Since we’re on the road today anyway, let’s take a moment to consider the ages-old question of should we fly or drive to our destination? Back in our salad days, when gasoline was under $1 a gallon and you could get on an airplane with as much bottled water as you wanted (without taking off your shoes, belt, or undergarments in the process), the trade-off was simple: flying was faster, driving was cheaper. Thus, if you needed to get where you were going quickly, or if your idea of a fun time does not include days of highway driving, you would fly to your destination; otherwise you might drive. But under the current conditions, this is no longer a given…
First, let’s consider the trip we’re currently on. It’s about 2200 miles from LA to Lansing, or about 34 hours of road time at 65 mph; this does not, of course, include time for food, refueling or rest stops, let alone sleeping. If you’re willing to drive for 17 hours a day you could do it in two days, but most of us would take four. If we assume $150 per night for hotels and 20 miles per gallon of gas (both optimistic under present conditions), we are talking about at least $950 for the trip, not counting food or other needs. We should probably allow another $300 or so for routine maintenance on the vehicle, since 2200 miles is most of a service cycle, and this will be hard use (2200 miles in four days). Allowing for food and other necessities, it’s going to be somewhere on the order of $1,400 to make the trip…
If I’m traveling alone, this does not compare well to the $309 I’ll pay for a ticket with 2 stops (Las Vegas and Chicago, for example) or even to the $825 I’ll pay for one stop in Chicago. It doesn’t even compare well with flying to Chicago and renting a car for the rest of the way. If I’m traveling with a companion, however, it would be at least $600 and more likely $900 to fly with 2 stops, and $1,700 to fly with 1 stop – no longer a clear advantage to the airlines. And if I’ve got three people with me, it’s going to be at least $1,400 to fly, and more likely $3,200 – advantage car. Although flying is still faster…
Now let’s take a shorter example. It’s about 680 miles from East Lansing to New York City; a drive that will take all day (about 10 hours+) and cost about $150 in gas, and let’s say $100 in repair costs. If we fly through Cincinnati (there are no direct flights to or from Lansing to either coast) the cost will be $242, and the trip will take a bit over 6 hours – if the planes are on time. But this time factor does not consider having to be at the airport 2 hours before your plane leaves, or the time it takes getting from East Lansing to the Capital City Airport (10 minutes) or the time it takes getting from JFK to Manhattan (90 minutes or more). If I’m by myself, the price difference is a wash; if I’m traveling with anyone the car trip is significantly cheaper, just as you would expect. What is bizarre is that with the common delays in air travel and the need to change planes, the car trip DOES NOT take any longer…
Even worse, from where I’m sitting (which today is the driver’s seat of a Pontiac Torrent), is the surcharge we would face getting all of this cargo onto an airplane. With most U.S. carriers now charging extra for each checked bag, we’d be looking at another $300 to $900 in fees, assuming they’d let us check this much baggage in the first place, which they probably wouldn’t. This might not apply on a weekend trip to see my folks in New York, but it would definitely apply to the voyage we are currently undertaking…
The bottom line is that even the current gas crisis has not changed the equation all that much. It’s still cheaper to drive, and in the post 9/11 landscape, it isn’t always faster to fly, either. Which would make me feel a lot better if the price of gasoline wasn’t still rocketing up…
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
We Paid HOW Much For That?
As most of you know, I recently stopped working for UCLA Extension, a curious organization which is actually older than UCLA itself. It was 90 years ago when the first Extension classes were offered in Los Angeles, or 360 academic quarters ago, depanding on your point of view. And for most of them, Extension has published a large catalog that lists all of the classes, seminars, certificate programs, and (more recently) distance learning (online) classes offered for that quarter. If you've lived in L.A. for any length of time, you've probably seen one of their catalogs in your mailbox, with its distinctive cover art, which will usually reference the concept of "extension" and/or the quarter to which it belongs. For example, the cover for Spring Quarter a few years ago was a close-up photograph of a quarter (a U.S. quarter-dollar coin) under a spring approximately the size of the coin's diameter. "Spring" and "Quarter" -- Spring Quarter. Get it?
Last winter's catalog was heralded by the advertising people who came up with it as being one of the best covers ever -- the best concept, the best artwork, and so on. Even as a complete newbie to the organization, I could feel the excitement as we waited to see what it actually looked like. Imagine our collective surprise when the cover turned out to be a tiny (1" by 2") classified ad about Extension, "taped" to a blue field with two strips of yellow tape -- UCLA Bruin colors, blue and gold. Needless to say, everyone was speechless...
