Semiconductors, China and Us

A friend observed that Elon Musk is remaking Central Texas with companies that bore (rock), move (electric trucks), launch (space ships), and link (your brain). And yes, it seems that the South African native opted for this most business-friendly of states over progressive California.

He’s not alone.

South Korea’s Samsung is negotiating a $17 billion expansion of its existing fabrication plant, or fab, Samsung Austin Semiconductor. The new fab will make logic chips, a more profitable product than the memory chips its made here for the past 25 years, and expand the company’s foundry business. Perhaps most important, it will do all of this closer to its U.S. customers.

With a national unemployment rate flirting with 8%, semiconductor manufacturing jobs pay about twice those in the rest of the manufacturing sector, feeding those middle rungs of the pay scale ladder where the middle class lives (or would like to live). Samsung’s new fab, for example, is expected create 1,900 jobs that pay an initial average annual wage of $66,254.

Semiconductors: Technology’s anchor store

Semiconductors, or microchips, are the technology food chain’s anchor store, the building blocks for advanced technologies that will run our factories, manage our cities, develop and deliver our medicine, re-shape education and the workplace, and keep us safe.

Semiconductors are the tiny chips that serve as the brains behind your toaster, your smartphone, all the way to fighter jets and in the very near future, they will serve as the brains behind the innovations of tomorrow such as 5G, quantum computing and artificial intelligence.

U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, ranking member, Foreign Affairs Commitee and Chair, China Task Force

Today about 90% of high-volume, leading-edge integrated circuit production in this made-in-America industry takes place in East Asia –Taiwan, South Korea and the People’s Republic of China. Although the United States remains the market leader in worldwide sales, the pandemic and a testy relationship with China have shaken both U.S. dominance and its confidence in the complicated, globalized supply chain and foreign markets those sales rely on.

There’s always a bit of machismo in dominating an industry, but also a real recognition that the ready availability of semiconductors is essential to both to national security and the future of America’s role in technology. Like sensible parents, microchip companies and policy makers want to bring some of that production closer to home. Of course there is a price to pay. According to the Boston Consulting Group, it will take $50 billion provided over 20 years to raise the United States from its #4 slot to #2 in domestic manufacturing production. Twenty billion will keep us at #4. By way of comparison, China is investing $170 billion in semiconductor independence.

About that global supply chain

The federal government has nurtured the semiconductor industry since its inception. The last time a foreign threat to U.S. dominance appeared, it bankrolled an industry consortium called SEMATECH right here in Austin. To underscore the importance of its mission, members installed no one less than the co-inventor of the microchip as chief executive.

There are those that ague against adopting anything akin to an industrial policy, but consider how integral semiconductors are to the drones, weapon systems and monitoring devices central to our national defense. Then consider the panicked workarounds that would be needed should supplies be disrupted. As if those risk scenarios aren’t enough, the biggest hack in U.S. history, also made here in Austin, was discovered in late December after months of burrowing undetected into the workings of both the public or private sectors. The 2020 Solar Winds Breach was a supply chain hack, perhaps through software maintained in Eastern Europe.

A time for enlightened partnerships

The semiconductor industry has shown a remarkable ability to develop ways to collaborate on common problems. SEMATECH skirted proprietary intellectual property issues and settled on a strategy of solving common manufacturing problems that would result in more efficient, effective manufacturing processes.

Not that supply chain concerns are restricted to the United States. Europe doesn’t want to depend on the United States or Asia. China doesn’t want to depend on the United States, and South Korea doesn’t want to depend on Japan, which doesn’t want to depend on South Korea. So depending on how you look at it, the field is ripe for geopolitical gamesmanship – and enlightened alliances.

As Samsung negotiates its plans in Austin, Taiwan-based TSMC is breaking ground on a $12 billion fab in Phoenix. Both Taiwan and South Korea are U.S. allies; both live in dangerous neighborhoods; both are manufacturing powerhouses, hosting respectively 36 and 24 operating fabs. In addition to its Austin fab, Samsung has six fabs in China and is reportedly repatriating its semiconductor supply chain. It closed its China-based smartphone factories in 2019 over intellectual property concerns.

Semiconductors are the tip of the iceberg.

The federal government is doing its part in maintaining a robust tech sector, its battles with Big Tech aside, passing the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, thanks to the efforts of Congressman McCaul (R-Tx) and Doris Matsui (D-Ca) in the House, working with Senators John Cornyn (R-Tx) and Mark Warner (D-Va). The NDAA, which still needs to funded by Congress, provides incentives, grants and credits research and development and domestic fab construction.

