or cause distraction. Phone was not an option, since a lot of work was done in computer labs, and email was just far too slow. Once the list got past a certain size, random questions, comments, requests from people not on the project all negated the value of this form of communication media and I had to restart.

This is similar to the plague of email avalanche that infects most of us. Email is a valuable tool, but over use of the CC button, spam email, work items that chain letters forwarded by my mom... there is a point of diminishing returns where the value of some communication media declines with over-usage.

Ayo! I'm tired of usin' technology!

The beginning of Chapter12 discusses the differences between use of "technology" as a term in its modern and historical definitions. A really good passage discussed the idea of how technique defines technology and people have shifted technology to denote machine advancement.

In software programming, there are often times where people get so wrapped up in making the code work and look good, that they lose sight of the goals of the project. Namely, they lose site of the human problems that the software is trying to solve. We live in a technical area and many of us have technical jobs. It isn't a mystery why we've shifted so far into focusing on efficiency and technical aspects.

My old boss told me that when he first started working, a problem was dealt with by re-evaluating what their goals were, possible alternatives, and finally working on it. Today, he complains, everyone's solution is to throw more hardware at it. People get so wrapped up in the technicality of things, that they lose site of the big picture.

Fishing Ethics?

I've recently been involved in some discussion over fish & game legislation. Not the typical MBA subject matter, but ethics played a key role.

There are several controls in place to control over-fishing. Bag limits are one of the most prominent methods. For example, a bag limit basically says that "for rockfish, a person is allowed to keep 10 per day". Many believe that while bringing home 10 rockfish per day is excessive and while legal, not ethical, since it hurts the rockfish population and their ability to recover. Others maintain that if it's legal, then people should be allowed to take as many fish(X) they are allowed... and if the amount is considered excessive, then bag limits should be lowered to a proper level.

This case is a good example of how people define "ethical" take in many different lights. Some think that legal is tantamount to ethical... and if there's a gap, then the law should be changed. Others think that anything more than 1 or 2 fish is considered greedy and unethical. Others say they have bigger families, so 3 or 4 fish is completely fine, but any more is unethical. The commercial contingent feel that everyone has a right to eat fish and they provide that service... so they can take as many as they want and it is ethical.

This is one case where there is a definite trend towards conservation; however, there will always be strong supporters on either end of the spectrum. Ethics is a tricky subject - depending on perspective, a single simple act maybe considered completely ethical, completely unethical, or in the ambiguously gray area.

Ethics as a class?

A few classmates have blogged about Ethics as a business class. I thought I'd offer my two cents on the issue...

Ethics is undoubtedly important in business as it shapes how workers deal with each other, partners, suppliers, customers, etc. Ethics represent a set of values with some buffer in either direction. Different countries, regions, and companies possess different value sets. Once a company identifies the standards and definitions of ethics they wish to portray, they may work to alter employee behavior through rewarding positive ethical behavior and admonishing (or punishing) unethical behavior.

IMHO, I don't believe that ethics should be treated as it's own class. As with any value system a company wishes to instill within its company's culture, the real focus should be motivation. Through motivation, organization, and communication, a company may identify and develop a code of company ethics. My last blog depicted a business where the company encouraged unethical behavior. I believe that if they wished to, this company could easily address these behaviors. Unfortunately in business, ethics often takes a backseat to profits.

Questionable Ethics

Not sure the point of this particular blog. This story is just the first thing that came to mind when the topic of ethics came up. My cousin was a finance manager at a large Chevrolet dealership. Last I talked to him, he had a new job. The following is a paraphrase of his story:

"My normal job would be to take a 70-yr old lady, persuade her that she needs the car, and convince her that she can afford a brand new minivan on her meager social security income. Then I'd go call the loan financiers and lie to them, stating that she had a steady 4k a month income. Whatever it took to get that car out the door and commissions in my pocket. One day a lady came back to me in tears and it made me take a look at myself in the mirror. I told myself I'd try to do the right thing... it wasn't easy. Not impressed by my new approach, my dealership laid me off two months later."

I'm not saying car dealers are bad people, but this is a prime case of an environment where monetary gain reigns supreme over ethics. As my cousin depicted, questionable or downright unethical acts were the norm. For example, mechanics would break parts on purpose to split commissions with parts sales people. It's a mystery to me how such a large company can have such overt examples of unethical behavior without suffering repercussions...

Whose responsibility?

In the software development arena of Silicon Valley, off-shoring is a hot topic among developers. Often discussed with a sense of contempt, fear, and disdain, this reputation is not unwarranted. Business strategies for new software products are not considered complete unless an off-shoring alternative is included. Jobs are being sent overseas with increasing frequency as companies assess the potential savings.

Directors express tinges of guilt as they lament "we would have loved to keep the jobs in the US, but the cost savings is too great..." Who is really to "blame" here? Does a company owe anything to the country to keep jobs domestically, even if it incurs a greater cost? Is it the government's job to step in and do something? I've heard so many contrasting views, it's hard to determine which POV is "right".

Convergence confusion

Page 384 discusses forces of convergence and expansion of Western influence throughout the globe. One interesting case experienced as an IBM employee was that of working with our India contingent. Traditional IBM employee structure is based on band levels (i.e. 6, 7, 8). It is not uncommon for someone to remain as a band 8 for quite a while as there is considerable range in pay scale. As long as the pay keeps going up, the band level is often regarded as relatively insignificant.

In pushing much of our "Western" corporate culture to India, many ideals transferred and were accepted well. The band system was not. Looking into the situation, IBM found that for many Indian employees, a promotion of increased band level weighed more heavily than the monetary increases. As a result, our India IBM outsourcing locations adopted a different band scale (i.e. 6a, 6b, 6c). After implementation, worker satisfaction increased.

Even with a sense of heightened global awareness, we must still remain vigilant to learn more about our domestic and foreign counterparts.