That is, until one member of our team who is studying design piped up with the plaintive question "We paid HOW much for this?"
We've all hearn the jokes about organizations that can not paint the latrine without running five focus groups and a double-blind comparison survey, but this was the sort of thing only an adman could love. Or perhaps a senior marketing executive of some kind. adding insult to injury, as far as we working stiffs were concerned, was the fact that the "artist" who came up with this cover was paid $5,000 for his work, which as far as we could tell, any ordinary six-year-old could have duplicated in five minues...
If there were taxpayers involved, there would probably have been outcry. Fortunately, Extension is entire self-supporting, and receives no taxpayer money whatsoever, which kept us from having to explain to an outraged public why we were spending their money on the dubious project. In fairness, the inside front cover had one of the best bits of advertising I've ever seen: A letter from the Governor of California, telling how when he first came to America he took classes at Extension while pursuing his career as a bodybuilder. It's hard to argue with a guy who arrived in this country barely able to speak the language and went on to superstardom in Hollywood, enormous commercial success in business, and was then elected Governor of the richest and most populous state in the Union, and his endorsement is a simple message that anyone who isn't actually brain-dead should be able to understand about just what a great opportunity classes at Extension can be.
Which is the point, of course: the ad on the cover is supposed to be the sort of thing an obscure Austrian body-builder recently arrived in this country might have seen in the back of a newspaper, and responded to. Clearly, the ad on the cover is intended to make us imagine Arnold looking at it in the gym between sets, and getting an idea, and the inside cover is supposed to represent how far he has come as the result of reading that humble ad. And, I suppose, under some circumstances, this might actually work. But I had to have someone who knows much more about design than I ever will explain it to me, and some quite good designers of my aquaintence (who have since seen the thing) have all had the same reaction to it: "You paid HOW much for that?"
Last winter's catalog was heralded by the advertising people who came up with it as being one of the best covers ever -- the best concept, the best artwork, and so on. Even as a complete newbie to the organization, I could feel the excitement as we waited to see what it actually looked like. Imagine our collective surprise when the cover turned out to be a tiny (1" by 2") classified ad about Extension, "taped" to a blue field with two strips of yellow tape -- UCLA Bruin colors, blue and gold. Needless to say, everyone was speechless...
That is, until one member of our team who is studying design piped up with the plaintive question "We paid HOW much for this?"
We've all hearn the jokes about organizations that can not paint the latrine without running five focus groups and a double-blind comparison survey, but this was the sort of thing only an adman could love. Or perhaps a senior marketing executive of some kind. adding insult to injury, as far as we working stiffs were concerned, was the fact that the "artist" who came up with this cover was paid $5,000 for his work, which as far as we could tell, any ordinary six-year-old could have duplicated in five minues...
If there were taxpayers involved, there would probably have been outcry. Fortunately, Extension is entire self-supporting, and receives no taxpayer money whatsoever, which kept us from having to explain to an outraged public why we were spending their money on the dubious project. In fairness, the inside front cover had one of the best bits of advertising I've ever seen: A letter from the Governor of California, telling how when he first came to America he took classes at Extension while pursuing his career as a bodybuilder. It's hard to argue with a guy who arrived in this country barely able to speak the language and went on to superstardom in Hollywood, enormous commercial success in business, and was then elected Governor of the richest and most populous state in the Union, and his endorsement is a simple message that anyone who isn't actually brain-dead should be able to understand about just what a great opportunity classes at Extension can be.
Which is the point, of course: the ad on the cover is supposed to be the sort of thing an obscure Austrian body-builder recently arrived in this country might have seen in the back of a newspaper, and responded to. Clearly, the ad on the cover is intended to make us imagine Arnold looking at it in the gym between sets, and getting an idea, and the inside cover is supposed to represent how far he has come as the result of reading that humble ad. And, I suppose, under some circumstances, this might actually work. But I had to have someone who knows much more about design than I ever will explain it to me, and some quite good designers of my aquaintence (who have since seen the thing) have all had the same reaction to it: "You paid HOW much for that?"
