A Love for Amazon

Amazon has cracked the code on keeping customers.

A coworker used to work at Amazon for four years. He told me that Jeff Bezos believed there was nothing more expensive than losing a customer. Hence, the reason why returns are so easy with Amazon, even though Amazon may eat those costs in the short term. Last night was no exception.

AWS Hack

In 2014, my Amazon Web Services account was hacked. Ten days into the month, I noticed that my bill was already a thousand times larger than my typical bill. Amazon recognized the hack and gave me amnesty for the entire bill. 

Spreading the Profits

Amazon had their first profitable quarter in the fourth quarter of 2001 when they earned $5 million in profit on revenues of over $1 billion.¹ Bezos wanted to share this profit with customers.

Tech companies typically don't pay dividends to investors. Even today, Amazon doesn't pay a dividend. But sharing profits with customers is very unusual. In this case, the profit shared with each customer amounted to less than $1/customer. As insignificant as that sounds, Bezos found a way to make it meaningful.

The price of a USPS First Class postage stamp was increasing in January 2002 from 34¢ to 37¢. Back then, "snail mail" was much more popular than today; not everyone had an e-mail account. Each price increase in postage was a challenge before April 2007 when the post office introduced the Forever Stamp. Before the Forever Stamp, a person had to buy 1¢ stamps to add to postage. This was a hassle and many people, including myself, would, for example, simply put two 34¢ stamps on a letter instead of a 34¢ stamp plus three 1¢ stamps. It seems like a waste of money but our personal time, to purchase additional 1¢ stamps, is worth something to each of us.

Bezos's solution was elegant. He recognized this inconvenience of needing to buy 1¢ stamps, so he had Amazon send a bunch of 1¢ stamps to their customers. I remember thinking how brilliant this was when I received them.

Last Night

Two days ago, I received my shingles #2 and pneumonia vaccines. The shingles second vaccine is the same as the first one, which I received on its own, without much discomfort. But, yesterday, I felt sick and I feared Covid because, on New Year's Day, I had breakfast with someone who tested positive for Covid, the next day – the same day I received my vaccines.

I took my temperature yesterday morning and it was fine – no fever. In the evening, when I took it, my thermometer was displaying a fever of 100.7°F. But the display was blinking which meant the battery was too low for a reliable reading. I looked on Amazon for a replacement battery. But there was no practical option that would arrive in time plus I couldn't buy a single battery which would be a waste.

Instead, I ordered a new thermometer around 6 PM and I paid an extra $3 so it would be delivered the next morning between 4AM and 8 AM. However, to my surprise, Amazon delivered it about an hour later. I took my temperature with the new thermometer and all was well – no fever. 

It's unusual for Amazon to move up a delivery by one day. I'm speculating that they know, if someone is paying extra for a faster delivery, for a medical item, that it's urgently needed. So, it seems they were able to expedite my delivery to give me peace of mind. I greatly appreciate that and it pays to live very close to downtown San Diego.

Entrepreneur Syndrome

Over the past 25 years, I’ve personally noticed something that I now call entrepreneur syndrome.

In a nutshell, these are wannabe entrepreneurs (nearly always solopreneurs) who spend all of their time going through the motions of entrepreneurship without ever generating revenue by bringing a product or service to market. 

Instead of selling, entrepreneur syndrome sufferers end up being very "busy" working on things they like doing and telling people about it, especially through social media. They have the title of CEO on one or more “companies” with no employees, no marketing plan, and certainly no revenue. They love to work from wherever they want, like coffee shops, never earning a single cent. Their focus is on building, not boosting (marketing), or buying (selling).

In the end, what they're doing is OK, but what they're really doing is called a hobby, not a business.

Backups and Versioning

Revert To keeps multiple versions of your iWork files
with a UI similar to Time Machine.

Steve Jobs first demonstrated Time Machine about a dozen years ago. It's a simple backup feature built into macOS that takes hourly backup snapshots of files on your computer, when they change. This makes its trivial to recover a file your deleted or overwrote. The biggest challenge is enabling it with an external hard drive (which isn't much of a challenge at all).

Even Better

But, what if you didn't setup Time Machine? No worries, since backing up work is such a valuable feature Apple has incorporated versioning into their iWork suite of applications for word processing (Pages), presentations (Keynote), and spreadsheets (Numbers). At any given time, you can step back to earlier document versions in iWork; no setup required (screen shot, above).

I wish other major software suites, like those from Adobe or Microsoft, would implement this simple feature.

To step back to an earlier version of your iWork file, simply go to File –> Revert To and, voilà, your previous versions are there. This out-of-the-box feature, coupled with Time Machine, will solve nearly all of your common backup needs. I say nearly because all of your backups will still be local to your computer and network. For the most mission critical redundancy, I recommend a 3-2-1 backup policy: Three backups on at least two different media, with one backup located offsite (i.e. Amazon S3 or Glacier). 

