Irony, anyone?

Poynter Journalism Forums [no permalink. scroll down a few lines]

4/20/2004 10:14:11 AM
PRIZE-WINNING WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTERS TO SPEAK OUT AT WEDNESDAY'S ANNUAL MEETING -- AND TO STAGE PROTEST OUTSIDE
Inside the Dow Jones annual meeting on Wednesday, Pulitzer-Prize winning Wall Street Journal reporters will stand up and speak to directors and shareholders about the damaging effects that proposed healthcare cuts and pay limits will have on quality at the Journal. Dozens of other Journal and Dow Jones employees will attend the meeting to support those speeches. (The Journal is Dow Jones's flagship publication.)

Why do Wall Street Journal reporters hate "progress"? Why do they want to stay in the Buggy Era? (See post below)

[/sarcasm]

It's not a bug, it's a feature your future

bostonchannel/AP:

Bush Pushes For Computerized Health Records
President Promotes Plan To Computerize Records Within Decade

President George W. Bush says America's medical technology may be tops, but its medical record-keeping is stuck in the "buggy era."

"Buggy"? Like Amish SUVs?

"The 21st-century health care system is using a 19th-century paperwork system," Bush said. The result is that files get misplaced and problems with drug interactions aren't systematically checked, among other problems. "These old methods of keeping records are real threats to patients and their safety and are incredibly costly," he said.

Ahh, okaay. Like Buggy-buggies. Cute ponies, old timey. For a minute there I thought--Wait a sec...

Not all doctors are ready to jump on board the electronic record-keeping train, either. Dr. Marc Seigel, an associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine, said he has concerns... He said electronic records might lose sight of patient privacy -- records might get shipped to specialists or related doctors without express patient permission. "For the purpose of patient access, I'm all for it. For doctor use, I'm all for it," Seigel said. "But it's access for third parties that I'm worried about."

Oh, that kind of "buggy". It's not a bug, it's a feature buggy. Like say, touchscreen voting but-no-paper-trail, gross system failures, lost votes, software security holes, your voting history available to interested parties on the web buggy? Wired: How E-Voting Threatens Democracy buggy?

Those bugs, pesky euphemisms. They're everywhere. Lookee here, one more that almost got away: "...But it's access for third parties that I'm worried about." Gee, who do we think the good doctor might really be referring to there? Couldn't be his altrusitic friends in the actuarial and apothecary trades could it?

Nah. He'd have to be buggy to suggest something like that.

What's your job description, Monkey-boy?

Update: Briefly posted here on the main blog but, in hindsight, this kinda sorta really belongs on the bio page. Now back to our regular programming...

This can't not be wright rite correct.

How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Doh! This is the one I wanted:



link via ensight [edited]

"The only thing we can do is do the right thing..."

"...What other people do is out of my control," said [Veryfine Juice Company President] Rowse.

Loyal Employees Get 'Veryfine' Bonus

$15M Split Among 400 Employees

LITTLETON, Mass. -- It seems like when a local company sells out to a corporate giant, executives collect the big money. But that is not the case with Littleton juice maker Veryfine.

I really like Sam Rowse.


link via rebecca's pocket.

Rate the ad



The teeny copy you can't read:

Ask for our Porter, Pale and Wheat Ales in Williamsburg's finer restaurants. Hugh Burns, Brewmaster. Nadia Burns, the one with the checkbook. Williamsburg Brewing Company. 1157 Ewell Road, Norge. 757-253-1547. wbcale@aol.com

It's a small family business. The kids stir malt, wash bottles and run the label machines after school and on weekends. The marketing budget is invisible - these are run off at Kinkos in varying formats--point of purchase, poster, direct, small space community broadsheets. The challenge is to increase awareness with regional hospitality and F&B decision-makers in advance of sales calls.

Now, what does this ad do for you?

Addenda: Hugh Burns is an ex-F-117 pilot and college biology major who retired from the US Air Force and found his bliss at a brewing convention. He and Nadia and their kids are ideally situated in one of America's most "historic-minded" vacation towns. More on what we do for their town, Colonial Williamsburg later.

the little engine that could. and did.

And a little prideful horn-tooting ensues...

Here in the little burg of Richmond, Virginia some 2nd and 3rd graders today took on all comers in a regional "Mind Games^©" (General knowledge, logic, construction) competition. Some comers were Goliaths, some were Davids. Some were deeper-pocketed and better socially situated, with demographics and genetics "on their side". Some were less able financially, less powerful in terms of zip code, but equal to the task and ferocious in their competition. All competed with gusto, brains and stamina. But only one was left standing. Ladies and germs, I present the Richmond Public Schools' 2004 Mind Games Champions, Grades 2 & 3:

Fisher Elementary School...



They won. They beat odds, and their own imaginings of what's possible. They learned that winners are born, then unmade--but only if you let it travel that far.

Way to go Fisher.

Next Thursday, 4th & 5th Grades. Boooyah!

[update] Yes, our company, Alchemy, coaches these kids. In our eyes, it's a natural adjunct to, and a way to keep fresh, what we do for businesses: help people achieve their statue-sense; become what they think they deserve to be: "A bigger, better me." We may seem different in our approach and our language, but consider... Architecture, marketing, knowledge, leading are all just tactics, too often regarded and practiced as disconnected. That's silly. They share one overarching goal: moving people forward and up, whether they're 9 or 99.

Burning desires.



I think books are great things. But they don't hold all the answers, do they? Individually, taken alone I mean. Of course not, why should they? Their best characteristic, the ultimate payoff I think, are the seemingly invisible connections between things that books allow us, and sometimes force us, to draw and see.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein connected the dots of a presidency gone awry that no-one else detected. James Gleick, standing on the shoulders of many before him gave, in his Chaos, a view into why not making sense makes sense. The Tipping Point, the Death and Life of Great Cities, Anna Karenina, Franklin and Winston, The Wealth of Nations, Good to Great, de Toqueville's Democracy in America, Harry Potter, even Harlequin Romances all weave and detail things out in their own fascinating ways. Great stuff, some far reaching and truly mind bending.

But one thing that persists for me when I read is the seemingly latent similarities and coincidences; the patterns of action and behavior, lessons learned, forgotten, relearned that appear over and over. Perhaps what I mean is the simple yet elevating sameness in the messages of wise people sharing their wisdom and their sweat.

You don't write a book without feeling you have something to say. You don't recognize you have something to say unless it pounds in your mind as being relevant, or urgent, or different. And again, you don't say something out loud, in print, to millions unless the urge to share and inform outweighs your worry for being shown a fool or a lightweight or a bore. For this, I am awed by the mere fact that a book gets written.

But books require similar risk and investment and willingness to suspend anxieties from a reader, don't they? Books are like bricks. You can collect them and stack them merely to say you have them, and perhaps, to infer you've read them all (God knows, I haven't read all mine.) Or, you can build something with them, a worldview, say. Or a fire. Yes, that's it. A fire. You can rub them together in your head, and build a fire. I much prefer fire over worldview. It feels more real, more in touch with the senses. A worldview seems more inert and abstract, more the way we might disinterestedly watch a child's ant colony--Us, and them; we observing, they doing. They committed to exploring and building, trying and failing and trying again, and us, taking notes, with no skin in the game.

