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Category: POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, WELLBEING & POETRY

Not heard of ZIZEK? Why should you read ZIZEK?

Published August 20, 2011 by Jo Jordan

I must say that a few months, I had not heard of ZIZEK.  But we all should have heard of Zizek because we are going to hear a lot more about him.

Why should a mechanic, a fireman, a hairdresser and god forbid, a member of the chattering classes, read sociology?

I know a lot of people who never read any sociology and the live quite happily.   Maybe they are happier than us too.  And they probably are richer and more powerful too.

But not knowing about the sociology of your time is like not knowing that the banks deal in derivatives that are 10x the value of real assets.  Even if we don’t have the big money to play on the derivatives market, we should at least understand that

  • liberalization of banking means derivatives
  • and derivatives mean a banking system that has electronic (or printed) money
  • that there is more than one derivative (so to speak) for each tonne of wheat or gold that they say they own
  • and there is not 10% more but 10x more paper than things.

90% of derivatives are what you and I think of as a pyramid scheme.

So we read sociology because we don’t want to be caught out holding useless paper assets

Any economist or financier reading this will wince at my crude explanation but you do see my point.  If you willfully persist in ignoring the basics of social science, don’t cry when you are standing in a Northern Rock queue when the bank almost falls over.  Don’t cry when your pension turns out to have been invested in derivatives and they turn out to be worth 10% of their face value or nothing at all.

And we are tired of the argument that there is nothing you and I can do

Many people will talk to me as if I am an idiot, and say “there is nothing we can do about the mess of our politics and economics”.

That indeed maybe true too.  I am not telling you to start fixing the derivatives system.  But I am explaining that knowing more about sociology will mean you will be the patsy less often.

We begin by knowing what is going on

I am pointing you here to a commentator who is worth reading, even if he writes real sociology that requires a little concentration.

So you go and read Zizek. 

In my next post, I will try to give my understanding  of what  Zizek says about the way we are living.

And I’ll do what psychologists do: translate what Zizek says into what you  and I can do ourselves – apart from read him.  So go read.  See you later on my next post.

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The basics of managing a collaborative supply chain (Part 5 of 5)

Published August 19, 2011 by Jo Jordan

In this the last of a series of  five posts on collaborative food chains, I’ll sum up by asking whether the Scottish pig industry achieved a ROI (return on their investment) in an information system that collects data across the whole supply chain.

Was this just an annoying additional set of ‘paperwork’, or does the system supply information that allows players up-and-down the food chain to work out why variations occur and what can be done about them?

Improvements depended on knowledge of the entire supply chain

The Scottish pig industry described two examples of vitamin supplements on the farm helping to control quality control at the abattoir (by reducing ‘drip loss’) and in the shop by slowing discolouring (which you and I don’t like when we buy meat).

These examples show that a business cannot be dependent only on information collected within their own business. They need information on businesses on either side of them in the chain. The pig industry provides that in 4 quarterly reports.

Improvements depend upon us experimenting systematically to find the causes of unexplained variations

These reports are obviously ‘after the event’. They are not part of the day-to-day management of operations which generate forward momentum. They are an additional diagnostic system to help us understand ‘unexplained variation’.

We have the information systems now to run experiments.  For example, I can ask, if I add Silenium and Vitamin E, will the colour of the meat hold up all the way to the 2nd or 3rd day of display in the store?  Perfecting our craft becomes a matter of understanding consequences along the line.

3 simple lessons for managing collaborative supply chains in other industries

To draw out lessons from the Scottish pig industry for other industries:

  • Collect data across the whole food chain so people at the beginning can help solve variations later in the food chain.
  • Remember this is a diagnostic loop.  It provides data after the event.  It is does not tell us what to do when.  That is management.  But used correctly, and an extra diagnostic loop helps us understand what is important and what is not.
  • Don’t think quantity and control.  Think variations and unexplained variance.  We want to understand what is happening so we can bring good food across the system from farm to plate.

