By John Latta

by John Latta, Editor-in-Chief, jlatta@rrpub.com

Thomas Paine, in the bitter cold of December 1776, wrote that, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

Seriously worried, like most ‘Americans,’ that the revolution was falling apart as the British pressed retreating American troops south towards the capital Philadelphia, he produced an inspirational eight-page pamphlet that began with those words. Two days later, George Washington’s raggedy American troops, who had been read the pamphlet, launched an unlikely and perilously difficult counter attack and captured Trenton, changing the course of the revolution. The victory, and the pamphlet, which was widely read and cheered across the new country, revitalized the American spirit.

But Paine, whose pamphlet Common Sense helped inspire the launching of the revolution itself, was not only a writer of revolutionary tracts. He was a designer of radical bridges. His most essential idea, triggered by seeing the ice flows of American rivers, was that a bridge with piers would always be endangered by ice, and the answer was a span without piers.

After the revolution, Paine was somewhat idle. Intrigued by bridges, he designed a super wooden bridge to cross the Harlem River in New York. The plan failed. Paine decided to break new ground and designed an iron bridge for the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, and built a model. But he was ahead of his time and thwarted by politics, uncertain financiers, an unreliable American iron industry and his own in-your-face personality. Iron bridges in America were still half a century away. So he took his iron bridge model to Paris.

Stuck in a debate about whether Paine’s bridge or one of French design would better in the capital, despite some support from the then American Minister in Paris, Thomas Jefferson, Paine also pushed his iron bridge idea back in his native England, where a single iron bridge already existed, securing a patent for it in August 1788. He erected what was essentially an unnecessary, public relations iron bridge, in London. It was praised but it had its flaws and, again, politics and skittish financiers left it high and dry. There is every reason to believe that Paine’s bridge design was used by others to create better bridges in England and France, but, fair is fair and Paine had ‘borrowed’ some French designers’ ideas for his English bridge. Politics, in both England and France, soon took Paine out of the bridge industry.

Paine, like his fellow founders, was bold and daring, thoughtful and, being himself, reckless. But if we share Paine’s American dream then we, too, must be able to look at these times that try men’s souls and say, as he did, we will never cease to believe in America. Bridges, Paine would say, are a way to bring men together in pursuit of their future. v

by John Latta, Editor-in-Chief, jlatta@rrpub.com

By John Latta

I once wrote an editorial about fairy tales for one of the company’s trucking magazines. Basically I edited them by adding some original material to well-loved old stories. I was actually trying to make an important point across. Maybe I did, maybe not. But the idea is worth revisiting now.

The central idea was that while the trucking industry was trying to convince Washington to make some essential moves, politicians were reluctant to do what was needed because it might upset voters. One way to look at this is to assume that voters did not know enough about the trucking industry to understand and accept essential changes that on the surface seemed a bit harsh. Think in our case about raising the fuel tax. So how could we educate voters on the need to put money into our crumbling infrastructure before it’s too late? As we know, not much is really effective in a hurry.

One answer for the future is a long-term strategy that educates our children so that by the time they are voters they will have a very good understanding of the highway and bridge industry and be well aware of its needs. If we’d done this 50 years ago when the interstate system started, maybe we’d have an adequate, indexed fuel tax working for us today.

This is where the fairy tales come in. For example:

When B.B. Wolf makes it to the brick house we add a little to the story, something to the effect that the bricks weren’t just laying around, they came on a truck via efficient county highways. Goldilocks not only has a variety of cereal offerings she has three different sized beds to choose from. So we add to the tale the story of how the beds came from a factory far away to the town’s bed store along a state highway. And Cinderella – yeah, right glass slippers are an everyday item. No, they were hand-made Italian, shipped in from a port, through some intermodal facilities then down the Interstate. No good bridges and roads, no story.

