Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Labor Day started as a sop to the working masses after a strike was broken using Federal troops. When I was young Labor Day was an actual holiday when businesses closed. Fast forward to today and for many it’s a workday like any other and a great reason for businesses to have sales.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Have you ever taken time to wonder why there is a holiday dedicated to people who work?

No?

Then before you get too caught up in shopping, beer and BBQ, take a minute to learn exactly where the holiday comes from.

It’s the result of an 1894 labor strike against the Pullman Company (think aspirational, luxury private railroad cars).

Engineer and industrialist George Pullman’s workers all lived in company-owned buildings. The town was highly stratified. Pullman himself lived in a mansion, managers resided in houses, skilled workers lived in small apartments, and laborers stayed in barracks-style dormitories. The housing conditions were cramped by modern standards, but the town was sanitary and safe, and even included paved streets and stores.

Then the disastrous economic depression of the 1890s struck. Pullman made a decision to cut costs — by lowering wages.

In a sense, workers throughout Chicago, and the country at large, were in the same boat as the Pullman employees. Wages dropped across the board, and prices fell. However, after cutting pay by nearly 30%, Pullman refused to lower the rent on the company-owned buildings and the prices in the company-owned stores accordingly.

Federal troops used extreme force to break the strike resulting in 30 deaths, while rioting and sabotage left 80 million dollars worth of damage in its wake.

Indiana state professor and labor historian Richard Schneirov said President Grover Cleveland’s decision to declare Labor Day as a holiday for workers was likely a move meant to please his constituents after the controversial handling of the strike. The president was a Democrat, and most urban laborers at the time were Catholic Democrats.

Congress approved (knowing their constituents would also be pleased).

Makes you wonder what the current president and congress would do.

Image credit: Fredrick Remington via Wikimedia Commons

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Sometimes old posts just depress me. I wrote this one in 2008 and it’s still applicable today. With very slight alterations, it would be just as applicable in 1908 or 1808 or even earlier and it will probably be just as applicable in 2118 and beyond.

Expecting companies to “do the right thing” when they think the right thing will impinge on their bottom line is just plain stupid. It hasn’t worked historically and I doubt it will work in the future; certainly not on the tech world, whose arrogance makes Wall Street look humble.

The only thing stupider is businesses’ inability to understand that the right thing is often more profitable — of course, they could take a lesson from Blackrock,  but more about that tomorrow.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Yesterday I asked, “What else does Wall Street and the financial industry do besides cripple corporate strategic efforts?”

They fight for self-regulation, assuring watchdog agencies and Congress that they are good guys that should be trusted to do the best thing and that the economy will tank if any kind of control or regulation is enacted—and they win.

They win based on the money spent to focus the efforts of well-connected lobbyists on stopping cold, or at least significantly watering down, any legislation or rules that might offer protection to us—the people who keep them all in BMWs and champagne.

Wall Street and the other financial services industries aren’t alone in this, every industry does it, but the money guys seem to be exceptionally successful—until something blows up. Then, when public outcry is loud and tempers are hot, Congress has the leverage to pass anything—whether it fixes the problem or merely makes them look like they care.

Deregulation was one of the prime factors in the S&L mess in the eighties; earnings pressure combined with personal greed fueled many of the recent corporate financial fiascos—think Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia Communications, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P.Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and others.

And now, of course, we have the Sub-prime debacle with which to contend.

And after each of these, Congress, the SEC and others all run to add laws and rules to prevent it from happening again.

The repercussions from the latest snafu (Navy term meaning ‘situation normal—all f*ked up’) are reverberating through the credit markets making it more than difficult for corporations, small business and just plain folks to access it.

Who will step into the breach to provide investment and liquidity?

Private equity and big hedge funds—both with even less regulation and even larger egos and greed factors than more traditional Wall Street firms.

But a land grab by big hedge funds and private equity firms might create new problems. The Securities & Exchange Commission and the Finance Industry Regulatory Authority oversee investment banks to some degree, and the Federal Reserve is moving in that direction. But hedge funds are largely unregulated and aren’t bound to make any disclosures to anyone but their investors. Even that information is often incomplete. A move by hedge funds into traditional corporate finance would mean even less transparency than exists on Wall Street now.

