All Posts by Bob Lewis

|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

It’s the second half of December, a time when the world’s religions and traditions have conspired to celebrate themselves and, among the enlightened, the rest of our religions and traditions as well.

So whether it’s Hanukkah, St. Nick’s Day, Winter Solstice, Diwali, Christmas, Sir Isaac Newton’s birthday, Boxing Day, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Day, Perihelion, Isra & Mi’raj, or some other seasonal holiday you celebrate that I somehow managed to miss, I hope it’s happy.

In addition to sharing gifts, good spirits, and goodwill, there seems to be no seasonal abatement of the sharing of strongly held opinions. Nor has the reliably inverse relationship between being poorly informed and richly expressive diminished in the slightest.

As a strongly-held-opinionator myself, I occasionally wonder what motivates so many of us to insist on sharing our mostly redundant views about What’s Going On Out There, not to mention why. My tentative, introspective, non-research-based conclusion?

Start here: The universe has a radius of 45.6 billion light years. Each of us has a brain that’s roughly the size of a cantaloupe – about 0.00000000000000000000000000035th smaller, assuming I didn’t misplace a decimal place or three along the way.

Meanwhile, Earth is, as of this year, home to more than eight billion people. Each of us represents (this math is easy!) one eight billionth of the world’s population.

A mid-tier practitioner of the ghastly “Influencer” profession might have a million followers – 0.000125th of the world. I have far fewer, but probably more than you.

Which gets me to my theory of why we’re all surrounded by so much seemingly pointless opinion-sharing, which is:

We want to matter. In a universe so staggeringly large, and a planet so heavily populated, and with so many other people competing for attention, it’s hard to feel important.

And so, failing to feel important, it’s easy to fall into the trap of self-importance, if for no other reason than to avoid the even worse trap of nihilistic despair.

In his Devil’s Dictionary, the estimable Ambrose Bierce defined egotist as A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

Those who engage in tiresome opinion-sharing are, according to Bierce, egotists. But much as I admire Bierce’s perceptive analysis (and lexicography), I think it’s more accurate to view those of us who compulsively share our perspectives about life, the universe, and everything as wanting to matter and not knowing any other way to accomplish it.

Perhaps because I’m guilty of misdemeanor excessive opinion sharing too, I can empathize with the desire to matter. But what matters more than wanting to matter are the decisions each of us makes as to whom we matter to, and how.

So perhaps we should celebrate this as the season we each reflect on to whom we each matter, and how, and to be grateful for the mattering.

In my case, in addition to my wife, family, and friends I’m lucky enough to count the KJR community among those I matter to. I’m grateful for the privilege, and for the occasions on which members of the community share their thinking with me.

And so, as 2022 lurches to its finish line, let me close it out with this strongly held opinion: I’m grateful for your time and attention.

Okay, strictly speaking that isn’t an opinion. So sue me.

Meanwhile, just let me say thank you!

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I’ll be taking a break until 2023 rolls around. In between now and then, enjoy everything the season has to offer.

See you in a few weeks.

# # #

And as long as I have your attention, you might also enjoy this month’s CIO Survival Guide on CIO.com, “A CIO’s gift guide for IT and business colleagues.”

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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

It’s been a busy week – too busy to concentrate enough time and attention to write anything worth reading.

Fortunately enough, ten years ago I wrote what follows – about how my bank ticked me off and how your company could easily turn into a similar perpetrator without anyone even realizing what a succession of what seemed like reasonable decisions when they’re taken one at a time.

It’s another example of the “third axle alternative” at work. I hope you enjoy it.

– Bob

# # #

The Third Axle Alternative is alive and well.

The third axle alternative, in case you don’t recall it, is deciding to weld a third axle onto your car when a nail punctures one of your tires, instead of fixing the flat.

Before we get to why it’s important to you, let me take a few moments to talk about me, and a bank that’s working hard to lose my business.

When I opened IT Catalysts, I worked with the bank that already took care of my personal checking, my wife’s personal checking, and our household checking, all of which were free checking accounts … excuse me, they were FREE! Checking Accounts as I recall how they were advertised at the time.

So were my two business checking accounts (one for IT Catalysts, one for IS Survivor Publishing).

For convenience, I had the same bank provide my business Visa card. A few years later I switched my personal Visa card to the bank as well.

And then the service charges started to appear.

On every single checking account.

I called customer service, explained that my idea of FREE! Checking isn’t compatible with paying service charges, and asked what had changed.

What had changed, it turns out, was that the bank had redefined the types of checking account it offers, along with the conditions necessary to maintain FREE!-dom. Long story slightly less long: The bank couldn’t stop the service charges, but it could automatically refund them right after it charged them, welding on another axle as it did so.

The fix lasted a year, at which point the service charges reappeared. Another call to customer service; another discovery that the terms had changed. For my business accounts, this meant:

  1. Switching to a different class of checking account.
  2. Opening two business savings accounts.
  3. Transferring $150 from each business account to one of the savings accounts on the first day of each month.
  4. Transferring $150 back from the savings accounts to the checking accounts on the third day of each month.
  5. Sticking my left pinkie in my right ear.
  6. Pushing my left foot in and my left foot out, pushing my left foot back in and then waving it all about.

We didn’t long ago switch banks for two reasons. The first is our suspicion that all the rest are just like the one we’re already working with. The second is the inconvenience of switching all of our accounts, automatic payments, and so on, to a different financial institution.

Why am I telling you this? To vent, of course.

But also as a cautionary tale.

Unencumbered by facts, I can nonetheless make a pretty good guess that the Third Axle Alternative is at work. It matters to you as an IT leader.

But first, back to me and my venting. Here’s what I think happened: FREE! Checking sounded like a terrific idea to the banking executives when money was plentiful and there was more competition. And so they offered it. Then, with banking consolidation eliminating competitors and an ongoing need to grow profits, the bank decided to use the lure of free (as opposed to FREE!) checking as an upselling tool — customers could still get their checking at no charge, but only if they were good customers — the kind that buy several products and services.

Instead of figuring out products customers actually want — fixing its metaphorical flat — my bank created a set of artificial financial upselling incentives, built around an ever-more complex collection of bank-account types — a third axle.

(What banking customers actually want: I’m pretty sure most of us want no choice at all with respect to our bank accounts. We want one type — one where we can put money in when we have it, take money out when we need it, and send money from it to someone else when the situation calls for it. As the bank already makes money by loaning out depositors’ money, and more on float when we use on-line banking to pay someone … we figure the bank makes a profit without charging us an additional fee.)

Anyway, instead of ending up with more-profitable customers, my bank ended up with the $150 back-and-forth transfer — a fourth axle developed by bank staff as a way to placate customers like me who were irritated by the third axle.

Brilliant!

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