The Ethics of Slackers

I suppose I should call this post “the Ethics of Teaching Slackers,” since that’s what’s really going on. But I’ve been associated with what might charitably be called the Slacker Culture for going on forty years now, and I know from personal experience that there’s really more to this question than just Mr. Authority Figure taking on the Kids Who Are Way Cooler Than You Are. So let’s consider both sides of the issue and the ethics involved as a career slacker tries to cope with being a teacher who has to assign grades to slackers…

In the class I taught this summer, one of the assignments was a term paper – of a sort. I didn’t feel comfortable giving my students a full-sized term-project in a seven-week summer session, so I made it a three-page assignment; just enough to get the kids started in doing literature searches and article critiques. It’s the sort of thing that will be a piece of cake to anyone who had to do library research in high school (the way I did), and a useful introduction to this type of assignment for anyone who didn’t. You can’t get a degree in any social science without doing this type of research, let alone an advanced degree, and if you’ve never done this before it can be a bit intimidating. In fact, I had one student who needed my help learning how to use Google Scholar and how to access full-text versions of the documents on line, and several others who wanted to go over their early drafts with me before turning them in…

But on the other side of the room, one of my students has failed to hand in this assignment. It’s possible, of course, that he’s been eaten by giant wombats or called away on urgent and personal business before he could turn it in, but it’s also possible that he just figures (correctly) that he will pass the class with or without the points available. In which case, spending the five to ten hours he’d need to complete the assignment is probably seems less urgent than the 5,000 or so things a young man could be doing two weeks before the start of Fall Semester. The real question is what I’m supposed to do about it…

On the one hand, by syllabus for this class sets out the point totals available and the number you need to hit each grade level. Based on the points this student has received to this point, a passing grade on the final is all he would need to hit the 2.5 level on MSU’s grade scale, which is definitely passing, and in fact he gained enough points to crack into the 3.0 level without the paper. With even two-thirds of the points from the paper he’d easily crack the 3.5 level and pick up the extra grade points – not to mention whatever benefit he might actually gain from doing the paper. But, on the other hand, if he’s satisfied with that passing grade, he could conceivably use the extra time to prepare for harder classes he plans to take this fall, work extra hours at his summer job to have more cash on hand or pay down debts, or spend time with family he won’t be able to see again until December…

The other question, of course, is what message this sends to my other students, present and future. Clearly, blowing off an entire assignment is not the most respectful gesture in the world, and it doesn’t seem fair to all of the students who actually did as I asked them and completed the assignment. Of course, almost all of them got higher grades than our AWOL slacker will, and gained more experience and better reputations within the Department, all of which will help them in their future careers. But the question of whether I can ethically allow this matter to slide remains. Do I have a responsibility to the Department, the University, or my other students to compel everyone to complete the assignments I give them? Or do I have a responsibility to just set out the rules and then keep score and let the chips fall where they will?

It’s worth thinking about…

The Grad School Diaries: Giant Wombat Syndrome

“You know, kid, you need to get out more,” the giant talking wombat remarked, sounding just like a young Harrison Ford. “I think you’re starting to lose it.”

“No, really?” I replied, sarcastically. “You’re just saying that because I haven’t slept more than a couple of hours a night in weeks and I’m so stressed out that my old job is starting to sound like heaven on Earth.”

“Well, there’s also the fact that you’re arguing with your hallucinations,” the giant talking wombat suggested, helpfully.

“I always argue with my hallucinations,” I replied. “Especially the ones that look like giant anthropomorphic marsupials. At least, I assume that’s what you are. I don’t even know what a wombat actually looks like.”

It’s finals week of First Semester, and I’m in sort of a fugue state; stressed and tired enough that I’m not completely sure what is going on. I’d be doing better if the giant talking wombat would stop interrupting me, though. At least, I’m pretty sure I would be…

“Remind me why you’re doing this, again?” the giant talking wombat requested. “What are those things, anyway?”

“Flash cards,” I replied, finishing another one and adding it to the growing pile in front of me. “You use them to drill yourself on things you’re trying to remember. Much more efficient than flipping through the textbook every time you want to review something.”

“Like those things kids use when they’re trying to learn the alphabet?”

“Actually, you see these associated with any memory-based discipline,” I replied, primly. “Age doesn’t enter into it.”

