The theory of externalities

In the business world, we can lower our cost by pushing what we can onto others: by externalising costs or clean-up. This has become a field of economic practice where the elements which get externalised are thought of as "externalities". While Milton Friedman defined these as "the effect of a transaction between two individuals on a third party who has not consented to, or played any role in, the carrying out of that transaction" (Achbar et al., 2004, 17:22) - which I find less than clear - Ray Anderson suggested "let somebody else deal with that" (17:53), which is much clearer. That businesses push whatever cost they can onto others.

In fact, considering what Ray Anderson (founder of green flooring business, Interface) had to say in full could be helpful, along with some commentary from corporate advisor Robert Monks:

"Running a business is a tough proposition, there are costs to be minimized at every turn, and at some point the corporation says, you know, let somebody else deal with that. Let's let somebody else supply the military power to the Middle East to protect the oil at its source, let's let somebody else build the roads that we can drive these automobiles on, let's let somebody else have those problems, and that is where externalities come from, that notion of: let somebody else deal with that – I got all I can handle myself" (Akbar et al., 2004, 17.44).

"A corporation is an externalizing machine in the same way that a shark is a killing machine. Each one is designed in a very efficient way, to accomplish particular objectives. In the achievement of those objectives, there isn't any question of malevolence or of will, the enterprise has within it, and the shark has within it, those characteristics that enable it to do that for which it was designed" (18:20).

"So, the pressure's on the corporation to deliver results now, and to externalize any cost that this unwary or uncaring public will allow it to externalize" (18:47).

So where did this idea come from? Well, from Brit and Nobel prize winning economist Ronald Coase, way back in 1960 (Boyle, 2024; Medema, 1994). "Externalities can be positive or negative, but pollution is the most commonly cited example of a negative externality. A polluter might make decisions based only on the direct cost of and profit opportunity from production, without considering the indirect costs to those harmed by the pollution" (Boyle, 2024, 20:49).

He came up with "The Coase Theorem[, which] states that where there are complete, competitive markets with no transaction costs and an efficient set of inputs and outputs, an optimal decision will be selected. The Coase theorem is considered an important basis for most modern economic analyses of government regulation, especially in the case of externalities, and it has been used to analyze and resolve legal disputes" since Ronald came up with the idea (21:10).

Yeah. And look how that is working out for global populations in general. Climate change, anyone? Strip mines? Heavy metals? Land-fill? Leachates? Micro-plastics? 

Sam

References:

Achbar, M. (Director), Abbott, J. (Director), & Bakar, J. (Writer). (2004). The Corporation. Zeitgeist Films/Big Picture Media Corporation.

Boyle, P. (2024, May 12). Shell's Fake Carbon Credit Scandal Explained! [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/P1NBGM1ZJ10

Coase, R. H. (1960). The problem of social cost. The Journal of Law and Economics, 3(10), 1-69. https://doi.org/10.1086/466560

Coase, R. H. (1988). The Firm, the Market, and the Law. The University of Chicago Press. (illustration)

Medema, S. G. (1994). Ronald H. Coase. St Martin's Press.

read more "The theory of externalities"

Breakeven between ICE and EV

As an EV owner, I have always been a bit uncertain where the breakeven point is in driving an electric vehicle (EV), as compared to an old car with an internal combustion engine (ICE). I went from a 17 year old Daihatsu Sirion ICE to a new Mini Cooper EV a couple of years ago. While I love the Mini, I was still uncertain whether I should have pushed on and nursed the Sirion along for another couple of years.

I follow a couple of renewable energy/climate change vloggers, and a comment from another watcher on a post by the channel Just Have a Think earlier this year encapsulated my thinking (2024). 

Commenter @crnlbwlawson explained that their "32 years of driving" was in older second-hand ICEs, beginning with a two year old Honda then driven for 16 years, followed by a "10 yr old Ford Escort [driven for a further] 5 years". There are numerous other examples, with the commenter explaining they have "spent less than $10k dollars on vehicles for myself in 32 years of driving. How much carbon dioxide did I save from being produced by not buying new vehicles that had to be created during that time span?" (Just Have a Think, 2024). 

I felt that @crnlbwlawson had raised a valid point. However, while I get the second-hand line - not needing another vehicle to be manufactured - I am not sure that comparing overall purchase spend to emissions is necessarily a valid part of the argument. To follow up on the second-hand line, I ran a search for "is driving old ICE cars better for climate change than new EVs",  and got a few pieces which seemed to evaluate the issues reasonably logically. 

Of "the energy and CO2 a petrol car is responsible for in its lifetime, roughly four times is in the driving compared with the manufacturing. For an EV it’s about three times" and, if we drive a reasonable amount - which I suspect may be around 20,000km annually (Baldwin, 2022) - "Getting an EV would after a very few years move you into credit". The advice was also given to sell older ICE vehicles to people who did very few kms, which also seemed sensible (Horrell, 2022). 