But semiconductors are only the first rung of a technology food chain that creates industries that in turn create jobs, opportunities and living wages for real people and their kids. With geopolitical gamesmanship the name of the game these days, it’s a good time to look ahead, learn from not only the past and “our most serious competitor.”

Allies and immigrants: We get the job done

Which brings us back to Elon Musk.

Musk’s relationship with China transformed Tesla into a stock market darling and Musk into the world’s richest man. Tesla is a case study in using the anchor store concept to build supply chains. The all-important batteries that power Tesla EVs are made locally by Chinese manufacturers not the Tesla battery factory in Reno, Nevada. The romance may not last, but there’s a lot to learn from it.

Does Elon Musk answer to anyone? Turns out, the answer is yes. Take a look at the language Tesla used in response to the Chinese regulators inquiring about quality issues. In a filing, the company “sincerely accepted the guidance of government departments,” and “deeply reflected on shortcomings.” That’s a far cry from Musk’s belittling the SEC as the “Shortseller Enrichment Commission,” or telling U.S. auto regulators its rules are “anachronistic,” or attacking California health care officials as “unelected and ignorant.” Pretty clear where the power lies these days.

Alan Murray, CEO Daily, Fortune
Tesla’s Gigafactory in Shanghai, built in record time with $1.4 billion low-cost Chinese loan and a $1.6 billion infusion when Covid-19 hit. The factory uses locally-made batteries rather than those from its U.S. plant, building and strengthening the Chinese supply chain for EVs. (photo/dw.com)

A Prayer on September 11

Today, my memories of September 11, 2001, when the world froze and I stood paralyzed as images of people jumping from the Towers repeated and repeated and repeated, are mixed up with memories of other days when time stopped — the deaths of each of my parents, my brother, selling off my dad’s cattle, days that closed one chapter of my life and initiated another, whether I knew it or not.

In the past, I watched landscaping crews saw limbs off of trees where birds were nesting in the spring and early summer. I thought I knew how those hysterical creatures felt as their homes and offspring tumbled to the ground. But 2020 has shown me I didn’t, I couldn’t, watching safely from the ground.

Today, I see images of cataclysm on a Biblical scale — the California fires and melting ice caps, human-induced tragedies, unintended consequences of — let’s call a spade a spade — our greed and ambition. I think of the lives destroyed and the unimaginable suffering of those beautiful lands and the wildlife trapped by fast-moving flames and melting ice.

None of us knows what will follow. Have we learned from our mistakes? I wish I could say, “Yes, absolutely!” But that’s yet to be seen.

Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

So here, on this day, I’m offering a prayer that we rise above our prejudice, greed and hate to preserve what we love and somehow figure out how to move together into a future that honors our best selves.

Are We Learning Anything from China?

China welcomed Tesla’s EV manufacturing innovation and used it to build an EV supply chain. Where is America investing?

Del Valle, Texas, has made a bid for Tesla’s $1 billion electric truck Gigafactory, waiving some $46 million in property taxes over 10 years, with the county kicking in an additional $14 million.

Can you help us get an HEB?

Question from a Del Valle resident to Tesla representatives

The thing about economic development is that, in Texas at least, communities bid with the property taxes that pay for public health and kids’ educations. Del Valle, a stone’s throw from Austin and its Bergstrom International Airport, is chronically underserved. It has neither a permanent medical clinic nor a hospital. At a recent community meeting, a school board official’s question to Tesla representatives was, “Can you help us get an HEB?,” HEB being the the state’s flagship grocery store.

Proposed land for the Tesla Gigafactory in Del Valle, Texas. Courtesy of Michael Minasi/KUT
Innovation, riding the crest of Chinese investment

Any relationship is a risk. Not too long ago Tesla, in need of cash, made a similar gamble with China. Tesla agreed to pay $323 million a year in taxes, accept a $1.6 billion state loan, and source 30% of its parts locally (100% by the end 2020) to open a Gigafactory in Shanghai, the first foreign automobile company not required to share profits and technology with a local company.

The deal paid off handsomely. Tesla’s second-quarter earnings moved into the black, the stock’s value quadrupled to $1,790 per share, and Elon Musk’s personal wealth pushed past Warren Buffet’s.

