Norwood Consulting Group

After examining how high performers use analytics, it is clear that quick action is a distinguishing feature of an effective analytics culture. Companies like Harrah’s and Best Buy, for example, do not simply gather and analyze data: they use the resulting insights to make smarter decisions faster.

No technological solution, simply layered on top of existing processes and culture, can achieve these results. Further, pockets of existing analytical talent quickly grow disillusioned and, because they are not integrated into the business as a whole, fail to deliver much strategic value.

A corporate culture that values analytics and a respect for data combined with a pervasive curiosity results in people asking questions such as, “Do we think this is true, or do we know?” This is the key to success— the “secret sauce”—of analytics leaders. Due to the hard work required to build and maintain such an analytics culture, succeeding in this endeavor raises the table stakes the market. Accenture uses the term “organizational effectiveness” to structure the multifaceted endeavors required to foster an analytics culture.

Three areas are fundamental to fostering an analytics culture that enables high performance:

• Leadership. The single most important step is to promote leaders at every level who have a passion for data analysis. Executives must also honestly assess just how in touch they are with the existing culture before they attempt to transform it.
• Breaking down silos. Silos are a quick killer of an analytics culture. To help organizations achieve their business goals, analytics requires cross-functional collaboration.
• Developing, motivating and retaining analytics talent. Upskilling the workforce in analytic capabilities is quickly becoming essential just to keep pace with the market. Training workers in IT skills has consumed the organization’s training departments in the past; the next 20 years will be about integrating analytics into everyday work.

Read Accenture’s Summary

As stricter environmental regulations approach, some power generators are choosing to shutter their coal-fired plants.

June 11, 2011|By Julie Wernau, Tribune reporter

Consumers could see their electricity bills jump an estimated 40 to 60 percent in the next few years.

The reason: Pending environmental regulations will make coal-fired generating plants, which produce about half the nation’s electricity, more expensive to operate. Many are expected to be shuttered.

The increases are expected to begin to appear in 2014, and policymakers already are scrambling to find cheap and reliable alternative power sources. If they are unsuccessful, consumers can expect further increases as more expensive forms of generation take on a greater share of the electricity load.

“Each generator will have to decide for itself whether the investment required to meet environmental requirements can be justified based on its projection of market prices and the cost of its capital. In any case, those costs will be passed through to consumers,” said Mark Pruitt, director of the Illinois Power Agency, which procures electricity for Illinois.

American Electric Power, one of the country’s largest coal-burning electricity generators, said Thursday it will retire nearly a quarter of its coal-fueled generating capacity and that it will spend up to $8 billion to retrofit remaining units to meet regulations that start taking effect in 2014. Those moves will have an impact.

“The sudden increase in electricity rates and impacts on state economies will be significant at a time when people and states are still struggling,” AEP Chairman and CEO Michael G. Morris said.

Exactly how much bills will go up is unclear.

What analysts know is that a portion of ComEd bills that pays electricity generators to reserve a portion of their power three years into the future will increase more than fourfold. That would translate into increases of $107 to $178 a year for an average residential customer in ComEd’s territory, starting in 2014, according to calculations by Chris Thomas, policy director for consumer advocacy group Citizens Utility Board.

In 2014 those so-called capacity costs are expected to add approximately $2.7 million over the previous year to electricity bills in Chicago Public Schools, $3.3 million for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and $5.4 million to the city of Chicago, according to an analysis by Tenaska, a Nebraska-based power development company that wants to develop a coal-fed power plant in central Illinois that would meet stringent regulations because it would capture and sequester emissions.

Coal-fired plants historically have been one of the cheapest ways to generate electricity, but operating costs are expected to increase significantly because of upgrades needed on older plants to meet new environmental regulations. The Illinois Power Agency estimates that by 2017 the energy portion of bills could jump 65 percent from today’s rates.

Coal plants that account for roughly a fifth of Illinois’ electricity generation could exit the market as a result of the new emissions rules, the Illinois Power Agency told state legislators in a memo last month.

More than 8,000 megawatts of coal-fired generation capacity has been retired in the U.S. since 2005, according to data from industrial software company Ventyx. Generators have announced they plan to retire another 21,000 megawatts in the near future, and some industry consultant studies estimate 60,000 megawatts of power, enough for 60 million homes, will be taken offline by 2017.

One example of the trend is Dominion Resources’ recent announcement that by 2014 it will close State Line Power Station, an outmoded coal-fired plant sandwiched between Lake Michigan and the Chicago Skyway at the Illinois-Indiana border.