"Despite the bump in CO2 from manufacturing an electric car and its battery, a new EV would start cutting emissions after 20,000-32,000 miles in the UK (32,000-50,000km)". The "average UK driver replacing an 'old banger' would pay off the carbon debt from buying a new EV within around four years, with the exact timelines depending on the fuel efficiency of the car being scrapped, annual mileage and the battery size of the new EV" (Evans, 2023; see also graph accompanying this post).

"According to [...] a model developed by the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, [...] an EV’s carbon footprint [...] begins to fall below [an ICE...] vehicle [...] at around 13,500 miles. So after an average year of driving, the EV is better for the environment" (Baldwin, 2022). It should be noted that this breakeven analysis allows for the US grid being 28% coal-powered (Baldwin, 2022). 

It seems that the faster we can move to EV vehicles, the better it will be for our planet.

However, what if the car owner is using renewables - such as photo voltaics (PV) - to recharge the EV battery? Using renewables for charging seems a long way ahead of the ICE carbon footprint. And - luckily - I am in that enviable position as we have enough PV installed at home to cover charging the EV almost all year round. Or PV system has been running for 14 years without a hitch; a well-sunk cost. The remainder of charging energy in winter comes via a grid-tie system, which in the South Island of New Zealand is sourced largely from hydro-power (NZ runs at roughly 84% renewable generation; EM6, 2024), but it should be noted that there is sometimes a small power swapsie overnight from the North Island, where power comes from hydrothermal, wind, AND fossil fuel generation (Transpower, 2024). So not perfect, but pretty good.

While this is not a very scientific analysis, I feel reassured that the EV purchase was a sound decision.

Sam

References:

Baldwin, R. (2022, April 29). New EV vs. old beater: Which is better for the environment?. Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/04/new-ev-vs-old-beater-which-is-better-for-the-environment/

EM6. (2024). Electricity Market Overview. https://app.em6.co.nz/

Evans, S. (2024, October 10). Fact Check: 21 Misleading Myths about EVs. CarbonBrief. https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-21-misleading-myths-about-electric-vehicles/

Horrell, P. (2022). Mythbusting the world of EVs: better to buy new or keep your old car?. Top Gear. https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/mythbusting-world-evs-better-buy-new-or-keep-your-old-car

Just Have a Think. (2024, April 29). China's Cheating Dragon?. YouTube. https://youtu.be/bmz4nzcsx-4

Transpower. (2024). Today's HVDC Transfer Summary. https://www.transpower.co.nz/system-operator/live-system-and-market-data/consolidated-live-data

read more "Breakeven between ICE and EV"

Climate change evidence

(Hossenfelder, 2024, 4:01; Keeling & Graven, 2021, p. 96)

I was interested to watch a video on what evidence there is to show clearly that climate is happening. Sabine Hossenfelder, a German physicist and science vlogger, explained this beautifully in a single clear video.

She outlined five evidence statements, as follows:

1. Firstly, "we can measure [how carbon dioxide molecules absorb and emit light] in the laboratory", so we know it "is really good at absorbing light in the infrared. This is what makes carbon dioxide good at keeping our planet, and other planets, warm" (Hossenfelder, 2024, 1:27)
2. Next, we have measured "how much carbon dioxide [there] is in the atmosphere, [which has] been increasing ever since" recordings began (1:55). That "gives us a [probable] cause [for] warming: it’s the carbon dioxide" (2:02)
3. Then, there's our oceans. They "take up carbon dioxide from the air and that lowers their pH value, so it makes them more acidic" (2:08). Other potential causes of acidification have been ruled out, so "it’s probably the carbon dioxide" (2:27)
4. Now we get to the key point, making the leap that the "additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere actually comes from fossil fuels" (2:33). To begin, there are "three different isotopes of carbon: carbon 12; carbon 13; and carbon 14" (2:44) which plants absorb in differing ratios. "Carbon 14 is radioactive and decays with a half-life of about 6000 years. It’s really good for dating organic" matter (2:58), but, "because nuclear bomb tests in the 1960s pumped a lot of carbon 14 into the atmosphere (3:13), we don't know "what the baseline is" (3:16) to discount that from what we want to measure. We could measure carbon in the atmosphere using Carbon 13, but it is heavier so the plant uptake is lower than Carbon 12, which plants like. The "carbon 13 to carbon 12 ratio in plants is lower than it is in the atmosphere" (3:36). OK, so if we buried "a lot of dead plants underground, [we would] bury a lot of carbon 12 with them, and if [we then dug] them up and burn[ed] them, that carbon 12 goes back into the atmosphere and lowers the carbon 13 to carbon 12 ratio" (3:42). And that is what is happening: "The Carbon13 ratio has been dropping" (3:56), which "tells us that this carbon doesn’t come from rocks or volcanoes, it comes from plants, plants that must have stored it for a very long time. Like, you know, fossil fuels" (Hossenfelder, 2024, 4:01)
5. Lastly, there "is stratospheric cooling. Carbon dioxide warms the earth’s surface, but high up in the atmosphere it actually has a cooling effect. In [...] the stratosphere the additional carbon dioxide helps the thin air shed heat more efficiently. It’s known as stratospheric cooling and goes back to a prediction made already in 1967. And the upper stratosphere has in fact cooled as satellite data show. If the warming of Earth’s surface was caused instead by an increase of energy coming from the sun, this would affect the surface as much as the higher layers of the atmosphere. So, we know it’s the carbon dioxide, and we know that the carbon dioxide comes from fossil fuels" (Hossenfelder, 2024, 4:29)

