Notes from the Road #24 - The things you see/hear during 8 hours in the Sky Club

The details don't matter, but let's set this up that due to a flight delay and some inflexible travel plans, I spent about 8 hours or so in the Delta Sky Club in Detroit yesterday.

The Sky Club is awesome, by the way. If you travel more than once a month, I think the expense is worth it. Nice place to sit and work. Food and snacks options are getting better. Decent selection of complimentary booze (we will come back to that one in a minute). So making the disclaimer that the rest of this is not a knock on the Club or Delta (who I love). It is more a commentary on what happens in these kind of environments where people seem to drift in this weird, 'I am working but not working' pattern combined with 'I may or may not be drinking Jack Daniels while I sit on this 1PM conference call.'

So presented to you in more or less chronological order - the things I saw and heard after spending essentially an entire workday in the Sky Club.

11:00 AM - Not technically in the Sky Club, but just outside the door to the Club, is a currency exchange counter. The person on line in front of me requested almost $10,000 worth of Philippine Pesos. The exchange rate is about 54 pesos/USD. So $10K is a lot of pesos. So much so that the currency exchange counter tapped out at about $2800 worth of pesos. The dude basically walked out of that counter with every peso in Detroit. Kind of a bummer for the next person on the 5:30PM flight to Manila who is going to be out of luck trying to score a couple of pesos.

11:30AM - This particular Sky Club as a self-service bar area. You walk up, pour yourself a beer, or a glass of wine, or something a little stronger from the collection of booze. The self-service Coke machine is in the same spot too, so as I was waiting to fix myself a nice Diet Coke, an older gentlemen in a suit was pouring himself a scotch on the rocks. He then took a sip of said scotch, said something like 'Smooooooth', and proceeded to try and convince the woman behind him in the drink line to have a sip of the drink as well. He was for real trying to convince a total stranger to sip off of his scotch at 11:30 in the morning. For the record, she declined.

1:00PM - Airline clubs are getting more and more crowded these last few years. Maybe it's the booming economy. Maybe corporate travel budgets are expanding. Who knows. But on a weekday the Sky Club in Detroit is packed. I was sitting/working, (I promise), at one of the few desk/office chair setups in the back part of the Club. Nice and quiet, comfortable spot to work. Near the self-service bar too. A prime spot. Only four desks here and all are taken. So what happened? Two or three guys were literally lined up near the space waiting to pounce at the sight of someone packing up their stuff and exiting the space. For one person, the wait was getting too long and he tapped me on the shoulder and asked me how much longer I was going to be, like the desk was a treadmill at a too-crowded hotel fitness center. How much longer? I am going to be here all night, pal. I'm moving in. I am putting up new wallpaper I am so moved in.

2:00PM - Phone job interview! Not for me, but the person right behind me was doing a phone interview with a candidate. So tell me about yourself? Why did you decide to go to MIT? What else do you like to do for fun? (Are we even allowed to ask that?). Interviews are the worst. I bet he/she went to MIT to get an awesome job with great perks like a corporate Sky Club membership.

2:30PM - Guy sitting near me has been on a conference call for about 15 minutes. He has said the word 'Omnichannel' five times. I am pretty sure no one knows what that word means. Including him.

3:00PM - Just remembered to set up my 'Out of the Office' email auto-reply. FYI - I am out of the office. I am in the Sky Club. I may be here a long time. Thankfully, the supply of carrots, celery, and ranch dip seems unlimited.

3:15PM - My fitness tracker app on my phone just buzzed me to let me know I have not been active in the last three hours and it is probably time to get up and stretch. Probably a good idea. Nothing like sitting in the Sky Club for 8 hours before getting on a 7 hour flight. I wonder how many steps it is to the self-serve bar?

3:18PM - It's 47 steps to the self-serve bar.

3:30PM - Getting up to walk about the Club a bit. Leaving my laptop open to the BLS 'Jolts' report page just because.

4:00PM - It is right about the time when many of the Sky Club road warrior types stop even pretending they are working. Guy near me has solitaire going on his laptop, some kind of a movie or video on an iPAd, and is talking to one of his buddies on the phone. Yes I agree, Aspen will be EPIC this winter.

4:10PM - Nothing to do with the Sky Club, but this trend of people doing 'selfie' LinkedIn videos has to stop. These are horrible. You are actually making LinkedIn even worse, which is not easy to do. 

4:45PM - Admittedly, I have wound things down a bit and have fired up a replay of the Milwaukee Bucks v. Charlotte Hornets game from the other night. Got what looked like an evil eye from yet another Club member who wanted to take over my prime seat/desk location. How do you know I'm not working? I could be a sports writer or something. Yeah, that's it.

4:48PM - The 'Ford Keys to the Game' for the Hornets were 'Control your emotions' and 'Don't freak out'. Decent advice. Probably more generally applicable beyond the Hornets game.

