Weblog: March/April 2002

02.04.24: The Catholic Church and Its Little Child-Rape Problem
Ummm, let me get this straight. The Vatican, having concluded that priests raping children is both a sin and a crime, is now wrestling with whether or not to institute a zero-tolerance policy for child rape? As opposed to what? All in favor of "three-strikes-and-you're-out" raise your hands? Okay, now everybody that thinks we should pass out seven year-old boys as ordination gifts?

Check this, hot off the wires from CNN.com:

"U.S. cardinals said they will recommend a special process to dismiss any priest who has 'become notorious and is guilty of the serial, predatory, sexual abuse of minors'."

"Notorious," huh? Sounds like a euphemism for, "embarrassed us by getting caught." And what about that other part: "serial, predatory, sexual abuse of minors." Doesn't "serial" suggest that you have to rape several children before it really becomes an issue? And if I want to get really critical, I'd note the use of the word "and" where I'd much prefer an "or." As in, rape as many little boys as you can catch so long as you don't incur any bad press?

I mean, Jesus H. Christ, what in the hell is going on in Vatican City?

The Catholic Church has a monster-sized credibility problem, and it's getting worse by the day. The fact that the Pope didn't instantly issue a one-strike-and-we-feed-your-ass-to-the-cops policy is all you really need to know. That Boston's Cardinal Law is still in office is as nasty a piece of evidence as you could hope for if you were litigating the institution in a court of law (and while we're on the subject of judgment, I'd love to be there on the Final Day when JP2 and Law get to explain their thinking on this one to the Lord Almighty, who, if I can believe the Christian version of the spirit world, I'm sure has pedophilia filed in the "B," drawer, along with the rest of the "Burn in Hell for All Eternity" folders).

I'm not going to set myself up as the final arbiter of what's Good and Righteous in the Universe or anything, but I think most people – including nearly all members of the steadily dwindling Catholic flock – would agree with me that if you have to stop and deliberate over what to do when your holy representatives start peeling the pants off their altar boys, then there's something pathologically wrong with you. Rehabilitation of pedophiles may be a worthy goal (despite evidence showing how very rarely it actually happens), but it's a goal properly pursued in your life as a former priest, the first 25 years of which are ideally conducted in the state penitentiary.

In the interests of full disclosure, I'm not a Catholic and am not a Christian, and further, I have profound issues with the evil the Church has perpetrated over the past several millennia. However, I respect the spiritual devotion of the millions of people who rely on the teachings of Jesus Christ to guide them toward better and more meaningful lives. For this reason, my disgust with the corrupt political leaders of the Church is tempered with a grave sadness.

So while I'm not exactly crusading to destroy Catholicism, John Paul II and the College of Cardinals should understand that even if I were could hardly do a better job of it than they're doing themselves.

And a word of advice to Cardinal Law and all the Church's child-raping priests and former priests: tonight, hit your knees and pray, pray hard, that there's not really a Hell.

02.04.24: Commodity Economy and Customer Service: Attack of the Lone Differentiator
Dr. Venturo makes a good point in his comments below about the distinction between customers and consumers. Then Jim Gwyn, a friend from back home, chimes in with some thoughts of his own, including this:

I was just reading your blog discussion about the myth of customer-centrism and have a couple of thoughts. The first is that we want to be treated as customers whilst behaving as consumers. This is the source of much of the discontent about which people like to carp. But they still go to Wally-world...

Indeed they do. I guess people want to act like consumers, but they want to be treated like customers, eh?

===

Customers, consumers and "consumption-side" behavior are all important factors to consider, and the comments by Venturo and Gwyn got me to thinking about a study that crossed my desk three or four years ago when I was as US WEST. While I believe it was referring primarily to the telecom sector, its primary findings seem relevant to the discussion of customer-centrism generally.

Briefly, the study (and I don't have the source or cite – sorry) concluded that we're rapidly moving toward an economy where multiple players will offer a range of products and services that are essentially equivalent, and for prices that are roughly the same (think long-distance service here). Assuming that such a commodity economy emerges, what's the differentiator in a given market? Same product, same price, so why would you buy the ACME Widget instead of the SamCo Widget?

