Meetings

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I wonder if there is a simple and straightforward formula which determines the value proposition of having a meeting at work.  Corporations love looking at the bottom line.  Cost saving measures abound in these economically straightened times.  Travel budgets are slashed, weary executives travel coach class and nights out on the company expense accounts usually stretch no further than a burger at TGI Fridays, if you are lucky.

It is depressing when you attend a meeting knowing fully that it is pointless.  It is doubly depressing when you know your fellow attendees probably feel the same way,  but nobody else wants to cancel the meeting.  I guess it depends on the corporate culture.  Here in Tokyo, decision making is basically building consensus, and meetings are all about sharing information.  What ends up happening is you have ten people sitting in a room and one person talking.  Out of the ten, maybe three would have some idea on what is going on.  Two will be asleep, and the rest would be nodding but with a glazed over look in their eyes.

So, is there a solution?  Maybe have Outlook or Notes or your meeting organizer somehow hookup to the HR database and come up with how much the meeting is costing the company?  If you have ten people, each costing say $50 an hour to employ, an hour long meeting is going to cost $500.  Is it worth the expense?  Would it be better to get everybody out of the office and to a bar or a restaurant for a meal (probably costing around $500 – TGIFridays!).  Maybe people can have a bit of fun, and relax and get something done as opposed to just sitting around slowly sinking into a dazed sort of stupor.

Echo Chamber

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Does anybody even remember the term “Information Superhighway” any more?  Do you remember a pre-global warming, pre-divorce, skinny Al Gore and his dubious claims on inventing the Internet?  We were told about having the world’s knowledge at our finger tips. The Internet would free information and provide the most egalitarian way to get to knowledge previously limited to inhabitants of ivory towers.  But what happened?  The story of the last ten years unfolds almost like a moralistic tale. Like Midas and his golden touch or like the Genie from Arabian nights and their granting of life wishes that destroy lives.

We don’t learn any more.  We bookmark.  We don’t read any more, we skim.  We don’t discuss any more, we forward links to points, and another set of links to counter points, followed by links for the conclusion.  When we do decide to comment, it is a comment made in character, stereotypical.

We all live in an echo chamber of our stereotype.  Our voices bounce off the walls, and are magnified by those of our peers, also of our stereotype.  These voices then pour out of the mouth of the chamber and as an atonal roar that clashes with those coming out of other chambers.  We are here, shouting at one another, but not bothering to understand why or what we are shouting for.  We like shouting because it is what we do, our slogans are what define us.

Saving the American Job

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I read this editorial early last month when it was published on the Bloomberg opinion pages.  It was by Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel.  It is a thought provoking, if somewhat incendiary piece.

Mr. Grove argues that the move of manufacturing jobs to low cost locations, especially in Asia, have resulted in the loss of “scaling skills”,  i.e. the ability to move from a startup to an established, market leading industry.  He worries that this will lead to a terminal disadvantage for US industries when it comes to emerging or green industries (like advanced batteries).  He suggests the US imposing a tariff on all goods that have been manufactured off-shore.  The revenue should be earmarked for supporting industries that will create jobs in the US in strategic industries.

To read such comments coming from a man whose company has benefited immensely by offshoring, and by exploiting new markets (and lower wages) abroad is shocking.  It goes to show the existential angst the current economic conditions are causing.  Slapping import tariffs on all good manufactured abroad is starting a trade war, and is naked protectionism.  None of the The US’s key trading partners would take take kindly to such a move.

What could be the possible implications of such a move?

  • It would cause a jump in the prices of imported goods.  Politically, this would be a risky move.  While people in the US have been agitating to “Take America Back”, it is difficult to see them taking a sudden jump in prices at Walmart without a murmur.
  • Lets say they go ahead, and after a couple of decades these new industries do take off.  With unilateral import tariffs, unless the goods made in the US have a huge advantage in quality or cost, there is nothing stopping competing products being created in other countries that could also have invested in new industries around the same time.
  • With the ability now to send huge amounts of data instantaneously anonymously, it would be almost impossible to protect US intellectual property abroad.  By imposing unilateral tariffs, the US would also lose political leverage, making it difficult to try and enforce US patent law abroad.
  • As the industry manufacturing our hypothetical future commodity grow, they would come up against limits of domestic consumption.  To continue growing, they would have to find markets abroad.  There are guaranteed to be retaliatory tariffs imposed on US exports.  So who will pay for these US jobs?

What Mr. Grove seems to be suggesting is a form of Mercantilism.  What was a dominant economic theory of the 18th century might not work in a world that offers a much more level playing field.

Please find Mr. Grove’s original article here on Bloomberg.

Less money, more problems..

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That seems to be  Dileep Premchandran’s hypothesis in his latest entry on the Guardian Cricket website.   It should not be surprising that an eighteen year old from a deprived background falls for a couple of thousand pounds.  The most interesting comparison on the lack of money in Pakistani cricket compared to their IPL playing, bling-blinging counterparts across the Punjab border was this:

Little has changed. The £4,000 cheque Mohammad Amir received for being Pakistan’s player of the series was three times the monthly retainer he gets from the PCB. It is just over half what Ishant Sharma, India’s most exciting bowling prospect when he signed for the Kolkata Knight Riders in 2008, received for every ball he bowled in the Indian Premier League.

It probably is all down to Cricket’s most unpopular (ex) commissioner, a certain Mr. Modi.  If he hadn’t gone after the ICL, all guns blazing, there might still have been a viable way for up and coming Pakistani players to make some money, and not get distracted by shady “fixers” hanging around the hotel room.