But then Tesla fit neatly into the guiding principle of China’s “Made in China 2025” strategy: “innovation-driven, quality first, green development, structural optimization, and talent-based.” And since Tesla sources parts locally, China builds an in-country supply chain for manufacturing electric vehicles.

Looking for a mask? All roads lead to China

That’s EVs, now consider medical supplies. If you’re wondering why American doctors are re-using their masks, read Keith Bradsher’s reporting in The New York Times. In three years’ time, China has dominated the market in medical devices and supplies by investing heavily in companies that make those things and requiring hospitals to source locally. Bradsher, chief of the Times‘ Shanghai bureau, quotes an LA-based entrepreneur who decided to manufacture masks and hand sanitizer, only to discover the machines that make masks and the plastic bottles that dispense hand sanitizer are only made in China.

Investing in the future, locally

In the next 10 years, Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute estimate U.S. manufacturers will be short some 2 million skilled manufacturing workers. The starting salary for an entry level Del Valle Gigafactory worker with a high school diploma would be $36,000, about 55% of a living wage in Austin. But those jobs could conceivably propel workers into more skilled, advanced manufacturing roles with double the salary, in a market market hungry for those skills.

A model of a Tesla Cybertruck model. American innovation has depended on private investment and state and local economic development initiatives.

To fill the pipeline, local Austin-based manufacturers and the Army Future Command are collaborating with the Austin Community College to build an advanced manufacturing incubator that would offer hands-on experience and apprenticeships. As an EV manufacturer, Tesla could play a major role in mentoring the community in those very sectors that matter so much to the Chinese government: “innovation-driven, quality first, green development, structural optimization, talent-based” manufacturing.

Some signs of investment at the federal level

These are important but local initiatives. The larger question is whether we as a country are learning anything from China’s passion for investing in the technologies that will shape the future — advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, 5G, semiconductors.

Take semiconductors, technology that beats at the heart of all things digital. The U.S. semiconductor supply chain is complex and global. Fabrication and assembly are mostly off shored. A bipartisan bill proposed this month would offer matching grants to chip manufacturers willing to build domestic fabs, a line item of some 20 billion for a state-of-the-art facility. Two of the bill’s sponsors are incumbent Texas’ politicians, both ranking members in their respective chambers and both up for re-election this year. In the Senate, John Cornyn (R-TX) is working with Mark Warner (D-VA), vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee; in the House, Michael McCaul (R-TX) is working with Doris Matsui (D-CA). China meanwhile, seeing the writing on the wall, is investing huge sums in building domestic semiconductor manufacturing capabilities. The jury is out on the feasiblity of such an initiative but then again, China is a country with a history of moving mountains.

Texas and Austin, of course, were once the site of the semiconductor consortium SEMATECH at a time when Japan threatened American dominance in that seminal industry. In the end, the state withdrew funding, SEMATECH moved north and is no more. So much for long-term vision.

In this mercurial world, it pays to pay attention, particularly to our own hubris. Texas has always been a destination for risk-takers. Hopefully we’ll take the right risks, and Del Valle will finally get its HEB.

The Pandemic, Jobs and Human Dignity

Magical thinking gets us through what seems unendurable — grief, pandemics, subjugation, airplane flights. But now is not the time for it. We need to be sharp and practical to build the future we want for our ourselves and our country.

When the shelter-in-place-order hit, lacking medical skills, I pitched in to help with the collateral damage — an avalanche of unemployment applications. The experience has given me a catbird’s seat on the future of the job market here in Texas, home of the Texas Miracle, and it is not a rosy picture.

In Texas, jobless claims top 2.3 million

I’ve been without work more than once, and I can assure you it is no fun. Take away the job, the income, the camaraderie (even when it drives you nuts) and what’s left? Those of us lucky enough to have an education, skillset and professional network will probably be okay. Otherwise, we’re in trouble.

I’ve sorted applications from oil workers in south and west Texas, Louisiana, and New Mexico; substitute teachers, restaurant and fast food workers, millwrights, puppeteers, musicians, pipeline consultants and business process engineers, cosmetologists, travel agents, dentists and their hygienists, retailers, financial planners and anesthesiologists. Their names have the ring of Africa, China, Vietnam, Japan, the Middle East, Mexico, Latin America, rural Texas, the Ukraine and Poland.

“I work for pennies, not hours”

Early on, I opened an application with a handwritten note. Written in block letters by a deck hand on a shrimp boat, it said,”I work for pennies, not hours.” There was no self-pity, just the facts from a man with four kids and a third-grade education. A laborer from Donna, Texas, was out of work because he unloads onions from Mexico. Take away the trucks, and there is no job. The pandemic anticipates his future. As autonomous driving and robotic technology develops there will be no need for him.

