Federal job training programs: outcome assessment via Facebook page

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The GAO found that $18 billion went to 47 different federal training programs for job training. Apart from the overlap in target beneficiary populations it turns out that only 5 of the 47 programs have been studied for whether job training improved the trainees' chances of actually landing a job.

Somehow organizations get so overwhelmed when they scope a new project ( e.g. job training) they seem to overlook the need for outcome assessment. It is very likely that all these training programs had a survey of the trainer's course delivery and whether the training was effective from the  students' point of view.

But the programs did not take the next step  to have some post-training tracking of the participants. This is supposed to be routine in higher education and for purposes of ranking of different educational institutions by  the press, educational associations,accreditation agencies etc.

So it's sort of surprising that outcome assessment is not built into the plan  of each federal training program. Today, you need to probably just send out an email survey to track the alumni of a federal training program at a defined interval. Better still is to just have a Facebook page for the program and keep track of how trainees do eventually!

It's not enough to just axe programs without fixing these basic problems. As the job market improves,good job training should deliver outcomes and those outcomes need to be tracked. Based on this tracking of outcomes training needs to be modified for higher effectiveness.

Better days for auto sales ahead – Toyota brake report and Volkswagen Superbowl Ad

Today’s  release of the NASA study of Toyota’s braking problems is heartening to the auto industry. That the braking problems were caused due to mechanical problems and not some unknown electronic unreliability is comforting to  Toyota  owners and overall auto customers alike. Because, with the auto supply chain being pretty common across auto companies-one would expect that similar suppliers supply to other auto brands and unless this was sorted out, one felt slightly uneasy with the increasing electronics particularly in mechanical things like brakes. Thankfully, a industry wide initiate to give braking the first priority among all car controls is something that  all would like to see.

But moving from the question of auto safety to the enormous number of views the Volkswagen Superbowl  ad has been having on Youtube. Today the number of views is almost 22 million and rising!

This huge interest in a car Ad coupled with the good news that generally the brake electronics work should translate to more sales for the auto industry.

Innovation today is about making and selling world-wide- but look at the market first

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President Obama spoke to the members of the US Chamber of Commerce and spelt out a bit more of what  innovation really means to business in America. Obama did this by contrasting the need to make stuff that sells around the world  to just trying to get Americans to buy more by borrowing more.

Making things that sell in other countries is innovation. It does help to be able to sell the same identical product everywhere because you can build larger factories, reduce overhead and cost but there's a problem – the market you are trying to reach may not like what you offer. So you need to modify your offering for that market. As earlier mentioned in this blog, companies like GE are doing exactly that – by localizing management decision processes closer to the market so that product designers are not hung up with issues of  product platforms, false synergies etc.

Let me illustrate with a simple plastic mold you have created for the needs of  one market. Now in another market your market research suggests a slightly different mold technically but which might mean a lot to the market requirements. The more  say your home factory,supply chain and finance folks have on this – you'll find yourself trying to save a 100K on a new  mold and potentially sacrificing your market orientation. The moment you make the decision locally and look more outward  to the market the savings in the inappropriate mold will not look that great.And the chances to succeed in the market will zoom !

In other words look at the market first.

 

Jobs report: need to look at “Two-speed” economy of chicken tikka vs. chicken wings

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Today's job report was somber at only 36,000 new jobs. The numbers literally cold comfort for the 13.9 million Americans looking for work,with some blame for the cold weather that slowed economic activity. What do people do whose skills are simply declining in demand ? One option is move to higher speed economies of the two speed economy, as this piece from Wharton suggests. The US being the slow speed economy and high growth countries like China,India,Brazil being the high speed ones.

Let me explain what it  feels like to be in a high speed economy from waiting for chicken malai tikka at a barbecue  in Delhi  last month. It was rather late and folks did not want to wait for called in delivery so had showed up for the take out. At  fairly expensive pricing . if you go by purchasing parity , there were at least 7 people waiting with an average of an hour's wait for take-out as you watched the guy in the front putting all manner of barbecue into the clay oven. As one huge order seemed to take too long the customer apologized to others waiting saying that an impromptu  party had been suddenly organized and 30 people had showed up and this was a post Lohri ( a festival that has nothing to do with barbecue at least traditionally) celebration. Others waiting grumbled at the longer wait.

