A Goofy Foot in Mouth

This is a partially baked thought, so I assume there are tons of holes in my logic, but I thought it needed some attention.  I firmly believe that compensation should not be static.  There is a floor, or salary component to everything we do.  A minimum understanding and commitment from the firm to the employee.  But I also believe a significant component should be flexible, even to the point that an unprofitable firm should budget for variable compensation.

I am all for job satisfaction and doing what you love and all that touchy-feely crap.  But at some point, we all recognize that everything comes down to money.  If a company makes a promise to the employee in the form of salary, that employee needs to make a commitment to the company.  I would not want just a commitment at that base minimum level, I want an employee to want the company to excel.  Because the employee wants the company to do well, that person should want to kick ass in what they do.  That commitment has to be rewarded.

Employees should treat the company as if it were their own.  I want them to feel part of the organization as if it were a family.  The company’s success is their own.  If the company succeeds, so should they.  But what if you kick ass all year only to fail or the product fails?  We live in a culture that only rewards accomplishments.  As far as promotions go, I would agree.  But there has to be a reward for effort.  You have to encourage your people to embrace the team, to devote themselves to the effort.  If we encourage people to take risks, it seems wrong to penalize them for giving it their best.  And this is where I think effort based compensation can play a part.  I want my people devoted, but not fearful of taking a risk.  Someone who plays it safe and doesn’t push the limit is no good to me.  It’s like I tell people skiing, if you don’t wipe out at least once a day while on the mountain, you haven’t been pushing yourself hard enough.

People would probably accept a lower overall base salary knowing that there was a non-profitability based component based on how hard they tried.  At the very least you encourage people to feel invested in the company, reward them when they do, and have a mechanism to reflect those that only skate by.  Skaters aren’t necessarily bad, they sometimes serve a pupose.  But those that excel want to see a difference.  In fact, the effort based component should be made public within the company.  No?

I would define a fair compensation package as below.  I think effort counts

• Salary = Compensation for doing your job
• Bonus = How hard you work, how much you go the extra mile (not based on profitability)
• Profit sharing = Everyone should share if the company makes money
• Equity = Based on performance or an individual’s direct contribution to success

It seems so easy to me, this is how I would do it…

Chuck Todd: Welcome to Meet the Press Mr. Rutstein

Me: Thanks Chuck. Glad to be here

CT: Before we get started, how goes it on the campaign trail?

JR: Great. I feel fantastic, we’re winning on all the important issues and I am doing better than anyone expected. People told me that it is a grind, but I am enjoying meeting lots of really amazing Americans and here I am on Meet the Press having a great hair day. No comb over needed to cover up anything going on here! [pointing to head]

CT: Are you trying to make a point about Donald Trump’s hair?

JR: What? Of course not, I didn’t even say his name. You are already starting conspiracy theories about me? Haha. All I did was talk about my own hair

CT: But mention of a comb-over must be a reference to Mr Trump? Should you apologize for a personal attack?

JR: Attack? Only you would think that. My grandfather on my mothers side had a comb-over. It was awful. We used to make fun of it all the time. I would joke with him about it. What are you hiding under there? A comb-over must be made for covering up things. I wonder if that is a metaphor. Chuck, how can you be so incompetent to read that statement as a reference on someone else? I was talking about me.

CT: Are you saying that Mr Trump is hiding something?

JR: No of course not. You said that.

CT: Then what are you trying to say?

JR: I was just pointing out that I am having a good hair day and that got me to thinking how long ago it was normal to have comb-overs to hide baldness or other stuff. I don’t have to do anything like that and I am proud of that fact.  

CT: And that’s it? You don’t think you are commenting on Mr Trump in a way that is unfair?

JR: No. Mr Trump is a very successful man. He has made a lot of money, as he so often points out, on properties all over the world. I really find it incredible that he sold his Atlantic City properties and made a lot of money on them right before the whole market there fell apart. As I travel around the country I meet people that work in jobs that are being systemically eliminated by the market or technology or competition from overseas. It’s heartbreaking when you see something falling apart like that. You see it happening to real people, just like the folks in Atlantic City. I know lots of people that lost their jobs in 08-09. I just tell them that if I were President that I wouldn’t give up on them. I wouldn’t abandon their jobs and let it go under. I would work with them. Work with their leadership. Work with the local government to find a way to help them reinvent themselves or the product or the market in a way that let them be successful. That’s what great leadership does. I want to be a leader that is great and wouldn’t cut and run.

