Endless Knots

Superstorm Sandy collides with Supermess LIPA

"Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area."

Remember that famous line from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? In case you've forgotten, here's the awful story.

The week after Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. Aaron Broussard, then-president of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, sobbed on national television as he spoke to the late "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert, recounting the death of the mother of his county’s emergency services director. Eva Rodrigue, 92, along with perhaps thirty or more residents, drowned in St. Rita’s Nursing Home, after what Broussard described as days of bureaucratic promises broken.

He ticked off the list of the guilty:

“Were we abandoned by the federal government? Absolutely we were…nobody came here, sir. Nobody came. The federal government didn't come. The Red Cross didn't come. I'll give you a list of people that didn't come here, sir, and I was here…Did inefficiencies, did bureaucracy commit murder here? Absolutely, it did.”

We've yet to hear that bureaucracy is being charged with murder following Superstorm Sandy but the reports of massive dysfunction at the Long Island Power Authority certainly suggest organizational culpability. Consider this from Danny Hakim, Patrick McGeehan, and Michael Moss's piece in Tuesday's NY Times:

Customers have been exasperated not only by a lack of power, but also by the authority’s inability to communicate basic information. Long Islanders have recounted tales of phones unanswered at authority offices, of wildly inaccurate service maps and of broken promises to dispatch repair crews.

It gets worse (or is still worse--as of this writing 8,000 are still without power more than two weeks after the storm) and it's really echo-y of what Broussard said 8 years ago:

“Resources came late,” said Frank P. Petrone, chief executive of the Town of Huntington and a former official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “When they came, there was no management to utilize those resources effectively. And it took 10 days for them to get their act together.”

Also from Petrone who tried to plan ahead only to discover that LIPA's crews didn't communicate when they finally arrived:

“The upper management couldn’t communicate with the middle management,” he said. “The middle management couldn’t communicate with the crews. And finally, when we had sufficient crews coming in — resources that should have been arranged before — they came in and had very little direction and they were flabbergasted at the condition of the infrastructure, the wiring, the entire system.”

A quick look at LIPA's publicly available 13-page PDF organizational chart shows 3 executive-level vacancies as of August 2012. Add to that the recent resignation of its COO and LIPA's leadership team resembles Swiss cheese more than an organization worthy of public confidence and trust.

Lastly, we arrive at news that reeks of the BP spill in the beleagured Gulf of Mexico. It turns out that LIPA is a shell company that outsources its operations. Remember all the finger pointing after the BP spill as it became nearly impossible to know which company was responsible for what, who was accountable for what, and who ultimately made the bad decisions that led to the spill? Lots of outsourcing. Here's what Reuters reported on Tuesday of this week:

LIPA, however, is a state-owned shell company that has only about 100 employees [all of whose positions are represented on their publicly available org chart]. It has outsourced the operation of its electric system to a unit of British power company National Grid PLC, which has said it is responsible for implementing LIPA's restoration plan.

Outsourcing is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that if you outsource, leadership must be fixated on clear lines of communication and have complete confidence in the competence of outside organization(s). And in yet another twist to the story, National Grid is "set to hand operations over to a unit of New Jersey power company Public Service Enterprise Group Inc in 2014," according to a Nov. 6, 2012, Reuters story. Although our research on this is still to be completed, it's likely that National Grid currently has massive outsourcing operations itself. That, coupled with the planned turnover of operations to yet another company in a short time (PSEG), makes the accountability/commitment-to-excellence worth questioning.

Given LIPA's empty leadership and problematic outsourcing, it is no wonder that a historic Frankenstorm is causing so much suffering. Going forward, it would be interesting to use OrgScope to fully analyze LIPA's (and/or National Grid's) organizational structure, examine lines of communication, and provide recommendations for transforming LIPA from a dangerous disconnected bureacracy to a fluid, communication-rich storm-proof network.

 

 

 

 

And in other news this morning

Driving into Groton, MA this morning, suddenly a call from the sky...

Carrot dust and heaven in a barn... and a flood... and a festival

It was a gorgeous late August day,
fields abundant with the fruits of summer.

 

Even the goat and pig were friendly.

