Archimedes' Tub

George Washington in Debt

2011-10-27T09:53:00.000-07:00

As one of Virginia's most successful farmers, George Washington sold his tobacco crop through the London-based mercantile house Cary & Company. They would sell Washington's tobacco for as high a price as they could get, and in return Washington had access to all of London's cosmopolitan goods like clothing and high-end household goods, perpetuating the young soldier-turned-farmer's status as a member of the Virginia elite.

But the desire to furnish his estate at Mount Vernon quickly ran Washington into the red, as he began spending over £300 a month. Within five years, the future Father of Our Country had spent today's equivalent of $2,500,000 on things like wine glasses, ivory-handled utensils and snuff.

When Cary & Company informed Washington that he was in debt, and the company would be charging him 5% annual interest on the amount, Washington realized that being a member of Virginia's planting elite meant being financially handcuffed to a creditor. Colonial farmers (including Thomas Jefferson) tended to live their lives in chronic debt, and the only escape hatches were selling their farms, bankruptcy, or dying and passing the debt off to their posterity.

With his economic fate resting in the ledger of a mercantile house across the Atlantic, Washington did what few other Virginia farmers managed to do: He began to innovate himself out of debt.

Washington became one of the first Virginians to abandon tobacco as a cash crop and started planting wheat instead. He then had a mill constructed to grind the wheat into flour which he exported not to London, but to local markets like Norfolk. He also had a schooner built which caught fish in the Potomac to sell in the Carribbean. And these proceeds helped him purchase a larger ship that carried his fish, flour, and other crops to ports as far away as Lisbon. He also initiated a spinning and weaving operation at Mount Vernon that produced fabric for clothing. Seven years later, in November of 1773, he instructed Robert Cary to pay off the remainder of his debts.

Both Jefferson and Washington were Virginian farmers who became revolutionaries. Both were elected President, and both left behind land and mansions (Monticello and Mount Vernon, respectively) that testify of their high-standing in Colonial society. Yet for all his genius and scientific curiosity, Jefferson died in debt, and Washington die one of the richest men in the nation. So how did Washington solve the problem of debt while Jefferson failed?

To begin with, Washington recognized the problem of his debt, while his contemporaries saw it merely as a condition. He perceived the caustic, long-term implications of paying interest on his debt to Cary & Company, and took the dual action of reducing his own expenses and increasing his revenue.

There are some obvious parallels between Washington's situation and consumer credit card debt. Today, the average American household has over three credit cards, and owes a total of $15,799. And because the average APR on a new credit card is 14.89% (almost three times what Cary & Company was charging Washington), the average American is paying about $196 in interest every month. (click for source)

Even though Jefferson has a great monument in D.C., and drafted the Declaration of Independence, it's no credit to his ledgers to say that too many Americans are taking the Thomas Jefferson approach to consumer debt, making the minimum payment month-to-month and seeing our personal debt reduced by a few dollars with each statement. If more Americans saw their debt as a solvable problem, and took Washington's two-pronged approach of spending less, and finding ways to make even just a little more, maybe the consumer debt in this country wouldn't be $2.43 trillion.

How To Succeed in Advertising When All You Have Is A Pink Slip

2009-01-12T01:00:00.000-08:00

“So we’re going to start our own agency, right?”

This was the question Steve Carli asked Kevin Lynch within the hour of learning that they and almost every other employee of Arian, Lowe & Travis were being let go. The Chicago-based agency’s largest client, a software and IT company trading on the NASDAQ, had let the agency’s CEO know they had no plans to advertise for the coming year. It was January 2001, and in the residue of a ruptured tech bubble, they’d decided not to renew the agency’s substantial retaining fee.

Lynch had been with the agency as its creative director for two years, and had helped lure Carli, a former coworker from Toronto about 18 months earlier to sign on as head of planning. Arian Lowe & Travis was a small creative boutique with a growing reputation and a series of significant new business wins. In fact, the very week Carli and Lynch were let go, Hewitt Associates, a $2 billion global business was set to name ALT as their agency of record.

But the departure of their largest client was too great a blow for the agency’s CEO, who opted to drastically scale back to a single-digit skeleton crew focusing on strategic consultancy.

When it was clear the agency wasn’t going to survive, Carli and Lynch approached the CEO with an interim plan to keep it afloat. “It was back-of-the-envelope kind of stuff,” says Carli, “But there were projections there that suggested it could be successful.” But since the plan involved giving Carli and Lynch greater control over the agency in the long term, it was summarily rejected.Which is why the pair found themselves at the neighboring tavern, discussing plan B over two pins of Guinness and Bass. “We talked about our choices,” says Carli, “There seemed to be only one.” Lynch says, opening their own agency “was decided before the beers arrived.”

Knowing they’d need a good art director, they brought Thomas Richie into the circle. Richie had just joined their soon-to-be former agency a couple months earlier, and had been a partner with Lynch earlier in their careers.

“Organizing meetings (if you can call them that) took place over lunches and in evenings over the next couple weeks,” says Lynch. “But when we ended our time with ALT, we walked out client-less.”

“This is an industry that doesn’t require much in terms of capital infrastructure,” says Carli. “It’s mostly bodies. Once we all agreed to work without pay, it was just a question of having enough money to pay for computers. Instant agency!”

The trio approached Hewitt Associates, who had been set to sign on with ALT the week layoffs were announced. Despite being told that the $2 billion business didn’t want to hire a start-up, Carli, Lynch and Richie gave Hewitt a capabilities presentation within a couple weeks. At the time, their agency had no name, no office space, and no employees. “As I look back, we were uncharacteristically confident,” says Lynch.

Hewitt was the first client to sign the team as their agency of record.

The team also pitched The Harvard Business Review, another former Arian, Lowe & Travis client. The first assignment was a buckslip (a small insert added to a mailing package), for which they were paid $200. “We should have kept the check, but we needed to lease a copier,” says Lynch.

The month-old start-up already had two significant wins. “The tough part was sharing a room with Kevin and Thomas in Boston,” says Carli. “Kevin snores.”

The three eventually decided to call the agency Hadrian’s Wall, after the 900-year old wall in Northern England built by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Richie offered his newly mortgaged loft apartment as a base of operations for the first couple of weeks, though it became the agency’s home for the first year and a half.

“We got a chance to create a culture that felt nothing like an agency,” Lynch says. The name fit as Hadrian was a champion of art and architecture who established good communications within the empire, but as Lynch points out, “He was also a bisexual who murdered his gay lover, but everyone has their bad days.”

With the business philosophy Do good work for people you like, Hadrian’s Wall went on to hire new employees, securing office space and winning more new business. After five years, Hadrian’s Wall had generated a significant body of work and press to attract the attention of MDC Partners’ Zig in Toronto, which bought the agency in 2006, renaming it Zig Chicago.

It would have been fairly easy for Carli, Lynch and Richie to seek out jobs at other agencies after their former agency collapsed. They’re each talented, driven and well respected in the industry. The fact that Carli and Lynch approached their CEO before the bloodletting with an alternate plan shows starting an agency wasn’t necessarily their first choice (although Lynch says, “Steve was hell-bent on starting an agency sometime in his career.”). Instead, the three laid-off employees built something of value for themselves, and a lot of other people. And they had a pretty good time doing it.

Like early 2001, layoffs are again plaguing almost every industry. Each pink slip is a mountain of problems to the recipient, and the scramble to solve them can be overwhelming. Even if the stress of a sudden job hunt isn’t your panic du jour, there’s a good chance a career change or something like it is going to give you a series of problems to juggle. The answer may not always be to start your own company. But the right solution usually involves some fearless common sense.

