~synthesis~

humane

What does it take to shape the essence of who we are? For an individual, it is likely to be one or a series of personal experiences. For a community it might be a shared experience, more often than not a calamity of some kind. But for the whole human race? Now that's something else.

Think of what has impacted us on that scale - religious figures like Buddha or Christ or Mohamed; evil figures like Pol Pot or Hitler or bin Laden. And then I think of Gandhi and King Jr. and Mandela.

They have affected me profoundly - not just in terms of who I am, but more than that, the type of person I aspire to be; and if I have one, what I would hope is the nature of my soul. I hope they have in some small way touched the better angels of all our natures.

If you think of the essence of India - Gandhi comes to mind. If you think of the essence of America, King Jr. comes to mind. If you think of the essence of Africa, Mandela comes to mind.

We are so very lucky to have had one of these men inhabit our lifetime, to have personally experienced and been touched by his essence.

As I was driving home today, not long after I heard the news of Madiba's death, I was thinking about my own experiences with racism and intolerance (in my home country of Tanzania, and my adopted countries of Canada and the US); how I acted, and how I wish I'd acted.

I wrote this blog about Madiba a few years ago, it includes the poem (Invictus by William Ernest Henley) that accompanied Mandela during his 27 years in jail. There is immense strength and power in Henley's words, and there is even more in Mandela's actions.

If his death (and life) are to have meaning in our world, then his actions (like those of Gandhi and King Jr.) can not, must not stand alone. We have to walk in their footsteps, to demand of ourselves and of our elected leaders the tolerance and care that goes along with the word "humanity."

Humane is a powerful word. It demands immense things of us; it asks us to transcend our Darwinian urge to survive even at the cost of our fellow man, and recognize that our individual freedom and opportunities for greatness only comes when all in our community are also free and great.

Amandla Awethu.

social business

Facebook announced its first post-IPO earnings this week, heralding a critical step in the maturity of social networking - is this a new way to make money, or just the same-old?

The "same-old" is Google, whose innovation was to turn what was the customer (we who search) into the product, and selling us to their customer - the advertisers. It was brilliant, and transformed the very nature of internet monetization.

Social is a bit different - most who use it are less susceptible to, and rarely click on ads. After all, the idea is to connect with friends, share - not to click on random ads. With that, this aspect of Facebook's Q2 (second quarter) numbers should give pause:

• Earnings: $1.18 billion
• Earnings from advertising: $992 million (84%)
• Average monthly users: 937 million
• Total quarterly users: 2.865 billion
• Average revenue/user/quarter: $0.41 ($1.23/year)

Piling on, their most ad-lucrative market, and also the most stagnant in terms of user growth is America; the fastest growing is mobile (543 of 937 million users, or 58%), however converting mobile users into big time revenue remains undiscovered country.

At ~1 billion users, Facebook owns ~14% of the planet's population; but even the user base doubles this coming year (nigh impossible), the current revenue/user puts them at just $8.5 billion/year. Hardly "big-time," especially given their initial $100 billion valuation. (For context, Apple expects to earn $13 billion from iTunes alone in 2013.)

Key to social networking is the ability to publish what you're doing or thinking right now. This requires a mobile, connected device. The problem of course is that mobile, connected devices have to be small enough to go anywhere, and if the screen is cluttered with ads, there's no room to express yourself or see what your friends are up to, which defeats the purpose, and turns users off.

While Facebook started out on PCs, it's pretty clear that their future is mobile. But they've also admitted they don't know how to turn those users into $$.

The approach they're most bullish on is Sponsored Stories - where if a company buys the service, their ads show up in the right pane (on a PC), along with names of your friends who Liked it, and with that endorsement, the hope is that you'll Like it too. Facebook said they're now earning $1 million/day from these ads, with about half of that from mobile.

Even if this does create meaningful mobile revenue, it's not how Facebook becomes "big," or how social networking gets through puberty in a compelling way. Ads are just plain intrusive on a small screen; moreover, mobile click throughs need to go to mobile-enabled sites, which are more difficult to turn into actual sales for the advertisers.

Despite Google's brilliance, click through rates have declined from 5% initially to about 0.3% today. Google is still a success, but now with logarithmic (or less) vs. exponential growth.

If social media rely on ads as their primary revenue source, they will only make money by interrupting human interaction, not enabling it or enhancing it. It will however have the advantage of being not at all transformative, but at least it will be irritating.

I hope they are thinking bigger. I hope that Sponsored Stories sparks in the very smart minds at Facebook, Twitter, etc., ambition to innovate yet one more business model; one not based on the user's propensity to click random links, but instead attuned to the interaction between people, aware of what they care about, and savvy about how they will express it. Imagine how effective a company would be when armed with this kind of insight! Let's call this IP - Interaction Perception.

In fact, the smart approach would be to eliminate advertising altogether (reduce distraction and improve satisfaction) and focus instead on collecting data and creating algorithms that can (without infringing on privacy) assess and predict interaction, preference, and passion based on how we Facebook or tweet or tumblr.

Advertising is about creating urgent awareness (you learn something and are then compelled to act). The more savvy or sophisticated the consumer, the less effective ads become. Most ads suck at doing both - they at best accomplish awareness.

The type of contextual engagement that would be possible with interaction perception makes advertising obsolete. With IP, you could pinpoint exactly where your target audience tends to be when they're most likely to want your product, and literally place yourself at that location. You would know the 5 or 10 trend-creators for your product that you need to reach, and through whom you can create immediate and pervasive market penetration without ever "advertising."

foursquare for example creates incentives for people to announce their location, and then works with businesses to create special offers for frequent visitors. They can now identify "magnets" that bring people together, track traffic flow from place to place, determine brand preference, and much more. Today, foursquare is still using their knowledge to help merchants better target advertising/offers on their site, but this is just the beginning. While much of the insight today is location-centered, I'm sure this will not be the case tomorrow; they'll be able to get predictive enough to know when you need your next coffee, and potentially be able to vector a mobile coffee service to where you are. The possibilities are endless.

