A good idea for merger/conslication/takeover

I've been through a number of mergers, consolidations and takeovers in my professional life. Below is the value statement developed for the consolidation of the Minneapolis and Hennepin County Library systems. Could be useful in public, private and nonprofit sectors:

The Library Steering Committee and the co-chairs of the nine pre-merger teams, comprised of more than 100 Hennepin County and Minneapolis Public Library employees, continue to meet and recently developed guiding values for the pre-merger planning process. These values are:

1. We are focused on the needs of the customer and are accountable to the needs of a new organization and to each other.
2. We are open to new and different ways of doing things – what worked in the past may not work in the future.
3. We are truly curious and realize that there is rarely only one way of doing things.
   
4. We will work to understand and respect the past work of both partners while channeling our creativity into this opportunity.
5. We will presume good intentions of others and, if needed, will follow-up for clarification.
6. We recognize that there will be challenges ahead that will require us to understand and respect elements of bureaucracy and politics.
7. We will use our collective sense of humor to assure we have more celebration and less commiseration.
8. We are committed to open communication amongst ourselves and with all staff while recognizing that we do have some fear and anxiety to conquer.

1. 
   

Good Engineering doesn't mean ugly

Here in Minnesota we're now starting the debate about the design of the new 35W bridge.

On one side is MN DOT and the Governor saying we need to have it done fast and that there isn't time for a great design. To quote MNDOT, "It won't be beautiful but it won't be ugly." That has to be a new standard for setting low expectations.

The other side says that good design doesn't have to take a lot more time or cost any more. That side (my side) notes that, since this bridge is planned to last 100 years we should take the time to do it right.

The standard line is that out of the three goals:

• low cost,
• beauty, and
• fast;

you can only pick two. I would argue that that isn't necessarily true.

Often, in the push to go fast or get by cheap, governments go with the plan that looks like it will be the lowest initial cost. There are three very good examples of where Minnesota picked "cheep and quick" over quality and beauty that didn't turn out. All are within a mile of each other in downtown Minneapolis.

• I remember back in high school a debate in the newspaper over the design of the 35W bridge that just fell down. People were complaining that it was ugly. That just when Minneapolis was starting to re-claim the river from industry that we didn't need a boring, industrial bridge. The response was that the money wasn't available and the the design selected was a lot cheaper.
• A few years before that, Minneapolis built a new downtown central library as a part of a downtown urban renewal project. The city kept cutting the budget. No one thought about the future of libraries. We built the last library that had closed stacks--85 percent of the books were in stacks that were only accessible to the public. The building was not flexible, few walls could be moved. The building was dark. It was ugly. Only 33 years latter, we started the process to build a new central library.
• Back in the 1980s, Minnesota built the Humphrey Metrodome. Everyone was thrilled that it cost so little to build. Problem is, it has never worked for baseball and it is the last major league park built with a fixed roof (in Minnesota where on a nice summer evening you WANT to be outside--we don't want to waste our short summer). A short 15 years later, the Twins and Vikings started demanding a new stadium that would meet their needs. We are now building a new Twins stadium, only 25 years after the dome was built.

Now a little about engineering. Quality engineering is always about doing things with elegance. Quality engineering does not mean ugly. In fact the best engineering can be beautiful. Examples of structural engineering that come to mind include the Eiffel Tower, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Minneapolis Stone Arch Bridge--all designed by engineers--not architects.

There is a great OpEd in the New York Times yesterday--One Bridge Doesn't Fit All. By David Billington (professor of structural engineering at Princeton and co-author of Power, Speed and Form: Engineers and the Making of the 20th Centruy)

I Titled this post Engineering doesn't mean Ugly. A friend just asked a related question:

Is there such a thing as ugly engineering that is not bad engineering?

Monument to Consumerism

The Minneapolis Planning Commission (I'm the Library Board representative on the Commission) -OKed monument to consumerism-4 story-air conditioned, carpeted, brick and glass self-storage bldg for stuff. Do people really buy so much stuff that they can not "stuff" it into their home? Do they really have the money to waste to store stuff that they never use?

Should Computers Forget

There was a very interesting issue on Future Tense on public radio a few months ago (just catching up with listening to my pod-casts). Should computers learn how to forget? (The May 8th entry of Future Tense at http://www.publicradio.org/columns/futuretense/2007/05/index.shtml)

To quote from Future Tense:

Harvard public policy professor Viktor Mayer-Shoenberger believes our digitally-fueled culture remembers too much for too long. He's suggesting that we learn how to forget again."

Schonberger has just published a paper called "Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing."

Some very interesting issues to think about.