Consider a 30-year old former Lyft driver with a wife and a four-year old son. When we met in April, he was taking three classes towards a career in cyber security without really understanding what working in the field would entail. He worked 10-hour days, six days a week while taking three classes, found he couldn’t pay his rent, became discouraged and dropped out of school.

Accessible, hands-on approaches with a global outlook

Disasters crack open change, and the pandemic may very well re-shape education to address reality. Instead of competing to get into a high-cost university to realize her dream to become a veterinarian, my friend Cherie’s daughter enrolled at Blinn College where after a couple of years, she’ll be able to transfer seamlessly into Texas A&M University and enroll in one of the best veterinarian training programs in the country.

Austin Community College will soon have four incubators where students get hands-on experience in their future careers. Bioscience, gives students access to a wet lab, which until recently was hard to find in Central Texas. The Fashion incubator features a huge 3D printer for designers and makers, and Entrepreneurship jump starts budding small businesses, something we’ll need in coming months.

A fourth, advanced manufacturing, will train students to use the sophisticated design equipment and processes that produce semiconductors for the factory and consumer of the future, chips that will take advantage of 5G and the Internet of Things. Graduates will be qualified to fill well-paying, high-demand openings at local employers Samsung, Advanced Micro and AMD.

Widening the lens to see the world

Even more remarkable may be an award-winning project at Del Valle High School, a chronically underserved community in the shadow of the Austin Bergstrom Airport.

Using Zoom and a partnership with the World Affairs Council of Austin, the Global Scholars Diploma program connects students with policy experts around the world to explore racism, immigration, climate change, global infections — issues that will shape their future. At left, these young women welcomed me when I visited to watch a regularly-scheduled moot court session with University of Texas law students.

Del Valle and Mike Cunningham are not taking a traditional approach to education. Working on a shoestring budget and leveraging local resources, the program teaches its students to think. It encourages debate, tests opinions, builds confidence and the patience to listen to other views. It nurtures participation, an understanding that the world is bigger than our own backyard, and a sense of a human responsibility that transcends the day-to-day.

Nurturing human dignity

Among Yuval Harari’s many provocative writings is a statement that humans have evolved too quickly to develop the dignity shown by the large predators of the past, who both ruled and served.

Needless to say, we’re not doing a very good job on the dignity front. We murder one another in the name of law enforcement. We brutalize the wildlife that shares the planet with us in the name of “sport.” We deport sick young immigrants who have contracted Covid-19 while in federal detention, transmitting the virus to their home countries.

Dignity is a big concept on which everything we call civilization turns. Our sense of human dignity determines our self respect, which in turn determines how we treat one another, the planet we rely on, and the beings we share it with. It’s difficult if not impossible to maintain our dignity if we lack the training or education to get a job that supports our children, if we’re too sick or obese to endure a full day’s work, or if other people look down on us because we can’t communicate effectively.

Education will not address all of our problems. But it is part of the baseline. Our world is trending in a direction that reflects more of the East and less of the West that defined the last century. If we are going to change direction, this is a moment of full of possibility. Just recognizing the opportunity and working towards a better future would be a fine thing. Because if we don’t do it, who will?

If We Know So Much, Why Don’t We Do Something?

An old book of Texas history, pulled from storage during the Covid-19 shutdown, reminds us of the optimism that marked the start of the 20th century, in stark contrast to our fears for the 21st.

A young activist writer living in Austin, Texas, is inspired by a charismatic politician. He writes a successful novel, secures a good job close to the halls of power and passionately supports liberal causes. A global crisis breaks out. He volunteers to help, is exposed to an untreatable virus, and dies at the age of 33.

The writer is Sinclair Moreland; the year, 1918. The virus was the so-called Spanish Flu. I pulled his book, The Noblest Roman, a tale of idealism in the face of corporate greed and political corruption, from a box I stored a decade ago in preparation for — now?

Sinclair Moreland wrote The Noblest Roman as a testimony to “civic morality.”

When Moreland wrote The Noblest Roman, the world must have seemed full of possibilities. The Spindletop gusher of 1901 remade the oil industry in the image of Texas. Progressives took the reins of power and used a tax on oil production to create the state’s educational and transportation systems. They battled big business, reformed the prisons and passed laws to protect food safety and regulate lobbying. They created the Texas State Historical Society where Moreland became the archivist.

