Meh…

15 Responses to “Are We Good Enough Yet?”

• Brett Legree says:
  14 November 2008, 7:59 am

  It isn’t just you.

  I read an interesting piece by Robert Scoble, about manufacturing in China.

  http://scobleizer.com/2008/11/12/disruptive-factories/

  Basically, we have been behind for a long time, and they have not been sitting still. No matter where we are working, what we do, we need to be good enough.

  We need to be better than good enough.

  (Hmm… reminds me of a certain Factory…)

  -Brett

  Brett Legree’s last blog post…the game.

• Friar says:
  14 November 2008, 8:46 am

  The last three Girlfriends would be:

  “Jealous Psycho….Workaholic Mommy’s Girl, Workaholic Yuppie”.

  As for the rest, with exception to my blog posts and my vacations…my answers would pretty much all be:

  “Meh…Meh…Meh.”

  I dunno. Maybe I’m just in a crusty mood…or mabye I need to look at other lists of three.

• Urban Panther says:
  14 November 2008, 10:49 am

  I think my answer is depends. It seems to be hit and miss. I agree it leans more towards not good enough though. Wait, let me review the list again.

  Your last three dining experiences - very good
  Your last three shopping experiences - very good
  Your last three doctor’s visits - very good
  Your last three new hires - pretty good
  Your last three telephone conversations with a customer - my client is an idiot; oh, um, not good
  Your last three blog posts - EXCELLENT of course
  Your last three boyfriends - this one EXCELLENT, 2 previous - nope!
  Your last three rush-hour drives - not bad
  Your last three vacations - last 2 EXCELLENT, 1 before those not at all, but see boyfriends above
  Your last three desserts - okay

  Conclusion: yep, hit and miss

  Urban Panther’s last blog post…Faerie glasses

• Kelly Erickson says:
  14 November 2008, 4:35 pm

  Brett,

  I was going to reply here a half an hour ago but I got wrapped up in Scoble’s article. Wow wow.

  You know, that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about for the last month or so. We here in North America tend to blame somebody else quite a bit. I had a lousy this, I bought a crummy that, so-and-so treated me badly.

  The insurance companies have run surveys where something over 80% of people say they themselves are good or excellent drivers, but they typically describe over 60% of the rest of the drivers on the road as bad drivers. It’s like that.

  If everybody’s having these crap experiences, at some point we’re going to have to look inward. How much of the problems around me (around my business) am I really causing?

  We can’t all be running blameless companies, but finding everyone else’s at fault. It’s just not good math.

  Friar,

  For your dating scene perhaps I should have expanded the scale, but I didn’t see quite how much expansion would be involved. No wonder you’re a confirmed bachelor.

  I have to say that your last three blog posts have rocked. Hovering right around awesome. You are a Friar in the Zone, friend. In spite of your resistance to the norms, the medium agrees with you.

  Panther,

  I am waiting for someone to wander in and admit that they were “phoning it in” on at least one of their last 3 posts. Not gonna be you, I guess!

  I’ll go first: Why Today, which struck a nerve with some people and ended up rather good, started off as an “oh, Lord, I just can’t post today” kinda post. So I was aiming for “sufficient,” came up with what I thought was “rather good,” but got a reaction a bit further down the line, maybe around “pleasing.” I think I have anniversary-itis right now. As I hit the big 1-year-old (next Mon.), every post for the last week or two has been torture to produce. Some kind of utterly stupid performance anxiety or something.

  And wow, a Canadian who doesn’t want to complain about doctors’ visits? I thought that was a law up there? Heck I could say at least meh about two of my last three! Good for you.

  Regards,

  Kelly

• Brett Legree says:
  14 November 2008, 5:47 pm

  Kelly,

  Exactly - the “blame game”. I had a debate yesterday at a fellow’s blog (I’d never been there before) - he was writing that his father was really angry that he had “done everything right”, and now some people in the US might get some assistance from the Gov, he didn’t think it was fair and he thought they should lose their houses as punishment (basically).

