Posts tagged enlightened conflict
rome & atlanta have something in common
Feb 8th
So.
Whoda thunk Rome and Atlanta would have something in common.
Not a Bernini statue (although Atlanta has a rusting Olympic torch).
Not a square… albeit it is really a circle <St. Peters> (although Atlanta has a dome that would make the Vatican envious).
Snowplows.
Neither of them has any snowplows.
This week Rome had an Atlanta-like freak winter snowstorm of eight inches of snow. Apparently Snowdrifts reached 6 feet outside the city (not sure how that happens with 8 inches of snow but … whatever ..).
Cars were abandoned on roads.
Grocery stores were running out of milk & bread (someday someone will have to explain the correlation between snow/ice & milk/bread).
I heard that even dogs & cats started living together (sorry … Ghostbusters reference).
Anyway.
Italian newspapers reported Rome has only three true snowplows. But. Italians being industrious folk … have rigged up some tractors to help clear streets.
Ah ha!
But here is where Atlanta could learn something.
The Italian National Civil Protection Agency handed out 4,000 shovels to residents.
Shovels.
What an awesome idea.
Could anyone speculate the response in America if the government suggested that in times of snow you, god forbid, take a shovel (we will give you for free) and shovel your own streets.
Yikes.
The National debt debate would pale in comparison.
Ah.
But what if we encouraged everyone to do it in Italian?
To shovel: spalare
A shovel: badile
Ah.
But if you have any doubts as to the smarts of the Italians … they actually disrobed a woman with a shovel (albeit a big one) … on television … http://www.break.com/index/woman-stripped-by-mechanical-shovel.html
Show this to Atlantans and I bet guys will be lining up to shovel on their own.
For the women?
Geez. Even their shovels look like designer shovels.
but.
This isn’t about shovels.
This is about the fact that neither Rome nor Atlanta hasn’t any snowplows.
How about that?
Enlightening one may even say.
hard choices
Jan 25th
Ok. Let’s talk a minute about Kodak.
And the fact that their demise had nothing to do with lack of foresight or inability to innovate (because they actually invented the digital camera). Kodak is about leadership, or the lack thereof, and people and decisions (or the lack thereof). 
When an iconic company and brand like Kodak goes bankrupt everyone should think about hard choices and people who make them.
Oh. And people who don’t make them.
I am sure in 1976 when Kodak had 90% of film and 85% of camera sales in the US and was regularly rated one of the world’s five most valuable brands that it would seem inconceivable to company decision makers that the company could disappear. I do not have to imagine that we the people couldn’t conceive it.
In addition.
What’s not often recognized is that it was actually Kodak that invented the digital camera (in 1975). And, interestingly, four years after that a Kodak executive issued a report that predicted, in some detail, how different parts of the market would switch from film to digital with an inevitable digital mass market by 2010 (whew. Pretty close, huh?).
Look.
This is surely not the first time a company, and its leaders, has decided it is so self-important it can ride out what is happening in the market.
But I believe people are focusing on the wrong things.
Successful organizations are rarely successful because of foresight (or fortune telling or predicting the future). They are typically successful due to thoughtful reaction and response to change … and making the inevitably hard decisions when the change is truly disruptive to their core business.
Yes.
Decisions get significantly harder when a company is faced with truly market disruptive innovations/actions.
And, no, corporations don’t have to inevitably die. It depends entirely on their adaptability.
So. Let’s talk about the decisions to adapt.
What I mean by that is … why couldn’t Kodak and its leaders make the hard choices to avert this demise?
I disagree with the popular opinion that it was their lack of vision with regard to the role digital in the photo business that led to their demise.
Why?
Many organizations make big innovation or lack of vision mistakes and don’t go bankrupt. Why don’t they? They make the hard decisions to course correct.
Yup. Hard decisions are called hard because they are just that – hard.
Difficult.
Not soft.
Not soft?
“I want (and need) to make significant changes. But I want to retain the core.”
(Oops … that is decision with high potential for ‘soft characteristics’).
Why? That core, or what is deemed most important, always seems to grow and grow when being discussed internally. It is almost within the DNA of an organization to think in these terms. And, inevitably, those ‘significant changes’ become soft changes.
