August 2009 Archives

Bring money and mortality together and you have an unstable mix. The more important these values and issues are in a society the greater the likelihood the discussions and debates blow up in the smoke and fire of self-interest.

That is the sad sum and outcome of the United States' healthcare 'debate'. A conversation over proposals aimed at helping the less fortunate has become twisted by those who profit from the status quo who have abetted ideological warfare alongside the true believers in the long and dishonorable tradition of willful ignorance. Much like what has happened to peace plans in other troubled parts of the world. That millions suffer through being uninsured or underinsured in the U.S. and poverty in others is just collateral damage.

Unfortunately the refrain from the business community--the one constituency that could bang heads to work this out--has been 'we don't want any pay more either in premiums or taxes or put up with what we fear is more red tape'. Yet is this attitude and approach really in their best interests, let alone the nation's?

Have businesses especially really taken a hard look of what the total costs of the healthcare crisis inflicts on their bottom lines? How can their books benefit when staff comes in injured or sick to work when they can't afford to get adequate treatment? When staff benefit-shop: jumping from company to company to stay alive and well? When individuals leave flexible part-time jobs or independent contractor work for benefit-paying full time employment?

Is it in the employers' best interests to collectively pay huge sums for administration, back office, and overhead, including marketing, customer care, and billing/collections contact centers and their underlying technologies? Dollars shelled out by them and their employees that could have gone instead to keeping employees and families well and keeping their costs down? Shouldn't they be demanding streamlining of the present bloated industry?

Shouldn't businesses also be demanding increased effectiveness of medical services delivery by demanding a nationwide standardized intermediate caregiver level, between MDs and RNs, who can make diagnoses and prescribe and administer treatments now carried out ad hoc by PAs, nurse practicioners, and in emergencies, by highly-trained paramedics? Would this not save huge sums while providing more immediate and widespread higher quality of care?

Moreover shouldn't those also who underwrite health costs be asking where is the bottom-line value in having huge resources going into prolonging the lives of those terminally ill by another six to eight months to live, in subsidizing doctors and their attendant infrastructure? When those resources can be used more effectively with more caring and less suffering through palliative care and in enabling others to get well better, quicker, back to work, happy, and productive? As The World According to Garp author John Irving put it: "we are all terminal cases."

Contact centers, and contact-center-dependent organizations especially ought to take a hard look at whether the existing system works for them. They are the ones who get hit the most on turnover, sick days, and high healthcare costs.

Not that the United States is alone in facing healthcare issues. Other countries have been debating how to manage rising costs amidst aging populations, with matters such as physician shortages and wait times. There is ongoing fighting between established medical interests and with other spending and fiscal priorities, with no quick fixes. There too the business communities have washed their hands even though their firms as a whole are impacted.

There needs to leadership in both the U.S. and in other countries to triage such debates, to look beyond their constrictively-defined self-interests to where their goods and society's meet, and engage in truly rational discussions about what is best for their societies. In this process there needs to be second and third opinions, and compromises and consensus.

Only in this fashion will there be courses of treatment fashioned for the healthcare systems that may not be ideal and will require some effort on the patients' parts but which are best prescriptions for their, and society's long-term survivability.

There is great customer care and then there is great customer care. Service that is delivered by companies and staff that assists not only existing customers but who goes out of their way to help those individuals and businesses who are not but thanks to their four-star treatment could well be in the future and if not them their family, friends, and associates.

Radisson Hotel Vancouver (B.C., Canada) Airport (a.k.a. YVR), which is located in the suburb of Richmond, falls into that category. For service alone I recommend staying there, along with being very convenient for both the airport and the downtown, including the Olympics venues.

And here's why: late yesterday afternoon my wife and I had personal business in downtown Vancouver that required taking TransLink's new Canada Line rapid transit from near YVR that was inaugurated that day (regular service begins Sept.7). Vancouver driving and parking is no fun and there's no reason why it should be so, so any opportunity to deposit the car and take mass transit makes sense. So I drove from my home in the 'burbs (our buses will be routed into the Canada Line on the 7th) and parked the car at the Bridgeport station in Richmond adjacent to the River Rock Casino Resort, which has a huge garage between the Canada Line and the casino.

The train was fast, smooth, comfortable, much more preferable in all aspects to the existing express buses but packed New York-/London style (yes I used to be a straphanger on the E and F trains from Queens, and on the Underground's District and Piccadilly lines).

But when we decided to get back on the crowds were so huge the TransLink staff and Vancouver police were telling people that there was a 2 to 3 hour wait and service would end for that day at 9pm. So I spotted a bus--one of the routes that the Canada Line will replace in less than a month's time--that would take us back roughly where we packed our car, bought transit tickets, and boarded.

After a long if scenic ride we got out adjacent to one of the Canada Line stations in Richmond, at Aberdeen, to ride one stop back to Bridgeport. There was a massive crowd though.

So spotting the Radisson adjacent to the station we hoofed it over to the hotel to get a cab. Once inside I asked the bell desk to call one up. He said it could be a 30 minute or wait so but then he offered to take us to back to Bridgeport/River Rock. We explained that we weren't guests but he took us anyway and then in chatting he told us he told how he arranged a limo tour for a family of guests that included an elderly member who could not easily take mass transit and how they enjoyed the experience.