The video below shows the graphs which support each statement. A brief, but interesting watch.

The image is taken from the video, but appears in Keeling & Graven's paper (2021, p. 96).

Sam

References:

Hossenfelder, S. (2024, January 26). How do we know climate change is caused by humans? [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/J1KGnCj_cfM

Keeling, R. F., & Graven, H. D. (2021). Insights from time series of atmospheric carbon dioxide and related tracers. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 46, 85-110. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-125406

read more "Climate change evidence"

Considering water use

In New Zealand, most councils have moved to a water metering system, using loggers on the mains supply where it enters the property. There is a certain amount of use which is considered the 'base line', then households are billed for what is used above that.

Our household water use has always been quite low. We have always planted low maintenance gardens because, basically, we can't be bothered faffing about watering plants. We plant natives, and they grow by themselves. The main consumer of water was always our vegetable garden, our washing machine, and our dishwasher.

So when we built our own house way on a 10Ha block out in the country, one of the many things we considered was water. How we would get it, how we would store it, and how we would ensure that we had enough. We had long ago shifted to a front loader washing machine (because it used 66% less water than a top loader). I bought a Swedish dishwasher (washing up machine) that used less water than I would if I washed the dishes in the sink... and got them cleaner! That left us with pretty much only the vegetable garden as our largest water user, but as it fed us, it was a necessary use of water. The toilet moved up the list as a significant water consumer, so I bought dual flush toilets, and put a brick in each cistern to artificially reduce the water volume. Sorted.

In our planning process, we worked out how much roof space we had to collect rainwater, and how much tank volume we would need to store it. Then we could be sure that we could reasonably stay off a mains supply scheme. With 200 square metres of roof (sheds and house) and an average rainfall of .75m/annum, we put in 71,000 litres of storage tank capacity. We knew we had rain enough to fill the tank volume roughly four times each year.

The trickiest part was working out how much water we used annually. We knew we did not use more than the base-line rating level, because we didn't get water bills in the city. In the end, we decided to suck it and see. Well, in 11 years, we only ran out of water once (when the builders were building the house, and emptied the tanks by accident). I now know that we use between 1,000 and 2,000 litres of water a week, INCLUDING our garden. That average weekly use works out to about 78,000 litres/annum. Our tanks are always full.

Now, we are not hairy-toed stinkies who never wash. While we mostly shower (and have a water-conserving shower head), I love running a bath in winter and having a lovely soak. I just don't do it all the time. We know that water is a valuable resource, and - as we have to collect it and look after it - we need to ensure that we have enough for any time of scarcity.

Recently I was watching a DW documentary (2021), looking at water use in Las Vegas. They examined how the city was conserving water, with household use having fallen by a third. It all sounded great until I realised that in 2018, Las Vegan (!) households used an average of 100,920 gallons (Mullenix, 2020); an appallingly high 382,023 litres/annum. And that was with a 33% reduction! I was gobsmacked. I still am.

We use 78,000 litres of water per year, and Las Vegans use five times more water per year than we do (and their consumption used to be almost six and a half times ours!). I am still staggered that this was considered to be 'good'.

So I looked at what New Zealanders use on average. While not so ghastly as in Las Vegas, it is still high at 236,520 litres/year (2.7 people x 240L/day; Catley, 2017; Greater Wellington, 2011).

No wonder water is considered to be in short supply with use like that.

Sam

References:

Catley, C. (2017). What does the average New Zealand household look like?. https://rwtakapuna.co.nz/news/what-does-the-average-new-zealand-household-look-like

DW Documentary (30 May 2021). The world of water [video].https://youtu.be/YxzYzv8ijEs

Greater Wellington (2011). Section Five: How much water are we using?. http://www.gw.govt.nz/assets/Our-Environment/Water-Supply/PDFs/Turning-on-the-tap/Turning-on-the-tap-Section-5.pdf

Mullenix, B. (2020). The Average Water Bill In Las Vegas (See My Water Bills). https://www.feelingvegas.com/average-water-bill-las-vegas/

read more "Considering water use"

Newsletter Issue 234, May 2013

Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 234, May 2013

Hi guys,

How many of us set out at the beginning of a new year, full of enthusiasm for change, only to peter out of steam by Easter. A couple of extra steps might help us all in achieving what we set out to achieve. Check out Building Change Capacity below.

