Conscious Light on the Housing Crisis

After the dot-com meltdown, a friend who works outside of the business world asked me where all the venture capital had gone.

Um, some of it went into my pocket.

Consultants (me, at the time, though most of my work was not in dot-coms), infrastructure providers, commercial real estate providers...and the bankers.

And sellers and purveyors of Aeron Chairs, later to grace the offices of non-profits and other buyers of used office furniture, also prospered.

This American Life did a tremendous show last week about the mortgage industry food chain: where that money came from, and where it has gone.

They connect the dots, showing points of convergence -- and even agreement -- (as they say) for folks who read the WSJ editorial page, and those presumed to be a bit more left-leaning.

(Missing: the complicity of local tax authorities and public officials, glad to have the coffers filled by property taxes based on fat assessments. It's only a 60 minute program!)

My early career was in banking, and I still remember my managers drilling me with the mantra: "The First Rule of Banking is Know Your Customer".

The program shows how financial culture's "first" agreement was violated, over and over.

Download it here. (It's also available for purchase on CD: and excellent tool for forward-thinking managers in the financial world who recognize this point in time as a good teaching moment.)

But if you want an Aeron chair now? It might be a bit too late, but you can always check Ebay!

(Or connect with Aeron via the Herman Miller website, where I snagged this photo.)

Mindfulness of Fast Food in NYC

In NYC, a new law now requires fast food outlets to post calorie counts on menus and menu boards.

People seem generally supportive of this effort, with the exception of the inevitable "nanny-state" complainers.

(And for opinions of some dissenters, check comments at the NY Times City Room blog. And a brief digression, if I may -- I appreciate what seem to be moderated comments on the Times blogs. I recently watched commentary on one of the WSJ blogs devolve to the most juvenile sorts of attack and counter-attack. I won't squander my attention there again.)

In the meantime, and I don't think this is my imagination: Starbucks muffins seem to have shrunk. Significantly.

Calorie counts in the 450 range for the seemingly smaller muffins make me wonder: coincidence? Or solution to a marketing problem?

(photo from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene website)

Earth Day: The Dalai Lama to Speak on Sustainability

On Sunday, April 20, His Holiness the Dalai Lama will offer The Peter M. Wege Lecture on Sustainability at the University of Michigan.

The talk is sold out. Tickets were free, so the U of M anticipates no-shows -- open seats will ultimately be given out to some who show up without tickets. If you want to try to fill one of those seats, click here for more information.

Michigan's website quotes His Holiness:

"We are also being drawn together by the grave problems we face: overpopulation, dwindling natural resources, and an environmental crisis that threatens our air, water, and trees, along with the vast number of beautiful life forms that are the very foundation of existence on this small planet we share. I believe that to meet the challenge of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for his or her own self, family or nation, but for the benefit of all mankind."

Ann Arbor's Jewel Heart is co-sponsoring talks by his Holiness on "Engaging Wisdom and Compassion"; they are also sold out. But a live stream will be available -- and it looks like the Wege Lecture will be streamed, too. Check it out.

And if you're missing the connection to business here, it is a bit tenuous. But if learning about wisdom and compassion is useful to the law enforcement community, it may help in business, as well.

Sustainability Means Not Wasting People

Fasten your seat belts: this post is a bit "earthy".

Regular readers know that I've spent a lot of my career with a day job in financial services, and that late last year my entire team was politely shown the door due to a merger.

I got a great severance package, including the services of a blue chip outplacement firm. Outplacement, for those who don't know, provides job search services and office facilities to laid-off corporate executives.

This is my first round (and probably last, although I've learned not to say "never") through outplacement. All in all, I'm pleasantly surprised.

Some of my fellow clients set themselves up in offices at outplacement and report to the work of job search work every day. This firm provides also support to people who are buying and starting their own businesses. I mainly show up for meetings, since I have a good office setup at home.

