Category Archives: Efficiency

Models

Automation has been a catch word in business for a long time. It has been and continues to be viewed as one of the best ways for businesses to go faster and to save money. I can remember when “office automation” was the automation or application that was the driving force for business. Now it seems to be words like “robots” or “self-driving / healing / whatever” or “artificial intelligence” and the like are the automation applications de rigueur. With this in mind I’m going to talk about models. Not the kind that walk down the fashion runways and seem to dominate all forms of social media (for reasons that I still can’t quite fathom), but the kind of models that can continue to help simplify and speed up business, in the face of an ever more complex environment.

I first learned about the value of models in the Economics courses that I took in college. It was put forth that the best way to learn about the various specific market forces was to create simplified models of the complex real environment. Once the various specific forces were understood, more and more complex models could be created where the primary and secondary interactions between these forces could be estimated or observed. Regardless of how complex you tried to make the model, it was always simpler than the real environment. It was also shown that a relatively simple model could provide a very accurate representation of the system and environment as a whole.

This drove the idea that you could create a model that could very closely approximate the real world. In this way you could get a very good answer to your economic question, without the significant over-head complexity, time, effort, etc., of trying to account for every possible detail. The most recent utilization of models for the representation of a complex system that I have seen are the various models that meteorologists use for weather prediction.

What I haven’t seen in quite some time is the use of models in business.

We are all aware to the “Fast, Good, Cheap – pick two” scenario of business. With continued focus on quality and costs, I get the feeling that “Fast” is paying the price (if you pardon the pun) in the equation. If you don’t believe me, just ask, or watch how long it takes to get a quote or price for any sort of technology product that you are either selling or buying.

I like to joke about “Gobeli’s Laws of Business” in positing how things should be. Sometimes it gets me in trouble. Sometimes it gets me ignored. Occasionally however, sometimes someone listens. This is similar to my wife’s reactions to my “Gobeli’s Laws of Domestic and Marital Tranquility”, except for the occasionally having someone listen part.  

My position for business is this, if it takes more than a business day – that’s eight hours, not twenty-four hours, to either create or receive a quote, it’s taking too long. You will find yourself at a competitive disadvantage. You had better find a way to speed up your quotation and pricing process. Because, while coming in second in a multi-contestant race is admirable, it is usually only the winner that gets the customer’s order.

As technology continues to be one of the primary drivers of product, business and market evolution, the ability to configure this new technology into usable customer platforms and applications continues to grow in demand as well. Again, if you don’t believe me, just look at the number of engineers that are involved in both the quotation and evaluation processes for any technology-oriented businesses. Engineers seem to be taking on a bigger and broader roles in the commercial process.

Needless to say, this concerns me.

In addition to the “Good, Fast, Cheap” product output trade-offs, there are also a couple of other business trade-offs to be aware of. They are the “People, Time, Money” input or resource trade-offs, and the “Sales, Finance, Engineering” internal business forces trade-offs. Strangely enough they all seem to be interrelated and roughly align as well.

“Cheap”, “Money” and the driving force “Finance” are obviously all related. This is a pretty simple one. “Fast”, “Time” and the driving force “Sales” are also related. Since sales is indeed a competition (for the customer’s order) getting there ahead of the competition can be seen as an advantage. That leaves “Good”, “People” and driving force “Engineering” as the third relationship. That also seems to make sense as it is the engineers that are concerned with the accuracy and “correctness” of how the technology fits together.

Now a days it seems that you cannot get a project started, a bid created, or a proposal reviewed without direct engineering involvement. This direction has the effect of creating a business bottleneck based on the number of engineers you have available for any activity at any point in time. It also limits the options available to business leaders.

In the “pick two out of three” business trade-offs listed above, if you have always chosen the “Good”, “People” and “Engineering” business force (for “correctness”) then you can only choose between “Speed” and “Money” (read profitability) as your second choice. While going fast is nice, making money is not negotiable. Without it you won’t be in business long. Hence “Money” is usually chosen over “Speed” in these trade-offs.

This is my long-winded, round about way of getting to the topic of models. Current mathematic and modeling techniques can be used to predict the location of a single electron (the sub-atomic, negatively charged particle – you didn’t think I would ignore physics entirely for this article, did you?), with respect to a single proton (the sub-atomic positively charge particle) at any point in time. With this kind of modeling capability and technology available, getting a price, or creating a quotation should be as simple as creating a few salient entries into the appropriate model.

Remember the Economics analogy. Models can be created as complexly, or as simply as desired. Also remember the goal of a quotation or pricing model: to create a price for a good or service, not to specifically engineer and configure that good or service. Up to now most businesses believe that the good or service must be engineered (and costed) in order to create a price (with acceptable / appropriate margin) for the customer.

Also remember that by and large customers do not care what it costs the business to deliver the desired good or service. As an example, I don’t think many people care what it costs an automobile manufacturer to create the car they purchase. They just want to know what the price is in relationship to the features and capabilities of the car.

Price modeling versus cost engineering can and would significantly speed up the quotation and pricing process for businesses and their customers. It would enable the customer to ask for several “what if…” prices and configurations. It would make things easier and faster for the organizations responsible for providing the price. It would simplify the process.

So, why isn’t this the usual case? Why does it seem that everything must manually pass through engineering, in some way, before it can be approved or released?

I think the answers are relatively simple, but the solutions are not. Change of this type, moving from an ingrained engineering process to the utilization of models for customer prices and quotations involves not only change, but the relinquishing of control at such a level as to cause some discomfort to the overall organization. No group knowingly gives up control of a process, even if it is for the betterment of the overall organization.

On a related issue, models are always an approximation of reality. There will always be small variances present between what the model generates, and what the engineer will manually create. This will always generate a certain amount of uncertainty, and no one wants or likes that.

Engineers will always argue that their manual engineering is always more accurate than a model’s price prediction. In some instance this may in fact be true. But one of the issues with manual engineering is that no two engineers do it the same way. If they did it would be much more easily modeled. So, despite arguments to the contrary, even manual engineering injects inconsistency into the pricing equation as well.

This is why most changes must be driven from the top down, as opposed to the much talked about, and often desired bottom up approach. Creating a modeled approach to engineering and pricing goods and services to customers will need to be driven from outside of the group that is currently responsible for performing these functions. Remember, that given their choice, an engineer will always search for a way to engineer a solution, regardless of the commercial ramifications of that approach.

Utilizing a price modeling approach to generating customer prices and quotations will re-inject “Speed” back into the business output and business resource trade-off equations with a minimal effect on the accuracy and quality of the price generated. With speed, comes a competitive advantage that should be translated into more orders, without incurring incremental costs or reduction in quality.

And isn’t that what automation is supposed to be all about?

Shorter Meetings

I’ve been trying something new lately when it comes to meetings. I started by looking at the number of meetings I attend. I don’t think I am too far outside the norm by saying, I seem to attend a significant number of meetings. I think I have said this before. We may have hit the point where we seem to establish our credibility and measure our value contribution by the number of meeting we attend. We have now associated attending meetings with making progress.

I then started looking at what actual portion of the meeting was I actually engaged in or contributing to. I am sure there are those that would question my engagement or contribution to any meeting I attend or participate in.

The point here however, is that I found that there were specific portions or times during meetings where the topic being discussed was germane to me and I needed to be fully engaged and participative. The rest of the time, maybe not quite so much.

When I looked further at this relative “down” time I would experience in a meeting, I found that a significant portion of it was associated with what I will call “related” meeting topics, not the specific meeting topics. I’ll give an example.