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Time Travel
I’m sending this one on ahead to myself (and any of you who are still reading this space), since I don’t think it would be either fair or safe to publish this post while still employed on this job. So for those of you reading along (including me), welcome back to the second week of June, 2008, and the truly bizarre place known as UCLA Extension, or UNEX…
Several weeks ago our Director scheduled a “retreat” for the Senior Staff members, to discuss ideas for a possible reorganization of the department. With our fiscal year ending, and funds being short, the Director decided to hold the retreat on Monday, June 9, 2008 at the Faculty Club facility on UCLA’s campus (that’s yesterday, from the point of view of when this post was being written). Given the number (and nature) of miss-steps that subsequently occurred, I thought this might be a good time to consider management retreats in general, and some of the things to avoid doing on one in particular…
To begin with, the whole project ran afoul of UNEX rules against spending money on food or entertainment for employees. Technically, even though Extension does not receive any taxpayer money, the funds we do get (from fees and tuitions) are still State money, and can’t be spent on these categories. Undaunted, the Senior Staff made plans to “retreat” to the conference room across the hall. The problem here is that getting off-site – or at least getting out of your regular working space – is critical for this sort of conceptual meeting to work in the first place. Otherwise, not only do you lose the sense of occasion (and importance) obtained by being Outside, but you’re much too likely to have people excuse themselves and go work on their usual assignments – which is in fact what happened…
Then there’s the lack of structure and the overabundance of agendas – which I regret to say are quite typical of this type of retreat. Every member of the management team is going to be threatened by different aspects of a reorganization, and each member of the team will have his or her own ideas about what changes should be made. In the case of our department, the Program Directors have been running their own areas of operation as little independent departments for years, and will resist any chance to centralize control or work more collaboratively, while the Program Managers have been used primarily as Administrative Analysts (not managers at all) during this period, and would like to actually have some hand in running things. If the Department’s Director doesn’t set the agenda and take a firm hand in running the discussion, the results will be anarchy – and the complete waste of a work day – before people decide the whole thing is rubbish, tune out, and the excuse themselves to return to work…
Which is, in fact, what appears to have happened…
Compounding matters, at least as far as I’m concerned, is the fact that I wasn’t invited to this “retreat” myself. Now I know some of you are thinking that since I’m leaving this job in three weeks, getting my opinion on the future direction of the department is not important. That’s almost certainly what my boss was thinking when he told me not to attend. But in this case, he was wrong (and so was anyone out there who agreed with him) for two reasons: First, because I am the only member of this department (however ephemeral) with a management degree, and the only one experience in leading this sort of reorganization event; and second, because with me absent and the third Program Manager position currently vacant, that left only one manager to represent the interests of a good 40% of the management team. The manager in question is a good man, and I’m sure he put on a really good show, but there’s no denying the fact that he was outnumbered five to one…
I could go on, but I think you get the point. The whole exercise was a huge waste of time and resources (although fortunately not taxpayer money), and will have to be repeated any number of times before any substantive change happens – if, in fact, any ever does. All things considered, I’d rather be in Winslow…
Several weeks ago our Director scheduled a “retreat” for the Senior Staff members, to discuss ideas for a possible reorganization of the department. With our fiscal year ending, and funds being short, the Director decided to hold the retreat on Monday, June 9, 2008 at the Faculty Club facility on UCLA’s campus (that’s yesterday, from the point of view of when this post was being written). Given the number (and nature) of miss-steps that subsequently occurred, I thought this might be a good time to consider management retreats in general, and some of the things to avoid doing on one in particular…
To begin with, the whole project ran afoul of UNEX rules against spending money on food or entertainment for employees. Technically, even though Extension does not receive any taxpayer money, the funds we do get (from fees and tuitions) are still State money, and can’t be spent on these categories. Undaunted, the Senior Staff made plans to “retreat” to the conference room across the hall. The problem here is that getting off-site – or at least getting out of your regular working space – is critical for this sort of conceptual meeting to work in the first place. Otherwise, not only do you lose the sense of occasion (and importance) obtained by being Outside, but you’re much too likely to have people excuse themselves and go work on their usual assignments – which is in fact what happened…
