Category Archives: Business

18 July 2026

Racism Is Bigger Than Bigotry

By Rick Ladd

In 1973, while preparing to travel to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade, I underwent extensive political education on race, class, imperialism, and American society. Among the most memorable lessons came from members of the Black Panther Party. They distinguished personal prejudice and bigotry from something broader and more deeply rooted: racism as a system—something embedded in institutions, laws, customs, economic arrangements, and accepted ways of doing things.

That distinction has stayed with me for more than half a century because it explains something that our ordinary public vocabulary often conceals. Americans commonly use the word racist to describe an openly prejudiced person: someone who uses racial slurs, expresses hatred, refuses to associate with people of another race, or consciously believes one race is superior to another. Those behaviors are certainly manifestations of racism. But when racism is reduced to such behavior, the larger system disappears from view.

The lesson I heard in 1973 belonged to a broader Black Power analysis already articulated by Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwame Ture, and political scientist Charles V. Hamilton. In their 1967 book Black Power, they distinguished “individual racism” from “institutional racism.” Individual racism, they wrote, is generally visible and attributable to particular people. Institutional racism is more subtle, arising through the operation of established and respected institutions. As they observed, people who would never personally bomb a church or attack a Black family could nevertheless support institutions and officials that perpetuated racial inequality.[1]

For purposes of clarity, I use prejudice to mean a preconceived judgment about a group; bigotry to mean a stubborn and often hostile attachment to such judgments; and discrimination to mean unequal treatment. I use racism more broadly to describe the network of attitudes, practices, institutions, and distributions of power through which racial hierarchy is created or reproduced.

These categories overlap. Psychological definitions often describe racism as a form of racial prejudice, while also recognizing institutionalized racism in schools, health care, employment, law enforcement, and other systems. Sociologists tend to place greater emphasis on racism’s systemic character—on the way interconnected institutions produce unequal access to resources and unequal life chances.[2]

The point, therefore, is not that personal racism does not exist. It plainly does. The point is that personal bigotry is only one level at which racism operates.

The inadequacy of “I’m not a racist”

When someone says, “I’m not a racist,” the statement usually means something like this: I do not hate Black people. I do not use racial slurs. I would not deliberately mistreat someone because of race.

That may be entirely sincere. It is also an answer to the least demanding question.

The larger question is not merely whether I consciously hate anyone. It is whether the institutions I inhabit, support, benefit from, or leave unexamined continue to distribute wealth, security, education, health, opportunity, and punishment along racial lines.

A person can be free of conscious racial hostility and still participate in a racially unequal system. A loan officer may treat every applicant politely while applying standards shaped by decades of discriminatory lending. A real estate agent may never utter a racial slur while steering clients toward different neighborhoods. A school official may care about every child while administering district boundaries created by residential segregation. A physician may sincerely believe in equal treatment while relying on a medical algorithm that underestimates the needs of Black patients.

That is why innocence of intention cannot be the sole measure of racism. Intent matters, but systems also have histories, incentives, routines, and consequences.

Redlining: prejudice converted into geography

Redlining is one of the clearest examples of racism becoming structural.

During the 1930s, federal agencies and local real estate professionals classified neighborhoods according to their supposed mortgage risk. Neighborhoods containing Black residents, immigrants, or other groups regarded as undesirable were frequently given the lowest ratings. Redlining did not merely deny particular individuals a mortgage. It denied credit and investment to entire communities. The federal government’s own housing materials acknowledge that the 1938 Federal Housing Administration underwriting manual incorporated racially discriminatory policies.[3]

The consequences extended far beyond the original mortgage decision. Families denied affordable mortgages were less able to purchase homes, accumulate equity, borrow against that equity, finance education, start businesses, or pass property to their children. Neighborhoods denied investment experienced deteriorating housing, weaker commercial development and, in many cases, reduced public and private services.

Meanwhile, families admitted to federally supported suburban housing markets accumulated appreciating assets. Those assets could be inherited. Their neighborhoods acquired stronger tax bases, better-financed services, and reputations that attracted further investment.

