Gabriel’s scarcity rent - it’s management stupid!

I’ve just arrived from Delhi. In fact it has been 24 hours but, in the meantime, my mind kept wandering inbetween all kinds of different landscapes, smells and tastes until it settled back again. So many different faces, so many different paces: our hectic effort of preparing a presentation on the club lounge of a five-star hotel, the five-year-old child making his frenzied small monkey shout and dance to attract our attention and a few coins, the slow-moving cow trying to take a nap in the middle of the street and the agitated drivers trying to pass as close as possible. Definitely distances are measured differently in this huge place.

The billion cattle estimated to be alive today are more less one sixth of the estimated human population on Earth. The lucky ones live here, where they are revered and spoiled, where they can live tranquil and blissful lives, where they can thrive and be loved. It’s a wonder that there is no cow immigration process to this beautifully colored lands. If the other cows knew!

Humanity. This word takes new meaning here. So many people. We Europeans have tended to grow aseptic, almost inhumans. We hide within huge buildings of concrete, glass and steel, like the new terminal I’ve nurtured along with my peers, and we become insignificant below our not-so-functional monuments. We want them to serve as a rule to measure our cities and civilisation, instead of ourselves, our little selves.

In India you see so many people, so many happy -and not so happy- faces. The wonder is that it’s not easy to infer which faces will be happy and which won’t. Usually you won’t see that in the colours -or cost- of the robes. Humans… sometimes so happy owning nothing but conceiving nice thoughts… you never know.

This column, blog, page -whatever this is- wouldn’t be complete without the management reflection. And today it comes from Professor Geert Hofstede, of Maastricht University: “Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster.”

Are they? I’m personally a cock-eyed optimist and I tend to see the positive side to it. If we kept narrow mindedly to our own culture and background, the learning process would surely be impaired. Nonetheless cultural divergences must be managed.

As a reference, it is very interesting to examine Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, built from a handful of parameters:

• Power distance or the degree of acceptance of the less favoured members of one society of the inequalities they are subjected to.
• Individualism versus collectivism, or the degree to which the members of a society are integrated into groups.
• Masculinity versus femininity, or the degree of distribution of roles between genders.
• Uncertainty avoidance or degree of tolerance to uncertainty or ambiguity.
• Long-term orientation versus short-termism.

As an example, the former dimensions applied to the Indian, Spanish and British cultural dimensions, according to the available data by Hofstede. Of course generalisations are unfair, and the Spanish profile was never actually completed, but the exercise is still interesting.

Vista has not accomplished its expectations. Albeit more than 140 million copies sold, that only represents around 13% of the installed base. And if you take into account that Vista has been around since november 2006 and an average lifespan of five years for any computer, only because of natural growth that figure should be around 20%. What’s happening?

When a company has such a great market share as Microsoft, and a killer and omnipresent product like Windows, it wouldn’t be fair to say that those figures mean trouble. Not really, only unfulfiled expectations, that’s all.

But users are not massively upgrading to Vista. Many prefer their new computers with XP (and still get counted as new Vista licensees) because it’s simpler, faster, and you already know your way around. I myself like the aqua, sorry aero, look in Vista, but still struggle to find my way to simple things. I’d rather use a simpler system: I get tired of so many questions and confirmations and having to navigate tortuous paths.

Simplicity gets its reward in speed. Ask any Linux geek and he will tell you how he manages without lots of small utilities incorporated in your software that you use daily. The good thing is that he also manages without hundreds of utilities that you seldom or never use, and without hundreds more that you never knew they existed and, if you ever had needed them, you wouldn’t have even sought. (Do you really know how to insert an horisontal line in Microsoft Word or how to query an ODBC source in Windows?)

Then, there’s us, people that use MacOS. A sometimes despised and bashed minority (around 3%) that happens to be growing above average with a dangerous tendency to be self-conscious. In a mass consumption society, isn’t it great to be special in something? More stable than Windows, more usable, a better user experience (yes, that is completely subjective, but believe me in this one) but still not bomb-proof in its latest version: Leopard. And more visible than ever because of iPods, iPhones and, of course, the incumbent’s spoofs.