CT: So Mr Trump abandoned the people of Atlantic City?

JR: I didn’t say that. I don’t know what he knew when he decided to sell those casinos. I just know what he has stated for the record, that he made a lot of money and now Atlantic City is near failure.

CT: But you are saying that he has a tendency to not support the notion of sticking with something when the going gets tough?

JR: Where are you getting this from? I was just talking about how I would do things. This country is in debt. United States as a business takes in less revenue than we have in expenses. No one can continue to live like that.  The good news is that we still have a huge balance sheet and intrinsic value. So we still have a lot of potential to use all that capital and natural talent of the American people to rebuild this great country. Would I as President choose to sell now and still make a big profit by liquidating those assets and giving up on the American people?   No. But I wish I made lots of money and could live an extravagant lifestyle and travel on private jets and helicopters, no matter what my financial situation and the finances of my friends and neighbors.  If I did, and then let’s say over time, just like the US government, I found myself deeply in debt, and I filed for bankruptcy numerous times, well I am the type of person that has the capability to roll up my sleeves and cut back my personal spending habits and find a way to use my God-given resources to rebuild. If the bankruptcy court told me that I could only live on $5,000 per month instead the $75,000 that I had been spending, I would find a way to do it

CT: Mr Rutstein, you are describing the exact situation Mr Trump went through in the late 90’s. Are you making a statement about Mr Trump’s bankruptcy practices? Or how he handled his personal lifestyle while in bankruptcy?

JR: No you are making that inference. I am talking about how this country needs a President that can survive financial tumult without giving up on the American people. Our current President has resolved the fact that we should just concede certain realities of the economy and I don’t feel that way.

…..

So you see where I am going with this. The guy is not that smart. You use his own words against him but just in general pronouncements about reality that could be linked to his actions or persona. But you let the press make the linkage and perpetuate it as news. Never do your own dirty work.  If you see a team working successfully out of the ‘wildcat’ formation, you wouldn’t try it too?  The guy found a winning strategy, steal it!  Come on political operatives, this isn’t hard. Trump is a joke, just make it easy for us to see.

Tomorrow my older daughter, my first born, goes under the knife to repair a torn LCL, evaluate bone fragments from her knee cap and check her ACL. All damaged about 2 weeks ago in a high school soccer game. Tay thinks she was close to scoring on a crossing pass. She was going to tap the ball around the goalie and dribble in for an easy shot. She doesn’t remember the tackle, just the after effects of laying on the ground screaming in agony after being taken out by the goalie.

This was the 7th minute of the 2nd game of the season. What hurts her and what stings is that she busted her ass all summer to get in shape. We worked out almost every day. And when we didn’t work out, she did body weight workouts in her room: squats, situps, supermans and pushups. She even ran on vacation and tempered her eating at an all inclusive resort in Mexico.  She went to soccer camps.  She was in the best shape of her life and it showed on the field. Her coach even told her so. When you put in the effort and get recognized for it, when you feel it and it shows, there is no feeling like it in the athletic world.

And then you get your knee blown out going 110% for a ball. Doing your job. That’s just not right. I was 120 miles away at Haley’s horse show and I knew exactly what Taylor was feeling when Megan said they were heading to the hospital. I had to walk away from the show. I almost crumbled. Both Taylor and Haley have complete commitment to their craft and it sucks to see that taken from them.

When I saw Taylor the following day, she said exactly what I expected. “I worked so hard all summer…” That feeling of sadness in me came back. But then she said something that took me completely by surprise and made me respect her as an athlete and as a student of the game. Taylor always talks about how she sees the art, the beauty of the game and how amazing it is when it is played right. A perfect pass. “Good ball”. Great shot. Ball control and movement. Possession. Taylor said to me, “We didn’t even get a free kick out of it.” She went on to describe how there were only two referees on the field and that if there had been an AR in position, she would have been tracking back with the ball, looking right at that spot and would have seen the foul. Taylor is a trained referee, she knows how she would have been positioned for that play.

Our standard leg-day workout includes; extensions, curls, calves, squats, inner and outer thigh, and a cable workout to strengthen the kicking motion in both legs. Taylor’s legs are not weak. This kind of trauma does not come from a tackle that hit ball first; a clean tackle. Her team deserved a free kick. Taylor deserved to earn a free kick for her team.

