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This is just too funny

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OK, so I’m feeling lazy today, but there really isn’t anything I can add to this (from Popular Science):

China’s Weather Manipulation Brings Crippling Snowstorm to Beijing

By Clay Dillow Posted 11.11.2009 at 6:08 pm
Forecast for Beijing: Cloudy The Chinese government employs the controversial practice of cloud seeding in an attempt to force precipitation in and around Beijing.

In The People’s Republic of China, it’s no secret that the Party controls just about everything. But as Beijing suffers through its second major snowstorm this season, residents are growing weary of their leadership’s control-freak tendencies. After all, while the storm came as a surprise to residents, the government knew about it all along. In fact, the government caused it.

China has long tinkered with Mother Nature’s waterworks, even establishing a state organ — the Beijing Weather Modification Office — whose sole purpose is to meddle with the weather. The purpose behind weather modification is less megalomaniacal than it sounds at first pass; a large swath of northeast China, including Beijing, has been mired in a drought for nearly a decade, and the party leadership would like to reverse that trend for both practical reasons and to show the Chinese people exactly who is in charge.

To do so, they’ve turned to cloud seeding, a controversial practice that involves launching (or dropping) chemicals into the atmosphere — silver iodide in China, though dry ice and liquid propane also work — that cause water vapor in the air to crystallize at temperatures it otherwise would not. Its effectiveness is dubious; while it’s generally accepted that it works to some degree, it can only increase precipitation by 20 percent. Sometimes.

Weather manipulation is actually not as rare as one might think. Currently, 24 countries practice some kind of cloud seeding. Moscow’s mayor keeps the Russian Air Force on cloud seeding duty to make sure it never rains on his parades (literally). The U.S. has dabbled with weather manipulation in attempts to curb the intensity of Gulf hurricanes back in the ’60s, and the military seeded clouds over North Vietnam during the war there to extend the monsoon season. Oh, and the CIA seeded clouds in 1969 in an attempt to rain out the hippies gathering at Woodstock, but they partied right through it anyhow (that instance is unconfirmed, but groovy to think about).

China prefers to deliver its silver iodide to the sky via rockets or artillery. For the residents of Beijing, those armaments deliver all the headaches that go along with big snowstorms: traffic problems, flight delays, cancelled classes and various transportation issues. While the government claims the seeding is for the good of the country, that claim is about as dubious as the practice of seeding itself; in 2005, a snow melting agent killed 10,000 trees in Beijing, and experts worry it could be eroding the city’s infrastructure. As of last night, highways in and around Beijing were closed and many roads were blocked, bringing day-to-day commerce to a grinding halt.

Muse’s Laws

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In yesterday’s post, I mentioned Muse’s Laws. Some explanation is probably in order.

The late, great Leonard A. Muse passed away 7 years ago last month. Mr. Muse was a close family friend and a very successful businessman. He was a world-class hunter and a crack shot, and for his memorial service, his family held a skeet shoot with his ashes packed in the shotgun shells. At the end they passed out business cards with two truly invaluable bits of wisdom, one per side.

On one side were Muse’s Laws:

  1. Never Assume Anything;
  2. If You Don’t Know, Ask;
  3. And There Is Always A Better Way.

Since that day, I’ve passed this wisdom on to every employee and co-worker, and now I pass it on to you, dear reader. It’s part of our corporate philosophy at PassageMaker.

The other side of the business card had an even more invaluable bit of wisdom, the recipe for the Muse Margarita, which is the best I or anyone I know has ever tasted. Nothing is harder than simple:

  • 1 oz. Rose’s Lime Juice
  • 1.25 oz. Clear (White) Tequila
  • 1.5 oz. Bols Triple-Sec
  • serve on the rocks

The Muse Margarita should be part of our corporate philosophy, as we try to be a fun place to work. Maybe I’ll talk Mike into that in 2010. In any case, enjoy the rest of your day!

P.S. – The cell phone odyssey resolved itself today. Excellent customer service from Verizon. Droid is not there yet – wimpy, immature email client – so I went with a Blackberry Storm 2. Very happy all around.

