The Wrong Way to Find Work

(From Adapting! What I Learned From Unemployment)

Any way you find work is okay. There is no wrong way to find work.

I have gotten jobs from networking, people recommending me, applying online, posted resumes, recruiters, company open house interviews, mailing resumes, creating special reports, applying in person, and becoming self employed.

My wife got jobs from going door to door dropping off resumes, applying for advertised positions and government jobs online. People get work sending value proposition letters.

Guerrilla Marketing expert Jay Levinson changed the rules of finding work by helping create small businesses. Social media get people eposure and work (and prevent others from getting hired). Writing books and public speaking are wonderful ways to be the expert employers need.

If there was a worst way, it would be only using one technique to hunt for jobs. Bugdet your time - call people, network, search for jobs online, research companies, find new projects, learn about other industries, write marketing materials, send them out, and make time to be with family and friends.

Remember rules are made to be broken. Use more than one way to find jobs.

Focus on Being Good for Solutions

Been reading “The Myths of Innovation” by Scott Berkun (Have been a fan of Scott’s writing for several years www.scottberkun.com ), and he dispels the myth that there is one great epiphany moment that creates new products. Instead he shows through history all great ideas are preceded, followed or more likely surrounded with hard work.

Also every improvement overcomes people doubting it will work.

In addition even the person with the idea did not know all the ways any new invention could be used. Wilbur and Orville Wright did not imagine airmail, worldwide airlines, cargo services and millions of travelers daily. They were just the first to really control powered flight. A lot of work by many people has happened since then to create the world travel we take for granted.

Scott’s suggestion for creating innovations – focus on the simple language of problem, prototype, experiment, design and solution. The solution should benefit someone else and “do good”.

The other point is get started doing something, work in small teams, provide needed leadership, and be happy about interesting mistakes to learn from them. Interesting mistakes often become the innovations people think of like microwave ovens. You have to be aware and see why they did not fit your expectations.

So do something good, learn from it, and try to benefit people. Focus on being good, and who knows where that will take us in the future.

Terrorist Ruin Good Days

Today another terrorist tried ruin a good day in Boston. Patriot’s Day is a Massachusetts Holiday. People were vacationing, running, and watching their family and friends finish.

We need to pray for the victims and their family. We need to grieve. Then we need to live our lives like this never happened. Be aware when things don’t look right. But go ahead and live your life anyway.

I do understand. I was there in Olympic Park about 45 minutes before the bomb went off in 1996. Probably walked within 100 feet of the explosion site, or closer. The park was closed for a day while the police investigated. When it was safe, the authorities reopened the park. My friends and I made sure to go back the first day it opened. No bomber is going to ruin a great event like the Olympics.

Terrorist want people to panic. To destroy the government by ruining your trust. They think we want anarchy.

No we want civilization and people to care for each other. We do not think violence is the answer.

How many anarchists do your family know? None. We don’t pay attention to violent characters. Mother Theresa and Mahatma Gandhi are worth remembering.

Few attacks succeed. Many more attacks have been tried. Hard work by good people, law enforcement, and a little luck as prevented most of them. But many more people die from car accidents. The odds of you being a victim are very small.

So grieve today. Then honor the victims by living the life you want. Change the world by doing good.

Frankly go back to Back Bay. Run in a race. Watch family and friends at events. Live more good days for the rest of your life.


Lyrics from the Beatles Revolution

“We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be all right”

Working Generations

My dad retired at 53 to enjoy my mom's last years as her health was not great. Worked at Eastman Kodak and left with the first golden handshake to a good pension with benefits. The extras beyond the pension just ended as the company went bankrupt.

Our generation grew up with lots of competition due to the baby boom, and also is the first to depend on 401Ks instead of pensions, so we may have to work longer. (My 101K will not support me anytime soon)

Everyone (Boomers, Gen X and Millennials) may have major jump in better health and active lifespan due to the stem cell research / bio technology coming to market soon or next decade." What would you do if you knew you would live to 120?" is not a theoretical question these days.

