Can SIU win by being paying the professors the least?

One of the interesting differences between hiring with professors and hiring in a company is a public universities salaries are public knowledge. What we know about SIUC is that they pay the least of any university in their current rankings, pay way less then universities they would like aspire to be equal to. You know the Southern at 150 deal about being top 75? In salaries for professors, SIU is something like 250th. At a private company, there is much more deception possible, so the employees never really know what anyone else is making (this is a good thing BTW).

A little more management theory for you from Peopleware (a seminal text about managing people in my business), the best people do 10 times more work then the average people and the average people do 10 times more work then the bad people (or words to that effect). This is the kind of thinking that drives Southern at 150's "super hires" initiative (I'll get into what a stupid management move it was calling out this obvious hiring practice another time). Basically, you want to hire all superstars and not hire losers. Of course, once you get the superstars, you want to keep them and get rid of the losers.

If you were a superstar, would you come to SIU today? In the Morris years, they could and did hire superstars. Today, SIU hires only people who don't get a job offer from a different research university. To say it a different way, every research university is a better place to be a professor then SIU.

How do you fix this? My three step plan would be

• Hire earlier then everyone else and make the good people accept when they have no other offers.
• Improve management.
• Pay competitive salaries.

The worst thing is that some professors develop into superstars at SIU, but many of they leave for greener pastures soon after. After all making $25,000 less each year, forever is a very bad thing.

SIU can't pay the worst salaries in the industry and win. They can afford to pay industry average and they should. It is both ethically right and the right decision if they want to improve the university.

Your comments are welcome.

How SIU would change if you followed my plan.

I wrote about how SIU is killing the local economy yesterday and the comments are interesting. I know most people know about how big companies work (by big, I mean every company over 250 people), but let me spell it out here. Here is the comment that tee's me up.

If everyone could make minor changes on their own, you'd have a real mess after a while. But, the SIU union "craft" workers charge a lot and do as little as possible.

Like every big organization SIU would still have it's bureaucracies to prevent real stupid things from happening. I thought this was self evident, but let me spell out would work.

In the teaching areas, the budget would rest with the department chair or for bigger items, the Dean or the upper administrators. Every year there would be a budget with estimates of how you would be spending your money for the whole year, just as there is now. If you wanted to recarpet your office and there was money in the budget, the chair could sign off on it. The chair could use the stupid SIU system or just go get it directly and pay less then half. Bigger items or out of budget would go up the line to Deans and upper administration, this would be no different.

There are lots of audit trails in a big bureaucracy, at SIU the bureaucracy also forces a much, much higher price and doesn't develop local business, which would help SIU by keeping the money locally and develop a vibrant local economy. I can go into why this would be helpful to SIU more, but imaging if there were 20 people like me in town (don't read that before bedtime, you will get nightmares).

You want to guess why the business people of Carbondale aren't pounding the table to get SIU more state money? We can all see the system, we know the results and waste levels (you can't miss it). The SIU people know the system too, but how do you fight city hall?

As always, your comments are welcome.

Are Students Ready to Work

I caught a wiff of this on CNN.com and did a little searching to find this report. It is about how industry views the students once they start to work. I wonder if there is a report that shows the same kind of survey results from 10, 20 or 30 years ago?

Nothing like comments to prove the point - more about SIU killing the local economy.

From the comments of the last post -

After my experiences with outsourced photocopier and printer services at SIUC, I know it's possible for private industry to do worse than SIU. If you tried to use a photocopier at Morris Library before this year, you know what I'm talking about. My understanding of that particular situation is that local businesses are too small to provide what SIUC needs, but SIUC is too small and too far from St. Louis for major companies to invest the energy it would take for SIUC to get decent service.

Local businesses are too small to provide what SIUC needs? What a pile of crap! Giving this kind of work to a local company is exactly what SIU should be doing. That local company will work like heck to make it work. SIU will get great service. The SIU money will be in the local economy, instead of pumping it off to Atlanta (or some other remote location).

I'm now wondering if the little local company can't provide the under the table grease to make the deal happen or what? We are talking about copy machine for goodness sake.

I think this comment is exactly what I was writing about. This is exactly that SIU is doing wrong.

Is SIU stifling the economic development of Southern Illinois?

I can't remember where I read it anymore, but there is this idea that I have held onto -
There are two beliefs about making yourself rich, either you believe that all the wealth in the world has already been created, so to become rich you need to take wealth from someone else or you believe that you can create new value and become rich.

