James Drogan

For some time I have been using the following quotation attributed to Jim Kelly, former CEO of UPS.

“I believe that we’re about to witness what may turn out to be the last competitive frontier business will see. It’s going to be a war over the one priceless resource. Time. And when it comes, trust may turn out to be the best investment anyone’s made.” [1]

In my closing remarks to this year's CUNY Conference on Academic Integrity I asserted:

"Trust is based on integrity. And trust and integrity take time to develop. If one waits to develop ethical behavior and trust until one needs it, it will be too late."

Unfortunately, at the moment, there seem to be more cases where people have thought that trust could be turned on when needed, rather than to have invested the time to build the relationships that lead to trust.

As a teacher, helping students to understand the necessity of trust and how to develop relationships that lead to trust is one of the more important things tasks that I have.  And I just can't talk about trust, I must demonstrate trust. 

[1] Jim Kelly, CEO of UPS, Remarks to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco & Oakland Chamber of Commerce, February 23, 2000.

I don't usually dabble in politics in this blog, but the events of the last week (i.e., the commuting of  Libby's sentence) has broken through my normal reserve regarding political matters.

The commuting of Libby's sentence represents, to me, an unwarranted interference in the workings of the American justice system by the President.  His logic behind the decision is illogical.  Even a layman such as myself can see the perfidy in all this.   I'm tempted to think the President has bought Libby's silence.

This act, coupled with warrentless wiretaps, rendition, refusal to implement laws (e.g., signing statements), refusal to comply with legitimate requests from Congress, incompetence in management of foreign and national policy (e.g., the Iraq War, Katrina Relief), the continuing ethical lapses, and bludgeoning of any who would get in the way, mark this as simply the worst administration of any that I can remember.

If Bush and his Administration were businessmen, we would have had them either out-on-the-street or in jail some time ago. 

The accompanying incompetence of Congress marks them as  co-conspirators.  The Democrats and the Republicans are much more interested in seeing to it the Republicans and Democrats, respectively, lose or are otherwise embarrassed on a day-to-day basis than resolving the significant issues of the day.  Congress increasingly makes strong arguments for the value of term limits.

My sense is that two of the three branches of government have failed us and have been failing us for some time.

Sometime, somewhere, someone said we get what we deserve.  I think we deserve better, but we need to demand it of our officials.  I don't really care whether Obama brought in more money than Clinton.  What are their values?  What policies do they propound?   And here, the Fourth Estate has failed us.  Tell me again the importance of Paris Hilton on Larry King.

We, the people, seem to have lost our way.  Our satisfaction with a beer, a boat, and a sound bite may well be our undoing.  We have willingly, or unwillingly, ceded our responsibilities as citizens to a group of people who, I'm convinced, could not hold down a real job and therefore ran for office to get themselves on the golden dole. 

Lincoln, in the Gettysburg Address ended with, "...that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."   I'm not too worried about "perish from this earth," but I am worried that  what is happening is government  of the people, by the few, for the few.

Re Conversations with Dave

We are probably hurting ourselves with all this remembering.

However, to your point “…all that work which reached a peak of completeness and sophistication in the early 90s has yet to be implemented to any signficant extent.”

More and more I find myself asking why things are the way they are, looking, I think, for a deeper understanding and, when and if finding it, hopefully developing reasonable change strategies.

There is a cadre that includes you and me that has believed for some time that a disciplined look at how things work can reveal how the things can be made to work better. IE is an example of that. Why is it that it “…has yet to be implemented to any significant extent?” Another example of this is the brief discussion that Langley, you, and I were having regarding the take-up of SCM.

By the way, I attended a webinar sponsored by Supply Chain Digest called “The New Generation of Global Transportation Management.” I2 and Aberdeen Research participated. I was struck by how the “new generation” seems so much like the generation we espoused so many years ago. Why the lag? Were we and others, like da Vinci, too far ahead of our time? Were we focused on the wrong problem? Were the necessary incentives for change not in place? Has the economy been growing sufficiently well to hide the underlying problems? Do the pressures for short term results prevent the investment in strategic thinking?

Somewhere in all this, if we are correct in our beliefs, is the lever that needs to be pushed to cause the alignment of all that needs to be aligned that will enable the change. I’m beginning to think (and I have expressed this to you before) that it is somehow connected with management incentives.

