Books about the Great Financial Crisis (GFC)

Hi everyone.  I’m back after taken two months to complete my Risk Management Field Study.  It was a torture to go back to school.  I hope my write up is good enough to pass, thus I can really take a break from studies. Do I want to study again?  hmmm…

The other day I was reading something regarding the state of the economy, and an author coined the term Great Financial Crisis (GFC).  As all things, someone would always reduce whatever and however big or small the incident into an abbreviation, and thus you have the GFC.

A couple of months ago, I’ve decide to read up on the GFC.  And set out to buy a couple of books for the Finance Library.  I started with the biggest book I can find at MPH, with a catchy title, Too Big To Fail by eminent business author, Andrew Sorkin.  What a great read.  It chronicled the days leading up to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. 

I followed up with another book on the GFC, this time on the one story that signalled the start of the GFC – House of Cards by William D. Cohan.  This chronicled the collapse of Bear Stearns.  Another great read, though not as smooth reading, but nevertheless contains lots of behind the doors’ insight.

There are a couple more books I would like to get to, but alas, we live in Penang, where the bookstores sucks!  Ya, ya, you are thinking Amazon, but did you know the shipping cost more than the books itself?!

So I settled on a more economic book, Hoodwinked by John Perkins.  A VERY different kind of read.  A bonanza for those who love conspiracy theories.  What Perkins wrote was believable, which makes it even more scary!

My apologies as to skip my usual brief summary as the above books was read by me more than 2 months ago.  But what sticked in my mind was how greed and hubris (I learned a new word :) ) could lead to the downfall of even the smartest man on Wall Street.

These books are available in the library. 

The Value of Oddball Data

Key Thought:

Solving complex, messy business problems by NOT ignoring data that does not fit.

Background:

Harvard Business Review published an excerpt of discussion between Roger Martin – author of “The Design of Business”, and Stephen Scherer, world-renowned autism spectrum disorder and genomics researcher where it illustrate the 3 stages strategy described in the book.  1) staring into the mystery, 2) developing a heuristic, or rough rule of thumb; and 3) creating an algorithm, or step-by-step formula for addressing the problem.

Summary:

Martin

- most problem solvers would start with a hypothesis, test it, and then look for data that confirm or disprove it

-  identify the mystery, then attacked the mystery by asking what is true, rather than what was true

- scientific method focus on creating reliable outcome, but major leap in knowledge comes from achieving a valid outcome

- using well-horned template saves time, but we can forget to look at the mysteries entirely

Scherer

– my belief is that answers to really difficult problems can often be found in the data points that don’t seem to fit existing frameworks

- quantitative measures that produce reliability often strip away nuance and context and thus sometimes even prevent the discovery of a valid outcome

My Comments:

A startling thought consider how well-drilled we are in the reliability reproduction of outcome as the bedrock for the scientific method.  In complex, messy problems, it is often better to look at the mysteries first.  In conclusion, read the book first, and try apply it to a problem we have – like how to improve profitability!

Reference: Conversation: two leading researchers discuss the value of oddball data, Harvard Business Review, November 2009, pg 26.

Planetree Conference 6 Part 3 of 3

Last installment!

3 Doctors – Dr. Davies, Jenkins, and Hunt.  3 young doctors who banded together and beat the odds (they grew up in the ghettos of Newark)

Dr. Davies

- “young minds aiming for something you can’t see is very tough” –

- They are not smarter than the rest, just teamwork

- Enjoy ER because he treat patients they way he would treat his mother – he imagine every patient is like his mother

- Nurses are always right!

Dr. George Jenkins

- 13 years old had bad crooked teeth, the dentist treated him so well, he aspire to be like him – you never know, one act of kindness can change someone’s life forever

- Started a foundation when graduated even though they were broke, because they remember where they come from

Dr. Hunt

- You never know when a little thing to do change someone’s life – that’s the point, you never know

- There were so many times this has happen

- The kid at the back who just need the extra attention

- Every time a patient look at the watch, it’s the most insulting thing, it means you are not on time

- When patient talks about their family wrote down on the margin, next time will ask them how they are, it’s just good medicine, because others has done that to him

- Patient story: she was a complainer, but a nurse who spend time talking to her, eventually she become a solid supporter of the hospital, sometimes patients just need some ‘love’

If we have these kind of doctors, we can all go home early and sleep well!