I was in a project review meeting where the objective was to detail the status of the project. An issue was identified. This is a good thing. But it quickly caused the meeting to go off the rails. Instead of identifying the issue, and assigning those responsible to work out a resolution, those responsible for working out a resolution proceeded to try and work out their solution – during the review, with everyone else waiting to contribute their portions of the review.

The issue was important. But more so specifically to a subset of all those in attendance. The rest of the meeting attendees (myself included) time was less than efficiently spent listening to the attempted resolution of a topic that may not have been completely defined, or fully germane to their areas of focus.

In other words. We sat there on the call.

The meeting dragged on. Another issue was identified which created another attempt at an on-line resolution.

The meeting ran out of time so that those at the end of the agenda had to curtail their reports.

The meeting ran over the allotted time.

Parkinson’s Law was reaffirmed.

For those of you that are not familiar with Parkinson’s Law, according to Google, it is as follows:

“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. A proverb coined by the twentieth-century British scholar C. Northcote Parkinson, known as Parkinson’s Law. It points out that people usually take all the time allotted (and frequently more) to accomplish any task.”
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=BhmlW5GQIsvzzgLem5qABg&q=work+expands+to+fill+time&oq=work+expands+&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0l2.1768.4291..6750…0.0..0.86.947.13……0….1..gws-wiz…….0i131j0i10.QQZmraKUhpQ

It seems that it may have its roots in science (Physics actually, and as we all know I am extremely fond of Physics).

”This law is likely derived from ideal gas law, whereby a gas expands to fit the volume allotted.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

And as we all know, if it is science, it must be true.

As with any scientific theory, several corollaries have been created as a result.

“The first-referenced meaning of the law has dominated, and sprouted several corollaries, the best known being the Stock–Sanford corollary to Parkinson’s law:

“If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

Other corollaries include Horstman’s corollary to Parkinson’s law:

“Work contracts to fit in the time we give it.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

All of this got me to thinking. And, as we also all know, this can be a dangerous situation for not only me, but all those involved or effected. It seems to me that meetings have taken on a status where it’s okay to ramble and take extra time, because invariably we make excuses for, or accept this kind of meeting behavior. The end result is that the meeting does achieve is goal, but it takes far more time than anyone is comfortable spending, and no one feels a sense of accomplishment when it is done.

My answer to this issue was pretty simple.
I made my meetings shorter.

Instead of having a one-hour review, once a week on Wednesdays, I scheduled two – one half hour reviews on Tuesday and Friday. I didn’t reduce the agendas or topics either. We covered everything in each meeting.

You might ask how this is possible? The answer is really very simple.

I became ruthless in cutting non-specific meeting discussions off.

If the meeting is a review, then it was a read-out, or reporting delivery only. If an issue was identified, it was immediately taken off-line, with an action item and an owner identified and would be resolved so that it could be read out and reported during the next half-hour call.

No exceptions.

It took a couple of meetings for the team to understand and get the rhythm of the approach, but the results have been very apparent. The project is moving faster. Ownership of issues and their resolution is much clearer. Progress is accelerated.

Just to review: we are spending the same total amount of time in meetings on the project reviews, but we are making more, and faster progress toward our objectives.

Looking back at Horstman’s Corollary to Parkinson’s Law, meaning if work expands to fill available time, that it should also contract to fit available time. Parkinson’s Law would mean if we schedule a one hour review we will conduct the meeting in such a way as to fill the full hour (and then some). Horstman’s Corollary would say that if we reduce the available time from one hour to a half-hour, we should be able to get the work done in that interval as well.

They both seem to be correct.

The issue is changing what were full hour meeting behaviors to the now necessary half-hour meeting behaviors. That means:

Ruthlessly staying on topic.
If it is a read-out meeting, read out only. Issues need to be taken off line, resolved and then read out at the next read-out meeting. If it is an issue resolution meeting, resolve the identified issue only. Don’t read out. Don’t work on other, related issues.

Cutting them off.
Many times, presenters do not know how to end their presentations. Sideline discussions, anecdotes, stories and all other manner of communications needs to be curtailed. Then move on.

Action Items.
Just because non-germane topics come up does not mean that they are not important topics. Clearly note them. Assign an owner and a time for resolution – and move on. Do not allow the group to lose focus on the topic at hand. This will keep everyone engaged.

Own it.
If it is your meeting, then it is your responsibility not to waste everyone else’s time. Stay on topic. Cut them off if necessary. Assign the action items. Publish the meeting minutes.

I didn’t set out to prove what are widely regarded as accurate, if not tongue-in-cheek axioms regarding how time is spent in business. I actually set out to see if I could start to reduce the amount of “down” time I was spending in meetings in general.

I am reasonably well convinced that the reason we have so much multi-tasking during meetings is due to the length and engagement requirements we now seem to expect in our meetings. We know the meeting will be longer than we want. We know that we will really only need to be fully engaged and aware for a relatively small percentage of the time that the meeting is conducted.

We know we will be bored the rest of the time.

The alternatives are to either multi-task, or to reduce the total time of the meeting in order to reduce the down time. Multi-tasking is the meeting attendee approach to solving their individual wasted meeting time issue. Reducing the actual meeting time is the meeting owner approach to solving everyone’s wasted meeting time issue.

Conducting shorter meetings will take significantly more effort on behalf of the meeting owner, and by extension some of the attendees, but I have found that you can actually get more done in the meeting by taking this approach. And I think that everyone in the meeting appreciates that, since that is supposed to be the objective of the meeting in the first place.

Meeting Invitations

Let’s get one thing straight up front: I am not proposing to be any sort of Ann Landers when it comes to any sort of business conduct advice. I call ‘em as I see ‘em, and I try to base it on my personal experiences. And I am definitely not a Miss Manners when it comes to saying or doing the proper things according to some unwritten business protocol. I like to quote the Texas Comedian Ron White when it comes to describing myself: “I have the right to remain silent. Unfortunately, I seldom have the ability to remain silent.” However, today I may tread on the toes of the Mms. Landers and Manners, when I visit today’s topic, meeting invitations.

I think by this point it should be well known that I am not a particular fan of meetings. Any meetings. I believe that the current business climate has far too many meetings. And all of these meetings are invariably too long. I think that this meeting proliferation is a byproduct of the matrix organizational structures that are now the base-line organizational structure for so many businesses. I also believe that having meetings is an activity that sometimes confused with actual business progress.

Sometimes it appears that we are spending more time in meetings (actually not meetings, but what were once described as “conference calls”) making sure that everyone is aware of and aligned with the latest information and associated directions, than actually progressing in that chosen direction. These are calls where we go over what we have already gone over, with the possible exception of those pieces of the puzzle that may have changed or been incremented in, since the last time they were reviewed, if you know what I mean.

It appears that business has created something of a “meeting culture” where every meeting can hold significant importance and therefore anyone with what could be considered having even a tangential connection to the topic at hand should attend.

This brings me to today’s soap box.

If someone is invited to a meeting, that said meeting’s ownership does not automatically become partially theirs by the simple act of agreeing to attend that meeting. Meeting attendees should not presuppose the right to then invite any others to that meeting, just because they have accepted the meeting invitation.

This brings me to Rule One of meeting behavior:

“If you are not the meeting organizer, do not invite anyone else to the meeting without the express consent of the meeting organizer.”

If you have been invited to a meeting, good for you. If you truly believe that someone else should also attend due either to their topical knowledge, being a stakeholder in the issue to be covered, or just for comedic relief, you should reach out to the meeting organizer before forwarding that meeting’s invitation. There may have been an actual, viable reason that particular person was not invited to the meeting. On the other hand, they may have been genuinely overlooked and should attend.

