b.cognosco

This may explain some of my outsourcing troubles

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Although this woman speaks much better English than anyone I dealt with.

Paying For Outsourcing

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 22:10:13 GMT

Outsourcing my burdensome tasks is very appealing, and I have already begun to make inquiries about a couple of specific tasks I want done. But even though the Indo-Asian outsource firms tend to have lower labor rates than comparable US firms, they still don't work for free. So I need money to pay for them.

I don't yet have products or services that generate regular, dependable income that can pay for these projects, and I don't want a net add to my monthly expenses. The idea is to make things better, not worse. So what to do?

I started with a review of the monthly charges for business services I already use. There was plenty of fat in there. I immediately called Sprint and knocked $90 off my monthly cellular bill. I contacted my shopping cart service (for another site I run) and downgraded the service to a Basic package for a savings of $40 per month.

That $130 will get me a Basic-10 package at GetFriday.com, which includes 10 hours of labor per month for whatever tasks I need. I've identified another $99 monthly fee that I can probably eliminate outright, but I'm not sure just yet. And I think I can move a couple of small loans to one of those 0-interest-for-a-year credit card deals to free another $40-$50 per month,

With about an hour of effort I've freed $130 and identified another $140. That's enough to get me 20-25 hours of labor per month for various projects. That's a good start.

The 4-Hour Work Week

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 04:58:53 GMT

Got a new book over the holidays - "The 4-hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferris. One of my consulting colleagues recommended it a few weeks ago as being a good source for tips and ideas for some of the areas I've been investigating as a sideline the past few years. I love the book. I read most of it on a 2-hour flight from Atlanta to San Antonio, so it's clearly a fast read. But it's also a practical book, containing specific and usable ideas and recommendations in the areas of personal automation, personal outsourcing, product development, and removing yourself as a bottleneck.

This is what I call a "connector" or gap-filling book. I think you have to be at a certain point in your thinking on these areas in order for it to resonate with you. I've spent more time than I care to admit thinking about and poking around the edges of this stuff and made very little progress. I've read numerous books on time management and internet marketing and product development and PPC advertising and such. I've conducted a few of my own experiments. I've tried to find assistants and sources for doing tasks that are necessary but burdensome and low priority for me. But it just never worked like I wanted. There was never a serviceable "big picture" I could latch onto and I never got that mental "click" that happens when a concept gels in your mind and you can begin to make it your own. I don't know why this is so hard in some things and so easy in others, but I've learned to keep striving for that "click" and I know it when I feel it.

“4-hour Workweek” was a constant stream of little connections and examples that fit together to form a proper big picture, such that things which previously seemed isolated and disconnected are now linked in an overall vision. This is important for me as I have no energy for pursuing small things, no matter their potential, when I can't see a clear contribution to a the bigger goal.

I don't have any interest in copying Ferris' global vagabond lifestyle. But his approach to creating a low-pressure, low-risk, low-involvement business structure is compelling - especially if you have already been struggling to do many of the things he discusses. If you haven't, Ferris' claims may seem like just so much additional BS in a world already filled with it. But I don't think they are. My goal for 2008 is to implement as many of Ferris' strategies as possible, starting with the identification and outsourcing of my "boat-anchor" tasks and moving up to higher-level functions such as product design, marketing, etc. I will outsource as much of this as possible, and catalog my progress and failures here. It will be nice to have a theme for blog entries again.

Amazing Discovery - Innovation Is Not A Strategy

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Thu, 17 May 2007 21:34:13 GMT

The cover story for the May 3 issue of BusinessWeek was "World's Most Innovative Companies" The big point was that the idea of running around as a multi-millionaire CEO chanting the word innovation as if it would magically alter your organization has now been recognized as another in the long line of stupid management fads.

[...] At the behest of an "ideation" consultant, he donned a blue superhero costume—cape, tights, and all—to put a little extra oomph behind the company's innovation-boosting campaign. "I guess the thinking was that if you free people from the norm, you'll unleash a torrent of creativity," says Scott Anthony, president of Innosight, a consulting firm co-founded by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen. Anthony refused to name the company because it was a client. "Innovation Man led to a lot of laughs," he quips, "but it didn't lead to a lot of innovation."

