Pflogging ... in pursuit of accelerated value creation

Faith, hope, and change are as much a part of political reality as they are in change programs within businesses. As I reflect on the daily political landscape that pretends to offer us information to make sense of the 'most important issue' in the upcoming election (the economy), I offer the following two articles for your consideration. I think these two articles are important to digest together. Both have the feel of the kind of unbiased analysis, reflective discourse, and unvarnished truth that must accompany any true reform in our national debate on such topics (a reform that is desparately needed).

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There is no longer much public debate about whether global warming is occurring or not. Articles like 'Mass extinction study casts cloud on future' paint a bleak picture of what lies ahead for the earth's population. But wait, if the future is cloudy, wouldn't things be cooling down? This flippant remark is intended to reinforce that it is sometimes a bit hard to sort out sensationalism from reality in related policy-making. For example, the risks of rising ocean levels on populations living near sea level are nearly always used as one of the justifications for why we must try to respond to global warming; yet sea levels have been rising for the last 20,000 years, when they were nearly 400 feet lower than today. And statements like "Every time the tropical-sea temperatures were about 7 degrees warmer than they are now and stayed that way for enough years, there was a die-off" in the above extinction article, imply a cause and effect relationship, even though none has actually been established.  read more »

A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to attend an excellent lecture by Margaret Thatcher, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. In it, she indicated that the world was going to be changing radically as a result of those events, and that it was not clear what new direction it would take.

Below is a link to an excellent paper that was presented several weeks ago by Herbert Meyer at a Davos, Switzerland meeting which was attended by most of the CEOs from all the major international corporations. It provides a very good summary of what he considers to be today's key trends, and a number of interesting perspectives that one seldom sees in such analyses.  read more »

The word process is an abstract concept. As a result, its meaning is often dependent upon the context in which it is used, and the mental models of those who are using the term. The dangerous part of this is that people can carry on conversations about them, and believe that they are talking about the same situations, even though they are actually discussing several, fundamentally different things. As a result, they each can think that they are communicating about the same 'process', and can go away from that conversation with the mistaken impression that they all agree on something meaningful, or all have a shared vision of what it will take to transform something. What is really going on is that consensus is typically achieved by adding ambiguity, rather than removing it.

As an example of these different 'mindsets', consider the following:  read more »

In the first five months of this year, American businesses and households have spent $49 billion more on gasoline than in the first five months of 2007, according to Cameron Hanover, in a recent New York Post article. Compared to early 2002, (the last time gas was around $2 a gallon) our bill is more like $122 billion more this year. These prices affect more than just gasoline; wholesale heating oil/diesel is up 93.3 percent, and natural gas is 45.3 percent higher than a year ago, and is at the the highest in three years. George Soros, who controls a $17b hedge fund, is predicting these levels are not sustainable, and thinks prices will crash soon. Of course, he's a guy that isn't afraid to manipulate things for his own personal benefit and beliefs.  read more »

The scientific method is the basis of our modern world. The three steps of the method are to establish a hypothesis, perform an experiment, and evaluate the results. The method does not guarantee a successful outcome on the first try, but has the advantage of self-correction. As a result, over time, it will (through repeated application and follow-on action) converge on a solution, if a solution can be found.

However, if core disciplines are not used throughout this experimentation (for example, by not keeping good records, or controlling the variables of your experiments), this ultimate success is not assured. Process improvement is similar, and has a set of core disciplines that must be followed for consistent performance and reliable outcomes from improvement efforts. read more »

The term health care reform has diverse meanings for the many stakeholders involved in the US health care system. The underlying issues associated with implementing such reforms are quite complex, but pressures for reform are high. In 2005 alone, the United States spent more than two trillion dollars on health care, or over $7,100 per person, and are growing at over twice the rate of growth of our overall economy. Government and private insurance fund about 80 percent of those costs, and the rest largely comes directly (rather than indirectly) out of our pockets. About a third of these expenditures occur within hospitals; clinicians get another third, and the rest is spread across nursing homes, prescription drugs, and the costs of administering our insurance system.  read more »

A major element of Lean is standarded work instructions, which must be implemented as detailed procedures for doing the work, rather than more abstract statements of work, in order to be effective. The purpose of such standardized operations is to make work rules explicit in order to minimize and control variation in quality, cost, throughput, and/or work in process, and thereby reduce defects, rework, and wasted materials. There are three elements that are critical to achieving these goals: Takt time (the heartbeat of the production system), standard flows, and Standard Work In Process (SWIP).  read more »

Biomechatronics is an effort to recreate & integrate mechanical elements of the human body using a synthesis of multiple technologies. Research and development costs for breakthroughs in prosthetic devices are enormous, and few private companies have interested in pursing the challenges and risks inherent in such developments for such a comparatively small market; for example, in the United States, only about 6000 people require arm prostheses each year. Under normal economic conditions and market forces, there is thus little financial incentive for entrepreneurs or companies to pursue creating a new, next-generation prosthetic arm. However, with over 1600 soldiers returning from the latest Iraq conflict with at least one arm missing, there are new opportunities and funding sources for innovations in treating these wounded soldiers. An effort from the Defense Research Projects Agency is underway that could be leading to some real breakthroughs in this area.  read more »