Planetree Conference 6 Part 2 of 3

Day 3 Keynote Speaker No. 2

Dr. David Katz – John Hopkins University – Life and Death, Knowledge & power: why knowing what matters isn’t what’s the matter

- It does us no good if the reason for death is disease of the coronary artery

- McGinniss, Foege – actual causes of death in the U.S (Journal of American Medical Association paper) 1993: 270.2207-12 – we have the knowledge to define these death.  What we know and what we do is to different thing

- Master levers of destiny is our feet, forks & fingers [choices we make with lifestyle, diet, exercise etc]

- Dean Ornish study was quoted, Potsdam study.  Are we living [a life] or just not dying?

- Medical prowess has delay death but what about living well?

- He claimed: Obesity is a cause for all cancers except for certain skin cancer and certain brain tumour

- Rise in diabetes, coronary disease, insulin resistant conditions

- We call type 2 diabetes, it’s just a euphemism for when children get adult onset diabetes before age of 10! – we have sanitized it, and make the disease not as serious

- We need to turn our knowledge into power

• 17 years old getting triple bypass
• The trend has to stop
• Teenage coronary artery looks like adults (a study of teenagers using ultrasound to scan their blood arteries)

- We live longer today but live with chronic disease

- Healthy lifestyle can do:

• 80% reduction in heart disease
• 90% reduction in diabetes
• 60% reduction in cancer

- The trouble with public health is there’s no ‘public’ involved.  Each health episode is delivered in person.  Think about that one particular person, what can we do for him/her?

- We have known all these for 17 years (refer to study reference above, first publish date), but we haven’t done anything.  Imagine if we have?

- Favorite symbolism – polar bear in the desert.  We are a product of our environment, we adapt in the calorie deficient environment.  But what happen when that environment no longer exist?  We have more food, we eat more.  Like the polar bear, the very thing that keep him alive in the polar region will cook him alive in the desert.  How about human beings?

- Read Michael Pollen’s [not sure spelling] book – In Defense of Food

- If it glows in the dark, you probably shouldn’t eat it – reference to artificial flavouring, colouring and process food

- Now we have an environment that condemn us to fail (conspire against us to succeed).  Supermarket aisle, abundance of food, all the wrong food in the supermarket etc

- We place all the emphasis on willpower, it should be skillpower

- He invented NoVal – a simple numbering system to rank supermarket food by nutrition value

- Also created Activity Burst in Classroom (ABC) – dramatic result in healthier school kids, better grades and less disciplinary problem.  How? By having recess (a novel idea suddenly)!  It’s been scientific proven and published now.

- Government created No Child Left Behind, but perhaps taking out recess, we are encourage our kids to ‘No Child Left (on their) Behind

- Story of ABC

• 5 ½ year old son was with him when he was giving a talk, he was so restless, he (father) ask the son to run around the hall.
• At lap 1 – he completed the lap and sat down, then with an impish grin, took off again
• At lap 2 – he wave and kept going
• At lap 3 – 3 other kids follow him
• At lap 4 – 35 kids were running around the hall!

- Rumbuctious kids should be treated with recess, not Ritalin

- ABC reduces asthma medication by 17%, reduces ADHD medication use by 33% - proven, see website for more details

- Only one place to grow a kid, food is the only way.  So do we want to build him/her out of junk or good food?

- Teach kids simple way to find good food.  Husband and wife invented Nutrition Detectives.  Teach them 5 clues

• Big letters, beware of them
• 1^st ingredient usually means the most content
• Beware of partially hydrogenated oil, corn syrup, trans fat
• Long list of ingredients usually means bad.  What’s the ingredient for broccoli?  Broccoli, simple
• Choose whole grain

- Fiber is your friend

- Program to train them as Certified Nutrition Detectives

Once again a particularly inspiring talk.  Check out the website: http://www.davidkatzmd.com.

More later…

Planetree Conference 6 Part 1 of 3

Day 3 of conference proper consisted of a series of keynote address.

James Canton, Phd – Futurist, Title: Extreme Future of Healthcare

- Question: is it possible to transform healthcare to become cost effective and high quality care?

- Key trends – asymmetric risk

• Eg. Alzheimer will affect 1/3 men over 70 years old

- At least 50 companies at working on retrieving memories in the brain

- Yesterday Wall Street Journal reported that the State of Pennsylvania will publish all quality data for all hospitals in Penn State

- We are in the era of consumer genomics – what we can do, what insurance co can do, government can do with the data is still largely unexplored

- Hospital can becomes the arbiter of information (overload) – we (hospitals that is) are already trusted to cure/disease management, why not extend the continuum

- With all these data and information, can we move to Predictive Medicine, instead of Reactive Medicine?

