An Ox and a Moron?

Halfway through the morning coffee I came across Duncan's post on the grifter society. That an arts administrator might claim a salary so far in excess of the annual budget of the small arts groups I can lay any claim to once administering boggles.

But a further thought meditated on the title Chief Executive Officer. Somewhere late in the sixties this locution became trendy, and then de riguere, in place of the title 'President'. It was part of the moves that took top management compensation into the stratosphere. It appears to be an interesting feint.

In the way of things corporate power is nominally wielded by a Board of Directors who delegate their powers to the President. The President runs the operation, with the consent of the board. The military analogue is a Captain of a ship. Said 'Captain' [a title, not necessarily a rank] may report to an Admiral, but still runs the ship.
Assisting him or her is a second in command titled The Executive Officer. Every officer aboard may execute orders, indeed, that is their function, but only one is 'The Executive Officer'.  To call him a 'Chief Executive Officer would be an offense even to the Navy's love of verbal redundance. To call the Captain a Chief Executive Officer would offer a heinous demotion insulting to military honor or gloire or some such.
So, in an epic Uriah Heap move, our quondam president offers to titularly demote himself to Chief Executive Officer for a slight increase in compensation by a power of ten, or so. And, with complete humbleness would be delighted to remove the onerous duties of Chairman of the Board from the Board's weary care including adding to their compensation and a promise to vote likewise for each Director at their own company. All CEOs together!
--ml

POV

Today's Guardian has an article about job interviewer's trick questions and riddles to winnow applicants.

Try this one. You're locked in a pitch-black, empty room with bare walls and no electric lights. You've got a book of matches, a box of tacks and a candle. How would you attach the candle to the wall for a light?
The best answer: empty the box of tacks. Take the box top, turn it upside down and tack it to the wall. The box top projects out like a little drawer. Then put a tack to attach the candle to the box's bottom. The tack's point, projecting through the box bottom, serves as a pricket. Finally, slide the box bottom into the box top on the wall. The nested top and bottom will be sturdier than either alone, and safely support the weight of the candle.
.

So that works.

If you are used to tacks distributed in full telescope boxes. (that's the kind where the bottom has sides that fit inside the sides of the top.)

In my observation, tack makers stopped using that style decades ago. The boxes cost too much and slowed processing which diminished productivity.

Reverse tuck boxes had a go. (That's the kind that is one piece and the top flap tucks into the side opposite the one it is integral to.)

These were disparaged when the blister pack appeared.

These permitted small quantity packaging in an easily handled form. Everybody appeared to win.
The customer is sold on the convenience; she can see the product, and buy as few as she needs. There is little excess to store.The blister pack's total retail cost is less than the box price.
The seller has an attractive low maintenance display which saves his clerks' time because customers find the options they desire on their own. The cards the blisters were on, make the product bulky enough to discourage shoplifting while they provide a good platform for price tags and, later, bar codes.
The maker can inflate the price per unit outrageously. The per pound price of a 100 count box might be $10 at retail. When repackaged in tens, those same fastenings might sell for $1.98 each. That makes $19.98 per hundred. The maker and seller  more than double their margins. The customer "saves" $8.00.

Neither blister packs nor reverse tuck boxes would be suitable to support the candle as the full telescopic box does. Given the difficulty I had finding the image of the telescopic box, I guess it would not be very familiar to today's job applicants.

The interviewer might think that these children just don't know as much as she did at their age. That would prove that the labor force has declined in quality?

Perhaps that is the real point?
--ml

The MBA Culture Defined

 Atrios muses:

I don't have a fully fleshed out point here, but it occurs to me that there are certain people in politics who are like the finance guys in business. They're so removed from the actual product that they're selling that they forget that customers actually need to like and buy their crap.

That's how the Plundecrats go to work this past thirty years and more.
--ml

Consult Consultants Consulting

Earle: "The job of a consultant is to restate the client's question in such a way that the problem states its solution."

Problem:
At present we have a depressed economy with too little demand.
Unemployment is unconscionably high.
Major corporations are awash in cash.
Income inequality is at the highest level in generations.
Manufacturing has moved offshore.
Research is moribund.
Our greatest innovations are fraudulent financial instruments.
Infrastructure -- roads, bridges electric grids, water supplies and sewage systems, et. al. -- are antiquated and crumbling.

