« S.N.A.F.U. - 2004 | Main | The Gaudier the Patter, the Cheaper the hood. »

The World Rotates Under Your feet And You Don't Even Know It.

So, I’m out doing Christmas shopping today and driving** between malls, I hear Bob Brinker complain about foreign oil imports. You know the drill, “ we import too much oil”. It wasn’t his diagnosis of the disease that got me thinking; it was his cure. Bob wants the “government” to mandate that car manufacturers make cars with twice the mileage that they get today. His logic being that “just” by doing that, we could cut oil imports in half.

Bobs Diagnostic works like this:

Problem: Americans are importing too much oil because they drive big cars.

Solution: Government will make manufacturers produce cars that produce twice the gas mileage of current model cars.

Now, if Bob were 15 years old, I would let him off the hook. But Bob is a respected man in his field. He is someone I listen to regularly, and I agree with most of his advice. In this case I must disagree strongly. Now, I have other things to do this evening, so I’m not going to write a full essay on this, so I will limit my disagreement to only his proposed solution and not his premise. They are both rich with the good crock-pot like makings of “a fisking”, but as I said, I’m limited in time.

Bob wants to solve the problem of “too much Oil being imported” by making cars twice as efficient. A nice idea, it seems simple enough. If the government can mandate smog requirements and safety mandates so as to cause the complete revamp the car industry, then what cant the government make an industry do if it so decides that it needs to be done?

Bob says “ Make cars twice as efficient”. For Bob's cure to go into effect, Billions of dollars and man-hours will need to be expended before the first benefit will be found in the marketplace and the economy. Varifrank has a much simpler method that costs close to nothing and can be implemented immediately.

Buy whatever car you want. Get whatever kind of mileage you want. Manufacturers can take their sweet time making hybrids (which I like, and will like more when I can get a Dodge Ram ½ ton that uses a diesel/electric motor, but I digress…)

All you have to do to reach Bob's goal, is drive half as much as you do today.

How do you do that? Chances are, you already are. If you are reading this, you are using the infrastructure that has the best chance of lowering America’s dependency on “Foreign oil”.

Allow me to explain.

Back in the 1970’s, you had to GO to work. It was the workplace that had the phones, the manuals. The primary method of communication between part of the company was a stack of manila envelopes, called “interoffice mail”. Memos slipped into these envelopes and routed between departments represented the information flow of major companies. In the 1970’s, you had no other choice but to go “someplace” to meet with “someone”. In the 1970’s you had no other choice than to live where your work was. Everyone you worked with was within arms reach of your work. If you had to meet with someone “far, far away” you HAD to travel to meet with them. Get in your car, drive to the airport, get on the jet, sit in a hotel, go to another office, say hello, talk for 2 hours, show a presentation, and then reverse the process. An entire “work week” of man hours and thousands of gallons of jet fuel, just so you could put a slide show presentation on the wall of someone else’s office in a far away city.

In the 1970’s OPEC decided to punish the United States for standing by Israel in what was once again a humiliating defeat for the forces of Islam. The result was an embargo against the US and it was devastating. It wasn’t that gas was expensive, it simply couldn’t be found at any price. The real problem was that for almost everyone in the US, there simply wasn’t any choice in transportation to work. You had to go to work, it didn’t matter if you took the train or even if you carpooled, you had to go, and for almost everyone, a car was involved at some point.

It’s only when we begin to examine how the world of “work” has changed since that time that we can see that oil does not have the role in our lives that it once did. Since the 1970’s a revolution has taken place that is such a part of our lives that we hardly notice its influence. The incredible investment that companies, government and yes, even individual citizens have made into computerization has changed the world in deeply fundamental ways.

