~synthesis~

spintegrity

As a kid, I routinely proclaimed my innocence when “stuff’ happened . It is possible that sometimes “I didn't do it” wasn’t exactly accurate; it's also possible that had I come clean right away (or even before the “stuff” was discovered), I would have spent much less time being well-grounded...

When I was in that “innocent” moment, I always felt it was possible that the broken fish tank (or whatever) might not actually be discovered, or that I could find a way to not make it my fault.

As in childhood, “stuff” also happens in business; but the consequences are worse than a wet carpet (the fish were saved, though I got zero credit for that). Sadly, the “adult” leaders are often as righteous as I was, and as convinced that they can somehow get away with it.

A teacher I admire recently posted a link on Facebook to a blog by Gary Rubinstein entitled: Why I did TFA, and why you shouldn’t. As a former TFAer, my friend was understandably upset about this. I too am an admirer of TFA (Teach for America), and this article was an eye-opener, it exposed perspectives I hadn’t considered.

Money quote: "Rather than be honest about both their successes and their failures, they deny any failures, and charge forward with an agenda that has not worked and will never work. Their ‘proof’ consists of a few high-performing charters. These charters are unwilling to release the data that proves that they succeed by booting the ‘worst’ kids — the ones that bring down their test scores."

A few months ago, the Susan G. Komen Foundation was accused of politicizing their grant-making (which they denied despite information to the contrary); they were further accused of singling out Planned Parenthood, which the head of Komen, Nancy Brinker also denied. When asked if their reputation was at stake, Brinker responded: “...all I can tell you is that the responses we’re getting are very, very favorable." They reversed their decision 24 hours later, apologized for causing any distress, while reiterating their righteousness.

Like TFA (23 years), Komen has been around a long time (30 years), both are very effective, and widely regarded as resounding successes. They had to overcome huge obstacles; persevere through difficult times; and finally gain traction and slowly win people over. Now, rather than begging to get an invite to the dance, they are the main attraction.

To get to success, it is often necessary to transcend negativity; it is always necessary to believe in yourself, your vision, and your strategy, even (or especially) when everyone else doubts you. This thick skin is critical to progress in the early days, and if you are fortunate enough to "win," it is sadly also very effective at helping you forget who and what you were when you started, and think only of how great you are now.

Humans are designed to forget, minimize, or even romanticize tough times -- I can't imagine a mother wishing to give birth to second child if this weren't true; it is certainly how adults forget the angst and difficulty and complexity of puberty and teenagehood, when they vowed never to be the jerks their parents were.

In life, as we learn and grow, we hopefully never lose sight of the principles and morals that we were taught as children -- these neural pathways were formed when young, and ideally persist and guide us throughout our lives. But in business (and politics), there is no such memory, especially when it comes to leadership. Principles or morals are routinely forsaken in the name of expediency. What's worse, it is the very leaders who were closest to those principles that are most likely to ignore them.

But how is the ideal that caused shivers down your spine, brought a tear to your eye, and drove you to do just one more thing before going to sleep so easily replaced??

I think it happens when you hire two- and three-lettered people - JDs, PRs, MBAs. The "2-3s" are designed to manage situations by respectively telling you scary stories about what will go wrong if you admit things; telling you lies about how great you are, and assuring you about how easy it is to fool the public; and by "helping" you measure success with generally-irrelevant metrics. The 2-3s also help you forget the big picture -- the very reasons your organization exists in the first place.

The result? You've been spun.

Spin is a powerful thing - it is intended to "shape" truth into convenience: "the fish needed a new home anyway, and let's face it the floor also needed a wash." The problem happens when you start believing your own spin. Back to TFA: Education is a difficult, difficult challenge -- we spend $100s of billions on it and are still failing. Rather than admit that some of their efforts have also failed, and help others learn from their mistakes, they're forsaking their original dream -- we can make education better -- for their new mandate -- TFA must succeed at all costs. This is true for Komen, for many large corporations, and certainly in politics.

As Gary put it, “TFA spawned leaders suffer a type of arrogance and overconfidence where they completely ignore any evidence that their beliefs are flawed.  The leaders TFA has spawned are, to say this in the kindest way possible, ‘lacking wisdom.’ ”

When you start believing that your 2-3s can help you hide or spin failures and acts of stupidity, you’re in trouble. When you start believing that these things didn’t really happen, you’re an idiot. And when you start thinking you can now do no wrong, you’re sunk, for you are now without integrity.

The standard to which we hold ourselves is our greatest asset. When we are honest about our successes and failures, we show our humanity. When we are open to external scrutiny, we are worthy of other people’s trust.

prelude to discombobulation

I was reading a speech John F. Kennedy delivered in 1961 to the Canadian Parliament, and struck by this quote:

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder. What unites us is far greater than what divides us.

Over the last few months, I've been wondering whether the country President Kennedy represented still exists, whether his half of the "us" can in fact be represented as he did. Is there still a "we" in the "us" or is America no longer one country? Can the President legitimately "represent" US?

I thought the intra-American vitriol had peaked during the presidential election in 2008 - from calling candidates terrorists to questioning their birth and religious affiliation, because in the weeks that followed, it felt like we were moving back from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Wrong.

Today there is NOTHING the Republicans can do that will inspire Democrat support or approval, and vice versa. I bet if Speaker John Boehner(R) were to give money to a homeless person, Nancy (the idiot) Pelosi(D) would find a way to condemn it as a political act aimed at eliminating Federal social programs. Such is the lack of quality, maturity, and civility within the government.

The very concept of governing has lost meaning; American politicians' only goal is to win, and then raise enough money and create enough polarity to keep winning - there is no compulsion to actually do anything (serve) whilst in power, who cares about that!

Whatever "they" do, "we" have to hate and decry, even if we agree (or agreed) with it. If they do something that the electorate thinks is good, we have to spin it as misguided, anti-freedom, anti-common man, anti-jobs, or (last resort?) treasonous.

How did politics become so devoid of honor? I blame Karl Rove, who in crafting George W Bush's candidacy, saw that the only way to win was to target the religious right, prey on their fears, and make them hate, truly hate John Kerry. It was a brilliant strategy, and obviously successful. Now all politicians passionately embrace the low road.

Each side is so effective with their spin, they've erased the essential principle of democratic rule - that the wisdom of the broader electorate will attenuate the candidates' radicalism. When politics comes up at the coffee shop or at the dining table, it is easy to find "regular” people parroting either the MSNBC or Fox argument depending on their bias, and expressing the same vitriol against “them” that they hear on TV and from political talking heads.

The electorate has been manipulated, and can no longer do its job of keeping politicians honest and focused on governing.

The American government divides power among three branches so that no one agenda will or can dominate. But today the President (executive branch) largely controls his party in Congress (legislative), and with a majority in the House and Senate, is able to have his way on most things. The Supreme Court (judicial) is nine individuals with a lifetime tenure and the power to interpret laws as they choose. The current Court is comprised of five conservative and four liberal judges; many 5:4 rulings happen along "party" lines, and while the Court wishes to avoid this, it occurs more and more frequently, especially in cases where the Executives and Legislatives are also divided according to party propaganda.

If Mitt Romney wins his party's nomination (likely), and if he is able to activate the Tea Party with sufficient force to maintain the House majority and also win a Senate majority (possible), he will, with this "friendly" Supreme Court, essentially be a despot.

While he may have been (perhaps still is) more moderate than his rhetoric, he knows how to appease "them that brung him," in order to sustain majorities through the midterm elections, and then get reelected in 2016. Winning = radicalism + fear mongering.

Even within America, does the picture JFK painted still apply? Can Americans of both stripes be neighbors, friends, partners, and allies? Is there more that unites us than divides us? Or has Karl Rove put us asunder? It took a several years to foster the revulsion each feels for the other; I imagine it will take much longer to repair the rift and establish real trust. I do know that the longer we mistrust, the longer it will take to undo the damage.

Not ironically -- this rift was created by our leaders and blossomed with our assent. Not so long ago, a group of traitors wrote these words within a proclamation saying that enough is enough:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Here in the 21st century, the so-called Representatives inside the Beltway might well be worse than the despotic Brits of the 18th century.

So what will this primary and the upcoming election say about US?

Have we endured a long enough train of abuses and usurpations? Have they evinced a desire to once again establish new guards? Or will we just placidly whine about it and order another nonfat decaf half soy latte?

bondage

I spent a few weeks during December/January visiting West Africa - it was a wonderful and enlightening experience. One day while driving on a beautiful road alongside the ocean approaching Luanda (in Angola), we noted how quickly the city is growing (we were stuck in traffic, looking at tons of cranes); how much opportunity there is; and how odd it is that one of the most expensive cities to live in in the world is actually in Africa. Who would’ve thunk it!

This led us to contrast the differences in how business is done in Luanda vs the West. I recall this same phenomenon across much of the rest of Africa, in the Middle East, and some parts of Asia as well. For someone from America, business takes soooo much longer to get going, it moves at a glacial pace, and we feel totally out of the loop. It’s just plain “wrong,” and uncomfortably difficult to “manage.”

We long for the bang-bang-bang cadence so familiar in America.

Hearkening to my days in Microsoft’s HQ, there was an “indicator” that was used to measure process and progress; it doesn’t exist so much outside the West, which seems to throw many “Westerners” for a loop when they are over “there.”

Meetings.

Here in America, if you walk past a person’s office a few times and note that they’re always there and alone, you conclude they’re disconnected, ineffective, and not a team player.

This perception and the corresponding meeting-primacy-sensibility is modeled by the entire executive leadership (GMs/VPs and above) who are ALWAYS in meetings. Scheduling just 30 minutes requires at least two months’ notice - they’re that “busy.” (Doing what, I wonder?)

How much real estate might Western companies save by eliminating all the offices, and “storing” everyone in meeting rooms?? ‘Cause let’s face it, if you’re any “good,” you’re never in your office anyway.

My first job in the Middle East was for an American company. Before leaving the US, I was told that it is different "over there"; things were going to take much longer, business wasn’t going to close anywhere near quickly, and I was not be fooled, because even if progress was made in the first meeting, it wasn’t going to stick.

My first couple of meetings in the Middle East reflected this - the customer didn’t ever want to “get to it” or talk business. I kept looking at my watch, worried that our time would run out. I declined his offer of tea (not wanting to impose), and he seemed upset. My much vaunted Effective Meeting Skills were for naught. Being a good Western worker, I had another meeting scheduled right after, and had to depart abruptly, leaving an important customer with zero progress.

I reflected on this afterwards, recalling that the two customers I had met were much happier when I arrived than when I left. I also noted that “local” executives were much more available than expats, and that the locals seemed to have much lower stress levels that “we” did. Those who’d been around (particularly the locals) were much more effective despite hardly being in meetings at all, and the meetings they did have seemed mostly social and not “business,” but despite all this, their “numbers” were really good.

I reconnected with that first customer, keeping the rest of the afternoon free. We talked not at all about business, instead we drank awesome Turkish coffee and shared school and travel stories - I never once looked at my watch, instead just focused on getting to know him, and helping him get to know me. We met again a few days later, this time over food and did more of the same; we also talked about our families, and about our hopes and dreams for them.

A few days later, he invited me to his home for dinner - I was honored. I met his family, we ate amazing food and just (!) enjoyed each others company. After dinner, when the two of us were alone drinking coffee, he said this:

“Shafeen, we have gotten to know each other, you have met my family, I have learned about yours [I had no family there], and we are now brothers. We have a bond of trust, and I seek success for you just as you seek success for me.

“I also know that you’ve spent time learning my business, know what we are doing, how we are doing it, and how your company can help us do better.

“So my brother, tell me how should we do business, and let us make it so.” 

That last sentence left this unsaid: “because I know you have my best interests at heart and will only do what helps me, for we are family, and I trust you.”

An agreement was struck, hands were shaken, a partnership was forged. When stuff hit the fan, I was on it, and make sure we did right by our partner. We hardly met to check progress, etc., trust replaced that.

More than 15 years have passed, much has changed, but when he calls, I do take that call, enjoy hearing news of his family, share the same of mine. If the conversation includes a request, it will be done. Ours is not (and never was) a business affiliation, it was and is a relationship, one I hope will endure for many moons to come.

Returning to America was weird - meetings were about doing work, and most rooms had more than one clock. Process people drove the agenda, and people left with action items. “Effectiveness” was key, and a “productive” meeting was marked with dense slides, many charts, tables, follow-up activities, and, yes, the promise of more meetings. People are actually measured on how well they “show up” at meetings (not whether the business or customers were benefited, but whether they do good meetings)!!

It is said that matrixed management (still the vogue in the West) is a more efficient [I wonder if we really understand the meaning of that word] way to run a large organization. But fragmentation and zero-sum employee compensation models that come with it perpetuate mistrust among leaders and workers and across organizations. Meetings are the way to ensure your interests are protected.

Accountability, responsibility, and relationships have become corporate collateral damage.

The measurement model for most large organizations intentionally flaunts team performance for comparative individual achievement. I gain strength only if my teammates are weaker; my success requires them to fail; there is no “us.”

Driving along that road as we approached Luanda, I saw once more that the non-Western approach, while seemingly frivolous and hopelessly inefficient, created relationships and trust and built bonds of accountability that resulted in success. It is unthinkable to betray the trust of a brother or sister.