This got me to wondering why there were only two refs on the field at a varsity high school women’s soccer game. We have seen this before in rec. But Taylor has been a referee at U11 games where they staffed the full complement of a referee and 2 ARs. I further wondered, would this situation conform to Title IX? Would there ever be a varsity football game played without a back judge? Certainly not in Texas, but even in New Hampshire?

I don’t really know much about Title IX. I have been reading a lot over the past few days but I admit that it is confusing. The original law didn’t even talk about athletics. That came through the written regulations. Is this fair? Does Tay’s team deserve better treatment? What is the minimum standard for officiating a soccer game? I admit that I don’t know what the men’s varsity team gets, but if 3 is required for safe play, could they be being cheated too?

I absolutely hate the idea of suing to affect change here. And I know the kind of budget constraints and gimmickry that schools play to balance myriad programs for students. But I just feel that there needs to be some acknowledgment to the game that was actually played, that Taylor’s sacrifice meant something. Do injuries occur for fair play? Yes. We see it in football and hockey all the time. But this was different. This feels different and I would probably say that even if it wasn’t Taylor. I admit that my zeal for this cause would not be what it is if it wasn’t my kid. I know Title IX is meant to level the playing field for funding of the programs within a school between the genders. But I wonder if officiating is part of that overall definition and if not, shouldn’t it be? I wish I knew the answer to that. I would certainly work to right that wrong. Because next season, I want to see 3 officials on the soccer field: That’s how Taylor would do it if she was in charge.

Last week as part of the Fidelity Cares group, I led a team that built a greenhouse at the Elm Street Middle school in Nashua  It was a pretty intense day.  It felt really good to give back to the community using a skill that I normally only employ at home.  One of the Fidelity Community Relations coordinators knew that I did a lot of construction stuff on the side (see tailgate box) and so thought I would be well suited.

Overall this was challenging.  This was your typical DIY kit.  I am really not a fan of these.  They dumb it down so much to simplify shipping and assembly, that they actually make it more difficult.  Examples: There were no lock washers, the ‘square bolt’ channel system is crap, the base kit was a different size than the actual greenhouse, etc.  Some of the design was cheapened too; the roof vents were flimsy and had an awful design for the lower cross beams, the roof and side panels were held in by caulking but we needed to cut several panels, squaring the unit was near impossible.

The idea for these kits is that the basic 2-3 person homeowner team could complete the unit in 3-4 days.  Mom, Dad and I could have done it in a weekend, but we work really well together: There were a LOT of these projects over my first 21 years of life.  But scaling a project like this that has very linear directions to a large team was particularly difficult.

Fidelity gave me a team of +30 to assemble the structure in about 4 hours.  Some teachers had already built the base.  So I split the directions and assigned groups of 4-6 to assemble pieces and bring them to the unit for final assembly.  My favorite project management expression is that “9 women can’t make a baby in one month”.  Meaning that sometimes you can’t just throw bodies at a problem and have it scale efficiently.  This was one of those situations.

After the first day we finished all of the framing assembly.  I came back a few days later and installed the doors.  Last Friday, Sara, Cristin and myself helped one of the science teachers Denise Rock, install the roof and wall panels.  I’m proud of what we accomplished and I hope the kids enjoy and learn about how the hydroponics work.  But I also learned about employing volunteer teams on projects and how non-profit work for large groups needs to be compartmentalized.  I think if more projects contemplated large teams and how to cater to them, there would be a lot more volunteering by big corporations.  If I had started from scratch, I would have gamified the 8 teams and structured the work around building micro-teams and healthy competition.  It stoked a lot of ideas on how to do this for my business…more to come.

The other day a good friend of mine and I were discussing the general notion of ‘making lemonade from lemons’  He framed the counter-point argument in a metaphor that I thought was really insightful.

In general, I have never been happy about my lot in life.  I wouldn’t call it a full-fledged depression, but it certainly is a disappointment.  Things have never gone the way I want and I have always had abnormally high expectations for myself.  This translates to a perpetual sense of not achieving my goals and unhappiness with that situation.  There are aspects of my life that go well, and others that are absolutely wonderful.  I don’t negate or ignore either.

But when things don’t go according to plan, I don’t actively celebrate the positives in that particular scenario.  I don’t look for the ‘silver lining’, the ‘bright side’, or ‘the positives’.  I see no need.  Just because I am unhappy with a situation does not mean that I need to reframe my context of that situation to make it positive.  It is what it is.  It has positive aspects, but the overall occurrence is not positive and focusing on those aspects only degrades my full objective as unworthy of expecting success.  I won’t do that.  If I want an Aston Martin but can only afford a Ford Focus, there is no need to celebrate my new car for it being a new car. Yes that is nice, just don’t tell me that my desire for the Vontage was unrealistic to start with and that I should embrace what I have.