So while I'm in the process of starting a small management consulting practice (which I'm sure will make the pages of this blog as time goes on) I'm also meeting with professionals who have looked at my business plan, and a group of other laid-off executives who are starting their own businesses. It is a huge blessing to have this support!

That said, the New York office of this fine business is stuffed to the gills with out-of-work finance professionals.

The other day, I went in for a meeting, and and there was no toilet paper in the ladies room. Not a spot. And while I've seen worse situations in public restrooms (even here in the "first world", although things like this week's airline imbroglio is another nail in the coffin of "first world" status for the US, as far as I'm concerned, but I digress), the waste baskets were overflowing, the soap dispensers were empty.

Two or three women were in various stages of exiting of the ladies room as I was walking in. None of them warned me about the lack of, um, amenities. Nor did they (apparently) report the issue.

(Doesn't this violate some kind of girl code? Or is the world of job search so dog eat dog that even our most primal agreements are out the window?)

At any rate, I noticed. Having cleaned the bathrooms at the yoga studio, I had no problem asking the receptionist for supplies. There was a bit of a production, a flurry of phone calls and flagging people down. I would up with two half rolls of toilet paper, and the information that this had happened the day before, too.

That evening, I wrote a very ladylike note to the head consultant, and got a slightly harried, almost appropriately horrified, and appreciative response.

The place is overwhelmed with volume.

One of the outplacement consultants reported that one Gigantically Large Financial Services Institution (GLFSI) was sending executives in to outplacement with one hand -- and hiring in other outplacement clients in with the other.

Um, it took me about a year to figure out how to get things done at the gigantic global financial institution I just left. Wouldn't it make sense for GLFSI to keep people in the fold*?

Do institutional knowledge and the relationships that people build up by virtue of working in these firms have value?

Rhetorical question. Of course they do. The real question is, why is this not seen, and valued by the current marketplace?

Seeing this value isn't just some floofy sustainability practice: it is good business.

*(NB: this wouldn't have applied to my situation -- due to the merger there was very little hiring going on. And it was time for me to move on, and I did so gratefully!)

Beautiful NASA photo "Blue Marble (Planet Earth)" courtesy of flickr's Woodley Wonderworks. Used with permission under Creative Commons License, and under the NASA guidelines.

Two Not So Little Words: "I'm Sorry"

Yikes, it has been quite some time since I've posted.

In late February, I got the flu, in epic proportions. (I understand why Janet Jackson had to cancel her Saturday Night Live appearance.)

For a month, it felt like my visual field was the Kansas part of the Wizard of Oz, filmed in black and white.

Even after I started to see in color again, I was dashing around to catch up with everything I had canceled and fallen behind on.

No, I did not get a flu shot. It is my understanding that this year's flu vaccine didn't cater for this monster flu anyways. (And even if it had, the vaccine may not have protected me.)

Enough about that. Last week, I returned a disc to Netflix, and didn't get the same day email telling me when my next pick would be delivered. I noticed this for about a second, and then forgot about it.

Until the next day, when Netflix sent an email with the header "We're Sorry":

As you may have heard, our shipping system was unexpectedly down for most of Monday. We should have shipped you a DVD but were unable to. Your DVD was shipped today, Tuesday, March 25th, instead.

And they were issuing me a 5% credit. Chances that I would have registered the one day delay as a problem? Miniscule. Especially a weekday delay, as my usual viewing time would be over the weekend.

What's the big deal? Netflix demonstrated three important rules of how to recover from a customer service snafu:

1. Take responsibility;
2. Be proactive;
3. Offer a remedy.

Apologies work. Hospitals are even finding that they are less likely to be sued when doctors apologize for making medical errors.

I'm not sure what Netflix saved. Maybe some complaint calls and emails into their customer service group, which divert time and energy from the core business.

But they've renewed my admiration for their service. It is deadly simple, it doesn't have many bells and whistles. And it works. (And when it doesn't, they apologize!)

"Red Rx Drugs Sign" courtesy of Exothermic, used under Creative Commons license.