When I apply this idea to SIU and the State of Illinois government, I find that SIU and the state act to take wealth out of the private sector and do not create new value themselves. Basically, ever available dollar SIU jumps on (like a linebacker on a fumble) and keeps, where often investing that dollar would bring back 20 dollars later. For example, one of the biggest problems SIU has is the lack of surrounding industries for them to interact with. But SIU is creating this by eliminating money making opportunities and turning those opportunities into petty bureaucracies.

Think of the blossoming of productivity, tax base and entrepreneurship that would happen if SIU started to outsource to local companies, instead of using state bureaucrats.

Why is SIU spending so much of their management attention to supply marginal services, instead of allowing the local business to thrive? We know they aren't doing a good job running their core business. Surely they should be spending 100% of their time trying to figure out how to educate kids and build football stadiums and the like.

If they did away with Dunn-Richman, wouldn't the local bankers do a better job? If they got rid of the motor pool, wouldn't Enterprise rentals do a better job? If they go rid of their ride services, wouldn't the local taxi companies do a better job? If they didn't build apartments, the local landlords would do a better job. If they replace the electricians with local companies running those electricians wouldn't they get better work for less? How about the phone department? The SIU website? The PR department? I'm not saying outsource the professors or other people really doing education, but does anyone think that private industry wouldn't do a better job? Is it possible to manage anything less efficiently then SIU does?

Your comments are welcome.

Interesing Chronicle article about how Higher Ed has changed in 40 years

Check it out. Guess I need to figure out the rate of inflation over the last 40 years so I can do Apples to Apples on the money.

Being happy and a life of accomplishment

When I list the nice things about living in Southern Illinois, it is calm, quiet, smog free, people are nice, commutes are short, many of the frustrations of big city life are minimized, every commercial good you might want to buy is available easily. I guess if all you want to do is live a happy little life, this is a great place. A question I have been asking myself of late is can you live a life of great accomplishment here? If you can be happy, but not have great accomplishment, is that enough?

I have found living here one of our greatest challenges in trying to do economic development in Southern Illinois is that our most motivated people leave. As a matter of fact, one of the great pleasures of living the West Coast is hiring the Midwestern engineers who have moved to try their hand at the big time. Like an actor going to New York, almost all the people who are going to try to make their mark on this world move to be a little fish in a big pond, then work their way up.

SIU moves professors here to jobs that are pretty high quality based on quality of the work. If you are going to be a high school teacher, this is a fine place to do it. A few people have started companies that are very interesting and fulfilling. I certainly don't want to imply that being a librarian isn't a good life and worth living, but you have to decide if that life is enough for you.

As you know from reading my little blog, I see the world differently then most everyone else. In 1984, I was 21 years old and I left this place to go to Silicon Valley. I wasn't always happy, I was often stressed out and over worked, I got laid off or quit a number of jobs, but I was trying to live a life of great accomplishment and I was surrounded by people trying to do the same. There is joy to sharing the struggle with like minded people that I have missed for the last few years. I have my allies and friends, but we are the counter culture here. Maybe I'm just sick of being called lucky?

The rural economic development experts say that we aren't going to be able to attract big factory or corporate headquarters to places like this, we just don't have the money to pay for the blackmail/tax cuts required. It is cheaper and more possible to support and encourage your local entrepreneurs to create new business then steal them from somewhere else. Maybe Southern Illinois doesn't have a culture of entrepreneurship and might think about developing one at the local government level? What we are doing now isn't working well enough, we don't have enough entrepreneurs.

Your comments are welcome.

SIU's Golden Age and trying to get it back.

If we talk about SIU's Golden Age, I think we can all agree it was in the years of 1950 (or so) to 1970. You will notice, that I don't really know when it started, but I do know the date it ended. The Golden Age ended with Delyte Morris left the university and the Old Main building was burned down.

When I start thinking about managing a fast growing organization over 20 years, I start to think about the people. In those 20 years you can hire great people or lay a ground work of bad management, either way the legacy of those hirings will continue for many years. The Morris years were good years to be hiring a large faculty, the professors still remembered the hard years of WWII and the Great Depression. The USA was assuming the mantel as a Superpower, expectations were that if you worked a whole lot harder, you might make a great life for yourself.

If you were to start thinking about the management difficulties of turning SIU around today, instead of trying 8 or 9 years ago, there is no one left from the Golden Age on the entire campus. When Jo Ann Argersinger was Chancellor the back bone of the senior professors were hired in the Morris years, they still had an idea of what the university was like when the buildings were new and the university was on the way up. Today, all the professors from the Morris years are retired.

