Corporations (3/3)

FRENCH AIRPORTS SHOULD USE THE SERVICES OFFERED BY ARCHITECTURAL AND DESIGN FIRMS TRAINED IN APPLE AND GOOGLE METHODS
It had been a while since I travelled by plane, and I had not had the opportunity of a first-hand look at French airports, hence realizing the extent to which they are halfway between a crypt and a labyrinth! Only the initiated, the regulars, the local people can actually find their way easily and directly.
Airports have many attributes: they should offer cleanliness (particularly in the toilets), the opportunity to rest on sofas (or even paid for hotel-boxes for a few hours in transit), to eat in a range of eateries (from fast-food outlets to a one-star restaurant), and to buy products representative of the country (in France, these would include clothing, perfume, cosmetics, gastronomy, etc.). A key requirement is also to enable travelers to find their way very easily (that would involve putting oneself in the shoes of foreigners who do not speak our language and sometimes do not recognize our script – hence offering them automated translation kiosks) and very quickly (for rapid connections). I suggest, among others, color-coded floor markings, alphabetic placing of airlines, ensuring that hanging signs are visible from everywhere and follow a continuous route.

Finally, airports ought to borrow, or rent at reasonable rates, works of art from the national museums, and regularly renew the collections; the goal would be to make airports an exhibition site, in partnership with museums. Murals ought to be regularly renewed as well (frescos, pieces with different textures, patterns inspired from street art or learned paintings). As for the tiled floors, they should be easy to clean and robust; current fashion seems to favor large, charcoal grey tiles. If possible, ceilings ought to be high to prevent feelings of confinement. In short, I am no architect, but good ideas can be found in museums, magazines, or by asking professionals; it just takes effort and passion. Don’t tell me that the issue is one of investment budget: returns will flow in when prestige and national culture are back in our airports as in all our French industrial developments and services.

OFFERING A 0% RATE STUDENT LOAN
I encourage all banks to offer a civic student loan at 0% rate, based on the general idea of “You are committed to your studies? We’re rewarding you by offering you a loan at 0% interest rate.”
In addition to offering civil society a well deserved civic contribution, banks would recoup their investment by gaining the loyalty of new clients.

DISSEMINATING TECHNICAL SALES BOOKS AMONG MANAGERS/ ENTREPRENEURS
I suggest disseminating technical sales books among managers and entrepreneurs, whether they have scientific and technical training or not, so they may find new markets by understanding technical basics. It would enable them to gain an insight into commercial potential and technical complexity while remaining on a relatively superficial scientific level. That’s what commercial schools use them for.
Example: SMARTGRIDS (smart electrical networks) EGEM Hermes Lavoisier

INVESTING IN VSEs AND ARTISANS/CRAFTSMEN
If you have small savings, say of several tens of thousands of Euros, think about investing in VSEs (very small enterprises) and proximity artisans – those people who work well, long, and hard. For an investment of a few thousand Euros, they may be willing to give you shares in their enterprise, without voting rights, to be free to develop their business; in return, either your shares go up or you receive an annual share of the profits.
As far as the technological start-ups are concerned, those investments can, indeed, be highly profitable, but they are rather reserved for the professionals in a technical sector.
In other words, do not let your money sit idle in a bank account, blindly accepting your financial adviser’s words. A comfortable nest egg in life insurance policies is more than enough. It’s also best to give up on shares in the large enterprises: you’d be part of a tiny minority, not really able to assess the strategies of the groups, let alone to influence them.

ESSENTIAL ERGONOMICS FOR ELECTRONIC DEVICES
Electronic devices need to be quick and simple to use (also in case of emergency, security issues), reliable, robust, proven, compatible with different successive and parallel versions and ranges, with simple ergonomics, usable by the targeted public (in particular the general public), quality, fast, high performing, powerful, easy to learn at the beginning. Otherwise, commercial failure is certain.
For instance, Apple currently offers a large range of electronic devices (computers, tablets, mobile phones, fixed line telephones, TV sets, music distributors + editing, software, etc.). Yet, Apple’s ergonomics is still not fully accessible to the general public regarding its operating system, which is nevertheless highly reliable.
If Apple were to enter into a strategic partnership with Google, which also knows all about innovation (a simple and highly efficient Internet search engine – their flagship product-, a wide range of derived software products, utilizing innovating start-ups, etc.), we would now have one of the most successful industrial development in the world today.
NB: I’m also interested in the promising developments of the Windows operating system ergonomics for computers, tablets, and mobile phones.

SMOKE DETECTORS
Home security is an issue that worries families.

Current electronic sensors and telematics have made possible the following solution, based on the services of a private surveillance company connected to the fire brigade and the SAMU (emergency medical services):
- Against fraudulent intrusions, radar and infrared alarms trigger optic cameras and robots.
- For medical conditions, there are smart smoke sensors (that can analyze the type of particles being released, their quantity, the flow increase, the time of day, the presence of human beings, etc.) Wi-Fi-linked to the internal alarm connected to the private surveillance company or connected to the fire brigade via GSM card.
- To prevent swimming-pool drownings, a swimming-pool sonar triggers a sound alarm and under water cameras, also GSM-connected to the fire brigade/SAMU and/or to the private surveillance company and all the family members’ telephones.
- For car accidents, the airbag is set off simultaneously with the GPS tracker that sends coordinates via GSM to the fire brigade and is connected to external and internal cameras that permit assessment of the situation.
- For accidents involving small, private aircrafts, boats, and the railways, a GPS+GSM tracker is used.