Unlike search, social networking is implicitly permissive. We never gave Google the right to track our behavior; we became angry when they started doing that and figured out how to disable their oversight. But we choose to publish what we're doing, with whom, and how we feel about it on Facebook/twitter/etc. Sure, some prefer to keep it private, but most don't - they want to share.

Social networking is about the only way to capture interaction perception - the problem is the "innovators" in social networking are too busy trying to sell ads, despite the inherent diminishing returns.

Rather than interrupt our experience with ads, why not infer and fulfill our needs with insight?

divided

Something rather predictable happened in America yesterday. North Carolina became the 28^th State which overwhelmingly voted to amend their constitution to protect the "sanctity" of marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

As a recent citizen of this much-vaunted nation, this and related events make me question two things I was required to learn to gain citizenship:

(1) Did the Boston Tea Party really occur? Was this country really formed in response to "a long train of abuses and usurpations" against the ideal that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."? Or is that all a sham?

(2) Are the fifty (50) United States of America really so, or is this just a geographically convenient artifact?

Today, 56% of American States are anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion, and anti-any-other-religion-but-ours. They ironically campaign for this using the very Declaration quoted in #1 above. They are strong in their conviction, persuasive with their campaigning, and (very) successful in their actions.

If an alien were tapping into American news over the last months, they would be convinced that this continent is on the brink of civil war pitting the Middle/South (MS) against the North East/West (NEW). They would be further convinced that the passion, state of weaponization, and ferocity of MS would prevail against the tepid passion and insipid NEW.

I think they'd be mostly right. MS wins referenda because they stir passion in an organized way, they instill fear by correlating any issue to the personal insecurities of their constituents. NEW on the other hand appeals to people's sense of what's right; they may agree, but are not provoked enough to rock the vote. Once again proving that when it comes to politics, the threat (actual, perceived, or fabricated) of imminent, personal danger far outweighs any intellectual discourse.

Notwithstanding their brains, NEW's density and lack of savvy are impressive -- if I were running the NEW campaign advocating that any two consenting adults should be allowed to marry, I would also argue that any two consenting married adults should be allowed to divorce. I would be sure to give the latter as much "air" as the former, secure in the knowledge that that would cause/require MS to oppose it. While incredibly obvious, I'm certain NEW will never do it.

Gay rights is but one rift in metaphoric Grand Canyon that separates Americans; it began with the Civil Rights movement and the US military presence in Vietnam (or perhaps with the abolition of slavery?), and fed by vitriol, violence, and politics, blossomed into our current state of "irreconcilable differences." The pundits claim that the upcoming presidential election is about the economy/debt, jobs, national security (energy self-sufficiency), and health care. They're wrong. These are surface issues, filled with gray; and both sides (politicians and voters) are mostly in agreement. The real issues, the most evocative, are personal and decidedly black/white.

Democrats and Republicans alike claim "what unites us is far greater than what divides us" and in the next breath, go on to paint "them" as against the core, fundamental, and personal issues that "we" share.

You can't have it both ways. Aaron Sorkin said this best with President Andrew Shepherd's speech in The American President:

America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship.You've gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say, "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours." You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms.

Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.

America (and democracy) can't exist when her citizenry is made to be personally severed from its neighbors. If we continue down this path of intolerance, metaphoric severance will become literal; either peacefully - "You (44%) go your way, and we (56%)'ll go ours.", or violently - "You're too evil to live, you need to be ended."

Maybe it's time to renew my Canadian passport...

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...

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.

deFUDdle

Back when I worked at IBM, if we didn't have the "winning" solution, our strategy was simple - we used FUD. It was brilliant, and worked more often than you might think. FUD = Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. The idea was to push the customer's emotional buttons, poke holes, create scary what-ifs, do whatever it took to force a delay, redefine the problem, or whatever so that we were in a more favorable position.

The Republicans FUD skills are renowned. They are able to create a sense of tension in the electorate in ways that routinely befuddle Democrats. Take health care - they did a brilliant job of associating the reform bill with "bad for the economy" and "a perilous step towards socialism" - fantastic! First, I'm willing to bet that most of us don't even know the definition - according to Webster, socialism is a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property; b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.

Is there any real risk that America turns into a socialist country through health care reform? Hardly. There is no correlation between the government providing a service and the elimination of all private ownership, but it's a fabulous way to create FUD. The first people to oppose socialism are our much-vaunted Congress, who let's face it, enjoy private ownership of a lot of stuff, some of which was funded by special interests and the tax payers(!); they will do everything in their power to preserve the fruits of their avarice. So - socialism is an absurdity.

What about "bad for the economy"? Again - there are many ways to make numbers mean what you want. You only have to look at this NY Times article about law schools using misleading data to shore up their performance numbers (graduate employment rates, etc.) to help improve their rankings, and you can see how universities ("reputable" universities) will lie.

When it comes to the economy, there are two things that matter most - I want a good job, and I want to take home more money than I am now. But then here's one pretty diabolical piece of FUD: taxes are bad. Well... I don't think it's that simple. How much tax do you want to pay? As little as possible - right? Me too. Thus the resonance with the Republican push on lower taxes. It makes total sense - or does it?

Do my taxes really matter or is there more to this?? Put another way, the real question in my mind is: how do I maximize my net earnings? What I really care about is how much I take home at the end of the day, the nature of the deductions from my earnings are less important than the value I get for those deductions and whether the net amount I'm taking home is going up. <-- Does that make sense?

If it does, then it's not really about taxes is it? Why not make it about personal profitability? Profits being what you get to keep in your wallet after all your expenses are paid. So if there is a change to our economic system that costs me more in tax but lowers or eliminates another (bigger) salary deduction, and after all that I end up ahead, why should I care?