Thoughts on Droid, Muse’s Laws and managing expectations

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So my much beloved Blackberry Pearl, which I’ve had since they first hit the market 3-4 years ago, finally started to malfunction a little too often for my tastes. Trackball sticking, freezing, crashing, etc. It’s been around the world a few times, dropped on the floor of Chinese factories, nearly crushed in luggage, caught with me in monsoons, etc. It has been the single electronic best device I’ve ever owned of any description. Better than my rice cooker, and I have a deep and abiding affection for my rice cooker. Were it not for the malfunctions, I would keep the Pearl indefinitely.

But AT&T’s service is expensive and spotty in this area and they wanted too much money for a new Pearl with basically no new features. So a’shopping-we-went.

The new Droid caught my eye. Very slick device and I loved the actual keyboard. The touch-screen keyboards of the iPhone and Blackberry Storm turned me off. All the other new Blackberries are a step backwards to the monster machines of old – big, wide and heavy. The Pearl was slim, light and elegant. Oh, how I loved it.

I thought I could love the Droid, and for about an hour I did. I got it late on Saturday, around 7 PM and tinkered with it all through dinner. The kids loved watching youtube, listening to music, etc. All was well until I tried to sync it with Outlook on Sunday.

Before I bought it, I asked two separate “sales technicians” with Verizon over the course of three visits whether or not the Droid would synchronize with Outlook contacts and calendar. Yes sir, Mr. Kelly, no problem, of course it will. Easy as pie. I have over 2500 contacts in my Outlook, and I manage a global sales force with representatives in USA, Mexico, Brazil, Europe and Asia using Outlook, so this is not a side issue.

Turns out, that’s not even close to true. Now I will give all involved the benefit of the doubt and assume they were poorly trained. The Droid is a new device after all. But after wasting all day Sunday trying to synchronize the device, I started calling technicians on Monday. They were going to send me a link to the software online; they didn’t. And when I finally got to a regional level tech who actually knows something, the truth comes out.

Motorola and Google, in a move that I hope smacks them both in the face across the fruited plain, apparently failed to launch this product with any software that would allow the ongoing synchronization of data between the device and Outlook (which is estimated to have around 60% market share). Oh, we can “sync” the device one time to transfer all the data to the phone, but no ongoing synchronization like with Blackberries, Palms, etc. Forget about the fact that this is a one-time transfer of data, not really a synchronization.

Microsoft sucks. I get it Google. Heard you loud and clear. I hate them too. Vista is a war crime and Office 2007 should result in public hangings in Redmond. My next laptop will be a Mac, and I will burn Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in effigy when I have spare minute. All the cute ads promoting Windows 7 – “I’m a PC and Windows 7 was my idea” – make me retch. How about “I’m a customer and with 85% global market share you should be able to create software that doesn’t stink on ice without my freakin’ input, you over-paid, incompetent jerks”.

Outlook is the majority player. Who in their right mind launches a smart phone that ignores 60% of the potential market? And even more amazing, they don’t even have software to synchronize with Google contacts. Only Google calendar.

W. T. H?

Maybe tomorrow the story will change, but even if there is a software solution, how about making it available as part of the purchase of the phone?!

Now why do I torture you, dear reader, with all this? Because I want to point out the guiding principles behind PassageMaker’s philosophy of customer service, and highlight how Verizon is re-earning my trust.

The initial sales force over-promised and under-delivered. They forgot Muse’s 1st and 2nd Laws – “Never Assume Anything” and “If You Don’t Know, Ask”.

The cardinal sin of supply chain management is not managing expectations. ALWAYS under-promise and over-deliver. ALWAYS assume it will take longer, cost more, be painful, etc., and then be happy when things go better than planned.

You have to be able to say “no” and “I don’t know”. Often, those are the right answers. We had a client once who wanted to go from drawing to production in 10 days. For a plastic part. That required tooling. After stifling the urge to laugh, I politely went through a reasonable time frame – approximately 30 days, but we’d the best we could to expedite things. When first articles were ready ahead of schedule and only a bit later than his original deadline, everyone’s happy. But had I committed to the 10 days and been 3-4 days late, it would have been a disaster.

