YouSaid · the spoken record

Peter Goodman

lines on the record: 76
first: 2024-11-08
most recent: 2024-11-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, so Henry Ford, I was fascinated by this story myself. You know, bonded with Thomas Alva Edison riding a rail car back from a trade show at a hotel on Coney Island. This is in the 19 teens. Edison is his hero. And they bond over the supply chain. Edison says, yeah, you know, you have all these great creations, but if you can't get the materials you need, these are just ideas. And Ford was obsessed with self-sufficiency. I mean, to the extent to which he had his own fiascos, you know, trying to become self-sufficient and rubber. You have this failed venture in Brazil. But the scale of his factories, including the River Rouge factory, which remains, you know, Ford's showcase outside of Detroit, was all about having soup to nuts, the ability to make a car without, as Ford put it, being pinched by some supplier. He was suspicious of rail in particular.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that's right. Look, you know, take this to real life. Imagine that you told your kid who you're trying to get to brush teeth at the end of the day. I insist that you spend five minutes by the sink. Well, if that's how you do it, your kid's going to spend five minutes by the sink watching YouTube videos. Common sense is, no, I better get involved in knowing what exactly are they doing and what, like, how's this going to play out? Well, we've effectively let McKinsey write those kinds of rules. And it's not just McKinsey. It's lots of business consultancies. And it's not even just because of the business consultancies. It's that we've handed over our business and societal fate to shareholder interests to the exclusion of anything resembling common sense.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Too far in the 90s when they discovered that Toyota factories were telling their suppliers not to replenish enough to fill even the existing space on the assembly line. They said, well, this doesn't make any sense. Even McKinsey said, look, why have two trips to replenish the same workspace just so you can say on the spreadsheet that you're only holding four bits as opposed to eight even McKinsey recognized that was bananas? You're coming down the other side.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, you can have spectacular business failures that we can all see that are wildly successful for all the people involved as long as they get out before the plane crashes, part of the mixed metaphor. And so if you talk about the role of consultants, it's a question of are you distilling it down to this kind of cultish reverence for just hitting that one metric? I mean, even Toyota, well, first of all, Toyota understood that they needed their suppliers close at hand because you have to be able to replenish the supply so something goes wrong. They would never have signed up for supply chains across oceans, which is what we get from McKinsey combined with the rise of container shipping and the internet and all of these things that have made our version of globalization doable. What's happened is we've eliminated all the margin for trouble. But McKinsey actually, even McKinsey realized that we had gone.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's that the consultants understand who they're working for. They are working for executives who must get the share price to go up right now. And if they fail to do that, they're going to be looking for their next job. So whether they think it's commonsensical or not, in terms of the long run, I mean, look, this we learned up close during the financial crisis.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, let me be clear just in time is a good idea and trying to eliminate waste from your supply chain is a good idea. The question is, are you doing it in a way that's common sensical or in a way that's purely driven by trying to hit some metric that some 22-year-old at a Harvard told you is a good way to do it?”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Place. And so the guy running Union Pacific's rail yard in Nebraska absorbs this mantra and says, well, I don't care where the next train's going. I am attaching as many cars to it as possible. So I have done my job. I have lowered dwell time. Well, the real effect of this is there's somebody sitting in Southern California waiting for auto parts that are in Oregon because this guy's hauling them to the wrong place. We've lowered dwell time. Wall Street's happy. If all you're looking at is some window on an Excel spreadsheet. Oh, the railroad is more efficient than ever. If you're the paint manufacturer in California needing a drum of chemicals that's stuck in Washington State and now you got to tell your customers you're late with the order. That doesn't seem particularly efficient. My takeaway from doing this book is there's a lot of inefficiency in this ruthless efficiency.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is central to understanding the product shortages that we've experienced for the last few years in overdoing it on lean and the ultimate example, the story I tell in the book, is I found a railroad engineer out in Idaho who's working for Union Pacific. Now, the railroads have their own version of the Lean Taliban. It's called Precision Scheduled Railroading. It's a fancy way of saying let's lay off lots of workers, let's stick the remaining workers with more jobs. Let's make scheduling really complicated. Let's limit scheduled service, make trains longer than ever. Well, so this railroad engineer is horrified to discover that he's actually pulling freight to the wrong destinations. And this is not by accident. This is because Union Pacific has told Wall Street, we hear you on the need for efficiency in going lean, we're going to limit dwell time, which is the amount of time that cargo sits in any individual.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to expedite delivery of their products. They're losing sales because they're upsetting the contract, which we're waiting for their generators all so they can say, look at us being so lean that we don't have $5 sheet metal brackets.