The point is that you will not know for sure unless you ask first. It won’t take much time, and it may avoid future issues associated with the meeting.

On the other side of this forwarded meeting topic, if you are the recipient of a forwarded meeting invitation, there are two additional rules that you may want to follow. The first is:

“Ask the original meeting organizer if it appropriate for you to attend the meeting.”

After all, you were not directly invited by the meeting organizer. It would be a courteous thing to do to assure that your invitation and attendance is appropriate or desired. The second is:

“Do not feel that by having a forwarded invitation to someone else’s meeting you are appropriately empowered to forward it and invite still other people to the meeting.”

This is not a “more the merrier” sort of situation. This is how what were to be short and concise meetings become bloated, run long and lose much of their desired functionality. Again, if you have received a forwarded invitation to someone else’s meeting, when you are checking with the meeting organizer to see if it is appropriate for you to attend the meeting, you can then bring up the topic of additional potential meeting attendees.

Perhaps the meeting culture within business has progressed to the point where what we once viewed as a yes/no decision associated with attending a potentially germane meeting as a part of our position, has evolved to a position where it is now incumbent to attend all meetings that may somehow be related to our respective roles, as being now part of the greater defined job responsibility. Where it was once that we were relieved to not be invited to any specific meeting since it was then perceived that meetings got in the way of getting your job done, it appears that many are now genuinely disappointed if they are not on the initial meeting attendee list since it is now perceived that attending meetings is now a significant part of the job.

As you may have guessed by now, I have been involved (several times actually) in situations where I have scheduled a small meeting on a concise topic, only to have the meeting attendance balloon beyond normal recognition and the topics diffuse themselves to the point where progress is almost impossible. Now, I know that I don’t call many meetings, and that the ones that I do call are purposely kept short with a limited invitee list in order to drive both proper meeting behavior, and so as not to impinge on people’s limited availability of time.

I am beginning to believe that it is for these reasons that people seem to want to invite other people to my meetings.

Is it possible that there is some sort of cache associated with attending my meetings? Does their rarity and truncated length make them that much more desirable to attend? Do people get the same sort of satisfaction from attending one of my relatively few, short meetings, that would get if they were to get a reservation or access to one of those “in” bars or restaurants that it seems only the beautiful people get to attend.

There are no paparazzi skulking around my meetings ready to take pictures of the elite few that I have been invited to attend.

I am reasonably adept at calling and setting up meetings, as I am sure so many others are. If I had wanted other, or additional attendees to the meeting, I would have invited them myself. It really isn’t that hard to do.

So why does this happen?

I wish I knew. When I am invited to someone else’s meeting, the first thing that crosses my mind is not “who else should attend this meeting?”. It is more along the lines of “is this a functional meeting that I should attend, or not”. As I sit here, I am hard pressed to think of an instance where I have forwarded someone else’s meeting invitation either with or without their pre-approval.

On the other hand, I can usually count on seeing several more attendees than the number I have actually invited, at any meeting I set up.

Perhaps the greater change in the meeting culture of business is as I mentioned before: Meetings were once viewed as a necessity that usually got in the way of doing your job. As communications capabilities have blossomed, we seem all too eager to take advantage of the advanced meeting technologies available, whether we need to or not. Now what was once a necessity that got in the way is now perceived as just a necessity.

The perception seems to now be that if you are not in a large number of meetings, you are not busy. If you are not in all the meetings that could possibly impact your function, then you are not doing your job. As our abilities to meet and share information has grown, so has our desire to be a part of the meeting and sharing, whether we need to or not.

The matrix organizational structure, and the processes that must be in place to make it function effectively does require an increased amount of communication to make sure that the business can run relatively smoothly. Functional hand-offs require coordination. Coordination reduces the possibility and effect of “surprises”. These are obviously good things.

There comes a point in time where the business process and culture has become a meeting process and culture. A calendar full of meetings will then seems to be desired and aspired to, as opposed to limiting meeting attendance in favor of other functional activities. When that happens, it can seem that every available meeting has then become “open game” for whomever wishes to attend it.

You can tell that point has passed when meeting attendees start inviting other people to your meetings as a matter of course.

Good, Cheap, Fast – Pick Two

This has been a well-known conundrum in business for quite some time. There are always three variables associated with getting the product or service that you want. The variables are Quality, Price and Speed. They are normally associated with the words Good, Cheap and Fast. The conventional question has always been that you cannot get all three variables at high levels at any specific time. If that indeed is a limitation, the question arises: If you are a vendor or supplier dealing with your customers, which two of the Good, Cheap and Fast variables do you choose when delivering your products and services?

As a customer, the simplest answer has always been to demand all three variables, and to demand them immediately. They want the lowest price, the fastest delivery and the best quality. They want it now and please don’t argue. We have all been there. However, even the most demanding of customers recognize that this is usually only an opening gambit and that there will always be negotiations associated with what is actually obtained and when it is to be delivered.

In the past customer hierarchy of desirable product attributes, Quality has ruled as king. The higher the quality, the more reliable the product, the better the customer liked it. They would possibly make concessions to either Cheap and Fast, if they got the best Good there was.

If Quality, or Good, was the given, then the customer (and vendor) needed to decide which other variable, Price or Speed was going to be sacrificed. I think that history will show that for the most part it was speed. (In support of this position I will submit that almost all product and productivity focus in the last few generations of products have been on how to take time out of the equation). Even the axiomatic statements associated with business in general refer to the fact that the pace of change within business has been accelerating.

That meant that a good customer would wait for a good product, and that they would get at a good price.

Those were the days. That does not seem to be the case anymore.

As I just noted, everything about business has accelerated. Cycle times for everything from product development to customer billing have been reduced. No one wants to wait for anything anymore. What was once fast or accelerated is now the new normal. Full speed is now the minimum accepted and if you expect to get ahead you had better figure out how to go even faster. They want it all now.

We have become an immediate gratification society.

What was once saved for, and purchased later, is now purchased today on credit, and paid for later.

So, if this increased focus on Speed, or Fast, is the new primary given requirement (instead of Quality, or Good) for driving customer satisfaction, then which of the two, Good and Cheap, will be the second factor chosen in the customer purchase decision? (remember, the axiom of you can only have two of the three variables at any time still pretty much holds in reality – or does it….) One would suspect that since Quality was so important in the past that it would also be of high importance today. That would leave cheap as the odd variable out.

That would also mean that customers want their products and services Fast and Good, and would hence be willing to pay the requisite higher price associated with this variable selection.

I do not know about you, but it has been a very long time since I have dealt with a customer that is willing to pay more for anything, regardless of speed and quality.

I think the reality is that price is still king. It is very difficult to sell a higher price versus a competitive product regardless of the speed and quality delivered. It can be done, but you are starting out at a significant competitive disadvantage if you start with a higher price than your competition.

As I have noted in the past Good in the business vernacular has been replaced by “Good Enough”. As product life cycles have become shorter (there’s “Fast” again) and prices have come down as components, support, warranties and service have been reduced (there’s “Cheap” again), Good has been reduced down to Good Enough to compensate.

The answer to the Good, Fast and Cheap, pick two conundrum in today’s business environment is now Fast and Cheap.

How quickly can the product be in the market? It has to be fast because there will be another, better competing product put out by a competitor soon enough. It better be cheap because customers most likely won’t buy a more expensive product, regardless of any (temporary) advantages. As for quality? That’s now a given. It is almost impossible to differentiate in the market based on a quality variable. Almost all manufacturers in just about any given market can be viewed as having a high-quality parity.