Does the new system help provide better food at a good price?

Well, I hope so because to be well-fed, I need farmers to be making a fair living and I also want farmers to know when I am walking past their food in the shop and not buying it.

A free market system of letting the incompetent go broke is naïve.  Of course we learn some things by chance but in a system as complicated as a modern food chain, we also need a sophisticated feedback system so that everyone who is really into what they do, can do a better job – with data, proper analysis, and well thought-out experiments to understand events beyond our immediate control yet affecting us and being affected by us in small part.

I hope these five posts have helped explain why collaborative supply chains are a critical part of business in a developed economy.  The Scottish pig industry is a good example, down-to-earth, close-to-home and relatively easy to imagine why we collect and share information at industry level.

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The basics of managing a collaborative supply chain (Part 4 of 5)

Published August 19, 2011 by Jo Jordan

This is a series of posts using the Scottish pig industry to explain collaborative supply chains.

In post 1, I described the problem of complex supply chains.  Feedback gets lost.  Or to use an example, if I don’t like the bacon on my plate, the farmer does not get to hear about it.

In post 2, I explained that in years gone by we thought food had to be cheap or expensive and there was no in-between. Toyota showed in the car industry that there is an in-between when we move from cheap high-volume to agile, just-in-time supply systems by working closely with our suppliers. Computers make it easier to work collaboratively across a whole sector.

In post 3, I briefly described the diagnostic system that runs in addition to the management system.  Information is sent out every quarter that allows everyone to see the whole supply chain and to work out where variations in quality are happening. I ended that post by staying that a management system will tell us what is explained variance and what is unexplained variance.

Explained variance allows us to act; we have to think about unexplained variance

Simply when we understand the cause of a ‘blip’, we can take action, confidently.  When we see variations that don’t have a known cause, then we have unexplained variance and we have to stop and think.  So what are our choices?

What can we do about unexplained variance?

Unexplained variance means one of three things:

  • We need to do more analysis to see if any of the factors we had thought to be important, and have been dutifully recording, indeed account for dips in quality.
  • Maybe there is no answer, at least for now, and we are going to have to plan for variations in quality (more wastage).
  • Or we can investigate further and collect data on new factors to see if they explain variations as they happen, not only in our own business, but further along the line.

 

Unexplained variance might have its cause several steps removed in the supply chain

You might think that everyone does this already. They do – with the data they have.  But by working together across the whole food chain, the Scottish pig industry is able to help farmers see if there is something they can do on the farm that will help manage variability much further along.

  • To take a simple example where the farmer’s action brings a clear and immediate benefit to the farmer – giving a pig Vitamin C shortly before it is sent to the abattoir reduces the drip-effect, i.e., maintains the weight of the meat and gives the farmer a better price per carcass
  • To take another example that benefits the whole industry and gives the farmer a better price eventually because average prices are higher – giving a pig Selenium and Vitamin E slows down the discolouring of meat, meaning it looks a heap nicer in the supermarket and I as a consumer are willing to keep it in my mix of groceries.

When we can match data on what is happening in our business with data on what is happening in businesses up-and-down the chain, we might find new solutions to unwanted variations.

Once we know what to do and what to look for, future variations done to these causes, become of course explained variance – which is good, we know what to do now.

But is this science good business?  Is there a ROI on a collaborative supply chain?

In the next post, let’s ask whether the Scottish pig industry got a ROI (return on their investment).

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The basics of managing a collaborative supply chain (Part 3 of 5)

Published August 19, 2011 by Jo Jordan

This is the third post in series on collaborative supply management.  The posts are based on a case study of the pig industry which I’ve rewritten to bring out how we manage collaborative supply chains.

In post 1, I described the supply chain for pork products simply and pointed out that feedback gets lost in complex supply chains and does not reach people who need it.