According to this (well worth a read), the American health care system is the most expensive in the world; in 2006, we spent more than $6,700 per person on health care, compared ~$3,500 for most Western nations. The cost is actually higher since every other Western country has universal health care, and about 10% of Americans don't have any coverage at all, so the $6,700 is actually closer to $7,500 per person.

Digging a bit deeper, 70% of Canadian health care costs are borne by the government vs. 46% in the US; the Canadian system costs about $3,700 per person (just about half of the US cost), and yet Canadians live longer and have a lower infant mortality rate - these are the two primary measures of national health care effectiveness.

Bottom line: Canadians spend $3,800 less per person for better health care. If you're American, you might think - yeah but my employer pays my share - what do I care? Well - if personal profitability is your goal, then you will know that you are paying EVERY penny of your medical insurance costs, whether it is in taxes, payroll deductions, a lower salary, or lower prices at the store. No matter how you cut it, the $3,800 difference DOES come from your wallet, and means those of us who live in the USA earn that much less every year, and die earlier to boot.

Even if the US decided to spend $4,500 per person (for every person), that's still a savings of $2,200 for each of us plus the knowledge that no-one gets left behind. Every person in this country gets access. Every person also gets to pad their wallets a bit, and rarely is that a bad thing!

But how to communicate this? It's a pretty complex analysis, and given the state of education in America, I'm not convinced that every voter is going to understand it. Think back to the last person that had a tough economic message to share with the populace - President Ronald Reagan in is first address to the nation from the Oval Office in 1981 - a brilliant speech.

If President Obama had addressed the nation in just this way - not talking to politicians and special interests as he did in his attempts, but talking to the American people, sitting in his office, and not standing in the House; if he had applied simple metaphors as Reagan did, perhaps each of us might have been able to look forward to an extra $2-3,000 in our wallets in 2011.

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.

bumfuzzled

There's been a lot of furor lately about WikiLeaks and the US State Department documents they published (vs. stole). The United States Congress is seeking to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange; Senator Joe Lieberman in a recent Fox News interview stated that Assange (an Australian) should be tried for American treason! He is also contemplating charges against the New York Times for bad citizenship! Do Senators now get to fabricate their own laws? Next he'll outlaw literate people - oh wait - that was Pol Pot.

Every government/police system in the world wishes to prosecute Assange for his part in publishing these documents. I bet if they had their way, the US Congress, Interpol, etc. would also want to prosecute everyone who tweets or blogs, and possibly everyone who's under the age of 25 just on principle.

According to www.senate.gov, the average age of this, the 110th Congress is 57 years (55.9 House, 61.7 Senate). This is one of the OLDEST Congresses ever. The average Congressperson was born in 1953, when TVs had two channels, no remotes, and black & white pictures; they were teenagers before it was even possible to send telexes. They graduated from university five years before CNN was created, a decade before personal computers became commercially available, fifteen years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and almost a quarter of a century before mobile phones were broadly available. The world's population has almost tripled since they were born.

Sadly for them, we are in the midst of the Communication Revolution. Going from the Industrial Revolution (their world) to the Information Revolution to this, the Communication Revolution, we have shifted from standardization (Ford Model T) to discoverability (Internet/Google) to transparency & immediacy. While foreign to these relicsleaders (many of whom have never even read email), the need to be transparent and expect to have anything be immediately exposed for all to see is today's reality. Keeping secrets like you did during the age of Leave it to Beaver, in a time where the latency between information capture and global distribution is measured in seconds is absurd.

Congresspeople: the good old days are over. The RIAA faced this with online music, the MPA is facing it with online films, and you are now facing it with pervasive (and unfettered) access to information. The systems you employed to safeguard your secrets are antiquated and designed for the Cold Warriors, not today's average 12-year-old. But like your much-vaunted HUAC and Senator McCarthy's demagogic anti-communist investigations, you have charged decrepit freaks like Lieberman to persecute these modern "evil-doers" in the name of National Security. Bravo.

History will judge you as it did McCarthy and HUAC - as a Congress unable to fathom a changing world, using its power in desperate ways to impose order, and putting its energy into holding on to the past vs. leading your country towards a brighter future.

Punctuating the 2010 US Government's reaction to this leak is their edict to all government employees instructing them NOT to read any of the WikiLeaks documents. Quoting MSNBC, the Department of Homeland Security sent out a strongly worded memo to all employees and contractors telling them that not only may they not “download or attempt to download” any of the classified WikiLeaks memos onto their computers, they also may not “discuss the content” of such “potentially classified” documents “with persons who would not otherwise be authorized access,” according to a copy of a Dec. 3 memo from the department’s Office of Chief Information Officer. NASA and the Library of Congress have blocked the WikiLeaks site from their employees.

As a Homeland Security employee put it, "So, my grandmother would be allowed to access the cables, but not me."

Remember - these same government leaders have publicly decried the Chinese Government for impeding free information flow to her citizens.

The modern world has left the aging US Congress and various government Ministries bumfuzzled.

How does one de-fuzzle? I don't think it's possible - with apologies to canines everywhere, you can't teach old dogs like Lieberman/Pelosi/etc. new tricks - they're simply too withered, and sadly too entrenched.

Giving them some credit, they do understand that the WikiLeaks episode portends an even more dangerous future - one where no secrets are safe, no back-room dealings are kept in the back room, and what happens in Vegas becomes a TV movie that everyone can watch. Their strategy is to delay that future as long as possible, not realizing that their very acts (which only serve to extend the story) are actually helping seal their fate.

That this is news to Congress is not surprising given their agedness, but it is surprising that one of the youngest (and most tech-savvy) presidents in history is behaving so much like his septuagenarian colleagues.

Or is it that the very act of joining the government not only bumfuzzles but also calcifies?

community v ambition

First, it's been quite a while since my last post. A lot's been going on over the last months, and as a result, I prioritized other things over ~synthesis~, but I intend to amend that from now on! I thank all of you who sent me emails and were concerned about my well-being - that was surprising and sincerely appreciated - a thousand times thank you.