“Honestly, we didn't do much that wasn't obvious, at least to us,” says Lynch. “It was basically led by us asking, ‘What kind of agency would we want to work at?’ When we wrote the philosophy, Do good work for people you like, it wasn't for business reasons. Rather, it just felt right.

“Further proof: As we were starting the agency, we asked people across the country who had started agencies, 1) what are you glad you did? And 2) what do you wish you ‘d done? The first person we contacted was Marshall Ross, who had a small shop of his own once. ‘Marshall,’ we said, ‘we're starting an agency.’ He replied, ‘Well duh. Why wouldn't you?’ Yeah, why wouldn't we? Common sense.”

Meadows vs. Lawns

2008-12-27T05:55:00.000-08:00

I recently discovered this TED talk from Dennis vanEngelsdorp, who spoke to me about colony collapse disorder for a previous article. His meadows vs. lawns idea - which he addresses at the 12:50 mark - is pretty fascinating.

As a side note, a big thanks to those of you who've faithfully kept Archimedes' Tub in your Google Reader while I've transitioned to life in Switzerland. I have a couple of very cool new articles which I hope to post in the next couple of months. Thanks for staying tuned.

The Streets of Philadelphia

2008-09-22T02:49:00.001-07:00

Whether capitalizing on the opportunity to bring a library into existence (an unapparent problem), or reforming the city watch (an obvious problem) Franklin began the solution process with the same initial step: observation.

Observing that Junto members turned to their personal books to settle disputes set off the chain reaction of thoughts that produced the group’s first library. And observing a poor constableship, a disproportioned fee placed on merchants and widows alike, and a watch full of ne’er-do-wells led Franklin’s crusade in police reform.

Observation leads to comprehension. And the more Franklin carefully observed, the more he understood. To solve a problem, or discover a hidden opportunity, it is imperative that we understand the situation.

It was his adept observation that initiated another of Franklin’s solutions:

The streets of eighteenth century Philadelphia were large, straight, unpaved and busy. In wet weather, they became quagmires for traffic. Living near the Jersey Market, Franklin “saw with pain the inhabitants wading in mud while purchasing their provisions.” And in dry seasons, they created a plague of unbearable dust.

In typical Franklin fashion, he began to talk and write on the subject until the city capitulated and paved the street with stone. But the street was only paved to a certain point, and Franklin noticed that whenever a passing carriage would make the transition from soil to stone, the jolt would shake mud and dirt off the carriage wheels and onto the cobblestone. The newly paved street continued to accumulate mud and “it was soon covered with mire, which was not removed, the city as yet having no scavengers.”

Franklin found a “poor industrious man” who was willing to sweep the street twice a week for a monthly fee of sixpence, to be paid collectively by each house. To make his a case for hiring this man, Franklin printed and distributed papers throughout the neighborhood. Following up a few days later, an agreement to employ Franklin’s candidate was unanimously signed. Franklin wrote, “this raised a general desire to have all the streets paved; and made the people more willing to submit to a tax for that purpose.”

With the streets paved and clean, Franklin turned his attention to lighting them. The streets of Franklin’s Philadelphia were illuminated by globe lamps – candles encased in spherical glass bulbs that were imported from London. As Franklin points out in his autobiography, the candle inside the fishbowl-type glass did not allow any air from below, so as the smoke circulated inside the globes, coating the glass and reducing the light. Wiping them clean became a daily chore.

Franklin proposed constructing lamps with “four flat panes, with a long funnel above to draw up the smoke, and crevices admitting air below, to facilitate the ascent of the smoke.” Franklin’s design allowed the lamps to burn brighter and longer. As Franklin pointed out, they also minimized damage control; where a cracked globe would be completely shattered, a single broken pane of Franklin’s design could be easily replaced. Franklin’s lamp designs can still be seen today in Independence Square, Philadelphia.

The problems Franklin solved might not have been seen as such. They were circumstances the majority never bothered to question. But Franklin's combination of observation and initiative that helped him not only challenge the status quo, but propose a solution to it.

Each of us have such opportunities all around us. It may be the way the school fund raiser's always operated. Or office protocol. Or the way we communicate with our own friends and families. We may not see problems in our own situations. But that shouldn't prevent us from finding solutions.

Boston, We Have A Problem

2008-06-13T11:12:00.001-07:00

The Boston Red Sox aren’t an organization you’d think has a lot of problems to solve. They’ve won two of the last four World Series, and every home game has been sold out since 2003. But it's precisely their popularity and success that gave rise to a problem you might not expect: revenue. With seating for about 38,000, Fenway Park is one of the smallest ballparks in the Major Leagues. And with six players contracted at over $10,000,000 each, the Red Sox have the fourth highest payroll in the Majors. With sold out games, revenue would seem about capped. (Unless, maybe the price of a Fenway Frank doubled to $7.)
The obvious solution might have been to build a bigger stadium to sell more seats. The Yankees did just that announcing the 51,800-seat New Yankee Stadium, scheduled for completion in 2009. But this is Fenway, the oldest and one of the most venerated stadiums in sports. It's not exactly something you tear down without alienating generations of loyal fans.

So how do you bring in more money? The answer was Fenway Sports Group, a subsidiary of New England Sports Ventures, which also owns the Red Sox and Fenway Park. Creating partnerships and new business ventures with other companies in and out of Boston, Fenway Sports Group and the Red Sox are now drawing additional revenue worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Certainly more than a new stadium might have brought in. Here are just some of the sources of this new income:

FSG launched the startup Fanfoto during the 2004 All-Star Week. Fanfoto photographers would wander Sox games and take photos of fans who could then order prints and even calendars of themselves at the games. When Fanfoto proved successful, FSG expanded the service to include 13 MLB, NBA and NHL teams and one race track.

FSG became so successful in selling online advertising for the Red Sox, MLB Advanced Media contracted them to do it throughout the League.

In 2005, FSG signed Boston College as a client. It has since expanded TV coverage and tripled Boston College sponsorships. The partnership, has recently announced the extension of the relationship through 2019.

When attendance was slipping at the Garden for the Celtics and Bruins, FSG helped them by launching the Verizon Wireless Post-Game Concert Series, which included artists like Elliott Yamin, Plain White Ts and Natasha Bedingfield. The extended events not only sold more tickets, but more food and merchandise.
FSG launched Red Sox Destinations which acts as a kind of sports travel agent, organizing trips to see the Red Sox play on the road. This year, FSG has scheduled 18 VIP travel experiences during the MLB regular season including one overseas.

Roush Fenway Racing is Nascar’s biggest team, 50% of which was purchased by FSG last year.

FSG organizes golf outings to high-end courses, and sells sponsorships of the PGA’s Deutsche Bank Championship.

FSG acquired the Salem Avalanche, a minor league baseball franchise in the Class-A Advanced Carolina League. FSG provides operational, marketing and sponsorship sales support to the Avalanche's front office.

Major brands like Dunkin' Donuts, Verizon Wirless, EMC Corproration and CVS/Pharmarcy now hire FSG as a consulting group to help them market their products through sports. FSG recently helped Dunkin’ Donuts launch their Iced Latte products in New England. Ads featured Red Sox Johnny Damon and Theo Epstein.

In solving their problem, FSG deliberately avoided conventional wisdom (building a new stadium) and became resourceful. Had FSG decided to build a new park, they would have had to deal with contractors, debts and irate fans who might see a new venue as sacrilege. Innovating and searching out new ways to bring in revenue; originally pedestrian (taking and selling fan photos during games), they became much more sophisticated (effectively become a full-service sports marketing consultancy), FSG found a way to bring in much more money than a new stadium could have hoped to produce.

Sometimes, confronted with our own problems, we’re too quick to push it off our desk with conventional wisdom and typical solutions just so we can say “There. Problem solved,” before moving on to the next fire. But when we take the time to reach deep into our own intelligence and resourcefulness, investing a little thought and creativity, we might find the answers to be more lucrative and fulfilling that we initially thought.