The news comes as consumer advocacy groups are fighting a parade of utility rate hikes, along with legislation that could add an extra 2.5 percent to ComEd bills each year for at least the next three years. ComEd customers paid 30 percent more for their electricity in 2009 than 10 years earlier. ComEd, a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corp., serves 3.8 million customers across northern Illinois, or 70 percent of the state’s population.

While coal plant operators have years to plan for new regulations, the first glimpse into future pricing came May 13. That’s when the PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission system that oversees the electric grid for 54 million customers in 13 states, including the ComEd region of Illinois, held its annual auction for future power needs. The auction locks in supplies of electricity three years in advance to prevent massive power outages.

PJM chooses the lowest-cost blend of power that can meet demand expected during peak hours — the hottest days of the year when air conditioners are blasting.

n return for that commitment, utilities pay auction winners a “capacity payment,” which is determined based on the cost of the supply mix. Consumers pay these costs on electricity bills as part of an “electricity supply charge” that makes up about two-thirds of the bill. The payments are in addition to what generators receive for the energy they sell.

Figuring in additional costs of scrubbers and other environmental upgrades, the coal-fired plant operators bid too high and found themselves out of a job.

“The surprise was probably in the fact that (the bids) went up so quickly in just the one-year time frame,” said Travis Miller, associate director for utilities research at Chicago-based Morningstar.

Overall, enough electricity to power about 6.8 million homes dropped out of the auction compared with last year. This means the price consumers pay to ComEd to reserve that electricity will go up because power that costs more to generate, such as gas-fired peaker plants, will be tapped sooner.

Not all coal-fired power plants in service will need to install emission-control equipment.

As of May 2010, nearly half of the 310 gigawatts of coal-fired generating capacity in the U.S. had already installed the necessary scrubbers and more were permitted or under construction, according to an analysis by ICF International, a global consultancy.

Environmentalists say the new regulations will protect Americans from airborne mercury, arsenic, dioxin, acid gases and deadly particulates from coal-burning power plants. How companies choose to meet those standards — whether by installing emission controls or shutting down — is a business decision, said Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund.

One company that expects to benefit from the changes is Chicago-based Exelon Corp., which has a large fleet of nuclear power plants that have low emissions and are cheap to run compared with coal plants.

“The upside to Exelon is unmistakable,” CEO John Rowe said last year. “Every $50 per megawatt-day as a change in capacity prices, translates to almost $350 million of additional capacity revenue for Exelon in 2014 and subsequent years.”

Rowe said energy prices are also expected to rise if coal plants are retired and replaced with other energy sources, like natural gas. “These changes add up quickly,” he said. “A $5 per megawatt-hour increase in energy prices would be $700 million to $800 million of incremental annual revenue to Exelon on an open basis. We expect that at least some of that upside will be realized in the next two to four years.”

Meanwhile, legislators are working on a variety of possible alternatives to offset the loss of cheap coal power. One of the boldest ideas is allowing the Illinois Power Agency be able to procure energy efficiency — essentially paying businesses to reduce energy consumption.

A 2009 report prepared for ComEd by energy and environmental consultancy Cadmus Group Inc. found that 14 percent of energy supplied by the grid could be “cost-effectively avoided” through energy efficiency programs.

“Energy efficiency is the cleanest way to meet our power needs,” said Howard Learner, president and executive director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center. “There’s a tremendous amount of energy in buildings and people’s homes that can help save us money on utility bills and feed our economy.”

Cross-posted

PERSONAL QUALITIES

“What made you want to leave your current job? Or, why did you leave your previous job?”

“What did you like least about your last job?
Their answer will tell you if they are just a unhappy person and it doesn’t matter where they land they will find unhappiness.”

“What’s the one most important thing to you?”

“What leadership qualities do you believe in that makes you a good fit with my team?”

“Do you take personal ownership of decisions right or wrong?”

“Are you honest?
Without honesty or integrity one cannot be trusted; a person without integrity lacks everything in character thus they have no true work ethic.)”

“What’s your greatest strength?”

“What is your greatest weakness?”
[Read more about this question.]

JOB QUALIFICATIONS

“What’s the meaning of the phrase ‘people person’ and are you one?”

“What makes the best job for you right now?”

“Why do you think you would be good for this position?”

“What makes you think you can do this job?”

“Can you read a tape measure and do simple math?
Hand out a simple one-sheet math quiz.”