Millennials were raised as the most teamwork focused group you would ever meet. In many ways they remind me of the Silent Generation who saved the world. (Look at the warriors in Iraq and Afghanistan) I suspect they will overcome the slow economy and global competition. They will have many more opportunities in their long careers as the Boomers retire.

Intend to join them for the ride as long as I am productive.

Business Owners Need Fans

The average business owner is not flush with cash. If they still have their best customers, the orders are smaller, and he has to offer lower prices. Half their small customers have gone out of business and the business owner had to at their debt. The average business is hurting for income and profits.

If the owner has any cash, he is waiting for the next crazy idea to come from DC. Taxes will go up next year 4%. Cap and Trade (Tax) will export more manufacturing jobs overseas. Who knows how much health care will cost in a few years.

Look at states that have better economies. Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota have lower unemployment and generated two thirds of all new jobs created over the last three years. Why? Business friendly regulations, stable taxes, governments within budget, limits on litigation awards, and respect for taxpayers.

Canada is doing well in this global recession. Why? Business friendly regulations, lower taxes, limited government spending, limits on litigation, and lots of legal immigrants. Same thing that built the USA. Canada also avoided the real estate bubble by not allowing very low down payments nor subprime lending. Smart regulations unlike Fannie and Freddie offerings.

If DC wants to improve the economy, the government has to be fans of business owners. Not vilify them. What business needs is stability. Cut government spending and borrowing, don’t add more regulations, and limit tax increases. Then businesses will start investing, expanding and hiring. Until then we are starting down the path of the Japanese lost decades.

Concern - Will America Keep Taking Risks?

Everyone has seen the news about the Deep Horizon oil platform exploding, burning and sinking in the Gulf of Mexico. The large oil spill is very memorable, and the news stories are telling about the people who will be negatively affected by the large oil spill. Very heart wrenching.

In addition British Petroleum is getting ripped in the press as everything from incompetent to evil money makers. BP is responding announcing they are doing everything they can to clean up the problem, and will pay for all the damages. Properly so, I may add.

The real question is what will happen long term? Is this going to be like Three Mile Island accident, where the nuclear industry fell behind the rest of world in developing nuclear energy? Think about it. One accident caused a whole industry to stop in its tracks over 30 years ago. Almost no new plants have been built for three decades.

What is the result? Most of the technology has moved to other countries. Canada and France develop much more nuclear electricity than we do. The other scary side effect is these plants were designed to be replaced after 25 to 30 years and then replaced by modern plants. We have

Will one oil spill stop more drilling and exploration? Will the US be more dependent on imports to provide the gasoline and diesel for our cars and trucks. Most of us drive cars, and all of us buy groceries and goods delivered by trucks. Are we going to stop producing energy we need to complete in a global economy?

There are over 30,000 drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. There are plenty of opportunities for more accidents and oil spills. Are we going to stop driving and eating? No. We can not stop taking reasonable risks.

Our military is trained in taking risks. They professionally get in harms way and fight enemies who would love to kill them. We don't see them hiding in a military base in the US. We see our men and women all over the world in the worst conditions performing admirably. They do it by preparing for the risks and using training to overcome.

The US has to keep drilling for oil as well as developing alternatives. This will take decades to resolve. In the meantime talented men and women will come up with solutions to these problems and improve processes to make them safe. We must continue to develop energy and take risks to succeed.

Meantime our prayers are with the families of the lost and the injured from the accident.
Steve

Top Finance Concerns

These Top Finance Concerns from Cindy Kraft, the CFO Coach. These opinions reflect the view on business conditions we see from talking with business owners and investors, so I wanted to share them.

The CFO Rising conference yesterday morning was right up my alley with sessions on Creating Alignment in the C-Suite, A New Dynamic in the Boardroom, and ... particularly ... Finance Skills for a New Decade. My next few blog posts will talk about what I heard, but I’ll start with some interesting stats that opened the morning.