500,000 Wasted Hours

2008-06-13T11:11:00.006-07:00

If you’ve ever purchased a ticket off Ticketmaster, submitted an article on Digg, or signed up with Facebook, you’ve probably been asked to decode a simple set of distorted letters to ensure that you’re actually a human being. That lit

tle security device is called a CAPTCHA. And by one estimate, over 200 million of them are solved every day.

CAPTCHAs (an acronym for the “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart”) are a simple security device, and solving them is a fairly easy task. Unless you’re a computer. While the human eye can easily interpret a hazy word set against a backdrop of diagonal lines, even the most sophisticated programs can’t detect which lines belong to which characters. It’s a puzzle computers simply can’t crack. So it’s these simple CAPTCHAs that keep specious programs from spamming inboxes and chatrooms, and keep scalperbots from jumping ahead of you when you buy concert tickets online.

But as beneficial as CAPTCHAs have been to web security, their developer, Luis von Ahn, can’t get over the fact that they’re wasting our time. “Each time you type a CAPTCHA, you essentially waste 10 seconds of your time,” he says. “And if you multiply that by 200 million, you get that humanity as a whole is wasting like 500,000 hours every day solving these annoying CAPTCHAs.”

Von Ahn, an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, helped create the CAPTCHA in 2000. But a few years later, he began contemplating a more productive use for them. “The thing is, while you’re solving a CAPTCHA, while you’re reading these squiggly characters, you’re doing something amazing. You’re doing something computers cannot yet do. So the question is, can we use this effort for something good for humanity.”

It may seem a far stretch to ask how a little series of distorted words could benefit humanity. But with some thought and observation, it fit in perfectly with another online project: digitizing books.

The Internet Archive, a non-profit project in San Francisco, is attempting to scan all public-domain books, making them available for free online. It’s a vast undertaking requiring hundreds of thousands of pages to be scanned. The problem is, the computer can’t read the words as clearly as a human can. If the ink is smudged, or the type isn’t clear, the optical character recognition program (OCR) misreads or doesn’t recognize the characters, and the sentence becomes gibberish.

It occurred to von Ahn that if these unreadable words were used as CAPTCHAs on websites, people would be simultaneously solving CAPTCHAs and helping the Internet Archive project. Both projects hinge on the fact that computers sometimes can’t read as well as human beings can. “If you think about it, it’s a really natural solution,” says von Ahn.

With von Ahn’s new effort, reCAPTCHA, two words are shown with a spambot-thwarting line scrawled through them. One word is known to the computer, the other is a word that was unreadable to the Internet Archive’s scanners. Typing in the known word establishes your ability to read it, and typing in the other is your small contribution to the Internet Archive project.

Though it seems like an easy eureka moment, the idea of reCAPTCHA was a process that took several years. “What I usually like to do with my ideas, is I like to think about them for a long time before I actually implement them to really convince myself that they’re a good idea,” says von Ahn.

“When I first thought of it, I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea.’ But then, slowly, I was trying to find reasons why it wouldn’t work. And I guess after a while I couldn’t find any reasons why it wouldn’t. So I just did it.”

Von Ahn is a harsh critique of his own ideas. He has three disclosed patents, and a host of other programs. But he says with all of his ideas, he begins by trying to poke holes in them. “And for like 99% of my ideas, I eventually come up with a reason why they it won’t work.”

Von Ahn subjects the integrity of his ideas to others as well. “I also tell the idea to like 50 different people. And normally, if it’s a bad idea, pretty quickly, people start telling me why it won’t work.”

Having passed the test, reCAPTCHA currently corrects about 5 million words a day. About 25,000 websites use the program including Facebook, Ticketmaster, Twitter, Last.fm, and Bebo. Von Ahn points out that all this work is being done for free, and estimates it would take a paid staff of over 1000 to do the same amount of work. Von Ahn says the goal now is to have everybody who uses a CAPTCHA switch to reCAPTCHA. “We really would like to serve 200 million CAPTCHAs every day,” he says.

reCAPTCHA is just another example of the inescapable and recurring theme: problems are solved when connections are made. When careful observation allows two seemingly unrelated issues to combine for one symbiotic resolution.

What Von Ahn teaches us about our solutions is that when we set out to solve problems, we need be willing to share our ideas. Even if that means exposing them to the bludgeonings of criticism. We can’t shelter them, hoping they’ll somehow develop on their own. We can't be precious with them. For their integrity and validity to be truly tested, we need to open them to attack – even by ourselves.

To digitize a few words of your own via reCAPTCHA, or to add the program to your own site, click here.

Photo of Luis von Ahn taken from the Carnegie Mellon Today.

Utility Bills for the Homeless

2008-06-13T11:11:00.005-07:00

Of all 50 states, Illinois has the 12th largest economic gap between average income and rental costs. Fewer than 40% of all households can afford a two-bedroom apartment, and 33% can’t afford one with a singe bedroom. In recent years, nearly 18,000 units of public housing in Chicago were slated for demolition, effectively displacing 42,000 people. Clearly, homelessness is a salient problem in the Windy City.

One of the many charities established to combat the city’s problem is Inspiration Corporation. Founded in 1989, Inspiration Corporation has grown to include over 850 volunteers, and now assists more than 1,500 chronically homeless individuals. With comprehensive programs for housing, employment, supportive services and meals, Inspiration Corporation is designed to not just feed and house individuals, but help them become self-sufficient.

It runs Inspiration Cafe and The Living Room Cafe, which reject the formats of choice-deprived soup kitchens in favor of restaurant-style seating, complete with a volunteer wait staff and menus. It even operates a culinary skills program called Cafe Too, where the program’s participants do a nine-week internship at the Cafe Too restaurant.

Inspiration Corporation operates in part because of government funding and earned income. But over a third of the organization’s costs are dependent upon private funding. Diane Pascal is in charge of raising that money. Originally a volunteer serving breakfast at one of Inspiration Corporation’s restaurants, Diane has been with the group for three years, working with a network of donors which includes corporations, foundations and individuals. But when the problem isn’t finding the donors, it’s managing their donations.

“I’ll tell you a problem we have,” she says. “And every non-profit has this problem. Funders often want to fund something new. They get excited about program growth. But if you have $1.3 million in private funding to find, not everybody can fund growth or new programs. You have to find people who are willing to fund ongoing programming and general operations. It’s ‘I want you to use this money to grow.’ But somebody has to pay the electric bill.”

It makes sense that donors would want their money to go to the newest shiny object. Donors want to see the value of their gift returned. They want to see some perpetuity to it. They’re giving up something of value (time or money), in exchange for something they feel will be of greater value (someone else’s happiness, self-sufficiency, or comfort) It’s easy to measure results in a new wing, or even a newly-designed brochure. But it seems so mundane when charitable donations translate to working light bulbs and a functioning thermostat.

Corporations are happy to donate to marquee programs like Inspiration Cafe and Cafe Too because these programs have a story. They have faces and families attached to them. But that still doesn’t pay the electric bills. So what do you do when a company offers you $40,000, but makes the request, “Use it to grow.”?

“Whenever we have a new program, we are going to tuck as much as we can into that budget,” says Pascal. “Because if people want to support something new, then we want to put as many things as we’re already doing into that program.”

It’s a little like pork barrel spending, but with honesty attached. “We tuck some of the existing costs into there, as long as we can defend it,” she says. “You can’t be tricky. We always put all the overheads, salaries and benefits, rent, and all of that into the budget. It’s a reasonable request. It’s a fair thing to ask for. But it’s something that we’re already doing. And that way, if they want to fund something new, we’re still covering some of our existing costs.”

