April 17, 2008
Goodbyes
This week I returned from a memorial service for my first collaborator in arts policy research, and my second PhD advisee, to find that my most recent coauthor, on biofuels and global warming, had taken his life. It's been a tough week, as both were friends, optimal colleagues, much too young, and respectively central to the two main areas of...
February 28, 2008
Is there a cost-quality tradeoff?
One of the illuminating koans of management directs attention to the production possibility frontier in a space defined by "good" and "cheap". My late colleague Bob Leone taught me that while there obviously is one, no real organization is actually operating at that boundary, so we should assume we can make stuff both better and cheaper and see what happens....
May 18, 2007
Literary history extended
A common parable about leadership goes as follows: Halfway through the construction of the cathedral, the architect died. The bishop, not knowing what to do, went out to walk through the stoneyard, and found a man hammering on a chisel. "Bless you, my son. What are you making?" "About twelve centimes a day, your excellency." The bishop moved on, and...
Wei wu-wei and the art of persuasion
People find silence uncomfortable and will say anything to fill it: even "yes."
May 06, 2007
Fares and fees
David Lazarus' column in the SF Chronicle this morning riffs on airlines' recent decisions to sell services that used to be included in a ticket price for 'extra' charges. The implication is that passengers are somehow being chiseled, but I'm not sure this is the right way to look at it. One could easily say they were no longer charging...
February 07, 2007
Service and quality
I just got around to following Mark's second of Brad DeLong deploring the GM and Nationwide Mutual Superbowl ads. First, yeah, what they said. Second: How can a person with a moral sense and intelligence higher than a turnip's, or pride anywhere in the positive range, even engage with a meme that being of service is somehow degrading? This is...
