Happy Medium

Remember the big Y2K scare? If you need to have your memory refreshed, the problem stemmed from computers being set up to handle a 2-digit year. When the new century rolled around, everything was reprogrammed to accommodate a 4-digit year. I’ll never forget one of my friends who thought this was a shortsighted approach. “It will be the same problem in the Year 10000,” he said, shaking his head in disgust. Planning ahead is a good thing, but I thought that was going a bit too far. (Check back with me in 80 centuries to see if I’m right.)

The utility company I worked for after college went through a merger. The two merging entities had quite different cultures. One example was how projects were managed. The joke was that their company policy was Ready – Fire – Aim, and ours was Ready – Aim – Aim – Aim … This is a case where mergers can be beneficial, if compromise yields a more reasonable process – a happy medium.

Of course “splitting the difference” isn’t always the best strategy. Sometimes it just dooms you to a watered-down solution. Like the bomb squad technician, choosing between the red and blue wire. Which one should she cut? The compromise solution – choosing the purple wire – delays the explosion but guarantees it at the same time.

Right or wrong – you be the judge. — KK
Kristofer Kesterson is CEO of kSquared Consulting.
© 2011 kSquared Consulting, LLC

Secretariat

In 1999, ESPN unveiled its list of the century’s best athletes. Their Top 50 included 44 men, five women, and one horse. That horse was Secretariat, one of only three horses since 1948 to win the Triple Crown (Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes). The book Secretariat by William Nack provides interesting trivia and a few good lessons that can be applied to business.

First the trivia. Did you know that Secretariat was not the first name chosen for the great horse? There are many rules governing the naming of a race horse, and in Secretariat’s case, five names were rejected before they got it right. In case you’re wondering, the first five choices were, in order of submission: Scepter, Royal Line, Something Special, Games of Chance, and Deo Volente. (By the way, my favorite horse name of all time belonged to a horse that used to run at Prairie Meadows: Hoof Hard Ed. Say that real fast.)

One story in Nack’s book amazed me. A few weeks prior to the Kentucky Derby, Secretariat developed a quarter-sized abscess in his mouth. But nobody bothered to tell the jockey, Ron Turcotte. He couldn’t figure out why the horse was acting strange and was running slower, not “taking the bit.” As the book describes it:

That afternoon and evening – in fact for the next several days – Turcotte would examine a whole range of explanations for Secretariat’s [subpar] race in the Wood [Memorial], turning each one over in his mind. He was searching for something to hold on to. For some clue to explain the horse’s lethargy …

Finally, the jockey was clued in about the abscess and the horse’s change in behavior suddenly made sense. A similar scenario is repeated every day in the corporate world. People on the front lines don’t communicate important information, and those at the top don’t ask.

Another lesson from the world of racing: When Secretariat won the Triple Crown it ended a 25-year drought. After the feat was accomplished again in 1977 (Seattle Slew) and 1978 (Affirmed), 33 years have passed without another winner. In horse racing and elsewhere, there’s a lot of good competition out there. It takes an extraordinary competitor to stand out above the field.

Right or wrong – you be the judge. — KK
Kristofer Kesterson is CEO of kSquared Consulting.
© 2011 kSquared Consulting, LLC

Time to Celebrate?

It sure was a relief when federal government leaders reached an agreement the other day, keeping everything running and slashing $38 billion from our budget deficit. That certainly warranted both parties patting themselves on the back, and President Obama rushing out to the Lincoln Memorial to celebrate.

Or did it?

Closer inspection of the numbers makes one wonder. Our deficit this year is projected at $1.6 trillion. So the $38 billion dollar reduction represented just 2.4 percent of the total shortfall. And look at all the time and wrangling it took just to pick that low hanging fruit. Now if they can repeat the process 41 more times, the balancing act will be complete.

That sounds difficult enough, but according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, the $38 billion is not really an accurate number. Care to take a guess whether the real number is lower or higher than $38 billion? If you said lower, you are correct. (That was a tough one, wasn’t it?) According to a Washington Post article, after clearing away smoke and mirrors, all those celebrations stemmed from a $352 million reduction, not $38 billion. If we trust what the CBO says, our government actually completed only 0.02% of the job. So instead of 41 more times, they need to go through this painful exercise 4,544 more times.