Reverse Planning

Reverse planning, also known as backward planning, is a simple concept that took me a long time to learn.

I was raised in a very "casual" family where 90 minutes late, to family gatherings, was considered on time. Sometimes, we'd arrive at Mass after the Gospel (very late into the liturgy). The Marine Corps was less tolerant of tardiness; 15 minutes early was considered on time. In the military, being late is referred to as UA/AWOL – a punishable offense.

I had two key experiences in the Marines that got me focused on time management. Reverse planning is a cinch once you learn it since it requires minimal attention. Simply start with a place you need to be, by a certain time, and work backward.

12:30 PM: Airline flight departs.
12:00 PM: Airplane begins boarding (unless it's Alaska Airlines, they begin boarding 45 mins early).
11:30 AM: Allow 30 minutes to get through security.
11:15 AM: Allow 15 minutes to get your boarding pass and check-in your baggage.
10:55 AM: Give yourself 20 minutes to park and walk into the terminal.
09:10 AM: Drive to the airport. Give yourself an extra 50% for traveling. So, if it typically take 30 minutes to drive to the airport, then give yourself 45 minutes.
09:00 AM: Allow ten minutes to gather your stuff and load it into the car.
8:00 AM: Reveille, reveille! Wake up at 8 AM if it typically takes you 45 – 60 minutes to shower and get dressed. Add an hour or so if you need to pack.

There's nothing difficult about reverse planning other than having the discipline to do it and being honest on your time allowances. I frequently do it, even for trivial events, to keep my skills sharp.

Kitchen Upgrade

I heard someone complaining about their real estate estimates after a $25,000 kitchen upgrade. It seems the homeowner didn't understand pricing.

Let's say that, today, a home is worth exactly $500,000. After tearing out the old kitchen and installing the new one worth $25,000, the home's value does not increase by $25,000. Hence, the home may end up selling for only $515,000, after the upgrade. The reason for this discrepancy is "overlooked" math. After tearing out the old kitchen, the value of the home may have dropped from $500,000 to, say, $490,000. So, in fact, the $25,000 upgrade was added to a $490,000 home since the previous kitchen, that was demolished, still had a value of $10,000. That's how real values are calculated.

The Entrepreneur's Pitch: Keep it Tidy

Keep your pitch tidy.

I've mentored many entrepreneurs over the years – they usually come from a "maker" background in that they make things. Typically, they make physical products or they are software engineers. Most of them are in the midst of their careers as individual contributors. They usually work quietly at their desks without much interaction with others. While this is great for their productivity, it doesn't give them the soft people skills to communicate clearly when interacting with other people.

I've listened to some entrepreneurs take 15 or 30 minutes to explain to me what their product does. That's 60 times too long. For a conversation opener, it should take a couple sentences to tell someone what your company or product does. Longer than that and people lose interest and they're not going to want to work with you.

If you don't know how to do this then practice. Start off with telling the listener if your "thing" is a product or service. "We manufacture an LED light that's an alarm clock for your nightstand which is more effective at waking you up compared to an alarm clock."

That single sentence is how I'd describe TheUplight. Most importantly, it leads with the benefits, not the features. From that sentence, the listener can follow up with their own questions, i.e., "Why is it more effective?" which the entrepreneur behind The UpLights responds with, "The UpLight gently prepares your body for waking up to reduce morning stress and increase productivity throughout the day."

The problem with listing a litany of features is that customers then have to figure out how those features would be of benefit. I know this sounds simple, but it can be very difficult to focus on what's marketable. For example, "it's patented" isn't marketable. While that tidbit is marketable to venture capitalists, it's not a buying decision factor for consumers. I don't care if I buy a patented or patent pending product. Big whoop. So, knowing your audience is important, too. But, regardless of your audience, make your point succinctly. There's a lot of noise out there.

Here's one of the best example I know of about succinct marketing, "1,000 Songs in your Pocket."

Hail Cricket, Farewell AT&T

AT&T LTE Bandwidth

I've used AT&T Wireless service since the first iPhone was released, exactly ten years ago, yesterday. AT&T offered unlimited data and then, a couple years later, they instituted limited data plans. I stayed with AT&T since they grandfathered me in with their unlimited data plan. Even today, I still had an unlimited data plan with AT&T, but they'd throttle it at a certain point. The data would still come through, but at a much slower rate.

However, data was never a big selling point for me. The real issue for me was monthly cost. Phone companies utilize a price elasticity business model, which means they figure out how to charge the most they can to maximize their profits. If they charge too little, they leave money on the table. If they charge too much, then customers will switch to another company. 

