Mapping Strategy

Thinking the Unthinkable... Before It's Thinkable

In an article entitled, "Citi Weighs Its Options, Including Firm's Sale", on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal, this line stood out [emphasis added]:

Citigroup officials have decided they need to reckon with a range of scenarios that were unthinkable only weeks ago.

It neatly captures the essence of why it is vital for scenario thinking to be cultivated as a natural part of an organization's analytical culture, and to become an accepted aspect of ongoing corporate dialogue, and why the term 'scenario' is often maligned and misused.

Two simple ideas: 1) It's hard to think as clearly or creatively when an 18-wheeler is bearing down on you as when it's not, and 2) calling something unthinkable is... unthoughtful.  I'll deal with the first point here and second point more extensively in another post.

Studies of cops under stress bear out the fact that fear and adrenaline reduce or even shut down one's ability to access key higher brain functions, including one's peripheral vision and other sensory input. They don't do much for collaboration or listening skills either. A group's thinking may appear to get more expansive under such circumstances; that's typically an illusion.

Ideas long held close to the vest (because others would have thought them crazy) are suddenly poured out on the table in a torrent of collective logorrhea. By definition they are not pro-active, nor have they had time to ripen. It's an environment conducive to the green and rotten ideas becoming indiscriminately co-mingled with the good and timely ones.

Some might be tempted to reply with Boswell's reporting of Samuel Johnson's famous quip, "Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." (September 19, 1777, p. 351, Volume III of 'The Life of Samuel Johnson"; often misquoted as 'being hanged in the morning'.) It's a quote I love and have used often.

Yet the frame for that quote involves a man already devoid of attractive options (other than prayer, perhaps). He's done. The only mystery is what kind of scene he will make as he leaves the picture and what lessons others will draw from it. The value of having thought steadily, wisely and creatively about a broad array of alternatives years in advance of one's crime, trial, conviction and sentencing doesn't even enter the picture.

Laser-like tactical concentration under extreme stress is very different from the calm, disciplined thoughtfulness and habituated creative behaviors (either corporate or individual) that can help steer clear of circumstances that might lead to one staring death in the face. They make so-called 'unthinkable' futures far less surprising and lead to better responses.

Better choice: create an environment in which 'unthinkable' futures and strategic options for addressing them are systematically thought-out by groups of key managers and executives and carefully positioned in relation to one another (and to the present state) within a detailed, event-based hypothetical cartography. Such scenario maps make it far easier to avoid being surprised by the kinds of dire circumstances Citi and others face today -- or that Johnson spoke about 231 years ago.

How does one reduce the chances of an 18-wheeler bearing down with little room to maneuver? Use a map to figure out where the sidewalks are. Don't walk on exit ramps after dark with your back to traffic. Don't make a desperate, instinctive lunge for the bushes and call the choice of thorns or poison ivy 'scenarios'.

Preparing One's Mind to See

I venture back into blogging after a long hiatus which was, thankfully, busy, productive and stimulating. Why? This piece, by Richard Fernandez over at the Belmont Club, referencing this anonymously authored August 7th Economist article (by a 'risk manager at a large global bank'), entitled 'Confessions of a Risk Manager'.

Fernandez writes [emphasis added]:

It is actually possible not so see something that is really there... We can’t see patterns that our brains have filtered out... But although the risk hunters saw no danger as they stared into the seemingly benign financial jungle, in retrospect, there were certain signs — whose significance was not realized then — that should have sounded the alarm about the crisis that is now upon us...

The signs were there, but they couldn’t interpret them, even when strange and unusual things were happening. Part of the problem with grasping the significance of the anomalies was that the risk hunters were prisoners of their analytic models. What cues they picked up were interpreted in the context of their mental frameworks. They “saw” through the prism of their models. And their models did not account for the existence of the monster that was now closing in on them...

The scenario work I've done with clients for years is rooted in precisely the precept Fernandez begins with: that the mental models or frameworks that people build up over a lifetime, a career and/or a role strongly color what they believe is possible and therefore the kinds of potential problems and opportunities they are willing to consider. I mean literally color. Fernandez' analogies to invisible spectra are apt. It's not that the spectra aren't there. It's just that I'm not equipped to see ultraviolet, infrared or to hear a dog whistle.

I should note that, while the Economist article is about 'seeing' risk, the concept applies equally well to innovation. More on that in future posts. It's where I've been spending most of my time and energy recently.