But, following the initial reasoning, which are the strategies behind the operating systems? Which should be next move? Apple has recently uncovered a few words about their new version of MacOS: from Leopard to Snow Leopard. Doesn’t sound very different, does it? What’s behind it and why is it important? It’s not easy to deny that Apple knows a lot about emerging trends that tend to be imitated by the rest of the market.

I’ve drawn the following model thinking about operating systems in two axis:

• on the horizontal axis the sophistication of the operating system, measured in terms of “eye candy”, as it is easy to observe and doesn’t focus on the utility of that eye candy (that would increase the analysis’ complexity and introduce a lot of interpretation), but it’s obviously correlated with the utilities offered to the user.
• on the vertical axis is the complexity and size of the code what counts: the system weight.

First of all, the dangerous zone is on the top level: heavy systems. Heavy systems tend to be unstable, usually because they build on foundations laid out many years ago by legacy systems that don’t exist anymore but that they need to preserve. This is the case increasingly both by Windows and MacOS: the first because it has compatibility with a sheer list of devices and still with good old MSDOS, the second because, albeit being much more selective with hardware, still hasn’t recovered from the trauma of having two very distinct CPU platforms: the PowerPC and the Intel platform. Vista still is far higher in this classifications making a very heavy system, to the point that requires the latest hardware to fully function while still being compatible with everything else. That’s why many prefer XP.

The massive side for an operating system is not that good either. XP was clearly short of functionality, while with Vista the effort has been made to try to compensate, but jumping too far away, adding cumbersomeness to the menu. Vista is only a street away of being annoying, and that’s another reason to still prefer XP. In any case it’s also a proof that with XP you’re going to miss things too.

MacOS stays in a comfortable middle position. Still, Leopard increased functionality and usability, as well as eye-candy, but paying a price for it: increased system sophistication and weight. That means, of course, instability issues.

Linux users sit in a comfortable corner table: a simpler system that is lighter than anything else, with good and bad consequences.

Where is the future going to be?

This is the part that is supposed to be explained in Nostradamus’ prophecies, but I think I have a clue to offer. Many Vista users are still downgrading to XP, and there must be a reason for that: the seeking of simplicity. We need more stable operating systems, not nicer ones. Don’t get me wrong, we like eye candy, but we are ready to trade some off in exchange for better performance. Windows should aim back, somewhere in between Vista and XP, going down in the stability road… and down the chart back to the safe green zone, still losing some screens and complexity in its way.

That’s what Snow Leopard is all about. The same animal, only changed by a couple of colours, but ready to live in a much hostile environment. Trimming the OS, making it more hardware selective, only optimised for the newest hardware platforms. No human-machine interface overhaul but a lot of kernel and essential applications rewriting. That’s, in my humble opinion, the way to go. And the way Microsoft should follow too.

Because, when with a laptop, energy consumption depends on CPU consumption, and thus in the cleanliness of the code, and the megabytes taken by programs to run. After all, those bytes need to be read from the hard disk, paged in and out of the memory, and can potentially make your computer run out of fuel faster.

Taken from Roughly Drafted, a web you cannot miss if you want to know more about Apple, this is what the apple folks have been doing to the Snow Leopard basic programs:

Interesting backoffice work, don’t you think?

Star Trek is not the encyclopedia of life. Even though it contains so many interesting ideas about leadership and management, with different styles depending on the series, that is worth knowing about.

One of the scenarios that is a reference in the Star Trek world is the Kobayashi Maru scenario, which is a “lose-lose” or “no-win” scenario. Regardless of what you do, you’re doomed. We can see this kind of scenarios in everyday life: from organisations that have a couple of conflicting objectives to pursue at all costs, pyrrhic victories or military victories that are so costly to win that are not worth-it (ring a bell?), or the kinked curve of demand for oligopolies, that can only begin competing between itselves bearing huge losses. Even the Spanish Inquisition’s confessions were like that: torture until pleaded guilty and then executed: every move made it worse.