Cricket LTE Bandwidth

Generally, cutting edge smart phones cost $500 – $1,000 or more. To defray these costs, the wireless carriers will subsidize the price of the phone by having their customers sign a two-year wireless service contract. This works well since many people do not frequently hop from wireless carrier to wireless carrier. But I like the idea of not being committed to a single carrier. So, I typically purchase an unlocked phone. Purchasing an unlocked phone means I had no service contract commitment, plus I can insert any companies' or countries' SIM card.

About two years ago, my AT&T bill was a very ridiculous $150/month. I never used up my minutes so I dropped my plan down to a moderately ridiculous $95/month which kept creeping up until it recently hit $111/month due to inflation. That's when a couple friends told me about Cricket Wireless which is now owned by AT&T. Cricket utilizes nearly all of AT&T's cell towers meaning that I'll have the same level of coverage. But they key selling point of Cricket is that it costs way less than AT&T.

Switching

So, today, I made the switch from AT&T to Cricket. It took less than an hour for me to go to the local Cricket store and return home with my phone number and service ported.

My monthly bill dropped from $111.42, with AT&T, to $35 with Cricket. But there are some slight differences.

Cricket Cons

1. AT&T LTE down stream bandwidth clocked in at 13.4 Mbps. Cricket advertises that their LTE tops out at 8 Mbps. In practice, I'm seeing about 7.8 Mbps download with Cricket which is very respectable.

2. No more unlimited data. I now pay Cricket a total of $35/month for 4 GB of data. I looked at my AT&T bills from the past year and I was topping out at less than 3 GB of data/month.

Cricket Pros

1. Unlimited voice minutes. (I was paying AT&T $40/month for 450 minutes, with unused minutes rolling over.) Most of my talking is over WiFi since I use either FaceTime or Facebook Messenger, so voice minutes was never a big selling point for me, but I do like that I now have unlimited talk minutes.

2. Unlimited texting. (I was paying AT&T $20/month for unlimited SMS/MMS text messaging; with Cricket, that's all rolled into the $35/month plan.)

3. Cricket utilizes nearly all of AT&T's cell towers, so I should see no connectivity differences.

Today, I ended up paying about $75 to Cricket, out the door, for the $35/month plan due to one-time activation charges. Let's see where it goes from here.

Future-proofing Naïveté

How naive we were, ten years ago, to think that URL shorteners needed to withstand the apocalypse. Even back then, we called it future-proofing. Today, clicking on a ten year old link typically yields a four-oh-four unless you're visiting the website of an Internet power-player with a keen interest in archival like the NYT or Wikipedia 

While shortened links may last a decade or longer, web pages have a much shorter shelf life. As technology quickly changes, so do server-side URL naming schemes that break links. Today's working links will eventually become tomorrow's orphaned links.

404 Solution

I saw a fix to this problem when working at a corporate conglomerate. Every morning, someone analyzed a list of all the 404s from the past day and then did their best to fix the "referrer." Usually that was easiest done by fixing the source, if it was an internal brand webpage. If the broken link was on an important, external website then we set up a web page, where the 404 was landing, to redirect the user to the correct destination. Fix the problem at the source, and when you can't then fix the symptoms rather than shifting the blame.

In The Future

Soon, it'll be common for digital anthropologists to piece together the Internet puzzle, from days long gone, to document the digital history of a culture. No different than a traditional anthropologist, except dealing with electrons instead of atoms.

The web is what it is, it is us who need to adapt our thinking to be inline with online. 

Prime Now, Amazon Flex (One way to spend money. One way to make money.)

Signed, sealed, and delivered.

A friend told me that she recently started driving for Amazon Flex which is like Uber for Amazon package delivery. As a contract driver, she simply drives to her local Amazon warehouse and loads up her car. She scans each package, using the Amazon Flex app, as she places it in her car and the app determines the optimal driving route. Drivers have three hours to finish their delivers and return with any undelivered items.

As I looked into Amazon Flex, I noticed that Amazon Prime Now delivers groceries, similar to Amazon Fresh. I gave it a try since Prime Now offered free delivery for orders over $20 (plus an additional $5 tip).

I started putting items into my shopping cart, yesterday afternoon. When I went to resume shopping, this afternoon, I noticed that a couple items were no longer available which was clearly displayed. After adding a few more items to my cart, I checked out at 1:30 PM with a 2 PM – 4 PM free delivery window. I had the option, for $7.99, for delivery within the hour.

Ding Dong

Cooler bag for dairy.

About 75 minutes after I placed my order, which was 15 minutes before arriving, I received a text message that Ryan was on his way, with a link to track him that updated in near real-time. I went out to meet him when I saw that he had arrived. As he walked toward me I said, "You're Ryan, from Amazon, right?"

"Yes... this was an easy delivery," said Ryan.

"Do you drive for Amazon Flex?" I asked, catching him off guard.

"Um, uh, yeah... do you know me, personally?"

He was a bit baffled as I explained that I did not know him but I understood how Amazon Flex worked. Best part is that my delivery was exactly what I ordered, plus the dairy was in a cooler bag with ice.