Mental models are seldom examined. You and I may talk about our views on particular future events, but it takes a lot of time and effort (plus a common 'language' for discussing it) to talk in terms of entire models. And mental models that are not  examined and described -- at any level -- tend to lead to decisions that don't fit reality. (Think blindfolded child attempting to hit the party pinata and hitting grandma instead).

Mental models are also fractal. My own colors the decisions I make, but I also go about my day constrained, to a greater or lesser degree by the mental models of the groups to which I belong (family, company, church, country, etc.)

I'm reluctant to conclude that individuals' mental models are always able to change faster than those of groups. (We all know some stubborn stick-in-the-mud; perhaps he's the one staring at us in the mirror). Anecdotally, however, I know of more individuals who have had a 'Damascus-road' 180-degree 'a-ha!', 'boy I've been stupid, haven't I?' moment in some part of their lives than I do larger groups or companies that have done the same. (When that does happen, e.g., Bill Gates' famous 'Internet' memo ten or so years ago, it tends to be just a powerful individual who changed his mind, not evidence of the group turning quickly together.)

Finally, mental models not challenged systematically and fundamentally on a pro-active basis (e.g., with scenarios) tend to change only defensively and slowly (in response to hard, external truths; often at great cost). That's painful. As Fernandez writes:

I wonder to what extent the policy reaction to the current financial crisis is still colored by the limitations of received wisdom — the financial models — and the need to keep the music playing. The interventionary mechanisms of the last few weeks are designed to fix problems as we understand them. If you’re convinced we understand things now. At any rate we are firing into the last known position of the monster. Nothing can withstand that firepower. The crowds are being told not to worry because the monster will soon be dead. True, there are few doubting souls who are worried that the creature may actually be feeding off our weapons, but their fears are dismissed as nonsense. The important thing, we are told, is to keep things going, which was just the advice the traders gave the risk managers.

It is remarkable how the advent of the current financial crisis structurally resembles the intelligence failures leading up to 9/11: the same misinterpretation of warning signs, the same blindness to threats now evident in retrospect. The same belief in a rapid resolution and a belief that the normal would soon be back.

In other words, we all sense that things have changed fundamentally (in financial markets and geopolitics) but we probably won't be able to develop our new mental models (at least collectively, agreeing on which ones are 'real') for many years -- not without a lot of deliberate thought-work, that is. Nor will we be able to perceive ongoing change properly (assessing both direction and magnitude) or develop said models in a way that enables us to act with precision, resolve and clarity. For years. That's a bit scary. It's also humbling (at least it should be).

Here's another thought that I should probably 'unpack' more fully in another post. Mental models are reflected in, but less often challenged by analytical tools. Oh sure, insights can most definitely be had with them, but I'm talking about much bigger constructs.  Sophisticated computer models, for the most part, tend to only amplify the force and reach of our brains. They do not, as a general rule, make them better able to 'think different' (ly) and develop new mental models for seeing the world -- for assessing the big risks in truly complex adaptive systems or for finding innovations.

Forecasting Their Way to Durable Profits

From the front page of today's Wall Street Journal [emphasis added]:

...a little-known tool of the insurance world: Computerized catastrophe modeling. Crafted by several independent firms and used by most insurers, so-called cat models rely on complex data to estimate probable losses from hurricanes.

But regulators and other critics contend that the latest cat models -- which include assumptions about various climate changes -- are triggering higher insurance rates.

Starting in the early 1990s, cat models began to replace the industry's older tools. Previously, insurers based their rates and underwriting policies largely on historical records of past claims.

Never mind if the forecasts are accurate or not. They work. To increase profits. That's not a pejorative statement as far as the insurance companies are concerned. It's their fiduciary responsibility to maximize return for their shareholders by any legal means available. It does however, set up an interesting, albeit very long-term test of the credulity and patience of their customers. I.e., should the forecasts prove inaccurate. More from the WSJ piece [emphasis added]:

Underlying the newer cat models are scientific theories that rising sea temperatures will result in more intense, and possibly more frequent, hurricanes. The hypotheses suggest that catastrophic hurricanes like 2005's Rita, Wilma and Katrina weren't an aberration, but rather the shape of things to come.

Large reinsurance companies... were early converts to theories of global warming and cite warming of the earth's oceans when predicting massive damages from future storms.