The study says that under these conditions, customer service, and customer service alone, determines consumer behavior. (And anybody who said "brand" would be the distinguishing factor here needs a bit of deprogramming – brand perception and loyalty will derive from customer service in this circumstance.)

Now, if this is correct – and I'm inclined to buy the finding at least on a limited, general level – what implications does it have for companies that continue to talk a customer-centric talk while walking the investor-centric walk?

That, of course, was a rhetorical question.

Been thinking about your latest weblog. Both you and Anders have merit in your claims. My observation is that you are both a bit off the real issue. Of course, corporates only give "lip service" to customer service because they wish to maximize profits for their shareholders and they can't do that by providing expensive services to customers. And, investors want to invest in companies that are demonstrating that they can increase market share by getting more people to purchase their goods and services (expanding their customer base).

But, what do we mean by the term "customer." Your point/counterpoint recalled to me something I read a few years back (maybe by Paul Hawkens in Growing Your Own Business), that there is a difference between "customers" and "consumers." If a business wishes to pursue "customers," then it must be willing to establish relationships with those customers. Building relationships takes time and careful attention to customer needs. People in service industries understand this implicitly because their long term revenue depends on long term relationships with clients/customers. Arthur Andersen took this principle beyond ethical bounds in its dealings with Enron.

Mass marketing conglomerates by their very nature cannot attend to customers. They must cultivate "consumers." Consumers don't care about service, they care about price, and they want products/services that entertain them even if for a short time. We are a culture that buys into what has been characterized as the "disposable society." Disposable goods and services have to be produced efficiently and in large enough quantity to keep prices down so that more and more consumers will purchase them. So, ACME widgets is going to maximize it profits each quarter, even if that means tanking some customer service employees, because that doesn't matter in the long run. What matters is that ACME keeps its prices competitive so that it can attract an increasing market share of consumers. It seems to me that Anders is right, investors, other than idealistic Sam, will put their money in a company that seems to promise larger market share rather than customer service. Microsoft seems to be the best example.

So, I would pose that maybe the discussion is about the notion that most people prefer being consumers and not customers because they do not want to worry about their relationship to the businesses from which they purchase their goods and services?

I'm not the only one thinking about this question, as it turns out. An article in today's NY Times ("ID Cards for 'Trusted Travelers' Run Into Some Thorny Questions") looks at the idea, and in addition to considering the civil liberties implications, it also talks a great deal about the basic efficacy of such a program. It's certainly worth a read, especially for anybody who has to travel.

But as I type this, a wonderful conspiracy theory presents itself. Say I'm somebody like John Ashcroft. And being a fascist, I want to know everything I possibly can about everybody in the world. But I'm also smart enough to know that overt intrusions upon people's rights draw attention and resistance, so the sneakier I can be, the better.

But hey – what if there were a program that would subject people to all kinds of unreasonable investigative scrutiny, and better, they would beg to be included? How sweet would that be? I mean, hell, we've already dropped the term "shadow government" on them and they didn't even flinch.

But how to get them to buy in? Well, if they get hassled at the airport often enough...

Of course, I'm being silly. John Ashcroft doesn't control airline security, and imagining all these dark networks of power connecting like-minded paranoiacs throughout the government... well, that's just one episode too many of "X-Files," ain't it?

02.04.05: On the Myth of the Customer-Centric Corporation
[The following is a point-counterpoint exchange between me and my boss. I wrote the first part as we were flying back from a business trip this week, showed it to him, and he (as is his tendency) disagreed with me a bit. I asked if he'd like his comments included, and so here you go.]

These days no manager, director or top executive of any company in the world can speak for more than about four seconds without using some variant of the phrase "customer-focused." Customer service this, customer-centric that, and my favorite – "delight our customers."

And most of these folks probably believe it. In fact, you do see a lot of companies and a lot of managers devoting lots of time to figuring out how to better serve those of us on whom their professional lives ultimately depend.

But the emperor is buck nekkid, folks, and worse, he's not especially well endowed. The fact is that no publically-traded company you're likely to encounter is customer-focused. Zero. Nada. Zip.

They're investor-focused. Stay with me for a second.