Today I live in Seattle; my work requires me to inhabit a Western business fabric. I have more meetings than I’d like, and sometimes experience a sense of sadness as I realize how little this/our culture values us as people, and how much it values what others can do for us.

I think of my times in the "3^rd world," and wonder how long it will be before we 1^st worlders finally evolve...

feckless

Tony Karon argued yesterday that Israel's 'Diplomatic Tsunami' has arrived, I think he’s right, and it got me thinking about America’s foreign policy.

From Wikipedia, “a country's foreign policy... consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu.”

For almost a century, America has been the world’s cop, the world’s strongest economy, and even the world’s authority on morality. From protecting Korea and Taiwan in Asia, to helping Japan and Germany with their post-war economic recoveries, to leading the world in communications and high tech and entertainment, to being Israel’s doting uncle, America has been a (really “the”) dominant force in shaping the world’s behavior.

America, the President of the United States, and the American Congress were regarded, respected, and feared as the pinnacle of freedom, integrity, power, and achievement.

When “powerful” is your norm, you assume infallibility and righteousness are forever yours. The most brazen example of this is the Bush Doctrine (aka National Security Strategy of the United States) wherein the American government empowered itself to preemptively strike any entity or sovereign state that it deemed threatening.

American foreign policy is/was not so much a diplomatic process as thuggery; using either the threat of, or the actual act of military or economic retribution to impose its wishes.

Wielding brute force will go to your head; when you have this kind of power, why bother with subtlety? Why waste time on nuance and wit when you own the most powerful one-two punch (US Military, US Dollar) in history? Sure it's dominant now, but time isn’t kind to those that drink too much of their own Kool-Aid; Davids are able to find slingshots, Goliaths are vanquished.

Ten years ago today, America was the victim of a horrible and criminal act, and it reacted with force and anger, some of which was directed against its own citizens, making us a lot less free than we’ve ever been. America is a more intrusive place to live today than it was on September 10, 2001.

That same act also robbed America of its integrity, as evidenced by three words - Guantanamo, Rendition, and Torture.

The American military is without equal in “traditional” warfare; the last time they were asked to fight one of those was 21 years and 40 days ago, and they were victorious. Since then, the “enemy” has been replaced with individuals and small groups of criminals who are inhuman, without honor, and lack any national affiliation. This is a law enforcement problem, not a military one.

Using the military to counter terrorism is like using a gun to kill a mosquito. You make a fool of the weapon, create a ton of random damage, and help the foe look agile and effective. Case in point - Afghanistan, ironically the same place where Americans helped the “locals” defeat the Soviet Union. American power does exist in reality, but in the eyes of the rest of the world, it is no longer mighty, nor is it feared. The thug mind assumed that every problem could be solved with the same weapon, and that delusion made a mockery of both the thug and the weapon.

Can we at least rest on achievement?

Going back to Karon’s article, taking its cue from Uncle Sam, Israel assumed that a powerful military and self-righteousness are all that’s required to maintain the status quo; but they didn’t count on the agility and effectiveness of the mosquito, which took the form of individuals and their desire for personal freedom and justice.

They did count on Uncle S to stand with them and “prevail” on the Turks, Egyptians, and even the Palestinians to respect and honor the integrity of Israel; and of course America did stand with its favorite nephew, but regrettably, with little effect. Nations (and worse, individuals) that once cowered are no longer bowed. They listened politely, but then followed their own beliefs rather than US "advice."

Why? Because today even America’s ability to get it done is suspect - the military will leave its last two theaters of operation without victory; the economy is weak and depleted; the government prefers ideology over strategy.

What was once a majestic and imposing and relentless is tired and fading. The “assets” that America has held dear for so long, it’s military and the all-mighty dollar remain, and remain strong, but only according to the definitions of the last millennium.

While the world moved on, America chose laurels and rest.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
Bob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changin’

These are harsh words on this sad day; but this is also a day of reflection, when we contemplate not just what was lost, but how we've changed, and what we've become. Reflection must encompass the whole image in the mirror, not just the convenient illusion. Humility always prevails over hubris.

how can you be so obtuse?

Sound familiar? It will if you've seen The Shawshank Redemption, and recall when Andy Dufresne (protagonist) finds proof of his innocence, but Warden Norton (antagonist/scumbag) dismisses it. Andy "knows" he is innocent; the warden "knows" that all criminals are guilty. We are on Andy's side, and appalled that the warden doesn't even consider the possibility of innocence. In the end, the warden is vanquished and Dufresne is free, but both remain obstinately true to their beliefs.

I was reminded of this when reading The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science - a brilliant analysis on the strength of our belief systems, and why persuasion is so difficult. Psychologists use the term cognitive dissonance to explain it - when we are faced with conflicting ideas, we "reposition" things to reduce the discomfort. Like when justifying an expensive purchase - "Sure this is an expensive car, but that's because it's well-engineered, safer, and will last so much longer than that cheap clunker you just bought - you get what you pay for."

Unprovoked, most of us are somewhat open-minded, but when pushed, we forsake reasonable for defensive and obstinate, and that leads to bad decision-making.

As American politics kicks into gear for the 2012 elections, apparently *every* politician feels pushed and under siege, and none are capable of making good decisions. The abject disinterest in governing has never been more present than during the recent debt ceiling and FAA debacles. The good of the nation is/was forsaken for the good of the Party or the individual politician.

Why? Because politics is a zero-sum game - there is only one winner. It used to be that candidates would campaign on the merits of their vision, their ideas, talk about who they were as a person, and "may the best (wo)man win." But as politics has "evolved," they've discovered that it is much easier to make your opponent(s) lose than it is to show why you should win. Rather than being the best candidate, it's about being the one with the best opposition research and counter-marketing.

Bizarrely, this new breed of politician's cognitive dissonance causes them to actually believe that integrity and good is about partisan one-upmanship and not about service and governing.

How can they be so obtuse?

On Friday Standard & Poor's lowered America's credit rating from AAA to AA+; their analysis wasn't based on numbers (i.e. is America actually a trusted investment), but rather on the politics - can Congress and the White House stop the posturing and juvenile finger-pointing, and focus on running the country?

Is this a reasonable basis for judging credit-worthiness? Will a loan officer at a bank decide to lend money to a couple based on the numbers, or on whether they keep bickering all the time? I'm sure the bickering should be a factor, but am not convinced it is the ONLY factor.

How can they be so obtuse?

Having said this, the reaction so far from both the White House and Congress is partisan drivel. The ONLY thing politicians are capable of is showing how the other side is to blame for everything that's bad, and how they are righteous and good (there is no pressure to talk about compromise, leadership or governing). If immaturity and petulance were the only factors, America should receive a rating below that of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain - maybe closer to that of Syria or North Korea.

A strength of democracy is that the fringes are attenuated by the center; and that effective partisanship impedes government overreach. A weakness of democracy is that it is possible for enough of the electorate to be swayed in the moment, that the most fringe voices are rewarded, and the more honorable and insightful are ignored.

Today the American public is as polarized as her politicians, no-one is considering the ramifications of the downgrade or our economic state, instead we are each bent on making sure everyone knows how screwed up the other side is, and how we'd be better off if they didn't exist. This is our cognitive dissonance, founded on our deepened commitment to the votes we've cast.

How can we be so obtuse? 

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things; and no good thing ever dies." These are the last words spoken by Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption.

Does good come out of bad? I hope so. Has American been harmed enough by our politicians' failings to demand and expect more from ourselves than angry sound bytes? Not yet, but perhaps soon.

I was listening to a show on NPR asking, "What is life?" I agreed with the NASA definition - life exists when there is procreation and evolution. I was talking to a friend later about the unasked question, "What is humanity?" I think humanity exists when there is empathy and aspiration.

Survival requires community - we must have more empathy for our brothers and sisters, because the community prevails when the least among us survives and thrives. Success requires ability and desire - we must make our children more capable than we are, and we must imbue in them a desire and urgency to be greater than their parents.

Out of all that has happened recently, my hope is that we overcome our cognitive dissonance, and resurrect our humanity.

crossing lines

Over the last couple of days, a question has been bothering me - when do the ends justify the means?

I was driving home Sunday evening, and NPR was a-buzz about President Obama's impending announcement that American forces had found and killed Osama bin Laden. I watched the speech, heard the President proudly state that Mr. bin Laden had been "brought to justice," and saw the wild demonstrations in front of the White House and across the country. Americans had literally taken to the streets, were singing the national anthem, and chanting "USA, USA, USA." The coverage looked just like the demonstrations we've seen on TV of crazed Muslims the Middle East decrying America.

And I keep thinking of this rather crude joke:

A average-looking man walks into a hotel bar, sits beside a very pretty woman, and strikes up a conversation. A couple of drinks later, he asks her: "If I gave you a million dollars in cash, would you have sex with me?" She agonizes over this for several minutes and then says, "OK - let's do it." "Then how about fifty bucks for a blow job?" She slaps him, "What kind of woman do you think I am!?" she demands self-righteously. "We've already established that, now we're just negotiating."

If you draw a line in the sand and then cross it, how different are you from someone else who draws a line in a different place but also crosses it?

How different is America from Al Qaeda? Al Qaeda tortures people, attacks countries, and acts out of anger, all without accountability.

The intelligence that helped locate Mr. bin Laden came from a prisoner interrogation at Guantanamo Bay. Many are using this to justify the existence of Guantanamo, and the methods America used/uses (extraordinary rendition, enhanced interrogation, etc.). Evidence gathered in this way is not accepted in an American court of law.

American forces invaded a sovereign state without the permission of its government to conduct the raid that killed Mr. bin Laden, and yet the US Government is now accusing Pakistan of playing a "double game." Invading a country is a criminal act, how will America be held accountable for that?

The Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the American Constitution respectively give us the right to due process, and to face our accusers in a court of law. Granted these don't apply in the case of a War, but why didn't America take the extra step of capturing Mr. bin Laden alive and trying him in open court? (Had I been President, I would have wanted him captured alive, returned to his native country of Saudi Arabia, and demanded that he be tried in public court in that country, by its citizens.)

Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization that does evil things in the name of religion. Its members are criminals and must be brought to justice. They interpret a book of laws (the Quran) in a way that makes it convenient to commit acts of terror and violence. The Quran does not preach violence and anger - hundreds of millions of peaceable Muslims are proof of that. But it, like the Bible have been selectively interpreted by bad people to justify evil acts.

There is a quote that is falsely attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. but is still worth reading: ‎I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

America is a nation founded by people of integrity - its principles and laws were conceived and crafted by brilliant men who understood the power of freedom, the path to prosperity, and the fallibility of man. The Declaration of Independence and Constitution were written to guide this country towards a future different from the oppressive Britons of that time; one that would form a republic governed by the people, and guided by the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is an incredible country, which despite its size has been pivotal in shaping the path of this entire planet for decades.

I can't help but wonder if by crossing our own line in the sand, we have turned what was a brilliant beacon of hope into a fifty dollar hooker.

this above all

Seth Godin's post today on tiny media is spot-on. It reminded me of a social media panel I sat on a couple of years ago with the two people who respectively ran John McCain and Hilary Clinton's e-campaigns in the 2007/8 primaries and general election.

Despite having polarized political views, they were totally aligned on web2.0. Paraphrasing: "Everyone needs to jump on social media and web2.0 - if you're not in, you'll be left behind. This is the cheapest and easiest way for you to get the word out - if you post a video on YouTube that doesn't work, it's OK - you didn't lose anything by trying."

My argument: "Marketing is marketing, YouTube, Twitter, newspapers, TV, radio, etc. - are just channels. If your marketing fundamentals aren't strong, you will fail. The advantage of social media is that the channels have fewer gatekeepers. The disadvantage of social media is that the channels have fewer gatekeepers. The impact of social media is that anyone has a voice, and at any point in time, any voice can rise above the fray."

Seth's point - these "tiny media" voices, unlike mainstream press or traditional advertising, are not susceptible to conventional corporate PR machines and can't be bought. While corporations might be used to buying advertising and even editorial, it is impossible to manipulate "any" voice because you have to manipulate every voice. In his words:

If you're hoping that this now important form of media is going to sit there and promote your average stuff for average people made in bulk but pretty cheap product merely because you're used to paying media companies to run ads... I think you're wasting a lot of time and money.

This goes deeper than that. You'll need to take that money and change the product and the service instead.

I agree but I don't think Seth took it far enough. More than product and service, you also have to evaluate your philosophy for the intent to deceive will out. I wrote this last fall in response to a NY Times post about Apple's voice in media:

The reason Apple dominates is that they have no interest in PR per se vs. a fundamental desire to create and achieve incredible and inspiring consumer experiences. Their integrity and authenticity in this is obvious and undisputed. While there are product hiccups (recent iPhone 4 antenna issue), they weather these by staying true to their mission vs. via a well-crafted PR strategy.

Microsoft, Google, etc. on the other hand invest in efforts whose sole or overarching purpose is to drive PR and coverage; ironically making the message the medium. I don’t believe this is authentically who they are, but it is how they act.

Their (MSFT/GOOG, etc.) target audiences and the press can smell this, and obligatorily cover them vs. wanting to be a part of their world because of their products' compelling, profound, and far-reaching implications.

