Fish Stories

Both the New York Times Book Review and The New Yorker covered book reviews associated with fish last week - - in particular the sustainability of our current fishing practices. The book reviewed in both publications was Four Fish (2010) by Paul Greenberg. Given our current concerns regarding sustainability and debates over climate - - it is important to reflect on how the global community has managed the sea and its resources to date. Several points made in both publications are as follows:

• Bluefin tuna has gone from a "bloody fish" mainly seen in cat food to bon-maguro, Japanese sushi. At one point, 1,000-pound giant bluefin were selling for $100,000 or more. No more - - Atlantic bluefin face annihilation.


• The total fish population, once deemed "beyond the limits of our imagination", has declined dramatically across the board. Increased demand, combined with technological advances ranging from factory freezer trawlers to GPS to "smart fish aggregating devices" - - the combination has had a huge negative impact on fisheries.


• Peak fish - - a total world catch of around 85 million tons - - was actually reached in the late 1980s.


• Catch size and the size of the fish actually caught have declined dramatically.


• Current fish consumption is equal to approximately the entire weight of the Chinese population - - 170 billion pounds.


• Most fish you probably get at the store or at a restaurant has been farmed - - with their corresponding issues of cross-breeding and pollution from the farms.


• A review of the box score from the movie Jaws showed somewhat of a tie - - three or four dead humans and three or four dead sharks - - and I think the humans were extremely happy to get out of the movie with a tie. The actual box score is shockingly one sided - - five to eight dead humans per year worldwide and 100 million dead sharks.

Our efforts to manage the resources in the seas have demonstrated the limits of global cooperation - - once you cross into the international zone, competing interests force a movement toward "everyone interests" becoming "my interests." The dual passions of greed and commerce, combined with hunger - - dictate the behavior of all the participates. As we march toward civilisation changing climate change - - we should remember how we failed to manage the resources of our oceans as we attempt to manage an even more complex set of resources on the land and in the air.

What I Learned

One of the many things that I learned in Boy Scouts was the following regarding time management:

"If you are early, you are on time. If you are on time, you are late. If you are late, you are forgotten."

Many, many people never got this lesson and message. Many others did. David Sokol is one that did. He is profiled in an article in this month's Fortune - - the article is entitled Buffett's Mr. Fix-It. At 53, Sokol is mentioned most often as Buffett's heir. He is currently running and turning around NetJets. He has an engineering background - - civil engineering. Like with a lot of engineering types - - the following management style follows - - ". . . he is a tough, no-nonsense manager. He's up before 5 a.m. each day and jogs five miles and lifts weights five days a week . . ." And he learned the appropriate time management skills:

"His assistants also know he never likes to be late for a meeting - - he believes it shows disrespect. They always build in extra time in case something goes wrong, but they also make sure he has work to do if he happens to show up a half-hour early."

He also self-published his own book - - Pleased but Not Satisfied.

Henry Mintzberg - - Round Three

From Henry Mintzberg and Managing (2009):

• Thinking is heavy - - too much of it can wear a manager down - - while acting is light - - too much of that and the manager cannot stay put.
• The manager has to practice a well rounded job.
• Effective managers do not exhibit perfect balance among their roles; they tilt toward certain ones, even it they cannot neglect the others.
• Downsizing - - this looks to be a contemporary form of bloodletting - - the cure for every corporate disease.
• Some managers see themselves on top with regard to the hierarchy of authority, but also metaphorically. Other managers see themselves in the center, with activities revolving around them, outside as well as inside the unit.
• While every manager has to make the job, he or she also has to do the job. That is why managerial style cannot be considered out of context, independent of where it is practiced.
• People who have a job to do shouldn't need to be "empowered" by their managers.
• How to plan, strategize, just plain think, let alone think ahead, in such a hectic job.
• Strategies can form without being formulated: they can emerge through efforts of informal learning rather than having to be created through a process of formal planning.
• Where to find strategic synthesis in a world so decomposed by analysis?
• Structure is supposed to take care of organizations, just as planning is supposed to take care of strategy. Anyone who believes this should find a job as a hermit.

"Sh*t My Dad Says"

My son is off to college in three weeks - - he recently got me the rare book - - laugh until your sides hurt hilarious. The book, Sh*t My Dad Says (2010), by Justin Halpern is one of the funniest books I have ever had the opportunity to read. Halpern tells the story of his relationship with his father, Sam Halpern, over a 30-year period based on a selection of quotes and sayings from his father. Halpern the Elder, who has a background in nuclear medicine, is like a modern day Socrates - - except much blunter and coarser.

Provided below are several examples of the Halpern the Elder view of the world:

On Sportsmanship

"You pitched a great game, you really did. I'm proud of you. Unfortunately, your team is sh*tty . . . No, you can't go getting mad at people because they're sh*tty. Life will get mad at them, don't worry."

On My First School Dance

"Are you wearing perfume? . . . Son, there ain't any cologne in this house, only your mother's perfume. I know that scent, and let me tell you, it's disturbing to smell your wife on your thirteen-year old son."

On Silence

"I just want silence . . . Jesus, it doesn't mean I don't like you. It just means right now, I like silence more."