No contemporary homeowner needs to have participated personally in redlining for its effects to influence the value of a home, the quality of a school district, the availability of credit, or the inheritance a family receives. The original prejudice has been converted into property, geography, and accumulated advantage.

The Federal Reserve reported that in 2022 the median wealth gap between White families and Black families exceeded $220,000. Redlining alone does not explain the entire gap, and it would be simplistic to pretend that it does. But it demonstrates how discriminatory policy can shape wealth for generations after the openly discriminatory rule has been repealed.[4]

Sundown towns: exclusion without Southern signs

Sundown towns provide another example. These were communities that excluded Black people—and sometimes other racial, ethnic, or religious groups—through ordinances, police enforcement, threats, restrictive covenants, intimidation, or widely understood local custom.

They were not exclusively Southern. The National Park Service notes that sundown towns were more common in the North and West than many Americans realize. For Black travelers, an ordinary road trip could become a calculation about where it was safe to buy gasoline, eat, sleep, or remain after dark. The Negro Motorist Green Book existed in part because the supposedly open American highway was not equally open to everyone.[5]

The disappearance of a threatening sign did not automatically undo the community the sign helped create. Decades of exclusion affected who owned property, who attended local schools, who developed business and political networks, and whose families benefited from rising land values. Later generations could inherit the resulting advantages without personally approving of the original exclusion.

Again, this is the difference between an event and a structure. The event may be over; the structure created by the event may remain.

The double standard in ordinary transactions

Systemic racism is not confined to dramatic episodes of history. It can appear in routine decisions that seem individual and unconnected until they are measured collectively.

Consider employment. In a widely cited field experiment, researchers sent employers fictitious résumés with equivalent qualifications but different names. Résumés bearing conventionally White-sounding names received approximately 50 percent more callbacks than those bearing conventionally African American-sounding names. The disparity appeared across industries and occupations, including among employers describing themselves as equal-opportunity employers.[6]

Consider housing. In a national paired-testing study, equally qualified White and minority homeseekers approached housing providers about advertised properties. Blatant refusals had declined, but minority applicants were still told about and shown fewer homes and apartments. A subsequent HUD review found that paired-audit studies consistently detected statistically significant discrimination against historically disadvantaged groups.[7]

Consider appraisals. A 2024 Federal Housing Finance Agency study found that, after controlling for numerous property and appraisal factors, appraisals below the contract price were at least 23 percent more likely in majority-Black neighborhoods than in otherwise similar neighborhoods with no Black residents. The researchers also found evidence that appraisers’ familiarity with a neighborhood could reduce the effect, suggesting that institutional information practices—not necessarily overt personal animosity alone—helped produce the disparity.[8]

The pattern is difficult to dismiss:

The same qualifications, but a different name.
The same financial readiness, but fewer homes offered.
A comparable transaction, but a different valuation risk.

No racial slur is required. No one involved has to announce a doctrine of racial superiority. Yet the burden repeatedly falls in the same direction.

Housing becomes education

Housing segregation does not remain a housing issue. It becomes an education issue because American public schools are organized largely by residential location and are financed in part through local property revenues.

The Government Accountability Office has noted that discriminatory history, residential wealth disparities, school district boundaries, and local property-tax financing remain intertwined. Poor, Black, and Hispanic students generally attend schools with fewer resources and worse outcomes. GAO also found that when communities separated from existing school districts to form new districts, the new districts tended to be substantially Whiter and wealthier than those left behind.[9]

A family may say, “We moved here for the schools,” without harboring conscious racial hostility. But that apparently private choice occurs within a housing and school system whose geography was not created innocently. The issue is not that every family making such a decision is personally bigoted. The issue is that millions of individually understandable choices can reinforce a structure created through exclusion, unequal investment, and inherited property advantage.

Discretion and the racial double standard

Racial inequality also appears where institutions give decision-makers broad discretion.