“I thought this was a math-based discipline,” the giant talking wombat replies, puzzled.

I had thought so too, especially when I saw all of the calculations, ratios, and other numeric factors involved. But as the weeks passed it rapidly became clear that much of the analyses done in our profession are computerized these days. While we still have to generate the numbers, the critical factor now is remembering (and understanding) what they mean. I tell the giant talking wombat this. It looks confused.

“So this whole class is just read and regurgitate?” it asks. “Where’s the point in that?”

“It’s a matter of learning the vocabulary,” I reply, rising to the challenge like a good contrarian, no matter what I might think of the class. “You can’t tell someone that their new program is too Theory X if you don’t know what Theory X is in the first place, now can you?”

The giant talking wombat considers. “But in practice, can’t you just look things up as you need them?” it asks.

“Not if you don’t know you need to look,” I reply, decisively. “The fact is, this class is an overview of a subject that people really DO spend decades examining, and it can’t actually hope to do more than just get us started thinking about these issues. It’s going to take a lot more nights like this one before I’m even ready to join the conversation.”

“Not if you don’t start taking better care of yourself,” the giant talking wombat replies, returning to his original topic.

I sigh deeply and grab the little bottle of Wide-Awake from the corner of my desk. Caffeine does not work on me (because of all of the ephedrine-based medicines I was given as a child), but this allegedly all-natural herbal crap will at least keep me from dozing off or hallucinating. So I use it, even if it does taste the way industrial-strength disinfectant (think of the liquid they put in porta-potties) smells…

After a few moments the room stops spinning and the horrible chemical flavor recedes. I take a cautious look around: no sign of my giant talking wombat. I sigh with relief. I might still succeed in getting ready for the final on Friday…

As long as the pack of man-eating bananas in my bathroom doesn’t come up here and start bothering me again…

Line It Up

I’ve spent a lot of time in this space talking about how important it is to stay on the good side of your customers, not annoy them, and so on; I’ve even written at length about the importance of not asking your customers to wait in long lines in order to make a purchase, especially if there are unused cash registers sitting idle and available personnel who are standing around, doing whatever, and not lifting a finger to help people check out. But, I must admit, I’ve never broken the problem down into its component parts; to me, an excessively long wait to make a purchase is just an undifferentiated annoyance, and all I’m interested in is leaving as soon as possible. But now it turns out that the time spent waiting in line may not be the most important part of this issue…

According to a story reported this week in The Wall Street Journal, ongoing research at MIT indicates that what really annoys people isn’t so much how long they’ve been waiting in line – people have poor internal senses of time, anyway – but rather the feeling of injustice when someone who got in line after they did is served first. Like when you’re waiting in line at the supermarket and the line next to yours moves three times faster (three people check out before the idiot in front of you can finish writing out their check). This turns out to be the basis for all of those single-line systems – like the one in most banks, for example – where the next person in line goes to the next available check stand, teller window, or whatever. This eliminates the perception of people getting ahead of you in line, and is apparently more effective even that just opening more check stands…

The implications for any retail or customer service operation are staggering. Granted, there’s not going to be much that a small business can do about this situation; you’ve only got so many feet of sales floor or operations space, and so many people you can put on a register. But large retailers like department stores and supermarkets could certainly adopt such a system, and so could most fast-food operations. The so-called “Big Box” operations would have to modify the system a bit to accommodate customers pushing flatbed carts and forklifts and so on, but something like this would be great for “hypermarket” operations like Meijer and Super Wal-Mart, not to mention K-Mart and Target stores. How much faster such a layout would make these stores is highly debatable, but ultimately it doesn’t matter, because what’s actually important isn’t how long the wait is, but how fairly your customer believe your handling of the process is…

Now, if your company is not in the retail sector, you may not find this research to be especially interesting. If your business model does not involve people standing in line and waiting to have interactions with your personnel, you might think that these suggestions can’t help you. Let me suggest, however, that they key finding here isn’t about lines or routing them, but about the people waiting in them. Is there some way that your company could improve your customers’ perception of how fairly you treat them? Granted, it might take something more complex than a single, serpentine line and a sign that says “please wait here for next available register,” but can you think of anything that might help convince people that they really are getting served ahead of the people who got in line after they did? It might be worth considering…