In post 2, I pointed out that Toyota showed that it is not necessary to choose between cost-driven high volume businesses and high margin niche luxury businesses if we are able to manage our supply chains to deliver ‘just-in-time’.  Becoming nimble becomes easier with modern computers.

In this post, I’ll move from telling you about the general problem to what the Scottish pig industry did to manage their collaborative supply chain.

The Scottish pig industry already had an efficient system of delivering pigs and pork to market

The Scottish pig industry got together to do what they do well even better.  The farmers, the butchers, the shop-keepers and yes, the farm and meat inspectors run the ‘forward system’.  In psychological parlance, they track – they pay attention, they coordinate and they get everything done in an intricate and complicated dance.

And they added a diagnostic system which feeds information on the whole system back to individual players

The Scottish pig industry, working together, then added a ‘diagnostic system’ which collects information and feeds it back to everyone in the food chain every three months.

An example of a collaborative supply chain

Let’s take an example of how it works.

The farmer has records of how much food was given to a particularly pig, what supplements it gobbled up, how often it was ill and what medicines it was given.

By monitoring food throughout the chain, farmers can now learn what happens to a pig after it leaves them and they can find the condition of the meat when it lands on our plates (or rather leaves the supermarket in our trolley).

Let’s imagine that sometimes the pork I eat is fantastic and sometimes it makes me regret my purchase.  The information system in Scotland lets farmers know that this variation is happening.

The information system can also analyse the variation to see whether it the fluctuations are triggered at a particularly farm, a slaughter-house, a shop or transport system.

Once we have seen the numbers, then we can begin to understand ‘unexplained variance’

Moreover, the information separates out explained and unexplained variance.

Explained variance means, in plain English, that we know what caused something.  If we know what caused a blip, then we know what to do and we do it with confidence knowing that when we do the necessary, quality will go up and will be seen to go up. The consumer will be happy again.  Bravo. Simple. We can get it done.

I’ll explain in the next post what we mean by unexplained variance.

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The basics of managing a collaborative supply chain (Part 2 of 5)

Published August 19, 2011 by Jo Jordan

This is the second post in series on collaborative supply management.  The posts are based on a case study of the pig industry which I’ve rewritten to bring out how we manage collaborative supply chains.

The Scottish pig industry has set up a sophisticated feedback loop to listen more closely to consumers

The Scottish pig industry has set out to create a feedback loop between you and I, who buy bacon, ham and pork in small quantities once a week, or maybe even less often, and everyone in the supply chain from our favourite shop working back through the abattoir and factories (that we some of us don’t even like to think about) to the pig snuffling in its pen at the farm.

Their focus has shifted from competing to collaboration

Scottish farmers have good commercial reasons for setting up this feedback loop.

We all know that much of the food arriving in our supermarkets is cheap and well, nasty. But that does not have to be so.  In the past, business schools taught that a business must choose between cheap and horrible, on the one hand, or expensive and good, on the other hand.  One of the benefits of collaborative supply chains is that we may not have to make that choice.  We may not have to choose between working in industries driven only by cost and industries that are quality but niche.  For that matter, pigs may not to be condemned to cheap and nasty living conditions either.

The key to collaboration is sharing information on the bigger picture so we can each be more nimble

Industry began to move away from the idea of cheap or luxurious when Toyota figured out how to work with its suppliers and deliver good products ‘just-in-time’.  The internet is making it even easier to produce good things at reasonable prices.  High speed computers mean we can collect information, share information and analyse information and get enormously better at what we do.  We all benefit – producer, shopkeeper, consumer and animals.

So what is the information we need to collaborate and become more nimble?

In the next post, I’ll tell you more about what the Scottish pig industry did to use information to improve their entire supply chain.