Researchers examining nearly 100 million traffic stops found that Black drivers were less likely to be stopped after sunset, when darkness made a driver’s race harder to perceive. They also found that police applied a lower evidentiary threshold when deciding to search Black and Hispanic drivers than when deciding to search White drivers.[10]

This does not prove that every police officer is consciously bigoted. Nor does every disparity, by itself, prove discrimination. But when similarly situated people encounter different thresholds of suspicion—and when the pattern persists across a vast number of decisions—the matter can no longer be reduced to a few identifiable “bad apples.” Training, discretionary standards, supervision, institutional incentives, deployment patterns, and accountability systems all become relevant.

The Justice Department’s investigation of Ferguson, Missouri, illustrated this institutional dimension. It found that the city’s emphasis on generating revenue had shaped police and municipal court practices, systematically violated constitutional rights, and both reflected and exacerbated racial bias. The problem was not simply what individual officers believed privately; it was what the institution rewarded and required publicly.[11]

Racism without an explicitly racial rule

Perhaps the clearest modern example comes from health care.

Researchers examined a widely used commercial algorithm intended to identify patients who needed additional medical attention. The algorithm used prior health-care spending as a proxy for illness. But because less money had historically been spent on Black patients with comparable medical needs, the algorithm interpreted lower spending as evidence that those patients were healthier. Black patients assigned the same risk score as White patients were actually sicker, and the bias reduced by more than half the number of Black patients identified for extra care.[12]

The algorithm did not need to express hatred. Its bias arose from treating an unequal historical outcome—medical spending—as though it were a neutral measure of medical need.

That is what “baked in” means. Yesterday’s inequality becomes today’s data. Today’s data become tomorrow’s decision. A system can reproduce racial inequality while presenting itself as objective, colorblind, and mathematical.

Not every disparity is proof—but every pattern deserves examination

A serious argument about systemic racism should not claim that every difference between racial groups is automatically caused by racism. Such a claim would be intellectually careless.

Evidence matters. We should compare similarly situated people, examine institutional history, identify the operative rules, test alternative explanations, measure outcomes, and look for mechanisms connecting policy to consequence.

But we must be equally careful not to impose an impossible burden of proof—one that recognizes racism only when a person explicitly confesses racial hatred. Systems do not possess private emotions. They reveal themselves through their design, incentives, practices, and patterned outcomes.

The relevant question is not simply, “Can we find a bigot?” It is also, “What does this institution repeatedly do, to whom, and why?”

From innocence to responsibility

Understanding systemic racism does not require believing that every White person is malicious, that all members of any racial group have identical experiences, or that class, gender, geography, and other forces do not matter. Nor is it a demand for inherited personal guilt.

It is a demand for responsibility.

Guilt asks, “Am I personally a bad person?”

Responsibility asks, “What have I inherited, what do I participate in, what consequences does it produce, and what am I prepared to change?”

“I’m not a racist” can become a form of evasion when it ends the conversation rather than beginning it. It allows a person to treat the absence of conscious hatred as evidence that no further examination is necessary. It turns racism into a question of personal manners and moral self-image while leaving housing, employment, education, policing, health care, and inherited wealth safely outside the frame.

A better response would be: I may not consciously wish to discriminate, but I live within institutions shaped by racial history. I have an obligation to understand how they operate, to listen to those who experience their burdens, to examine evidence rather than defend my innocence, and to support changes when apparently neutral systems produce unjust results.

The distinction I learned in 1973 remains essential. Bigotry is often loud, personal, and recognizable. Systemic racism can be quiet, respectable, procedural, and self-perpetuating. Bigotry may announce itself with an insult. Racism may arrive as a zoning ordinance, an appraisal, an algorithm, a school boundary, a résumé callback, or a discretionary search.

The opposite of bigotry is not expressing hatred. But the opposite of systemic racism requires more than private tolerance. It requires public justice.

Innocence is not the same as justice—and “I’m not a racist” is not the same as confronting racism.

[1] Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and Charles V. Hamilton, “Black Power,” excerpted from Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967), Teaching American History.

[2] American Psychological Association, “Racism, Bias, and Discrimination.”

[3] Robert K. Nelson et al., “Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America,” Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond.