So: Government should tax the rich to get money to build infrastructure, providing demand to employ people, increase investment in manufacturing, spur innovation by increasing research, and regulate the banks to make them the servants of capitalism they are meant to be rather than the piratical bosses they claim to be now.

Plutocrats own the government.

Geez! It was working so well until that last line!

So maybe the real solution is to get new elected officials -- ones who serve the public rather than the plutocrats?
--ml

Inept Marketing?

An e-mail just arrived from a service company, that shall be anonymous here, that tracks various stats. Included was the following:

Here's what we've found for your account:

Now, on to the updates…

This is a true statement so far as I know. But might it not be more productive, for the marketing, to include a loop in the mail merge that deletes this in the case of null fields? After all, it isn't as if their product can do something about the situation.
--ml

Another Trip to the Well

On listening to streaming audio:
A commercial classics station that broadcasts in a language I do not comprehend is much more bearable than one that broadcasts in English. From annoyances the ads rise to mildly intriguing puzzles.
--ml
tags: Dum Luks Stockpot, management

Management Imponderables

Back in March I told one of Earle's favorite stories.
In mid October, Morrison Bonpasse made a comment in which he noted that his grandfather's (A Harvard alum in Chemistry) family had owned Union Paste. He suggested that the tale may have been "enriched."
I replied in the thread that the point of the story remained good whether it was literally or only metaphorically true.

Since then it occurred to me to wonder if my words could be construed as critical of a particular company, viz: Union Paste. This was never my intention. Nor did I ever hear Earle speak critically of the concern. I apologize for anything I may have written that gave that impression.

Rather the tale focused on a general flaw in our species. Luke 6:41 notes this flaw: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

We have a tendency not to see what is right in front of us that is counter to our purpose. This leads to absurd decisions and stupidity. We also tend to assume that highly educated experts are the only useful source of information. Often the most important bit of information is so commonly known that no one thinks of it. Hence the definition of an expert as another village's idiot.

It is why skepticism is the only sound basis upon which to apply the scientific method.

It is also why a fact marks the point where inquiry ceased, rather than the result of the inquiry.
--ml
tags: Dum Luks Stockpot, management

The Right Word?

Today's mail brings a large, colorful postcard with pictures of our newly expanded hospital's new operating rooms and new staff.
The 60 point type bravely announces:

"It's a Boom for Surgery ..."

The reverse continues in 30 point type:

"...and our Surgical Patients"

I'm overwhelmed by both their honesty and eager greed.

Or is it merely an inept advertising firm? One that is not a boon to their clients?
--ml
tags: Dum Luks Stockpot, management

The Stove, or Cooker, or Range I

About ten to twelve thousand years ago the first major act of piracy occurred among the human species: The invention of agriculture.

Prior to that time we lived in small groups, no more than 50 individuals of mixed generations, by hunting and gathering.
The Wikipedia article on "Hunter-gatherer" describes one attendee's contribution to the 1966 "Man the Hunter" conference thusly:

Marshall Sahlins presented a paper entitled, "Notes on the Original Affluent Society," in which he challenged the popular view of hunter-gatherers living lives "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," as Thomas Hobbes had put it in 1651. According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well. Their "affluence" came from the idea that they are satisfied with very little in the material sense. This, he said, constituted a Zen economy.

Hunter-gathering requires a certain skill set which includes stone sculpture, zoology, physics, geometry and botany. It also requires a certain range: an area which provides sufficient plants and animals to feed the group. Equality is a requisite for the teamwork needed to compensate for the survival skills of the prey, and outwit the competition (lions, tigers and bears, et al.) It also enforces an economic outlook which confines the concept of property to that which one makes, and can carry. The notion of owning land is dismissed as the patent absurdity it is; a complete mismatch of time scales.
This way of life is no idyll. It takes knowledge and skills absent in most of us today. It is not an overly generous life style. So the weak and sickly do not last. And the total number of people per acre is so scant as to be risible in our age of the world. OTOH crowding might mean no more than another group barely in sight after a day's walk. Compare this life to a career working a blast furnace and it comes out on top for ease, pleasure and longevity. If you survived the first several years of life, when nature was most assiduous in pruning, you could look forward to most of your three score and ten -- barring accidents. I submit that a blast furnace is far more likely to provide some than a savanna or wood.
Few groups were so blessed (cursed?) as to find one range generous enough to permit settling. One such region was my own, the Pacific North West of North America in which a temperate climate combined with fertile forests by an ocean embayed, with many islands, to provide ample provender the year 'round. To illustrate the point the coastal trading language. contained a word which meant "He went East over the mountains to live on the desert." There was also a word that meant "He went crazy." It was the same word.

