When Does Choosing A Better Computer Become Wasteful?

No, I'm not referring to green computing devices. Though, apparently computers account for 2% of the world's carbon emissions. I'm swapping my nearly four year-old PC notebook for a new 15" MacBook Pro. Can you say upgrade? Like many buyers, I'm tempted to get the fastest possible machine with the most memory, given my budget.

But I keep thinking about over-processing. It's wasteful to get a tool that's more powerful than what's needed for the job. Here's some of my thinking.

• How fast? I do minimal multimedia work. Mostly, I access databases and documents on a local network and remotely, create text-based documents, and work on the web. But time is money (my time ends up being my clients' money, to be precise). So, I decided to get the fastest available processor along with a solid state drive. I can always upgrade RAM, but predict 4 GB will be plenty for 95% of my work.
• How much memory? With a 500 GB hard drive I can save data for years to come without worrying about usable disk space. But I've only got 65 GB of data now. So I decided to get the 128 GB drive. I can always upgrade when I near capacity. And who knows what cloud storage options will look like then.

The hardest decision was whether to get a solid state drive. Ultimately, I chose one because they're more reliable (no moving parts) and run cooler (no motor). The result is a more efficient machine, with the related benefit of a longer battery life. I decided to go with the Apple OEM drive rather than with a third party upgrade. There may be better after-market drives out there, but I'd rather avoid any potential problems with warranties and service. If there's a problem, it's Apple's to fix. Period.

Now, it wasn't that hard to identify the right machine for today's work. The over-processing analysis would have been easy from that standpoint. But predicting the appropriate tool for two to four years from now? Given the extraordinary rate of change in consumer electronics and the web -- who knows what we'll all be doing then. That's what made this a challenge.

Has anyone else experienced this challenge when buying a computer? From an enterprise IT perspective, our firm certainly has, and larger organizations must have it even worse.

Over-processing: Too Much Of A Good Thing

Bruce MacEwen at Adam Smith, Esq. has an interesting post on how the views on quality held by corporate in-house legal counsel diverge from outside counsel. Referencing McKinsey, he divides quality into three segments and explains how he thinks corporate America views them:

• Good enough: Sufficient for almost all purposes almost all the time.
• Excellent: Occasionally needed when germane to reputation, marketplace perception, or positioning.
• Superb: Very rarely required, perhaps only when genuine organizational threats are in play.

He contrasts this with the perspective of outside legal counsel:

• Superb: Why you come to our firm, what we do, and who I am. (Don't for a second underestimate that third element; it's why you get up in the morning and how you hold your head high.)
• Excellent: When we try to execute a representation with some degree of sensitivity to costs, based on a longstanding relationship.
• Good enough: Who do you think we are? You've come to the wrong place.

Assuming outside counsel does the work at a "Good enough" level, Bruce poses the question: "who's to blame-your firm or the client-for the fact that merely sufficient legal advice has come back to bite?"

Good question. And one I'm not prepared to answer.

But let me add a comment from a Lean perspective. The problem with outside legal counsel's view is the willingness to engage in over-processing, one of the seven traditional forms of waste (muda). Over-processing is doing more work, or higher quality work, than is desired by the customer, or using tools that are more expensive or precise than needed.

Outside counsel sees the high quality work as an unqualified good thing (who would want lesser quality?) In-house counsel sees the work as "wasting" their finite budget for legal services. The company wanted a Corolla. Its attorney just built a fully loaded Lexis LS600hl.

The key here is open communication between the client and outside counsel.The client should be clear about what it needs. Counsel should be clear about what it will deliver and at what price. Also, counsel needs to explain the risks of opting for work of lesser quality. And to the extent possible, the client needs to sign off on any such risk.

We also should be careful to distinguish between the quality of work product and the quality of representation. Work product almost always should be high quality. It's the amount or type of work product that should vary depending on the client's needs. For example, a legal brief should be very well written -- no matter what. But whether the brief should be filed should be considered at the outset.

Given the current economic climate, there's sure to be a lot more discussion about the appropriate level of quality, for legal services and virtually everything else we have to pay for.

GM's Plan For "Zero Waste" Operations

The New York Times reports:

General Motors said last week that 62 of its manufacturing plants (representing 43 percent of its global production) no longer send any production waste to landfills. The company’s goal, first stated in 2008, is for zero waste at half of its operations by the end of 2010, and it’s 87 percent of the way there.

Zero waste, or “Nil to Landfill,” has been a rallying cry in Europe, and it is national policy in New Zealand, but it’s still a fledgling movement in the United States. Still, some major corporations, including Wal-Mart, Nike and the carpet maker Interface, have embraced zero waste goals.

Physical waste indicates that a process contains one or more of the seven traditional forms of waste, or muda (transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, over-processing, over-production, and defects). For example, if you're throwing out a lot of spoiled food from your refrigerator, you should reconsider how you do your grocery shopping (over-production and excess inventory?), meal planning (defects and waiting?), and cooking (over-production and defects?).

However, GM and other companies are careful to clasify material sent to outside recyclers as non-waste. But being able to recycle waste is less a testament to an efficient manufacturing process than it is innovation by the recycling industry. Just because my paper waste goes into a recycling bin rather than the trash bin doesn't mean my processes have improved. Recyclable waste is still waste, and still a likely indicator of inefficiencies in the process. Still credit where credit is due.