Today, if a company is not viewed as having a high / acceptable quality level in its products, they won’t be surviving for very long.

As an example, look at automobiles. Manufacturers have tiered the market into sub-markets based on car size (e.g. Sub-compact, compact, mid-size, etc.). Many manufacturers have created specific models to address and compete in each specific market tier.

The model for buying a car has “Fast” as a given, since I don’t know anyone willing to wait for a specific car to be manufactured for them – they want to drive off the lot in their new car when they buy it, not at some later time. That leaves Price and Quality as the final negotiation variables. I think Quality for the most part is also a given since now almost all cars come with similar warranties, usually somewhere between six and ten years. If you don’t believe Quality is a given in cars, try negotiating a longer warranty for your car as a term of the purchase agreement.

Let me know how that works out for you.

That essentially leaves Price as the next (only) selected variable in your car purchase decision. The starting price can vary a little, based on the feature set that the car is equipped with (X, SX, LX, etc.), but even that is limited. Fast (you want to drive off in it) and Cheap (you don’t want to pay anything more than you absolutely have to), are the criteria.

Fast and Cheap. That’s it. That’s where we are in business.

Now there may be other variables that you input into the decision criteria such as the car must have an appealing design. This is a matter of personal taste. Car companies spend incredible amounts of money in creating appealing designs for each of their cars. Car companies also spend incredible amounts of money advertising these appealing designs with the objective of convincing you that theirs is the most appealing, (Mazda has gone so far as to create a commercial showing what I suppose is a sculptor, sculpting the latest appealing design of their latest car model) and hence getting you to come to their dealership where you can negotiate the price and then drive off in that appealing (work of art) car.

There are always exceptions to every rule in business. That is also probably also a rule of business as well. However, when putting together a strategy on how to attack a market in general, and to pursue specific customers on an individual basis, with quality now thought of as a given in the market where “Good Enough” is now good enough, focusing on speed and price will most likely provide the best competitive advantage.

Answering questions as to how quickly the solution can be acquired and more importantly implemented will be a differentiator. Price, more so than almost ever before will be a decision driver. With almost all products now being viewed as easily interchangeable, why would a customer pay more for anything?

I remember the good old days where management would blithely tell the sales team to sell “quality” when their market price was higher than the competition. Management would say reference the product’s “quality” when there was a delay in product availability.

Now if a product takes too long to arrive in the market, or the price is too high, the opportunity is most likely lost. It doesn’t matter what management will want to tell the sales team. A competitor will have a substitutable product available when the customer wants it at a price they can afford.

Times have changed. Quality was once a product differentiator. It is probably not anymore. Of all the resources available to everyone, time is the only one that we cannot readily get any more of. Hence Speed has become the new prime differentiator. With Quality a given, and speed a differentiator, that leaves Price as a decision driver.

Customers might pay a little more for a preferred product, but that differential is closing fast. The more expensive you are versus the competition, the more disadvantaged you are. There will always come a point where the Price differential will always outweigh any Speed or Quality advantages. That Price differential point is always moving closer and closer to the Cheapest solution.

Brevity

I’ll let everyone know up front that this article is going to be somewhat brief, or at least shorter than the average article that I usually post.

It is probably no secret that while I think I may understand and appreciate the concepts and the thought that goes into creating a project and process oriented business (I have a PMP certification to this point), I also recognize that there is the potential for significant overhead and non-productive work to be attracted to this type of business structure. It is easy to say that you have got to take the good with the bad (as the beginning of the famous anonymous quote goes), but I am not so sure that is the case. Project and process structures were created in order to generate efficiencies in business. But who, if not ourselves, is responsible for making sure our projects and processes remain as efficient as possible?

This brings me to my topic: Is it just me, or more accurately, is it just my imagination or have all of business’s documents and presentations been getting longer, more detailed, more complex, and less functionally useful or justifiable?

A process at is simplest is defined as: “a series of actions or steps that are taken to achieve a particular goal”. I couldn’t make that up. It came straight out of the dictionary that way. The idea here being that it is possible to break down a complex work requirement (goal) into a series of simpler tasks and functions. This breaking down process is called “work decomposition”. I didn’t make this one up either. Although somewhat paraphrased, it comes directly from the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) handbook.

So the idea of taking the complex and breaking it down into a series of simpler, repeatable steps is the goal of a process. This is a good thing.

So what has this got to do with the burgeoning size of documents and presentations you might ask. I think it has a lot to do with it.

As we continue to try and bring finer and finer granularity to the work requirement, we find ourselves documenting and presenting on ever more specific and smaller topics associated with the overall process and goal. Instead of presenting on sales, we now are discussing the various sales and support team engagement processes and when they come into play in the overall sales process. We don’t necessarily look at orders, but all those functions associated with the order process. Now each team will create documentation and presentations on their specific roles, when they engage and who they hand off to when they are done.

I can remember being asked to review a thirty-one-page document (not presentation, an actual Word document) regarding one of these team’s engagement process. That is correct. Thirty-One pages.

I do not begrudge anyone their function or role, but I am concerned that if it is felt that thirty-one pages are required to try and define one’s role in the greater scheme of a sales process, then it may be just possible that we have reached the point of decreasing returns on the value of the incremental process documentation investment.

The add-on effect of this process granularity can now also be seen in volume of slides and presentations that are now also being generated.

There was a time (long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away) when overhead slides and overhead projectors were somewhat expensive and cumbersome items. This had the knock-on effect of limiting the size of presentations. Now with the proliferation of personal computers, bandwidth to connect them and the sharing of desk-tops each new image now represents only a slightly greater utilization of an ever more abundant resource. If you think you need more slides, go for it. As the great Yogi Berra once said: “The limitations are limitless”.

It now seems that fifty slide presentations are no longer the exception, but instead have become the norm.

The net here is that we seem to be producing ever greater amounts of documentation, be it written word or image / presentation based, about ever smaller and more specific topics.

It is said that work will expand to fill available time (C. Northcote Parkinson, in one of my favorite books: “Parkinson’s Law”) and that demand will expand to meet available supply. It now seems that the expansion of our ability to share information has also come with the desire and ability to share ever more of that specific information. Now it appears that the volume of what we share has increased in accordance with our ability to share it. Technology has enabled us to share more, in finer and finer detail, to the point where it seems that we may have lost our bearings as to what level of detail represents a useful or appropriate content materiality.

In the African plain faster cheetahs are able to chase down the slower gazelles. That left only the faster gazelles to reproduce the next, faster generation of gazelles. This in turn meant that the slower cheetahs were then not be able to chase them down and did not survive. That left only the still faster cheetahs to reproduce the following even faster generation of cheetahs. On and on it has been going, with both species currently topping out at speeds of approximately seventy miles an hour during the chase. There is a question as to where this evolutionary cycle will lead.

Previous generations of business structures and communication technologies seemed to have had an effect on limiting the number, topic and volume of documents and presentations created and communicated. As the speed and capacity of each succeeding generation of business structure and its communications capability has increased, so it seems has the number, topics and volume of documents and presentations that it has created.

Who can be sure what the future holds for business organizational structures. It is however expected that our ability to connect, share and communicate will continue to expand. This would lead me to the somewhat gloomy supposition and expectation that with this expanded communication capability we should expect to continue to see an expansion in the number and volume of documents and presentations created and shared to fill it.

I think that sooner or later the limitations imposed by each individual’s available time will have to kick in and start to curtail their ability to read or process this information deluge. I would hope that we would then see the pendulum start to swing back toward brevity and the informational value associated with the document or presentation, not its volume.

