Can Stopping Illegal Immigration be this Simple?

My 15 year old son just got a job at a local sandwich shop. Since he's underage, they require a work permit.

In our town, work permits are issued by the school (when in session) or any local bank branch. So off we went to our local bank. After presenting his Green Card (we're not citizens yet), his Social Security Card, his birth certificate and a photo id, we waited 24 hours for the Bank to process the paperwork.

The next day we picked up his Work Permit (cost $5). On the reverse side of the permit are all the restrictions imposed upon a 15 year old (hours of work etc).

On Monday, he's expected to show up at work with the Work Permit and copies of all the documentation we provided for the Bank, so his employer can file all the applicable documentation.

Its a relatively painless process. We follow the rules, the local employers follow the rules. I'm assuming we must have some local enforcement, because this is his third job and we got Work Permits for all three.

I tell this story because we managed to do all this without the Federal Government having to pass a comprehensive immigration bill.

I'm assuming similar rules apply in all States. If you don't have the proper documentation, no work permit, no employment.

Enforce the existing rules, stop building a fence. Without the prospect for employment, the tide of illegal immigration will become a trickle - or stop altogether.

Can it really be this simple?

Confident or Arrogant?

I just ran across this Businessweek slide show which has tips for the company Newbie. Liz Ryan's entire article provides valuable tips that resonated for me.


Several years ago I joined a new company. In my first week, it was very apparent to me that my new company was awash in improvement opportunities, some of these the CEO planned to exploit with a new ERP system (that no one else wanted).


While we "won the battle" by installing the new system, we lost the war, in that our team was seen as arrogant.


I saw us as being confident.


While we did garner most of the benefits we anticipated, we didn't get them all. Had we taken the challenges a little more slowly, building relationships and garnering confidence with our business partners as we went, we might have garnered 100% of the expected results.

Hire Beware!

Several months ago, a former associate of mine was hired by a very large company into a very senior role.

Now I know this guy. And I don't have a very strong opinion of him. I knew him to be vain, somewhat paranoid, highly political and quite devious. Many of his peers felt he was somewhat dysfunctional. He would avoid dealing with any confrontation directly, instead delegating all tough issues to his staff.

His major talent, was his ability to "manage up" - fooling his boss into believing he was effective.

Almost everyone else knew differently. He was not a guy I felt proud to be associated with. Yet a successful company is now excited to have him on board.

It makes me wonder about recruiting. How does one really know the person they're about to hire?

Hiring mistakes at the senior level can be so expensive. Termination is expensive. Damage to the hiring manager's reputation is expensive. Damage to the department or to corporate morale is expensive. There's a lot at risk.

Yet hiring decisions, in many cases, comes down to "feel" - in essence, a beauty contest. Are we comfortable with the candidate? Does he seem to know his stuff? Does his experience fit our needs?

"Steve" (not his real name) definitely knew his stuff. That wasn't the issue. His issues surfaced in the way he went about his job. And typically, that doesn't show up in an interview.

References aren't a great way to weed out candidates either - who offers up bad references?

Some companies use scientific testing (although not usually at the senior level), some use "gang interviews", some use 360 interviews, with the candidate being interviewed by superiors, colleagues and subordinates. But none of these techniques come with any guarantees.

I think there's a huge business opportunity out there for anyone who can come up with a better way of making hires - especially at the senior level. And in about 12 months from now, I'm betting there will be at least one major company who'll want to second that motion.

What about a 23% Approval Rating Don't You Get?

They still don't get it.

That's what I was thinking as I watched Anderson Cooper interview Rahm Emanuel yesterday on CNN.

CNN's "Keeping them Honest" segment called every congress-person and asked for their list of proposed Earmarks. Initially less than 10% of our government agreed to publicly list Earmarks they had asked for. About 15% said absolutely not - unless there was a legal requirement to do so. Over 300 never responded to the inquiries at all.

Rahm Emanuel, who was aghast at the coverage of the issue, appeared with Anderson Cooper to defend the progress that Dems had made in turning the entire process transparent.

He argued that Dems were going to force Earmarks, which end up added to other legislation, to be identified by the sponsoring Congressperson. He argued that is substantial progress towards the path to transparency.

Nice try Skippy.

When more than 90% of Congress is unresponsive to public requests for proposed Earmarks, it's very clear (at least to the Public) that Congress doesn't appear to understand that it is they, who are supposed to be serving US.

For Rahm Emanuel to appear on CNN and defend Democratic earmark initiatives as being "progressive" would be like the Army Corps of Engineers defending themselves after Katrina by saying that "not all the levies broke."

Regardless, New Orleans was under water.

Congress has a 23% approval rating.

What is it that you don't understand?

Mr. Emanuel was acting like the Dems were about to "cross the finish line" on Earmarks. Bad news Congressman, you're not running a 100 yard dash. You're in a marathon.

