Author Archives: Jon Lowder

I’ll Do as I Do, Not as I Say I’ll Do

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During a presentation I gave last week at ConvergeSouth I mentioned that, in my experience, making decisions based on survey results was a dangerous proposition. For instance, when I was working in a marketing department we'd constantly ask customers if they'd be willing to spend $x on a product they'd say "yes" and then we'd send them an offer with that exact price and a rare few would actually buy it. In other words we learned real fast to follow the money and largely ignore what people said they'd spend.

Here's the thing: we knew people weren't lying to us, but it was a lot easier for them to say they'd spend money than to actually spend it. In essence they were lying to themselves. According to this interview on Freakonomics most of us are very good at lying to ourselves:

DUBNER: I wouldn’t say you’re wrong there, but let me also say this: we lie to ourselves all the time. We’re constantly trying to predict how we’re going to behave in the future when something happens.  A tax hike.  A price change.  A Presidential election.  And we’re almost always wrong.  Take something as simple as driving. The American Automobile Association is constantly surveying drivers.  They’ll say something like, “if gas prices stay as high as they are now, or go up, will you drive less?”  And people always say, “oh, absolutely!”  And then you look at the data and they do not drive less.  Here’s Joel Weichsel with AAA:

Joel WEICHSEL: “I think there may be people who lie to themselves, or imagine that they’re doing something that they’re not.  But I think there are also people who maybe forget about things that they’ve done.  

RYSSDAL: “Forget?”  He’s being very polite and saying “we’re lying to ourselves.”  That’s what he’s saying.

DUBNER: It’s a synonym.  But I will say this: I don’t believe it’s necessarily intentional. One problem with any survey is that the power of suggestion comes into play.

The full interview can be heard here and it's worth a listen:

A Doctor Describes Losing a Daughter to Cancer

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Reading about anyone's loss of a child to cancer is terrible, but somehow reading a doctor's account of losing his adult daughter to an incredibly aggressive malignancy makes it seem even worse:

Her oncologist arrives in a few minutes.  Comparison of chest C-T’s shows that the undifferentiated tumor in her lung has doubled in size in less than three weeks.  The hopelessness of the situation is discussed with her husband, and a decision is made with the assistance of a hospice physician to provide comfort care.  She receives ice chips, and morphine is administered.  About four hours later, she enters a peaceful coma and dies at 6:30 am on August  29, just 20 days after the initial MRI demonstrated the brain tumors.  

The purpose of this brief chronicle is not to criticize the practice of medicine. While I had several  disagreements with non-physicians, the physicians who cared for my daughter, without exception, were very understanding and gave freely of their time.  Each did everything possible  to deal with her  enormously  aggressive malignancy.   Rather, I have attempted to relate  the experiences of  a father/physician as he watches his daughter die of cancer.   Her course was a testament to the limitations of medical care.  In this era of molecular biology, the most valuable medication was morphine, a drug that has been available for almost 200 years.

Although painful, I am capable of describing the events of my daughter’s illness.  When I try to describe my despair and grief, words fail.

Credit Where Credit is Due

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Remember "It's the economy stupid?" The first President Bush certainly does, because that phrase famously summed up the soon-to-be President Clinton's campaign focus in beating him. Here's the thing – Clinton ended up getting too much credit for the economic recovery that occurred during his first term, and Bush-the-first didn't get enough credit for making the tough and politically disastrous policy decisions that kick started the recovery in the first place.

Why bring that up now? Because it's interesting to see how President Obama is blamed for things that he literally has no control over, like high gas prices, but gets no credit for things he had a direct hand in, like an improving economy. He is also being criticized for budget deficits that were largely made necessary by the policy decisions of his predecessor, President Bush-the-second. Could Obama have made policy choices that kept the deficit from growing as much as it did in his first term? Sure, but many economists think that would have been much worse for the economic recovery we're seeing. In fact some argue that his policies weren't aggressive enough – that larger short-term deficits might have led to a faster, steeper economic recovery. 

What further complicates the issue in this election cycle is that President Obama came into office as the US economy was in an unprecedented-in-our-lifetime freefall. In the same way that it's difficult to prove a negative, it's also difficult for a sitting President prove that the economy could have been in worse shape if his policies had been different. Quite frankly it's easier for a challenger to say that things could/should have been much better and that it's the President's fault that they aren't; he literally doesn't have to prove it since it's a matter of opinion.  That's how Clinton took out Bush Sr. and that's how Romney is trying to take out Obama. 

It remains to be seen if the recent economic improvement will be enough to convince voters that Obama is worth keeping around. If it's not, Romney will inheret a growing economy and unless he really screws up he'll be given far more credit for it than he deserves.

We’re #79!