Your organization's purpose is to become a trusted adviser to your customers – a powerful mission to be sure. I wonder sometimes if proactive PR helps or hinders? If your greatest and most visible business successes are measured mostly on PR metrics, you run the risk of pursuing the wrong things, and diminishing your genuine and authentic commitment to the premise that technology can help achieve profound, pervasive, and sustainable improvement.

It’s the difference between doing things that happen to be coverage worthy vs. doing things because they are coverage-worthy…

Tiny media's advantage vs. conventional PR and media: their ONLY currency is integrity and authenticity; the "conventionals" can be bought. Since the former is by definition "any" voice, you can't find it, or buy it, or manipulate it - you don't know which one(s) will surface and be heard. We are increasingly more likely to seek out and believe tiny media because we're tired of the bias and lack of discipline and integrity of conventional media (witness Fox and MSNBC) - this is why I read Yelp reviews.

For "old-school" organizations that count on their secrets remaining intact, and on owning and controlling their image, beware. If your fundamentals aren't sound, and your beliefs and practices can't stand up to external scrutiny, you will be found out. But you won't realize it until it's too late - unbeknownst to you, your own marketing and PR people and agencies are now spending more time spinning you than spinning the market.

kill skills

It's easy to get caught in a rut - the greater the risk or threat of change, the taller the walls become, the harder it is to accept new things, and worst of all, the less aware you are of your self-imposed exile.

When change occurs in a team, or they are asked to rethink their business given new market conditions, rutted people will produce a PowerPoint presentation that references new market research, extensive analysis of Twitter feeds, and select customer quotes that proving that strategy X is exactly what's needed to achieve success.

X is of course the current mission restated with a new team name, new logo, renamed programs, and one or two tweaks that come with incremental budget requests - PowerPoint lipstick on the status quo pig. They will also revamp their "scorecard" with additional rows to reflect the tweaks, and of course the team leader will require a business manager to manage the growing "burden" of command.

Does this sound familiar? Have you looked back after a couple of years of genuinely hard work to see what was really accomplished? There will have been a TON of "busy" results that can be documented in scorecards and spreadsheets (thanks to the now entrenched business manager), but how have you helped the business?

In consulting with organizations, the first question I ask is, "What is your why?" Once we are clear on why you exist, figuring out how you will get there and what you will do are easy. This is a difficult discussion because even CEOs are in a rut of busy work that is assumed to be of value, but rarely mapped back to the why. I wrote a few weeks ago about an organization I knew with ~90,000 employees, and my belief that they could achieve the same results with 30,000 people. One reason is this organization has misplaced its why; there are many brilliant people who are accomplishing amazing things that have little or no contribution to the business and have nothing to do with their why. In fact, I bet fewer than 30,000 could accurately state their why.

The reason clients resist the why discussion is because it leads to evaluating every investment (the whats) vis-à-vis its contribution to why. Many of the investments were created for good reason, but do those reasons exist today? If the what is still meaningful, then its contribution to why must be clear; if it isn't, then why are we still doing it?

Whenever something new comes along (especially in large organizations), if there is an openness to try it, it will never come at the expense of something old. "Without incremental resources or funds, fugedaboutit!"

What just happened? The organization chose NOT to make a difficult decision. "This new what is great, it can and will help us achieve our why. Which of our current what(s) should we kill to do this?" The text in red creates tension, angst, the killing of sacred cows, and a lot of hand wringing and unhappiness, and that is always difficult.

The reason organizations fall into ruts, the greatest impediment to good business is an inability and unwillingness to confront every (existing and new) what with why? Rationalizing ruts is easy; making difficult trade-offs is not. The more you rationalize, the more ingrained your siege mentality; this mistrust makes you think you can't be dependent on "them," thus justifying redundant what's in your portfolio. This balloons rapidly - contributing to the 60,000 excess employees in the example above.

Leadership is not just about the salary, stock options and the big office. If you can't make tough decisions, you are not a leader; the skill to kill investments that don't contribute enough to the why is a fundamental criterion of leadership.

the greater bad

Have you ever told a white lie? I have, many times. We tell them because it's convenient or more tactful than the truth, thinking that serves a greater good.

Saying those trousers don't make you look fat is one thing; claiming that we should invade a country because there is incontrovertible proof (a lie) that they have weapons of mass destruction is an altogether different thing.

Or is it? In both cases the truth was stretched; the consequences (they do look fat vs. thousands dead, $billions wasted) were ignored; and the liars weren't held accountable.

Where should we draw the line? When is it polite or forgivable vs. unethical? Most of us push personal limits, but rarely legal ones - the threat of being caught and the possibility of harming someone prevents me from speeding excessively. What constrains governments?

In democracies policing the government is the job of the opposition party(ies) and voters, though recent history hasn't shown either to be effective. Freedom of the Press is a constitutional safeguard, but most journalists work for news media owned by large corporations (=bias), and others (liberal MSNBC, conservative FOX) are excessively partisan. Plus let's face it, they're not motivated to find truth as much as they are to get elected or draw eyeballs.

Our governments (America, Britain, Sweden, etc.) are conspiring to undermine and attack organizations like Wikileaks, and many are rising up against the government to "fix them." Read for example John Pilger's speech at a recent Sydney Town Hall meeting, where he implores the ~2,000 people that attended to rise up and demand change. Will they succeed?

The ethos of government is integrity, it achieves sustainability through accountability, and its strength comes from transparency. The authors of the American Constitution and the Magna Carta believed this, but time hasn't been kind to our leaders.

Rather than aiming for the greater good, our governments are bent on sweeping their bad acts under the rug. Democratic governments come into power through a process of lies and exaggerations (aka elections); and from that beginning, they have no precedent on where to draw the line once in power. We citizens are so drawn to the political rhetoric that we forgive current and prior bad acts and vote the liars back into power!

Look at China's alternate fuel (vs. oil & coal) investments - they are NOT interested in climate change or reducing greenhouse gasses; they are simply uncomfortable being dependent on foreigners for something so critical as power. Their motivation is energy independence and market advantage; any climate change impact is a pleasant but uncritical byproduct.

There is no greater good, there is only what's good for the government of China, or America, or whomever.

It's naive to think that politicians will suddenly develop morality. Politicians are designed to self-aggrandize, grandstand, and win elections. Serving constituents is a pleasant but uncritical byproduct. Political ethos is tied directly to ego and a compass that points to power and reelection.

Voters are no different - we're self-centered as well. Whatever the situation, most of us will first figure out how it helps or hinders us, and then (if at all) consider societal consequences. We therefore "reward" the politicians that we believe will help us most, or more specifically, help us most right now.

Our elected officials have been conditioned (by the voters) to tell us only what we want to hear, whether that's a promise or a threat (or a lie). We apparently don't care about truth, we're just looking for a good pandering.

Shame on us - the burden of citizenship and the right to vote is enormous and not to be taken lightly. No wonder our leaders routinely aim at the greater bad... we ask them to.

clarity

"You've got mail" was in the vernacular 15 years ago, there was even a movie that used this now quaint Aol phrase. Such was Aol's strength and place in the market that they were able to strike the largest business deal to-date in buying Time Warner in 2000 for $182 billion. Aol's core business was (and still is) dial-up Internet access. They peaked in 2003 with 26.7 million subscribers; today that number is 3.85 million, with earnings of $1.02 billion (and $1.28 billion from advertising) in their last fiscal year. Both were 26% lower than the prior year, despite averaging 112 million visitors/month. Revenues have fallen by 25% for the last three quarters of this fiscal.

With desperation come bad decisions. Aol recently bought TechCrunch for $25m and then Huffington Post for $315 million in the belief that content is the light at the end of their tunnel.

On the same day I learned of the Huffington purchase, I read this fascinating survey whose title says it all: "Executives Say They're Pulled in Too Many Directions and That Their Company's Capabilities Don't Support Their Strategy." My gut response to these executives is: "then you're clearly not worthy, do us a favor and quit."

64% of these "executives" complained that they have too many conflicting priorities; 52% don't feel their strategy will lead to success; and a whopping 66% admit their organization does not have the capability to be successful.

To run an organization, you must have a clear vision; be relentless (dare I say - single-minded) in pursuing it; and you must have the capacity to ensure success. If you can't do these things, you are not a leader - you're at best a mid-level bureaucrat who needs a manual to figure out where the toilet is (and perhaps what to do while there).

In my last post I talked about how team trumps the individual, how success requires a cohesive team focused on the end goal and not individual glory. Executives bent on personal accomplishment to "rise" above their peers create random strategies and priorities aimed only at making them look good.

In the end, these organizations are doomed to fail, they favor spurious action over well-thought-out plans, they jump on random bandwagons, and they don't create a community with a common purpose, where people are valued and team success is rewarded.

What does this have to do with Aol? First:

1. Dial-up - what market segments use dial-up today? I’m guessing it's people who have decided they're too old to change, can't afford to change, or have no interest in change because it's not worth it to them.
2. Advertising - the fact that Aol's ad revenue is falling at exactly the same pace as their subscriber revenue means that most of their traffic comes from their subscribers, and they're doing nothing to hold on to, or expand either.
3. TechCrunch/Huffington Post - including DMG from the link in #1 above (a must read), you might not need all the fingers on one hand to count the number of TechCrunch (nerds) and Huffington (liberals) readers who prefer and use dial-up.
4. I'm willing to bet that Arianna Huffington only sold the Post because she's been promised the CEO-ship of Aol in the next 12-18 months.

Second – one of the most interesting demographics for advertisers is older people; now that baby boomers are retiring by the thousands every day, there’s a lot of $$ available to companies that have access to these very lucrative audiences. Aol's 112 million visitors/month are probably closer to this segment than any other, but have minimal overlap with either the nerds or the liberals.

If Aol has a core competency, it is in provisioning dial-up access and advertising to their subscriber base. Why not buy a cheap broadband ISP that they can use to convert (and maybe even grow) their subscriber base, and focus on delivering (vs. acquiring) content that is meaningful to the customers they already serve?

Tim Armstrong, their CEO was President of Google Americas (US & Canadian ad sales) prior to Aol; there is no doubt that he knows the Internet ad business and how to run a sales organization. He will leave Aol soon, having added M&A to his portfolio.

But sales (and M&A) by its very nature is not a team sport - for you to win, others must lose. Is Tim forging a path for Aol's success or his own?

make tweets not war

I'm a pacifist - I don't believe that civilized people or societies ought to kill. I'm not saying you don't defend yourself, what I am saying is that killing and war perpetuate killing and war.

Take the situations in Tunisia and Egypt today - these are largely peaceful actions (the protesters in Egypt are actually searching fellow protesters for weapons to ensure this!), where the people in interest of self-determinism are asking their current leaders to step aside in favor of a new, populist government. Americans know this all too well, for this is how the US was founded. Democracy at its best.

Contrast this to Western attempts to impose democracy on Iraq and Afghanistan by invading these countries, killing soldiers and civilians alike; destroying lives, property and infrastructure; perpetrating corruption on a massive scale; and installing ineffective, destructive, corrupt and lawless governments.

Lest we forget, this has cost Western citizens $TRILLIONs and achieved nothing. The two countries are more violent, anarchy reigns, and the terrorists are stronger and better funded.

We can hope that as with America in the 1770s, Tunisia and Egypt will emerge as sustainable, vibrant, pluralist, democracies, simply because their motivation to change came from within. We can hope that their actions will lead other countries around the world to embrace a similar path to peacefully oust oppressive leaders in favor of government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Rarely if ever does imposed rule prevail over self-imposed rule. In Tunisia and Egypt, the most powerful weapons used were Facebook and Twitter, the military stood by and watched. Imagine the outcome if these had been weaponized protests - more deaths, military suppression leading to Martial Law and more deaths.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution says that A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. This is generally interpreted to mean, "we never want to be controlled by other nations or their armies - we have the right to create our own military to ensure our security." I couldn't agree more.

Oddly, many interpret the Second Amendment as an imperative to bear arms, where every American must be weaponized to ensure freedom and peace. It is this ethos that led to the many wars America has unilaterally declared on everything from drugs to terror to sovereign nations. It is this same ethos that has made the NRA such a strong political force in this country, and that created SCCC - Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (formed after the April 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech University), boasting over 42,000 members and chapters on > 350 campuses across America.

Civilized behavior requires that we exercise judgment, that we think and then act, and that we choose paths that lead to better than worse outcomes. Humans are not (yet) civilized - how often have you reacted without thinking? How often have you followed the crowd in a frenzy of emotion? Have you ever regretted things you have done as a result? Take a look at this video of a 15-year-old burglary suspect being assaulted by police officers in Houston, Texas. I bet these officers deeply regret their actions.

Houston police officers are carefully screened, evaluated, tested (polygraph, drugs, etc.), and trained for one full year (6 months each in the Academy and on the job), before being "given a badge." And yet they were unable to control their actions in this, a situation where they were not in danger (actual or perceived), and where they outnumbered the suspect 8:1. According to the SCCC, to carry a concealed weapon in Texas, you must be 21 or older, not have had trouble with the law, be of sound mind, attend 10-15 hours of training, pass a written test, and successfully shoot 50 rounds at the gun range.

I'm thinking back to how "civilized" I was at 21, or how much I retained from my driver's education classes (about 15 hours in class), and whether I might be suited to carrying a concealed weapon in the name of "personal protection"??

