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Balance, it appears, is the new political incorrectness.

Unsubscribes peaked following last week’s satire that drew parallels between voter outrage and how bad bosses have treated people over the years. It was clear many would have had no problem with the subject matter had I validated their outrage instead.

Now don’t go away … this column is about you as a business leader, not matters of public policy. Honest. Stay with me.

The subject: How business leaders should interpret the news.

I just read a political commentary – a hobby of mine I should take more care to resist, but we all have our bad habits.

This commentator’s theme was the importance of showing politeness to those who are wrong about one thing or another and accepting them as friends regardless.

Which got me to thinking: Those who think there’s always a right position when they evaluate positions are wrong.

Mind you, I’m not talking only about those who think their view is always the right one. I’m talking about those who think there’s always a correct view at all.

What I think … and I’m pretty sure I’m right about this … is that there are some subjects that do have right positions. Call them “facts,” because there’s some objective way of knowing what’s correct about them.

Here, for example, is a fact: I’m writing this column using Microsoft Word on a Microsoft Surface Pro that’s running Windows 10.

This isn’t disputable, or shouldn’t be. In principle, should someone doubt the correctness of this statement I could defend it, up to and including inviting skeptics to inspect my office setup, something I would be willing to do, although I’m confident you’d find the sum I’d charge you utterly unreasonable.

There’s a second meaning for right vs wrong, which happens when two parties agree on the facts but not on their interpretation. For many of us, this is where fun happens. It’s where we discover disagreements that can be resolved, or where we have opportunities to deepen our thinking about a subject.

Then there’s the third domain – values. This is where a lot of us get into trouble, because when we disagree about values there’s no way to reconcile them. Values come from tribal membership, religious leadership, and, more often than not, Mom.

If you and I disagree about one of our values, the best we can do is to decide whether we (1) agree with the other’s position; (2) can respect the opposing position (that is, acknowledge that it’s potentially as valid as our own); (3) can tolerate it, which is to say we can peaceably coexist with those who hold it, even though we are quite sure they’re entirely wrong about it. That leaves one last alternative – (4) zero tolerance – that this town ain’t big enough for the two of us.

There are people whose values can’t be reconciled, even to the level of mere toleration. There’s no point in pretending otherwise, which is why exhortations to “do the right thing” are so entirely useless: My right thing is your wrong thing and vice versa.

To illustrate: a stereotypical Apple fanperson must disagree with my choice of computer, operating system, and word processor, and doesn’t respect it, either.

So long as they can tolerate it, though … and there’s no reason for to not tolerate it, as it doesn’t affect the Apple-ite in any substantial way … neither of us has anything to worry about.

If, though, for some unaccountable reason, the Apple-phile decides they can’t tolerate having any Windows users on the same hectare as themself, one of us is going to have to leave town, probably after an unpleasant demonstration of how much we disagree.

Bob’s last word: Wherever politics happen – our interactions with colleagues in a business setting, or arguments about where government is headed in social situations – we’d all be happier, and more congenial, if we kept most political dialog in the second domain, where we disagree about our interpretations of facts.

Regrettably, reliance on “alternative facts” as a means of persuasion is on the rise, while familiarity with epistemology is not.

Well, I think it isn’t, but that’s based only on my day-to-day experience, not on formal, fact-based sociological research. Oh, well.

Anyway, I have a hard time tolerating those who deliberately craft alternative facts, and almost as hard a time tolerating those who consider their values to be facts.

But those are my values. And as you’re (presumably) a long-time subscriber I’m confident we can respect, or at least tolerate, each other’s values.

If you’re among those who can’t tolerate mine, that’s what the unsubscribe link is for.

Bob’s sales pitch: Have I mentioned the KJR archives? They include everything I’ve published under the KJR banner and its predecessor, InfoWorld’s “IS Survival Guide.” If you need the KJR take on a subject, whether it’s out of curiosity or because you need a framework or perspective to address a current professional quandary, they’re free and you’re welcome to use whatever you find.

Although if you make extensive use of my material I would appreciate attribution.

Now on CIO.com:Bad metrics are worse than no metrics,” and especially why SMART goals just might be worse than no goals at all.

Fistfights sure have changed.

John Wayne only needed one good punch to win a fight, and he was able to take some time to set it up. Thirty years later we have Jackie Chan, who delivers as many as 10 punches (and other blows) per second.

Let’s do some metrics.

The Duke was the clear winner in productivity, achieving a UO-per-punch rate (Unconscious Opponent) of between 1:1 and 1:3 as compared with Chan’s rate of between 1:12 and 1:100. He wins when it comes to efficiency, too – our contender from Hong Kong burns far more calories per UO.

Effectiveness, though, is different from productivity and efficiency. In hand-to-hand combat with a dozen simultaneous opponents, the Duke would have been overwhelmed, while Jackie Chan regularly emerges victorious from duodecimal combatant situations.

Business competition in the Duke’s day looked a lot like his fistfights – fairly slow, deliberate, each move carefully calculated. Today it’s more like Jackie Chan – speed rules.

We all know this. We’ve heard about the acceleration of business cycles until we’re tired of hearing about it. “Internet time” is yesterday’s cliche.

Two other trends — molecularization and service/cost convergence — aren’t yet cliches. Molecularization is the growing need to customize marketing, service, and product delivery — in other words, every interaction — to each individual customer. Service/cost convergence means that customers no longer accept the classic trade-off between quality of service and product price. Combine these two trends with time compression, and every measure of effectiveness changes.

In the old days, companies worried most about measures such as capital utilization ratios, manufacturing output, and defect rates. Their goal was to produce the most products with the fewest defects using the least equipment.

What matters more and more are customer-focused measures such as product utilization (number of products owned per customer), customer loyalty (the likelihood of a customer patronizing your company first), and customer affinity (a customer’s emotional attachment to your company). Other measures, such as shipping service levels — the delay between receiving an order and shipping the product – are equally important.

While the Internet is the most visible driver of this dramatic change in business, the reality is that call centers are still more important in improving these new measures of success.

For companies to succeed in this new world, information technology must permeate every process and activity. It’s possible to “pop” customer information, such as recent purchases and the 10 most recent customer interactions, on the screen of any employee interacting with a customer automatically at the start of any call — inbound or outbound. It’s possible, and your chief marketing officer knows it. When are you going to deliver the capability?

Unfortunately, many IS departments are still mired in the old business model, failing to understand that “late” is just as bad as “buggy” … perhaps worse … when judging the quality of software.

Why? Although some bugs are fatal, others are merely inconvenient. The business will still run while you track them down and fix them. Software you haven’t delivered yet is completely inferior.

It doesn’t run at all.

Correction:

Never confuse a spreadsheet with reality.

As evidence: A few weeks ago I discussed storage options for the 6 billion people now on earth. If you put us end-to-end, we’d only go around the world about 260 times, not the 2,600 times I claimed. I lost a decimal point due to bad parentheses. And a swimming pool big enough to hold all of humanity would have to be about 15 miles per side, not the quarter-mile I stated. One-quarter of a mile is the edge-length of a cube big enough to hold a “Homo sapiens puree.”

Thanks to all who wrote. And no, there’s no ironic tension between these mistakes and my suggestion that “fast” is more important than “bug-free.” These mistakes weren’t the result of haste — I made them quite slowly, in fact. I was just having a bad math day.