When the public gets a 100% response from its elected representatives on Earmark requests, when Dick Cheney's office discloses what information his office has classified as secret or declassified, when Government contracts are forced to be open-bid, when the President stops trying to amend legislation with signing statements, when the Executive branch stops hiding behind the notion of Executive Privilege and ignoring subpoenas from Congress, when shadow email systems are exposed as a circumvention of the Hatch Act and the perpetrators punished, when the Executive Branch releases its stranglehold on the Department of Justice,
then we'll be at the 1 mile marker in the race for transparency, Mr. Emanuel.

Our expectations are simply a little higher than yours.

Before you appear on CNN again, at least make sure that everyone in your party has disclosed their Earmarks. Otherwise you simply appear foolish and inept.

Where's the News?

Is it me or are mainstream TV media ignorant of the Internet and its effects upon them?

I've been noticing newscasters trying to use Web 2.0 buzzwords with the same comfort as George Bush, when he talks about "the Internets". Over the past year, Jack Cafferty has learned to use email, which he now reads to us in "The Situation Room". And don't get me started on the internet polling that almost every show does (Lou Dobbs, I'm talking especially to you).

A few days ago, about 24 hours after the "I Have a Crush on Obama" viral video was making the rounds, some reporter was interviewing the creators and announced with awe that more than a million people had viewed the video.

The creators corrected the intrepid reporter and told her that there were more than 30 video sites on the Web - not just YouTube, (where it had been seen more than a million times). So in fact she was under reporting its impact significantly.

More and more, news shows are showing YouTube video clips. CNN has begun the I-report, where viewers can upload their local stories. It seems to me that CNN and others have delegated the responsibility for accurate, investigative reporting and replaced it with commenting on the reporting.

Isn't that what bloggers do?

So my question is: Next year, where will we tune for current, original, accurate, source-checked news content? Lonelygirl15 or CNNs Baghdad Bureau chief?

Since it takes mainstream news outlets at least 24 hours to report on items of interest on the Web, I'm betting on Lonelygirl.

I Don't Know

These three words can result in a dead end or the start of a journey of discovery. Which happens at your company?

Tech Advice from MSNBC?

I was reading an MSNBC article today called 7 Steps to better e-mail management and came to the conclusion that MSNBC had run out of Tech News..

Here's the summary.

1. If you're a business it's better to use your own domain name rather than a free email service.
2. Learn how to use your email client.
3. Quickly act upon incoming email so your inbox doesn't fill up.
4. Use folders
5. Use filters & rules
6. Be secure
7. Backup your email

Did you find these tips insightful? Neither did I.

In fact I disagree with a couple of these suggestions. I never put email at the top of my priority list, (rush to read all current mail) nor do I use folders. I tend to keep everything in my inbox (except junk) and use Google Desktop search if I need to quickly find anything. For me, it works far more efficiently than maintaining a discipline of folders.

But along the same lines as the above listed suggestions, here are a few more lame ones:

8. Stop "cc"ing yourself on every email you send. They're already in your Sent folder.
9. Stop using the "Reply to All" button when responding to emails. No one cares.
10. If you are about to reply for a second time on the same email exchange, stop. Pick up the damn phone.

Class dismissed.

Next Father's Day....If I'm Good.

My son Jeff showed me one of the potential Father's Day gifts he considered. Given some of the office environments I've worked in, this would have come in very handy!

It's a USB powered mini-rocket launcher, you can control from your PC. It features the ability to rotate 360 degrees and supports angle of fire up to 45 degrees. It can shoot foam rockets to a distance of twenty feet.

The answer to your question is NO.

I got a book instead.

Glenn Beck - End of Days?

I was channel surfing this week and came across the Glenn Beck show (CNN HN) with the caption "End of Days?" In the past I heard Glenn Beck warn about the "coming apocalypse" and turned it off. A year later, the rant apparently still continues.

Just out of curiosity, I searched YouTube to see whether anyone else has picked up on this... and found:



I wonder how CNN journalists who cover real news from war zones, feel about this type of broadcasting on their sister network?

I'm sure this helps CNN HN's ratings. It certainly doesn't do much for CNN's credibility. For me, this type of broadcasting is much more offensive than anything ever uttered by Don Imus.

Maybe Glenn is right. For me, it is the "end of days" - of my viewing of CNN HN.

Will the Real You Please Stand Up?

I am a huge fan of the Internet. I enjoy discovering new ideas, new blogs, new products, new technologies, new sites.

There is a dark side to the whole Internet business though. And I'm not talking about the porn sites or the Internet stalkers. I'm talking about the level of discourse brought about by anonymity.

Everyone has seen the cartoon of a dog sitting in front of a computer, with the caption "On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog".