Donors of significant amounts serve to police the appropriation of the funds, re quiring further transparency. “They really monitor our performance,” says Pascal. “They ask to see our outcomes. They ask questions about them. It pressures us to do better. It’s important. It keeps us honest. We’re a public trust, and they’re the ones who are monitoring our performance in that regard.”

Honesty isn’t often viewed as a form of problem solving, though it certainly can be problem prevention. But transparency also helps Inspiration Corporation face another problem all non-profits face: attracting donors. “It’s hard to get corporations interested in cause-related marketing for people who are homeless,” says Pascal. “So finding new sources of revenue is our biggest challenge.”

To attract interest in a sea of noble causes, the company has to be consistent with its messaging and its culture. Pascal says, “We’ve worked really hard to maintain our culture of empowerment and individuality. So I think when people read about us, or go to our website, they feel pretty good about it, and the message about helping people become self-sufficient as opposed to sort-of warehousing them.”

Like a company that advertises one experience and fails to deliver, being inauthentic can disappoint, if not totally alienate potential customers. Inspiration Corporation knows consistency and authenticity are vital to long-term communication.

“We’ve worked hard to make sure that our messaging really reflects who we are. You can’t make empty promises for what you do, because people come to visit you. You really have to be what you say you are.”

For information about volunteering or donations, click here.

Franklin's Police Reform

2008-06-13T11:11:00.003-07:00

In 1735, Benjamin Franklin presented a paper to the Junto that addressed what he saw as egregious deficiencies in Philadelphia’s police force.

Philadelphia’s city watch was managed by constables who patrolled the streets and kept special guard over residents who had paid an annual fee. The fee was intended to help hire substitute watchmen. But the substitutes who were hired were, in Franklin’s view, of low character, who preferred to spend their nights drinking rather than patrolling: “The constable for a little drink often got such ragamuffins about him as a watch, that reputable housekeepers did not choose to mix with. Walking the rounds too was often neglected, and most of the night spent in tippling.”

Franklin also charged that the six-shilling fee was not only unnecessarily high (the constableship was bringing in a profit at the expense of the residents), but hardly a fair rate. The merchants and homes of affluence received the same protection as the poor and the widowed paying the same amount.

Presenting these problems to the Junto, Franklin proposed a more effectual watch be established, by regulating the hiring of “proper men” to serve and instituting a tax proportioned to one’s property.

Changes were made. But not overnight, as Franklin wrote: “The plan was not immediately carried into execution, yet by preparing the minds of people for the change, it paved the way for the law obtained a few years after, when the members of our clubs were grown into more influence.”

In truth, the “few years” Franklin mentioned were seventeen – hardly instant results. Franklin was only 29 when he brought the issue before the Junto, and was 45 and a member of the Philadelphia City Council when the city finally began regulating the watch. The point here is not that change was gradual, but that through diligence and patience, a problem was solved.

It is also worth noting that in presenting the problem to the Junto, Franklin also proposed his own solution. Though his initial proposal had little traction and took years to develop in clout and viability, Franklin clearly understood the difference between problem identification and problem solving.

A Less Creative Solution

2008-06-13T11:11:00.001-07:00

People in advertising know who David “Jelly” Helm is. And those outside the industry have likely seen the work he’s done for clients like Nike, Microsoft, Timberland and Wrangler. Currently an executive creative director at Wieden + Kennedy, Jelly is one of the most accomplished creatives in the business, and has won every major award the industry offers.

And winning awards is very important to most advertising professionals. Receiving a Pencil at the One Show, or a Lion at Cannes is the equivalent of winning an Oscar or a Nobel Prize. Awards are often how the writers and art directors who come up with magazine ads and TV commercials get noticed, receive raises and promotions, and evaluate their careers. Jelly not only wins awards, he’s asked to judge award shows.

A few years ago, while working at the Richmond-based Martin Agency, Jelly was given the assignment of creating an ad for Project Exile, a Virginia group trying to reduce the city’s escalating murder rate. For most creatives, it would have been an ideal opportunity: a chance to win awards and do it for a good cause.

Jelly explained the assignment in a speech to the American Association of Advertising Agencies:

"I’d like to show you a recent billboard I am particularly proud of…The ad is inspired by a new law designed to punish people who carry unregistered handguns.

"Murders have declined since the billboards were posted, and of course, I’m glad, but I am also proud of our creative solution.

"The client wanted the ad to say 'An illegal gun gets you five years in Federal Prison.' Here is our creative solution:

Jelly goes on to explain, “We won’t be getting any One Show pencils for this ad. But I am proud of this ad because, instead of trying to win a creative prize, instead of coming up with the most creative solution, we came up with the most appropriate solution.

“Of course creativity is a tool we should use. Of course we should speak to people in fresh, unexpected, imaginative ways. But I believe we can no longer measure ourselves by creativity exclusively. We have bigger challenges.”

Jelly and the Martin Agency were able to meet Project Exile's challenge because they excluded wrapping their own unrelated problem (“How do we win awards?”) into the equation. By ignoring this creative pork barrel spending and stripping away superfluous concerns, they had a clearer view of what their destination should be. And Richmond’s murder rate declined. (It’s a reminiscent of Harry S Truman’s quotation: “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”)

To be successful in problem solving, we have to be cognizant of the actual puzzle we’re faced with without cluttering it up with our own initiatives. Trying to impress superiors. Appear relevant to co-workers. Come across as the smartest one in the room. There’s a lot of noise that can keep us distracted. And sometimes it’s our own.

Animal Enrichment: The Problem of Not Fighting For Your Life

2008-06-13T11:10:00.003-07:00

In the wild, animals face two persistent problems: finding food, and avoiding predators. Gazelles have to find grass and avoid lions. Seals have to find fish and avoid sharks. Wildebeests have to find water and avoid the spots with crocodiles.

But in a zoo, all that changes. Predators and prey live in separate enclosures. And meals are provided daily. No famine. No drought. No carnivores lurking in the brush. And while this seems ideal, it presents a entirely new problem. Because without these natural stimuli, however life-threatening, animals can get real bored, real fast. Animals kept in stark, uninspiring confines have shown such psychotic behavior as repetitive pacing, obsessive paw swinging, even head banging.

Since the 1970s, many zoos have implemented “animal enrichment” programs to provide that missing stimulation. These programs can be as simple as introducing new scents into the animals’ territory, or hiding their food in unexpected places. Animal enrichment can be the difference between healthy, active animals, and those who plummet into chronic ennui.

Dr. Diana Reiss (recently featured in Archimedes’ Tub) is co-chair of the animal enrichment program at the Wildlife Conservation Society. Overseeing enrichment in five facilities in New York, including the Bronx Zoo and the New York Aquarium, Dr. Reiss has been involved in a variety of enrichment programs.

“We want to keep these animals stimulated physically and mentally,” she says. “We want to give them a chance to problem solve.”

Here are just a few examples of animal enrichment:

Birds of prey at the Bronx Zoo reacted with greater enthusiasm if their meals (dead rats) were wrapped and tied in cornhusks – “brown paper packages tied up in sting,” as Dr. Reiss likes to call them. “The birds would claw off the packaging. They were much more active in opening up these gifts.” The raptors even preferred their packaged meals to meals that were left out for easy consumption.
An octopus at the New York Aquarium was given a screw top jar with fish inside. Despite the fact that cephalopods don’t come across screw top jars in the wild, this octopus unscrewed the jar in less time than some of the primates that had been studied.
Perfumes and spices are often sprayed in large cat exhibits to awaken the felines’ senses and heighten their awareness and curiosity. When an exotic casts exhibit was being built, Dr. Reiss even invited two top perfumers from International Flavors and Fragrances to attend a workshop, allowing zoologists and chemists to share ideas for the cats’ benefits.
Dr. Reiss mentions a colleague who studied tamarinds who preferred to work for their food. Two types of food were presented: one was the tamarinds’ preferred meal, and the other was a basic “monkey chow.” The preferred food was left out in an accessible feeder. The less-appetizing monkey chow, however, was placed in a container the tamarinds had to work reach. At mealtime, the tamarinds chose the less-appetizing monkey chow. As Dr. Reiss points out, “It’s important to give animals choice and control, as they have in the wild.”

