Ignorance

Michele Bachmann, the Tea Party favorite, made a comment to supporters in Florida this past weekend. She said that Hurricane Irene, which killed at least 40 people, and 5.8 magnitude east coast earthquake were God's way of telling US politicians to cut spending and fix the budget deficit. What?

I can't believe that someone with so much political clout can be so stupid. Do you really think that God cares so much about the budget deficit that he is willing to kill innocent people to get the message across? How can someone this dumb be so close to leading our country?

Michele and her husband own a Christian counseling center that, among other things, tries to convert gays to be heterosexuals. An undercover counseling session was filmed and aired on ABC News. The counselor actually says that God "designed" men's eyes to be attracted to women's breasts.

I am tired of all the politics in this country and the dumb people that continually support politicians that do not have any common sense. Michele Bachmann is such an idiot. Here is a link to some of her best quotes.

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Selfish Government

Candidates are now declaring their intentions to run for president in 2012. Millions and most likely billions of dollars are spent on elections every four years. It has made me think about the amount of money spent on elections in this country and what that money could be spent on.

I think we have to ask ourselves what makes more sense? We have found out this year that governments can be toppled by Twitter and Facebook. These social media websites are free to use, so why do candidates for the office of president of the most powerful nation in the world not grasp this technology and spend their campaign funds on something that will definately make our country a better place to live?

Many of these politicians who have announced their candidacy have fought against President Obama's healthcare plan and our budget and taxes. Everyone knows that our healthcare system needs reform. Everyone knows that the government has the potential to employ people that will shape the future of our country. We need good, quality teachers to teach our children so they can grow up to be leaders of the world. Budget cuts affect our ability to hire these qualified teachers, forcing our children into overcrowded classrooms that make it difficult to learn.

Our politicians need to stop being selfish. Our politicians need to embrace the technology that is changing the world. For as much as we consider our country the most wealthy, powerful nation in the world, we are still selfish and slow to change. We believe that nobody can tell us what to do. We do things the way they should be done. We cannot look at something that is successful in a third world country and make use of it here. We are better than that. I am tired of this type of thinking and call on our leaders to truly embrace change. I am asking them to stop spending money selfishly and start thinking about the greater good.

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Who is Responsible?

The whole rapture thing that was supposed to happen in 1988 or 1994 or last Saturday or this October 21 is absolutely ridiculous. Without even starting the argument of religion and which one is the correct one, it has no basis whatsoever.

Harold Camping is an irresponsible individual who has just been looking to make a name for himself. He has raised a ton of money, all of which comes from people who believe what he preaches. Don't get me started with believing the rantings of a lunatic.

Many people gave their entire life savings and retirement funds to his cause. The money was used to post billboards all over the world. He finally responded on Sunday and stated, "I don't have any responsibility. I don't have any responsibility of anybody's life. I'm only teaching the Bible. I'm simply saying, 'This is what the Bible says.'" He also took no responsibility for what his followers did with their money and possessions stating, "We at Family Radio never tell anyone what [to] do with their possessions. That's totally between them and God."

You must always think about your words, especially if you are a public figure. There will be people who believe what you say with all their heart. You have to be responsible and make sure you are not misleading these people. Obviously Family Radio does not think this way and does not care about the listeners it has.

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No Excuses

My company has been behind schedule in engineering and production for several years now. Up until recently, we have been able to pull together for the really important projects and complete them close to on time. Things have gotten much worse for about the last six months and I have lost all faith that we can even complete one project on schedule.

Things really came to a boiling point recently when one of our regional sales managers called me out of frustration. He said that he was told one date one day and the very next day he was told that project would be a month late. He was confused as to what changed in that twenty-four hour period. I had to admit that I did not know. I asked around and nobody had a good answer so we decided to have an emergency meeting of department managers to figure out what could be done from this point forward.

I put together a list of fourteen items that I thought should be done to fix the mess. When I handed out the list in the meeting, everyone there was surprised that I had gone through that much trouble. They acted like they were shocked that anyone would put that much time into fixing the problem.