The CFOs in attendance were polled around critical issues they are facing, and here are some of the results ...
--89% felt the worst was over but do not anticipate a turn around anytime soon
--Only 4% felt growth was likely to happen in the next several months
--70% were concerned and VERY concerned (35%) around the cost effectiveness of proposed government regulations
--When asked about the proposed health care legislation, 69% were very concerned about the tax impacts and 62% were very concerned about the quality of care

Conversely, the attendees felt there was some good that came out of the economic downturn ... it has forced finance to go back to basics.
--32% said they now had a core business focus
--25% were focused on increasing productivity
--3 out of 4 indicated they would be preserving cash as a hedge against economic uncertainty
--77% indicated their focus would be on organic growth ... which means ...
--Only 10% indicated M&A was a core business focus

http://www.cfo-coach.com/ to subscribe to Cindy Kraft's postings.

Toyota Man

Interesting article about the culture at Toyota. Good read.
Steve

http://latimes.com/business/la-fi-toyota-man23-2010mar23,0,7100881.story

Toyota’s Runaway Case Gets Stranger

Poor Toyota. All they wanted to be was the number one automobile manufacturer in the world. They were so close. Good cars, great reputation, worldwide distribution, owners are fans, and the best marketing of any auto manufacturer. The successful launches of the Lexus and Scion lines changed the luxury and first car markets. Nobody was close to Toyota’s momentum.

Now their name is smeared with runaway cars, stuck gas petals and floor mats. Have talked about companies not believing complaints by customers, and over confidence in their product. Complaints are second chances given to you by customers to save the sale. You can look at the Big 3 in the USA ignoring reports by the car rental companies that the Japanese cars were performing better with less maintenance, and they ignored statistics proving them. It was hubris by domestic manufacturers.

Toyota is in a difficult situation. Too many lawsuits by too many opportunistic attorneys looking to make money, and government prosecutors looking to improve their political name by suing Toyota. If you read the previous article I sympathize with Toyota finding intermittent problems with multiple causes. They are difficult to see and harder to analyze than production problems, and a nightmare to resolve.

The San Diego case is strange, very strange. A 61 year old car runs away with him. 94 miles per hour. Police chase him and help slow him down. Makes the national news. Next day we find out he driving a car NOT recalled. It has a brake override system that if he was holding down the brake should have turned off the accelerator. Worse, the “victim” is $700,000 in debt and was about to lose the car along with the other three repossessed. He could be motivated to fake the runaway to make money.

First of all, am not going to assume this was faked. Am going to analyze the situation and ways to investigate this. I am not convinced by investigators who can not make the car do it again. How can you know how to trigger it unless you know all the possible causes and combine them all? Right now that has not been settled.

Would love to see the video if I were investigating. Per Toyota if he is stepping on the brake the acceleration should stop. The police cruiser video should show solid brake lights if he is pushing like he claimed. Were there any highway cameras or news copter pictures of the incident? Did they as for witnesses?

If he was faking, he had to overcome the brake override system that should have turned off the accelerator. There would be evidence of that unless he was a top flight programmer. Most people do not know how to reprogram a car.

First impressions by the police are good evidence. Did they smell the brakes catching up to him? Yes. Did the brake lights stay on the whole time? Maybe not, he was reportedly pumping the brakes until the police had him apply the parking brake and stay on the brakes. That may have finally activated the brake override system. How did the victim act when they stopped? The brakes should have been too hot to touch. The wheels hot too conducting heat away (unless they were aluminum or magnesium. They might conduct heat away too fast, but the hub would be hot.

Physical evidence needs to be checked. They would have had to fade. That may glaze the face of the pads or show other damage on the pads and discs. Experts can tell. The reports are the brakes were worn out.

If the evidence is he let go of the brakes to accelerate, would suspect fraud. If not, Toyota would be well served to assume this is a possible real problem and keep looking for combinations of problems. How likely is a 61 year old to panic when his car acts irrationally. Know a lot of teens through fifty year olds who would panic. My gut feel is this is a real runaway.

