For myself growing up in New England, I was always interested and intrigued about the history of the United States. As a child, I was engrossed with the celebration of the Bicentennial of our country. Being in the area where early events in America happened, it was almost like I was absorbing history rather than studying it.

For a lot of the rest of the history of my homeland, however, I don't know it to the same level of depth. Much of it to me is top-line to the timeline, but without a lot of the minutiae. This is why I was interested in reading The Fight for the Four Freedoms by Dr. Harvey Kaye. I learned about the book after I heard Kaye on local radio interviews. I borrowed a copy of the book from a friend to learn the author's take on this time in history.

My takeaways from the book were a mix of thoughts on myself and history.

I had no recollection of ever learning about the Four Freedoms – As I read through the book, I often ask myself, why didn't I already know about this? Thinking back on what I learned in public schools, that one history class in college, stories from family members who lived through that era as well as my own personal reading, I knew a lot of the basics – the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (aka FDR), the New Deal, Social Security and of course the U.S.’s entry and time in World War II. All things considered, I can’t recall the Four Freedoms at all.

In short, the Four Freedoms were goals or quests FDR had for America: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. He first presented these when he addressed Congress in January, 1941. I know the first 2 are in the U.S. Constitution. The last two, in my own assessment, are “covered” with the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

There were a lot of government “acronym” agencies during this time, and now – Thinking back on my own history lessons, I knew about the Work Progress Administration (WPA) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), but that was about it. The book lists programs after program, agency, after agency, and all were referred to the acronym for their much longer names. We of course have this today, with new ones created just this year. If I were to look back my guess is there were more in between and even before this time. Each acronym comes with its own overhead needs to exist: budget, staff, etc., and one always hopes the results are worth the effort to create it.

History plus opinion of this period of time – I knew going into the book, from listening to him on radio interviews, the author has strong liberal / progressive political views. As I read the book, this was evident in the very positive tone given to FDR and all that government did, in contrast to the negative tone towards business and free enterprise. Granted from my own knowledge I know all wasn’t good from business, and many had the same feelings towards the government. I was able to read beyond this, however, and still got the essence of the Four Freedoms. Not bad for a self-described centrist and supporter of business and entrepreneurship.

I recommend The Fight for the Four Freedoms for anyone who is interested depth on this topic and period of time. It painted a good picture of the beliefs of FDR, those who followed him and the meaning behind his goals. As I borrowed this book, I returned it to its rightful owner and did not pass this one onto someone else.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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The idea of these “What I Learned” posts is certainly not something original, just the content is. I certainly didn’t create this category, and I have seen more and more of these types of posts and emails out there. So before I get into this week’s, I ask – do you find these useful? Feel free to add a comment to this post or contact me. In the meantime, here’s what’s cross my personal dashboard, in some cases literally.