The original Kobayashi Maru scenario was a test for Star Trek commanders. In the simulator they received a distress call: a ship had been stranded on the other side of the border. They were subsequently faced with the decision of whether or not entering into enemy zone, underpowered, to try to rescue the crew of the Kobayashi Maru.

There was no escape, the only option was not to try the rescue.

One briskly student devised a  solution: cheating. Cadet Kirk did in his third attempt. Strangely enough, tweaking the simulator was considered original thinking. Probably that was only because it had not been attempted before. In time Cadet Kirk became the infamous Captain Kirk.

Sometimes, regardless of what you do, defeat is unavoidable.

Yes, I’m exagerating a little, but this has been a hell of a Kobashi Maru week. And to you all there that have Kobayashi Maru weeks once in a while, there’s still a message of hope. The Kobayashi Maru scenario had a meaning and purpose.

Because it wasn’t an intelligence or ability test. It was a character test. How do we face odds and specifically unsurmuntable odds? After all managing death is a way to learn to manage life.

Paraphrasing another Star Trek classic, Mr. Spock, “fear is the mind killer”. Sometimes the worst might simply happen, and what’s important then is how to handle the situation, how to keep your own control and integrity under adverse or inauspicious circumstances.

Making the most out of it. That’s how you learn to be better, and how to bounce back and subdue the next possibly conquerable odd. Don’t let circumstances drag you down, because you need to keep fit for the next, possibly unforseeable, challenge. And it may well be one you can cope with.

The exam was really stressful. More than three hours writing like crazy. At the end I was rather confused, not really sure of what to expect. Fortunately, it was over.

I sat the exam at Barcelona’s British Council. I thought it would be a better experience than taking a plane and driving to Henley. It was a good idea. The place is just ten minutes from home.

On the other hand it was rather weird to be the only one taking the exam. The invigilator was there only for me. At least he was nice and had a thick book to read so he didn’t spend three hours glancing at me in suspicion. That would have been awkward.

Half full or half empty, who knows. I hope I pass. In the meantime I just need some time to relax. And that’s what I did on the weekend. The garden needed my attention so I just focused on trimming the bushes and getting tired. Oh my, my arms got so bruised!

The view from home is rather relaxing. The weather wasn’t perfect. It was the fourth rainy weekend after the most severe draught that I can recall. From scarcity to the most rainy May in 25 years. Our water reserves have tripled and reservoirs have reached 60% capacity. It looks like we’ll have enough water for the time being.

I like it when the beach is almost empty, and the showers scare the tourists. The calm seems to envelope everything, the air is fresher, the plants greener. This spring the plants are blooming like never before. Let’s forget about the price of oil, the high interest rates, the lack of liquidity and the forthcoming stagflation. It’s time to enjoy… at least for a while…

The garden this year is full of Mediterranean roses. The plants grow by the hour. A good omen? I hope so.

It’s been too long without blogging. Some weeks at an hectic pace. Good things, bum things and a grain of salt. In this learning journey I don’t especially like posting about me. But here I am again, the worst draught we have ever suffered in Barcelona and I am at the beach and it’s raining! A few days ago I was in rainy England reflecting, trying to finish my assignment -dismissed as too reflective by the way-. Can it be that I’ve started to believe my own lies? Do people really expect you to reflect or talking about reflection in personal development is paying lip service to a new god while still worshipping the old one? Who knows.

I don’t want to further bore you with my own ramblings. The thing is that, if you ever face finance, think about the bottom line! There’s absolutely nothing else. No corporate social responsibility, no carbon footprint, just budgets, margins and ratios. The stake-holders are simply unavoidable, and the customers necessary. And if they care about those things, we’ll have to convince them that we care too. Nothing more.

My macbook just took this picture of me. I know I should have moved to avoid the direct light from behind, but I thought I could put something natural and improvised here. And that’s what I did. It’s raining outside. The fireplace is the only heat around, and the air is a bit smoky. Huge waves from the storm are splashing on the beach a few metres from here. Some dogs are howling while mine lay wet on the floor next to me. The recently established neighbouring bees are completely quiet inside their hive: they do not dare to go out. Next picture I’ll try to show you more of this. But not today.