In summary, the situation doesn’t look good.

Right or wrong – you be the judge. — KK
Kristofer Kesterson is CEO of kSquared Consulting.
© 2011 kSquared Consulting, LLC

Doctor K

A trip to my chiropractor used to be an hour-long endeavor. It started with the paperwork. Every visit they made me fill out a survey that asked where is the pain, how bad is the pain, and what type of pain is it? Is it burning, blazing, flaming, scalding, scorching, or searing? I doubt they even looked at these forms, probably just filed them away for no reason except that’s how they’d always done it.

After completing the survey, it was time to sit and wait for 15 minutes, after which I was told to go into another room to wait some more. (Anyone who’s ever been to a doctor knows the drill.) Eventually my chiropractor rushed in, made a couple of adjustments, then rushed out, saying “Wait here” on the way out. After a while, an assistant entered the room and placed a heating pad on my back. It was quite relaxing, but I always wondered why I couldn’t just use my heating pad at home. I concluded that their heating pad was magical. It must be, since they charged me a hundred bucks an hour to use it.

Eventually I got sick of all the paperwork and waiting, and took my business to Doctor K. He’s a great example of what happens when a business owner is customer-oriented and is also willing to think outside the box. First of all, he opens every weekday at 6 AM, and he’s in the office an hour before that. I’m sure he would rather sleep in and open at 8:00 like everyone else, but he decided to do what’s convenient for his patients instead of what’s convenient for him.

Another thing. Dr. K and his staff are always friendly. They treat you like a customer, not an irritant. Whether it’s 6 AM on a Monday or 6 PM on a Friday, the conversation is the same:

Dr. K:  How are you doing?
Me:  Pretty good, and you?
Dr. K:  Fantastic!

The entire process is streamlined, with minimal paperwork. Often I’m in and out in 10 minutes, and about 9 minutes of that is actually doctor-patient time. It’s such a great system that I almost hope to fall down on the ice or suffer a minor skydiving accident, just so I can pay Dr. K another visit.

One more thing – if someone refers you to Dr. K, your first visit – including x-rays – is free. Have you ever heard of anything being free in healthcare?

All this reminds me that I’m about due for another appointment with the good doctor. I wonder if it’s too late to book a skydiving outing for this afternoon.

Right or wrong – you be the judge. — KK
Kristofer Kesterson is CEO of kSquared Consulting.
© 2011 kSquared Consulting, LLC

Basic Math

Recently I’ve been reading The Math Book by Clifford A. Pickover. (Not sure I should admit that.) I used to think I was pretty good at math, but some of the things in this book make Einstein’s Theory of Relativity seem simple by comparison.

I won’t cite any of the insanely complex stuff in today’s blog, but will mention a couple of interesting highlights. The first is about an Italian mathematician from the 16th Century named Gerolamo Cardano. He wrote an early book on algebra, and is also famous for correctly predicting the date of his own death. The Math Book calls it “a prophecy he is said to have ensured by killing himself on this date.” Now there’s a guy who hated to be wrong.

My favorite part of the book so far is about a survey of Mathematical Intelligencer readers, asking them to pick the most beautiful formula in history. The winner was the following equation:

e^iπ + 1 = 0

The book quotes Harvard mathematician Benjamin Pierce: “We cannot understand [the formula], and we don’t know what it means, but we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth.” Now that’s beautiful!

Right or wrong – you be the judge. — KK
Kristofer Kesterson is CEO of kSquared Consulting.
© 2011 kSquared Consulting, LLC

In the Beginning

My love affair with baseball was in full swing when I signed up for pee-wee league as an 8-year-old. The team that chose me was called the Lions. It peeved me more than a little that we were named after Detroit’s football team and not a baseball team like most of the other teams in our league, such as the Cardinals and Yankees. But that stupid decision by the grown-ups, while unpardonable, didn’t dampen my enthusiasm. I counted down the days and minutes to spring training.