  I disagreed - I mean, yeah, the taxpayer would end up being “on the hook” but we’re always kind of on the hook with any sort of social programs. It’s a slippery slope when we start pointing fingers and saying everything is someone else’s fault. I mean, then we start withholding medical treatment because you eat hamburgers or something - where do we draw the line when blaming people. Maybe if we concentrate on helping each other, creating true value and innovation… well, we might just rebuild everything the right way.

  Oh, to dream…

  -Brett

  Brett Legree’s last blog post…the game.

• Janice Cartier says:
  14 November 2008, 6:56 pm

  Whoa, That article was something else, Brett. When I saw the opening ceremonies from Beijing, I got goose bumps. Long a student from the art and cultural perspective, I saw a “sleeping dragon” stir to life.. and immediately thought, oh sh**. We are so in for it. Going to give everyone a run for their money. And wow, must follow this disruptive thing Scoble is talking about. I get offers frequently from China , to create for me, really. At least once a month.
  The Meh thing? Any time that happens, we have a choice. We can accept the meh, or not. Meh is sometimes, good enough, but long term, meh will dull your palette.

  Janice Cartier’s last blog post…Hi Ho Hi Ho

• Brett Legree says:
  14 November 2008, 7:45 pm

  Janice,

  I know. I remember reading somewhere (and I’m paraphrasing here) “the 20th Century belonged to America, the 21st Century belongs to China”. My company realizes this and is pinning it’s hopes to reactor sales over there (China wants to build dozens of nuclear reactors over the next 50 years).

  But, we must not fear it - we must embrace it. They are our neighbours, our partners, and we can help each other. So we cannot compete with them in a manufacturing sense? Okay, then, it is up to us to find something else to do. Services perhaps. Something. It is the biggest market in the world, and is ripe with opportunity.

  I tell you, if I were 25 and single I’d probably be living there already. But there’s nothing to stop me from tweaking one of my numerous ideas for that market, right?

  -Brett

  Brett Legree’s last blog post…the game.

• Kelly Erickson says:
  15 November 2008, 10:01 am

  Brett,

  If the gov didn’t bail us out at least half this country would still have no electricity. We’d have very few paved roads. The stock market would have collapsed, not just tanked, 2001, nevermind now, and a half a dozen other times since the Great Depression. People like that don’t see that though it isn’t direct, the government is involved in practically everything all around us, anyway.

  As you say, we’re always on the hook. The alternative is anarchy. So if we like growth in the industrialized nations (and all the less-industrialized nations that are right on our heels like growth, too), we bail out occasionally as necessary. ‘Fraid that’s the price we pay for the good times. Sometimes, the gov has to step in and smooth out the bumps in the bad times.

  I sincerely hope for your well-spoken solution. Let’s learn (individually and at the governing level) from all this. Let’s rebuild the right way. Nice dream. Fingers crossed… and nose to the grindstone.

  Whoa, that’s enough politics for me today!

  Janice,

  “Meh will dull your palette.” Great phrasing.

  Twenty years ago I wanted to take Chinese classes because I thought they were the next big thing we in business were going to have to reckon with. (Then I found out that it’s considered twenty times as difficult as learning any other language and even then there are dialect barriers, and that whim passed.) I’ve always watched with great interest, as they went from being associated with cheapness (like Japan) to being associated with industriousness, if not yet high quality.

  What made me want to learn Chinese back then is that the industriousness was always there. We assume they’ll just stay in one place, but that is nonsense. They don’t have that western sense of entitlement that makes us all so darned lazy. They have an incredible competitive spirit. I think it’s beautiful, but I wish we weren’t just watching them innovate and grow. I wish we were being infected by a desire to learn from their spirit instead of fearing it or hoping to shut them out somehow.

  Who knows where a post will turn in the comments at MCE?

  Certainly not the author…

  Until later,

  Kelly

• Brett Legree says:
  15 November 2008, 10:52 am

  That’s right - that’s what it’s all about. Those who “have” must help those who do not “have” - so that everyone can “have”, eventually.

