Somewhat off topic here, but I sent the following letter to the LA Times today, in response to yesterday's op-ed faceoff about unions. Items in italics are my own embellishing of the original letter text which was shorter.

The original pieces are at:
Pro Union
Anti Union

After reading the face off over unions on your op-ed page, I remain convinced that unions and their supporters remain stuck with their heads in the sand, unwilling and perhaps unable to confront the fact that the world has changed and that union decline is at least partly due to their failure to change with it.

Professor Shaiken correctly notes that a majority of workers in the US would like to be able to join a union. He then trots out the old tired reasons for why union participation has nonetheless declined. What he fails to grapple with is the reality that many, many of today's workers find no unions that are interested in them!

Had to point out this piece on Minyanville by "Mr. Practical" an unnamed money manager.

...By definition major social change is driven by individuals who go against the crowd.

http://www.minyanville.com/articles/index.php?a=12165

I've already heard lots of nightmares about Vista incompatibilities. As I have written earlier, it probably won't be worth installing on existing machines expect in the most tightly controlled environments, and even then many of the features won't work well with older machines. I suspect lots of people and companies will hold off until there's a really compelling reason, which for businesses right now there isn't.

This video kind of sums up the upgrade experience as most people I have spoken to have experienced it.

I'll admit it, I'm a pretty big fan of Kevin Kelly's stuff, so looking at things from the "out of control" perspective tends to appeal. Likewise, I tend to be a big fan of Michael Rothschild's "Bionomics" theories. Whether in my regular business (project management) or in the world of companies I invest in, I tend to avoid those situations where management still believes the world is predictable and controllable.

So I liked Cody's latest piece about the Cable and Satellite companies. That I am currently going through "cable hell" probably makes me more receptive than ever, but as much as I sometimes disagree with Cody's optimism about where technology is taking us, I can't disagree with this one.

Just not in any media I routinely see.

I was thinking this as I was perusing an old copy of the Santa Monica Daily Press at my local pizza joint. (See column on page 4)

I didn't have to get past the third paragraph to be able to completely discount what this guy was saying about anything, because it was clear that he didn't even check basic facts.

these days, there’s nobody at the top. Nobody’s the boss. Everyone’s accountable to somebody or something else.

You might want to try to explain that to people working for mercurial and domineering characters like Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison. And you certainly might have a tough time explaining this to any of the shareholders or employees of Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), who saw "the boss" Hank McKinnell walk out with almost $300m compensation for destroying 40% of the company's value while simultaneously wrecking the company's new product pipeline for years to come and at the same time pissing off hundreds of millions of dollars on questionable pet projects like Pfizer Health Solutions that aren't even designed to make money for the shareholders and probably don't really benefit anybody else (unless you consider Hank's ability to hobnob with the top politicos to be a "benefit." No question who was the boss there.

In corporate America, this phenomenon is easy to spot. With globalization, rampant mergers and acquisitions, and efficiencies brought about by technology and management improvements, the biggest companies are bigger than ever,

This popular bit of neo-socialist bullshit is not surprising from a publication in Santa Monica. While one might certainly argue that the influence of businesses is greater than it ever was -- in large part because of outright apathy by the voters -- this statement is patently false. In 1960 the largest company in the US and the world was General Motors. It sold half the motor vehicles in the United States and employed more than half a million people. Today you won't find a behemoth like that anywhere. In 1980, more than 20% of people in the US worked for the Fortune 500, today it's less than 9%. Like it or not, businesses are in fact getting smaller, more focused and less "big" in most real meanings of the word. True, the dollar figures keep growing, but have you looked at what those dollars are really worth these days? Not the bullshit government inflation numbers which ceased to have any connection to reality sometime during the first Bush administration, but the real value of those pieces of paper. Biggest businesses getting bigger? Not a chance. That trend died sometime in the early 70s. Any simple fact checking on google might have enlightened this unfortunate excuse for a columnist.

so the CEO of any organization is more like a division manager than a corporate leader.

Well, there's certainly been CEO inflation, in the sense that these days some divisional leaders are given "CEO" titles and other perks, but in general you'll find that most corporations have one CEO, and guys running divisions are in fact division managers, VPs, or whatever. At least that's the case at every corporation I follow.

And given the huge market capitalization of the Fortune 500, anybody who finds themselves at the top of these organizational flowcharts has a whole host of bosses called shareholders.

The writer seems to be presuming that in the past Fortune 500 CEOs were not -- at least in theory -- accountable to shareholders. He might want to double check that fact, since in my experince they always have been, and in fact in the past were often far more accountable than they are today.

Not to mention the strict oversight and regulation corporate boards and directors have employed since the accounting scandals of the early part of the Millennium.

Hank McKinnell
Bob Nardelli
Bill McGuire
Bruce Karatz
Jacob "Kobi" Alexander

Look 'em up, then tell me how all the post-Enron legislation suddenly made CEOs more responsible to their shareholders.

Then look up the stock option backdating scandals at over 130 companies leading to resignations and SEC investigations.

And then, please explain why after getting so many basic facts so wrong, I should want to pay any attention to any of the opinions expressed in your column. I can't think of any.

-btc