The same might be said for many gimmicks that companies have tried over the past few years in their attempts to boost growth. Suddenly trendy, innovation took on the flavor of an elixir, as companies raced to hire "chief innovation officers" and build innovation centers complete with purple-painted walls and conference rooms with funny names. Ford Motor Co. (F) boasted in a press release about its new Innovation Acceleration Center in Dearborn, Mich.: "It's amazing what a room filled with radio-controlled cars, a 3-ft. Statue of Liberty made of Legos, and some comfy couches can do to stir the imagination." [...]

According to the article many CEOs, having failed at turning their billion-dollar behemoths into innovation engines, are experiencing "innovation fatigue." I am shocked! Shocked, I say. Shocked to learn that innovation is not a commodity that can be ordered up like Papa John's Pizza. Shocked to learn that innovation doesn't exist on its own like, say, cotton.

It turns out that innovation is actually a result - something that happens after you change every aspect of your stodgy, corrupt, inefficient, overbearing, outsourced, badly managed global corporation where everyone spends 80 percent of their time in meetings, 20 percent of their time doing reports, 10 percent of their time fixing stuff someone else did wrong, and 5 percent of their time doing something valuable that a customer will actually pay for. (I know, that's 115%. That's called increasing productivity. Guess which 15% gets dropped when your average, everyday human realizes they can only give 100% today.)

And this turns out to be very, very hard.

But there are a few innovative companies. And they're innovative because, well, because they just are. Because they actually do the hard things most companies can't, or won't, do. Because they focus on things far more tangible than "being innovative." Things like finding and hiring talented employees and then not stomping on them or burning them out. Things like actually listening to employees with good ideas. And things like not letting the accountants and lawyers decide about what does and does not get done.

Mostly, innovators just seem to understand that innovation is a fundamental result, that comes from getting the fundamentals of running a business right. What a shocker.

Steve Hannaford Tells Us Why Chrysler is Dead

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:00:13 GMT

The US auto industry is in turmoil - rising gas prices, changing buyer tastes, stiffer environmental laws, and massive labor costs, among other things - have cost US automakers tens of billions in losses in recent years. And now the pompous jackasses at Daimler-Benz have killed Chrysler. It's bad enough that my beloved IBM ThinkPads have been sold to Lenovo - I can't even imagine buying a Chinese-made Jeep! Chrysler was in trouble when Daimler bought them in 1998, but the Germans were supposed to make it better, not spend $40 billion to make it worse.

Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” may well be at play here. In fact, then entire auto industry may be heading for fundamental change not only in product design, but in who it sells to and how [see Shaping the Future by Charles Stross.] What Hannaford describes is very much a “Barbarians at the Gate” scenario. Pay particular attention to his analysis of what Cerberus Capital (the distasteful but quite necessary carrion eaters of the capitalist world) will do with the decaying corpse. Oh, and you can be sure that somewhere the government (that means you and me) will get pegged to pickup the tab for some significant portion of this fiasco.

The Chrysler deal

What to say about the Chrysler deal that already hasn't been said. A few thoughts:

The deal was even worse for Daimler than the putative $7.4 billion that was announced. That sum was just for show, a pitri enough remnant of the $36 billion Daimler paid for Chrysler. What Daimler will receive for the Chrysler division when all is said and done is nothing - in fact it will pay over half a billion dollars for Cerberus Capital Management to take the US automaker off its hands. As we've said before, this makes the merger the 1998 Daimler-Chrysler "merger" in year the worst deal ever. As one commentator said on NPR, "It like when you have a broken down car in your front yard, and pay someone to haul it away."

The deal is likely to end up in the chop shop. The valuable bits will be sold off eventually, and the brand names (especially Jeep) may be attractive to, say, a Chinese company. Cerberus will be ruthless in cutting pensions and healthcare costs. It may operate a much reduced business, with SUVs and pickups as the main assets, at least for a while. It will dump dealers mercilessly, lay off workers, and move more operations overseas. And, like the airlines, it will plead extreme duress to outflank the unions.

Meanwhile, Cerberus will suck the company dry, so that the investors get their money back with a hefty profit quickly. It set up a labyrinth of holding companies to preserve the good assets from an eventual bankruptcy, much as was done at Kmart.

It will be curious to see if the company has any development in the pipeline, now that Daimler will have all the R&D assets. It's hard to believe that, for example, a hybrid or electric car, or even a cool sports car or luxury vehicle could originate form a stripped-down Chrysler.

buying a company that looks like it is in freefall. What value will a five-year warranty have, for example, if the company could close its doors at any time. And how motivated will workers be to make dependable cars when their health benefits and pay are threatened?