[4] Aditya Aladangady, Andrew C. Chang, and Jacob Krimmel, “Greater Wealth, Greater Uncertainty: Changes in Racial Inequality in the Survey of Consumer Finances,” FEDS Notes, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, October 18, 2023.

[5] National Park Service, “The Green Book: An Historic Context.”

[6] Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination,” NBER Working Paper 9873, July 2003.

[7] Margery Austin Turner et al., “Housing Discrimination Against Racial and Ethnic Minorities 2012,” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, June 2013.

[8] Daniel Grodzicki, Sean Cannon, Christopher W. Davis, and Ken Lam, “Home Purchase Appraisals in Minority Neighborhoods,” Federal Housing Finance Agency Working Paper 24-06, November 4, 2024.

[9] U.S. Government Accountability Office, “K–12 Education: Student Population Has Significantly Diversified, but Many Schools Remain Divided Along Racial, Ethnic, and Economic Lines,” GAO-22-104737, June 16, 2022.

[10] Emma Pierson et al., “A Large-Scale Analysis of Racial Disparities in Police Stops Across the United States,” Nature Human Behaviour 4 (2020): 736–745.

[11] U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, “Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department,” March 4, 2015; see also the DOJ’s United States v. City of Ferguson case page.

[12] Ziad Obermeyer et al., “Dissecting Racial Bias in an Algorithm Used to Manage the Health of Populations,” Center for Healthcare Marketplace Innovation, October 25, 2019; underlying study: “Dissecting Racial Bias in an Algorithm Used to Manage the Health of Populations,” Science 366, no. 6464 (2019): 447–453.

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26 March 2025

At The End Of The Day

By Rick Ladd

I prompted Poe’s chatbot, “Assistant”, with the following. Its response seems almost like it enjoyed doing this.

“Write a corporate pep talk of at least 300 words that sounds reasonable, but is nothing more than corporate gibberish.”

Team:

As we embark on the next fiscal quarter, it’s imperative that we synergize our verticals and double down on our core competencies to truly unlock cross-functional scalability. The paradigm shifts in our industry demand an agile mindset, and we are uniquely positioned to leverage our robust infrastructure to capitalize on emerging opportunities. Now is the time for us to think outside the box, lean into our KPIs, and disrupt the status quo with unprecedented velocity.

 Our mission is clear: we must amplify our operational bandwidth while maintaining a laser-sharp focus on customer-centric deliverables. This is not just about meeting expectations—it’s about exceeding them at every touchpoint. By fostering an ecosystem of innovation and embedding a culture of excellence into our DNA, we can achieve a seamless alignment between our strategic objectives and ground-level execution.

 Remember, success in today’s dynamic landscape is not a linear journey. It’s about embracing iterative growth, harnessing actionable insights, and pivoting proactively when faced with volatility. Let’s not forget the power of collaboration—our ability to break down silos, ideate collectively, and drive end-to-end solutions will define our trajectory as market leaders.

 I urge each of you to take ownership of your deliverables and approach challenges with a growth mindset. Let’s circle back to our organizational north star and ensure that every touchpoint in our value chain is optimized for maximum impact. The low-hanging fruit is ours to harvest, but we must also keep an eye on the blue-sky opportunities that will future-proof our success.

 In closing, I want to reiterate that our greatest asset is you—the people who make this organization thrive. Together, let’s move the needle, operationalize our vision, and deliver unparalleled value to our stakeholders. The sky is not the limit—it’s just the beginning. Let’s make it happen!

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31 March 2024

Deming and Rocketdyne

By Rick Ladd

Sometime in late January of 1987, almost one year to the day after the Space Shuttle Orbiter Challenger was destroyed as it ascended to orbit, I was assigned by the temp agency I was using at the time to begin work on the Space Shuttle Main Engine team at Rockwell International’s Rocketdyne Division in Woodland Hills, CA.

Prior to that fateful date I had, with one exception, never worked at a company with more than a dozen employees. My family’s wholesale food business, at its peak, was only my father, brother, me, and one employee and most of the numerous jobs I had held over the previous 20 years or so were similarly small.