One of the rights of being an American citizen is that you get to vote; the 2008 national elections enjoyed the highest voter turnout since 1968 - 56.8%. This means that 43.2% of eligible voters chose not to participate, and yet there are five Constitutional Amendments + the Constitution itself that expand voting rights!!

Just because you can do a thing doesn't mean that you should. "Shoot first, ask questions later" is not the mantra of a society aspiring to be civilized.

real service

During elections, candidates will tell you that their primary motivation for entering politics is to serve. They are called to a higher purpose, and wish to devote their time and energy to public service. Hmmm... I'm thinking "No..."

Paul Krugman's latest OpEd suggests that the only motivation Republicans have is to benefit wealthy people at the expense of the poor. Krugman thinks the new Republican House is bending their own rules to repeal the Health Care Reform Bill "because it would cover the uninsured — and that’s something they just don’t want to do."

In the wake of the killing spree in Arizona, Democrats also feasted on the militaristic attitude of Republican campaign tactics aimed at stirring their base into a frenzy of fear and anger and frenetic action at the thought of a Democratic leadership. This story was almost as big as the actual shooting - "political rhetoric caused that idiot to arm himself and shoot people." Of course the Dems sought to mark the Republicans as the instigators. For shame!

Both sides are seeking to paint their opponents as evil, misguided fools, ostensibly in the hopes of getting them to see the truth, and come around.

But I think we're being naive - Democrats and Republicans exist neither to create a gay loving, baby-killing Socialist state, nor to create a redneck, gun-toting military state. They simply wish to win; to beat the other party and win.

It turns out governing is almost like the tax they have to pay for winning. I used to wonder how politicians ever work together following campaigns that have so much vitriol. Imagine for a minute that Sarah Palin had run for Congress in 2010, and been voted Speaker of the House -- how might she have "partnered" with Nancy Pelosi to create a bi-partisan Congress? To steal a quote from one of the best movies of all time, "Inconceivable!"

Hence the benignly-titled "H.R. 2: Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act." It aims to paint the opponent as "job killers" in the lead up to the 2012 election. It isn't about governing or improving health care, or even about creating jobs, it serves only to position one side as job creators and rescuers of the American worker, and the other side as misguided wrong-doers. A good marketing strategy at least.

Surely not all politicians are bereft of the desire to truly serve? Will voters ever prefer a genuine commitment to representing the electorate? Will there come a point in our future when people look back on idiots like Palin and Pelosi and wonder what the hell we were thinking?

Survival (or getting reelected) is the basest of motivations - the system requires politicians to be in constant campaign mode or they die. We live in a very connected world; to rise above the noise and become the preferred candidate, you need to raise and then spend a ton of money promoting yourself and de-positioning your opponent. The economics make actual governing an afterthought.

Can we fix this? What if we limit the President, Senate and Congress to only ONE term, and also ban private campaign spending. Each candidate gets a fixed amount of public money to spend on their election. This might make a difference, but it doesn't eliminate the D vs. R vitriol.

What does? The real problem is not the candidates, it is the electorate. They choose not to engage, hold their representatives accountable, or take the act of voting seriously. Until the right to vote is not given but earned, it will be squandered, and the voters will continue to suffer.

anger

Does it feel like the world is angrier today than ever before? Perhaps it's just that communication is so easy, that every action (more often every bad action) in the world is made more visible. But I think it's more than that.

A 22-year-old man shot a Congresswoman in Arizona. There are violent clashes in the Sudan during a referendum that will decide whether the country should be split in half. A few days ago, Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab, Pakistan was assassinated; his death was celebrated by a segment of the country that decried his moderate views. The assassin was showered with rose petals and garlands during his appearance before the court. What provokes all this anger?

Extremism exists in every community - that's reality. The "edges" have historically not been as visible to the middle, but the media in their relentless quest for shock-journalism are changing that. Once they become visible, it's much easier for the edges to collect fellow extremists, and wannabe extremists with the tools the Internet makes available.

What were scattered, random, disconnected micro-freaks are finally able to coalesce into much larger, more coherent, better funded, and very real threats to the mainstream. Of course the media will now shower ever more attention on these now macro-freaks, and in doing so, legitimize them (can you say, "Joe the Plumber"???). This is when things get scary.

Being legitimized means that you are accepted as part of the zeitgeist - you are now acculturated, and scarily you are a "respected" force. Look at Moktada al-Sadr who recently returned to Iraq from exile - originally a cleric in a small town, he became political by weaponizing his community, and inciting them to resist. He became a force when CNN and the US Army began to pay attention to him, and this enabled him to recruit more micro-freaks to the point where he went macro.

The scariest part is when a mainstream player decides that to become even more "main," they must incite the fervent and freakish edges to their cause, thus expanding their base with people more driven to act (donate, vote, rock the vote, etc.). Frenzy is currency is politics - the ability to drive your constituents into a frenzy is considered a good thing (for any party); it is defined as:A state of violent mental agitation or wild excitement; temporary madness or delirium; a mania; a craze. Is it hard to picture violent acts resulting from this? If you can drive your constituents into a frenzy against your opponent, your chances of winning have gone up significantly. Honor and being honorable are seen as weakness.

Going back to the Arizona case, the same NY Times article talks about how Sarah Palin's Facebook page contained a map where every "enemy of Palindom" was identified with cross hairs. It's interesting that she just chose to take this down now, in the wake of the Arizona shooting (the Congresswoman is one of the "targets" she identified). Is that an admission of guilt?

I wrote a post after the US Midterm elections last November questioning whether Democracy is simply the lesser evil, and that there must be a better form of government that is at once both pluralistic and of integrity.

No doubt there are horrific examples of wanton violence in non-democratic states around the world, and when they occur, the "voting" countries all rise up to condemn them. And yet more and more we see horrible acts of violence in the name of winning elections in democratic countries, yet no-one rises up to question that.

Campaigning and then governing based on anger is no different than despotism and fascism when it comes to the price exacted on humanity and integrity. In fact, the advantage with despots and fascists is at least you know what's coming and can, to an extent, steel yourself. With democracy acts of anger are random and spurious, and always catch you by surprise and unprepared.

Until politicians (and voters) can agree that winning with integrity is preferred to winning at all costs, acts of anger will occur even more frequently - this isn't the last time a 9 year old girl will be killed by politics.

goog-up

If money is the ONLY reason someone is working for you, do you really want them in any kind of role, much less a “mission-critical” one? Aren't they then really a vendor/ consultant vs. an FTE?

When you start a company, everyone is connected to the vision, shares the passion, and is there with you to create something great. When you're small enough and young enough, this common thread amongst all employees is intrinsic, and management is almost not necessary. As you grow, you must create the conditions that naturally attract those that must work with you, and repel those that shouldn't; your values and integrity must be intrinsic and permeate the whole company. This is the best of management.

I recently wrote about how I thought Google might implement a growth strategy that would be more in keeping with its original premise and the ethos of its founders. Over the last five years, they've grown more than seven (7) times in revenue, and their employee base has grown almost five (5) times to 23,000+.

Impressive! There is no arguing their success in advertising, email services, video provisioning and of course search, and there is no arguing their competence in these.

Sadly, success has a price (especially for American companies that wish to play in Europe, and eventually other regions); but it can be avoided. They have to be open to growing by becoming smaller, recognizing that spinning off little "Googlets" can enable both the organization and its people to progress and achieve; and they have to be committed to great management.

When Brin and Page (Google founders) wanted to hire a CEO, they needed someone who spoke their language, that had chewed the same dirt that they had; otherwise they wouldn't be able to relate to, or trust him. They found Eric Schmidt, a fellow-nerd. Of course there are other critical functions (HR, PR, facilities, etc.), but they were viewed by the nerd collective as "non-core," nothing more than corporate overhead, and there was less focus on hiring in these areas.

In some high-tech companies, HR/Operations, etc. are roles where executives are relegated (penalty box), or where "core" people are assigned because there are no other (real) senior openings. Since these roles are "different" and aren't valued (or understood), there is a tendency to not only not pay for, but mistrust really capable outsiders; so if at all, these roles are filled with inadequate leaders. You can't be cavalier about any management role.

Now we read that Google is struggling to retain their employees (ConnectCV, NY Times), and the risks of not caring about "non-core" things like effective management surface. I'm singling Google out, but this is true of most (all?) high-tech companies. When asked about their recent brain drain, Schmidt's response was "the company’s attrition rate for people it wished would stay has been constant for seven years."

My interpretation: "We think of our people as numbers and don't regard or value them as individuals with unique abilities, gifts and interests. Our numbers are consistent; we don't suck any more than we used to, and we don't see a need to change." What do you think that response says to the 23,000 people that stayed behind and still work for Google?

This answer was not crafted by anyone that cares about the people of Google, it was written by a PR person whose job is to spin a story and control the message. It speaks volumes that Schmidt was quoted saying this. Alas - most high-tech leaders blindly parrot PR/HR talking points.

If it were me: "Of course it hurts when people like Lars or Matthew leave - they are amazing and talented, and this is our loss. But I am excited about people like XXX and YYY who are doing fantastic things; and we just recruited ZZZ and QQQ who are brilliant and passionate, and already making a difference. Our strength is that no one person is Google; together all of us are Google. I wish Lars, Matthew and everyone else who has worked at Google the very best in their futures; we are proud of the fact that Google 'graduates' are sought after by other companies; it's a compliment to the great people who work at Google now, and we are honored that they chose to spend time here and make a difference with us."

A statement like this must be a genuine reflection of management's philosophy and approach. When senior executives companies so obviously feign knowledge of their own products and customers, or worse knowledge of their employees or interest in their well-being, it's time to short the company.

Google recently gave all 23,000 employees a 10% raise; from the NY Times article: "The motivation was, in part, the “war for talent,” Mr. Schmidt said. People who have other job offers have been persuaded to stay with seven-figure bonuses. Google says 80 percent of people who get a counteroffer stay put."

The interpretation is either "Doh! We suddenly realized you're underpaid!", or "When we learn that you're not happy, the only thing we can think to do is buy your loyalty." Neither is a message I want to share with current/future employees or investors. What kind of people does this say Google is recruiting? Those bent on creating profound impact, or those just looking to make a buck?

Goog-ups (high-tech screw-ups) happen when you grow to a certain size (when leaders no longer personally know all the employees), but because you're still "small" (~250 employees), you feel that it's "frivolous" to burn valuable FTEs on mere people management. Here is my corollary to the Mythical Man-Month - a well-run and well-managed company is much more sustainable and likely to succeed than one that is lean but un- or badly-managed.

Goog-ups only value "core" skills. Everything else isn't just overhead, it's commodity. Or in the old IBM parlance, plug-compatible - anyone can fill those roles, and they're utterly replaceable. A mature player sees and appreciates the whole chess or Go board, and plays the whole board, not just that one pawn or stone.

According to a Feb ‘09 survey, the top three reasons employees stay are: good relationship with co-workers; job security; and desirable commute. The top three reasons for leaving are inadequate compensation; inadequate professional development opportunity; and insufficient recognition. High tech compensation is already excellent, but rather than focusing on why people stay, and optimizing for that, most obsess only with why people leave. Addressing the latter is about sucking less. Addressing the former is about being the place people would work for free. Which would you prefer? Which is more sustainable?

A well-run company has the maturity to look at the whole board, and plays not just to win today, but to keep winning always.

reinforcement

How do we regard and celebrate good behavior? What are our expectations of people and how do we help reinforce what we want?

What would have happened during the 1992 Democratic Primary if Bill Clinton had said: "You know, while I'm devoted to my wife, I view sex as something altogether different. My wife and I have an arrangement, I do and will have other women in my life, but that in no way compromises my leadership."?

He would not have won the Democratic Primary, he would not have been President, but he would have been truthful (something we presumably value). Clinton is not the only politician to have ever strayed; one might argue that faithful politicians are the outliers. Do voters want to know about these affairs? Or would they prefer to assume goodness, hope the infidelity stays hidden, and then be self-righteous if it comes to light.

Of course infidelity is not particular to politics; it happens in sports, religion, business, and in everyday life. Despite this, "customers" - fans, congregants, employees, media, partners, friends, etc. - are always shocked at the behavior, wonder what mysterious and diabolical circumstances contrived to make it so, and wonder why these people are unable to "control" themselves?

What's more, by turning a blind eye to any one "bad" behavior, are we not tacitly sanctioning them all? Having "gotten away" with the fidelity lie, is it any wonder that President Clinton claimed not to have inhaled? Sure eyes rolled at that, but in the end, there was no accountability for either smoking pot (not that that really matters) or lying about it. There are many other peccadilloes that human nature says are within us, yet we persist in expecting people to transcend their genes.

Taking this to the next step, if we expect and forgive lies, surely we can't expect the lies to be limited to meaningless acts like smoking pot or having an Oval Office "O"? What else might a dishonest President lie about??? Are we ready to accept that?

In the business world, a smart company will under-promise and over-deliver. They do this knowing the value of setting clear expectations and the cost of failing to meet them. If the company develops a reputation for always achieving or exceeding expectations, they know that that currency is worth something - it could be a premium at the point of purchase or market value or even more critical, customer retention and loyalty. Equally, a smart company will not make a promise it can't keep. They will not set an expectation knowing that they can't meet it. This is good business. In both cases, the rewards are clear and the company benefits in the long run.