Our first practice was held on a vacant lot where Garfield Elementary School had recently lost a battle with a wrecking ball. (This was about 90 years after Garfield himself lost a battle with a bullet.) Our coach, an old guy named Woody, apparently hadn’t scouted the site very well, because there were bricks strewn all over the place. Woody’s first managerial decision was ordering us 8 and 9 year olds to clear the bricks from the west side of the lawn. We dutifully complied, and after 15 minutes of back-breaking child labor, Coach deemed the playing field good enough. He then paired everybody up and directed us to play catch. I assumed we were just warming up, but soon learned otherwise. After we tossed the ball back and forth (and over and under and off to the side) for a while, Woody announced that practice was over. I couldn’t believe it! We hadn’t even seen a bat, let alone swung one. What a rip-off!

So that was my first experience with organized baseball. Now let’s skip ahead several years to my initiation into the corporate world. A few months in, The Boss prepared me for my first performance review. He pulled out an official-looking form, and explained the process with great solemnity. The Boss was so serious I was expecting an Amen at the end. Anyway, here’s how it was going to work: He and I would answer the questions independently, then we would meet, reconcile our differences, and reach a consensus. An organized, fair, democratic process. So this was how Corporate America functioned! I returned to my desk and immediately set to work with great diligence. I was careful to throw in a few modest answers, figuring I’d let The Boss trump me with his version, which I assumed would be chock full of flowery praise.

A week later, it was time for the meeting of the minds. The Boss read my strategically humble self-assessment, nodding his head approvingly. When he finished, I anxiously waited for him to reveal his answers. But it soon became apparent that The Boss hadn’t bothered to do his part of the assignment. He handed my document back to me and said, “Ask our admin to type this up. Where it says I did this or I did that, have her change it to He did this or He did that. Then I’ll sign it.” So much for discussion and compromise. Just like that, my idealistic beliefs went out the window. Welcome to the real world, rookie!

Oh, by the way, in my second year of pee wee league, I got picked by the Blazers. That’s not even a pro football team.

Right or wrong – you be the judge. — KK
Kristofer Kesterson is CEO of kSquared Consulting.
© 2011 kSquared Consulting, LLC

Metal versus Plastic

Spring is here, which means the NCAA basketball tournament is in full swing, which always reminds me of Walmart. That’s because of my annual invitational on-site NCAA tournament pool (currently in hiatus due to a flood-ravaged basement). Your entry fee got you homemade chili and that brings me to Walmart. The first year I hosted the invitational, I went to Walmart intending to buy plastic spoons for the 16 participants, but found a surprising thing. I could buy genuine metal spoons for less money than the disposable kind. What a country!

Although they definitely have low prices, I’m not actually a big fan of Walmart. In fact, since watching the movie Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price about five years ago, I haven’t set foot in the store. I assume the movie contains a fair amount of bias, but if half of it’s true I figure a boycott is in order. (There’s nothing more fun than a good boycott.)

Regardless of what one thinks of the giant retailer, Walmart founder Sam Walton had some great ideas about building a successful business. Below is a condensed version of his top 10 list. (And here is a link to the whole shebang.)

1. Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else.
2. Share your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners.
3. Motivate your partners. Money and ownership alone are not enough.
4. Communicate everything you can with your partners. The more they know, the more they’ll understand.
5. Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. All of us like to be told how much somebody appreciates what we do for them.
6. Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures.
7. Listen to everyone in your company, and figure out ways to get them talking.
8. Exceed your customers’ expectations. If you do, they’ll come back over and over.
9. Control your expenses better than your competition.
10. Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find a niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.

Now that this blog is finished, it’s time for breakfast. I didn’t buy the cereal at Walmart, but my Walmart spoon is still going strong after all these years. As I said, what a country!

Right or wrong – you be the judge. — KK
Kristofer Kesterson is CEO of kSquared Consulting.
© 2011 kSquared Consulting, LLC

What Were You Thinking Dr. Lind?

Scurvy (SKUR-vee) – a disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C, which used to be common among sailors but is now very rare.

Several years ago, my friends Dave, Pete, and I became interested in scurvy. (The reason now escapes me.) About that time, Dave’s wife Christy finished her schooling and got hired as a physician’s assistant. We immediately hatched a wonderful plan and proposed it to Christy: The first time the doctor lets you make a diagnosis, you should announce with great confidence that the patient has scurvy. Just imagine the doctor’s (and patient’s) surprise! Sadly, Christy wouldn’t risk her entire career just to appease us, so our dream went unfulfilled.