Rocketdyne employed several thousand people, most of whom labored at our campuses in Woodland Hills and Canoga Park, CA. It was a division of Rockwell International, which employed over 100,000 people world-wide. It was a jarring transition to go from small (really small) businesses to a multi-national aerospace conglomerate. However, having been somewhat of a space-cadet, i.e. enthusiast most of my life, I was thrilled with the opportunity.

A year later on 1 February 1988, I was hired to work in Engineering Computing on the Flight Ops team – a position I would not have dared to dream of filling. Nevertheless, there I was helping our nation’s space program get back on track. It was truly a dream come true.

At the same time, I was becoming aware of the unique way in which large organizations conduct themselves. Some of it wasn’t pretty. I first encountered the business philosophy of W. Edwards Deming soon after I was officially hired as I was lucky enough to have a colleague who was a student of his. Deming had written a book (he wrote many) in which he laid out a fourteen-point explication of his concept of TQM (Total Quality Management).

I was enamored of his positions, as they coincided with my growing understanding how things worked in virtually any organization. I had long been someone who looked for and found ways in which to improve the processes and procedures of any organization I was involved with, and Deming’s philosophy made a great deal of sense to me.

At the same time, I was becoming increasingly aware of the reality that many companies, including Rocketdyne, were honoring those principles in their breach, not their adherence to them. As I was studying Deming’s 14 points I began to realize just how thoroughly many of the managers I encountered were oblivious to the virtues Deming laid out.

Somewhere around 1990 I decided to see if I could capture the differences between what Deming offered and how Rocketdyne was actually doing things. I captured Deming’s 14 points and then created Rocketdyne’s 14 counterpoints. I’ve kept them over the years and am here sharing my understanding with two screenshots of those differing points of view. Please keep in mind not all managers were as controlling as the worst of them. I was lucky to work under the supervision of several truly wonderful managers in my nearly quarter century of employment there. Regardless, I think my analysis was reasonable, even after over 34 years. You?

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27 December 2023

More Than 2 Dozen Jobs!

By Rick Ladd

In my 76 years on this planet, I’ve worked no less than 2 doz jobs, ranging from short order cook, busboy, waiter, restaurant manager, truck driver, forklift driver, butcher, jewelry bench worker, and wiener clerk, to legal secretary, project manager, knowledge manager, and business manager.

I retired from Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, where I worked on the Space Shuttle Main Engine program for nearly a quarter century and I am neither an engineer nor a scientist. Now … in a desire to get out of the house and make a little money, I am beginning a job working as a clerk in a liquor/convenience store. It’s low pay, low stress, and part time (26 hours/week).

My experience runs the gamut from highly physical work to entirely knowledge/mental work. If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that there’s no such thing as a menial job. There is dignity and sanity in working at virtually any job. I know this one won’t tax my intellect, but I’m looking forward to it.

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29 June 2023

A Different Kind of Foodie

By Rick Ladd

Like many a young American, my very first job, that is the first one I got paid for, was at a McDonald’s in Arleta, CA. I was sixteen years old and had just earned my driver’s license. This was in the Summer of 1963 and my father had bought me a used ’57 Chevy – my dream car. On my first day I did nothing but make milkshakes. On the second day I bagged french fries. Then the manager discovered I knew how to work the cash register and to make change, a skill I learned in Junior High when I worked in the student store. From then on I worked the window, taking and fulfilling orders. I had nightmares involving endless lines of people who ate every meal there (at least lunch and dinner; McDonald’s didn’t serve breakfast in 1963) every day. These dreams were based, in part, on the fact there were several customers who did eat there every day. It was a frightening thought.

My second job was as a bus boy at Pancake Heaven, which no longer exists but was just around the corner from the McDonald’s I cut my working teeth on. I eventually became a fry cook there for a while and learned how to make breakfasts, for the most part. At least, that’s all I can barely remember. Actually, one specific skill I recall learning was how to hide mistakes with garnish; a slice of orange or a sprig of parsley. I also worked at Mike’s Pizza on Van Nuys Blvd. for a while. The only thing I remember about that job was sneaking out a bottle of Chianti in a trash can filled with the sawdust I was responsible for changing out every few days so the floors were reasonably clean.