5:00PM - The food and beverage area has two large TVs mounted to the wall about 20 feet apart. One TV is playing Fox News while the other is tuned to CNN. I think that is a smart move by Delta. Like Michael Jordan once said, (I am paraphrasing a little) - 'Both Democrats and Republicans buy sneakers.' And airplane tickets.

5:05PM - I like Brook Lopez on the Bucks. One of my favorite players. Giannis for MVP this season. Lock it in.

5:15PM - BANDWITH CRISIS! So many people pounding the Sky Club wifi that people are having a hard time getting connected. Hell hath no fury like a Regional Assistant Director Manager who is not able to access the Penske file. if I were a better person I would stop streaming games from NBA.com. If only.

5:45PM - Have to admit, I am getting a little punchy. Maybe I should have scheduled some kind of phone interview or a call where I got to say 'Omnichannel' a few times. But if all goes well, I am nearing the end of this stint in the Club. One more 47 step walk to the bar and maybe a few more cubes of cheddar and a couple of carrot sticks and I will be good to go. It's a marathon, not a sprint. A marathon with a self-serve open bar. Which, if they had that in more marathons, would spike the popularity of the sport.

6:00PM - Observation: 74% of people in the Sky Club like to call someone they know and tell them they are, in fact, in the Sky Club. I can't really think of many other places that drive people to alert someone else of their current whereabouts.

6:15PM - Finally leaving the Sky Club to head to the gate. Not quite 8 hours in the Club, more like 7 and a half. Felt like longer. a lot longer. Hopefully there lays ahead a nice flight, maybe one movie, and sweet, sweet sleep. Let's hope.

Have a great weekend!

CHART OF THE DAY: Reminding you that China is really, really big

Regular readers of the blog will remember that I've been fortunate enough to be a part of the first two HR Technology - China Conferences in 2016 and earlier this year. Both times visiting China, learning more about the HR and the HR technology ecosystems there, and meeting some truly engaged HR leaders, I have left more and more impressed and in a way, awed by the size, scale, growth, and innovation of HR and HR tech in that country.

I look forward to going back in 2018 for sure and in the meantime, I am a member, (the only non-Chinese member I think), of a 30-person strong group chat on WeChat titled 'AI in HR', where HR folks I met in China share information and discuss innovation in HR and HR tech. It is really cook, even if I can only successfully translate about half of it. Get on that, WeChat.

So I'm a mark for interesting information and additional insight about China and when I saw the below chart/infographic, wanted to share on the blog as a reminder for those of us that sometimes forget, or just never think about, the scale and size (and opportunity), the growth opportunities for businesses of all kinds that China presents.

So here's the chart, courtesy of Visual Capitalist, then a comment or two from me after the data. Email and RSS subscribers may need to click through to see the chart.

Pretty amazing, right? That many 'mega-cities' that rival many medium to large countries in terms of the size of their economies.

A couple of things struck me. One was kind of personal in that the first HR Tech China Conference was held in city called Zhuhai, which, (it seemed to us), was a really large, growing, busy, and important city in Southern China, strategically positioned between Kong Kong and Macau. That city, Zhuhai, does not even crack the Top 30 in terms of economy size in China. Amazing.

And last, taking a closer look at the map in China, and thinking about these different cities and regions and how they are different, i.e. some still focusing on manufacturing while others are financial centers or hubs for innovative new tech (like AI), reminds me that it is really, really hard to get to 'know' China from just taking a few business trips or attending an event or two. Spending four days in Beijing and thinking you 'get' China would be like taking a long weekend in New York City and concluding that you 'get' America.

Anyway, file today's post under my philosophy for the blog since 2008 - 'It's interesting to me, so I'm blogging about it'. Your mileage may vary.

Happy Tuesday.

Everyone wants a piece of Amazon HQ2. Except in these places.

Amazon's call for proposals from states/cities to be the location of their planned second headquarters location, (HQ2), closed a few days ago.

As has been widely reported, Amazon claims that the location that is eventually selected, (sometime next year), to be the new site for HQ2 will benefit from something like $5B in investments and as many as 50,000 well-paying jobs (again, eventually). As you have read, and should have expected, the competition has been pretty fierce, with many cities staging pretty elaborate stunts to get Amazon's (and other companies, surely), attention, and even some pretty embarrassing gimmicks as well. Mayor of Kansas City, who personally left 1,000 product reviews on Amazon.com extolling the virtues of his city, I am looking at you.

After the close of the submission process, Amazon announced it had received a total of 238 submissions from 54 states and regions across North America who want to be the home of HQ2. Below is a map that shows from which states and regions Amazon received proposals, (aggregated, sadly, it would have been more interesting if they broke out all 238 proposals).