There was a lively discussion in the meeting and the excuses started to fly from everyone. I had to speak up a few times and refocus everyone back on our customers. I explained that there is no good excuse to our customers and the first thing we need to do is stop accepting excuses. Everyone agreed, but the excuses kept flying.

We had a follow-up meeting a few days later and nothing was solved. There were more excuses and not solutions. That meeting wrapped up with them inviting me to their weekly production meetings. I told them that I did not know if I could handle sitting through them if they were like these last two meetings. They asked me to attend again and I agreed.

I have heard rumors about how bad the production meetings are for several years. I attended my first production meeting yesterday and I was not dissappointed. There was excuse after excuse given by everyone in attendance. Nobody wanted to commit to any dates and there were no solutions given to any problem. Everything was done verbally because our production schedule does not track enough items. It was difficult to follow and I asked if the production schedule could be expanded to include more items. I was told that there is another schedule that tracks those items. Someone even volunteered to show me where it was.

I have to admit that my company is in worse shape than I believed it to be. I feel like this is partially my fault for not getting involved earlier. While I have nothing to do with production at all, I am a vital member of the company and one of the leaders of the management team. I can't let things continue down the path we are currently on our the company may not exist in a few years.

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Our Choice

I downloaded the app "Our Choice" by Al Gore. It is a book that includes full sized photos, interactive charts and videos. I guess then it is more than a book, but you can get a printed version of it.

I absolutely love the idea of this interactive book. I think this is a good example of what all books should be. It is perfect for reading on the iPad.

I started reading it before I even finished "The Art of Non-Conformity." I just could not wait to start it after I downloaded it. I really enjoyed watching "An Inconvenient Truth" so I was excited to read this book. So far I have not been disappointed. I have learned a great deal about what we are doing to the planet and why our weather patterns have started to change so drastically.

We need to stop denying the science and blaming other people and just take responsibility for our actions. The West can be a good example for the rest of the world and we can even satisfy our capitalist needs by creating better alternatives to our current energy sources and industrial practices. The developing world would have no other choice but to follow us or be left behind...again.

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Great Advice

I am reading a book named UnMarketing. Yesterday I read what is the best business advice I have ever seen in print. It is something that I totally believe in and have been doing from the beginning of my business career. Praise in public and reprimand in private. Or better yet, assist in private.

As managers we need to focus on developing our people and making our companies great places to work. We can no longer expect our people to accept that they are lucky to be working for our companies. We must continually prove to them that our company is the best place to work. We must appreciate them and help them become better employees. If an employee fails, it is because of poor management.

I want to emphasis this fact. If an employee fails, it is because of poor management. Management either hired the wrong person because they do not have the proper interviewing or hiring skills or they failed to develop the employee. That is it! This is a pretty black and white situation in my opinion.

I am not saying that we need to pamper our employees and reduce expectations. Quite the opposite actually. I think we need to hold our employees to a higher standard, our standard. We should be performing our own jobs at a higher standard and that should trickle down to even the lowest level employee.

Sometimes there are external factors that come in to play and cause an employee to fail. A good manager will be aware of those factors based on the working relationship they have established with their employees. Once aware of those factors, a good manager will work to reduce their impact and get the employee back on track.

We need to stop propagating the us against them attitude and really start building teams. After all, as the old saying goes we are only as strong as our weakest link.

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Citizen Revolt

We entered into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan under false pretenses. That is a fact that we cannot ignore. Information was tweaked to support the position of those in charge. While I think that it was a good thing to remove Saddam Hussein from power, the reasons we did so were not correct.

I recently watched two documentaries about the war in Afghanistan, Restrepo and Camp Leatherneck. I watched them because I wanted to see what was going on there. I know that the documentaries can present information as the film maker wants it, but I think they did open my eyes.

