Early Morning Beaching

Early mornings are the best time to attend the beach. It takes some time to figure this out as the most popular times are around noon and after when the younger crowd finally wakes up. True beach goers start early and get the choice spots.

You can tell a seasoned beach goer by the vans loaded with   chairs, surf boards, canoes, and grills. They get their stuff right next to both the water and the grass making their commute easy. You might even find the restrooms within short distance. 

Starting early also offers some other benefits. Some of the restaurants have specials on breakfast burritos. It doesnt take much time to bring your vehicle to the beach, unload the bikes and go to breakfast. Make sure you grab your coffee.

It doesnt take much to spend a good day at the beach assuming you have the right gear. With towels, chairs, and umbrellas you can enjoy the water and shade. Bring your grill or sandwiches and save some money. Start early and enjoy ease of parking.



Formal and Informal Communication Networks

Communication can take two basic forms in terms of formal or informal. Formal communication occurs within the workplace and informal occurs among our personal connections. Both are important for understanding, integrating and using information successfully. To truly understand a situation often requires listening to both channels of the said and the unsaid.

Formal Communication: Formal communication is official communication that helps the company make official statements. It may also include formally designed communication channels that help an organization, unit or team understand what is going on. Well designed communication channels will consider the speed of information and the reliability of the channels used to reach members.

-Official statements
-Memos
-Email
-Phone
-Alerts
-Company meetings

Informal Communication: Informal communication occurs organically in the population and encompasses everything that isn't formal. These are the conversations that occur over the water cooler and backrooms. It is the type of communication that is based more on trust and friendship than a formal channel.

-Personal emails
-Personal text
-After the meeting conversation
-Casual discussion
-Parties and social events

Encouraging the Military's Innovation Initiatives

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, a physicist by trade, announced at a visit to Camp Pendleton a new Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx. The Pentagon's innovation outpost will make its way to Silicon Valley to scout for new advancements to see how they could be applied to the military. Keeping an eye out for emerging innovations means staying connected to the scientific scene.

Companies continuously seek new technologies and ideas to invest in. Sometimes they buy those technologies outright while at other times they invest directly into the business. The military isn't that much different but typically has to rely on well established products and pricey contracts to make new equipment available. The process of developing something new takes years and costs much more than in the civilian world constituting a long-term risk.

An advantage the military had was that they could buy in bulk and resell older models to make up some of the money. Contracts with the military were lucrative and people sought them out at inflated prices. However, with today's new emerging threats technological development will be much faster and this requires the military to be more connected to whats happening on the ground. They need to get emerging products quickly before someone else scoops them up.

This requires a team of creative people who are highly educated and can understand quickly how new things work. They should be able to understand unique ideas to see if they are worth exploring for greater applicability to the military. The type of people they are looking for are open minded, scientific, creative, and can envision the utility of ideas.

To get this technology before it is fully developed requires interconnection with the community of builders and creators. They will need to integrate and mesh themselves into this scene and know who the players are and where to get information. They will need to be willing to follow up on rumors and chase down leads on new technology to get in contact with developers. That relationship can only happen with like minded innovators who understand how creative people think.

Values or Duty?

It has been said that personality is stable over one's lifetime. By the age of seven we will maintain the same outlook on life unless something drastic has happened. Character comes with internal personality and values while duty is a promise to uphold a certain value system. To uphold a duty when no reward is forthcoming is a deeper value system based into the way the person sees themselves. Are we driven by values or duty?

Consider a person with character who seeks to live life with meaning and ensure they treat people with justice and kindness. They have character and are capable of making tough decisions because they believe life is more than the fulfillment of one's own needs. Not that their needs are not important, but that there is a greater meaning to it all that transcends self.

A person who believes in duty is willing to put in play certain actions in order to fulfill a promise they made to someone or a personal promise they made to themselves. Duties are often socially oriented and are sworn as an oath in front of other people. People are expected to live by the duties they proclaim. When that social environment changes those duties often disappear.

We know that duties are sometimes left unfulfilled and not all people have values. Their character is such that if it doesn't benefit them they have no use for it. A duty to them is only as good as the temporary euphoria praise provides and the financial benefits one receives. If no one is watching those duties are quickly discarded for something that is more advantageous to the situation they find themselves in.

 The type of person who keeps their duties and oaths even long after no one is looking or can hold them accountable is the type of person who has developed character. Their character runs deep into their value systems and they have incorporated those beliefs into their self-image. Without their core values they know they would be drowned into a world of being the same as everyone else.

Emerging Online University Models

Online education is as credible as traditional education and is growing every year. Despite heavy regulation and the desire to support traditional models it is suspected that most universities will offer online classes to augment their expensive infrastructure. As online models change and adjust to meet multiple stakeholders and regulatory shifts one has to wonder about stronger emerging models.