Second, I've decided to leave Microsoft - my employer of many years - and embark on a new journey in the world of education and start-ups. The next weeks and months will be spent refining the vision, finalizing the business plan, and of course, securing the funding to make it happen. I may do some consulting work in the interim, but hope to devote most of my energy to creating this new future with the goal of making a difference.

Community v ambition: I was visiting with a friend recently and we got to talking about her recent adventure in India, and then about some of the differences in the way people approach life (broadly speaking) in "developing" vs. "developed" worlds. Out of this came this idea that there are two extremes in how we approach life - community and ambition.

For most of our existence on this planet, community has been fundamental to survival. As competition grew and threats increased, people coalesced into communities where roles were defined, and they took care of each other. For example, in a true community, there are people who will hunt, grow, prepare food, build shelters, heal, and defend the community; more often than not, the children will inherit their parents' roles as they grow older. Similarly, you won't see daycare or convalescence or retirement homes - the young, the recovering and the aged are cared for within the community. The very idea of saving for retirement doesn't occur or exist.

The community can and does sustain itself with relatively lower stress - certain issues that individuals face simply don't arise; and others (will there be enough food today, what if bad weather damages our homes) are dealt with more easily because the burden is shared by the entire community, and there is comfort in that. People never go it alone. The community creates a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, and a sense of beholdenness.

At the other end is ambition. It argues that the individual prevails over everything, that we each go it alone, and that success is self-created, and self-enjoyed. "Ambitious" parents expect their kids to leave the home after secondary school, go on to university (in another town) and then the working world, happily leaving them in the bliss of an "empty nest" - this concept simply doesn't exist in the community.

Ambition is also a zero-sum game - there are winners and losers in everything - and that's how "keep score" and gauge your progress. It's a bit weird that ambition requires us to prevail over fellow humans - a rather counter-to-Darwin strategy.

To and "outsider," community is an oddly stagnant thing - "don't they want/expect/desire more than the status quo?" I am an outsider (ambitious) - but I wonder where happiness lays, where less strain and stress, fulfillment lie, and whether individual outcomes are on an equal footing with community outcomes.

The recent election in the United States was largely a celebration of individual ambition over community impact. Most if not all of the issues in play asked why the one should pay for the many. Incumbents were vanquished because they supported legislation that required individuals to spend their money in support of others. While there is a party line, most members of the party only agree on one thing - that the other party must be stopped. Outside of that, their perspective is largely individual.

Most large corporations believe success comes by pitting individuals (their own employees) against each other (in a zero-sum performance management scheme) in an effort to achieve greater team performance. BUT because success comes comparatively, many of their own employees (presumably rigorously-selected and trained, etc.) must "fail" in order for some of their employees to succeed, and theoretically for the company to succeed. Hmmm... "For us to be a great company a proportion of our employees must be failures - we have therefore designed our system and set our expectations to achieve this."

Does that compute?

It is fair to argue that the community forsakes the individual - the "communistic" view requires each of us to sublimate our desire for the broader good; the innate artist must be a hunter; or the budding mathematician must be a seamstress because those are the things the community requires. They must forgo their uniqueness.

In my family - we often wonder at the fact that the only times we get together is for weddings and funerals, that as much as we say "we must do this more often," actions speak louder than words, and the next reunion is when someone else bites the dust.

Is there a happy medium where the individual is celebrated, and yet a vital and contributing, and nurtured member of the community? Or does the one implicitly pollute the other? Is individuality inherently a corruptive agent in the community? Is there a limit to the amount of corruption that a community can withstand before it evaporates? Does community suppress innovation? Does community perpetuate stagnation?

Over the last ~3 years, I've had the honor to be a part of an amazing community - those that are passionate and committed to improving education around the world. It is vibrant and passionate and energetic and able; but are we really a community or are we just ambitious individuals who share a common goal?

Is there a pendulum effect? Will Western society move back to a community base at some point? I was in Cape Town a couple of weeks ago, and saw community power first hand; but I fear that progress trumps stagnation, and while I appreciated what they have, inside me is the desire for it/them to be more...

why?

How often do you ask this? More importantly, how often did you ask this? Wondering and asking "why" is a powerful determinant of creativity. Ironically, it's something we "breed" out of our children when they're young. I think it's mostly because adults get tired of being asked it at home, and when they're in school, it's because teachers (also adults I suppose) are also tired of being asked.

Sir Ken Robinson (if you haven't seen him speak, click on the image to the right; if you have seen it, click anyway - I've watched it at least 4-5 times) defines creativity as "the process of having original ideas that have value." He argues that creativity should be as important in schools as literacy.

Sir Ken further argues (I couldn't agree more) that our schools in their ever-mechanical approach actually extract creativity from our children because of the way they measure "achievement," how they "enforce" discipline and adherence to structure, and worst how the "wrong" answer or approach is so actively discouraged as to impede the emergence of anything but a bland, conformist child. "If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original."

Newsweek published The Creativity Crisis this month, where among other things, they talk about the correlation between a student's score on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking and their "success" in life (entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers).

I've written here and here about how the values and needs of the industrial revolution have polluted the idea of a public education being about helping every child achieve their greatest self. As I stated during a recent interview on edReformer: "It feels like Education America has become an end unto itself – i.e. the system is less about whether children graduate prepared for the world vs. whether they went through the process of going to the school. The former is righteous, the latter smacks of too many administrators and mid-level bureaucrats getting in the way of people with a legitimate desire to help our children be the best they can be."

Voices like that of Sir Ken, and Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman (authors of the Newsweek article) are important, but not enough if the goal is to reshape Education America or any other country's system.

The most critical voices are parents and employers. The former because they are (or are supposed to be) their children's advocates, and because they are voters and hence valuable to elected officials. The latter because they are the "reason" that education exists in the mind of most people/parents (to prepare kids to earn money). In effect, the employer has the real power, and the parent is one of the strongest advocates of their needs.