Many Americans complain about our personal freedoms being trampled when the TSA gives us pat downs or full body scans in our airports. Conservatives are up in arms that the government is trying to force everyone to have health care. The right wing complains that we are becoming a socialist state and that our government is getting too big. Of course the right wing politicians don't want their jobs or the jobs of their friends eliminated, just the useless government jobs like social services and mental health. How would we feel if our country was occupied by a military force from another country?

Afghan citizens have to deal with the fear of having an occupying force in the ground all around them. They are pushed around and forced to answer to these people from another country. One thing that is repeated in both of these documentaries is that the Afghan people do not like having the US military in their country. They don't like the fact that they have to answer to our young military. I don't blame them one bit.

In Camp Leatherneck it is stated that it costs one million dollars per man per year to have our marines in Afghanistan at that facility and nearby outposts. I don't know how correct that number is, but that is a lot of money! If that number applies to all branches of the military in Afghanistan then we are spending a lot of money on a war that we should not be in. We are also losing a lot of lives that we don't need to be wasting.

The Republicans and Tea Party like to blame our national debt on Obama's "failed" programs. I would like to blame them. They love to say that they favor smaller government, but the military is part of the government and we are spending billions of dollars every year to have our military occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. Those billions of dollars could be used for programs here in the United States our to pay down our national debt, instead of being wasted.

I think we need to cut back our military spending significantly. We should keep the essential programs including DARPA and ARPA-E because their research has given us a lot of the things we use in every day life. We need to lose our belief that we need to police the world, it only makes other countries hate us passionately.

With the unrest happening in Egypt and other countries, now is the time to reduce our role in policing the world and the time to bring our service members home. We are supporting the Egyptian people and are saying that it is their choice to fight for democracy. We are telling them that we do not have a say, but we will support their decision. We should be doing the same thing in Afghanistan and Iraq. We should bring our military home.

Here are some numbers to contemplate:





So the wars have cost us over one trillion dollars and our national debt is fourteen trillion dollars. We spend nearly as much on defense as we do on Social Security and Medicare. That does not make sense to me. These wars are not doing anything to protect us in our daily lives while Social Security and Medicare both do. Take a look at those websites for more information.

I would like to see us utilize Facebook and Twitter to insist that we end these unnecessary wars and focus on our population at home the way the people in Egypt have used them to tell their government that they are not satisfied. We need to rise up and take control of our country the way they have. Tell our politicians that we do not like the way they are wasting our money and our futures. We deserve more.

Use the hashtag #citizenrevolt if you want to see change.

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We Need Change!

My company is struggling with many issues. I could have told you a few years ago that this would happen, but nobody bothered asking me. At that point there were two people promoted to vital positions who do not have the skill set required.

I really do not know how the owner of the company is so blind, but he is. He loves to tell everyone that he can read people well, but he was sold a bill of goods by both of these individuals. His other major problem is that he does not like to get involved in the day to day operations of the company until it is too late. Everything is coming to a head at this moment.

I blame myself for this issue escalating to this point because I did not try to push for change. I don't mean to get those two people fired or demoted, but I should have pushed them for change and then tried to force them to stick with it. Some of their major issues is that they do not track the right information and they do not motivate their direct reports to do their job to the best of their ability.

Another major issues is that a few members of our management team are spending big portions of their day trying to cover for themselves. A few team up to cover for each other as well. This is bad for the company as a whole because we cannot progress if the issues are not being properly addressed. They cannot be addressed if nobody is aware of them and that is what happens when people cover for themselves and/or someone else.

I was not in the meeting when everything bubbled to the surface because I was on a business trip. I was let in on what transpired yesterday by our production manager. It is ironic that I was thinking about some of these issues and how to address them while on my trip.

In my conversation with our production manager I really tried to coach him on the things that he should be doing to improve is department and keep him out of the line of fire. There are four departments in our company that need a lot of improvement and his is one of those. His department is not the worst, but after the two major departmental issues are solved his will be next in line.

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Out of Control!