That's the funny thing about books, especially the kind of business books that I see reviewed and read myself. They, like Anna Karenina or Harry Potter, are really how-to manuals in the art and technique of creating and understanding, using and abusing, passions and commitments and dreams. They presume an investment, an ambition. Yet we regard them as things apart from those senses and states of being.

We skin them of their humanity, harvest them for utility and in the process, they lose both. We're hungry for results, frustrated by failed prescriptions and processes and, yet, we return to same fount over and over, repeating the same skinning and separating, expecting perhaps that "this time, somebody's captured the magic in bullet form" that we can prune even further.

Wow. Again, I find my self using words that betray a sense of life and growth, of organic things, of being in the thing... Humanity, harvest, hungry, frustrated, magic, prune.

Maybe I'm being melodramatic, but it seems the more knowledge that gets shared, and is available, the more it takes on a commodity's presence, the sense that one idea's pretty much the same as another, and therefore none really deserves a special place on our own bonfire. Like I said, melodramatic, but this feels true to me. Perhaps bricks are not the only analogy for books, because they too seem inert, whereas maybe logs, fuel for a fire, still retain their organic nature, their evidence of themselves as the product of growth.

Fire. Growth. It brings to mind something I scribbled not long ago, an email, almost as a joke, to a friend who was frustrated--with business, with business books, with recalcitrant people, with everything:

....4. "Work, eat, sleep" is a self-imposed life sentence. Some leaders may think that little of their lives and their futures, but millions of employees and consumers are just dying to hear one say "Enough! I want more out of this for me, too! (No, not more money.)
5. Pick any two of the better, hot business books--Semler, Jack Welch, Collins, Sun Tzu--doesn't matter. But make sure one is diametrically opposed to what you "think" you already believe. Don't read them. Climb into them. Live them, like you're going to be shot if you don't live them. Tell your people you are doing this. Then, after doing exactly this for 6 months per book, ask yourself: Which did I feel like I would have written right out of school and not yet jaded to the working world? Keep that one. Buy copies of it for your people. Own it. Then take those assembled people into the parking lot and ceremonially burn the other book you did not choose. Bring a keg. Throw a party. Celebrate your freedom.

You'll be amazed at how good this feels and, how can I say this? Simple.

And that's it, isn't it? Feeling good, about what you are doing. Re-injecting the humanity and energy into rote and reductionism. Admitting, sharing the universal, communal reality that what we all want is a choice in things, preferably a better, more authentic road less traveled. One that fits. I've come to believe that that simple act of exposure, the willingness of a man or woman to really embrace an idea, to allow themselves to say "I'm looking for fire here"--that is the essence of growth and leadership, of one's self and of others.

The best books say this, over and over. Good to Great is The Fifth Discipline is The Lunar Men. They say the same things in different words. We nod at the answers when we read them. But not because we've had an epiphany, but because we recognize a pattern, a thread, a sensibility already parked in our heart and our head. We recognize, we aren't discovering.

We already had it. It was right under our nose. It wasn't "new."

Silly, isn't it?

Go on. Go "burn" a book.

update: Cleaned up for slapdash.Sorry. Posted this on my way out the door late for a morning meeting.

Small Business. Big Business. Beef. And Bullsh*t.

National Cattlemen’s Beef Association

"Federal farm programs can influence, change and distort the price and supply of beef cattle. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association supports agricultural policy that is based on private enterprise, competitive markets and minimum government intervention. Government programs are sometimes necessary in disaster and emergency situations or to aid market access and expand information availability, but that is where it should end. NCBA encourages private enterprise in marketing and risk management as the alternative to government programs."

Our story continues....

UPI runs a story today finding that USDA's (and, by extension, Swift/Tyson/Smithfield/NCBA's) chief argument for opposing Creekstone Farms' bid to test 100% of it's herdstock is, appropriately enough, heavily laced with cow patty:

WASHINGTON, April 21 (UPI) -- A recent U.S. Department of Agriculture decision to block a private company from testing all its cattle under 30 months of age for mad cow disease runs contrary to its own records that show it has tested more than 2,000 animals in that age range, United Press International has learned.

The USDA rejected the Creekstone Farms testing plan on the grounds it was scientifically unsound. The Arkansas City, Kan., Black Angus beef producer wanted to test all its cattle for mad cow disease voluntarily so it could export its beef to Japan....

In announcing the decision to reject Creekstone's proposal, Bill Hawks, USDA's undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs, said, "There is no scientific justification for 100 percent testing because the disease does not appear in younger animals" under the age of 30 months.

A more sound approach scientifically, Hawks said, would be USDA's expanded surveillance plan, which calls for testing 200,000 or more cows in U.S. herds that are 30 months of age or older.

Sampling from millions. Only in animals over 30 months. For a stealthy, volatile, "tipping-point" epidemic disease.

The department's mad cow testing records, however, which were obtained by UPI via the Freedom of Information Act, show over the past two years the agency tested 2,051 animals -- and possibly more -- that were under the age of 30 months.

The article goes on to somewhat clumsily detail a compromise solution crafted by USDA in conjunction with major packers such as Swift & Co., Tyson/IBP and Smithfield Foods. In this previous post and links, it was stated that the ostensible reason for all the wrangling over this issue is the implied "safety gap" between "premium" beef houses like Creekstone Farms and the more high volume, shall we say, less picky meat packers like Swift, Tyson and Smithfield. Oddly enough, the pilot 100% compliance program the big boys are endorsing, and the USDA is pushing for them, carries a tentative price tag of around $375 per tested head of cattle. Creekstone's state of the art program--read: more rigorous than USDA's--costs $18 per head. This reader, and others it seems, view this as a stalling tactic by more diversified (Pork, chicken) mega-packers in an attempt to stretch out the inevitable reasonable solution to the Japanese' complete ban on American beef without 100% testing.

Why? Because Tyson, Swift and cohorts can remain profitable on other meat products while the ban slowly chokes niche, regional and premium producers into bankruptcy. Agribusiness is using the thing it claims to hate--regulation--to winnow it's competition from the field. And they've gotten USDA to herd players like Creekstone to the kill-floor.

Larry Bohlen of Friends of the Earth, an environmental advocacy group in Washington [said] the USDA "offered a puny compromise to test older cattle for Creekstone farms when the agency itself has been testing some younger cattle for the last 2 years,"

Bohlen was referring to a compromise the agency offered Creekstone to test an unspecified number of its animals older than 30 months at USDA-approved labs. Creekstone rejected the deal because it has invested $500,000 in building a state-of-the-art testing facility and nearly all of its animals are under that age at the time of slaughter.

Bill Fielding, Creekstone's chief operating officer, said he would not classify USDA's offer as a compromise because it did not address the issues of concern to the company.

"As the USDA is aware, only about 1 percent of our animals are over 30 months, so testing them does nothing for our business and is not what our customers are asking for," Fielding told UPI.