One interesting idea from the Golden Age idea is what maybe the only person who remembers them on campus is Glen Poshard. He was here then and he seems to understand the power of events and symbolism that were so important to Morris. It could be that he wants to return SIU to a new Golden Age, he seems to be putting the trappings of the Morris years back together.

When big companies get into a situation like SIU is in today (poor performance, bad corporate culture, poor employee morale) they execute a massive reset in the form of a layoff. That really gets the attention of the employees and often does a reset in values that is needed for the organization to survive.

I wonder if Glen Poshard is brave enough and has enough power to make a new golden age. I wonder if he did have the power if he would use it for good and not evil. If he did start making changes, I wonder if the BOT (and their owners in Chicago and Springfield) would allow him to do it.

Your comments are welcome.

Let the revolution begin - Illinois Power Rates.

I would put a link to the Illusion's story about these things, but they are taking the weekend off at the website (or they could be down in the line at Best Buy trying to get one of those cheap laptops). Everyone should know by now that power rates in Illinois are about to go up 40% or more on January 1.

We all know the state government of Illinois is corrupt. Lots of under the table payments, unlimited giving to political campaigns, patronage jobs everywhere (filled by the unqualified), boondoggle spending on hometown projects, etc, etc. My question for the peanut gallery is if this stupid management of our power utilities will be the last straw? Is this the one big event that will make Illinois voters stand on their feet and vote all the Bozo's out of office? Is this were we demand clean government and accountability? Do the voters demand a change in the system were only 5 politicians make all the rules and have all the power?

I don't think there will be any changes? But, if the "Pol's" don't stop this rate increase, people are going to be really pissed.

Kind of makes you wish the Green Party had won the election. Their platform is naive, but at least they have their hearts in the right place.

Your comments are always welcome.

U of I Criticized for low minority enrollment

Little article from yesterday's Southern (no link that I have found for the story, but here is a link to the source), the story was opposite the comics. They are claiming that U of I doesn't enroll enough minorities. Their numbers are 12.8% of the students are minorities and 27% of Illinois graduating high school seniors are minorities. I liked the quotes at the end of the story, "Chancellor Richard Herman (of U of I) took issue with the report, saying it should have compared the school's minority student population with the percentage of high school graduates qualified enough to be accepted to the campus." Also "If you look at the minority population in the state ... the simple truth is that not all of them go on to college, " Chancellor Richard Herman of U of I.

I got a kick out of the little source report that I provided a link to and their comment about UC Berkeley "received high marks for attracting low-income students." I'm not sure about the other universities they list with good access to minorities or low income students, but Berkeley's low-income students can be directly attributed to California's large number of Asian immigrants. Those Chinese and Vietnamese parents produce kids that are great students while working as janitors and cooks. But those immigrant kids aren't counted as minorities, I guess because they are doing to well?

I have written this before, but don't you wonder what would happen if all the poor kids in Southern Illinois had Jewish, Chinese or Vietnamese parents? They would be reading by the age of 5, blowing out the school GPA's and going to the best colleges within one generation. It is all about the parents. We see the immigrant Asian parents here too, and their kids are kicking butt and taking names. I guess we can't train them when they are adults and it is all hopeless? Anyone know, can you train poor parents to do this?

I also wonder if we aren't seeing lies, damn lies and statistics from "The Education Trust" people. They must know the problem is in the parents and preK-12 system, the universities are using reverse discrimination to help more minority and poor kids into the schools with better financial assistance. What exactly can you do about parents who don't have enough self discipline or cultural roll models to push their kids to success?

Return of Civility to the Classroom?

Interesting story on CNN.com about managing the classroom. I have been wondering about the media has been claiming this generation of college kids can multi-task at new and historically levels, yet we all know they can't learn anything hard that way (just like everyone else).

This story seems to be simple and clearcut. If the professor is letting people do cell phones and instant messenger in the classroom, they have lost control.

Two tough issues for the Carbondale City Council - Smoking and CVS

I think the Carbondale City Council is facing a couple of really tough issues in the vote to ban smoking and rezone the corner of Oakland and Walnut for CVS this meeting and next.

We saw the first vote last night on banning smoking, it was a tie 3-3. Personally, I'm for banning all smoking in all public buildings. But, the anti-ban group did a really poor job selling this ban. They should go back and find the economic impact of a one city ban, like the one they want, on the businesses in town. For example, find a Midwestern city that passed the ban a year or two ago and see what the effect was on restaurant and bar revenue. If the economic effect was positive or neutral, I bet they could get the ban though.