We, in the United States, often look at the messes in other countries and laugh at them. We believe that the struggles they have are because they are not as civilized as us. We believe that the things that happen there could never happen here. We are jaded. We are arrogant!

Politics in this country has gotten out of control. Obama was elected president based on a campaign of change. The people bought into this change agenda, even though we knew that it is virtually impossible to change politics in this country.

Obama and the Left pushed through health care reform, which I think is a good thing. I have said before that I don't believe health care reform was marketed correctly. It is really insurance company reform. The Right was angry and they got everyone all riled up about reform. The Tea Party started whipping everyone into a frenzy by making them believe that this was going to be bad for them. It was going to turn us into a socialist country. Even people on government health care, Medicare, were furious that we were implementing government health care. A lot of hate was being directed at the Left from the conservative Right.

The Tea Party gained some control back in the elections last year. The first agenda from the Right was to reverse health care reform. That is the last thing we need in this economy. It will cost us hundreds of millions of dollars to reverse what is already being changed. That money could be better used to create jobs for the massive number of unemployed workers this economy has created. Or, it could be used to pay down the deficit that has been increased in order to help spur the economy along. Instead the Right is forcing this reversal of health care reform as a direct attack on Obama and his supporters.

Sarah Palin created a frenzy in March of last year when she released her target map of congressional districts with cross hairs on them. The map pointed out districts that her and John McCain had won in 2008 whose Congressmen voted for health care reform. She created hate among her followers for anyone who disagreed with her and the Right. I believe that her and some other politicians from the Right have gotten out of control. They are not trying to solve any problems, they are just trying to force their agenda down the public's throat. And I think that there carelessness contributed to the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona. She was one of the Congressmen in the cross hairs and Jared Loughner, the shooter, took her words literally.

I don't blame them for the actual shooting as it appears that Loughner was mentally ill. What I do blame them for is dividing this country and creating anger and hate. They are just fanning the flames of unhappiness instead of trying to overcome the issues we are all facing and improving our situation. They are creating a bad culture in the United States and that can be blamed on poor leadership on their part.

You can look at countries as larger versions of companies and we all know how important culture is to the success of a company. Without a great, or even good, culture, a company will not thrive. It can limp along and be somewhat successful, but it will never be a great company. The same goes for countries. The culture of the United States needs a severe tune-up. We need to stop the hate and fighting amongst our politicians and focus on trying to make positive changes. I don't know if Obama's health care reform is the answer for the problems in the system, but at least he is trying to change it for the better.

We need our politicians to be leaders and focus on being positive and inspiring us to do great things. They need to help us embrace change and realize that it is necessary if this country is going to survive. We need to stop all of the hate and fighting and move forward so we can make this country great again.

Read this good article.

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The Tea Party

So The Queen was telling me all about Dancing With The Stars this morning. She is an avid viewer. So she was telling me that everyone expected Bristol Palin to leave the show, however she was miraculously spared the humiliation and remains to dance again.

Let me start off by asking, is Bristol is a "star?" I don't believe she is and think that she was a very cunning publicity stunt for the show. They roped in all of the Tea Party viewers with that one casting decision. I think the producers of that show are the most brilliant in all of TV. Year after year they put people on the show who us non-viewers question, but they bring the viewers.

So, Bristol is not a star. She is just a young girls from Alaska who got pregnant as a teenager and has a famous mom. Her mom is not a star either, by the way. But she is famous because John McCain was desperate to find a running mate that he thought would get him votes. That is the only reason she was chosen as a running mate. She is not smart. She is not good at her job. She is just a strong-willed, attractive woman and that is what he thought he needed to combat Hillary Clinton.

By all accounts, Bristol is not a good dancer. She was expected to be voted off the show last night, but the voters, er Tea Party, kept her on. I am not a fan of the Tea Party. I think they are a bunch of misguided individuals who are being manipulated for a bigger agenda. The right wing is always good at manipulating people and whipping them into a frenzy. They love to play on fear and racial issues and they do a great job at it. They create a loyal group that will not question right and wrong. They create a loyal group that will even keep a bad dancer on a TV show because she is the daughter of one of their own.

