Last weekend I had the pleasure of being driven from Buffalo Airport to Toronto. It was night time, and neither driver nor navigator had completed the route before, but they did have the benefit of two GPS machines. Supposedly one worked better in Canada, the other better in the USA. I was tired, and vowed to keep my mouth shut.
Maybe predictably, the two GPS’s proved a dubious blessing. They took time to calculate routes, they didn’t seem to know landmarks, they were for ever blaring out “cancel” like a couple of Daleks, and even when they gave out routes they contradicted each other.
Somehow, we made it to Toronto, thanks to a calm and careful driver. But we took a couple of wrong turns, went over a different border crossing than the one we wished, and had some pauses at the side of the road for the GPS’s to get their breath back.
From my vantage point in the back seat, I think I could have avoided all the missteps, despite also never having completed the route (except once in reverse). Often there were helpful road signs. When there were not, simply knowing roughly where North was would have done the trick, or heading for somewhere which seemed sure to be in the right direction.
The reason the driver and navigator missed all the clues were the GPS’s. They were so focused on the machines that they weren’t really tuned into to other available data. Later, I wondered if it was even more fundamental. Having become used to driving with GPS, perhaps they had lost the art of being able to navigate any other way.
I am a bit of a navigation nerd, being a mathematician, having had to learn to get around strange cities on foot and by car, and with a bit of network planning experience for Shell. This has also helped me in New York, with its scale and its variety of transport options. One thing I have really enjoyed is discovering the city on foot and bus and subway.
I sense these arts are disappearing, and the GPS experience offers a clue as to why. Even mobile phones are partly responsible, with their ability to google up support and call friends. I am not saying these are bad things – indeed how did we ever manage to complete appointments at unfamiliar private residences before the days of mobile phones? But I am saying it is a shame if a valuable life skill is lost. Technology does not always work and is not always available, especially in emergencies. And people looking lost are more vulnerable to pickpockets.
For me, geography at school would have been more useful if map reading had replaced learning capitals. Rote learning has become increasingly redundant anyway, due to the internet. We need a new skill now to know the capital of Honduras, rather than the memory of old. This made me think about other skills that had been lost, and which ones should be mourned.
IT itself has seen the biggest changes. I actually came from a very narrow generation who learned to program computers, and was taught all sorts of technical stuff about how computers worked (which I then forgot again). Computers were just come in, but they were large machines rather than personal ones, and it was believed that we would all need to be able to give them instructions in strange codes. Then IBM, Microsoft and Apple changed all that. The nerds in shops and marketing departments haven’t completely dropped the bit and byte speak yet (why not?), but the idea of anyone but a specialist writing programs now seems very quaint. I wonder how IT education has responded? What I hope is that time is spent on stuff like how to navigate a web menu to buy things, how to research information quickly and reliably, and perhaps on creating websites. The former two have become critical life skills now.
Language and writing has changed too. Is accurate spelling a lost art, with spellchecker everywhere? And does it matter? Perhaps we should not mourn the need for mastering spelling too much, especially us English speakers with all our exceptions. The other day I had to write a hand-written letter, and a proper one, not just a one-pager instructing some financial institution of an address change. I found the actual physical act of writing difficult, and the letter construction was not simple either. For me, it is sad that these arts are being lost, as letters are powerful ways to communicate. With text, even alphabets are curtailed. It is efficient, and perhaps it is only sentiment that makes me mourn the traditional methods.
My Mum used to knit a lot. Who does now? It is so cheap to buy finished products, that the only benefit of knitting now is as a creative pastime. Darning does not even have that merit. I think Mum also used to use a mangle, though I am not all that sure what for. This sort of lost art probably doesn’t require us to do anything but celebrate.
What other arts have been lost? Dancing is one that was almost lost in some societies, but is gradually being found again, thanks partly to Strictly (Dancing with the Stars here). A regret of mine is that my generation were the ones who lost the joy of dancing, instead just jumping up and down. I have gained a lot of pleasure from ballroom and Latin lessons these last two years, and recommend them wholeheartedly.
Last month I taught our twelve-year-old how to tie a tie. I enjoyed that. Then I wondered how old I was when I learned, and how many times in the last ten years I had actually worn a tie. Probably more often than he will in how whole lifetime. We need not mourn that sort of lost art, I think, and there are probably many more female equivalents we can be grateful to see the back of. The tie was actually needed for a wedding, but this month I also attended a funeral, indeed had to help to organise one. My sister and I needed help with everything. I wonder if this sort of skill was handed down more effectively in the past?
While on the subject of kids, this month we were delayed four hours waiting for a flight, and neither child had any electronics with them. That made me think two distinct arts might be in the process of being lost. The kids were less resourceful than those of a generation ago in this situation, having been brought up with electronics available almost everywhere. And the parents were also less resourceful. I remember Mum having all sorts of games and gadgets up her sleeve for that sort of eventuality. We struggled but managed, while some of the other parents in the lounge seemed even more lost than we were.
Finally, an art that is still relevant, but I don’t understand why, is driving a stick shift car. Why do we still have these things? Automatic gearboxes make better decisions than humans nowadays and are more economical. Yet many people insist on carrying on making driving more cumbersome than it needs to be by using a gear stick. Well done USA, that is something you have got right, I think.
There must be many similar lost arts, and newly required arts to replace them. Some of the lost ones will be preserved, and hopefully the most creative and satisfying might make a comeback, like dancing. I hope our educators get the balance right between responding to change and retaining skills that, though less critical than before, can still make a difference.
Next time I am in the back seat with a GPS as competition, I wonder if I’ll still be able to keep my mouth shut? Maybe the next generation would find it even harder, as keeping ones mouth shut might itself be a vanishing art, not that I am generally effective at that one myself.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Fair Fines
It seems Americans are obsessed by taxes, and New Yorkers are additionally obsessed by tickets.
I am amazed how often tax comes up in everyday conversation over here. In Europe, we don’t like tax, but generally we let it happen. I have a general saying that people who complain about tax, specifically income or wealth tax, have too much money. The more you have, the more you pay. So suck it up.
Here, it is different. There are many possible reasons why. Perhaps wealth here is something you brag about, and tax conversation is a good way to flaunt your wealth. Somehow, many taxes seem more in your face here. Sales tax is added on at the point of sale. To me, this is crazy. An item will be labelled at a cost of ten dollars, but at the checkout it rings at ten dollars eighty something. So it is much harder to budget your overall spending, and, if you pay in cash, you end up with pockets full of change (and loads of paper single dollars as well. Why?)
For me, this flaunts a basic principal of consumer rights. A price on an item should be its price. But Americans seem ready to accept it, and some even express a wish to know what the tax is. Some say that because tax varies between states, the retailer has to do it at the point of sale, but that strikes me as BS. Tax varying by state is another way tax assumes a higher profile and higher everyday concern.
The retailers lobby may be one reason this regime remains acceptable. But I also suspect the politics. It suits the right that tax is always top of the agenda. In some ways that is good, as in Europe it can be the opposite – there everyone wants everything from the state, and don’t think of the trade-off involved. Here it is the opposite. No one accepts tax, and they don’t link that to poor schools or infrastructure or elderly care. On neither continent is there much intelligent debate. And it also makes point-scoring very easy, suiting the side with the big advertising budget.
Last weekend in Atlanta there were referenda where the proposition was a sales tax for a limited time to be spent exclusively on improving the transport infrastructure. They all got voted down. It becomes very hard here to complete any project for the common good. No wonder the roads are all full of holes, and the bridges and tunnels feel unsafe. At least in New York City, there is a well-functioning system overall.
Anyway, as well as taxes, New Yorkers love to moan about tickets. So far, I haven’t got any, not least because I am not driving here yet. But the belief is that the police treat tickets as fair game to raise money, and give them out very loosely. And fail to pay, and you yet loaded with interest, and pretty soon a ban.