Personally, I think the right place to get this passed is at the state level. That is where the health costs really rest and where the most level playing field can be established. Yes, I know that would be harder to do.

Clearly this is all about money for the local business people. The argument that their employees smoke and it is their right to cause cancer in others is really stupid. Because the pro-ban people didn't do their homework on the money, they let the businesses off the hook.

CVS going in on the corner of Oakland is really interesting. I have written that I'm against it, but I'm now really on the fence. You are talking about a bunch of really crappy homes. I have seen the map of where they would like to build now and CVS has offered as part of the deal to keep the traffic and noise on the Oakland side and have a blank wall facing East and a green belt too. The homes that will be effected are already really the homes on the South side of Walnut at the Oakland corner. Those homes already are on the busiest street in Carbondale and next to a fire station. There is noise and light there 24/7 now, I'm not sure I'm buying that CVS is really a great burden on the local houses. I'm certainly not buying the selling booze BS being thrown around.

Carbondale is completly dependent on our sales tax revenue to fund our local services. You are talking about a length of street that has a fire station, 24 hour grocery store and strip mall and a video store and pizza takeout already. It is the busiest street in Carbondale. I'm pretty sure that everyone within a reasonable distance from the proposed CVS site has purchased their house since 13 went one way.

I don't expect that you will see the kinds of people who hangout at Walgreen's late at night, because they aren't near the Northeast.

As I wrote before, I feel that it is going to be very difficult for the "Arbor District" (which is shaped like a snake) to fight off the economic reality that the property around them is worth more as retail and rental then residential. The traffic noise and speed on 13 and the state of School District 95 make it unlikely that families will move in to the area. They are already surrounded by rooming houses, frat houses and flop houses. If something like CVS doesn't happen now, it is very likely to happen in the future.

CVS is a very tough call. I'm pretty sure I would vote against it, if I was voting. But, I'm not sure.

I'm wondering if Poshard is serious or if he just hated Wendler.

Now that Uncle Walt has been put out to pasture, the next question about SIUC's future must be asked - Who else will be fired in the administration? I have written that I feel that over 50% of the department chairman should be fired. It looks like the Dean of Engineering (sorry screwed this up and had to change it) should be gone as soon as possible. I have published a list of others who should be fired. All these people I figured out should be fired from several miles away in my office. If I can name that many, there have to be more, many more. (editor's note - most of these people would just become professors when they are fired and not lose their jobs, but the educated readers of this blog know that already)

I have some data that Poshard has put the management of Dunn-Richman to work cleaning out the layers of admins and deadwood that Ray Lenzi stacked up out there. That seems like a good omen.

If we look back and no one else has been fired that needs to be, we can say that Poshard is a POS and just had it in for Wendler. If Poshard goes in and really cleans house, then all this crap in the papers about Wendler's anti-gay comments will be proven to be just crap. Wendler really was a poor performer, maybe no worse then the losers before him, but still poor.

So, is SIUC going to be turned into a meritocracy it will be because Glenn Poshard has stepped up and put down some mighty pink slips on the turkeys in key positions. Now, we wait and see what he does. I figure there will be good blogging either way.

Your comments are welcome.

Sheila Simon's two worlds.

I was reading the Southern Illusion's editorial page yesterday and came across this "Cole has the support of the business sector" editorial. This should come as no surprise, Brad showed up with a plan and has really improved the business environment in Carbondale. He has done better than should have been possible in his first term. He has figured out what could be done and is doing it (note to the Southern at 150 boys at SIUC, this is how you do a plan). I like to think that it was impossible to do business in Carbondale before Brad and now it is just difficult.

What really surprised me was this quote from the article -

Simon attended Cole's speech Tuesday and was not one of the audience members leaping to her feet.

She was surprised the mayor talked about problems with gangs and truancy in his State of the City address.

"It's an illustration of our focus and the two worlds we live in," Simon said. "I have not heard anyone talk about gangs or truancy as a major problem in Carbondale. It's another undeserved, bad rap for the Carbondale school system. I will point that out, and other differences, as the campaign goes forward."

Sheila is now on the record saying that there is nothing wrong with School District 95 (that is Carbondale's K-8 grade school)? Here are my posts about District 95 from way back in July and August -
Post 1
Post 2
Post 3
Here is a link to get all the statistics, test scores and other numbers. Click around on the tabs at the top.