• If IKEA is the crown jewel of the flat-pack, build-yourself furniture market, then I just found the court jester in Monarch Specialties. I finished putting together a new desk for my daughter which, in the end, looked as nice as the pictures of it online, but was an unbearable experience to build. To begin with, the instructions were extremely tiny, even with a magnifying glass combined with my reading glasses. The instructions also took major “leaps” on each page – rather than step-by-step, several steps, some which required an extra person or fancy maneuvering, were combined together. I could go on, and I just may with a not-so-flattering product review.
• The Nielsen/Norman Group is a consultancy on online usability and user experience and is well-known in the Web space. Their recent article on Privacy Policy and Terns of Use pages on Web sites can be summed up in 3 words – they all suck. Note those are my own words, and you can read the article for yourself if you are so inclined. With the increased number of international privacy laws, coupled with people trying to bypass them, those pages likely won’t get any better.
• Though it was a Merriam-Webster word of the day a while back, for some reason flibbertigibbet didn’t resonate with me then, as I read them daily. But it has stuck with me now as it was the title of a recent episode of the news analysis podcast No Agenda.
• Posts of the picture of Dignity,, a large, unique monument in South Dakota stated appearing recently on LinkedIn. However, Dignity was installed several years ago. I wish I had known about it before and on my family’s road trip that way last year we would have taken a different route to see it.
• My friend Nick Rhodes’ photo booth service OutSnapped now offers a virtual component. And not surprisingly to me, it has a great user experience and creates some great pictures – check it out for yourself and try it for free. If you are hosting a virtual event and want something other than the usual Zoom / Brady Bunch grid, check out OutSnapped.
• I recently ventured over to High Cliff State Park here in Wisconsin. The entry booth is no longer staffed and even the automated pay stations are disabled, thus leaving buying a pass online as the only option. But it has to be an annual pass, not a daily pass. But the extra funds go to a good cause, right?
• A local small business that I have used extensively since we moved here, Donaldson's Cleaners, went delivery-only as a result of the virus and closed its 2 retail stores. As I never visited the stores and as an indicator to send me monthly statements with inserts like this announcement in their customer system was not checked, I didn’t find out until I saw the story on a local newspaper’s Web site. That being said, it has had no impact on me, in the quality cleaning of clothes or their service level.
• If you buy a hitch cover for a trailer hitch on your vehicle, don't forget to buy a hitch lock pin, which is most always sold separately.
• When looking for a place to stay for some form of a real vacation this year, I found the Web site for a hotel that had the interesting description above for its non-existent business center.

As I was editing these I was listening to DJ Liquid Todd on SiriusXM’s BPM channel. I had a déjà vu moment as I recall listening to him on WFNX in Boston back when I was in Boston and there was still a WFNX.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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With professional baseball finally – well, at least as of this writing – starting to come back this year, I have been thinking more about it and other sports, especially how teams and the league are structured. In keeping with the mission here at The Hot Iron, my mind has been pondering how the business world could benefit from being more like professional sports.

Now before you the fair reader says, “hey, pro sports ARE businesses” let me elaborate. First, I concur, as you can’t have teams worth multi-billions and players making multi-millions and not be a business. Where I think they can be more alike, it’s certain aspects unique to sports that would be welcome and refreshing complements to the business world.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, here’s the starting line-up for my 5 ways I wish business was more like sports.

Minor leagues – When you get a job with a company, you are working right away. Some firms may have a training program, and many have a probationary period, but those are in place to get you up to speed and to fire you if need be, respectively. If you are new entering the workforce, say from school or perhaps not, or if you are switching careers, having a minor league system would be a great way to develop your skills and abilities, all the while actually producing.

By being in a minor league system in business, it’d be known that it is still the minors, and expectations would be somewhat different. Such differences could be in your pay and the cost of your services. When you are ready to perform at the top level, you would join the majors. If you never achieved that level, you could stay in the minors or maybe switch careers. In either case the minor leagues of business can be a place to develop the best and brightest people.

Free agency – Talk about the ultimate transparency, as everybody knows what an athlete makes and what the terms of their contracts are. What if that was the same in business, where it is completely the opposite and as non-transparent as one can imagine.

What you are worth to the marketplace would be well-known, and if your current employer couldn’t offer it to you, you could easily go elsewhere, being a free agent. Sure, being a contractor in today’s business environment is a close approximation, but the knowledge of who’s out there and available in any profession or discipline would not be as much of a mystery as it is now.

Working 162 days a year – That’s the number of games in a traditional Major League Baseball season, and other sports have fewer. When you are only working those days, it doesn’t mean you are idle the remainder of the year. When not in a game you are training, relaxing, recovering, getting physical therapy or even meditating.

What if the business work schedule allowed for you to have designated working days and designated training days, days in the middle of the week, and not just at night or the weekends? This way you can prepare better for your work time, ideally correlating to you being more productive and efficient.

No stigma to getting fired – When you get fired in business, it is a bad situation. How many people go around saying, “hey, I got fired?!” There are many reasons why people are fired, including lack of management oversight, new leaders or a change in direction in a company or group. Many times, it is simply personality conflicts. Or simply they could have made mistakes worthy of their termination. Getting fired doesn’t mean you don’t have the skills to do your job. That being said, you are not going to go out looking for a new job saying you were fired from your last one.