The more time I spend on the Internet, the more I see it. Hateful, sexist, racist comments made in anonymity. You know - the kind of behaviour that would embarrass your colleagues, friends or family, if made public. When posters hide behind pseudonyms all rules are off. And I think that in many cases, it lowers the level of discourse - name calling, slander and just plain lies all done under cover. It doesn't add to the conversation. It interrupts it.

I'm an advocate of free speech and would never suggest that these people not be able to express their points of view - no matter how rude or hateful. And I'm not saying that anonymity should be banished. But I'd like the option to filter out anonymous posts.

The challenge, is how to implement an identity technology that would force "the real you to please stand up".

If we all had the option of using a 3rd party identity validation - which would automatically attach our real names, city, state/province and country, along with the icon of the authenticating source, we might be able to allow posts to be filtered, (authenticated vs anonymous).

I know it wouldn't solve all the problems, but it might raise the level of discourse on the web. My hope would be that if we can hold people accountable, they might act more responsibly. And perhaps the Internet would be a slightly better place.

1 Button: Voice of the Customer

Has your company talked about "the voice of the customer"? You know, a conversation which starts with the realization that you have no idea what your customers are saying about you, your products or your service?

It usually starts in the Marketing department, right after the CEO demands that the company try to attract more of your customers' share of wallet.

"Maybe it's time we listened to the voice of the customer!"

The outside agency is hired, the surveys and interviews begin, are analyzed and then presented back to your company. Once again, you've delegated customer relations to an outside agency. It's seen as a project, not a process.

Maybe it's time you saved the tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars and installed something on your website to do the same thing.

It's called a FEEDBACK button.

This function would allow customers (or prospects) to suggest product or service improvements, compliment or berate you. It would give your customers a direct communication channel - so you could hear the voice of the customer - in real time, everyday.

Brave companies make the process transparent, allowing visitors to see others' comments and your responses.

But that's not the way we like to work. In fact big business goes out of its way to setup customer service from an internal point of view, not the customer's POV. That's why we hide behind complicated voicemail menus, almost never reaching a human. That's why we don't offer FEEDBACK buttons.... because responding to customers would be sooooo inconvenient and time consuming.

Instead of spending several hundred thousand dollars every few years on Voice of the Customer projects, just hire a couple of extremely friendly (and tenacious) interns to forward, follow-up and respond to the customer email you get from your new FEEDBACK button.

And you'll get to hear the voice of the customer everyday.

And you'll likely earn the extra share of wallet.

What is Business 2.0 Doing?

This morning I came across a Gizmodo plug for their Senior Editor in a Business 2.0 contest entitled Who Matters Now? The online magazine is hosting a poll, asking readers to vote for those people who inspire, inform or infuriate.

What the hell does that mean?

Has the Paris Hilton phenomenon struck Business 2.0?  I would expect better of them than to run a contest strictly based upon noteriety.

When the founder of Digg gets in excess of 200 thousand votes and Nicholas Negroponte gets only a few thousand, I know we're headed down the wrong track.  

Can I.T. be Green?

I decided to check back in with Dell's Ideastorm site to see the latest developments. The site is still going strong and most importantly, the customer dialogue continues.

In May, Dell announced the availability of a Linux operating system (Ubuntu) on three PC models - an offering created as a direct response to overwhelming demand on IdeaStorm (where customer submitted ideas are voted "up" or "down" - in a process made famous on Digg.com).

Most recently the conversation has steered towards environmental initiatives. Dell's customers have been asking how Dell can produce "greener" products.

And now Dell has decided to focus on this initiative.

To be fair, Dell has always promoted PC recycling efforts and has made attempts to use earth friendly components in their PCs. Michael Dell says they're one of the greenest companies in the Fortune 50. Dell supports a plant a tree program and their founder recently announced a personal commitment to match donations to this effort for the next three months.

Dell will be measuring their carbon footprint with an effort towards reducing it. And they'll be looking up and down their supply chain to hold their partners equally accountable.

Of course the reasons for "going green" are many. The Greener Computing website features an article on The Rise of The Chief Green Officer.

All this begs the question; What are YOU doing to reduce your carbon footprint within your I.T. department?

Here are some ideas:

1. For years I.T. departments have had to be careful when disposing of outdated PCs and laptops because of environmental concerns with some of the components. How about extending the life of these machines by replacing the licensed software with Ubuntu and donating the machines to schools, or charities? Giving these PCs an extended life will keep them out of landfills.

2. Do you offer everyone the ability to work from home and avoid the gas consuming commute to work? Is working from home done on an exception basis (inclement weather) or can employees do this more frequently? Could it be an option for your team?

3. Do you still have paper based processes at your work? If so, make these electronic. Once a process begins with a piece of paper, it automatically generates an environmental impact. Whether the paper gets used for a short period of time then gets tossed or whether the paper is moved around the organization for approvals, then gets filed. Electronic workflow processes dramatically reduce the environmental costs of routing, storing, archiving, shredding and disposal.

