Boomers: The Evil Generation!

[Lexicus]

I think that democratic governments are bad at (and getting worse at) any sort of long term planning not that UK and US business seems any better at that either.

I would agree with this but the "maximize quarterly returns next quarter" thing in the corporate world is making the private sector even worse at long-term planning. It's possible that AI may be able to help us in this respect, but the question of how democratic sovereignty and long-term planning interact (the interests or desires of the electorate change, the plan must change) remains as far as I can see.

 

[AmazonQueen]

But the kids were Boomers.

Thats us, unsung heroes.

 

[Hrothbern]

Short term thinking bad indeed.
I think what also matters is how strong the responsibility culture is.
Do people accept that you say "no", or "not now", "we are still busy implementing what we decided already".
The devaluation of the value of past decisions.

Living in Amsterdam, where Heineken started...
There are many family managed big companies that perform a lot better than average big corporate. When responsibility for ownership coincides with responsibility for the company as sustainable family "pride", short term effects are smaller.
But mostly, after a few generations, that family sees that company as wealth only.
But given that those family members of continueing family companies are not "special" people, that earned their way to the top from personal excellence, normal well-educated and "dedicated to long term" managers can apparently function quite well.
As proxy logic that good civil servants, not hindered by ad hoc priorities of the Minister in charge, can function quite good (if their is a living code).

When you have a "good enough" governing responsibility culture in your government with a code of responsibility in your civil servants, long-term planning is an obvious important element of managing responsible.

My impression is that the general increase of the "instant" culture and "many choice" culture is affecting everything and everybody.
When, after browsing through many choices, we order something online before 22 PM, we expect it to be delivered next day.
No planning needed at all.

 

[aelf]

Central planning does have a very bad rap from anyone old enough to remember its failures in the USSR and China. One major problem with it is that it takes expertise to plan things well and government Bureaucrats are ill equipped. They do not have the expertise to understand how industries work and how regional variation calls for regional differences especially across a large nation. Most governments don't know how to plan the simple stuff, let alone biog complex sectors of an economy.

This rings hollow when I've seen companies, big and small, fail in planning, particularly through lack of expertise. Corporate execs seem as ill-equipped, given that many of them seem to prioritise short term profits or 'shareholder value' over long-term growth and sustainability. Hell, entire markets fail to plan, and that's how we get crises where the government needs to step in and bail the markets out.

This is a human problem, and it doesn't seem like capitalism somehow makes it go away.

 

[rah]

When their bonuses are based on 'short term profits' or 'shareholder value' what do you expect them to do?
Be careful what you incent, because that is what you will get.

We had one president who's bonus was based on the ratio of employees/paying members. Since contractors were not included in employee count, guess what he did?
Yep, fired employees and replaced them with HIGHER PAID contractors which led to lower profits but a higher bonus for him.

 

[Hrothbern]

When their bonuses are based on 'short term profits' or 'shareholder value' what do you expect them to do?
Be careful what you incent, because that is what you will get.

We had one president who's bonus was based on the ratio of employees/paying members. Since contractors were not included in employee count, guess what he did?
Yep, fired employees and replaced them with HIGHER PAID contractors which led to lower profits but a higher bonus for him.

I experienced the same wave of outsourcing after the wrong sets of bonusses to our presidents. With us it was simply turnover per FTE and some silly promises to analysts driving the whole nonsense.

But you can design bonus schemes that do not have such perverse incentives and are longer term, functioning at the same time as golden chains against job hopping.

 

[rah]

It all depends on who is designing them. In most places i've worked the management team usually provides input You can bet every time I had input I slanted them to goals we were already going to attain or those that I could directly impact favorably . Or as in my case above, it sounded good but the way to cheat it wasn't thought through all the way. When shareholders design the goals, they're usually not as sneaking, but clueless in general.

 

[civvver]

When their bonuses are based on 'short term profits' or 'shareholder value' what do you expect them to do?
Be careful what you incent, because that is what you will get.

We had one president who's bonus was based on the ratio of employees/paying members. Since contractors were not included in employee count, guess what he did?
Yep, fired employees and replaced them with HIGHER PAID contractors which led to lower profits but a higher bonus for him.

Ha we don't do that cus of bonuses but because HR puts a hiring freeze on head counts all the time but for some reason short term contractors are not considered head count because they aren't permanent. We've had some non permanent contractors here for 5 years

 

[rah]

But even then, the hiring freeze didn't really accomplish what it was intended to do due to it being gamed, so not that different from a goal incentive.

 

[Hrothbern]

It all depends on who is designing them. In most places i've worked the management team usually provides input You can bet every time I had input I slanted them to goals we were already going to attain or those that I could directly impact favorably . Or as in my case above, it sounded good but the way to cheat it wasn't thought through all the way. When shareholders design the goals, they're usually not as sneaking, but clueless in general.

yeah...
Only report issues in your monthly report until after you have already found the solution and have it prepared or started.
My eyeopener on perverse bonus incentives came, when I was still student, from someone heading up a big R&D in a many floor building. The idea was that the best new idea, development, of the month would grant a bonus to all on that floor. A month's salary at stake.
Within a short time the heads of the floors were engaged in their bargaining game. It started with a floor having a really great idea, good enough for winning, to secure that they would not have the bad luck that in the same month another floor had also a really great idea. Within a relatively short time the really great ideas came at a rate of 1 per month !