The more future voters know about America’s infrastructure, the easier it will be to maintain the Highway Trust Fund (if it’s still around). Better the next generation understands what must be done – and why – when the industry realizes we must increase the fuel tax or user fees and politicians hell-bent on reelection still won’t have the necessary courage.

A bit over the top? Maybe. But imagine if today’s voters knew what we know about our highways and bridges and what must be done. Imagine if infrastructure was valued highly by future generations.v

By John Latta

by John Latta, Editor-in-Chief, jlatta@rrpub.com

Chameleon, drab and ordinary, is faced with a bright red or green or yellow or white background. Chameleon’s thick skin changes color so that it blends into the background, comfortable in its own, new, skin.

It’s easy for him/her; nature takes care of the process, there’s no burning the midnight oil figuring out how to do it. It harder for us, but just as essential. Our industry has a modern history where not too much changed in macro terms, and in which we were able to make the subtle moves needed to adapt to what was out there. Contractors and agencies knew where the edges were, knew the boundaries, and could accommodate what was needed. They worked in a place where unpredictability was uncommon, where changes were met without a lot of fuss. Warm mix came along, okay we can handle that. Latex in concrete? Okay we can handle it. We can change our colors to accommodate those.

But back then the chameleon only had to change, relatively speaking, from brown to light brown or dark brown. Out of Washington later this year, or maybe next year, or even the year after, will come a reauthorization bill that may well require the chameleon to change from brown to rainbow. Quickly.

We cannot predict with any degree of certainty what a new bill will look like in this game. If this were poker, and it well might be, there are more wild cards than you’d expect at a fraternity poker night lit up with a keg and an unrestricted guest list.

Be you a contractor or a government agency, you must be ready for this administration to push through a reauthorization that demands that you change the way you’ve traditionally worked. No more browns. It is entirely possible that contracts will require “livability” provisions. It is also possible that the Highway Trust Fund will finance some roads and a new fangled formula will decide how to finance other road projects. Perhaps some of the stimulus provisions will be carried over into any new reauthorization bill. Perhaps you will have to show your “green” bona fides to get a contract. There are so many maybes.

Maybe the short-term, erratic stimulus model will remain the norm for years. Maybe you’ll see a need to work with other companies; maybe you’ll have to do more of what has not traditionally been your core work. Maybe you’ll have to go outside your comfort zone when you bid.

I know, I’ve been here before. My concern is that history shows us that when companies fail to change they can be undone very quickly, and sometimes the rigidity comes not from an inability to change or even an unwillingness to change but a lack of awareness that change is needed.

Imagine a brown chameleon on a white leaf. Easy pickings.v

by John Latta, Editor-in-Chief -- jlatta@rrpub.com

Irises and roses

By John Latta

‘April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.’

— T.S.Eliot, The Waste Land

Not lilacs but irises. The daffodils precede them in March, but it is the irises of April that are most moving. The roses come later. I rarely think of my mother without thinking of her in her busy gardens, and it was irises and roses that she most loved and made to flourish so spectacularly. It came so naturally to her. It was a gift and she valued it as such. Thinking back perhaps it was not only their beauty that made them her favorites, but the fact that they came back to life after the winter.

When the first irises opened – usually her dark blue and gold variety followed soon by a faded purple and gold bloom – she was simply overjoyed. I wonder now if she felt they were sharing something. Winter did its worst, but in the end we did not succumb to it.

She had a lifelong saying: “Press on regardless.” I remember it from when I was too young to have any idea what she meant. It was brief enough, simple enough, and its origin was probably from her youth in the tough times of post-war England. Possibly from her parents. She was an admirer of Churchill but I could not find it in his speeches. In tough times she would never consider throwing up her hands and letting the easier options take their course, nor would she rely on others to do for her if she could do it. Her “press on regardless” was, I suppose, a way to draw all of her resolve together under a single banner, to simplify the fight and help her recognize that, at its base, giving up wasn’t an option, so have at it and come what may. And on she went.