Public corporations are legally obliged to act in the best interest of shareholders. Not customers, not communities, and certainly not employees – shareholders. Over time, the "best interest of shareholders" has been operationalized as best short-term interest – in other words, this quarter. Not next year, and sure as hell not 10 years from now.

We've seen it countless times – it's nearing the end of the quarter, a corp is in danger of missing its numbers, and gods, the Street hates it when companies miss their numbers. So since you can't make people buy more product (if you could, you wouldn't be in danger of missing your numbers, now would you?) the only way to salvage the quarter is to cut costs.

Of course, "costs" in this context is a euphemism for "human beings." So here comes another round of layoffs. Get those salaries and benefits packages off the books and all of a sudden those quarterly numbers look a little better.

Mr. Lip Service, meet Mr. Reality.

Because, all horsewax about "streamlining" the organization to "better align" with customer demand notwithstanding, you can't provide better customer service with less people unless those people sucked to start with, in which case they should have been fired a long time ago and replaced with people who could do the job. I've worked corp PR, and trust me when I tell you that the people writing that drivel can barely stand themselves when it hits PR Newswire. Well, most of them, anyway. Some of them don't have souls, and in these cases mainly they just try to stifle the laughter.

Better customer service is innately people-intensive, and therefore resides on the red side of the ledger, where it inherently collides with the need to satisfy the investors. And the investors always win. That's what I mean by "investor-centrism," and in today's economic climate it's usually at odds with a genuine concern with customer service.

But wait, you say – doesn't it all go together? Doesn't the ability to satisfy investors depend on satisfying customers? Aren't customer-centric and investor-centric two faces of the same coin?

In theory, maybe, but in practice, no. See, a term like "customer-centric" means the customer comes first – top priority, job one, the most important factor, etc. It has to mean that, because if it just means that we think customers are important (along with a host of other things that are "-centric") then it's pretty much like the Pointy-Haired Boss telling Dilbert that everything is his top priority. And from experience, again, I can tell you that the people using this language mean it just that way – they think the customer is #1.

But it's simply not true. The institutional fund manager sitting on a few million shares – he's #1.

Here's what I'd kill to see someday. It's the end of the quarter and Acme Widgets, Inc. is going to fall short of its earning projections (and don't even get me started on where earnings projections come from). But in the widget market these days, customer service is a major differentiator. So instead of canning half the work force in an attempt to hotshot the quarterly earnings results, John Bravery, the CEO, announces that Acme will be adding customer service reps and investing more in training them, effective later this afternoon. He acknowledges that this will actually hurt the quarterly numbers, but makes clear that Acme's money-where-our-mouth-is commitment to customer service is a strategy that will, in due time, lead the company to the Promised Land.

Of course, the next morning at the opening bell Acme stock will tank as short-sighted earnings junkies jump ship faster than an Arthur Andersen junior partner with a job offer over at KPMG, which is fine, because at around 2:00 pm I'm going to place a nice little buy order (assuming the Acme board isn't parading Mr. Bravery's head around on a pole by then). I won't be rich in three months, but I'll take my chances over the next three years.

And if I'm in the market for some widgets, Acme's phone is about to ring.

CounterPoint
Anders Gronstedt, Ph.D.
President, The Gronstedt Group
I disagree on one point: Investors for the last several years have been obsessed with long-term prospects, not short-term profits. How else can you explain that some companies, including Cisco even today I think, are trading at 50 times earnings? And that any number of other stocks have skyrocketed while they were delivering huge losses. Why?

Because they were adding new customers and investors thought that would equate great long-term prospects. The .com boom was all about adding "eyeballs" and adding customers, because the investors were misinformed and thought this old acquisition-oriented marketing was what delivered long-term profitability. That's still a prevailing myth among investors, but the market is not paying such astronomical premiums for it, hence companies continue to focus on it but aren't getting rewarded for it like they did a few years ago…

Rebuttal (by Sam again)
While I think we could probably find some problems with this line of thinking (for instance, we might look harder at the role of greed and its triumph over good business sense during the last two or three years), in essence your argument is about investor behavior. And yes, I think investors do want long-term value, even when their actual behavior is more short-sighted.