Here, USDA walks into the grinder itself: Japanese health authorities have detected mad cow disease in animals less than 20 months old. They believe, and research supports, that it's only a matter of time--aided by a lax sampling system, rather than 100% testing--before it regresses down the maturity scale. They don't trust luck when it comes to Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, the cause of variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, a fatal human brain disorder. Perhaps USDA has a hard time with Japanese Scientific Peer journals, what with all those squiggly characters n stuff:

USDA spokeswoman Alisa Harrison told UPI the agency's rationale for prohibiting Creekstone from testing younger animals is "the scientific evidence is there that you can't find it (mad cow disease) in animals under 30 months."

Asked why the agency tested thousands of animals under that age, Harrison replied, "I don't know."

It could be the animals were showing severe signs of central nervous system disorders -- a possible indication of mad cow disease -- or perhaps there was some "confusion on the age of the animals," she said. "I'm sure there's a good reason."

Harrison said she would look into the agency's rationale for testing the young animals and including them in official statistics, but she did not respond by presstime.

Bill Bullard, chief executive officer of R-CALF USA, a non-profit association in Billings, Mont., which represents independent ranchers, noted a 3-month-old cow looks like a calf, so it is unlikely animals in this age range were confused for 30-month old adults....

The USDA is just plain wrong in deciding against Creekstone," Bullard said. "I think their argument is extremely weak and unfortunately it is damaging the industry."

Bullard and Fielding said they know of other companies that would like to emulate Creekstone's plan and test all their cattle as a way of tapping into the export market. Creekstone plans to appeal USDA's decision, and the other companies may come forward as the debate continues, they said.

I'll try the Creekstone Filet, Pittsburg, Sour Cream and plenty of Horseradish.

Way cool.

Baskin Robbins Free Ice Cream Night is Wednesday, April 28th. 6-10 pm.

From Worthwhile

This is cool. For the fifth year, Baskin-Robbins is holding Free Scoop Night next Wednesday, and the good news is that needy kids will be the big winners. Here's how it works: When you go into Baskin-Robbins, you get free ice cream; for each person who stops in, the company makes a contribution to First Book, an organization that donates books to children in low-income families. What a neat way to help underprivileged kids. For more about First Book, click here.

I love The Economist, but sometimes...

...they do take on airs of the proverbial Seagull manager: Flutter in, squawk a bit, crap on a few things, and flutter out:

economist.com

Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People's Minds
THE “science” of management is largely derivative: a mix of military strategy, the economics of the firm and the engineering of processes. Less frequently than it should, it takes ideas from the field of psychology, and some of them have had considerable influence..... Two other influences may lie behind management's new-found enthusiasm for the science of Freud and Jung. The turmoil at the turn of the century, when stockmarkets' and businesses' fortunes rose and fell like boats in a force eight gale, increased managers' awareness that they live in a world that is not just ever-changing, but is changing ever more quickly too. “Change” is a buzzword in management literature today. Among other things, companies realise that they have to change, frequently and radically, the attitudes and practices of much of their workforce. For help they are turning to psychology.

The other influence comes from the spate of corporate scandals in America and Europe, and the subsequent soul-searching about the corruption of leadership. The study of leadership has, in the view of many of its more traditional exponents, gone “soft”. Out are the sturdy reminders of how the likes of Alexander and Shackleton led their men through impossible hardship; in are the exhortations to executives to examine their inner selves. “Get thee to a personal trainer,” is the fashionable advice.

A recent issue of the Harvard Business Review recommended that its high-flying readers “learn to navigate the twists and turns of their emotions”. (It is assumed that the leaders of Enron, Tyco and the like threw away their emotional compasses before they ever came close to a boss's chair.) “When there's dissonance between an executive's inside and outside,” the journal warned, “he's got trouble.”

Uhhh, Economist?

"Change" has been a buzzword since hair, one that's belatedly getting a serious look from some people because it keeps chopping them off at the knees.

The study of leadership has...gone Soft?

Jeebus. Leadership is precisely the study of how to get soft, squishy, self-interested things called people to commit "hard," worthy, unconventional acts of selflessness. Call it propagating courage and ambition. Unsolicited advice: You're posing. Supplement those World Bank seminars with one on Drucker or The Group Dynamic in Recruit Drill Instruction every once in a while.

Hmmm, what does Amazon's reference have to say:

Publishers Weekly: ....While the discussions and real-life examples are intriguing and do clarify Gardner's theories, the book doesn't fully deliver on its promise. Although Gardner does offer suggestions on how someone can influence others, he doesn't include a detailed prescriptive strategy for decision makers in the business world. Readers must draw out insights on their own, which, given the complexity of the material, may be difficult.

I bet I know why he doesn't offer up prescriptives. Here's another guy, Col. John Boyd, who worked to assemble a forest out of trees, much to the success of the American Military... and with the "Smart Set" kicking and screaming all the way....

[Boyd] absorbed the writings of great military theorists, like Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and Jomini. He analyzed campaigns of the master practitioners, like Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Belisarius, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Grant, Manstein, T. E. Lawrence, Lettow-Vorbeck, Mao, and Giap. Beginning with the Peleponnesian War, he studied conventional battles and guerrilla warfare.

....he [scoured] books on physics, mathematics, logic, information theory, evolutionary biology, genetics, cognitive psychology, cultural anthropology, sociology, political science, economics. Between 1973 and 1976, he poured his intellectual energy into producing a 16-page double-spaced, type-written paper describing his theory. Entitled "Destruction and Creation," this abstract treatise describes how a dialectical interplay of analysis and synthesis destroys and creates our mental images of the external world. It describes what pressures drive this mental process, and how internal phenomena naturally regulate it in a never-ending dialectic cycle, which takes on the outward manifestations of disorder turning into order, and order turning into disorder.

Boyd did not read books, he devoured them — marking them up, cross-correlating information in the front with information in the back, seeking out contradictions with every turn of the page, gleefully tearing each author's argument to pieces. After only six months, his copy of Clausewitz looked as if it were 100 years old. He never attempted to publish his work, but assembled all his research into a 15-hour briefing called a "Discourse on Winning and Losing." He gave the briefing to enlisted men and generals, congressmen, newspaper reporters, scientists, futurists, academics, anyone who would listen.

And the genuinely curious solution-oriented weren't yawning. I know Gardner's past work, haven't read this new book yet, but grew up Air Force, knowing "Ghengis John's" legend and learning a lot of the fact of his OODA loop. Guess what? Boyd's, like Gardner's work and approach, doesn't "bullet point" or fit on a te back of a napkin.

In that 15-hour lecture Boyd weaved an accellerated scientific, pyschological, cultural and historic tapestry. He slammed you through a true liberal arts approach to strategy, the world, it's inhabitants and their quirks. At it's conclusion, out pops you, a changed, chastened yet reeenergized individual with a new definition of clarity. And a broader understanding of the reasoning of people and their organizations. Boyd's ideas changed the way we think about situational awareness. He was a renaissance fighter pilot and the father of 4th Generation warfare and strategic thinking.

And he was a maverick. If you couldn't sit still to unlearn all the "mush" traditional, linear strategists like Clausewitz had palmed off on you--if you asked for bullets or an elevator speech--what I believe he termed "pre-chewing your food for you"--he'd butt his cigar out on your tie.

You don't intuitively "own" bulletpoints, was his message. And change makes those kinds of bullets moot the minute the crap hits the fan.

