"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose." Garrison Keillor

I get a lot of abuse for teaching business beyond the "those that can't do, teach" teasing.  A lot of this bad feeling about business is due to the often accurate perception that business people are just greedy and unethical.  I know that a lot of people are like that, but are more of them in business?  I don't know, but for a long time in business schools "agency theory" has been used to describe the purpose of the corporation.  Simply stated, agency theory maintains that the purpose of the firm and its employees, i.e., the agents of the shareholders, is to realize the objectives of those shareholders, which typically is profit dominated.  While "shareholders" have been expanded to "stakeholders," (including exployees, consumers, society, etc.), and objectives broadened beyond shareholder profit, there is the perception and in many cases fact that businesses, especially their executives, go to great pains to maximize their own welfare.

Yet business schools, and hopefully increasing numbers of businesses, are evolving to consider the purpose of the firm as providing value.  In other words, businesses should have a larger purpose than just making money.  Yes, a business needs to make money to remain a business, but it is not the source of greater value, the passion that drives those in business.  That sense of higher purpose, that desire to achieve, is beyond the profit motive.  That value, that higher purpose, that achievement and contribution, may take many forms, and is often embodied by a firm's mission statement.

The question is, do you have a "mission statement," an idea of higher purpose to give meaning and motivation to your life?  As George Bernard Shaw wrote in the dedication to Man and Superman,

"This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

Hair today, gone tomorrow

I heard a really clever if not insidious ad for a hair restoration service a couple of days ago.  The fact that I heard the ad on the radio and it registered in my consciousness is not a good sign.  Before you know it I'll be wearing hats, not to look cool or to showcase my affection for the Sox  (I'm more than a little tired of "Red Sox Nation." bandwagon), but to protect from sunburn.  I guess it happens to us all; it's just a matter of when.  Still, I do not look forward to the day when I am follically challenged, and hope I can gather the grace to accept it with dignity and not resort to the comical comb-over, muskrat glued to your scalp, or inlaid cornrow plugs.  Is that some thinning I see?

So this ad, instead of saying that the company was running a sale on hair implants or whatever technique they were using, ran the ad in a PSA-type format informing listeners that there was a research study being conducted on hair restoration, and that volunteers would receive several benefits, including a significant reduction in the price of the procedure.  That just sounds so much better than a sale.

Please note that the picture of Phil Spector is not meant to indicate any respect or admiration for this horrible, horrible person.  He just looks like a chia pet here.

iTrap

I've been a pretty loyal Mac boy for a quarter of a century now.  I can remember paying $2000 for a computer with a 7 inch screen and a memory of 512k, and I'm not talking about the RAM.  And I can tell you about walking seven miles to school in the snow too.  Barefoot.  Yeah, the age is here, but still waiting for the wisdom.

Anyway, there's a certain smugness in feeling superior to the PC geeks, but the truth is I started using that first Mac because it was easy.  Why would anyone learn DOS when you can just point and click?  Well now it's all point and click, sometimes with a finger, but Mac's are still a little bit better for a lot more money.  And yes, prettier too.  Yet my point today is that it just isn't as fun to be a Mac boy anymore.  It's not just that they've lost their underdog charm, it's that in some ways they're becoming a lot like the dreaded Microsoft.  By that I  certainly don't mean the boring, mediocre products of the Gates crew driven solely by marketing and market power.  No, Apple still puts out the best products out there.  Rather, I'm referring to the arrogance and avarice of the modern Apple i-mperium. 

Here's what I mean.  I've got an eMac that's at least 8 years old and has served me well but is showing signs of failing, not to mention the limitations due to modest memory and an outdated operating system (which cannot be simply upgraded but must be replaced at no small cost as is typical of Apple).  So it's time for a new computer.  I see laptops as yesterday's technology, and love the idea of tablets and other convergent devices, especially operating in the cloud, so the iPad is intriguing to me.  But this iPad is still just a toy, a beefed up iPod Touch (which I already own).  It's a shame, because the potential is so great for a tablet that can be productive and entertaining, but having no multi-tasking, inadequate productivity (even with google-docs), the perplexing (and likely spiteful) inability to employ Flash, among other limitations, will make me wait for a generation or two until the iPad is targeted to somebody other than the Nintendo crowd.  So I'll have to pass on the iPad for this round.

Yet the basic point is that Apple's maintenance of too-high price points, planned incremental innovation (keep coming out with newer versions every 10 months), infamously poor product support, grab-every-nickel mentality, and megomaniacal desire for control is getting harder to tolerate.  On that last point, I can appreciate that with control comes quality assurance, and kudos to Apple for defending against shoddy and pernicious developers and hackers.  But while the freedom of developers vs. the security of the system is an interesting and important debate, as a consumer I'm also concerned about freedom of choice.  I don't like being forced to go through AT&T if I were to ever get a cell phone made by Apple. Yes, there are obvious workarounds, but why should anyone have to.  I don't like having to go through i-Tunes for all content.  I don't like having to go through Apple to buy their products (and the Apple stores at third-party locations are really controlled by Apple) at their prices.  I will likely buy another Mac, but I don't think I'll feel as good about it this time.  On the other hand, I feel really, really good about their stock price.

Grin and Tonic

Why aren't business mistakes ever in your favor?  Yesterday I was bagging my own groceries as I normally do, which I mostly do to get out quicker but I suppose there's some deeper psychological reason, and of course I didn't notice the checker's mistake.  Usually it is an item that doesn't scan correctly (or the more insidious mis-shelved item; fell for that with the potato salad last week), but I've noticed that the on-item coupons, to be removed by the checker, are rarely removed and credited.  Yes, it's a small thing, but it's an aggravating thing, as the reason I bought the item in the first place is because of the coupon.  

OK, I'm a man, I'm cheap.  They say that if you take care of the pennies, the dollars take care of themselves.  (Obviously "they" aren't married.).   Those dollars aren't going to keep the kids out of college. They're just small things that don't go our way- ever.  And is it worth it to seek remediation?  Usually not.  Businesses complain, legitimately, about shoplifting and employee theft, but do they ever mention when consumers are overcharged or underserved?  Businesses raise prices, put the onus on us to recover our losses, and overall it probably more than evens out for them.  The thieves, well let's just hope that what goes around comes around. Meanwhile, the rest of us jamokes who don't get our coupons credited, get our car doors dinged, and fall prey to the small print of life, just have to grin and bear it.
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To have and have not

We don't know how anything works anymore.  Sure, we know how to use it, but we don't have the slightest idea why it does what it does.  I don't know much about cars, but I can remember adjusting the timing on a car that had dual distributors, replacing a clutch slave, and doing the basic stuff that we all used to do when we could work on cars.  Now I barely know where the oil filter is, and there's not much a lot of us can do with cars anymore.  It's the same with a lot of technology.  You can take something apart,  and sometimes you, or more likely a "technician," can find what appears to be the problem.   But there's really nothing you/he/she can do about it but replace the part, or more likely just buy a new one.

And do you really understand electricity?  I don't think anybody does.  Imagine going back in time.  Could you really tell them much of anything or build much of anything? 

Society is increasingly being dichotomized into those that use technology and those that understand it.  That is, the haves and have-nots used to refer to wealth, but it increasingly is referring to knowledge, particularly technical knowledge.  But it's not just information, it's information that informs.  It's incredible how little of that there is.