Our changing English usage leads me to Advise you to Get Advice. 

Save Trees with GreenPrint   TLAs for SMEs        Tips, Short & Hot Keys        Hot Linx

Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

 

Building Change Capacity

Change is a hard thing to effect in ourselves. It not only takes the courage to see ourselves clearly, but then the ability to strategise, break down large tasks into digestible pieces, and then the endurance to take action after action, and monitor our own progress.

Lots of us get to the strategising step. Not so many of us successfully sort out the tasks. But where most of us fail is with endurance.

Richard Boyatzis, a professor at Case Western in the US, developed a theory of Intentional Change. It was published in 2006 in the Journal of Management Development ("An overview of intentional change from a complexity perspective", Volume 25, issue 7, pp. 607-623), detailing a framework that we can all use to create a personal change plan. Richard's framework arose out of longitudinal studies of individual and organisational change. 

So, what should we do? 

According to Boyatzis (2006; MindTools, n.d.), there are five common-sense steps to follow to make a lasting personal change: 

1. Discover your ideal self. Think about and record your short, medium and long-term goals. Think about your goals in terms of personal development, work, recreation and dreams. Draw out what really gets you engaged: what grabs you. Don't discount things that you think are too far fetched: this is all aspirational work.
2. Discover your real self. Do lots of tests and quizzes, and ask someone who has completed leadership study for their workbooks so you have access to leadership development tools. Ask people around you - whom you trust - for what they think are your key skills and key opportunities to improve. Compile over time a personal SWOT analysis that pulls all this feedback together. 
3. Create your personal development plan. Compare your ideal self with reality: look for gaps. Think about what actions you need to take you from reality to ideal. Consider  resources you might need. Find someone to guide you (ie, a coach or mentor). Have a reality check: are some of these things going to be too hard? Are you better to achieve some smaller goals so you can build your change capacity? Once decided, schedule things in your diary. 
4. Experiment with and practice new habits. Set small goals that you can tick off. Do something every day to help build your change capacity muscles. Additionally, working on developing good habits in less important areas also helps you develop better muscles for the really big goals (Pinola, 2013).
5. Get support. Share what you are doing. Share your failures and your successes. Share your plan, and they will carry you in the tough times with their encouragement. 

Read more about intentional change at:

• Boyatzis, Richard E. (2006). An overview of intentional change from a complexity perspective. Journal of Management Development, 2006, Volume 25, issue 7 (pp. 607-623)
• MindTools (n.d.). Intentional Change Theory: Achieving Manageable, Meaningful Change. USA: Author. Retrieved 5 May 2013 from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/intentional-change-theory.htm#np 
• Pinola, Melanie (4 May 2013). Boost Your Willpower by Building Small, Unrelated Habits. USA: Lifehacker. Retrieved 5 May 2013 from http://lifehacker.com/boost-your-willpower-by-building-small-unrelated-habit-489227080?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews 

I Advise you to Get Advice

Oh, our tricky, tricky English language. No wonder so many travellers in our lands have such trouble determining which words to use.

I was emptying out my inbox the other day, and came across a note I had written, on a usage rule. 

There are three word pairs which are all quite similar: practice/practise, licence/license and advice/advise. Of the three, only advice and advise are pronounced differently. Each of the pair has one form that is a noun, and the other, a verb. The 'c' form is the noun; the 's' the verb; thus advice is a noun, advise is a verb.

To check which to use, replace either practice or licence with advice/advise. Whichever works - sounds correct - is the one you should use. But the real trick of this is that in NZ we now use practice and licence for all usages. 

Have you seen it used both ways recently? 

Save Trees with GreenPrint

There's a nifty little tool called GreenPrint. You can use it as your printer handling tool, and it will give you a page by page thumbnail preview which allows you to decide which pages to print, which images not to print, determine if you want your pages in black-and-white or colour, set for duplex printing (double-sided), or save the print job as a pdf.

Not only do you get more print options, usually far more easily than you do with standard printer drivers, but you get to save ink, paper, and make a tiny contribution to saving the planet. For home use it costs a mere USD$19.

Check it out at http://www.printgreener.com/1/greenprint-world 

 

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) for you:

• APC, Academic Publishing Costs. Many top quality academic journals, which were once published by non-profit academic societies, are now owned by the three main profit-making publishers. They are Reed Elsevier, Springer Science+Business Media, and John Wiley & Sons. This top three account for 42% of articles published worldwide, and are responsible for the increased cost of journal articles (eg, one article may cost $90). In 1986, academic library budgets were consumed roughly 45% on books and 55% on journals; in 1998 around 25% and 75%. The percentage would be even higher for journals today.
  Because of this there is a groundswell of support for 'open access', where the person/organisation writing the article pays the publication costs, then makes the peer-reviewed final article freely accessible. If this becomes the norm, it will drive down academic library costs, and, as a result, higher education costs. 

