I’ve long been an advocate of “plain language contracting” – in fact, for many years. After all, it is the users of the contracts who need to understand and live into them. Of course, I perked up when I saw an insurance company issuing a plain language contract. The company is Lemonade and they are […]
From the Blog
Avoiding the Death Spiral
Many procurement organizations don’t realize they are in a virtual death spiral when it comes to cost-cutting. Procurement organizations that constantly demand lower and lower costs (often having a metric known as Purchase Price Variance) often find themselves in a painful death spiral with the companies’ supplier relationships. When a company gets in a tit-for-tat clash […]
Paying the Piper
The old saying goes, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” The adage dates back to medieval times and emphasizes the fact that the person paying someone to do something decides how that something gets done. Paying the Piper makes a great deal of sense in transactional deals; if Company A is footing the bill, shouldn’t it call the shots? […]
You May Think You Know What You’re Doing…
Seth Godin’s recent blog on “Rationalizing your project” really struck a chord with me. Godin talks about how companies and individuals fail to follow advice because, “In the face of helpful advice, it’s easy to say, ‘sure, that’s what I’m already doing,’” or justify altering the advice to make things easier for them. He gives an excellent […]
Counting on What Counts
The saying goes that not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. Those are excellent words to live by in both personal and business relationships. I especially like the nuance of the first part of the quote because all too often companies are seeking the holy grail of “value,” but […]
Don’t be a Stick or a Paper Tiger
KPJR Films has a fabulous documentary called “Paper Tigers.” It’s about how a high school decided to approach troubled youths – who are acting out because of trauma and toxic stress levels – with love and respect rather than punishment. The documentary is supported by research from clinical physician Dr. Vincent Felitti and CDC epidemiologist Robert Anda; they […]
George Akerlof and the Lemon Problem
George Akerlof put math behind the concept of the “lemon problem” in his classic 1970 article, Akerlof (with Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz) received the 2001 Nobel Prize for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information. This YouTube video explains the lemon problem in an easy to understand two-minute clip. In a nutshell, there are honest sellers and dishonest sellers (e.g. those selling […]
A New Day, A New Way for Island Health and Hospitalists
Our latest case study relates the extraordinary and inspiring journey of the Victoria Island Health Authority and their Hospitalists as they used the Vested model to transform their troubled labor relationship into a highly collaborative one. Most on the team have called the shift to transformational. Some go so far to say it was more like […]
All I Want for Christmas and the New Year…
As I ponder the holiday season and the start of a New Year, I wonder – from a Vested perspective of course – what would happen if Christmas stockings and New Year resolutions contained: Collaboration instead of coal Win-win instead of whine-whine Trust instead of truculence Integrity instead of infamy Value instead of venom Decency […]
The Problem with Supplier Trust
The problem with trust when it comes to suppliers is that they probably supply many different companies, perhaps even your competitors – so how do you trust them? But have you stopped to think the reverse is also true: how can suppliers trust their buyers? This is a situation as old as the buyer-supplier relationship […]