Then there’s the lack of structure and the overabundance of agendas – which I regret to say are quite typical of this type of retreat. Every member of the management team is going to be threatened by different aspects of a reorganization, and each member of the team will have his or her own ideas about what changes should be made. In the case of our department, the Program Directors have been running their own areas of operation as little independent departments for years, and will resist any chance to centralize control or work more collaboratively, while the Program Managers have been used primarily as Administrative Analysts (not managers at all) during this period, and would like to actually have some hand in running things. If the Department’s Director doesn’t set the agenda and take a firm hand in running the discussion, the results will be anarchy – and the complete waste of a work day – before people decide the whole thing is rubbish, tune out, and the excuse themselves to return to work…
Which is, in fact, what appears to have happened…
Compounding matters, at least as far as I’m concerned, is the fact that I wasn’t invited to this “retreat” myself. Now I know some of you are thinking that since I’m leaving this job in three weeks, getting my opinion on the future direction of the department is not important. That’s almost certainly what my boss was thinking when he told me not to attend. But in this case, he was wrong (and so was anyone out there who agreed with him) for two reasons: First, because I am the only member of this department (however ephemeral) with a management degree, and the only one experience in leading this sort of reorganization event; and second, because with me absent and the third Program Manager position currently vacant, that left only one manager to represent the interests of a good 40% of the management team. The manager in question is a good man, and I’m sure he put on a really good show, but there’s no denying the fact that he was outnumbered five to one…
I could go on, but I think you get the point. The whole exercise was a huge waste of time and resources (although fortunately not taxpayer money), and will have to be repeated any number of times before any substantive change happens – if, in fact, any ever does. All things considered, I’d rather be in Winslow…
Friday, July 4, 2008
Independence Day
I know it's geezer-talk to express a fondness for any time period other than the exact one you're in at the moment, but I'll admit I miss the time when being patriotic didn't necessarily mean that you were a member of any particular political party; when it was okay for moderates, liberals, free-thinkers and garden-variety troublemakers to just come out and say that they love their country; when no one would try to claim that you hate America if you just happen to be wearing the wrong lapel pin...
Actually, the fact that I persist in believing there was such a time probably makes me a geezer in and of itself. But I think the people who claim that if Richard Nixon was alive today and running for President he would be too liberal for either party to go near are probably right. And I remember a time when your lapel pin was your own business, no-bid contracts for companies that the Vice President used to run would have been an Impeachment offense, and you could still buy, transport, possess and use fireworks in my old neighborhood without being arrested for Weapons of Mass Destruction offenses...
For years now, fireworks have been illegal everywhere in the City of Los Angeles, and most (although not all) of the other places in the county as well. What is really odd about that is that here and there within the county (places like Lawndale and Inglewood, for example) individual cities have kept the sale of fireworks (at least, the so-called "safe and sane" ones) legal. In those cities, local civic groups run the fireworks stands every year to raise money, and almost everyone goes to buy some, the implication being that if you really cared about the Boy Scout troop, high school marching band, or little league team, you'd at least go and buy some fireworks. Whereas anywhere else in L.A., if you're caught with anything resembling fireworks today, you'll be on your way to jail...
From an economic standpoint, we can all understand where they are coming from: fireworks CAN be dangerous in the wrong hands (e.g. the very young, the careless, and the stupid), even the relatively low-powered variety being offered for sale elsewhere in the county. The cost in terms of fires that need to be put out, injuries that need to be treated, and people who need to be arrested (for arson, child endangerment, assault, or being a complete and total dumbass) is high, and the City of L.A. is already broke; accordingly, it's probably in the public interest to prevent these sales. And don't even get me started on the effects a few stray sparks (or garbage that's still heated to 1700 degrees F) will have on the dry brush on the hillsides...
From a practical standpoint, however, it doesn't make much sense to ban something in L.A. City if you can get it elsewhere in L.A. County (and many places in the neighboring counties as well). Nor does it make much sense to divert law enforcement resources from more serious matters to pursue those transporting or even using fireworks within the city limits. Especially when the fire department and much of the law enforcement apparatus being used for this purpose is County, rather than City, based...
I don't usually have an easy answer for these questions, and I certainly don't in this case. I only know that tonight I'm going to one of those places where fireworks are still legal, buy as many as I can afford, and spend a few pleasant hours lighting them off...
Happy Independence Day, Everyone!
Actually, the fact that I persist in believing there was such a time probably makes me a geezer in and of itself. But I think the people who claim that if Richard Nixon was alive today and running for President he would be too liberal for either party to go near are probably right. And I remember a time when your lapel pin was your own business, no-bid contracts for companies that the Vice President used to run would have been an Impeachment offense, and you could still buy, transport, possess and use fireworks in my old neighborhood without being arrested for Weapons of Mass Destruction offenses...