DIY STORES
In order to widen the clientele of DIY stores, hence their turnover and profits, I suggest a vertical extension of the services on offer:
- Selling tools and products placed in three color-coded categories (cheap, best value for money, high-quality)
- Training people to use the tools
- Connecting people to architectural firms
- Selling magazines and books regarding decoration and architecture (interior, exterior, garden design)
- Connecting people to entrepreneur artisans, vouched for by the local store, depending on the level of the services needed (hence their cost) by the clients
- Entering into partnership with furniture stores in the area (the stores are classified in terms of various criteria such as modern/rustic style and price range) for furniture repairs needs, for example.
- And even more services to be created!

COOKERY RECIPES
A publisher should produce a collection of recipes according to skill level (beginner, easy, intermediate, expert) with a DVD + Internet + CD-Rom (“serious game” training).
Contents would include: ingredients (photos showing them on stalks and in the open-air markets /shops, how to choose the right product, seasonal and regional prices over the last 3 years), filming and commenting on the preparation, with several chefs’ variants, showing the presentation being served and on the plate, promotional vouchers for tasting the dish in a restaurant, options for a live lesson (Internet-based interactive lesson or with a chef).

OPTIMUM SALARY POLICY
Until recently, I favored limiting from the top the remuneration of a company’s employees and managers, according to the principle that people have only one stomach to fill, and consequently do not need huge, even unlimited, remuneration. The problem with this type of reasoning is that eventually it can lead to downward leveling, the “tall poppy syndrome” form of egalitarianism, which is ultimately demotivating for the “locomotives” of the company. A value hierarchy of individual performance would cease to exist. That would be wrong: everything is not equivalent to everything else. We need a set of values that is just, understood, and accepted and monitoring mechanisms over time.

Hence, I now advocate a monthly, fixed remuneration that meets the needs of families, is relatively egalitarian, and takes into account the “family-quotient system” (family-based taxation) + a variable remuneration that depends on the profits, is totally egalitarian for all the company members (it is best to choose a simple figure, e.g. 25%, of the variable remuneration) + an individualized portion depending on people’s performance and their contribution to the proper functioning of the company (this portion is not limited at the top but needs to be part of the total profit-based variable remuneration, e.g., in this case, 75% of the annual variable remuneration).

It is important to ensure that the variable portions that do not have an upper limit do not induce uncooperative, predatory, exclusionary behaviors; instead, this element should bring about healthy competition between services and staff members, ensure staff commitment, identify the best, reward the meritorious, and ensure the continued existence of the fundamentals of the company.
At the same time, the company leaders will take the responsibility for arbitrary measures, depending on the company strategies, regarding the focus placed on services from one year to the next. In concrete terms, to what extent should the short-term sales be favored over long-term research and development goals, product quality or shrewd management, etc.?

Inevitably, new unwanted behaviors will ensue from this mode of remuneration. The variable allowances should thus be reviewed every year, distinguishing between services and the annual individual performance. Time will be required to make all necessary adjustments to this new remuneration policy; I suggest that all stakeholders (upper management + unions for the managerial staff, workers, employees) should negotiate a 3-year experimental implementation period, after which the old remuneration system may be reverted back to or the new protocol kept.

GENETIC PREDISPOSITIONS: PREFERABLY FEMALE MANAGERS AND MALE SPECIALISTS
After thorough psychoanalysis and observation of male and female behaviors, I have reached the following rather surprising conclusion, which of course grants many exceptions so as not to lead to abuse or genetic totalitarianism: I truly believe that women make better managers/ decision makers, and men make better specialists/advisors/researchers.
My explanation relates to genetics and species adaptation.

Women are used to managing the day-to-day processes (the numerous and varied tasks require a memory favoring lists + diary and the rigorous time-bound execution of tasks, e.g. feeding children); they characteristically share out the tasks among husbands, children, and themselves; they can pull things together, analyze and synthesize the state of the household. Besides, women traditionally create links in their communities (which requires interpersonal skills). In an industrial society, these feminine genetic abilities correspond well to the management and company-leading tasks.

As for men, we know that males in the animal world are programmed partly for hunting (bringing food back) and partly for fighting/the physical protection of their family, given their genetically greater muscular strength. Regarding hunting, males need to be resilient, persevering, and smarter than their prey, whether they hunt alone or in packs. Regarding fighting, males need to be powerful, cunning, and able to design multilevel strategies. These genetic abilities are best exploited in the kind of long, hard, and tedious analysis tasks that advisors, specialists, and researchers are required to carry out.

In a nutshell, in industrial societies, men would be better suited to the advisor’s substantive work, long and tedious, whereas women, quick and decisive, would bring together all those findings in their role as arbitrators and decision-makers.

I have not yet dealt with the tricky issue of authority, namely whether companies should favor the lines of authority (a typically masculine imposition of power) or consensus-based authority (a typically feminine flexible way of resolving issues).

In addition, men are more adventurous (hunters, explorers, pioneers, migrants) whereas women are more conservative (preserving balance in the home). Giving a man the responsibilities of general management might correspond to the strategy of winning new markets and related risk taking, or might be useful in a phase of strategy break-down in an economic context of crisis. A woman general manager would probably be more management oriented, conservative, and useful in a phase of economic stagnation, for example, or of growth-limiting competition.

However, we should guard against sinking into the genetic determinism of X and Y chromosomes. I am talking in terms of trend only. There are evidently exceptions for each individual man or woman, the different business sectors do not necessarily follow the trend, and this observation might be valid for labor organizations at the start of the 21st century and become obsolete in future, should company organization change unpredictably.