But--a strategic philosophical framework? Now, THAT you can own. And climb into. And fly.


Still need bullet points? Okay, I'm game. Or engaged. (Yeah, it's the second one.) More on this later.

It's nothing personal folks...

Business Evolutionist relates a great story from a recent speaking trip:

It's nothing personal folks

That was the first slide of a Power Point presentation I saw someone putting together on the airplane the other day, seriously.

I wasn't trying to eavesdrop or pry or anything, but I couldn't help glancing over a couple of times...

"It's nothing personal folks..."

That is just wrong on so many levels.

First: Okay, then why are we here?

Second: Yeah, actually, it is personal.

Third: So, you don't care about me... then why should I care about you, this presentation or this company?

I wanted to lean over to the guy and suggest another approach: Get rid of the Power Point and instead take a boom box into the meeting and play that song "We're in this love together, we've got the kind that lasts forever."

Yes! Just imagine. A sense of humor and sense of humanity along with the necessary task of bearing what seemed to portend bad news. Not happy talk. Not covering your "people skill bases," but actually exercising your people skills.

One of the commenters to Jon's post offered a mea culpa--

I'll admit it--I use that line, too. I guess it's a matter of tact--it's the disclaimer that says "the following comments may sting a bit, but I still value you as a person."

Sounds lovely, but research shows that people's ears are far more tuned to negatives, than positives. It's that pesky R-complex again, always suspicious and looking for inauthenticity; always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Around here, we've learned from client/employee surveys on reorgs and M&A projects that "the following comments may sting a bit, but I still value you as a person" is not the takeway.

Everything one says after something like that disappears into a black hole called "What's wrong with me?" which quickly mutates into a vortex of resistance called "Who is this asshole?"

Kind of like saying, "To be honest with you, I think..."

Why fight reality? Everything's personal, work especially. Who wants employees who abstractly observe that your company's going down the tubes in some way, and then move on to passionately wondering what new lure they're going to use while fishing this weekend? Candor works wonders, well presented. It also flushes out the passive/agressive obstacle builders and the clock-punchers.

"It's not personal, it's business" is their weapon and excuse.

Take away their tools. Disarm them.

He's not being naughty he's an ODD child

London Telegraph

Children who behave badly are no longer described as naughty but suffering from Oppositional Defiant Disorder - or ODD syndrome.

The condition, which was established by scientists in America, is said mainly to affect children under 10 and result in a number of disruptive symptoms including defiance, provocative conduct and disobedience.

Literature on the subject says that sufferers "argue persistently with adults", "actively refuse to comply with adults' requests or rules" and "often deliberately annoy people". Other ODD children are said to "consistently blame others for their own misbehaviour"....


Psychologists and child specialists, however, question the use of such labels and say that the problem lies with the shortcomings of the adults who care for them, not the children. Attributing bad behaviour to a medical "disorder" allows parents to abdicate responsibility, they claim.

Dr Gareth Vincenti, a consultant psychiatrist and the medical director of the Harrogate Clinic, a mental health hospital, said that the over-use of medical terms gave many children an excuse to run riot. "You're medicalising behaviour by saying, 'Oh, you've got a condition', then straightaway it is not the child's fault or the parents' fault," he said.....


ODD is one of about 300 classified mental disorders - most identified in the US - that doctors and psychologists use to explain bad behaviour. Some of these "conduct disorders" are considered to be treatable with drugs such as Ritalin. [emphasis mine]

ODD. How perfect. One more acronym: P.H.A.R.M.A. Can't write a prescription for "naughty" or "latchkey".

Stop the merry-go-round, I want to get off.

William James was a damn smart man:

The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing. New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions.

The point I now urge you to observe particularly is the part played by the older truths . . . their influence is absolutely controlling. Loyalty to them is the first principle; for by far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them. [emphasis mine.]

Memo: Technique matters. But Reality's the bitch, not the messenger.

Case in point... Slate:

Capitalists for Hillarycare
Look who's supporting universal health care now.

In the early 1990s, big business largely opposed Hillary Clinton's ill-conceived effort to establish a government-run universal health insurance plan. But over the past several years—and especially in the past year—large corporations, and the trade groups that speak for them, have been subtly changing their tune.....

That interest in more government health care is spreading from automakers to other manufacturers. In December, a study released by two business establishment trade groups, the Manufacturers Alliance and the National Association of Manufacturers, found that when it came to structural costs—environmental compliance, taxes, and employee benefits—American companies pay more compared to many foreign competitors. Structural costs add 22.4 percent to the price of doing business in the United States—more than in Canada, Britain, or South Korea. The largest single structural cost borne by the American private sector is health care. The clear implication: Unless society (read: the government) does something to relieve manufacturers of their health-care burden, the sector will suffer further....

HCA's profit warning points to several other reasons why big business will eventually accept a Hillary-like scheme. First, because it's the largest hospital company—HCA has a market capitalization of about $20 billion—HCA's uninsured problem is Wall Street's problem. Expect more of the analysts, bankers, and credit-rating agencies who have a vested interest in HCA's future to start commenting on the need for a national solution to the health-care crisis. Second, because it was founded by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's family, HCA's problems are also Washington's problems. [emphasis mine.]

Hmmm. I suppose it goes without saying that Canadian, British and South Korean Tax Structures and Environmental Compliance policies are far more "onerous" than those in these United States. All those nasty taxes and regs and they're still kicking our hiney's Structural Cost-wise. What gives?

Perhaps another William has the answer, this time, Bill O'Neill, founder of Investor's Business Daily. 20 rules of investing:

#18: Don’t try to bottom guess or buy on the way down. Never argue with the market. Forget your pride and ego.

Small Business. It's what's for dinner.

Washington Post:

To Creekstone Farms manager Bill Fielding, his company's idea does not seem unreasonable. In order to satisfy its very important customers in Japan -- customers the company needs to survive -- Creekstone wants to test for mad cow disease every one of the cattle it slaughters....

But there is a big obstacle in the way of Creekstone's mad cow initiative: The U.S. Department of Agriculture will not allow it.

Whoa there, free-market cowboys. Holster your six-shooters. The black hats in this Rodeo ain't who you want them to be.

"That the USDA is standing in our way makes no sense," Fielding said. "Their position flies in the face of the basic rule of business -- that the customer is always right, and our job is to meet their demands."

Yeah. Why would they do that?

As a small, upscale slaughterhouse and meatpacker, Creekstone already does for its domestic and foreign customers many things that competitors do not do. It specializes in premium-quality Black Angus beef, accepts fewer and fewer animals that have been fed antibiotics or hormones, and can trace the origin of each animal it receives....

Japan's intense sensitivity over the issue began in 2001, when mad cow disease was first detected in an animal there. Since then, universal testing there has found 10 more infected animals, and few have had the characteristics that normally put an animal at high risk.....

Universal testing? Examining every animal, instead of some compromise profiling or aggregate sampling regimen cobbled together by USDA and the packing industry? If the Japanese want 100% testing for $50/lb premium beef, not a problem. Creekstone would test for Martian Pathogens if that's what its customers wanted. Then what is the problem?