I may change my mind when I suffer a glut of tickets, but overall I am in favour of the approach. There are so many police on the streets here all the time, raising money is one way to make use of them. And rules are there for a reason, so we should not complain if we get fined for violating them.
How many times have I been delayed for an hour or so in London because some rich guy chose to park illegally and created a bottleneck? Fine him, say I, and at least we all get some compensation for our inconvenience. If the result is more fines, then presumably we can have good enough service, without higher taxes.
The London example raises the issue of differential fines. The reason the rich guy parks illegally is that the fine is peanuts to him. To get around that, the authorities in London started towing cars away, reasoning that this would hurt the rich guy more, since time matters more to him than money. Good move, except that the very rich guy then pays some contractor to retrieve his vehicle for him.
In Finland, I understand fines are proportional to the ability to pay. I remember this being introduced in Britain years ago, and then withdrawn again almost immediately. The elite managed to find a few old ladies who was fined thousands of pounds for a minor offence, and used them to turn public opinion.
Indeed it would be difficult to implement this system in practice, and well done to the Finns for persevering – no doubt the wonderful public IT systems there help. Without that, the debate about what income counts or wealth counts, foreign income, who owns the car and so on could make things very complicated. Unlike for the Tobin tax, this is a fair argument against a variable scheme. But hardly insurmountable, I would think. The Dutch have become smart at making fines variable depending on previous offences. Variable for some income/wealth coefficient should not be too hard to devise. That might deter the guy on Putney High Street – as long as he wasn’t a diplomat, which seems to be another insurmountable problem – hard for me to understand as insurmountable, and then I suspect some other elite conspiracy.
Joe Public is not the only one worrying about fines just now. The summer has seen many corporate fines, with more to follow. Barclays, HSBC, Google, Airlines, Glaxo and the rest are starting to pay dearly for their indiscretions. First, I often wonder where such fines go. They can be eye-watering amounts, and could help plug some debt holes just now.
Again, in principle I support these fines. In the Economist, Schumpeter argued recently that businesses will do whatever they can get away with, trading off risk against benefit. I am not quite so cynical, but I still favour harsh sanctions. If the regime is fair and consistent, it only creates a level playing field and protects the consumer.
Competition law fines started to become an issue at Shell a few years ago. A Dutch EU commissioner put a strong regime in place, including fines according to ability to pay and previous record. They also included the wonderful incentive of penalties imposed on individual managers not just their corporations. Ouch. Shell was heading into the hundreds of millions, and it had an impact. We all had lots of training, and legal scrutiny became stronger. Training beforehand had seemed half hearted, but not after the fines got nasty. Well done Nellie Kroes.
Businesses also have to worry about a secondary quasi-fine that arises from lawsuits, and a tertiary one in the form of reputation loss. Barclays and the other LIBOR miscreants seem very vulnerable to these now. I often thought Shell under-estimated this type of risk, perhaps as a European rather than a US company. I once did a study assessing the risks to a business of Shell offering services to other manufacturers, and I concluded that litigation and reputation was the biggest risk category. We could earn a few thousand dollars for some advice, but what if, either because the advice was flawed or the customer mis-applied it, the result was some catastrophe? For our own operations, we had to accept these risks, but why extend them outside the company boundary, for only a small reward? Like most of my advice, this was duly ignored – probably quite correctly.
I foresee an era when fines, litigation and reputation become even more important drivers to business success, as regulators and lawyers step up their game, supported by IT and rampant media. Rupert Murdoch may well agree. In general, I find this all to the good, with caveats.
One caveat is the risk that we all feed the lawyers even more than today. Regulation needs to be simple and transparent wherever possible. Another is that regulation becomes a weapon in trade wars between countries. Like so much else, this is a hidden benefit of the EU: Europe regulates as one nowadays.
But generally, just like individual taxes and tickets, if people cheat and are punished, the consumer benefits and money flows to the law-abiding. If you complain about tickets, try the alternative of following the rules. Most of them are there for good reasons. If taxes and tickets and fines reflect your ability to pay, celebrate that you have that ability in the first place.
But I am sure the New Yorkers would still find something else to moan about.
I am amazed how often tax comes up in everyday conversation over here. In Europe, we don’t like tax, but generally we let it happen. I have a general saying that people who complain about tax, specifically income or wealth tax, have too much money. The more you have, the more you pay. So suck it up.
Here, it is different. There are many possible reasons why. Perhaps wealth here is something you brag about, and tax conversation is a good way to flaunt your wealth. Somehow, many taxes seem more in your face here. Sales tax is added on at the point of sale. To me, this is crazy. An item will be labelled at a cost of ten dollars, but at the checkout it rings at ten dollars eighty something. So it is much harder to budget your overall spending, and, if you pay in cash, you end up with pockets full of change (and loads of paper single dollars as well. Why?)
For me, this flaunts a basic principal of consumer rights. A price on an item should be its price. But Americans seem ready to accept it, and some even express a wish to know what the tax is. Some say that because tax varies between states, the retailer has to do it at the point of sale, but that strikes me as BS. Tax varying by state is another way tax assumes a higher profile and higher everyday concern.
The retailers lobby may be one reason this regime remains acceptable. But I also suspect the politics. It suits the right that tax is always top of the agenda. In some ways that is good, as in Europe it can be the opposite – there everyone wants everything from the state, and don’t think of the trade-off involved. Here it is the opposite. No one accepts tax, and they don’t link that to poor schools or infrastructure or elderly care. On neither continent is there much intelligent debate. And it also makes point-scoring very easy, suiting the side with the big advertising budget.
Last weekend in Atlanta there were referenda where the proposition was a sales tax for a limited time to be spent exclusively on improving the transport infrastructure. They all got voted down. It becomes very hard here to complete any project for the common good. No wonder the roads are all full of holes, and the bridges and tunnels feel unsafe. At least in New York City, there is a well-functioning system overall.
Anyway, as well as taxes, New Yorkers love to moan about tickets. So far, I haven’t got any, not least because I am not driving here yet. But the belief is that the police treat tickets as fair game to raise money, and give them out very loosely. And fail to pay, and you yet loaded with interest, and pretty soon a ban.
I may change my mind when I suffer a glut of tickets, but overall I am in favour of the approach. There are so many police on the streets here all the time, raising money is one way to make use of them. And rules are there for a reason, so we should not complain if we get fined for violating them.
How many times have I been delayed for an hour or so in London because some rich guy chose to park illegally and created a bottleneck? Fine him, say I, and at least we all get some compensation for our inconvenience. If the result is more fines, then presumably we can have good enough service, without higher taxes.
The London example raises the issue of differential fines. The reason the rich guy parks illegally is that the fine is peanuts to him. To get around that, the authorities in London started towing cars away, reasoning that this would hurt the rich guy more, since time matters more to him than money. Good move, except that the very rich guy then pays some contractor to retrieve his vehicle for him.
In Finland, I understand fines are proportional to the ability to pay. I remember this being introduced in Britain years ago, and then withdrawn again almost immediately. The elite managed to find a few old ladies who was fined thousands of pounds for a minor offence, and used them to turn public opinion.
Indeed it would be difficult to implement this system in practice, and well done to the Finns for persevering – no doubt the wonderful public IT systems there help. Without that, the debate about what income counts or wealth counts, foreign income, who owns the car and so on could make things very complicated. Unlike for the Tobin tax, this is a fair argument against a variable scheme. But hardly insurmountable, I would think. The Dutch have become smart at making fines variable depending on previous offences. Variable for some income/wealth coefficient should not be too hard to devise. That might deter the guy on Putney High Street – as long as he wasn’t a diplomat, which seems to be another insurmountable problem – hard for me to understand as insurmountable, and then I suspect some other elite conspiracy.
Joe Public is not the only one worrying about fines just now. The summer has seen many corporate fines, with more to follow. Barclays, HSBC, Google, Airlines, Glaxo and the rest are starting to pay dearly for their indiscretions. First, I often wonder where such fines go. They can be eye-watering amounts, and could help plug some debt holes just now.