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Extra savings to the corporate executives as a reward for being smart enough to hire McKinsey. And I end up digging deep into how this actually works in the decades before the pandemic. And I spent time with this guy in Minnesota who was working at this industrial generator plant where McKinsey's lean Taliban show up, a bunch of slick-suited young people straight out of Ivy League universities, one older guy from the Chicago branch, and they say, you're doing it all wrong. You know, why do you have all these $5 sheet metal brackets sitting around taking up space and warehouses? Let's go lean, just order them when you need them. And the guy I'm talking to, he says, well, hold on, these are giant industrial generators that need to be installed by Crane. Talk about just-in-time. If we listen to your advice, we're going to be slow with orders, which is exactly what happens.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Love it. Yeah. So the lean Taliban refers to the way the people at McKinsey and Company, the business consultancy, viewed themselves in proselytizing for lean manufacturing or just-in-time as we know it. Now, just-in-time is a very sensible idea pioneered by Toyota that says, you know, instead of having giant warehouses filled with all kinds of stuff that we may need at some point in the future, but who knows when, it's Japan, the end of the Second World War, space is limited, capital is limited. Let's have the suppliers bring the stuff we need on the supply chain as we need it. They sort of emulated the way a supermarket deals with milk. You want enough on the shelf that everybody gets milk, they don't leave unhappy, they can't buy it, but not so much that you're spilling it. Well, this is a great idea till business consultancies like McKinsey get hold of it and turn it into this crude imperative to just slash inventory.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a tough question. I mean, I would say that Iraq coverage just felt so vivid and important. And I mean, there's nothing like... When you get accustomed to doing sort of enterprise or investigative or longer form stuff, there's nothing like being in a place where it's like, no, people actually want to know right now what happened to you today. And stories almost write themselves. I'm going to go to an oil refinery that shut down because the looters came and the Halliburton people haven't figured out how to turn it back on. And there are a bunch of Iraqi employees.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's going on? I'm not like the bravest soul. But there's nothing like being in a place. And boy, I mean, Iraq after Saddam was just a gold mine for journalists because there are all these people, many of whom are English-speaking, who are dying to tell their stories, whether it's like, how do these trading companies work despite American sanctions? I did a story on smuggling out of the port of Basra, where like in a day, I found the guy who ran a smuggling ring, who took me to the porch, showed me the fake bills of lading. Like that was absolutely incredible. Cambodia was an endlessly fascinating.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It depends. I have been embedded in places. In Iraq, actually, I was there at the best possible time to be a journalist in this period. I was there as Bush declared mission accomplished. I was just in my own SUV driving from the Kuwait airport up to Basra with a couple Washington Post colleagues. And then we drove all the way up to Baghdad and Kirkuk. And actually, I'll never forget the car broke down when we put a black market gasoline in it at some point. I had to call National Car Rental in Kuwait and then get that thing on the back of a flatbed truck through all these laid-off truck drivers who had no business and we hired somebody for a couple hundred bucks to drive it through the desert. You know, it's always, I'm not a thrill seeker by nature. I mean, there are people who cover conflict, who've spent a lot more time in conflict zones than I ever will, some of whom I fear for their safety because there is, I'm just somebody who wants to see.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's face it, we all click agree, read all the terms to millions of documents a day that we don't even read a sentence of, right? And suddenly we're living in the fine print. Oh, there actually are terms that are going to apply here. That people that we deluded ourselves into believing would never, you know, this would never matter because housing prices are going up forever. Even Alan Greenspan says that. You're a sucker if you don't get a variable rate mortgage. And, you know, what could happen if it doesn't work out? I'll refi, I'll sell. Well, suddenly, you know, we're dealing with all of this ink that was never intended to have effect.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Marshall Woody explained that to me. I didn't even understand what he meant. He said, Yeah, I'm sending the keys back. I'm like, what are you talking about? What? He's like, well, you know, this home, I never expected to live here. I guess I'm going to be spending some time here. I figured I'd be moving uptown next year. That's not happening.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It wasn't that it was so expensive, it was what it said. It was the name of the place. Yeah, right. But that's where they want it to go. I love the expression.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's exactly that. In fact, the guys I was hanging out with, when I said, well, I'll take you out to dinner and drink so we can have a longer conversation. We ended up in a place where there were people of that profession. It was actually my first expenses that I ever recruited as a New York Times writer, and I was embarrassed to submit them. Because it was so expensive at the time.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To my colleagues in the newsroom, we are, and I used an impolite word that I will not use on your radio program, we are, you know, really up a creek here. And they'll say, you know, calm down, you know, let's take it easy. But that story, I sort of just accidentally fell my way into. I saw that this was going to be really bad. It was not merely a mild recession. And so every story I did afterwards, I mean, as I then got into the minutiae of how the mortgage markets work and eventually covered the foreclosure crisis, really began with that just basic, you know, naive question. Well, what's going to happen when we can't just use our homes as ATM machines anymore? That seems like it'll have implications. And yes, it did.