Okay, what possible problems are there? Physical, Hardware, Firmware or Software. Physical has been exhausted with petal recall and changing the floor mats. Hardware is what it is. Firmware and Software are really the biggest culprits left. My partner believes it is software. Too much probability with the diversity of runaway cars over so many models and years. Also he is a systems expert unlike any inside the auto industry with too many years of experience to fall for the first good probable answer and would dig deeper.

Toyota would be wise to hire an expert like him, but suspect it would not happen. Mainly for litigation reasons. Toyota is better off with non English speaking help who would be tough to be interviewed on a witness stand. (Especially if the company help was hard to find?). Disclosure rules in the US would eventually flesh this out, but still makes the attorneys’ jobs harder with all the difficulty of translating exactly technical jargon to English. Can’t blame Toyota here, is any country more litigious than the US?

Don’t think Toyota’s problems are over. Cruise control runaways are happening too. Would expect more recalls and finding more causes. Some people are saying a brake override software solution and reprogramming the on/off button to shut off under repeated pushing is all that is needed. I have doubts that covers everything unfortunately. Technology is too complicated and simple solutions often miss part of the problem like the sticking petal and floor mats.

Toyota will recover like Ford did from the Pinto fiasco, and will focus like Ford on making great cars again. May take a few years, but Toyota’s great reputation will return.

Till then I would know how to shift my Toyota into neutral, or hold the start button down for 3 seconds. Yes I would still buy a Toyota before this is resolved, because the odds of it happening are under 0.1% and going down with every improvement.

Drive safe,
Steve

Toyota’s Runaway Acceleration and Prius Brake Problems

All cars have design flaws and quirks. However think Toyota's ego got in the way of fixing these problems.

Am an engineer that understands technology. Toyoda builds high consistency and quality products, and I would buy one in the future.

Have sympathy with trying to find intermittent problems with runaway acceleration. It can take several examples of problem assemblies or complete vehicles to analyze. You need people who can look outside their specialty for other possible causes, and then follow each one to prove they are not the cause. It is also difficult when the rate of failure like this one is under 0.1 percent. Then it is only when multiple causes happen together. It is really tough to find these type problem sources. But this has been reported in various models for over 4 years, enough time to find causes and solutions unless your head is in the sand.

In the acceleration case there are three causes: Floor mats, mechanical sticking of accelerator pedal, and software/hardware programming problems with the drive by wire system. Steve Wozniak reports his Toyoda runs away intermittently on cruise control. I would take his report seriously since he tries to replicate the problem and analyze it. So far Toyota has not taken care of the hardware software problem beyond solving the accelerator pedal problem.

Each source gets blamed and says it can't be us. Then blames the other sources. In a large corporation you have to be determined and persistent looking for true causes in spite of pressure to settle the problem quietly. This is where ego about "we can't be wrong" gets in the way. Finding these causes is dangerous to your career if you are on the wrong side.

Sometimes you need outside consultants to take the heat and you need a willingness to admit problems. Toyota has lost the willingness to admit problems. It may be cultural as taking the blame in Japan is a cause for great shame leading to resigning or even committing suicide. If Toyota is smart they will honor the group that resolves these problems within the company. You have to want to always improve.

Thought Toyoda would have jumped on possible brake flaws with the Prius which are also in the news. Brakes not working are a major liability and would kill sales. This is a major flaw with the Prius have been hearing about for a couple years. Toyota will take another big hit if this is not resolved.

Mechanics tell me they think Toyota brakes calipers and pads are smaller than the competitors. They question stopping power because of this. You need extra stopping power when conditions are less than ideal due to weather, dirt, etc.

Toyota will take a hit on sales, and resale’s for about 2 years. Hear used Toyota's are now $3,000 cheaper wholesale than they were a few weeks ago. Think runaway acceleration will extend to more vehicles.

Remember if your company is involved in repetitive complaints, take the customer’s seriously if you want to keep them buying again.
Steve