Again, in principle I support these fines. In the Economist, Schumpeter argued recently that businesses will do whatever they can get away with, trading off risk against benefit. I am not quite so cynical, but I still favour harsh sanctions. If the regime is fair and consistent, it only creates a level playing field and protects the consumer.
Competition law fines started to become an issue at Shell a few years ago. A Dutch EU commissioner put a strong regime in place, including fines according to ability to pay and previous record. They also included the wonderful incentive of penalties imposed on individual managers not just their corporations. Ouch. Shell was heading into the hundreds of millions, and it had an impact. We all had lots of training, and legal scrutiny became stronger. Training beforehand had seemed half hearted, but not after the fines got nasty. Well done Nellie Kroes.
Businesses also have to worry about a secondary quasi-fine that arises from lawsuits, and a tertiary one in the form of reputation loss. Barclays and the other LIBOR miscreants seem very vulnerable to these now. I often thought Shell under-estimated this type of risk, perhaps as a European rather than a US company. I once did a study assessing the risks to a business of Shell offering services to other manufacturers, and I concluded that litigation and reputation was the biggest risk category. We could earn a few thousand dollars for some advice, but what if, either because the advice was flawed or the customer mis-applied it, the result was some catastrophe? For our own operations, we had to accept these risks, but why extend them outside the company boundary, for only a small reward? Like most of my advice, this was duly ignored – probably quite correctly.
I foresee an era when fines, litigation and reputation become even more important drivers to business success, as regulators and lawyers step up their game, supported by IT and rampant media. Rupert Murdoch may well agree. In general, I find this all to the good, with caveats.
One caveat is the risk that we all feed the lawyers even more than today. Regulation needs to be simple and transparent wherever possible. Another is that regulation becomes a weapon in trade wars between countries. Like so much else, this is a hidden benefit of the EU: Europe regulates as one nowadays.
But generally, just like individual taxes and tickets, if people cheat and are punished, the consumer benefits and money flows to the law-abiding. If you complain about tickets, try the alternative of following the rules. Most of them are there for good reasons. If taxes and tickets and fines reflect your ability to pay, celebrate that you have that ability in the first place.
But I am sure the New Yorkers would still find something else to moan about.
Monday, July 30, 2012
IKEA - My fallen Icon
This week I visited an IKEA store in the USA. Well, I visited a blue and yellow warehouse type place with the name IKEA on the front and furniture with odd Scandinavian names inside, but there the resemblance to the IKEA I love ended.
The visit was to a store in New Jersey, right by Newark Airport, at a place called Elizabeth. This area constituted a new benchmark for me for the term industrial wasteland. It seems the whole of this part of the state consists only of motorways, railroads, swamps and factories.
I was already a bit stressed, the visit coming half way through a day of picking up bits of furniture in a van from most of the New York City boroughs as well as New Jersey. But I wasn’t ready for what happened inside my blessed IKEA.
The physical layout was familiar, though the car park was vast, uncovered and bleak, and the inside seemed tired, even the restaurant. But the real problem was the service.
First, the store did not have a single catalogue inside. That is a bit like a pub with no beer, as the catalogue is at the heart of the business model. The staff were blasé about it. Seemingly, a new one was just coming out next week. But really, how can it be acceptable ever to run out of catalogues?
Then, the place seemed understaffed, and the staff that were there just didn’t have motivation or knowledge. Only three checkout lines were open, with long queues, though the people manning them seemed happy talking among themselves some of the time. After establishing upstairs that the storage units I wanted did not get supported upstairs (why?), I found the warehouse, and some computer screens which got me tantalisingly close to the information I needed to go and fetch my components. But only close. Some pictures didn’t come up well on screen, and the menus were not good enough. I just needed a catalogue! Or even the IKEA website would have sufficed. But neither were available.
Instead I asked for help. The first guy was offhand and pointed me to another guy behind a desk. Who was rude, ignorant and useless. In the end I had to guess what I needed I still don’t know if I guessed well or not.
The other thing that struck me was the absence of joy in the whole place. The staff were just going through the motions, and no managers were in sight. The customers were grim faced. Many were confused and unhappy, and more than one was handing out abuse to anyone who would listen, shouting “this place stinks” or things like that.
All in all, after a long hour and a half, I was very happy to get back to the van and drive off into the industrial wasteland, fortified only by the good meat balls, but otherwise in a foul mood. And I suspect many other customers left the same way, and some of those would not return.
When I got home, I tried to work out what had happened and why. Many European retailers struggle in the USA, and IKEA has had a mixed experience here. Does my experience this week offer any clues as to why?
When I thought about it, many of the direct aspects of the experience were similar to Europe. IKEA is nearly always in something close to an industrial wasteland, and parking is never fun there. Choosing items from the warehouse is always a fraught experience, and often leads to mistakes and follow up visits. There are frequent queues at check outs. Staff often seem to be absent from where you need them and not to quite the knowledge needed.
So the European experience is not a bundle of laughs either. Yet somehow there is something about it which makes me feel good. Something plainly missing from the experience in the USA.
I thought back to my first visits to IKEA in Europe. These had been tough too. It took time to build belief in the business model and faith in myself to make it work for me. I remember long queues in Croydon as well, and the misery of having to take loads of stuff back due to my errors. Yet I came back, and became a fan.
I think there were two reasons. One is the end product. I managed to persevere long enough with IKEA to get benefits, and to believe that I would continue to get benefits. The products are great, and wonderful value, and brilliantly designed, and even I can put them up. If I keep my head down through the difficult parts of the experience, I would emerge at the far end with a good outcome. I came to believe it was worth it.
The second reason is that IKEA did everything they could to make the experience bearable, with positive aspects mitigating the inherent bad bits. The catalogue is clear. If my mood is light enough, I can marvel at all the great products. The restaurant is a miracle. I can take myself out of the experience itself and intellectualise how superb the business model is. The staff do their very best to help. And somehow a combination of all this means that lots of other people, with their kids, are in a light, positive mood around me in the store, which keeps my own mood lifted.
So in Europe the two factors build a strong brand. The positive parts of the experience are just enough to get you through the inevitable negatives, until the great outcome kicks in, from when your mood on visiting is so good you stop noticing the negatives.
Obviously what was missing in Elizabeth was the positive aspect of the experience. Far from happy kids and great staff, this place was just miserable, and we were all dragged into the void, even long-time fans like me. And this came down to basic operations. Not enough staff. Management not caring enough (or bothering to find out) about a lack of catalogues. Undertrained, under-motivated staff.
The USA is strange when it comes to staff. I receive some wonderful service every day, from people who lift my mood. I used to think the famous “Have a nice day” cliché was a false thing forced on people by training and coercive management, but I learn that usually it isn’t. When this wow factor exists it is powerful. But I also frequently experience the opposite. Just now, having arrived, I meet a lot of government departments, and they are notorious, not just in the USA. The Department of Motor Vehicles has scarred me already, and just from one visit.
I suspect the main problem European retailers have is in creating this wow factor among the local managers and staff. This certainly seems to be the case with IKEA. Which suggests that US staff respond to a different combination of stimuli. The package of pay, teamwork, training, job security, incentive and other things needs to be different here.
I’ll observe more and develop some theories. One possibility here is that the freshness fades more quickly, so managers have to find new ways to keep people motivated more often. That would correlate with the focus on marketing and continuous renewal here.
Whatever the secret, IKEA in Elizabeth do not have it, or if they once had it, they lost it. IKEA global managers should be ashamed of that store, at least based on that one visit. I will be going to the one in Brooklyn this week, with some trepidation. Can my icon recover?
The visit was to a store in New Jersey, right by Newark Airport, at a place called Elizabeth. This area constituted a new benchmark for me for the term industrial wasteland. It seems the whole of this part of the state consists only of motorways, railroads, swamps and factories.