But this doesn't address the behavior of companies that time and time again act in ways which are clearly detrimental to their long-term health in order to prop up quarterly numbers. A company that has serious customer-service issues, and that lays off 1000 call center employees two weeks before the end of the quarter in order to bolster the earnings report, that company is placing short-term investor-centric goals ahead of long-term customer-centric goals. In sports terms, when you trade the best pitcher in the league for a homerun hitter, you have emphasized hitting over pitching, period (especially if the rest of your pitchers suck). Same thing.

*note: Stay tuned. We may hear more from Dr. Gronstedt on the subject next week.

02.04.05: A Good Week at Airport Security (note sarcasm...)
I traveled some more this week – Dallas and back Sunday and Monday, then to Kansas City on Tuesday and back today. So that's four trips through the old airport security machine, and I only got yanked out for "random" secondary screening twice. Wow – that 50% clip for the week drags my yearly average all the way down to 72.2%.

According to a big, highly publicized audit a few days ago people actually get guns through these checkpoints about a third of the time. So, in principle, I could improve my rate of avoiding secondary checks by about 6% if I started packing heat.

02.03.29: Burn a Copy, Burn the Artist...
I want to second what Bruce Brodeen has to say on CD-R burning from a fan's perspective. From time to time somebody I know will ask if I can burn them a copy of something – I own something like 1000 CDs, and I push my tastes on others, which makes me a would-be opinion leader, I guess, and sometimes that can backfire. My gut reaction is always one of embarrassment – on the one hand, of course I want to get the music out there, but on the other, I'm essentially being asked to help a friend steal something.

In most cases we're talking about bands on indie labels like Brodeen's Not Lame, which means that you're hurting a record company that's probably lucky to pay its bills and an artist who probably has to work at least one day job to support a music career that's economically about a half-step from being a hobby.

Ironically, the reason so many of these bands and labels are on the brink of oblivion is that their "fans" are making it impossible for them to earn a living. What's the difference between not buying a record because you hate a band and burning yourself a free copy because you love a band?

Nothing. You aren't helping the band and you aren't promoting the music. And if enough people out there do the same thing you're doing, it adds up to be just about as bad as the effect the major labels, Clear Channel and the boy-band whoremongers are having on the industry.

In this context, "burn" is an appropriate term, because a generation of people who ought to know better are helping burn good music to the ground. One day, when the only music available is pre-fabricated corp schlock (copy-protected, by the way), and the guy who ought to be the next Kurt Cobain or John Lennon has given up completely and is pissing his life away behind the counter at Tower Records, well, just remember that you heard it here first.

Spend the $10, dammit (or $12, or whatever). If you care about music, get right with the reality of music: somebody has to pay the bills, and if the people who like it won't, then who the hell will?

02.03.24: The Problem with Post-9.11 Airline Security Policy

Do I look like a terrorist? No, seriously – I've been told I look "intimidating," and cameras all seem to hate me on sight – but if you saw me boarding a plane with you would you worry that I posed a threat to your safe and timely arrival at your chosen destination, especially if I were wearing a business suit?

I don't know how you answered this question, but I must scare the mortal hell out of the good folks working airport security. How else can I explain the damned-near automatic frequency with which I'm "randomly" selected for secondary security checks whenever I attempt to board a flight?

Since the new year I've taken several trips – mostly business – flying to Las Vegas, Anaheim, San Francisco, Kansas City, and Toronto via Frontier, America West, and Air Canada. Early on I noticed I was getting yanked just about every time I hit security, so I started keeping count.

The results: I have now encountered the airport security process 14 times in the last two months, and have been pulled for further screening 11 of them. That's about a 79% clip.

Now, I don't yet have all the data I need to understand precisely how bad I'm being tooled with. I need to know what percentage of all travelers are pulled, and I probably also need a bit larger sample size in order to arrive at statistically meaningful conclusions. From just observing what happens at the gate, I'd guess that they're pulling maybe 5% of people "at random."

