Dear Son,
Hi, it's Dad. You know, it still amazes me, that word - dad. I didn't think it would ever happen, or happen this way, but I'm glad it did. Mom and I are happy you're in our lives, and by the time you read this, if we've done what's right, you'll know it without a doubt.
Son, I'm writing this letter from the past, a past that is probably as foreign to you as any other country. The world as I know it is a complicated place, though maybe quaint by your standards.
I am writing to let you know that those of my generation faced a number of challenges in the new millennium, and some unfinished business from the old.
By the time you receive this letter, the world will have recognized, quantified, and attempted, perhaps many times, to grapple with the large questions of the age: nuclear proliferation, energy, climate change, and poverty.
Privately, I will have struggled with the perennial challenges of life, and questions concerning body, mind and soul.
And all of us, at different stages of life, if we are honest, strong, and loving, face the eternal questions of purpose, personally defining happiness, and searching for love that is good and true.
I want to let you know that I've been there; I know what you're going through. I've done it with fewer tools, a weaker will, with all the uncertainty and fear and unpreparedness that it seems each generation embraces in its sometimes helpless, sometimes empowered, dance of progress. The problems you face are different, perhaps unique in all of human history, and will require all the creativity, energy, and courage your generation can bring to bear.
But I hope you feel, as I have come, unwillingly but inexorably, to recognize that the power remains in the hands of the individual. Each day you choose to live, and to live a certain way, with certain values, and with a level of courage, awareness, and compassion that will determine a measure of your destiny.
There will always be external forces at work. And your identity will be broken, sewn together, and reforged many times, to the point you might not recognize or know yourself. But know this - whoever you are, you are defined fundamentally by the choice to live a certain way. Own that choice - in so doing, you will have seized full claim to your humanity, and taken the first critical step toward life.
I'm writing it because I want you to judge me in the future, to the extent that I've kept my promises to you. I could, and should, write a thousand things here. You deserve so much, and I know not what I, and my generation, will be able to provide.
It is a poor excuse to say that there is virtue in leaving something undone for the next generation to accomplish. But I cannot, and would not, promise to solve all the problems in society. Many problems, in fact, might not be problems at all. I hope that you will realize sooner than I the necessity of the many seemingly inefficient, inconsistent, and broken aspects of life that somehow, invariably, draw tiny bits of goodness from individuals who choose to live. To see the beauty in things - it is a struggle, but a struggle that builds us into wiser men.
I don't know if you'll enjoy cheap water, energy, and housing. I hope, but do not know, if you will do a better job than I of receiving and absorbing the knowledge that was so wonderfully provided to me through good schools and excellent friends. I can't even promise a future without nuclear terrorism, militarism, economic crises, or a world with living pandas. There is so much that I cannot promise, and that breaks my heart, and brings tears to eyes that have seen much suffering, and sink in shame at the many unrealized possibilities for service.
But this I promise to you - to be the kind of father that you need, not the father I missed. I promise to draw understanding from within myself, but also to rest heavily upon the experience and wisdom of others. I promise to try to place progress over pride, to learn from failure, patient in sacrifice, and gracious in the penumbra of your generation's achievements and way of life. For it is in that that we should feel neither jealousy nor regret, but ultimate confirmation that we brought a bit more truth and beauty to the world.
You come from a long line of individuals whose struggles with the self loomed greater than the struggles with the world. I want you to give yourself permission to conclude the peace early, and permit yourself to grow and prosper. There are certain tensions that serve more purpose in their continuation than in their resolution.
Son, you have my love and respect - you need do nothing to earn either. But you will find, I hope, the drive to earn both from yourself, and that will propel you to be a good man. For that, above all other things, I thank God, this day and all days, glorious and dark.
Thank you, for reminding me why I fight, and what victory truly is.
Love,
Dad
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
comments on Jonah Goldberg on the Daily Show and his book, Liberal Fascism
I just saw the online version of Jon Stewart's Daily Show interview with John Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, published in January 2008. It portrays a smiley face with a Hitler-esque mustache on the front and a big red cover.
Now, if I had seen that book on the shelves, I probably would've written it off as yet another liberal-bashing book and lumped it with books by Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and others. (Al Franken could go there, but he's got some wit, and some street cred from his stint at SNL and the book Why Not Me? The Making and Unmaking of the Al Franken Presidency.)
The Daily Show interview was interesting because it tried to grapple with the genuine ideological origins of fascism. If you'll bear with me, I did take a course at Claremont McKenna as an undergraduate titled, The Philosophical Roots of European Fascism, which, depending on my memory (oh, the ravages of age), my ability as a student (questionable in the best of times), and Myra Moss' ability as a teacher (which I have no reason to question), might make me more qualified to comment on this than the average blogger.
As a further selling point, I care a hell of a lot less about precise definitions and historical forensics about who communicated what where, which should make this work punchier and clearer than the average (political) philosophy student's comments.
Jonah's argument goes something like this:
Progressivism is intimately connected to fascism in its origins and goals.
Hillary Clinton has recently tried to reidentify herself as a progressive, not a liberal.
Therefore, Hillary Clinton, Whole Foods, and the American Left are fascists (or neo-fascists, or post-modern fascists, or fascists-lite.)
One problem I have with this is that Jonah makes abundantly clear that while he is attempting to prove an important historical connection (or at least get people to avoid using "fascist" so casually, thereby broadcasting their ignorance in stereo), he fails to carry this over to being careful with his language.
An example serves to illustrate the none-too-strong argument that Goldberg abuses language when it is convenient for his cause. Hegel spoke of the organic unity or "whole" that is created when the State embodies both the desire for an individual to be free as well as the means for achieving that freedom. (We can go off on a tangent about the thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectic, whether it belongs to Hegel at all or to Fichte, but Wikipedia exists for a reason.)
This "organic unity" does not mean that the modern organic movement is Fascist. Jonah Goldberg seems to think so. One of his working titles for Liberal Fascism was The Totalitarian Temptation: From Hegel to Whole Foods .
I think he's gone a bridge too far. Hell, maybe an interstate too far.
In our class, we covered a number of thinkers whose contributions to Fascism as an ideology are not always obvious, are always complex, and often are the result of the genie getting out of the bottle long after its master had died. We covered Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Gentile, Mussolini, and Hitler. I think it's fair to say (even based on a brief Wikipedia survey) that many of these thinkers/writers did not intend for the rise of the Fascist state, or if they did, that it should be one that would appeal specifically to racial superiority and exhibit the brutality, excesses, and incompetence of Hitler and the Third Reich.
I'm annoyed by anyone who tells me that there's only one way to do things - whether it's a local hippie trying to convince me to "buy local" and organic, even when I am well aware of the New Zealand economic study that showed that globalization (and the transport of goods from overseas) can, in fact, have a lower carbon footprint. And I also know that "buy local" is motivated as much by protectionism on the part of small farmers as much as socially conscious living. I'm annoyed by people who believe that America needs to increase the size of its armed forces, because they believe in the potential for absolute security through a bloody path through Tehran, Pyongyang, and Lahore.
Groupthink, from any quarter, is dangerous. This should be obvious, but I think expedience and convenience dilutes this message, especially since those who have the most responsibility to communicate it (parents, teachers) stand to lose the most control, authority, and power if they do successfully instill the idea of independent thought. (sigh)
Why am I bothering? I don't know - I admit it might be a way to stay up, or to increase viewership of my blog/FB profile by attaching a photo of his book, which is controversial enough not to be ignored. I'm not above pandering. But neither is he, and Jon Stewart (rightly) rips him a new one on cable TV for his book cover.
But I do know that Progressivism deserves better, even if some of its intellectual/institutional offshoots supported American Fascism.
More importantly, I think it's also important to realize that America was not all that far from Fascism during that great trial of the Republic in the 1930s.
Our history books do not teach us that Mussolini and Hitler were looked upon with tremendous respect from America during the 1930s, in no small part because of their use of centralized authority and Military Keynesianism to improve their national economies. The Military Keynesianism discussion will have to wait for another post. But I will mention that the Business Plot (aka the White House Putsch) appeared real enough to warrant Congressional testimony from Gen. Smedley Butler, in which he testified that bankers and financiers had approached him about leading a coup, promising an army of 500,000 men for a march on Washington DC, $30 million in financial backing, and media spin control.
One final point about Mr. Goldberg - he is being wildly, perhaps willfully blind, if he believes that the American Empire can be maintained, much less expanded, without a large government offering security as a substitute good for liberty, and providing expansionism as a source of profits, jobs, and escape from domestic issues.
(Disclaimer: I am basing my understanding of Goldberg's claims exclusively on his Wikipedia entry, which is currently closed to edits until Jan. 30, 2008 due to vandalism. It's not good scholarship, but this is Facebook, not Foreign Affairs.)
According to Wikipedia, Mr. Goldberg is a supporter of the Iraq war, has advocated for American military intervention elsewhere. There are other items on his record (notably serving as an apologist for colonialism in Africa) that could be brought up, but would only serve to distract from the point. He has admitted in 2006 that it was a mistake to go in [to Iraq], but a noble mistake.
He rightly brings up the point that some liberals do have flimsy anti-war arguments. ' "In other words, the relation isn't to war per se; it's to wars that advance U.S. interests.... I must confess, one of the things that made me reluctant to conclude that the iraq war was a mistake was my distaste for the shabbiness of the arguments on the antiwar side.' "
But he neglects that regardless of whether there is "just war" or "war that serves interests", all war, save defensive wars against an opponent bent on total destruction of the nation-state, requires a construction of an organic whole where identity and capacity meet to defend or spread a set of values, or defeat a contrary value system.
Perhaps, then, all wars require Fascism.
There may be just wars. There may be humanitarian interventions that do far more good than harm. But in these cases, and all cases, Americans must be honest about the infrastructure and ideology that is thus mobilized in order to fight a war. And based on my admittedly layman's understanding of philosophical terms, that may qualify as fascism (small "f" intended to distinguish from European flavor associated with 20th century, and NOT to diminish the importance of the concept).
Separating the functional terms from the historical and popular associations might - in spite of objections from the very metaphysicists mentioned in this post - provide access to a more objective reality and reason that can better guide choice.
Mr. Goldberg, if THAT was your goal, I think you've failed miserably.
