What's Our Most Valuable Asset?

If someone asked you what your - or anyone's - most valuable assets are, how would you respond? Likely by saying "People, of course!" And you'd have a point.

Check out the implications:

This Dilbert cartoon strongly implies that a boss who makes decisions "based on what [he knows] about the people involved," as the cartoon has the boss character put it, is silly. What could be more important than the technical details?

The skills, character and collaborative ability of the people, that's what. As the boss observes, Dilbert is pale and poorly dressed - signals that he's not socially adept and thus may have a hard time cooperating with others. He also apparently doesn't understand others enough to know what impresses them - or he just doesn't care how others feel. And possibly he doesn't even have good enough attention to detail. Those issues can sink any project no matter what the numbers look like.

Have you gotten a bank loan? Perhaps you've noticed that the bankers don't just look at the data you send in like your income, current debts, projected profits (for a business loan), etc...they like to meet with you. That gives them an idea of who you are as a person. And that's an important way for them to know how likely they'll get their money back as agreed.

We ourselves - not our computers, nor our money, nor even our knowledge - are our most important asset. And for that reason, anyone who's considering starting or keeping any kind of relationship with us is most concerned with our attitude, our skill at dealing with the unexpected...and our ability to link up with others. They're what make us unique.

Those things, not our diplomas, technical skills or numbers, will make or break us.

What Will They Think Of Next?

Hello,

You may recall that sometime back I mused on the possibility that people could pre-write text messages to send to their loved ones and others in case their plane was about to crash or a similar disaster was about to strike.

Well, thanks to Occupy Wall Street, we've now got an Android app which, while intended for a slightly different scenario, should do the job here.

What next?

Conversational Gambit

Last night...

Emily: How do I look?

Your Humble Servant: OK.

Emily: Just OK???

YHS: *facepalm*

YHS: Well yes, because you normally look very good. So I'm just saying everything is normal. If looking very good weren't the norm for you, then it'd be special enough to specifically mention.

Emily: *smiles*

(And yes, she OK'd my posting that.)

You have just finished Building Common Ground's 200th Post - congratulations and thank you for reading with us this far!

Drill, Baby, Drill!

On Tuesday, a British Airways flight over the North Sea made an erroneous announcement that the plane may soon crash into the water. The pilots quickly corrected it, but not before passengers panicked.

Am I the only person who thinks we should have disaster drills on plans and perhaps other vehicles like trains and buses, just as schools, dorms and workplaces have fire and other drills? I wonder if, once passengers have prepared themselves for likely announcements of, say, likely imminent crashes, we'll make a habit of knowing what to do (eg, go for the life jacket, put it on and then inflate it, or maybe grab and apply the oxygen mask) and therefore not panic so much and more likely survive.

Also, what if we have reason to believe the end is near, and it would be our last chance to use our cell phones and we probably wouldn't want to take even a full minute or two in a true emergency? (Not to mention once you hit the water or likely even the ground your cell phone may get lost or destroyed.)

Perhaps it would be nice to prepare by typing and saving an appropriate text message, such as "PLANE ABOUT TO CRASH - I LOVE YOU AND WILL WAIT FOR YOU IN HEAVEN" (or maybe "PLANE ABOUT TO CRASH - I LOVE YOU AND DON'T FORGET MY WILL IS IN THE SAFE DEPOSIT BOX" - whatever your beliefs dictate), that you could pull up and then send with a touch of a key or two.

That way you'll save as much time as possible for putting on the life jacket or oxygen mask, and make it as likely as possible you'll stay alive and be able to give good news later - while if worse comes to worst you can die in peace knowing you said your last goodbyes.

Or might such a text message pose serious problems?

What do you think?

PS: More out with the old, in with the new - this is my first blog post using Google Chrome. Given who owns Blogpost, last time I checked, it seems only fitting.

PPS: On this day, 23 years ago, I went away to college for the first time, at American University.

UPDATE: We now have an Android app that - while intended for a somewhat different situation - will do the job for a possible plane crash!

Economists See the Darndest Things, or An Aspie Utility Function

Walter Nicholson, an eminent Economics professor at Amherst College, has written Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application, a popular textbook. (His specialty is applied microeconomics - basically how economic theory can be used to explain and predict how particular individuals, firms, etc. will act.)

On page 114 (Fifth Edition, 1990), Professor Nicholson gives this scenario to start off one of his review questions:

David N. gets $3 per month as an allowance to spend any way he pleases. Since he only likes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, he spends the entire amount on peanut butter (at $0.05 per ounce) and jelly (at $0.10 per ounce). Bread is provided free of charge by a concerned neighbor. David is a particular eater and makes his sandwiches with exactly 1 oz. of jelly and 2 oz. of peanut butter. He is set in his ways and will never change these proportions.

Am I the only one who suspects that Professor Nicholson may have known an Aspie or autist?

Tenacity Writ Large

If you know any Russians, you might want to wish them a happy anniversary of the Great Patriotic War. 68 years ago today, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and attacked the Soviet Union, which at the time was benevolently neutral toward Germany during World War II. In fact, Soviet food, oil and other raw materials had helped Germany to circumvent the British sea blockade.

If Hitler had instead decided to stay at peace with the Soviet Union, he would probably have won. The hundreds of divisions which Germany had used - and lost - against the Soviets could probably have kept the U.S., U.K., Free French and other Allies at a standstill.

More to the point, even as it was the war was a very near thing. Within the first two weeks alone, German forces advanced over 200 miles in all directions, occupying Lithuania, Latvia, Belorussia and Western Ukraine and taking - among many others - the cities of Vitebsk and Orsha. Before the summer was out, Estonia and the Soviet north including Novgorod, as well as Smolensk (the gateway to Moscow) and most of the Ukraine were gone. German troops literally got to within sight of the Kremlin in Moscow, besieged Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and entered Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in the Volga River near the Caucasus.

We will never know even approximately how many Soviet civilians and troops died; the official figure is over 20 million and it is widely regarded as an underestimate. (Many deaths in war are due to disease, starvation and other secondary causes.)

As Victor Kravchenko, head of the Soviet Department of War Engineering Armament during the war (and subsequent defector to the U.S.) has made clear in his I Chose Freedom that besides the vast Russian spaces (as it were, a safe space to make mistakes), exactly one thing saved the Soviets, and hence the Allied cause: the absolute will on the part of the Russian people never to give up.

No nation would have had more excuse. The Nazis - who hated the Slavs as much as they hated the Jews - performed unspeakable acts of vengeance on anyone who dared resist. The Soviet people and even the troops often died of starvation, cold or inadequate support in terms of fuel, ammunition, working machinery and other problems.

And let us be clear: many if not most of the Soviet people hated their regime in Moscow with a passion, having suffered through purges, mass arrests and executions - often following unjust and totally unfounded accusations of treachery and other crimes.

For nearly four years, the Soviet people stood firm against one of the most powerful - and most evil - regimes ever to grace this planet. Many more saw the war's beginning than its end. If they had buckled - as had the people of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and France - Nazi Germany would have crushed continental Europe...and gotten away with the Holocaust.

Sometimes sheer stubbornness and a refusal to ever give up really count.