Fresh Perspectives

The Golden Rule

I recently watched a TED talk by Karen Armstrong.  She advocates that the “Golden Rule”, not convoluted dogma, should be the basis for all religion.  Imagine if all of us did our best to follow that Golden Rule; “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”! 

p;

Driving with a Disability II

In my prior post, I gave you a summary overview about driving with a disability.  Today, I'd like to expand on that.

Again, primary driving controls are gas, brake and steering while secondary controls include everything else.  The systems I will be using come from 2 companies; Drive Master and EMC.  As you might imagine, there are not many companies around that manufacture products like this.  It is a specialty, and I'm sure the liability exposure, hence the cost of insurance, is considerable.  That applies to the dealer network as well.  Installing these systems requires specialized expertise, and generally the dealers offer driver training and evaluations as well as installation.  The company I'm working with locally has been doing this for well over 20 years, and they are indeed experts.  

I'll be using mechanical horizontal steering which connects to the steering column.  It can be adjusted on all planes.  Drive Master also retrofits steering boxes and rack and pinions for reduced and zero effort steering.  Among other innovative products, they offer backup steering systems as well.

I'll also be using the gas/brake system from EMC.  Their entire EMC system is called AEVIT (Advanced Electronic Vehicle Interface Technology).  They also offer secondary interface controls and "drive by wire" steering.  Their website is extremely informative.  This page gives a very nice overview of the AEVIT  driving system. 

Another very innovative company in this arena is MPD, Mobility Products and Design.  The hand control in my current van is an MPD product.  It is amazingly reliable, even after 11 years of use. 

Learning to drive with these devices is a little challenging and will require over 10 hours of training.  Mr. Keller has an older trainer van and is in the process of outfitting a new one.  You can imagine the expenses involved in such a specialty, hence the reason for the high cost at the consumer level. This is indeed a very specialized business, and the companies and dealers involved are indeed quite innovative.

I'm enjoyed doing this research.  I hope you enjoy it as well. 

GM - A Lesson Learned?

General Motors is now officially "Government Motors", no longer listed on NYSE.  The reasons are obvious...GM remained an old company whose management style remained in a 1950's mindset.  In the 1980's, W. Edward Deming predicted what is happening now to GM and other companies in the same situation.  And Bob Sutton clearly reflected this mindset in a blog post.

When will we learn?  The learning is happening in the auto industry at Ford Motor Company.  They operate lean in much the same way as Toyota, and they have trimmed down their vehicle offerings.  Ford is now setting the pace for American business.  They are learning to compete globally; GM never learned that! 

Having spent 30 years in public education I can tell you, however, that American public education will learn more slowly.  Education, and more specifically career/technical education, needs to be reflective of the direction industry is taking.  That happens slowly because public education is an extension of the government bureaucracy that created it.  Education remains in the "top down" management mindset where the customer (student) isn't always the priority.  But in this time of unprecedented change, I see a glimmer of hope for public education....the mindset is beginning to change.  Because for public education to survive, it must change!  I hope to be part of that.

In Pursuit of Elegance

Matt May's book, In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing, is being released tomorrow.  I read an advanced copy a few weeks ago, and could not put the book down!  Matt traveled the world to find cases where something was made to be elegant through subtractive means.  He strategically uses stories to drive home his ideas. 

This book is incredibly easy to read, even though it tackles some deep subject matter.  Check out his blog by the same name.  Mark Graban of Leanblog.org has posted a video podcast with Matt.  This work is entirely different than any business related book I've ever read.  It is a book about elegance written elegantly.

Story Musgrave

The video below is compelling!  Story Musgrave was the astronaut who led the team charged with fixing the Hubble telescope several years back.  Although the main focus of the video is teamwork, it is compelling for other reasons.  To me, it shows that an astronaut, who one would assume would be an analytical person, can be creative.  Dr. Musgrave has advanced degrees in both arts and sciences.  Plus his presentation style is wonderful.  Worth watching:

Story Musgrave and the Hubbel - Click here for the most popular videos

W. Edwards Deming

Mark Graban of Leanblog posted 3 videos about W. Edwards Deming.  I watched them twice.  Although Deming's methods involved statistics and measurement of production, all of his ideas revolve around people.  For those new to his work, he provided the main ingredients in rebuilding Japanese industry after WWII.  One quote of his stands out.  "The Japanese were in trouble; We are in worse trouble because we don't know it."

These videos are worth watching.  And Mark's blog is worth checking out.

Excellent TED Talk

On the Presentation Zen blog, Garr Reynolds posted this TED talk.  His comments were aimed at the presentation aspects of the talk, and I must agree the talk was engaging from that standpoint.  But the content of the talk was outstanding.  Check it out.

Entrepreneurship Competition

I'm CFO at a Career-Technical school where students from area school districts attend to acquire job and college prep skills.  Each year, students participate in Skills USA and compete with students from other schools at the district, state and national level.  This year, around 20 of our students advanced and competed at the state level.  All of them had a great time and enjoyed the experience.

This year, 4 of our students participated in an entrepreneurship competition in which they developed and presented a business plan.  Several of the staff at the school, including myself, mentored these students in preparation for the state competition.  The student's tireless preparation paid off; they won the gold medal!  Each of them received a scholarship at Penn Tech College as a result of their efforts.  Also, they now get to compete at the national level in Kansas City in June.  The students are (from left) Shannon Cawley, Ashley Hiller, Ryannon Boyle and Holly Demianovich. 

The amazing thing is that none of these students had any business experience a month ago!  In a short time, they developed an excellent plan, and the materials they presented were outstanding.  I am proud to be associated with these fine individuals.  Their work was an inspirational.  Congratulations to them and all of the students involved.  These are our future leaders!

Win/Win Borrowing and Lending

While exploring the IDEO website, I linked to an interesting approach to borrowing and lending.  Zopa acts as the facilitator of transactions between lenders and borrowers.

This approach brings integrity back into the game.  Maybe it is now time to stop treating the financial markets with band aids and make systemic change.  Creativity doesn't have to stop during tough financial times.  Matter of fact, that's when we need it most!

Company Empathy

I just got the latest Change This Manifestos.  Creating Widespread Empathy by Dev Patniak was interesting to me.  Dev talks about a company culture in which everyone is truly in touch with the customer. 

Matt May talked about the same culture in his book, Elegant Solutions.  He talked about the Scion project where Toyota employees actually assimilated to the culture of their potential customer's. 

This manifesto is worth reading.