For years now, fireworks have been illegal everywhere in the City of Los Angeles, and most (although not all) of the other places in the county as well. What is really odd about that is that here and there within the county (places like Lawndale and Inglewood, for example) individual cities have kept the sale of fireworks (at least, the so-called "safe and sane" ones) legal. In those cities, local civic groups run the fireworks stands every year to raise money, and almost everyone goes to buy some, the implication being that if you really cared about the Boy Scout troop, high school marching band, or little league team, you'd at least go and buy some fireworks. Whereas anywhere else in L.A., if you're caught with anything resembling fireworks today, you'll be on your way to jail...
From an economic standpoint, we can all understand where they are coming from: fireworks CAN be dangerous in the wrong hands (e.g. the very young, the careless, and the stupid), even the relatively low-powered variety being offered for sale elsewhere in the county. The cost in terms of fires that need to be put out, injuries that need to be treated, and people who need to be arrested (for arson, child endangerment, assault, or being a complete and total dumbass) is high, and the City of L.A. is already broke; accordingly, it's probably in the public interest to prevent these sales. And don't even get me started on the effects a few stray sparks (or garbage that's still heated to 1700 degrees F) will have on the dry brush on the hillsides...
From a practical standpoint, however, it doesn't make much sense to ban something in L.A. City if you can get it elsewhere in L.A. County (and many places in the neighboring counties as well). Nor does it make much sense to divert law enforcement resources from more serious matters to pursue those transporting or even using fireworks within the city limits. Especially when the fire department and much of the law enforcement apparatus being used for this purpose is County, rather than City, based...
I don't usually have an easy answer for these questions, and I certainly don't in this case. I only know that tonight I'm going to one of those places where fireworks are still legal, buy as many as I can afford, and spend a few pleasant hours lighting them off...
Happy Independence Day, Everyone!
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Say Goodbye…
So, how did my exit interview at UCLA go, I hear some of you asking? Given my occasion critical comments about my recent employers, and my rather more common (and certainly more vicious) clashes with human resources personnel down through the years, I’m sure most of you were expecting me to take full advantage of this opportunity to “stick it to the Man.” If so, I’m probably about to disappoint you, and you may want to skip ahead to my rant scheduled for the 4th of July, which is a good bit and has fireworks in it. Because my final interview at Extension was an excellent example of how this exercise should be done, and what can come of it…
To begin with, I should note that most line managers have a traditional (and understandable) antipathy for all staff departments, especially human resources. There is an unfortunate tendency in all human activity to consider your own duties and tasks to be the most important of any, and line managers often fall into the (bad) habit of assuming that just because they need (or want) something to happen at once, that it CAN happen at once, and anyone who tells them it can’t is simply lazy, incompetent, or secretly plotting to destroy them. A line manager, upon being told that a critical position may take four to six weeks to fill (when the opening is costing their department money every day someone does not do that job) may well jump to all of these conclusions at once, thus making a difficult working relationship even harder…
Human resources people, in fairness, do often suffer from the same syndrome, believing that following their own written procedures and staying inside their usual routines are more important than actually running the company, or at least, any particular revenue-generating department, and refusing to expedite any request, no matter how much the customary 6-week delay will cost the company, how many jobs will be lost as a consequence, or what the long-term effects on the company’s survival might be. Thus, a lot of line managers come to loathe the Human Resources department, and the feelings are most assuredly mutual. But the fact is a GOOD human resources rep is worth his or her weight in any valuable substance you’d care to name – and some of the best in the business work for UCLA…
The HR rep assigned to my unit, for example, provided me with invaluable insights into some of the long-running management and leadership issues afflicting our department, helped me with a range of discipline, evaluation and benefit questions that came up, and advised me on how to deal with my one significant personality clash within the management team. When the time came for me to leave the organization, we arranged to meet for the last time and went over most of the issues I discussed in my last post. However, we also covered my observations of the department, my unit, the people in each, and my professional opinions on the unit’s organization and how functions and positions could be better arranged to complete our mission.