Business Diversification

One of the common strategies used to increase the volume of sales a company is making is to expand operations into additional business sectors, either by re-positioning the products you already have, finding new markets or new distribution channels, or by introducing new products to the mixture your company carries/makes/promotes. So, for example, if you company sells coffee-based beverages, you could diversify your operations by introducing food items, making other types of beverage, or selling beans and coffee-related merchandise (such as coffee makers) on a retail basis. Alternately, if you make large automobiles and sales of such vehicles are down, you could diversify by using the same manufacturing division to produce small cars, airplanes, boats, or gasoline- and diesel-powered machinery of other types. But when all else fails, you can always jump into a new business sector altogether…

A story being reported this week on Fox News Online details the strategy used by a Hummer dealership in Illinois, which when faced with flagging sales and attempts by General Motors to sell off the entire Hummer division, decided to offer retail products for sale in their dealership. Specifically, they decided to start selling firearms and ammunition right off of the same sales floor from which they normally sell cars – or giant SUVs, at least. Technically, both products are retail sales; both require special documentation and ownership licenses in many states, and both are noted for resulting in a lot of accidental deaths when operated by careless people. But beyond those obvious similarities, the business times don’t appear to have much in common – at first…

The owner of this now unique operation claims that because Hummers are popular with hunters, fishermen and other outdoors types, the two business models produce natural synergy. This may even be true, at least as regards some significant portion of the company’s customer base. Certainly, anyone who actually intends to use their Hummer to reach remote hunting camps (or even remote camp locations where encounters with unfriendly wildlife are possible) might find the combined dealership and gun store to be convenient. For that matter, persons who are buying a Hummer to compensate for certain personal insecurities might also be interested in purchasing firearms, and this will provide them with a convenient means of doing so. A much more immediate question would appear to be whether this combination is really a good idea; to wit, should we be selling people products that boost their self-esteem by making them feel invulnerable at the same time we sell them products that give them the ability to destroy things?

Or, on the other side of the issue, should business owners start looking for non-traditional ways to diversify their businesses using their existing facilities and equipment? I’ve seen examples such as a combination coffee house and neighborhood legal clinic (the coffee is reasonably priced, and the legal assistance is as cheap as they can make it) and a combination Laundromat and singles bar (meet new people while you do the wash) – although that last example combines two of the most depressing human activities possible into a single nightmare. Perhaps in the future we will see new combined business models, such as a weight-loss clinic and clothing store (work towards a smaller clothes size, then reward yourself by buying them) or a combination movie theater and restaurant (dinner and a show) or a combination college book store, debt management counseling center and support group (if you were in college these days, you’d understand)…

Granted, some of these may sound like silly ideas. But if they make the difference between closing your doors, putting all of your employees out of work, and having to go do something less enjoyable for a living and staying in business, it’s hard to imagine what would be wrong about such operations. Perhaps the time has finally come for that store I dreamed up back in my Undergraduate days, which would carry both slingshots and chunks of rump steak (and other things that go “splat” when they hit something). I can see it now…

“Ya-HA! Ya-HA!” (Twang!) SPLAT!

You know what they say: if it's good for the economy, it's good for America...

The Ethics of Money

If your profession comes anywhere near the subject of Business, you’re going to have to get used to the idea of people ragging on you as a mercenary, a robber baron, an evil captain of industry, or just someone whose only connection to ethical behavior was a two-day seminar you took during MBA school – assuming that you weren’t out sick those days. Unlike such noble professions as a Doctor (healing the sick and reducing human suffering!) or a Teacher (fighting ignorance, illiteracy, and bad penmanship!) or a Peace Officer (fighting crime and defending our society!) or even a Lawyer (defending the innocent, punishing the guilty, and driving a really nice car!) most people seem to feel that there’s something wrong, evil, or at least ignoble about a career in business. I mean, we’re just dedicating ourselves to the pursuit of filthy money, aren’t we? What’s good or noble about that?