The corporate villain of the time was Ohio-based Standard Oil, the first company to master both vertical and horizontal integration and own its supply chain. Feared and disliked by competitors for its questionable business practices, Standard Oil built a loyal consumer base by keeping its practices low. The company’s CEO, John D. Rockefeller was the world’s richest man. Sound familiar?

The year after Moreland published The Noblest Roman, The Supreme Court split Standard Oil into 34 separate companies, one of which became Exxon-Mobil. The stage was set for what The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman calls “the next train coming down the tracks,” climate change.

So goes the arc of history. Last week, six new Guggenheim Fellows were announced. Among them is Jeff Goodell, who like Moreland, lives here in Austin. But while Moreland paints an ideal of political leadership, Goodell’s award-winning The Water Will Come mourns its absence in the face of rapidly-rising sea levels, and the inevitable associated destruction and mass migration.

“Sea-level rise is like aging. You can’t stop it. You can only do better or worse, ” Goodell quotes an expert in The Water Will Come.

And while Moreland’s subject was bounded by Oklahoma, Louisiana and New Mexico, Goodell’s is global, differentiated only by economic disparity and whether there is too much or not enough water.

“Nature is going to win. Nobody wins with water. Think about the Grand Canyon.”

Jeff Goodell

In 1917, the year before his death in the flu pandemic, Moreland wrote a second book, The Texas Women’s Hall of Fame, dedicated to the women of Texas for whom “social caste has no place” and who maintain a “vital interest in … clean streets, better factory conditions, child and animal protection, higher moral standards, public health, social justice and decent government.” With that in mind, I pass on the brilliant Arundhati Roy’s thoughts for our preset time:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

Arundhati Roy, writing in The Financial Times

A Question of Community

There’s a continuum (and a conundrum) between the social distancing mandated by the coronavirus pandemic and the vitality of our communities. Ancient Athens and a Nazi concentration camp remind us how much we need each other.

Surrounded by my four walls, I’ve been thinking about ancient Athens, which for a single generation, from 454 to 430 B.C., erupted in pure genius. In a perfect storm of creative class-like action, its citizens founded the Western world. Our systems of government, science, philosophy, law, the arts and education are outgrowths of those 24 years.

Athenians valued civic life above all else. Rich and poor lived in similar kinds of housing and ate the same plain fare. People congregated: the rich mixed with the poor, foreigners were welcomed, eccentrics praised, and differences tolerated. The author Eric Weiner writes the condemned Socrates chose death over exile from his beloved Athens.

In time, what Weiner describes as a “creeping vanity” set in. The global city grew insular. The rich built big, showy houses. The streets became wider, the differences between the haves and the have nots, more glaring. Foreigners were shunned. Political divisions erupted. Athens went to war with Sparta. Farmland was destroyed. Tolerance dwindled.

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/eric-weiner-genius-book-interview/
Ancient Athens was a place of genius where life was lived in the public eye. Photo/Wharton School of Business / The Geography of Genius by Eric Weiner

In 430 B.C., a plague killed nearly two-thirds of this dense city’s population. One of its victims was the great Pericles, who had been censured in the city’s political upheaval. A series of despots and tyrants rose to power. After a brief period of peace, war resumed, and Athens was absorbed into Sparta. Some historians have postulated the plague was caused by the Ebola virus, a coronavirus.

The density conundrum

https://www.worcesterart.org/exhibitions/past/hope-and-healing/sweerts_plague_detail.htm
Plague in Ancient City by Michael Sweerts. Photo / Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Years ago I visited the concentration camp Terezin outside of Prague. More than 150,000 Jews were sent to the camp; some 17,000 survived. I remember a guide commenting that the very act of crowding the Jews together so densely gave them the power of community. Artists, philosophers, musicians and scientists suffered alongside their fellows. There were no differences among them.

In 1944, the composer and conductor Rafael Schächter conducted a chorus of 150 prisoners singing Verdi’s massive “Requiem.” The performance was part of a Nazi propaganda initiative for a Red Cross inspection, and as chilling as the story is, I can’t help but wonder how much strength that beautiful project gave Schächter, his singers and their imprisoned audience.

The Czech composer Rafael Schächter conducting a chorus of Jewish prisoners at Terezin in their performance of Verdi’s “Requim.” Schächter was sent to the gas chambers soon afterwards.

