The Nebulous Kingdom

Mashing up think and do - the pendulum swings back

4/22/2013

Comments

 
I saw this great article on the shift of General Electric's manufacturing back to the US:  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-insourcing-boom/309166/?single_page=true

And "a funny thing happened to the GeoSpring on the way from the cheap Chinese factory to the expensive Kentucky factory: The material cost went down. The labor required to make it went down. The quality went up. Even the energy efficiency went up."

"What we had wrong was the idea that anybody can screw together a dishwasher,” says Lenzi. “We thought, ‘We’ll do the engineering, we’ll do the marketing, and the manufacturing becomes a black box.’ But there is an inherent understanding that moves out when you move the manufacturing out. And you never get it back.”

"It happens slowly. When you first send the toaster or the water heater to an overseas factory, you know how it’s made. You were just making it—yesterday, last month, last quarter. But as products change, as technologies evolve, as years pass, as you change factories to chase lower labor costs, the gap between the people imagining the products and the people making them becomes as wide as the Pacific."


Those of us who have been living in the SF Bay Area and following Google's serendipity-fostering HR and infrastructure decisions, and John Hagel / The Center for the Edge's thinking on the "Power of Pull" and the importance of place, will not be surprised to hear that the corporation is finally evolving in the same direction.

But US firms were not wrong to send their commodity assembly and manufacturing offshore in the previous cycle.  The discrepancy in labor costs between the US and China at the contemporaneous labor productivity levels was too dramatic to ignore.  Companies who flouted the offshoring trend went out of business.  But economics change, the bases of competititon shift, labor costs converge, and products transform.

And now we're moving back to a place where organizational learning and agility drive competitive advantage; where the ability of an organization to build a knowledge-sharing infrastructure, invest in long-term relationships, attract super-talent at all levels, and generate broad-based trust are core enablers; and -- somewhat controversially, the people who think need to be the people that do.

We like to put people into boxes - the executive, the creative, the engineer, the marketing guy.  "It's not fair to ask a project manager to come up with the ideas."  "We want to make sure they're successful."  "We need to bring someone in from the outside - an agency type."  "We don't have that skillset here."  "He writes books, he's not in the market knocking on doors."  These statements may all be true at the time they're said, but they're also used to pigeonhole people - because it's cognitively easier and cheaper to think of turn people into caricatures rather than think of them as whole, complex persons with myriad capacities that often go untapped.  We use the term "resources" to refer to people, because managers are trained to optimize among pools of resources - just like in videogames.
 
But people are not commodities like coal and oil, or base structures and drones.  Someone can be both engineer and artist, creative and project manager, and excel at both.  There's no natural tradeoff, the tradeoff here is one of time - how do they spend their time?  What do they learn to master?  And how does that mastery compete in the marketplace?

It comes down to the pendulum swing of specialization vs. integration.  Just like with General Electric, there is no timelessly right or wrong answer.  The pendulum will continue to swing back and forth, and firms will continue to race to stay ahead of it.

And the argument now, in this time, is that knowledge-sharing, connectedness, being in the same near-physical place as your colleagues, mashing up ideas on the whiteboard, speaking the same language, sanding away any fear or friction around surfacing new thoughts, sharing similar norms and values, feeling like you're in a fast-paced relay flash-mob race of learning - and that the people who think are the same folks as those who do - these are the current sources of competitive advantage.  Just like the gap widened over time between the "designers" and the "workers" in General Electric,  the gap will tend to widen over time across all distributed knowledge-based endeavors that don't design their interactions in a high-protocol fashion.  There's a reason why Marissa Mayer enacted the controversial decision to limit working from home at Yahoo.
  
It's a sea change for creatives who have gotten used to throwing ideas out for someone else to implement, for authors who have gotten accustomed to aggregating the labwork of others, for "thought leaders" who have achieved fame by pointing out patterns and telling some good stories, for consultants who only do strategy and leave execution to the "stakeholders", for MBAs who want to launch a tech startup without a technical co-founder or knowing how to code, for managers who see talented staff as resources and foster a fear-driven and fiercely competitive environment, for anyone that doesn't want to risk themselves in the field of action.

I spent a lot of time asking questions and listening over my career, and it's been a humbling journey to find out how little I know about anything.  The ins and outs of wastewater management, the nuances of the precision valve industry, the scale of airplane manufacturing, the complexity of our military-industrial complex, what it takes to run an Amazon-like distribution operation, the challenges of picking and packing orders for delivery, the incredible and inspirational talent in India, the back-and-forth of app design and development - you have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty to really know about these things.  You can't just read a blog and take a site tour.  For every inch I progress my knowledge in these areas, I uncover a football field of terrain.  There are so few experts in this world, I sometimes wonder how we keep this civilization together at all.  I always laugh when I hear the term "due diligence."

Everyone with just a hammer will find that the nails are turning into Rubik's cubes that are protagonists in a role-playing game where the rules of engagement are the dynamically derived outcomes of a different role-playing game enacted a world away. 

Can we ever win?  Maybe that's the wrong question.  From the children's book Cheaper by the Dozen, after the authors' father and time-saving operations expert Frank Gilbert had died of a heart attack:

"Someone once asked Dad:
“But what do you want to save time for? What
are you going to do with
it?”


“For work, if you love that best,” said Dad. “For education, for beauty, for art, for pleasure.” He looked over the top of his pince-nez, “For mumblety-peg if that's where your heart lies."
Comments

TEDxConstitutionDrive - Menlo Park, CA - May 4.  "On Time"

4/15/2013

Comments

 
Picture
In the spirit of "ideas worth spreading," TED has created TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxConstitutionDrive, where x = independently organized TED event. At TEDxConstitutionDrive, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.