The fight against our economic winter goes on. Within it, our attitude may be one of the most important weapons we can carry, and use. In the end it is a simple thing that we need to see simply. We don’t need pop psychology books, someone who was once on a television show or overpaid coaches to tell us this. It’s not a commodity discovered by marketers or motivators, they just profit from it. America may be the last, best place where attitude can actually make a difference in practice.

Mother would simply have said, ‘Press on regardless’ then thought out how to do just that and set to it. I miss her. April is indeed cruel. v

by John Latta, Editor-in-Chief -- jlatta@rrpub.com

I was struck at trade shows I attended over the past couple of months by a sense of déjà vu. It was all so very 2009. OEMs, contractors, media, design and support companies, parts producers and attendees were hearing, and delivering, almost word for word, the mantra heard at trade shows last season. “We just have to fight through it, to hold on, to get to the other side.”

It was more a team fight song than anything, but it captured our most basic approach to the recession back then. Buried within it were two assumptions. We assumed that the downturn would be limited in time, that by trade show season 2010 we would be talking about handling the recovery. And we assumed that once we “fought through it” we would be back on our feet in a recognizable world. But a recession with a definite, relatively short, time frame is a distinct, boundaried economic event. A longer one is not the same event. It is not simply a short one that overruns its predicted time frame.

The dynamics of the recession we are in now are not the same as the one we were in a year ago. And recovery will not take us back to a recognizable world. We have left Kansas and we won’t be going back.

We must continue to fight to survive the recession, but at the same time prepare for the new game that is coming. In my own world of media, change is everywhere. While we keep fighting to get through the recession with any and all the tools we can find, we also have to adapt to current changes and prepare for more changes. The 2008 model of media and publishing won’t be coming back. We will do things differently in the future economy. We’ll have no choice.

This is our challenge: we have to think like teenagers, or even pre-teens. They have grown up with change. If cell phones, mp3 players, video game configurations or computers come with totally new gadgets or apps and a whole new operating system they don’t blink. They fire them up and figure out how to get the absolute most out of them in a hurry. They discard the old for the next generation without a second thought.

Change, for teens, is not an interim activity that happens only when we stumble from one paradigm to the next. It is not separate from everyday work, it is built into it. It is not the exception, it is the rule. And it makes the future more accessible, more exciting and more profitable.

But it’s okay – we don’t have to like their music. v

by John Latta, Editor-in-Chief jlatta@rrpub.com

One of the many fears that come with a global recession as heavy as this one is that as industry falls back into a hunkered-down defensive mode there could be some severe collateral damage. It’s possible that in jettisoning everything but the survival essentials, this industry becomes overly aggressive and tosses a baby with the bathwater. R&D expenditure is essentially an offensive instrument, one that seeks to maintain or build market share, batter competitors, penetrate new markets or expand company influence horizontally, vertically or even geographically. It’s a down payment on future success.

Consider many of today’s homeowners, trying simply to get through the same recession while they see only uncertainty ahead. Why install a new roof, even if the old one is leaking like a sieve, when you can’t be sure you’ll own the house by the time the next rains come?

Bottom line is, if you have a future as a homeowner, you have to fix the roof or by the time the housing market looks rosy again and your job is secure, your house will be falling-down worthless.

Consider the OEM that is fighting for its life to make the best out of a recession economy that has ripped into sales and shuttered plants. Does the company keep spending vital funds on R&D?

There is a complex dynamic between continuing innovation and a successful industry. Laying off staff, consolidating product lines, closing factories are signs of maneuvers made in real time in the face of the enemy. But if innovation falters it may well be taken as a sign of some deeply disturbing wavering of faith.