In sports, it’s the opposite. Players are getting cut all the time, and many times their unemployment is short as another team signs them. Coaches are getting fired all of the time, only to emerge wearing another team jacket the next season. In all cases it was well-known that the coaches or players were fired, yet nobody is shouting at them during a game because of what they did for their last team. Both players and coaches can perform poorly one season and thrive and win the very next one for a variety of reasons, such as the organization they go to has a much different culture or “system” which works better for them.

Spring Training – In business, an annual kickoff for the new year could be a weekend away for some senior leaders, but for the majority it is a meeting or, these days, a Webinar. What if business had a true spring training, as baseball does, where you get out of the normal office, get some training and bond with your co-workers, and plan and prepare for the upcoming calendar or fiscal year?

Deconstructing Business Being More Like Sports

The way sports have traditionally operated lends to the structure and elements as I have outlined here. As sports have evolved, players and coaches are “working” year round, just as a standard business does. I present here how I have imagined how business can leverage some of these elements from sports, and feel it could transform how businesses function and perform. Isn’t it worth a try to change business as usual?

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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In addition to realizing how much I and my kids miss hearing the words “take your mark” in a competitive swim meet, or in this case a fun swim meet, my brain was enlarged a bit with the below things as well as squeezed by a continuingly hectic schedule.

• My friend Tiffany has started an eponymous home-based bakery called Tiffany’s Brownies and Treats and was recently featured on a Boston TV station. For my readers in the Boston area and across the Bay State, you can buy them locally or have her deliciousness shipped to your door. For the rest of the world, we will have to visit the Commonwealth to get them. That is, unless, one of my Boston-area readers wants to buy some and resend them to me...
• Thinking I have too much in my head and not as much documented on life, I sought a tool to help log all of the minutiae. I found Big Book an Excel spreadsheet for structuring the information. Now to start putting it all down.
• While trying to contribute to the elimination of shortage of coins in America, one coin kicked out of the Coinstar machine that I didn’t recognize. After looking it up I found it was an Andrew Johnson Presidential dollar coin. I had no idea they made such coins. Granted I am no numismatist, but I thought I was aware of all currency out there.
• Though it has been around for several months, many are not familiar that Appleton, Wisconsin, along with other municipalities, are using the locally-created app You Get It First. Though the user experience of it is a little clunky, it gets the word out on major accidents or police actions to avoid.
• There is such a thing as renewable natural gas.
• When I had the wild idea or recording myself speaking blog content and wondering how to convert it to text, a colleague recommended Temi as he uses it himself. I have tried other voice to text methods with varying success, so I may give this a shot.
• I found another online course that I haven’t had the time to take. This time GitLab, the Web based system development and operations platform (or DevOps for short) is offering a remote work certification which I have added to my growing list. Granted I have been working remotely for years, but likely there is something I will take away from it.
• There needs to be more teen/pre-teen movies like Teen Beach Movie.
• I attended my first in-person networking event in about four months. It was held at my co-working space and they are planning them on a regular basis. It was a great opportunity to meet the others I see in passing there, and reminded me networking is not just for yourself, but networking for others is equally as important.
• The somewhat newish Microsoft Edge Web browser recently release a “feature” where it would ask you every time you want to launch an external program, like say Zoom, from a link. As I launch external programs like say Zoom all the time, this was annoying. Fortunately this week an update allowed you to check a box to dismiss the ask.
• As school systems across the US and likely the world are coming up with their phased / hybrid / contingent plans for the new school year, likely something missing from each and every one of them is a way to make it easy for parents to know where their kids need to be. I posted about it here on LinkedIn but the post didn’t get much traction. Am I the only one thinking this?
• Speaking again of school at home, Numb is a short film made by a 15-year old Canadian student about her at-home studying this spring. Sadly, this represents the same experience of many kids around the world.
• Finally on schools, I found the above-pictured display of school supply donation kits at a local market. You buy these for $7, and the market donates them to a local school. In past years I would add one to my shopping order as a small way of giving back and perhaps buying some karma. Though nobody told this year’s checkout clerks as mine was at first bagged with my groceries until I called it out. Likely these will be sent home with students and their Chromebooks for this school year.