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Tips, Short+Hot Keys

In this newsletter, we look at all you can do with "End":

• Access, Excel, IE, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Windows, Word "Go to the last cell, field, item or line in the paragraph, row, object, cell, single-line field, end of the line in multi-line fields, Help topic, right edge of the page or select the first or last command on the menu or submenu" End 
• Access, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Windows, Word "Go to the end of a multiple-line field, text-box, text-frame, table, document, last item in a list, last field in the last record, last position in the current cell, last column in the input source window, lower-right corner of the page, end of the active field, last field in the last record, last position in the current cell or the last column in the active window, lower-right corner of the page, " Ctrl & End 
• Access, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word "Select from the insertion point to the end of the text box entry" Shift & End 
• Excel "Extend a selection to the end of a field or with scroll lock on, extend the selection to the cell in the lower-right corner of the window" Shift & End 
• Excel "Extend the selection to the cell in the lower-right corner of the window" Scroll Lock & Shift & End 
• Excel "Extend the selection to the last cell in the current row. This keystroke is unavailable if you selected the Transition navigation keys check box on the Transition tab (Tools menu, Options command) (with End mode on)" End & Shift & Enter 
• Excel "Extend the selection to the last cell used on the worksheet (lower-right corner) (with End mode on)" End & Shift & Home 
• Excel "Extend the selection to the last nonblank cell in the same column or row as the active cell (with End mode on)" End & Shift & Arrow Keys 
• Excel "Extend the selection to the last used cell on the worksheet (lower-right corner)" Ctrl & Shift & End 
• Excel "Move to the last cell to the right in the current row that is not blank; unavailable if you have selected the Transition navigation keys check box on the Transition tab (Tools menu, Options command) (with End mode on)" End & Enter 
• Frontpage "Go to the end of a line" Shift & End 
• Publisher "Extend the highlighting to the last character in a text box or go to the end of a line" Shift & End 
• Publisher "Go to the end of the text frame or table cell" Ctrl & Shift & End 
• Windows "Select the last item and additional items in an extended selection list box or the last item in the current list and additional items above it" Shift & End 
• Word "End of Row" Alt & Shift & End 
• Word "Go to end of row or row in a table" Alt & End 
• Word "Go to the end of a document" Ctrl & Shift & End 

Hot Linx

Making deliberate personal change sometimes requires some extra help to maintain progress. Richard Boyatzis developed Intentional Change Theory to help people through the process. Read about it at http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/intentional-change-theory.htm#np 

Those of you interested in career development might like to take a look at Careers NZ's Tertiary Career Development Benchmarks document, online at http://www.careers.govt.nz/fileadmin/docs/tertiary_career_development_benchmarks.pdf 

Randstad issues a C-suite gender wake-up call at http://www.randstad.com/press-room/randstad-workmonitor/randstad-workmonitor-women-in-leadership-still-a-tough-battle-march-2013.pdf. NZIM has a New Zealand summary at http://www.management.co.nz/executiveupdate.asp?eID=540&utm_campaign=MGTE&utm_medium=email&utm_source=66

Now, if you really want to be confused, check out the OED on ‘might’ and ‘may’ – this makes for fascinating reading! View online at http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/04/may-or-might-whats-the-difference/

---

                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here

read more "Newsletter Issue 234, May 2013"

Newsletter Issue 184, June 2010

Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 184, June 2010

Hi guys,

I've been thinking, but unlike Richard Prebble, its about Leadership on Ice - read on, below.

The end of one lifetime's use is not necessarily the end of useful life. Read Eco-Businesses with Smarts. 

Remove bmp Backgrounds in PowerPoint   TLAs for SMEs        Tips, Short & Hot Keys        Hot Linx

Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

Leadership on Ice

Recently I read an article about the 2001 book "Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer" by Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell. I referred to another book about Shackleton in the last issue (Newsletter 183); Dennis Perkins' book "Leading at the edge: leadership lessons from the extraordinary saga of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition" (2000). Examining Shackleton's leadership became a bit trendy at the turn of this century, almost 90 years after his team set the record - at that time - for the furthest exploration south in Antarctica.

For a long time Shackleton's exploits were overshadowed by Amundsen, who reached the South Pole in 1912. But as time has gone on, what has become quite significant is that despite tackling journeys through unknown and hazardous terrain in extremely harsh environments, with no support available, Shackleton apparently didn't lose a person on his exploration teams. Every time there was serious danger, Shackleton halted the team, carefully took stock, then determined a course of action with the team which kept everyone safe.