During the conversation the tradition conflict become clearer than ever; with the frustrations of the HR people trying to help the line unit (which I was leaving) to function better, with fewer internal conflicts and fewer potential legal issues conflicting with the line unit’s desire to accomplish everything faster, cheaper, and with fewer intermediate steps. I don’t know if our HR rep will be able to use my insights into the department’s ongoing problems to resolve these conflicts, or to assist our Director in making our department more functional, more productive, or more efficient, but I know that I was able to get the right information into the right hands where it might do some good. Which is the difference between doing your last, most important duty to your employer, and just wasting a final hour of staff department time and making your exit...
To begin with, I should note that most line managers have a traditional (and understandable) antipathy for all staff departments, especially human resources. There is an unfortunate tendency in all human activity to consider your own duties and tasks to be the most important of any, and line managers often fall into the (bad) habit of assuming that just because they need (or want) something to happen at once, that it CAN happen at once, and anyone who tells them it can’t is simply lazy, incompetent, or secretly plotting to destroy them. A line manager, upon being told that a critical position may take four to six weeks to fill (when the opening is costing their department money every day someone does not do that job) may well jump to all of these conclusions at once, thus making a difficult working relationship even harder…
Human resources people, in fairness, do often suffer from the same syndrome, believing that following their own written procedures and staying inside their usual routines are more important than actually running the company, or at least, any particular revenue-generating department, and refusing to expedite any request, no matter how much the customary 6-week delay will cost the company, how many jobs will be lost as a consequence, or what the long-term effects on the company’s survival might be. Thus, a lot of line managers come to loathe the Human Resources department, and the feelings are most assuredly mutual. But the fact is a GOOD human resources rep is worth his or her weight in any valuable substance you’d care to name – and some of the best in the business work for UCLA…
The HR rep assigned to my unit, for example, provided me with invaluable insights into some of the long-running management and leadership issues afflicting our department, helped me with a range of discipline, evaluation and benefit questions that came up, and advised me on how to deal with my one significant personality clash within the management team. When the time came for me to leave the organization, we arranged to meet for the last time and went over most of the issues I discussed in my last post. However, we also covered my observations of the department, my unit, the people in each, and my professional opinions on the unit’s organization and how functions and positions could be better arranged to complete our mission.
During the conversation the tradition conflict become clearer than ever; with the frustrations of the HR people trying to help the line unit (which I was leaving) to function better, with fewer internal conflicts and fewer potential legal issues conflicting with the line unit’s desire to accomplish everything faster, cheaper, and with fewer intermediate steps. I don’t know if our HR rep will be able to use my insights into the department’s ongoing problems to resolve these conflicts, or to assist our Director in making our department more functional, more productive, or more efficient, but I know that I was able to get the right information into the right hands where it might do some good. Which is the difference between doing your last, most important duty to your employer, and just wasting a final hour of staff department time and making your exit...
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Before You Go…
How many of you out there have ever had an exit interview? To date, my working life has included about 22 years of full-time employment, and in the dozen or so jobs I’ve had so far (which I realize is too many for only 22 years – especially when you consider that one of those jobs lasted 5 years and two others were 3 years each) only two companies actually conducted an exit interview with me when I left. In one or two cases, where I had been laid off or asked to resign, I suppose my employers might have felt that I didn’t have much to tell them (they were wrong, in fact), but in the remaining eight cases, it was mostly a matter of the company not doing such interviews, my boss being too unprofessional to bother about one, or some other form of institutional failure…
When I left my job with Tosco in Phoenix I was so exasperated that no one was going to interview me (the company had turned down my request for an interview) that I wrote down all of my comments and sent it to our Director as a memo. But what I have since discovered is that almost no one seems to conduct these interviews; outside of very large and very regimented organizations (like my late employers) most people seem to feel that someone who has elected to leave the company is no longer relevant to the future of the organization, and if they’ve been laid off, asked to leave, or fired, there’s no point in even listening to them. Indeed, you’d better have them escorted off of the premises before they have a further bad influence on the rest of your people or, you know, steal something…