The other thing I remember about visiting Terezin was a compulsion to leave as quickly as possible and never return, so vivid is the stamp imprinted by the place.

The need for foundations centered around people

We are not victims. We’ve ignored the Cassandras and their warning signals. We’ve pushed the natural world to a state of dry tinder and its inhabitants to homelessness, starvation and flea markets. There is a natural cycle to things, a cause and effect.

Will technology to save us? It will certainly help those who have the time and tools to use it, hopefully including both children and adults in need of a good education. It will continue to enrich those who create and dominate it. But, without guard rails, it will also drive us down the same path we’ve been on.

Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, a former surgeon general of the United States, has championed the role of happiness in health, including maintaining a vital social safety net. Quoted in a recent column on social distancing, he says:

“If we want to be a stronger, more resilient society, we have to focus on rebuilding foundations centered around people.”

Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, author and former surgeon general of the United States

If we learn anything from history, it’s that nothing lasts forever, and everything has its price. Oh, and leadership matters.

Observations Made During a Search for Provisions, Day 7 of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Is insatiable hunger a symptom of Covid-19?

Everyone is talking about how things will be. How will they be? I have no idea. What I do know is that people are afraid, which makes them very hungry. Some also feel the need to explain why they’re not following the usual courtesies. Some observations made today, Day 7 of the pandemic:

A man scanning the empty aisles of our largest neighborhood grocery store, “I guess I better come early in the morning. They clear the shelves by afternoon.” Indeed, all the raisins are gone. Ditto the Goya beans, my favorite. Ah! I snag a box of golden raisins, pushed to the back of the bottom shelf. Who are “they,” I wonder, and where are “they” putting all of this food?

Is insatiable hunger a symptom of Covid-19? (Lauren Canterberry/Community Impact Newspaper)

Pet food, fully stocked. Should I worry about the cats and dogs? My staple Earl Grey tea, all brands. Gone. And I thought I was surrounded by coffee drinkers.

The checker at the same grocery store. He’s about 18. I try to make him laugh by asking where all the groceries were going. I get a smile as he shakes his head. “I don’t know. Don’t they know things go bad?” Together we wonder when we’ll all settle down, perhaps to a very large shared meal with lots of beans and raisins.

A woman opening the door of the UPS Store with her elbow as I approach sheltered behind a 36-in by 36-in box (the lamp my sister has rejected which I couldn’t return to the store which had closed overnight from the day I called to see if they were open): “I’d open the door for you except for this coronavirus thing.” The door closes just as I reach it. I’m impressed that she explains her actions to me.

Is it time to shop online? Should I worry about the environmental implications of paying Amazon Prime $13/month to bring me tea and raisins instantaneously? What about all those young delivery people who have no health insurance? Perhaps a victory garden in the flower pots on my balcony would work.

Like Scarlet O’Hara, I vow to think about it, not tomorrow, but next week when I run out of greens.

Take care. Be safe, and yes, if at all possible, stay home.

Communicating During a Crisis

Six takeaways from the U.S. response to the Covid-19 pandemic

In a crisis, nothing is more important — aside from saving lives — than clear, consistent communication. Our present crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic — offers some vivid lessons in Crisis Communications 101.

(1) Take responsibility. Have a plan. Trust is everything.

Leadership, leadership, leadership. At the helm of crisis management is a trusted, credible leader supported by a project team with a designated spokesperson and a group of experts germane to addressing situation, each with a clearly-defined role. This team is the source — through multiple channels — of clear, consistent messaging and regular updates.

(2) Deliver the facts clearly, accurately, and on a regular schedule. (Do not lie, obfuscate or bluster.)

A crisis is not the time to wing it. Don’t lie or offer false reassurance. I understand the pressure to deny the reality of a bad situation. But in the end all is revealed, and it’s just not worth it.

We’ve been blessed in Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Health Institute’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has the credentials (2008 Presidential of Freedom for his work with HIV/AIDS) and credibility to steer a rational response and call a spade a spade.

Brene Brown reminds us that we are at our worst when we’re in fear. Address the why/who/what/when to lessen isolation. Help communities figure out how to care for those who don’t have the money, mobility or transportation to prepare. Consider how to give people opportunities to help, despite social distancing. Despite an uptick in first-time gun sales, you probably don’t need an AR-15.

A dedicated website. If Google is developing it, that’s great, because a central repository of accurate information is pivotal.

Microscopic view of Coronavirus, a pathogen that attacks the respiratory tract. Analysis and test, experimentation. Sars. 3d render (Getty Images 1200706447)

(3) Stay out of the forecasting business.