This morning, via Techmeme, comes a pointer to John Battelle's Searchblog wherein he muses "I've found myself more and more wary of doing things that I'd like to do with Google applications simply out of some primal, lizard brain fear of giving too much control of my data to one source."

A provocative statement and there a number of very good comments on the position Battelle has staked out.

I'm reminded here of the following quote from Jim Kelly, former CEO of UPS.

“I believe that we’re about to witness what may turn out to be the last competitive frontier business will see.  It’s going to be a war over the one priceless resource.  Time.  And when it comes, trust may turn out to be the best investment anyone’s made.”

This is not a technical issue, but a cultural, philosophical issue for which there may be not correct answer except for the answer you feel comfortable with.  This is reflected in the comments to Battelle's post.

I tend towards the conservative and risk-averse stance (as I sneak up on Medicare eligibility).  I keep a minimal amount of data (I think this to be true, but do I really know?) out on the 'net.  I don't store passwords on my desktop.  I backup my user data every three weeks.   Is this prudent or do I also have the "primal, lizard brain fear?"

Battelle's post is also be to be contrast with my post on Forgetting.

Finally, could this fear be a damper in the development of on-demand services? 

I have mused about skills in multi-sensory communications  and offered the hypothesis that “Inbound communication skills must be as strong (stronger?) than outbound communications skills.”

This paper expands upon this hypothesis and offers some suggestions as to how to deal with the issue.

After this year's Schwartz Symposium, where I once again served as a moderator, I decided to publish a short paper describing the results of the table discussion in which I participated.  Described is the evolution of an idea and the research needs it suggests.

The link to the paper is below.

Channels, Audience Needs, and Communications - The Rise of an Idea.pdf 102K

I recently became reacquainted with a graduate student of mine from the spring of 2002.  She wrote, in part, the following:

"Thanks for your greetings. I have one comment though, if I follow your logic... I am not sure how ANY of the MBA classes have contributed to my success!!!!

To tell you the truth, I think ALL the choices I have made in my life lead me directly or indirectly in the position I am today.  Of course, there was a better related way, which I ignored the existence back then... But I am very thankful that I was in the US at the right time.  Would it have been in France or Switzerland, I am not sure I would have been given the chance to start in this industry.

I wanted to get more into international logisitcs when I completed my degree after Baruch College... However, having no professional experience and looking for a job in France or Switzerland, the doors were just NOT opening!

That's how I got an internship in New York, during which a little bit of international logisitcs was involved since I had to take care of the distribution of a Swiss skin care line in all the country of the USA from a small office in Manhattan (it was my boss and myself).

This internship introduced me to the beauty industry in which perfumery is a part of!...

Et voila!

I got hired in a position in which logisitcs is involved in a much smaller scale... but still!  It is everywhere!

I think your class helped me a lot to understand and reason on how to make things move more effectively.

This is also thanks to your class that I graduated for my European Master in France since I have written my "Memoire" on international logisitcs taking as an example how international logistics were affected by the West coast strike!"

We can and do make a difference in the lives of people.  For that I am grateful to be doing the things I do. 

One of the tasks I'm called on to do by my students is to help them figure out what it is they want/could/should do in the next stage of their lives.

I've found it convenient to think about this issue in terms of roles, responsibilities, rewards, and risks.   This framework has arisen over my 42 year career in business and academia.

But I also look for other useful viewpoints on this issue.  In How to Save the World, Dave Pollard has provided just such an example in How to Make a Living. 

Whether you are student starting out, a person looking to make a change, or, like me, serving as mentor from time to time, I think you will find Dave's perspective of interest. 

Via SmartMobs comes a pointer to a piece by Sherry Turkle of MIT, "Can You Hear Me Now?",  that suggests the dark side of technology.  I've cited Turkle before (see How to Use Computers and Internet in Daily Transactions) as a provocative thinker.

I've questioned (see A Small View of a Possible World) whether "always on, always connected, always transacting" is a good thing.   Prof. Turkle asks, it seems to me, the same question.

Prof. Turkle is always worth a read and a subsequent think.

This is from the Washington Times via The Huffington Post.

Surely, oh surely, the Mayor can get more for his money than spending it this way.

Surely, oh surely, there are issues of more significance (e.g., education, health care) that can be addressed with this money than electing the Mayor to the White House.

I've noticed over the last several months that more is being said about the candidates' ability to raise money than is being said about the candidates' values, vision, and goals. 

We, the people, are letting this get away from us.