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there were a lot. Yes, DC was hit for sure. There were parts of New England that were hit, but you just listed that. But so I sort of randomly said, well, I'm going out to Reno because if you look at the ratio of home equity lines of credit to consumer spending, we've seen this big dry up fast. And within five minutes of getting off the planet, I had no real reporting plan. I pulled off the road from the airport, headed to where I was staying, and there was a tile shop. And I went in, introduced myself, and talked to this guy, Marshall Witty, who was a salesman, who at that time was about to send the keys back on his third speck house. His commissions were drying up. He told me how he had financed a trip to Tahiti for his honeymoon on home equity line and credit. He used to get a new truck every year for the variety of color. And suddenly he's answering, no, dude, I can't go to the club tonight. I'm staying home to watch Netflix. And I just sort of glued myself to this guy for three days. I met all of his friends and I went back to New York and I remember seeing.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Showing where were home equity lines of credit drying up the fastest and what was their historical relationship to consumer spending. And I got this crunched for like every metropolitan area in the United States and almost it ran around.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's interesting. I was sort of an accidental national economic correspondent because I was very happily working for the Washington Post covering international econ. And the post was, let us say, not having its best days. And I had this opportunity to go to the Times, and they offered me the National Economic Correspondent. I thought, well, I'm living in New York at the time. I'm working in the New York Bureau of the Washington Post. Wasn't all that keen to, I love the Washington Post, but I thought, well, I better do this. Sleepy story, the national economy. It's the fall of 2007. Didn't know anything about it. It was surrounded by people who knew much more about it than I ever would. The first story I ever pitched was, you know, it seems like consumer spending is drying up because housing prices are falling. That could be significant. I keep reading that, you know, consumer spending is more than two-thirds of the American economy. So I got Mark Zandy to go crunch some data for me.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that was just an incredible story. It was a story of a lifetime. It was a moment where China had become a very significant story in the American media and imagination and politics, but it was still before everybody had these giant bureaus, before we were covering news in this very granular way. So you had time to really dig into stuff. And, you know, we had two guys in Beijing who were phenomenal, my two colleagues, who did a lot of political stuff, and I was ostensibly the economic writer. But the truth was all of her stories were more or less the same because everything was an economic and political story combined. And it was a moment where you could just sort of point at anything. Like, how did that ball point bearing factory get there? Who owns it? How did the land and the energy become available? Where are they selling their product? Who's getting a cut of the action?”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it was fascinating. I mean, there's nothing like having a local beat and having to figure out who matters, what's a story, how do I go to a meeting of local government, prepare for whatever issue seems most interesting, develop sources, build people's trust, figure out, you know, when you get it wrong, how to make it right. And, you know, there's nothing like being in a place where someone will call you if you get a fact wrong. I mean, when you're freelancing in Cambodia, writing about Cambodian refugees, you spell somebody's name wrong. Nobody's going to call you. You mess up a fact like I once messed up a fact. You know, I misheard somebody say assessment when they meant Cessna. And boy, I thought I was going to have to flee the state in embarrassment. And you learn how to get it right.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I basically figured out that if I wanted to do this seriously, I was going to have to go somewhere to learn journals. I didn't go to J school, went to a liberal arts college where we didn't have, you know, that sort of paper where we had beats and structure. And I understood that freelancing would take me a certain distance. But if I wanted to be serious about it, I had to go work doing local journalism somewhere. I was lucky enough to be hired by the Anchorage Daily News, which was just a heavyweight shop of talent, only about 16, maybe 20 reporters. They had won the gold medal for public service Pulitzer a few years before I got there. They were finalist a year before I got there for the Excellon Valdez crash. And it was just a very talented, creative group of people. And yes, I ended up in, I was living in Palmer, which is next to Wasilla. It was the local government reporter where I covered, as you can probably guess, a then unknown member of the”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so you know, I was one of those kids who got out of college and just did what I wanted to do. I liked write. I had been sort of a political activist in college, but life seemed more complicated than it did to my activist friends. So journalism drew me. And I wanted to go check out Southeast Asia. So I first stopped in Japan, got a job writing features for the Japan Times, teaching English to pay the bills and save up the money to then move to Manila. And then eventually Jakarta, spent a lot of time in Cambodia, covered a massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in East Timor, got kicked out of Indonesia, came back to the States, and ended up in Alaska at the Anchorage Daily News. Yeah.”
2024-11-08 · Masters in Business · How the World Ran on Empty with Peter Goodman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source