It’s a sad fact that the 214-year-old force that was instrumental in building the most powerful industrial nation on the planet could be just as instrumental in presiding at its demise.

Understand, it’s not that I have much faith in government regulation, but have seen little-to-no proof that self-regulation works—it’s too much like having the fox care for the hen house.

So-called government intrusion is the result of the inability of various industries to “self-regulate” for any reasons other than short-term profit, doing as much they can get away with and pushing the boundaries beyond what’s reasonable.

So you tell me, how can we get well-reasoned laws that aren’t defeated or seriously watered down by special interest groups and industry lobbyists before the crisis?

Image credit: pinkfloyd

Awhile back Wally Bock wrote what I think is a very important post about leadership that I want to share with you.

It’s something that you should keep in the forefront of your mind, especially during election season this year and every year.

Think about today’s leaders.

Be it Congress, the White House, governors, or politicians at any level.

How many of them would meet the Hickory leadership test?

How many corporate leaders? How many educational leaders? How many religious leaders?

Sadly, I doubt that even 1% would qualify, no matter how you grouped them.

I sincerely wish I was wrong.

At the very least, we deserve leaders who consider us of equal priority to themselves and not a (very) distant second — or lower.

Andrew Jackson and Leadership in Adversity

In January 1813, Andrew Jackson marched south from Tennessee with a force of 2000 to bolster the defense of New Orleans. When he got to Natchez, some 500 miles from home, he received orders to dismiss his troops.

The order was for him simply to dismiss the troops and turn over his supplies to General James Wilkinson. Apparently, Jackson’s men were expected to make their own way home and find ways to feed themselves. They were in hostile territory and, by then, over a hundred of Jackson’s men were ill. Fifty-six couldn’t even sit upright. Jackson turned over his supplies, as ordered, but he vowed to take all his men home.

The problem was that the expedition had only eleven wagons. When Dr. Samuel Hogg asked Jackson what he should do, Jackson replied simply, “You are not to leave a man on the ground.”

Hogg reminded Jackson that the wagons were already filled with the sick. There was no more room. Jackson’s solution was straightforward.

“Let some of the troops dismount. The officers must give up their horses. Not a man must be left behind.”

I can imagine Hogg screwing up his courage then. Jackson was known for a volatile temper. But he also had a horse. Hogg asked for Jackson’s horse for the sick. Jackson turned over the reins.

Jackson led the troops home, paying out of his own pocket for their provisions, and walking all of the five hundred miles. He laid out his thinking in a letter to Felix Grundy.

“I shall march them to Nashville or bury them with the honors of war. Should I die, I know they would bury me.”

Leadership is about accomplishing your mission and caring for your people. And how you do both speaks volumes about the kind of leader and person you are. Jackson’s actions are a stark contrast to “leaders” who put their welfare first.

This incident was the making of Jackson’s reputation as a general. During the march, his men started calling him “Hickory” because he was so tough. That became “Old Hickory,” the nickname he would carry for life.

Boss’s Bottom Line

What I love about this story is that Jackson did what he thought was the right thing, without much thought about the consequences or how things might look. At the time he chose to get all his men home, walking himself and paying for their food, he could not have known how things would play out later in his life. When you lead, we expect you to do the right thing, all the time, not just when it’s convenient or when it looks good.

Resources

Jon Meacham’s biography of Andrew Jackson, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, is a great biography, but it concentrates on Jackson the President and skips over most of his early life. If you want an overview of Jackson’s life, I recommend Robert Rimini’s one volume Life of Andrew Jackson.

Image credit: Three Star Leadership

Have you ever taken time to wonder why there is a holiday dedicated to people who work?

No?

Then before you get too caught up in shopping, beer and BBQ, take a minute to learn exactly where the holiday comes from.