Well, as previously noted in this space, a successful company isn’t just an engine for putting huge amounts of money into the CEO’s pockets. A good company provides jobs for hundreds or even thousands of ordinary people, as well as all of the people who sell anything to those employees, including houses, cars, food, energy and personal items. A lot of companies also have charity programs that support the local Red Cross or United Way or similar agencies, but even without such support the company’s tax payments will also support the state and local governments, contributing to such non-trivial aspects of the local quality of life as roads, schools, police and fire coverage, and social programs. All across America you can find towns based around a single large factory that employs half of the community directly and most of the rest of it indirectly, as well as paying for all of the local services. And increasingly, tragically, you can find remnants of towns, now little more than ghost towns, where the plant has closed and the former residents have been forced to give up the lives they loved and move away…

Then too, we should consider all of the new technologies and products that have been produced by for-profit companies over the past few centuries. It’s probably true that most of the new science is discovered by pure empirical research, but the application of those new discoveries is usually left to private companies and their R&D sections, and without that basic profit motive most of the comforts we take for granted in modern life, from electric lights and telephones to plasma-screen televisions and laptop computers, would not exist. There would be fewer types of fabric for clothing, fewer types of food (and less of them available), less convenient transportation (and less of that available), less comfortable houses and offices, and even fewer medications (and far higher prices on the ones that exist) if not for those money-grubbing companies that make their living producing these things…

One could argue, I supposed, that capitalism and for-profit companies aren’t necessary to produce all of these things, but history has already provided some hair-raising rebuttals in Soviet-era Russia, contemporary Cuba, and parts of China that are generally kept away from international scrutiny. There are other ways to motivate people to perform and companies to produce, but none of them have ever worked in both large-scale and long-term operations. Until such time as a post-scarcity economy arrives (and the jury is still out as to whether that will be a blessing or a curse), the only practical way to generate the things we want seems to be paying for them – and for that you’re going to need for-profit businesses and the people who run them…

Now, to be sure, no one is claiming that making money is a holy crusade, or that the people who want to do that are a bunch of saints. But I would argue that even if the world won’t be a better place tomorrow because we made a lot of money today, it won’t be a better place if we just sit here and starve, either. In fact, if we accept that business gives millions (or hundreds of millions) of people the chance to live good and comfortable lifestyles, drives the development of new science and technology, supports education and the arts, and contributes to the sort of life that most people actually want to live, it’s hard to say what is actually evil or even wrong about the business sector…

It’s worth thinking about…

The Grad School Diaries: Taylor’s Serenity Theory

Here comes the chill:
It’s not exactly unexpected; one of the things Michigan is famous (or infamous) for is really crappy weather, and particularly for cold winters loaded with snow. When we made the decision to leave California and come here one of the most common questions we got was how would we ever be able to cope with all of the snow. Well, we’re about to find out: it’s December 1, 2008, and the snow has arrived…

There were a couple of flurries earlier this semester, but nothing that actually stuck to the ground once it arrived. Last night saw a drop in the temperature, however, and the familiar cold rain turned into snow, with big, fat flakes swirling and flowing around in the beams of light. This morning I was treated to an experience so alien to a man raised in California that I might as well have been walking on the Moon: I cleared my driveway. With over 4 inches of snow overnight it’s not really passable, at least to conventional vehicles like the Torrent. Fortunately, I had planned ahead for this contingency, and there was a new snow-thrower waiting in the garage, all gassed up and ready to do. Specifically, a Craftsman 2-stage snow-thrower from Sears, with 7 forward gears, 2 reverse gears, an auxiliary electrical starter (for those occasions when the pull-starter just won’t cut it), and enough power to clear the heaviest, wettest snow…

I suppose I should be taking this harder than I am; there are times when I miss the South Bay so much I physically ache, but most of the time I find I’ve been too busy with reading, writing, and sheer blind panic to notice anything else. And then there are all of these new experiences; all of the things I’ve never done or seen before. Not snow on the ground, specifically, or even falling snow; I’ve seen both of those many times before. Things like driving in a snowstorm, for example, or scattering traction-melt (rock salt plus other chemicals) on the cleared driveway and sidewalks to prevent more snow from accumulating…

There’s an odd sense of calm that applies to times like these, and tasks like this one. I’m in deep trouble right now; behind in all three classes and completely bewildered by the hardest one. And even if I can complete the challenge of the next two weeks, pass both finals, get my term paper completed and turned in, lead my cohort to a successful completion of our holiday party performance, and pass all three classes, I’m still just getting started. It’s only one semester of the 10 to 12 (or 15 to 18; it depends on your point of view), or “10 miles behind me, and 10,000 more to go,” as James Taylor once put it…