The Summer before I graduated High School, which was actually the Summer after I should have graduated High School, I worked as a “bus boy” at Pacific Ocean Park (POP). My job was to walk around the pier on which the park was built and scoop trash into one of those self-opening dust pans and empty it into one of the larger trash bins that were placed all over the “park”. It actually had nothing to do with food or food service, other than that most of the trash was created by people who had purchased something to eat and were too damned lazy to deposit the trash in a receptacle themselves.

I didn’t work in or around food service again until 1973, when I tended bar at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles, where I was raising money for my upcoming trip to Cuba with the 6th contingent of the Venceremos Brigade. I had studied Hapkido with Ed Pearl, the owner of the club. It was a favorite target for anti-Castro Cubans and was burned down for the third and final time shortly after I worked there. I don’t think we had a liquor license; only a beer and wine license, so tending bar wasn’t quite as intellectually challenging as it would have been had I been required to remember dozens of mixed drinks, but it was a busy venue and I enjoyed my time there.

Shortly after returning from Cuba, in my first year of law school, I secured a position as a “wiener clerk” at The Wiener Factory in Sherman Oaks, CA, where I served up the finest hot dogs, knackwurst, and polish sausage to ever cross a taste bud. Even though they closed on December 31, 2007 (>15 years ago) it’s still talked about as the top example of how a hot dog should be presented to the discriminating public. I loved it there. PS – Click on the link and you might find my posthumous review of the place, which I posted almost 13 years ago.

I didn’t work in food service again until sometime in the mid-nineties. I had left my job at Rocketdyne to rejoin my brother in a family wholesale food/restaurant supply business our father had started when I was 13. After less than two years it wasn’t going well and I decided to leave and fend for myself. One of my customers was Les Sisters Southern Kitchen in Chatsworth, CA. The owner at the time, Kevin Huling, was working his butt off and wanted to be able to take a day off during the week. I offered to run the place for him on Wednesdays and, until I returned to Rocketdyne, I managed the restaurant once a week. My favorite day was when I had to wait on tables. I made quite a bit more money than I did from just managing the place (hint: tips!).

In addition to all these jobs, my father was working at the Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles when I was born. He worked at Faber’s Ham Shop, which was a stand in the market that sold lunch meats and fresh chickens. He liked to refer to himself as a butcher, but my birth certificate lists his occupation as “Food Clerk”. I remember my mother taking me shopping there when I was about five years old. We took Pacific Electric’s Red Car on the Red Line that stretched from San Fernando, running right through Panorama City, where we lived, to downtown L.A. My father put me in a far-too-large, white butcher’s coat, and put a Farmer John paper campaign hat on my head, stood me on a milk crate and had me selling lunch meat for an hour or so. I learned my first three words of Spanish behind that counter, which were “¿Que va llevar?” literally “what are you going to carry?”, but was more loosely translated as “what’ll you have?” or “what can I get for you?”

Later on, specifically right after I handed over every check I received for a Bar Mitzvah gift to my father so he could buy a truck, he went out on his own. He became the broken wienie king of Los Angeles, buying (essentially) mistakes from packing houses and selling them to his old boss, as well as to other small markets scattered throughout the greater Los Angeles area. Until his death in 1984, I spent virtually every school holiday being his “swamper” on his route or—later on—delivering and selling on my own as part of the business. Somewhere around 1994 I left my job at Rocketdyne to rejoin my brother in the family business, once again selling almost exclusively to restaurants.

My point is, I have no formal training in the culinary arts, but during a rather large portion of my life until I was around 50, I spent quite a bit of time working in jobs and being in businesses that involved food; at times merely delivering it and at other times preparing and serving it. I know my way around a kitchen and I know quite well how to operate a successful food business. It’s not easy. People can be real assholes when they’re hungry, and people who cook can be real prima donnas, so learning to satisfy your customers can be a painful experience. It is, however, quite rewarding when it works out. I think you have to genuinely like people in order to do it well.