Muse’s 3rd Law is “There Is Always A Better Way”. This afternoon the regional rep called to tell me he thinks he’s found a solution that he will test tonight on his own system. He is driving an hour and a half to the store closest to me to fix the problem, either by getting the Droid to work with Outlook as promised, or find me a phone that works for me. The mistake should not have been made in the first place, but nearly every problem outside of the Middle East has a solution. Showing the willingness to find that better way is a sign that this young man gets it.

All of us at PassageMaker understand this and are taught Muse’s Laws. We are not perfect, but when something goes wrong, we step up and take the hit, no excuses. Our goal is the client’s success and satisfaction, and you will NOT achieve either by making promises you can’t keep or trying to shirk responsibility when you make a mistake. How you handle a problem says more about a person or a company than any advertising.

And the wall came a-tumblin’ down…

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Twenty years ago today the Berlin Wall fell. I remember being in joyful shock, not entirely sure what it meant, but knowing that it was good. My parents remember where they were when JFK was shot; I remember the juxtaposing endpoints of the Cold War in 1989 – the political repression of Tiananmen in June (later followed by the economic freedoms that have created the modern China), and the collapse of the Evil Empire that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

1989 was indeed an amazing year to be alive. Ross Douthat has an excellent op/ed in today’s NYT (free registration may be required):

For most of the last century, the West faced real enemies: totalitarian, aggressive, armed to the teeth. Between 1918 and 1989, it was possible to believe that liberal democracy was a parenthesis in history, destined to be undone by revolution, ground under by jackboots, or burned like chaff in the fire of the atom bomb.

Twenty years ago today, this threat disappeared. An East German functionary named Günther Schabowski threw open his country’s border crossings, and by nightfall the youth of Germany were dancing atop the Berlin Wall, taking hammers to its graffiti-scarred facade. It was Nov. 9, 1989. The cold war was finished.

There will be speeches and celebrations to mark this anniversary, but not as many as the day deserves. (Barack Obama couldn’t even fit a visit to Berlin into his schedule.) By rights, the Ninth of November should be a holiday across the Western world, celebrated with the kind of pomp and spectacle reserved for our own Independence Day.

Never has liberation come to so many people all at once — to Eastern Europe’s millions, released from decades of bondage; to the world, freed from the shadow of nuclear Armageddon; and to the democratic West, victorious after a century of ideological struggle.

Never has so great a revolution been accomplished so swiftly and so peacefully, by ordinary men and women rather than utopians with guns.

Twenty years later, we still haven’t come to terms with the scope of our deliverance. Francis Fukuyama famously described the post-Communist era as “the end of history.” By this, he didn’t mean the end of events — wars and famines, financial panics and terrorist bombings. He meant the disappearance of any enduring, existential threat to liberal democracy and free-market capitalism.

This thesis has been much contested, but it holds up remarkably well. Even 9/11 didn’t undo the work of ’89. Osama bin Laden is no Hitler, and Islamism isn’t in the same league as the last century’s totalitarianism. Marxism and fascism seduced the West’s elite; Islamic radicalism seduces men like the Fort Hood shooter. Our enemies resort to terrorism because they’re weak, and because we’re so astonishingly strong.

Starting in 1993, my family company began a relationship with an excellent plastics company in Plzen, Czech Republic that lasted for 12 years. I had the pleasure of visiting Czech that year when Prague was still new to the West, and had I not visited Singapore and China the next year, I might have made a career in Europe. PassageMaker now has a growing sales presence in Europe, led by Marc Brzezinka and Julien Roger (Managing Director of our sister company China Quality Focus), and we expect to have at least one rep based in Eastern Europe soon.

