Yay Elmo 🤨

Twixter has lost a shit load of value since Elmo bought it.

If you remember, he paid $44B for a company valued at about $20B, and since then, the valuation has dropped by as much as $15B according to some, while others are (IMO) a little over-anxious to boost the company, thinking (again, IMO) it might be ripe for a big comeback.

Elon Musk's X is gaining value, Fidelity says

NOTE: Fidelity helped put Elmo's financing together so he could buy the thing last fall.

Gee, I wonder if that has anything to do with their decision to pimp it up a little.

But the main problem being reported is that ad revenues continue to lag badly - because companies want to avoid the potential for brand damage due to their names appearing next to some seriously slimy posts on a platform becoming quite well-known for slime, and dis-infobots, and racism, and Nazis, and hosts of other monsters of the id.

Case in point:

We can't continue with an overarching policy of Profit Over Principle, and expect a nice happy ending. It's never worked out like that. Ever.

• People, then Policy
• Labor, then Capital
• Principle, then Profit

Call it a Business School version of Popper's Paradox: Allowing an anything-goes fully-laissez-faire management philosophy because "Profit Is King" can lead to the extinction of profit.

I think maybe Elmo is illustrating that for us now.

A Word On Management

I confess to having been a near-fanatical devotee to the short-sighted, and borderline demonic pronouncements of Ayn Rand.

30 years ago, I finally started to see the faulty reasoning of Rand's "Objectivism", and I won't bore the hell outa everybody with those details. Suffice to say her philosophy insists on sprinting to The Logical Extreme, which is where even good ideas go to die in sometimes epic implosions.

With Ayn Rand, you get things like this:

What the boss says goes.

Rule 1: The boss is always right

Rule 2: If the boss is ever wrong, refer to rule 1

While there's an element of truth to it, there's no room in that cutesy shit for the kind of clear-eyed, pragmatic reasoning that a Randian likes to believe he's mastered.

The most glaring of such reasoning is: The boss does not exist in a vacuum, where he needs no help from anyone.

The only pure rugged individualist is a hermit who starts out naked and alone, and somehow manages to make or otherwise acquire everything he needs all by himself with no help or input of any kind from anyone else - weapons, tools, food, clothing, shelter - all of it.

Wanna know why you never heard of such people? Because they all died before they could get their genetic material into any succeeding generations. Every one of them ended up scattered across the landscape in piles of leopard shit - or bear shit, or fellow-hominin shit - and in very short order.

We are all descended from people who knew how to cooperate - people who knew collaboration and collective action were essential to our survival as a species.

So - New Rules:

1. The boss can be wrong, and the employees can be right. So it's best if everybody gets the benefit of the doubt, and we can hash it all out as we go.

2. Although this is a business and not a democracy, it's a business that exists within a democracy, and democracy is not a business. We all have rights that are not relinquished in exchange for a paycheck.

3. Earn cookies, get cookies. Earn shit, get shit. And that goes for bosses and employees alike.

 That's it - let's get back to work.

A Matter Of Management Style

WaPo:

President Trump told his staff that the nation’s leading weather forecasting agency needed to correct a statement that contradicted a tweet the president had sent wrongly claiming that Hurricane Dorian threatened Alabama, senior administration officials said.

That led White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to call Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to tell him to fix the issue, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the issue. Trump had complained for several days that forecasters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration contradicted his Sept. 1 Alabama tweet, the officials said.

Mulvaney then called Ross, who was traveling in Greece, and told him that the agency needed to fix things immediately, the officials said. Mulvaney did not instruct Ross to threaten any firings or offer punitive actions. But Ross then called NOAA acting administrator Neil Jacobs, the officials said. That led to an unusual, unsigned statement from NOAA released on Sept. 6 that backed Trump’s false claim about Alabama and admonished the National Weather Service’s Birmingham, Ala., division for speaking “in absolute terms” that there would not be “any” impacts from Dorian in the state. The Weather Service is an arm of NOAA, which is an agency within the Commerce Department. The New York Times first reported some elements of the White House involvement.

Most of us have worked in a shop where it's "Management By Shit Rolling Downhill".

Everybody has to become either a snitch or the invisible man just to survive, which makes for a god-awful place to work, as that environment never leads to good outcomes for your business. Ever.

What're Your Wings Made Of?

I think I posted this one a while back - worth a 2nd look anyway.

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Today's Moronicity

Lil Brian (bless his heart) tries to make a point about how the sheriff's limited resources are being stretched too thin by helping all those dirty immigrant invaders who're busily destroying USAmerica Inc by trying not to get fucked over - or something.

So here's a question:  How do we fix the problem of underfunded border security when "conservatives" refuse to support funding for better border security?

It's just too fucking typical of the over-delegating under-thinking kind of hands-off "Modern Management Mindset" that always always always ends up saying, "We need you to improve all this mess, but make sure you don't change anything - and just let us know what you need, as long as it's nothing".

These jag-offs wanna slag Obama with some bullshit about "leadership"?

PS) I'm betting there's a fair probability that somebody's good buddy/brother-in-law is putting together a really great private-sector (or even better, a public/private) solution that promises amazing results at the low low price of about 2 1/2 times what it'll cost us if we just figure out a coupla ways to treat people like people instead of using them as political theater props in order to turn their hardship into corporate profit.

No soul and no honor.

How It Works

Ya gotta look after the people who're looking after the business, Meg.  The only thing your bonus gets you is a little extra insulation; an added layer of "security" against the inevitability of a vengeful mob coming to take whatever they want once they realize they have nothing more to lose.



Doing it right is important, but doing it right for the right reasons is everything.

Don't Get Pushed Around

Pot Cracks

I didn't know you could be fired for "personal views that were contrary..."

From newser.com: Cops Fired For Opposing War On Drugs

The whole concept of Loyal Opposition seems lost in this country.  It's more than just possible for a guy to be against The Policy you've told him to implement, AND be able to execute the plan as if was his own.  It happens every day in every organization you can name.  In this case, it's the people wearing the badges - the ones who're at the broken end of the bottle every day - who know the most about how The Policy translates out in the real world.  We need to be listening to them very closely - not firing them for telling us the truth.

And one other minor point: Something you really DON'T want in an organization that's armed to the teeth and authorized to use deadly force, is a bunch of gung-ho gonzo goons runnin' around lookin' for an excuse to go off on somebody.