His leadership appears - granted, in our perfect 20:20 hindsight - to have been inclusive, supportive, team-oriented, and never left a person behind. A tremendously 'modern' model of leadership; one based on transformational values.

If you have read Jim Collins book "Good to Great" (2001), you would also feel that Shackleton closely matched the Level 5 Leadership model that Jim outlines in his book - a model of quiet, humble leadership, driven by a strong, tightly-focused vision. To paraphrase a metaphor from the book, you could imagine Shackleton being one who, when there is a fault looks in the mirror; but when there is success, looks through the window at his team.

What made me interested in Shackleton was reading about the leadership of Kiwi mountaineer Russell Brice. The Discovery Channel filmed "Everest: Beyond the Limit", which glorified Russell's professionalism, experience and weather smarts as he led Everest expeditions in 2006 and 2007. However, in the 2007 expedition, Russell made some management decisions on Everest which very likely caused the needless death of climber David Sharp.

Russell was organising two separate expeditions for his company HIMEX; both expeditions passing David Sharp and both teams in a position to have done something to at least make David's last hours more comfortable. In both cases, Russell told his HIMEX parties to carry on and not give assistance - the impression given by these directives is that nothing is more important than his parties' uninterrupted ascent to the summit, including the life of another climber. What adds fuel to the fire is that Kiwi double-amputee Mark Inglis with his HIMEX guide Mark Woodward apparently came across David Sharp early enough to have saved David's life, and, when they radioed Russell for instructions claim they were told “There is nothing you can do” and to “move on” (to read more, go to http://climb.mountainzone.com/2006/david_sharp/index.html and http://www.explorersweb.com/everest_k2/news.php?id=15279). Reading about Russell I suspect that he would see "the leader" in the mirror, and "the children" through the window.

When I compare Shackleton's leadership with that of Russell Brice, there really is no comparison. You support your people, no matter what. Leadership is not about achieving the goal at all costs. It is about ensuring the cost leaves the goal still achievable.

Shackleton knew that. Russell Brice still doesn't.

 

Eco-Businesses with Smarts

The new word de jour is 'up-cycling' - recycling is so yesterday (!). There are some very cool business ideas out there, which embrace a sustainability theme and up-cycle.

The first one I would like to mention is Hello Rewind at http://www.hellorewind.com/. This US company has a totally socially conscious focus along with a recycled product; as they say on their homepage "Turn your old t-shirt into a custom laptop sleeve + Support new life for sex trafficking survivors". Wow. Not quite what I expected when I clicked a link to see who this company was.

However, their product is very stylish, and they really make the whole process easy for you; you register, enter your laptop dimensions, they send you a post-paid envelope, you put your old t-shirt in it & post it off, and in 8 weeks you get your t-shirt back as a laptop sleeve. I am sure if this takes off, there will be some additional product lines that you can extend the life of your fave t-shirt into.

Another US company recycling specialised clothing is Narwhal at http://narwhalcompany.com/. They take neckties and turn them into wallets, passport covers, billfolds and wristlets. You can purchase online using a credit card, and buy something to keep you credit card in; each one is a unique work of reinvention.

Then we come to the third US company; http://www.etsy.com/shop/RecyclingZychal, the brainchild of Taryn Zychal, who makes dog coats, dog and cat toys, and rain hoods; largely out of fabric from recycled - oops, up-cycled - umbrellas. Not only can you order products online, but you can make arrangements to donate your up-cycleable umbrella to the production line, and generate a $1 donation from the company to an animal refuge for your pains.

In the UK, the Green Door at http://www.thegreendoor.co.uk/ makes handbags, clutch purses and shopping bags from up-cycled clothing. You can order your own bespoke bag online, or you can browse their stock items. While this website is far less slick than it's US counterparts, each of the online descriptions gives a provenance, detailing what items were recycled during manufacture.

Earth Huggers also retail a range of bags in the UK at http://www.earth-huggers.com/splash.php?groupID=330. This is not their core business however, but all these products are from fully up-cycled materials.

Lastly we come to the Moonfruit range by Carol Atkinson in the UK at http://www.carolatkinsontextiles.moonfruit.com/. Carol makes slippers, bags, hats, brooches and scarves from up-cycled materials, as well as being an exhibiting artist.

These businesses target a small need; have a quite narrow focus, but all think about the WIIFM (what's in it for me) from the customer's point of view. While not quite cradle to the grave, the idea of creating something new from an item that you have enjoyed has quite a lot of appeal. Wear out your bestest t-shirt? Turn it into your laptop cover. Favourite umbrella died? Make it into a coat for the pooch. Spilt red wine down your special Christmas tie? Make a passport cover from it...

Regeneration is an idea for all of us to consider.

 

Remove bmp Backgrounds in PowerPoint

Adding your company logo to a presentation should be easy, but sometimes your background is a different colour to your logo background.

Luckily TechRepublic have just published a "How To" on bitmaps (bmp files) at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/msoffice/?p=3058&tag=nl.e056,  which I am sharing with you all.