What's interesting about the map of locations that submitted at least one proposal to be the home of HQ2 is not so much just how many of the states and regions wanted to have their hats in the ring, I mean, what city or state wouldn't want the influx of investment, jobs, and attention that the selection and eventual construction of HQ2 will bring? If you are the Mayor of the city that lands this deal, chances are, you'll never have a re-election worry and never have to buy your own beer in town again.

No, there are actually two interesting things in the chart to me. One, that lots of cities and locations that truly have no realistic chance, considering Amazon's own list of requirements for the HQ2 location, submitted proposals anyway. While these proposals are on paper for consideration for HQ2, they are really public statements of interest, cooperation, and positive attitude towards the hundreds or even thousands of smaller business location (or re-location) decisions that are made every year in North American. Making a claim to be ready to be the location of HQ2 is a public statement that your location is ready to be the home of any business really. That of course is likely not true, but I think it is better to compete above your weight class and get on the radar of the folks who advise companies on these decisions.

And the second thing that I thought was interesting on the map above are the locations that did not have a submission for HQ2. In the US, the only states not submitting a proposal are Hawaii, Vermont, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota. These are all relatively small states, lacking the people, infrastructure, and other resources Amazon is seeking, and thus were never going to land HQ2 anyway,

Wait, there was one more state that did not formally submit a bid for Amazon's HQ2 - Arkansas.

Hmm, that one is more curious. While not the largest state, and having only one big 'city', Little Rock, still it does seem curious that they didn't even submit a token bid alongside just about every other location in the US.

Wonder why that didn't happen.

I will have to ask someone from Arkansas. I only know a couple of people there. They both work for Walmart in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Oh, I get it now.

Have a great day!

Learn a new word: The General Theory of Second Best

There's nothing I care more about that NBA basketball, (I promise this isn't another basketball post, but I may have to dig out a basketball analogy to make the point), with the possible exception of learning new things.

Which is why, I think, I run the 'Learn a new word' series on the blog. I am also falling into the trap of thinking 'if this is interesting to me, then it should be interesting to people who read this blog'. After 10 years of this, I am not really sure if that is even true. But I persist.

So here's today's 'Learn a new word' entry - The General Theory of Second Best.

What in the heck is that?

A decent description can be found in the Economist: (emphasis mine)

The theory of the second-best was first laid out in a 1956 paper titled, sensibly enough, "The General Theory of the Second Best", [paid access] by Richard Lipsey and Kelvin Lancaster. Roughly put, Lipsey and Lancaster pointed out that when it comes to the theoretical conditions for an optimal allocation of resources, the absence of any of the jointly necessary conditions does not imply that the next-best allocation is secured by the presence of all the other conditions. Rather, the second-best scenario may require that other of the necessary conditions for optimality also be absent—maybe even all of them. The second-best may look starkly different than the first best.

Let's think on that for a moment and take it back (sorry) to the basketball analogy I hinted at in the open.

The optimal allocation of resources for say a basketball team has traditionally consisted of five different kinds of players, with different body types, playing styles, and characteristics that when assembled, would provide the team with the right balance of scoring, passing, rebounding, and defensive play that would result in winning.

But let's say that the team can't acquire or develop one of the positions, let's say the point guard - the player who usually is charged with handling the ball, setting up his/her teammates for easy scores, and functioning as the on-court leader of the team. If this example team can't find a good enough point guard, the Theory of Second Best suggests that 'answer' to the problem isn't making sure the other four positions/roles are filled as designed and slotting in any old player as the point guard.

The theory suggests that the 'optimal' solution, when one resource (the point guard), is missing, may be to take a completely different approach to building the team. Maybe the team looks for more 'point guard' like skills in the other positions, or maybe the team implements a different style of offense entirely to mitigate the problem.

The real point is that once conditions appear that make the 'first best' strategy impossible to execute, that you may need to think really, really differently about what will constitute the 'second best' strategy. 

The second best may look starkly different than the first best.

I really dig that and hope you think about it too, once your plans in business or in life run into some challenges.

Notes From the Road #21 - Friendly Skies Edition

I was waiting for an early morning flight today (on Delta, the best airline in the world), and heard a gate announcement from across the terminal for a United flight that was also soon to depart. The United gate agent was seeking volunteers to give up their seats on the 6AM flight to Chicago and take a later flight. With everything that has been in the news about the recent problems United has had with overbooking and removing passengers from flights, I couldn't help but wince a little as I heard the announcement. And I wasn't even on the flight. Nor that airline. Just the stench of what has been going on at United wafted across to my Delta gate. Aside - my Delta flight also was seeking folks to volunteer their seats as well. Must have been a big day to get out of Rochester today.

But the announcements this morning, and the United follies of late made me think I hadn't done a 'Notes' post in a while, and since I KNOW you must have been waiting, on edge, for me to share my thoughts on the United stuff and air travel in general, here are my frequent flyer informed Top 10 observations/comments on the current state of the friendly skies...