On the other hand, if you are illustrating the time-tested truth (I believe best said by Oscar Wilde), that "The only thing worse than being talked about than not talked about," then congratulations. You've made a buck by exploiting sensationalism and capitalism, which maybe means that America is better than you or I might think. :)
Sunday, January 20, 2008
"What Could Stave Off A Recession" - my comments
Businessweek contains an interesting article, titled "What Could Stave Off A Recession". The main point is that government spending targeted at education and health care would be a more effective way of using countercyclical Keynesian policy in order to put the skids on a shrinking economy.
I've got some thoughts about this, and also in response to reader comments.
My comments on article:
Businessweek is correct that health care and education (especially the former) are projected growth areas. One issue of concern - both primarily cater to domestic individuals.
The quality of emergency health care in this country is still very good, though there are obvious issues with its cost, an incentive structure that discourages preventative care, and general individual lifestyle/education issues that compound American health, quality of life, and life expectancy. But the growth will primarily come in geriatrics - in which those who can afford to pay, will, and those who can't, will depend upon Medicare/Medicaid for long-term care. Though we might add more jobs in elder care, it may come at the cost of additional federal expenditures, since even with Medicare/Medicaid, community care facilities have an average -7.2% pretax margin. (“The Most and Least Profitable Businesses to Start”, Forbes, 18 Jan 2008)
Impact:
- Care primarily focused on Americans
- No major effect on trade imbalance
- Neutral/Negative on national debt/Medicare unfunded liability
Education faces similar issues, partly because the advantage the United States has in higher education is decreasing with renewed efforts on the part of national efforts to develop top-tier domestic institutions. This will take a while longer for Europe, India, and Asia to develop - unless these nations choose to use their recent commitments in areas of R&D to focus their educational institutions around specific fields and subfields. While the Ivy League may remain on top for a while, it might not be surprising to find in the not-too-distant-future a large number of Singaporean medical/drug researchers, Indian systems engineers, and European materials scientists that will carve away certain sectors of the educational advantage once held by the United States. When they stop coming here to study, we will lose their tuition money and their long-term contribution to American research, industry, and cultural/social intangibles.
Responses to reader comments
(in order from past to future - I would have included them here, but I'm a bit uncertain about the copyright law in this area)
Mike:
An economy supported by war spending is an example of Keynesianism (specifically, military Keynesianism). Keynesianism only suggests that the government spend money to increase employment - it does not require that the employment be particularly useful, productive, or moral. Many of the alphabet-soup programs initiated by Roosevelt during the 1930s did improve the infrastructure of the economy, but many programs could legitimately be called "make-work". The key is to keep employment as low as possible, and enough money in the economic system to avoid a decrease in demand.
Jayendra:
It is precisely that fear that led to a breakdown of the classical model. A rational individual will stuff their money in a mattress (c. 1930s) or commodities/money market funds (c. 2007) because of fear of further downturns. However, when A LOT of rational individuals do this, you get a classically "irrational" result - that is, a feedback effect where each drop in consumption/investment spending leads to increased fear and more money effectively taken out of the system (mattresses, gold, and euros). I'm not saying you should spend money just to keep the economy afloat - only the government has the resources, incentive, and - for now - a sufficiently large line of credit to do that.
Hugo van Randwyck (and Phil Owen):
A "sin tax" on gas, coupled with a lump-sum transfer (tax rebate) could work to reduce American dependence on foreign oil, which in the long run might be healthier for the environment and the economy.
Additional spending It might provide the economic incentive to fund increased R&D. However, research-grade scientists already have near-zero employment - you would need to increase the supply of researchers, which would take many years to train, and many years of economic conditions still making it valuable to pursue advanced degrees in engineering, materials science, operations research, and basic science.
Timeframes are important. If gas hits $6 a barrel through a tax, what will happen to a large number of commuters who can't absorb the cost? In my native Los Angeles, many people commute over an hour and a half precisely because their budgets are pressed so far that they cannot afford housing closer to their home. Substitution goods - public transportation - are not as well funded as that found in many European cities. Even if the tax on gasoline were used to fund new public transportation, it would take a considerable amount of time to mount such a campaign. Meanwhile, you have rapid inflation of everything from foodstuffs to big-ticket items, which could lead to a period of extremely painful stagflation (decreasing GDP + inflation).
There is also an issue in which China has been reluctant to float its currency, precisely because they want to keep a positive trade balance. The issues are more complex than I understand, but appear to be well articulated in the January/February issue of the Atlantic Monthly.
Rakesh Mehra:
One problem with this is that overseas profits are, for the first time ever, responsible for the majority of many firms' profits. These firms, which do pay taxes (we can argue if they pay enough), do face competitive pressures from overseas. A unilateral effort on the part of the US Government to stop outsourcing could, in the short-term, reduce badly needed tax revenues, and, in the mid- to long-term, erode American companies' market share in the international markets, leading either to decreased revenue (and decreased taxes), and/or layoffs of domestic workers.
Outsourcing is an issue - the US would do well to look into beefing up its Trade Adjustment Assistance program and seriously consider restructuring its education programs and government procurement priorities. But a general tax on outsourcing would not help, and could do much harm.
Chandra SR and Jayendra Sai Chelluri:
This article pointed out that the financial sector has not added a large number of jobs since 2000 - though one could argue that there might be a multiplier effect as these white-collar employees spend in their local community.
Subprime is exacerbating a correction in the housing market that may have started a couple years ago. It is a symptom of a business cycle change meeting poor decisions at all levels - individual, corporate, and national.
I agree that it is tough to find buyers when people are pessimistic about the future - and sellers are unwilling to sell their houses at market values (insisting that they at least recoup their original purchase price. (See NYTimes article "A reality Checl for Home Sellers, NYTimes Sept. 23, 2006) In Southern California, I've got anecdotal evidence (sorry, no hard data) that property value increases had been driven, in part, by wealthy Taiwanese/Chinese immigrants. This may help in the short-term with a decrease in housing value (though the impact might be small), but is separate from adjusting the issues stemming from an artificial situation of low savings rates, consumer debt, and low inflation and interest rates, all sustained by external debt and wagers on future productivity increases.
Shelley Mizener:
Agreed. But I think there's room for all people - local and national - to chip in. I agree it'd be ridiculous to wait for it from the top, but individual responsibility and action will find a greater opportunity for success if policies at the national level can facilitate both micro initiative/change and macro stability.
David Esrati:
Your ambitions are noble, and I wish you the best for your election. But I would add a cautionary tale by one of the better American presidents. JFK found, prior to and during his term, that he needed to recognize the importance of Wall Street firms and "big corporate interests" in providing jobs. The provision of jobs is based on the profit motive, yes, but also on a reasonable assessment of the mid-term future prospects. Implied in this is a sense that some sense of stability is needed in order for businesses to keep people employed.
Yes, policy can change the way individuals do business, especially if done with a popular mandate and in a non-combative fashion. But the near term requires coordination - or at least dialogue - with the Nation's businesses, large and small, and an understanding that no one wins if we deviate from the key issues and problems.
Li:
Keynesianism isn't focused merely on spending money that we don't have. There are two key points - first, to avert a downturn, the government increases spending to improve the economy. After recovery, the government decreases spending and pays down the debt through budget surpluses.
It is fair to argue that it's not politically realistic to expect a party taking control during a recovery to decrease spending. It is also fair to argue that the basic model may not accurately account for various firms and individuals pricing in government intervention, to the point where deficit spending is less effective than predicted.
I've got some thoughts about this, and also in response to reader comments.
My comments on article:
Businessweek is correct that health care and education (especially the former) are projected growth areas. One issue of concern - both primarily cater to domestic individuals.
The quality of emergency health care in this country is still very good, though there are obvious issues with its cost, an incentive structure that discourages preventative care, and general individual lifestyle/education issues that compound American health, quality of life, and life expectancy. But the growth will primarily come in geriatrics - in which those who can afford to pay, will, and those who can't, will depend upon Medicare/Medicaid for long-term care. Though we might add more jobs in elder care, it may come at the cost of additional federal expenditures, since even with Medicare/Medicaid, community care facilities have an average -7.2% pretax margin. (“The Most and Least Profitable Businesses to Start”, Forbes, 18 Jan 2008)
Impact:
- Care primarily focused on Americans
- No major effect on trade imbalance
- Neutral/Negative on national debt/Medicare unfunded liability
Education faces similar issues, partly because the advantage the United States has in higher education is decreasing with renewed efforts on the part of national efforts to develop top-tier domestic institutions. This will take a while longer for Europe, India, and Asia to develop - unless these nations choose to use their recent commitments in areas of R&D to focus their educational institutions around specific fields and subfields. While the Ivy League may remain on top for a while, it might not be surprising to find in the not-too-distant-future a large number of Singaporean medical/drug researchers, Indian systems engineers, and European materials scientists that will carve away certain sectors of the educational advantage once held by the United States. When they stop coming here to study, we will lose their tuition money and their long-term contribution to American research, industry, and cultural/social intangibles.
Responses to reader comments
(in order from past to future - I would have included them here, but I'm a bit uncertain about the copyright law in this area)
Mike:
An economy supported by war spending is an example of Keynesianism (specifically, military Keynesianism). Keynesianism only suggests that the government spend money to increase employment - it does not require that the employment be particularly useful, productive, or moral. Many of the alphabet-soup programs initiated by Roosevelt during the 1930s did improve the infrastructure of the economy, but many programs could legitimately be called "make-work". The key is to keep employment as low as possible, and enough money in the economic system to avoid a decrease in demand.
Jayendra:
It is precisely that fear that led to a breakdown of the classical model. A rational individual will stuff their money in a mattress (c. 1930s) or commodities/money market funds (c. 2007) because of fear of further downturns. However, when A LOT of rational individuals do this, you get a classically "irrational" result - that is, a feedback effect where each drop in consumption/investment spending leads to increased fear and more money effectively taken out of the system (mattresses, gold, and euros). I'm not saying you should spend money just to keep the economy afloat - only the government has the resources, incentive, and - for now - a sufficiently large line of credit to do that.
Hugo van Randwyck (and Phil Owen):
A "sin tax" on gas, coupled with a lump-sum transfer (tax rebate) could work to reduce American dependence on foreign oil, which in the long run might be healthier for the environment and the economy.