The solution is easy for bmp files:

1. Insert your bitmap on the slide.
2. Right-click the logo image and choose Show Picture Toolbar to display the Picture toolbar.
3. Click the 'Set Transparent Color' tool (the second to last button). The pointer will change to resemble the transparency tool.
4. Simply click the image’s background. If you’re lucky, the off-white background will just disappear like magic!

If you have a jpg logo, save it as a bmp, insert the bmp and then follow this How To.

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) for you:

• ARS, Acronym Rich Space. Usually refers to the IT industry :-)
• CIM, Customer Information Management. Managing client data for Customer Relationship Management (CRM!)
• CIS, Customer Interaction Software. The software back-office which your customers interact with your CRM system.

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Tips, Short+Hot Keys

Over the next few newsletters, we are going to look at all you can do with Function keys. We will start at the end, with F12:

• Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint & Word "Open the 'Save As' dialog box" F12
• Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint & Word "Save" Shift & F12
• Excel, PowerPoint & Word "Display 'Print' dialog box" Ctrl & Shift & F12
• Excel, PowerPoint & Word "Display the 'Open' dialog box" Ctrl & F12

Hot Linx

To see a hand-drawn, zoomable map of London full of interesting facts about every neighbourhood, go to http://www.bl.uk/magnificentmaps/map4.html. The the level of detail is great.

To read about a fateful Word 2007 spellcheck auto-replace muck up in an Australian cookbook, check out http://news.office-watch.com/t/n.aspx?a=1418. This wee story clearly illustrates the need for time to proof-read!

If you are trying to co-ordinate a load of different people from different organisations to attend a meeting together, try registering for Doodle at http://www.doodle.com. It is so simple to use; enter a range of possible dates, then times, then enter your invitees, and you are done.

Check out Coroflot's foldable wind turbine at http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_file.asp?individual_id=240287&portfolio_id=2706051&. This is a great idea - who knows when it may be in production!

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                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here

read more "Newsletter Issue 184, June 2010"

Newsletter Issue 175, November 2009

Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 175, November 2009

Hi guys,

In a post-recession world, how can we take better care of our customers? Check out Eco-Economy below.

I have some stats from Trendwatching that indicate we will be Online 24/7 by 2014. 

Detecting Wireless Freeloaders   TLAs for SMEs        Tips, Short & Hot Keys        Hot Linx

Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

Eco-Economy

Some coming trends to think about as the world climbs out of the current recession may make the difference between businesses that take off and those that crawl.

A few interesting pieces of news came across my desk this week, which got me thinking about about the new links between ecology and economics:

• Apple has apparently refused to repair PCs which belong to customers who smoke, advising that nicotine is on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) list of hazardous substances and Apple would not require an employee to repair anything deemed hazardous to their health. A US Consumerist website claims to have received reports from two Mac users stating that US Apple repair centres have declined to fix 'Applecare'-warrantied PCs, claiming that the warranties have been voided due to second-hand smoke contamination under OSHA regulations (while it is entirely logical that nicotine and other toxic cigarette residues would seep into computers over time, providing a health risk for Mac techies when fixing them is a bit of a stretch). See http://apcmag.com/apple-wont-work-on-macs-owned-by-smokers.htm
• Bundanoon in NSW, taking inspiration from the Tasmanian town of Coles Bay which went 'Plastic Bag Free' in 2003, is Australia's first bottled-water free town. To put to rest repeated consent applications from the Norlex conglomerate, which wanted to drill for bottled water, the townsfolk responded by banning bottled water completely (http://www.bundanoon.nsw.au/bundy-on-tap.html), and installing filtered drinking fountains.
• And speaking of plastic bags, New Zealanders use 1 billion plastic shopping bags per year (a mind boggling over-consumption for a mere 4 million people), but China - with a population of two billion - knocks us into a cocked hat for green practices. They have reduced their use of plastic bags 66% in the first year of legislating against single-use plastic bags by an amazing 40 billion bags, from kick-off in June 2008 through to June 2009 (http://www.chinaretail.org/shownews.asp?id=766). Collingwood is Nelson's only plastic bag free town; although Wanaka and Kaikoura have now followed suit. However, the worst on the planet are the Americans, who throw away almost 100 billion plastic bags every year, only recycling between 1 and 3 percent. Hong Kong, Kenya, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Germany and the Netherlands are all plastic bag free. Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland and Ireland have a plastics tax.
• Soda stream is being advertised on TV again - probably for the first time since the 70s, by my recollection - with the pull strategy of the young Australian boy on the ad saying that they were not contributing to landfills by using soda stream, and that soda stream is an "Active Green" company as it consumes CO₂. Quite a different marketing ploy to the 1970s and early 80s (http://www.sodastream.com.au/earthfriendly).