 

But we had come to eat the best meal of our lives.
First, hors d's (photo by Etienne Frossard) on the patio

 

With the eve's wine in the fine hands of Daniel Johnnes (r)

Fifty people at one very long table in the center of the barn
(photo, Etienne)

with tomatoes for sale along the walls.

With Ray Bradley (left) and his pal (since they were 14 growing up near Storrs, CT) David Bouley cooking in the kitchen, grilling cod in the field.

Six courses, maybe 16 (photo from Bouley Restaurant on Facebook, thanks)

Which then were served to discerning palates (thanks again, Etienne)

Including the piece, the Carrot Dust of the title (Etienne, encore)

 

Course by course until it was over and David and Ray said goodbye
and that they'd do it again -- soon

And that the Annual Festival would take place Sept 25

 

But what we did not know is that just a few days later,
Hurricane Irene would turn Ray's farm into this
and ruin his whole crop

 

As the waters receded, fund-raising arose (everyone loves Ray)
and he continued to go to (Grand Army Plaza and 97th Street Farmers) Market
selling what he could (here on Sept 24)

 

And the next day, we went to the festival, which NY Times reported on here
and where Etienne took this picture of these tractor drivers

And I took this picture of Etienne

And of Heather Marold Thomason, whose company badfeather does Ray's website and who's been reporting on the flood on her blog

And said goodbye to Iris Kimberg, who runs the show

And to the stone pig

Artist alert for Bradley Farm

Further to yesterday's post from the Bradley Farm newsletter, pictures reprinted with permission (and I still promise that post on the heavenly meal served at Bradley Farm on Aug 21):

 

Show Your Support, Design a Bradley Farm T-shirt!

Here's your chance to help support Bradley Farm and show us how creative you can be!

Ray suffered terrible losses from Hurricane Irene. The farm, and with it the fields of crops that would have been harvested to sell at the markets, have all been flooded. We're planning to sell t-shirts as a fundraiser to help Ray recover some of his losses, and we thought it would be a lot more fun to get Ray's loyal customers in on the action.

Bradley Farm T-Shirt Contest
Send us your best idea. The winning t-shirt will be for sale at this year's Annual Farm Festival!

Contest: Email your design by Wednesday, September 14th to [email protected]. We'll choose a favorite and the winner will be announced in the next week's newsletter.

Prize: The winner will receive a t-shirt, a free ticket to this year's farm party and a big hug from Ray. All submissions will be included in a gallery on the website.

Details: Your design must be able to be reproduced in 1 or 2 colors (it will be silkscreened). Send us a jpeg, PDF or other digital file (no Word Docs please) that is at least 150dpi at actual size (email us with any questions about this).

Bradley Farm, Irene, and the best meal I've ever had...

 
© Etienne Frossard - David Bouley speaking after the meal (read on)

This is one of those posts that I've been meaning to write for nearly two weeks but life trumped every attempt and now I'm in the position of having heard that the hurricane has caused flooding and...

What am I talking about?

Earlier this summer, Farmer Extraordinaire Ray Bradley of Bradley Farm in New Paltz, NY, started hosting Farm-to-Table dinners in his barn. My daughter and son-in-law went to the first, raved about it, and invited me along to the third, which took place on August 21.

Ray sells his wares at the Grand Army Plaza Farmers Market in Brooklyn, which I've blogged about many times. It is indeed a grand farmers market and the Bradley Farm stand is a de rigeur stop for us...which is how my family knew about these extraordinary dinners.

The August 21 meal was one apart - incredibly, David Bouley, chef of great renown (viz. Bouley, brushstroke, Bouley Test Kitchen, etc), who's known Ray  since they were 14 and growing up together near Storrs, CT, collaborated on this event. David was the chef, Ray was in the kitchen, Iris Kimberg was the producer...along with a very large staff, including many volunteers, and the result was pure wonder. When I properly blog this event, the post will be called "Carrot dust and heaven in a barn."

But alas, I've learned just a few hours ago via Etienne Frossard, who took the pictures on the Bradley Farm site, and who has sent me a bunch to share here, including the one at the top of this post, that Bradley Farm was flooded by Hurricane Irene and that Ray finally was able to reach his precious land - by canoe.

We wonder who really gets touched by this wild weather. A number of people I know have lost power; a friend couldn't drive from Vermont to Boston today due to roads being washed out. And now we know that there's so much water at Bradley Farm that Ray is moving around in a canoe.