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet "The Money":

While all American beef exporters have been hurt by the ban on sales abroad, Creekstone is especially vulnerable because it is small -- with less than 1 percent of the market -- and it only packs beef. The big players in the business -- companies such as Tyson Foods, Swift & Co. and Smithfield Foods -- also sell pork and chicken and can weather the beef ban much better.

If Japan will not buy their beef, the more diversified companies can sell pork, which they are doing now at a tidy profit. As a result, Fielding says, the beef export ban works to the advantage of the big firms and could end up squeezing many small operations such as his out of business.

Now, meet "The Mouth" of The Money:

The largest and most powerful meat-packing companies are dead set against Creekstone's proposal, as is the group that represents ranchers and feedlot owners, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

Association President Jan Lyons said that allowing one company to test all its cattle could quickly snowball into a situation where all companies would have to do similar testing. "If testing is allowed at Creekstone and other companies, we think it would become the international standard and the domestic standard, too," she said. "But it's a standard that's not based on science, would be very expensive and so is something our government definitely needs to resist."

Not based on science. Very expensive. Both of those PR statements are patently untrue. They lack not only fact, they abrogate integrity.

Wampum finds a concurrent article in the Miami Herald with real numbers: USDA approved bare bones standards testing, under long term study, costs $375 per head of cattle. Creekstone's Tiffany Science testing? $18 per. Notice the "long-term-study"? That's Greek for Stalling. It's also the favored approach of the Beef industry--rather than endorse a free-market solution that costs an additional 0.1 of X, they'd prefer to sit on the fence, book that extra 0.1 profit for a few more years, then claim shock and threaten mass economic woe when the eventual Industry-USDA study says it'll cost 30*X to test every animal.

Avarice, Pride and Sloth? Meet strategic decision-making. Strategic decision-making? Meet Avarice, Pride and Sloth.

The funny and sad part? The industry "leaders" are the sheep. The real leader, Creekstone and Bill Fielding, they're being led to the slaughter.

In southeast Kansas, the issue is being closely watched. Kevin Gallaway, owner of Gallaway's steak restaurant in Winfield, a buyer of Creekstone beef, said the USDA should approve the testing:

"If our government keeps the company from testing the animals and it goes under as a result," he said, "I can tell you that people around here would be plenty angry about it."

And so they should be. But why isn't Kevin just as pissed at NCBA, Tyson, Swift and Smithfield? That's whose water Anne Venneman, the head of USDA, is carrying--water that's gonna drown Kevin's neighbor and favored supplier.

Why? Because that would be "counter-intuitive," I guess. Goverment is always dysfunctional. But "Free markets" keep business efficient and pure. That's it. Ubetcha. Yessiree.

I'm not certain about others, but me, I'm insulted when fed Spam and told to think "Great Filet!" It seems conservative pro-business firebrand Christopher Caldwell feels the same, citing CBS/Gallup: "Do you think U.S. executives are honest?" No - 67%. Yes - 27%.

Kind of hard to say those answers are skewed by a biased or confusingly worded question.

True or not, unfair or not, perception is reality. And it's pretty damn hard to sell when your customer is gripping his wallet and scanning for a policeman, just in case.

Substitute seat belts, pasteurization, air travel, flouridated water, or whatever for Creekstone's 100% Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis-Free beef and, once again, we see organizations public and private close the wagons, then camp outside the circle. Public and private. Nobody has a franchise on virtue. Or common sense.

Too bad the Business Roundtable doesn't round up a posse over that one.


Read the whole Washington Post article, or visit Wampum, who far better flays this tale of small and big business in detail.

40,000 women with Lexan^® Spheres of Death are headed this way.


[Janeane Garofalo as The Bowler in Mystery Men - 1999]


They're coming! With crazy shirts! Outrageous shoes! And money to burn!

The Women's International Bowling Congress, that is. Now, how do we get them to think about coming back before they've even left?

Simple: Say "Thank you!" first, then say "Please?" Michele over at Wonderbranding explains how common sense and people-friendliness in deed, not just in brochure copy, makes a difference:

These ladies should have no problem finding their way around. The city of Wichita has created nearly 100 new blue traffic signs with letters and arrows that may seem foreign to Wichita residents, but are crystal clear to members of the WIBC. "Forty frames" refers to the forty-frame tournament at one bowling alley. Signs reading "D/S" are directing bowlers to where they compete in doubles and singles. The "WIBC" signs direct teams to another competition.

Wichita's Marketing Director Jessica Johnson explains the reason for the signage:

"That signage is part of rolling out the welcome mat and making sure everybody knows where they are going, and hopefully so we can relive this so they will remember how great they were treated here in Wichita, and they will want to come back."

A nice backward marketing plan - say thank you first, then say please.... as in please return very soon.

Cost of the signage? About $10,000. Estimated boost to Wichita's economy? About $40 million. A small investment with big returns.

Yeah!

I take it to read that those are REAL, regulation blue DOT amenity signs a la "Hospital" or "Crunchy Frog Museum -->" placed unselfconsciously alongside the everyday "I-70" And "No turn on Red" variety around Wichita.

How perfect. We all say "Come on down, we'll treat you like family." But how many times have you taken someone up on it and found they'd actually added a spare bedroom for you? Same thing here. Permanence says: You matter.

Bowling Bodiceas caps off an excellent series of posts on intuition by Michele. My left brain salutes her. My right brain is still coveting Garofalo's neato-torpedo bowling ball above.

“The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.”

That's from John W. Gardner's Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society 1995. It's great--as was he. It's short--as is life. It's simple--as are most things, if we're honest with ourselves....

SELF-DEVELOPMENT. Not just skills, but the whole range of our own potentialities for sensing, wondering, learning, understanding and aspiring. Gardner points out that this does not happen until one gets over the odd notion that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE. By midlife we are accomplished fugitives from ourselves. Our lives are filled with diversions; our heads stuffed with knowledge; we are involved with people. Result: weve never taken time to probe our inner selves. We dont want to know ourselves. We dont want to depend upon ourselves. We cant stand to live with ourselves. A better way is to develop a more comfortable view of who you are. It is the true basis of inner strength.

COURAGE TO FAIL. By the time we reach middle age, we carry in our heads a long list of things well never try again because we tried once and failed. Mature people learn less because they are willing to risk less. Theres no learning without difficulty and fumbling, but if you want to keep on learning, you must keep risking failure.

LOVE. Develop the ability to have mutually fruitful relations with others. Be capable of accepting love and giving it; of depending upon others and of being depended upon. Develop the ability to see life through anothers eyes and reach out to others.

MOTIVATION. A self-renewing person is highly motivated. The author points out that motivation isnt a fuel that gets injected into your system (motivation speakers wont do it); its partly inner energy and partly the result of the social forces in your life. Gardner makes the point that we live in an over-verbalized civilization. Words have become more real than the things they signify and we need to return to the solid earth of direct experience because we are drowning in meaningless word tonnage.

[From a fine Amazon reader review of the book]

To learn more about this incredible individual (founder of Common Cause, Secy. of HUD, War Hero, the list is too long), visit The Gardner Center at Stanford University.

New World ~ Old Europe. Compare and contrast.

From Britain's Management-issues.com blog [scroll, no permalinks]:

Digging your own grave
07 April 04 | Management Issues
Categories: Globalisation. 