If employers don't want creativity, parents won't demand it in the classroom. If employers stopped hiring graduates of school factories, parents would take action. I had dinner this weekend with two very cool people who work for an education foundation, and we were talking about how difficult it is to affect real change.

What if instead of trying to change teachers or drive common standards or curriculum, etc., these foundations went straight to employers to "help" them become stronger advocates for better job candidates? What if they were able to get these employers eliminate the requirement for an accreditation to get a job? What if they were willing to put a bit more energy into the recruitment and filtering process, but focus on the person and their ability vs. what some piece of paper said they could do?

What if the foundation in question invested in a service that helped candidates better represent their true capabilities and not just what the transcript said? Imagine how by building a whole new way of marrying candidates to employers, a foundation with a relatively small investment could create fundamental change in the education system without ever touching it. Now imagine how parents would glom on to this and push their children, and their children's schools to make sure they were prepared for this new world.

Creativity requires that you be prepared to be wrong; if we're not willing to try new approaches, we will forever live up to Einstein's definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

aVOIDance

Lao Tzu was a brilliant, brilliant man - in Tao Te Ching, he wrote this:

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.

We turn clay to make a vessel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.

We pierce doors and windows to make a house;

And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.

Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.

This should be tattooed on the foreheads of every leader and politician so that they can read it every time they look in the mirror (I presume mirror-looking is a frequent act). Governing (or leading in that rare case) is as much about what you do as what you don't do; it is as much (more) about the things you help happen as it is about the things you prevent from happening. It is indeed as much about the usefulness of what is not as it is about the structure we create. But most critically, governing is about creating a space in which the people it serves are allowed to be great, and to be happy.

I do believe the gentlemen that wrote the Declaration of Independence were aware of Lao Tzu and others, and were themselves brilliant and well-thinking men. Here's a bit of their work:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 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.

Read this a couple of times to see how in a mere 202 words so many powerful ideas were collected; how so much power and possibility were granted to both the citizenry and its government. Knowing that this was written to set up the throwing off of one "such Government" is powerful. This document is one of the most eloquent demonstrations of creating a container; knowing full well that the value lies not in the shape or structure of the container, but the power of what it holds, and the potential that creates.

When you read of today's political machinations, you can't help but wonder why our politicians (I can't call them leaders) are bent on creating ever more walls. It's like saying that everything that could possibly happen needs a law to "manage" it.

But we fail to realize that humans are innately skilled at finding the 11th door out of a 10-door room. Every new wall we create invites (nay, demands) loophole seekers, makes it harder to find "miscreants" because the very walls obscure things, and forces us to waste energy policing existing walls.

We also ignore the very purpose of government - to secure their citizens' right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, among others. Today the purpose seems to be to enumerate and prevent misdeeds.

How sad that we're defined by what we mustn't do.

We are voidphobes. Whether it is a lull in conversation, or a lull in behavior, or a lull in regulation - we are much more comfortable when cocooned (straitjacketed?) in structure and "no."

Consider our schools and what we impose on children from the first moment of "institutionalization" - rules, constraints, expectations, examinations. I wonder if this is one reason we have so many more "atypical" children in schools today than ever before? Our definition of "normal" is compliance, living within walls, and accommodating adult expectations. We resist, as Seth put it, exposing ourselves. This might be the worst thing adults can do in service of human evolution, and caring for our young.

A free society, a free people, a free nation are powerful, powerful ideas. They live only when what is celebrated is not the walls around us, but the vast, possibility-filled spaces we inhabit.

Our future may well hinge on our ability to resist avoiding voids.

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.

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.

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.

no why, no how

One of the cornerstones of "good business" is to create consistent, predictable outcomes. Customers value it, Wall Street values it, it's basic MBA theory, and most employees value it as well. As leaders grow and shape their companies towards this outcome, there is a natural excitement attenuation effect - 'mundane' is rewarded more frequently than 'exceptional'; and 'different' is just plain discouraged. Keep at it long enough and creativity turns into procedures, and breakthrough turns into incrementalism. The final step is commoditization, margin pressures and, with an ironic twist, eventual demise - all in the name of "good business."

Seth Godin wrote Why ask why? today - it struck me as an interesting variant on this theme, not just in the commercial world, but especially in education.

'Progress' demanded the same "consistent, predictable outcomes" of education as it did of business. The Industrial Age needed a massive influx of skilled workers and education was scaled up to respond. In the interests of standardization, they distilled curriculum into 'core' knowledge, and in the interests of efficiency, all teachers focused teaching 'core,' to the exclusion of almost everything else. One result is the suppression of students' ability to ask "why?"

A few years ago, the "new" idea of 21st Century Learning became vogue - a lot of .orgs were formed, a lot of companies intent on social responsibility set up programs to support it, and a lot of edu-cognizanti heralded 21st Century Learning as the basis for education reform. IMO, there is no difference in the essence of learning in the 18th century versus the 21st century; content, method and tools may change, but the fundamentals remain the same. Ironically, while these proponents all think that inquiry and creativity are new skills, most want to mechanize their teaching.

I am reminded of this quote (my emphasis) when students did ask "why?":

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. - John Keating from the film Dead Poets Society.

Seth argued that not being able to ask "why?" prevents improvement; I think not being able to ask "why?" also leads to the suppression of our essential poeticism - the very thing for which we stay alive. When you walk into a great school, there is a vibrancy that sparks a need to channel Thoreau (with my emphasis and also from the same movie): "I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." It's why as adults we wish we were that young again, to have that passion, and be immersed in that place.

Even in Dead Poets Society, Keating was forced to succumb to the school authorities, and extract the passion and marrow out of his class in favor of consistent, predictable and conventional outcomes.

I am convinced that size does matter, that overemphasizing predictability leads to the starvation of passion and excitement, and when the original wave of innovation dissipates, we are left with emptiness. The bigger a company or a school gets, the more likely it is to lose its mojo - there are exceptions - High Tech High comes to mind, but I can't think of many others.

