Gamified Labor 'On The Clock'

My Own Pace

In June of 1991 I began my career as a rural letter carrier, working for the Post Office.

And what a lucky break that was.

Why lucky?  Rural carriers (as opposed to city carriers) are paid a daily salary based on the difficulty of their route.  Routes are periodically evaluated to determine how many boxes and miles are involved, and how much mail carried.  Mileage, boxes and quantities of various kinds of mail are fed into a spreadsheet that generates an expected number of hours a day.  But whether rural carriers take more or less time to deliver on a given day, they're paid for that evaluation.  Which means that work can become a game, with efficiency king.

What do I mean by efficiency?   Work is not recreation.  It is not what we would choose to do if we weren't being paid to do it.  So, the mind's natural reaction is to imagine ways to minimize work.  This is being efficient.  The unnatural reaction most work pushes us towards involves doing the least amount of actual work in the greatest amount of time; being inefficient.

We all know the psychology involved in being inefficient.  If waiting in the doctor's office, for example, the desire for time to pass is greater than the delight in exploring the present.  Work is similar.  If paid by the hour, there's no natural incentive to minimize work.  In fact, if our workload is increased when we're more productive, efficiency actually works against us.  Likewise, if paid by the hour to do a specific task, like fix a sink or toilet, the 'natural' reaction is to prolong the task.  Which means that because most people are honorable, they're constantly fighting the headwind of their own self-interest.

Placed in this context, a rural carrier's evaluated pay system, since it harmonizes the interests of worker and management, is wonderful indeed.   But there's more!   I've found that as a worker on the lookout for efficiencies I learn to be awake to opportunity, and this rubs off on home life, and some might say, on personality in general.  And this, in turn, allows us as humans, potentially, to progress.  When we're generally more aware and conscious of the choices we make, we all benefit.

If we can find a way to use 'evaluated' pay in other lines of employment, then, the game is afoot.

All of us have likely been in a Post Office, have stood in line, and been waited on by a postal clerk.  And most of the time we're likely too busy with our own experience to imagine what it's like to work behind the counter.  But for a moment, let's stand in a clerk's shoes and pretend that each transaction we complete, whether it's selling stamps, mailing a package or answering a question, is automatically recorded electronically.  Our 'transactions total' for the day is then compared to an evaluation based on engineered time studies that determine how long a particular duty takes.  If we complete 100% or less of our evaluation, there's no effect on our paycheck.  Anything over 100%, however, is added to paid vacation, which we use at a later date at our discretion.

We're motivated!  If we keep customers moving through the waiting line by seeking out efficiencies, we win.

Yeah, but what about the quality of our work?  Wouldn't we naturally want to rush customers through and treat them as mere figures on a flowchart?  Not if our evaluation included the quality, as well as the quantity of our work.  Mystery shoppers, who evaluate the postal window experience, have long been used by postal management to keep track of work quality.

And how does management benefit?  Simple, because many attempts by clerks to reach the 100+% zone would abandon 80 and 90% for 90 and 100%.  Plus, fewer hours are needed, if eight clerks can do the work of nine.

Would this work for other lines of employment that don't have a computerized record of every transaction?  Maybe.  It certainly could work for individual post offices, many of which are currently micro-managed from above.

Examples of management bloat in modern bureaucracy are not hard to come by.  Top-down yes-sir toadying is the bane of effective operations.  The antidote is localized decision-making.  And in an age of computerized analysis, where all statistics, including the mighty bottom line, are at a manager's fingertips, it should be a simple matter of setting guidelines, and progressively elevated expectations, then getting out of the way.  For the US Postal Service, this could mean that an individual postmaster who improves, overall, on a mix of performance measures is given greater autonomy.

This wouldn't be a namby-pamby lack of supervision (fewer periodic 'inspections'), but rather, things like allowing unions to self-regulate (keeping office-wide statistical records that are used to reform and reward); small-bore, but significant revenue sharing (bonuses for consistent improvement); and dramatic media --> community outreach (maybe contests to earmark a share of bonuses to charity and so encourage the use of post office products).

For all its attractions, the gamification of labor will likely take a while to catch on, so the more likely, early adopters, will probably have to convince the otherwise skeptical by example.  The Postal Service with its intense, internal record-keeping seems a likely place to start.

Where'd He Get That 'Cool'

My Kennedy Listicle

On this, the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination, I jot down a list to answer the question: "Where'd he get that 'cool":

1. As a wealthy man from a prominent family he had those 'high hopes' upon which ambition feeds.
2. His wife, Jacqueline.  She had a serious, classically trained mind that must have challenged him to greatness.
3. He read and studied history.
4. The experience of war would be enough to remove any uncertainty of character resulting from his privileged background.
5. He was, for the most part, successful, politically.
6. His extramarital affairs, though they point to his downfall, meant that he thoroughly experienced life.
7. All the cool kids were Democrats when his time came.  Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and then Adlai Stevenson led the way.  His elite Harvard education meant he was a player.
8. In his final years he took many drugs, some of which would have had psychoactive effects.  Which leads us to:
9. His health was terrible (very bad back, serious adrenal disease), but he was able to rise above the pain.  How could this not have been a source of strength?
10. Compared to what?  To the white bread banality of Nixon and Eisenhower.
11. His secret that he probably kept to himself: he didn't fear death.  