More emotive stuff here about offshoring, this time from USA Today. If just seeing your job shipped overseas isn’t bad enough, it seems that some US employers are asking (OK, make that forcing) their employees to train their offshore replacements before they get given the pink slip.

Here's what typically happens: U.S. workers getting pink slips are told they can get another paycheck or beefed-up severance if they're willing to teach workers from India, China and other countries how to do their jobs. The foreign workers typically arrive for a few weeks or months of training. When they leave, they take U.S. jobs with them. The U.S. employees who trained them are then laid off.

What really grabs attention, though, is the statistic from a survey by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers that almost one in five information technology workers has lost a job or knows someone who lost a job after training a foreign worker. And seven out of ten say they would support legislation requiring companies to inform local officials if they plan to use US workers to train foreign replacements.

In an election year, numbers like these are hard to ignore, and we wouldn’t be at all surprised to feel a wind of protectionism blowing in from the US if things continue as they are. With reporting like this, it isn’t hard to see what side USA Today is on in the debate.

Employees forced to train their replacements say the practice is a stark illustration of how the hiring of foreign workers is plundering U.S. jobs. In the next 15 years, American employers will move about 3.3 million white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages abroad, according to Forrester Research. That's up from $4 billion in wages in 2000.

Here comes the Sun, doot-n-doo-doo.....

Big bonuses again at B&Q
29 March 04 | Management Issues
Categories: Compensation & Benefits. Motivation.

Staff at UK DIY superstore chain B&Q are to share in a £34m bonus bonanza following a 13 per cent rise in profits to £372 million.

The average bonus for employees in the chain's 320 stores will be equivalent to about 10 per cent of their salary. This equates to roughly £845 for a ' customer adviser' and almost £3,500 for a store manager.

B&Q's staff are benefiting from big bonuses for the second year running. Last years' pay-out of £28 million gave them an extra nine per cent of their salaries.

It is company policy to offer all staff a guaranteed profit-share bonus of six per cent with the remainder based on the individual worker's salary and how well their store has done.

B&Q marketing director David Roth said: "The success of our stores, and ultimately the company as a whole is determined by the people who work here and it is only fitting that their hard work, enthusiasm and dedication is rewarded in this manner.

"I know that many of our staff have already made some special plans for their bonuses and they thoroughly deserve it."

John Lewis employees' bonus bonanza
11 March 04 | Management Issues

The 59,000 staff of UK retailer the John Lewis Partnership will be sharing a £87 million bonus this year, an increase of 29 per cent over 2003 and equivalent to just over six weeks pay for each employee.

This year's increase follows a 10 per cent increase in profits at the group to £277 million.

The company, which has no outside shareholders and is run as a partnership for the beneift of those who work in it, distributes a proportion of its profits every year as bonuses.

The success of the business is largely due to the vision of John Spedan Lewis, whose personal belief that the the real advantages of ownership should go to those who gave their time and labour to the business rather than to those who had supplied the capital led to the creation of the company's unique structure in the early part of the 20th century.

"The Partnership was meant to enable people to feel that they might be making a contribution of real value to the ceaseless experimenting that is necessary to human progress. It was meant for people who need not only something to live by but something to live for," he said.

How sad that more than half a century later, so many organisations still ignore the simple message that John Spedan Lewis saw so clearly - and which the company he led still thrives on today.

La-la-la-la-la.Cha-ching.

Bodicea Emotes

Bodicea here - a fouro partner and, yes, my debut! Couldn't sit still with all the hormonal references flying without adding my pennies. Since everyone has an opinion, here's mine.

When men use “feeling” they are often admired as evolved enlightened individuals and regarded as compassionate leaders. When women use “feeling” it’s often suspect as hormonal imbalance or the inability to hang with the boys. That's the generalization. But emotions do not have Mars-Venus ownership rights. Though often stereotyped by gender bias and false assumption, emotions are more apt to go unacknowledged - - better left to drift in the abyss than open THAT can of worms. Why? Might you be wrong? Might you loose control of a situation? Might you have to concede? Might you have to change? You might.

You might also grow. Now that’s real scary stuff!

It is basic human nature (R-complex to use Fouro's refs) to want to protect oneself. It’s personal. And it’s real. When it comes to emotions, yours or mine, it’s easier to discount or “spread sheet” a situation, reduce it to facts or figures, than to open one’s heart and mind (left down one’s guard) and recognize that what has been done, or not done, has affected a human being. Could be someone else, could be me.

Emotions: We all have them. And just like minds they are terrible things to waste.

Emotion, good or bad, is powerful stuff. Left unattended, emotions can manifest in ways more destructive than constructive. Take a lesson from a tamtrumming two-year old, a disconnected teen, or a professional “isolated deliverer.” Without compassion in business or in the home, edict what you want in the figurative “boardroom”, but it’s the personal conversation at the “water cooler” that will make or break your stride. Go ahead, feed the dragon: you’ll just have to slay it later. And it may have two heads by then. A real leader - - male or female, professional or parent or child - - intuitively knows that “Leaders don’t just make products and make decisions. Leaders make meaning” (John Seeley Brown).

Everything is personal, not impersonal; and Emotions are Business.

The HAVING of Feelings in the workplace, as in life-space, is not rare - - just denied. Feelings are something to be shared, not flaunted superficially. And Compassion is another way of letting a person know that you hear their concerns, understand their position, relate to their dilemma, or even “feel their pain.” Moreover, Compassion is the greater giving of your time and your attention to let someone else know you noticed them - - and they matter. It’s a bridge. It builds relationships. It reduces barriers. It creates allies. It takes courage. It unleashes curiosity. It reveals leaders. And not all leaders sit at the head of a boardroom table, but you’d better have one directing your “Customer Advocacy” division or your child's classroom.

Why does being heard matter? At the risk of yet another quote,

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that what's deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit. (e.e.cummings).

And once you’ve made this connection, a life-time customer you will have. (And I’m not referring to the estrogen network). You may also discover that you like yourself a little better than before.

Anyone can be in charge, and many think they are. Anyone can sell a product, but few do it well. And anyone can be a parent, though many should not. But when you personally invest yourself, your feelings, in any of these roles, you emerge stronger and better for it and closer to your goal. How do you realize a goal, a dream, unless you allow yourself to dream? As Emerson said best, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.” And if what lies within us is our best part, why then do we rarely find and often devalue the experience or its expression?

Oprah understands this.

It doesn’t take a woman to recognize the heart is home to everything. We just recognize it sooner than most men.

Thanks for letting me share [grin].

Ooooh.



Ford GT $150,000.

Just stumbled on this. Considering the last post on feeling over logic maybe this is what that Jung guy calls "synchronicity." I'm sticking with Ooooh.

Housewives.... Redux

Simran points out in comments that he was being facetious and begs the mercy of the Estrogen Goddess (Hey, I married a Warrior, it's a move I've been perfecting for years):

I think that business has lagged behind in realizing what appeals to women, and that there is tremendous potential for those that choose to do things right.

A successful business today is different from a successful business 40 years ago - the responsiblities have changed, and emotion is a part of that.