Business has the luxury of bankruptcy and acquisition and start-ups and venture capital to achieve renewal - education doesn't. When education goes under, it takes futures with it.

While there are many federal and state programs in America aimed at investing in education, the one common denominator is consistent and predictable outcomes. I'm not saying this is not required, it absolutely is; but today it seems that the winners of the grants and prizes and awards have to be mechanical right from the get-go, and there goes our mojo.

As I've written before, I think it's absolutely appropriate for schools to be funded federally, but that the feds don't get to tell schools how to teach, theirs is to define the outcomes they expect for their investment. 

The schools in turn must treat their students as customers, respect them, and create an environment that allows them to wildly exceed the federally-designated outcomes, and most critically, experience the joy of learning.

acceptance

Ask ten people what the opposite of "love" is and chances are at least nine will say "hate." I don't agree. I think its indifference. When asked what "love" means, most will speak at length about many facets of what makes them feel good, but I think it's simpler - it's unequivocal acceptance. In most (ideally all) cases, this is how your mother feels about you. This acceptance is what we all seek.

There is power in knowing that you are accepted just as you are, just as you behave, just as you act, dress, think, play, whatever. When you are in this place of acceptance, you are empowered to be you; in fact, you're just plain empowered to be.

Most of us recognize the sense of comfort we feel when we arrive at a place where we are loved, a sense of ...de-burdening - the load lightens, the stress fades away, words flow smoothly, smiles are more frequent, expressiveness is more unfettered... There's more - we also feel safer, more cocooned, perhaps even impervious to harm. It's a sense of home isn't it?

I was talking with a good friend a couple of weeks ago about the differences in our two upbringings, how we were educated, and the role that people around us played. We looked at schools that are successful (measured by student success after graduation) and also have happy, energetic, and engaged students, and we saw that we had traveled similar paths. While we both successfully emerged from our respective public schools systems, many students don't. 25% of American students don't graduate from high school, of those that do, more than a third require remediation before entering tertiary schools (but it's really worse - more than 60% of those that were accepted into university required remediation). In our two cases, we saw also that others helped make sure we stayed on the straight and narrow, that we were given the impetus and support to stay in school, do well in school, and aspire.

I was talking yesterday with another close friend about binge drinking in the UK - more than half of all teenagers in Britain have been binge drinking in the last month. Scandinavians and Americans are also prone; and the drinkers are getting younger, developing other issues (poor academic performance, health issues, delinquency, etc.), and costing the system increasingly more money -£2.7 billion annually in injuries and illness in the UK alone.

Whether education or binge drinking, governments have attempted to isolate micro points of failure (poor teachers, drinking hours), and tried to fix these issues in the hopes that they will lead to widespread change. But things haven't improved; instead it's increased the tension with teachers, teacher unions and pub owners.

There is no research on macro common denominators that indicate increased learning performance or reduced drinking, so there's no data or foundation for what follows, it's my conjecture.

When you look at successes in education or when you look at places where binge drinking isn't as much of an issue, there is one (at least) common denominator - community. When I think of community, I think of a place where acceptance reigns - the group accepts and cares for the individual, and every adult is a parent to every child, every one a sibling to each other. Look at almost every successful school and you will find a community of people (parents, teachers, administrators and students) that share in the goal of raising great children; you can judge the strength of that community by whether students and their families stay connected to the school after graduation. Schools like this have a sustained record of success, and are led by people who care and people who are committed to the best for their community.

The indifference towards the individual, the absence of real community from birth onwards could be a predictor of poor academic performance, drinking, other addictions, the tendency towards criminal behavior, etc. Most people go out drinking because it's the only time they have a connection (albeit ephemeral) with others - a chance to belong for those moments to a group. Children join gangs because of the pride of belonging. When there is no alternative to real connection, real acceptance and real community, an easy way out is to drink your way into that feeling for at least those few hours where your behavior is accepted, your words are listened to (and enjoyed), your seat is held for you.

But if you can find a real and safe place to call home, a place where you belong, are accepted, and can just be, things change. Look at the Harlem Children's Zone and similar places where people invest in the community, and in turn the community invests in the individual, and you will find better students, less crime, less drinking, and a chance for redemption. Some centers are able to do this in a small way, but they will always struggle because they can't care for the whole child - that requires a broader effort.

Investing to build communities that live, that care, and that last are where I would put energy if I were running the show - I would center it on the youngest children and work upwards. It will take time, it will not yield immediate politically compelling results, but if we keep at it, it will work - acceptance will happen.

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.

entropic policy

Entropy is the tendency of a system to move to its most energetic (entropic) state. For example, you expect ice to melt, turn into water and evaporate into the air. In order to maintain H2O in its solid state (ice), you have to apply energy (a powered ice box/fridge); otherwise it will eventually dissipate into water vapor.

Social entropy is a similar concept applied to people - we have a tendency towards anarchy unless society applies extensive energy (laws, police, Dick Cheney, etc.) to rein us in. The NY Times reported today that the level of social entropy in Iran has increased to the point where the government is expending significant energy to control it and keep the community "intact."

We may be dormant (complacent) for a long, long time simply because we don't know better - think about the fall of the Iron Curtain; think more about the shifts in perception/behavior/desire/unrest in countries like Japan, China and Korea. But once information about a less-constrained society is "available," it is almost inevitable that shifts happen. This is how America was colonized and eventually formed as an independent state.

What catalyzes significant changes to the social entropic state? Fear? Hope? Freedom? Safety? Opportunity? Risk? I think it's all of these (and more). There is enough knowledge and insight to be able to predictably shift a society's entropic state either from within or from outside; there are also evil and benevolent ways to do this.