Presidential Aplomb

US Presidents -- From Forty To One

First, let's acknowledge the obvious: being president can't be easy.

Second, while it may be impossible to adequately know the historical constraints presidents face (foolish political allies, a hostile congress, belligerence overseas, prior catastrophes), a close enough approximation is possible.

Third, I'll be adjusting this ranking as I learn more about each man.

And fourth, I'm not considering presidents who died soon after taking office: W.H.Harrison, Taylor and Garfield.  And, of course, Cleveland's two non-consecutive terms are counted only once.

You may wonder what criteria I'm using to judge.  Well, Alex Voltaire has a good round-up.  One additional thing I will say is that as a progressive, I see being a slave owner or having imperialistic tendencies, to cite two examples, as more and more serious faults as time goes on.  While Washington was a slave owner, Tyler's slave owning came many decades later.  Likewise, Eisenhower and LBJ, not to mention Bush II, are marked down much more for overseas overreach, compared to a president like Polk.  In a similar vein, Grant is credited with surprisingly early attempts at social justice.

Washington - 5

Adams - 8                      

Jefferson - 10

Madison - 25                   

Monroe - 21         

JQA - 17                 

Jackson - 34            

Van Buren - 33       

Tyler - 28

Polk - 27

Fillmore - 30           

Pierce - 36

Buchanan - 39

Lincoln - 1

Johnson - 38

Grant - 7                 

Hayes - 19              

Arthur - 23                

Cleveland - 14       

Harrison - 31           

McKinley - 16

T. Roosevelt - 4

Taft - 15                   

Wilson - 18                         

Harding - 26           

Coolidge - 32         

Hoover - 22             

FDR - 2

Truman - 9              

Eisenhower - 20     

Kennedy - 6                           

LBJ - 11                           

Nixon - 37

Ford - 29                                

Carter - 13                

Reagan - 33            

Bush I - 24               

Clinton - 12              

Bush II - 40

Obama - 3
Trump -41     

Many rankings have Truman at #7 to #9, Buchanan near the bottom and Lincoln, FDR & TR at the top.  These presidents need no introduction to their ranking slot.  I will say a few words, however, about some of the more unusual rungs on the ladder:

#25: Madison: His presidency would likely have been much more successful if it hadn't been for the war of 1812, but by his own hand he had helped do away with national economic and military power (central bank, standing army) only to find the nation sliding into war.  D'oh!

#18: Cleveland: I'm giving Cleveland a pass on the economic stink in his 2nd term; this, since economic theory had yet to blossom (the Federal Reserve, monetary stimulus to fight recession) and it can be argued he inherited a mess from Benjamin Harrison.

#26: Harding: The scandals in his administration that are often cited when placing him in the dungeon did not implicate him, personally. 

#6: Kennedy: This is a rather high rating compared to most experts.  I think it deserved due to Kennedy's inspiring charisma alone, and the fact that much of his agenda was stalled in Congress.  Reckless in his personal sphere? Sure, but at the time not so far outside the norm.  And indications are that he was heading in the right direction in the final year or so of his life, both as regards policy and in his personal life.

#3: Obama: Here's the shocker, since as I write this (November, '13) Obama's legacy looks mighty bleak.  My bold predicition is that 'Bama's legacy will feature five major turnarounds: economy, war overseas, healthcare, the environment and higher education.  Each well underway by '17 when he leaves office.

Another couple mentions are in order: both Jackson and Reagan are placed in the low 30s zone (34 and 33), despite poor, high 30s performances.  This is because they presented a commanding presence that, rightly or wrongly, added to the country's stock of confidence.  Likewise, the records of presidents like Coolidge, Nixon, Ford, and Bush I are weighed down by their lack of gravitas.  In the case of Nixon, perhaps what we see is a feigned gravitas accompanied by the shaking of jowls.  Bush II could be added in here, except that I find no 'up' side to be weighed down. 

One last point about ranking.  What judging is all about is determining whether there is any slack between what's possible for a president to accomplish and what he / she actually accomplishes given the times lived in.  Clinton, for example, couldn't have passed most of the major progressive legislation that Obama enacted.  Did he need to 'triangulate', though, that much, separating himself from his own party?  Probably not, though this is debatable, since the U.S. population wasn't nearly as blue, demographically, then as today.  Likewise, was Wilson's backslide segregation of Washington DC, etc., something he had to do to garner votes from his native South and so pass his ambitious agenda?

Also, am I being too partisan?  My Democratic presidents look a lot livelier than do my Republicans of the past 100 years.  Hey, sorry, that's not my problem.  Essentially, Wilson grabbed the populist, progressive agenda from Teddy Roosevelt's Republicans, FDR and Truman spelled out the specifics, and the Democrats have been the more progressive party ever since, with perhaps Hoover, Ike, Nixon, and Bush I each bridging some of that gap.

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Update: Presidents Day  --  2/19/18   ----     #41 -- Trump 
Okay, he's had a year and a month to show us he can't do any better than 'worst ever'. 

Nobody thought it would be this bad.  I can't think of a single thing President Trump hasn't managed to make worse--dramatically worse in most cases.

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Also, here's an interesting ranking of presidents based on their health.  Obviously, it's hard to know much about our earliest leaders, but this list does a good job with what we know.