I have always valued the clear and concise. Fifty-page presentations and thirty-page process guides are usually neither. We seem to be in an age where we create them because we can, not because we need them. We need to get back to sharing the information we need, not all the information we have.

I told you I would be brief, or at least shorter than usual.

Little Things

Usually I start off one of these articles with a specific idea in mind. I try to examine a topic or a specific facet of business that I find interesting and provide my take on it. I end up trying to make a point or infer a position, and I also try to make it a little entertaining, at least to myself. I have been told on multiple occasions that it is not uncommon for me to miss that entertaining objective for others. Today I am thinking I might change things up and try a little different approach to things.

None of the topics running through my mind really seem worthy of their own entire article. However there doesn’t seem to be a way to banish them from my thought process in favor of a perceptibly higher priority topic. They continue to pop up and present themselves in various forms, apparently clamoring for my attention. It appears that the only solution is to run through them all and let them be sorted out on their own.

Fridays

Is it just me or does anyone else notice a perceptible drop in attendance at the office on Fridays? I understand all that has been written about the benefits of flexible hours and virtual offices and the like. If that was truly the cause of this phenomenon I would expect a little more even distribution of lower office attendance days across the rest of the work week.

I have seen the new television commercial where the “boss” proclaims much to everyone’s amusement that “Wednesday is the new Thursday”. That’s fine, but I definitely must have missed the memo where Friday has become the new Saturday.

On a related topic, I don’t seem to have much sympathy either for those who are ever more frequently complaining about having to attend calls or meetings on Friday afternoons. The last time I checked Friday was still part of what has been so quaintly and colloquially referred to as the “work week”. You know, that eight to five, Monday through Friday thing?

This is especially interesting to me since the latest information from Gallup.com is that the average work week is no longer forty hours, but closer to forty seven hours. That would mean that instead of just working eight to five Monday through Friday people are on average also working eight to four on Saturdays.

So I guess the conundrum to solve here is that people are working more hours and the business offices have lower attendance on Fridays. With all the additional hours being worked I am not so sure that more is actually being accomplished. Interesting. Maybe this one does deserve more thought and research. I’ll have to think about it.

Spam

I passed a milestone a little while ago. I am now averaging more than two hundred spam emails a day on my corporate email account. That is correct. Across a typical eight hour day I am now receiving a spam email every two and a half minutes. I must really be popular with the spammers. I don’t know why. I never respond regardless of how tempting they tell me their offer is.

What is a little more than disconcerting to me is that both my email system and my computer recognize that the junk emails are spam, and regardless of what setting I use to try and stem the ever increasing flow, nothing seems to work.

Now my system lets me know that they are spam, as it continues to present them to me:

picture3

If the system knows that they are spam emails, why doesn’t it just get rid of them, or better yet, block them from even being presented. This number does not include the approximately fifteen other emails that did go directly to my junk email folder because I had already individually blocked the sender of previous spam emails.

As an aside I went out to www.todayifoundout.com and looked up the origin of the term “spam” as it relates to emails. This is what they had to say:

“The real origin of the term comes from a 1970 Monty Python’s Flying Circus skit. In this skit, all the restaurant’s menu items devolve into SPAM. When the waitress repeats the word SPAM, a group of Vikings in the corner sing “SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, lovely SPAM! Wonderful SPAM!” drowning out other conversation, until they are finally told to shut it.
Exactly where this first translated to internet messages of varying type, such as chat messages, newsgroups, etc, isn’t entirely known as it sort of happened all over the place in a very short span of years, in terms of the name being applied to these messages. It is, however, well documented that the users in each of these first instances chose the word “spam” referring to the 1970 Monty Python sketch where SPAM singing was drowning out conversation and SPAM itself was unwanted and popping up all over the menu.”

“Drowning out all other conversation…” That sounds about right.

Spam Calls

As if spam emails are not enough, it seems I am now getting more and more spam phone calls as well. They are coming in on both my personal as well as business phones. These calls seem to have also spiked in frequency most recently.

I initially tried to be polite when I told them that I wasn’t interested in whatever it was that they were sure that I wanted to talk about. They just kept going on with their spiel. I would then be forced to hang up anyway. I then tried being a little more “forceful” in communicating my desire that they should never contemplate calling me again. Despite my directly questioning their intellects and species orientation, this didn’t seem to work either.

I have settled on what I think is a good solution to this particular business problem. When I receive a spam call, I simply answer the call, lay the receiver down and go on doing whatever it was that I was doing when the call interrupted me. The auto dialing system then connects the call to a person on the other end and I can eventually hear someone start speaking, and then realize that no one is listening. Eventually they hang up and go away.

Since these auto dialing spam phone call shops are predicated on the efficiency of the system, this method disrupts their entire process. I think that they then put me on some sort of a “do not call” list as the number of repeat offender calls from these places seems to be reducing. The only problem is that there seem to be so many new ones popping up to take their places.

I don’t want this to seem like some sort of scree or disconnected rant today. Business is obviously changing. How people work, where they work and what they do has changed. I have noted in the past that I am not so sure in many instances if these changes have been for the better. Working more hours from a virtual office, does not in itself indicate any sort of an improvement to me. It does however seem to be instrumental in generating what is now a forty seven hour work week.

I am not sure what the business benefit of generating spam is. I guess it can be considered the electronic replacement for Direct Mail Direct Response (DMDR) marketing and since there is now no cost for postage it seems to be running amok. I don’t think I have ever seen or heard of anyone responding to that stuff although a DMDR response of one to two percent was the expected target. I guess the logic is that if the volume of junk mail is increase by an order of magnitude then the response will increase proportionately as well.

Still, sending me ten requests for the thing I didn’t want once isn’t going to improve things.

Generating spam of any kind should be a punishable offense, at least in my opinion. Living in Texas the idea of dragging spammers through cactus or horse whipping immediately comes to mind as a suitable punishment. No need to get too medieval on them, at least for the initial offense.

I think that’s enough disparate business topics for this session. I’m sure I’ll have more to discuss in the future.

Getting Better

One of the things that I have learned as I have gotten older is that age doesn’t make you any smarter. It just provides you the experience to recognize the things you didn’t know the first time you saw them. It was Randy Pausch, the author of “The Last Lecture” who said:

“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted”

I have wanted many things that I have not gotten, so needless to say, I think I have probably gained a lot of experience. Some of this experience I think I probably could have done without, but I gained it anyway. What I think I now recognize is that sometimes solving some issues or fixing some problems may be beyond our individual or collective reach. The key to situations like this is to recognize them, and instead of trying to make the quantum leap from thoroughly screwed up to pristinely perfect, just try to make them better.

One of the other things that I have experienced is that just about every situation that I have been in falls into this category.

It’s now election season and the number of talking heads earnestly speaking directly to us through our collective big screen televisions is growing. The various media outlets are lining up behind their favorites, and the various positions on the issues are being identified. In short it is the same thing all over again.

People are searching for the best thirteen second sound bite regarding their personal favorite unsolvable problem. Whether it’s the national debt, immigration, unemployment, or any other issue, it seems everyone is jockeying to position their glib and simple solutions to the Gordian knot style problems that are besetting us.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the Gordian knot, in ancient times there was a knot that was thought to be unsolvable or intractable. When the knot was presented to Alexander the Great, who at the time was the acknowledged leader of the known world as a challenge, instead of trying to untie or solve the knot, he simply took out his sword and cut it. Believe it or knot (pun intended) this is thought to be the genesis of phrase and concept of “outside the box” thinking (True!).