On Asking to Have Candy Passed to Me During Schindler's List

"What do you want - - the candy? They're throwing people in the gas chamber, and you want a Skittles." (Edited version)

On Breaking the Neighbor's Window for the Third Time in a Year

"What in the hell is the matter with you? This is the third time! You know, at this point I think it's the neighbors fault . . . No not really, it's your fault, I'm just in denial right now that my DNA was somehow involved in something this stupid." (Edited version)

The Revenue Box

Those of us that work on the public infrastructure side of our profession are fully aware of "The Revenue Box." It is the place where all tax revenue goes - - prior to disbursement for public infrastructure improvement and upgrades. We never had to worry about the box - - it was a big box - - full of other people's money. The box historically had little if no competition - - no wars to siphon off funds, no out of control health care, no underfunded entitlement programs. Our country had relatively new infrastructure - - the box fit the requirements for our modest needs. But "The Revenue Box" was also a product of our imagination - - a world of low taxes and low user fees combined with a blindness of our aging infrastructure. Call it habit or conditioning - - the engineering community saw "The Revenue Box" as the ultimate symbol of our status quo. It had always been there and will always be there because it had always been there. It would always be full - - because it had always been full. But then you wake and read the following last Friday in The Dallas Morning News: "We need more revenue sources," said Ted Houghton of El Paso, one of five Texas Transportation Commission member. "It's got to come from somewhere." The box is too small? The box is too limiting? Our box - - the box that defines are needs and wants, has to be different? We have never really looked into the box - - it is large, and complex, and terribly outside our comfort zone. We design bridges - - someone always just opened "The Revenue Box" - - we have never imagined the world inside the box. We all should get very comfortable with "The Revenue Box" very quickly. You want to design that new bridge - - 200 firms can design the bridge. Talk innovation, high tech materials, and critical path improvements - - but the reality is no money, no bridge. No innovative money ideas = no bridge. The truly innovative aspects of this will be the firms that crawl into "The Revenue Box" - - the ones that can navigate the complex world of the political, the legal, the economic, and the public relation wars. You want your new bridge design - - figure out a way to pay for it. Let's utilize satellite tolling technology with the tolling technology embedded in the vehicle registration sticker (George Orwell just rolled over in his grave and science fiction writer William Gibson is smiling and thinking, "I told you so!!"). Crossing the bridge will cost you money - - because your new bridge that you utilize to get across the river to your place of employment costs money to design, build, and operate - - and you really like your low taxes. Lift up the lid to "The Revenue Box" - - we had all better get very comfortable with the idea of jumping in the box and making things happen. Remember - - "It's got to come from somewhere."

Don't Leave Home Without It

Quintin E. Primo III, co-founder and C.E.O. of Capri Capital Partners (a real estate investment and development firm in Chicago), has a simple message for young people - - "Three words, leave the country and get out of here. I don't care where you go, just go." Quintin writes the following:

Because the world is changing, it is no longer acceptable to speak only English if you are 25 and younger. You have little chance of being successful if you speak only one language. So you're got to get out of your safety zone. You will have a much broader understanding of the world's cultures, and you will have a much clearer idea of how the world perceives our culture. There is nothing more important. I don't care where you went to business school. I don't care whether your grades were good or bad. You have to leave the country.

Rise of the Machines

I have discovered a secret plot twist in the science fiction classic, Terminator (1984). As you remember (or maybe you really don't want to), in a post-apocalyptic 2029, artificially intelligent machines seek to exterminate what is left of the human race. Body builder/actor/governor Arnold Schwarzenegger plays one such machine that travels back to 1984. How the machines came about was rather unclear - - something to do with a system called Skynet that grows out of control.

I just don't buy the Skynet story - - it must have been deeper and more complex. The New York Times yesterday, in an article entitled As Recovery Slows, Outlook on Jobs Seems Dimmer, sheds some light on what actually might have happened. As stated in the article:

"There are limits on the degree to which you can substitute capital for labor," Mr. Ryding {John Ryding chief economist at RDQ Economics} said. "But you can understand that businesses don't have to pay health care on equipment and software, and these get better tax treatment than you get for hiring people."

There you have it - - Arnold is fundamentally a product of our inability to control accelerating health care costs and our tax code. It looks to me like that in around 2015, organizations glanced into a world where health care costs were 50% of labor costs and increasing at 8% per year and said, "Arnold has zero health care costs, plus we can actually depreciate Arnold over a five year period." So in 2020, Arnold shows up in a police car patrolling your neighborhood - - no health care costs, no retirement benefits, no pesky police union. Arnold then starts showing up in the cockpit - - no really pesky pilot's union and Arnold depreciates faster than the airplane. At some point (and this is pure speculation), all the Arnolds get together - - to form a really, really pesky union. So all of the 2029 destruction is a function of a desire for the Arnolds to unionize - - ultimately caused by out desire to control health care expenditures combined with our tax code.

Keep an eye on two variables - - the cost of labor, including the health care component and the cost of technology. Arnold is a product of these two variables. And the evil ones in the Terminator series are not the engineers and scientist that created the Arnolds - - they are the economists and tax barristers that figured out a way to break the limits defining the substitution of capital for labor.