I’ll admit that if you’ve fired someone for gross incompetence, there may not be much point in trying to capture what they know about the organization. But even someone who does not do their job properly may still know things about the company that the management team doesn’t, and someone who has elected to leave voluntarily almost certainly does. The purpose of doing these interviews is not just to find out why someone has chosen to leave, but also what they know about the firm, what they think is positive, what they think needs work, where your organization is weak, and where it is strong, and so on. Because, let’s face it, it’s now or never…
From a management standpoint, the exit interview gives you a unique opportunity to look inside your own organization and find out what your employees really think about you and your policies. An employee who is leaving the company will tell you things they would never dare say when there was a chance that you would fire (or discipline) them; they’ll tell your human resources people things you would not believe. Conflicts between employees, abuses of power and privilege, unsuspected rivalries, and outright flaunting of company regulations (and sometimes the law) may come to light at this time. And then there’s the possibility that the departing employee hasn’t been doing the job you thought they were doing in the first place…
The bottom line is that like most feedback opportunities, the majority of all exit interviews will not produce anything spectacular, unexpected, or even interesting; but that one occasional example might contain a single nugget of information that could change your entire operation for the better – or save the company from destruction. It might seem tedious, expensive and time consuming to conduct those interviews (or just expensive, if you pay the human resource people to do them for you), but I have to ask if you can really afford to take the chance of missing that one special piece of information. Can you, in fact, afford to take the chance of ignoring your employees’ opinions in the hope that they don’t know anything you need to know? It’s possible, I suppose – but I for one would not want to bet the company on it…
When I left my job with Tosco in Phoenix I was so exasperated that no one was going to interview me (the company had turned down my request for an interview) that I wrote down all of my comments and sent it to our Director as a memo. But what I have since discovered is that almost no one seems to conduct these interviews; outside of very large and very regimented organizations (like my late employers) most people seem to feel that someone who has elected to leave the company is no longer relevant to the future of the organization, and if they’ve been laid off, asked to leave, or fired, there’s no point in even listening to them. Indeed, you’d better have them escorted off of the premises before they have a further bad influence on the rest of your people or, you know, steal something…
I’ll admit that if you’ve fired someone for gross incompetence, there may not be much point in trying to capture what they know about the organization. But even someone who does not do their job properly may still know things about the company that the management team doesn’t, and someone who has elected to leave voluntarily almost certainly does. The purpose of doing these interviews is not just to find out why someone has chosen to leave, but also what they know about the firm, what they think is positive, what they think needs work, where your organization is weak, and where it is strong, and so on. Because, let’s face it, it’s now or never…
From a management standpoint, the exit interview gives you a unique opportunity to look inside your own organization and find out what your employees really think about you and your policies. An employee who is leaving the company will tell you things they would never dare say when there was a chance that you would fire (or discipline) them; they’ll tell your human resources people things you would not believe. Conflicts between employees, abuses of power and privilege, unsuspected rivalries, and outright flaunting of company regulations (and sometimes the law) may come to light at this time. And then there’s the possibility that the departing employee hasn’t been doing the job you thought they were doing in the first place…
The bottom line is that like most feedback opportunities, the majority of all exit interviews will not produce anything spectacular, unexpected, or even interesting; but that one occasional example might contain a single nugget of information that could change your entire operation for the better – or save the company from destruction. It might seem tedious, expensive and time consuming to conduct those interviews (or just expensive, if you pay the human resource people to do them for you), but I have to ask if you can really afford to take the chance of missing that one special piece of information. Can you, in fact, afford to take the chance of ignoring your employees’ opinions in the hope that they don’t know anything you need to know? It’s possible, I suppose – but I for one would not want to bet the company on it…
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
They Diverted What?