When I look at today’s slate of candidates I am concerned that any of them that may in the remotest of possibilities be mentioned with or the even more remote possibility be positively compared with Alexander the Great. However there they are, swinging away with their metaphorical swords on television.

I think we have all see the business equivalents of these would be world beaters and problem solvers. They are the ones that have the “simple” answers to declining sales (‘just sell more”) or low margins (“just spend less”), or any other intractable long term problem that the business may be facing.

Unfortunately with all that is plaguing leaders in business today it is easy to see how they may fall victim to the siren song of the “simple solution” providers.

Please do not misunderstand me. I truly believe the basic premises of business are pretty simple. I have said this many times in the past. It is usually the business itself that adds complexity to its organization and operations in search of ever better and more eloquent was of completing the simple tasks required for it to run.

If a simple process adequately handles eighty percent of the situations then with only a little tweaking it might handle close to eighty five percent of the situations. A little more tweaking might get it to ninety percent. Still more might enable it to be implemented globally instead of specifically for the region in which is currently working. Still more might enable the creation and publishing of fancy metrics charts detailing various aspects of the process and the state of its implementation.

Eventually a process is created that works everywhere in all situations, but takes more effort and resource from the business to work for the entire business than the original eighty-twenty rule process that was the starting point.

It can be argued that the “getting better” approach to business could in fact be responsible for the evolution of both business and process into the complex systems that they are today. This would be akin to the example of taking several small logical steps one after the other to eventually arrive at an illogical conclusion or solution.

I think part of the issue we see in situations like this is the lack of rigor that is applied to defining the problem, setting a baseline and then measuring against the improvement on the baseline. If we all know that we need to improve then we just accept the premise. If we state that the plan is to take the solution global then why would we need to measure if there is in fact a global improvement? The goal is no longer improvement of the business but instead is now the global dispersion of the solution.

Getting better does not mean making breakthrough advancements, although these are always exciting and welcome. Rather it means actually trying to use the primary building blocks of the Continuous Improvement Process that J. Edwards Deming envisioned where Feedback drove Efficiency drove Evolution which in turn drove further feedback, and so on.

The key step in this cycle that seems to be missing in both politics and business today is the Efficiency review. Efficiency by its very nature requires the identification, reduction or elimination of sub-optimal structures and behaviors. The definition of efficiency is:

1. The ability to accomplish something with the least waste of time and effort; competency in performance.
2. The ratio of the work done or energy developed …. to the energy supplied…

Many thanks again to Webster’s Dictionary. One of my favorite books.

The idea of efficiency, and getting better means that we need to continuously look at what we are getting out of systems, processes and businesses as compared to the work that we are putting into them. Efficiency is not just the output, but the output as compared to the input required to get it. Too many times it seems that it is taken for granted that just because there is some new way of doing things, or a new process is being implemented that it is better (read more efficient) than what currently exists.

Almost everything that I read these days in books and periodicals regarding business performance seems to bemoan the loss of speed in business, or the lack or loss of decision making abilities in business, or the complexity that is now being faced in business. These seem to be issues that are now inherent in the business system. The simple command to “sell more” or “spend less” won’t solve them.

I guess the same goes for politics in that the system seems to have evolved to reward those that “sound” the best but in reality only kick the problem down the road for the next generation to deal with. Their simple solutions fit nicely into the thirteen second sound bites provided by the media for public consumption. Perhaps that is why it seems that in this iteration of the political campaigning those that are viewed as being outside the normal political process seem to be preferred more than the established politicians by the general populace.

At its most basic getting better, as well as efficiency means doing more business with less resource. That means that being efficient requires the removal of some functions, effort and work from the business as compared to the set baseline while still accomplishing the set goals. It doesn’t need to be a lot. It just has to be measurable in some fundamental way.

Getting better means making sure that attaining your goals actually, measurably improves the business. The simplest definition of getting better that I can think of is showing some measureable improvement in efficiency. If you can’t directly relate and measure the business activity to somehow improving the business efficiency (mathematically identifying work being done to work being saved or improved), then there is probably a pretty good chance that it is not associated with the business getting better.

The Perfect Metrics

I think we as a species inherently love to measure things. I take that back. We love to measure everything. I am not a baseball fan, but I find it humorously entertaining the number of statistics that are available for seemingly any situation in baseball. I think it is possible to find the batting average for any player in late innings, with runners in scoring position, for away games with left hander pitchers on the mound. Really? I guess there must be someone interested in all that, but I can’t think of who it might be.

I am a hockey fan and there are a whole new generation of metrics created which I am not sure I entirely understand yet, but are supposed to give a much better measurement of the quality of the hockey players on the ice today. It seems that you can now get statistics for third line shots generated or allowed, for defensive players on offensive zone draws in the third period. Okay. I understand what all that means, but I am not sure if I care. Just drop the puck and skate.

I am not quite sure but it seems that some people are trying to make hockey appear to be more like baseball through the use of more and more arcane and detailed metrics. Unless they allow baseball players to carry their bats with them out into the field when they play, (stealing bases would get a whole lot more interesting) instead of just when that are at bat, or figure out a way to make hockey a whole lot slower and more boring, this would not seem to be a plausible goal.

The roundabout introduction here is that to generate all of these baseball statistics, someone had to measure and record all of these actions and variables. They had to create the metrics. And once they created these metrics it became a challenge to create the perfect metrics to more perfectly measure and reflect the game. After over one hundred years they are still trying. This should convince everyone from the onset that there are no perfect metrics. There are only good metrics, and other measurements.

I have had the opportunity in the past to be involved with many metrics projects, programs and functions during my time in business. It has been both an enlightening and useful process to me. It has helped me on several levels when it comes to the successful leadership of a business. In business as in sports, metrics are in part how we keep score.

Metrics are interesting in that they are indicators of performance. Hockey players with good performance metrics tend to be on good teams. Good teams tend to win more games. Winning is usually thought of as being a good thing. The new, complex metrics associated with Hockey seem to go a long way toward providing supporting evidence for how good and accurate the older simpler metrics associated with Hockey actually are. Interesting how that works.

It also seems to go that if a few metrics provide a reasonable indication of individual or business performance, then as we have noted in baseball, a very large number of metrics should provide a significantly more specific and detailed indication of individual or business performance. This thought process is along the lines of the old adage “If a little is good, a lot must be better.”

To extend the baseball analogy that is like saying if a beer or two is good while watching a game then two cases of beer should be excellent. You can find yourself at the game in a state of unconsciousness, immobility or alcoholism.

Similarly you can find yourself in business with so many metrics and indicators that they will begin to provide too much, or even conflicting indicators to the point that you end up in an immobile situation. Hence the phrase “Paralysis by Analysis”. I think I may prefer to refer to this situation as “metricoholism”, or the over dependence on and addiction to metrics to the point of being dysfunctional.

Metricoholism is the inability to have just one, or even a few meaningful metrics. It’s more along the lines of once you get started measuring things, you can’t stop. Eventually you will have measured everything, but will then have no idea what to do about all that you have measured.

I have found that the value of metrics lies in the talent of the people that are interpreting them. Metrics in and of themselves need to be the indicators of where additional human interaction with the business processes may be required in order to understand the possible underlying issues associated with the numeric measurement anomaly (metric). Good metrics identify the leverage points where analysis and performance modification can have the greatest effect on the business. Good metrics simply point to where the leader must look to understand what is affecting their business’ performance indicator.