When to Bring Software Development In-house

A friend taking an HR course contacted me, this evening, to ask me for my input into her homework assignment. The scenario was that you, the student, work in the HR department at a 75 person company that delivers meals to people. The first version of the mobile app, used for scheduling deliveries, has been outsourced and the CEO believes it's taking too much time and money to be developed. The CEO is considering hiring software and QA engineers to bring development in-house and wants your input.

This a good scenario for the real world and I was happy to share my thoughts. My first question was asking if the company considers itself a technology company. Corporations like Apple and Amazon are clearly high tech companies, so it's a no brainer for them to develop their own software. On the other end of the spectrum would be companies who use custom IT systems, but are not tech companies. For example, Wyndham, where I worked about five years ago, outsourced development of their e-commerce websites and backend reservation systems. Asking a company to determine how they self-identify is a good first step.

Another thing to consider is how often will the software be updated. Modern, high tech companies release new versions of their software weekly or monthly. Facebook is a perfect example of a 21st century company that treats development as an ongoing process, instead of an event, by releasing new software three times each day.

These considerations are simply a starting point for the discussion. If the decision is made to bring development in-house then there are questions about conducting interviews, how to dress, and hearing about candidates real-world experiences.

A Busy Day at the Office

What does a busy day look like?
Ten years ago it was reading and writing e-mails. Today, it's bouncing between Slack, Trello, Basecamp, and Facebook.

More tools seems more complicated, but it actually allows for better filtering of information while establishing well defined boundaries. 

I recently started working as the CTO at It's Borrowed, which is like Airbnb for your stuff. Why not earn money renting out that camping equipment, golf clubs, power tools, or wheel chair that's sitting around in your garage? Looking to borrow a ladder or ice chest? Check the It's Borrowed app.

Since It's Borrowed is a small team of five, I'm also the product manager for our API servers and mobile apps. When I last worked in this capacity at Wyndham we only used e-mail and SharePoint, which was marginal. What made it worse, at Wyndham, was that I had to manually sort and archive e-mails in Outlook, my key communications tool. Otherwise, when my e-mail storage grew to more than about 4 GB, Outlook would stop working reliably. Allow me to digress by pointing out that Outlook's horribly engineered to stuff every single e-mail and attachment into a single file which grows and grows until it eventually collapses in an unpredictable way. Compare that to macOS which organizes your e-mail boxes into an elegant hierarchy of folders; each e-mail (body and attachment), is then stored as a separate file. File systems are much better at managing (CRUD) ten-million 1K sized files than two 5GB sized files.

Workflow Filters

Today's workflow, with Basecamp, Slack, Trello, etc., simplifies my life by managing filters. A ding of an incoming e-mail is an interruption; and a message could be from my manager or my mother, each having a unique sense of urgency and importance.

Here's my workflow when using Slack, Trello, and Basecamp...

Basecamp
When I meet with the business (marketing), we put high level tasks into Basecamp such as "Create an e-commerce shopping cart so people can buy our stuff." Think of the tasks in Basecamp as the business's vision – a high level goal.

Trello
Since I'm the two-way bridge between the business and engineering, I take the vision of the business and break it down into a single engineering task that can fit into a Sprint since we're closely following Agile/Scrum. In Trello, our tech lead has organized boards for each Sprint and the backlog. Each column has a card which is akin to an electronic Post-it note. Inside each Sprint board, we have columns such as Blocked, To Do, In Progress, Review, Done, etc. The blocked column are impediments that I take for action, while the tech lead focuses on the other columns.

Each Sprint begins with the engineers reviewing the backlog along with the CEO and me. The engineers get to pick, from our prioritized list, each task (card) they'll do in the upcoming Sprint. Only the engineer picking the task can assign a weight to a task – a weight, meaning how long it'll take a task to be completed. That part is sometimes a hard pill for management to swallow. But, over time, as engineering delivers on all they promise, management will gain confidence even though they can't interrupt a Sprint with new requirements.

Slack
I think of Slack as Twitter on steroids, across different teams and channels. The key Slack teams are the ones that I have with the engineering department and each individual engineer. Since the engineers fall under the tech lead, I rarely communicate directly with an engineer so as to not interrupt them. This is harder than is sounds when the CEO asks me a pressing question which I could simply have answered by interrupting an engineer. A couple of our channels are automated and tied in to third party services so, at any time, I can see code check-ins or deployments to production in real-time.

The beauty of slack is I can see the history of a channel conversation without having to search through e-mail looking for specific threads.

Discipline is key. As long as the team has the motivation to follow this format then the information will quickly and effectively flow, increasing productivity. It really does work well.

Presidential Elections and the Press

In the 2000 Presidential Elections, the press reported results in real-time which, some say, may have effected the outcome since people in the western US, AL, and HI may have skipped voting, thinking it was a forgone conclusion.