However, my friends and I remained dedicated to scurvy, and decided to have a contest between the three of us to see who could contract the disease first. It turns out that this was easier said than done, and not nearly as fun as one might imagine, so we soon gave up on that dream, too.

The reason I started thinking about scurvy again is that I’m reading Bill Bryson’s latest book, At Home, in which he discusses the malady at some length. According to the book, scurvy claimed the lives of about two million sailors between 1500 and 1850. Nobody could figure out why they were dying. Finally, a Scottish physician named James Lind applied a systematic approach to solve the problem. He rounded up sailors who already had scurvy, divided them into six groups and administered different treatments to each. Five of the groups showed no improvement, but the subjects being fed oranges and lemons made a swift recovery. Problem solved, right? Wrong. Bryson explains what happened next: “Amazingly, Lind decided to ignore the significance of the result and doggedly stuck with his personal belief that scurvy was caused by incompletely digested food building up toxins within the body.” As a result, sailors kept on dying for several more decades. I wonder if Lind had malpractice insurance.

Isn’t this how things work sometimes? We do all sorts of testing, and then toss aside the results on a whim. Reminds me of a job I had early in my career. I was supposed to analyze potential projects and determine if they were likely to be profitable. I obtained basic assumptions from the project sponsor, then modeled the results. More often than not, if my model didn’t yield the answer they desired, they “reevaluated” their assumptions until it did. It made me wonder, why waste our time going through the motions? Just eliminate the middleman (me) and launch the project.

A similar thing happens when we ask a friend for advice. If it isn’t what we want to hear, we just ignore it. It isn’t advice that we’re seeking, but validation of our own opinion. And hey, speaking of advice, do you think I should try one more time to get scurvy?

Right or wrong – you be the judge. — KK
Kristofer Kesterson is CEO of kSquared Consulting.
© 2011 kSquared Consulting, LLC

Numbers in Sports

Last week kMondayMemo delved into numbers in general. Today we’ll continue along the same path, focusing on numerals in sports.

Numbers play a big part in sports, especially baseball. Three hundred career wins is a landmark of excellence for pitchers, just as 3,000 hits is for hitters. Early Wynn and Lefty Grove both finished with exactly 300 wins. When Pittsburgh Pirates great Roberto Clemente picked up his 3,000th hit on September 30, 1972, he was just the 11th player to accomplish the feat. He never made it to 3,001. Three months later, Clemente died in a plane crash.

Maybe you’ve heard of Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown, a hall of fame pitcher. As a boy, Brown lost parts of two fingers of his pitching hand in a farming accident, but didn’t let that stop him. (Technically, he should have been called “Eight Finger” because his left hand retained all five digits.) A more current major league pitcher, Antonio Alfonseca, has six fingers on each hand, a condition known as polydactyly. One of my favorite baseball stories involves Alfonseca. He was having a great year for the Florida Marlins in 2000, but manager Bobby Cox didn’t include him on the National League’s All Star team. There was a story in a Miami newspaper (unfortunately I don’t recall the writer) that talked about the snub and how bitter Alfonseca should be. It concluded by saying: Lucky for Bobby Cox, Alfonseca doesn’t have a middle finger. I thought that was brilliant, and wish I would have thought of it.

The 1929 New York Yankees have often been cited as the first major league baseball team to use uniform numbers. However, the Cleveland Indians were actually first, experimenting with numbers in 1916-17, then abandoning the idea. Numbers were more important back then because players didn’t have their names on the jerseys as most do today. The ’29 Yankees numbered the uniforms based on the normal batting order. That’s how Babe Ruth, who usually batted third, ended up with #3, and cleanup hitter Lou Gehrig got #4.

Speaking of the Yankees, pretty soon they will run out of one and two-digit numbers. The team has retired 16 numbers (one of them twice). These include 1-Billy Martin, 3-Babe Ruth, 4-Lou Gehrig, 5-Joe DiMaggio, 7-Mickey Mantle, 8-Yogi Berra and Bill Dickey, 9-Roger Maris, and 10-Phil Rizutto. Current Yankee Derek Jeter wears number 2, which will almost certainly be retired someday. That will leave only one single-digit number (6) for future Yankees.