Models come and go but those that are likely to make it might transform higher education models as to provide what stakeholders need while still capitalizing on the efficiencies virtual colleges provide. Their biggest challenge is not their quality, as based in research, but their credibility as defined by a few bad actors and lots of protectionist language.

That doesn't mean things will be this way forever. As traditional colleges adopt online techniques and online research supports the virtual model that image will change. The lines between virtual and traditional will be blurred as each seeks to mimic the benefits of the other. Eventually online leaders and elite schools will emerge creating new demographic markets.

Online schools will also start producing research with public appeal. They may be partnering with other universities for the hard sciences but will be engaging in lots of different types of research on their own. Professors, whether working out of an office, or in their homes, will be conducting investigatory studies and publishing their findings.

Regulation will also change. It will come down hard like a hammer so that people can make political blowing about how they are doing something about the bad actors. As regulation moves into overkill mode it will also damage their traditional stakeholders and slow down Americas competitive position in higher education leading to the pendulum shifting back in the other direction.

Ultimately, the good that can come out of regulatory gaming is that some online institutions will transform their models to meet new requirements and will come out stronger when the pendulum does swing back. They will master both playing fields and be even more competitive than their traditional counterparts. They can beat the metrics game while providing a superior product that has wide appeal not only to Americans but also the international community. 

China at the Crossroads of Reform

China is at the crossroads between a path that goes left and one that goes right. To the left is political stability that pulls from the bag of old fashion communist economic policy while to the right is a path that forces Chinese businesses to be compete without as much government support. The process of reform will become more apparent as time moves forward. Recent market corrections are an opportunity for Chinese businesses to reach out to American companies for collaborative partnerships that expand both economies.

Both mentalities come with some risks. Communist approaches provide for control and stability but ultimately lead the country to less wealth and growth. Something closer to communism with capitalistic overtones has been used to try and manage parts of the economy through one lens and other parts of the society through another. Until now officials were able to keep the balance.

The Chinese leadership had a solid strategy for the past couple decades and their ability to raise their position from market followers to market leaders. Their primary advantage was the cheapness of their labor and abundance of resources. They had a hungry population willing to work hard do what it takes to succeed. Labor mixed with modern manufacturing led the day.

That situation is changing and countries have found parity in manufacturing thereby damaging the fundamentals of the Chinese economy. The same policies that helped push the economy forward through centralized control are the same policies that led to today's market correction. How they approach this issue will determine China's future its long-term stability in an international market.

America on the other hand is growing and appears to be on solid financial footing. Protecting American intellectual property rights, investment opportunities, and fair cross-border trading policies will connect the two economies closer and bring greater stability for both. Chinese-American partnerships will need fair Chinese policies that protect the interests of both parties while ensuring international partnerships have an open regulatory environment to succeed.

The Lines of Bureaucracy-Models of Inefficiency

Bureaucracy can be difficult to deal with. Waiting in lines, filling out large forms, waiting weeks for a response, and trekking down to some physical location can be pretty tough. Where we experience bureaucracy we generally feel annoyed and sometimes devalued as a person. The modern conveniences of this century sometimes feel absent when large clunky operations grip with white knuckles to ineffective models. Those organizations that don't change eventually are buried in history. 

You know you are standing in one when everything looks worn out, old, and dilapidated. Bureaucracy breeds incompetence and stakeholder indifference that manifests in general customer annoyance. Bureaucracy become inefficient because it 1. ignores the legitimate complaints, 2. monitors the wrong things, 3. delays decision making, and has 4. biased oversight (Prendergast, 2003)

Bureaucracies have many layers of management but are ultimately separated from the needs of their stakeholders. Their operations are often inefficient and costly leading to incentives for additional waste and inefficiencies. The effectiveness is weak and the outcomes are poor. One of the only benefits it provides is control based upon rigid rules and policies.

These types of businesses can be found anywhere but often are found more in government than anywhere else. Even though we know poorly management branches cost taxpayers a fortune to continue to run inefficiently it is possessed in seeking resources to feed its needs. These resources become wasted in programs that don't work and within the operational inefficiencies embedded in layered management and bloated departments.

There are ways to improve bureaucracies by borrowing from modern business techniques. The advantages of continuous updating and improving help to ensure that ultimately stakeholder needs are being met. In government bureaucracies politicians and government decision-makers have a responsibility to ensure that their oversight is using tax payer money in the most efficient manner as possible through increasing departmental performance. Bureaucracies in the business world have nearly all been wiped out by more efficient models.

Prendergast, C. (2003). The Limits of Bureaucratic Efficiency. Journal of Political Economy, 111 (5).