I'm really slack, I know

I've been a bit slack here with my posting but there's been a lot more activity on my other blogs... please check 'em out!

Addicted2wheels - bike racing for everyone
Offline - my take on the planet and its politics
Dopage - all the dope on the dopes who dope, allegedly
Secrets of a Sydney Past - personal photos and recollections of Sydney's history
Central Coast Imagery - my photography blog
Musical Must-knows - software and gadgets for the electronic audio artiste
My Alfa Blog - as in rust-free Italians
My PC Help Blog - as in fixing hardware and software

Will Holden survive?

'Will Holden survive?'. That was a search string I just saw in my stats. Interesting.

First up, why does this interest anyone? (BTW, Holden is an Aussie automobile brand name, wholly-owned by GM.) If you were CEO of GM, or a shareholder, it would be of interest, and you would want it to be profitable. But you would also be keen on the overview - does Holden's survival depend on brand alone, or do we need to make 'Holdens' in Australia?

Judging upon the relatively slow sales of re-badged imports masquerading as 'Holdens' it looks fairly likely that local manufacture - or assembly - is indeed important to buyers. Or maybe they are just the wrong cars, poorly marketed. Then again the locally made big cars are declining too, so maybe 'locally-made' doesn't matter so much any more either. After all, most Aussies have bought into multiple foreign brand-names anyway, like Toyota, Mazda, Honda, Sony, Hyundai, Apple and so on without caring about 'where it was made'. So why should it matter with Holden's cars?

Well Holden's survival also matters to Holden employees. And many of them are involved in making the cars themselves. Many more are involved in sales, distribution, marketing and servicing, and to be honest they may say they care where the cars are made but at the end of the day they just want a job. So local manufacture is probably not that important, unless you actually work in the factory. In which case you would indeed be asking, 'will local manufacturing survive'? Well I looked at that some time ago in this post, where I looked at the energy consumed in car manufacture. In a nutshell I found that the Italians and the Koreans were far more efficient at making cars, to a staggering degree. The Holden Commodore was simply a glutton in energy terms and was probably sustained only by subsidies.

So I think that's the answer, really. If left alone with current levels of subsidy the local (Australian) manufacture of cars will continue to decline. Likely as not, if supported by increased subsidy it will stay at current levels. Which is a fairly expensive way to support a few manufacturing jobs; however prestige and politics go hand in hand with subsidies, and I suspect we'll continue to foot the bill. Don't forget that these subsidies are often hidden as 'incentives' and 'tax breaks' under umbrellas like 'innovation'. Thus we get Federal government support for local manufacture of old tech like hybrids inserted into declining car designs like Toyota Camrys, or 'new' small GM cars that are still using old petrol tech.

So will Holden survive? Yep, certainly as a brand, even if GM itself died. But it will only take one tough decision by a determined government to bring down the house of cards that is 'local manufacture'. And after that, who will care?

Network World article on free DNS services

Good, readable and useful article on free recursive DNS services. Worth a read if you want to break free of your ISP's DNS service.

And another good read on DNS turning 25. Blame (or thank) Paul Mockapetris for your DNS woes I guess.

Teamplayers... what are they, really?

We like to think we need 'teamplayers' in our business, and in our lives in general. They sound like assets, don't they? People who are cohesive, get along, absorb instructions and lead others in the designated direction. They follow the rules, don't make trouble and work as one with the group to generate the desired result. All goodness, surely?

Mind you, to most of us our vision of a team is based around sporting analogies, tinged with military terminology like tactics and strategy. So we tend to see our manager as a coach, our team leader as a captain and the team working in different positions on the field but playing to the same rules and game plan. Which is all sweet and lovely within a context of strictly enforced rules, clearly delineated roles and an end result (ie winning games, winning the season finale etc) that's a self-reinforcing common vision.

If we are to critique this just a little, what exactly do we have in common here with modern work practices? Perhaps it was a stronger analogy in the 20th Century's time-and-motion-manufacturing and typing-pool -style of regimented labor, but does it hold true in a world of increasing role diversity and the blurring of who-does-what-when. Do you see yourself in such a team? I don't. I work in a geographically dispersed, virtual team, do everything myself (from typing to reporting to creating graphics; scheduling my time, prioritising as I see fit) as and when needed. I set my own hours around a work and life balance and rarely find myself boxed into anything like regimentation. It's more fluid, organic and diverse, and very flexible.

Sure, I'm just me, just one example. But the shift in work practices - from full time to more part-time work; from office or factory to home-based work; from clearly delineated single-task-based work to multi-tasking, is as real as the shift to a service-based economy. Not everyone works likes this but a heck of a lot more do today than yesterday.