Facing your truth and setting the right expectations is what we should all aim to do; but our society doesn't want this; it prefers the illusion over reality. Look at Enron or Bernie Madoff or every too-good-to-be-true diet program, and the fact that people will flock to the next Enron or Madoff or diet pill to know that we prefer to gamble on goodness or outlandish promises despite the history or the massive odds against success, believing that this time we will buck the odds and find the one honest politician, or win the lottery. Either way, we mostly end up disappointed. And because we keep coming back for more, there is no shortage of predators creating "disappointment opportunities."

I think this phenomenon contributes to the downward morals/ethics/behavioral spiral. In the old days, we lived in (and were known within) communities. The community - your neighbors and friends and family helped ensure a broader ethos using both active and passive reinforcement; we don't have that today.

Instead the precepts of society and the canon of law expect us to fail; they spend all their energy anticipating and policing these (potential) failures, and publicly "recognizing" the miscreants with trials and the like. So what behavior is modeled for impressionable minds???

Are there societal examples where good behavior is rewarded (i.e. "Congratulations!! You get a free petrol/gas coupon because you adhered to the speed limits!")? I can think of two - first where good students or talented athletes (or both) are able to get scholarships to reduce higher education costs, and second, reduced prison sentences for good behavior.

So other than helping convicted felons reenter society early (a rather ironic incentive), when does society actively reward positive behavior? I did a quick search to see what I could find, take a look for yourself - it's not pretty.

Isn't it a shame that there's so little we do to reward ourselves when we've achieved more than expected? If human nature is so filled with "vices," why shouldn't Clinton have gotten some kind of reward for being honest and admitting that he's a horny old man, but still a good leader?

Instinctively, most parents (or pet owners) know that positive reinforcement leads to better (and more sustained) behavior in children or young animals than negative reinforcement. Why do we flip that as we become adults? Science tells us there is a big difference between telling someone "Don't forget to pay the rent" and "Remember to pay the rent." The parts in bold are the most likely outcome.

It is this simple - we must expect more of ourselves, and we must encourage others to do the same; we can do this by taking the energy we invest in finding and showcasing failure, and putting it into rewarding success.

unjust disparity

Bob Herbert wrote A Sin and a Shame in the NY Times, where he argues that over the last several years, corporations have used the "desperate times call for desperate measures" sentiment to lay people off, even when their economic situation didn't really require that dramatic a reduction in workforce.

The "surviving" employees feel they have to double down and work much, much harder to keep their jobs. The result is even more profitable corporations (profits up $572 billion, payrolls down $122 billion), whose cash positions have improved (now $1.84 trillion, a 27% increase from 2007) dramatically, and an employee base stressed to the limit.

Here's the real killer - from Q4-2007 to Q4-2009, real GDP fell by 2.5% while payroll fell by 6%. This is big.

Two questions:

1. Why is this bad? Is it wrong for corporations to be as lean as possible, to have their employees be as productive as possible, and of course to be as profitable as possible? Isn't this how we judge corporate performance?
   
2. How will this end? Will they relent, reduce profitability, hire back, and expect less? Will people grow to love the idea of being this productive and want to keep it going? Is people's ability to contribute at such a high level sustainable?

Nowhere are desperate times more felt than in the home. It's not as difficult for a company to lay someone off as it is for that person to actually be laid off. For the company it's simply a numeric exercise; for the employee it's about a roof over their head and food on the table. So how do the employees react?

Things don't suddenly hit the fan; there is a lead up that gets to the point when people, despite the risk, say "Enough." It is at this point that revolutions are born, that causes are formed, that the Man is made to pucker.

As the unjust disparity grows, the people's desire to hold on to the status quo shrinks to the point where what was once unthinkable becomes thinkable.

Unjust disparity is the gap between being controlled and being in control. [I just made this up, and I'm sure there are other more "official" terms for it, but this is mine. So there. :-)]

This is not about wealth vs. not-wealth - there is tolerance for this, especially now (with sports and music) that so many once-poor people have struck gold. It's about hitting some kind of personal limit. This is about a more fundamental, and intentionally-created inequity. I'm reminded of the first time I heard Meat Loaf sing I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) (my emphasis); coming from a man who called himself "Meat Loaf," that seemed like quite the repugnant thing.

To the two questions above, corporations must be successful it's what their shareholders expect; the issue is their ability to sustain it. What the leadership does to achieve that is the that that will damage organizations that choose corporate bulimia (purging employees) as an effective strategy.

Of course there are moments in business when extreme effort is required, but they are moments, not months, and they are not sustainable. Greed combined with corporate myopia will take the productivity peak achieved in crunch time and turn it into the worst kind of backlash. There is a progression:

1. Those that can't handle the stress begin to fall over or leave
2. Those that can handle the stress, but have a sense of moral purpose and the knowledge that they are employable (even in tough times) begin to leave
3. Future stars that are now forced to pick up the slack of the current top talent (#2)'s departure begin to leave (this is disaster)
4. It goes on...

Smart organizations are actively recruiting disaffected #2s, and one of their selling points is that they won't do that. They are also networking with #3s, knowing that they are much more fickle and open to change. This is not good for those that did do that.

Organizations where HR/Legal/PR rule, where there is a feeling of soullessness, and where management has no empathy or visceral understanding of how the employees feel, will suffer. Their management is so reliant on reports and analysis and McKinsey-type presentations, that they view their people as things, and have little or no sense of what's really going on, be it within their walls, or in the minds of their customers. Good leaders don't allow knowledge to be filtered; they most certainly want to be connected to their people and their customers. Those that claim that it's not possible to manage without the filters are the ones the Board needs to replace.

The unjust disparity is never more clear than when we choose the company over the individual. You can't sustain success when it comes before those that create it.

standard deviance

"The idea that you are a faceless cog in a benevolent system that cares about you and can't tell particularly whether you are worth a day's pay or not, is, like it or not, over." So wrote Seth Godin a few days ago.

There's a lot in this - and not just about work. We are, each and every one of us, unique. The way we look, the way we think, the way we dress, the way we work, the way we play - we are unique.

At first, I wondered if this was something that we did to ourselves - do we each need the comfort of being a cog because standing out makes us uneasy? Or are there other forces at play? (And if there are, how long have they been "playing" with us?)

In my limited experience, most parents of young children look to correlate their child's progress to published norms. They want to make sure s/he is at the right percentile physically, behaviorally, and intellectually. They may want their child to be at the "upper" end of the scale, but "normal" is just fine. Even the doctor's goal is to map every child to an expected norm.

Once in school, the measures become more tangible since we explicitly assess performance vs. set of pre-defined standards/expectations. We should of course note that these standards most closely resemble the management structure that Henry Ford implemented to build his Model T with one notable and evil addition.

Success for Ford was setting a standard of consistent, prolific production - millions of cars, all identical in quality, capability and performance. At that same time, kids were "institutionalized" to both manage the child labor problem and create lots of future factory workers. The schools adopted a similar approach to standards, with the shared goal of burping out millions of children, all identical and drone-like in knowledge and skill.

As factories have become a smaller and smaller part of the employment base, the need for hoards of similarly-skilled workers has also fallen. Whilst "they" do pay lip service to the idea that each child is unique and must be treated in accordance with their specific needs, capabilities and potential, actions speak louder than words. And just as in the 19th century, schools continue to have one standard, one set of assessments, one curriculum, and one teaching approach.

Even the latest "innovations" in learning embrace this idea of normed achievement. You might know that Common Core Standards were published on June 1 (2010), and have been heralded as a tremendous step forward for American education. As ever, success according to "them" is about burping out hoards of like-minded and like-abled drones. The only thing that's changed is type of drone. How sad.

The evil addition? The Bell Curve. In an attempt to patch the genericness, many schools (still) grade on a curve so they can normalize the results and create an achievement blend (say 20% great, 70% average, 10% poor).

In essence, we're assuming that everyone contributes (and must contribute) in an equal way - that there is only one meaningful measure of attainment as a student, and that nothing else matters. If a student doesn't measure up, it's the student's failing, and like at Henry Ford's plant, those cars don't graduate to the showroom. But unlike Ford (and this is the evil part), the curve implies that we can only have so much greatness; the rest of you are (whether you are or not), normal or failing.

Ironically, this implicitly limits a school's ability to graduate more than the specified number of great students, or less than the specified number of failing students!

As Seth pointed out, norming doesn't end when students graduate. The world of work is also normed - from recruiting to training ("on-boarding") to performance management - most organizations operate on the basis that all employees in a given level or role stratum are essentially equal; their contribution should be compared relatively, and they should be graded on a curve (a zero-sum game).

In each instance, we've bizarrely ignored our real and true instincts. When a child is born, it is (and forever will be) the most beautiful person their parents know. Their light will shine above all others, and remain brightest ...forever. When a parent looks at their child in school, some part of them has to want them to be the best, perhaps not the best of all, but certainly the best of themselves.

Surely every teacher, every principal, every minister of education wishes their education system to be the best, that it not be limited by any norm, but rather perform with excellence and graduate brilliant students. Surely there's no such thing as a good (and successful) business leader who aspires to not suck, or to not lose, or to be average, or not rise above the fray?

So if these leaders all expect the best of themselves and their organizations, how do they justify embracing standards that require the people they serve or the people they employ to be merely average? Seth is urging us to rebel against the system, to proclaim individuality in the face of facelessness. 

Bravo.

good business

If you hire someone to do something for you, how do you control quality and outcomes? Do you outline the expectations, milestones, and deliverables explicitly? Do you track progress regularly? Are you careful to negotiate well but equitably?

If you're the vendor, would you rather the definition of success was in your hands or those of the people that hired you?

Say someone came up to you and said "I want you do this job, I'm not going to tell you how, I'm not even going to tell you what success looks like, you have to figure that out for yourself, but I will pay you a ton of money. Oh and by the way, I'm almost never going to check up on you." Would you be interested? Well - duh!! You get paid and you get to say what you have to do get paid, and they may not even check that you actually did the work - how sweet is that!

Does this happen often? Yep, and especially in governments and other ultra-large organizations. Two examples come to mind - first, the use of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan:

According to a recent Wartime Contracting Commission report, there are about (the exact number is not known) 240,000 contractors in these two theaters.  The commission states that the greatest opportunities for improvement include focus on the "leadership, culture and accountability" of the agencies that do the hiring, the process for defining contractor requirements, performance and cost-effectiveness, and visibility into and accountability of subcontractors. This can't be good...

This NY Times article on a Pentagon-funded Afghani warlord is classic - the US military has anointed an illiterate highway police officer with more wealth (gets paid $2.5 million/month!!), and more power than any democratically elected or appointed official in the region! First, I'd put money on this guy and his army going against his current "benefactor" at some point very soon. Second, how does accountability work when your vendor has more power than the local government, and is protecting your employees (soldiers) and property?

Literally $ billions are spent on these contracts, an untold number of random people become wealthy and powerful, and yet there is almost zero oversight and hardly any expectation of actual performance. Let's not even think about what happens to these "made men" a few years hence (think: Taliban, Saddam Hussein, etc.).

The second example is the No Child Left Behind Act - while conceptually a good thing, it is hampered by the weird jurisdictional dance that the Feds have to play with the States and local governments on education. The concept was good - let's figure out a way to push schools to graduate every student, and also improve what is taught.

Using the only power they had (money), the Feds paid for outcomes, but left it to the States to define those outcomes, define their baseline, and define how to measure progress. The results speak for themselves - students got dumber, money got wasted, everyone was more frustrated.

When the measure of success is a specific test, and all the actors (school administrators, teachers, parents, students) know it; then with their short-term brains in full gear, they also know that passing that test (vs. actually teaching/learning anything) is all that matters, nothing else "counts," helps them get paid, and all else falls by the wayside.

Another classic example of wanting to do something, having the best intentions (as with the Pentagon above), but making an absolute mess of execution.

To their credit, though they haven't rescinded No Child Left Behind, the present Department of Education has implemented a new approach (Race to the Top), though again the performance measures are flawed. Measuring teachers based on student outcomes is a failed strategy, and will ultimately create poorer graduates - let's hope they fix this before it creates irreparable damage.

Are there ways to avoid these outcomes, or at least improve one's odds of success? There are no absolutes, but here are some things to consider:

1. Think before you act, and then think again. If your first (and only) thought is "I'm going to pay someone else to do this," you're going to fail. Before the "how" you've got to know "why" you're doing something, and then "what" you will do. The "why" helps you clarify the goal and the desired end-state. The "what" helps you map your approach to the goal, and test to make sure it does get you there; then you can worry about "how."
2. Own the outcome. Just because you've hired a vendor to do the work doesn't mean you don't own it anymore. No matter what happens, you own the "why," the "what," and the choice of this particular "how" as it relates to the goals you need to achieve. The larger the organization the more likely the people who made the decision will be in different jobs when there is a reckoning - that doesn't absolve the organization of responsibility.
3. Separate performance from measurement. This should be obvious but it isn't. If the people you're paying are also measuring the results and reporting them back, there is NO realistic expectation that you will ever get the truth. Consider the simple fact that they get paid if their results look good, and they get paid more if their results look better...