If I could bring myself to believe in a deity who meddles, I’d probably be praying for mercy 24/7 these days; if I could bring myself to believe in anti-depressants that work I’d probably be grokked out of my gourd just as often. But as I guide the roaring snow-clearance machine through the drifts, with the flakes still swirling around me on the cold wind, I can’t help but feel a strange sense of serenity, as though I were part of it all, and all of this was supposed to be. Or, to quote Mr. Taylor again:

“There’s a song that they sing
When they take to the highway;
A song that they sing
When they take to the sea;
A song that they sing
Of their home in the sky;
Maybe you can believe it
If it helps you to sleep;
But singing works just fine for me…”

It’s probably just resignation, or at most fatalism, not really serenity. But as I shut off the engine and listen to the winter world around me, with the wind as the only sound, there’s a rightness about it all. This may not end in triumph; it may not end well at all. But for now, at least, I know why I am here. And what I must do…

First Mover or Follow-on?

The concept that being the first company (or division, or corporation, or individual, etc.) to adopt a new business model, start using a new technology, or move into a new product category contains inherent risks should be immediately obvious even to readers who have never studied business. For that first company (sometimes called a “First Mover”) there is no experience to fall back on; no way of knowing whether the technology will work, the products will sell, or the business will turn a profit. Strategically, of course, there are some inherent advantages in being the first company into a new market segment, not least of which is that if you are the only ones making that product, you are also the only ones who can sell it or make money doing so. But a lot of companies prefer to take the position of waiting to see if the product is going to be a success, before they move into the market with their own version. And sometimes they will do better than the firm that originated the category…

Several very familiar examples can be found in the American brewing industry, due in large part to the ongoing rivalry between Miller Brewing and Anheuser-Busch. It began in 1982, when Anheuser-Busch introduced Bud Light to compete with Miller’s Miller Lite (Bud Light now sells three (3) times as much), and has been repeated with non-alcoholic beer (Miller’s Sharp’s followed by Anheuser-Busch’s O’Doul’s) and lime-flavored light beers (Miller Chill followed by Bud Light Lime). It’s hard to argue that this strategy has worked out very well for Anheuser-Busch, especially considering that 1 year after its introduction their Bud Lime Light is out-selling the first-mover product eleven to one, according to this article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. But according to the same article, the wars are about to start up again, with the introduction of “Select 55” ultra-light beer to complete with Miller’s “MGD 64”…

By the sort of odd coincidence that only happens in blog posts, bad movies and real life, I happen to know the executive who was in charge of marketing for Anheuser-Busch when they invented the first “ultra-light” or low-carb beer, called Michelob Ultra. At the time the idea was a total flop, since most of the demographic of people who drink beer did not overlap with the demographic of people who wish to reduce their carbohydrate intake. But then came the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, and all of the spin-off diet methods, and suddenly even people who didn’t know exactly what a carbohydrate was were trying to consume fewer of them. Michelob Ultra is now selling approximately 3.5 million barrels a year (that’s somewhere around 340 million six-packs), and MGD 64 has taken off in ways that people in the primary beer-drinkers demographic could never have imagined. Thus, it’s only logical to expect Anheuser-Busch to dust off its own ultra-low product research and attempt to take advantage of that growing new product segment…

Eventually, of course, this process must reach bottom. There are only a finite number of calories and carbohydrates in a bottle of beer (only 55 left in Select 55, in fact) and when those are gone, there is no way to venture into negative numbers. But the basic principle will continue; we can comfortably predict that any new product category either of these companies develops will be invaded by the other as soon as it develops that there are any customers out there who are willing to pay for that product. Which brings us to the point of today’s harangue: do not assume that just because you’ve expended all of the time and effort to pioneer a new product category that you will then be able to maintain sole possession of that category for any length of time. Eventually, someone else is going to notice that you are making money selling that product and decide to cut themselves a slice of that pie, which means that your strategy MUST include plans for what to do when follow-on products began to enter your market, at least if you want to remain successful…

Alternately, I suppose, you could just wait for someone else to invent a new product category and follow them into it. But if you adopt that strategy, you’d better be prepared to outperform the first-mover in product quality, product availability, price, or at least marketing. And you should be ready to respond when they innovate the next big thing…