Empathy and imagination have proven to be two primary facets in Dr. Reiss’ development of successful enrichment programs. “When I work with animals experimentally, I try to understand how they think and how they perceive the world,” says Dr. Reiss. “It’s really a challenge to come up with ways to understand the minds of these animals that are very different from us.”

Similarly, we can use these traits in our own problem-solving. Whether we are managing a frustrated employee, balancing partnership or attempting to predict a competitor’s next move, the ability to identify and understand another’s feelings and motives can give us new perspective on a problem at hand. And it’s imagination that grants us initial access to that empathy.

It’s important to note that even those of us who aren’t scientists and zoologists cannot escape the lesson of animal enrichment: the opportunity to solve problems is essential to our well being.

Aristotle contended that doing things well can make us happy. And that we are happiest when we are doing all we’re capable of doing. Animal enrichment demonstrates the truth in this statement. Whether it is an animal outrunning a predator or foraging for food, or a human balancing a checkbook or constructing a bridge, the environmental stimulation one receives has a direct correlation to that individuals overall well being.

The point is, when we’re not challenged to do our best at any task, we’re not stimulated. And that’s just being stuck in a cage.

Special thanks to Dr. Diana Reiss, Co-Chair, Wildlife Conservation Society for her time and cooperation in writing this post.

The Wisdom of Crowds

2008-06-13T11:10:00.001-07:00

In his book, The Wisdom of Crowds, business columnist for The New Yorker, James Surowiecki, introduces an almost counter-intuitive solution to problem solving: trusting the crowd instead of the expert. He asserts that in decision-making, innovating and forecasting, the crowd is often smarter and more accurate. The caveat here is that for the crowd to be truly wise, the members must be operating as individuals, and to the best of their ability.

One of the many examples Surowiecki uses to demonstrate this concept is the 1968 rescue of a U.S. submarine called the Scorpion. After disappearing in the North Atlantic, the U.S. Navy launched a search for the vessel. The naval officer in charge assembled a team of men with a wide range of knowledge (mathematics, ocean currents, submarine specialists, etc.). But instead of asking these experts to consult with each other, he asked them to give him their best individual guess as to where the Scorpion might be based on its last known position.

When they had submitted their responses, the officer formulated a theorem to average their answers. And the Scorpion was found 100 meters from that position. Surprisingly, none of the experts’ individual estimates were anywhere close to the location. It was only the average that pinpointed it.

Surowiecki compares the wisdom of crowds to a foot race; it would be impossible to take the individual results of a 100 meter dash and have the average exceed the speed of the fastest runner. But that’s not the case when it comes to problem solving.

There is, however, a danger of groups becoming too collaborative, which results in groupthink. Surowiecki points out that the reason the Bay of Pigs was such a disaster was because those involved in planning the operation were the same people who were asked to judge whether or not it would work. No differing points of opinion were welcomed. No outside judgments weighed in. Without anyone to test the integrity of the conclusion, disaster was inevitable.

Crowds will contain experts, and experts are valuable. But that’s not the same thing as relying on a single expert to make a decision. He points out two great problems of relying on a single expert, no matter how well informed: First, genuine experts are surprisingly hard to identify. “If a group is smart enough to know whether an individual is a genuine decision-making prodigy, then the group is smart enough not to need that individual,” he writes.

Second, even brilliant experts have biases and blind spots, which they may not always be capable of recognizing. But with collective decision-making, it doesn’t matter when an individual makes a mistake. “As long as the group is diverse and independent enough, the errors people make effectively cancel themselves out.”

The Wisdom of Crowds is not about following the whims of popular opinion or relying on the unproven buttresses of focus groups and protracted analysis. It is about the solutions, decisions and innovations that result when a group of individuals performs to the best of their ability, letting the crowd become wiser, stronger, and more effective.

Major Buzz Kill: The Compound Problem of Colony Collapse Disorder

2008-06-13T11:09:00.004-07:00

Dave Hackenberg is a beekeeper in Pennsylvania who keeps about 3000 colonies of honeybees. A year ago in October when he moved his hives from Pennsylvania to Florida, he described them as “boiling over with bees.” But when he returned just one month later, he found the colonies completely empty.

The colonies still contained honey and pollen. And large areas of brood – young bees in larva and pupil stages – still inhabited the colonies, indicating that the disappearance had occurred within the last two weeks. There were no dead honeybees nearby. They had simply disappeared.

Dave Hackenberg is hardly alone in this experience. What seems more like an episode of The X-Files is now known as colony collapse disorder, and it’s been reported in nearly half of the states, from coast to coast.

This is the problem Dennis vanEngelsdorp of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has been trying to solve.

More Than Empty Honey Pots

At least half of all U.S. commercial honeybee colonies affected by colony collapse disorder. But we might be prone to think we’re simply in for some honey shortages. But it’s much more complex than that.

“Honey isn’t the big issue,” says vanEngelsdorp. “The big issue is that we require a moveable pollination force for modern agriculture. If we want a greater variety than just wheat, oats, corn and rice in our diet, we have to rely on insect pollinators.”

The simple honeybee, Apis mellifera, pollinates more than 90 different fruit and vegetable crops. “The work is done by honeybees because you can move them,” says vanEngelsdorp. “Apples bloom for three weeks. You can move in a colony per acre, and you can move them out two weeks later when the fruit is set. You can start spray insecticide when they leave and there’s nothing else for those bees to forage on. And those same colonies that we use in Pennsylvania for apples then go to Maine for blueberries, then they come back down to do pumpkins in Pennsylvania, then go down to Florida for oranges.”

This movable pollination force is not limited to the Eastern Seaboard. Says vanEngelsdorp, “We’re seeing more and more commercial colonies moving to California for almonds. And five years from now, there are going to be more almond trees in bloom than there are colonies in the continental United States to pollinate. So we need this movable pollination force if we want to keep agriculture operating the way it does.”

Honeybees are also used to produce alfalfa seed. And with the cattle industry relying so heavily on alfalfa, colony collapse disorder could affect meat and dairy producers as well.

With all our agricultural advances, there is no technology that comes close to pollinating as effectively as the honeybee. As vanEngelsdorp succinctly puts it, “If we want apple pie, we need bees.”

Trouble in the Hive

As acting state apiarist for Pennsylvania, vanEngelsdorp enforces bee law. While that may sound strange, bee laws are probably some of the oldest agricultural laws. There was no sugar in the Old World, and honey was a precious commodity, there are bee laws dating further back than the time of Christ. Contemporary bee laws exist primarily to prevent the spread of disease.

Invasive species are a constant threat. But the 1980’s seem to be the tipping point. Though it’s not clear how they were introduced, Asian mites made their way into North America and began to cause the first significant trouble for honeybees. “Before the ‘80s,” says vanEngelsdorp, “you could be a beehaver. Now you have to be a beekeeper.”

The industry is still reeling from the losses caused by Asian mites. “In Pennsylvania, we had 80,000 colonies in 1980. Last summer we had 40,000 colonies. And most of that loss has been because of the mites. Or the viruses mediated by the mites.”