I reject that whole proposition.  When something doesn’t go the way you want, fight back at it.  Don’t give up on what you really want.  This brings me to the metaphor of my good friend.  Sometimes it is good to fight back.  Sometimes you have to.  Accepting something for what it is, or as a ‘learning experience’ is a copout.  If your job is going in a way you don’t like, don’t embrace it as a ‘learning experience.’  You have to fight back.  If you get accused of a crime unfairly, going to jail is not a “great opportunity for growth.”  No.  It sucks no matter how good 3 squares a day, endless time to read, and that societal experience might be.  Fighting back makes sense.  Defending yourself is right.  Your goals, no matter how unrealistic, is justified.

“Making lemonade” is just about dumping a ton of sugar into lemon juice.  It still tastes sour.

Every time that there is a police shooting or some instance where a renegade cop acts inappropriately, we hear the call for “more training.”  I find this whole notion spectacularly irresponsible.  These are people who have grown up racist or at the very least insensitive and now we think x hours of “training” is going to make them more effective at being responsible humans capable of “to protect and to serve.”  Training also can’t make chauvinistic bosses less apt to sexually harass associates.  Sensitivity training doesn’t make people sensitive.

Clearly these people were not raised with any sort of decorum or decency that respects others.  But the problem is with how they are raised.  The problem is with their belief structure, not with how they act on that belief structure.  When presented with possibly life threatening situations requiring moral sensitivity, do we really expect a split second decision to be responsible based on section 4.2 of the sensitivity training a cop received on day 3 of a 4 part series?  Come on.

Juxtapose this to times when training is actually useful.  Training can help govern a thought based or procedure based action.  Call any healthcare provider and try to get a decent answer to a question.  Step 1, tell your life story to an operator, who doesn’t tell you they are the answering service.  That’s HIPPA violation number 1.  Step 2, play the transfer game to 15 departments and schedulers and specialists and PCPs. Step 3, talk to your insurance provider.  What a fun conversation that is.

Oh and please be sure to make sure you are not in a plan that might actually help “bend the cost curve” by incentivizing you to find the low cost option like an HDHP.  Because when you pay out of pocket from your HSA you can be sure that none of these knuckleheads will know the actual COST of a treatment or procedure that would let you act like a consumer and comparison shop.

We see recurring themes of cases when training would actually enhance the user experience of a service.  Yet training never seems to be applied in the right places.  Certainly it is never advocated for in the right ways.  When have you heard public clamor for “more training” of health care providers?  I have yet to figure out why this is.  “More training” has become the go-to solution for every social ill in the way that “rehab” seems to cure every celebrity personality fault.  But it can’t solve social problems, it can’t change beliefs, only actions.

There are times when knowledge is power and training can really benefit the collective actions of mankind by making people smarter.  But it is not the utopian solution to all problems.

Only in boxing does alto training really make things better.  Definitely alto training.  Alto. Alto? Alto?  Oh!  “A lot!”  (4:26)

I wrote this paper at work to galvanize thoughts around ways to do my job that make systems development more efficient.  Back office big-data projects are different from customer facing UX driven ‘products’ and so we should think about the work in a different context.  Less is more.  80:20.  KISS.  All the typical euphemisms are thrown around but never actually followed.  Capability Based Design is a philosophy that helps the dev teams, funding sponsors, and business users act together for the benefit of the project and the organization.  It is how I have been thinking and doing my job for a while now.  I hope it rings true with others. I’d love to get feedback on how practical it might be from people in similar roles.

Capability Based Design

I’ve been meaning to rant about this one for a while.  I like to say that “decaf” is not “coffee”.  At the same time, a two-wheeled wheelbarrow is not a “wheelbarrow”.

Haley and the girls at the barn love them, and yes I understand that it makes things easier when you are small, but that is not the point.  You lose the process of gaining valuable skills when there are two wheels in the front of a wheelbarrow.

Balance:  It is not easy when there is only 1 wheel in the front.  Every time you go to move something and you lift the handles, you have to be thinking about balance.  That means that as you load the bucket, you think about how and where you fill, even distribution, stacking vs the hill you are on, forward vs back placement.  It requires thinking ahead and planning.