Well of course they were! Think about it for a second.

You're the CEO of a big reinsurance company. Two scientists walk into your office. One says he's got a new computer model that predicts big future costs due to storms.

"Of course I may be wrong," says scientists number one, "After all, I'm a scientist. We deal in hypotheses. You're the executive. You need to make the call on what to do with this."

"So let me get this straight", says the CEO. "If your models are right, we get to raise our rates because our competitors, customers, regulators and the general public are all looking at the same stuff, convinced that your predictions are true? Is that what you're saying?"

Hmm, she thinks to herself (the CEO). This is pretty good. If this guy is wrong, we get to pocket the difference for decades. It would take that long for anyone to prove this guy wrong. Even better, it's not that hard a sell to the general public. We've got cover. If he's right, well... we'll keep him on retainer. Keep his firm in good shape. Drop them some plum projects to keep 'em happy... maybe even kick this over to mar-com to manage. Under that scenario, we've at least got a decent business until I retire -- no better or worse than before. All upside. No downside. Suhweet!

The CEO smiles. She turns to scientist number two. "And what do you have to say for yourself?" she asks.

"Um...", stammers scientist number two (a geologist by training), "...the fossil record over several million years, and agricultural evidence over several millennia would tend to suggest that storm activity actually decreases during warmer climatic periods. And we're just getting this new data in from deep ocean probes suggesting that 80-90% of the ocean volume is staying the same temperature or maybe getting colder. It would be a bit hasty, in my opinion, for you to raise your rates based on a set of theories and prospective models that claim precise predictability when what we're really dealing with here is massive uncertainty. If you just sign the proposal we put on your desk to study this a little further, we can refine the numbers..."

"Thanks for your advice", asks the CEO. "I'll look into it. Have a nice day."

That's a fantasy dialogue, obviously. Read the WSJ article and draw your own conclusions [emphasis added]:

Perhaps the most prominent critic to surface is Karen Clark, an economist who founded one of the first cat-modeling firms two decades ago. Today, she warns about the programs' misapplication...

Companies that rely too heavily on cat-model data "are subjecting their businesses and their customers to the volatility of computer models," says Ms. Clark, who now runs a Boston cat-model consulting business. "The models are being used as if they produce definitive answers rather than uncertain estimates." Ms. Clark says she advises clients to use them in conjunction with other factors, such as broad historical data.

To be sure, insurers themselves are facing higher rates from the reinsurance companies that backstop their claims. The reinsurers, and the financial ratings agencies that assess the health of carriers, are also using the controversial newer models.

I just love this last bit:

...some models now attempt to estimate future losses over a shorter period of time. In doing so, they may also use selective historical data. One model, for example, was reprogrammed to give greater weight to years in which ocean temperatures were particularly warm and hurricane rates were high, such as the period from 1930 to 1945 [prior to broad industrialization and CO2 increases]. That particular model resulted in higher loss estimates for the near-term.

...and therefore higher rates. The logic is circular.

David Einhorn on the Financial Crisis, Government Complicity and Why Rating Agencies Aren't Much Better Than USAToday

Working deep inside Wall Street these past eight months or so, I've had a privileged vantage point from which to observe some of the most tumultuous quakes in the industry in a generation -- and arguably in a century. (Given the near-catastrophic, and still potentially catastrophic nature of those changes, one might legitimately argue with whether 'privileged' or 'punitive' would be the right word to describe my seat in the proverbial bleachers on this one. Since I'm still being paid -- for now -- I'll stick with the former, if only because it has been quite an education.)

Readers without a direct interest in the inner workings and accounting arcana of the financial services industry though, should take a gander at David Einhorn's ten-page pdf/speech: "Private Profits and Socialized Risk". [emphases added in the excerpts below] H/T: Bob Weber.

On the credit-rating agencies:

The market perceives the rating agencies to be doing much more than they actually do. The agencies themselves don't directly misinform the market, but they don't disabuse the market of misperceptions -- often spread by the rated entities -- that the agencies do more than they actually do. This creates a false sense of security and in times of stress this actually makes the problem worse...

It is hard for me to see how the rating agencies survive this debacle with their franchises intact.