There was a recent movie about the use of metrics in sports. It was called “Moneyball”. It was nominally a baseball movie, which meant for me that I would wait for it to be on television before I would watch it. I usually don’t pay money to watch a live baseball game because it is as I said a rather boring game to me. Why would I pay money to watch a movie about a rather boring game?

Just as an aside not all baseball based movies fall into this category. I thought “Field of Dreams” and “Bull Durham” were very entertaining movies, in spite of their baseball based premises. However “The Natural”, not so much.

In any event, Moneyball was the story of how a specific baseball team changed the way the business of the sport was conducted. By changing the way that the humongous amount of data associated with baseball and the baseball players was interpreted, they changed the way players and teams were viewed, built and paid for.

That bears repeating. By changing the way that the standard data (that was available to everyone) about the game and each of players was interpreted, one team changed the way an entire century old sports institution looked at how teams were built and how they should best perform.

The value was not in the data. Everyone had the same data. The value was in how the data was interpreted.

While interpretation of the data is going to be the key to success when it comes to metrics, it is also best to remember what Robert McNamara (one of the original automotive industry “whiz kids” of the 1960’s) said. He said:

“First thing: Get the data.”

The point is that there is a lot of data available. Which data do you go get. If you were a Metricoholic you would end up trying to get all of the data, since partial data would not be satisfactory. Also as previously noted, this would be a mistake. It takes far too much time, money and effort to do this and what are you going to do different with one hundred percent of the data that you wouldn’t do with eighty percent of the data.

That was an oblique reference to the old eighty – twenty rule where you can get eighty percent of the data in twenty percent of the time. If you can get eighty percent of the data reasonably quickly, you can make excellent business decisions from that data, and move on.

Good metrics for a business need to be relatively simple and straight forward. They need to deal with the basic functions and core values of the business, not the ancillary capabilities. Revenue, costs and profitability are good examples of simple metrics that all businesses use. I think there is probably a good reason for that. Performance levels and adherence to service levels are good metrics for service related industries. There are certainly others and they can be customized by business type and industry.

The key and the value to good metrics lie in their simplicity and their interpretation. Complex metrics just provide you complex data that is difficult to interpret. Exhaustive numbers of metrics generate exhaustive amounts of data that requires exhaustive interpretation. No amount of metrics, or process for that matter, can replace the need for talented people who can interpret the data, then decide where and what to act on.

The idea of good metrics should be to create a few indicators that measure the specific core leverage points of a business or organization. They should provide both a historical trend (are they getting better or worse) and a specific snap shot of performance. They should indicate where the interpreter of the information should go look for issues, if they are indicating issues. They should not be expected to indicate what the cause of the problem is, and certainly not what the solution to any particular issue will be.

Almost every business in existence already has some sort of metrics. Some are probably good metrics and some are probably just measuring something. There will also probably be those in the organization that are clamoring for more metrics as a way to improve performance.

However, I have found that good metrics are usually like bitter medicine. They are best and most effective when delivered in small doses, and usually best prescribed by someone outside the organization that does not have a stake hold to protect.

Just like healing oneself, measuring oneself is sometimes a difficult thing to accurately and honestly do as well.

The Optimal Meeting Length

I think that the new business reality is that it is the rare event when something actually gets done without first having a meeting. We need to know who will be Responsible for the action to be taken, and who will be Accountable for taking it, and who will need to be Consulted before it is taken and who will be Informed of its being taken. We will spend hours in meetings in this type of analysis before we actually do anything. We seem to have evolved the business approach that having a meeting about something is the same thing as taking action.

With all this time being spent in meetings trying to decide how to split the accountability and responsibility for doing anything, it got me to thinking: What would be the optimal length for a meeting, not just one of these deciding how to take action meetings, but any meeting?

I looked. There is any number of books available on line purporting to help people run efficient and effective meetings. I was in a meeting when I Googled that so I really didn’t have the time to read any of them. Who knows some of them might actually hold the key. But since we are in the here and now I will take my kick at the can (and utilize some of my own web sleuthing) to come up with what I think is the optimal length for any meeting.

There will be a few meeting ground rules.

• For it to officially be considered a meeting it must be visual in nature. That means that you either have to be there in person, or attend via video. Audio attendance at a meeting only is a phone call / conversation regardless of how you want to describe it, and it enables everyone associated with the call to multi-task doing email, play solitaire, or any other distraction they may so choose.

• If it is a real meeting it will have an agenda. If you don’t have set topics, speakers and time frames it is not a meeting. It is an unstructured discussion, or lunch. Without an agenda you should not expect to get anything done.

• The only computer that is to be open during the meeting is that of the person presenting. Open computers enable everyone to multi-task (see the first bullet above) instead of paying attention to the topic of the meeting. It’s also discourteous to the presenter.

• There should be no refreshments of any kind at the meeting. No bagels or muffins for a morning meeting. No coffee or soft drinks. The object of the meeting participants should be to get something done, not get fed and watered. If you really have to bribe people with food to get them to come to your meeting, maybe you don’t really need to have a meeting.

• Finally, there will be no leaving the meeting and coming back for any reason. No taking phone calls. No smoking breaks. And lastly, no bathroom breaks. Get that done before or after the meeting. Don’t disrupt it by having to go.

I understand that these rules will take a lot of the fun out of meetings. People will actually have to show up and pay attention. I know this is a lot to ask, but I do think it is critical that we get back to the old outdated ways of actually getting things done. Show up. Do your work. Then go do something else.

Now when we are talking about meetings, we are talking about the internal gathering of company employees. They can be called reviews, or updates, or deep dives or just about any other euphemism that you can come up with for having people get together for a business purpose. I will refer generically to all these events as “meetings”.

I am also going to specifically exclude meetings with customers from this discussion for the time being, since those types of meetings are held only with the consent of the customer and at their discretion. Many of the ground rules I have laid out would and should apply, but some (such as food and refreshments) may not.

With the ground rules in place and the meeting defined as not including customers we can get started on how long a meeting should take, or should last, depending on how you want to look at it.

Research (Google) shows that the average person goes to the bathroom about six times a day. That same research also shows that the average person stays awake about seventeen hours a day. Using simple math that means that the average person goes to the bathroom on average once every three hours or so (actually a little less than that). I think this is a good upper bound for a meeting’s length.

Now if we use a little probability theory, because not everyone goes to the bathroom at the same time, we will find that on average for any meeting of two or more people someone will have to go within half the average time frame. That means that our maximum meeting length is now slightly less than an hour and a half.

Even better.

Now on to other research (Google) topics. Estimates for the length of human attention span are highly variable and depend on the precise definition of attention being used.

• Transient attention is a short-term response to a stimulus that temporarily attracts/distracts attention. Researchers disagree on the exact amount of human transient attention span; some say it may be as short as 8 seconds.

I think it is safe to assume that senior management is more Transient Attention oriented.

• Selective sustained attention, also known as focused attention, is the level of attention that produces the consistent results on a task over time. Some state that the average human attention span is approximately 5 minutes; others state that most healthy teenagers and adults are unable to sustain attention on one thing for more than about 20 minutes at a time, although they can choose repeatedly to re-focus on the same thing. This ability to renew attention permits people to “pay attention” to things that last for more than a few minutes, such as long movies.

Attention span, as measured by sustained attention, or the time spent continuously on task, varies with age. Older children are capable of longer periods of attention than younger children.

It doesn’t say anything about executives or managers. Insert your own experience based limit here, however my experience has taught me that they tend to align with younger children.

I have been writing this for an hour or two and I think I need to take a break. I’ll be right back….