- Population is aging, different buckets of demographics uses technology different [important as we think about how to employ technology for patient-centered healthcare]

o 25% Gen Y (> 1976), 10% Gen X (1965-1975), 40% Boomers (1946-1964), 25% Mature (<1946)

- Health 2.0 – everything digital about healthcare, that’s where everyone is focus on right now

- 7 Characteristics of Healthcare in the near future

• Patient centered, humanistic (personalization)
• Predictive
• Preventive
• Wellness vs Disease focus
• Self-care & Personal Responsibility
• High Tech, High Touch
• Social networking

- What medical model will we be using?  We have a rare opportunity to re-think the healthcare model.  Can we take advantage of it?

- Early detection made possible through genomics, data warehousing, epidemiological data, all sorts of wonderful invention in predictive power, are we doing enough to take advantage of it and advance healthcare?

- Diagnostic future – patient wants more information

- Wellness Centers – the younger the demographic, the more they want to know the extent of probability of something happen to them

- Regenerative medicine – next big thing!

- Medicine will be personalized

- New class of pharmaceuticals coming up, personalized, targeted

- Personal bio-detection – do you know what that is?

- Design evolution for drugs, surgical devices, diagnostic equipment

- Tiger Woods have Lasik twice to have better than 20/20 vision

- Telerobotics – not just DaVinci, have you heard of nano surgical robots?

- Conquering disease at the atomic scale – the next frontier

• If we know how disease works on the atomic level, don’t you think the intervention will be different too?
• More than 100 companies working on this now

- Synthetic biology – merging engineering and biology – grow new limbs, new kidney, new heart?

- Designer genes – already coming

- The future of healthcare, can be summarize in 3 Ps

• Predictive
• Prevention
• Health Promotion

- Hospital is already a social network for the community regarding health

• How do we empower the patients?
• how do we partner with them to prevent disease?
• we need to think health management vs disease management
• somehow we have to integrate all these together, does your hospital know how?

- Every industry is moving to Cloud Computing, because it’s always on, anywhere, anytime

- Technology is a good thing, it integrates, it is cost effective, the biggest resistors are doctors unfortunately

- We can now move information faster, have better access to data warehouse, leverage all the extra information to provide better care

- Cloud computing means collaboration

- Did you know that there are 100s of medical apps for iPhone currently available

- Nutra genomics - Individual groups response to medical intervention

• Greek study – Normal way to lose weight did not work for them. Genomics research discover potatoes help them lose weight, not what you expect. 
• Only Europe is doing all this pioneering work, not happening in USA
• Speaker sees prime opportunity in helping people manage their health in pre-diabetes stage

- Insurance companies are like dinosaurs, still want to manage disease, we need to manage health

- Can we give people a glimpse of their future, use lifestyle information we have today, we can do it, could we do more?  It can be a source of new revenue!

- We are already patient-centered care for Planetree hospitals, we are already halfway there

- Look up this term, “Intuitive Awareness”, [I have no idea], googled it!

- Electronic Health Records – who owns them?

• It appears that hospital just need to ask permission from them to store it for them.  Ownership will need to be defined better. [we need to think about this when we go EMR, do our patient agreement covers use of data in EMR database?]
• this is a great opportunity to use the data for greater quality of care
• raise awareness of these trends to doctors
• link/collaborate with those working on it
• hospital as “trusted advisors” help navigate patient through all this.  The emerging role of patients in their health management will be dramatically change

- We are still medieval.  Why is it none of us know when we are going to die? Why??!!  Will all this information available, we still leave it to chance

- Insurance can play a different role

• Eg. His brother has retinal detachment due to genetic predisposition, but he himself has the same thing 15 years ago.  So there is greater genetic predisposition, but nobody tell him.  Information is there, we need to link it and use it. 
• Eg. If you are predisposed to renal failure, why not work with patient to put away $10 a month, and get ready to pay for a new kidney 15 years from now.  Hello insurance companies?  Isn’t this a better way?

- 50% of lumps we will know the timing of when it will turn cancerous.  Knowledge is available, are you using it?