Grade: You can’t take a 2-wheeler cross-wise on a steep hill, it just won’t work because the wheels have to stay parallel to the earth.   All of your choices on how to get from point A to B are limited when you can only think 2 dimensionally to the hill you are working against.  It limits the variables you assign to the challenge.  Do I keep the weight light and go straight up the hill?  Or can I add more weight and work against the grain?

Strength:  Let’s face it, the shoulder strength needed to lift a single wheeler and the micro adjustments necessary to keep it balanced throughout the run, can greatly enhance your long term health.  Stronger shoulders means more neck strength meaning less long term pain as you get older.  Lifting more weight for balance, means you are constantly engaging your core to keep yourself upright.

Risk vs Reward:  “When I was a kid” we heated with wood in a cast iron Vermont Castings stove in the living room.  Every year mom and dad would order two cords of wood and we would move it from where it was dumped on the driveway to the back of the yard and stack it along the property line.  Each run started with a steep up-hill slope gaining about 4 feet of elevation over a ten foot span and then leveled off for about 30 feet and then the last 50 feet or so gained another 3 feet of elevation finishing such that you had to turn the wheelbarrow 90 degrees to park on the flat parallel to the pile (another off-axis slope).  This was hard.  You had to get a good running start for the first hill and then save enough strength for the long haul and still avoid bumps.  I hated taking multiple trips.  LONG before there was any term called “gamification” I would challenge myself with how much I could stack in the wheelbarrow without it all falling out.  Heaven forbid a piece fell out the front.  It was hard to recover from the bump which almost always forced the wheelbarrow to tip over, losing everything.  It was a risk.  You would lose all your gains and waste a ton of time.  But stacking too little meant that each run plus the walk back, kills time.  If I wanted to get back on the Commodore 64 (yes I am THAT old), I had to finish the wood.  Time was important.

Yes I know these things seem silly.  And yes later we got the tractor and trailer and so things got a lot easier.  But then I learned other skills, like backing up a trailer.  Yes I know this wasn’t exactly ‘farm living’ and I had it pretty easy in comparison to families that required real work on a daily basis.  But somehow this 2 wheel thing just makes me think back on all the things I learned in little subtle ways by arguing with that damn 1 wheeler.  I’ve ranted about this before, that as life gets simpler, skills aren’t being replaced with other challenges.  My tractor example is perfect to illustrate this.  Kids can barely drive a standard transmission today, never mind backing a trailer into a driveway.

When Haley and the crew are at the barn, they certainly do their fair share of hard work.  Mucking stalls is not exactly fun, and yes I have seen them gamify the experience…by running up and down the muck pile…yuck.  But I also watch as they load the wheelbarrow (missing 20% of each pitchfork throw, don’t get me started) and then push it over to the pile.  They will lift and tip the wheelbarrow to dump, and as it is perfectly balanced in the air, on two wheels, reach into their pockets, pull out their cell phones…and post on Instagram/FB/Snapchat.  Is that the new “skill”?

Yesterday Megan and I were able to attend an end-of-year school ceremony where Haley received an academic award for having the third highest aggregate grade on her team.  A team is 4 classes or about 90 students.

The funny part is that 3 years ago we sat in the same room and Taylor got the exact same award.  I leaned over to Megan and said, “She got third and does no work, imagine if she tried.”  Megan laughed and said “She’s just like you were.”

It’s true.  I was an awful student.  I was smart but I never did any real work.  When I understood a subject, I did well.  If a subject required lots of assignments and homework, I didn’t do as well.  In primary school, I was a classic “B” student.  I like to say that I was top 10%, but I have to rely on rounding as I graduated 33 of 329 in high school.  It wasn’t until college when I was writing very large checks for tuition, that I started doing well.

Megan was at the top of our class and was always diligent about doing her homework and studying.  Taylor is just like her.

Both girls continue to impress me.  Haley’s ability to retain facts and images is just incredible.  She is able to grasp things very quickly and retain them.  She is writing a novel and I have to admit that I am hoping she finishes it this summer.  It is both interesting, and I am learning a lot about horses.

Taylor has an incredible work ethic.  Her ability to focus (outside of text messages) on homework, study regularly and perform on exams is admirable.  I really wish I had some of that ability to focus on things I don’t want to do, because I know it’s the right thing to do.

Not much point to this blog post.  I just found the day and the continuity in my kids to be fascinating in light of how different they are.  As they get older and I see them becoming more like ‘real people’ it is fun to evaluate their personalities and note their skills in the context of admiration, and not just in a parent’s state of wonder.