4. Hopefully, your company is already purchasing recycled paper for its printers. But have you done a print audit? If your company is using the same amount of printer paper as it was five years ago, you may not be taking advantage of the multitude of technologies which allow you to publish and subscribe (blogs and RSS feeds) or to hyperlink documents to one another or to collaborate (TeamRooms, Sharepoint, wikis) to reduce that mountain of paper we all consume each year.

5. Does your company continue to print its annual report? Why not simply put it online as a pdf document? Or offer a print on demand solution (at Lulu.com or similar site) to allow interested parties access to a printed version only as required.

6. Are you asking your employees for suggestions as to how to be a greener corporate citizen? Are you listening and acting on the suggestions?

If your company is adopting innovative solutions towards reducing its environmental impact, let me know how. I'm happy to publish your ideas.

Internet Tokyo Rose

Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News introduced a "story" last night which detailed how radical Islam was placing phony stories on the Internet in an effort to undermine support for the war in Iraq.

Did NBC News just get their broadband hookup yesterday? Is this story so shocking, so unbelievable, so horrifying that it made the Evening News? Those tricky Islamic radicals, posting anti-war messages on YouTube? How diabolical!

Give me a break.

Have we forgotten how to reason? The video example that the NBC showed was so clumsily edited, it looked like a badly dubbed Kung Fu movie.

When I was growing up, my teachers and parents cautioned us not to believe everything you read. Anyone who has spent more than five minutes on the Internet knows the same thing.

I guess the staff at NBC never learned that lesson.

YouTube Democracy in Action

I recently came across this YouTube video by Chris Dodd, who is sponsoring a bill to restore Habeus Corpus to America.



I think this is a tremendous use of YouTube (I'm over the water skiing squirrel.) Can you imagine a day where all Senators and Congressmen record and publish the reasons for each vote and publish on the Internet?

What more effective way to combat the terrible effect of those 30 second attack ads that we all endure as elections grow near. Now, forward thinking politicians have an unedited communication channel with which to articulate their thinking.

Over 10,000 citizen co-sponsors went to his website to "sign up". I hope this is the future of democracy in action.

The Best Technology?

On a recent trip to Toronto, I became aware of a major addition to the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), pictured above. The unique style is the work of famed international architect Daniel Libeskind. He's also the architect of the proposed New World Trade Center.

Apart from the stunning Royal Ontario Museum architecture, what caught my attention was how the whole project was conceived. The new addition was created as the result of a 2002 contest. In a TV interview, Libeskind, divulged that his winning submission consisted of sketched images drawn on eleven cocktail napkins!

From personal experience I can tell you that you never know when inspiration will strike. I was on a trip to Belgium several years ago with four of my team members. After a long day of work, we visited the hotel bar, where we started brainstorming how we could become more effective in delivering IT services and projects. The session ended with a stack of scribbled-on drink coasters, filled with ideas.

The guys at 37signals , who write elegantly simple software, suggest that great software starts with brainstorming, followed by sketches - drawings, sketches, doodles to convert your ideas onto paper.

I spend most of my time in the technology world and it amazes me how often true inspiration begins with pencil and paper.

The Two Most Important Words?

I recently visited my brother in Ontario. The night before I arrived, he and his wife had hosted 24 people at his home for dinner. Bob is a partner in a small accounting firm in eastern Ontario. His firm has three regional offices and he runs one with about 7 staff members.

His office environment is hard working, friendly, collegial - a typical "small town" business.

The reason for the party was to celebrate the career of a woman, who was retiring after 38 years. She joined the firm in her early twenties and had seen the company letterhead change five times as partners came and went. And she's not alone. A couple of other staffers have been there forty years.

It seems to me that when you're an any relationship for that long, you and your employer must be doing something right.

And so it was against this backdrop that the party was held - a celebration of almost four decades of working together. The wine and beer flowed, shish-kabobs sizzled on the BBQ, and the evening was capped with a huge cake and presents.

But as the evening drew to a close and all the guests drifted home, Bob felt something was missing.

And then it hit him.

The guest of honor had left the party without ever saying perhaps the two most important words; "Thank you".

As a small business owner, the $1200 party came out of Bob's pocket. His co-workers (including all the firm's partners, past and present) made the effort to show up and contribute to her expensive retirement gifts. The company in effect, said a big "Thank you" to her.

But the sentiment was left unrequited.

Perhaps she assumed that people knew she was grateful. Perhaps she felt deserving of the honor. But she never said the words. And she won't get the chance to tell everyone tomorrow at the office.

After a career of 38 years, that's all people are talking about.

The moral of the story? Never miss a chance to thank someone. It's a huge gesture that costs very little. Once you've missed the opportunity, it's gone forever. You can't get it back.

And in this case, the absence of those two little words defined a 38 year legacy.