Learn about previous years' events at:
http://www.tedxconstitutiondrive.com/
http://tedx.posterous.com/tedxconstitutiondrive-2010-an-intimate-event

The themes of previous years have been TRUST [2010] and IDENTITY [2012], respectively. This year will be TIME!  We're excited about the possibilities of this theme to explore how human beings experience their time, the science of it, how we manage it (and how it manages us sometimes), and stories of the stuff of our lives. Again, we're gathering amazing speakers to talk on this topic from diverse angles - -

Isa and Ana Stenzel
cystic fibrosis / lung transplant survivors
“The Power of Two”

Michael Santos
writer, consultant and former inmate
“9,135 Days In Prison”

Cello Joe
beatboxing cellist & international bicycle-touring vagabond troubadour
“Cello Joe: Cello & Beatbox”

Sam Lessin
director of product, Facebook
“bending time: what happens when identity and technology mix"

Mort Grosser
venture investor and inventor of human-powered airplanes
“The Time of Your Life”

Red Hot Chachkas
new American klezmer band
“Klezmer Music - Tradition & Future”

Lisa Solomon
professor of design strategy, CCA
“Designing Time: Meaning, not Management”

Chuck Darrah
anthropology department chair, co-founder of the Silicon Valley Cultures Project & the Human Aspirations and Design Laboratory (HADLab)
“Technology and Time”

Blaine Dehmlow
TechShop San Francisco
“Making Time for Making Time”

Abbas Milani
director of Iranian studies, Stanford
“The Trauma of Time in Modern Iran”

Kelly McVicker
founder, McVicker Pickles
“Pickling & The Art of Time Travel”

Jonathan Ly
fitness trainer, Body Mechanix
“Fitness & Making the Most of Your Time”

Buff Giurlani
entrepreneur and founder of the unique classic car warehouse and winery Auto-Vino
“Cars & Wine – Getting Better Over Time”

We try to make this an intimate and low-key event where people who are deeply interested in the topic can engage with each other on a personal level. Please come with an open mind and a sincere desire to connect with the ideas and the other attendees.

Our venue is the phenomenal classic car warehouse and winery (yes, both!) Auto-Vino. If you love one-of-a-kind fabulous cars and wine-tasting, in addition to great ideas and people, this is the TEDx for you. After we finish the speaker sessions at 4pm, we will transition to the winery counter for an optional wine-tasting flight (included in your ticket).

TEDxConstitutionDrive is a non-profit program fiscally sponsored by Philanthro Productions, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization – Tax ID: 20-8695723.  Ticket fees will go towards event planning and speaker expenses. Fees cover speaker sessions, snacks, lunch and one wine-tasting flight.

About TED

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. The annual TED Conference invites the world's leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes. Their talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Nandan Nilekani,Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The annual TED Conference takes place in Long Beach, California, with simulcast in Palm Springs; TEDGlobal is held each year in Oxford, UK. TED's media initiatives include TED.com, where new TEDTalks are posted daily, and the Open Translation Project, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as the ability for any TEDTalk to be translated by volunteers worldwide. TED has established the annual TED Prize, where exceptional individuals with a wish to change the world are given the opportunity to put their wishes into action; TEDx, which offers individuals or groups a way to host local, self-organized events around the world, and the TEDFellows program,helping world-changing innovators from around the globe to become part of the TED community and, with its help, amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.

Follow TED on Twitter at twitter.com/TEDTalks, or on Facebook at facebook.com/TED

Comments
    Picture

    Author

    I'm interested in uncertainty, time, trust, consistency, strategy, economics, empathy, philosophy, education, technology, story-telling, and fractals.
    Contact

    Archives

    May 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    January 2015
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    December 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009

    RSS Feed


    My Favorite Curators


    Email newsletters

    Edge.org
    John Mauldin
    STRATFOR
    Futurity.org
    BPS Research Digest
    Domain-B.com
    FORA.tv
    PopTech!
    PIMCO Investment Outlooks
    GMO Client Reports
    Big Think
    Commonwealth Club
    Someecards.com
    MRN Research Papers
    Chicago Booth eNewsletters
    McKinsey Quarterly
    Boldtype / Artkrush
    Singularity University
    Charlie Rose
    The Aspen Institute


    Feeds

    WNYC
    Radiolab

    This American Life
    Freakonomics Radio
    The Moth
    Chicago Booth Podcast
    The Atlantic Council
    The Memory Palace
    TED.com
    Foreign Affairs
    The Ideas Project
    Long Now Foundation
    The School of Life
    Letters of Note

    Periodicals

    The Economist
    The Wall Street Journal
    The New Yorker
    The New York Times
    Wired Magazine
    The Atlantic

    Other Websites

    Oaktree Capital Memos
    LSE Public Lectures
    Bubblegeneration
    Becker-Posner Blog
    Eric Von Hippel
    NetAge
    John Seely Brown
    Malcolm Gladwell
    John Hagel
    HBR – The Big Shift
    LookBook.nu
    Robert Shiller
    Paul Graham
    Frontline PBS
    Royal Society for the Arts
    Blake Masters

    Humor

    Best of Craigslist
    Texts from Last Night
    FMyLIfe
    MyLifeisAverage
    Lamebook
    The Onion


    Categories

    All