I was already a bit stressed, the visit coming half way through a day of picking up bits of furniture in a van from most of the New York City boroughs as well as New Jersey. But I wasn’t ready for what happened inside my blessed IKEA.
The physical layout was familiar, though the car park was vast, uncovered and bleak, and the inside seemed tired, even the restaurant. But the real problem was the service.
First, the store did not have a single catalogue inside. That is a bit like a pub with no beer, as the catalogue is at the heart of the business model. The staff were blasé about it. Seemingly, a new one was just coming out next week. But really, how can it be acceptable ever to run out of catalogues?
Then, the place seemed understaffed, and the staff that were there just didn’t have motivation or knowledge. Only three checkout lines were open, with long queues, though the people manning them seemed happy talking among themselves some of the time. After establishing upstairs that the storage units I wanted did not get supported upstairs (why?), I found the warehouse, and some computer screens which got me tantalisingly close to the information I needed to go and fetch my components. But only close. Some pictures didn’t come up well on screen, and the menus were not good enough. I just needed a catalogue! Or even the IKEA website would have sufficed. But neither were available.
Instead I asked for help. The first guy was offhand and pointed me to another guy behind a desk. Who was rude, ignorant and useless. In the end I had to guess what I needed I still don’t know if I guessed well or not.
The other thing that struck me was the absence of joy in the whole place. The staff were just going through the motions, and no managers were in sight. The customers were grim faced. Many were confused and unhappy, and more than one was handing out abuse to anyone who would listen, shouting “this place stinks” or things like that.
All in all, after a long hour and a half, I was very happy to get back to the van and drive off into the industrial wasteland, fortified only by the good meat balls, but otherwise in a foul mood. And I suspect many other customers left the same way, and some of those would not return.
When I got home, I tried to work out what had happened and why. Many European retailers struggle in the USA, and IKEA has had a mixed experience here. Does my experience this week offer any clues as to why?
When I thought about it, many of the direct aspects of the experience were similar to Europe. IKEA is nearly always in something close to an industrial wasteland, and parking is never fun there. Choosing items from the warehouse is always a fraught experience, and often leads to mistakes and follow up visits. There are frequent queues at check outs. Staff often seem to be absent from where you need them and not to quite the knowledge needed.
So the European experience is not a bundle of laughs either. Yet somehow there is something about it which makes me feel good. Something plainly missing from the experience in the USA.
I thought back to my first visits to IKEA in Europe. These had been tough too. It took time to build belief in the business model and faith in myself to make it work for me. I remember long queues in Croydon as well, and the misery of having to take loads of stuff back due to my errors. Yet I came back, and became a fan.
I think there were two reasons. One is the end product. I managed to persevere long enough with IKEA to get benefits, and to believe that I would continue to get benefits. The products are great, and wonderful value, and brilliantly designed, and even I can put them up. If I keep my head down through the difficult parts of the experience, I would emerge at the far end with a good outcome. I came to believe it was worth it.
The second reason is that IKEA did everything they could to make the experience bearable, with positive aspects mitigating the inherent bad bits. The catalogue is clear. If my mood is light enough, I can marvel at all the great products. The restaurant is a miracle. I can take myself out of the experience itself and intellectualise how superb the business model is. The staff do their very best to help. And somehow a combination of all this means that lots of other people, with their kids, are in a light, positive mood around me in the store, which keeps my own mood lifted.
So in Europe the two factors build a strong brand. The positive parts of the experience are just enough to get you through the inevitable negatives, until the great outcome kicks in, from when your mood on visiting is so good you stop noticing the negatives.
Obviously what was missing in Elizabeth was the positive aspect of the experience. Far from happy kids and great staff, this place was just miserable, and we were all dragged into the void, even long-time fans like me. And this came down to basic operations. Not enough staff. Management not caring enough (or bothering to find out) about a lack of catalogues. Undertrained, under-motivated staff.
The USA is strange when it comes to staff. I receive some wonderful service every day, from people who lift my mood. I used to think the famous “Have a nice day” cliché was a false thing forced on people by training and coercive management, but I learn that usually it isn’t. When this wow factor exists it is powerful. But I also frequently experience the opposite. Just now, having arrived, I meet a lot of government departments, and they are notorious, not just in the USA. The Department of Motor Vehicles has scarred me already, and just from one visit.
I suspect the main problem European retailers have is in creating this wow factor among the local managers and staff. This certainly seems to be the case with IKEA. Which suggests that US staff respond to a different combination of stimuli. The package of pay, teamwork, training, job security, incentive and other things needs to be different here.
I’ll observe more and develop some theories. One possibility here is that the freshness fades more quickly, so managers have to find new ways to keep people motivated more often. That would correlate with the focus on marketing and continuous renewal here.
Whatever the secret, IKEA in Elizabeth do not have it, or if they once had it, they lost it. IKEA global managers should be ashamed of that store, at least based on that one visit. I will be going to the one in Brooklyn this week, with some trepidation. Can my icon recover?
Thursday, July 19, 2012
An aural Assault
Life in New York City is certainly fast-paced. It is no wonder that I frequently look into eyes that seem very, very tired, and also into eyes that appear utterly defeated. This is no place for anyone lacking spirit.
I have come to realise that one symptom of the intensity of life here is that all my senses seem to under fire all of the time. It is nice in a way, life is spicy that way.
Touch is more frequent than elsewhere. Despite the frequent warnings in the subway about sexual assault, it is impossible to live here without touching more human beings than in other places. The subway is just crowded. So are the buses, and so are the pavements (should I say sidewalks?). Anyone over sensitive to being touched will have a miserable time here.
Taste is assaulted mainly in a good way. Food and drink are a big part of life, with little and often being the metier. I have never seen so many cafes and restaurants and street stalls, and the variety of their wares is stunning. Whereas we have been rather shocked by the cost of many things here, casual eating and drinking is quite cheap. And the variety is wonderful, so the taste buds get used to many flavours. You have to be careful to avoid things with added sugar, as much of the diet seems unhealthy. It is no wonder so many Americans have become obese, even here with its built in exercise regime.
This is a city of many smells. Human flesh is a large part of it. In the heat and the crowds, it would be good to be able to shower many times a day, but of course that is not what people can do. So odour is a part of the human diversity here. Add in smells of food, and of various forms of pollution, and there is plenty to smell.
There is always something to see, anywhere in the world that is not dark or confined. But what sights there are in New York! Nothing is petite. I was looking at some building today, very majestic architecture, somewhere in Gramercy. I have no idea what is was, but it struck me that the building would have been the centrepiece of almost any town, but here it was almost mundane. We can be snobbish about our history in Europe, but there is majesty a plenty here. Add in the human diversity, which surprises me every single day in some way, and even our eyes get life full on.
All the senses get battered, but it is the ears which bear the brunt. I remember an Indian once telling me that it was the silence in Europe that he never got used to, since there was no such thing as silence in an Indian city. It is the same here. So far, the only thing I miss of Europe is the absence of noise. I expect that would be common, it is the absence of something that we don’t appreciate so long as we have it, but miss when we lose it.
Noise here is everywhere. Start with the background noises. Air conditioning machines or power generators are never far away, with their tell-tale hum. To sleep at night in summer either requires great tolerance for heat or tolerance for noise. Open windows let in the world. Air conditioners are just noisy. When we watch television with the aircon off, we set the volume to about 16. When the machine is on, we need to set it at 40 to hear properly. Imagine what that is doing to our ears.
At home we can keep the windows closed, but what about when we are outside? There is always a steady hum of traffic, often punctuated by loud heavy motors and sirens. The subway trains are brilliant, but wow do they make a racket.
New Yorkers almost all respond to this by employing ipods, and I have come to do the same. But I wonder if that is so smart. Firstly, I cannot listen to anything with loud and soft bits, as either I am deafened in the forte or the piano is absent. Hooray for Bach and renaissance music! But even when listening to something of a steady volume, I find I need the volume set very high. These ears seem destined to be assaulted one way or another.