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28 June 2023

Bass Ackward EVM

By Rick Ladd

Has anyone else noticed how the majority of illustrations depicting Earned Value Management methodology show projects over budget and behind schedule? Why the pessimism? I know it’s frequently how things work out, but why do we put up with what amounts to continuous failure improvement? Why don’t we – since we’re only depicting how measurements and calculations are made – show the positive side, e.g. under-spent and ahead of schedule?

It seems like it would make a difference if, rather than presenting failure in the abstract, we presented success in the abstract. Isn’t it better to be going in with a success-oriented mindset, tempered with a good dose of reality? Of course, this presupposes situations where we’re not driven by the dynamics to be overly optimistic and unrealistic at the front end of a project in order to win a bid or compete with others, especially in large programs/projects. A tall order methinks.

Earned Value Management chart example.
Behind Schedule & Over Budget!

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18 May 2023

Gratitude

By Rick Ladd

I had my job interview the other day. Now that it’s completed and I wait for them to conduct a couple more interviews, I’m thankful for several things:

1. I still remember how to tie a four-in-hand knot, though I haven’t worn a tie in years;

2. Despite wearing zoris and sneakers for some time, my feet still fit comfortably in my dress shoes;

3. My brain remains agile and capable of fielding questions with ease;

4. I retain the knowledge, if not all of the skills, of every one of the dozens of jobs I had during the more than two decades in which I worked before joining Rocketdyne at 39;

5. I’ve kept my ability to use Excel all these years. I actually started with VisiCalc in the early 80s;

6. If I don’t get this job it won’t in any way diminish my self esteem.

I am, if nothing else, persistent.

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16 May 2023

Don’t Call Me a Guru, Dammit!

By Rick Ladd

NB: I published this article sometime in 2010, around the time I accepted an early severance package from Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and retired. It was published using WordPress’s old classic editor and didn’t render well any longer, so I’ve upgraded it to their current block editor format. This should explain why the date associated with it is May 16, 2023.

This article is a few years old, but there’s so much good stuff in here I’m thinking I should post it every other week for the rest of my life. Seriously, with all the talk lately about how you need to be careful of people who hold themselves out as Social Media Experts, Russ’s words are even more impactful.

This October Russ will have been gone for a year. I’m willing to bet I speak for a lot of people when I say he is sorely missed. He is surely not forgotten. Read the whole article; then get the book f-Laws.

Update (Thanksgiving, 2013) This post was originally published from www.telegraph.co.uk using Amplify, a curation service that no longer exists. Below is the excerpt as Amplify prepared it.

Anti-guru of joined-up management

Published: 12:01AM GMT 08 Feb 2007

My Last Visit With Russ
I was fortunate to spend Russell’s 90th birthday with him in Philly, I took this photo when Bill Bellows and I had dinner with Russell and his wife, Helen

If you were asked to picture what a management guru should look and sound like, you might come up with a description of someone very like Russ Ackoff. Grey-haired, distinguished, softly spoken, Ackoff fits the bill. And also, since he turns 88 on Monday, he can claim the benefit of wisdom earned over the course of six decades studying and working with businesses and organisations.

Except, of course, that “guru” is not a label that Ackoff is keen to accept.

“A guru produces disciples, and a discipline, and a doctrine,” he says. “If you are a follower of a guru, you don’t go beyond his thoughts, you accept his thoughts. He gives you the questions and the answers – it’s an end to thought. An educator is exactly the opposite,” he says. “You take off where he sets you up for the next set of questions. One is open-ended, the other is closed. Most consultants are gurus. They are ‘experts’, not educators.”

So please don’t refer to Ackoff’s body of work as gurudom and please don’t describe his work with clients as management consulting.

“We don’t call it consulting,” he states firmly. “We make a distinction between consulting and being an educator. A consultant goes in with a solution. He tries to impose it on a situation. An educator tries to train the people responsible for the work to work it out for themselves. We don’t pretend to know the way to get the answer.”