I'll still do the post about the best meal I've ever had but tonight there is only this report and the hope that the animals are OK and that the harvest is not lost. Thinking of you, Ray and Iris.

A tornado blows through Brooklyn

It was just a bit cool this afternoon in Brooklyn, the kind of cool where you wonder whether to wear a jacket but, then again, you think it's really not that chilly, yet without the jacket, you wish you'd worn one.

Then suddenly, around 5 PM, we noticed that it was extremely hot, so warm that we had to open the windows, remove socks, that sort of thing, the air very close. Odd, we said.

And just as quickly there was mammoth thunder, the sky turned dark, pelting rain, hail, and a wind so forceful that I saw someone across the street blown over, umbrellas turning inside out. Next it was dark, dark, dark, the driving rain, the wind, again, the wind...and confusion about where to go, to the cellar, into the hall, as we figured out that it had to be a tornado.

 

Perhaps five minutes later, maybe ten, it was all over. A huge branch down across three backyards (including that of my relatives), the back door jammed shut, leaves blown in through open windows...and then outside, trees down everywhere, everywhere, branches, limbs, the steeple of a church folding a car roof in half.

 

I went outside to take some pictures but was stopped by people coming up from the subway, asking what had happened, others reporting what they'd seen a block or two away, everyone talking to one another, the most unlikely people exchanging information, people who in any other moment would barely look at one another, or worse, be afraid to talk. Instead, old and young, hip and dowdy, from the islands, from New Jersey, black, white, brown, yellow, just so many people talking, all stunned.

 

A tornado in Brooklyn? My mother's hometown. A tornado brings Brooklyn to a halt.

 

 

6 countries, 24 hours and a virtual team stat

I had occasion to chat with Colin Rainier earlier this week. (No, I'm not switching industries - if you follow the link, you'll see what I mean.) We'd had a bit of trouble scheduling the call as Colin was one of those whose travel plans were affected by that nasty plume of ash that was pouring out of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull (I love that word - should be in spelling bees) volcano.

Colin had to get to a meeting in Nice, or thereabouts, in fact a tiny village even more beautiful than Nice (Eze). To get there, he flew from his home in #1 Bermuda (below, the view from his office window, which he kindly sent) to #2 Newark to #3 Porto (Portugal) to #4 Geneva, where he picked up a car, swinging through #5 Italy and finally arriving in #6 Eze (France.) Right. Six countries, for a brief meeting, then turned around and came home, all within 24 hours.

His colleagues at the meeting had even greater adventures getting there - ferries, trains, cars, and such.

That the subject of our call was virtual working was not lost on Colin who went on to cite his experiences with same and this phenomenal stat: he figures that his "expense ratio is 40% of [his] competitors" due to his use of virtual teams, sourced for the need, then dispersed when the task is done. Well done, Colin, especially when you have the good fortune to be "assembling" those teams while looking out on this.

Iceland causes virtual teams to finally erupt

From Reuters/Ingolfur Juliusson, plasmastic

Quite a good post ("Eruptions") from Hugh Tonks at workshifting.com. Clever walk around his team looking at what the shutdown in air travel has meant to them. How many more volcanoes will it take before virtual teams gain some respect?

Eyewitness report from downtown Reykjavík

I've been concerned about my friend Jonas and his family who live in Reykjavík so was pleased to receive this report, peppered with Jonas's typical wry humor. (Meanwhile, one set of friends has had to postpone a work trip to Russia; another is grounded in SF and unable to get to the UK; yet another couple is mourning their lost vacation to France; one more, and daughter, are stranded in the Netherlands...and friends in the Caribbean are wondering when they'll be able to return to London.

Hi,

We're all okay so far and the south-west corner of the country (Reykjavík) has remained unaffected (until the wind changes direction, that is).

The odd thing is that after the Westman Island, or Heimey to be more exactly, was literally buried in ash overnight when I was a child, you tend to take these things in stride.

Unfortunately half of Europe is sore at us for upsetting their vacation plans, as if my Uncle Steini poured some potato juice down the crater by mistake and...

Drying out

Remember our problems walking around the Charles here in Boston last week? Things are improving. Same path, same bench, new turtle, plus an elegant fowl, all yesterday.