Today, you have a cellphone with you at all times. You are always connected, so much so that in the rare case where you are in the far outback and outside of a cell, it feels like you stepped into the middle ages. You have at least one computer in your home, with more software running you home accounts than even a large company could point to in the 1970’s. In most cases, your company has their internal systems set up in such a way that information can be reached from any employee from any point on the globe. Woe to the field sales representative who cannot keep his pipeline up to date for the management team to make projections. We all live with the concept of “just-in-time” inventory systems, but to the world of the 1970’s, it would have seemed like an impossibility (except for the visionaries who were proposing and creating them at the time)

Where once you had to go to an office to get work done, you very often find that most of the people you work with are no longer in that office, but spread out all over the globe. It was precisely because of the work to ‘computerize” business since the 1970’s that the ability for a company to work in several time zones and countries became a reality. We’ve gone from the turn of the century concept of a “Company Town” to the 1950’s ,“headquarters office” on to the 1970’s “corporate campus”. In the world of today, its considered a detriment to have your company working at one location as that wastes 16 hours of productivity in a 24 hour period. Companies around the world have gone to a ‘follow-the-sun” philosophy where workers are distributed around the globe, rather than clumped into one office.

What does this mean to you ,dear oil burning commuter? It means that you go to the office today, largely out of habit, rather than utility. Ask yourself this on you next drive into the office:

What am I going to accomplish at the office that I could not get done better/faster/easier in my office at home?

Here’s what I want you to do, examine why it is you go to the office. Is it habit?, or is there something in the office that you simply cannot do without? Obviously, if you work in a factory or a warehouse and you put your hands on things or you meet directly with people in the field, this does not relate to you, but in my estimation, that is not the majority of people.

My point is this, how many people do you know today who plan their weeks by saying:

“ I’m going to be working from home on Friday”?

It’s a smart thing to do, and without realizing it, that person has cut their driving by 20%. It's a quiet revolution and it's been going on for some time now.

The challenge in implementing this change is largely cultural, not technological. My guess is that a large percentage of people who work in offices already have the tools they need to begin working remotely, its just the habit that needs to be broken, along with a long standing cultural tradition that needs to be broken.

Back in the 1990’s, American business culture underwent a different kind of change. It started innocently enough, it was called “Casual Fridays” In the 1980’s I worked for one of the most straight laced companies in the world (I dare you to find one more tightassed, I double dare you, I triple dog dare you….). We had to wear full suits (with jackets on at all times!), white shirts, dark tie, black shoes, even on weekends. I was once sent home for wearing a bright red tie. I knew the world was changing when on of my assignments I was at IBM, and IBM began to talk about “casual Fridays”. Our management didn’t know what to do, should our staff come in to the customers office in suits, or should we “go native”. Well, we went native, and within a year, so did my company. By the end of the 1990’s, the last of my suits met its end. Today, I have to remind myself how to tie a tie, where it was once a daily ritual.

Change happens, not in big “central command planning” ways but in simple and small ways. If you were to work remote just two days a week, you would be amazed at how much work you will accomplish in those two days, but you will also be stunned at how much money, and gas, you will save. This isn't limited by just commuting, look at how much you buy via Amazon.com or safeway.com that you used to have to go "somewhere" to get. Look at the use of movielink.com to keep you from having to drive to get a movie. It all adds up! Look at how much you can do today without leaving your house compared to the 1970's and you can see what I mean.

In deference to Bob Brinker, I would much rather “the government” get involved by encouraging the expansion of broadband internet access to more remote areas of the United States. I would much rather “the government” help companies break their dependence on office cubicles and their need to fill them. If companies can send jobs overseas, then the aught to be able to accommodate your working across town. They get a happier employee, they don’t need a big office building, and you are vastly more productive. You also get to drive whatever the hell you want; you just get to do it for fun rather than because you have to.

Change doesn’t come from Washington D.C., it comes from you. This change is already underway; you just need to give it a little shove. This makes a whole lot more sense to me than making a whole industry make cars no one wants.

** - Yes, I was out driving today, but here's the point. I drive a Dodge Dakota V-8 manual 5 speed transmission, it gets 12 miles to the gallon. When was the last time I bought gas?

I love my truck, but what saves me from buying gas for it is my T1 line, not my fuel injection technology.

Posted @ December 12, 2004 10:36 PM | Current Events

Posted by: Mike at December 14, 2004 08:17 AM

Posted by: Frank Martin at December 14, 2004 08:38 AM

Posted by: Walter_E_Wallis at December 15, 2004 08:49 PM

Posted by: Paul at December 20, 2004 06:11 PM