The only major leaguer to wear his birthday on his back was Carlos May, who was born on the 17th. (I’ll let you guess which month.) Then there’s Eddie Gaedel, 3-foot 7-inches tall and 65 pounds, who batted once in 1951. His uniform number was the fraction 1/8. In case you’re wondering, he walked on four straight pitches. It was his last chance, because Major League Baseball immediately banned midgets, as they were called at the time, which seems like discrimination to me.

There are numbers in other sports besides baseball, of course. We’ll wrap things up with a basketball quiz for any sports trivia junkies out there. What number did Michael Jordan wear when he played for the Chicago Bulls? (Not counting his stint on the Olympics “Dream Team.”) If you said 23 and 45, that’s very good. After Jordan’s experiment with baseball, he switched from the familiar 23 to 45. However, that’s not all. Jordan also wore #12 for a Bulls-Magic game in 1990, after his regular jersey was stolen. Did he let it bother him? Was he Error Jordan? Nope. He scored 49 points.

Right or wrong – you be the judge. — KK
Kristofer Kesterson is CEO of kSquared Consulting.
© 2011 kSquared Consulting, LLC

Easy as 1-2-3

My dad started working in the engineering department at Iowa Southern Utilities in 1947, when he was 17 years old. Not long after, he took pencil and paper and began to noodle:

Retirement – 65th birthday: 10 – 6 – 94
Minus employment date: 5 – 3 – 47
Equals: 5 – 3 – 47

Dad ended up retiring early, after “only” 45 years, but this story made me realize where I got my “number junkie” genes.

Numbers are everywhere, as you’ve probably noticed. Before leaving a bar, we have one for the road. We contribute our two cents worth, and understand that three’s a crowd. We use four-letter words, especially after hearing that Christmas song about five golden rings for the umpteenth time. Eventually we end up six feet under, at which point we face judgment for the seven deadly sins, which means we’re really behind the eight-ball. So we throw ourselves on the mercy of the court, going the whole nine yards in hopes that St. Peter will hear something that’s salvation-worthy.

Numbers are also connected to many historic events. These include the Ides of March, Fourth of July, Cinco de Mayo, and Ocho de Julio. According to Three Dog Night, One is the loneliest number. I suppose the tastiest number would be pi.

Some numbers acquire special nicknames, such as deuce for two and trey for three. Other examples are a dozen and a baker’s dozen. And eleven – a crooked baker’s dozen. Lincoln took advantage of numeric aliases to jazz up his Gettysburg Address. You know, the four score and seven years part. He was probably bummed that there wasn’t a less-mundane alternative for seven because something like “four score and mazoombi years ago” would have sounded even better.

Mathematics can be overwhelming, but it could be worse. If you don’t believe me, try doing calculations with Roman numerals. I just multiplied 63 by 27 and came up with MCDILL. Sounds like something you’d hear at a fast food drive-thru: “Give me a Big Mac, two orders of fries, and a large McDill.”

Scientists and mathematicians often toss strange numbers at us, like absolute zero, which must mean they’re really sure about it. At the opposite end of the certainty spectrum are imaginary numbers. According to Wikipedia, imaginary numbers were once considered “fictitious or useless” by some people. No kidding!

Then there’s Avogadro’s Number, named for an Italian guy who lived a couple of centuries ago. If you took chemistry in college, you may remember that his number is 602 with 21 zeroes after it. It’s a good thing Avogadro never played football, because his jersey would have been enormous. And he would have driven the P.A. announcer crazy. “Bob Smith makes the catch. Tackle by Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Bernadette Avogadro di Quaregna e Cerreto.” By the way, it was his dad’s fault. His mother wanted to name him Steve.

Avogadro AKA 'The Mole': Number 6.02 x 10²³ in the program, #1 in our hearts

To be continued … stop by next Monday for Part 2.

Right or wrong – you be the judge. — KK
Kristofer Kesterson is CEO of kSquared Consulting.
© 2011 kSquared Consulting, LLC