Tag: CCA

RANT! Software needs to be stupid

RANT! Software needs to be stupid

I have ranted that software needs to be stupid before. I am not suggesting that software should not work effectively, in fact, quite the opposite.  I just don’t think that software should make assumptions about what I want and it definitely should not override my common sense.

I mention this because I just read about Safe Driving Systems Corporation.  I cannot think of a dumber idea (I know that they have competition so they aren’t the only ones with a dumb idea).

At first blush, their idea has merit. Software that will detect if you are moving at driving speeds and turn off the ability to call and/or text. This may sound great if you are a driver, but what about if you are a passenger? Does this mean that the teenager in the back seat can’t text to her BFF? Even a person that normally drives will occasionally be a passenger therefore they would need to be able to turn the software off.

The counter-argument to this, of course, are companies that install this on phones that are provided for their delivery drivers. They put this on to prevent liability problems. But is this really necessary? Does it take an intrusive piece of software to provide professional drivers with common sense?

And if they software could be turned off because the user was a passenger, doesn’t that mean the driver with no common sense would be able to turn off the software to text his buddy about the cute girl in the red Toyota that he just passed?

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How to handle 200 emails a day

How to handle 200 emails a day

Mastering Technical Sales has a great article on their site explaining how to handle 200 emails a day. It is purposely written for suggestions to their target audience which is the pre-sales technical folks that are the brains in the IT sales world.

I pulled out a few of the more relevant paragraphs that were relevant to all regarding of profession but I suggest that you read the entire article.

I will start this suggestion list by sharing one of my habits. “Don’t file – SEARCH”.  Install one of the several desktop search indexing tools such as Google Desktop Search, Windows Desktop Search, or Copernic Desktop Search. Then, when you have read and are finished with an email, move it to a “Done” folder and forget about it.  Don’t try to figure out if you should file the email in the customer folder, the folder of the person that sent you the email, the folder for product problems or whatever.  Most people end up spending way to much time worrying about their filing system or trying to find an email in the file system.  Don’t worry about it – just search for the email in one of the above systems let the engine do the heavy lifting for you.

Unplug the machine. Almost every email system has a setting for receiving mail which says “poll every xx minutes”. Either set xx to something like 60, or turn it off completely and only synchronize your mail manually. You will be amazed how much time this saves you, as many problems will get fixed by other people and you don’t have to needlessly, and constantly, switch thought processes from one task to another and back again.

Train the people who email you the most. Especially if you are in a customer-facing position, they (the righteous emailers) have no right to expect you to respond inside 30 minutes. So, even if you can respond rapidly to these folks, don’t do it – wait for a couple of hours when appropriate. Should you decide to start answering emails between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon you are on the slippery road to electronic assimilation by the machine. Can you say CrackBerry?

Make your inbox a real inbox. It is a place where new mail arrives and waits to be processed. It is not a place to store pending tasks/to-dos or even to keep emails you don’t know what to do with. Your working inbox should be less than a screen full of messages, which equates to 20-25 emails for most of us.

Color up your world. Microsoft Outlook has a nifty feature which allows you to color code messages based upon who sent them. If you are a high email individual or a visual learner this can prove to be very useful. My system does the following:

  1. Red – My boss, his boss, executives and my primary HR contact.
  2. Green – My direct reports
  3. Purple – Anyone else in my department/division
  4. Grey – My peers within the company
  5. Brown – My “watch list” – typically Sales Directors and Area Managers
  6. Yellow – Automated Expense, HR, Purchasing and other approval requests

Take a trip to OHIO. The acronym stands for Only Handle It Once. When you do perform your hourly check of your inbox – take immediate action whenever you can. Either respond if it is a quick item, read and file if it is an FYI, delete it whenever possible (unless of course it is from a customer and you are the primary recipient), delegate it if appropriate or flag it as a task/to-do and move it to a “Take Action” folder. Just don’t let it sit in your inbox once you
have read it.

Your Mother was wrong! You do not have to send back a thank you every time someone helps you out. Reserve the thanks for special occasions, and responding to the nice people in HR, Finance and the office manager. Better yet, if you are in the same office, get off your rear and go say it in person.

Make your boss more efficient. Assume that your direct supervisor is even busier than you are, and if you can save her from thinking too hard it will reflect well upon you. So try phrases like “Julie – please read through point #3 below and reply with your approval or any questions by Thursday”. 95% of bosses will love this, and for the other 5% it gives you an opening to find out exactly what they do want. Once again, less room for misunderstandings and fewer last minute panics and reworks.

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My comments on New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit

My comments on New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit

Bill Maher is a relatively famous television personality. Of course, he got this position by correctly realizing that he wasn’t a very good standup comedian and his real talent was getting famous people on TV and then making fun of them or using them as foils to make a political point.  He has bounced around a couple of different venues and has currently landed at HBO.  His show is called “Real Time with Bill Maher”.  He has used this notoriety and fame to also publish some of his remarks and is a frequent contributor to Huffington Post.  His latest article is the subject of this post.

Originally, I only wanted to reply to Bill Maher in his comments section.  However, Huffington Post limits comments to a small number of words so I am forced to make further comments here.  You can read my original thoughts at this link as there are currently over 2500 comments on this article and it would be difficult to find mine.  You may also want to read Bill’s original article before you read my comments.

