08.27.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:38 by lnxwalt
Earlier today, I was browsing the Town’s site and came across a survey. One of the questions asked whether it was important for the town’s residents to have jobs locally instead of having to commute outside the area.
I have to ask. How can you NOT KNOW that local jobs is one of the top issues for Apple Valley residents? Where have you been if you do not know the most basic things about the people you serve?
Apple Valley’s residents tend to drive down the Cajon Pass to get to employment. Why? Because local job openings are few, and most of the jobs that are available are retail and fast food restaurant jobs. Certainly there are a number of construction and real estate related jobs (at least they for now), but not enough to sustain the local economy.
Elected officials and employees of the Town of Apple Valley, wake up! Focus your attention on helping local residents to start and grow local businesses, since local residents have an incentive to try to make our local communities the best that they can be. After all, we live here too. In fact, many of us are renters. Why not help some of us become owners as the market prices for real estate head toward a realistic level? What a marvelous way to help stabilize the local economy.
But if you are not paying attention, it will never happen. You will continue to throw away our hard-earned money on hare-brained schemes to attract out-of-the-area businesses to move here. “We’ll pay your property taxes, your sewer assessments, and refund a portion of the sales tax revenue if you’ll just open a Gree-C-Burger here in our fine city.” You’ll continue to build homes in an area where there are no jobs to offer the residents.
The path you are on has not worked in the twenty-plus years I have lived in the area. Why would you expect it to suddenly work now? It is time to change.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: localgovernment, economic development
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Posted in Uncategorized at 1:58 by lnxwalt
This could easily become Basic Economics or Introduction To Organizational Management. However, each of those subjects is far greater than I can cover in a short little blog article. We will attempt to give a very basic idea of what and how. If you need more, contact your nearby community college or state university. In my area, that would be Victor Valley Community College or California State University, San Bernardino.
Resource Allocation
Limits On Resources
Even though it may sometimes seem as though there is no limit on resources, there is indeed a limit. Humans generally live into the area of seventy years of age. Some may live an extra fifty years, while some may die fifty years earlier than seventy. But the median in the United States is somewhere in the seventies. This serves as a hard limit. Everything you are going to do or say or think or experience has to occur before your life ends. After that, it is too late and you just miss out on whatever you have not experienced. Ignoring issues of eternity for the time being, this puts an upper cap on your life and the time resource that you can invest in any particular task.
There are other limits as well. If you desire to accomplish any particular task, assuming that you have the basic skills and abilities that are required, there are limits on the amount of time you can invest in achieving that goal. For example, if you are sleeping, you are probably not learning to speak Italian. If you are watching Numb3rs, you are probably not practicing to win the Tour de France. With only 24 hours in a day, how you choose to use your time weighs heavily on what you can accomplish.
Mozilla gets promotional funding from Google for Firefox. A good portion of Mozilla’s paid development effort therefore goes into the browser, despite the fact that Mozilla has several other worthy projects that also need resources. For example, the Thunderbird e-mail client, the Sunbird & Lightning calendaring solutions, the Camino Macintosh browser and the Minimo mobile browser. A recent discussion about resource allocation pointed out that T-bird has a better chance of getting resources allocated if it goes into its own organization.
The reasons are probably many, but the number of current and the number of potential users for T-bird in its current state is far smaller than the number of current and the number of potential users for Firefox.
Sometimes in larger companies, it seems like no idea goes unfunded. That is when a company winds up with dozens of completely unrelated divisions that the senior management cannot summarize into a comprehensive “this is what we do and why we do it” statement. In SLOBs (Small, Locally-Owned Businesses) and OMBs (Owner-Managed Businesses), there aren’t that many unneeded staff members or unused funds available for such empire-building.
In smaller businesses, as in Mozilla, we have to make choices as to what our limited resources will be spent upon.
It isn’t just in our business lives—we have to use the same principles in our personal and family lives, too. You can imagine my surprise when I get a call from home that starts this way: kid: “Can you send me $600? The camera that I want is on sale.” Now consider this in the context that I just bought a camera (a $99 digital snapshot camera with 4X zoom, the same model I bought myself, but still a camera). In all the years that digital cameras have been out, I just bought for the first time in June. Now in August, I’m being asked for double what I’ve spent on digital cameras in my lifetime for one camera!
Do I spend more on project A, which brings in most of my revenue and growth? Do I invest some funds in project B, which will bring in less revenue than project A for the foreseeable future? Do I invest in a project C, which will start out slowly, but is expected to grow rapidly?
If you have a product that suddenly takes off the way Twitter has, but which has no sustainable business model (yet), do you give it all the resources it wants and hope the revenue issue works itself out later?