“What makes you qualified to work here?”

“Why should I hire you?”

“You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?”
[Possible answers.]

MOTIVATION

“Why did you apply here?”

“Tell me what you know about my company?
This tells me if they truly want to work on our team or if they have applied with every competitor in town & if they are prepared.”

“Do you want my job?
‘NO’ ok then leave. You have no ambition.

“What motivates you?”

“Are you available to work overtime?”

“Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”
[Read more about this question.]

BONUS ROUND

“Are you willing to be the fall guy?”

And for you Monty Python fans: “Can you cut down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring?”

Source: See all the suggested interview questions in this NFIB Facebook post on May 11, 2011.

Cross-posted

Free markets, free enterprise, innovation and entrepreneurship are the foundation for economic growth and job creation in America.  For the past four years, Democrats in Washington have enacted policies that undermine these basic concepts which have historically placed America at the forefront of the global marketplace.  As a result, most Americans know someone who has recently lost a job, and small businesses and entrepreneurs lack the confidence needed to invest in our economy.  Not since the Great Depression has our nation’s unemployment rate been this high this long.

Enough is enough.  More taxation, regulation, and litigation will not create more jobs.  Government takeovers of the economy have failed while the size and the scope of the federal government has exploded.  Washington has tied the hands of small business owners and job creators with onerous regulations and backward fiscal policies that have stalled the economy, slowed innovation and destroyed jobs.   We need common sense, pro-growth policies to give small businesses and entrepreneurs renewed confidence in our economy and to remove Washington as the roadblock to job creation.

America is at a crossroads and House Republicans are committed to taking every possible step to spur job creation and get our economy back on track so that Americans can do what they do best: create, innovate and lead.  The pro-growth agenda detailed below builds on the GOP Pledge to America, our governing agenda focused on job creation and economic growth.  It will address our economic challenges, foster innovation and investment, and help job creators without raising taxes on working families and small business owners.

Read the plan HERE.

Chicago – Tony Raymond, Norwood President and Principal Consultant, recently joined Ambit Energy’s marketing team. “I am excited about the opportunity to provide Nicor and ComEd customers in Illinois with affordable energy,” Raymond says. “I am also eager to share this business opportunity with others that may be looking for an opportunity to earn supplemental income.”

Larry Leafblad, Senior Consultant for Ambit says “We are honored to have Tony Raymond join our marketing team. His sales and marketing experience will help build Ambit’s brand in Illinois.”

Ambit is the “#1 Fastest-Growing Private Company in America.” Imagine trying to live up to the kind of entrepreneurial legacy Jere Thompson Jr. – whose grandfather Joe Thompson started the iconic 7-Eleven chain in 1927 – faces every day when he heads to work. But the younger Thompson has been establishing an impressive track record of his own, most recently in the energy industry by building a company that sells electricity and natural gas in the deregulated energy markets. The company doesn’t actually produce or deliver energy. Rather, it buys power at wholesale prices and resells it to customers acquired through a direct sales channel. That process is powered by an army of some 70,000 independent agents, who get paid to sign up new customers and other agents

By Julie Wernau , Tribune reporter

Utility also seeking additional $3 monthly for system improvements and speedier reviews of rate hike requests

On June 1 ComEd residential customers will see their monthly electric bills go up an average of $3.15, and more increases could come in a rapid succession if the state legislature passes a bill expected to be introduced this week.

The bill would tack on an additional $3 monthly to residential customers’ bills to pay for electricity system improvements and, more significantly, would speed up review of rate hike proposals, essentially relegating the Illinois Commerce Commission, the state regulatory body that sets electric rates, to a lesser role.
Commonwealth Edison, a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corp., said the current process for deciding rate cases takes 11 months, and appeals can drag out cases for years, hampering the utility’s ability to plan because it can’t expect investment costs to be recovered from ratepayers. In the expected bill, ComEd is asking that rates be decided according to a formula.

Consumer advocates who opposed the rate hike and proposed legislation said the fact that ComEd received about 40 percent of what the utility asked for in its rate case shows that the ICC’s role is necessary.

“The rate increase approved today is not what consumers would have wanted, but without regulatory involvement ComEd could have run roughshod over consumers. Rate increases should stop with the ICC, not be written into Illinois law,” said AARP Illinois Senior State Director Bob Gallo.