We tipped this gentleman for the ride and thanked him profusely. And I came away with the impression of if that is how well the Radisson treats non-guests we look forward to becoming guests.

This is how businesses should treat everyone. The ROI is there and in spades. For anyone can be a customer, or recommend to others to become customers.

A tip of the hat to you, Radisson Vancouver Airport. May your business do well. Count on us being at a Radisson in our travels and to give others our recommendation to stay at your hotels.

If you want to get somewhere then you have to see how to get there. And if you can't see where you're going you'll stumble and fall.

And that's exactly what happened with Nortel. This lack of vision: both foresight and on the immediate environment led it to crash.

Yes this sounds like armchair quarterbacking, of hindsight, and all those other clichés, especially coming from a journalist. But vision is what the CEOs and board directors get paid the serious money and are empowered to decide the fates of its employees for. To be a leader you must see clearly. If you can't see you have no business being one.

And seeing what they think is happening and calling it as it is are what journalists like me get paid to do. In my case being a taxpayer and voter in the country where Nortel is headquartered, where this company's screwups are becoming public policy and likely an election issue and having lived in communities where Nortel employs or employed my neighbors and acquaintances, gives me some skin in the game.

For all the brilliance of now-gone Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski and the board that selected him, and presumably the senior management execs how come:

* They couldn't foresee how the competitive landscape was going to shape up even before they took the helm?

Surely these smart people have seen their opponents' maneuvers and guessed where they are going to land even before Mike Z. took his first paycheck. If Nortel was going to be much smaller or DOA then would have been time to do it, while the 'Ponzi Economy' was still upright, when others were blindly buying into the scam, to maximize sales price and minimize the fallout.

* They didn't tackle the legacy cost issue upfront from the start. This was what got me from reading Nortel's press release on Mike Z's departure. To cite

Mr. Zafirovski commented: "I am extremely proud to have been associated with this company. The Board members and I came to Nortel because we really believed in the value of Nortel's people and technology. Although solid progress was made in many areas, at the end, the capital structure and legacy costs coupled with the economic downturn proved too difficult to surmount."

'Hello, Finance calling. If your costs are too high how can you compete?'

In deciding where you want to go and how to get there you must look at what is in your way. Hmm--legacy costs and capital structure--what were the Nortel honchos thinking? Did see they see them as matters to be dealt with down the road instead? Unfortunately for Nortel and more importantly for its employees both present and former the journey ended before it got there.

* They did not understand the political landscape. When you're a big company in a small jurisdiction (and Canada is small in population and mindset) you are by default a public policy matter. And when you ball up your fate is of interest to not a few people. And if you're large enough and you stumble chances are that you will be on the agenda of public policy makers.

There is no excuse for this in Nortel's case. The firm is HQed and has operations in urban areas that have long been politically powerful.

'Hello Nortel, you have a campus in Ottawa, yes that's Canada's capital. And who is the Member of Parliament who represents the area near where your campus is located? Yes that's John Baird, a young, aggressive Cabinet minister who is one of the top dogs in the Harper Conservative Government, who used his influence to kill a poorly-planned megamillion light rail project in the city when he wasn't using his opponents for toothpicks.

'And oh yes, didn't you have a Defence Minister, Brigadier General (ret.) Gordon O'Connor, repping where your office is?'

Nortel FUBARed the political game so badly, with moves like bonuses to retain top execs when playing with employees' pensions that even lapdog backbench Government MPs like Daryl Kramp from the Belleville, Ontario area where Nortel still has a plant and a number of retirees, got off their hind legs barked, and yes nipped at Mike Z.

(To the Nortel CEO's credit he did volunteer to go in and testify, against legal advice, but did he really know what kind of pit was he walking into?)

But when even thinking of about getting government help you need to get your act together first. Kind of like getting your finances in order before approaching the bank for a loan; you have to demonstrate that you are worthy enough for them to expend political (and taxpayer) capital so that they see ROIs.

Is it any wonder why according to the Globe and Mail the government declared the company "toxic"?

In fairness, all levels of government share some blame for Nortel's debacle. They too lacked the vision--of a country built on tech not just on dead dinos and logs and big foreign branch plants--and could not see the signs of Nortel stumbling, as experienced as they are in bailing out other firms, to avoid such a cap-in-hand scenario.

Ontario Municipal Affairs Minister and former Ottawa mayor Jim Watson made this point in a story carried by Canwest News Service. Watson, who had criticized city hall for failing to stand up for the largest private-sector employer in the city, now says all levels of government -- the city, the province and the federal government -- did not do as much as they could have done to save Nortel.

Watson, whose district is home to Nortel, said the federal government had not been as engaged in saving the technology company as it was with the auto industry. He also said distracted city politicians failed to agitate and lobby on behalf of Nortel, as other cities both in southern Ontario and the U.S. had done for their auto industries.

"Nortel is the single largest employer in the city... and I was disappointed that there wasn't more of a coordinated effort, really, from all three levels of government -- not just the city -- to deal with it," Watson said.