Fact: No one knows the future. Set realistic expectations based on the information on hand and leave prognostication to soothsayers. They have disclaimers.

No vaccine or treatment exists for Covid-19. It takes 18-24 months to develop a vaccine for an unknown virus such as the one that causes the disease. The timeline is mandated by federal law which regulates the licensing of vaccines which require a series of clinical trials, animal and human. Here’s an interesting take from Dr. Jason McLellan, a scientist at the University of Texas who has been studying coronaviruses for years, and is working on a Covid-19 vaccine.

Given our proven lack of forecasting abilities, setting a deadline for the end of a crisis, particularly as it unfolds, opens the door to panic and blame.

(4) Use clearly-defined terms.

Hats off to Wired for a clear explanation of the pandemic’s terminology. Coronavirus refers to a family of viruses; SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the germ that causes the disease, and Covid-19 is the disease itself. Coronaviruses are so-called because the germs that cause the disease latch onto cells in a circular formation, like a crown or corona (see the image, above).

(5) Set clear guidelines and explain why.

At heart, we’re all children. We need rules. So give us clear guidelines, tell us why, and enforce them. That way, we know how to respond. The guardrails are in place.

Covid-19 differs from other coronaviruses in that its more contagious. With no vaccine in place, curtailing the virus’ spread is step one. If this means curfews, tell us and make it a national rule. We’ll adapt. Voluntary compliance is rarely effective. If you doubt this, check your neighbor’s (or maybe your) recycling bin. You’ll find the definition of “clean glass, paper and a very limited range of plastics” is far broader than you could have imagined.

(6) Remind people what’s most important.

Our culture is built on community. That’s how we earn a living, worship and create family and community bonds. And therein lies the biggest hurdle (and lesson) of Covid-19. I have no doubt that how we respond will define us for the foreseeable future. There are some really interesting things happening virtually which I’m exploring and will write about in a future blog.

Let’s learn our lessons well. My take: Give us accurate information. Deliver it consistently, through sources that we can trust. That way, we can follow the rules, take care of our neighbors and the vulnerable. And remember to take care of the environment because ultimately, that’s what we depend on.

Never Waste a Good Crisis

The word crisis has its roots in the Latin krisis, to separate, a reminder to step back and take a more objective look at our habits, expectations and momentum. Our world is shifting on its axis: Covid-19, an price war between oil giants, Meghan and Harry. It’s a time to reevaluate.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor head to Vancouver, striding off one stage and onto another, uncharted one. Frank Augstein/Associated Press

We’re being nudged, gently and not so gently. It’s quiet here in Austin, Texas. Typically at this time of year, the city is buzzing with SXSW. Residents rent their houses and pack up for Paris or Rome. Austin becomes a mini-Las Vegas, full of celebrities, adrenal rushes, music, deals and futurist thinking. Not so in 2020. This year we’ll take a different, as yet unknown approach.

Yesterday I had a phone interview with a prospective client looking for someone to plug in for a team member out on leave. Her questions were smart and focused: what value do you bring? But it wasn’t until afterwards that I acknowledged her critical thinking. Okay, so you’re different. How will you improve what we do and how we do it? Think more about us, and less about you. Hmm, a timely reminder.

Chatting with my neighbor Mohamed, the conversation turned to — the stock market. I asked him how old he was in 2008 when the Great Recession unfolded. He was 18, a freshman at Rice University in Houston. He’s morphed from a statistician (oil), to a sales analyst (software), to an entrepreneur. Now he tells me he’s where he wants to be, in technical sales. So far, the unknown doesn’t phase him. He’s unashamedly optimistic.

Off and on for the past month, The New York Times has advised practicing optimism. Yes, optimism, like abs, can be toned. And similarly, there’s value there. When we’re optimistic, more possibilities bubble to the surface.

Experimentation is risky. But at a certain point, remember, we are a very lucky in many, many ways. What have we got to lose by smiling and taking a new approach?

Meetings Aren’t Getting You Where You Want to Go? Try Something New

Are you getting the most out of the time you’re spending in meetings? Try Liberating Structures, a set of tools that cultivates a focused purpose and broad participation.

I thrive on early mornings but shun early-morning meetings. For me, morning is thinking time. Even summoning the power of speech before 9 am takes an effort. Nevertheless on Valentine’s Day, I led a group from the Women Communicators of Austin in dismantling their usual way of doing things to try a different approach.