But 11 of 14?! I think I have enough data to be justifiably annoyed, and more than enough to begin formulating a research hypothesis. It's actually gotten so bad that I'm getting a little paranoid. Have I somehow gotten onto a secret government list of People to Keep a Close Eye On? Some of my friends think I probably do get pulled because of how I look (although I don't recall any of the September 11 hijackers being bald white guys with goatees). And they also believe it's entirely possible that the contents of this Web site might have attracted the attention of government cyberspooks. I don't know that I'm quite that paranoid yet, but I have to be honest: I'm getting there, one pat-down at a time.

My own personal carping notwithstanding, there is a larger question here of how we establish security policies that are fair, workable and effective in the post-9.11 world. A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal essentially calls for overt racial profiling by airport security, saying:

No one disagrees that at this moment in history terrorists come overwhelmingly from the ranks of radical Islam; it follows logically that screeners ought to give special scrutiny to Arab-Americans, Muslims and others who fit into certain other ethnic categories. This isn't discrimination; given the threat, it's common sense. The innocent will suffer at most a few minutes of inconvenience, but the possible benefit is hundreds of lives spared.

Now, this is a troubling question, isn't it?

On the one hand, I do understand where the author is coming from. We're so PC-obsessive about avoiding the appearance of racial bias that, as the WSJ editorial put it, "U.S. policy seems to be to search just about everyone except Arabs and Muslims, the very groups most likely to belong to the terrorist al Qaeda network." Maybe it's time to rethink our policy along lines informed by what actually happened with the al Qaeda hijackings.

This is a seductive line of reasoning, and one that gains a little more strength every time an innocent bystander is inconvenienced. But it's also important to remember that there are a number of very Caucasian loons loose here in the homeland that we'd do well to keep a very close eye on. Timothy McVeigh didn't look remotely Arabic, and there's precisely zero reason to think he wouldn't have flown a 747 into the World Trade Center if he'd had the wit and means to pull it off. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be on a plane loaded with under-scrutinized Republic of Texas types, you know?

So what's the answer? I'm really not sure, but we need to find a better solution than the ones we have at present. My boss says that Israel has a pretty effective system whereby people can apply for something like a security clearance card. They do an extensive background check on you, and if they conclude that you're no threat to hijack a plane, you're issued an ID card that exempts you from things like secondary security checks. (If anybody reading this knows more about how the policy works, please let me know.)

Would something like this satisfy me? Tough question – tougher than it looks on its face, to be sure. I shouldn't have too much trouble passing a background check, despite my apparently thuggish appearance. I've never been arrested and have no prior affiliations with subversive organizations (unless you count my Ph.D. program). Hell, I even lectured at an Air Force Public Affairs conference a couple years ago, and you'd think something like that would earn you a couple bonus points.

And the convenience of bypassing security shakedowns would sure be a major selling point. The whole getting patted down by security thing – jeez, there are altar boys on camping trips with the parish priest who get less action than I do. And the gods know I'd love to avoid having my bags reverse-engineered every time I have to take a business trip.

On the other hand, I don't especially like the idea of being investigated by my own government, which probably already knows a lot more about my private life than they have any reason to. Nazi General John Ashcroft has conclusively demonstrated that he will seize on any opportunity that presents itself to strip from us whatever rights he can, and we'd all do well to think about the larger implications of our actions when it comes to signing away our civil liberties. We're talking about a policy that would routinely subject Joe Citizen to the same sorts of investigative scrutiny historically reserved for suspected criminals and politicians. I've never been fingerprinted, and would very much like to keep it that way, but something tells me that printing (and who knows what else) would be a required step for certification (kind of like it is for concealed carry permits, I believe).

So how much privacy would I trade for how much convenience?

I don't know off the top of my head. This is the devil's bargain of the contemporary wired consumer world, isn't it? But it seems that having such a policy as an option would, at the very least, solve some of the congestion we face at checkpoints these days. And we Americans do love choices.

Stay tuned. I plan on finding out more about who gets extra security scrutiny and who doesn't. I don't know with what frequency Middle Eastern travelers get pulled for secondary screening, or Latinos, or Blacks, or Asians. But you give Osama bin Laden himself a shower and a shave and I doubt he'd get yanked 79% of the time.

Clearly, I'm doing something wrong.