It’s the result of an 1894 labor strike against the Pullman Company (think aspirational, luxury private railroad cars).

Engineer and industrialist George Pullman’s workers all lived in company-owned buildings. The town was highly stratified. Pullman himself lived in a mansion, managers resided in houses, skilled workers lived in small apartments, and laborers stayed in barracks-style dormitories. The housing conditions were cramped by modern standards, but the town was sanitary and safe, and even included paved streets and stores.

Then the disastrous economic depression of the 1890s struck. Pullman made a decision to cut costs — by lowering wages.

In a sense, workers throughout Chicago, and the country at large, were in the same boat as the Pullman employees. Wages dropped across the board, and prices fell. However, after cutting pay by nearly 30%, Pullman refused to lower the rent on the company-owned buildings and the prices in the company-owned stores accordingly.

Federal troops used extreme force to break the strike resulting in 30 deaths, while rioting and sabotage left 80 million dollars worth of damage in its wake.

Indiana state professor and labor historian Richard Schneirov said President Grover Cleveland’s decision to declare Labor Day as a holiday for workers was likely a move meant to please his constituents after the controversial handling of the strike. The president was a Democrat, and most urban laborers at the time were Catholic Democrats.

Congress approved (knowing their constituents would also be pleased).

Makes you wonder what the current president and congress would do.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Federal government is definitely out of favor, whether for doing too little or too much depends on your MAP (it never does enough for us and does too much for them).

In no part of the government is this more obvious than NSA; the poster child of dislike, distrust and disdain.

But those feelings should hold only for the leadership, not the techies who staff the place.

NSA hires a lot of techies and techies are techies the world over. One of the things they all have in common is that they love puzzles, especially math and logic puzzles—not just to work them, but to create them.

“Intelligence. It’s the ability to think abstractly. Challenge the unknown. Solve the impossible. NSA employees work on some of the world’s most demanding and exhilarating high-tech engineering challenges. Applying complex algorithms and expressing difficult cryptographic problems in terms of mathematics is part of the work NSA employees do every day.”

So if you love puzzles click the link above and try your skills. Here’s a sample from a software developer.

Four friends, Holly, Belle, Carol, and Nick, gather for May birthdays. Holly announces that she has a game before dinner. She hid gifts for each of her friends inside three separate boxes secured with padlocks. She challenges her friends to figure out the combination without consulting each other.

She provides the following information. All the padlocks have the same combination. The padlocks use 3 digits from 0 to 9. She also tells them that the sum of the three digits is equal to nine, and every digit is equal to or greater than the previous digit. Holly tells each of her friends one of the digits in the combination. She states, “I’ve given the first digit to Belle, the second digit to Carol, and the third digit to Nick.” The caveat is that the friends cannot share their numbers with each other or they will forfeit the gifts.

Then Holly gives her friends 30 minutes to open the padlocks while she watches and finishes dinner.

The three friends begin to think of the solution. One by one, they each try their hand at their padlock, but none of them opens the padlock. Seeing that no one has succeeded, suddenly Carol realizes she knows the answer, and successfully opens her box, revealing a new fitness tracker. Following this, Nick opens his padlock, revealing a new tablet; and Belle opens her box to find new pair of headphones.

Having watched this entire event unfold, can you determine the correct combination?

Hint: Belle knows her digit is a 1.

Click and scroll down for the solution.

Have fun, everybody.

Image credit: NSA

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Decades ago computer manufactures, such as IBM and DEC, created closed systems that wouldn’t/couldn’t talk to each other.

Apple chose to keep a closed system for years.

While closed systems seemed to enhance profitability, in the long-run the strategy failed to protect the companies from competition.

What closed systems did do was cost customers millions when, for business reasons, they had to be made to communicate.

Closed systems are back again only this time forcing compatibility is costing billions.

And it is you and I who will end up footing the cost.

Why?

Because this time the incompatibility is in the proprietary electronic medical records (EMR) systems that are mandated under the Affordable Care Act and, far more importantly, are an imperative for the health of the entire population.