Juggling bowls of oatmeal and cinnamon rolls, we took the bull by the horns and experimented with Liberating Structures, a set of collaborative tools that focuses shared participation on an articulated purpose. In this experiment, the purpose of the meeting was the answer to a question: “What is keeping you from doing what you want to do?”

Never start a meeting without a clear purpose. Here, Monique Correon, WCA Careers Over Coffee coordinator, focus on how we can get the results we want.

Harnessing the collective problem solver

Most people approach meetings the way they do weddings and funerals: This is how we do it, making the results predictable. According to the Harvard Business Review, 90% of the people at your last meeting are daydreaming. Seventy-three percent are doing other work. If you care about your time and productivity, it’s a problem.

But we are social creatures; shared ideas and approaches are our secret sauce, the can of spinach Popeye pops open to defeat his arch-nemesis, Brutus. When we harness the meeting format, those shared ideas are transformed into what the New York Times columnist David Brooks recently described as “gatherings” where:

“…traits (like): open-mindedness, flexibility, listening skills, team-building skills and basic human warmth. In this saga, leaders are measured by their ability to expand relationships, not wall them off.”

Too blue sky?  Maybe not.

Too much control or too little structure?

The answer to the meeting conundrum lies somewhere between fluidity and control, neither so tightly orchestrated the meeting’s structure sucks the spontaneity out of the discussion, nor so loose it degenerates into interminable chaos. Liberating Structures uses simple exercises based on 10 basic principles:

  • Never start without a clear purpose
  • Practice deep respect for people and local solutions
  • Include and unleash everyone (each person is given equal time)
  • Build trust as you go
  • Learn by failing forward
  • Practice self-discovery within a group
  • Amplify freedom and responsibility
  • Emphasize possibilities:  believe before you see
  • Invite creative destruction to make space for innovation
  • Engage in seriously playful curiosity

What we did: an early-morning example, with oatmeal:

The session began by establishing its purpose, why each of use was there. Because we were a diverse group with different roles and backgrounds, I made it a personal challenge, the answer to my question, “What is keeping you from doing what you want to do?

What followed was a series of linked exercises, each prompted by a question related to their challenge. Participants moved randomly around the room, sharing their challenge with others, deepening their understanding of its nature and sharing commonalities.

To rediscover forgotten resources and insights, each person worked alone, then sequentially with one and then three others, to share a personal success. Finally, we explored, individually and in small groups, what actions can be now to address the challenge. To respect everyone’s time, each exercise was timed.  

Liberating Structures builds trust and engagement by starting with small interactions and building to larger ones. Here, WCA President Jenny Magic (right) talks with Laura, a new member and new Austinite.

Failing forward

Monique Carreon, the meeting coordinator, a marketing manager at EOS, a tech startup that uses Agile methodology. Agile is terrific for software development, but it doesn’t solve the problem is giving each participant the opportunity to engage. Monique was completely engaged from our first conversation. We debriefed afterwards here’s what we’ll do differently next time:

  • Arrange the space for movement and flexibility:  This was my biggest oversight. Open space encourages engagement. Finding the room already set up with a single long table, I opted against dismantling it. More space would have made it easier to reconfigure the groups and maximize networking.  As a result, although the small groups were active, there was minimal overall group contribution.
  • Engage everyone equally:  I timed the small groups, but I did not time individual contributions. Had I done so, it would have equalized each person’s talk time and more fully encouraged listeners to talk.
  • Clarify and reinforce the meeting’s purpose: To be valuable, the discussion must tie back to the reason for the meeting. I didn’t brief latecomers and as a result, they were unable to participate fully.  

Nothing Ventured …

As WCA member, mentor and attention management expert Maura Nevel Thomas advises, “If you’re a leader, I encourage you to collaborate with other managers to take a fresh look at how you handle meetings.”

Liberating Structures is a living online collaborative. Over 30 structures are posted on the website, ready for application. If you have a virtual team, try using it with Zoom! for team meetings. Questions? There is a dedicated Slack channel. LS is used by the Gates Foundation, the World Bank, the U.S. Army, IBM, many nonprofits, and just maybe — you. Meetups and collaboratives are alive worldwide, so check it out:

Meetups in Austin, Texas; check for one in your area:

Room set up makes a big difference. Our interactions would have been more broadly distributed if the long table had been dismantled into smaller groupings. Even so, our approach got people thinking and talking about how to have better meetings.