I hate when people stop questioning authority and become sheep that just blindly follow their leaders. That is what the Tea Party is whether you want to believe it or not.

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Fat & Happy

I will admit it. My company got fat and happy. Management, including myself, got complacent. We let our guard down and now we are paying the price for our mistakes. My company is going through a rough patch. This trouble came to us much later than most companies because we had done a fairly good job before the recession. But we are dealing with it now.

Within the last few weeks we have laid off a hand full of employees. Our overhead is increasing and we are struggling to ship product. The layoff was the right thing to do to help our overhead issue and it should not affect our ability to ship product. It is just a minor readjustment that was long overdue.

Sometimes a company has to make the tough decisions. When times are good, companies sometimes put these decisions off. This is a really bad thing. It is important to continue to make the tough decisions even when times are good. We did not do ourselves any favors by putting these decisions off. If an employee is not carying their weight you need to cut them loose. A company cannot afford to absorb the overhead of an unproductive employee.

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Brainstorming Change

The Queen works for a school in a low income area of town. Many of the parents of students are involved in gangs. Many parents are not home very much, so the kids are on their own a lot of the time. There is a church that is located in a an upper middle class area of town that supports the school with whatever they need. They have one person who is there every week.

This church inspires me. They really support the kids and families of this school in everything they do. If they kids need something, all the school needs to do is ask and the church does there best to get those items for the kids. For example, every year the church supplies many, if not all, of the students with back packs and school supplies. When one of the teachers started a Saturday academy for the kids, he asked the church for shirts and they provided them.

Last year The Queen had this girl in her fourth grade class who was behind in every subject. She could not read or write, but she tried really hard and wanted to learn. Everyone thought she might have some learning disabilities, so they tested her. It turned out that she did not have any disabilities, but was affected because her family moved a lot when she was younger. She was just always behind so she never learned the things she was supposed to. I really wanted to help her and mentioned it to The Queen a few times, but I never acted on it.

Last night we were sitting in one of our favorite Mexican food restaurants and I told her that the book "Linchpin" was really motivating me to do something. I told her that I would like to volunteer in an after school program at her school. We were talking about it for a while and she told me that she thought something involving computers would be good. I said that was fine, but I would like to make it very unstructured so that the kids could choose what we did.

I mentioned that it would be great if we could get a company like Apple to donate some laptops and maybe a company like Canon could donate some cameras. We could then have weekly assignments for the kids to look for. They could find their own solutions to problems like intersecting lines. I think it would teach them to look at their world in a different way. It would show them that beauty can even be found in their own neighborhood. I got really excited about this idea. Now all I have to do is find some way to get some laptops and cameras so I can move forward with this idea. I think this is too much to ask of the church.

I also mentioned to T-Bird that we can't rely on teachers alone to run after school activities for the kids. We need to get the community involved. We need to get local graphic artists to come in and teach the kids about art. We need to get local business people to come in and talk to them about entrepreneurship. We need to get the local college to come in and talk to them about opportunities for education. We need to try to open their eyes to the possibilities that are available to them.

Now comes the hard part.

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Am I a Linchpin?

I am reading the book "Linchpin" by Seth Godin. His writing style does not keep me riveted, but it is a fairly easy read.

The book is very interesting to me, but I am constantly wondering if I have what it takes to be indispensable. Can I be a linchpin? I think I have a lot of knowledge that makes me very valuable to my company. I just don't know if I can be a linchpin.

I don't know how to be a linchpin yet. That much I do know. I need to figure that out.

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Review of The Toyota Way

I finished reading The Toyota Way on Saturday. This book was packed with so much background information on the way that Toyota operates that it took me a while to get through. I read a book some time ago on Six Sigma, but TPS is totally different.