Okay, if we accept that people can pay attention to a single topic for up to twenty minutes, but that they can continue to “refocus” on interesting topics in order to stay engaged for longer periods of time, the question now becomes; how many times can they refocus? This is where true science comes into play.

In baseball its three strikes and you’re out.

Asking people to maintain their attention, and refocus multiple times while limiting the number of bathroom breaks is a lot to ask. Asking people to refocus their attention three times for a total of sixty minutes seems to be about the limit of reasonable expectation.

There you have it. A scientific explanation. No meeting should be more than one hour long. If you can’t get it done in an hour then you probably need to re-look at what it is that you are trying to accomplish in the meeting.

I think we all knew this is where I was going with this topic. We seem to have broken our lives down into hour intervals starting with our classes in school. If you can teach Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to twenty five disinterested teenagers within a one hour class, you should be able to have far less than twenty five adult business people come to conclusion on just about any topic within the same interval.

By the way, time does indeed slow down, the closer you get to the speed of light.

This interval sits comfortably within the average need for a bathroom break, and it is short enough that it doesn’t require too many refocusing events. It is the optimal length for a meeting where the objective is to actually get something done. It enables the meeting attendees to get in, get out and move on to the next topic. By limiting the time one would expect (hope) to drive the attendees to come to a conclusion within that time.

If there are more topics to be covered they need to be broken down into other multiple one hour meetings.

Of course, none of this one hour meeting logic applies to how long a luncheon meeting should last.

Is Travel Efficient?

I often travel for business. Maybe that is the reason that I seem to find myself writing about business travel so frequently. I used to think that travel was exciting and exotic. That was right up until the point where I actually started traveling, a lot. For those of you that don’t travel much, trust me, it isn’t that great. I noticed a new commercial on television (since there really aren’t any new shows out right now, I notice the new commercials during the reruns) extolling the virtues of a certain hotel for those that “get” to travel as opposed to those that “have” to travel. Cute approach, but definitely aimed at those that don’t know anything about traveling.

I think very few of us who have done any traveling actually feel like we “get” to travel. I understand that a certain amount of travel is to be expected, and might even be considered mandatory for the proper conduct of business. Even in the virtual world that we now work in, sometimes there is no substitution for being there in person. We can video conference, Instant Message, email or even call on the phone all we want, but it is just not the same as being there.

If we accept that there is a defined amount of travel that should occur, we now need establish some boundaries around it so that we can make sure that we are efficient with the use of our travel. Is too little bad for business? Can you travel too much? Do you get a good return for your travel dollar cost investment?

Remember that travel constitutes the entire amount of time portal to portal, and back that the trip encompasses. The two hour meeting that you attended may have been very productive, but was it worth the entire two business days of work time (including travel) that were invested in it for you to attend? Before we can answer that question I think we need to apply a “weighting” factor. Customer meetings are important. They are always more important than internal business meetings. Time with the customer is precious. The customer has only a limited amount of time available in their day and if they choose to spend any of it with you, it should be treated as precious.

On the other hand, internal business meetings occur all the time. I have discussed in the past that there seems to have been a blurring of the lines between what is a meeting and what is a conference call. This blurring if anything has devalued the time spent in meetings. Now multiple people choose to attend by video or conference circuit. It may be a meeting requiring time, travel and expense, but for several it is just another phone call.

For me travel is not a very efficient use of time. I look on with great admiration and envy at those on the plane that are able to open their PCs and work on their spreadsheets or presentations. I have tried to do it. Occasionally I try again to do it, just to see if something has magically changed and I am now able to work in a cramped, strange setting with 250 strangers sitting close by, with several of whom seemingly in succession needing to go to the bathroom. It is to no avail. For whatever reason I cannot get meaningful work done on an airplane. I have even tried to write articles for publication in this forum while spending twelve hours en route to Brazil, and was unsuccessful at it.

Perhaps it is the same internal programming that makes it difficult for me to work at home instead of coming into the office. For whatever reason I find that I am most productive at the office, in a professional environment. I seem to have the tools, space and environment that I find conducive to high productivity work when I am in a business office. I find that I am reasonably productive when I travel to a remote company location and can work from an office while there, as well. It seems to be the transit time where it is difficult for me to work.

It is possible that my productivity on a plane has decreased with the available room to work on a plane. There was a time in the dim, glorious past where a standard coach seat on a plane was a whopping thirty inches wide and there was a staggering thirty two inches of leg room for each seat, in coach no less. Now it seems that there is only twenty seven inches of seat room and twenty eight inches of leg room (if you are lucky). That means we the travelers on average have lost two hundred and four square inches of room on the plane. That is almost one and a half square feet. That is a loss of approximately twenty one percent of the space that we used to get to travel in.

For comparison’s sake, my laptop computer measures eight inches by twelve inches, or is approximately ninety six square inches. On average we have lost more than two laptop computers worth of room on the average airplane seat.

Isn’t it interesting how the cost of travel continues to increase but the space that our airline ticket now purchases has decreased so significantly?

I don’t know how I was going to relate the loss of one and a half square feet of space with my difficulty in being able to work on a plane. I don’t remember being particularly able to work that much better on the old roomier seats. Perhaps it is the now much closer proximity of other people who are also not working on the plane, but who do seem to have over active bladders that is affecting me.

I do however remember being able to sleep more comfortably in the old coach seats.

Regardless, what I find is that I am not as productive when I travel as when I am in the office. I suspect to some extent this is the case for everyone, with the possible exception of my daughter. She seems to be able to conduct her work, which appears to consist of the use of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and any other number of social media programs, equally well from anywhere. Maybe that is the future of business as well, although I haven’t heard if she can study for her classes as well while on a road trip with her girl friends as she can in her dorm room, but she definitely can “tweet” up a storm.

This brings me in a roundabout way to the topic of if travel actually is efficient. I have had to think about this one for a while. We spend a lot of time and money on travel. Do we actually get our monies worth out of it?

I guess it really depends on a few contributing criteria as to whether business travel can be considered efficient and whether or not we think we are getting our monies worth for the resource investment. Criteria such as who is traveling, who are they meeting, what is the purpose of the meeting, how long is the meeting and how long will it take to get there (and back) should all come into play when looking at travel.

With a decreased productivity associate with travel, spending double digit hours in transit to attend an internal meeting that is scheduled for a couple of hours doesn’t seem efficient. On the other hand as I said earlier, meetings with customers would significantly change the balance of this equation.

I have mentioned travel and meetings with customers several times. That doesn’t mean that all travel associated with customers should be construed as necessary, or efficient. There are only so many dinners, sporting events and outings that you can take a customer to before you should expect some progress. Too many times it seems that we have the tendency to associate meetings with customers as progress. Meetings with customers are activities. As I said earlier, time with a customer should be precious, but progress is actually closing deals with customers and getting contracts.

What this means that in many instances it is difficult to know if the meeting with the customer is going to progress the desired result of a business contract or a product order, or if it will be just another activity.

I guess the bottom line is that travel, even travel to see customers is more expensive from an efficiency and work opportunity lost point of view than just the cost of the airfare and hotel. When you travel you have to put several other functions and opportunities on hold or at least in a lower priority state in order to focus on the travel task at hand. I think it might have been viewed in the past that travel was some sort of break from the grind of work and hence travel might have been something to look forward to.

It’s not.

And as business and the world in general speed up and virtualizes, I am not even sure that it is really an efficient way of conducting much of our business anymore. There is definitely a place for travel, particularly where customer contact is concerned, but I am not so sure about anywhere else.

Maybe I have just traveled enough and don’t want to “get” to travel anymore.