Additional spending It might provide the economic incentive to fund increased R&D. However, research-grade scientists already have near-zero employment - you would need to increase the supply of researchers, which would take many years to train, and many years of economic conditions still making it valuable to pursue advanced degrees in engineering, materials science, operations research, and basic science.
Timeframes are important. If gas hits $6 a barrel through a tax, what will happen to a large number of commuters who can't absorb the cost? In my native Los Angeles, many people commute over an hour and a half precisely because their budgets are pressed so far that they cannot afford housing closer to their home. Substitution goods - public transportation - are not as well funded as that found in many European cities. Even if the tax on gasoline were used to fund new public transportation, it would take a considerable amount of time to mount such a campaign. Meanwhile, you have rapid inflation of everything from foodstuffs to big-ticket items, which could lead to a period of extremely painful stagflation (decreasing GDP + inflation).
There is also an issue in which China has been reluctant to float its currency, precisely because they want to keep a positive trade balance. The issues are more complex than I understand, but appear to be well articulated in the January/February issue of the Atlantic Monthly.
Rakesh Mehra:
One problem with this is that overseas profits are, for the first time ever, responsible for the majority of many firms' profits. These firms, which do pay taxes (we can argue if they pay enough), do face competitive pressures from overseas. A unilateral effort on the part of the US Government to stop outsourcing could, in the short-term, reduce badly needed tax revenues, and, in the mid- to long-term, erode American companies' market share in the international markets, leading either to decreased revenue (and decreased taxes), and/or layoffs of domestic workers.
Outsourcing is an issue - the US would do well to look into beefing up its Trade Adjustment Assistance program and seriously consider restructuring its education programs and government procurement priorities. But a general tax on outsourcing would not help, and could do much harm.
Chandra SR and Jayendra Sai Chelluri:
This article pointed out that the financial sector has not added a large number of jobs since 2000 - though one could argue that there might be a multiplier effect as these white-collar employees spend in their local community.
Subprime is exacerbating a correction in the housing market that may have started a couple years ago. It is a symptom of a business cycle change meeting poor decisions at all levels - individual, corporate, and national.
I agree that it is tough to find buyers when people are pessimistic about the future - and sellers are unwilling to sell their houses at market values (insisting that they at least recoup their original purchase price. (See NYTimes article "A reality Checl for Home Sellers, NYTimes Sept. 23, 2006) In Southern California, I've got anecdotal evidence (sorry, no hard data) that property value increases had been driven, in part, by wealthy Taiwanese/Chinese immigrants. This may help in the short-term with a decrease in housing value (though the impact might be small), but is separate from adjusting the issues stemming from an artificial situation of low savings rates, consumer debt, and low inflation and interest rates, all sustained by external debt and wagers on future productivity increases.
Shelley Mizener:
Agreed. But I think there's room for all people - local and national - to chip in. I agree it'd be ridiculous to wait for it from the top, but individual responsibility and action will find a greater opportunity for success if policies at the national level can facilitate both micro initiative/change and macro stability.
David Esrati:
Your ambitions are noble, and I wish you the best for your election. But I would add a cautionary tale by one of the better American presidents. JFK found, prior to and during his term, that he needed to recognize the importance of Wall Street firms and "big corporate interests" in providing jobs. The provision of jobs is based on the profit motive, yes, but also on a reasonable assessment of the mid-term future prospects. Implied in this is a sense that some sense of stability is needed in order for businesses to keep people employed.
Yes, policy can change the way individuals do business, especially if done with a popular mandate and in a non-combative fashion. But the near term requires coordination - or at least dialogue - with the Nation's businesses, large and small, and an understanding that no one wins if we deviate from the key issues and problems.
Li:
Keynesianism isn't focused merely on spending money that we don't have. There are two key points - first, to avert a downturn, the government increases spending to improve the economy. After recovery, the government decreases spending and pays down the debt through budget surpluses.
It is fair to argue that it's not politically realistic to expect a party taking control during a recovery to decrease spending. It is also fair to argue that the basic model may not accurately account for various firms and individuals pricing in government intervention, to the point where deficit spending is less effective than predicted.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Comments on Seattle's Best/Borders Rewards Program Policy
I'm currently a bit sick, and felt a bit lonely after a long day at home reading papers. So, I decided to stop by my local Borders Cafe and drink some hot tea. I go to the Borders Cafe in the Pyramid Mall, where I am enough of a regular that most of the baristas know me by name and disposition.
During this trip, I found out an interesting change in store policy. Apparently, Borders is enforcing a 55% Borders Rewards scan rate among its staff. This is a stronger way of enforcing the policy that the staff ask customers for their Borders Rewards card, then offer to sign them up for one. I do not know if this policy is codified, but it apparently comes up from somewhere in the ranks of Borders management/executives.
All of this is interesting in it of itself, and deserves a long, separate post. But I find it interesting that the company found it prudent to explicitly mandate that cashiers will be rated on whether or not they make a quota of 55% Borders Rewards scans. So, I'm going to flex my neophyte business policy muscles and analyze this policy. I'm doing this on admittedly little info, so if you have more information on the specifics, I'd be glad to hear it.
It's a tad long, so I'm going to outline my thoughts in an "executive summary" of sorts, which, knowing my luck, won't be read by any executive other than my immediate boss, who will wonder what the hell I'm doing wasting time on rather bland commentary of corporate policies.
----Summary------
Policy: Cashiers need to maintain at least a 55% Borders Rewards scan rate among customers.
Relevant characteristics of policy/other store policies:
- Percentages depend upon region - for example, Oregon has a policy of 35%.
- Failure to do so will result in being written up.
- Three write-ups, and you're out (fired).
- Customers should spend more than 5 minutes from the time they get in line to the time they are finished.
Why?
1. These tags track purchases. Better consumer demographics will help advertising/marketing divisions better design promotional campaigns targeted at the customer.
2. These data also help evaluate stores and profitability, and in particular, managers and regional directors that might be seeking advancement in the corporate hierarchy.
Potential Problems With Policy:
1. Write-up threat
Demoralizing
Punitive
2. Incentive to sign up individuals leads to longer lines
Contrary to policy of efficiency
3. Odd measure of productivity
Why it will be effective
Seattle's Best can get away from this, because many of its entry-level employees are not seeking a career - they are seeking a way to make pocket money during college.
Common enemy can, paradoxically, improve group cohesion
Innovation regarding application processing
-----End Summary------
First, let's ask the question:
Why would Borders want to implement this policy?
1. These tags track purchases. Better consumer demographics will help advertising/marketing divisions better design promotional campaigns targeted at the customer.
---details of above point, skip if lazy/rushed---
I've always been fascinated by these little membership cards. A long, long time ago, a company could only use aggregate sales, perhaps on a store basis, perhaps by depending upon regional accounting, on what consumer behavior looked like. With the advent of the UPC symbol (1974) and scanning technology, this process became incredibly efficient, but remained limited to per-store behavior melded with local demographics.
As recently as a few years ago, it would be possible to shop in major supermarkets that lacked a membership card. Today, however, nearly every retailer makes use of membership cards (and their handy miniaturized companions, keytags) to record purchases by consumer. For the first time in history, it might be possible to gather timely, specific information on the consumption of a large fraction of the customer base. Granted, I don't know whether Gmail shares my specific profile with Borders (Asian, 24 years old, United Methodist, etc.). Google in general probably has enough information on me (and most everyone in America) that they know me better than I know myself.
But even without that information, Borders can compile the number of customers per store, same-store visits, correlations between cafe use and book purchases, etc.
---END details of above point, skip if lazy/rushed---
2. These data also help evaluate stores and profitability, and in particular, managers and regional directors that might be seeking advancement in the corporate hierarchy.
This point is rather obvious - headquarters wants to promote the individuals with the best potential to extend their effectiveness to a larger number of stores at the regional or national level. The best way to do this is to measure whether they are, in fact, helping the company.
Potential Problems With Policy:
1. Write-up threat
By most measures, this is a pretty stupid way to get 1/3 fired. Whether or not a person signs up for the card depends on many factors - whether they expect to be back, whether they mind toting around a little tag with marginal benefits, whether they appreciate hauling out their existing membership out of their pocket, etc. Little, if any of this, has to do with the given cashier.
The fairly punitive nature of the penalty for not making a quota on something that, technically, does not improve the company's profits is pretty demoralizing. Never mind that "the enemy" (another SB) is already highly ranked as one of the 100 best companies to work for. If Borders wants its employees to feel like a "family" or at least a minimally Hobbesian contest of profit and power, then it needs to do a better job of not handing down policies that most employees would find mean and stupid.
2. Incentive to sign up individuals leads to longer lines
Contrary to a stated policy (and good business sense) of efficiency, signing up for a Borders Rewards card leads to an additional wait. This is absolutely deadly with long lines. (This cafe, I am told, is the second busiest in the state, making this a particularly relevant point.) As someone who spent about 15 minutes of precious Christmas break time trying (unsuccessfully) to get a Blockbuster membership in West LA, I can say that it's infuriating to be the person putting up with the application. My friends Jake and Ed can tell you that it's doubly annoying to be the person waiting for the person waiting for the form.
A customer cradling a book in line will be more likely to wait in line, in part because of the endowment effect. (See behavioral economics.) It's not clear to me that customer waiting in line for coffee or food experiences less of an endowment effect, since they don't have to physically give up an object they've had in their possession (in fact if not in deed). This may be offset by the fact that consumables might pose more immediate utility than durable objects (like books) - depending on how much the customer seeks immediate gratification, they may or may not be more likely to wait in line for a drink than a book.
In any event, filling out the form not only decreases efficiency, but also may lead to a net loss in sales if people are fed up and leave.
3. Odd measure of productivity
There is, of course, the question as to whether or not this should be a good measure of productivity. What Borders is doing is measuring the effectiveness of its employees in getting people to sign up such that Borders HQ can measure the effectiveness of their employees/stores.
What?
That's right. In the obsession for quantitative measure of progress, Borders may in fact be using a handy number as a proxy for effectiveness. Yes, there are tangible benefits for maximal participation in Borders Rewards. Yes, there is a component of effort on the part of the individual employee, and this is a way of measuring it. But seriously, some manager is going to be worrying about whether or not the change in the percentage of employee Borders Rewards numbers on the right side of the quota is positive and of sufficient magnitude. You're talking about a one-two-three-fourth order separation from the actual job of selling stuff.