So what does this mean for teams? To some, nothing at all. They cling to old ideas with new labels. They divide people up by 'personality type' and advise that you need one of these and two of those and lots of these worker bees to make it hum. Which is great if you are a bee, and ant or maybe a wasp. But what do insects know about teamwork outside of their genetic endowment? What about insects, sorry people who need to generate new ideas to improve the business and match - or beat - the competition? We don't want to make the same stuff the same way over and over again, do we? Well not if we are making incandescent bulbs in a world that is switching to energy-saving LEDs and fluoros.

In this new 21st Century world we need flexible, adaptable people who think and act on the run. They are assets to the team as well, in fact they are the new team. And if they uncover problems and devise and implement solutions within the overall team context and direction then they are invaluable. So we don't want mere followers, we want action-thinkers who network with their peers. We don't want them to buck the system for no reason, and we need a way to accommodate valid dissent, too. We don't want managers to have to micro-manage, either. So it's not just the team player per se but the team organisation that needs to allow free thought, innovation and a way to generate and propagate new ideas, quickly. In fact in a lean organisation, and I mean Lean in a particularly business-oriented way, the team player will contribute incremental improvement to process, procedure and organisational design quite natuarally. So they are truly a thinking, doing, trying-out-new-ideas kind of beast. Sure, not all of the team members will shine to the same degree, or generate the same caliber or type of idea; but they will support each other and provide an environment of contribution by which the team overall prospers.

So it's a cohesive environment of contribution that is important, coupled with flexible, empowered individuals. Perhaps thinking about 'personality types' and trying to build teams around a shopping list of personalities is too blinkered in this new world. Maybe we need to expect everyone to do a bit of everything, but in their individual way.

Ford: Out of touch or what?

Bleeding cash, selling off assets and now dressing up old ideas as their best new ones. All wrapped in a slick name. Help! Bail out of Ford now, before the rats jump! No, wait, it may just work. Let's announce a great "new" way to get more power out of a smaller engine and save gasoline to boot! And give it a catchy enviro-friendly name like "EcoBoost". From the Car Connection: With its EcoBoost technology, however, Ford engineers apparently are adopting new math. An array of new engines will not only boost power but increase mileage while also reducing harmful emissions. The technology will make its formal debut at this month's Detroit auto show. More significantly, the automaker plans to begin rolling EcoBoost out on a half-million Fords, Lincolns, and Mercurys annually over the next five years.

You'd imagine EcoBoost to be something unique and whizzbang, but it's a combo of direct injection and turbo charging. Not only is this old tech - like 1940s airplane technology - but it's not even newsworthy in the auto industry. Like direct injection is new? OK, for an automotive petrol engine it's maybe 10 years old. Turbocharging? Decades old. Low-boost for fuel efficiency to make a 6 feel like an 8? Ancient history - go check out SAABs in the 80s for starters. And so on.

What it does show is that Ford doesn't have the cash to come up with genuinely new ideas. The only saving grace is that it's logical - and timely, if a bit late to the party. So it may just work, if staving off the inevitable is the goal. Just how long do you reckon Ford can keep banking on its past without bankrolling the future?

Tom Yager gets excited

InfoWorld blogger Tom Yager gets a bit excited about AMD's Spider chipset. Quad-core meets graphics management in one super-moddable yet lower-power chip. In a word, it's another Intel-beater. (That's if you allow 2 hyphenated words to count as one, as I clearly do.) It's a good read, especially if you too get excited about performance improvements and renewed competition in the CPU marketplace.

I say that because I remember all too well the 'good old days' of competing CPUs from the likes of Motorola and Zilog, as well as Intel. Let alone competing operating systems! Yes, yes, we have AMD and a few others out there now but largely (and for too long) it's been a landscape of endless Intel and Microsoft design and manufacture, hasn't it? Now we have more hope for competition than ever, with the likes of Linux et al, generic Web Services and of course the Open Source movement opening up the software side of the world; and AMD offering some very realistic options in the hardware marketplace.

You probably don't need to know this, but here it is...

A general ramble about business stuff...

• IBM lost server market-share but posted more revenue in Q3 2007. Now IBM won't be happy about losing share but they are clearly doing better at growing margins and selling into premium markets. So who should really worry about this - HP, Sun and Dell, or IBM? Hey, I work for IBM and this is my opinion only and not necessarily IBM's, but gee I'd rather be the guy making money than the guy discounting to the bone... if that's indeed what's happening.
• Motorola slips to 3rd in mobile handset market. Now traditional MBA-style strategic analysis will tell you that 1st or 2nd are the places to be, and climbing looks better than dropping. So that's bad news for Motorola (13% share, down from 21%), good news for 2nd placed Samsung (now 15%) and 1st placed Nokia (a whopping 38%). Yes, I'd be looking to improve the product and sharpen the marketing if I were in charge at Motorola - or get out of the kitchen.
• Sony win's Greenpeace's annual 'green-ness' award in electronics, replacing Nokia. Nintendo bottom of list. It's hard to know how this is measured fairly when unknowns abound. I suspect a lot of guesswork takes place, although policies are usually visible and practices can be tested, if Greenpeace actually go so far as to test them. Let's assume they do and give Sony a cheer, at least for now.
  