But while investigating Dave Hackenberg’s deserted colonies in Pennsylvania, vanEngelsdorp noted, “We didn’t find mites that were at high enough levels to explain [the mass disappearance], and we couldn’t find any traces of the known bee diseases. That’s when we thought that something new – at least new in my experience – was going on.”

Trouble for honeybees means trouble for their keepers as well. “I’m expecting to see loses again this winter, which is really worrying, because if the same guys who’ve lost bees last winter lose bees at the same rate, they’re going to go out of business.”

Significant numbers of commercial beekeepers going out of business is another grave concern. The fruit and vegetables pollinated by honeybees have an estimated economic value of $14 billion. There are relatively few commercial beekeepers that move bees around the country for pollination, and it’s not a simple matter of training a new guy to do it. According to vanEngelsdorp, “To be a beekeeper, you have to be a truck driver, you have to be a forklift operator, you have to be a mechanic, you have to be a woodworker. You also have to be a sort of nomad, willing to move with your bees across the country. So losing these guys is a critical concern for American agriculture.”

Compound Problems and the Wisdom of Crowds

The problem of colony collapse disorder is compounded by the problem of not knowing what’s causing it. Before a remedy can even be proposed, the cause has to be identified. So how do you solve a problem when you don’t even know what the problem is?

“We’ve really tried to approach this as a collaborative effort,” vanEngelsdorp says.

After initial investigative trips to Florida and California, vanEngelsdorp and Jeff Pettis of the USDA took extensive samples from 102 colonies. Those samples have since been divided among several team members. And vanEngelsdorp is quick to give credit where credit is due. He cites collaboration with Dave Tarpy at North Carolina State, Jerry Hayes in the Florida Department of Agriculture, and Jay Evans, also with the USDA. He acknowledges cooperation with Maryanne Frazier at Penn State, individuals at the University of Illinois and the National Honey Board. And he’s quick to point out the differences in each individual’s expertise. Diana Cox-Foster, a team member at Columbia University, “has used technology that’s so new, I hadn’t even heard of it yet.”

In his book, The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki, asserts that problems are best solved by groups of people, provided that each individual within the group is acting independently, and to the best of his abilities. This is exactly the type of organization vanEngelsdorp describes. “I think it is key that you try to have a very diverse group. I’ve learned this over and over again: everyone has an expertise, and it’s better to try to coordinate all those. There’s a maximizing ability that way.”

With a range of possible causes, getting to the root of colony collapse is a bit like playing a matching game, seeing which theories make sense, and which can be discarded.

“We really have very deliberately tried to put everything on the table and take things off as we determine it.” Continued tests divided among the various disciplines allow the collaboration to rule out improbable causes.

As of this writing, vanEngelsdorp says the team has three leading hypotheses: colony collapse disorder may be caused by a pathogen, a pesticide, or some type of environmental stress. “The scientists wants to say it’s Occam’s Razor – the simplest explanation is the truth – it’s one cause,” says vanEngelsdorp. “I think I’m increasingly of the conviction that it was probably many faceted. Maybe it’s a combination of things. There was this perfect storm which allows the collapse.”

Even when these theories are eventually narrowed to one, that scenario will contain a host of new possibilities. But when the cause of colony collapse disorder is determined, and the focus shifts to solving that problem, it will likely be solved by a group of individuals with varying backgrounds and expertise working in collaboration.

Says vanEngelsdorp, “Basically, we’re following the bees’ example of a collaborated effort. That’s the best way we know to get at the problem.”

Solver-In-Chief

2008-06-13T11:09:00.003-07:00

Wordplay is a fascinating movie about Will Shortz, the crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times, and the 50 million people who pick up the Times crosswords each week. Among the featured crossword junkies are the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, Yankees pitcher, Mike Mussina, and former President Bill Clinton.

In an interview with the former President, Clinton says he found the Times’ crosswords very relaxing in the White House, because they allowed him a short time to take his mind of whatever it was he was doing. He explains the relationship he sees between crossword puzzles and more complex problems:

“Sometimes you have to go at a problem the way I go at a complicated crossword puzzle. Sometimes I picked up the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle, and I’d go through way over half the clues before I’d know the answer to one. And you start with what you know the answer to, and you just build on it. And eventually, you can unravel the whole puzzle.

“So I rarely work a puzzle of any difficulty from One Across and One Down, all the way to the end, in a totally logical fashion. And I think a lot of difficult, complex problems are like that. You have to find some aspect of it you understand and built on it until you can unravel the mystery that you’re trying to understand.”

For a New York Times crossword puzzle with clues written by former President Clinton, click here.

Benjamin Franklin’s Library

2008-06-13T11:09:00.001-07:00

In 1927, at age 21, Benjamin Franklin formed a club dedicated to the mutual improvement of its members. The group consisted of Franklin and 12 friends of diverse backgrounds. Each Friday night, these men would gather to discuss the social, scientific and moral issues of the day, and continued doing so for 40 years. Franklin’s group was called the Junto (pronounced WHO-n-toe), taking its name from the Latin word for “meeting.” Franklin describes the Junto in his autobiography:

“I had formed most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club of mutual improvement, which we called the Junto; we met on Friday evenings. The rules that I drew up required that every member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point of morals, politics, or natural philosophy [physics], to be discussed by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased.”*

As the members of the Junto continued to meet, they frequently turned to the printed word to settle debates and clarify ideas. Books were expensive, and because most were imported they were difficult to come by. But the members of the Junto realized that in pooling their books together, each member would have easier access to a far superior library.

The Junto was then meeting in the home of member, Robert Grace, and had compiled their books, which filled one end of the room. But the experiment was short-lived. “The number was not so great as we expected,” wrote Franklin, “and though they had been of great use, yet some inconveniencies occurring for want of due care of them, the collection after about a year was separated, and each took his books home again.” But the idea of a common library prodded Franklin to embark on what he called his first project of a public nature: the formation of a subscription library. With help from his Junto friends, he procured 50 subscribers each contributing 40 shillings initially, and 10 shillings annually. Later obtaining a charter, the company grew to 100 members.

In July of 1731, the Junto drew up its “Articles of Agreement” to found the first public library in Philadelphia. The Library Company ordered its first books in 1732 with the income generated by its subscribers. The experiment initiated by 12 curious men became America’s first subscription library, or as Franklin described it, “The Mother of all the North American Subscription Libraries.”

The success of the Library Company became a catalyst for libraries opening in other American cities. Franklin even credited this “enlightenment” of the common public with contributing to the American colonies’ struggle against the oppressive British Empire: “These libraries have improved the general conversation of Americans, made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the stand so generally made through the Colonies in defense of their privileges.”

The seal of the newly established library featured two open books and the Latin phrase: “Communiter bona profundere deum est,” or “To pour forth benefits for the common good is divine.”

The absence of a public library in Philadelphia, or anywhere else in the Colonies was not a glaring problem. It was not something the Junto set out to establish, nor was it an institution the public was demanding. Did a problem even exist?

The idea of a “problem” tends to connote a need for urgency. An overflowing toilet is a problem. So is a bleeding ulcer or a viral epidemic. But not all problems demand immediate solutions. Unlike a leaky roof in Franklin’s print house, it would seem that the problems which led to the establishment of a subscription library might have been ignored indefinitely. Problems are not defined by their urgency.
In their pursuit of mutual improvement, Franklin and his Junto uncovered a hidden truth: Books are of great value, but exceedingly rare. That simple “but” of that statement indicates the presence of a problem. Without a public mandate, the Junto remedied it. And subsequently contributed to America’s revolutionary course.

Franklin lived – as we all live – in an imperfect world. Entropy is a constant force. Henry Adams wrote that chaos is the law of nature, and order the dream of man. If this is true, then each of us finds ourselves in varying states that can be made better. We merely need to look around and see what we can improve – what hidden problems we can help solve.