After settling a curious result followed: equality gave way to hierarchy. Loose notions of property tightened until acquisition became more important that use. This was viewed with spiritual alarm. The Potlatch, in which the point of the party was to gift the attendees with all one's possessions, freed one's spirit to re-experience the purity of the nomadic hunter-gatherer. This state was fleeting. It was never long before a neighbor felt the need for a spiritual cleansing and issued his invitations. It was a carousel of aggressive generosity.

One such experience may have corrupted a farmer into the first great Pirate. Some how he acquired enough means to support a modest crew of bully boy ruffian-wannabes. These he grandly called his "Army". He spent a fair effort talking up 'the present danger' which he assured everyone his army would protect them from. Of course he wouldn't object to a little help. Donations of food were useful. Of course it would make the army's job easier if everybody stayed put.
See we could pile rocks and mud up to make barriers -- call them 'walls -- we can all hide behind them if another army comes by looking for trouble. Or we can go out looking for trouble. Won't that be fun? Of course, we'd need a bigger army, which would need more food, which means we have to do something about finding new things to eat. How about that grass? Isn't it great? Good exercise for the teeth and jaws! Slimming, too. That's quite a roll of antelope fat you have there. Well, don't get tetchy! Of course you can live on grain. Lets see, maybe if we smash it up with these stones it won't take so long to chew. I soak mine in water. Overnight usually. (It tastes funny if you leave it more than a week. Kinda fun, though.) Well, try heating it up. With a hot rock of course. Just drop it in 'til it boils. Ya'know, it smokes and bubbles. No, it's not magic; I don't think; is it magic? Fiddlesticks (whatever they are) the rock is hot, you touch, you get hot. Same-same. The water and grain gets hot. No magic.
Down the road a bit was another tribe making a go of it. they had a mess of pretty crystals they'd bring to batter with. Some times a blue stone was worth a basket of grain and sometimes it took two.Other times they was that pinched they'd give two for a half basket.
Then the First Act of Piracy was committed. The Boss Man's nephew, the one who went around explaining the rules, called out a proclamation. Henceforth the Boss Man was King. That meant he owned everything as far as he could see. That's why you paid taxes, so's he wouldn't off you for ingratitude.
It was the first use of the concept: "Stand and deliver!"
Before one knew where the old time religion had gone the pirate chief was strutting around with a copper band around his head to keep his mighty brains contained. The army Bristled around him making everybody bow to him and call him "King". His brother was very prompt to point out all the ways the King was perfect in God's sight while almost everyone else -- especially the one's who didn't tithe to the King's Brother's Church -- stank to God, His Holy Nostrils, and generally Pissed Him Off -- which would account for why everybody's life was such a misery.

The new food supply, besides being indigestible, took a lot more work than hunter-gathering. The first weeds were discovered and the long battle with crabgrass and dandelions among the wheat stalks began. If it wasn't for all the new possessions -- split level hovels and such -- the young folk would take off into tho veldt. If it wasn't for all the new possessions and upholding the family's honor.
With the new hierarchy of King, Priest and Army came artisans and craftsman who made the specialized tools of fawning, worshiping, arming and farming. At bottom were the peasants doing the plowing, the seeding, the tilling, the weeding, the guarding, the mending, the gathering, the threshing, the gleaning, the rendering (of tithes and rents and bills), the storing and the manuring.
The women, when not required to work in the fields, got to tend the household chores. The kitchen garden plot. The gathering of herbs and fruits and nuts. The cooking of meals. The weaving of the baskets tight enough to hold water to boil the grain they ground into a porridge, thin or thick, or gruel depending on the state of the larder which they had to maintain and keep vermin free.
Of course a basket is not exactly indestructible. Hell it's not even all that durable. So, with a splendid burst of creativity, pottery sprang upon an expectant world.
But this is all back story.
to be continued...
--ml
tags: Dum Luks Ordinary, early cooking, paleolithic cookery, economics, management, pirates, the march of technology

The Longer the Title ...

The smaller the pay check.

e.g.: President = 30 x median
CEO = 300 x median

-- ml
tags: aphorisms, Design, management