Like most people these days, I am deluged with companies asking for my opinion. It seems every time I stay in a hotel, get my car serviced, or purchase food at a restaurant, I receive a call, email, or receipt requesting a short survey. While I cannot fault any business for taking the time to gauge its customers' opinions, the manner in which most organizations gather these opinions seems suspect at best.

Perhaps my favorite is the poor call center rep, who calls in broken English, clearly reading from a script, and shockingly frequently botching my name or the name of the business. The best part of these calls is they invariably start with "Your opinion is very important to us." Just as one would be suspicious of any fashion advice I might offer upon seeing what color combinations I choose, I have trouble believing that my opinion is particularly important to an organization that clearly put no thought into gathering it.

Similarly, I am always frustrated when an employee whose compensation is presumably based on survey results implores me to score him in all categories at the highest rating. I've had auto dealers tell me they would lose their jobs with any score less than the maximum possible. If everyone is constantly excellent, doesn't excellence become mere mediocrity? How can the organization accurately gauge opinion when its employees are regaling customers with tales of the financial ruin they'll face if they are not awarded the highest possible honors?

If you truly value your customers' opinions, take the time to gather it in a careful and thoughtful manner. I'd argue that a VP or above calling 10 past customers and having a detailed and free-flowing conversation will do world's more good for your understanding customer opinion than a call center tallying thousands of "Excellent" ratings, extorted from customers who would hate to threaten another's livelihood. However, that's just my opinion.

I set a new personal record time for a half marathon this month in New York City, making my way through Central Park, through Times Square, and down the West Side Highway for my first finish in less than two hours. In the past, I have run with the goal of merely finishing the race, and paid little attention to my pace or splits at each mile.

This time, I went into the race planning on finishing under the two hour mark, and setting my watch to provide immediate feedback as to where I stood vis a vis my planned pace. While I spent a fair portion of the race focused on my time, and was constantly giving worried glances towards my wrist, I knew exactly where I stood in relation to my goal, and where I had to pick up the pace or I could relax for a few minutes and catch my breath.

While there are certainly times where planning and monitoring each minute aspect of life is overkill, and takes away from the joy of spontaneity, other endeavors call for planning, careful monitoring, and adaptability in order to achieve a goal.

Joining the cadre of groan inducers this month is the term "monetizing," as in "If I could monetize horrendous business jargon, I'd be a billionaire." Apparently, making money from a business is no longer implicit, and people must state that they wish to actually generate a financial return from a business activity. Like all jargon, monetizing seems harmless on the surface, but the suggestion that a venture be allowed to heedlessly burn through cash until it can be monetized is arrogant at best, and absolutely foolhardy at worst.

One would think we would have learned our lesson during the dot-com bust a decade ago, where poorly-conceived businesses were showered with venture money while overzealous investors awaited the arrival of the monetization fairy.

Anyone who has flown within or into the US in the past several years has likely experienced the Transportation Security Agency, or TSA, the federal government's takeover of airline security after September 11^th terrorist attack on the US. While security weaknesses were responsible in part for the attacks, the TSA seems to bring out the worst in reactionary government policy, and the travelers subjected to these policies.

What passes for airline security now requires that I effectively completely disassemble my briefcase, and take up three of four of the large plastic bins, since I am not allowed to place items in a single bin for reasons that no one seems able to explain. On a recent flight, when I noted the inanity of these policies to the nearest TSA employee, she said "That's why I don't fly anymore!"

It seems to be a sad comment on the state of air travel when the agency tasked with providing security finds their own policies so onerous that they refuse to be bothered by them.