Recent View from the Prairie Articles

August 2023

Authority or learner?

In 1907, George Soper tracked a series of typhoid fever outbreaks to the cook. He was certain that she caused the diseases and approached her in all the confidence of the professional who knows the answer. She reacted strongly to his attitude and it took government action to put Typhoid Mary into quarantine. Being a "professional" is not always the best way to get things done. It can feel good to be "the expert" and have people look up to us. The danger is that we can easily slip into

Financial Bubbles Unpreventable

Every so often, western society has a financial bubble. Ever since the Tulip craze in Holland, people have wondered how to prevent such bubbles. A study by the University of Miami shows that one of the deep causes of a bubble is a lack of knowledge by the buyers. This has profound implications for financial regulators. Bubbles are created by people gambling without knowledge and piling on in the fear of missing out on a "sure bet." Such gamblers do not want to know more. If a bubble could be prevented by more knowledge, then a solution would be

Cascading Failures and Resilience

Someday, stop by a children's playground, pick up a handful of sand, and dribble it out in a pile or watch the sand in an hourglass. The pile will build up and appears to be stable for a while. But then, the top will start sliding and a bunch of sand slides down. This is a cascading failure. One small grain of sand won't stick and as it starts sliding, it triggers others to let go and slide also. The longer the sticking, the larger the failure. The failure stops when many catch the falling grains and hold them fast. The world is a lot like that.

Make a Profit?

So many impressions, so many clicks, thousands of followers, hundreds of connections on LinkedIn, book listed on the New York Times Best Seller List, EBITDA, Rule of 40, etc. When people are asking for money, we can hear so many ways that sound like success. But most of these are not sustainable success. Many a startup company wants to show investors that they are being more successful than they really are. They can make presentations showing all sorts of statistics that imply success. But there is only one measure of success: making money. In order to make money, sales have to bring in more money than it costs to generate those sales.

Distracted from Real Goals

Are you distracted from the real goal? Many get distracted by having their name on the building. At least one business person worked hard to get his name on buildings, casinos, and golf courses. That name on the casinos and buildings has not kept those businesses from going bankrupt over and over again. That name on the buildings is not a brand for quality. Often, when we distracted and start focusing on our own prestige, we lose sight of our customers and what they want. Our goals need to be

Make Office Work Great Again?

Many people are pushing back against the huge number of changes that happened over the last few years. We saw a large number of companies adopt remote working during the pandemic and many are mandating a return to the office. This is not being driven by any hard metrics of worker productivity, but from the needs of managers. Managers do not believe that remote workers are as productive even when the few metrics show that remote work has been as productive or more productive that being in the office. But we need new metrics and new tools for managers as remote work is not going away.

Company Purpose

Recently, a beer company ran an ad that riled part of their market. The person who approved that ad made a fundamental mistake, forgot their primary purpose, and violated the number one rule of advertising; Don't harm your customer. When advertising a broad market product, they should never create controversy. When we don't know the primary purpose of an organization, we can often make subtle or even major mistakes out of ignorance. What is your organization's primary purpose?

Accepting Responsibility

On the eve of the D-Day invasion, General Eisenhower prepared two statements. One was for if the invasion succeeded. The other was accepting full responsibility for a failure. He knew that to succeed as a leader, he needed to accept responsibility for when things go wrong, even when he didn't cause things to go wrong. Leaders know that praise goes down but responsibility comes up.

Limits on Individuality

The rugged western rancher ruling over his own land is a deep part of our national mythology. We want to believe that we can be self-sufficient. We want to believe in the myth of "pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps." The reality is that what we do on our own land does affect others. Other people are impacted by what we use, what we produce, and what we discard. Groups need rules and the larger the group, the more rules.

Make Work Adult Again

Perhaps, it is time to change what is work. With AI and the new robots coming, we may need a new paradigm of work. We have "dumbed down" work enough. We no longer need people doing dumb tasks. Perhaps we need to make work "adult" again.

No Undue Burdens

A passenger caused a ruckus and got banned by the airline. After a diner raised a huge fuss, the manager asks the diner not to come back. Customers can use their judgement when choosing to buy from a business. In a competitive environment, businesses need to be careful about putting an undue burden on their customers. Businesses can ask customers to not come back because of behavior. There are many opportunities out there when we do not place undue burdens on who our customers are or who our employees are.

Sorry Boomers

Our country is at a cultural turning point. The "baby boomer" generation is no longer the largest population group in the country. The "boomers" are dying off and the young people are now larger than the boomers. The millennials are now the largest age group and when combined with Generation Z, they are more than 40% of the population. When the boomers first started to affect culture, our country went through the turmoil of the 60's and 70's. The previous generations were not happy about losing control. Perhaps our current turmoil is partly based on the boomers losing power.

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