The qualities Franklin and his Junto exemplified in this instance of an unapparent problem were an inquisitive mind and the willingness to act upon an idea.
*All of Franklin’s comments are taken from his autobiography. To avoid confusion and distraction, spelling and capitalization have been modernized.

Lubo MacGyver at the Library

2008-06-13T11:08:00.002-07:00

Earlier this year, I was a guest at the Library Hotel in New York City. It’s a 12-story building in Midtown, just a block away from the main branch of the New York Public Library. Each floor of the Library Hotel is named for a subject in the Dewey Decimal System (e.g., 3rd floor is Social Sciences, 4th is Languages, 5th is Math and Science), and every room is assigned a corresponding name (rooms names on the Math and Science floor include Geology, Zoology, Astronomy and Dinosaurs). Rooms are decorated accordingly, including organized books on the room’s featured subject.

On the third night of our stay, my wife and I came back after dinner to find ourselves locked out of our room. We hadn’t forgotten our keycard – it still worked. But the safety latch – one of the u-shaped locks – had somehow closed while we were out.

We notified the concierge who seemed just as perplexed as we were. But someone else at the front desk simply said, “Get Lubo. He knows what to do.” Apparently, this had happened once before.

We waited in the Library’s second floor lounge for about 15 minutes before the concierge returned and told us our room was now open. We asked what they had to do. They explained that Lubo, their chief engineer, was out that night, but was able to walk the concierge through the necessary steps over the phone.

Not having witnessed the procedure, I can only explain it vaguely: With the door cracked open, a rubberband was attached to the frame with a couple of thumbtacks stuck into opposite wall. The door was then shut slightly, and the concierge used a coathanger to loop the rubberband around the latch, so when the door closed, the latch would spring back, away from the lock. (Whether you can envision this or not, you can tell, it’s a real MacGyver job.)

So when I was in New York last week, I decided to stop by the Library Hotel to see if I could speak with the concierge who helped me. Though he had since left, the hotel’s chief engineer who invented the MacGuyver technique was, and was very willing to speak to me.
Luboslav Hrabkovsky has been the chief engineer for the Library since the hotel opened in 2000. I asked Lubo how he came up with the idea of opening up a door locked from the inside, and he was very nonchalant about the process.

“I just put this rubberband, and this pin, and that’s all,” he said.

One or two of the hotel’s locks had grown loose with overuse, and it took only a little vibration or the slam of a door to trigger them to falling into place. (The latches have since been replaced.)

When he first encountered this problem, Lubo said he had heard of stores selling devices that would help him. But his first effort wasn’t trying to replicate anything he had seen before. He was simply innovating.

“I’m the guy who doesn’t believe a perfect model exists. I just believe there are so many things you can just solve, you can just do better,” he said. “There’s always a solution. Always.”

Lubo says he understands that the guests of the Library expect the best, and when something malfunctions, it’s his responsibility to fix it as soon as possible. Whether it’s a vent that’s not blowing air, or a freight elevator stuck between floors, it’s Lubo’s job to fix it as soon as possible.

“Whatever it is, you have to see the final effect. You have to see the door open. It doesn’t matter how. It just has to work.”

Originally from Slovakia, Lubo was trained as a technician with and emphasis on automatic devices.

“My first boss was even better,” he told me. “He was an airplane technician. He used to work in an airport fixing army planes in Slovakia. What he had that so many people don’t have is patience. You’ve got like 25 options of what to do. And he comes in with 26, and that one works.”

While the virtue of patience in problem solving is self-evident, I had to ask, did his thumbtack-rubberband-coathanger idea work the first time? “Yeah,” he said. “It’s not a big discovery. Just something works.”

Talking to Lubo, I was struck with his casual confidence. Listening to him, it’s hard to imagine Lubo being overwhelmed by a problem. By training, he understands that problems have solutions. And the sooner he begins working on them, the sooner they’ll cease being problems.

Special thanks to Lubo Hrabkovsky, and the staff of the Library Hotel (which I highly recommend the next time you're in New York).

Smokejumpers: Putting Out a Few Non-Metaphorical Fires

2008-06-13T11:08:00.001-07:00

Last year, there were 96,385 wildfires in the United States. They burned through more than 9.8 million acres, causing about $9 million in damage. Most of these fires began in remote areas inaccessible by road. Putting them out wasn’t as simple as driving a couple fire engines to the blaze. The country’s primary resource for fighting wildfires are the smokejumpers – the men and women who actually parachute onto the scene to fight the fire.

Once dispatched, smokejumpers will fly to the fire and formulate their plan mid-air. The crew selects a jump spot, getting as close to the fire as safety permits. Once they land, they being digging a line around the fire to contain it. In the smokejumper lexicon, this is called “cutting line,” and it’s not uncommon for jumpers to cut line 14 to 16 hours a day until the fire is contained. Once the fire is under control and no longer at risk of spreading, “mop-up” begins with the jumpers searching the area for hot spots, snuffing them before they have a chance to reignite.

Smokejumpers typically operate as a crew of 20, each carrying roughly 100 pounds of equipment. The average smokejumper will make about 10 jumps per season.

According to the USDA’s National Smokejumper Report, in 60 years of smokejumping, more than 270,000 jumps have been made, with only four parachute-related deaths, and 16 firefighting deaths. Today, there are about 430 smokejumpers in the United States, nearly 30 of which are women.

Coordinating a jump and formulating a plan of attack while juggling the unforeseeable problems of weather and medical attention in the midst of an unrestrained forest fire may seem like a cauldron of disorder. But according to Wayne Williams, a 31-year-veteran in Missoula, Montana, addressing an actual wildfire isn’t much different from facing a metaphorical one. “It’s the same as if you were trying to run an insurance business, or trying to teach high school kids,” he says. “It’s a matter of organization. You have certain things that come up and you need to prioritize what’s important.”

In fact, Williams doesn’t see firefighting as a problem at all. “Using the term ‘problem’ to me is just a bad approach. In my 31 years, I’ve done nothing by try to figure that whatever is dished to me is not a problem. It’s just what I’ve got. I look at it from a positive point of view and try to make the best of it. It’s nothing different than any other kind of problem solving. There are certain things that come up and you deal with it.”

As the base manager of the Boise, Idaho Smokejumpers, Eric Reynolds understands how crucial organization is. An active smokejumper and veteran of 19 years, Reynolds oversees all six departments of the Boise program ranging from aviation to training. Yet, as an organizational principle, he recognizes the need to rely on the managers who head up each department. “Those guys are what hold us together,” he says. “They have years and years of knowledge compared to whatever I have, so I do my managing through those guys. You have to use the knowledge base you have, without undermining it in any way by being overbearing.”

But Reynolds’ organization doesn’t mean a flow chart of buck-passing from superiors to subordinates. The characteristic Reynolds values most highly is the ability to think and act independently. “What we expect of our jumpers is what I call ‘independent action.’ When jumpers split up, they cover their own 200 yards of line. When they see something that needs to be done, they don’t wait to be told, they take care of it, and let us know they did it. They anticipate what’s needed. That independent action is something we’ve just got to have to be successful. And it’s something we work at and expect.”

This characteristic is readily apparent in the role of the “spotters.” When a team of smokejumpers arrives at the fire by air, it is the spotter who assesses the situation and determines whether or not to jump and where. The jumpers want to land as close to the fire as possible while maintaining a safe distance. To determine the safety of a potential jump spot, the pilot will maneuver the plane over an opening with maximum visibility. From 1500 feet up, the spotter will throw down a stream of 20-foot long crepe paper. “This sounds very primitive,” says Williams, “but how far they drift is an indicator of wind speed and velocity.” After weighing all factors, “the spotter ultimately has the say of ‘go’ or ‘no go’ on the mission right there. So that is quite a decision process that goes on.”