Fair enough. But, as they say, many a truth spoken in jest. It was a prototypical example of a real problem.

That 40 years-change example seems right give or take. We've mastered the scientific method and global overnight delivery, but those are all the "easy" problems if I may be so bold. They merely require an understanding of sequencing, logistics and statistical analysis. What the hell--they require analysis. These are primarily left cortex skills, and vital, but only half the equation.

Many messes I get to witness or help clean up are due to the fact that some (most?) business thinkers proudly wear their rationality on their sleeve, but when stressed or challenged, they revert to limbic and self-defeating behaviours they still insist are rational. In denying the validity and impact of feeling--their own and others--they guarantee negative outcomes because of the imbalance from this prejudice.

In a way, we become irrational in our rationality, unwilling to call a spade a spade and say, "I don't know", or "I made it up", or "we got lucky".

There's no shame in this. There is, however, plenty to dole out when we walk away from it's Elephant-in-the room influence. "Contempt before exploration leaves us in ignorance" is the essence of a quote from Herbert Spencer. It causes many of us to view innovation purely in terms of silicon chips or delivery systems, leaving a whole host of "business leaders" unaware and unarmed as they enter what's now being coined "the experience economy" or an "era of transformation."

Many can finesse a balance sheet within a nanometer and yet have little intuitive sense of the deeper meaning of the products and transactions and urges behind those numbers. If you can't understand you can't describe, and you can't teach. If you can't teach, you can't replicate on command. No command means no ability to reasonably manage, forecast and plan. And that means no pudding.

Leaders who fess up and admit this common understanding deficit and resulting urge to overcompensate, to deny imbalance, end up learning amazing things and profiting from them.

Andy Pearson--a subject in the original Oprah!/Business Leader debate--is but one of many examples of the benfits of evolving this understanding.

I think this is a very salient and productive topic. I'd love to hear more opinions from all corners.

How much skill does it take to exploit the emotions of housewives?

The Harvard Leadership Institute study mentioned a few posts back has generated its first subjective disagreement: Is Oprah! a "business leader"? [via Simran and Canadian Headhunter.]

It seems Harvard's Leader Database has named Oprah Winfrey to their Pantheon, and Simran begs to differ, quoting a Fortune article where the Diva of self-development chirpily proclaims: "I can't read a balance sheet!" In Simran's book, this makes her a powerful, successful Brand (Oprah!^®) but not the vaunted "Business Leader™". Well, people of goodwill can disagree, and if you want to witness that angle of the debate, it's here.

But, in the course of making his point, Simran notes:

...I've stated before that I admire her for her accomplishments, and she can read her market well (although I'm not sure how much skill it takes to exploit the emotions of housewives), but it is her attitude towards business skills that dismisses her as a business leader.

...how much skill it takes to exploit the emotions of housewives...

Oooh, boy. I'll leave aside "exploit" because, well, you gotta walk before you can run: In that tight little paragraph I see so much of the "urge to converge", reductive, cortical thinking that troubles business in these times of extreme flux.

How much skill does it take? According to Nielsen and Pew, J.D. Power Surveys, and PTA polling, it obviously takes more skill than Networks and Advertisers, Retailers and Manufacturers, School Boards and Politicians can muster.

Women are fleeing broadcast TV, yet cable remains a predominantly male medium. Where are they? Complaints of shoddy products and inneffectual service seem to plague a durable goods value chain that comprises largely of women-influenced purchases. Standards of Learning Tests and time-pressured 10 year-olds are an increasing worry to mothers and predominantly female classroom educators.

And who's calling the shots? Why, it's us proudly non-emotional boys with our sliderules. The Masters of the Universe who delight in reminding everyone that "It's not personal, it's business."

That is, until the 10k's bleed red and people are mapping out egress. We boys--the smart ones, at least--then have our often temporary epiphanies: Hey, this feeling stuff matters.

I won't bore you with more details, because we all know the following to be true, and we fight it at our peril: nobody ever threw themselves on a hand-grenade for a balance sheet.

Now, how about doing so for a true and powerful feeling of connection, protection, edifying self-image, commitment?

You betcha. Every day.

Hard to quantify? Sure. Non-discursive? Certainly. But keep trying. And don't look down your nose at the magic emotion can perform. If that's still hard to get your head around, I'll offer a specific: If customer service matters one whit to your enterprise, you'd better be exploring and amplifying the concepts behind that "squishy" word we call compassion--and mean it. Because it, Compassion, and it alone, is what compels and impels real CSM. Period.

Do I feel strongly about this? Is it showing? Good. So did another guy. His name was Ogilvy, not Oprah. And HE unequivocally belongs in the Pantheon of Business Leaders.

He said:

"The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife."

Why won't Donald Trump hire "Donald Trump"?

Daniel Gross at Slate has an interesting take:

In The Apprentice, Donald Trump set out to find his doppelgänger, the next aggressive, combed-over, self-important tycoon. But from a field populated with prickly, quirky, and assertive mogul-wannabes, Trump has narrowed his choices to a pair of mild-mannered guys: Kwame Jackson and Bill Rancic....

To a large degree, The Apprentice mimicked Trump's business. Most of the tasks the apprentice-wannabes tackled involved selling goods and services—lemonade, art work, a rental apartment, celebrity auction items, a party room—to gullible members of the public eager for a brush with boldface names at inflated prices. It is telling that no task involved, say, reading a balance sheet or a loan-amortization schedule—skills that are essential for real-estate development but in which Trump's record is less than stellar.

But over the last several weeks, as the crowd was winnowed from eight to the final two, Trump systematically weeded out the contestants who shared his style. Virtually all of the final eight worked in sales or marketing—except Kwame. But Trump found each of them wanting....

Of course, both Kwame and Bill seem like good, capable guys. They didn't ruffle feathers, play mind games with fellow contestants, or lie. They didn't incite fear, desire, or envy, which is one of the reasons they survived week after week. They both seemed grounded and capable of having a conversation about someone other than themselves. They're the kinds of guys The Donald would probably like his daughter Ivanka to date. And the kinds of guys who would make fine executive vice presidents and middle managers at a Fortune 500 company. The show that was supposed to mint New York's next brash entrepreneur has instead given us the Organization Man, 2004.

Don't trump Trump? Why cannibalize the Flagship Brand? Maybe it takes a BS-er to spot a BS-er. Stay tuned.

Okay, now this is getting ridiculous.

Or maybe not. Given all my harrumphing about leadership and courage and brand and yadda-yadda on these pages, this was downright eerie.

Rob over at BusinessPundit has this:

A Harvard initiative has brought us the Great Business Leader database. There is an interview with Tony Mayo, the project director, here. This project has given us a new buzzphrase - contextual intelligence. According to the project, it can make all the difference.

Contextual intelligence is the ability to understand the macro-level factors that are at play during a given period of time. For our study, we looked at six contextual factors that shaped business during the last century and continue to shape it in our present century: government regulation, labor, globalization, technology, demography, and social mores. Within each decade of the twentieth century, these six factors ebbed and flowed, coalescing in unique combinations. A business leader's ability to make sense of his or her contextual framework and harness its power often made the difference between success and failure.

Interesting. I'll have to chew on this for awhile and post more on the topic once I have digested it.