  It is no secret that two of the very best countries in the world for quality of life (Norway and Finland) also have the highest tax rates - and I believe that the taxation schemes are such that if you make more money, well, you pay more tax.

  A lot would say this “isn’t fair”. Well, I know of another example of what happens when you change this, because of personal interest. New Zealand used to be a “welfare state” in the real sense of the word, prior to about 1985. Taxation for middle class and up was around 65 percent, if my research is right. There were no homeless people, medical was very good, very low crime, and so on. But due to intense lobbying from the better off, there were sweeping tax cuts after 1985.

  Guess what? Homeless people started appearing, crime rates went up, health went down. Well, of course the rich got richer, as usual.

  I see it happening here too. I expect that if you live in a Canadian city 20 years from now, you’ll have to be in a gated, patrolled community for safety. Just like Cathryn’s family back in South Africa now, in fact.

  Unless we can change it. Maybe we can learn how by watching people in other cultures, such as China.

  -Brett

  Brett Legree’s last blog post…the game.

• Janice Cartier says:
  17 November 2008, 12:44 pm

  Hi Guys,
  Well I am a big fan of the Silk Road. So I think that all the Chinese industry will bring lots of innovation, just like it brought all those blue tea cups to Europe and tea, and the paper they were wrapped in which were woodblock prints…and dynamite, and paper, and bronze, all those really caught on, in my view, for the better of us all , but that’s just me..LOL There is a Chinese artist who “paints” with gunpowder exploding on paper that is scroll sized, huge, you know…and he does installations in the sky…. big , big money making contemporary artist whose name escapes me at the moment. That way of bringing ancient forward, just gives me a thrill. Some very clever minds at work.

  So I don’t think we’ll be devoured by them, we just might be reenergized by them. I think we need to be an artery on that Silk Road for sure. (Although, I think there’s a lesson in the age issue on the cute little girl gymnasts.) I can’t wait to see the rest of the series Scoble is doing.

  ( Kelly, thanks. )

  Brett- Gated? in S.A.? Because of the difference in levels of wealth?Or a Race thing?

  Janice Cartier’s last blog post…Hi Ho Hi Ho

• Brett Legree says:
  17 November 2008, 4:26 pm

  Janice,

  Yes, gated with 12-foot walls around the houses, with electrified barbed wire sometimes. It is all interlinked, wealth and race - though there are wealthy and not so wealthy people of all backgrounds, it is definitely skewed in favour of the people who were originally European settlers. My wife’s relatives are probably in the minority by not having firearms, too.

  I’d like to go visit as it is a very beautiful country, though I want to wait until the children are a little bit older first.

  Brett Legree’s last blog post…the game.

• Janice Cartier says:
  17 November 2008, 5:04 pm

  Ahh. Yes. I thought…well I thought that was further north, but no, you’re right. Hm…well, I know that is like.
  You’ll go, and the children will love it. Does your wife visit often?

  Janice Cartier’s last blog post…Hi Ho Hi Ho

• Brett Legree says:
  17 November 2008, 5:11 pm

  Sadly it is everywhere, I think. But I mean, my ancestors and perhaps yours as well were like that 1000 years ago, in many ways. With help and understanding, they’ll get out of it, I believe.

  It is getting better. Having a government that consists of people from all backgrounds there has helped a lot.

  Sadly, she doesn’t get back there very often - but I hope she gets to go next summer. Of course, we want to go too but it is more important for her to see her family first.

  I could actually get a job there quite easily, but it would be a big adjustment lifestyle wise. I’m used just walking to the variety store, and so forth - you can’t do that there, unfortunately… but we still want to go to see the country.

  Brett Legree’s last blog post…the game.

• Janice Cartier says:
  17 November 2008, 5:16 pm

  Then you will. I have to go, but I look forward to more. always a pleasure Brett. Thanks Kelly for triggering the discussion.

  Janice Cartier’s last blog post…Hi Ho Hi Ho

• Kelly Erickson says:
  17 November 2008, 7:01 pm

  He he, I hate to interrupt. You guys were having such a nice conversation. Glad to provide the trigger!