Spotters involve the entire crew on the decision. Opinions are voiced, and information coordinated. “It’s as if you’ve got the eyes of 16 rather than the eyes of two,” says Reynolds. (This is especially critical when a smoke-induced haze obscures power lines and barbed-wire fences below.)

But despite seeking input from the crew, these spotters have to act prudently and decisively when making the call to jump. They’re leading a planeload of jumpers who are relying on the spotter’s experience and who trust their intuition unquestioningly. Because, as Reynolds puts it, “Once a decision’s been made, they abide with it.”

The members of the crew understand they’re in it together. “Most of the time, when we jump, no one’s on the ground yet,” says Reynolds. “We aren’t reinforcing. We’re the first ones there, and it’s hours, sometimes days before anything gets to you.”

What makes the smokejumpers so effective – especially on the ground – is their blend of group organization and independent action. It’s simultaneously a collective and an individual effort. The crews are dependent upon the individuals, not a single overseer who orchestrates their moves. United and organized under a common goal, each individual can be implicitly trusted to perform to the best of his or her capabilities until the problem is solved.

Whether we’re in a remote mountain area, an executive boardroom, or participating in a research project, a group that faces a problem can be most effective when our culture and circumstances give us a clear vision of what needs to be done. With the goal is made clear, the individual members must be allowed the freedom to act independently and to the best of their ability for the common good. As Eric Reynolds says, “It’s a work norm around here.”

Special thanks to Eric Reynolds, base manager of the Boise, Idaho smokejumpers and Wayne Williams, foreman of the Missoula, Montana smokejumpers, for their time and cooperation in writing this piece.

Additional thanks to Mike McMillan, whose photographs of smokejumpers contributed to this piece as well. To view more of Mr. McMillan’s photographs, visit spotfireimages.com.

Heel, Humphrey

2008-06-13T11:07:00.001-07:00

In 1985, while other whales were making their seasonal migration from Mexico to Alaska, one 40-foot humpback wandered into the San Francisco Bay and began making its way inland up the Sacramento River.

Humphrey, as he became known, spent the next 26 days off course, eventually straying 69 miles inland to the Rio Vista area. This 36-ton leviathan was swimming in narrow inlets that were perhaps only 20 feet deep. If he were to continue any further, he would certainly beach himself beyond rescue and die.

Dr. Diana Reiss was working as a scientific adviser for Marine World in San Francisco when she was asked to help with the rescue. An expert on marine life (bottle-nosed dolphins in particular), Dr. Reiss had helped rescue dolphins before. But Humphrey weighed 200 times the average bottlenose. Still, she was the closest thing the Coast Guard had to a humpback expert.

In assessing the situation, Dr. Reiss and her team ran through a series of possibilities. A net was out of the question. Using one on an animal that size would be very dangerous, both for the animal (which can quickly become ensnared and drown), and those operating the net (who can’t predict the sudden thrashing of an 80,000 pound animal).

But what if the net weren’t physical?

With her background in bioacoustics – the study of animal sounds and vocalization – Dr. Reiss suggested making an acoustic net to wrangle Humphrey. If a flotilla of boats could create a U-shape in front of Humphrey, each boat could lower large, metal pipes into the water. With half of the pipe submerged, the crew could bang loudly on the exposed pipe. (If you’ve seen the last few minutes of Jaws 2 you get the idea.)

Dr. Reiss had seen dolphins themselves use acoustic barriers to herd fish in the wild. Making a series of loud clicks, dolphins create an adverse stimulus, driving their prey into a tightly packed school. With a tighter concentration of fish, dolphins can swim directly into the mass for an easier catch.

Anticipating that Humphrey would react similarly and move away from the unfamiliar noise, the small fleet of boats made an arch in Humphrey’s path and began banging on the pipes.

Everything Dr. Reiss was suggesting was based on her knowledge of bottlenose dolphins. “I try to really empathize with them based on everything I know,” she says. “It doesn’t mean we’re necessarily right. But we’re making our best educated guess based on what we’ve learned from them.”

The acoustic net was an immediate success, and Humphrey retreated, making his way back towards the San Francisco Bay as tens of thousands gathered along the banks of the river to cheer him on.

But once Humphrey reached the wider waters of the San Francisco Bay, it became increasingly difficult to corral him. There was just too much open water and not enough boats to be effective.

In her study with dolphins, Dr. Reiss knew that when a calf and its mother are together, they remain silent. But as soon as a calf begins to stray, the mother calls out, coaxing it back to her. Knowing this, the rescue team decided to lure Humphrey through the Bay using the same technique.

An enormous speaker was rigged to the side of a 42-foot boat, and the team began playing a collection of whale recordings provided by a pair of University of Hawaii grad students. As the only scientist on the team who had done communication work with marine life, Dr. Reiss was the scientific liaison in charge of the playback. In spite of being the expert, she had no way of knowing whether or not the experiment would work.

But when the first humpback call emitted from the speaker, Humphrey headed immediately towards the boat. And once he began to drift away, another humpback call was played, and Humphrey returned. “It was like calling my dog,” says Dr. Reiss.

In the afternoon of November 4, 1985, after a 26-day, 138-mile detour, Humphrey reached the Pacific Ocean, passing under the Golden Gate Bridge.

Last May, more than two decades after Humphrey’s visit, a mother humpback and her calf took a similar Bay Area detour. When the pair (named Delta and Dawn by the rescue team), was eventually led back through the Bay, it was with the techniques first suggested by Dr. Reiss.

Sometimes, by necessity, our problem solving is done on the fly. We might not have enough time to test our theories. We might not have enough facts to build an airtight case. In pressing circumstances, we simply have to apply what we already know to the current situation and press forward.

While Dr. Reiss was an expert on bottlenose dolphins, she’d couldn’t possibly have been trained in rescuing a 36-ton humpback. It was her ability to take the knowledge she possessed and adapt it. Being an expert in one field helped her become an expert in an area she’d never imagined.

Special thanks to Dr. Diana Reiss, Co-Chair of the Wildlife Conservation Society, for her time and cooperation.

Construction and Carabineers

2008-06-13T11:06:00.001-07:00

A few years ago, I met Doug. A former CPA, Doug had switched careers and had spent the last several years refurbishing houses.

When he buys a property, he doesn’t just fix it up. He completely renovates it. He knocks down walls. He moves kitchens. He redirects pipes and reroutes wires. To increase the value of one of his properties in Park City, Utah, he had the entire three-store structure lifted and moved 200 feet south on Main Street.

Curious about this line of work, I asked Doug how he first became involved in real estate renovation. The answer? Rock climbing.

Doug had a group of friends who spent their weekends rock climbing in the canyons surrounding Salt Lake City. One day, Doug was invited to join them. He enjoyed it, and began climbing regularly. Gradually, he discovered all of his climbing friends were also into property restoration. Not adding little accents like paint or crown molding. But real gritty demolition kind of work.

As Doug continued to climb and began to experiment with his own property investments, he began to see it wasn’t strictly rock climbing or home improvement that interested his friends. It was problem solving.

To them, being 30 feet up a granite face and having to figure out the next secure toe hold wasn’t all that different from having a mold-ridden support wall that needed to be replaced. And a new ascent held all the promise and anticipation as finding an undervalued property that needed a lot of work.

I’m fascinated with Doug’s ability to link these two seemingly-unrelated activities. And even more interested in the fact that I can learn from them and apply that knowledge without having participated in either.

That’s what this blog is all about. Problems, the people who solve them, and what we can learn from them.

I hope you enjoy it. I hope you find it useful. And I hope you feel free to participate.