Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Jack be Nimble, Jack be Quick – Jack Better Not Imitate Government

“Welcome to Government,” said my friend after I voiced my frustration at the lack of clear, unambiguous command and responsibility.

Most of us have seen the television crime dramas or movies where local law enforcement is investigating an incident when the black cars carrying the Feds arrive.  Guys in dark suits with dark sunglasses invariably step out, and one of them walks up to the sheriff.  He announces to the sheriff that he’s from the FBI and that the investigation is now under federal jurisdiction.

If only government and government agencies worked that cleanly!

In a parody of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”, there are quite a few grey areas where agencies have to ask themselves, “Whose Jurisdiction Is It, Anyway?”

Legislation drafted by policy people and passed by politicians has created within many sectors a patchwork of jurisdictional responsibility.  The laws do not always make it clear who is in charge at any given time, and government agencies may not step over the bounds prescribed by law.

It’s all hunky dory when everything in the world is going well and the government machine hums along nicely.  However, what happens when the shit hits the fan and a multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional response is required?

Let’s say both Command Agency 1 and Command Agency 2 have legislated authority to direct a particular Do-It Agency.  Who does Do-It Agency listen to?  Command Agency 1 has its particular concerns and its particular responsibilities defined by the law.  Likewise, Command Agency 2 has its own concerns and responsibilities.  However, for certain tasks they both rely on the Do-It Agency to actually do it.

Time is finite, time is limited.  So are people, equipment, and money.  Do-It Agency can’t do everything – there are limits to how much it can do in a given timeframe.  So if Command 1 and Command 2 are each saying something slightly different, or possibly asking for completely different things, who is Do-It Agency going to listen to?

The law says “Both.”  Fine in principle, but imagine yourself with two bosses, and both tell you they have urgent tasks that have to be completed ASAP.  Whose takes priority?

Okay, maybe it comes down to the dinero.  Who pays you?  You’re going to listen to the one who pays you and give lip-service to the one who has authority over you but doesn’t feed you.  That’s also fine and dandy if your funding came from only one source.  Unfortunately, Do-It Agency probably gets funding from both Command 1 and Command 2.

Do-It Agency will not, in most cases, become paralyzed.  It will start doing stuff.  The problem though is that at some point Command 1, Command 2, and Do-It Agency will have to waste time and effort to work out the conflict of command.

Gee, and what is the most valuable, most critical, most I’d-give-my-left-nut-for-more element in an emergency?  Oh yes, TIME!

Thank you, legislators for creating a jurisdictional structure that will suck up time in the most inopportune circumstances.

Government is not made to be fast and agile.  Private industry on the other hand, and perhaps certain public sector agencies, have the opportunity to be quick and nimble.  However, the only way to do so is to avoid becoming encumbered by rules and regulations.  You have to trust your people to do the right thing, then get the hell out of the way.

But you need to have good people to do that.  In fact, you need to have excellent people.  The better your people, the less rules and regulations you’ll need to put in place – they’ll do the right thing.  They’ll know when the exceptions arise that require flexibility, and they’ll know when to hold the line and be strict about certain decisions.

Rules and regulations are made for the lowest common denominator.  The less you can trust your people – whether due to their abilities or their characters – the more rules you must lay down.  The end result of rules and regulations is like slapping on lead weights. Every time someone does something that causes the government political grief, more rules, regulations, and layers of control are put in place for everyone.

Laws are the ultimate rules (unless you live in a country where rule-of-law is laughed at, or where laws apply only to other people).  Government itself and government agencies are bound by laws that create jurisdictional and command difficulties that guarantee significant reductions in speed, agility, and effectiveness.

You might argue that some degree of inefficiency is a necessary cost of representational, democratic government – I would.  However, when it comes to dealing with emergencies, time means lives saved or lost, dollars (measured in hundreds of thousands, millions, or tens of millions) saved or lost, and public confidence saved or lost.

I don’t have a solution for this.  I’m simply pointing out what I see here in government and hoping that (a) those who are able to change parts of the system will do so, and (b) those who are not in government will avoid this kind of mess like the plague.

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.  Be like Jack.  Learn Not from Government, Jack.