In his distaste for gurudom, Ackoff is of a mind with his old friend and colleague, the late Peter Drucker. Drucker famously once observed that the only reason people called him a guru was that they did not know how to spell the word “charlatan”.

“Peter Drucker made a great distinction between doing things right and doing the right thing,” Ackoff says. “All of our social problems arise out of doing the wrong thing righter. The more efficient you are at doing the wrong thing, the wronger you become. It is much better to do the right thing wronger than the wrong thing righter! If you do the right thing wrong and correct it, you get better.”

Read more at www.telegraph.co.uk (I don’t believe you can see the entire article without accepting a “free” monthly subscription, which you will have to cancel if you don’t want to be charged.)

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14 May 2023

Stepping Off The Deep End

By Rick Ladd

I’ve got a job interview tomorrow, less than three weeks before my 76th birthday. I’m not old; I’m experienced, I’m seasoned, I’m tested. I know I’m at an age where, even if I don’t look as old as I am, I still look old and, in my experience, ageism is a very real thing. This position is in aerospace, which I’ve found to be more accepting, but the proof is in the pudding, as us old farts like to say. 😉

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2 May 2023

Memories

By Rick Ladd

This month will be 13 years since I retired from Rocketdyne. At the time it was owned by United Technologies’ Pratt & Whitney division. When I first joined the organization in 1987 the mother ship was Rockwell International. Later it was sold to The Boeing Co. It is currently owned by Aerojet, but negotiations are continuing to complete its sale to L3Harris.

Throughout all these changes, which I have either experienced or watched somewhat closely from not too far, one thing has remained relatively constant. The quality of the people who work there. I believe I was privileged to work with some of the smartest, most competent people on the planet. After all, it WAS rocket science. To be more precise, Rocket Engine science.

Now, I’m neither an engineer, nor a scientist. I am not a machinist, technician, or mechanic. I had nothing to do with the actual design, manufacture, assembly, test, or flight of the rocket engines we manufactured and provided to NASA. Not directly, that is. An organization such as Rocketdyne cannot operate without ancillary functions to ensure lines of communication are robust and effective between and amongst each of the dozens of functions such an org needs and I am happy I was able to provide some of the skills and knowledge necessary to facilitate those connections.

When I left the company in May of 2010, I took home with me numerous mementos of my time there. These include printed editions of studies I played a major role in conducting, training materials for a tool I was the project manager for, internal awards I received, and other items that had some meaning for me. Today I once again came across this simple ticket. I’ve kept it all these years because it reminds me of one of my favorite people ever. Myrna Beth Thompson or, as we knew her, Beth.

She was one of the first people I met and became friends with when I joined the Program Office of the Space Shuttle Main Engine team. In an organization composed of very conservative people, she was another progressive I could relate to and she wasn’t shy about her beliefs. She was also kind, caring, empathetic, and always available to help anyone who needed it. Tragically, she died of a massive heart attack nine years ago this month.

The ticket is a prop from a class Beth championed and taught as part of our efforts to instill the concept of Systems Thinking into the heart of the organization for which we labored. It was based on Barry Oshry’s book, Seeing Systems: Unlocking the Mysteries of Organizational Life. If I recall correctly, one of the concepts taught was that of the Abilene Paradox or, as many people refer to it, The Road to Abilene. You can read about it here. It’s understanding, however, is ancillary to my reason for posting this.

Beth has been gone nearly a decade. I don’t think of her often, much as I don’t think of my father, mother, and others who have passed on. But I’ve kept this simple little ticket all these years because it reminds me of her and our friendship. I can’t bring myself to part with it. I’m pretty sure it will be one of those things my children will unceremoniously dump when I am gone. It has absolutely no intrinsic value any longer. Its value is entirely dependent on my memories and my life. I consider that extremely valuable.

PS – In case you’re wondering, SSME stands for Space Shuttle Main Engine (the program we both worked on for many years) and O.E. stands for Organizational Excellence, one of the numerous efforts we indulged in over the years to improve how we did business. They were often spectacularly unsuccessful, but that’s another story.

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