In physics, the first derivative of position is velocity. The second derivative of position is acceleration. Few people know the technical name of the third derivative of position (rate of change in acceleration), because it is not relevant for most applications. The third derivative of position is known, properly, as jerk.
I'd say the analogy couldn't be more appropriate.
But all sniping aside, the point is that anything that doesn't directly contribute to profits - including employee satisfaction (reduces turnover), customer satisfaction (increases market), and efficiency (decreases per unit costs) - probably doesn't belong in a good business.
Why it will be effective
Seattle's Best can get away from this, because many of its entry-level employees are not seeking a career - they are seeking a way to make pocket money during college. Seattle's Best can get away from this, because many of its entry-level employees are not seeking a career - they are seeking a way to make pocket money during college. If people get fired or leave because of this policy, there will be plenty of other young, cheerful baristas-in-waiting who are waiting for their chance.
It's not pretty, but it works.
There are some positive benefits to this, of course. Borders Rewards numbers will go up. Hatred of dumb management policies will lead to added group cohesion - by defining the other as the amorphous and distant "headquarters", it's possible to exploit in-group/out-group dynamics and create a better, closer team. This is also true because success for any one individual depends in large part upon getting enough regulars to sign up - that is, for all cashiers to do their best.
And in the end, this policy might spur innovative ways of improving the system to make it more effective. It doesn't take brilliance to conceive of keeping a Rewards Card handy to scan customers that don't have one, and then direct them down to an empty spot on the counter to fill out the application. This uses the obligation that has been created by "doing the customer a favor" by scanning the standby card and creating a situation where, in order to be self-consistent with prior commitments, the customer should move down the counter and fill out the info while their drink is being made.
Conclusion
In the end, the reason why this policy exists has as much to do with a principle of management/governance/leadership that is as old as time...
To be a prince, one must always be able to point to something that has been done to serve the body politic, though often doing nothing is more effective and desired than any possible policy.
- ME
A mid-level manager probably came up with this policy, which was stolen by his upper-management boss and pushed as a way to prove value to the company. Yay for leadership.
Anyway, I'm still sick. But I'll drink to Borders - not the company, but the people. Even on a down day, these folks are some of my favorites in the world.
During this trip, I found out an interesting change in store policy. Apparently, Borders is enforcing a 55% Borders Rewards scan rate among its staff. This is a stronger way of enforcing the policy that the staff ask customers for their Borders Rewards card, then offer to sign them up for one. I do not know if this policy is codified, but it apparently comes up from somewhere in the ranks of Borders management/executives.
All of this is interesting in it of itself, and deserves a long, separate post. But I find it interesting that the company found it prudent to explicitly mandate that cashiers will be rated on whether or not they make a quota of 55% Borders Rewards scans. So, I'm going to flex my neophyte business policy muscles and analyze this policy. I'm doing this on admittedly little info, so if you have more information on the specifics, I'd be glad to hear it.
It's a tad long, so I'm going to outline my thoughts in an "executive summary" of sorts, which, knowing my luck, won't be read by any executive other than my immediate boss, who will wonder what the hell I'm doing wasting time on rather bland commentary of corporate policies.
----Summary------
Policy: Cashiers need to maintain at least a 55% Borders Rewards scan rate among customers.
Relevant characteristics of policy/other store policies:
- Percentages depend upon region - for example, Oregon has a policy of 35%.
- Failure to do so will result in being written up.
- Three write-ups, and you're out (fired).
- Customers should spend more than 5 minutes from the time they get in line to the time they are finished.
Why?
1. These tags track purchases. Better consumer demographics will help advertising/marketing divisions better design promotional campaigns targeted at the customer.
2. These data also help evaluate stores and profitability, and in particular, managers and regional directors that might be seeking advancement in the corporate hierarchy.
Potential Problems With Policy:
1. Write-up threat
Demoralizing
Punitive
2. Incentive to sign up individuals leads to longer lines
Contrary to policy of efficiency
3. Odd measure of productivity
Why it will be effective
Seattle's Best can get away from this, because many of its entry-level employees are not seeking a career - they are seeking a way to make pocket money during college.
Common enemy can, paradoxically, improve group cohesion
Innovation regarding application processing
-----End Summary------
First, let's ask the question:
Why would Borders want to implement this policy?
1. These tags track purchases. Better consumer demographics will help advertising/marketing divisions better design promotional campaigns targeted at the customer.
---details of above point, skip if lazy/rushed---
I've always been fascinated by these little membership cards. A long, long time ago, a company could only use aggregate sales, perhaps on a store basis, perhaps by depending upon regional accounting, on what consumer behavior looked like. With the advent of the UPC symbol (1974) and scanning technology, this process became incredibly efficient, but remained limited to per-store behavior melded with local demographics.
As recently as a few years ago, it would be possible to shop in major supermarkets that lacked a membership card. Today, however, nearly every retailer makes use of membership cards (and their handy miniaturized companions, keytags) to record purchases by consumer. For the first time in history, it might be possible to gather timely, specific information on the consumption of a large fraction of the customer base. Granted, I don't know whether Gmail shares my specific profile with Borders (Asian, 24 years old, United Methodist, etc.). Google in general probably has enough information on me (and most everyone in America) that they know me better than I know myself.
But even without that information, Borders can compile the number of customers per store, same-store visits, correlations between cafe use and book purchases, etc.
---END details of above point, skip if lazy/rushed---
2. These data also help evaluate stores and profitability, and in particular, managers and regional directors that might be seeking advancement in the corporate hierarchy.
This point is rather obvious - headquarters wants to promote the individuals with the best potential to extend their effectiveness to a larger number of stores at the regional or national level. The best way to do this is to measure whether they are, in fact, helping the company.
Potential Problems With Policy:
1. Write-up threat
By most measures, this is a pretty stupid way to get 1/3 fired. Whether or not a person signs up for the card depends on many factors - whether they expect to be back, whether they mind toting around a little tag with marginal benefits, whether they appreciate hauling out their existing membership out of their pocket, etc. Little, if any of this, has to do with the given cashier.
The fairly punitive nature of the penalty for not making a quota on something that, technically, does not improve the company's profits is pretty demoralizing. Never mind that "the enemy" (another SB) is already highly ranked as one of the 100 best companies to work for. If Borders wants its employees to feel like a "family" or at least a minimally Hobbesian contest of profit and power, then it needs to do a better job of not handing down policies that most employees would find mean and stupid.
2. Incentive to sign up individuals leads to longer lines
Contrary to a stated policy (and good business sense) of efficiency, signing up for a Borders Rewards card leads to an additional wait. This is absolutely deadly with long lines. (This cafe, I am told, is the second busiest in the state, making this a particularly relevant point.) As someone who spent about 15 minutes of precious Christmas break time trying (unsuccessfully) to get a Blockbuster membership in West LA, I can say that it's infuriating to be the person putting up with the application. My friends Jake and Ed can tell you that it's doubly annoying to be the person waiting for the person waiting for the form.
A customer cradling a book in line will be more likely to wait in line, in part because of the endowment effect. (See behavioral economics.) It's not clear to me that customer waiting in line for coffee or food experiences less of an endowment effect, since they don't have to physically give up an object they've had in their possession (in fact if not in deed). This may be offset by the fact that consumables might pose more immediate utility than durable objects (like books) - depending on how much the customer seeks immediate gratification, they may or may not be more likely to wait in line for a drink than a book.
In any event, filling out the form not only decreases efficiency, but also may lead to a net loss in sales if people are fed up and leave.
3. Odd measure of productivity
There is, of course, the question as to whether or not this should be a good measure of productivity. What Borders is doing is measuring the effectiveness of its employees in getting people to sign up such that Borders HQ can measure the effectiveness of their employees/stores.
What?
That's right. In the obsession for quantitative measure of progress, Borders may in fact be using a handy number as a proxy for effectiveness. Yes, there are tangible benefits for maximal participation in Borders Rewards. Yes, there is a component of effort on the part of the individual employee, and this is a way of measuring it. But seriously, some manager is going to be worrying about whether or not the change in the percentage of employee Borders Rewards numbers on the right side of the quota is positive and of sufficient magnitude. You're talking about a one-two-three-fourth order separation from the actual job of selling stuff.
In physics, the first derivative of position is velocity. The second derivative of position is acceleration. Few people know the technical name of the third derivative of position (rate of change in acceleration), because it is not relevant for most applications. The third derivative of position is known, properly, as jerk.
I'd say the analogy couldn't be more appropriate.
But all sniping aside, the point is that anything that doesn't directly contribute to profits - including employee satisfaction (reduces turnover), customer satisfaction (increases market), and efficiency (decreases per unit costs) - probably doesn't belong in a good business.
Why it will be effective
Seattle's Best can get away from this, because many of its entry-level employees are not seeking a career - they are seeking a way to make pocket money during college. Seattle's Best can get away from this, because many of its entry-level employees are not seeking a career - they are seeking a way to make pocket money during college. If people get fired or leave because of this policy, there will be plenty of other young, cheerful baristas-in-waiting who are waiting for their chance.
It's not pretty, but it works.
There are some positive benefits to this, of course. Borders Rewards numbers will go up. Hatred of dumb management policies will lead to added group cohesion - by defining the other as the amorphous and distant "headquarters", it's possible to exploit in-group/out-group dynamics and create a better, closer team. This is also true because success for any one individual depends in large part upon getting enough regulars to sign up - that is, for all cashiers to do their best.
And in the end, this policy might spur innovative ways of improving the system to make it more effective. It doesn't take brilliance to conceive of keeping a Rewards Card handy to scan customers that don't have one, and then direct them down to an empty spot on the counter to fill out the application. This uses the obligation that has been created by "doing the customer a favor" by scanning the standby card and creating a situation where, in order to be self-consistent with prior commitments, the customer should move down the counter and fill out the info while their drink is being made.
Conclusion
In the end, the reason why this policy exists has as much to do with a principle of management/governance/leadership that is as old as time...
To be a prince, one must always be able to point to something that has been done to serve the body politic, though often doing nothing is more effective and desired than any possible policy.
- ME
A mid-level manager probably came up with this policy, which was stolen by his upper-management boss and pushed as a way to prove value to the company. Yay for leadership.