The only way that makes sense is to evaluate each competing alternative use of your resources according to your estimate of the value of the expected return from investing in that alternative, with the variability of return factored in. This is freshman business administration, but it is something that even experienced managers may fail to do. In the corporate world, with all the back-stabbing that goes on, a manager may resort to patronage, rewarding those who support him and his projects and punishing the opposition. The business may have enough resources to survive such activities, whereas in a smaller business, mis-allocation may be the end of the company.
Begin by heading over to Amazon or Barnes & Noble to pick up a couple of business and economics books. You want to understand the practical and theoretical implications of resource allocation, you really do. This can be the difference between writing a book that tells how you made it and writing to your old friends from high school asking them to send you enough money so you don’t have to live in your car.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: resourceallocation, small business management
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08.12.07
Posted in General Management, Small Business at 20:36 by lnxwalt
Overheard at that really big retailer last week:
Cashier: I’ve been working over eight hours and I still haven’t had my break.
In nearly any field, big companies use “economies of scale” to thrive and grow. When augmented by computerization, we get “management by the numbers”. That is, we get decisions being made based upon ratios and measurements, rather than the readily observable needs. Smaller companies do need to implement some of this, but you can see the effect of taking this to an extreme.
This cashier works longer than she should work without a break because there are more customers waiting to pay for their purchases than the available cashiers can handle. Rather than call in additional cashiers (and possibly incur unapproved overtime), the managers on duty just keep the existing staff from leaving their posts when they should.
This doesn’t just happen when I am visiting New Jersey. We have the same chain in the Victor Valley area of California. At one of the two locations of this chain, it is common to come in late in the afternoon and hear cashiers saying, “I’m supposed to be off already, but I still haven’t had my break.” Again, it is to the advantage of management to do this, rather than to incur overtime.
This is an effect of the centralized management in larger organizations. Despite laws and policies that are supposed to prevent such abuses, Lower-level supervisors and managers may lack the authority to actually enforce these rules. Certainly, they are constrained by dictates from their superiors that they meet numeric targets such as labor cost percentage and customers per hour. Because of the top-down nature of management in large organizations, seeing that it is widespread and frequently-repeated is a clue to where the problem comes from. (I often wonder why such places do not have “rovers” whose job is to cover breaks throughout the store. Even during a rush period, it should only take a minute or two to put a rover in the place of a cashier.)
For SLOBs [Small, Locally-Owned Businesses--search the site for the term] and OMBs [Owner-Managed Businesses--search the site for the term] that deal directly with consumers, it is vital to your business that you take good care of your staffers that do the actual interaction with your customers. One large company decided that its employees cost too much, so it laid off its best employees (the ones who had gotten raises) and forced them to reapply for their old jobs at a lower wage. In a field where most sales happen because a knowledgeable salesperson helps a customer decide which item is right for them, this was a major mistake. Their mistake may land them in the trash pile with all the other failed consumer electronics retailers, or they may last long enough that customers and employees forget the betrayal. Your customers, however, are not likely to give you enough time to prove that you meant well when you let management by the numbers replace common sense.
An OMB or a SLOB that pushes MBTN too far is likely to close its doors, with the owner winding up back in the job market.
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08.09.07
Posted in Political, Small Business at 2:12 by lnxwalt
I recently wrote about the political campaign. This has the potential to be a series of small articles.
Look, there are a lot of major problems in the educational system. There are far too many for me to list, and even if I did, some would disagree with nearly every point.
Tonight, I want to focus on one problem only: unrealistic goals.
First of all, school is supposed to give you the general background needed to learn a job on the job. Our school system is not supposed to train the workforce to walk in the door and immediately be competent engineers. Anyone who expects something different is lying to himself. It has never been that way, and it will never be that way.
Secondly, I have read that nearly fifty percent of all U.S. employees say their first job was in fast food. Yet, we constantly hear about the poor quality of our graduates. Don’t get me wrong: dealing with customers and incompetent managers is challenging and takes an amazing level of skill. Still, when I worked in fast food, I said I could teach a ten year-old to do most of my job within thirty to sixty days. The whole design of the business is to take away the latitude to make decisions, and therefore the necessity to do any thinking whatsoever.
The one thing that I do wish schools taught kids is how to count back change instead of depending on the computerized register. That skill that is even more valuable as a customer, because it will clue you in to possible theft by an employee.
Still, if we do not have the challenging jobs available, why do we need to give kids so-called entry-level skills in a particular field?
What is wrong with schools? Schools need SLOBs to absorb many of their graduates and give them the on-the-job training that will help them for the rest of their lives. Schools need the owners of OMBs to come and help the kids get acquainted with the kinds of jobs that they are likely to be doing once they graduate. Schools need some major organizational structure-type changes, but these two changes are doable NOW. Get involved.
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Posted in Local News, Political at 1:49 by lnxwalt
We are beginning the “silly season” a year early. This means that we get to wade through the politicians talking one another down and trying to come up with cute phrases that will fit in a thirty second “sound bite”.