Vis-à-vis Iran, I think Secretary Clinton must rethink her position - weaponizing nuclear technology is a threat, but the current tack (attack, provoke, vilify, and (over)react to every twitch) demonstrates how easily Iran is able to goad and manipulate America, and is clearly NOT working. To the contrary, and not unlike the War on Terror - Iran's hand is strengthened at minimal cost to them.

America in true Aikido fashion, must take advantage of Iran's inertia and momentum, and divert her attention from weapons, warfare and terrorism into defending the status quo inside Iran. It must do this in a way that is not invasive but rather creative and filled with guile (a foreign concept in the good ol' US of A). The recent Iranian election combined with the death of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri have opened a door for the West - one that they can help widen by being good global citizens and in no way referring to, commenting on, or vilifying the current regime.

I'd create a US-government-sponsored scholarship fund for all Iranian (why stop there - all Middle Eastern) students that covers expedited student visas, transport, tuition + room & board at any American high school or University, provided the Iranian student is able to gain acceptance (i.e. they are evaluated equally to any other candidate), and they successfully undergo a careful security screening. Clinton's statement should say "we wish to celebrate our friendship with all Middle Eastern countries (including Pakistan and Afghanistan), and do so by offering to help their children be as well-educated as possible and as well-prepared as possible to meet their future and achieve their greatest potential."

What will happen?

1. First (and this applies to everyone in the Middle East), parents will see a possibility for their children to create a better future; they will see a possibility for their families to be more than they are today; they will see a possibility for achievement and attainment that secures the destiny of their progeny, and they will push their children towards it. The side effect is that they will view America as someone that can and is helping them.
2. Second, the Obama Administration uses this to fund expansion of schools in America from the ground-up, improve cultural awareness between Middle Easterners and Americans, and save money because this is way cheaper than war. This is about as good a stimulus package as you might find.
3. Third, it is a way to create a vestedness for America in the Middle East (in particular with those who are susceptible to terrorist recruitment); despite being disaffected, you are less likely to want to bomb the country in which your brothers and sisters are studying for fear of killing your brethren (and biting the hand that feeds you) - I'm not saying this is a guarantee (suicide bombers do kill their own today), but it does engender better feelings.
4. Finally, in Iran specifically, this is a way to empower to those that challenge the status quo by recognizing and offering them a chance for a better future for their children. The Iranian government will want to resist this dilution of their power base and way of life, and focus more energy on resisting it. They will try suppression, but that will only work for so long - a willful citizenry can be very powerful.
   At some point they will have to offer a better alternative to keep Iranian students in Iran (especially as Iranians see their peers from other Middle Eastern countries flocking to a better education), with better and more "open" local schools, more freedom of expression, etc.
   They will have to respond knowing that their actions will affect their ability to trade globally.

If we use society's natural tendency towards entropy and self-determination, not usurp a country's right to self-determination, and honor that country's people by hosting and educating them in our nation, good things will come, and they will live in the form of lasting friendships and better understanding. There will be a harmonizing of all our states of entropy.

overclocked

Have you noticed how much e-stuff you have? How much you depend on all that e-stuff? How much the e-stuff dictates your behavior?

I was giving a speech recently and among other things, talked about how significantly electronicization has altered power consumption. There was this article I read in 2003 that said the average freshman at the University of Miami needed 18 power outlets in their dorm room! As part of a renovation of residences, the University actually had to add new power substations to accommodate the students' hunger!

I'm guessing today's student may need less plugs but more power - if it were me, I'd need 6 - iMac (music, video, work), external speakers, laptop, iPhone/iPod (shared), headset, oh and my toothbrush.

Overclocking is the equivalent of giving your computer steroids to increase its throughput. If you go too far, you can harm the circuitry, and potentially trash the PC. What's the human equivalent?

You know you're overclocked when you're wishing you had your phone so you can check email or play a game while waiting in line, or at the gas station filling up your car. You know you're overclocked when you have to check texts and emails when you're having a drink with a friend and they've popped off to the bathroom. You know you're overclocked when you dim your phone so you can play without disturbing others while watching a movie.

I admit to the first two, but not the third :-).

Are our bodies able to cope with the increased electro-magnetic radiation? What about our minds? We now have many (too many) business processes but not enough time to process things. There is value to reflection - it is how we change minds, grasp concepts, and create a shared vision. Reflection is also how we question things; it is how we are able to look at things from alternate perspectives; it is how we move from reacting instinctively (which is all you can do when you don't have time) to reacting purposefully, to changing outcomes ...profoundly.

We intentionally create pressure situations - in the corporate world they call these "forcing functions" - creating faux crises that require rapid response. The result has no choice but to be evolutionary, gradual if any improvement and largely the same old thing in a new PowerPoint template - because there's no time for anything profound. Without the time to change minds, new ideas can't gel, be socialized and convince others.

There is absolutely a place for rapid-fire reactions and quick decision-making - this is a big part of getting things done. BUT you can't expect every decision to be made this way. Briefly overclocking a business is good when reacting to a crisis or capitalizing on an opportunity, but like any computer that's treated this way, the longer you do it, the greater the risk of burnout.

The obvious damage is falling ever deeper in a rut and ironically losing that very competitive edge; the collateral damage is people burnout - you only have to look articles like this or this to see that the American worker is overclocked - they're afraid of being viewed as redundant so they don't take vacations; they don't have time to reflect and be energized so they can't conceive to catalyze revolutions (or even evolutions); and worst of all, they make big decisions rashly, and end up paying the piper at some point in the future. Constraining broad thinking (or as Seth Godin put it, getting meta) is what prevents us from really grasping a situation and doing something about it.

In the end though, I think the e-stuff is a red herring; we've overclocked ourselves in response to a ...desperation to get things done, to build and sell more widgets, and to own more crap. This ideal is not ideal. It is impales us in a self-imposed rat race, and removes us from the social, reflective, connected (dare I say actualized) world in which we ought to live. We've lost our ability to exercise a modicum of control over our own actions, and achieved an inability to exercise the instinctive urge to sit back and think...

affect magic

I tend to think in threes. Driving home this evening, the concept of experiences was bouncing around my head, and I saw three aspects - those that create, those that watch, and those that curate.