Ah, but trade show season is here, and at World of Concrete, World of Asphalt, bauma, and the other shows you will see some mind-blowing innovation. And it cost big money. I think it’s evidence of a unwavering belief in the future strength of our industry. In Munich last month I was talking to Eugen Egetenmeir, managing director of Messe Munchen, home of April’s massive bauma trade fair for construction, building and mining machinery. He said, “If you have only one story you can write about us, write about our innovation awards, because innovation is our future.” On that same visit I heard a leading industrialist, asked to back up his public optimism in the face of still-flat numbers at best, give an answer that was more optimism than data-based logic. Such optimism is a necessary attitude. Innovations are physical evidence of that optimism at work.

If you live on a recession-hit Main Street USA and one neighborhood family puts a brand new roof on their leaky house, are they risk-takers or long-runbelievers? And if you don’t?v

jlatta@rrpub.com

Never ask someone to explain the rules of cricket to you. It is endlessly labyrinthine. But when I was following the first day of a recent match between England and South Africa (oh, yes, first day; the big games go on for five days) one play stood out for me. That’s how cricket is, wonderfully educational and promotional of new self-insight. At least it has seemed that way to me over the years.

A South African batsman was doing quite well, scoring a lot of runs and scoring them relatively freely. But it was well into the afternoon and a tea break was approaching. A tea break. With sandwiches. How wonderfully British! Anyway, the batsman began to play cautiously, intent on getting to the break safely. Essentially his mindset, his thinking processes, his attitude, his priorities, his natural aggressive athleticism, all changed. And, playing tentatively, he was soon out.

The natural flow of a game that players are familiar with is changed in such instances. Players in any sport are adaptable to the ups and down of the game. But when a situation arises where those players are trying to get by on technical skill alone, trying to survive, laboring their way through, their instincts are not helping them. They can struggle and look very ordinary.

The highway and bridge construction industries are looking a lot like this now, struggling to operate the way they instinctively know how. Maybe it’s not instinct in this business, maybe its experience, but nevertheless the players now have to operate under circumstances that make them uncomfortable. There is too little work, a new surface transportation bill is way up in the air, the future is a profound uncertainty, stimulus money may or may not be available and the economy is still shot. Road professionals are playing a game with which they are not familiar.

The thing that bothers me is that this defensive, trying-to-survive mode may be unduly influential as time passes. Economic recovery will almost certainly be slow; steady maybe, but not rapid. In the climb-out from this economic nose-dive will contractors, and government agencies that used to be bold and even daring in taking on vital, major projects, be hesitant? Will the scars change mindsets? I’d hate to think in years hence we’ll hear people at annual meetings and conventions saying “well, it was never the same after the recession, we have to be careful.” This industry is full of larger-than-life characters making brave decisions and running with an open throttle. Here’s hoping they come roaring back after the tea break.v

Consider the situation of the magician who moves smoothly into the rabbit-out-of-a-top-hat trick. His preparation is designed to convey the impression of a skilled professional negotiating a tense preamble that must be done just right to build tension in his audience. The thrill is in the anticipation. The rabbit, even though we know its coming, is a surprise. It’s an act, but it delivers.

This time the audience is not particularly ready to believe. They don’t think there’s a rabbit in there. Even the magician is a little concerned but he tries not to show it. Maybe a rabbit will appear, after all this is supposed to be a magic act.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the delay in passing a new surface transportation act is the curious idea held in the administration and the senate that a delay, perhaps as long as a year and a half, will allow people in Washington to find surprising, innovative and paradigm-changing ways to pay for it. That rabbit is missing.

Back in the summer in Washington I listened to Janet Kavinoky, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s senior lobbyist and policy expert on transportation infrastructure, point out the obvious: If there were some unthought-of new ways to finance the Highway Trust Fund we would have thought of them, she said. That’s not hubris, that’s reality and the Chamber is not alone in thinking this way. Two commissions studied ways to fund reauthorization and presented detailed findings. Associations such as the American Road and Transportation Builders Association spent a vast amount of time, money and talent addressing the funding problem. The hat is empty.