Do Event Planning Backwards Only If You’re the Gambling Type

When planning for a major event involving multiple parties and agencies, particularly when multiple specialties are involved, effective communication is absolutely critical.  Everyone needs to understand who’s in charge, where they will get information from, and who they will give information to.  You need to have a solid command, control and communication (C3) structure in place and make sure everyone understands it absolutely clearly.

Unfortunately, sometimes things are completely backwards.

I am struggling right now, trying to piece together just what the C3 structure is for a particular series of events.  On the one hand, I have agencies that I’m helping asking very reasonable questions related to the C3 structure.  They need to know where they will be getting information and direction from, and whom they need to inform of developments on their end.  On the other hand, I have an overarching planning apparatus that (a) isn’t saying much, and (b) appears to still be working out the C3 structure.

Once you know who the players are, the C3 structure ought to be one of the first things you decide upon and clarify with everyone.  Once the roles, responsibilities, command and communication are all established, each party then goes off to plan for themselves how to do what they need to do.  That would be the sensible way to do things.

Unfortunately what I’m seeing right now is something almost completely backwards.  Each area seems to have planned for their own portion, and now everyone’s trying to figure out how we all tie it together.

It’s going to be a jerry-rigged ship that we’re launching into the water.  If everything goes smoothly, nobody will mind it and people will say, “See, there was nothing to worry about!”  If anything goes wrong, though, everyone will know that we are not in a high-performance ship and our ability to resolve things well will depend far more on individual heroics than should be needed.

If you are responsible for leading a team, organizing an event, or pulling anything together that involves more than just yourself, you’ll benefit greatly from making the C3 structure absolutely clear to everyone right from the start.

Or, if you’re the gambling sort, feel free to do it ass-backwards and hope everything goes well!

Read the Intro to Avoid Buying Crappy Cookbooks

Okay, I’ll admit it, even after amassing a sizable collection of cookbooks, I still get suckered in and buy a crap cookbook every now and then.  I should know better, I really should, but it still happens – like today, for instance.

The thing about cookbooks is that it’s not about the pretty pictures.  In fact, I prefer cookbooks that do not have glossy photos showing you what every dish looks like when prepared by the author and photographed by a professional.  It’s also not just about how delicious each of the dishes sounds when you skim through a few of them.  Ultimately, a cookbook has to be something that you will actually use.

If you don’t use it, then it’s a big piece of crap and a waste of your money.

I normally go through a multi-stage process:

1. See a cookbook that I like, whether online or on the shelf
2. Look it up on Amazon and read the reviews, starting from worst to best
3. If it’s there in my hands, flip through and see if the recipes are ones that I like and that I’d make
4. Read the preface & intro to get a sense of what the author is all about and intends for the book

If steps 2 and 3 check out, I usually end up with something that I like and which I feel is worth the money.  Sometimes that means $5 and sometimes it means $50.  Either way, when I stick to that, I usually end up with something nice.

But when I don’t stick to that, things can go wrong.  Today, for instance, I did the following:

1. See a cookbook that I like
2. Look it up on Amazon, and find that there are no reviews on it
3. Flip through the book, and see if there are some recipes that I like and that I’d make

I missed a step there today.  I skipped over Step 4.  I saw 2 or 3 recipes that I liked, got hooked in by the snazzy cover and photos, and bought the book.  Then, while riding on the subway, I started reading the preface.  That’s when I had a sinking feeling – oh shit, I just bought something I’m not going to like and not going to use.

I bought a book about cooking fish.  I liked the fact that the author is taking a Malaysian take on it, because it’s something different for me.  But, as I read the intro, the author starts talking about how the book was inspired by her need to cook for her husband who doesn’t really enjoy fish.  Therefore, the recipes are all about adding tons of other flavors.  That means the fish flavor itself is pretty much gone.

Why the hell would I want to take a perfectly nice fish and completely smother it in other flavors, taking away the intrinsic goodness that I like about fish in the first place?