I occasionally hear commentators in the USA talk about “Communist China”. While China is a one-party state, I have a good laugh whenever I hear that. China today is more capitalist in many ways than the USA, and Shenzhen, our corporate home, is the most capitalist city of all. While the marriage is imperfect, the relationship between the USA and PRC is nothing like the Cold War, and thank God for that.

My first time with Singapore Chicken Rice

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Yes, more food-borne analogies to ruin your day, dear reader. Hey, it’s Sunday.

My first 24 hrs in Asia in 1994 changed my life. I knew instantly I was hooked on Asia’s dynamism, the very excitement of just walking down the street in a part of the world so obviously on its way up, but it was the food that sealed it. Prawn Mee Soup with fish balls was the first meal I had on that summer night 15 years ago, and I still eat my homemade version at least twice a week.

But the signature dish of Singapore is “Singapore Chicken Rice”, more properly Hainan Chicken Rice, hǎi nán jī fàn, 海南鸡饭, from the Chinese province where the dish originated. And while I have it regularly whenever I am in Asia, I had never braved it on my own until a couple weeks ago. Now I must admit I cheated and used a box mix given to me over a year ago by my friend, a professor in Singapore. Despite under-cooking it the first go round and having to re-poach it (which made a colossal mess), despite using the wrong kind of rice, it was… not terrible. In fact, it was pretty darned edible!

So emboldened by my partial success, I pulled out the cookbooks with the dauntingly complex recipes. What had before seemed impossible now made sense. I tried it from scratch this past Sunday, no spice mixes or packaged sauces and everyone loved the results! I’ll keep trying different types of rice and with each attempt refine ‘my’ recipe, but I am no longer intimidated.

One of the reasons I enjoy cooking is the creative aspect, but as an operations guy, I also enjoy the process. A recipe is essentially a set of work instructions, usually poorly written. They leave out steps, get seasoning wrong, cooking times off. I usually have to make something 2-3 times before I know how it should work. The cookbooks are only the roughest guide.

One of PassageMaker’s greatest strengths is our ability to write solid bi-lingual work instructions that capture those critical nuances that make an assembly process actually work. The differences between a successful product and a warranty claim are minute – a torque setting here, an adhesive application there – but they are critical. When your money is on the line, don’t you want a team that knows how to cook and write a good recipe?

Responding to concerns about patriotism

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I received a very interesting email from a prospective client. He is concerned that the Americans working for PassageMaker have lost their patriotism for the USA.

This is an interesting conundrum. How do you promote business in China, without seeming to run down your home country?

Here is my [edited] response for what it is worth:

Thank you for your email. All of us at PassageMaker look forward to working with you.

I appreciate your feedback vis-a-vis patriotism. I cannot speak for Mike and Brian, as they have both married into China as it were, but I can tell you that I consider [it PassageMaker’s role to help American businesses] remain viable.

I spent most of my life in the US automotive industry, and the corporate buyers began pressuring us in the mid-to-late 1980s to move production, first to Mexico (after 6 trips to check it out, we decided to pass); to eastern Europe (we had a great 12 year relationship with an excellent supplier in Plzen, Czech Republic); to the Asian Tigers (we started sourcing in Taiwan in 1991 and I lived in Singapore in 1994); and now to China. Left to ourselves, we likely never would have moved anything anywhere.

PassageMaker recognizes that outsourcing is a sensitive subject with many clients, but the sad reality is that buyers expect a “world price”. Having worked in manufacturing for over 20 years, starting with my first job in a machine shop at 14, I know that sometimes American companies can deliver that price. I know my company in Virginia does just that. But many companies, especially start-ups, cannot. They don’t have the tooling, equipment or expertise in place to meet the expectations of the market.

China has a role to play, and that is where PassageMaker comes in. Our goal is to help foreign companies be successful in their dealings with China. If by helping an American company successfully manage their China supply chain, I can make the USA operation more profitable, everyone wins.

While the economic and political environment in the USA are causes for great concern, I agree with your assessment of America [as the exceptional and indispensable ‘city on a hill’ with its best days ahead of it]. It is why I live here.

