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Archive for Decisions

Get Your Bitsmith Here!

Andy Spero | July 8, 2010 | 0 Comment(s) |

Expert Subject & Information System Knowledge

We occasionally get comments (from folks that don’t know us very well) that our consulting practices seem broad and unrelated. Their (unsolicited) advice is usually that we should “focus.”

In those situations, our verbal response is simply, “thanks.” However, it is quite possible to be an expert in more than one field, especially if those fields are (1) related at a more basic level and (2) support each other.

More importantly, for knowledge workers, cross-field expertise applied to substantial and/or… Read the rest

Inefficient Bonus Schemes

Andy Spero | January 13, 2010 | 0 Comment(s) |

The Outrage Makes Them Larger

Recently, much has been written about “Wall Street” bonuses. Almost all of those articles mention the same two things: (1) populist and government sentiment against the bonuses, and (2) the composition of the bonuses towards long-term, restricted stock and away from cash. At least some of the drive towards a more stock-heavy composition seems to be management’s attempt to appease the government and the public. In this post, we argue that such moves are needlessly costly, which means inefficient and larger than need be.¹… Read the rest

John Bolton is Right

Andy Spero | January 11, 2010 | 0 Comment(s) |

We really like Ambassador John Bolton’s opinion column, Let’s Take Bureaucracy Out of Intelligence, which appears in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, and we like it for the usual reason: his identification of the cause of government’s recent intelligence failure and recommendations are similar to ours.

That’s what we wrote about last week where we blamed failures on overly-centralized and overly-rigid information systems:

As he wrote:… Read the rest

Sad but True: Intelligence Failures & Bad Information Systems

Andy Spero | January 8, 2010 | 0 Comment(s) |

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

—George Santayana

Preface: on Monday, we wrote Human Error (versus Systemic Failure), which supplemented our longer post from Sunday: Intelligence Failures and Bad Information System Design. Much of that ‘Human Error’ post was devoted to mentioning that within organizations, most failures, including human failures, are systemic failures. You can’t blame it on your subordinates!

In the Sunday post, we hypothesized and speculated that bad information system design could be the cause of the recent… Read the rest

Human Error (versus Systemic Failure)

Andy Spero | January 4, 2010 | 0 Comment(s) |

Is There a Difference? Sometimes.

After intermittently pondering the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253, yesterday we published Intelligence Failures and Bad Information System Design.

Per its title, we speculated that bad information system design could have been the cause of the failure. In particular, if the system is overly-centralized and overly-rigid intelligence failures can occur. (It’s a long post, but we think that it is well worth reading.)

Shortly after publishing it last night, we saw today’s (Jan 4) opinion column by The Wall Street Journal’s L.… Read the rest

Intelligence Failures and Bad Information System Design

Andy Spero | January 3, 2010 | 0 Comment(s) |

Update: What timing! Moments after we published this, we saw this column, Intelligence Is a Terrible Thing to Waste, by L. Gordon Crovitz at The Wall Street Journal’s web site. It nicely complements our post and validates a few of our speculations–although we must admit that his column has a catchier title.

In this rather long post we speculate about a possible underlying cause of the “intelligence failure” involving Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of trying to blow-up Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day. Of interest is how he… Read the rest

George “Ebenezer” Will

Andy Spero | December 25, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) |

The Joy of the Season… is Lost on Him

The children are all snug in their beds with visions of Wii’s dancing in their heads, and after four weeks, we finally have the chance to finish a post that we started on Thanksgiving Day, when we read a very silly column by George Will.

His column was entitled, “No gifts, please.” In it he discusses (and approves of) a pamphlet called Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays by Joel Waldfogel. Based upon both Mr. Will’s column and the… Read the rest

Firing Customers (Intelligently)

Andy Spero | November 17, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) |

There was a very interesting article in last Tuesday’s (November 10) edition of The Wall Street Journal. It is entitled, It Just Isn’t Working? Some File for Customer Divorce, and it relates how some small businesses are eliminating problematic customers.

In the paper edition, the article appeared under the “Small Business’ banner, and it now resides under a similarly-labeled section of the web site; however, it applies equally well to businesses of all sizes.

We must admit, though, that the topic is especially poignant for small businesses because… Read the rest

When Duplication of Effort Saves Money

Andy Spero | July 30, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) |

The High Cost of Centralization at the Defense Department

Penny-wisdom and Pound-foolishness

A few weeks ago, we had a conversation with the CEO of a mid-sized organization who asked, “Why would I ever want my divisions to compete with one and other?”

It was posed as a rhetorical question, but when we finished the “short version” of our answer–about 30 minutes later–we were sure that he understood that, indeed, there are times when intra-organizational competition is a good idea–by good we mean value- or wealth- or welfare-maximizing. (Obviously, it’s not… Read the rest

Incentives and the Financial Crisis

Andy Spero | May 29, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) |

There’s an excellent opinion column in yesterday’s (May 28) edition of The Wall Street Journal. It is Crazy Compensation and the Crisis by Alan S. Blinder.

Why do we write that it is “excellent” the dear reader may ask?

Well, for the obvious (and self-serving) reason that we have been writing the same critiques on these pages for much of the past year or so.

Mr. Blinder identifies several problems that created the potential for the crisis and its subsequent realization.¹ We will categorize the problems that he identifies… Read the rest

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