Covid-19 has helped to propel the work-from-home movement. Many companies have announced plans to maintain a remote workforce. For some workers, this might represent a permanent change in scenery. Workers are now being hired specifically to work from home. For others, it could be on…

In my most recent blog, I discussed the idea of aligning the supply of services to market demand.  My conceptualization of “alignment” specifically relates to time intervals: i.e. having people at the right place and at the right time - for example, to take advantage of opportunities - is a sign of alignment.  Alignment for me is often about the relationship between capacity and incapacity:  the ability to supply services versus the inability to satisfy the market demand…

A fictitious retailer which I am calling Malwart sells automobiles and automotive parts.  On this blog I will be focused on the sale of a particular automobile model called the Blair - a sporty compact that can be ordered in custom colour schemes.  Because all sales must be done by clients that also have accounts,…

It isn’t too unusual for surveys to contain open-ended questions:  respondents would be free to enter their comments in any manner.  More on an operational basis, not surveys but rather client systems might hold such comments; and not the respondents themselves but customer service agents would be responsible for entering the information.  These same agents would likely classify the nature of the exchange or comments maybe using drop-down menu choices, radials, and check-boxes.  One approach…

A theme in my blogs is how the "structure" of data - rather than just the "content" - affects what that data can say and is capable of doing. In particular, I suggest that certain structures tend to reinforce certain contents; this means that a structural imposition can have an effect similar to a contextual imposition. Structure is an interesting conversation…

I sometimes ask myself while musing over the need for a particular service, "I wonder if this is commercially viable?" If the service is routine and the required software is rather inexpensive, perhaps there is little need for a company to outsource. I cannot think of any company that would routinely outsource work normally performed on a spreadsheet. I suspect that decades ago some companies hired specialists to handle spreadsheets; this seems much less likely today in light of the…

"Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech."  (Genesis 11-6,7)  On the distance between expression, meaning, and action resulting from growth of populations and…