Bill’s opening comment starts out all wrong.  He says “Not everything in America has to make a profit” and while this is true, I am not aware of any time in America’s history when it was discussed that something could NOT make a profit.  Doesn’t it seem very un-American to decree that a certain portion of our economy is not eligible to make a profit?

When the very unfunny Bill Maher mentions the war profiteering problem, he forgets that at the time we were a very agrarian society and not even close to the world power that we are today – in fact we were probably not even ranked in the top 10 most powerful nations. Can we have one without the other? Do we want to live in that world again? Really, do you? Think about it Maher.

Yes, I understand that there is a concern over Haliburton and other companies that were awarded contracts in the MidEast without open bids. But he includes this discussion in an article that talks about not making a profit, which implies he thinks that government contractors and service providers should not make a profit.

The term “war profiteering” was really a big concern back in the two world wars when rationed goods were required. With any rationed good there are, inevitably, ways to make lots of profit if you can find a supply of the rationed goods and sell them outside of the system. It was also a time when over-charging for military goods was easy to do.  In fact, then Senator Harry S. Truman made his big mark by chairing a committee that was designed to go after profiteers. But even Mr. Truman didn’t want to eliminate profit from the process, he just wanted to eliminate the corruption of charging for goods and services in unfair manners.

Does Mr. Maher really want to eliminate the profit potential of companies that do work for the United States?  Will he be able to delineate those that offer services to the military versus those that offer services to other branches of the government?

While it is important to make sure that we are getting value out of our government spending, I doubt that most people (aside from Mr. Maher) would want no profit to be made in the process. At the time of the big worry on war profiteering, approximately 20% of the workforce was in agrarian efforts but by 1970 it was about 4%.  To make matters worse, a decade or two before the world wars (but definitely in the memory of most alive at the time) over 40% of the workforce as agricultural based and we were not considered to be a world power at all.  In fact, prior to WW1, the real powers of the world resided in Europe.  This change from an agrarian society that was not a force in the world to a world power in 40 years was fraught with danger of profiteering and therefore a real concern to everyone.

He then goes into prisons that make a profit. Does he really think that the reason that we have a lot of people in prison is because of the profit making of CCA?  Come on, Bill.  That simply doesn’t make sense.  There are approximately 2M people in prison in this country and according to CCA’s website only 75,000 of them are in their care.  If CCA has such a huge influence do you think that they would have a larger market share than under 4%? Are the other 96% of the convicted criminals incarcerated the real felons and CCA is only getting the CCA influenced laws?  This is a perfect example of Bill Maher simply not thinking before he talks/writes.

Bill then goes after journalism and he dreams of the good old days. He dreams of when real journalists were like Walter Cronkite, may he rest in peace. That was an era with little competition for TV. There were 3 stations, no Internet, only AM radio, 2 newspapers in every town, only 2-3 movies came out a month AND LIFE magazine was a thriving concern.

The reason that News didn’t make money was because it didn’t have to make money. Bill is correct, it was a loss leader because people watched it and it drug people to watch the Entertainment divisions products which did make money. Now it needs the Entertainment division to pull the viewers to the 11 o’clock news. A regular complaint of station owners is when the Entertainment division of their network has fallen behind in market share it affects the 11 o’clock news profitability.

The profitability of News v. Entertainment was never a philanthropic effort on the part of the big networks. Quite the opposite, it was a concerted effort to drag in viewers and achieve the highest gains that they could.

And then Bill, the lover and worshipper of Michael Moore, gets to his real agenda (because the above junk is not really a problem anyway) – healthcare.  Bill is one of those that doesn’t think that it is fair to make a profit from running a service in the health sector because if you are sick then you have to go to a doctor and get better. You don’t have a choice so it is morally wrong to charge more than your costs.

But that is precisely where Maher blew it in his utopian dream rant. He specifically discussed healthcare and made the reference to going to a Catholic hospital. Yes, there was little motive for profit BUT there was little interference from the government, as well. How do you get from the times were great in the past without interference from government and now the only way to get better is to make government bigger?

If you read some of the comments in Mr. Maher’s columns you will see them chastise insurance companies.  Mr. Maher only makes one reference to an insurance company in his column but instead spends time lambasting HCA, an operator of hospitals.

Of course, he doesn’t take it to the next step and look at food. If you don’t eat then you will die so this is a requirement of life as well.  Therefore, if we follow Bill’s thought pattern then Kroger and WalMart should operate as non-profits as well. To continue this logic, then surely the power utility provider should operate as a non-profit since you need electricity to heat/cool your home and we wouldn’t want them to take advantage of you. And since the majority of people in the US need clothing to survive the elements at least during part of the year, no one should make money on winter coats, scarves, hats, boots, etc.

And even if you buy the absurd argument that all of that should be free from profit then where do you stop.  Does the thread provider that provides the thread for your coat need to operate as non-profit?  And the trucking company that hauls vegetables from the farm to your local grocery store, should he succumb to non-profit status as well?

And what about the nurse that works hard and cares for the child with the broken leg at the hospital? Should she work for only enough to fulfill her basic needs? If so, doesn’t that make her a ward of the state?  Is that the goal of Mr. Maher?

So when we get down to following the logic of Bill Maher (and the more confused Michael Moore), who is allowed to make money these days?  Why of course, Bill Maher and Michael Moore are!