 Here’s a bet: whatever provisions the final reauthorization legislation contains it will not bedazzle us with fascinating and unheard of new ways to fund the HTF.

Fuel taxes (which are essentially user fees) work and they will be the basis of the new bill. You the people have also backed the idea of such user fees to fund infrastructure in recent elections. Down the road we’ll need a steady increase in funds from alternative sources.

Taxes on oil trades, vehicle miles travelled charges, increasing privatization, tolls and other user fees are out there on the table even if the White House says they aren’t. We know about these, how they work and what their potential is. But right now we need new legislation based on today’s reality.

If all the magician can pull out of the hat is a hamster masquerading as a rabbit, why are we waiting? The rabbit is AWOL and magician is stalling.v

The internet started to alter the publishing landscape and now social media is expanding both the speed and the range of changes. No one really knows where social media is going but we are all using it. The value it brings seems to be linked very closely to the intent of the content-uploaders. A colleague of mine recently showed me a YouTube clip of a pudgy little guy doing all of Beyonce’s moves from one her music videos. It was funny. It had also been seen by something like three quarters of a million people.

George Mallory, a British mountain climber obsessed with Everest and who would die trying to scale it in 1924, is quoted as answering the question of why he wanted to climb the world’s highest peak with: “Because it’s there.” So much of what we find on the internet and through social media is posted because they are there. It’s a jumble out there. All sorts of people posting all sorts of information. It’s commonplace for the gratification from page after page and post after post to go to the source of the material not the end user.

Better Roads uses social media and we also have a brand new website (www.betterroads.com). Our approach to building and using these tools, because that’s what they are, is to work from the user’s perspective and the user’s needs back to ourselves. We are purpose-driven. We don’t want to have a presence in social media or on the internet simply because we can. That means feedback becomes a call to action. We try and walk a mile in your internet surfing shoes but it is reacting to your use of what we create that will continue its development and continue to increase its worth.

The velocity and breadth of the expansion of internet, digital and social media make an endeavor like this a daily challenge. Take a single example. LinkedIn arrived almost overnight and we incorporated it into our portfolio. But to maximize its usefulness we have to constantly assess what it is doing, how it is doing it, how its potential to change they way business is done is developing and then adapt our strategies in using it. Get complacent in publishing today and you die on the mountain.v

The news media’s role was changing and adapting.

Walter Lippmann saw a world where the public could not keep up; there was too much information that could not be fully understood, and news media were not capable of being a satisfactory interpretative delivery vehicle. Our leaders would have to determine what was to be done and the news media would basically transmit their decisions and actions to the public.

John Dewey and the so-called Chicago School agreed that a period of change at unprecedented pace was upon the country but felt that the public could in
fact be entrusted with managing it. The key was a news media that did not simply transmit information as Lippmann suggested but put it into context and made
it relevant. For Dewey our foundation would be a well-informed and involved public.

Dewey said journalists should be as thorough and neutral as they could be doing this, basic expectations of responsible journalists, because information without context could be both useless and misleading. The various publics, he suggested, needed to know as much about the information they received as they could so that they could understand it and react to it.

The press then had a major responsibility within American democracy. But something is wrong. Conveying vital information in context today still happens but it is a shrinking, increasingly ignored segment of the total ‘news’ pie. The news consumer has been hijacked by purveyors of torrents of information that is attractive to us but of little use to our role in keeping the democratic machinery running. We are in danger of becoming as unaware of the complexity and influence of many core issues in our democratic life as if we were simply receiving Lippmannesque updates.

Dewey and his Chicago School were not the first Americans to think news
media could help build a stable, progressive society. Robert E. Lee, as president of Washington College (Washington and Lee University today) after the Civil War, intended to create a journalism school to produce graduates who could work in the South to help reconciliation and reconstruction succeed using a Dewey-like model. Unfortunately, it never got off the ground.

If reauthorization is anything like reconstruction we’re in for a long hard ride.