• Repeat one last time, we need a different model of healthcare

I know there’s a lot here.  Each of the keynote speakers were great.  Hospital cannot stand still.  Time to think differently.

Enjoy reading…

Planetree Conference 5

Keynote address for Day 2 evening session:

Joe Tye, Values Coach, Inc, author of The Florence Prescription.

- If you have a job, you could lose it, but if you have a calling, you can lose it

- address open with a vide of a baseball being hit to the left field, the left fielder decides that the ball is too high to be caught.  The ballgirl, standing right out the boundaries, using her feet, climbing nearly 10 feet and caught the ball.  Have to see the video to believe it.  Then she shrugged and sits down on her chair waiting for the next ball.  Now who has a job, and who loves the game?  Who do you want to take care of you when you are admitted to the hospital?  The ball girl or Jake the outfielder?

- The left brain counts and the right brain matters

Nordstrom – they don’t have rules – one statement “in all situations, use your common sense, there are no more rules”

Left Brain	Right Brain
bean counter	poet
measured	seen
rules	values
plans	inspires
hardwire	softwire
what you do	what you are
boring	chaos
count beans	plant beans

I really like the comparison table, it summarizes what we are doing perfectly

- the invisible architecture we allowed to evolve haphazardly

- The foundation of the hospital is your core values, the spiritual side of our workplace

- What value do you think your senior leadership valued the most? Productivity or Compassion

- Values are not good intention, they are skills –> teach it!

- Corporate culture is the superstructure of the Invisible Architecture of the organization

- Culture eats strategy for lunch! –> any time, every time

- Emotional climate is the interior decor of your Invisible Architecture

- Where’s our blueprint for the Invisible Architecture?

we have masterplan for physical construction, now we are starting a masterplna for services, how about a masterplan for the Invisible Architecture – the culture of the hospital

- Spark plugs/zombies/vampires

Spark plugs make up about 25% of the staff, they are the ones engage

Zombies are on auto-pilot, still doing the work, but it’s a job, 60%

Vampires suck the life out of everyone they touch, the disengaged staff, about 15%

- BMW Club – bitching, morning and whining people

- Negative emotion is physically harmful, if we allow this in our - workplace, for our caregiver taking care of our patients, that’s medical malpractice!

 

8 values

1.  Commitment – a lightning strike and two delayed weddings.  Someone build a barn to hold weddings, a lightning strike it and burn it to the ground.  Because of what he represented, two weddings are postpone, the to-be-wedded couples help re-build the barn so that they can get married.  the barn builder does not have a job, he has a calling!

2. Engagement – how long does it take to finish a road?  Paul Newman’s film, where they decided to own the chain-gang work while in prison. 

Leaders are Storytellers.  Speaker is continuously amaze that so many leaders are not good storytellers, simply because they haven’t bother to learn the skills.  each leaders speech must have SEX (sic) with the audiences. SEX – significant emotional experience

3. Passion – nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Texas Roadhouse – have pep rally and singing the company song “I Love My Job”.  They realized that every store can have great food, but the customers will come back if they have fun, and they will only have fun if the employees have fun

4. Initiative – the antidote to learned happiness – “PROCEED UNTIL APREHENDED” – key phrase by speaker.  You can’t empowered people until they empowered themselves

5.  Stewardship – at home, at work, in the world

6. Belonging – fear excludes and creates enemies.  Courage includes and creates friends

7. Fellowship – put the cheer back into leading.  James O’Toole book “Leadership A to Z”, CEO stands for Chief Encouragement Officer

8. Pride – the classic icebreaker opener, “What do you do?”.  the most horrible answer, almost always given, “I’m JUST…”  why do we say that?

example: Industrial ventilation system company called High Volume Low Speed (HVLS) Fan Company.  sales was normal, and customers being calling it a different name, so they decided to adopt the name, Big Ass Fan Company.  Sales double every year!  They adopted a donkey mascot and started selling hats, t-shirts and pants.  They proceed goes toward – get this – Orphan Donkey shelter.  They have fun!

Case Study:

Tucson Medical Centre – Emergency Department was one of the worse place to work.  Speaker conducted focus group, and CEO authorized the entire report to be given to every single staff of the hospital.  Staff were told, fix the problems, don’t wait. 

- maintenance says they don’t have time to paint for the wards, the nurses went out, bought the paint and started painting, maintenance department suddenly have time to paint for them. 