Anyway, I'm still sick. But I'll drink to Borders - not the company, but the people. Even on a down day, these folks are some of my favorites in the world.
One Reason Why Psychology Matters: $BILLIONS$
The most recent edition of the Atlantic (January/Feburary 2008) included a brief blurb about a curious result from a Cornell Johnson Business School research paper. This paper found that sellers can make buyers perceive that a cost is smaller than it is by replacing zeroes with numbers. The authors suggest that this comes about because we use precise numbers to measure small quantities, and rounded numbers to measure large quantities - consequently, a number like 391,534 will seem smaller than 390,000. Examining 27,000 real-estate transactions on Long Island and in South Florida, they found that having at least one zero lowered the sale price by about 0.72% compared to houses listed at a similar price. Three zeroes lowered it by 0.73%, and each additional zero lowered it by 0.39%.
I can think of a couple other reasons that might be the case (For example, buyers might understand that sellers would likely round up rather than round down. Or, sellers might believe that the more precise number reflects careful pricing and analysis and is more reliable than the rounded number.) Whatever the reason, this result is an example of the success and value of behavioral economics.
Behavioral economics is a recent effort spearheaded by psychologists and economists to incorporate the results from social psychology into microeconomics models. in turn, features these microeconomic models are being incorporated into macroeconomic theory.
The recent wave of foreclosures provides another example of behavioral economics at work. The NYTimes has an article titled "A Reality Check for Home Sellers" (Sept 23, 2007, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/business/yourmoney/23view.html). Home buyers experience loss aversion ; that is, they feel losses more strongly than gains.
One consequence of this is that they will leave homes on the market at or above the price they paid for it, even after it is clear that their home is no longer worth as much. This is deemed "irrational" by classical economics, which states that the price a rational consumer offers ought to simply be whatever the market price is for the home. Another consequence is that an unsold home can prevent an individual from moving and taking a better-paying job elsewhere. (This may be particularly important if the drop in housing prices is in part due to the closure of a local employer.)
Studies show that individuals typically feel losses more strongly than gains by a factor of 2 to 2.5 to 1. This means that, all other things being equal, the average person would wager $100 on a coin toss only if she would win $200-$250 if she called it correctly. The ancients were right when they said, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."
The strength of Behavioral Economics is growing, as evidenced by another NYTimes article ("Calculating the Irrational in Economics, Jan. 14, 2008) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E1DC1F3BF93BA15755C0A9659C8B63) and the popularity of the book Freakanomics. It was by far one of the most interesting and valuable courses I have taken in my life (and I've been in school for 19 of my 24 years). Check it out - even if it doesn't make you a fortune, it might explain why you aren't socking away money in your 401(k), or why you waste so much money on gym memberships, or why procrastination hurts so good.
Speaking of which, I've got some work to do...
I can think of a couple other reasons that might be the case (For example, buyers might understand that sellers would likely round up rather than round down. Or, sellers might believe that the more precise number reflects careful pricing and analysis and is more reliable than the rounded number.) Whatever the reason, this result is an example of the success and value of behavioral economics.
Behavioral economics is a recent effort spearheaded by psychologists and economists to incorporate the results from social psychology into microeconomics models. in turn, features these microeconomic models are being incorporated into macroeconomic theory.
The recent wave of foreclosures provides another example of behavioral economics at work. The NYTimes has an article titled "A Reality Check for Home Sellers" (Sept 23, 2007, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/business/yourmoney/23view.html). Home buyers experience loss aversion ; that is, they feel losses more strongly than gains.
One consequence of this is that they will leave homes on the market at or above the price they paid for it, even after it is clear that their home is no longer worth as much. This is deemed "irrational" by classical economics, which states that the price a rational consumer offers ought to simply be whatever the market price is for the home. Another consequence is that an unsold home can prevent an individual from moving and taking a better-paying job elsewhere. (This may be particularly important if the drop in housing prices is in part due to the closure of a local employer.)
Studies show that individuals typically feel losses more strongly than gains by a factor of 2 to 2.5 to 1. This means that, all other things being equal, the average person would wager $100 on a coin toss only if she would win $200-$250 if she called it correctly. The ancients were right when they said, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."
The strength of Behavioral Economics is growing, as evidenced by another NYTimes article ("Calculating the Irrational in Economics, Jan. 14, 2008) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E1DC1F3BF93BA15755C0A9659C8B63) and the popularity of the book Freakanomics. It was by far one of the most interesting and valuable courses I have taken in my life (and I've been in school for 19 of my 24 years). Check it out - even if it doesn't make you a fortune, it might explain why you aren't socking away money in your 401(k), or why you waste so much money on gym memberships, or why procrastination hurts so good.
Speaking of which, I've got some work to do...
Friday, January 11, 2008
Subprime
To the subprime lenders -
I have just one thing to say: you knew what you were doing.
It doesn't matter that it was company policy. It doesn't matter that incentives to sell higher interest loans directly impacted your take-home pay. It doesn't matter that the relatively simple algorithms for calculating the fitness of a prospective borrower are buried behind pastel GUIs, such that you, dear agent, do not have to crunch the numbers yourself.
You knew what you were doing.
It doesn't matter that you would have lost your job, or been denied promotion had you questioned company policy, or that your boss' boss' boss would have illustrated to you the time-tested truth that shit does roll downhill, and that, by god, it could become a brown avalanche by the time it landed on your desk if you failed to do your job.
You knew what you were doing.
And because you knew, you must now know that in the final account, you bear responsibility.
I don't really care if you hide behind Ricardian economics to explain why all the good, easy money has already been made, resulting in the need for complex debt instruments in order for you and your firm to make a buck. I don't really care if you in fact helped some customers buy homes that they would not have otherwise been able to purchase. And I especially don't care that caveat emptor is a logical result of evolutionary biology, and that dog eat dog is simply the nature of things.
I don't even care that, rightly, a lot of people were damn stupid to think that citizenship entitled them to ownership, and that a house defined who they were so badly that they were willing to ignore basic arithmetic, and that I, like you, are pissed as hell that we're going to chip in to pay for some shithead dealings.
You knew what you were doing, and no rationalization will hide that. No matter how small the part you played, you were directly responsible.
I don't claim moral superiority over you - through my incompetence, I am in my own way defrauding the taxpayer. I am reneging upon two generations of admirable ancestry by failing, at the critical moment, to take command of myself, responsibility and ownership of myself, to do what must be done. God knows I've enough sins to send me straight to the hot seat, among which are possession of investments which, directly or indirectly, contribute to the credit crunch.
But I want to know that I'll save you a seat on the bus, the Good Intentions Express, right next to me.
America is what it is, good, bad, or indifferent, because of the ability for most of us to push aside personal responsibility, to be led admirably by those who embrace it and honor, tyrannized by those who embrace it and selfishness. But ownership of one's actions, thoughts, and words is the prerequisite for leadership, perhaps the prerequisite for humanity.
So you have a choice, friends. Admit that you are no more than cogs of an elaborate, magnificent, and fundamentally unhealthy clockwork piece of questionable but not decisively negative value to humanity's progress. Or, admit your failure to commit to the principles of honor, integrity, and good faith that are the bedrock of the American enterprise, in idea if not in fact.
Either way, i, and others like me, will not permit you the complacence of ambiguity, the somnambulant reprieve from the blistering attempts to reconcile who you think you are, to get at the core of who you really are. Vivisect your false self, yo.
Welcome to my hell.
On the brighter side of things, check out this delightful website: http://www.predatorylendingassociation.com/
I have just one thing to say: you knew what you were doing.
It doesn't matter that it was company policy. It doesn't matter that incentives to sell higher interest loans directly impacted your take-home pay. It doesn't matter that the relatively simple algorithms for calculating the fitness of a prospective borrower are buried behind pastel GUIs, such that you, dear agent, do not have to crunch the numbers yourself.
You knew what you were doing.
It doesn't matter that you would have lost your job, or been denied promotion had you questioned company policy, or that your boss' boss' boss would have illustrated to you the time-tested truth that shit does roll downhill, and that, by god, it could become a brown avalanche by the time it landed on your desk if you failed to do your job.
You knew what you were doing.
And because you knew, you must now know that in the final account, you bear responsibility.
I don't really care if you hide behind Ricardian economics to explain why all the good, easy money has already been made, resulting in the need for complex debt instruments in order for you and your firm to make a buck. I don't really care if you in fact helped some customers buy homes that they would not have otherwise been able to purchase. And I especially don't care that caveat emptor is a logical result of evolutionary biology, and that dog eat dog is simply the nature of things.
I don't even care that, rightly, a lot of people were damn stupid to think that citizenship entitled them to ownership, and that a house defined who they were so badly that they were willing to ignore basic arithmetic, and that I, like you, are pissed as hell that we're going to chip in to pay for some shithead dealings.
You knew what you were doing, and no rationalization will hide that. No matter how small the part you played, you were directly responsible.
I don't claim moral superiority over you - through my incompetence, I am in my own way defrauding the taxpayer. I am reneging upon two generations of admirable ancestry by failing, at the critical moment, to take command of myself, responsibility and ownership of myself, to do what must be done. God knows I've enough sins to send me straight to the hot seat, among which are possession of investments which, directly or indirectly, contribute to the credit crunch.
But I want to know that I'll save you a seat on the bus, the Good Intentions Express, right next to me.
America is what it is, good, bad, or indifferent, because of the ability for most of us to push aside personal responsibility, to be led admirably by those who embrace it and honor, tyrannized by those who embrace it and selfishness. But ownership of one's actions, thoughts, and words is the prerequisite for leadership, perhaps the prerequisite for humanity.
So you have a choice, friends. Admit that you are no more than cogs of an elaborate, magnificent, and fundamentally unhealthy clockwork piece of questionable but not decisively negative value to humanity's progress. Or, admit your failure to commit to the principles of honor, integrity, and good faith that are the bedrock of the American enterprise, in idea if not in fact.
Either way, i, and others like me, will not permit you the complacence of ambiguity, the somnambulant reprieve from the blistering attempts to reconcile who you think you are, to get at the core of who you really are. Vivisect your false self, yo.
Welcome to my hell.
