Technical (Installment) Advise Week #43/45 - Tough Economic Times

Well we thought that doing a weeking piece would be easy. However, as we discovered it isn't and therefore we end up skipping weeks. So although we are still going to do our best to meet with this objective we have decided to properly label these pieces as 'Installments'. This way we don't have to count how many we have missed and can simply provide another in sequential order.

Max & I feel compelled to discuss the tough economic situation we are in. While many point to the present laments, like gas prices or housing market slump, as the precipitating factors, it is in our humble belief that these are simply 'tipping' factors (those things that illuminate systemic problems that exists). We heard yesterday that there have been discussions of GM filing for bankruptcy. Obviously gas prices have has some effect but is anyone asking questions about the frameworks that inhibits their ability to change, the excessive assessment maze that they undertake to qualify a supplier (with little value effect), or the inability of the company to be innovative and adaptive? Obviously GM is or may be in the forefront, but we can assure you that there are 1000's of companies that are in a similar situation. The talk about stockholder value yet they are depriving shareholders of value through diminished ROI (and to compensate ravage the workforce to generate increased income, when the workforce isn't the problem, their framework for operations is). Then someone, with great scholarly abilities, draws aim on outsourcing and laments about job loss. Outsourcing is about making a business decision, just like buying hard commodities. Yet, the ROI that outsourcing affords is lost when operational problems here are pass along to the service provider. Then the contracts are carried out in a very hands off fashion and then the organization points to outsourcing being the problem. We are the problem! We are the problem because we speak a good story about our abilities and our accomplishment, yet with a brazen attitude we point to other surrounding factors as the cause. This leaves us at the doorstep of innovation. Are we innovative? We are deer in the headlights when confronted by challenges, and to go one step further we don't even see the signs. Did the housing boom expect to last forever? People were like drunken soldiers grabbing up whatever they could, at insanely high prices, and became self-indulgent with the feeling of being someone special. We heard a recent news account of a mortgage banker, who formerly worked at a fast food chain (does this give rise for question) who was making a six figure income. Now he was faced with selling of his guitars he had collected when working as this mortgage expert and can't find a job. Not to put him down but as some would say, "you can dress them up but that doesn't make them who they think they are". He is, for all intensive purposes, still a fast food cook. To expect that he's going to land another six figure job is a stretch and if accomplished it's a matter of luck and not a matter of ability. Where is the innovation? People fail because they rely on others and lack the basic ability to live outside the box (and I'm talking about going beyond just thinking outside there). We want innovation but lack the ability to do anything once it's presented. Often it's met with reluctance, reservation, or simply rejection. If this country and others (including outsourcing countries) want to be successful you have to break from tradition, you have to inject a level controlled innovation and stop relying on frameworks and processes that lack the ability to be comprehensive enough to cover all conditions. Frameworks and processes are great for the commonplace events, and even then they are limited. Let's make a pledge to throw open the age of innovation as the solution to our problems. Maybe we ought to consider the elimination of foreign aid to those oil producing countries that are (if we wish to blame them) directly assaulting us at the pumps? Is this innovation or opening our eyes? Till the next installment we remain INNOVATIVE!!!!!