On the failure of Bear Stearns and how the SEC has enabled the entire mess:

Rather than looking at its own rules which permitted increased leverage, lower liquidity, greater concentrations of credit risk and holdings of no ready market securities, the SEC is conducting an investigation to see if any short-sellers caused the demise of Bear by spreading rumors.

Of course, Bear didn't fail because of market rumors. It fell because it was too levered and had too many illiquid assets of questionable value and at the same time depended on short-term funding.

On how none of us are really spectators in this

...before Bear Stearns failed... I [had] planned to speculate that regulators believe all of these [major investment banks] are too big to fail and would bail them out, if necessary. The owners, employees and creditors of these institutions are rewarded when they succeed, but it is all of us, the taxpayers, who are left on the hook if they fail. This is called private profits and socialized risk. Heads, I win. Tails, you lose. It is a reverse-Robin Hood system...

As night follows day, it is certain that in the absence of tremendous government regulation, this bailout [of Bear] will lead to a new and potentially bigger round of excessive risk-taking...

On the counter-party credit system

In effect, [with Bear] the government appears to have guaranteed virtually the entire counter-party system. The message is that if you are dealing with a major player -- anyone in the "too big to fail" group -- you don't have to worry about that player's creditworthiness. In effect, your risk is with the U.S. Treasury...

...regulators should consider dismantling the counter-party system... require the posting of all derivative trades, clearing them through a central system and regulating margin requirements...

Sobering stuff, with a few funny bits (check out his water-vs-Coke analogy), along with some interesting long- and short- stock picks near the end. I urge you to read it all. The reason I post it here (a scenario- and big-picture-oriented blog) is that it will eventually touch pretty much everything in the global economy. Ignore it at your peril. Understand it and you'll at least be able to tell the difference between a two-by-four and a rock when it hits you (and all of us) in the back of the head.

From Risk to Uncertainty

I don't agree with everything in this piece by Thomas Homer-Dixon that appeared last week in the Toronto Globe and Mail, but this quote is an absolute gem (emphasis added):

Our global financial system has become so staggeringly complex and opaque that we’ve moved from a world of risk to a world of uncertainty. In a world of risk, we can judge dangers and opportunities by using the best evidence at hand to estimate the probability of a particular outcome. But in a world of uncertainty, we can’t estimate probabilities, because we don’t have any clear basis for making such a judgment. In fact, we might not even know what the possible outcomes are. Surprises keep coming out of the blue, because we’re fundamentally ignorant of our own ignorance. We’re surrounded by unknown unknowns.

It's something I've said for a long time:

It's tempting to think that all things are predictable given enough information, enough minds, enough time and enough computing power. It's just not true. (Which is not to say that some things are not predictable... and with incredible precision... a phenomenon that leads to overestimating the scope of problems and questions that lend themselves to such methods.)

Telling which is which is the trick...

I would go even further to say that really smart people who, by life experience know that some things are fundamentally unpredictable still draw an unvoiced sense of emotional comfort in their business life from the idea that some wise expert somewhere has been to the future (for all intents and purposes) and if we could just find him or her things would be OK... and/or that a really sophisticated computer model or prediction market (the 'collective mind') can provide crystal ball-level insights.

Sometimes yes. Often, no.

I liken Mr. Homer-Dixon's observations to those tragically massive car pile-ups that happen a few times of year in fog-prone areas like the Central Valley of California. Everyone is driving along at a reasonable speed, with reasonable spacing between vehicles. People are sipping coffee, tuning radios, maybe talking on cell phones. Slightly distracted, but mostly responsible. All is normal.

Then the first guy hits a fog bank and can't see squat. He taps his brakes. The second guy sees red lights and fog coming up fast and taps his brakes just a little bit harder, and so on. In just a few seconds, hundreds of cars end up in a tangled heap and people die. All because the guy in front was convinced by every one of his senses and not without justification based on experience that the visibility on the next 100 yards of road would be the same as on the last 100 yards of road.

One of the Benefits of Working in "Cube Land"

Your choice of seating at work may affect much more than your sensory pleasure at knowing when someone is eating tuna fish or onions versus citrus fruit or chocolate. Google has discovered that it's the most important factor in your being in the loop: in particular, whether you win or lose based on your close colleagues' prediction market trading.

(See 'heat map' at right: successful traders are depicted in green; losing traders in red).

(H/T: Jeffrey Henning)

'Real' traders take note! (Pick your desk-mates carefully.)