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According to this website Wake Forest University is the 79th most expensive university in the country based on total cost (Tuition + Room and Board + Required Fees). Wake's total for the 2012-13 school year was $54,860. Other notables:

#1 – Sarah Lawrence College ($61,236)
#4 – Columbia University ($58,742)
#7 – Dartmouth University ($57,996)
#9 – University of Chicago ($57,711)
#36 – Boston College ($56,516)
#39 – Georgetown University ($56,362)
#48 – Penn ($56,106)
#53 – Duke University ($55,871)
#67 – Yale ($55,300)
#73 – Brown University ($55,016)
#78 – Notre Dame ($54,905)
#84 – Stanford ($54,508)
#85 – Harvard ($54,496)
#92 – University of Richmond ($53,970)
#98 – University of Miami ($53,102)

Know Whereof You Speak

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This video of a woman calling Obama a communist, and then not being able to explain why he was a communist, was an uncomfortable reminder of what it feels like to be caught using words beyond your comprehension when debating/arguing/philosophizing. When I was in high school I accused my brother of being a fascist and he realized pretty quickly that I didn't actually know what a fascist was, and so asked me to explain why he was a fascist.

Oops.

Let's just say I've done a much better job since then of not using adjectives I don't actually understand.

Minds Like Empty Rooms

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Harper Lee, in a letter to Oprah Winfrey about her love of reading books, talks about working to learn and having things happen on soft pages:

Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.

And, Oprah, can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up — some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal.

Everybody Rides!

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Last week I was honored to be able to speak at the 2012 ConvergeSouth conference, and one of the real highlights was meeting Tracy Myers. If you live in the Piedmont Triad and have a functioning TV set you've probably seen one of Tracy's commercials, but you may be surprised to learn that he's probably the most aggressive social marketers in the local small business community. At ConvergeSouth he gave a very good keynote presentation about his marketing approach and it would behoove any small business person interested in using social media to build his brand to check out how Tracy is approaching it. 

Here's a fun fact: Meyers is a fellow resident of Lewisville.

Will Obamacare Lead to a Part Time Nation?

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Darden Restaurants, parent company of restaurants like Olive Garden and Red Lobster, is experimenting with limiting the hours worked by some of its employees to see if it can avoid provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – a.k.a. Obamacare – that go into effect in 2014:

Analysts say many other companies, including the White Castle hamburger chain, are considering employing fewer full-timers because of key features of the Affordable Care Act scheduled to go into effect in 2014. Under that law, large companies must provide affordable health insurance to employees working an average of at least 30 hours per week.

If they do not, the companies can face fines of up to $3,000 for each employee who then turns to an exchange — an online marketplace — for insurance.

"I think a lot of those employers, especially restaurants, are just going to ensure nobody gets scheduled more than 30 hours a week," said Matthew Snook, partner with human-resources consulting company Mercer.

Darden said its goal at the test restaurants is to keep employees at 28 hours a week.

Analysts said limiting hours could pose new challenges, including higher turnover and less-qualified workers.

It would seem logical that employers would limit employees to part time status whenever possible in order to avoid fines for not providing health insurance, but on the other hand employers already spend much more than $3,000 per full time employee on health insurance – $10,522, of which the employees paid $2,204, according to the Society of Human Resource Management – so it would seem even more logical for them to stop providing health insurance altogether and lower their expenses by over 50% overnight. 

Here are some other questions:

  • How many companies, in industries that have not historically had high levels of part time employees, will start turning jobs that had been done by one full time employee into multiple positions filled by part timers? 
  • Are there provisions in the ACA that would prevent that?

 

Swiss Table Manners

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Found this list of Swiss table manners via the excellent Swiss Miss blog and think they're useful beyond the borders of Bankerland:

  1. Be on time.
  2. Always wait for everybody to be served before beginning to eat.
  3. All meals are usually started with the words "bon appetit" or "guten Appetit."
  4. If wine is served, wait until the host begins the toast.
  5. When toasting, chink your glass with everybody at the table and look each person in the eyes before drinking.
  6. Keep your wrists on the table, but never your elbows. Do not place your hands in your lap.
  7. Remember to always say please and thank you.
  8. French bread is always torn rather than cut with a knife.
  9. Lift your forearm from the table while moving the fork to your mouth.
  10. Use your left hand for the fork and the right for your knife and gently push food on your fork.
  11. If you are served cheese as a wheel, it should be cut from the centre into slices (as you would slice a pie).
  12. When finished, put your knife and fork parallel to one another on your place as if they were hands on a clock indicating 5:25. If you don't do this, your host will serve you more food.
  13. Finish everything you take on your plate. The Swiss do not appreciate waste.

Additional children rules: make sure children wash their hands before meals. Children generally must wait to leave the table until everyone is finished.

Good luck with that last one.