Alright, this might be obscure, but think back to Arrested Development and one of the attorneys.
One of my roommates just cited Robert Loblaw, JD, in his paper. Bob Loblaw. From the Bob Loblaw Law Blog.
I can’t be the only one that remembers this!
Make ringers “polite.” If a phone ‘rings out’ (e.g., rings non-stop until voicemail kicks in), switch to silent mode automatically.
Yes, this has flaws, like missing multiple calls because you missed one call.
But sit here with my as my suitemate’s phone rings time and time again, with a really irritating ringtone while he’s gone, and hold back the tears long enough to tell me that this feature isn’t necessary.
If nothing else, come up with a universal, unobtrusive means of switching a phone to silent. My Treo’s got a slide on the top, and I think all phones should have something like that. Every time I try to use someone else’s phone I end up getting into strange menus or, more often than seems statistically probable, ending up inside a web browser. So I’m pretty averse to opening up people’s phones and changing settings. I could cope with sliding a hard switch on the outside, though.
Seriously, please implement this. I’m begging.
I graduate in May. Here are some jobs that I’d like:
Hammacher Schlemmer has a second idea that’s eerily similar to something I’ve had in mind.
Granted, mine would be an order of magnitude (or two) more expensive, have a cell modem for enormous range, solar panels to aid it in flying for a long time, and an ultra-high res camera with a long zoom lens… 640×480 is pretty much a gimmick, especially when you can only store 26 of them. And a 7-minute battery life is gimmicky too. I want a high-quality lens and 8 good megapixels. And a 4GB flash drive or something.
Oh, and GPS. And WiFi. I want to be able to, on the computer, map out a path for it to fly over, and automatically ‘return home.) Granted, you’re far, far from the $200 price at that point. But it’s also seriously cool at that price.
Tonight I interviewed a sergeant with the campus police department. He’s starting a community policing division, and some of what he had to say was neat. When he first started doing it years ago, his supervisors thought he was slacking off. He’d spend hours in the residence halls, chatting with students. At first, he told me, students were suspicious. Why were the police asking them about the football game? What were the police really there for? Soon, they got to realize that there was no hidden motive. His job was to patrol the campus and keep a presence in the dorms, and, as long as he was doing that, he figured he might as well make sure people knew his name and that people knew he wasn’t out to get them.
After a while, his supervisors realized that the officer that seemed to waste his shifts chatting with students was one of their top officers. He was solving crimes no one else could, until soon there really weren’t many crimes for him to solve. The crime in the buildings he patrolled dropped sharply. And the reason, he told me, is pretty simple: people knew he was there all the time, so they thought twice about doing anything stupid. And when people observed someone else doing something that affected them, they felt comfortable reporting it to him, whereas they might not want to call the police ordinarily.
But this reminds me a lot of the “Broken Windows Theory.” For those not familiar, some researchers somewhere watched an abandoned building for a while. Nothing much happened. One day, the researchers smashed out one of the windows, and kept watch. In a matter of days, people smashed in all the other windows. The reason put forward is that, when people see things in disrepair or decay, they don’t see as much of a problem with making the problem worse. As a very minute example, consider a trashcan in the bathroom. Would you ever throw your paper towel on the floor? If you’re the least bit civilized, no, it’d never cross your mind. But what if the trashcan was overflowing? You could probably fit your paper towel in. But you just throw it on the floor, partially because you have no choice and partially because you’re dismayed at the level of disrepair. And extrapolate that feeling to the people who would go around committing more egregious acts. I think it’s the exact same thought process.
At work, I probably drove the maintenance people nuts. I considered it a complete disaster if a light in the bathroom was out for more than a day, for example. There were nine bulbs in each bathroom, but a single flickering bulb is all it takes to make the bathroom seem like a run-down place. Pretty soon, I’d tell my coworkers, we’d have graffiti and people breaking the mirrors. We never did find out if I was right, because we never let the chance present itself. (I won’t lie: OCD was another factor that I insisted that burned-out bulbs be replaced ASAP.)