 

[rah]

Yeah, let the gaming begin. But at least in that example they got 12 'good' ideas a year, so not totally negative.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Ha we don't do that cus of bonuses but because HR puts a hiring freeze on head counts all the time but for some reason short term contractors are not considered head count because they aren't permanent. We've had some non permanent contractors here for 5 years

My brother worked for a bank for 8 years as a contractor. 5 days a week, same hours as employees, only he didn't qualify for sick pay, holidays or pension.

 

[rah]

When I worked at a contractor, I was making over 100 bucks an hour which, at the time, the difference was better than benefits.

 

[AmazonQueen]

When I worked at a contractor, I was making over 100 bucks an hour which, at the time, the difference was better than benefits.

When my brother was it was just a way for the bank to cut costs. He did turn himself into a limited company with just 1 customer and 1 employee which cut his tax bill. Hes now a civil servant, rather less money, but much better benefits.

 

[rah]

Yes, at the time I started my own company for those reasons but right when I was getting ready to hire another employee, I got offered a job for around the same wage that included benefits. Needless to say I jumped at it. When I was consulting, I used to waste considerable time humping for work.

 

[civvver]

My brother worked for a bank for 8 years as a contractor. 5 days a week, same hours as employees, only he didn't qualify for sick pay, holidays or pension.

We hire ours through outside firms so it's basically a wash, you pay a higher rate to those firms, but don't pay benefits. What benefits those employees get depends on their deals with said firms. We have very few independent contractors.

 

[Birdjaguar]

This rings hollow when I've seen companies, big and small, fail in planning, particularly through lack of expertise. Corporate execs seem as ill-equipped, given that many of them seem to prioritise short term profits or 'shareholder value' over long-term growth and sustainability. Hell, entire markets fail to plan, and that's how we get crises where the government needs to step in and bail the markets out.

This is a human problem, and it doesn't seem like capitalism somehow makes it go away.

Good planning is very hard work. Most plans that are larger than project size struggle because they are not comprehensive enough and do not consider the key factors necessary for success. The larger the scope of the project, the harder it is to plan and the harder it is to succeed. Capitalism (despite its failure rate) has more success with planning than other systems, one, because in it folks are more likely to try and measure results and two, the plans tend to be narrower in scope. City-wide, regional, state and national plans are for more difficult with many more competing interests to satisfy. In fact, one of the things I've been doing for the last three years is building a planning mechanism that scales easily from the community level to a state and regional level seamlessly and incorporates economic based jobs, service sector jobs, and poverty reduction programs. One of our "discoveries" was that our logic used in economic development planning can be applied at the strategic level, the community level and anywhere in between and that any particular project of any type can use the same approach. A book is in the works and we are wire framing the front end to automate it and enable us to put it on line. Our goal is to create an easy to use tool that allows governments and their partners to write comprehensive and prescriptive plans that are actionable with deliverables that are measurable.

 

[Hrothbern]

Nice initiative

Most plans that are larger than project size struggle because they are not comprehensive enough and do not consider the key factors necessary for success.

The key factors... the critical success factors...
smile
The problem with any plan or program I experienced is that if you use the "convenient" key factors, the ones of which "everybody important knows" that they are the reasons for past successes... you can end up badly.
It is almost like truth seeking. And cynical as I am here, ofc writing the convenient narrative, kissing all the rings needed for approval... with your engine of the plan or program as correct as you can get it.

What seems also difficult to me for plans with involvement of city, regional, state, is to design them structurally so that they are "enough" parasite resistant for the implementation project phase (and ofc also the later operational phase).

* Among advanced economies, countries with the lowest levels of corruption collected nearly 5 percent of GDP more in tax revenues on average than countries with the highest levels of corruption, the IMF found.
* A 2018 survey by the OECD found 42 percent of state-owned enterprises reported corrupt acts or other irregular practices in their company during the past three years.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/04/imf...n.html?__source=sharebar|twitter&par=sharebar

 

[metalhead]

It all depends on who is designing them. In most places i've worked the management team usually provides input You can bet every time I had input I slanted them to goals we were already going to attain or those that I could directly impact favorably . Or as in my case above, it sounded good but the way to cheat it wasn't thought through all the way. When shareholders design the goals, they're usually not as sneaking, but clueless in general.

Maybe don't pay bonuses then.

 

[aelf]

Be careful what you incent, because that is what you will get.

Who are you directing that to?

Good planning is very hard work. Most plans that are larger than project size struggle because they are not comprehensive enough and do not consider the key factors necessary for success. The larger the scope of the project, the harder it is to plan and the harder it is to succeed. Capitalism (despite its failure rate) has more success with planning than other systems, one, because in it folks are more likely to try and measure results and two, the plans tend to be narrower in scope. City-wide, regional, state and national plans are for more difficult with many more competing interests to satisfy. In fact, one of the things I've been doing for the last three years is building a planning mechanism that scales easily from the community level to a state and regional level seamlessly and incorporates economic based jobs, service sector jobs, and poverty reduction programs. One of our "discoveries" was that our logic used in economic development planning can be applied at the strategic level, the community level and anywhere in between and that any particular project of any type can use the same approach. A book is in the works and we are wire framing the front end to automate it and enable us to put it on line. Our goal is to create an easy to use tool that allows governments and their partners to write comprehensive and prescriptive plans that are actionable with deliverables that are measurable.

I'm not seeing anything unique to capitalism there.