I was serious about someone shipping me brownies.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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As our household got a slightly larger, more high definition video monitor, learning to get used to it fortunately is not all I learned this week, as there were heftier things that crossed my mind the last seven days.

• The purchase of U.S. flags is tax free.
• First there was the GDRP, then the CCPA, and now there’s the LGPD, which is the privacy law for Brazil, as compared to the previously-mentioned acronyms for the laws in the European Union and California. If you aren’t familiar with GDRP or CCPA, I wouldn’t worry about LGPD and focus on the first 2 to start.
• The University of Wisconsin Madison did a study on impact of loss of athletics on young people and there was an emphasis on the mental health impact of not playing and performing. This is something I have been concerned with all along. Where it is reassuring to see data behind my gut feel, it doesn’t make dealing with it any easier.
• A by-product of athletes not being athletes and then getting back into it is something called “yips” – a term I learned from a friend of mine who mentioned how his kid was almost forgetting how to accurately throw a baseball. It’s something real, much to my initial disbelief, and significant enough to be written up by the Mayo Clinic and Major League Baseball.
• A couple of new training programs came into my purview. One is the iAI Institute where you can take free online courses to learn about artificial Intelligence. It is offered by Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics giant that makes iPhones for Apple, and has been controversial here in Dairyland around the opening of manufacturing plants in the southeast corner of the state. I hope the courses can lower my 100,000 foot view of AI to something more down to earth.
• Google is offering something called Career Certificates which are positioning themselves as an alternative to technical school training for a number of careers like tech support. Some may be able to qualify to take the courses for free, or they are offered to anyone for around US $50 each.
• I actually took a course, this one offered by my employer and delivered by the Gartner Group on Delegating Effectively. It was an interesting 45 minute Webinar and was backed by a lot of research that Gartner is known for. However it wasn’t for me – it painted an idyllic picture on delegate to a full-time team, where what would have worked better for me would have been how to do that with a part-time team comprised of employees and contractors.
• My local newspaper is the Post-Crescent and like most major papers in Wisconsin it is owned by USA Today. If you look at a few different USA Today newspapers you will notice their designs are the same. This week their local publication started touting its new look. The first thing I noticed was there were fewer ads that were on top of content and pushing it down the page. Gone was the left and right side arrows where you could conceivably scroll horizontally between stories, something I always found to be a user experience nightmare. In its place is an “X” in a circle at the top right of stories, though not completely obvious but indicates all stories are a pop-up window over the home page. In other words, a page on their site really isn’t a page, and I have no idea why they are doing this.
• Online shoe retailer Zappos announced it is just now selling mixed pairs and single shoes. What may not be obvious to many is a lot of people have different sized feet, which required them to buy 2 pairs of shoes, throwing out one from each. Decades ago I worked with someone who had to do this, as her feet were like 2 sizes different from each other. Perhaps too long overdue, but certainly welcome to people who don’t want to spend double on already increasingly expensive footwear.
• I came across this article on LinkedIn shared by my co-working space on 50 free online advertising methods. Or for me, it was more of a reminder, as many of these are not advertising sites or services per se, rather effective ways to promote your business or whatever you have to promote.
• For the first time in 2020 my family and I stayed in a hotel. Despite this half-year lag, I apparently haven’t lost my touch of finding all of the miniscule flaws in a hotel room within the first few minutes of being in it. For this room, the TV remote didn’t work with the TV and neither did its replacement, there was a noticeable gap at the bottom of one side of the room door, the emergency exit sign behind said door was for the neighboring room and different styles of lightbulbs were in the bathroom light fixture. Not to forget what I presume were used bath towels in one of the nightstand drawers… but masks were required in the public spaces of the hotel.

Happy Brady Birthday RG!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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