Sometimes we’d be insanely busy. And it felt like the building would be nice and clean for hours and hours, and all of a sudden, the floors were a mess. People would drop crumbs, and, as long as there were crumbs on the floor, why bother picking up the napkin you dropped? And when the people at the next table saw napkins on the floor, why should they bother picking up the plate they dropped? And when the kids a few tables down finished their soda and knocked the bottle over, why not leave it on the floor?
As Malcolm Gladwell would say, there’s a tipping point. Things would be nice and clean for hours on end, until all of a sudden there’s a subconscious signal that it’s no longer necessary to be tidy. And I’m not sure how many of my coworkers understood it on a scientific level, but I think most them intuitively got it. Even though we were really busy, we’d try to find an employee who could spare 15 minutes to go around and pick up. Not only did this have the positive effect of solving the “broken windows” problem, but I think it even went the other way: they saw that, not only were the windows not broken, but we were actively addressing the issue. And every once in a while, you’d get someone who would pick up the trash under their table when you got near them. You’d basically reversed the problem.
Our toilet in our dorm room was getting really gross. In addition to the predictable filth, the top of the toilet had become really dusty, and there were probably about five cardboard rolls from finished-off rolls of toilet paper. The other day, I couldn’t take it any more, so I cleaned the toilet bowl and the seat. I didn’t really have the energy to do the whole thing, so only half the toilet got cleaned. There was still considerable room for improvement, but you were no longer afraid to use it. Today, our toilet is sparkling clean. I don’t know who did it. I never asked anyone to, and I didn’t do it. But I take partial credit. I think I sent a subconscious signal by cleaning half the toilet. All of a sudden, the other part of the toilet was thrown into contrast, and the message was sent that we don’t like our things to be filthy. Someone else picked up on that, and finished the job. And I think the toilet’s going to stay clean for a while.
And now that I’ve talked about sending subconscious messages with my toilet, I think it’s time I acknowledged that I’m up way too late and went to bed.
These guys stole my idea! Some iterations of my idea also featured an air ionizer, though. And all iterations of my vacuum idea were to be uncommonly powerful.
Oh well.
Like many people, I’d like to be extraordinarily wealthy some day. Between a string of business ideas that I’m convinced would make me fantastically wealthy, and the lottery which never seems to work out in my favor, I have lots of occasions to hope I’m rich.
Of course, as a millionaire, there are lots of extravagant purchases I’d like to make. But I think you can make them a lot less extravagant.
For example, I’m a nut about keeping my car really, really clean. It’d be nice to build a really nice auto garage, where I could do detailing, and maybe even hire a mechanic to keep up my cars. So why not buy a failing auto garage business somewhere, fix it up to millionaire-pet-project standards, and then put it in business? It might not be profitable, but it’ll at least defray the costs of running it just for your own use.
And what millionaire doesn’t own a limo or two? There are some seemingly-rare models for sale right now. So you pick them up, and start a limo company. You can make sure not to over-schedule them so that there’s always one available for your use, but when you’re not using them, they’re making you money. Again, it might take a long time to be profitable. But you view it like how I viewed the first hosting company I started: I wanted the server for myself, and if I could get people to subsidize the cost by buying space, great. It’d be great if I someday made a profit, but if I just ended up having use of a dedicated server on the cheap, that’s great too.
You can even work philanthropy in this model. Merrimack’s library is badly in need of a new building. I bet we can find a neighboring town that shares our need, too. So you build a really, really nice library somewhere, merge the two libraries, and donate it to the town. But, when you build the library, you build in a few spaces for a coffee shop and deli. And, as part of the donation, you own rights to put in retail shops there in perpetuity. Will you ever make enough to pay off the library? I doubt it. But getting a little income from a philanthropic donation? That’s nothing to complain about!
If you weren’t too picky about people using some of your properties, you could even apply this “semi-business, semi-personal toy” model to real estate. As a multi-millionaire, I’d love a few vacation homes. For example, this would be a great retreat /vacation home. But I’d only use it for a few weeks at a time. This‘d be awesome, too. Add some oceanfront property and maybe a winter retreat in a tropical location. But a lot of them you won’t live in for more than a few weeks at a time. So you file a corporation, have it own your vacation homes, and rent them out most of the time. Of course, you keep your personal property in your main home. And the others are just awesome vacation homes. And when you’re not using them (which is most of the time!) you’re renting them out, paying off at least the costs of maintaining the homes and paying their tax bills. And, ideally, making owning them a little less expensive.