“The ICC’s decision today clearly demonstrates why state legislators should reject ComEd’s proposal gutting the regulatory process and guaranteeing that consumers pay increasingly higher bills every year, so ComEd can lock in double-digit profits for the next decade,” said Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

The rate hike approved Tuesday by the ICC amounts to $156 million, which ComEd said reflects its costs to maintain a reliable system.

The additional $3 a month that ComEd is seeking through legislation would pay to add “smart” technology to the electrical system, giving consumers the ability to see their electricity use in real time and the utility the ability to more easily pinpoint the location of outages.

Consumer advocacy group Citizens Utility Board had argued that ComEd’s rates should be lowered, not increased. CUB vowed to petition the ICC to rehear the case.

The new rates take effect June 1 and will boost the utility’s annual revenue by 7.6 percent.

Also Tuesday, the ICC struck down a proposal by ComEd to add a surcharge to consumers’ bills to pay for programs like low-income customer assistance, electric vehicle testing and, eventually, smart-grid investments.

“There are multiple fields of battle here,” said David Kolata, executive director of CUB. “It certainly complicates things.”

The ICC’s unanimous vote followed testimony by Chicago residents who pleaded that the request be denied and held up signs during the hearing to protest the proposed increase.

April Knighten, a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, forced her way to the microphone despite ICC attempts to prevent her from speaking on procedural matters. Knighten said ComEd’s rates were already too high and that thousands of residents have had their electricity shut off for nonpayment.

“Is this what we’ve come to in the great USA?” she asked. “Where our people are subjected to live in Third World conditions?”

The ICC’s decision followed 11 months of testimony and hearings, and it represents a significant reduction from ComEd’s original request for $396 million. The earlier request would have added about $5 to the average resident’s monthly bill.

The rate hikes will apply only to the delivery portion of customers’ bills, which make up about a third of the average customer’s bill. ComEd’s profit comes from delivering electricity, not from supplying it.

While ComEd customers have the option of getting electricity supplied from a number of retailers that recently entered the market, they will not be able to avoid the rate hikes because ComEd controls all delivery of electricity.

Cross-posted

By Michelle B. Rafter

America’s workforce is weary. Employees of all ages report feeling fatigued, stressed, burned out or depressed, brought down by a heavier workload, layoffs and an assortment of other adverse conditions workers feel they have little or no power to control.

In a recent study, 81 percent of human resources managers agreed that employee fatigue is a bigger problem than in years past. According to a Workforce Management and WorkForce Software survey of 820 U.S. companies, the major culprits are reduced head count, lack of boundaries between home life and work, second jobs and a culture of “wanting to do it all.”

It’s a perfect storm of employers cutting their workforces as far as they can and workers being stretched as far as they can, says Marc Moschetto, WorkForce Software’s vice president of marketing. “Doing more with less is a pretty unsustainable model.”

In a separate survey of U.S. and Canadian workers, more than half of the 794 people polled reported feeling fatigued at the end of the work day, and at least 40 percent of all age groups said their jobs made them depressed. Yet because of the weak job market, employees are afraid to talk about how tired they are, says Mario Canseco, a vice president at Vision Critical, the Vancouver, British Columbia-based pollster that conducted the survey. “You don’t want to be perceived as someone who’s not doing more than you should, even without a raise, because you don’t want to lose your job.”

Indeed, a secretary at a Sacramento, California, agency—who requested anonymity in this article for fear of being retaliated against for discussing conditions at her workplace—says a state-imposed furlough ordered because of the recession effectively cut 15 percent from her salary. Further, budget cuts reduced her agency’s staff to a skeleton crew, leaving more work for those left behind. “I can’t remember the last time I went out for lunch. I bring my lunch and eat at my desk,” she says.

The secretary says her agency wanted to promote her, but a statewide promotions freeze means she has assumed the new position while remaining in her previous job classification and pay grade. She can’t even go home and pour her troubles out to her husband because he’s in the same boat, she says, working 10-hour days “and coming home late and exhausted.”

The animosity directed at California government workers during a protracted and often ugly state budget process only added to civil servants’ stress levels, the secretary says.

“The constant uncertainty, fights in the court, our employer vilifying us, it’s been awful. It’s that more than the monetary losses that are getting us down.”

Some companies have figured out ways to keep employees’ spirits and energy up during down times. For example, Xonex Relocation, a New Castle, Delaware, relocation services company, says it realizes its employees are under added stress with many people making work-related moves. “Every day we’re dealing with people at their very worst, and the last two years it’s gotten worse,” says Bill Humphrey, the company’s senior vice president and managing director.