We luckily found a haven of peace last Sunday at the episcopal cathedral, with a lovely recital by a Cambridge college choir of all things. But even then the silence was less than I was used to. Once the conductor had to give a tone in competition with a mysterious noise emanating from somewhere. And there was also the audience. To be fair, people were quiet during the singing, but not immediately before. Two New York ladies behind us had plenty to discuss, and did not seem to mind who heard it.
Which brings me to the last source of noise, the people. Wow, are they loud, and in your face. Actually, I rather like it. A bus journey is never dull, there is always someone telling their life story or moaning about a New York sports team. In restaurants, everyone talks all the time. In Europe, I had already got used to choosing places which muffled sound better, and sitting with my good ear facing my companions. Here, even those precautions will often not be enough.
As someone whose hearing is already a little impaired, I worry what effect New York will have. I would like to see some studies on the subject. I have blogged about hearing before, and I feel this is still an under-researched area, compered for example with the science of vision. There are occasionally (rather contradictory) studies about what electronic mobile phones might be doing to our brains, but I also wonder if we are destined to be a generation of half-deaf people, especially those of us living in the biggest cities. I only hope the science of hearing aids develops quickly, for I am sure to need them before too long.
Is any relief at hand for our suffering ears? Well, I hope so. First, it will not stay mid-summer for ever, and the air-conditioning can be turned off for much of the year (though I am told that the steam heating common here makes a racket too). And we have rented a house with central air conditioning and heating, so hopefully that impediment to sleep can be removed.
Secondly, we will be living in Forest Hills, which is not anything like Manhattan, or Roosevelt Island where we are temporarily. The background noise will be less there, especially since we seem to be a good distance from railways and motorways. I am already wondering if people will speak more softly as a result.
Finally, I think we have to look to ourselves. All lives need balance. I have written about simplicity, and here we will need to seek simplicity of sound. We can seek out places of silence, and reflect more on silence when we find it. We can coach each other to speak more softly and to listen more carefully. Meditation may play a role. I wonder if the Church here might turn out to have subtly different benefits here compared with in Europe.
New York has many wonderful things to offer, and most of the surprises so far have been positive ones. But I sense that we will need to utilise our ingenuity to negate the assault on our ears that New York might be.
I have come to realise that one symptom of the intensity of life here is that all my senses seem to under fire all of the time. It is nice in a way, life is spicy that way.
Touch is more frequent than elsewhere. Despite the frequent warnings in the subway about sexual assault, it is impossible to live here without touching more human beings than in other places. The subway is just crowded. So are the buses, and so are the pavements (should I say sidewalks?). Anyone over sensitive to being touched will have a miserable time here.
Taste is assaulted mainly in a good way. Food and drink are a big part of life, with little and often being the metier. I have never seen so many cafes and restaurants and street stalls, and the variety of their wares is stunning. Whereas we have been rather shocked by the cost of many things here, casual eating and drinking is quite cheap. And the variety is wonderful, so the taste buds get used to many flavours. You have to be careful to avoid things with added sugar, as much of the diet seems unhealthy. It is no wonder so many Americans have become obese, even here with its built in exercise regime.
This is a city of many smells. Human flesh is a large part of it. In the heat and the crowds, it would be good to be able to shower many times a day, but of course that is not what people can do. So odour is a part of the human diversity here. Add in smells of food, and of various forms of pollution, and there is plenty to smell.
There is always something to see, anywhere in the world that is not dark or confined. But what sights there are in New York! Nothing is petite. I was looking at some building today, very majestic architecture, somewhere in Gramercy. I have no idea what is was, but it struck me that the building would have been the centrepiece of almost any town, but here it was almost mundane. We can be snobbish about our history in Europe, but there is majesty a plenty here. Add in the human diversity, which surprises me every single day in some way, and even our eyes get life full on.
All the senses get battered, but it is the ears which bear the brunt. I remember an Indian once telling me that it was the silence in Europe that he never got used to, since there was no such thing as silence in an Indian city. It is the same here. So far, the only thing I miss of Europe is the absence of noise. I expect that would be common, it is the absence of something that we don’t appreciate so long as we have it, but miss when we lose it.
Noise here is everywhere. Start with the background noises. Air conditioning machines or power generators are never far away, with their tell-tale hum. To sleep at night in summer either requires great tolerance for heat or tolerance for noise. Open windows let in the world. Air conditioners are just noisy. When we watch television with the aircon off, we set the volume to about 16. When the machine is on, we need to set it at 40 to hear properly. Imagine what that is doing to our ears.
At home we can keep the windows closed, but what about when we are outside? There is always a steady hum of traffic, often punctuated by loud heavy motors and sirens. The subway trains are brilliant, but wow do they make a racket.
New Yorkers almost all respond to this by employing ipods, and I have come to do the same. But I wonder if that is so smart. Firstly, I cannot listen to anything with loud and soft bits, as either I am deafened in the forte or the piano is absent. Hooray for Bach and renaissance music! But even when listening to something of a steady volume, I find I need the volume set very high. These ears seem destined to be assaulted one way or another.
We luckily found a haven of peace last Sunday at the episcopal cathedral, with a lovely recital by a Cambridge college choir of all things. But even then the silence was less than I was used to. Once the conductor had to give a tone in competition with a mysterious noise emanating from somewhere. And there was also the audience. To be fair, people were quiet during the singing, but not immediately before. Two New York ladies behind us had plenty to discuss, and did not seem to mind who heard it.
Which brings me to the last source of noise, the people. Wow, are they loud, and in your face. Actually, I rather like it. A bus journey is never dull, there is always someone telling their life story or moaning about a New York sports team. In restaurants, everyone talks all the time. In Europe, I had already got used to choosing places which muffled sound better, and sitting with my good ear facing my companions. Here, even those precautions will often not be enough.
As someone whose hearing is already a little impaired, I worry what effect New York will have. I would like to see some studies on the subject. I have blogged about hearing before, and I feel this is still an under-researched area, compered for example with the science of vision. There are occasionally (rather contradictory) studies about what electronic mobile phones might be doing to our brains, but I also wonder if we are destined to be a generation of half-deaf people, especially those of us living in the biggest cities. I only hope the science of hearing aids develops quickly, for I am sure to need them before too long.
Is any relief at hand for our suffering ears? Well, I hope so. First, it will not stay mid-summer for ever, and the air-conditioning can be turned off for much of the year (though I am told that the steam heating common here makes a racket too). And we have rented a house with central air conditioning and heating, so hopefully that impediment to sleep can be removed.
Secondly, we will be living in Forest Hills, which is not anything like Manhattan, or Roosevelt Island where we are temporarily. The background noise will be less there, especially since we seem to be a good distance from railways and motorways. I am already wondering if people will speak more softly as a result.
Finally, I think we have to look to ourselves. All lives need balance. I have written about simplicity, and here we will need to seek simplicity of sound. We can seek out places of silence, and reflect more on silence when we find it. We can coach each other to speak more softly and to listen more carefully. Meditation may play a role. I wonder if the Church here might turn out to have subtly different benefits here compared with in Europe.
New York has many wonderful things to offer, and most of the surprises so far have been positive ones. But I sense that we will need to utilise our ingenuity to negate the assault on our ears that New York might be.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
First Bites of the Big Apple
Today seems the first time in a month that I have been able to draw breath. Some periods of our lives go at turbo speed, with decisions and actions far faster than normal. We get by somehow on adrenaline, supported if possible by good friends and some project management skills. This has been such a period for me, combining my wedding last month with a relocation to New York City on 1st July.
When I look back at what we have managed to achieve this month I am rather proud. Somehow we have enjoyed a milestone celebration in a great way, while emptying a flat, finding new places, and all the million and one other things required to relocate. So far nothing serious has gone wrong, at least nothing with any longer-term consequence. We hope to sign a lease for a permanent apartment here this evening, not bad for nine days after flying in. There is still much to do, but hopefully from now on we can gradually revert to our normal pace of life.
