Hartford Business Journal

24 Hartford Business Journal • February 24, 2020 • www.HartfordBusiness.com OPINION & COMMENTARY EDITOR'S TAKE In search of moderate political candidates C onnecticut's April 28 presidential primary is set and to the delight of some local Republicans, Donald Trump won't be the only name on the GOP's ballot. Of course, it won't matter. Trump will be the Republican nominee for president this fall as he seeks a second term in office. And there is a good chance, if you believe national polls, that Bernie Sanders, a Demo- cratic socialist, could be his challenger. As an independent voter and thinker who long ago disavowed party loyalty in search of problem-solving candidates, it's mind- boggling to me that our political system could leave us with such extreme candidates. On the one side, you have a man child in chief who deliberately taunts and challenges the rule of law and presidential norms, while igniting, at times, our worst fears and emotions. Meanwhile, his signature tax reform largely benefitted the rich while leaving American tax- payers with a trillion-dollar deficit. On the other side, Sanders wants to upend Ameri- can capitalism in favor of providing free higher education and health care to all, while canceling all student loan and medical debt, expanding social secu- rity and significantly increasing union power. I think it's safe to say a Sanders election would send the stock market and business investment into a tailspin. Given those potential choices this November, I sought out an independent mind and voice who is actively trying to upend a system he says caters to the political extremes. Oz Griebel, the former CEO of the MetroHartford Alliance, ran as a third-party candidate last guberna- torial election after fleeing the GOP. Now he's the chair of the SAM CT Task Force, a group trying to reform the state's electoral process to give unaffiliated and more moderate candidates in Connecticut a better chance of winning elections. Griebel is a self-avowed fiscal conservative who is liberal on social issues. A former bank executive, he fits the mold of the typical corporate CEO who was the standard bearer for the Republican party, before Trump arrived. Griebel said he's never going back to the GOP and still "fundamentally believes this country is center left and center right." The SAM CT Task Force, which was founded nationally by long-standing New York Republicans, recently called on the state Democratic and Repub- lican parties to open their respective presidential primaries to Connecticut's nearly 1 million unaffili- ated voters. They represent about 41% of all voters in the state. Currently, only Democrats and Republicans can vote in the upcoming primary for candidates in their own party. An open primary, Griebel said, could shift the outcome of the race on the Democratic side and give moderates more of a say in who wins Con- necticut's delegates. Predictably, the GOP and Democrats shunned the idea, arguing voters can change parties to become eligible for primaries. In reality, they don't want any changes that would loosen their stranglehold on the electoral process. But Griebel isn't giving up. He said he plans to lobby state lawmakers next year to adopt open primaries. He's also pushing for other reforms, includ- ing term limits and ranked-choice voting, which would allow voters to rank all candidates for an elected office rather than choose just one. A candidate would need to win a majority of votes before they are declared a winner, even if it takes multiple elections. Maine has adopted such a system and Massa- chusetts voters will consider it this fall. Griebel said ranked-choice voting would en- courage candidates to consider views of all voters, not just those who represent a party's base. When he was running for governor he said people told him they thought he was the best can- didate but backing him would be a wasted vote. "Ranked-choice voting would get at that issue," Griebel said. I think Griebel's reforms are good ideas that have little chance of coming to fruition. But hey, he's used to being on the losing end of political fights (he only garnered 2% of the votes in the 2018 gubernatorial election, which was won by Gov. Ned Lamont.) His best chance to change the system could be to oversee it. So I had to ask, is he considering a third run for governor? He didn't say no. "I'm focused exclusively for 2020 on working with others to build the grassroots movement needed to implement the three SAM CT reform initiatives," he said. "I look forward to continuing the discussion." Greg Bordonaro, Editor BIZ BOOKS The power of innovation By Jim Pawlak "Experimenta- tion Works — The Surprising Power of Business Experiments" by Stefan H. Thomke (Harvard Business Review Press, $32). While business lauds disruptive big ideas, most ad- vancements come from the cumulative effect of incremental improvements in products and services. Example: While Apple has been a disrupter, it kept its "disrupters" fresh by intro- ducing apps and product upgrades, which has sustained profit growth. Organizations of all sizes thrive when they focus on continuous improvement, which involves constantly doing things differently and doing different things. "Doing" means experimenting. Will ev- ery experiment succeed? No. Amazon's Jeff Bezos stated, "Failure and invention are inseparable twins … organizations embrace the idea of invention but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there. Why? They equate failure with "money and time down the drain." Thomke believes otherwise; he sees failure as an opportunity to learn more about how a company improves its business. That said, he believes there are productive and unproduc- tive ways to experiment. The productive way, which finds its roots in scientific method, starts with mea- suring a cause and effect (what happens when … ) hypothesis. The mandate — narrow the focus to one causal variable. Example: Kohl's, when it was looking to reduce op- erating costs, conducted a controlled experiment. It could potentially save money by open- ing an hour later M-S. It could also lose sales if it did so. A test involving 100 stores showed that opening an hour later had a negligible effect on sales. Expanding the reduced hours to the rest of the stores had the same result. Had the expansion produced significantly different results, Kohl's would have had to figure out why it worked in the control group but not in others. More experiments would be needed. What about unpro- ductive experiments? A poor-quality problem statement results in a shotgun approach that generally drifts toward "more is better." Adding things only makes a difference if they add value. Jim Pawlak

• Cover