Had I read the intro, I would have put the book back on the shelf and saved myself the $12.  Yeah, I know, $12 isn’t a whole lot in the grand scheme of things – but to put that in context, the fresh squid I bought for dinner tonight only cost me $1.75.  I’m going to get a helluva lot more enjoyment out of that $1.75 squid than the $12 crap cookbook.

So, learn from my mistake.  Check out the reviews on Amazon.  Be very wary if there are no reviews at all.  Then, if the book is right there in your hands, read the damn intro.  The author will tell you why they wrote the book and where they’re going with it.

If you neglect to read the intro and ignore the fact that Amazon is no help, you’ll have only yourself to blame for wasting your money.  Then, maybe you will also find yourself seeking consolation in a $1.75 squid for dinner…

Brands Mean Less as We Get Older

Brands are an important part of the business world, and they’re important to us as consumers.  I wouldn’t be so presumptuous to say that brands don’t mean anything to me anymore, or that I am immune to their power and influence.  However, I have noticed that they don’t matter to me as much anymore.  I think it’s because I’ve been disappointed enough times by crap produced by brands I used to like, used to praise, and used to believe could do no wrong.

Perhaps you’ve noticed this in your own lives.  Do you remember when you were a teenager how strongly you felt about this celebrity or that celebrity?  Do you remember how dogmatic you could be about a particular brand and knew, down to your bones, that it was the best.   You might even literally have been unable to understand how anyone with intelligence wouldn’t consider that celebrity to be the best, and the brand in question to be the best thing on the market.  If that doesn’t seem to apply to you at all, I can tell you that it certainly used to be the way I thought about things.

I used to love flight simulators by a software house called Microprose.  They could do no wrong.  If it was from Microprose, I “knew” right away it would be good stuff.

I used to love BMWs with absolute certainty about their superiority over every other thing that rolleth on the roads.  They were the ultimate driving machine, with unquestioned superiority over anything in their respective classes.

I used to love Palmer paintball guns with the smug knowledge that they were handcrafted by artisans with magical abilities and pixie dust.  If it was Palmer, I knew sight unseen that it would be nail-drivingly accurate and would have reliability on par with any hammer from Home Depot.

Since then, Microprose has gone out of business because their simulations couldn’t keep up with the offerings from other software houses.  I lamented their passing, but now when I think about it, they were beaten by superior products and superior marketing.  BMWs are still my favorite cars to drive, but I now acknowledge they aren’t the most reliable beasts on the road and might not be as fun to own as they are to drive.  Some Palmer paintguns are built by magical elves of the highest order, and others are built by gnarly gnomes from the depths of the underworld.

I used to believe in brands with fervor.  I know that teenagers around the world behave as I did when I was their age, so I know it isn’t just me.  In fact, celebrities (who are really human brands) and consumer brands survive and thrive on this very fact.  But somehow, somewhere along the way, I think most of us learn that brands aren’t as reliable as we might have once believed.  Brands we used to think were bulletproof, with products made by gods, lose their lustre.  We begin to see that they have serious shortcomings and weaknesses, and we see that those who make them are businesspeople who sometimes produce great products but can also produce absolute crap.

Logically, I know that brands have power.  Markets around the world are living proof of that.  I also know, however, from thinking about my personal experience that many of us who are no longer teenagers are far, far less brand-aware and brand-loyal than marketers and business writers may believe.

Having said that, I drink Coca Cola and would never choose Pepsi if given the choice.  The problem now is that I probably wouldn’t choose a cola at all.  Oh well, c’est la vie for marketers, I suppose!

What has your experience been like?

Ballistic Art @ 1 Million Frames per Second

Many of us have seen high-speed film footage of bullets tearing apart apples, water jugs, and other innocent objects.  That’s still cool to watch, but it can get a little boring after a few moments.  It takes someone with an artistic eye to come up with something new.

I think I’ve found that something new.

Here’s some highspeed footage, apparently taken at 1 million frames per second, of metal bullets creating wonderful visual patterns when they smack into metal plating, glass, gelatin, and paper.  It isn’t just about the bullets blowing things apart with shockwaves.  It’s about the visual patterns created when they punch through or, my personal favorite, when they disintegrate against objects they can’t penetrate.

Plus, there’s a funky soundtrack to this one!  Enjoy!