The second is a post by Scot Herrick at Cube Rules, all about the concept of “practicing” for a layoff.  There are so many truths in this article, that it should become an HR offering to employees a year before layoffs loom!  One comment he makes that really resonates in this economic morass we find ourselves in, is that rather than the rule of thumb of having a savings cushion of 4 months to handle a layoff, he counsels trying to set aside ONE year’s worth of your own operations capital.  Now, that is a hefty amount, especially for most Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, but given the extreme challenges inherent in finding a job now, especially if you are a 50 plusser, I have to say, he isvery, very correct.  In any event, an excellent article to prepare you for the inevitable.

The third article is by Corinne Copnick at Cyro-Kid, who chronicles her (funny if it weren’t so heartbreaking) futile attempts to get her prescription provider to send her test strips for her diabetes.  Not only will it give you some chuckles, it will possibly also bring you to tears.  If I had a TV to throw out a 2nd story window and create a furor, yelling: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”, I would.  But I live in a one floor bungalow and my analog TV is worthless after June 12th anyway. 

And to give a follow up to Corinne’s story, today, again during another call to find out whether the THIRD authorization from her doctor had been approved, she was told (for the first time after, literally, hours of phone calls) that not only box SEVEN had to be filled out again as the wording was not 100% correct, but box TWO had to be rechecked. 

President Obama, are you listening?  The insurance companies cannot fix this problem.  THEY and the pharmaceuticals are the ones CREATING it!  By  so much bureaucracy, so much dotting of “i’s” and crossing of “t’s”, they are delaying Corinne’s test strips, for now…um…6 weeks, and if they are doing this to countless numbers of Americans, how much money are they keeping for themselves?  If Prescription Solutions delays all prescriptions from filling by one month (in this case now more than 6 weeks) they gain an 11% additional profit on this one client.  So what if the client dies?  In fact, that would save them a whole lot MORE money in the long run. 

Corinne is my mother.  So, I’m not done with this one yet.

But it still doesn’t scare me, yet.  Having lived multiple corporate lifecycles, I’ve seen big business tighten and loosen the reins.  In that cycle, a company will decentralize to be more nimble and give great latitude to field operations.  As soon as profits start to shrink (which is inevitable), the company will again centralize, taking away operational privilege from field directors and managers.  Purchasing will become centralized, expense accounts downsized and for a period of time, there can be intense scrutiny on all aspects of remote operations.  And, then, when the burden of handling all operations and control internally at corporate headquarters, the cycle will begin again — more control and responsibility will head out to the field.  Some unprofitable operations will be shut down, corporate headcount will be streamlined and it’ll be sink or swim for the field leaders. 

If you are in a corporate structure for any period of time, you’ll see the same pattern repeated.  Each time the pattern is re-shaped, with a new leader, new CEO, new director, there will be many fancy names attached to the activity: downsizing, right-sizing, change management, restructure, etc, etc.  But if you take all the fancy, scary names away, really, you just have natural expansion and collapse.  Companies with enough support survive the collapse.  So right now, we are in an elevated state of collapse and the restructure is nationalization.  It’s the business reaction to a disastrous economy. 

Is there any silver lining to this current cloud?  I don’t really think so.  But I do believe that the innovators and inventors will find their way to invent and innovate new ways to rebuild economy.  Israel created farms out of desert through creation of irrigation and solar systems, when there was no other way to fuel their own need for a level of self-sufficiency.   We, the boomer generation, the “me” generation, the post-hippie Yuppie, found ways, as a whole,  to create wealth…to the point of fabricated wealth for which we are all suffering greatly now.

Obama’s mantra of “Yes, we can” is not about the government “doing” for us.  The government must and will shore up deficiencies by making more money to keep us afloat until the “we” in “yes, we can” actually get squeezed into invention.  That invention will come from our demographic and the invention of the millenials, our echoes.  Of that I have no doubt.

Well, that wasn’t quite the right image either.  So I pounced on the tried and true “two steps forward, one step back.”   Now, this one seemed closer to right.  Also called the “Frog in the Well”, the image is of a frog trying to get out of a well and for every two leaps forward, up the walls of the slippery well, it slips back by half, making for an arduous, but necessary journey.  If the frog gives up, it will drown in the well.  If it can make it out of the well, it will be depleted, exhausted, but will have survived death.

Since nothing is quite right to describe the trials and tribulations facing Obama as the leader of our nation, I came up with a combined image, instead.  Obama is in the well.   The water in the well is our economic death.   Obama has been elected by us, the people, to get us out of the well.  He’s climbing up the sides, two steps forward, one step back, with a humongous boulder on his back.  On top of that, it is raining.  Non-stop.  Now, if Obama were the frog, he’d likely be defeated.  I mean, how could a tiny frog possibly get out of a slippery well, in the rain, with a boulder on its back?? 

But Barack Obama is different.  He is not alone.  He’s asking us, the people, to work with him to get out of the well.  He’s shouldering the boulder in the rain, but he’s asked us to get behind him and help push.  It will still be two steps forward and one step back, but if we can help relieve the weight of the boulder and give him the support, energy, enthusiasm and innovation to fundamentally change how the US does economy, then, I’m pretty confident he’ll get us out of the well.  Oh yeah…also, we’re a people of good intentions.  Unlike Sisyphus.