Hard means sacrifice. Not cutting back on the decision. Making a real sacrifice.
I wrote about it in a post called “how far would you go to solve a problem?” http://brucemctague.com/how-far-would-you-go-to-solve-a-problem
Hard decisions could have saved Kodak. I truly believe that.
But let’s maybe discuss why hard decisions are hard to make (even by people who are quite capable of making a good hard decision).
Here is something to ponder.
Hard choices harden the person who makes them.
You have to harden yourself. You have to harden yourself, insulate yourself a little, from the human aspects of the decision and focus on the bigger picture and the horizon. Please don’t mistake this for minimizing the ‘little people’ or the individual. This is the forest or trees type decisions leaders need to make. It may sound callous but it is just like firefighting a big fire … burn some trees to save the forest.
Oh. And sometimes burn a shitload of trees to save the forest.
Leaders make the same decisions. In this case it is people & buildings and not trees.
Regardless.
The big hard decisions, when they are made, harden you as a person. It’s just life. It’s not personal.
Here is what makes it even tougher.
I believe all of us who make hard decisions worry a little bit that it … well … becomes too easy.
That we become so hard that we lose sight of everything else.
Oddly Richard Gere in Pretty Woman reminded us of this – if you got past the fact he was hiring a hooker in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel – in that his character lost sight of ‘being human’ as he became quite good at making hard decision for business successes.
And it was a true depiction of what can happen. Hard decisions are difficult because there is not only a financial risk & toll … but a personal toll. Each one affects you.
As with everything in life (it seems) … it is a balancing act.
I say all of this to try and share that there is a human aspect of any hard decision. And leaders don’t overlook that (despite what everyone else may want you to think).
Every one understands the repercussions.
Every. One.
Now. Having said that.
Someone at Kodak couldn’t make the hard decision.
I truly believe that.
Were they soft with regard to people or whatever? Heck. I don’t know. I believe they just inevitably made soft decisions. Soft decisions that possibly gave a glimmer of hope but once you begin the slippery slope of business issues (particularly if you are a large company and gravity really takes over) the glimmer becomes dimmer and dimmer over time.
To stop the slide a really hard decision needed to be made.
A big hairy audacious decision.
Anyway. I often believe business leaders could learn a lot from the military on how to win a war.
Do I believe a general wants to lose a single soldier’s life? No. He does not.
Do I believe a general understands that he needs to lose soldiers’ lives? Yes. He does.
Do I believe those decisions weigh upon him (even if we elect to judge the decision on the final successful outcome)? Yes. I do.
But they make the hard decisions.
And no one at Kodak did make the hard decision.
It wasn’t lack of foresight.
It wasn’t a lack of understanding of what was happening in the market (trust me … they probably saw dozens of reports of what was happening in the marketplace).
It was a lack of ability to make the hard decision.
And … it’s a shame.
facts and creation
Jan 23rd
“Without the hard little bits of marble which are called ‘facts’ or ‘data’ one cannot compose a mosaic; what matters, however, are not so much the individual bits, but the successive patterns into which you arrange them, then break them up and rearrange them.” - The Act of Creation
I find it tragic to watch bright, energetic youth become lethargic and uninspired in the workplace.
Yes. Tragic. Because it is such a waste of not only mindpower but, well, will power. And it is also tragic to the work company because lethargy does not lead to ideas/ideation/creative thinking.
To me? The real problem lies with the older folk (in manager positions) who seem to lack a comprehensive relevant view of learning. Or maybe better said … they have an archaic way of viewing the way it should be done.
There are a lot of leaders (management whatever you want to call them) who appear to be guilty of classifying learning as being a difficult and frustrating experience.
This is in combination with the fact they also tend to have odd views on ‘how to make it fun.’ Oh. And to complete that thought … they have a belief that they have to ‘make it fun’ because learning is difficult/frustrating. Therefore it is a flawed belief system.
Look.
Creative thinking and innovation does not arise out of a vacuum but must be supported by a culture that encourages people to experiment. To experiment with facts, with ideas and products. With the hard little bits of marble as it were.
Original thinking and new ideas has to be nurtured and rearranged in successive patterns … not destroyed and scattered.
We can all encourage creativity by helping young people learn to assess the bits of marble and take intellectual risks in their work & ideation. Does this have to be “made” fun? Nope. And it is, frankly, silly to think it has to be.
Instead this is like providing a spark to combustible matter. I am not suggesting it should be painful but rather fun is slightly less relevant than providing the inspiration to learn and become engaged.
Ultimately I don’t believe management should teach people how to create ideas.
The goal should be to prepare young people to be competent and original in their thinking.
Do that and they will create mosaics like you have never seen before.
Oh.
And in successive patterns.
(by the way … that is a good thing)
black white and gray
Jan 15th
“In the course of your education you’ve always been taught to look for the right answer but you must also know that in life sometimes the right answer is that there isn’t one.”
- Mr. Feeny, Boy Meets World.
So.
I do know for sure, having been in the business world for too many years to count, that rarely is there one answer to the question … or challenge … or whatever.
There are multiple “right” answers to just about everything.
And I guess, if I want to get philosophical, that makes me wonder if anything is certain or concrete anymore.
Maybe I really am getting old … but black & white seemed clearer to me years ago.
In fact, some of my past team members may remember the “McTague good – bad scale.”
I would often simply sum up something by saying “well, on the McTague good – bad scale, well, that would be good.”
(or bad when appropriate)
These days I almost feel like I would have to shift the scale to a rating instead of an unequivocal good or bad.
Is there truly an unequivocal non debatable good and bad?
Or a right and wrong?
How about truth or lies? (where omission can be deemed a ‘lie’)
Or is it just mixed together and upon us to decide for ourselves?
Oh.
And say we decide for ourselves … judge our own actions … but the other person has a different judging scale. What happens then? Who is right or wrong?
(hey. maybe there is a new business idea here where everyone carries a little card they can hand someone before speaking which outlines the boundaries of their ‘persona right & wrong’ scale.)
Anyway.
Does the end really justify the means when it comes to good or bad or right or wrong?
And is it your end or ‘their end’ that really matters in your own black or white judgment?
It kind of makes you question the whole concept of ‘Is everything either black and white’ or even worse is anything black or white?
Or is everything somewhere in the middle, in the gray?
Wow.
Sadly this make you start believing the world is built in shades of gray. Everything becomes negotiable, flexible or left to interpretation.
Maybe that is life.
Because the reality in day to day life is sometimes we are forced to bend the truth or sometimes transform it because we’re faced with things that we did not choose to happen but are demanded to deal with it.
And sometimes ‘bending the truth’ simply catches up to us.
And it makes me wonder if this is right.
So.
If there is anything that is ethical in our day, where is the line drawn?
Is it simply if what we feel is right … well … then it really is.
And if we are forced to do what we think is wrong, should we do it anyway or reap the consequences that come with refusal to go along with the way life pushes us?
Ok.
All of that makes my head hurt.
I know one thing for sure … I would like to be certain of one thing.
That somewhere there really is an absolute truth.
Somewhere.
Tricky to find but there.
Maybe that is the truth.
That it is a journey for truth.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm … I like that (although that is a gray answer isn’t it?).
Maybe the best way to think about black, white and gray is this way:
“Dawn and sunset are the times when Nature herself is unstable and in flux. The nocturnal world and the daytime world are meeting, and for a brief time coexisting. It’s not a neat hard cut, but a blurred, irregular dissolve. These moments are the seams in existence through which we can get a glimpse of the deeper, fundamentally random, chance workings of a system in which we are only a small, insignificant player.” Bill Viola
Is it possible we can find solace in this question through some poetic thought like this?
Shit. I don’t know. Most of us would seek to find some more clarity then this.
But maybe he is right. Maybe truth coexists in day and night.
Blurred by the edges of right and wrong.
I do know no one will ever get “black & white” right all the time.
But I imagine that is not a reason I shouldn’t try for the absolute at all times by constantly seeking ‘truth’ whatever that may be.
Make the attempt to find the black or the white.
Avoid the grey.
And maybe this is the best reason of all:
“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.” - Ayn Rand
Avoid gray because it is evil.
