Turns out it doesn't matter what skin color you have, it just comes down to students from poor families do poorly at school in Carbondale and students who aren't poor do well. The test scores are terrible. We have seen a dramatic increase of private schools and home schoolers (in both numbers of schools an enrollment in existing schools), and a general drop in numbers of students in District 95. It isn't white flight, it is almost every educated and non-poor parent running the heck away from District 95 with their kids.

When you have populations of kids in high school that can't pass the standardized reading tests in 8th grade, you are heading for real problems. Over 50% of the kids the state calls poor, who attended District 95, failed the 8th grade reading test. Just a little research shows that black men who aren't functional literate have greater then 75% chance of serving time in jail. The kids who can't read cause almost all problems with violence and truancy. They don't publish the dropout rate that I can find, but it has to be way to high.

If I had to bet lunch on the "gang" part of Brad's plan being sound I would. It could be that the Mayor has talked to the Police Chief about this? Since the Mayor has made about 30 distinct calls like this in his State of the City speeches and been able to act in a positive way each time, I'm thinking he has done his homework this time as well.

I'm looking forward to hearing about Sheila's different world some more, I wonder what else she thinks. How about a published document Sheila?

"The Woz" good stuff.

I was reading Guy Kawasaki's blog about his 10 reason he loves the Woz, clicked through digg, found this article about how the Woz carries $20k with him at all times.

I have been thinking about buying very expensive computer of late, sounds like the Woz would just pay cash while shopping in Japan. Need to think that one over.

Southern Illinois Economic Development a quote from Milton Friedman?

On Jobs

Proposed economic policies tend to be judged in terms of jobs "created." That is the wrong criterion. The economic problem is not creating jobs. That is easy: Hire people at minimum wages (or lower) to dig holes and fill them. True, raising taxes to finance that project would destroy jobs, but the jobs destroyed would be high-wage jobs, the jobs created low-wage jobs, so for each job destroyed more than one job would be created--a net gain of jobs.

The real problem is to establish an economic environment in which there is a demand for workers at wages that those workers not only regard as satisfactory, but are qualified to earn: Better qualified workers and better wages--not simply more jobs--is the real problem.

--from "Better Workers, Better Wages: The Real Issue," June 1, 1993

When I look at Southern Illinois economic development this pretty much sums it up. In particular this is what I see in Marion and their tax incentive based method of attracting jobs. Also, any program involving the State of Illinois seem to be more about driving state soft money then real, good jobs.

This has been the one big problem I have had trying to doing economic development here. Carbondale/Southern Illinois based businesses seem to have completely given up, we take fairly high quality new college grads and under pay them. Everyone knows they are going to stay for a short time and move on, then the cycle starts again. This guarantees that you never develop an educated local workforce of experienced people. Owners never get good employees, both because they lose everyone who was good to better paying jobs, also there is no shared ownership (via stock) and no wealth creation through the ranks that might make the local environment bloom.

The funny thing is that our method is pretty much exactly the opposite of the areas that are doing well economically. To much short term thinking has lead us to where we are now, not enough of an educated and motivated workforce to build the high growth and high pay companies the area really needs.

Thanks to Todd for sending me the link.

I changed my will - I'm leaving my dog to the Park District!

Before I started reading about the park district's problems selling off Hickory Lodge, I started realizing you could give anything to the Park District and take a tax deduction on it. Then they would maintain it and never sell it, even if they didn't need it anymore.

The stupidest thing I could come up with as an example was my dog. I take a tax deduction, and they feed him until he dies. Then they have to stuff him and keep him in the lobby of their main offices. If they don't, I get some friends and collect a bunch of signatures. If they don't need him anymore, that is their problem. I want to look at his stuffed body every once in a while, so they need to maintain the body for me.

Carbondale politics are a trip.

"A man who has no moral consistency between his private and public lives."

I would give you a link to the "Voice of the Reader" in today's Southern Illusion, but they didn't put one up.

The letter in question is from "The Rev. Nathan Brunaugh" of Elkville and the title of this post is his closing line of the letter. He writes that Walt "has been on Poshard's hit list ever since the anti-gay remarks" in July 2004. This is clearly wrong, he has been on Poshard's _hit list since he fired Poshard when he used to work for him. "The Rev." goes on to say "I know Dr. Wendler. I have worshiped with him..."

I have written this before, but if you are not going to toe the line, your boss is going to give you the sack. Walt didn't choose to toe the line and now he is gone.

In his last line "The Rev." writes about how Poshard just wants a puppet and

a man who has no moral consistency between his private and public lives.