I learned a lot from this book, but I don't feel I learned enough to implement any of the ideas. I feel like this book was just an introduction to TPS that gave me a background to know what areas to pursue further. In particular, the idea of one piece flow is great. I just did not find any practical examples of how to implement it in the book.

I know my timing with the reading of this book was bad after all of the problems Toyota has been having, but the reaction I get when I talk about it is always the same. Everyone brings up Toyota's recent quality issues. What they don't understand is the level of commitment Toyota has had over the years to recreate their culture in every department in every one of their locations around the world. They do an outstanding job with creating a learning organization. They do so well that I have no doubt that they will bounce back from the recent issues and become an even better company.

Overall, The Toyota Way was a great book. I would recommend it to anyone, and as a matter of fact I have already done so.

I have moved on to my next book already. I have started reading Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. So far so good. It is an easy read.

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The Winds of Change are Blowing

Or if they are not quite blowing yet, they need to start soon. Out of the blue yesterday the owner of my company called a small meeting of some of the company managers together to discuss the performance of another manager. He had his mind made up before the meeting, he just wanted confirmation. I was in that meeting and brought up some key points about the manager in question. He did not fit our culture.

We do not have a well defined company culture, but this person just did not fit in with the rest of us. I would like to say that the rest of the managers in the company are team players. I would love to say that we work well together to implement change that affects our customers in a positive way. I would love to say that we have a clearly defined long term plan for the company. I would love to say that we are improving our product and the value we offer our customers. I would love to say that we have the best service in the industry.

We pretend that we have these things, but in reality our management team, including ownership, is just not committed to achieving them. I think these are the most important things that we as a company need to work on. We should be having weekly meetings on our status with each of those items on our hit list. We just don't.

I don't know how long we can go on without committing to these things and making our customers a priority. We, like many companies continue to pretend that the important things are important to us. We need to change that and make our customers a priority.

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Grand Challenges of the 21st Century

The White House is asking the citizens of the United States of America to help identify goals for the twenty-first century. Some of the goals that have been mentioned in the past include early detection of dozens of diseases from a saliva sample, solar cells as cheap as paint, and educational software that is as compelling as the best video game and effective as a personal tutor. I really like the idea that the White House is asking the citizens for feedback and not just having politicians make the decision for us.

One of our biggest challenges in the twenty-first century is global climate change. There are many things that are affecting this change. Our reliance on fossil fuels is a big contributing factor to climate change and I think the one area where we can make the biggest difference. We need to make our number one goal changing our global reliance on fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. This will not be an easy task, but I believe it is a goal we can accomplish.

Many aspects of our daily lives rely on fossil fuels. We heat our homes with fossil fuels. Much of our electricity is produced by fossil fuels. Our cars run on fossil fuels. Plastic is made from fossil fuels. Almost everything around us relies on fossil fuels. While this is a big challenge facing our global community, I believe that change is happening. Their are companies that are innovating new technology that is lessening our reliance on fossil fuels.

The greatest challenge we Americans face in the twenty-first century is education. I would like to see American youths lead the world in math and science scores. We have been losing ground every year and at this point we have fallen too far behind to be satisfied with our current education system. We need to have education reform. We need to make education our number one priority.

The students of today are the inventors and leaders of tomorrow and we are letting these students down by not making education our priority. We need to set education funding and not rob from it when tax revenue falls. We cannot say that it is a real priority if we cut our education budget every chance we get. It is easy to make cuts across the board, but we don't need leaders who can make the easy decisions. We need leaders who are willing to sacrifice in order to ensure that the long-term good of the nation is being met. We need leaders who believe that education is the key to our country's future.

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The Truth About The Tea Party

I knew that there was something wrong with The Tea Party movement. It has struck me as being wrong from the first day I heard about it. Now my suspicions have been confirmed. This movement is not just about politics or health care plans. It is about something much bigger and much uglier. It is about racism.

I came across a study with some really surprising information earlier this week. The study from the University of Washington found that "those who are racially resentful, who believe the U.S. government has done too much to support blacks, are 36 percent more likely to support the tea party than those who are not." This is a big deal.