On the brighter side of things, check out this delightful website: http://www.predatorylendingassociation.com/
On Volunteer Organizations (letter to MMAD)
1. Introduction
One of my biggest regrets at Mudd is not devoting the time, thought, and energy needed to really set up MMAD with more infrastructure. I am very happy that the coordinator positions are work-study - I think this is an important way for students who are concerned for society to be able to do good work without having to choose between work and volunteering. To clarify my thoughts, and to maybe pass along the experience and thoughts I should have before I left, I've decided to draft this memo. I don't know of an existing handbook for volunteering, but all social organizations operate according to a few basic principles, most of which I have tried to incorporate into this memo.
2. Summary
I've separated them in terms of strategic, operational, and tactical lessons.
Strategic lessons relate to long-term planning and agenda setting - usually things that happen once a semester, once a year, or even over the lifetime of MMAD. (planning)
Operational lessons relate to the mechanics of getting things done - logistics, planning, and execution of events. (doing things)
Tactical lessons relate to the techniques you actually use to recruit volunteers for events and keep people informed. (keeping people happy and interested)
The chief lessons learned:
Strategic
1. Decide each year whether energy and mission will be focused on outreach, volunteering, or activism, or a combination of these.
2. Be realistic as far as what to expect from HMC and its students, realistic but not pessimistic.
3. Volunteering can be fun, personally rewarding, and eye-opening - it does not have to be all of these, but there should be an opportunity for each.
4. Good relationships with the administrators and ASHMC are incredibly important in order to get things done.
Operational
1. Ego destroys more organizations and clubs than anything else - the cause, whatever it is, must be bigger than any one person.
2. Get help if you need it.
3. Everyone needs a clear idea of what needs to be done, why it needs to be done, and who needs to do it.
4. Money is important in order to get things done - make sure that the funding is available for every project. If it's not, don't be shy to go out and get it.
5. Learn how to negotiate with the administration and other stakeholders.
6. Professors, the administration, and staff have long-term connections with the community, and are a great source of contacts. Existing contacts should be maintained and transferred between years.
7. Talk about what worked and what didn't for each event.
Tactical
1. You get more flies with honey than vinegar - focus on the positive.
2. Provide a range of commitment/participation levels to make it as easy as possible for people to volunteer.
3. Know how to table and flier effectively.
4. Make use of digital media, like websites, electronic calendars, and listservs to get opportunities out.
Most of these seem obvious, but it's sometimes a bit challenging to keep all of these in mind when one has finals/jobs/personal life to worry about. I'll cover each point listed in more detail below.
3. Strategic
(1) Decide each year whether energy and mission will be focused on outreach, volunteering, or activism, or a combination of these.
When I was a MMAD volunteer coordinator, we focused on volunteering. We decided to do this because other organizations - like Upward Bound and the education course led by Professors Dodds (CS) and Yong (Math) - were working on outreach. Furthermore, outreach is done in different ways by research groups, in part because the National Science Foundation requires all recipients of grants to demonstrate a broader impact to society. Activism was avoided because it can be tricky - it is frequently political, often confrontational with the administration and other students, and highly dependent upon the personal values of the Mudd coordinators. This became a big issue during Spring 2004, when a cross-burning and various racial incidents led to the creation of a number of aggressive student activist organizations.
Both activism and outreach can be a part of MMAD, but should be recognized as different from MMAD's historical mission - to provide Mudders with the opportunity to volunteer with members of the 5-C community in the Inland Valley area.
Whatever the mission, make sure it is specific. It should be able to be articulated in a single, relatively uncomplicated sentence.
(2) Be realistic as far as what to expect from HMC and its students, realistic but not pessimistic.
This was something that took a very, very long time to drill into my thick skull. I'd wonder, why don't Mudders care about things like poverty, homelessness, or bad public schools? Are we just soulless scientists or spoiled college kids?
The problem, of course, was not the Mudd community, but my expectations of what should be. Mudd students have a sense of never having enough time, of always being busy, of always being overworked. At first, I thought we really did work harder than everyone else - now that I've visited a few schools and been at Cornell for a few years, I realize that most students feel this way. Mudd is different from some schools in that it is
(1) small
(2) focused on math, science, and engineering, which are hard
(3) an expensive school.
I didn't consider those three factors, which made it hard for me to realize why it would be harder to recruit volunteers here than at, say, Berkeley.
It is small - this means that everyone knows everyone else, and so you might be trying to convince friends instead of complete strangers to go feed the homeless on Saturdays. However, this also means that, all other things being equal, there are a smaller number of students who will see value in volunteering. Now, based on my experience with Oxfam donations, Mudders might in fact be far more generous than students at the other 4-C with their meals going toward international hunger relief. But the fact remains that with only 800 people, it's hard to believe that there will be an army of people who agree with your worldview.
It is focused on math, science and engineering. These things are hard. They require a lot of time, energy, patience, and training to become good at. There is a time pressure, and it's important to acknowledge it.
Mudd is also an expensive school. A lot of students can't afford to take time away from work and school to go volunteer. I was lucky in that I didn't have to work as much as some of my friends to pay the bills. During my frosh orientation, someone made the comment that "No one at Mudd has parents who make cardboard boxes for a living." I'm not quite sure if that's true - there are a lot of students who needed lots of aid, lots of work-study, and still had to take out a lot of loans to continue to go to school. This reality prompted Deans Sundberg, Noda and myself in 2004 to make MMAD coordinating a work-study position.
Because of these, it's helpful to measure progress and effectiveness not by raw numbers, but whether or not those numbers stay stable or increase. If they do, you're doing something right.
(3) Volunteering can be fun, personally rewarding, and eye-opening - it does not have to be all of these, but there should be an opportunity for each.
Volunteers and coordinators alike bring different skills and will get different things out of it. Some do it for social reasons - I've met a lot of amazing people through volunteering, and made some friends that I will keep for a lifetime.
Being a MMAD coordinator helped me with public speaking, with organizing events, and with managing people. I learned how to negotiate, form partnerships, and deal with politics. It probably helped me get an NSF fellowship In short, volunteering did not only benefit the homeless in Pomona or members of the Mudd community - I personally benefited.
And boy did it open up my eyes to the complexities of the world, of the nuanced nature of homelessness and the different communities that fall under that generic category. When you walk unwittingly up to two people engaged in a drug deal and hand out sandwiches, realizing only afterward that the guy on the left had a knife in his hand that he would have used against you if you had caused trouble, you look at the world a different way.
Point being - not everyone is going to want to do the "hard stuff". Some people will raise money - some people want leadership experience. By keeping these three payoffs in mind, you'll be able to design better volunteer activities and more effectively persuade people to give it a try.
(4) Good relationships with the administrators and ASHMC are incredibly important in order to get things done.
Coalitions are important in life. The maxim that won World War II was "Never fight unless you have to, never fight alone, and never fight for long." Whether they are your friends, your family, your professional network, or political affiliation, partners will make you more effective and less exhausted.
The administration has the power - and for good reason. They have to make sure that your plan to offer Platt's used food to homeless shelters doesn't leave them vulnerable to a lawsuit. They also have to make sure that students donating meals from their meal plan to a cause doesn't make it impossible to pay for dining services. I've negotiated, fought, and fumed against the administration as much as anyone else - but at the end of the day, they were MMAD's best friends.
Don't be afraid to disagree, but always be polite. Your club can only benefit from good relations with other groups.
4. Operational
(1) Ego destroys more organizations and clubs than anything else - the cause, whatever it is, must be bigger than any one person.
Boy did I learn this one. For those of you who overlapped with me, you probably saw how obsessed I was with getting whatever I wanted for MMAD at the moment. The way I operated, the club should've been renamed the Institute of Mudders Making Anarchic Destruction (IMMAD). In the end, my ego prevented me from getting help with projects, from giving others the opportunity to run with their own ideas, and from really opening up Mudd to the range of opportunities available.
If volunteers are honest with themselves, I think a lot of us have a bit of self-righteousness at our core. If you don't, congratulations - you're already wiser than I was. :) In the end, it may matter a little who gets credit - we think Newton invented calculus, though history tells us that it's a bit more complicated - but it matters a LOT whether it gets done. The only way to make real difference in this complicated world with lots and lots of empowered, intelligent people is to focus the energies of a large number of these people.
Facilitate, but do not dictate.
(2) Get help if you need it.
This is related to #1 in Operations. Everyone is busy. But everyone wants to help. If you need help, get it. If you're not sure, ask for it anyway. It's insane to try to move a heavy couch by yourself - it's equally dumb to try to run a big event without help.
(3) Everyone needs a clear idea of what needs to be done, why it needs to be done, and who needs to do it.
I heard that MMAD has 12 coordinators now. While this makes me happy that it's expanding, I wonder how effectively 12 people can set a time to meet, much less get things done. It may be possible, but only if there is a clear idea and overall agreement on what needs to be done, and who is going to do what. Even though no coordinator is officially in charge of MMAD, there does need to be one person who organizes a given project. Don't be afraid to take the initiative, and don't be annoyed if someone's bossiness gets things done.
Emailing meeting notes and a to-do list for everyone after a meeting is a great way of making sure everyone knows what they need to do, and a way of holding people to what they promise.
(4) Money is important in order to get things done - make sure that the funding is available for every project. If it's not, don't be shy to go out and get it.
When I left Mudd, MMAD depended upon ASHMC for most of its funds. However, we also got help for certain activities by negotiating with the administration on donated meals, or discussing joint funding of work trips with the 5-C volunteer office.
Though not directly affiliated with us, SALSA negotiated with Boeing to put up operating funds for science outreach to underrepresented minorities. It can be done if there's a clear plan, a measurable goal, and a way for the company or school to get something out of it (say, good publicity or access to young talent).
(5) Learn how to negotiate with the administration and other stakeholders.
Whatever you do, there will be people who think it should be done differently. Know the layout of whose turf is what, and do your best to talk with people who might be hurt or affected. Many of our newer projects would not have worked, had we not contacted the administration or other groups to make sure there was no conflict or overlap. Better yet, when you have a great idea for a joint project, talking with another group can increase your resources and chances of success.
(6) Professors, the administration, and staff have long-term connections with the community, and are a great source of contacts. Existing contacts should be maintained and transferred between years.
One of the problems with college organizations is that the membership constantly enters and leaves. It's easy to forget what happened a few years ago, the battles fought and lessons learned. This is part of the reason why I'm writing this letter. But another important part of this is that all the good will that boil down to personal relationships between MMAD coordinators and members of the community can evaporate once the person leaves.