I have to admit that I am far from ready to listen to the politicians argue, but when I do start to listen, I want to hear:
- Visions for the future and plans for how to accomplish that vision
- An emphasis on individuals, families, and smaller businesses and organizations–rather than larger corporations and organizations–in every plan, I want to hear how it benefits the “regular Joe and regular Jane” American.
- How to break up the concentration of power in Washington, DC and in the larger corporations and organizations that run things behind the scenes. How to make government accessible to ordinary Americans. Rather than having the federal government collect taxes and then give money to the states (with strings attached, naturally) to build and fix highways, I’d like to hear about ways to put more of the control and funding in the hands of the states. I want to hear how we can push some of the decision-making power into more localized levels of government, where individual citizens have more of a voice than they do in the nationwide government.
- How to return power to parents and teachers and students, rather than the layers of “educrats” that infest our educational system today. Teachers are generally hard-working and dedicated individuals, trapped in a morass of overly-specific requirements that prevent them from giving the attention to the areas that they perceive are most needy. Parents are given instructions to take their childrens’ all-important “free” time and fill it with homework.
You know what I don’t want to hear? I don’t want to hear:
- how this person is bad or evil or corrupt or he changes his mind sometimes.
- how someone is too liberal or too conservative.
- about this or that candidate’s personal peccadilloes (well, within reason)
Our nation is self-destructing, and all I hear are insults.
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08.03.07
Posted in General Management, Small Business at 2:19 by lnxwalt
I recently responded to an article by James Robertson about China’s product problems. USA Today has an opinion item today that reiterates my words. If the link dies, it is also in the dead-tree edition, on page 11A (”Hidden culprit of product scandal made in China”, USA Today, 11A, 2007-AUG-02).
I quote:
Nearly all the recent alarms raised about Chinese products point fingers solely at the Chinese, neglecting entirely how China’s success as an exporter is, in large part, the product of roughly a trillion dollars of foreign investment and limitless expertise that floods into the country in order to escape some standard or other at home.
In other words, when we want to make the product more cheaply, without dealing with all the restrictions that are built into Western social democracies, we have it made for us in China. When we don’t want to pay employees enough to own homes in pricey American cities, we move to work to factories in China, where they don’t have our standards. When we don’t want the cost of conforming to environmental regulations, we move the work to factories in China, where there are effectively no regulations.
Unfortunately, it is easy to blame China, its government, its culture, or its people, for the shortcomings of American corporations. If big-name-corporate retailer insisted that products it sold were produced under “ethical management” and held producers to similar standards as U.S.-based producers have to meet, Chinese companies would either step up their quality (in exchange for higher fees) or lose business to companies that would comply. In some cases, the products could even be produced in North American factories.
It is up to those of us in OMBs and SLOBs to take this message to heart. When a large company wants you to bid for work, refuse to bid if you have to compromise ethical standards in order to get or keep the work. Make it clear that you are willing to work extremely hard to get your costs down and your output up, but you are not willing to mistreat your employees or the community where you operate. There is a good chance that you will lose some big-business customers to foreign suppliers. Even so, take a stand and make it public. Make it a part of what you do and the way you present yourself and your business.
“Joe’s Upholstery uses only the finest materials, assembled by our highly-skilled workforce, right here in Pinon Hills, California.” Be sure to emphasize your local workforce, even if your only “employees” are your children Joey and Anna. Emphasize the quality of your work, but don’t make it just a slogan–make sure you really do produce a good product or service and price it fairly.
It also takes a commitment to bring your pocketbook in line with your principles. If big-name retailer violates your principles, you are going to have to stop doing business with them (and their “business club” subsidiary), even if it means you’ll have to pay a little more for what you buy. If other suppliers violate your principles, you are going to have to stop doing business with them also. It doesn’t have to be immediate, nor does it have to be ironclad. If your plumbing requires a plunger at midnight and big-name retailer is the only place that is open, go buy yourself a plunger.
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Posted in General Management, Small Business at 1:34 by lnxwalt
Today, while I am away working on the East Coast, I got called about something I had put in for at home on the West Coast. While there is no assurance that it will work into something for me, it does point out the reality that no matter what someone tells you, all jobs are temporary. A wise man keeps that in mind.
You and I need to always be working on what is next. When the “next” thing comes along, it may not be the expected thing, but it is probably going to be something that got started because you were willing to try new things and break out of the mold.
OMBs and other SLOBs [Owner-Managed Businesses and other Small, Locally-Owned Businesses] may find their whole mission changes–as Force Protection Inc, formerly Sonic Jet Performance Inc, found out–or the owner may move into and out of external employment. It is important that SBOs [Small Business Owners] recognize this and plan for the possibility.
What you do not want is for your current project (business, employment, or whatever) to end without you having any idea about what is ahead.
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