Led Discussion on From Great Potential to Not-So-Great Results – What are we missing?

Recently, Mark Finnern and SAP hosted an “open mike” Future Salon.  I led a discussion on “From Great Potential to Not-So-Great Results – What are we missing?”  (link: https://t.co/shxaWiaF , starting around minute 26:20 and ending around minute 38)  People presented concepts.  There did not seem to be much disagreement with the concept that society can and should try to frame more important issues, solve more important problems, and capture more specific opportunity.  In response to a question, I mentioned opportunities to reconsider to what extent people and discussion focus on individuals and to what extent people and discussion focus on groups.  I also noted opportunities to consciously improve self-awareness and thinking skills.

Another person led a later session and recommended people’s focusing more on deciding what they want to achieve compared to trying to achieve what they think they want.

 —

Click for information about Thomas J. Buckholtz

Interviewed by Personal Branding Pioneer

Recently, Peter Sterlacci, who is pioneering personal branding in Japan, interviewed me and produced the “Branding Mechanics’ Video Interview: Dr. Thomas J. Buckholtz” (link).  I hope I provided useful insight in areas such …
• The importance – for a team or individual – of what people think about when they think about “you.”
• The potential to use my game “2-Brains: Tell it & Sell it” to help develop marketing messages, including personal branding messages.
• The potential to use checklists from my book “Create Crucial Insight” to support the above two items.

It was my pleasure to work again with Peter. Previously, he led the San Jose State University program via which I led classes on American government (plus leadership and innovation) for more than a dozen groups of China government officials.
—
Click for information about Thomas J. Buckholtz

Gave presentation for Phi Beta Kappa

Recently, I led an after-dinner session on “From Great Potential … To Not-So-Great Effects. What is society missing? What can we do about it?” for the Northern California Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

I very much appreciate audience members’ contributing much during the presentation, Cal Wood’s having invited me and being such a considerate host, the opportunity to help support Phi Beta Kappa’s scholarship fund, and my being able to enjoy some time at Asilomar State Beach.

—

Click for information about Thomas J. Buckholtz

Published book “Create Crucial Insight”

Recently, I completed and made available a new book, Create Crucial Insight.

Insight matters.  People use insight to be aware, to plan, to achieve, and to appreciate achievements.  Needs for crucial insight range from personal to global.

Now, you can use Direct Outcomes checklists to create crucial insight – easily and quickly – throughout your work.  People use Direct Outcomes to frame issues, solve problems, and create opportunities.

Address pivotal questions such as the following.  “What services do our customers need?”  “What do we need to do?”  “How well do we need to do it?”  “Who best should do it?”  “What impact will it have?”  “What should we say?”  “What else should we consider?”  Gain crucial, situation-specific insight.

I wrote this book so that you can use Direct Outcomes, think well, create crucial insight, use the insight, do great, and thrive.

—

Click for information about Thomas J. Buckholtz

Wrote service-science chapter on metrics that matter

Recently, Springer published a book Service Systems Implementation containing my chapter Metrics That Matter: Measuring and Improving the Value of Service.  The chapter’s abstract states the following.

This chapter features two metrics for the value of service and provides how-to advice for using them to attribute value, improve service, create service-innovation roadmaps, select metrics, and promote service science. The chapter also presents perspective and advice regarding service offerings and measurement and provides examples of using the two metrics.

Key words include the following.

Metrics – value – innovation – roadmap – functionality – proficiency – service science – service systems

The following material (from Springer) describes the book.

Service Systems Implementation provides the latest applications and practices aimed at improving the key performance indicators of service systems, especially those related to service quality, service productivity, regulatory compliance, and sustainable service innovation.  The book presents action-oriented, application-oriented, design science-oriented (artifacts building: constructs, models, methods and instantiations) and case study-oriented research with actionable results by illustrating techniques that can be employed in large scale, real world examples. The case studies will help visualize service systems along the four key dimensions of people, information, technology and value propositions which can help enable better integration between them towards higher value propositions.

The chapters, written by leading experts in the field, examine a wide range of substantive issues and implementations related to service science in various industries. These contributions also showcase the application of an array of research methods, including surveys, experiments, design science, case studies and frameworks, providing the reader with insights and guidelines to assist in building their own service systems, and thus, moving toward a more favorable service customer and provider experience.

Service Systems Implementation, along with its companion text, The Science of Service Systems, is designed to present multidisciplinary and multisectoral perspectives on the nature of service systems, on research and practice in service, and on the future directions to advance service science. These two volumes compose a collection of articles from those involved in the emerging area known as service science.

I would like to thank the book’s editors – Haluk Demirkan, James C. Spohrer, and Vikas Krishna – for providing me the opportunity to contribute thus to the field or service science.  The book is one in a series – Service Science: Research and Innovations in the Service Economy.

As well as being available via links above, the Service Systems Implementation is available through Amazon.com via this link.

—

Click for information about Thomas J. Buckholtz

Interviewed for TV futurist Barry Minkin

On November 5, 2009, Frank Jewett and I interviewed for Issues Today futurist Barry Minkin.  Discussion included the state of the economy today, thoughts about facts and trends that were largely overlooked on the path to ‘today,’ a discussion of problems related to overly relying on the notion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and some advice for investors.  Barry is working a possible next book that may feature the term “compression” in its title or text.  The program should be on-line soon for a few months via CreaTV San Jose.

—

Click for information about Thomas J. Buckholtz

Co-produced video “From Outrage to Outcomes – Let’s produce pivotal progress!”

On August 27, 2009, LectureMaker posted a video featuring my presenting From Outrage to Outcomes: “Let’s produce pivotal progress!”.