As a result, Xonex bars employees from working through their lunch hour or even eating lunch at their desks.

The company has mandated other stress reducers, including the “sunset rule.” Every day before quitting time, the company’s customer-service agents must phone clients with a move update, so there’s no unfinished business hanging over employees’ heads when they go home. The company sells the end-of-day check-in as a special feature for clients, but it’s really about giving employees’ peace of mind, Humphrey says. “I don’t want them going home and picking their kids up from soccer and thinking of the calls they didn’t make. It’s a very beloved thing here. Everyone commits to making those calls.”

Workplace fatigue isn’t new, of course, but it’s receiving more attention as employers keep their overburdened staffs lean. It’s also in the spotlight because of high-profile accidents in recent years caused by sleep-deprived workers as well as federal and industry regulations meant to reduce employee fatigue.

One of those accidents happened in February 2009, when a Colgan Air Inc. crew flying for Continental Airlines crashed outside Buffalo, New York, killing 50 people. Federal aviation investigators blamed the accident on pilot error but said that fatigue hurt performance, too.

Fatigue also has been cited in several high-profile trucking accidents in recent years, including a 2009 accident in which a 76-year-old driver hit several vehicles and killed 10 people on an Oklahoma highway. In its investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board said acute sleep loss, shift work and mild sleep apnea contributed to driver fatigue that caused the crash.

In October, the transportation safety board recommended that trucking companies adopt fatigue management programs, which could include such things as screening and treating sleep disorders, scheduling with safety concerns in mind, and installing video and data recorders to collect information in the event of an accident.

Similarly, last year the Nuclear Regulatory Commission required nuclear power plants to minimize fatigue, including creating policies such as giving employees the right to say they’re too tired to safely perform their work and strictly monitoring hours worked. Facilities that fail to comply risk being shut down by the nuclear agency. “It’s not like turning off your light switch; it’s millions of dollars to go through the power-up and power-down cycle,” says WorkForce Software’s Moschetto, whose company sells software that power plants use for shift scheduling purposes.

Speaking at a national safety convention in October, Occupational Safety and Health Administration assistant secretary of labor David Michaels told reporters that he had no plans to create a standard for employee fatigue but expects companies to address it as part of their injury and illness prevention programs.

In the health care field, there has been a movement afoot to modify the back-to-back shifts that residents, nurses and other medical providers often work.

In recent years, a handful of states have passed laws banning mandatory double shifts for nurses, nurses’ aides and other medical-care providers. Pennsylvania passed such a law in July 2009, five years after a University of Pennsylvania study showed that the risk of medical error was as much as three times higher when a nurse worked a shift of 12½ hours or longer. A separate Pennsylvania Health Department study showed that 13.6 percent of the state’s registered nurses had worked mandatory overtime within two weeks of taking the survey.

Pittsburgh’s Allegheny General Hospital got a head start on the state regulation. When the 661-bed facility negotiated a union contract in 2003, it banned mandatory double shifts for its approximately 1,200 nurses. A few years before, Allegheny General had gone through bankruptcy reorganization in the middle of a national nursing shortage. Staffing was down, and RNs were routinely asked to work overtime. “It was a huge issue people were upset about,” says John Ziegler, an RN who has been with Allegheny General 20 years and was previously president of a union that represents its nurses. “It’s totally disruptive. It doesn’t matter if you know six hours ahead of time. If you have child care issues or standing plans, you have to scramble to arrange around it.”

Banning mandatory overtime and limiting the number of patients monitored at any one time made nurses happier and improved the hospital’s bottom line, says Judy Zedreck, Allegheny General’s vice president of nursing. The year before the 2003 union contract took effect, the hospital had paid temp nursing agencies for 140,000 hours of labor. At least part of that total was to cover for staff nurses dealing with fatigue and burnout. By 2009, the number of temp nurse hours dropped to 34,000, and will total only about 10,000 this year, Zedreck says.

Today, mandatory overtime isn’t even on Allegheny General nurses’ radar, says Zach Zobrist, vice president of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, the nurses union at Allegheny and 19 other western Pennsylvania hospitals. That’s still not the case at other state hospitals, some of which have called Allegheny for advice on meeting the state regulations banning mandatory double shifts. “Even with the law, they haven’t worked it out yet,” Zobrist says.

January 2010 – Norwood Consulting Group announces a solution framework for its core services.  Tony Raymond, President and Principal Consultant, says, “This solution map will provide our clients with a comprehensive suite of services that rival those of the high-priced consulting firms.”