These are pretty universal, and any well-run business will operate this way. It seems though that the bigger you get, the dumber you get...

plight and prejudice

How many public school teachers can you name who are only in it for the money? I struggle to name one. Are there bad eggs in the system? Of course, and here's an example of a more insidious variant (plus it quotes one of the more choice movie lines of the 1980s!). But most of the three million+ teachers in America teach because their stomachs and hearts demand it of them. It is a calling and their intentions are good.

I have been told of places in this country where being a teacher is a "way out," and people go into it because it's one of the very few choices available to them. I'm willing to bet that most of these teachers view it as a path to earning a living, being respected in their community, and helping future generations transcend.

Last night I was talking to a good friend about teachers in America; we talked about these two amazing teachers I had dinner with last October, and about Tyler Hester - a rather academically accomplished TFA teacher who was laid off recently from his school in Pasadena, CA; he was a victim of their policy of layoffs based solely on tenure.

There is a lot of talk about teachers being the most influential factor in a child's education, and that because student achievement is declining, they must be the point of failure. This type of scapegoat hunting is easy - it's not about solving a problem, it's about finding someone to blame - that's politics. As Aaron Sorkin put it in The American President (with my emphasis):

We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle age, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family, and American values and character, and you wave an old photo of the President's girlfriend and you scream about patriotism. You tell them she's to blame for their lot in life. And you go on television and you call her a whore.

The "problem" is a failing education system, the "President's girlfriend" is the public school teacher, and rather than "whore" it's incompetent. Good politics is about establishing ONE enemy that is easily understood, easily vilified, and where a simple fix (student testing - something they have also admitted doesn't work!) can be applied.

Like Bob Rumson in the movie, none of these "complainants" has a viable solution for the problem. None recognizes that students are only in school for seven hours a day, and that learning also happens in the other seventeen. None speaks of the role of parents and parenting in education, none recognizes that the most formative learning happens before a child is even of school age!!

This is the plight of teachers in America and the prejudice fomented against them. Look no farther than the rhetoric of Presidents Bush and Obama, their respective Secretaries of Education, many "lesser" politicians (Governors, Superintendents, Congress people, etc.), and even major foundations (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to name but one) to find the same story played over and over again. These are people who in one breath speak of dramatically increasing investment in our futures, and in the next of budget cuts that require teacher layoffs, cutbacks in classes offered, and even the closing of schools.

Phooey!

As Elizabeth Bennett (Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice) had to overcome her tendency towards hasty judgments and headstrong approach, so must American teachers overcome their first reaction - the raising of hackles.

As Seth said today that you must choose what of the myriad ...stuff that comes your way to accept; teachers need to focus not on a tide of disaffection, but what they would want to see in the system in order to improve it; some of this will require change on their part, and they can't shirk that. They must view being in the cross hairs as an opportunity and not a threat.

Like Elizabeth they must realize that beneath the prejudice their Mr. Darcy has a genuine desire to improve education, he just doesn't know how. In the book, circumstances contrived to help Mr. Darcy demonstrate his innate goodness and win Elizabeth. In reality, teachers must take the bull by the horns and create their own destiny.

spastic knees

Humans are competitive. We can't help it, it's a genetic and certainly Darwinian response to our environment. We compete for damn-near everything, and imbue this spirit in many things we create, including the businesses we build. Even non-profits compete with each other.

There are many schools of thought on "how to win" - most favor forceful and immediate action. "Shock and awe" is a phrase I hear all too often in the corporate setting. The belief is that a perceived threat should be squashed immediately, before it grows stronger and becomes harder to overcome. This is true in medicine, sports, business, politics, warfare, etc.

Is shoot first and ask questions later always the best way to go? If time heals all wounds, does it also heal conflicts? Does patience mitigate threats? Does looking at the whole chess board help you decide the best move, or is it better to just focus on the pawn that's being attacked?

Seth Godin's Rights and Responsibilities post makes a great case for stopping and thinking about your ultimate goal and sustained success vs. the short-term preservation of status quo, or worse, a knee-jerk and ultra-myopic negative reaction to what is really an opportunity.

Seth's story about how corporations react is classic, and typical of micro thinking - something that, yep you guessed it, I attribute to the profusion of MBAs, PR people and lawyers. Enough said.

But there is another example of jerky (or spastic) knees that has been prominent this week, and for many months now - the Republican Party. I was happy when Barak Obama was elected President, but was worried about what would happen, because the Democrats also won majorities in the House and Senate. I was worried because the Democrats are horribly inept and factional - they have a proven inability to get things done; from the outset, rather than focusing on governing effectively and with dignity, they strutted and preened like unattractive peacocks.

What should the Republicans have done in response to an overwhelming loss and a bunch of preening Dems? If you combine the thinking of Machiavelli (my interpretation: power through cunning and guile) and Aikido (my interpretation: convert negative energy into something that is a conflict-free, positive outcome for both), what do you get that might be worthwhile?

Rather than form a strategy (be smart, focus on serving the citizens of the country (your employers), and think about crafting a situation that would demonstrate your mettle and leadership, and allow the others to inevitably screw up), the Republican Party chose to pout. Rather than govern, they chose to obstruct, and follow Vince Lombardi's "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing." I can imagine a conversation like this among the leadership: "we only measure success in one way, in this game, at this hour, with this play. We will start now, and we can only win by thoroughly destroying those godless Democrats - damn the collateral damage. Let's go!!"

Lao Tzu once said: "Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?”

Western companies and certainly the political parties have never read this, or hear of Lao Tzu - more's the shame.

As the mud settled they should have realized that to win, they needed to transcend their very conservative base and win back Reagan Democrats (or perhaps in that moment, Obama Republicans). They needed to look at history and their knowledge of those on the other side of the aisle to know that the Dems are simply incapable of being one team and working effectively. Instead, they chose and continue to choose to focus solely on vilifying those rightfully elected to govern, obstructing any kind of governing, further polarizing the country, and moving relentlessly to the right.

It eludes me - they made themselves look just as bad.

And if you watched any of the recent Southern Republican Leadership Conference, did you hear anything about what a Republican leader would do if they were in charge? All I heard (and have heard for months) is how evil the "other side" is (again - these are not terrorists or drug lords or even Communists, but fellow Americans), and how they intend to do everything to stop them on behalf of all that's righteous in America. There is no plan other than "stop them." Not what we will do, but what they mustn't do.

For America (and Americans) to be successful in this century, her leaders must forsake their primal desire to win. Her leaders must be able to think clearly and deliberately, and take on the mantle of responsibility to the citizens of this country (ALL the citizens, not just the ones that voted for them).

Stop and think about how many times you've swung at a pitch in the dirt (knee-jerk reaction to someone doing something perceptually bad to do you or yours), and regretted it.

Think about stopping for a moment, taking a deep breath, and then doing the right thing.

euphemasia

I haven't been blogging very much lately; I just haven't been in a mood to write. I wonder at times if this is it? Have I said all I have to say, and no more is left? I hope not. I have begun with a title and written this much - let's see what comes.

As a child, I wondered why it was wrong to call a fat person "fat" or call a short person "short." I wondered why we said "passed away" instead of "died," why it was better to say "enhanced coercive interrogation technique" than "torture," or a bunch of other such examples.

At that age it felt like lying. Now it seems to me that all of these words represent an act of dehumanization instead of the intended act of compassion. I am who I am - whether that's brown, white, thin, fat, dumb, smart, ugly or whatever. I am who I am.

When someone euphemizes me, they take something away from my self. An obvious and defining characteristic or aspect of me is suddenly made generic.

Is a fat person also heavy? Yes. But "heavy" is intended not to offend, though the meaning is the same. But if the meaning is the same, then how is it less-offensive to be considered heavy instead of fat? Haven't we just insulted this person by assuming they're too dumb to notice that "heavy" is equally as pejorative? Shouldn't we rather be truthful?

When we euphemize, we generalize, we profile, we stereotype, and we assume that all of "them" are one. Every member of this "xxx" group is now the same. We've erased their individuality, voice and power.

Euphemisms convert people into demographic variables. The individual is killed.

But we don't confine our euphemistic ways to individuals - politics and business are equally "blessed."

President Truman called Korean War a "Police Action" - he did this for political reasons - to make it seem smaller and less than it was. The soldiers and civilians that died couldn't tell the difference, they were just as dead irrespective of the President's spin. In this case, the goal was to dupe a nation and even other countries into thinking a thing was more benign that it was. There are many others: "revenue enhancements" instead of raising taxes, "collateral damage" instead of military screw-ups, etc. The political world is rife with them, and in the end, they all serve to perpetuate lies.

This happens in business too, examples include "right-sizing" or "volume-based involuntary reductions" instead of layoffs and firings, "market corrections" instead of stock market collapses, "earnings restatements" instead of accounting failures, etc. Here's one a hospital network used recently: "negative patient care outcome" instead of deaths - imagine being told that your parent or sibling or child were unfortunately a negative outcome.

When you read these in a document or hear them in a presentation, you don't really realize what's being said; it's not clear even whether it's a bad thing (I suppose that's the goal), and what ends up happening? Middle management will euphemize poor results, failures, screw-ups when talking to upper management so that they don't look bad, but then the leaders have incomplete (bad) information and the company can't make good decisions.

In every case - personal, political, or business, we euphemize to take the edge off, and in doing so, we sacrifice clarity, we sacrifice truth, and worst of all, we avoid facing reality.

Try stopping yourself from using euphemisms - they are so entrenched in our vocabulary, our behavior, our very thought processes that it's almost impossible to be truly truthful - whether to yourself or those around you.

We say that children can be really cruel because they are unfiltered - I prefer cruelty and facing reality to killing with kindness.

balanceation proclamation

"Who's responsible for this mess!?!"

This question makes most people except politicians and psychotics (hmmm...) nervous - they are impervious to the concept of responsibility; they're good at laying blame, but have this remarkable ability to shake accountability.

The Emancipation Proclamation was a landmark moment in American history - it recognized the rights of a people theretofore viewed as property. Just as America has a human rights framework (based in part on the Emancipation Proclamation and the Declaration of Independence), surely there should be a more rigorous governance framework for the country?

I can think of three (vain) efforts at Federal political governance - the voters (elections and term limits for the President); the players (separation of powers); and the outers (GAO and the media). But each has failed - the voters are simply not smart enough to know what's going on, too partisan to vote based on actual performance, and too removed from the failures to "get it"; the players are overly self-centered and inbred; and the outers are in the former, employed by the politicians, and in the latter, too obsessed with sensationalism to make a difference.

What is the legislative equivalent of the Emancipation Proclamation? I was having a conversation about changing the mission in Afghanistan with some friends and the proposed 1% increase in income taxes to cover war costs. I think this is good, but not enough - let's take it further:

As of 2009 the gross (cumulative) American national debt is just under $13 trillion - or just over 90% of the country's entire GDP!! By the end of 2010, it will roughly equal the US GDP - this is horrible! Worse, Congress feels ZERO accountability; and since virtually NONE of their equally guilty predecessors have ever been spanked, and many actually rewarded by being reelected, they are convinced they will never have their feet held to the fire.

What if we changed that - what if we created another proclamation - the Balanceation Proclamation, which mandates a balanced budget? Simply, if the budget exceeds income, Congress must raise income taxes to cover the overage. Every taxpayer/voter must immediately feel the pinch their representatives cost them (the IRS should document your hit in your tax return). This would help the voters more directly tune into and respond to bad behavior, require Congress to proactively defend their actions within their constituencies, and generally make Congress pucker just a little bit.

But what about economic depressions, when only the Feds are in a position to stimulate the economy, and taxes will impede growth? The easy answer might be "tough," but society is responsible for those that can't help themselves, and we can't ignore that. My compromise is that the Proclamation have a clause requiring a two-thirds majority vote in both the House and Senate to secure debt-financing solely to stimulate the economy and avert or mitigate a depression - it cannot be used for any other purpose. Subsequent budgets must set aside funds to pay back the debt as quickly as possible. In the ideal case, this would be funded by the federal surplus emergency fund, but given our current debt, that won't be a reality for many years.

To help the outers, legislators (and political parties) may NOT receive contributions from anyone (individual or organization) that benefits from the spending that caused the deficit. For example, if the budget included new subsidies or credits for oil exploration, or if there was a new war, Exxon or Chevron, and Halliburton, Blackwater, Lockheed or Boeing, etc. would respectively be banned from any political donations for the duration of the benefit plus six years (Senators serve six year terms).

Quid pro quo. If we're punishing Congress for excessive spending, we should also reward them for good behavior. Every year that there is a budget surplus, all Federal employees will receive a bonus of X% (1 or 2%?) of the total surplus, divided equally (same percentage of salary). When they've also retired the gross deficit, the percentage should double. There should be no cap on this - the better they do, the better they do.

Today Congress exhibits the worst kind of partisan behavior, with almost zero focus on the electorate, and excessive focus on self-aggrandized power brokering. This is so because the incentive system is broken - success is getting funded and reelected, not actual public service.

The Balanceation Proclamation would reward good behavior and punish bad. If the country does well, they get paid; Congress will be incented to serve the citizens and fight for programs that help their constituents; but they know that excess spending will directly harm their electorate.

This just might be the way to help them "focus."

vulnerability

Oxford defines vulnerable as "susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm"; empower is to "give (someone) the authority or power to do something."

Someone very close to me died recently, and I've been thinking a lot about the choices we make in life. I was struck by these two words on the flight home from the funeral.