I was marveling earlier at my good fortune to have such great friends. Two of my dearest hosted an impromptu celebration tonight for a collection of fellows that were all three of these aspects of creation. They are artists one and all - their inspiration comes from everywhere, anywhere, and everything in between. It is filled with passion, intellect, sensuality, brutality... It is life.

Creators of experience use authorship, performance, story-telling, and many other -ships to enliven. Their ability to interpret the world and then reveal it is astounding to me.  The watchers (perhaps voyeurs is a better word) are people like me, who (I must admit) are all about the vicarious moment. Being a part of conversations in this home reminded me of how passion and art create boldness. How they bring to people the strength and fierceness to not just do it, but to do it in a unique, magical and affecting way.

As an observer, I got to revel in their energy, and to be ever-more inspired to create my own thing - for that I thank them.

Curators are many things - they are of course creator and observer, but that's not enough. They are also collector (like the creator they must consume, digest and interpret but they also have to get others to give). The are able to do this because they honor without judgment. They like to watch, but their eyes are filters that aim to reveal insides. In the processing is a special mechanism that formulates that most conveyable aspect that when combined with other such aspects, achieves a gestalt that we as voyeurs will experience and say "wow."

Tonight I was at a celebration for A Wink and a Smile. It is a brilliant and wonderful film whose director Deirdre Timmons is the quintessential curator. She and her producer-husband Jack Timmons are creatures who have that ability to find, nurture, honor and convey expression in a way that simply affects magic.

Driving home, I got to thinking about other brilliant curators - the first that came to mind is another good friend - Larry Rosenstock. As the leader of High Tech High, Larry like Deirdre created an environment in which his actors (teachers) are able to create and express and inspire and provoke with the trust and freedom that becomes the magic that is High Tech High.

It's one of those ineffable "we know it when we see it" qualities that is able to affect magic. If there were more magic affectors like Deirdre and Larry, we'd have more brilliant films, more brilliant schools, and more brilliant ...brilliance.

corporate therapists

Are you a fanatic about a sports team? If so, chances are you are among hundreds if not thousands who share that same passion and zeal. When you are with your "kind" (at the arena or stadium or in a bar), it's like a feeding frenzy. The crowd is a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reveres those who have been fans forever; who were actually there when XXXX did YYYY to ZZZZ; those who know all the stats and the history; and who have been there through thick and thin. Newcomers are viewed skeptically until they "prove" their loyalty, and "woe betide anyone who walks into our house wearing that [hated team X] shirt!"

If you're an "outsider" who happens into a bar at game-time, having a drink or a meal can be a rather odd experience. The intensity level during critical moments, the superstition, the insider lingo, the "us" and "them" stuff, etc. are certainly freakish, and may put you off that team forever.

Will you be able to find the truth about that team's ability/potential/etc. from those in that room? In Seth Godin's post about true believers and the truth, he said: "the truth of the market is that the products and services that win ... are rarely the products and services that are beloved without reservation by the true believers." Well said!

When I'm looking to buy a new product, the research I do online is equally about its capabilities (features, specifications, etc.) and about finding people who didn't like it, to understand what I'm really getting into. It's always easy to find those that really liked it, and who with their cognitive dissonance, want others to vindicate their decision, by joining the "team" and buying. I want the critic as well.

Cults are formed by those who blindly pursue a value proposition that may or may not be real. Their belief in the proposition overrides their ability to see clearly.

There's this interesting dynamic in "viral" marketing - everyone searches for mavens to advocate their product, but the real successes are when the mavens are a surprise. When the people who like it are the ones that "shouldn't" or ones that once decried it. They're most "legitimate" and most convincing.

The most powerful champion for your product is always the convert and not the lifer. The lifer is only able to talk to other lifers - and let's face it they don't have to be sold to anymore.

If you want to expand the size of your pie, you have to reach those that don't share your passion. The ones you already have need a different level and type of service.

This type of myopia also affects corporations. If you've drunk the Kool-Aid to the point where your world-view is utterly tainted, you simply can NOT make good decisions. Your vestedness impedes you from seeing the truth about your product, your competitors, or your customers. It absolutely prevents you from acknowledging (or even recognizing) any disruptive forces.

Many organizations view employees who use competitors' products as traitors (drinking Coke as a Pepsi employee); I'm all for passionate employees that care deeply about what they do and where they work, but surely there's an inherent flaw in only surrounding yourself with lemmings and sycophants? Surely you don't want to dis your customers by decrying what they also use/buy? How will you ever adapt, evolve and be successful over time?

Give me the objective skeptic over the fanatic every day - she's the one that I want to listen to. I want to know how the outsider critically assesses what I have, how I market and sell it, and what I'm building next. More critically, I want that objective outsider to help de-tint my glasses so I can see my customers, my marketplace, and my future with clarity and truth.

In life, many people go to a therapist for this type of objective perspective; at work, this is more difficult. I've only met one true management consultant in my life - Peter Drucker - a person who did not color his views for anyone, and certainly did not shape his PowerPoint presentation to please the customer, and ensure future business by telling them exactly what they wanted to hear, with just that mild hint of edginess (like using a black background) to be "credible."

This might not matter so much with sports, which is mere entertainment. But it sure does matter with work, with life, with business...

Do you have Kool-Aid drinking requirements at your company? Are people "rewarded" for strict adherence to the religion? Do people get punished for "straying"? Do you really know what's going on outside your walls?

Who's your corporate therapist?

95,032 words

I started this blog a year ago, propelled by the election in America, leadership, education and the world around us. Being a CAAD (child of the age of attention deficit), I didn't think I'd keep at it anywhere near this long. For that I have to thank all of you that read, commented and emailed - I am profoundly grateful.

This is a wordle of ~synthesis~ over the last year. I can't wait to see what words the next year provokes!