Random thought: this adds a whole new dimension to the elaborate strategies seasoned business travelers use to get primo seating on airplanes. Exit row? No thanks. Just give me the seat next to Warren Buffett.

Scenarios as Vehicles for Fear-Mongering

When we develop scenarios with clients, we emphatically avoid the kind Frank Furedi (rightly) decries here [emphasis added]:

From global warming to obesity, bird flu to terrorism: 2007 was the year when the threat of an apocalypse became an everyday, even banal public issue... The fear market in apocalyptic scenarios continued to flourish in 2007. Almost every week we were told that ‘the situation’ is far worse than we originally thought... Public figures appear to have lost the capacity to reassure or lead people. Instead, they frequently opt for evoking frightening futuristic scenarios where the line between fiction and reality become unclear.

One consequence of Western societies’ obsessive preoccupation with the apocalypse-to-come is that less and less creative energy is devoted to confronting the all too important problems that exist in the here and now. Take the global credit crunch unleashed by the sub-prime home loan crisis this year for instance.

In terms of its material impact, this was arguably the most significant event of the year. After more than a decade of economic stability, the world economy faces the threat of a major recession with important implications for people’s lives. This threat may not make an exciting plot for a sci-fi movie, but it has a direct bearing on the quality of life of millions of people. It also raises important questions about an economic system that is so heavily reliant on using fictitious capital to reproduce itself.

Events over the past 12 months suggest that what we think and how we think influences how we experience our reality.

Some rules and questions we use to avoid these traps and test whether scenarios are useful include:

Are scenarios sufficiently orthogonal to and distinct from one another? Does each embody both 'good' and 'bad' elements? Real world developments are seldom all good or all bad at the same time and from the same perspective. If participants in a scenario workshop find it trivial to line up the scenarios in the same way from "good/easy for us" to "bad/frightening for us", we haven't done our job of representing real-world nuance in hypothetical future stories.

Do scenarios incorporate "here and now" events and choices? (We usually embody these in what we call 'events', a component of modular scenarios). Scenarios entirely about some far-off, visionary 'place' with no explicit ties to current issues are seldom useful beyond the fiction stacks.

Are scenarios directly comparable to current conventional wisdom? (I.e., as Furedi puts it, "how we think... [and] experience our [present] reality"). Without a concrete "you are here dot" scenario that represents what constituents are thinking and assuming, it's impossible to describe how "far away" hypothetical future scenarios really are, or what change they imply. If I'm contemplating a trip to Miami, it helps to know (in terms of budgeting, preparation and mode of transport whether I'm currently in Juneau, Ft. Lauderdale or Tiera del Fuego.

China's GDP Changes Hands Every Day...

Well, almost. In my business it has become habit to scoop up watershed factoids like this and--along with other bits and pieces--make sense of them in a larger context of multiple future scenarios.

...the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland... [tracks] the size of foreign-exchange markets. In April, daily turnover in currency markets rose to $3.2 trillion, the bank said yesterday.

That's more in value than the annual economic output of Germany or China, changing hands in currency markets every day around the world. It's also up 71% from the BIS's last survey in 2004, the largest jump in volume since the institution began conducting its benchmark survey in 1989.

Fallacies of Telecom Network Resilience: Lessons From the Taiwan Earthquake

Picking up from my post on the same topic earlier this week, more is becoming clear about Internet and telecoms network failures to and within Asia as a result of Tuesday's major earthquake(s) in and around Taiwan.

• Boats are in place and the fix is already underway, contrary to earlier reports indicating that the cables wouldn't even be touched until after the turn of the new year.


• Laws designed to keep fishing vessels from dragging undersea cables carry fines pitifully out of proportion to the potential damage (roughly a million-to-one). It's not clear why, in a nation (China) not shy about capital-punishment, someone has not lost their head over previous cable cuts (e.g., April 6, 2004).


• The capacity of land-lines from Europe to Asia is tiny in comparison with those from the U.S. to Asia and the U.S. to Europe. This global asymmetry  raises a host of issues ranging from economic development to politics to outsourcing to culture.


• Satellites are expensive and have only limited capacity. The illusion that they offer backup to undersea cables is just that--little better than thinking that carrier pigeons will fill the gap.

With that and other emerging news, it's also becoming clear that lessons learned after 9-11 haven't 'stuck'.