Being vulnerable is viewed as a bad thing - giving up power or control or self-determination or... In relationships I've often heard it said that when you express your true feelings, or if you "give in" too quickly, etc., you're vulnerable - you've put yourself "out there," are weakened and at the mercy (and ridicule) of others.

In business, training classes say assertiveness, authority and decisiveness are the keys to leadership and creating a reputation for getting things done. If you "open up" or become too accessible, you risk losing respect, not being able to lead effectively, etc. It makes you less of a leader. Similarly your company can't appear to be anything but always correct and impervious to failings, or it will lose value in the eyes of the market and its customers.

Western society is obsessed with immediate gratification, with silver bullets, and with the idea that success is measured based on relative achievement vs. actual achievement.

When you buy into that article or book or class that promises you "Ten Sure-Fire Techniques to Find and Keep Your Wo/Man" or "Ten Management Techniques Guaranteed to Make You Succeed and Get Promoted" you are making the same bet for success as the person that buys the "Amazing Pill that Will Melt Away Your Unwanted Pounds in Minutes Without Dieting or Exercise." You are betting that someone else's approach, vision and values matter more than your own, or you.

When we treat people or "manage" people based on a formula or techniques like this, we have taken a shameful step towards treating our fellow humans as objects and not people. This is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of most MBA programs - they tend to distill everything into simple lists and lessons which are then taught as gospel.

Why should I have "Ten Techniques" to solve every problem in my life? That seems insulting, dismissive and inhuman. when we honor our friends, lovers, family, co-workers, customers, constituents, etc. as people, we become better ourselves. When we avoid formulaic approaches, we are more genuine, and create simpler, more real, and more lasting results.

I was re-reading Management of the Absurd (a gift from my friend Larry) and noted an informal survey the author did asking people to recall great moments of parenting from when they were a child, or great moments in management as employees. In both cases, the vignettes that were shared (and remembered) were those that had nothing to do with top ten lists, or being in a teachable moment, or even having any real outcome or victory - they were points at which humanity was expressed and connections were made - it was when the partner/leader became a real person.

We all know that feelings are reciprocated. To think of your partner or employees as "things" to be "managed," you MUST lose respect for them as people. They are now corporate assets, and your loyalty is to the outcome and not the people. Their loyalty is unclear or perhaps irrelevant?

We can all tell when we're being treated as objects, we can all tell when a boy or girl is "working" us, we can all tell when organizations are spinning us. When we "smell" this, do we react with an outpouring of love?

If Toyota had immediately acknowledged the issues with their cars, responded with honestly and action vs. obfuscation and inaction, many cars would already be fixed and they would be secure in the knowledge that they had acted with integrity and lived up to their ethos of caring for their customers and the work they did. Their customers, having sensed that while vulnerable, Toyota acted with integrity and honor, would believe more deeply in the brand and re-purchase knowing that when problems came up, the company would face them. Toyota's vulnerability would become its strength. In fact, I bet that this approach would not only increase loyalty, it would attract new customers - this is the kind of product people want to trust.

When managers genuinely care about their people and their work, they engender a sense of loyalty that not only stands the test of time, but also results in the team doing everything possible (and even impossible) to make sure they don't let the boss down. They will say, "we all pulled together and got it done; when one of us is in trouble, we stand together and act, we take care of our own." They will say this with pride.

When I express myself and how I feel, when I don't hold back, I feel like a load has been lifted from me. That rather than making myself less, I am strengthened. I feel more embraced and less alone.

Being vulnerable is about caring, it is about being expressive and honest. Your vulnerability doesn't imprison you - it sets you free. It gives you the power to have faced and not hidden; it gives you the ability to live and not cope; it secures you in the knowledge that it is OK to care, to cry, to feel because we are human. We respond to genuine feelings articulated badly and tearfully much more than contrived, homogenized PR/legal speak.

Vulnerability empowers.

strength v integrity

For most people in a position of strength, whatever they're facing, their approach is more aggressive. Whether you have a gun and they are unarmed; or you have the chip lead at the poker table; when you're a parent and your child is still dependent on you; if you're in a gang, and your "victim" is alone; or even when you have a majority in politics - you assert power because you can.

But the tables can turn quickly, be it when you run out of bullets, lose chips by betting recklessly, see your child turn into a teenager, face your "victim" when you are alone, or of course when a senator dies and the people vote in a candidate from the other party.

Oddly, strength is more ephemeral than integrity. Look at Haiti, where so many have died and even more have suffered because there is no integrity in their system. Today, in a show of global strength, many are working together to help; but as David Brooks of the NY Times wrote, at some point, the immediate crisis will pass, the passion will fade, and the world will have moved on. The work of helping Haiti build an infrastructure with the integrity to withstand future crises will be left undone. This is not because Haiti is an easily-ignored foreign land; just look at the levees in New Orleans which years after Katrina are still a huge source of risk to the city. We act with bluster and ego and forsake integrity.

When Lord Acton wrote these words in 1887, he knew whereof he spoke: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

How do great men become bad men? Maybe power is one part amnesia + one part imperviousness? Amnesia because you immediately forget how difficult the journey was, who you were and how you felt before you rose to power, and your conviction that when you got there, it/you'd be different. Is a side effect of the amnesia also a loss of compassion - the ability to empathize with both your people and those you vanquished? I think so.

The amnesia makes you suddenly wake up in power, believing that this is what you were born to do and be, and not only can no-one take it away from you, but that every decision you make is right, every judgment you have is correct, and every idea you conceive is brilliant. There is also a lingering, selective amnesia that immediately vindicates or absolves you of any "small" mistake you might make while in power.

Now look back over the last 12 months at how the majority party in Congress has behaved. Heavy-handed, acting behind closed doors, and with an aura of self-righteousness. Maybe the President has been less corrupted by power than either the House or Senate Democrats, but that hasn't really mattered because he has relatively little say in the actual law-making process.

If the Dems had behaved with integrity, maybe they would have discovered a better and more communal path towards effective healthcare. Now they are contemplating a massively watered-down version of the bill or even unbundling it and trying to pass sections piecemeal. Pathetic.

The House had a Democratic majority in the last midterms during WBII (President George W. Bush's 2nd term), and accomplished NOTHING. Their excuse was the Republican presidency. They learned NOTHING from the Republican majorities during the Clinton presidency, and NOTHING from their failures prior to Obama's presidency. Pathetic.

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi - both insipid, integrity-free "leaders" - are now in a pucker moment. My guess is they will find something or someone to blame for losing the Massachusetts seat, and continue to blunder through Congress as the grape-brained blithering fools that they are. The midterms will hopefully see them unseated, and the Republicans will enter the next session of Congress with parity or a very small majority.

Sadly, there is no redemption in the Republican power circle either - they relish the failure of the Dems but have demonstrated NO desire to act with integrity in their service of the American people.

What would I do? If I were President Obama, I'd invite a moderate Republican (with a bi-partisan team of two from each party, and one each from the House and Senate) to form a commission to write a healthcare bill by the end of April 2010. The President should personally spend at least one day/week with this group, but claim NO credit for the result - this was their work, not his. In exchange, the President should agree to campaign for that moderate Republican whenever s/he wants. The commission should be fully open to the public, and the conditions for success (cost, coverage span, etc.) should be laid out up-front.

The President can go before the people today and admit that the current approach has failed; admit that while there are good things in the bill, things he supports passionately, the process was wrong. He should point to the data the National Geographic published recently on healthcare cost vs. life expectancy, and how the US spends so much more, and yet her citizens see the doctor less and don't live as long. In the end, our outcome of healthier Americans is at risk, and that's not acceptable.

If I were with the insurance company leaders, I'd recommend an industry-wide preemptive strike to proactively eliminate many of the issues that the current bill has raised about their behavior (exclusions for preexisting conditions, caps on payments, etc.).

Thus far, they and the opponents of proposed healthcare reform have won with scare tactics. If instead they choose to act with integrity, especially when the tide is turning in their favor, they will control the agenda, chose exactly how to adapt to their new model, and maybe prevent regulatory intervention altogether. If they do this right, it might actually be a more profitable venture for them in the long run, irrespective of which party holds the majority. And they will have acted with a measure of integrity.

Integrity is laced with ethos, humanity, and a sense of what's right. It is shaped by accountability, transparency and the belief that your power is less important than the right outcome.

grace

Let no man pull you low enough to hate him - Martin Luther King Jr.

I saw The Express the other day - a movie about Ernie Davis, the first black man to win the Heisman Trophy. Davis was one of the best ever to play collegiate football in America. He accomplished this in a time when being black was reason enough to be victimized; being black and successful in what theretofore was a white sport was simply unacceptable, and the 'incumbent' thugs weren't shy about letting you know it.

Rather than get angry and respond in kind (with violence) to the treatment he received from white players (even his own team mates), coaches, officials and fans, he did his talking on the field of play, and became an even better and more successful player.

I think I know a little bit of how he felt inside. I experienced racism when I was younger - it is a feeling like no other - to be broadly vilified just because you exist. I did not always react with the aplomb that Davis showed - I ran when I was well-outnumbered, and stood and fought when the odds were more balanced. Even when the abuse wasn't violent, it was extremely difficult to turn the other cheek and not feel like I was less for doing it. Worse, there was no response I could imagine that would actually change how they looked at me.

As I've grown past my teens, less and less racism is directed towards me (the Ernie Davis' of today probably can't say the same thing), but I will never forget that feeling.

We live in a society where everyone has the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But these aren't real rights - they have to be earned every day, and require hard, hard work. Seth Godin said something the other day that resonated: Take a look at the language you use to describe what happened at work yesterday, that's your first clue. If you're not the one creating the change, perhaps it's time to start.

Freedom is not granted, it is earned. But to be free you must first free yourself. I am only just understanding this concept. Davis understood it when he was but a child - he did not aspire to be the first black player to do a thing, he wanted to be the best player period. He did not resent or hate those who resented and hated him, he rose above that. Having already set himself free, no-one could 'imprison' him, no matter what they did. This is how he was free to achieve what he sought. BTW the reason you may not have heard of Ernie Davis is that he died of Leukemia before he had a chance to play professional football - he was 23.

President Kennedy (JFK arranged a meeting with Davis after the Heisman presentation) telexed these words to Davis at an event honoring his accomplishments just 15 months before he died:

Seldom has an athlete been more deserving of such a tribute. Your high standards of performance on the field and off the field, reflect the finest qualities of competition, sportsmanship and citizenship. The nation has bestowed upon you its highest awards for your athletic achievements. It's a privilege for me to address you tonight as an outstanding American, and as a worthy example of our youth. I salute you. - JFK, 2/3/62

I recently wrote about shibumi - I think grace is implicit in shibumi - in "being without the angst of becoming."

Do we need to face difficulty (real difficulty) to achieve grace? Perhaps only then do we really understand what we want, what we will do to get it, and more importantly, what we won't do to get it. But when we do face difficulty, do we rise above it, or do we seek vengeance in the name of pride or respect?

In spite of all that was thrown at him, Ernie Davis embodied grace. It's time we learned from him and create our own change.

differentiation

Today is one of those days - the whole year is ahead of us and sadly, the prospect of imminent holidays is not. So what do you do? You get up, face your truth, and you get it done.

When an organization faces the prospect of a long struggle, it's different - there is no guaranteed holiday in five months, there is no fixed cadence that assures it of two fun weeks 50 weeks hence, etc. The organization faces a much more dire truth - survive or die. Seth Godin laid out an interesting corporate evolution process today:

1. Technicians who invented it, run it
2. Technicians with taste, leverage it
3. Artists take over from the technicians
4. MBAs take over from the artists
5. Bureaucrats drive the medium to banality

Organizations facing dire straits are generally well past stage 2 and usually in 4 or 5. When that happens, where do they turn to find their truth? The 4s and 5s will commission analysis, fabricate a plan to turn things around within a quarter or two to demonstrate to Wall Street that they've righted the ship. The strategy will be filled with data from quantitative and qualitative research, it will have lots of graphs and graphics, and it will answer the question - how do we turn our sow's ear into a silk purse?

But it will not have been authored by any of the 1s & 2s that found a truth, began from nothing and created a differentiated good or service that thrived. It will rather declare that the fruits of 1 & 2 were the sow's ear, and must now be re-thunk. "Our survival comes from giving them what the research and our consultants told us they want." Well... that's hard to argue, but it's also hard to show why customers will leave those that are already doing this (after all, if the market already knows what it wants, it's because it's already getting it somewhere else). It's also hard so show how your new extruded silk purse will be better than the competitions', and spark the turnaround.

The question of Making College 'Relevant' was discussed in the NY Times today. In it, liberal arts school students (and prospective students) are worried that this education won't translate into meaningful work. The schools are responding: University of Texas, Austin for example has a class called "The English Major in the Workplace," which includes reading Death of a Salesman, résumé writing and how to network. The provost at University of Michigan claims that they are too keeping up with changing times, after all - they have recently stopped offering majors in elocution and animal husbandry...

I don't know about you, but that doesn't feel like a liberal arts education anymore. It feels like schools run by, and designed to prep students to become #5s.

In five minutes of searching, I found this report that surveyed 25 Canadian employers (500k employees collectively) about the traits they seek in new hires; you can find hundreds of similar surveys - they all want the same thing:

1. Ability to communicate, think, and continue to learn throughout life
2. Ability to demonstrate positive attitudes and behaviors, responsibility, and adaptability
3. Ability to work with others.

