Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm

The #1 measure of sucess for an exchange standard is how many transactions per second take place via that standard. This is of course a pain in the neck for an emerging standard which since for a long period that number is zero.

Advocates of a standard will substitute other metrics to both create the impression of success, but also to measure the precursors of sucess. They might report how many users have could transact if they wanted to, i.e. how many have the ablity to send/recieve a fax. Or they might report that certain large vendors have indicated they will adopt, as Microsoft does or doesn’t intent to support SVG. But, these measures aren’t the #1 measure and until you have the #1 measure the standard’s success remains a risky proposition.

Here’s a nice example of something picking up real momenteum by that measure.

“a brand new weblog is created every 11 seconds. We’re also seeing about 100,000 weblogs update every day as well, which means that on average, a weblog is updated every 0.86 seconds.”

    - Technorati

Here is a nice enumeration of the big hits in
managerial enthusiasms over the last century. This list is lifted from
“Facing up to Management Faddism“

Early theories
Scientific Management	1900 - 1930	Process; one way to do things, efficency.
Administrative Management	1930s	division of labor functions, hierarchy.
Human Social Factors	1940s	Workers’ social needs are important for optimal motivation and productivity.
Beginning of True Faddism
Theory X and Theory Y	1950s	Authoritarian versus participatory management, motivation.
Leadership	1950s	Criticality of leader as pivotal to firm’s success of failure, traits could be identified.
Strategic Planning	1950s - 1960s	Plan, control, external environment critical.
Management by Objectives	1965	Individual Goals related to company goals.
Portfolio Management	1973	Boston Consulting Group; matrix of business products, cash cows, stars, dogs, and the like.
Matrix Management	1970s	Restructure reporting relationships to eliminate functional structures.
Quality Circles	1970s - 1980s	Monitor, workplace improvement.
Total Quality Manaement	1980s - 1990s	Customer focus, efficency, processes, quality.
Empowerment, Benchmarking, Reengineering	1990s	process, start-over, structure
Team-Based Work, Self-Managed-Teams	1980s - 1990s
Downsizing	1990s	Layoffs, called restructuring for efficency.
Learning in organizations	1990s	constant learning, how organizations learn new ways of doing things, share learning
Leadership	1980s - 1990s	Traits, charisma capable of being learned, individual pivotal to survival
Entrepreneurship	1990s	Start-ups, e-commerce

They also enumerate a handful of functions that a fad plays for those involved in it. It’s
interesting to contrast this with the list of drivers that give rise to standards, or the
the list of features of a distructive cult.

• Provide Identity to an Organization
• Serve to legitimate a firm, as firms tend to model each other’s behavior.
• Fads give managers, particularly those of short tenure, a tool to demonstrate activity.
• Provide a way for careers to advance and positions institutionalized.
• Create organizational culture (stories, scripts, shared understanding).
• Socialization - the fad’s rituals encourage work related social interaction.
• Legitimize decisions - responsiblity for the tough choices can be shared with the fad.

This Onion article seems likely to break all records for total incomming links.

…it’s like porn to her.

Affecting story, touching, common. Read it. Note: some people in the comments would rather not know. Shame.

I subscribe to the misleadingly named booksfree.com, I enjoy it. They raised my monthly price; so no link for them. I assume they notified me but my spam filters ate the message. I’m sure some vile marketing dudes will start a consultancy to helps firms craft their “service improvement” notices so they are likely to never reach the customers.

Some briliant twit at Belkin decided they could upgrade their home routers to occationally feed you advertisments. Just how vile is that!

I got a reciept at the gas pump yesterday that had two blank lines on it. One said “odometer reading” the other said “gas mileage.” The mind boggles. I assume the idea is that my car and the pump will cooperate and get those two lines filled in. You gotta start somewhere, so first they have changed the pumps and now they are waiting for the cars to get with the program.

One of my gas stations insists on advertising to me as I fill up. Presumably pretty soon they will customize the ad based on my credit card profile.

I enjoy suggesting big marketing ideas to small or non-commercial operators. My barber seemed entirely unenthusiastic about my plan for him to offer a loyality card, do better discrimitory pricing, while cross selling services with the post office. I’m still holding out hope though that the library will adopt my suggestion. My account should show how much money I’ve saved so far compaired to buying those books.

In the 19th and 20th century agricultural productivity exploded and farm jobs evaporated. The labor displaced moved into the cities. There is always more stuff to do, so in time they generally found new work. Often in manufacturing. I read today that worldwide manufacturing jobs are disappearing; down 11% in the US, but more interestingly down 20+% in China. Improving productivity again. One wonders what work people will find to do next. My fear is they will all get to work on clever marketing ideas like the ones above.