Ideally, MMAD coordinators will train their successors and provide them with a list of local contacts (or even a personal introduction). But an equally valuable resource, whether for resurrecting old relationships or creating new ones, is to use the administration, faculty, and staff. They live in or around Claremont, and know a lot of people. Don't depend only upon traditionally powerful people - dining staff and maintenance folks have been some of the most valuable friends and useful collaborators on projects, and have introduced me to local organizations that I would have missed otherwise.
(7)Talk about what worked and what didn't for each event
Feedback is important - I didn't do this very much at Mudd, in classwork, life, or volunteering. With every project or activity, we should ask ourselves "What worked? What didn't? How could we make this better? What have we learned?" A smart leader will be able to solicit and provide feedback without being hurt or hurting. But if egos are bruised in this process, too bad. You're in the business of helping people, not reinforcing self-esteem. :)
5. Tactical
(1) You get more flies with honey than vinegar - focus on the positive.
The worst thing we can do is make people feel badly if they can't volunteer, or make people think volunteers are all pushy, pretentious hypocrites. I know it's tough - when people turn you down for the 20th time to donate blood, or spend a Saturday at the shelter, you might feel like telling someone off. Please don't. Like any sales job - and yes, this is a sales job - you will need to tolerate rejection. It's not personal, and often it's simply a matter of giving someone the benefit of the doubt. There are jerks, and some will always be jerks. But your goal is to improve the Mudd community by providing an opportunity to leave a claustrophobic, closed world of perpetual stress and intellectual one-upmanship and step back.
At a more fundamental level, volunteering = good in most people's minds, even those who hate it. An inconsistent message - say, angry emails to the listserv condemning the lack of volunteerism (yes, I've done this) only lead to unsubscriptions (four in my case) and a loss of credibility. Save the rants for your livejournal (and make it private - minimize the drama).
If you're curious about the science behind how certain people and causes are more effective than others, I'd recommend reading Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. This book is designed to help you defend yourself against aggressive salesmen. But it can also enlighten your approach to soliciting volunteering. I've sent a copy to Susan Kim at MMAD.
(2) Provide a range of commitment/participation levels to make it as easy as possible for people to volunteer.
Not everyone expects the same thing. Some people will look for a jumping off point to personally crusade against poverty in America, or hunger in the world. Some people are uncomfortable with dealing directly with poor people.
The longer I'm in science, the more I realize that its strength and frustration comes from the fact that science takes all sorts of people. People who otherwise wouldn't have a place in our society can find success and even greatness in science. We need politicians, public relations types, specific nerds and visionary generalists in science. The same is true of volunteering. For every person who sits and chats with the homeless and gives them hugs, there is at least one person balancing books and writing grants in the office, one person calling up donors. To build a house for Habitat for Humanity, one can dig ditches, drywall, dig postholes, work on wiring, put up shingles... you get the point. Many hands, many different jobs, and a place for most everyone.
Some people will be able to donate ten hours a week. Some will donate ten hours a year. But it makes a difference, not only in what that person does, but what it does for them. Never forget this - our impact is not only on those we help, but on how our actions and words change ourselves and each other.
(3) Know how to table and flier effectively.
You have a few seconds to make an impression on people as they walk from the tray return to the doors of Platt. Think about what you want to say and convey. Remember that communication of liking and attitude is 55% body language and facial expression, 38% vocal tone, and 7% what you actually say. Be upbeat, cheerful, and kind. Or be sarcastic, witty, and clever. Whatever you think works best for the people you're looking to recruit, do it.
Note: I am not above recruiting volunteers - ahem - endowed with greater physical attractiveness than average. They make a difference when trying to recruit people for a cause. Just remember - you're selling volunteering, not pimping out your friends.
(4) Make use of digital media, like websites, electronic calendars, and listservs to get opportunities out.
I think Professor Yong said that time management was the key to succeeding at Mudd. Since he graduated in 3 years with two majors, I think he knows what he's talking about. Definitely make use of electronic calendars, listservs, and the MMAD website to keep people up-to-date about events.
Do not underestimate the value of a good website. A regularly updated, useful, well-organized website can provide potential donors and volunteers with a credible, professional face.
6. Conclusion
Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our
control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature
nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched
to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in
that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event,
it is the only way we can live.
- Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Kennedy spoke those words 40 years ago to Black students in Apartheid South Africa. It remains as true today as it was then. No one knows for certain the limits of one's potential, or of the range of effect of one's actions. What you can be certain is that, more than anything else, your character and ability will determine your future.
MMAD is a great organization that has the potential to change lives. But any organization is only good as its people. I hope this document helps you become more effective volunteer coordinators. But I also know that times, people, and missions change. You are here at Harvey Mudd because, more than most, you have proven yourself capable of independent thought and effective action. Though MMAD may be, and perhaps ought to be, only one small part of your time at Mudd, it is truly a place where you can make a difference, in the world, and in yourself.
Character is destiny - and I hope that in spite of the frustrations, setbacks, and uncertain progress, that you feel the time spent in MMAD, and HMC in general, will test you and compel you to become stronger and smarter women and men, armed with compassion and conviction. Good luck to you all.
One of my biggest regrets at Mudd is not devoting the time, thought, and energy needed to really set up MMAD with more infrastructure. I am very happy that the coordinator positions are work-study - I think this is an important way for students who are concerned for society to be able to do good work without having to choose between work and volunteering. To clarify my thoughts, and to maybe pass along the experience and thoughts I should have before I left, I've decided to draft this memo. I don't know of an existing handbook for volunteering, but all social organizations operate according to a few basic principles, most of which I have tried to incorporate into this memo.
2. Summary
I've separated them in terms of strategic, operational, and tactical lessons.
Strategic lessons relate to long-term planning and agenda setting - usually things that happen once a semester, once a year, or even over the lifetime of MMAD. (planning)
Operational lessons relate to the mechanics of getting things done - logistics, planning, and execution of events. (doing things)
Tactical lessons relate to the techniques you actually use to recruit volunteers for events and keep people informed. (keeping people happy and interested)
The chief lessons learned:
Strategic
1. Decide each year whether energy and mission will be focused on outreach, volunteering, or activism, or a combination of these.
2. Be realistic as far as what to expect from HMC and its students, realistic but not pessimistic.
3. Volunteering can be fun, personally rewarding, and eye-opening - it does not have to be all of these, but there should be an opportunity for each.
4. Good relationships with the administrators and ASHMC are incredibly important in order to get things done.
Operational
1. Ego destroys more organizations and clubs than anything else - the cause, whatever it is, must be bigger than any one person.
2. Get help if you need it.
3. Everyone needs a clear idea of what needs to be done, why it needs to be done, and who needs to do it.
4. Money is important in order to get things done - make sure that the funding is available for every project. If it's not, don't be shy to go out and get it.
5. Learn how to negotiate with the administration and other stakeholders.
6. Professors, the administration, and staff have long-term connections with the community, and are a great source of contacts. Existing contacts should be maintained and transferred between years.
7. Talk about what worked and what didn't for each event.
Tactical
1. You get more flies with honey than vinegar - focus on the positive.
2. Provide a range of commitment/participation levels to make it as easy as possible for people to volunteer.
3. Know how to table and flier effectively.
4. Make use of digital media, like websites, electronic calendars, and listservs to get opportunities out.
Most of these seem obvious, but it's sometimes a bit challenging to keep all of these in mind when one has finals/jobs/personal life to worry about. I'll cover each point listed in more detail below.
3. Strategic
(1) Decide each year whether energy and mission will be focused on outreach, volunteering, or activism, or a combination of these.
When I was a MMAD volunteer coordinator, we focused on volunteering. We decided to do this because other organizations - like Upward Bound and the education course led by Professors Dodds (CS) and Yong (Math) - were working on outreach. Furthermore, outreach is done in different ways by research groups, in part because the National Science Foundation requires all recipients of grants to demonstrate a broader impact to society. Activism was avoided because it can be tricky - it is frequently political, often confrontational with the administration and other students, and highly dependent upon the personal values of the Mudd coordinators. This became a big issue during Spring 2004, when a cross-burning and various racial incidents led to the creation of a number of aggressive student activist organizations.
Both activism and outreach can be a part of MMAD, but should be recognized as different from MMAD's historical mission - to provide Mudders with the opportunity to volunteer with members of the 5-C community in the Inland Valley area.
Whatever the mission, make sure it is specific. It should be able to be articulated in a single, relatively uncomplicated sentence.
(2) Be realistic as far as what to expect from HMC and its students, realistic but not pessimistic.
This was something that took a very, very long time to drill into my thick skull. I'd wonder, why don't Mudders care about things like poverty, homelessness, or bad public schools? Are we just soulless scientists or spoiled college kids?
The problem, of course, was not the Mudd community, but my expectations of what should be. Mudd students have a sense of never having enough time, of always being busy, of always being overworked. At first, I thought we really did work harder than everyone else - now that I've visited a few schools and been at Cornell for a few years, I realize that most students feel this way. Mudd is different from some schools in that it is
(1) small
(2) focused on math, science, and engineering, which are hard
(3) an expensive school.
I didn't consider those three factors, which made it hard for me to realize why it would be harder to recruit volunteers here than at, say, Berkeley.
It is small - this means that everyone knows everyone else, and so you might be trying to convince friends instead of complete strangers to go feed the homeless on Saturdays. However, this also means that, all other things being equal, there are a smaller number of students who will see value in volunteering. Now, based on my experience with Oxfam donations, Mudders might in fact be far more generous than students at the other 4-C with their meals going toward international hunger relief. But the fact remains that with only 800 people, it's hard to believe that there will be an army of people who agree with your worldview.
It is focused on math, science and engineering. These things are hard. They require a lot of time, energy, patience, and training to become good at. There is a time pressure, and it's important to acknowledge it.
Mudd is also an expensive school. A lot of students can't afford to take time away from work and school to go volunteer. I was lucky in that I didn't have to work as much as some of my friends to pay the bills. During my frosh orientation, someone made the comment that "No one at Mudd has parents who make cardboard boxes for a living." I'm not quite sure if that's true - there are a lot of students who needed lots of aid, lots of work-study, and still had to take out a lot of loans to continue to go to school. This reality prompted Deans Sundberg, Noda and myself in 2004 to make MMAD coordinating a work-study position.