During the next major Presidential Election, in 2008, it wasn’t a close race (365 [Obama] to 173 [McCain] electoral votes), but none of the major networks called the race until 11 PM ET (8 PM PT), at the exact minute when the polls closed everywhere but Alaska.

I wonder how they'll play it, tonight?

Freedom of the Press Means Capitalism 

Keep in mind that, while freedom of the press is critical, these news companies are for-profit businesses that need to make money. They make money by making news. By making more news, more people tune in. To make more people tune in there needs to be suspense and excitement. A close Presidential Election does exactly that.

Now take a look at the news cycle leading up to today's election. Have you ever noticed that the Presidential debates are hosted by journalists? On the surface, that makes sense since they should be able to interview people without bias. Of course, they do their best – in lines with their employer's desires – to be unbiased. But there are two points where this isn't the case. The first, and most obvious, is the fact we all have slants. I've done video and written journalism and I've seen how simple it is to have a story focus on what I'm most interested in. At best, it's unintentional bias, at worst, it's misleading (which we see, every single day, in politics). One can speak the truth with the intention to deceive.

Second, and this isn't obvious, is there are subtle cues in the news to make it more dramatic. A slow motion scene of a recently deceased Challenger crew; or a studio audience at a Presidential debate.  Between keeping your eye on the news crawler at the bottom of the screen, along with the transition sound effects and breaking news graphics, you are forced to pay attention.

Debate this Debate Idea

Would not the debates be more effective at informing citizens if there was no clapping, cheering, or booing? Of course, the audience is told by the moderators to refrain from making any noise, but that doesn't work. What also doesn't work is telling the candidates not to interrupt each other. The latter issue could be solved by either switching off the mic of the candidate who doesn't have the floor, or giving that candidate the option of overriding the switched off mic while incurring a time penalty.

Television media has a very good idea about how their reporting will affect their viewers. Repetitively showing dramatic events will keep people on edge which keeps them tuning in.

One way I've serendipitously discovered to avoid the news drama is simply by not watching live TV news. But, I am not disciplined enough to do this on my own; instead, years ago, I cut my cable service to nothing but Internet.

Startup Fundraising Idea

I heard an interesting startup fundraising idea from a well know VC. He made the point that he always takes at least 20% of a company. This has led to long discussions with entrepreneurs who, at times, had fought hard for the difference between 19% and 21%. He highlighted that most CEOs, looking to raise funds frequently show up at his door with two other cofounders, each with 33% of the company. His point: You've already given away two-thirds of your company and now you're fighting me over a 2% difference. Instead, consider keeping 100% and then give 10% to the first few people you hire for key positions. They might not technically be cofounders, but they're getting an excellent deal.

Beautiful Danger

Yesterday's enthusiastic delegation from China

Yesterday, I gave a speaking engagement called The Apple Way. I usually give it in Cupertino to business people from China. But yesterday's group was close to 50 people, so I used another venue about 12 minutes from the Infinite Loop campus in San Jose. The core of the two hour presentation is about what makes Apple unique when it comes to design and marketing. 

My plan was to fly up on Wednesday, give the talk on Thursday morning, have lunch at Apple with a buddy, and then fly home Thursday afternoon. Everything worked out, except my flight back. The weather turned bad by the time I reached the southern part of California's Central Valley and I had to divert to Meadows Airport in Bakersfield. It was cloudy and raining and I was flying a few thousand feet above the freezing level. My small plane doesn't have ice protection like the big boys. I could see ice building up on my wing after flying through the clouds, which can quickly become dangerous. As ice builds up, it changes the shape of the airfoil and compromises the wing's aerodynamic lift.

At 11,000', the temperate was well below freezing

Air traffic control was very helpful in suggesting that I land at Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield since that airport had a precision approach. A precision approach guides a pilot into an airport when the runway can't be seen until only a couple hundred feet above the ground. This is accomplished by sending out a radio beacon that keeps the plane lined up with the runway and on the proper glide slope. This was the first time I've ever diverted, overnight, and it worked out nicely.

Once I landed, I needed to find a place to stay for the night. Airbnb to the rescue with a $36 room. But the weather's still too bad, today, so it looks like I'll be spending another night in Bakersfield.

To add to the inconvenience, I left my iPhone charging cable in the presentation classroom. Also, there are no restaurants within walking distance of my Airbnb. So, it was off to Walmart for food and a cable. The walk to Walmart was nice, but it started raining while I shopped. So, I "Lyfted" back to my Airbnb.

Hopefully, I'll fly out tomorrow. It's always something. But, better safe than sorry. In the mean time, I keep watching this beautiful danger: http://adjix.com/flying.mov

When is it OK to Lie?

A version of this article was originally published in the Marine Corps Gazette in 2006.

Summary: It's OK to lie and be deceptive.... under certain circumstances.