The Tea Party has been playing on people's fears from its inception. It is using fear as a tool to convert supporters. It has bashed Obama's health care plan as being bad for the country. Now, it appears that they just don't want to provide health care or other resources for people who are not white.

Supporters of The Tea Party have painted themselves as patriots looking out for the well being of the citizens of this country. They are the new revolutionaries. This study would suggest that maybe they aren't revolutionaries at all but just a more mild version of the Klan. They are haters who are trying to spread their beliefs to the rest of the country.

I knew I didn't like what they stand for, and now I know why. They are a bunch of racist hate mongers who are pretending to be something they are not. I am horrified that they have received so much main stream support. Here is a quote from an assistant professor of political science at the University of Washington who was involved in the study. "It’s clear from the data that people who want limited government don’t want certain services for certain kinds of people. Those services include health care," says Christopher Parker. All I can say is wow!

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Why is Everyone So Angry?

I guess "everyone" is an overstatement on my part, but it sure seems like there are a lot of angry people in the United States these days. The conservatives are angry that Obama's health care plan has been signed into law. Fourteen states are so angry that they have sued the government over the law. Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh are so angry about the health care plan that they have resorted to comparing Obama to Hitler. I don't see the comparison.

Obama and his liberal friends have tried to do something to help all of us, not just the wealthy people that the conservatives bow down to. Hitler just tried to help the elite that he identified at the expense of everyone else. Hitler killed people. Obama is trying to help people. How are they similar in any way?

Many people are also angry that they have to complete their census forms. They think that there is too much government involvement in their lives. They want to be free from government control. The only problem is that if you don't complete the census forms, you local government will lose out on federal funding for things such as infrastructure and education spending. This means that the pot holes in your local roads may not get fixed or that the school your children attend may be overcrowded. There are many implications that I don't even know about. Just complete the census and stop being selfish!

Joe Biden was caught on tape at the signing of the health care plan. He whispered to Obama, "This is a big f***ing deal!" This has made some people angry. They cannot believe that the vice president said this. Come on! Do you expect me to believe that none of the other politicians use swear words. Maybe the conservatives want us to believe that they are good God-fearing church goes who never use that type of language, but I don't believe it one bit. I guarantee that at least ninety percent of the politicians use colorful language at least once a week. After all, they are very powerful men who are used to having their way and saying whatever they want when they think they are behind closed doors.

Give it a rest. Learn to control your emotions and use your energy for something positive. There are enough problems in this world that we do not need to worry about the vice president dropping a F-bomb while whispering to the president. Besides, it was a big f***ing deal! I can't fault a guy for showing some emotion.

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Long Flight Home

I had a lot of time on my long flight back to Los Angeles from Puerto Rico. I read What the Dog Saw for quite a while. I read some magazine articles. I listened to the audio book Tribal Leadership. I even slept for a while. There are not many things to do when you are stuck in a seat for nine hours.

I found the free download link for Tribal Leadership on the Zappos website. I have been interested in Zappos and their CEO Tony Hsieh for some time. I think the he and the company do things differently and it works great. I would love to work for a company with a culture like theirs. Because they offered the free download link, I decided to give it a listen. It does not disappoint.

I got all the way through chapter seven on my flight. It was very interesting information. The authors of the book define 5 tribal stages:

Stage 1 is reserved for criminals or those who exhibit criminal or violent behavior.
Stage 2 is for people who believe that "my lief stinks." This is the dominant culture in twenty-five percent of organizations according to the authors.
Stage 3 is for people who believe "I’m great, and you’re not." An organization that has this stage as the dominant culture is a group of individuals who do not want to share information with coworkers and are out for themselves. It is not all bad though, because these people will out work their competitors. Salesmen are usually stuck in this stage.
Stage 4 is for the people who shift their focus to the group instead of themselves. They no longer believe that "I'm better." They now believe that "we’re better" and that "life is great." This is a big shift and is what makes an organization a great place to work.
Stage 5 is when people believe that "we can make a global impact." The authors of the book say that only two percent of organizations reach this stage and that they often oscillate back-and-forth between stages four and five. Companies that reach stage five are truly great organization.