One of the things that I find truly offensive about "born again" groups in Southern Illinois is this business accusing anyone who doesn't pray with them as being morally unfit. There are lots of great people out there who want to be Chancellor of SIUC. John Dunn for example can't do worse than Walt and I dare say he is just as morally fit.

If you want to blast Poshard that is great, but please none of this crap about how the next person (not man, it might be a woman - Gasp!) will not be morally fit. At least the next Chancellor will be smart enough to read the organization chart and figure out who is above him on it.

I bet you that Sam Goldman isn't morally fit either according to "The Rev." either. That blanket immoral stuff just hits me wrong.

Preaching to the choir here, I know the hardcore right wingers of Southern Illinois aren't going to read this little blog.

Knowledge mapping in 3-D

I have this idea that as you learn you might be able to map knowledge in 3 dimensions. If you learn a lot about a very limited topic, you can view that as drilling a well about 12" wide and goes into the ground (I say into the ground, because no one that isn't a specialist can see the shaft). If you learn a lot about lots of things as a college student, maybe it is like scraping all the top soil off a square mile.

My belief is that the volume of your knowledge while mapping in 3-D grows the more you know and the harder you work. So assuming that you aren't lying on the couch watching TV a whole bunch as you get old you should grow your knowledge base, maybe even multiply it as you get older?

I was on a SIU search committee a couple of years ago. I realized that I have hired and managed more people then everyone else on the search committee combined. Looking back I'm not sure how I did it, but in each of 1997 and 1998 I phone screened around a 1000 people each year, interviewed 250 or 300 in person and hired over 100 people. In 1996 I did about half that number. I never intended to become such an expert on resumes, but there you go. Made a lot of money hiring all those people, but I wouldn't want to do it again. I can't tell you have incredibly valuable this is on a day to day basis.

I caught the show about one vs. the mob or something like that on TV. Is every question about TV or pop culture on that show? Normally, I'm pretty good at the TV quiz shows, but I was amazed how trivial all their questions were. Had to switch the channel, it was a waste of time.

A question for the peanut gallery, what have you learned today, yesterday, last week, last month, in the last year? Are you writing down goals to learn new things or have you found a better way to learn?

As always, your comments are welcome.

Of Luck and Timing.

I now find myself comparing the West Coast to Southern Illinois and attempting to find answers and insights into my life. A statement that I wasn't ready for when I first moved back to Southern Illinois was "how lucky" I am. I figure I have been told I'm lucky, by maybe 200 people in Carbondale since I moved back to town. Never have I been told I'm lucky on the West Coast. Kind of interesting isn't it?

One result of writing this blog as been that I am not longer told I'm lucky. After reading my ideas about management of SIUC, I guess you guys have figured out that I know a lot about management. I'm fairly sure that if SIU was managed by someone with my skill level it could be turned around, to bad almost no one with my management skill level has a PhD and is looking for a job.

I was on a SIU search committee a couple of years ago. I realized that I have hired and managed more people then everyone else on the search committee combined. Looking back I'm not sure how I did it, but in each of 1997 and 1998 I phone screened around a 1000 people each year, interviewed 250 or 300 in person and hired over 100 people. I never intended to become such an expert on resumes, but there you go. Made a lot of money hiring all those people, but I wouldn't want to do it again. So, if you can interview, hire and manage over 100 people a year and make money while you do it are you lucky?

We were lucky at my little Seattle based company, but how many people on Earth could have done it in the same situation? Almost none.

One of the really lucky things that happened in my life is that I had the good fortune in 1998/1999 of being offered a buyout of my little company and having partners who I hated at the same time. I sat down and figured out that my little company was in great danger of getting squished like a bug, because of a number of factors. This is what great timing is about, imagine realizing that the "dot com" stock bubble was about to burst, owning a bunch of stock riding the bubble and having time to sell it? Of course, my timing was good, but how many other people were smart, lucky or strong enough to sell? Almost no one it turns out.

If you were investing over 100% of your net worth in a house in a boom market today, would you sell? Would you be smart enough to know the right answer before it was to late? Smart, lucky or good timing?

I been back on the West Coast again of late and have found that no one tells me I'm lucky there again. My brief description of who I am makes people smile and I think they suspect I'm smart. I'm not sure there is a lesson there for you, but there sure is one for me.

Of course, I don't want to lose everything and start again from scratch. But, if I did I'm fairly sure I would do well again. I like the work and I'm good at it.

Let me leave you with this quote, "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

Your comments are always welcome.