There is much that society, businesses, and individuals need and want to achieve.

I hope many people will learn from, use, benefit from, and teach the presentation’s recipe for producing pivotal progress.  The presentation indicates needs for new progress (in education, healthcare, transportation, and politics and governance; throughout society; and specific to individuals), discusses why progress seems so hard to achieve now, provides the recipe, illustrates uses of the recipe, encourages people to act, and notes means for obtaining help.

From Outrage to Outcomes - "Let's produce pivotal progress!"

I will be happy to help foster communities that form to take positive action.

Also, perhaps people will consider sponsoring follow-on videos regarding specific challenges, opportunities, and means to improve how society and individuals try to achieve results.

Ron Fredericks (of LectureMaker) added considerable value by making suggestions about the presentation’s content and my delivery of that content, by adding effects to the video, by tuning the technical quality of the images and sounds, and providing a web-presence home for the video and related comments.  I recommend people contact him to explore producing high-quality videos.

—

Click for information about Thomas J. Buckholtz.

Attended neuroeconomics talk by Caltech’s Antonio Rangel

On March 29, 2008, I attended a talk titled “Neuroeconomics: The Neural Basis of Economic Decision-Marking.”  The speaker was Dr. Antonio Rangel, Associate Professor of Economics, Caltech.  This evening event was hosted by The Associates of the California Institute of Technology.

As a preface to asking a question, I noted that the talk included several times the phrase “how the brain makes decisions” and featured research pinpointing areas of the brain active during decision making and studying influences some factors have on some decisions.  I asked when the speaker thinks people will understand how the brain makes decisions.  Antonio answered that understanding of ‘decision-making algorithms’ may occur within a decade.  After the formal program, I inquired regarding research into whether or how entities beyond the brain take part in decision making.

Some key points in the talk are found in The Price is Wrong, a Caltech posting attributed to Mike Rogers.  The talk, presented between a salad course and the main course, was well received and audience members asked numerous questions – both before the main course and after dessert.

—Click for information about Thomas J. Buckholtz.

Churchill Club announces ‘information overload’ program

I received an e-mail announcing a Churchill Club program titled Silicon Valley Fights Back Against the (Information) Monster it Created.  A sentence from an announcement for the program states “The Valley and its denizens are trying to combat a problem of their own making: information overload.”   I am reminded of the following events, in which my thinking of “information overload” helped trigger developing the theme of “information proficiency.”

In late 1989, the United States General Services Administration (GSA) was doing strategic planning.  The Information Resources Management Service (IRMS, a 2,000-person GSA group which I led) needed a mission statement.  The following are three candidate themes, each with an image the theme might convey (to the community of perhaps 4,000,000 federal employees that IRMS served) and with an assessment of corresponding value (based on the Direct Outcomes “Achieve Progress” tool).

• Information Proficiency – Using information to make and implement decisions. (Implementation and Insight)
• Information-rich Environment – Useful information. (Information and Transactions)
• Quality Products and Services – Computers and telephones. (Transactions and Infrastructure)

 Previously, IRMS had developed an information-rich environment candidate theme, which I found momentarily compelling and then, thinking of information overload, not satisfactory.  (My tenure as the GSA commissioner leading IRMS began in October 1989, during this strategic planning.)  I devised and IRMS adopted the following.

• Mission statement:
  • To help clients achieve information proficiency.  Information proficiency is the effective use of information to achieve a person’s job or an organization’s mission.
• Operational themes:
• • Proficiency with information to make decisions and thereby set goals.
  • Proficiency through information to communicate and implement decisions and thereby achieve results specified by goals.

Later, I used the information proficiency theme as the title for the book Information Proficiency: Your Key to the Information Age.

—

Click for information about Thomas J. Buckholtz.

Recommend Robert Reich’s book Supercapitalism

I recommend people read “Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life” by Robert Reich. [1]

In particular, the book provides useful perspective regarding …

• The extent to which corporations emphasize agendas other than ‘serve shareholders by being adequately profitable by providing customers low-cost products and services.’

• The extent to which ‘interests other than corporations’ have influence in matters of public policy.

In both cases, a reader can be left with a conclusion of ‘not that much’ or ‘not as much as might be desirable.’

While primarily covering aspects of the evolution of capitalism and of the current situation, the book offers some concepts for potential change. For example, …

• People need to think more clearly.

• Some complexity (such as linking health insurance to employment and employers) should be undone.

I hope that people will think clearly about and address challenges the book suggests. Results could include.

• People become more satisfied with life, based on some true progress.

• People engage in practical politics and public policy that both ‘make a difference’ and fill in for activity that is, at best, being treated as low priority.

• Democracy becomes reinvigorated.

I would like to thank Robert Reich and Michael Nacht for providing me a copy of this book. Michael presented copies of “Supercapitalism” and of David Kirp’s “The Sandbox Investment: The Preschool Movement and Kids-First Politics” [2] on October 18 to members of the Board of Advisors for the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. [3]

I would also like to thank Michael Nacht for inviting me to be a founding member of that Board of Advisors. Years ago, I suggested that faculty members might want to write more op-ed pieces. Such has occurred. At the recent meeting, I made suggestions to students who lead the producing of the magazine “PolicyMatters.” [4]

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Supercapitalism-Transformation-Business-Democracy-Everyday/dp/0307265617

[2] http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/KIRDOE.html

[3] http://gspp.berkeley.edu/academics/board.html

[4] http://www.policymatters.net/

—

May 1, 2008

Thomas J. Buckholtz, Robert Reich, James Lerager, Mary Harper

—

Click for information about Thomas J. Buckholtz.