As I was listening to the description of these stages, I began to identify which departments in my company are at which stage. I think some of the departments are in a mix of two different stages. I even think that you can break it down further and find out which stage each employee is in. I know that there are several people in my company who are stuck in stage three, but the majority of people are in stage two. I think of the people in stage three as being hoarders of information and people who have not necessarily earned respect. They try to do things their own way, but when they need something from you they expect you to drop everything and give them what they need. They are dysfunctional. I think we have a long way to go if we want to be a great company and I don't know if we have the commitment and leadership to change our culture.

I don't know when I am going to have time to finish listening to the audio book, but I need to make time. I even want to buy the book after I am done listening to it. I am also thinking about passing along the audio book to people in my company who I think are ready to listen, learn and try to take us to the next stage. There are only a few that I think are ready.

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Obamacare and the Tea Party

I was watching the morning news this morning as I was getting ready for work. There was a segment about Obama's health care reform plan. I missed part of it, but I think it was talking about people who report medical fraud. It showed a very excited Obama talking about the real opportunity of his health care plan passing. It also showed health care plan supporters protesting somewhere.

The next shots were the Tea Party and the person they were showing called the health care plan Obamacare. Wow, that is very witty. This group seems to be all about fear, hate and clever word play. I have not heard any valid arguments from them as to why the health care plan is a bad thing. They are not original at all.

They chose their name to appear to be patriotic, referring to the Boston Tea Party. That protest happened because the colonies were being taxed heavily and were not represented in the British government. To protest this, they sneaked onto the British ships in Boston Harbor and dumped the tea overboard. They were patriots and were protesting something that was affecting everyone in the colonies in a negative way. The British were taxing the colonies in order to support the government.

This new Tea Party group stole their name from these original patriots and are using the name to try to give their cause some credibility. Groups love to latch onto names and words that give their silly cause credibility. Whenever I hear about groups doing this, I instantly become skeptical of their cause. If there was a reason to be concerned, the group would not need to resort to these tactics.

I don't know why people are against health care reform anyway. Health care costs go up considerably every single year, even when the economy is struggling. The insurance companies increase their plan costs or co-pays and don't increase the service or the items they cover in the plan. That seems to be something similar to taxation without representation if you ask me. That is what the Tea Party should really be concerned with.

Anyone who has spent any time at all going to doctor's offices or hospitals knows that our system is broken. People go to the emergency room all the time for colds and other basic sicknesses because they do not have health insurance. This forces all of us to wait for long periods of time in the emergency room to get care when we have real emergencies. It costs all of us money because the government is left to pay the bill for these uninsured people. This is actually costing us more than reform ever would.

The other problem is the doctors know what the insurance plans will and won't pay for. So they will just run test after test or prescribe medicine in efforts to "try" to solve the issue you are visiting them for. They don't really try to diagnose the problem and come up with a treatment. Instead they just try things until they find something that works. For instance, my Dad was having seizures. His doctor just kept experimenting with medications until he found something that worked. The problem was that my Dad had to go to the hospital several times because the medications were causing him to have really bad seizures. So this medical practice cost the insurance company more money than it should have if the doctor would have just done his job the first time.

Doctors also refuse to communicate with each other. So if your primary doctor refers you to a specialist, many times the specialist will have duplicate tests run on you. This happens either because the doctors are not communicating or because the specialist knows that the insurance will pay for the test to be run again, so they just do it. They are taking advantage of the insurance system for their own personal gain.

Don't get me wrong, I think the good doctors earn their money. I don't believe they are over payed at all. Medical school is a big investment and they deserve to make a lot of money. That is not the problem here at all. The real problem is that the insurance system is broken in a way that does us, the patients, a disservice. We deserve more and that is why I support health care reform.

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