PassageMaker intends to be a truly global company, with Assembly Centers in every major market. PassageMaker-Mexico will likely be next, but PassageMaker-USA is also on the list. We already have sales presence in USA, EU, Mexico and Brazil [with Asia, India and Africa on their way]. We want to be able to offer a comprehensive supply chain solution, including the option to assemble or complete manufacturing in America, regardless of where the core components are made.

I appreciate your concern and would be happy to discuss this further. Please feel free to call me on my cell.

Whether or not this prospective client takes me seriously has yet to be seen, but my email was sincere. I take no joy in the apparent slow death of American manufacturing, but I also do not think I am the one doing the killing.

I sure hope he’s wrong…

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A very disturbing piece from Michael S. Malone about the “hollowing out” of America’s innovation capital, Silicon Valley. It seems there are no new start-ups, due to lack of venture capital, onerous regulations from Washington (that make it damn near impossible to do an IPO), etc. If America loses the mantle of world’s innovation engine, what will we have left?

One of our salesmen, David Denny and I were discussing the similar problem (on a much smaller scale) in southwestern Virginia. Whether you care for the current crowd in Washington or not, the level of uncertainty they’ve created continues to suppress investment. That cannot be denied.

Where are these investors going to go? My bet is that in the future they will find a fertile garden in China and India. Chinese and Indian students are the academic core of many American universities these days, and why not go home where the government will pay you to market the next great idea?

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot…

Good suggestion from Dan

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Short post tonight.

Dan Welygan, who worked in our Shenzhen office for 4 years and is now back on the team as the sales representative serving Oregon and Washington, sent me a link to the China Law Blog. Thus far looks like a good read.

Another good China business blog is our friends at Silk Road International. Both well worth the time.

1500 new cars a day in Beijing

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1109 brief a x600

Continuing the pollution in China thread, here’s a short opinion piece by Stephen Cass in Technology Review which claims that 1500 new cars are added to the streets of Beijing each day (the excellent photo from that article is below). I don’t know where he got that number, but I’m going to assume that he’s right. A few of thoughts before I call it a night:

  1. Heck yeah! Buicks are popular in China and since I am now an unwilling shareholder in the second-worst run American car company, we need to sell some Lacrosses ASAP!
  2. Thank God I (a) telecommute and (b) don’t live in Beijing. I can’t stand the traffic in Roanoke, VA.
  3. Yes, there will need to be a alternative to the dominance of petrol, and the Chinese have as much of a vested interest as anyone in finding it. Their motivation will be more economic and national security than pollution, though they will certainly pay lip service.

1109 brief a x600

I look forward to reading Turning Oil Into Salt. When I read Salt some years ago, I was amazed at the currency value of that now basic commodity in ancient times. The book’s thesis is that we can break the back of the oil cartel by just introducing engines that run on a variety of combustible fuels. Let’s hope they are right.

Transport costs are one of those variables that PassageMaker will not quote. Our Logistics Department can give estimates, or we can help you get a quote from the shipper of your choice, but even with freight near all-time lows, it fluctuates daily.

A world in which transport energy is like salt is a world that will deliver prosperity to the masses of desperately poor people around the world who are trying to improve their lives. I hope I live to see it, and I have a feeling I will. Human ingenuity is a powerful thing.

Stupid ads solving non-existent problems and other bad sales pitches

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I’ve been cogitating recently on some of the marketing campaigns out there that seem almost designed to not sell the product or otherwise turn off customers. What the **** were they thinking?

The creepy plastic faced Burger King ad campaign has won awards in the ad industry, but resulted in a declining market share for the client. I refuse to take my kids there. The food is nasty anyway.

Microsoft’s TV ads for their new “decision engine” Bing show people experiencing “search overload syndrome“. Apparently, people using those other plain old search engines get too many random results and become confused. It’s never happened to me, or anyone I know, but let’s do a little test.

Google “china assembly and inspection“. PassageMaker is #1 and #2 on the natural results.

Yahoo “china assembly and inspection“. PassageMaker is #1 and #2 on the natural results.