I also found this essay On the Purpose of a Liberal Arts Education, after extracting the religious overtones, it is about exactly the skills that employers want, as is this Michael Roth Huffington Post post, which talks about Wesleyan University's value proposition.

The Liberal Arts folk from the NY Times article are missing a rather vital point - their truth, the thing that differentiates them from others is not whether they create jobs, or whether they are able to graduate students with pretty CVs, it is that they create thinkers with broad, open minds that are able to collaborate, learn, create and communicate. Turning their schools into résumé-writing factories is moronic and beneath everything their 1s and 2s stood for.

Why not instead demonstrate how liberal arts graduates added more sustained value to an organization than others? Why not demonstrate how their students were more innovative and created more shape-changing opportunities for their employers because they had ability combined with breadth?

The truth that sparked their being oughtn't be rendered meaningless so easily. Instead they must demonstrate with conviction that there is value from such an education, that the skills they create are sought by employers, and that their students bring even more to the table. <-- This last might be where they add to their truth - helping their students develop experiences more relevant to the anticipated needs of the workplace, and using their innate abilities to document them with maximum effect.

I'm not saying that a liberal arts degree is the panacea for graduates in the next decade, what I am saying is liberal arts schools were born because their truth was clear and differentiated; by becoming yet another #4 or #5 factory, not only do they (or any other company that succumbs) become mundane, but they also concede that their very reason for being (in this case to educate) is a commodity, and they must now follow the downward spiral to low-margin, high-volume genericness.

There is no truth in that, worse, there is no good in that.

1-1-10

The first day of the year is the most widely celebrated day on earth. It is the one day that almost everyone recognizes and feels good about.

But a new dawn, no matter the day is just that - it's what we do with it that counts. Our world today is so much more connected than ever before; today almost any action is a visible action; almost any idea is a shared idea; almost nothing can hide, and almost everything seeks exposure.

One implication of this is that we (people and organizations alike) must be quick to sense, quick to diagnose, and quick to react. This instinct is in us, and has evolved to protect us. But as often as it saves us, knee-jerk reactions can also hurt us; and in our world, this hurt can easily be magnified.

I am a CAAD, someone who is more interested in the beginning than the middle or the end, someone who thrives in a world of ideas. And as a marketer, I understand the power of ideas, the reality of perceptions, and the potential of the moment.

Seth talked today about this being the frustration decade; there is some truth to that, but I think this is also going to be the decade of clarity - one that like today's date, consists only of ones and zeroes; one that requires modernizing (pictured) The Thinker in all of us. This is going to be a time of binary actions and reactions, where judgments will be made rapidly and often indiscriminately. Clarity is not truth, but clarity is easily grasped and easily shared. Actions need consideration.

I don't make resolutions (ever), but I was reading The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card and was so struck by the power of I was what I did; I am what I will do - that I had to stop and write.

My resolution is this - I will do many things from now, I will do many of them instinctively, but I will do some deliberately. I will sense, diagnose, contemplate and then respond. I will take more care to do what I do, to think what I think --- to be who I am.

followings

If you were tasked with creating a following for your company, how would you go about it?

With most projects, I'd say you start by understanding the definition of success, perhaps asking questions like: Whom do we want to "follow" us? How will we know they're "helping" us? What's the budget? What is the first milestone and when do we need to hit it? (These are variants of "what are we trying to accomplish, and how will we know when we get there?")

But that doesn't really create a following as much as it creates a marketing outcome at a given point in time. Once the effort stops, will the following live on or does it just fade away?

I think a follower is someone who prioritizes the one thing over others in a meaningful way (i.e. I'll spend less (time, money, focus, whatever) on Y because I care about X and want to put my limited energy there).

If you are looking to get a following, your intention is not to do great things, but for others to applaud your doing of great things. Your intention is flawed. You might be successful in the short term, but you will be found out eventually.

If you're a company trying to create a following in DC, you go to the Capitol with hat (read: wallet) in hand to find someone to convince of your view/need based on what that politician wants to accomplish and how you can "help" them. Your goal is one of three things - policy advocacy (help change the rules in our favor); economic advocacy (help fund our efforts); PR advocacy (help us look good).

In all these cases, the company's currency is whatever is valued by their advocates - nothing more. Once that currency stops flowing, chances are the advocacy stops flowing as well.

There's a word for that - it's called a transaction. Ethics aside, you purchased an outcome - plain and simple.

Being followed is the same as being cool - by definition, when you seek it, or seek to emulate others who have "it" your effort is fruitless. If you are true to yourself, take pride in what you do, and take actions staying true to your integrity, you are cool.

Rarely do people or companies that have a true following begin with the goal of creating one. Their relentless passion is focused on whatever greatness is their raison d'être. It's not to say that you shouldn't be savvy about managing your political risk or ensuring market or political advocacy, but if you do it without a genuine passion for that which is you, you are at risk. As Seth Godin put it, you still need to create advocates, and "coordinating a tribe ... requires patience, consistency and a focus on long-term relationships and life time value."

A political example of this comes from one of our failed politicians - Al Gore - he achieved a following for the environment by doing what he believed in and putting all his effort into telling the story that he needed to tell. He was smart not to take the bait and run for office again - doing that would be akin to Ali actually throwing that last punch when Foreman was already going down in Kinshasa. It would have been inelegant, and offended the aesthetic (or coolness) of that moment. It was at that point that I respected Gore.

If a corporation wishes to create public advocacy for their cause in the form of a following (i.e. make politicians want to help them be successful), they have to counterintuitively avoid it - something very few CEOs have the cojones to do...

Y-shmy

I've been reading a lot lately about people who are trying to figure out ways to connect with and engage the Gen Y demographic (I've been reading even more about "consultants" that are "available" to "help" with this). Managers and business leaders (certainly HR people) are worried about recruiting, creating effective working conditions, making them happy, etc. There is a projected shortfall of millions of teachers with more than 40% expected to retire in five years (other industries have similar data); Harvard Business Publishing posted an article on low-cost approaches to motivating employees.

I wasn't around then, but was this type of thing discussed (albeit not blogged or twittered) when the baby boomer generation was about to hit the workforce? Were employers at the time worried about how that generation would be recruited, create outcomes and be happy? Were they worried at that time about potential staffing shortfalls in some industry? I think so.

In the end, what happened to all the Gen-Hippies? Did they fundamentally alter the work environment or recruiting or employee morale?? Not so much.

If you're employed (like I am), there is only ONE reason you go to work every day. This one reason is universal to everyone who is employed - whether its is at Microsoft or GM or McDonalds or the White House. And we all know for a certainty that if this one thing stops, we stop working - no ifs ands or buts.

We work because they pay us.

I don't care whether you are Gen Hippie, Gen X, Gen Y, or Gen Purple - if you don't have money and want to earn some, a job is required, and money is conveyed in exchange for work done. That's the bottom line.

If I were "consulting" employers on how to lure any candidate (irrespective of demographic) to come work for me, I would offer this employee perspective:

We go to work because we're paid. We enjoy work because we care. We thrive in the workplace because you care.

If you have the cash flow to make payroll, the first is easy. The second is self-selection combined with a belief that good work is being done. It is about the purpose of the organization and how it is conveyed - a barista at your local coffee shop has purpose, as does the assembly line worker at an auto manufacturer, as does a software engineer at a high-tech firm. It boils down to having a clear link between the mission of the company and the actions of each employee; it boils down to clarity about each job and its contribution. If a company is well run, one of the signs is employees that care about what they do.

Seth Godin said you have to watch the money to gauge a person's belief in the work they do - that's a great "indicator" of genuineness. When you're a leader, you have to go further.

The third sentence is about management's authentic commitment to greatness. You can smell that a mile away, and you can absolutely tell when it's being faked. You know when it's proxied through HR practices, and you know when the "all-hands" communications sent out by the leader are crafted by HR and PR.

Authentic commitment to greatness requires leaders to care - it requires leaders to be transparent and accountable, and it requires absolute integrity.

If you need HR and predatory consultants to "help" you understand people - perhaps it's because you've stopped being one yourself.

republican prime - reinvention

Necessity is the mother of invention. How true. It can also be the mother of reinvention.

When you become stale you get a makeover; when your home becomes stale, you remodel; when a corporation becomes stale, the board hires a new CEO; when a political party becomes stale - hmmm. They get a new leader in every primary - that hasn't changed things; they've tried makeovers, but people have seen through them. How does change happen for a party?

Once in a blue moon, a unique opportunity presents itself; something happens that is (or could be) so cataclysmic as to separate the very atoms that form the molecule of the party. Depending on how it is interpreted and shaped, the party can stay the course; or maybe, just maybe, if the powers can help it along, take the road not taken and emerge as a whole new entity. Let's call this "R-Prime."

Today the Republican Party (call this "R-Base") is floundering. Its identity is shaped by polarizing factions (religious right, war-obsessed xenophobes, etc.) who have taken the party away from its founding tenets of equality, integrity, small government, fiscal responsibility and adherence to the Declaration of Independence. Many of the R-Base winners in the national election are fervent adherents of these hard-line causes - their rhetoric does more harm than good if the goal is to be a truly national party.

R-Base has gotten to the point where they are actually evicting moderate Republican candidates who have a chance to win to promote people who think the "right" way.

If the R-Base leadership wishes (truly wishes) to once more be the party of Lincoln, it must recognize the potential "opportunity" that has presented itself in the last few weeks, and take action. Sarah Palin's base (dare I say "flock") are the very factions that are pushing R-Base past Attila the Hun on the spectrum. Can they take advantage? Here's what I would do:

1. Actively and vocally support Palin's "voice", build a strong attachment between Palin and her flock (Palin + flock = "Plock") through media appearances.
2. Post the book tour, publicly prevail on her to campaign for Plocky candidates - strengthen her relationship with that demographic, those politicians, and their fund-raising machines. Most critically, bolster her (and her Plock's) belief that she is a force in American politics, that she is a "leader" and has the potential to be the leader of her party.
3. Irrespective of how the midterms go, use 2010 to begin the R-Base shift - first remove abortion and gay rights from the platform - no litmus tests or other restrictions, marriage as a legal construct has no connection to marriage as defined by any religion - "the Republican Party believes all women and men are equal and not subject to any religious precept." Second, remove the idea that a good offense is the best defense - America's foreign policy is now economic policy; we will no longer have a unilateral armed presence in any country other than the USA. Third, start writing a new contract for America - one based on the founding principles of the Republican Party - equality, small government, balanced budgets, eliminate the deficit, etc.
4. Will these changes pass? No. Not unless something else is done in parallel. Once the midterms are over and Palin forms her "exploratory" committee, the Republican leadership must privately review the new platform with her (as the de facto nominee), assure her in no uncertain terms that this is the future, and that as a leader with a powerful connection to the base, she must bring them along. She needs to know that this is the only way the R-Base believes it can be a force in the future. When she expresses her doubts, she must be told that as the prospective nominee, she has no choice but to support this new platform. As preparation for this conversation, they must have primed the pump with the media, talking about how Palin is a force unto herself, that she has the gravitas to truly achieve. After the meeting, someone must leak the fact that things didn't go so well, and they're worried that Palin will "defect" and create her own party, taking the massively influential "base" and its money with her.
5. Allow nature to take its course, reluctantly encouraging those members of Congress that prefer the Plock to consult their faith and make the best decision for their, and their electorate's future.

If all goes as planned, within six months of the midterms, the following will happen: Palin will do a Perot, declare that she's "goin' rogue" and rally her followers to join her newly-formed Plock Party. She will encourage many of the House and Senate members that she campaigned for to do a Lieberman and get on her Plock-wagon.

Thus is born R-Prime. Its leaders will be able to pass the platform (per #3) because the naysayers will have Plocked off. R-Prime will also pick up many of the centrists that voted for Obama in 2008 who are now "available" because the right to choose, gay marriage, etc. won't be issues. More than this, they will gain funding from corporate (and maybe small business) interests who will realize that even Obama couldn't fix the bumbling acts of a Pelosi/Reid Congress.

The 2012 elections will herald the first truly three-party Congress - in the Senate for example, the Dems will have ~45 seats, the Plocks ~35, and the R-Primes ~20. The House will have a similar mix. Obama will barely win his second term, and Palin and the R-Prime candidate will lose. Facing the prospect of waiting yet another four years, Palin will succumb to Rupert Murdoch's offer of $5m/year to host her own show on Fox, and remove herself from active Plock leadership.

R-Prime will have a huge role in shaping the American legislative agenda (asserting their balance of power in Congress), and if they are able to stay true to their Contract with America and make a difference, they will be poised for a strong showing in 2012 and 2016. The Plock base will erode; they may remain a viable party in the years to come, but hopefully never enjoy a balance-of-power position in Congress. The Dems will have to choose between moving farther to the left ("D-Plock") or moving closer to the center, but tone their voice towards the individual proletariat and attempt to paint R-Prime as the business/bourgeois party.

Is this far-fetched? Notwithstanding the sage voices of Fox News, I think ultra-right is untenable in American politics, and if the Republicans have the stomach for it, they can reinvent. Will it happen? I hope so. Would I vote for R-Prime? Yes.