It's hard to imagine a renaissance, especially in new product areas. And it seems clear that with $5 gasoline looming, auto companies are going to have to adapt quickly in the next decade, something Chrysler is certainly not ready to do.

As for Cerberus, it's interesting to speculate on their motivation. They have been make increasing bets in the auto industry. Lat year they bought 51% of GMAC, General Motors' financing subsidiary. They recently bought Tower Automotive for $1 billion. They also one auto parts suppliers CTA Acoustics and GDX Automotive, and were in hot pursuit of Delphi, the parts maker spun off from GM. Do they think they can derive some synergy form these vaguely related firms and weld them into a new auto empire? Call me a skeptic on that one. These guys are investors, not "car guys."

For Daimler, it's a retreat from an attempt at world dominance. Like Ford and GM, Daimler's dreams of profitable investment in other companies have become a liability. No synergy, but plenty of culture clash and inner turmoil, has made both brands-Mercedes and Chrysler- weaker. Meanwhile, the single-minded, organic -growth approach of Toyota and Honda seems to be the winning one.

IBM Rumored to be Planning Unprecedented Offshoring Switch for 2007

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Fri, 11 May 2007 03:17:26 GMT

I worked for IBM from 1995 to 1998. During that time I met some great people and had the privilege of working on more than one world-class project. As part of the benefits package I was allowed to buy IBM stock at a discount, and I did so. A few years ago I sold the stock off, as it had stagnated for a while and my general fondness for the company had dwindled. I still have friends there, many of them working for IBM Global Services. Now Robert Cringely reports that Big Blue is planning to axe more than 100,000 people from IGS, moving all the work offshore:

I, Cringely:The Pulpit - Lean and Mean
[...]
The IBM project I am writing about is called LEAN and the first manifestation of LEAN was this week's 1,300 layoffs at Global Services, which generated almost no press. Thirteen hundred layoffs from a company with more than 350,000 workers is nothing, so the yawning press reaction is not unexpected. But this week's "job action," as they refer to it inside IBM management, was as much as anything a rehearsal for what I understand are another 100,000+ layoffs to follow, each dribbled out until some reporter (that would be me) notices the growing trend, then dumped en masse when the jig is up, but no later than the end of this year.[...]

This cannot be good. As Cringely notes, offshoring of this scale creates massive communication and support problems - at least if the customer is in the US. My experience with BellSouth's lame, dysfunctional, globalized tech support has been a disaster. Dell, same story. In fact, if you have ever had a good experience with offshore tech support I'd like to hear about it. But more importantly, if Cringely is right IBM management is going to axe 100,000 jobs knowing full well that it may cripple the company. I don't care if the stock price rockets upward for some brief period. I'm glad I no longer have any financial stake in Big Blue.

It's Not a Rate Increase, It's a Reclassification

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Mon, 07 May 2007 16:10:08 GMT

The new AT&T - "We're back. And it's just like nothing has changed."

AT&T now charges eight minutes for one of these one-minute calls in Missouri
Jo Ann Weitkamp knew something was wrong. The minutes on her prepaid telephone calling card were disappearing faster than she was talking.

Weitkamp, 72, lives in an apartment for seniors in Warrenton. Every few months, she visits a Sam's Club store and pays about $28 to add 1,000 minutes to her calling card. She's found that an inexpensive way to keep in touch with family members.

Until now.

Since February, AT&T has been charging Missouri customers eight minutes on their prepaid calling cards for each minute they talk to someone in Missouri.

The charge formerly was one minute for each minute called.

[...]

"We're following the law, and this is something we're required to do by the FCC," said Amanda Ray, a spokeswoman in Dallas for AT&T.

She says the change is not a rate increase.

"It's a reclassification," Ray said. [...]

According to the article, no one regulates phone card rates. Not the state of MO, not the FCC, nobody.

The problem here isn't the rate, it's the deception. AT&T wants to be allowed to change rates without state permission. Fine. Do that. But don't lie about it. Don't throw in some bogus multiplication factor when you agreed to provide per-minute charges.

There are two industries that deserve to be uttelry destroyed - the music industry and the telcos. They are both saturated with an entitlement mentality that defies description, and are populated by lying rat-bastards of the highest order. Good riddance to them both.