The blog has just surpassed its 30.000 visits. Not bad, huh? Fairly surprising in fact. I’m still amazed that people find these pages floating in this coarse soup that the internet is. Maybe that’s why I decided to show my face and my nonsense, all at once.

What else happened these days? Another workshop, and, seeing the big picture, I’m straightly headed for the final exam. The first year will soon be gone. But first I need to study, I need to pass the exam.  And another year will be gone, one year and a half of blogging, and I will still be here.

Sorry for the babbling. That’s what I felt like doing today. That’s what my 3.5G modem is for. And thanks for reading.

Last Sunday my doggie decided to jump on my MacBook. Doggies have the ability to change from a quiet and relaxed mood to an excessive joy in a matter of seconds. I can’t describe the sensation I had seeing my middle-to-large sized beloved dog on my highly-priced adored computer. But she did.

Guess what happened? The computer withstood valiantly the assault. The momentum wasn’t able to join forces with gravity. It never fell down. But one of the keys jumped in revenge and tried to catch the doggie. Utterly broken, there was no way to reattach it.

A broken key. I felt like possessed by a sudden illness. Now it was my time to change into a gloomy mood.

The worst thing a patient can do is try to impersonate a doctor and use the world-wide-vademecum, that’s the internet and its information about hundreds of patients that have gone through the same illness. Why is that that the bad experiences get blogged far more often?

I encountered dozens of stories about broken keyboards, computers kidnapped at the technical service for weeks or even months, and then returned scratched to their unfortunate proprietors, about huge repair bills, bad and worse experiences, voided guarantees or even frauds.

So my mood went from gloomy to desperately depressive, collecting the dismal, dreary and dispiriting tonalities all in one.

I even tried to investigate how to solve the problem. I found a couple of websites that sold individual keys. That was the first good news. The bad news was that the gone-missing key is not standard but from the Spanish keyboard. My computer is in English but of course with a Spanish keyboard: I need a few more symbols to be able to write Spanish or Catalan.

The missing key was the one with both the symbols < and >. The English (both American and European) keyboards, have those symbols in two separate keys. That meant that they probably didn’t have my key in stock. The cost wasn’t that important, but the expected delay was significant. What should I do?

Well. Monday came and I went to the nearest Apple service centre in Barcelona. Only 300m from home there is that nice place… Microgestio. Let me tell you about my experience with them.

There were no queues. Just a nice couple at the counter. They called a technician that was with me in a matter of seconds. Then he left with my hapless computer. And I was there left waiting… I felt naked… it felt like a long wait… but it was only for a couple of minutes. Then he came back. The key was there. Everything was covered, no questions asked. Just a nice, emphatic smile. Just what I needed: no delays, no retreats, only an efficient solution.

That was like a moment of truth, a defining moment. I enjoyed and experimented good service… a rare and elusive taste. For Apple it was a small expense: the cost of a key. But what they got in return was loyalty. Immediate pay-back, and a greater, by far, net present value.

One key for another apostle. Is there a better deal?

One of the best sensations of studying at Henley are the procrastinating moments at the Greenlands. You only have to find some stairs to sit on, and then just look around and stare at the Thames.

If you are lucky you’ll see rowers practising for the Henley Regatta, due in June. But they are just a few spots on a landslide made up of greens and blues coming in all tones.

Being a Spanish born in Catalonia, I can’t help losing myself into the amazing greens that England has to offer. Yes, I’ve seen so many blues in my life, as well as reds and yellows, and some greens too… but not this variety, from light to dark, a chromatic variety that depends on the time of the day, the temperature, humidity… If it is dark and foggy, as it has been these mornings, they even turn into greenish greys.

I know that my mobile phone is not the best camera to capture them, and then the computer screen doesn’t help either. In fact the colours look slightly different in each of my two screens. And although I’ve tried to correct that with my Mac OS, I’ve never experimented success yet. It’s so difficult to get something as incorporeal as a colour right.