The money in play is substantial; privately held Epic is one of the largest suppliers and its founder, Judith R. Faulkner, is supposed to be worth around $2.3 billion.

When you’re making that kind of money who worries about lives ruined or lost because of EMR incompatibility?

While the companies building incompatible systems are doing just fine, those who have to buy the systems aren’t—although size does make a difference.

The University of California Davis Health System has 22 specialists installing the technology so that doctors can share patient data between its Epic system and other internal systems, like the hemodynamic monitors in its critical care unit, or with some non-Epic systems outside the hospital. “We’re a huge organization, so we can absorb those costs,” said Michael Minear, the chief information officer at the U.C. Davis Health System. “Small clinics and physician offices are going to have a harder time.” (…) “The systems can’t communicate, and that becomes my problem because I cannot send what is required and I’m going to have a 1 percent penalty from Medicare,” Dr. Raghuvir B. Gelot said. “They’re asking me to do something I can’t control.”

What about regulators?

Regulators responded that interoperability was a “top priority” and that they recently set out a 10-year vision and agenda to achieve it, in an emailed statement from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The office’s spokesman added that achieving interoperability “requires stakeholders to come together and agree on policy-related issues like who can access information and for what purpose.”

So much for regulators.

Perhaps Congress… No; that’s a really stupid thought.

I guess the only sure things in all this is that the entrepreneurs who created the incompatible systems will increase their net worth, US medical costs will continue to skyrocket and you and I will pay the bills.

Image credit: HikingArtist

See all mY generation posts here.

Yesterday I asked, “What else does Wall Street and the financial industry do besides cripple corporate strategic efforts?”

They fight for self-regulation, assuring watchdog agencies and Congress that they are good guys that should be trusted to do the best thing and that the economy will tank if any kind of control or regulation is enacted—and they win.

They win based on the money spent to focus the efforts of well-connected lobbyists on stopping cold, or at least significantly watering down, any legislation or rules that might offer protection to us—the people who keep them all in BMWs and champagne.

Wall Street and the other financial services industries aren’t alone in this, every industry does it, but the money guys seem to be exceptionally successful—until something blows up. Then, when public outcry is loud and tempers are hot, Congress has the leverage to pass anything—whether it fixes the problem or merely makes them look like they care.

Deregulation was one of the prime factors in the S&L mess in the eighties; earnings pressure combined with personal greed fueled many of the recent corporate financial fiascos—think Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia Communications, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P.Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and others.

And now, of course, we have the Sub-prime debacle with which to contend.

And after each of these, Congress, the SEC and others all run to add laws and rules to prevent it from happening again.

The repercussions from the latest snafu (Navy term meaning ‘situation normal—all f*ked up’) are reverberating through the credit markets making it more than difficult for corporations, small business and just plain folks to access it.

Who will step into the breach to provide investment and liquidity?

Private equity and big hedge funds—both with even less regulation and even larger egos and greed factors than more traditional Wall Street firms.

“But a landgrab by big hedge funds and private equity firms might create new problems. The Securities & Exchange Commission and the Finance Industry Regulatory Authority oversee investment banks to some degree, and the Federal Reserve is moving in that direction. But hedge funds are largely unregulated and aren’t bound to make any disclosures to anyone but their investors. Even that information is often incomplete. A move by hedge funds into traditional corporate finance would mean even less transparency than exists on Wall Street now.”

It’s a sad fact that the 214-year-old force that was instrumental in building the most powerful industrial nation on the planet could be just as instrumental in presiding at its demise.

Understand, it’s not that I have much faith in government regulation, but have seen little-to-no proof that self-regulation works—it’s too much like having the fox care for the hen house.

So-called government intrusion is the result of the inability of various industries to “self-regulate” for any reasons other than short-term profit, doing as much they can get away with and pushing the boundaries beyond what’s reasonable.

So you tell me, how can we get well-reasoned laws that aren’t defeated or seriously watered down by special interest groups and industry lobbyists before the crisis?

Your comments—priceless

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Image credit: pinkfloyd   CC license