When your content is user-generated who has control?

Within the Digg newsportal lies a fundamental driver of content - you. If you want to raise the profile of a story, you can. Collectively it can matter, as Digg discovered when it tried to ban what it believed was illegal content - access to a DRM decryption key - or at least content that could bring about a lawsuit. What happened was salutary - the management couldn't actually ban a story - the readers, together, simply kept it alive. Now this c be a fine display of democracy in action, or it could also be a fine display of poor judgement on a large scale; or perhaps mob rule. I can see some sense on both sides, and can see such 'user-controlled' sites experiencing ongoing legal problems until some degree of lawful control is either enforced on these sites - or user-ratings are declared simply to be free speech in action. Forbes story here.

What happens in a globally accessible world when you don't understand which option to choose?

Well infoworld tells us here. It gets out. Not suprising, really. Wherever I have worked there have been people who didn't "get it" to greater or lesser degrees. Or who just didn't care enough to think it through. And a very, very small percentage who were bribable, malicious or just plain crazy. There's always a level of trust involved in any dealing we have with people but sometimes you need to build in some protection. At the most basic level, we set some rules so it's plain. And remind people about the rules regularly. At the top end, where the data really must be kept "inside", we default to the strongest level of protection. Like lock it up.

What infoworld is showing us in that article is that a search of Google's calendar feature is a rewarding pastime for some. They have highlighted taht some people share their calendar details without too much thought. Maybe it's inconsequential to them. Like who really cares if you are visiting the dentist today? And sometimes calendar entries are shared that by company policy shouldn't be... as in the McKinsey example quoted. Now I know how hard it is to control internal levels of document security - very hard - but we live in a world where increasingly useful Internet-based applications are being promoted to the masses. These same masses will become as familiar with the Google online application set as we may now be with Microsoft Office, and will bring that experience and expectation into the workplace. We can either leverage those skills for our internal corporate use - and save lots of time and money - or we can play it safe, ban the use of these thoroughly enticing tools "in house" and build the same functionality into our work based toolset. At great expense and possible frustration to our Google-savvy staff.

It's not a new problem, just a bigger one. Some big corporates will have no trouble funding an internal online workplace. But lots of smaller companies will cut those corners, use Google's or other online providers services and save a packet. They will pass these savings on with cheaper services to the client. And by doing so will eat into the big corporate's market shares. And simultaneously raise the risk profile for all of their clients. Unfortunately most of those clients won't see the risk they are taking until they Google up some confidential company material...

'Fattism' and hiring

Thinking of the workplace and our hiring and promoting practices, can we, or perhaps should we, discriminate against the obese? Legally it's probably OK. Ethically it's at least questionable. Yes, the obese are human too.

Of course we discriminate all the time, based on how people answer our questions (and what we deem to be acceptable answers) and probably - if we are being honest - on how they look. We size people up. Are they clean? Do they clean their fingernails? Have they brushed their hair? Have they dressed appropriately for the interview? Even if we don't admit to preferring the good looking over the more ordinary we probably do it subconsciously anyway. We are even prone to picking people 'like us'. So it's probably true that unless you actively seek diversity you'll end up populating the office with 'people like us'. And the extremes are what will get left out - or discriminated against, if you like.

Of course it's absolutely reasonable to pick the best person for the job - ie the most qualified or experienced, or the one who has demonstrated by their answers the best grip on what you believe to be important for the role. And it's also reasonable to expect that they will fit into your existing team, although you could argue that adaptability and diversity are important, too, so getting hung up on 'psychological' stuff is at best another attempt at selecting 'people like us'.

So do we hire the obese? Well we could say that they potentially will have more health issues, and that they may require additional hardware (stronger, bigger chairs for example). Or that they may not be able to physically perform some tasks, or to even get out of the building if there was a fire. But you could say that of persons with a physical disability, too. Then again, you say, the obese have chosen to 'let themselves go', so it's their fault; and besides, if they care that little about themselves how can we expect them to do a good job? But of course they haven't chosen to be obese, rather they simply haven't chosen to exercise or to maintain a healthy diet; or they have a medical issue, known or not. So do we ignore them, or do we instead take advantage of their skills and for the moment at least ignore the weight issue?

After all, they need a job too. Workforce Management reports briefly here on this topic.