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The basics of managing a collaborative supply chain (Part 1 of 5)

Published August 19, 2011 by Jo Jordan

Our food comes a long way from a farm

Let’s imagine a farm and on this farm, the farmer keeps pigs.  He, or maybe she, feeds them and waters them and breeds them and fattens them.  And when the pigs are big and fat, the farmer puts them on a truck and sends them off to the abattoir.  At the abattoir, the pigs are slaughtered, and sold as carcasses to butcheries and supermarkets who butcher the meat and package it into smaller quantities for us to take home and cook.

But if we don’t like it, it is difficult to let the farmer know

You and I, the shoppers at the supermarket, know what we want.  We want a meat that cooks well, looks good, smells good, tastes good, and feels good.

And when we don’t get what we want. . .well, exactly how is that communicated back to the farmer?

And are we sure that the problem was with the farm and not elsewhere in the complicated food chain?

And indeed how would the farmer know that it was something to do with his (or her) farming that created the undesirable quality.  Possibly the problem is elsewhere in the food chain… the transporting of the live pig or the handling of the pork at the butchery. . . to pick only two possible points.

A series of five posts to understand how we benefit from the collaborative management of a complicated supply chain

In this series of five posts, I have rewritten a case study of the pig industry in Scotland to help people who are interested in collaborative supply chain management understand how we  organize the collaboration and the key role of computers, data, analysis and experiments.

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I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride

Published August 11, 2011 by Jo Jordan

Love Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

 

Not to get to psychologically geeky on you but when love straightforwardly, without complexities and pride – isn’t that when we experience flow, mindfulness and even universe conspiring to help us . . .

Pablo Neruda  Nobel Prize

Neruda’s work cannot be out of copyright yet.  Does anyone know where this was published and where it is available for sale.? At least we should have links up but if you own the copyright, please advise what you would ike us to do.

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3 powerful social science ideas for living fully in a highly developed country like the UK

Published July 9, 2011 by Jo Jordan

Do poms whinge?

I’ve only lived in Europe for 4 years. In a new economy, that is a sizeable chunk of time.  Here it is nothing.  Surrounded by old buildings and reminders of a long history, everyone is acutely aware of their insignificance.  To the ear of a new arrival, there seems to be a lot of complaining.  And the constant whine is not a figment of our imagination.  Academics have constructed massive theories about the anomie of Europeans, the malaise of hopelessness, and the prevalent sense that someone powerful makes our lives a misery.

What is fun about living in a highly developed country?

There is another reading of life here that I find more useful.

Being a small part of a large system is invigorating when our understanding of the part we play brings alive our sense of our relationships with other people. The need to tell our story to the strangers around us sharpens our wits as we retell the same story for their appreciation.  And we are drawn into the present as we attend mindfully to changes the ripple across the land.

  • A part implies a whole and a complex whole implies relationships in every direction.  What could be more fascinating for the social animals we are?
  • A stranger needs a quick explanation and often not in words. A courtesy on the underground melds our story with others and is instantly recognizable to them.
  • The world swirling around us draws us in to fast moving events and draws us to horizons and vistas that are breath taking in our mutual recognition of possibility.

Putting my money where my mouth is

Sitting on a grubby train, it can be difficult, I admit, to be anything but disgusted.  And the impulse to withdrawn into our shell is very strong.  I do try to avoid the trains, I must be honest.

  • But what if we thought instead about the wonderful diversity of relationships we have because of our movement.  What would  our commute look like through a filter of “relationships”?
  • What if we were interested in the story of the person next to us (including their desire to sleep if that be their story)?
  • What if we developed a Sherlock Holmes sense of awareness about who was on the train with us and where they were going? If we knew the fields we pass through so well that we knew when the wild flowers were late and when the birds were hungry (or over fed).

Would we then feel out of sorts, put upon and out of control?

The three ideas from social science which suggest whinging is the wrong way to see the UK

Parts and relationships.  Strangers and stories in gestures.  Swirling activity and vistas suddenly appearing on the horizon.

Those are the powerful concepts that challenge the stories of us as hopeless bit-players in someone else’s romance.

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