Because of these, it's helpful to measure progress and effectiveness not by raw numbers, but whether or not those numbers stay stable or increase. If they do, you're doing something right.
(3) Volunteering can be fun, personally rewarding, and eye-opening - it does not have to be all of these, but there should be an opportunity for each.
Volunteers and coordinators alike bring different skills and will get different things out of it. Some do it for social reasons - I've met a lot of amazing people through volunteering, and made some friends that I will keep for a lifetime.
Being a MMAD coordinator helped me with public speaking, with organizing events, and with managing people. I learned how to negotiate, form partnerships, and deal with politics. It probably helped me get an NSF fellowship In short, volunteering did not only benefit the homeless in Pomona or members of the Mudd community - I personally benefited.
And boy did it open up my eyes to the complexities of the world, of the nuanced nature of homelessness and the different communities that fall under that generic category. When you walk unwittingly up to two people engaged in a drug deal and hand out sandwiches, realizing only afterward that the guy on the left had a knife in his hand that he would have used against you if you had caused trouble, you look at the world a different way.
Point being - not everyone is going to want to do the "hard stuff". Some people will raise money - some people want leadership experience. By keeping these three payoffs in mind, you'll be able to design better volunteer activities and more effectively persuade people to give it a try.
(4) Good relationships with the administrators and ASHMC are incredibly important in order to get things done.
Coalitions are important in life. The maxim that won World War II was "Never fight unless you have to, never fight alone, and never fight for long." Whether they are your friends, your family, your professional network, or political affiliation, partners will make you more effective and less exhausted.
The administration has the power - and for good reason. They have to make sure that your plan to offer Platt's used food to homeless shelters doesn't leave them vulnerable to a lawsuit. They also have to make sure that students donating meals from their meal plan to a cause doesn't make it impossible to pay for dining services. I've negotiated, fought, and fumed against the administration as much as anyone else - but at the end of the day, they were MMAD's best friends.
Don't be afraid to disagree, but always be polite. Your club can only benefit from good relations with other groups.
4. Operational
(1) Ego destroys more organizations and clubs than anything else - the cause, whatever it is, must be bigger than any one person.
Boy did I learn this one. For those of you who overlapped with me, you probably saw how obsessed I was with getting whatever I wanted for MMAD at the moment. The way I operated, the club should've been renamed the Institute of Mudders Making Anarchic Destruction (IMMAD). In the end, my ego prevented me from getting help with projects, from giving others the opportunity to run with their own ideas, and from really opening up Mudd to the range of opportunities available.
If volunteers are honest with themselves, I think a lot of us have a bit of self-righteousness at our core. If you don't, congratulations - you're already wiser than I was. :) In the end, it may matter a little who gets credit - we think Newton invented calculus, though history tells us that it's a bit more complicated - but it matters a LOT whether it gets done. The only way to make real difference in this complicated world with lots and lots of empowered, intelligent people is to focus the energies of a large number of these people.
Facilitate, but do not dictate.
(2) Get help if you need it.
This is related to #1 in Operations. Everyone is busy. But everyone wants to help. If you need help, get it. If you're not sure, ask for it anyway. It's insane to try to move a heavy couch by yourself - it's equally dumb to try to run a big event without help.
(3) Everyone needs a clear idea of what needs to be done, why it needs to be done, and who needs to do it.
I heard that MMAD has 12 coordinators now. While this makes me happy that it's expanding, I wonder how effectively 12 people can set a time to meet, much less get things done. It may be possible, but only if there is a clear idea and overall agreement on what needs to be done, and who is going to do what. Even though no coordinator is officially in charge of MMAD, there does need to be one person who organizes a given project. Don't be afraid to take the initiative, and don't be annoyed if someone's bossiness gets things done.
Emailing meeting notes and a to-do list for everyone after a meeting is a great way of making sure everyone knows what they need to do, and a way of holding people to what they promise.
(4) Money is important in order to get things done - make sure that the funding is available for every project. If it's not, don't be shy to go out and get it.
When I left Mudd, MMAD depended upon ASHMC for most of its funds. However, we also got help for certain activities by negotiating with the administration on donated meals, or discussing joint funding of work trips with the 5-C volunteer office.
Though not directly affiliated with us, SALSA negotiated with Boeing to put up operating funds for science outreach to underrepresented minorities. It can be done if there's a clear plan, a measurable goal, and a way for the company or school to get something out of it (say, good publicity or access to young talent).
(5) Learn how to negotiate with the administration and other stakeholders.
Whatever you do, there will be people who think it should be done differently. Know the layout of whose turf is what, and do your best to talk with people who might be hurt or affected. Many of our newer projects would not have worked, had we not contacted the administration or other groups to make sure there was no conflict or overlap. Better yet, when you have a great idea for a joint project, talking with another group can increase your resources and chances of success.
(6) Professors, the administration, and staff have long-term connections with the community, and are a great source of contacts. Existing contacts should be maintained and transferred between years.
One of the problems with college organizations is that the membership constantly enters and leaves. It's easy to forget what happened a few years ago, the battles fought and lessons learned. This is part of the reason why I'm writing this letter. But another important part of this is that all the good will that boil down to personal relationships between MMAD coordinators and members of the community can evaporate once the person leaves.
Ideally, MMAD coordinators will train their successors and provide them with a list of local contacts (or even a personal introduction). But an equally valuable resource, whether for resurrecting old relationships or creating new ones, is to use the administration, faculty, and staff. They live in or around Claremont, and know a lot of people. Don't depend only upon traditionally powerful people - dining staff and maintenance folks have been some of the most valuable friends and useful collaborators on projects, and have introduced me to local organizations that I would have missed otherwise.
(7)Talk about what worked and what didn't for each event
Feedback is important - I didn't do this very much at Mudd, in classwork, life, or volunteering. With every project or activity, we should ask ourselves "What worked? What didn't? How could we make this better? What have we learned?" A smart leader will be able to solicit and provide feedback without being hurt or hurting. But if egos are bruised in this process, too bad. You're in the business of helping people, not reinforcing self-esteem. :)
5. Tactical
(1) You get more flies with honey than vinegar - focus on the positive.
The worst thing we can do is make people feel badly if they can't volunteer, or make people think volunteers are all pushy, pretentious hypocrites. I know it's tough - when people turn you down for the 20th time to donate blood, or spend a Saturday at the shelter, you might feel like telling someone off. Please don't. Like any sales job - and yes, this is a sales job - you will need to tolerate rejection. It's not personal, and often it's simply a matter of giving someone the benefit of the doubt. There are jerks, and some will always be jerks. But your goal is to improve the Mudd community by providing an opportunity to leave a claustrophobic, closed world of perpetual stress and intellectual one-upmanship and step back.
At a more fundamental level, volunteering = good in most people's minds, even those who hate it. An inconsistent message - say, angry emails to the listserv condemning the lack of volunteerism (yes, I've done this) only lead to unsubscriptions (four in my case) and a loss of credibility. Save the rants for your livejournal (and make it private - minimize the drama).
If you're curious about the science behind how certain people and causes are more effective than others, I'd recommend reading Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. This book is designed to help you defend yourself against aggressive salesmen. But it can also enlighten your approach to soliciting volunteering. I've sent a copy to Susan Kim at MMAD.
(2) Provide a range of commitment/participation levels to make it as easy as possible for people to volunteer.
Not everyone expects the same thing. Some people will look for a jumping off point to personally crusade against poverty in America, or hunger in the world. Some people are uncomfortable with dealing directly with poor people.
The longer I'm in science, the more I realize that its strength and frustration comes from the fact that science takes all sorts of people. People who otherwise wouldn't have a place in our society can find success and even greatness in science. We need politicians, public relations types, specific nerds and visionary generalists in science. The same is true of volunteering. For every person who sits and chats with the homeless and gives them hugs, there is at least one person balancing books and writing grants in the office, one person calling up donors. To build a house for Habitat for Humanity, one can dig ditches, drywall, dig postholes, work on wiring, put up shingles... you get the point. Many hands, many different jobs, and a place for most everyone.
Some people will be able to donate ten hours a week. Some will donate ten hours a year. But it makes a difference, not only in what that person does, but what it does for them. Never forget this - our impact is not only on those we help, but on how our actions and words change ourselves and each other.
(3) Know how to table and flier effectively.
You have a few seconds to make an impression on people as they walk from the tray return to the doors of Platt. Think about what you want to say and convey. Remember that communication of liking and attitude is 55% body language and facial expression, 38% vocal tone, and 7% what you actually say. Be upbeat, cheerful, and kind. Or be sarcastic, witty, and clever. Whatever you think works best for the people you're looking to recruit, do it.
Note: I am not above recruiting volunteers - ahem - endowed with greater physical attractiveness than average. They make a difference when trying to recruit people for a cause. Just remember - you're selling volunteering, not pimping out your friends.
(4) Make use of digital media, like websites, electronic calendars, and listservs to get opportunities out.
I think Professor Yong said that time management was the key to succeeding at Mudd. Since he graduated in 3 years with two majors, I think he knows what he's talking about. Definitely make use of electronic calendars, listservs, and the MMAD website to keep people up-to-date about events.
Do not underestimate the value of a good website. A regularly updated, useful, well-organized website can provide potential donors and volunteers with a credible, professional face.
6. Conclusion
Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our
control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature
nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched
to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in
that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event,
it is the only way we can live.
- Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Kennedy spoke those words 40 years ago to Black students in Apartheid South Africa. It remains as true today as it was then. No one knows for certain the limits of one's potential, or of the range of effect of one's actions. What you can be certain is that, more than anything else, your character and ability will determine your future.
MMAD is a great organization that has the potential to change lives. But any organization is only good as its people. I hope this document helps you become more effective volunteer coordinators. But I also know that times, people, and missions change. You are here at Harvey Mudd because, more than most, you have proven yourself capable of independent thought and effective action. Though MMAD may be, and perhaps ought to be, only one small part of your time at Mudd, it is truly a place where you can make a difference, in the world, and in yourself.
Character is destiny - and I hope that in spite of the frustrations, setbacks, and uncertain progress, that you feel the time spent in MMAD, and HMC in general, will test you and compel you to become stronger and smarter women and men, armed with compassion and conviction. Good luck to you all.
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