Just two weeks ago my wife and I got our “Economic Stimulus Package” from the Federal government. It’s a whopping less than half a week’s total pay which will, in fact, not even cover the costs of our trip to Michigan later this week. I mean the gas, hotel bills, meals and car maintenance, here; the whole check does not represent even 5% of our total relocation costs. Still, having part of our travel expenses covered by a cheap political stunt is better than nothing, I suppose, and we will definitely be pumping back into the economy – paying for goods and services at gas stations, hotels, and roadside food stands. If there’s any left I plan to use the residue to purchase a snow blower once we arrive in East Lansing…
Have you gotten your “Economic Stimulus” check, otherwise known as a tax rebate, yet? Well, if not, you should probably check with any State, Federal or local agencies whom you owe money (at least if you haven’t been making your payments for a while). According to an article in USA Today about $2 billion of the rebates are being confiscated to pay child support, student loans, back taxes, and other things that the government thinks need the money more than you do. I’ll admit I have mixed feelings about this whole affair…
On the one hand, I don’t have much sympathy for deadbeat parents (we’ll be egalitarian here and include the tiny number of deadbeat mothers in with the vast majority of deadbeat dads) in the first place, and if you paid enough in taxes to qualify for one of these checks, you probably weren’t counting on it to survive anyway. I’m a bit more sympathetic to those who are defaulting on student loans and farm loans; the fact that some of these people have not been successful enough to repay the loans isn’t always their own fault, and in some cases I suspect that these folks need the money more than our government does. Especially since the whole $2 billion will only go to funding another two or three days in Iraq, anyway…
But there we come up against the big problem with this whole program. The country does, indeed, need some economic stimulus if we’re going to snap out of the current recession. It might seem as if one way to create more consumer spending is to just give money to people (and let them spend it), but somehow this never seems to work correctly; it didn’t earlier in the current administration, it didn’t during the Reagan years; in fact, it never has. This is because money pumped into the economy this way is only spent once, effectively: by the consumers who received it. If they spend it on the right products, it may have a small “ripple” effect, as retailers pay their distributors who pay manufacturers, but that’s as far as it is likely to go…
Suppose that instead, those same funds were spent on a Federal project to do any of the infrastructure development we desperately need in this country. For example, suppose we replace a few of those decaying highway bridges. The companies we hire to do the work have to pay their employees, their suppliers (people who make steel, concrete, paint and what not), and all of the fees, permits and insurance costs required. All of that spending results in additional spending, as suppliers pay their vendors, employees pay rent and buy consumer goods, and tax revenues are generated for cities and counties to support their own operations – not to mention what they might save on building new bridges…
This concept is called the “Multiplier Effect,” and is a common principle of macroeconomics. Depending on the conditions at the time, money injected into the economy in this fashion will generate between 2 and 5 times the impact of just giving money directly to the taxpayers (currently it’s about 4). It’s much more effective than a simple tax rebate in every sense except the political; politically the poor people see it as free money from the government and the wealthy see it as another opportunity to line their pockets at taxpayer expense. But at least this way our government is getting some of its overdue loan and tax payments back…
Have you gotten your “Economic Stimulus” check, otherwise known as a tax rebate, yet? Well, if not, you should probably check with any State, Federal or local agencies whom you owe money (at least if you haven’t been making your payments for a while). According to an article in USA Today about $2 billion of the rebates are being confiscated to pay child support, student loans, back taxes, and other things that the government thinks need the money more than you do. I’ll admit I have mixed feelings about this whole affair…
On the one hand, I don’t have much sympathy for deadbeat parents (we’ll be egalitarian here and include the tiny number of deadbeat mothers in with the vast majority of deadbeat dads) in the first place, and if you paid enough in taxes to qualify for one of these checks, you probably weren’t counting on it to survive anyway. I’m a bit more sympathetic to those who are defaulting on student loans and farm loans; the fact that some of these people have not been successful enough to repay the loans isn’t always their own fault, and in some cases I suspect that these folks need the money more than our government does. Especially since the whole $2 billion will only go to funding another two or three days in Iraq, anyway…
But there we come up against the big problem with this whole program. The country does, indeed, need some economic stimulus if we’re going to snap out of the current recession. It might seem as if one way to create more consumer spending is to just give money to people (and let them spend it), but somehow this never seems to work correctly; it didn’t earlier in the current administration, it didn’t during the Reagan years; in fact, it never has. This is because money pumped into the economy this way is only spent once, effectively: by the consumers who received it. If they spend it on the right products, it may have a small “ripple” effect, as retailers pay their distributors who pay manufacturers, but that’s as far as it is likely to go…
Suppose that instead, those same funds were spent on a Federal project to do any of the infrastructure development we desperately need in this country. For example, suppose we replace a few of those decaying highway bridges. The companies we hire to do the work have to pay their employees, their suppliers (people who make steel, concrete, paint and what not), and all of the fees, permits and insurance costs required. All of that spending results in additional spending, as suppliers pay their vendors, employees pay rent and buy consumer goods, and tax revenues are generated for cities and counties to support their own operations – not to mention what they might save on building new bridges…
This concept is called the “Multiplier Effect,” and is a common principle of macroeconomics. Depending on the conditions at the time, money injected into the economy in this fashion will generate between 2 and 5 times the impact of just giving money directly to the taxpayers (currently it’s about 4). It’s much more effective than a simple tax rebate in every sense except the political; politically the poor people see it as free money from the government and the wealthy see it as another opportunity to line their pockets at taxpayer expense. But at least this way our government is getting some of its overdue loan and tax payments back…
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