Contrast this scene  with the best chicken wings takeout  in your US town  on  this Super Bowl Sunday. Not many impromptu orders for  30 people I would guess. Not to say that the aggregate US consumption of chicken wings on Sunday will be less than previous years but the boom that you might see in India in a comparable restaurant business is simply not possible here.

 So is there opportunity for anybody with  restaurant food value chain  skills ?

Sure and its  just a question of figuring out a way of participating in these high speed economies and this applies to every skill that's looking obsolete in the US today.

India: A Raja is arrested in 2G telecom scam: learning to deal with the messiness of democracy

With all the excitement in Egypt even the BBC  covered the arrest of A. Raja only briefly. A. Raja is the former Indian telecom minister who is alleged to have sold the very lucrative 2G wireless phone licenses in 2008 at 2001 rates to private companies costing the Indian government billions of dollars in lost revenue. The Indian opposition parties,both on the right and left, are strangely united on this issue and have kept the pressure up for a joint parliamentary probe.

Meanwhile ,some companies who got the licenses in 2008 have sold them at windfall profits and there is some nervousness that as more details emerge beneficiaries of the scam might have to pay up. The latter is unthinkable given the enormous harm done to India’s economic growth and globalization when Coca Cola and IBM were asked to leave in 1977, which I mention in one of my articles (see page 460 here ).

But hey, that’s democracy and global businesses need to learn to deal with all these uncertainties as democracies evolve in different countries in the 21st century. For e.g. Raja is only  the second federal minister ever arrested on corruption charges and that’s a huge step forward  for Indian democracy.

Now consider fledgling democracies, and you have different levels of  sophistication  with different complications in countries from Afghanistan to Iraq and now Egypt to be soon followed by other Arab countries  etc.

The point is that business-government (B2G) relations are much simpler in totalitarian regimes from a business’s point of view because you deal with  a few defined decision makers. In democracies,just figuring out the players is complicated and staying  clear of basic controversy ( eg did you get the telecom license unfairly?) down the road is a challenge. Talk about the ability of companies to learn continuously!

Egypt Crisis : Oil is above $100 and yet the DOW is above 12,000

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One protester in Egypt was pretty amazed at the US concern about oil flow through the Suez Canal rather than exhilaration at prospects of democracy in Egypt. That the DOW is above 12000  despite crude at over $100/barrel suggests that the US stock  market, is taking oil prices in its stride and infact celebrating the peaceful protest in Egypt. Helping the stock market are  the oil stocks in the developed countries  that  are high across the supply chain. There is 61 days of stock compared to the 51 day stock of 2008, with lots of spare shipping capacity.

On the other hand , oil demand is booming in Asian economies and amidst oil supply concerns,stock markets are  down, including in India, Generally the  world media is doing a good job covering the Egyptian protests and the direct telecast of the  protests cutting across age and gender  with the Egyptian  military guarding the peace without threatening the public is heartening to see, and speaks highly of the Egyptian movement. It also calms businesses and hopefully the Asian stock markets will recover as things settle down in Egypt.

 

Of salmon – freshwater,saltwater and smoked ! The wonder of organizations and the President’s speech

The salmon comment by President Obama turned out to be one of the funniest comments of the State of the Union. The fact is that organizations – including Government, for-profit,non-profits are equally hilarious in what they do and more on why they do it.

There must be some good reason that one arm of Government handles freshwater salmon and another handles salt water ones. According to what I could find  it might be that Salmon is the wrong example of overlap or duplication. Or is it really wrong ?  Can’t say for sure.

But what is true is that organizations start doing things in a particular way due to certain good reasons and also the willingness of certain managers to take up a new task. Later, the environment changes and you wonder how or why you got there in the first place.

For example, the  post-9-11 multiple  security co-ordination problems  led to more inter-agency collaboration and data access. And well that led to Wikileaks with its fresh set of problems and fallout.

Since organizations are about people, things do tend to get irrational after a while. It really is worthwhile to ask the following 5 questions:

  1. What is the purpose of this activity?
  2. Is the purpose relevant to our organizations’ current mission?
  3. If yes- how is this task being done?
  4. How can we make the task simpler?
  5. More transparent/technology driven?

These 5 questions can get things back on track.

About StratoServe.

How does innovation create jobs? – The Music Industry example

We’re likely to hear President Obama talk about the need to innovate and create jobs in his speech tonight. But how exactly does innovation create jobs?