Within the IT-savvy portion of the New York financial community at least (and, I would have imagined, well beyond it) a great deal was learned, publicly documented and put into practice to address the fragility of such networks. The cost was not small, however the there was unanimous agreement that the alternative was worse. The direct and indirect costs of closed markets (four days in the case of 9-11) were understood to be vastly larger--something that many in Asia are rediscovering to their collective chagrin.

The lessons of 9-11 (from a business resilience perspective anyway) are not particular to New York, to the U.S.,  or even to a cause. I'll rephrase and repeat that last bit, because without justification, thinking about business resilience is too often segmented by what went bump in the night rather than what happened as a result of it.

The business resilience lessons of 9-11 apply as well to natural as to man-made disasters; as well to widespread as to 'point' impacts; and as well to protracted as to short-duration events.

The lessons are immutable--essential principles for building and maintaining resilient networks and organizations. Two biggies are:

Understand layer one. Don't assume that a carrier's logical architecture (much less it's marketing architecture) showing a ring, double ring, or even mesh network has anything to do with physical reality. Both 9-11 and the Taiwan earthquake illustrate how economic pressures and crowd dynamics drive networks towards similar if not identical paths-of-least-resistance. (I suspect that carrier assurances in articles like this are not really about physical routes.) This is no more the fault of a particular company or person than is Interstate 80 through the California Sierras, the Golden Gate Bridge across the mouth of San Francisco Bay or the majority of the U.S. financial community on one tiny island (Manhattan). Those were simply the most logical  and least costly places to put those things. So it is under the ocean... 

Get a cross-carrier view. Don't assume that because you have signed up with three carriers that your data (or voice) traffic is moving via three distinct networks, much less three physically dispersed paths. Inter-carrier 'grooming' agreements can spring up without any legal requirement for end customers to be notified.  This is what happened on 9-11. In a similar vein, don't assume that the Internet itself is resilient because it was designed to withstand a nuclear attack. See point one: physical routes matter.

I'll address other laws of business resilience in subsequent posts.

Exchanges (Finally) Go Global

It's unfortunate that the WSJ chose to run this fact-packed, big-picture story (subscription required) on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. Being the strategy geeks that we are however, we were all over it. The story charts the recent sea-change from human-driven, city-centric, product-specific, cooperatively owned stock exchanges to global electronic powerhouses trading in a wide range of securities and derivatives.

[U.S.] exchanges find themselves motivated by a new phenomenon: Big overseas companies no longer see the U.S. as a place where they must list their shares to raise capital. Tougher U.S. regulation of companies and the ease with which capital can flow around the world have made it attractive for companies to list closer to home. Next week, the Bank of China is preparing a nearly $10 billion offering that will take place on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange... In 2000, nine of every 10 dollars raised by non-U.S. companies outside their domestic markets was through U.S. exchanges... By last year, only one in 10 such dollars was raised in New York. [emphasis added]

As the WSJ notes, that's a truly radical change. Some of it is no doubt driven by exchange rates, but only some. Another major factor has been increased regulatory oversight in the U.S., (e.g., Sarbanes-Oxley), providing a sobering lesson in the unintended consequences of well-meaning legislation in a fluid, free-market global economy.

Massive, permanent structural shifts like this are what we refer to when we talk about "discontinuous change" and the need for creative scenario thinking in order to survive it. Linear forecasting and trend-spotting does little good. One day the world looks much like it always has and business-as-usual works just fine... and then one day it doesn't. Credit the NYSE's post-Grasso leadership with seeing and responding to these changes as best they can.

In early 2004, when John Thain arrived to take the helm, he quickly discovered that the NYSE had serious competitive issues. Specializing in stocks, it was less electronic than its peers. Visits to Chicago and Europe showed how the New York exchange had fallen behind innovative rivals such as the CME, Euronext and Deutsche Börse. Mr. Thain invited one NYSE staffer to his office a few months after he arrived and told him that the exchange had to go public, build a derivatives business and go overseas... [emphasis added]

Better late than never. The other thing they've been needing to do, which the article also notes, has been to marginalize and ultimately eliminate a byzantine human-dependent floor-trading system that by preserving antiquated pre-computer trading methods only lines the pockets of seat-holders and specialists. Other Mapping Strategy posts on NYSE doings can be found here, here, here, here, here, and especially here ("Competition and Terrorism in the Securities Industry").