One might wonder how this piece of landscape in a highly priced zone may have survived. It wouldn’t if it had been only subject to the forces of the market, but this part of land facing the Thames is thoroughly protected. Construction has been restricted, old buildings must be respected. Time has ceased to pass here.

I like this feeling of isolation, of being apart of the world. It’s like a retreat, an emotional escape.

Yesterday morning I couldn’t help staring with awe both the cow and the bull that enjoyed licking the entrance barrier and didn’t let me make it on time for class. I could have complained or horn them… but that would have been pointless. They were so happy that the barrier was so tasty. And I was so happy to see them that close… and to share their mouth-watering feeling.

But this kind of feelings are increasingly scarce in a mass-marketed world. And small schools will become bigger with time, to survive the ruthless competition. That includes Henley: it must grow to keep up with a fiercer competition.

Henley Management College won’t be able to grow much more here, though. Future Henley MBAs will probably be studying in other modern and expensive buildings, away from here (who knows, maybe in Reading). It’s a sign of the times.

In the meanwhile I just try to savour the moment. Moments by themselves are just an unintended consequence of the flow of time, of the increase of entropy in the universe. But we can make them special… as this one.

This week I’ve been listening to Cole Porter’s songs while driving to work.The Mobile World Congress 2008 has been clogging the traffic around Barcelona these days. Believe me, that has meant that I’ve had a lot of time while going to the airport. I happened to record a CD with a lot his songs and, one of them, simply surprised me: an unexpected snippet of wisdom.

It’s related to what I call ossification.

Ossification can happen in organisations, or to people. We tend to get used to the same thing, that we do increasingly efficiently.

Don’t you wish you were given the same assignment, the same topic, the same customer year after year? That would surely boost your ease and ability to achieve it. The customer would get to know you better and better… more trust, and you’d face that fright to a blank sheet no more.

But, as every good thing in life, that would also come with a trade off. You’d become less versatile, less adaptable.

You’d build muscle, yes, but your joints would calcify, become increasingly stable and unimaginative. You’d simply trade safety for vitality, stability for adaptability.

That means that not only your profit would increase but also your costs, albeit you wouldn’t perceive it, specially your opportunity costs (the gains you could have obtained if you had chosen the best available option). And your employability would decrease.

Finally, on the long run, there would be an expected outcome, that would not be the best possible outcome. Just imagine.

The treatment… that’s when Cole Porter, a composer and song writer that was born in 1891 and died in 1964 comes into play. There’s a simple but sound advice in this song. Think and reflect about it.

You all have learned reliance
on the sacred teachings of science,
so I hope through life you never will decline,
in spite of philistine defiance,
to do what all good scientists do.

Experiment,
Make it your motto day and night.

Experiment,
And it will lead you to the light.

The apple on the top of the tree
is never too high to achieve.
So take an example from Eve.

Experiment.

Be curious,
Though interfering friends may frown.

Get furious,
At each attempt to hold you down.

If this advice you’ll only employ,
the future can offer you infinite joy
and merriment.

Experiment,
and you’ll see.

I began one year ago. Now, 100 posts, 15,367 page views and 203 comments later I’m still here. The Rubicon I have crossed is that fine line that separates short term from long term, try from perseverance, taster from fullness and explorer from infestation.

When I look at the map below, with dots identifying the recent visits, I am amazed about how so many people from so many different places have reached this page. This beacon has been detected, and many concealed thoughts are now out in the open air. Very positive feedback but also indifference, flames and even insults. An invisible network of visits that spread (and spree) all over the world. Truly amazing.