Ask “china assembly and inspection“. PassageMaker is #1, #2 and #3 on the natural results.

Now Bing “china assembly and inspection“. PassageMaker is #1 and #2 on the natural results.

Wow. Do you think they can ask the advertising agency for their money back?

Although Bing is prettier and it is nice to see our friends at China Quality Focus at #4 in their natural results, their ad campaign turns me off. If you have to tear down your competition to sell your product, you don’t have much of a product. To the folks in Redmond, how about making amends for the twin travesties of Vista and Office 2007 by givingaway the upgrade to Windows 7 instead of charging $200, before everyone calls it quits and switches to Mac?

What’s next? Ads warning everyone away from that horrible Firefox 3.5, now that it has taken 25% market share? Not bad for a free browser developed by an not-for-profit foundation. Oh, and it’s the best product on the market. That’s got to hurt.

I switched to Firefox after buying a new HP laptop earlier this year with Vista (yes, I know). I had no choice as the old XP machine was nearly dead and wasn’t ready to make the running transition to Mac (though after 6 months of Vista, I am now). The default security settings made Internet Explorer 7 completely unusable – after 3 or 4 days of trying to figure out how to configure the security settings to allow normal browsing without constant warnings, blocked pages, etc., I installed Firefox and I will never go back to IE. They lost me for good.

US Cellular is aggressively promoting their new “battery swap” program with radio ads in my area. The idea is you forget to charge your battery, so you drive to the store to swap your perfectly good but temporarily depleted battery for a fully charged one. I guess they figure if you are in the store anyway for such a reason, you might just be dumb enough to renew your contract ahead of schedule, buy a new phone when the old one still works, etc. The first thought I had when I heard this campaign was “boy, business must really stink”. Are uncharged batteries a problem requiring a multi-million dollar as campaign? I have a charger in my car, in my office and a spare in my brief case. Methinks poor phone sales are the problem, so how about reducing the prices on the plans or offering better phones?

Yesterday my wife told me about a phone book salesman (I still can’t stop laughing at that one) who came into the boutique where she works and tried to renew the ad for this year’s yellow pages. This was the second salesman from the same company that day to visit with the shop owner trying to get this ad. The owner says no, she’s launching her website this month, she’s well established, premium location, and she doesn’t need the print ad anymore. The salesman responds with “everyone who cancelled their ads last year went out of business”. What?! That is the worst line I’ve ever heard, even if true! How about encouraging her to buy the ad to promote the new website? Keeping the ad for her older clientele or new students at the local colleges? There apparently is a rung lower than used car salesman.

Now Apple is trying to charge $1000 in China for an iPhone that is Made in China when in the USA it costs $600? My first impression was maybe I need to reconsider that Mac purchase. How is charging nearly twice the price not trying to alienate the PRC market? There are many other options for smartphones in PRC than the USA. I mean, why not just post the “ no dogs or Chinese” signs (supposedly an urban myth, but you get my point)! Dan Welygan, one of our sales reps and formerly a project manager in our Shenzhen office tells me this is common practice, to charge outlandish prices to capture the cream of the market. I am sure he is correct, but considering it lacks wi-fi, and the Hong Kong versions have been available on the gray market for 2 years, this is not exactly a new device. I’ll be watching to see what happens with Droid or some other iPhone killer when it hits the China market. My gut tells me this is a mis-step for Apple.

The primary reason why I joined PassageMaker was because it was a positive environment and a positive message. We sell Trust & Transparency – the services themselves are almost incidental. Sourcing Feasibility Studies, Vendor Coordination, Assembly-Inspection-Packaging, Logistics, VAT Planning, Factory Formation , etc., all provide solid value to the client, and are so flexible and fungible that we can do pretty much whatever the client needs.

I tell all our sales reps that they don’t need to talk down our competition. There are other good companies doing business in China. It is foolish to pretend otherwise. We don’t need gimmicks or mascots or incentives. We are selling exceptional service, fair pricing and peace of mind. What more do we need?

The truth shall set you free.