- no security guard at ED, nurses called the Police Chief to help out with security at ED, suddenly security has the extra personnel to help

- they were taught Proceed Until Apprehended

- CEO directed all senior management staff to round the hospital from 8 to 10am every morning.  No senior mgt staff is allowed to check their  email, or a phone call before then

 

Empowerment is helping others be better than who they are

 

visit www.joetye.com/blog for free download on culture of ownership, invisible architecture, keeping people, values training, presenting yourself with power.

 

visit www.healing-tree.com.  can’t remember for what reason!

 

- end of day 2 keynote address report -

Planetree Conference 4

Only attended one workshop today.

The first keynote address of the day talks about the soul, which i thought was a bit New Age, so decided to work on my emails instead.

First workshop of the day talks about impact of Color in Healing Environments.

Husband and wife team, over 30 years experience in design acute care hospitals.  Husband was with US Navy (I think), lived in Bangkok for a few years building a hospital for the US Navy. familiar with South-east Asia.  Volunteer to give us any resource if we need help.  Good contact.  Barbara Huelat and Joseph Parimucha.

- Science haven’t been able to explain our emotional response to colors, but experientially there’s an impact, many books written about color psychology but not a lot of scientific evidences as yet

- the color schemes that will be easy on the eyes and last longer with jading the eyes are nature colors.  A very common method I see with all the interior designers here, is to use a photo (literally) of the local scenery, and match a palette of colors to the design.  Very effective.  This was also demonstrate to me by the firm that Loma Linda uses, Aesthetic, Inc.  The industry term is nature fractal

- Use colors by the 3 Ps – Palette, Placement, Percentages

1. Palette – monochromatic (do not recommend), analogous, complementary, double complements, neutral and full spectrum-balanced.

2. Color Placement – background should be light neutrals, ceiling for be light neutrals, flooring should be mid-tones, secondary accents – mid-tones and primary accents must be limited

3. Color Percentages – ceiling is usually the lightest color, primary accents limited to 2 to 5%

Other things to consider – avoid fashion trends, keep a balance between warm * cool, consider the function, adjacent color scheme, lighting, color reflectance, color temperature, getting close to the right color match is not good enough, the the science, nature, culture and emotion of color.

Quote” It’s a goo thing that when God created the rainbow he didn’t consult a decorator or he would still be picking colors” Sam Levenson.

 

Made contact with Hackettstown Regional Medical Centre (part of Adventist Healthcare system), they are working hard on Planetree ideas.  HRMC gave a workshop on shadowing program, bringing high schools student through the hospital during school holidays and hopefully interest them to become healthcare works.  Works very well, part of their ‘giving back to community’ project under Planetree initiatives.

 

Drove to Washington D.C. to see International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector financiers for World Bank.  Highlights:-

- Investment arm continuously match projects with investors, we can play both roles

- when IFC lend, they become active partners, whether as lenders or equity holders, this is a good thing because they can bring to bear their consider resources in best practices for financing

- The South-east Asia desk person-in-charge was not available, so I spoke with the South Asian officer.  She was very keen to know whether we have interests in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India or Pakistan.  Just 4 months ago, she had investors looking for a hospital management company to take up a project

- I spoke about setting up a for-profit entity, possibly in Singapore, raise funds from private equity, capital market to invest in the region.  She said she will source a resource person from their Private Equity Division to work with me on how to structure such an entity.

- Overall, they were very positive, and was sold on our philosophy and approach.  Their familiarity with Washington Adventist Hospital helps.

- I offer for them to meet with GC Health Ministries Department.  I will be in GC on Thursday morning, will see if I can dropped by to see Dr. Landless and make an introduction to IFC officers.  I also explain to them a little bit about AHI, Loma Linda.  I’m not sure if these will lead us anyway, but we never know would we?

All in all, a good meeting besides recovering from the shock of paying $15 for parking!

 

Back to Baltimore for the second Keynote address of the day.  Details in the next summary.

 

Right after, attended a gathering for the International delegates.  Spend a bit of time with the key officers of Planetree, who also happen to be Griffin Hospital officers, they are the sponsoring parent body, based in Derby Connecticut.  A must visit hospital if we are serious.  They have hosted 700 hospitals visit since they started.  The President/CEO Patrick Charmel gave a personal invitation to tour their hospital.  www.griffinhealth.org, www.planetree.org

 

- end of Day 2 report -