So what of New York? Two clues are in the paragraph above.
First, somehow the place works. I managed to get a working mobile phone on the first day, and a bank account on the second day, with funds transferred into it by day four. I know from bitter experience that would have been much harder in the UK, and in other European countries as well. For all that we Europeans tend to look with scorn at the market-created chaos in the USA, my experience so far is that things work. You can find what you need, unnecessary obstacles are removed, and people are anxious to help. That is a pleasant surprise. At least I expected some problems because of our international backgrounds – after all the UK seems incapable of understanding that some people come from other countries, so I would have expected the same in an even more insular land with even more power and arrogance. But not so – well done USA.
Heck, even the public transport works. Transport is one of my favourite topics to extol central planning and its benefits. The Dutch are brilliant, the British rubbish, and it really shows. Until now, my assumption had been that only governmental oversight (national or local) could deliver this well. New York proves me wrong. Think of one place in the world where you would expect gridlock, and you might choose Manhattan. It is an island, reliant on bridges, in a land worshipping the car. Now, admittedly it is a holiday season, but somehow the various forces at work seem to have happily conspired to prevent this.
The subway may not be beautiful, but it is mighty extensive and effective. I did not expect to see so many buses, or even local trains. People even walk. And Manhattan has smartly used its reliance on bridges and tunnels as an effective defence mechanism by imposing large tolls. On Saturday, we went to New Jersey. On the way, we used public transport, and paid a flat fare $2,25 for a subway ticket and $4,50 for a bus, altogether travelling quite a distance. London, are you watching? On the way home, we took a lift in a car. The journey took longer, and was punctuated by $20 in tolls, not counting fuel or other costs. To my mind, that is how it should be – and not how I expected it to be in the land of the free and the powerful.
The system is also helped by a plethora of helpful announcements and signs. Some of this might emanate from the litigious nature of US society (“please tread carefully onto escalators”), but much of it simply helps. Each subway train and station has great maps and signs, and they announce things clearly. It also helps a mathematician like me that they use smart systems. The numbered avenue and street grid in Manhattan is well-known, and wow does it help navigation. They have the same in other boroughs, and signs use compass directions very usefully too. House numbers follow the pattern so you can find an address approximately quickly. In Forest Hills, some of the streets have real names, but consecutive streets start with A, B, C and so on. Smart. This is a mathematical navigator’s paradise!
The other clue about first impressions is about the pace of life here in New York City. It is not slow. People walk more quickly and converse more purposefully. Of course I have been ringing and visiting many estate agents this week. I would characterise these encounters by the expression “cut the crap”. No small talk, just down to business. If they haven’t got what I want, they work it out quickly, tell me, and kick me out the door, with a friendly “have a nice day” delivered to my back.
I have to say I like it. No one is unfriendly, but they don’t waste each other’s time either. It is not all about money, but money plays its part. Time is money. Space is money too. I just love the way they use the vertical axis of space here. Car parks use every square inch, and then do more by using cubic inches too, stacking the cars on winches high into the sky. Brilliant. But will life at this speed become tiring? I’ll let you know in the months ahead.
One bonus I have now is that for the first time in sixteen years I’m living in a country where I speak the native language. I’ve got by before, somehow understanding the gist of what is coming on around me, using all my senses and asking for help. But here they speak English! What heaven! I only realise what a handicap it has been for all these years now the handicap has finally been removed. Lucky me.
Mind you, you do hear some strange versions of English. I thought I was living in a diverse society in The Hague, but I was kidding myself, compared with here. True, we had many nationalities in The Hague, and Dutch society is tolerant of lifestyle choices. But here I have had to add extra dimensions. Take affluence. In The Hague we had poorer and richer people living together, but somehow within limits and with some borders. Here the range is wider and the borders less clear. Poor and desperate people, some missing limbs, are living side by side to the most affluent. I have seen some of the shortest and some of the tallest people I’ve ever come across in the last week. Colours blend, and you sense that within a generation or two they will have blended even more. I am amazed at how many Asians are here, and from so many countries. This is all great, in my opinion.
You also see some very tired people, with “lived in” faces. Living at this pace for so long and with some of life’s disadvantages must be tough here, yet many do it, year after year. You see some desperate life stories in the faces on the subway, every day. Many faces betray some cynicism and suspicion as well. This is a tough place to live, if you are not affluent, young or loved. I don’t think this is somewhere we would consider growing old.
I am looking forward to experiencing what New York City has to offer. I feel truly blessed. Each morning I open the blinds to see the might of Manhattan stretching before me across the East river. What a testament to humanity this place is.
When I look back at what we have managed to achieve this month I am rather proud. Somehow we have enjoyed a milestone celebration in a great way, while emptying a flat, finding new places, and all the million and one other things required to relocate. So far nothing serious has gone wrong, at least nothing with any longer-term consequence. We hope to sign a lease for a permanent apartment here this evening, not bad for nine days after flying in. There is still much to do, but hopefully from now on we can gradually revert to our normal pace of life.
So what of New York? Two clues are in the paragraph above.
First, somehow the place works. I managed to get a working mobile phone on the first day, and a bank account on the second day, with funds transferred into it by day four. I know from bitter experience that would have been much harder in the UK, and in other European countries as well. For all that we Europeans tend to look with scorn at the market-created chaos in the USA, my experience so far is that things work. You can find what you need, unnecessary obstacles are removed, and people are anxious to help. That is a pleasant surprise. At least I expected some problems because of our international backgrounds – after all the UK seems incapable of understanding that some people come from other countries, so I would have expected the same in an even more insular land with even more power and arrogance. But not so – well done USA.
Heck, even the public transport works. Transport is one of my favourite topics to extol central planning and its benefits. The Dutch are brilliant, the British rubbish, and it really shows. Until now, my assumption had been that only governmental oversight (national or local) could deliver this well. New York proves me wrong. Think of one place in the world where you would expect gridlock, and you might choose Manhattan. It is an island, reliant on bridges, in a land worshipping the car. Now, admittedly it is a holiday season, but somehow the various forces at work seem to have happily conspired to prevent this.
The subway may not be beautiful, but it is mighty extensive and effective. I did not expect to see so many buses, or even local trains. People even walk. And Manhattan has smartly used its reliance on bridges and tunnels as an effective defence mechanism by imposing large tolls. On Saturday, we went to New Jersey. On the way, we used public transport, and paid a flat fare $2,25 for a subway ticket and $4,50 for a bus, altogether travelling quite a distance. London, are you watching? On the way home, we took a lift in a car. The journey took longer, and was punctuated by $20 in tolls, not counting fuel or other costs. To my mind, that is how it should be – and not how I expected it to be in the land of the free and the powerful.
The system is also helped by a plethora of helpful announcements and signs. Some of this might emanate from the litigious nature of US society (“please tread carefully onto escalators”), but much of it simply helps. Each subway train and station has great maps and signs, and they announce things clearly. It also helps a mathematician like me that they use smart systems. The numbered avenue and street grid in Manhattan is well-known, and wow does it help navigation. They have the same in other boroughs, and signs use compass directions very usefully too. House numbers follow the pattern so you can find an address approximately quickly. In Forest Hills, some of the streets have real names, but consecutive streets start with A, B, C and so on. Smart. This is a mathematical navigator’s paradise!
The other clue about first impressions is about the pace of life here in New York City. It is not slow. People walk more quickly and converse more purposefully. Of course I have been ringing and visiting many estate agents this week. I would characterise these encounters by the expression “cut the crap”. No small talk, just down to business. If they haven’t got what I want, they work it out quickly, tell me, and kick me out the door, with a friendly “have a nice day” delivered to my back.
I have to say I like it. No one is unfriendly, but they don’t waste each other’s time either. It is not all about money, but money plays its part. Time is money. Space is money too. I just love the way they use the vertical axis of space here. Car parks use every square inch, and then do more by using cubic inches too, stacking the cars on winches high into the sky. Brilliant. But will life at this speed become tiring? I’ll let you know in the months ahead.