An earlier post mentioned how Jack Welch talked about “expanding” the pie and merely increasing efficiencies could not help. Let’s think about this last bit -some more. If let’s say a worker produces 100 widgets a day and ups productivity to 110 widgets- costs decline  and with overall lower costs and prices  demand moves up, more global markets waiting for low cost options can become accessible.

But there comes a point when unless you change  the technology platform you can only do so much. My favorite example is the  vinyl records->music cassette -> disc-> MP3 music platforms. Just the number of songs you could fit in into a device has jumped exponentially, industries like cassette tape makers are extinct but their place is taken by an entire cell phone industry that offers MP3 music- famously led by the iPod and iPhone. New markets have appeared for all types of “long tail music” with an audience of perhaps only thousands in number. The music brick and mortar shops have disappeared and cell phone  makers are looking for batteries that last long and are able to support loudly playing music on cell phones in countries like India. Yes, if you observe- you’ll see some of the most unlikely  people ,like security guards at apartment complexes, enjoying loud music from their cell phones and hopefully being more alert and productive.

At a global and overall level- sure the world music industry and consumers benefitted a great deal from the vinyl records to MP3 journey. Employment effects (when you count niche musicians who got a market) also went up a great deal at a global level. 

At a country level, probably every country that was able to promote commercialization and diffusion for every technology from vinyl to MP3 , should have created more jobs and opportunity for its people. Something to think about…. Why does innovation create jobs?

About StratoServe.

The Do-It-Yourself (DIY) market is different in India- no one does DIY!

When a market like India booms in everything from automobiles, roads , buildings including homes and offices and their cleaning and maintenance -it’s interesting to observe that practically no one does any DIY with the stuff they own. There is a cleaning person for the car and home, the former is frequently the driver. Any non-arrival of the cleaning person is treated with a sense of crisis. The automobile and home cleaning product suppliers try to segment the products they offer based on whether the owner might, on crisis occasions, sometimes DIY. In fact, one expat businessperson I talked to was reluctant to buy a Mercedes because the driver would drive it most of the time and was it really worthwhile to invest such a lot for the driver’s benefit? Obviously, Mercedes and luxury car sales are booming and are driven by drivers and the homegrown businessperson has no problems with that. I won’t DIY (or Do it Myself) has interesting business implications:

  •  Most high-powered executives do not read or answer their email on computers but their admins do. If it were not for the Blackberry and its adoption it would be hard to actually reach the executive by email. Happily everyone is accessible by mobile (cell) phone and that helps to reach people by phone or text.
  • No one paints their own house (get a painter obviously) or dreams of fixing anything else. Just imagine how Home Depot or Lowe’s types of businesses have to change.
  • The local grocer, pharmacy and takeout is able to deliver small orders free within minutes of a cell phone order. Huge implications for the Walmart and Walgreen distribution model. The small shop owner has a small army of delivery guys who either walk or deliver on bicycle and do not expect to be tipped.
  • No car owner changes the oil, wipers etc. Matters for auto related organization models like NAPA spares, Pepboys etc.

Aravind Adiga refers to this phenomena in his book.  Important to understand if you are entering the India market or if you are already there and wondering why your numbers are not doing as well as you thought you’d do.

About StratoServe

Why do you cover glass buildings with fishing net – in India? -To balance democracy with business-

By the time (this post from January 2011) I figured this one out,  our favorite taxi-cab company  cab had reached the Hyderabad,India airport  and I missed taking a picture.  This was one image that should have appeared in this “New Year” post. Anyway let me explain why 20-50 floor glass buildings  were covered with a semi-transparent fine mesh net.

There is a movement going on in Andhra Pradesh (where Hyderabad is the capital) about Telengana. This agitation is currently a war of words  but local businesses  expect  people  to take to the streets.  As can be expected in democracies,emotions will tend to run high and with lots of construction material lying around the agitators will be tempted  to throw stones at whatever property they can.

So what does a business do to keep humming as the agitators pass by?

They simply get a contractor to put up nets that would minimize damage.

Think about how various stakeholders work out their  priorities:

  • The businesses do not go through the disruption of broken glass,insurance claims etc.
  • The agitators throw a few stones, probably break a few window panes and make their point
  • The police have  less of a confrontation to sort out as at least the businesses are complaining less !

One wonders if the local property and casualty insurance  companies offer  a premium discount for covering glass buildings with fishing nets before planned agitations. Probably they will eventually as democracy and business find balance on the ground in India.

About StratoServe.