Granted, I don’t quite have the money to buy a slew of vacation properties, or start a limo company, or buy a private room in Internap’s Boston data center. But if I do, you can bet that I’ll be gaming my purchases to try to make me a little money, too.
One thing I’ve believed for a long time that as an organization grows it gets increasingly unwieldy. With a company of 7 employees, you can easily keep things under control. You have good control over spending. If you decide you need to shift directions, it’s easy to do. There’s a good sense of innovation.
But now suppose you’re a Fortune 100 company. As CEO you lose control over lots of little issues. But the worst part is that you can’t really “steer” the company. You get caught up in what you are doing. Status quo ‘sticks.’ You can’t change direction.
So here’s how I think it should be fixed. Let’s say you make $600 million in profits when it’s all said and done. (Net profit.) You’re a huge company, after all. Take $10 million and get some of your company’s “revolutionary thinkers” together. You become an “internal” venture capital firm. You brainstorm ideas, and fund the top 10 $1 million each. (Buying out small upstarts is also within reason here.) The companies operate independently, but the corporation still has ownership. You don’t want to be too nit-picky here, either.
Let’s say you’re Microsoft, and you’re brainstorming ideas. Someone’s idea is to make a “lightweight” word processor for MacOS. MacOS is your competitor, and the word processor would compete with Word. Do you do it? If it makes your top 10, yes. Because if it sells, you’re making money from Mac users, a new market opportunity. And won’t it cannibalize Word sales? I’m not so sure. You’d want to look into whether people would buy it instead of Word, and, if so, which is a higher margin product. You’re basically competing with yourself, but you’d want to steer people into your own thing.
The companies would have none of the baggage of the parent company. They’re separate companies. This is an important part. It makes it easy to start up. But you can also allow them the benefits of the parent company: you might already have a good marketing team, and a good legal team, and all that. So you let them take advantage of that. But they’re not bound by it, either: if the management thinks that one of their parent company’s weaknesses is, say, marketing, they might hire a marketing company.
Now let’s say that you’re Apple. They have boatloads of cash. And someone pitches the idea of a web hosting company. Services really aren’t Apple’s thing. Do they do it? Absolutely! That’s the whole point: these mini-companies are also “feelers” for new markets to enter. You greatly reduce your risks by keeping it as a separate company. But you create a ripe way of entering new markets and exploring new ideas. $1 million is pocket change to a gigantic corporation, and yet they’re deriving tremendous value from it.
Today’s real estate market is in a slump. What this means, clearly, is that you should be buying.
If you’re willing to live in the middle of nowhere, here are a few very interesting ideas for homes:
Granted, you’d be an idiot to buy any of these places without looking carefully into all the costs and zoning laws, and I’m not sure any are in good locations.
In business, and really just life, it’s important to plan for the long-term. In a lot of publicly-traded companies, managers have incentives to manage for the short-term: if they boost the company’s numbers for the year, they get huge bonuses. The plan doesn’t account for the fact that they may well have gotten there by sabotaging the company’s future.
But the long term is different from the absurdly long term. I’m sitting here reading an article about how Merrimack needs to replace its manhole covers. There are two plans; one is very expensive but will last us 50 years. The other is significantly cheaper, but there’s a chance that, in a couple of decades, they might need to be replaced again.
I guess the right way to look at it is the total cost over time. But frankly, in 20-25 years, I’m going to be in my 40’s, and probably not living in Merrimack. I’m not going to think, “Man, I wish we’d spend more on manhole covers.” I won’t even remember that we replaced them 20 years ago.
One of my classes this semester is called Strategic Management. Some classmates presented their “strategic recommendations” for a golf company. One of their plans was aimed at growing the company’s market share over 100 years. I had to choke back my laughter when they said this.
It’s important to plan for the future. Doing something that you know will endanger your company in the future is a bad idea. You always want to be thinking of the future. But how can you know what the golf industry is going to be like in 50 years? How can you know what the economy will be like? For a five-year plan you can infer that it won’t change too much, besides a little technological advancement. But if anyone ever gives you a 100-year plan for their company, I encourage you to crack up laughing. I almost did, at least.