1. On the United stuff - pretty much everyone was at least partially in the wrong there. United operations should have a better plan to get its employees where they need to be. United gate staff and on-site managers should have had more leeway to increase the compensation on offer in order to coax the desired number of passengers from the flight. Airport/aviation security should have found some other way to accomplish the de-planing of the passenger that did not involve concussions and a busted up face. And finally, despite the unfairness of it all, the passenger in question, once three airport security staff boarded the plane and requested he de-plane, had to comply. He should have been mad. He probably should have dropped a F-bomb or two. But he should have left the plane and taken up his case back at the gate. On board an aircraft trapped with 100 other folks in close quarters who have nothing to do with this incident is no place to decide to hold your own sit-in protest. 

2. I think an underrated element of the air travel experience is the newness of the aircraft itself. The plane I am on now is really, really new seeming. It almost has that new plane smell still. Creates such a positive feeling right from boarding when the plane is new(ish), and not one of those dreary, run-down, relics from 1987. 

3. I know this is easy to forget, but another thing that would make the overall experience better is for everyone to realize that you are not the only person on this flight, and unless you are the pilot, you are also not the most important person on this flight. You know what? We all have connections to make! We all sat through the turbulence over Colorado. We all had to endure the four hours to LAX with the terrible wifi. Treat everyone nicely, we are all in this misery together.

4. But given that we are all miserable, we can't take that out on the individual employees of the airline - gate agents, flight attendants, customer service folks - any of them. Ninety-five percent of the airline staff are giving their best effort to get us where we want to go - safely, on-time, and as comfortably as conditions, (which none of them created) allow. Sure, can an airline worker have a bad day? Be rude? Of course. But so can the guy at the gas station, the clerk at the DMV, and the passenger in Seat 17C who keeps hitting the call button to ask for another ginger ale. 

5. Air travel is a volume business. Delta, American, Southwest, and United, (the Big 4), might carry 125 million passengers each year. If they are lucky, they will make $6 of profit on each passenger (it is often less). So even if you think your $1700 fare to SFO was really expensive, the airline barely makes enough to cover the costs of getting you there. So like your local grocery store, volume and thin margins is how airlines make money. I think some of the disconnect in the air travel experience is we see our fares as big-ticket purchases, but the airline sees us all as contributors of $6 to the bottom line.

6. It is never a good idea to argue with the TSA. See point #4 - the person manning the scanner or waving the magic wand or doing the patdowns did not make the rules. The process is often ridiculous, but the time and place to make your stand is not at 5:30AM with 72 people in line behind you who just want to make their flights. Write your Congressperson if you don't like what goes on at airport security.

7. No matter what scheme an airline uses to manage the boarding process, (line up with numbers, line up in groups, high status first/lower status next, etc.), boarding will be probably the worst aspect of the flying experience. This is mostly our, (the collective we) fault. We lug too many things on the plane, we can't count rows, we have to position phones, tablets, e-readers, magazines, boxes of Good n' Plenty just so at our seats before we sit down. Just please, for the love of all that is holy, stash your bag under the seat, don't try to stuff the roller bag where it clearly will not fit, and just sit down. There is nothing more likely to make you weep for humanity than to watch 120 of us attempt to board a plane.

8. You do not, under any circumstances, need to make a phone call telling someone 'We just landed' the SECOND after the wheels touch down. I promise you that call can wait 7 minutes until we are at the gate and getting off the plane. Trust me.

9. Your bags will almost certainly not get 'lost' or even delayed. In 2015 the USA rate of lost luggage was about 3 per 1,000 passengers, a 10% reduction from 2014. Delta (and American I think) now allows you to track the movement of your checked bags via it's smartphone app. I get a little notification when my bag gets placed on the plane, when it is switched to my connecting flight, and when it is unloaded at the claim area. Will you be one of the 3 out of 1,000 who has an issue with your bag? There's a 99.7% chance you will not. So get over that one time in Indianapolis nine years ago when your bag went missing and it had to be delivered to the Fairfield Inn a couple of hours later. You were fine.

10. There are going to be times where you miss your flight, when weather or mechanical issues cancel the flight, when you are stuck in a middle seat between two guys who are the size of a WWE tag team, or when there's a crying baby, no wifi, or the plane has run out of red wine. That is just how it is. But remember none of those things are happening to you, they are happening to all of us too.

And it could be worse. Remember that 27 hour drive to DisneyWorld when you were a kid? And Dad threatened to turn the car around about 19 times? And your brother got car sick on your Keds?

Think about that compared to that crowded, stuffy, 2 hour 32 minute flight where you watched Moana and had some honey roasted peanuts and a Sprite.

That's it, I am out. Safe travels out there.