So what do all these things have in common? That in our post-recession, hyped-up global-warming world, the human race is starting to think about becoming a whole lot less wasteful, and I suspect in the medium term we will be a lot more careful of what knock-on effects we create. Mr FastFoodChain and Ms Supermarket need to take into account that a few greener practices will get customers onside; being clever about not creating the waste in the first place, so we don't have to deal with it later, will stand businesses in good stead.

Time and time again it has been proved that the only way to change our profligate habits has been legislation. However, while New Zealand's Waste Minimisation Bill was a total fizzer, there is nothing to stop each and every one of us from doing our bit, personally and in our own businesses.

Individually we can all make changes in how we do things; which will in turn keep our costs down. We can pass on savings directly to our customers, or pass those savings on to causes that we - and our customers - are passionate about, such as those reported this week by Trendwatch in Holland - http://trendwatching.com/briefing/#embedded.

Something for us all to think about.

 

Online 24/7

I was just reading on Trendwatching's website some projections of our mobile data use (at http://trendwatching.com/briefing/). We are apparently going to be quite "well connected" by 2013 or 2014:

• Globally, mobile data traffic will double every year through 2013, increasing 66-fold between 2008 and 2013. Mobile data traffic will grow at a CAGR of 131% between 2008 and 2013, reaching over 2 exabytes per month by 2013 (Cisco, 2009)
• The number of Orange 3G mobile broadband customers had increased to 21.7 million at 30 June 2009, compared with 13.4 million in June 2008, an increase of 62% in one year
• The overall number of individual mobile users in Western Europe is set to grow to 344 million at year-end 2014. By 2014, a third of Western European consumers will own internet-enabled phones compared with 18% in 2009. Mobile Internet adoption is set to grow to 39% in Western Europe in 2014 from 13% in 2008 (Forrester Research, August 2009)
• 6.5 billion tweets sent from Twitter thus far

Makes you wonder where you can cash in, and what trends you need to be up with, doesn't it...

Detecting Wireless Freeloaders

If you have a wireless network that suddenly starts slowing down, you may have someone else freeloading downloads on your account. And when you suddenly want to find out who else may be tapping into your network, most of us are a bit stuck.

However, there is an easy way to see which IP addresses are connecting to your router - and that is to query your router.

What you want is your router's status page. Anyone with network access to the router can see the status page simply by typing the router's LAN address into their browser's address bar (eg D-link at http://192.168.0.1/). Some routers may require a bit more navigation to get to the page that displays who's connected, but it is usually fairly easy.

Hey presto! There's the information you're looking for.

On home wireless networks, just compare the number of PCs the router says are connected to the number you should have. If you should have two and there are three connections, you know there's a problem and you need greater security. You might find there is a car parked on the street with someone in it. You could try turning your router off & see if they drive away. Then get some advice on how to better secure your internet connection (or do it yourself by reading the following article at http://windowssecrets.com/2009/10/08/07-Take-steps-to-secure-your-home-networks-router).

For larger setups, turn on all the machines you want connected to the LAN, note their IP addresses, and scan the router's list for "alien" IPs.

Bookmark your router's home page (IE - Add to favourites). Then you can check for anyone who shouldn't be on your router with a single click.

:-)

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) for you:

• RTLS, Real-Time Location System. This is one of a number of technologies detecting the current geo-location of a target, which may be anything from a vehicle to an item in a manufacturing plant to a person (...and cellphones, GPS etc).

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Tips, Short+Hot Keys

Over the next few newsletters, we are looking at all the things you can do with Alt, Shift, Ctrl in Windows Media Player. This is our sixth section in this series:

• Windows Media Player "Switch between the inner and outer areas of the Player" Ctrl & Tab
• Windows Media Player "Specify either a URL or path of a file" Ctrl & U
• Windows Media Player "Close or stop playing a file on the File menu" Ctrl & W
• Windows Media Player "Delete a selected item in the Copy to CD or Device feature" Delete
• Windows Media Player "Select the next item in the list" Down Arrow
• Windows Media Player "Play an item" or "Carry out the command for the selected item or button" or "Go to the selected link" Enter
• Windows Media Player "Hide the menu" ESC

Hot Linx

For instructions on how to back up and restore Outlook, there is a useful little How To page at "How To Outlook". Check it out at http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/backupandrestore.htm

And if you would like a bit of a laugh, check out the Heineken ad on YouTube (shades of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, rinsed through Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz9_YfIQaz4

A couple of newsletters ago I talked about MetLife International, and their study of International Employee Benefits trends. Some clients have asked about their survey tool; go to http://www.whymetlife.com/benchmarkingtool/criteria.asp (NB: use "North-West" US as your demographic area).

If you are interested in knowing more about Corporate Social Responsibility, check out Mallen Baker's site at http://www.mallenbaker.net/csr/definition.php

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                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here

read more "Newsletter Issue 175, November 2009"