Hmmmm.... Contextual Framing. Contextual understanding. Leading by context. Sensemaking. Harnessing latent power. Sounds familiar.

Here you go, Rob, some food for thought.



You quantify these according to a super-hyper-top-secret approach and optional Dick Tracy Decoder Ring that I can't blab about here. What's the general idea? From our old (sorry, being revamped) website...

What is a conceptual framework? In our view it's not getting caught up in your knickers--keeping your eye on the big picture while not floating off into space. Most important, it's a means to guide thinking, careers, organizations, brands or bake sales to self-replicating and surprising results.

A conceptual framework is not a box to put people in or to get outside of. It's literally a frame and a frame only. It's a geometric and philosophical diagram of what you do, what you believe, what you want and what you will and won't do to achieve those things. As a leader or owner of an organization, it's what you create before anything else, because, in times of indecision or crisis or plenty it will be your only intuitive, impartial and sublimely practical partner. it will make decisions for you. It will manage while you're on vacation. It will hire the best available people and turn away the unacceptable and unmotivated.

It's a counter-intuitive concept at first glance, since many of us have been taught that management and leadership, or persuading and inspiring, or acting and achieving, are the same thing. Well, they're not.

Leadership is not management. Management is management. Leadership is not inspiring others. Leadership is guiding others to self-inspire. Simplicity is not brevity. Simplicity is clarity. And simplicity is not an elevator speech.

Elevator speeches designed to impart the essence that something is worthwhile and worth listening to are myths. They are the result of impatient people trying to appease other impatient people. An elevator speech, if there is such a thing at all, should be a powerful connective moment that has the receiver reaching for the emergency stop button between floors. And then, cancelling her "important meeting" to beg you to share more. Seldom do "elevator speeches" even get close to this level of resonance or relevance or coherence.

Feature advantage benefit will not do it. Flowery prose about your company's competitive advantage won't do it. What will? The only thing that matters. The most basic thing that our impatience does much to squelch, yet the one thing that business or anything worthwhile is fundamentally all about: your search to become the idealized version of yourself. Your, our, everybody's need to be "a bigger better me."

When you create a brand, or a workspace for your people, or a retail environment where consumers meet your products and your people, do these things intuitively answer: "How can this experience make me a better version of myself?" That's an important question, because the answer is what separates the winners from the losers in an increasingly complex age where companies and employees and consumers are growing apart, not closer together. In this context, an organization's shared purpose, it's brand, is DNA . And it is the most important thing you can discover, not create, for your company.

©2001-2003 Alchemy LLC

Double hmmm... I like how all these guys are thinking. Finally.

Now, should I sue or ask them for a job? Maybe I should just "go Trump" on our web guys tomorrow?

Yeah, that's it. Then I'll fire myself.

[edited 4-14-04]

Business needs a Chief Courage Officer.

UPDATE: Courage needs a companion]

Did you see "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" this morning? If not, you didn't miss much with regard to politics. But you did miss a very powerful commercial launching a new governance-risk-leadership initiative from Price Waterhouse Coopers.

They ask a key question: Is Corporate America becoming too risk averse? Implicit in this question: Is that risk aversion oddly damaging the integrity and capacity of business for profit and good?



The spot is on their site, here--it's worth the 6mb download: [scroll down for link "Is the Chief Courage Officer a person, a position or a philosophy?"

The accompanying section of their website starts with this:

John Maynard Keynes called it the "animal spirits," that intangible quality required to move forward.... Where does your company stand on the courage continuum?

The true spirit of American business rewards those who evaluate risk and make smart decisions. But the results of our latest survey of nearly 1,400 CEOs in 40 countries are evidence that this spirit has been tamped down by recent events.

* When asked if the current business climate was making companies excessively risk-averse, 11 percent of CEOs said yes. 46 percent said it was making companies somewhat risk-averse.
 
* Although US CEOs remain confident about their prospects for revenue growth this year, more than two-thirds (68%) believe the current environment is making companies risk-averse.

* Only 5% of US CEOs say they are significantly more aggressive in their attitude toward risk-taking, with 25% saying they are definitely less aggressive.

One CEO said in our survey: "You have to determine what kind of risks you can afford. It's like walking over a wire. Technically, there is not that much of a difference if the wire is one meter high or 50 meters high. Technically it's the same—but there is still a big difference."

So how do you make sure you have the systems in place to tell you what is a risk worth avoiding and what is an opportunity worth pursuing?

This is where the mandates of new legislation can present opportunities far beyond just legal compliance. An organization that has strategically integrated governance, risk management, and compliance can form an ethical and operational backbone against which the business can be managed.....

These guys are the big dogs. In their 2004 survey [PDF] of CEOs, with particular attention to Enterprise Risk Management, they recognize that the Statue-sense visually depicted in brain, metaphor, archetype, brand is a huge unmet "feeling" and ambition in business that's causing harm to organizations large and small. They also recognize that the people aren't the problem, and that the culture of numbering before sensing, organizing without human and contextual understanding is detrimental to healthy growth and confident, sustainable decision-making in fluid times. As such, it is judged a large missed opportunity which they seem finally willing to admit...

Life is too short. It is also measured in height, not weight.

My words, not theirs, but close enough.

The TV spot to introduce their finding succinctly puts into 60 seconds what a 1000 page survey and hundreds of meetings can't: Business can and should be a heroic calling. Plant your flag and dust off your ambition; meaning's coming to town, and he's bringing integrity with him.

Bravo, Price Waterhouse Coopers. Bravo for bravery.

[update: Courage needs a companion]

---

for more on this theme scroll down for:

• Heroes for hire
• Doing or Being? Branding or Becoming?
• A brand is?

"Why should I include operations and field people in brand development?"

Got this interesting question earlier in the week.

Short answer: So they don't have to make s**t up.

(Pardon my language, it was a manly-man meeting. We also grunted a lot.)

Seriously, why the effort? Well, you're building (or refining) a brand. One you hope will be a powerful purpose engine if you're being conscientious. What you learned in the course of learning about yourselves can be of great help to others, a lot of others you never get to meet or see. But your employees will. Do we trust that they'll follow a script well? Have we scripted every possible circumstance so whatever comes out of their mouths, whatever solution they offer rings true to all the other messaging and communication and stuff you're throwing money at? Wait. Who believes and trusts someone who parrots back rote, scripted answers? How about when the unexpected happens? When presented with an unusual circumstance, as a representative of the brand what font of knowledge, language and manner do they refer to?

All that money spent on "branding" and what do you get? Deer. In. Headlights. Or a freelance response that may or may not finesse the situation, but probably doesn't reinforce a strategic market position. Unless of course, "shoot from the hip" is your market position.

Uhhhhh....

This is why top-down, outside-in brand initiatives lose their appeal and become bend-over-here-it-comes-again eyerollers. Branding ubiquitously crystallizes the loose understanding employees may have rattling around in their heads about an organization, and shapes it into a compelling portable, personal narrative that applies 9-5 too. Authentic people don't need a script. Again, they don't have to make s**t up.

But, you have to know what you've learned and be able to share the rationale and result for others in order to make brand an adaptable, authentic persuasive tool. If you know who you are and like yourself for