One bonus I have now is that for the first time in sixteen years I’m living in a country where I speak the native language. I’ve got by before, somehow understanding the gist of what is coming on around me, using all my senses and asking for help. But here they speak English! What heaven! I only realise what a handicap it has been for all these years now the handicap has finally been removed. Lucky me.
Mind you, you do hear some strange versions of English. I thought I was living in a diverse society in The Hague, but I was kidding myself, compared with here. True, we had many nationalities in The Hague, and Dutch society is tolerant of lifestyle choices. But here I have had to add extra dimensions. Take affluence. In The Hague we had poorer and richer people living together, but somehow within limits and with some borders. Here the range is wider and the borders less clear. Poor and desperate people, some missing limbs, are living side by side to the most affluent. I have seen some of the shortest and some of the tallest people I’ve ever come across in the last week. Colours blend, and you sense that within a generation or two they will have blended even more. I am amazed at how many Asians are here, and from so many countries. This is all great, in my opinion.
You also see some very tired people, with “lived in” faces. Living at this pace for so long and with some of life’s disadvantages must be tough here, yet many do it, year after year. You see some desperate life stories in the faces on the subway, every day. Many faces betray some cynicism and suspicion as well. This is a tough place to live, if you are not affluent, young or loved. I don’t think this is somewhere we would consider growing old.
I am looking forward to experiencing what New York City has to offer. I feel truly blessed. Each morning I open the blinds to see the might of Manhattan stretching before me across the East river. What a testament to humanity this place is.
Monday, June 18, 2012
I’m told that the boiling frog syndrome is a myth. The popular belief is that if you suddenly immerse a frog in boiling water it will jump for its life, but if you put the same frog in cold water and then gradually heating the water to boiling point, it will not react and perish.
True or not, the syndrome describes something we all recognise. If you see your grandkids every day, you hardly notice them growing. But if there is a gap of three years between sightings, you will notice a massive change. If you want to be depressed, try looking at a photo of yourself from ten years ago and then looking in the mirror.
Most examples are negative ones. If something bad creeps up on you slowly, you will not see it. But the same is true with good things. I’ve used the example before about learning to sing, that I like to try out a piece from a couple of years ago every so often. It is only then I notice that the piece that used to be tough is now easy, and I can be sure I have progressed.
I was struck by a different example last week, when I had a particularly trouble-free travel experience, including a wonderful time interval of less than fifteen minutes between my plane touching down and my emergence from the terminal. In travel and suchlike, we only tend to register when things go wrong. Hence we complain, and we tend to conclude that progress has been in a negative direction.
But my happy experience of last week led me to reflect on the typical journey I would have made twenty years ago, and how it has changed for the better.
First of all, my choice of destinations twenty years ago would have been more limited. For those places I could travel, there was probably only one airline flying, and that only once per day. The price was higher, even without allowing for inflation. To book, I would have had to use a travel agent, where I sat for ages in a queue, before dealing with someone who alternated between bad computer screens and endless phone calls to confirm my booking. Remember?
Next, the journey to the airport. It says on the ticket to allow two hours before travel, and in those days it really meant it. What is more, that meant allowing three hours in practice, because of the frequent traffic jams approaching the airport, the huge distance to the car park and the infrequency of busses to the terminal.
Once inside the airport, I would queue in a long line of people at check in, holding a ticket so large that it would not comfortably fit in my pocket (why did we need those?). I never understood why it seemed to take each party in front of me in the queue three or four minutes to complete the simplest procedure. Nowadays we have e-tickets, internet check in, and baggage drop (though I still don’t understand why that bit takes as long as it does).
Then there were several more lines before getting onto the plane, all asking overlapping information that an integrated service would remove the need for. This part hasn’t improved in twenty years, indeed it may have got worse, because of the added security checks these days.
Perhaps the biggest improvement is once we are actually in the plane. Can you remember how frequent it was that the incoming plane was late, and then seemed to take forever to turnaround? Easyjet have mastered the 30 minute turnaround, and other carriers have slowly copied that. Then we could often sit in the plane for an hour waiting for a take-off slot. Despite that, once we had taken off and flown to the destination, it seemed de rigeur to circle the airport a couple of times before coming in to land. Nowadays, air traffic control seems to work almost flawlessly. Apparently, we are less likely to bump into another plane than in those days as well.
Finally, on arrival, it was more common to have to wait for a vacant gate, the passport queues were longer (now, praise be, we even have Schengen), and the luggage comes more quickly as well. I even think incidents of luggage not arriving are less frequent too.
Of course when it goes wrong it still goes wrong, and delays can be hours, whether due to weather or mechanical failure. Even there, at least nowadays most airports have humane spaces to wait in with at least a modicum of facilities.
The improvements continue once we have started our business in the foreign country. Twenty years ago, money was always a problem, with lots of cash (where legal), bought at the airport for exorbitant rates, those quaint things called travellers cheques, and long queues at banks. Now ATM’s usually process foreign debit cards, and credit cards work nearly everywhere, and both of these services rip us off a lot less.
Then there are communications. Remember queuing at a foreign post office to make a phone call home? Or, in the early days of computers, the utter impossibility of connecting to any useful service? Mobile phones and the internet have changed all that.
So, next time you are delayed or stuck in a queue, remember what travel used to be like, and celebrate the progress we have made. You might at the same time celebrate progress in other areas. Infant mortality for example. Or the defeat of smog, at least in most countries. We are somewhat attuned to moan, and it is good for us to put our moans in perspective every so often.
On this happy note, this blog might go into hibernation for a month or two now, due to some momentous events coming up in my life. This weekend I’m getting married again, and a week later the family are moving to New York City. Even those this should be more trouble-free than it would have been twenty years ago, I somehow don’t think finding a connection and sitting down to blabber to a keyboard for an hour will loom large in the priorities in the coming weeks. I’ll be back though, hopefully and God willing in July, and can start to reflect on new beginnings in some letters from America.
True or not, the syndrome describes something we all recognise. If you see your grandkids every day, you hardly notice them growing. But if there is a gap of three years between sightings, you will notice a massive change. If you want to be depressed, try looking at a photo of yourself from ten years ago and then looking in the mirror.
Most examples are negative ones. If something bad creeps up on you slowly, you will not see it. But the same is true with good things. I’ve used the example before about learning to sing, that I like to try out a piece from a couple of years ago every so often. It is only then I notice that the piece that used to be tough is now easy, and I can be sure I have progressed.
I was struck by a different example last week, when I had a particularly trouble-free travel experience, including a wonderful time interval of less than fifteen minutes between my plane touching down and my emergence from the terminal. In travel and suchlike, we only tend to register when things go wrong. Hence we complain, and we tend to conclude that progress has been in a negative direction.
But my happy experience of last week led me to reflect on the typical journey I would have made twenty years ago, and how it has changed for the better.
First of all, my choice of destinations twenty years ago would have been more limited. For those places I could travel, there was probably only one airline flying, and that only once per day. The price was higher, even without allowing for inflation. To book, I would have had to use a travel agent, where I sat for ages in a queue, before dealing with someone who alternated between bad computer screens and endless phone calls to confirm my booking. Remember?
Next, the journey to the airport. It says on the ticket to allow two hours before travel, and in those days it really meant it. What is more, that meant allowing three hours in practice, because of the frequent traffic jams approaching the airport, the huge distance to the car park and the infrequency of busses to the terminal.
Once inside the airport, I would queue in a long line of people at check in, holding a ticket so large that it would not comfortably fit in my pocket (why did we need those?). I never understood why it seemed to take each party in front of me in the queue three or four minutes to complete the simplest procedure. Nowadays we have e-tickets, internet check in, and baggage drop (though I still don’t understand why that bit takes as long as it does).