I know that my posts are usually much longer, but this one won’t. We are at the point in history where there are 100 million bloggers and 200 million ex-bloggers. The analysts say we are reaching the peak. Well, I’m not giving up. Not yet! I still have so much to learn and to reflect about…

Thank-you

I’ve been reading Gartner’s key IT predictions for 2008 and beyond. (If you don’t have access to the full text you can access a summary here.)There’s one prediction regarding Apple:

“By 2011, Apple will double its U.S. and Western Europe unit market share in Computers. Apple’s gains in computer market share reflect as much on the failures of the rest of the industry as on Apple’s success. Apple is challenging its competitors with software integration that provides ease of use and flexibility; continuous and more frequent innovation in hardware and software; and an ecosystem that focuses on interoperability across multiple devices (such as iPod and iMac cross selling)”

The reflection about the failures of others it’s directly aimed to Microsoft. In a political analogy, the incumbent presidents are the ones to lose elections.And apart from the recent “downgrade” riots where many users want to go back from Vista to XP, there’s something wrong with Microsoft’s strategy. A misalignment that is growing worrisome for the huge company, accustomed to not being able to detect trends at their beginnings. Let’s think about it.Why is people downgrading from Vista? It’s not because it’s ugly, it is not ugly enough for that, and XP wasn’t the most handsome kid on the block either. People are trying to avoid vista because it requires too much hardware, because takes too much resources to run, because it’s not as snappy as it should be.Think of it from the personal computer cluster’s viewpoint: additional requirements from OSes mean more opportunities to sell more advanced hardware, and thus a growing market. The more sophisticated OSes become, the more complex hardware is needed. And the different companies are, of course, happy to indulge and sell.But that’s not what users want. There are no new necessities covered. Applications are fancier, yes, but there are no new killer applications. In fact I still have to see an application that makes full use of Vista’s new graphics engine. Everything could still be done from XP, no transparent frames, true, but who cares?After seeing Vista, people still prefer to focus their hardware on a better working machine, not on a better looking but buggier one. And they look the other way round… to XP and sometimes Apple.That’s where Apple’s new market share comes from. In evolving their Mac OS X system they have not used the extra power inherited by Moore’s law to rejoice in extra-sophisticated graphics and a huge coverage of legacy systems. Instead they have used it to get snappier applications, providing a secure and limited environment, even excluding their oldest hardware from compatibility. Once their compatible hardware (yes, all of it PC compatible hardware) has been short-listed, they have focused on making it work better.And then they have favoured usability over trendiness (without forgetting the latter). Simplicity over a spree of hidden options, users’ needs over hardware providers’ needs.But that’s not the only thing going around.And there’s still another trend going on here: from more powerful portable computers to simple ones (that are still very sophisticated by the way) but focus on doing simpler things and rely on other machines and network capabilities. We will no longer need that huge hard drive in our laptop when we will be able to store and synchronise our files on-line. Or, as the MacBook Air does, we don’t need to have a DVD unit in our laptop if we are able to access other’s people DVD drives.And sometimes, as gadgets like Blackberrys, iPhones et al have demonstrated, we can do most of the things we are requesting from our laptops if we can have better screens, better connectivity and better input methods.Or with network shared utilities and storage, as well as web-based applications (look out for some Google office hardware soon). Those web applications will increasingly have the ability of working off-line and syncing when needed. That will mean less reliance on your “own” computer and easier usability of both shared and simpler devices.That’s three dilemmas identified in this post:

• Using the additional power to provide snappier applications versus fancier looks.
• Focus on support a limited list of hardware and make the most efficient usage of it or try to keep all users (and providers) happy paying a price on performance.
• Relying on shared and simpler net-powered devices or having your own computer the more powerful the better.

As I see, Microsoft has focused on the second options of the three dilemmas, while other companies, namely Google and Apple, have focused on the first. And it’s the first trend that, IMHO, will dominate. Users do not want or need complete overhauls of operating systems that are operating within normal parameters. Only a big leap ahead in productivity could justify a radical change. That’s not the present case.What users do need are incremental and continuous improvements to operating systems that enhance productivity, stability and security without adding unknowns and uncertainties. And Microsoft is not walking the proper path.Apple, without being that brilliant (Steve Jobs *is* brilliant indeed), is doing much better by comparison… better enough to reclaim part of the market share that the incumbent is going to lose. Try a Mac OS X and tell me