"Soft management"

Jim,

Your statement below is all too true, and is one reason I have stayed with consulting, instead of working for the kind of managers you describe.

"In the pulp and paper industry, we have done no better. We have had legions of managers whose sole objective was to keep the game going until they retired and took their share of the pie home to a cushy mansion in suburban Las Vegas. They had no vision and no interest in the business beyond their last payday. Yes, I know some great retirees that did their jobs well and did their best to leave a great industry in their corner of the business, but there are many others that should be ashamed of the legacy they left."

To reinforce your comment about how great the impact of the Internet has on paper use, I thought you would enjoy hearing about my experience last week.

We were skiing in Canmore, Alberta with our 22 year old, off University for spring break. He saw his mother looking in the local Yellow Pages for a bakery, and promptly typed "bakery Canmore" into Google, and had several bakeries to choose from in a second, complete with information on them and a location map.

Derek said "Phone books are only useful for tearing out pages to stuff into wet rugby boots." My wife answered "You use newspapers for that", to which he retorted "I have never bought a newspaper in my life. We get some freebies in the mailbox, and they are good for wet boots too."

I have noticed myself that it is no longer necessary to go to one of the on-line directories to find a business. Googling is all that is required. It is faster, and more tolerant of imperfectly typed names.

We receive lots of free newspapers, Yellow Pages and similar directories, but I wonder when the advertisers will realise that they are providing fireplace fuel and wet-boot stuffing, and this paper market will disappear too.

Neil McCubbin
Foster, Quebec
Canada

---

Neil-

I must confess I don't buy a newspaper, either, and seldom have any time in my life. I'll read a freebie in a hotel. Yellow pages? If I have used them forty times in my entire fifty-eight year life, I would be surprised. Magazines are another story--I subscribe to quite an eclectic group, from "The Economist" to "Farm Show Follow Up" and always have a pile waiting to be read.

We recently bought a new GPS. As you drive down the street, it brings up small coupons from stores you are passing (national chains, such as gas stations) enticing you to stop and shop. This is a game changer, I think.

Jim

***

Jim,

On another subject...

I thought you may be interested in this extract from a report I am reading on carbon emissions

In 2005, total trading of carbon allowances in the EU was 7.9 billion USD, and in 2006 it was approximately 24 billion.

This is almost entirely driven by regulations, with companies trying to look green being a tiny factor.

Times are changing. The carbon trading situation in US and Canada today is like air and water discharge regulations were in 1970 when P&G were so horrified, and surprised, at being required to include effluent treatment in the cost of their greenfield Grande Prairie mill that they persuaded Alberta to pay the full cost of air and water pollution control systems, (about 8% of mill cost, if I remember rightly. I worked on the report to justify the amount)

I suspect that carbon trading will become a significant part of business in the North American P&P industry the near future.

Neil McCubbin

***

Jim:

I fully enjoy your discussions in "Nip Impressions" . The most recent re "Soft Management" was especially insightful. Keep em coming.

It also occurred to me that you qualify for "Ye Olde Westvaco Gang" thru your time at Westvaco's Mill at Wickliffe KY. This is where I first met you when I would come down from the NY Office. A group of retirees from the entire company have kept in touch, call themselves Ye Olde Westvaco Gang and they are having a reunion in Chicago in May 2009. [See the Following] I'm sure that you will recognize some of the names. I won't be among those present as my wife cannot travel at this stage in life. Thought you might like to know

Gerry Calehuff
USA

***

Jim:

The answer to your riddle is "The Althing" Iceland's parliament which has been in operation since 930. It is looked upon as the earliest form of democratic rule. There was one break following union with Norway in 1799 but it was reconstituted in 1844.

Cheers,
Peter N. Williamson

***

Jim,

I see that the state of the union is once again bringing out the best in you. You started the "Soft Management" piece by mentioning one of my pet-peeves: the switch from analog to digital TV.

As you say, the government has been touting the conversion as a seamless change for over a year. I was told that there would be plenty of coupons available, that I could use toward the purchase of an inexpensive foreign- made converter box that, once installed, would make my old analog TV do things I couldn't yet imagine.

Turns out that the government grossly underestimated the number of converter boxes that were needed, and ran out of coupons. Maybe sending out two coupons per household, when only one was needed caused the shortage? There seems to be some uncertainty about this, but ultimately the date of the conversion was moved back from February to June.

My point is this: if our government can't manage a relatively simple problem like conversion to digital TV, why would I trust them to handle more complex issues such as health-care reform?

Thank you for your consideration,

Linda A. Fagan
Syracuse, New York
USA

---

Obviously, Linda, you need to move to a highly enlightened place like Atlanta, Georgia. Click here to see what I mean. And, honest to goodness, I didn't go looking for this--it just landed in my inbound email.

Jim

***

Me again. Another tremendous column.