Then there were several more lines before getting onto the plane, all asking overlapping information that an integrated service would remove the need for. This part hasn’t improved in twenty years, indeed it may have got worse, because of the added security checks these days.
Perhaps the biggest improvement is once we are actually in the plane. Can you remember how frequent it was that the incoming plane was late, and then seemed to take forever to turnaround? Easyjet have mastered the 30 minute turnaround, and other carriers have slowly copied that. Then we could often sit in the plane for an hour waiting for a take-off slot. Despite that, once we had taken off and flown to the destination, it seemed de rigeur to circle the airport a couple of times before coming in to land. Nowadays, air traffic control seems to work almost flawlessly. Apparently, we are less likely to bump into another plane than in those days as well.
Finally, on arrival, it was more common to have to wait for a vacant gate, the passport queues were longer (now, praise be, we even have Schengen), and the luggage comes more quickly as well. I even think incidents of luggage not arriving are less frequent too.
Of course when it goes wrong it still goes wrong, and delays can be hours, whether due to weather or mechanical failure. Even there, at least nowadays most airports have humane spaces to wait in with at least a modicum of facilities.
The improvements continue once we have started our business in the foreign country. Twenty years ago, money was always a problem, with lots of cash (where legal), bought at the airport for exorbitant rates, those quaint things called travellers cheques, and long queues at banks. Now ATM’s usually process foreign debit cards, and credit cards work nearly everywhere, and both of these services rip us off a lot less.
Then there are communications. Remember queuing at a foreign post office to make a phone call home? Or, in the early days of computers, the utter impossibility of connecting to any useful service? Mobile phones and the internet have changed all that.
So, next time you are delayed or stuck in a queue, remember what travel used to be like, and celebrate the progress we have made. You might at the same time celebrate progress in other areas. Infant mortality for example. Or the defeat of smog, at least in most countries. We are somewhat attuned to moan, and it is good for us to put our moans in perspective every so often.
On this happy note, this blog might go into hibernation for a month or two now, due to some momentous events coming up in my life. This weekend I’m getting married again, and a week later the family are moving to New York City. Even those this should be more trouble-free than it would have been twenty years ago, I somehow don’t think finding a connection and sitting down to blabber to a keyboard for an hour will loom large in the priorities in the coming weeks. I’ll be back though, hopefully and God willing in July, and can start to reflect on new beginnings in some letters from America.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Dyslexic distinction
Over the last week, I’ve been watching some Monty Python compilations. As an adolescent, I remember the watching parts of each show creased up in laughter, and failing to see anything funny at all in other parts. That hasn’t changed. Some of the hilarious passages have not withered at all with age, still seeming edgy and original. Wow, how far ahead of its time this material was. But many of the animations and a few of the sketches still leave me as cold as they did forty years ago.
Python set many trends. One was pacey progression within a sketch. Before Python all sketches had a theme, a beginning, a middle and an end. Python often started with one theme but then deviated, as the saying goes, into something completely different. This must have frustrated ordered minds, but, watching it again now, I love it, as it maintains momentum and enables the team to get full value from their time. Nowadays, the Python way has become standard, though I would say few do as well as the Python team even now.
A stranger thought from watching the sketches was that Python may somehow have been the forerunner of reality TV, or at least celebrity TV. Many times the sketches revolve around the ridiculousness of people with one strength doing something else. Remember the philosophers playing football? Or, in a similar way, Marx and Mao being asked when Coventry last won the FA Cup? Brilliant. And not so different from celebrity Mastermind, or Strictly Come Dancing, or many other popular shows of today. Should we thank Python for this or curse them? Make up your own mind on that, but at least remember the laughs they gave us.
One thing that was never pleasant about Python but which sticks out like a sore thumb now is their attitude to stereotypes and to women. Poor old Connie Booth is never anything but a dumb sex object, and the boys seem strangely attracted to women’s clothing and hag characters that might just be their own mothers in psychological disguise. Gillam’s animated women seem to lose their clothes all the time. This sort of stuff has been relegated from the mainstream by now, and a good thing too. Well done, Pamela Stevenson and Tracey Ullman, I think you were the first two women to break into sketches and sketch-writing as equal partners.
There is a lot of cruelty and disrespect in Python for other groups, including homosexuals, which seems strange since Graham Chapman was gay himself. Perhaps we have become over-sensitive now. In any case, I don’t think Python helped tolerance. We have moved forward in these areas despite them rather than because of them.
And then there is disability. The 1500m for the deaf, where no-one hears the starting gun. The 100m for people with no sense of direction, where they all go off in random ways. Various other examples. Brilliant, and hard not to laugh. But over some line of acceptability? How far is this from the paralympics?
With physical disability, we have made a lot of progress in Western society, even if I am still always knackered after pushing Mum’s wheelchair along the uneven streets and unfriendly curbs of Eastbourne (of all places). Sometimes, it does seem almost Pythonesque in its tokenism. On Sunday, I saw a news piece about a warship fitted out for a disabled crew. OK, the armed forces should indeed make space for disabled people (after all, they create a lot of them), but on a warship? I couldn’t but think of what Cleese and Chapman would have made of that, with the Chinese or Al Qaida attacking with mortars or bombs while the crew were patiently queuing up to use the lift. Still, there are now many relevant and brilliant applications of the special skills of the physically disabled in our lives, which we can celebrate.
But then I read Schumpeter in this week’s Economist and was completely taken aback. The article focused not on physical disability but on people whose minds worked differently, like dyslexics and autistic people. It included stunning statistics from a recent survey. Dyslexics make up 10% of the population, yet only 1% of professional managers. Wow. Then, dyslexics make up as many as 35% of successful entrepreneurs. Wow again. Many of the entrepreneurs that we admire the most are dyslexic.
There is a parallel story with Asperger’s syndrome, ADD and autism. Here, the link is to IT, software and so on, as well as to entrepreneurism. Apparently, Zuckerberg and many in silicon valley show some of the associated symptoms.
The IT link is maybe understandable. Great memories, focuses on numbers and facts not nuances. Not easily distracted. This makes some sense. All the positive of features of geeks combined with natural talent will lead to a great software professional.
But dyslexia? That is more complex. One possibility is that those dyslexics who happen to be smart and commercial and ambitious are excluded from many fields, so gravitate to entrepreneurship. That makes sense, based on the statistic about professional managers. Most smart non-dyslexics end up as lawyers or bureaucrats or whatever else. Dyslexics are disadvantaged there, so start their own companies.
Even if this is the only factor at work, that says a lot about most companies. Dyslexics seem to prove that companies can succeed without the skills which companies demand of their professional managers. So some of those skills most be over-valued, or indeed counter-productive. If we couldn’t write reports, we wouldn’t. Perhaps the reports are useless, or at least less useful than the other things we could do with our time.
But perhaps there are other factors at work too. I have seen this myself, since I work closely now with a dyslexic. I can see ways he has used it to help him. He hates reports, so makes fast and simple decisions, asks good questions and uses great examples.
But he is also unusually commercial. My own arithmetic is very strong, but compared with this guy I am slow, especially when money is involved. A company may have 40,000 customers per day who could be persuaded to spend 30 Romanian lei more; what is that worth in US dollars per year after tax? It is useful to be able to rapidly compute things like this to a rough order of magnitude, and I find I make mistakes, but my friend does not, almost seems to know the answer intuitively. Is that just him, or does dyslexia help him somehow?
He also has a great feel for what customers might want. Might it be that while the rest of us are poring over useless market research or analysis, he is just observing? Just like a blind person hears well, does a dyslexic observe well?
This whole area must have massive potential for business. We have worked out how many different types of diversity benefits businesses, even if we don’t yet always embrace it willingly. But we are still quite narrow in how we typically view categories of diversity. These examples show clues to a multitude of new categories based on our mental indicators. The potential in this field seems almost unlimited, and the advantages for those ahead of the game huge.
Now I’ll go and enjoy some more Python.
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