Purpose: The intent of this post is to suggest a common ethical standard for managers to set for their direct reports.


What exactly is a lie, and when is it OK to tell one? All leaders should know that we are watched by our subordinates in everything we say and do. One dishonest statement from our lips and all who hear it will either question our fidelity in the future or, even worse, follow our example.

Definitions

Good definitions make for clear ideas. We often speak of honesty and integrity, but what do those words mean? Here are some clear definitions with concise examples.

Honesty

Honesty deals with the past. It means making your words fit reality, or specifically, to speak the truth about the past. For example, George Washington’s father asks him, “George, did you cut down that cherry tree?”

George replies, “Father, I cannot tell a lie. Yes, I cut down that cherry tree.”

In this example, borrowed from fable, George Washington’s words fit reality; therefore, his response was an honest one.

Integrity

Integrity deals with the future. It means making reality fit your words. Simply put, it means to do what you say you are going to do. For example, George Washington’s father tells George, “George, as part of your chores, today, I want you to cut down that cherry tree.”

George replies, “Yes, father, I shall cut down that cherry tree.”

At the end of the day, if George has cut down the tree then he had the integrity to make it happen. In other words, he got results, or as we used to say in the military, mission accomplished. Another way to think of integrity is the ability to do what you are supposed to do.

What is a Lie?

Poor planning can put people in a situation where they may end up doing something unethical to fix a problem. A lie is the intention to deceive or not let the whole truth be known. But, there’s more to it than that.

Explicitly stating the following definition of unethical behavior to your direct reports will go a long way to setting a standard for office business ethics.

Unethical behavior is:
– Committing or soliciting an illegal act.
– An intention to deceive or not let the whole truth be known.

The following are four exceptions where deception would be OK.

– Warfare. Sun Tzu wrote, “All warfare is based on deception.” We’re talking about bona fide warfare between a country and its enemy, not between you and your next door neighbor. This deception is aimed directly at the enemy, not at a friendly intermediary.

– Entertainment. A deception for entertainment purposes means all involved are aware of the deception. For example, a quarterback fakes a handoff and drops back to pass; a magician performing a trick; you tell a joke, “Your shoelaces are untied.”

– Personal or professional business.
• Personal: A social expectation of privacy that does not violate an organization’s policies or law. For example, you should not feel compelled to answer questions such as, what is your net worth, or whom did you vote for in the last election?
• Professional: The law sometimes allows deception, such as a police detective lying to a criminal in order to collect information, or a spy with a cover story, or as is the case with classified information, not revealing any knowledge of the information to unqualified parties.

– Social lie. A social lie is an untruthful statement to protect the feelings of others and from which the lying party gains no benefit. For example, the CEO of your company invites you and your spouse over for dinner. During dessert you whisper to your spouse that the coffee tastes like turpentine. A minute later, the CEO’s spouse asks you, “How do you like my coffee?” It’s perfectly acceptable to answer, “Fine.” However, in a different situation, it is not OK to lie to your spouse, citing the personal or social exceptions above, for reasons such as “she wouldn’t understand” or “it would hurt her feelings if she knew the truth” about something you did.

When you lie on paper, such as backdating a document to deceive inspectors, it is called fraud. But, backdating, say a promotion, which is done openly, is not unethical.

Sometimes, when people get into trouble, they will speak the truth with the intention to deceive. This technique usually involves some sort of distraction to lead the audience down the wrong path. Once again, there is an intention to deceive that does not meet one of the four exceptions above, especially since the liar’s sole purpose is to save his or her hide.

These examples will not solve every ethical dilemma. There are ethical questions – such as is abortion OK under certain circumstances, or should the government enforce capital punishment – that are beyond the scope of this blog post. But, these are not issues we face on a daily basis. Rather, the rules above should be good enough for most issues we face at work.

The Right Way to Fire the Wrong Employee

Direct reports should never be blindsided by their performance evaluations, good or bad.

Most companies hire employees "at-will," meaning either the employee or employer may terminate the employment relationship at anytime. However, when an employee isn't carrying his or her weight, the direct manager should try to correct the employee's behavior rather than ignore it.

The best way to fix an employee's behavior is through formal counseling sessions. During these sessions, the shortfalls and expected behavior is explicitly noted. But, these counseling sessions must be constructive and set the employee up for success. You shouldn't only document bad performance, but also good performance, as it happens, for reference during his or hers annual performance review.

Nevertheless, it's not easy to look a person in the eye and tell them they're not cutting it. I first encountered this situation when I was a second lieutenant in the Marines.

The Few. The Proud.

As a new supply officer for an infantry battalion, I worked with a staff sergeant who didn't provide the expected level of customer service. He was my direct report, with other Marines under him, and over the course of a year I counseled him numerous times following each incident of unacceptable behavior. The core of the problem was that he was focused inward, on taking care of our Marines, which is commendable; but he did it at the expense of our mission, which isn't acceptable. I frequently received reports from other staff NCOs and officers telling me what I already knew: he was immature, abrasive, and argumentative. The staff sergeant had an "us against them" attitude. He believed that others in our battalion were abusing our supply section. However, the real issue was a lack of understanding by others, outside of our supply section, about our policies and procedures. Unfortunately, rather than trying to educate others on how the system worked, he would simply reject their requests in a confrontational manner.

Fast forward to a year later. I've been promoted to first lieutenant and he's been promoted to gunnery sergeant and it was time for his annual performance review. Until the late 1990s, written performance reviews, known as fitreps, were grossly inflated to the point that nearly all Marines were rated outstanding or, at the very least, excellent. Anyone who didn't do a good job was usually rated average because it was easier to "damn with faint praise" than rank a Marine below average. A below average performance review officially made the fitrep adverse which required additional paperwork that most Marine officers wanted to avoid. It's human nature to not want to spend a lot of time on people who provide little value.

I discussed this issue with my peer officers when it came time for me to write up my annual review on the gunnery sergeant. We agreed that this Marine deserved an adverse report, but we felt it wasn't worth the extra paperwork. However, I couldn't bring myself to file the report as average. So, I filed it as an unsatisfactory fitrep, known as a "double signer" since it had to be signed twice. One signature for acknowledging the overall report, and the other signature to explicitly acknowledge that it was an adverse report. It wasn't that we hadn't discussed this possibility in the past, rather, he simply didn't think I would go through with it.

During this annual performance review I showed him my documentation of the issues I had discussed with him, during the previous year. The documentation included a mock fitrep I had drafted up on him a few months earlier during a checkpoint counseling session. During that checkpoint session, I presented the below average mock fitrep to the gunnery sergeant and said, "If I had to file a fitrep on you, today, this is how it would be." We talked about it in detail, but, in the end, he didn't heed my guidance and he disposed of my notional fitrep.

The other officers in the battalion deeply respected my decision to issue an adverse fitrep, including my commanding officer who was the reviewing officer – my CO fully agreed with my assessment.

The outcome to this process was complicated, as I knew it would be, since we were deployed to the Persian Gulf. "Firing" him meant he would have to continue to work under me, since finding a replacement wasn't practical. Needless to say, it was awkward and uncomfortable to continue working together. And, since we never saw eye to eye on customer service, not much changed. It's one thing to fire someone and have them be gone; it's another thing to have to continue to work together on a daily basis.

Something I liked about the Marine Corps, that is lacking in the corporate world, are candid evaluations when someone's not performing well. I've seen civilian managers, who had a problem with a direct report, complain about it to most everyone else in the office other than the employee with the issue. This behavior, on the manager's part is, at best, complaining and at worst, it's disingenuous leadership.

For me, this was a learn-as-you-go process and there's no better teacher than experience. More importantly, this experience has paid dividends, many years later, by teaching me to empathetically deal with problem people head on in order to maintain a responsibility to the long term.

How Not to Get Rich

It's almost needless to say that business pitches like "Get Rich Now!" or "Grow Your Business Revenue by 10x!" or "Earn $90,000 Working From Home!" should be avoided. It's not that these businesses don't want you to succeed, rather it's that their priority is to get you to buy their system or program, at any cost.

Then

Twenty years ago, I was browsing magazines at my local Borders bookstore. A forty-something-year-old man approached me and said, "I can tell, by the magazines you're looking at, that you're an interesting person." Flattery will get you everywhere. After a couple minutes of chit-chat he told me that he trusted me enough to give me a cassette tape with some business opportunities. It only cost me my phone number. I listened to his tape. It was a recording of a 15 minute group presentation about getting rich, living your dreams, having enough money, etc. As I listened, I kept wanting to know more. Specifically, how do I do it? How do I get rich? Then I realized what it was. When he inevitably called me, I asked, "How is this different than Amway?"

"We are Amway," he exclaimed.

Thanks, but no thanks. One of many problems with Amway is that they treat every person as if they can be turned into a hard-sell sales person. That's like assuming we can make every person a software engineer. To each their own. Engineers and sales people are wired differently.

Now

This past week, I attended a free presentation with headlines similar to those I mentioned above. I knew exactly what to expect, and reality was inline with my expectations. These pitches follow the tried and true "amway-ish" techniques. "Would you like to earn an extra $2,000/month?" Of course you would. Who wouldn't?

Here are the simple tell-tale signs:
1. Pump the benefits.
2. Hide the features.
3. Offer a single solution: Buy my money making system.

You'll see the same routine over and over again. These companies will push their benefits hard, with details, without explaining a single, actionable feature other than buying their system. The tripwire is something like, "I charge $500/hour, but I'll give you a free hour to see if you can be accepted into my sales program." Adding scarcity is another key selling point.