We (Albany International ) look at the paper industry as a 3 legged stool... It's supported by 3 major paper businesses: Tissue(sanitary papers) , Packaging, and Communications... Each leg I think has a different future trajectory...

The first, Tissue, is sound and overall trends seem to point to a bright future... We've seen almost no tissue downtime in this awful recession, new machines are planned globally including North America, and our mobile society should only demand more of these products, not less in the future... So the trends are in the right direction... It's the smallest of the three legs from our point of view (consumption of fabrics) but at least we have "One solid leg to stand on".

Packaging should be stronger but it's not... It's down for the obvious reasons-- slowing consumption means fewer "things" used, and many items come in brown packages... We've chronicled hundreds of operating weeks of downtime since the October financial meltdown... Let's put the recession aside... How did we blow the argument for paper packaging over plastic? --how did an oil based solution win so frequently versus a forest based one? How does a package whose source is a CO2 consumer, not generator, lose at the expense of a package whose raw material does the reverse?

Our company was a member of CPBIS and I was our representative in Atlanta... On a couple occasions I brought up this topic but paper company members gave it little play... They were consumed with steering projects toward narrow, tactical studies "incremental improvements in a process" for example... We've since dropped out of CPBIS but I thought that experience was telling... Are too many in our industry trying to get a couple percent better when major strategic opportunities exist? Tough to be critical when these are the people buying your products but it was an eye opener for me...

Where are the packaging lobbyists? Lobbyist is a bad word these days so how about calling them Paper Industry advocates? Have we approached the people we previously deemed the enemy like extreme environmentalists? These are people in 2009 much more listened to since last fall's national election than in the previous 8 years... With the oil men out of the White House most business people lament... Now we have VERY different people in... But don't we have alternatives compared to oil based products that might actually appeal to and excite this new administration? Are we doing anything about it? CPBIS could have been the perfect "front"--a paper business advocacy group not charged with a solely technical approach. Paper packaging is more patriotic if you think about it compared to plastic. It's a domestic industry that employs our own, it allows us to provide products without dealing with a lot of people and nations we'd rather not deal with, it requires no military "subsidy" (I believe we subsidize the oil industry by having the military and an aggressive foreign policy in part to protect it) and it decreases our trade deficit... What's not to like?

Now the communications leg is the one of most concern and perhaps the focus of your column... I like where tissue is, I see opportunities for brown paper, but the white paper leg of our stool is the shakiest... The book "Tipping Points" comes to mind... You are right, the Internet is an unstoppable force and we must learn to compliment it... Newspapers are first to shrink and I believe the tipping point is not the PC. (that takes 10 minutes to boot up and get an internet session opened--too long, not portable enough). I think it is as you pointed out so well in a previous article-- it's the internet MARRIED to the cell phone / text messenger / news flash receiver that will permanently decrease newsprint. The internet was not enough--but the internet coupled with a practical device that provides access and simplicity--now that is a game changer... This device and the dropping cost to use it, I think is the reason newsprint is dropping... Are other white grades next? I don't see a screen as an appealing forum for advertising but I am 55 years old... I need to ask my kids if a tiny image is appealing to them... If it is, communication papers that require advertising to make their business model work are vulnerable and next to follow the newsprint path...

I am one of the managers at our company that is charged with leaving an Albany for the next generation... I had children late and in fact have a 13 year old... I'm not planning to just work a few more years to get to my retirement regardless what it does to my company... But your comments sure hit home--we'd all be kidding ourselves if we didn't know many with that modus operendi.

Thanks again for another great column.

Regards,

Bill Luciano
VP Press Fabrics - Americas
Albany International
Albany, New York
USA

***

Jim,

Re: Soft Toilet Paper

During a visit by Westvaco-Wickliffe in the early 80's to Valmet's Rautpohja Workshops Ron Harlan had occasion to visit the W.C. during a meeting in the main building. He came back complaining about the fact that he got splinters in his rear, and he was right on. It was borderline whether it was small logs or paper. And it was that way all over Finland at the time. To it's credit, Valmet quickly remedied that situation so that customers would have one less concern...

Bill Hohns
Marietta, Georgia
USA

***

Dear Jim,

How true that fuel efficiency is only one of the many measures people use when deciding which brand & model of car to buy next.

Follow this link

http://www.aier.org/research/commentaries/1273
-detroits-painful-new-report-card

for an article about the latest Consumer Reports ratings of auto makers appropriately titled "Detroit's Painful New Report Card". While not everyone will agree with their findings, Detroit's dismal sales record most certainly does reflect the sentiments of the majority.

And, we better learn from the auto makers when it comes to our industry. The status quo has and continues to make it increasingly more difficult for our aging industry to compete with world class operations elsewhere.

Best Regards,
Franz Resch
Lancaster, Texas
USA

###

Have a comment? Send your email to jthompson@taii.com. Unless you tell us otherwise, we will assume we can use your name if we publish your letter.

A convenient shortcut: