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“The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.”

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Albert Einstein

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“We need timeless principles to steer by in running our organizations and building our personal careers. We need high standards — the ethics of excellence.”

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Price Pritchett

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Ethics are our morals in action. Ethical behavior is the system we develop framed within our moral code. Our moral code, or our morals, are a system of beliefs emergent from our values. Values are the foundation of our ‘right/wrong judgement’ which create some belief system. This is personal, an individual decision, not universally accepted.

“values are our measures of importance, whereas ethics represent our judgments about right and wrong”

(Shockley-Zalabak 1999, p. 438)

It may seem like I am parsing thought here, however, in the business world all the words get tossed around flippantly (interchangeably) – particularly when it comes to culture. It is important because culture is emergent, not dictated. Culture is a collection of individuals, with individual values, who act in a coherent behavioral fashion, within an organization (where the systems enable or suffocate the individual behavior). I say this because this is when “principles” comes into play. Principles encourage a specific coherence not by dictating but rather by establishing some common agreement. In other words, despite each person having their own value prioritization, the organization establishes its value prioritization (establishing not what to do, but what not to do).

Look. Here is a truth.

We don’t really like to admit it but Life, in general, more resembles a constant teetering on the edge of a slippery slope than anything else (especially with regard to ethics, i.e., “doing the right thing.”). Life, and business, constantly, relentlessly forces you to make, well, ethical choices. Now. They may not look like ethical choices, but if you look real closely you will see the face of ‘right or wrong’ staring at you wagging its finger. We don’t look that closely because it would force us to admit:

• Right & wrong is often contextual
• Right & wrong is often not a clear black or white
• Right & wrong is often measured, ultimately, in consequences not actions, yet, we are demanded to choose right or wrong and act now

You will most associate this constant teetering (also a recognition of being on the slippery slope of fading ethics) as “just this once” behavior. We don’t really like to admit it because ‘just this once’ tends to be used to explain away some of our more dubious behavior and decisions.

This ‘dubiousness’ gets couched in a variety of ways. Safety. Utility. Benefits (functional and ‘to me’). We find a lot of ways to justify our behavior, decisions and attitudes before we ladder up to ethics. As my friend Faris Yakob (see image) suggests it is almost a Maslow-ian decision model. Its not that we ignore ethics or even not care about ethics its just we prioritize a number of things before we get to ethics. This suggests ethics is not a foundation from which decisions emerge, but rather are a final, fairly wide, box in which a decision has to be checked against.

source: Faris Yakob

If that is true, then ethical fading is commonplace, yet, justified by ‘pragmatism’ criteria. I bring up pragmatism because, whether we admit it or not, unless you actually think about ethics, morals and values (in a non-meta philosophical way) then it becomes a little more difficult to understand how principles can play a fairly important pragmatic guardrail role. The truth is that ethics are constantly challenged, in context, by safety and utility. For example, would we steal to feed our children or lie to keep us safe.

Sound moral judgment is rooted in strong values and acted upon by our ethics. An organizational judgement, a collection of these individuals, is herded in common principles.

Principles, yes, before you despair, principles guard against ethical fading. Principles are the cornerstones of your ethical building. Without principles you have no solid ground to stand on in a world constantly trying to tip you over into a variety of holes, slippery slopes and dead-end tunnels.

‘Principle’ is defined in Nuttall’s Concise Standard Dictionary of the English Language as, “n. the source or origin of anything; a general truth or law comprehending many subordinate ones; tenet or doctrine; a settled law or rule of action; to impress with any tenet; to establish firmly in the mind.”

Principles protect, in a very fragile way, against ethical fading.

They do so in a number of ways

1. They establish a foundation, or a moral filter, for ethical behavior. Maybe call them the ground rules of how you assess what is right versus wrong
2. Unfortunately, the foundation is a framework not a “how to do” manual. Therefore upfront they help define exceptions to the ground rules and, yes, we will always find some exceptions. Some ‘blurring’ of the guardrails as it were.
3. Unfortunately (part 2), this blurring, while not always creating ‘just this once’ behavior, it CAN create just this once behavior which is, well, the slippery slope of ethical fading. In this situation principles can actually be the solid lily pads of ‘no more’ certainty from which one can stop the slide down the slippery slope of ethical fading.
4. Unfortunately (part 3), principles, while resilient, are not immortal. Facing the onslaught of ethical fading they can, well, fade and once they have made their last stand you are screwed. You are on the slope and the only question left to answer is how far down the slope you end up.

So, despite their fragility, let me talk about principles.

“The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are. And if our words and our actions come from superficial human relations techniques (the Personality Ethic) rather than from our own inner core (the Character Ethic), others will sense that duplicity. We simply won’t be able to create and sustain the foundation necessary for effective interdependence.”

Stephen R. Covey

To me principles revolve around a discussion of soul (selling your soul ). Some people may disagree with me but, to me, soul represents the intersection of I & We. It gives us life energy (call it our subconscious passion). It what joins us together with an external shared common vision – kind of our common value proposition for Life. It creates a connective tissue for, well, acting in a humane fashion with other humans. It is within this intersection in which we seek the common ground between morals, ethics and value and arrive at a coherent principled behavior as a community or business organization.

Let me suggest 4 cornerstone principles (not ranked, just foundational):

• Inviting culture premised on affection for humanity. Lives are to be lived for others (therein lies where we gain meaning), not just for our own success and advancement. We must model lives that matter if we want to nurture into living lives that matter. We believe that we are not islands unto ourselves but social beings who need community to flourish and become our best selves. Believing you are in, and of, community.
• Commitment to character demands involving oneself into multiple traditions and frameworks for what makes up a good life (contextually expanding your view). This means accepting a responsibility to pose questions which introduce one to a variety of cultures and contextual questioning.

Believing that character takes involvement & commitment & work.

• Do good. I imagine I am suggesting that if you do good you will contribute in a meaningful way (some call this a purposeful life). We must simply follow Aristotle’s advice, or Emerson, that “the purpose of our examination is not to know what virtue is, but to become good.” The point is not merely to study the good, in a detached and academic way, but to invite oneself to develop as a person of character.

Believing that a virtuous life is not found in attitude, but behavior & actions.

• Be curious about everyone and everything. Keep your head in a swivel as context changes. Exhibit a dedication, imagination and commitment to context as the fertile ground for intellectual growth, knowledge and ethical resilience. Ethical resilience is NOT rigid ethics, but rather strongly held principles which can accommodate the nuances of cultural context (reflective of cultures surrounding the person and decision). This principle, in particular, does not dictate character, but is intended to provide a compass to help each person find their own path and to grow in their awareness of self (and others).

Believing principles are not steadfast and unmoving but rather depending on adapting to new learning.

I will note that all the Principles are solid in belief but adaptable to time, knowledge and context. This is a recognition that we, humans, are not of self but rather of something bigger – society, community, connectivity.

Yes. This suggests Principles are not simple, but complex.

This leads me to leadership.

Leadership can be of one’s own life or it can be in combination with other people. Regardless, someone must develop some skills for successful leadership – for self or for group.

The first is the mindset that leaders see leadership as a skill that needs to be continually developed and improved (active listening, giving feedback, talking to people).

The second is a recognition that certain things happen under the surface and have a significant impact on the performance of the team, such as interpersonal dynamics, the way individuals work, disputes and tension between people (typically originating from the past). Leaders have to have the skills to bring these things to the surface and resolve them.

** note: this is also true of self and inner conflict

The third is power and inclusion. Power dynamics effect any social structure (you are misguided if you don’t believe this). You have to recognize, and acknowledge, power dynamics in order to be inclusive, empathetic and create complete connections. If you elect to ignore the relationship between power and ethical behavior, i.e., how power stresses individual values prioritization and behavior toward goals, you will ignore the truth that the more power you need, the more likely ethical fading is to occur.

That said. In old structures (hierarchy) power can be directed, but in future organizations power emerges (networks evolve) and leadership is expanding potential from emergent power dynamics. This will demand a different type of character. This type of character navigates the I, we, larger We dynamics of an interconnected life, business & society.

“Character, like oxygen, is most noticeable when it is missing.”

Richard Reeves

The new powerful leadership will not lead with power, but rather principled driven energy and instead of just accumulating wealth/profits/achievements, seek to accumulate outcomes to be proud of.

Look.

These are very strange times. I would not say it’s the worst of times, but it seems to be a world that demands binary, black & white stances despite the fact navigating ambiguity and uncertainty is the path to not only success, but progress. What I can say is that holding onto something in a black and white way in a world of swirling colors, and grays, creates an ongoing sense of uncomfortableness. Maybe worse is attempting to hold onto binaries you will slide down the slippery slope of ethical fading without even noticing until its too late.

And maybe that is where I will end. You would think ethical fading would be associated with gray and the graying of morals and choices, but its not. Ethical fading occurs one black & white step at a time.

In the end.

We often speak of “principled leadership” or desiring leaders to have principles. I would argue each of us, to be successful, need to grapple with our own relationship between values, ethics and principles. Because, in the end, while we may be grounded in our values and measured by our ethical behavior what will matter will be the principles which make all of these decisions coherent to our Life – what we will, or will not, do. Yes. Refusal of “ethical fading” suggests “we are what we refuse to do” or, as Paul Chippendale stated, “we are what we refuse to adapt to.”

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“The rules cannot be understood apart from the virtues at which they aim”

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Telos is the Greek word for a human’s ultimate aim. Its kind of the smart version of today’s dumbed down “individual purpose. It represents his ultimate purpose and function — an essential nature that can only be realized by throwing off the inertia of default desires and actively striving after it. Its kind of like attaining “what you could be”, your potential best, if you could clear the decks and do it. to be clear, this isn’t excellence, it is more about flourishing as a human being.

Which leads me to virtuous.

Here is what I mean by virtuous:

• Do good. I imagine I am suggesting that if you do good you will contribute in a meaningful way (some call this a purposeful life). We must simply follow Aristotle’s advice, or Emerson, that “the purpose of our examination is not to know what virtue is, but to become good.” The point is not merely to study the good, in a detached and academic way, but to invite oneself to develop as a person of character.

Believing that a virtuous life is not found in attitude, but behavior & actions.

I believe it was Aristotle who suggested being a good human was both functional and objective which means that being virtuous is not just lived within what you do (so asking to be judged by your actions may mean well but you are likely to be doomed within judgement of) but also within intent (your aspirations to be better). That said. I imagine the conflict of self, in life, mainly resides in the liminal space between who we are and who we could be at our best.

Which leads me to coherence.

Far, far, too often people suggest consistency is the key to attaining your purpose or even a life better lived. They would be wrong. It is coherence. Life, business, shit, everything, is driven by connections with others and other thoughts. And within each of those connections you have conversations – with others, their ideas and even in your own head. At some point, if you want to make any progress, this lends you some coherence within all the scattered ideologies and feelings and attitudes and opinions so you can shape some perspective. It shapes both imagination and reality all of which shapes identity.

I would argue they shape your telos as well as create the platforms for a better life, business, and society. And while these three things may never be completely in sync, I would argue that the constant coherence around seeking the sync is where things get better – everything.

That coherence establishes some parameters and ultimately people, not just an individual, get mobilized within those parameters to do better things, think better things, and become better.

I imagine this is an argument for each individual doing the right thing, and if they get close to individual telos, the greater good, the greater community and society, is positively impacted.

Which leads me to end with rules do not help.

While I don’t want to confuse, or conflate, morals and virtue, I will use philosopher Alasdair McIntyre, “when a moral culture lacks a teleological element, rules become the primary concept of the moral life” to make a point. Rules do not define behavior nor do they define virtue. Rules are a default mechanism for people too weak to decide what is right and what is wrong, what is virtuous and what is not.  Simplistically, a societal system, or even a business culture, which lacks a coherent understanding of its telos, there can only exist negative proscriptions for appropriate behavior, i.e., rules shape behavior. The reality is rules are not meant to move people toward meaning or purpose or mattering, they are simply reductive, and restrictive parameters, to basic behavior. If you want to be better, as a person, as a business, as a society, rules will not get you there. I am not suggesting rules should be abolished, but I am suggesting the closer we get to a true telos mindset, the less we will ever have to use rules. Ponder.

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“There are countless ways of achieving greatness, but any road to achieving one’s maximum potential must be built on a bedrock of respect for the individual, a commitment to excellence, and a rejection of mediocrity.”

Buck Rodgers

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While I have always been a Tom Peters fan, especially his book Thriving on Chaos, I have always chafed at The Search for Excellence. Ok. Let me be more specific.

First.

In Search of Excellence was the first book I faced in my career that became a ‘formula’ for business people I worked with. Normally sane thoughtful independent thinking business people (mostly men) would pull out the book or point to it on some shelf and would say “we need to do this.” Without question it became the first business bible, of many business bibles to come, of what everyone needs to do to be excellent. And while I could debate some aspects of the book itself suffice it to say, its good, has some great ideas, but is not a bible.

Second.

Excellence. While excellence seems like an innocuous helpful objective, when placed into a typical maniacal business environment (business pursuit of profits) excellence as an objective can become quite unhealthy. Its almost like perfection. Seeking excellence, and even perfection, can often make things better, but when they become objectives everyone gets measured in an “absence of” way <both are actually unattainable so when measured everyone will appear lacking>. When I was younger it was impossible trying to convince people excellence was a dubious objective at best. Later in my career as I got better at pointing out how good ideas can be misinterpreted and misused and become misguided objectives, I took this battle on more often (more on that later).

Then I found this snippet from a research paper (source lost):

In the eighties and nineties, N. Aubert and V. de Gaulejac (2007) argued, that the “ethics of excellence” in people management created the moral foundation of a system striving to control the totality of a person. In convincing employees that, by working for the firm, they were working for themselves, a complete blurring was made of professional and personal ambitions, and companies emerged as institutions capable of mediating individual destinies, supporting self-development, objects of true love, and in the end the only instrument able to fulfill the need for immortality of the self.

This work ethic creates particular interactions between people, interactions marked by the constant necessity to become visible. This quest for visibility takes the form of a new social game in which everyone is striving to capture the attention of others. In a sort of Goffmanian ‘parade’, self-branding and “newsing” oneself are ways to occupy the mental space of others and to stay on top of the competition. For businesses, being always present on personal communication channels, on webplatforms, etc., is a way to colonize the minds of their managers and to reduce their capacity to imagine another world.

The point here is that searching for excellence, when wielded as a management tool, became not only a power play, but as it became a standardized tool it became an imagination/innovation diminisher. As with most things business does, they decided to make the search for excellence more a ‘paint by numbers’ concept rather than a malleable concept to be applied differently in different contexts. What the idea lost was what Mary Parker Follett called “the law of the situation.” In other words, the situation, the context, dictates the application of an idea or concept – even excellence.

Third.

Excellence aside, there are a number of good well intended ideas that have driven many a good business person off the beaten path to success. Copying and standardization are the worst things that can ever be done to a good concept. I have known that for many many years and have therefore been a pain in the ass for many many years.

I have been a pain in the ass for years.

In mid 90’s I published the highly unpopular “customer is not king/queen” arguing that all it would do is create an entire industry of businesses chasing customer’s whims & wants consistently undermining expectations. My agency was not delighted. But it did.

In 2005 I published the ‘inside/out manifesto’ arguing to achieve highest order of value is thru organization knowing who it is, unequivocally accepting that, with a product as an extension of who they are (successfully addressing a need) matched with customers who want that combo. Branding people were grumpy.

In 2000’s when my agency introduced The Big Idea brief I skewered it as encouraging people to believe the only ideas of value were Big and encouraging clients to only be happy with so-called Big ideas & it would create a false culture in which we made ‘small’ shit, even small shitty ideas, look Big. Agency not happy. But it did.

In 2008 I skewered The Experience Economy (although I think it is one of most important business books/ideas of this generation) arguing it would spawn an industry of vapid ideas & meaningless products wrapped in experiences all the while espousing premium value. It has.

In 2010 I began harpooning customer centric arguing it only leads to unmet promises, false expectations & hollow value (internally & externally) within hierarchies. It demands distributed organizational autonomy or it creates no value. It has & it still does.

In Search of Excellence, Good to Great, Tipping Point … pick a book with a viable idea and it has been abused. The biggest abuse resides in taking one’s eye off the single most important thing – successfully implementing any of these good ideas to the highest order of value are contingent upon a consistently good product consistently delivered. My biggest issue is how all this stuff diverts people from the hard work of developing a meaningful product & creating value in it.

Let me end by circling back to a thought that may have not been highlighted enough. The Law of the Situation (Mary Parker Follett). I love ideas from smart people, I love books and I love learning new things. But. Everything is contextual. Everything. The law of every idea is overruled by the law of the situation. No idea’s maximum value can survive the context without some adaptation. In other words. Each situation has its own order and own concept. I imagine my point is that you can study excellence,  accountability methods, leadership principles, but, inevitably, all that matters is the Law of the Situation. Ponder.

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“a series of steps, each building on the last, but without a predetermined plan. We did what was necessary and as we made progress or ran into problems it became obvious what needed doing next. It wasn’t a straight line. We made mistakes and not everything worked. But we realized we were learning by doing.”

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“The devil isn’t just in the details. He’s in the definitions. And, most of all, he’s in the analytical distinctions: in the ability to tell one thing from another. To not mix things up.”

Hanzi Freinacht

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Where does all our crappy behavior and crappy perceptions of the world come from?

Like most things, it’s mainly the product of learned behavior. That may sound horrible, but we humans are imitation machines. Our subconscious minds constantly take in signals from the environment and integrate them into our mindsets, attitudes and, yeah, even behaviors, all of which end up guiding our perceptions and our actions. And while we want to blame social media, and media in general, the most influential part of any environment is the people in it.

Which leads me to a Toffler, Future Shock, thought.

….. impact of Warehouse of Images (before Instagram existed) …..

Pre-internet we were exposed to a fairly finite, and fairly rigid, sample of the human population to ‘imitate’ or judge our perceptions and behaviors. The people in our neighborhood. In our schools and libraries and community gathering places. At the grocery store. In our office. On the street. On the bus. We lived in smaller community echo chambers, where signals were fewer, and meanings/cues were clearer or, at least, more well defined. The internet exponentially expanded our universes wherein the number of signals we receive has increased exponentially and meanings/cues became scrambled into a moshpit of signals. Our common, well, any commonality, and agreed upon sensemaking lost clarity and gained some fairly vague outlines. In other words, social coherence lost accepted boundaries. Our imitation muscles were overworked as we attempted to learn behavior from a seemingly limitless onslaught of cues of which it became almost impossible to discern the majority from the minority.

Which leads me to the danger and opportunity.

We simultaneously see more crappy behavior than ever before, which creates a perception that everyone is crappy, and, yet, we see more kind and moral behavior than ever before (maybe just not from what we would have easily accepted as an established traditional local influencer in the past) which creates a perception that not everyone is crappy. Generally speaking, it is confusing. Are people good or bad? What that means is because we see more information about other people than ever before we need to be very, very, careful what we normalize because while we may not exactly imitate – we may simply begin accepting some version of crappy behavior. We see videos of crappy behavior of kids in schools, crappy crazy drivers, crappy acting adults arguing in grocery stores, let alone the insane amount of insane self made crappy video rants. All of these things we already knew happened occasionally, but virality implies it isn’t confined to the occasional.  And, well, what a culture sees, is what a culture becomes. The more a person sees something, especially another person’s actions, the more they will either gravitate toward it or simply accept it as “how we are” as people (whether we like it or not). It creates the message that “this is how society is.” Even if it is really not.

Which leads me to what we see (and what we become).

In the wayback machine, we had more control over what we would see. Plus. A smaller community controlled what we saw (in some form or fashion). Simplistically, we had to work harder to see the less-than-normal shit. The problem in today’s world is what we are ‘shown’ doesn’t care about proportionality so the ‘less-than-normal shit’ takes on an oversized shitstorm feeling of everywhere all the time. All this to say we get caught in the wretched inbetween of knowing that access to all this information makes us smarter, can make us safer, and actually can create a more equitable (accountable) society AND knowing that a consistent onslaught, or drip-by-drip, of exposure to crappy behavior, well, suggests we begin imitating some of that behavior in order to be ‘competitive’ in today’s crappy society/world. It’s kind of like the tragedy of commons just with behavior. This all breeds a sense of what is called ‘learned helplessness’. This is where we become conditioned to believe that a bad situation is unchangeable, resulting in an unrealistically negative view of the world and a sense of permanent crisis. Ultimately this eliminates hope, or diminishes it (through crappy perceptions), and we either disengage or assume some crappy behavior aspects.

Which leads me to creating a culture which we want people to see so it can become a better culture.

I have written far too often about how algorithms shape what we see and, therefore, shape culture (at least by my measure). But humans are smarter than algorithms, humans create algorithms, and algorithms do not have culture, do not understand culture nor do they even care about culture – algorithms feed people what they ‘say’ they want. Period. So, we can choose to spread the good stories and starve the bad ones of attention. Period. End of story. The stories we tell and we share, becomes what a culture sees and, ultimately, what it becomes.

By assuming this responsibility, hopefully, we learn something new, good; and we change course.

In the end.

Everyone should think about this a bit because the basic premise I offer is the thought if we continuously see crappy behavior, we will start doing some crappy behavior. A lot of people will balk at that. They will believe they can recognize crappy behavior as unacceptable and will never do it. Uhm. I am not so sure about that. I think it becomes just a bit easier to do some crappy things, on occasion, if you have a crappy perception of the context and think everyone else is going to be crappy. Shit. Think about how business culture works (and doesn’t). That said. Ponder. It feels important.

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… discovered a more complex problem. Most customers weren’t fed up with any one phone call, field visit, or other individual service interaction—in fact, most customers didn’t much care about those singular touchpoint events.  What was driving them out the door was something the company wasn’t examining or managing—the customers’ cumulative experience across multiple touchpoints, multiple channels, and over time.

Take new-customer onboarding, for example, a journey that spanned about three months and involved an average of nine phone calls, a home visit from a technician, and numerous web and mail interactions. At each touchpoint, the interaction had at least a 90 percent chance of going well. But average customer satisfaction fell almost 40 percent over the course of the entire journey. The touchpoints weren’t broken—but the onboarding process as a whole was.”

McKinsey: Touchpoints to Journey

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“Of course, disinformation,” Quinn said. “I can do that. I’ll leave out critical events, then I’ll put in false information and twist everything that has happened around into a vague, shadowy history that obscures what really took place.”

Terry Goodkind

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So. I pick up McKinsey white papers on occasion because, while bloated diatribes, they are typically frickin’ smart. My opening quote on the ‘touchpoint journey’ is from McKinsey.

Now. In the marketing & communications world touchpoint marketing has been around for decades by one name or another.  But recently I had to discuss it and ended up talking about it in a slightly different way than I have in the past. I had scribbled down “tactical connection engineers.”

What made me sit back on this a little was this applies to a communications professional as well as everyday schmucks like you & I <who take in communications & messages>.

Communications professionals as tactical connection engineers.

Communications people have had a logistical organizational problem with an effective touchpoint connection plan for years. We hire specialists and then ask them to drill down in their specialty to insure ‘the most effective plan of action within that touchpoint silo.’ This translates into a couple of things, assuming they do their job well,

<a> it will focus so much on the target, the consumer, in its intent to herd and persuade & ‘connect’ that it can very easily slip away from the business selling the shit, and

<b> while today’s business world vociferously balks at ‘purchase funnels’ the truth is that if you have a specialist within some touchpoint segment they may show you some hurricane like visual to show that in the swirl of a connection they herd someone into a ‘meaningful relationship’ stage … uhm … that’s a funnel.

In addition. I would suggest that with companies going to specialized partners and silos what could be construed as a ‘customer focus’ may actually exacerbate the problem as everyone goes running toward their own view of customers and journeys and, maybe worse, prioritizing shit on the journey based on their own budgetary limitations. These silos aren’t really customer focused people nor are they ‘strategic thinkers’, they are actually more likely to be tactical connection engineers.

Everyday schmucks as tactical connection engineers.

Let me explain this one a little because I think it would behoove communications professionals to think about us everyday schmucks like this more often. We tactically engineer our input. We do his to engineer the productivity in our life. Sometimes it may be fr pleasure but the majority of the time we are engineering on Life efficacy <efficient & effective>. I say this because while communications talk ad nausea about a non stop ever changing world they tend t view us everyday schmucks in some stagnant way. They don’t view us as “tactical connection engineers’ but rather simply prey for their own tactical connection engineering. Stupid.  We are tactically engineering our own connectivity on a daily basis dependent upon the context of the day, hour, moment.

Ponder that a second all you “highest order of personalization” advocates. Your head will explode if you ponder too long.

All that said.

While I am not a huge specialized fan, in a specialized world I would argue that holding the center is the most important thing — holding the center on functional offering, brand/company character lens and vision <let’s call that the company distinctness>. Holding the center on the grander strategy & the greater good <brand value> beyond the simple transactional connection objective. It insures whoever is doing whatever will at least be aligned on what really matters – what you are selling and who is selling it. It also insures the intense focus on connection doesn’t inherently strip away the substantive shit that makes up the greater value in the brand.

I cannot tell you how many times I have pulled the following lines from “The Second Coming” by Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

Siloes, or multiple partners, are the falcons. You need to make sure you have a falconer who can be heard <assuming you have a hierarchy type organization>. That means your tactical connection engineers need a head engineer <for ALL tactical engineers regardless of department or expertise>.

I have been asked a zillion times by my business owner friends I always tell them the same thing … do not hire multiple partners unless:

<a> you choose one as the one to hold the centre for you, or,

<b> you are strong enough to hold the centre yourself – and on b. I am honest enough to tell them that most companies/clients don’t really have that expertise to do that because it is far too easy to follow the next shiny object.

That is my #1 argument for finding one partner and using them well.

Now. Back to the risk in tactical connection management. Of course, it’s necessary to provide customers with what they say is important.  However, research consistently shows that it’s much more valuable to align customer experience investments to those elements shown to drive emotional connection, thus maximizing ROI while minimizing risk. For example, one research study showed customer-experience strategies that maximized emotional connection resulted in customers who are six times more likely to consolidate assets with the firm than customers who are highly satisfied, but not emotionally connected.

In the search for profitable organic growth, more and more companies are investing in the technological aspects of optimizing the end-to-end customer experience <each aspect of how customers interact with the company’s brand, products, promotions, and service offerings, on and offline>. They seek to optimize each touchpoint assuming by doing so they will optimize the entire ‘journey.’ They are wrong, in addition, most of these same companies lack a strategic objective for all the pieces & parts in the whole. This matters because without the strategy you gain efficiency (theoretically), but you lose the opportunity to increase customer value. This matters because without the strategy the tactical connection engineers just become the most efficient tactical engineers, not necessarily the most effective for the company.

Look.

I do think tactical connection engineers will also need to be better data interpreters <decoders>. Why? Well. data people are finally realizing to maximize customer value it isn’t about just customer satisfaction but also an emotional tier in which you appeal to some fundamental motivations and emotional motivators  <desire to feel a sense of belonging, to succeed in life, or to feel secure for details>. HBR has a nice article on this: “The New Science of Customer Emotions”).

In the end.

Touchpoint architecture is a good basic principled way of viewing things. Some people may argue against that, but it’s a framework, not a formula. I will say the larger issue is not the system itself but rather how the system is used, hence, my suggestion to have “tactical connection engineers.” Ponder.

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Gathering:

 accumulate, amass, assemble, bulk (up), collect, concentrate, congregate, constellate, corral, garner, group, lump, pick up, round up, ball, batch, bunch, cluster, huddle, heap, pile, stack, flock, herd, hive, pack, press, swarm, throng, combine, connect, join, link, merge, pool, unite

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Several years ago, in a piece called “thinking, decision making and leadership” I wrote this:

• Which leads me to declustering. Leaders like to cluster decisions and business like to cluster things. All are typically done because everyone believes it is more efficient and, possibly, more effective. Clustering is the unspoken organizational corrosive barnacle on the progress ship. It is true business, and clusters, arc toward replication. If a leader spots a ‘decisionmaker’ inevitably they will guide more decisions to that person simply. Decisions then cluster thereby making the overall – most clusters – desire to be involved in decisions to decluster. Yeah. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. By default, you’ve once again parsed out responsibility, not collaborative sensemaking, and created a different type of hierarchy. I am not suggesting some clusters aren’t better at making decisions than others. What I am suggesting is leaders’ natural instinct is NOT to spread sensemaking and thinking, but isolate so when convinced to distribute and spread, no matter how effective overall it may be, inevitably they will redistribute to a few – that’s the arc. Just ponder.

Several years ago I also wrote: “the natural arc of every business is to mediocrity.”

The two are related.

Yeah. I am saying clustering leads to mediocrity. That said, oddly, business tends to like clustering, or, they do not discourage clustering. Let me be clear. Given an opportunity to be excellent, a business will always choose the path to mediocrity. Yes. Always. What I mean by that is in every situation – customer service, capital investment, ideation, innovation, creativity, planning, strategy, implementation – given an opportunity to choose a Spinal Tap 11 choice, a business will always choose a 9 or below choice. And from there on out that ‘plus number’ begins diminishing bit by bit. And while I imagine I could point to a variety of reasons, let me focus on clustering as the culprit.

As soon as an “11” opportunity is identified, business will circle the wagons around some consensus data, group view, collective wisdom, whatever, which never raises the 11 to a 12, it only brings it down (usually significantly).

That’s clustering.

To be clear. Mediocrity is fairly equal opportunity employer. Data pools, cliques, opinions, specialists, likeminded clusters, all circle the wagons and transactional thinking actually (a) makes teams exclusive and (b) makes value finite and, yet, encourages a belief in exceptionalism (but a reality of mediocrity). From the ‘rational business’ perspective businesses like ‘clusters’ because they appear to be patterns (or some version of mass coherency) which they immediately associate efficiency and scale to. They don’t really care if the cluster benefits lose degrees of efficiency from that point on – they’ll flog the cluster until it is dead of anything good (or true value creating). Maybe worse is that over time clusters become ‘self-sealing belief’ parts within an entire system basically creating limits to tapping into the larger potential of the entire organization. That doesn’t mean they don’t offer value, its just that the value has limits and tends to stratify which makes them a bit more difficult to mesh with other components of the system. Clusters DO produce good things, but while those things seem good at scaling, it is not clear that they are necessarily good at innovation or anything ‘new’. Or another way to put it: clusters may might be good at exploiting (that is repeating a known winning pattern), but are less good at exploring (that is figuring out what needs to be done).

The corollary to that last sentence is clustering limits potential.

Business loves to cluster skills, but clusters tend to be herded into small clusters of micro skills in their macro skill puzzle. In this excellent video with Alain de Botton he points out that clusters are fragmentary in skills and interests and, yet, we are told what we are not good at, what we should focus on and then wealth is rewarded to that focus. In other words, we are told to cluster around a specific thing we may like or be good at and ignore (or relegate as a ‘hobby’) other skills and interests.

This has consequences beyond skills. The ways clusters interpret things do not translate neatly into larger decision trees. In addition. Decisions are not discrete, they are connected. A cluster may get parts of ‘now’ right, but the other parts may gather momentum or strength in the fact they were chosen as inconsequential in that ‘now’. In a cluster’s confidence lies its biggest risk. The truth is that, particularly in business, human expertise is usually tied to knowing what to look for – the nuances within hard data/information. Clusters become increasingly certain and blind to ‘new nuance.’ The repercussions to this is then a cluster is more likely elect to choose solutions or actions inconsistent with the problem/situation at hand but consistent with their view. That inconsistency can be in nuance or it can avoid some significant aspects, regardless, the consequences are often the same as the future unfolds from what was perceived as effective framing, but less-than-effective choice making. You have to decluster things. consciously. consistently, to optimize decisionmaking.

Which leads me to point out growth tends to polarize itself.

Cluster-driven growth is often spectacularly unprofitable. Business chases success/growth. Its inherent reaction to success is to milk that success until it is dry (albeit many businesses refuse to let go of even dry growth paths). Business uses math, numbers, relentlessly to pursue this objective. Reminder. It was Bernoulli who stated “mathematics alone does not capture a situation.” This is also true of a graph/dashboard. They simply inform or become a guide to a grander discussion of what exists and how to make sense of something, yet, business people cluster around dashboards and cluster energy/focus based on them.

“In a world glutted with information, the capacity to ignore selectively becomes ever more valuable … a system that is to control its environment successfully must adapt by constructing models that allow it to decide what information to get and how to act on it.”

Seth Lloyd, MIT

Business loves numbers. Which leads me to remind everyone one of businesses/s biggest lies is “the numbers never lie.” Numbers lie all the time. Even beyond how people torture numbers until they say what is wanted, numbers create clusters. Yeah. As soon as you find a number you like it becomes a magnet for other numbers, resources, energy, focus, etc. What this means is business relentlessly clusters resources against a diminishing growth opportunity. Invariably ROI can never really improve, in a meaningful way, but intrepid business people will always find ways to suggest things are good and getting better. Once again, it never hits 11 and is only getting closer and closer to 1. The only way to get off that slippery slope of lessening growth is, well, declustering.

Which leads me to power.

The issue occurs with, well, power. Those in power like evenness and replication and they view the only way to keep balance is to enforce it. They believe that no one else understands how to balance or maybe can even see the value of balance. They see themselves as being in the middle doing what’s best – for their sake – and they use ‘clusters’ as hammers. They cloak their hammers in ‘safety’, i.e., we keep clusters safe and the business safe. This gets tricky because most people clusters have an unhealthy trust in in larger systems with regard to what is beneficial TO the cluster which makes them less likely to realize when they (the cluster) has made a mistake AND less likely to realize when the larger system truly has something to offer that is beneficial to the progress/development of the cluster. All that said. Power clusters. Even though an individual in power is either (a) obliviously overconfident or (2) constantly paranoid, most individuals in power recognize they need other power players to dominate others. So whether it be by salary/$, titles, perceived meritocracy, education, or even psychotic authoritarianism, people will cluster for power – in implementing as well as in holding onto. Obviously, businesses should actively decluster power as much as possible to attain full potential.

“It’s a game of nanoseconds. Judgement calls have to slide through impossibly narrow doorways.”

Carolyn Barclay

Which leads me to data, technology and humans.

I have written a number of times about how technology can be used to decluster. In my unpublished book I even dedicate a chapter to how algorithms and technology can be used in a business infrastructure to nudge declustering to the benefit of sensemaking and gaining knowledge. That said. Technology amplifies everything – strengths & vulnerabilities – all of which stress the boundaries of any system. The corollary to this is the more you depend on technology the more likely a catastrophic even will occur (resolves little problems hiding the lurking catastrophe inside) because technology attacks/addresses things systematically while systems shape themselves organically (creating dissonance at some point). What that last mumbo jumbo sentence really means is that technology clusters shit by amplifying what people like and or are interested in. Sure. Machines and technology will often suggest potential actions and we may calibrate different paths with probabilities of success. The problem is that everyone will have the same input and if everyone does exactly what the input suggests everyone will, well, cluster.

Data and technology are inputs, but it is experience, wisdom, patience, and emotional fortitude that are the key ingredients when added to the inputs that result in differing results. And this is where clustering gets, well, fucked. Yeah. I just said clusterfuck. If people are clustered, they apply the same experience, wisdom, emotion against the same clustered data and technology, hence, the clusterfuck.

Experts always suggest the key to an algorithmic future is to be sure you understand what an algorithm is optimized for. I believe this is too simplistic.

“We know from biology that relentlessly preventing small problems can increase the risk of future big problems.”

Seth Blumsack

 

Not only are algorithms typically built to head off problems immediately (eliminate small problems), but how they get advice, information, determines how they behave. This has some very practical consequences in that, generally speaking, is more likely to present only catastrophic complex problems to the attention of clusters. Basically it ignores small problems/issues. Well. Anyone remember: “its never the elephants that kill you, it’s always the ants”? We design our systems, process and even encourage clusters, to focus on building elephants. We even build algorithms with that in mind. Clusters are elephants.

Which leads me to end with cluster narratives.

I don’t really know if clusters of people, or data, create narratives or if narratives encourage clusters. What I do know is a good story told well gets repeated over and over again creating a myth – and people cluster around myths. Generally speaking, myths aren’t very good for business. Myths get in the way of reality and are stubbornly resilient against alternative narratives (learning). So, yeah, I am suggesting declustering narratives (which is actually deconstructing narratives). This is a semi-important point as I circle back to an opening point: the arc of business is toward mediocrity. I cannot remember one business narrative myth that extols mediocrity, yet, by following most business narratives you are simply following the lure of mediocrity. Quite the paradox. It kind of feels like the only way out of that paradox is, well, declustering. Ponder.

——–

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”

Emily Dickinson

———

Life is startling.

Well.

That is if you let it be.

So often we spend time comparing ourselves to others, comparing our lives to others, comparing what we have versus others and comparing where we are, uhm, versus others.

Others, others, others.

Life isn’t a race nor is a competition.

It is a journey for fuck’s sake.

———

“Stop comparing where you’re at with where everyone else is. It doesn’t move you farther ahead, improve your situation, or help you find peace. It just feeds your shame, fuels your feelings of inadequacy, and ultimately, it keeps you stuck. The reality is there is no one correct path in life. Everyone has their own unique journey. A path that’s right for someone else won’t necessarily be a path that’s right for you. And that’s okay. Your journey isn’t right or wrong, or good or bad. It’s just different. Your life isn’t meant to look like anyone else’s because you aren’t like anyone else. You’re a person all your own with a unique set of goals, obstacles, dreams, and needs. So stop comparing, and start living. You may not have ended up where you intended to go. But trust, for once, that you have ended up where you needed to be. Trust that you are in the right place at the right time. Trust that your life is enough. Trust that you are enough.”

Daniell Koepke

———

Life can be a shitload of fun if you enjoy it. If you open your eyes to what is around you and not comparing yourself to what is around you.

Yes.

I can guarantee on the journey:

• You will break down <on occasion>
• You will get caught in a downpour <so strong you cannot see an inch in front of your face> at some point
• There will be nights so dark you will feel alone
• You will get lost
• You will have an accident
• <add in any unfortunate mishap you can think of>

But.

You will drive <you do actually get to steer you know>.

You will experience shit.

You will laugh & cry & be disappointed & be delighted.

You will be startled by how good, and interesting, and vivid people and life can be if you actually look around.

——–

“One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.”

Alain de Botton

——

Aw. I don’t know. Maybe I have a whacked view on what and how Life is and should be.

All I really know is that you may think you know what success is, what happiness is, what failure is, what sadness is, and, yet, life will startle you if you pay attention. In fact. If you pay attention to living, you may have time for little else. Ponder.

===

“It’s not what you actually do in life that you regret just the opportunities that pass you by. It’s even in what you choose to do the opportunities you do not let pass by. In those moments it is sometimes only that you are not courageous or brave but rather you have simply exchanged one fear for another. Afraid for what we were about to do and how you will do versus the fear of what we might not do.”

Craig Johnson

===

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

Joseph Campbell

————-

Polycrisis in now the word of the moment. But here’s the thing. I would argue polycrisis is not a reflection of the present, but rather a culmination of compounding fears over the past decade. Let’s call it the price demanded by our continual fear. Just think back on every year since about 2014 and it has been a ‘year of fear.’ And with that reflection it is not difficult to sit back and think “that much fear mongering is just not sustainable.”  Its not. And it shapes how one views the present in some incredibly unhealthy ways as in “we are in a poloycrisis.”

Its nuts (but understandable after years of fear).

By any objective measure the current US administration is one of the most boringly competent administrations in US history. Yet, in certain media ecosystems one could feel like the US is simply careening from one crisis to another. And one, in that case, would rightfully feel buffeted by anger and fear and accept the polycrisis narrative. That said. We have had our mental etch-a-sketches shaken so often we have lost the plot. Terrorist attacks become potential wars, Ebola made millions of people work themselves into a panic over a disease that has claimed the lives of fewer Americans that year than some random exploding air bag, a bank failing because of poor management becomes potential financial crisis (there is not one), higher inflation gets conflated with a failing economy (the economy is in really good shape), Isis (which really was the JV team) was never an existential threat to not only the US but no one ever really envisioned an ISIS flag over a country let alone embassies around the world, China is taking over the world one Tiktok video at a time (they aren’t), and every conspiracy has moved from possible to probable. The United States has lost its collective mind with fear of shadows. I am not suggesting some things do not deserve concern and some attention, but we seem to be addicted to fearing something if not anything.

This fear is exacerbated by the perceived unpredictability of things (which are actually a small minority of things but the fearmongers liked to heighten the “exogenous” events as indications of typical and not exceptions). To be clear. Exogenous events are events impossible to predict. That said. Most events are unpredictable and, yet, there is no lack of people predicting shit.

Its bullshit. Everyone who ‘predicted’ either:

• <a> has a resume filled with predictions that never came to fruition therefore their one successful prediction is an anomaly, or
• <b> their ‘prediction’ or hindsight brilliance has some other prediction attached to it <a consequence> which is false.

The people who claim to predict Armageddon are asshats who thrive on feeding the perceptions of polycrisis. The truth is the world is strewn with exogenous events which are simply an emergent property of a dynamic system, i.e., they will naturally pop up on occasion. But the world is also strewn with assholes with access to media <who loves to put these assholes onscreen> who love to treat exogenous events as rational predictable events <and therefore someone can be blamed>. And the world is strewn with everyday schmucks <people> who love to believe exogenous events are anything but exogenous. And, as a consequence, the world is strewn with everyday people fearing what is predicted as well as what is not predicted. Yeah. We are in polycrisis mindset now.

Regardless. All that really matters is that things that are impossible to predict create fear among normal everyday people. We like to think the world is predictable <despite the fact everyone knows that their own lives include a strong thread of unpredictability> and get absurdly indignant when uncovering rational reasons <something to blame> for seemingly irrational events.

Which leads me to what someone wrote somewhere about news:

…. a group of kids playing soccer: there is no strategy, just a raw, run, get it response. All running after all of those balls, irrespective of origin, and just trying to shoot.

 Plays happen in bursts, with no resolution.

But we, the people, jump into this game almost happily. It is a weird continuous doom loop of predictable behavior fueled by dubious ‘unpredictable’ events, or, less-than-consequential random events that the system naturally spits out on occasion. This culminates into a confluence of stagnancy, despite the fact it feels like things working at the speed of light, within a perception of increased complex world (its not really any more than before), perception of lack of control (control has always been a fallacy) and a perception of, well, polycrisis.

In this doom-loop reality we are trapped in a fear-driven world of inertia convinced things are moving too fast. That said. It seems like the news network’s, and politician’s, purpose is to let you know that things are moving too fast to manage and something is on fire (some event) and that we need to burn someone at the stake for starting the fire (but there was no arsonist, it was just lightning, i.e., the system just creates these things on occasion). Pick your ‘crisis du jour,’ immigration, crime, gun violence, domestic terrorism, moral decay, sharia law, urban issues of crime/homelessness/lack of safety, China/Russia/Iran/North Korea/some socialist country, the list is almost endless and is certainly recyclable. What I mean by ‘recyclable’ is that it is a constant churn of choices simply to make stomachs churn with constant fear of something. And it is within that constant churn that polycrisis thrives. None of these things are really a crisis, just concerns that need appropriate attention, but they create a perception of ongoing polycrisis.

I would like to blame media. I would like to blame politicians. But. It is us: the people.

Sure.  The media and politicians are surely bound to have a role in exaggerating common misperceptions, but we can’t lay the blame entirely with the media; it’s a much broader, attitudinal ‘people’ global issue. The issue is us, the people, and how we remember information, how vivid demonstrations/metaphors are retained in our heads, regardless of whether they are describing something that is an exception rather than the rule.

We also suffer from what psychologists call ‘emotional innumeracy.’ This is where we focus more on what is worrying us more than trying to get the right answers, i.e., concern leading to our misperceptions as much as our misperceptions creating our concern.

a Commenter on online Ignorance article:

We may be ignorant on proportions and statistics but we know and can trust what our eyes see

Example we don’t have to be told immigration is out of control and all the rest of it

This comment reflects how most people respond to facts & information and proves the point I am making. People cannot trust what they see with their own eyes because they filter what they see through what they think. For example, immigration is not out of control and they actually don’t trust images that support that only the images that their “eyes see”.

Look. There are two accepted approaches in the quest for knowledge – the deductive and the inductive.

The danger of inductive method is that we can be led to a false conclusion even if we begin with the correct assumptions. It actually makes more sense to deduce — challenge and modify any assumption repeatedly until you find truth. Unfortunately in everyday life most people do the opposite — develop a set of rules based on personal experience <and beliefs> and then apply them to other experiences.

In addition. We tend to view events, even global events in which we have no set of experiences nor have any dimensionalized real perspective, through rules of our own personal experience. Let’s add in an uncomfortable truth that most times we don’t care unless we believe it will affect us.

Let’s go back into the way back machine as an example. In August 2014 ISIS became a household word striking fear into Americans that with their long reach global organization they would terrorize America.

Why? Despite the fact Isis gained a foothold in January the world wasn’t interested until they beheaded an American journalist in August. All the while ISIS went ahead killing other Muslims.

Ultimately this is about personalized “micro” fear which leads to a sense of macro crisis. Because in our fear we want to assess blame or seek to have someone destroy what we do not understand. And here we are in 2023 with a laundry list of fears, crisis and things to destroy. In other words, a polycrisis.

Let’s be clear. While USA has issues, 99% of the 340million people wake up, are relatively healthy, a shitload of them go to work , are productive, interact with people around them in a courteous way, go home a little tired but to a home they are relatively happy with, talk with some friends and, in general, have not much to fear. And, yet, we are hounded by a sense of fear and polycrisis.

Which leads me to when can we get out of this doom loop.

I believe we are getting closer to a time of reckoning. We are getting exhausted and getting a bit closer to recognizing the fears we have had over all these years, well, never came to anything. I believe it’s actually the moment where more people stop acting like ignorant scaredy cats and focus more on rational thinking than emotional thinking and ideological tribes.

I am not suggesting it will happen easily because sticking to your personal attitudes & beliefs is better than uncertainty and compromise. And It certainly has become easier and easier for a person to find some media outlet <television, radio, or Internet> they agree with. And it is a natural human tendency to find ‘your people’ <people who share the same philosophical view>.

And, yes, we are fairly simple as people in what we want and like:

• want to feel a sense of certainty on whether something’s right or wrong, and
• tend to follow or bond with those who agree with our ideas, and
• through confirmation bias, ignore or attack things that contradict our personal beliefs <or experiences>.

These are normal human reactions. We all do it.

In addition. When overwhelmed in a ‘polycrisis world’ we naturally tap into emotions and emotional responses faster than intellectual ones.  And traditionally once we let emotions take total control we lose the ability to think rationally. But I think in a time of reckoning, even in the face of loudmouthed predictors of fear & doom, people are so emotionally exhausted that the ‘time of rational’ is nearing us.

In the time of reckoning I believe a lot of people will just shut out the loud asshats as we seek out rational explanations and rational narratives and rational solutions for the future.

Which leads me to my finishing thought and my message to people:

“Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems.”

• Nothing is ever as good as it seems.

This may sound pessimistic and while there are certainly lots of good things in life & in the world it’s important to remember that if something seems too good to be true; it usually is.

This is the insidious side of fear. Fear that it will not stay ‘good.’ and constantly seeking out things & people to blame for it ‘not being as good as it used to be.’

Stop. Just fucking stop it. It most likely wasn’t as good as you thought it was <particularly because when we look at things in the rear view mirror they always seem to look better than they really were>.  We shouldn’t be dictated by a fear of ‘losing good.’ Just be careful and maintain some perspective.

• Nothing is ever as bad as it seems

When it seems bad it is incredibly easy to exaggerate the severity of the situation <in our own perceptions as well as by asshats trying to influence our thinking>. Most times it is not as bad as it seems and it will not become as bad as you imagine.  Sure. There are ‘we are in deep shit’ moments and events. But most of the time it is just not as serious as we think. And most times it will not have as serious repercussions as you imagine.

Both of these are about perspective. Fear makes us lose perspective.  Lose the fear; gain perspective.

Look. 2014 thru the present was not as bad as we feared. In fact. Most of what we feared never happened.

What a waste of energy.

And who is to blame?

Us. The people. No one else.

Not the government. Not the media. Not a president. Not some incompetent greedy business leader.

Not anyone but us. The people.

Fear can only happen if we allow it to happen.

I believe it is a time for rational words, thinking and thoughts stepped to the forefront. I know a shitload of people will shove this up my ass – “rational doesn’t get people excited” or “emotional engages.” You know what? Context matters. For a decade we have constantly been told to fear something. We have been convinced the world is just an onslaught of crises and we are stuck in a polycrisis world. Shake the fucking etch a sketch. Snip the doom loop. Let’s get some shit done. I believe if we share some rational thinking in an engaging way, I am willing to bet a lot of money a lot of people are in the market for something other than fear. And, for god’s sake, can we stop talking about a polycrisis.

Ponder.

===

“All things are hidden in their opposites – gain in loss, gifts in refusal, honour in humiliation, wealth in poverty, strength in weakness … life in death, victory in defeat, power in powerlessness, and so on. Therefore, if a man wish to find, let him be content to lose.”

Mulay Al ‘Arabi Ad-Drqawi

===

“The most dangerous creation in the world, in any society, is the man with nothing to lose. “

Al Freeman Jr.

“the second most dangerous creation in the world, in any society, is the man who feels like he is going to lose what he has.”

Me

===

There are gobs of articles about how much people strive to avoid loss even incorporating an aversion to loss into decision making. But I also opened with a piece of research to point out this isn’t really true, scientifically, to make a point that we create loss avoidance narratives in some unhealthy ways.
Which leads me to social proof. In today’s I am leaning more into identity rather than any real “win versus loss” decision. In other words, I am discussing the wacky world of expectations and the absurd levels people go through to maintain wealth status. Yeah. I am discussing money and wealthy people. Dealing with the wealthy people can often be like dealing with paranoid schizophrenics. On one aspect they flaunt their wealth with absurd confidence and on another aspect they are constantly looking over their shoulder for someone or something that will take it all away. They end up with all this money, but it’s almost as if as soon as they’ve got it, they start worrying about losing it. Or somebody taking it away from them. And it scares the shit out of them (despite their confident façade). It’s almost like even though they act like they are deserving of their status, they don’t really think they would get THIS high so once they do achieve such great heights all they start thinking about is what the fall would be like. For them that feeling is like a background program running on your computer that never stops running and constantly drains the battery even when the computer is not in use. It reminds me of something that Gabriel Garcia Marquez said: “we all have public lives, and private lives, and secret lives.” True or not, all wealthy people have a secret life. That said. I believe what most wealthy people are scared shitless about is that their own wealth demise, which they seem to constantly be looking for, will come out of their secret lives. The weird thing is that their obsessive confidence and status identity stances almost encourage everyone to think the wealth bluster is covering up some secret. Anyway. Inevitably the fear of loss is both defining and a consuming thing.

Which leads me to bitterness.

Most of the wealthy people I have glanced off of have a thread of bitterness and cynicism about the world despite the fact they are not only living the good life they are clearly living life better than the majority of people. They struggle to envision a happy ending. Within that thought, tucked somewhere below the fear of losing, is a simmering blend of outrage and hurt at the state of the world relentlessly pursuing their wealth. At that point you can feel a bit of bitterness and sadness, a sense of ill fate lodged in these people. In an interesting twist of irony, they have simultaneously accepted the ‘die had been cast’ with regard to their success and feel like the die are constantly being rigged against them by others seeking to ‘win away’ their cast in life.

Which leads me to the consequences of fear of losing.

Wealth often translates into a fundamental belief in some fundamental rights – which are typically grounded in some extreme ‘self ownership’ ideals. This also means a constant belief that everyone is always trying to take their money and give it to someone else. This includes the government, but cascades down to the ‘lazy’, welfare queen, socialism grabbers.

In their minds they see the ‘grabbers’ espousing the marketplace is unfair while they see the marketplace as fair with winners who deserve all the winnings and losers who deserve all of their losing. That said. While I don’t believe that the world, nor the marketplace, is fair, the wealthy people HAVE to believe it is fair to attach to their fear of losing something. Why? Because then the only way they lose is by being a victim not of their own circumstances, but of others efforts. This begets a winner-take-all competitiveness and within that concept resides a constant fear of losing. This gets a bit worse. What I mean by that is the nefarious mental jujitsu of “if this, then that” inevitability. If I lose this, what’s next? This means a wealthy person treats every slight loss as a potential precursor to losing it all. To be clear. Most things that start, stop. There is no “slippery slope.” But that gets in the way of the internal narrative so the wealthy walk around increasingly paranoid of losing, well, anything. This constant paranoia makes them douchebags to be around and generally unhelpful in creating positive solutions for a better society. I would be remiss if I didn’t end this with pointing out that losing anything you have gained is painful – to everyone. All I am suggesting is some perspective is lost among the extremely wealthy. Ok. What I am suggesting is that a LOT of perspective is lost among the extremely wealthy. And that lost perspective is unhealthy for not only them, but society. Ponder.

===

“Right now I’ve got just two rules to live by.
Rule one: don’t taunt elephants.
Rule two: don’t stand next to anybody who taunts elephants.”
Howard Tayler

===

Michael Jordan once said, “Larry Bird is the greatest trash talker and mind-game player of all time. He taught me everything I know about getting in folks’ heads.”

===

Yeah. I am gonna get in trouble on this. I am going to weigh in on the John Cena hand gesture women’s basketball Angel Reese Caitlan Clark trash talking issue.

There are several foundational thoughts before I get into the crux of the issue:

1. I have never liked any trashtalking. I have always preferred the stoic athlete. I found JJ Reddick insufferable, John McEnroe boorish and Deion Sanders an unnecessarily showboating asshat. All successful athletes who I just thought did shit they didn’t have to do. The closest I came to accepting trash talking was maybe the Larry Bird/Michael Jordan type. One-on-one in someone’s ear type. No showboating, just kind of their competitive dickedness on the field of combat.
2. I have seen almost all hyper competitive great athletes create a narrative. Me against the world. Some bulletin board comment. Some perceived slight. It doesn’t matter. Many of the most competitive create a story which they can use to deflect some of the other distractions attempting to dent their ‘zone.’ They use their narrative to fuel the performance.
3. I don’t care if it is sports, business, politics, whatever, context matters. A word, or a gesture, is only comparable in context. Without context we have flattened some important things to an almost absurd false comparison.

So lets get to the kerfuffle. Simplistically it has been dumbed down to John Cena’s “you can’t see me” hand gesture and a black player and a white player. Even typing it that was makes me think America is purposefully getting dumber on a daily basis.

Which leads me to the context.

• Iowa’s Caitlin Clark used the “You can’t see Me” move after her sixth 3 against South Carolina
• As the title game came to a close, LSU forward Reese celebrated the win by doing John Cena’s “You Can’t See Me” move on Iowa’s Clark

Haggle if you want, but one used the gesture while they were in a playing zone as a reflection of what they felt at the moment. The other used the gesture to taunt an individual player reflecting what they felt at the moment. The former felt like celebrating skill, the latter felt like a taunt. That said (part 1). I’ll admit. The Angel Reese use didn’t sit right with me (see #1 as a reminder on how I feel about trashtalking). That said (part 2). Is one better than the other? Not for me to judge. But my point is the point. Context matters.

Which leads me to personal narratives. Angel Reese, as did several of her LSU teammates, created a “disrespect” narrative prior to the game. I suggest create because no where I can find Clark disrespecting LSU. In fact, all Iowa had done up to that point was suggest they had the ultimate respect for LSU. That said. A narrative is a narrative and noted earlier, it is an incredibly useful tool for a competitive athlete to get in a ‘zone;’ to compete. It worked. LSU played well and won. But. The trick to narratives is that at some point the narrative becomes not of use. In this case, LSU had the win. And at no point in the game had anyone on Iowa shown any disrespect to LSU. At some point you need to shut the narrative down and accept the moment for what it is. I tend to believe this is also a reflection of maturity. But. That’s just me.

In the end. I don’t really care about two great athletes making some gesture, which used at the right time is kinda fun, or how they trashtalk or do not trashtalk, or even the color of their skin. What I do care about is the idiotic simplistic comparisons which create unhealthy narratives which get distorted in public. It ain’t the color of their skin, it’s the color of the moment, i.e., the context which should be driving the discussion. Ponder.