Generally, the benefits of their system will be explained, in detail. "I used to do this, but now I do this." This is an excellent story telling technique I learned from Joyce Maynard. "I used to work hard for six months to earn $2,400. Now, I only need to work for six days to earn $24,000. And my program can show you how to do it." While the benefits are plentiful, the features are scarce. The "How is it done?" details are no where to be found during the initial pitch. And, when you hear it, it's almost always a let down.

My guard was down when I was in Borders, flipping through magazines. And cheap sales talk is designed to catch the attention of the unguarded. And, as I mentioned, you'll hear little to no details on the features of the system. In other words, "What do I need to do to achieve success?" or "How does it work?" is missing. That requires signing up for the program.

So, why do people continue to fall for it? PT Barnum is credited with answering that question.

The Apple Way of Design and Marketing

1 Infinite Loop: The Mothership

I figured, "Why not toot my own horn?" and brag about my Apple speaking engagements. I'm surprised how well it's been received, probably because it touches on a some key design, marketing, and branding topics.

I've given The Apple Way of Design and Marketing presentation a number of times, mainly to Chinese delegations of business people touring America's tech companies. Having worked at Apple, I forget the allure of how the company looks from beyond Infinite Loop and what makes Apple unique. Like a beautiful photo, things look amazing from the outside, where you wish you could touch the magic, on the inside.

My presentation touches on a variety of topics such as: why the Apple logo used to be upside down, to Apple's sophisticated unifying branding techniques, to simplifying UX and technology processes, along with Apple's brilliant decisions and mistakes.

Twitter Unique

Twitter is the haiku of the new millennium.

But, there is serious discussion to remove the 140 character limit in tweets.

Removing a tweet's 140 character limit is the equivalent of showing up at a haiku conference and telling everyone to stop using 5-7-5 and, instead, to use 7-5-7 since that would generate more content.

If Twitter removes the limit, what will differentiate it from other platforms, such as Tumblr, Medium, Blogger, etc? Twitter has recently removed this limit in their direct messages and I've already felt the negative effect of this decision.

In Corporate America, we detest e-mail because of its unlimited length. But Twitter's loved because it's short and to the point. The beauty of 140 characters is I always finish reading what I've started. ​It keeps everything short and to the point with the option to link to detailed content.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the benefits of the 140 character limit in direct messages (DMs). Recently, I had a customer service issue I addressed through DMing. My DM was not read, in detail since it was more than 140 characters. The CSR asked me for information I had previously included in my original DM. At 500 characters, my DM, written like a short e-mail, was too long. It's a fast and noisy world out there – clear and concise communications is appreciated more than we realize. 

Unique

Twitter is unique. It's both a micro-blogging platform and a two-way communications medium. One key feature that makes Twitter unique is the mention. What other blogging platform enables this type of communication? Remove the 140 character limit and you have what we already have with Medium, or most any other blog.

We the People of the Internet used to enjoy Posterous.  It was a longer form than Twitter, but simpler than Tumblr. You could even blog on Posterous without setting up an account. Then Twitter acquired Posterous and shut it down (so as to not compete with Twitter). Twitter gave me my Posterous content, but it looked nothing like it did when Posterous was alive and kicking.

My favorite part of Twitter is the absence of an over-lawyered, one-sided, postscript disclaimer: This E-mail and any attachments are private, intended solely for the use of the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient... When has that disclaimer been of any use in an e-mail? Increasing the Twitter character limit beyond 140 characters will definitely add more noise. And I also fear that it would lose its simple two-way dialog via mentions.

Active Writing

For me, the personal beauty of Twitter is it has improved my writing, in a Hemingway sense. I enjoy writing fact, fiction, non-fiction, and narrative. A key to writing well is using the active voice which is direct and to the point, much like Twitter. Many times, I've drafted a "long-winded" tweet, that wouldn't fit into 140 characters, and had to pare it down to a more active voice:

never heard before vs. never heard
tell anyone else vs. tell anyone
a friend of mine vs. a friend
taking care of vs. fixing

But, in the end, Twitter, the corporation, needs to grow, so it must generate more content.

How much better would Twitter be if it expands beyond 140 characters? Fundamental changes like this are bold risks. Perhaps it will payoff. Then again, what is haiku without 5-7-5?

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
–Da Vinci.

PS – Tweetstorms, on the other hand, are a great way to link tweets together to say more.

Corporate Taxes, Private Taxes

I asked a question on Twitter which lead to a fruitful discussion:
What's the difference between corporations doing business overseas to reduce taxes and New Yorkers who drive to NJ to avoid paying taxes on clothing?

The conclusion we reached was that it's about the corporations not doing business where they say they're doing business. It's the equivalent to an American citizen claiming income tax-free Las Vegas as their state of residency while living (domiciled full time) in California.

Of course, it's hard to blame a company or person for paying as little taxes as legally possible, but...