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“Drowning men, it is said, cling to wisps of straw.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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There is a difference between the future of work (a combination of productivity, mattering/impact and the business vision) and the future of business (a combination of globalization, geopolitics and business’ responsibility to people, society and the earth, i.e., its role in shaping capitalism). This doesn’t mean they aren’t related, but I do worry that those focusing solely on the future of work are simply making an incredibly flawed way of doing business more effective at being flawed. That said. When asked about the future of business I do begin on a pragmatic level and how a business should work because work itself has a feedback loop relationship with the future design of business. Almost everyone now agrees with what every thinker suggested in the 1980’s and early 1990’s that ‘agility’ is the key to business success.

Which leads me to fluidity and flow.

The reality of the future of work is a bit simpler than we tend to make it. It centers on two key features of agility; fluidity and flow.

• Fluidity

Toffler stated in 1985, “[business] must execute its current activities to survive today’s challenges and adapt those activities to survive tomorrow’s.” That is fluidity; bring to bear resources (people & material) to survive and thrive. Most businesses struggle with this because of command & control, silos, centralized management and lack of ability to not only share resources easily but shift the most appropriate people (from one department) to the optimal team. But it goes a bit deeper than that. Fluidity is an inherent attribute of progress and to the connectivity necessary for collective impact. What I mean by that is fluidity is about conversations, connections and creation not just of an individual, but individuals in action together. This is an important concept because it represents what is necessary in the present for the temporary results of a unique combination of circumstances presenting a unique set of problems/opportunities and requiring an original solution that represents work/labor ‘applied effectively’ AND edges into what is necessary for the future. What I mean by that is no temporary situation can be viewed in isolation, but rather each temporary situation merges with those that precede and those that follow, all simultaneously but maybe not equally, so fluidity is shaped by the former and shaping the conditions of the latter. Labor is then a continuous fluid activity with fleeting opportunities and unforeseen events. Since labor is a fluid phenomenon, its conduct requires flexibility of thought and fluidity in behaviors/actions. Successful labor depends in large part on diligence and the ability to adapt — to proactively shape changing events to the advantage of the business, and its vision, as well as to react quickly to constantly changing conditions. This can sound exhausting, but the cadence of labor fluctuates from periods of intense activity to periods limited to information gathering, reflection, or capability development. This means fluidity is found in the competitive rhythm, i.e., conflict, between entropy (or desire to replicate and standardize) and emergent, i.e., the intentional fluid organizing to optimize events to suit the purpose of the business (and the individuals). I would be remiss if I didn’t point out this is fluidity between self-interest (impact) and collective interest (impact) and generated value which leads me to Flow.

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“If you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything, it is likely that you will become interested in it. Many of the things we find interesting are not so by nature, but because we took the trouble of paying attention to them.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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• Flow

Flow is fluidity working in sync, but when I speak of Flow, I typically mean it in terms similar to what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests as in terms of state of mind, people energy, for optimal performance.  Flow has several states, but let’s say that the desired business objective (which fluid labor makes possible) is, the continuous, smooth flow of value from the business (collective labor) to the market. So, Flow is the people mindset that creates the intrinsic energy for that effort. Oddly many people think of this as ‘labor at scale’ when it really is simply ‘a system in flow’ and, worse, many businesses believe incentives, gamification and ‘motivational efforts’ are how to attain this. Economics, and individual meaning, almost always arises from flow and achieving an organizational flow state is when the flow state is attained by & of the people. The tricky part is that the system, the whole, is made up of layers and nested systems with their own pacing. This thought is kind of important. Flow can be asymmetrical and it can also contain a variety of speeds (see: Pace layering). I often refer to organizational flow as ‘cadence.’ What I mean by that is a business tends to have a rhythm when it is in flow which is a reflection of the combined individual worker pacing. Flow is actually when all layers of the organization find synchronicity – not same speed or pace. Flow at an individual level is almost irrelevant if it isn’t multiplicative to the energy of the system as a whole. In fact, I could argue individual flow can hamper organizational collective ‘flow’ if the individual self-interest is not in the greater system interest. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that often existing business ‘rules’, including incentives & performance metrics, encourage a belief in individual flow over collective flow. My point here is that organizational Flow is individual labor at a collective level. Which leads me to commitment to the Future.

• commitment to contribute to the future

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They say it all breaks down to keeping your feet on the ground

My sole intention is keeping my head in the clouds

They say that I can’t last a day in the real world

I say you wouldn’t survive one night in mine

Asking Alexandria

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This is where a business decides how they want to conduct business so that their business has a role in shaping the future. This is when a business should do some soul searching on their commitment to aligning the individual employee, the company, the community, society and, ultimately, the world. This is functional, emotional and aspirational. I have said for decades that the ultimate aim for any business is “better”: better moment, better outcome, better day, better life, better world (pick your better or combination of better). To be clear (part 1). A business cannot claim to aim to make the world a better place no matter how bad the business might be for people or society, a commitment is a complete commitment or, at minimum, a commitment to progress, i.e., becoming better. To be clear (part 2). I, personally, believe Purpose is establishing too simplistic a cage for a business to successfully exist within. I believe, as someone who thinks about the future of business, a business should purposefully decide what they want their commitment to the Future is. I have unequivocally stated that all business should have the same commitment, the purpose of business is to benefit people, but as long as a business decides to make a commitment that embraces that concept in some way, the business world should do fine. For example, an airline, or all airlines for that matter**, could commit to “social connectivity,” i.e., breaking down barriers that divide and unite humanity.

• ** I do not believe a business gains differentiation off their commitment or even “Purpose,” differentiation and distinction is gained by “How” they develop strategies and execute toward the commitment.

Once the commitment has been established a business can hunker down on the “hows” which can be environment, gender equality, social responsibility, a cause, or all of them. My main thought is this permits businesses to be flawed, as in their ‘hows’ do not have to be perfect, just showing progress (better today than yesterday), as long as their commitment remains, well, a commitment. Which leads me to how to make sure progress occurs in a business. Well. Suffice it to say, 99% of the best businesses have figured out how to successfully keep their feet in the clouds and their head on the ground. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know it looks like I got it twisted around, but I did not.

• Good businesses are always walking with the future in mind.

Always traveling toward possibilities, always seeking ‘what’s next’, possibilities drive movement. Feet in the clouds.

• Good businesses are always closely listening, and thinking, to the drumbeat of the feet of what is happening around them, i.e., the possibilities.

Ear to the ground, so while possibilities are driving movement and progress, pragmatism, or reality of what can be done, insures everyone in the business is keeping their head in the game today; but smartly and with fluidity. Head on the ground.

I have called it mastering pragmatism & possibilities, but it is the ability to have your feet in the clouds and head on the ground. I believe this shifts a mindset from being destination-based, or solely pragmatic based, to a more fluid & flow-based mentality in which the business is driven by movement (possibilities) but pragmatically adapts to possibilities (opportunities). Maybe most importantly, because I am discussing a commitment to the future, while you may identify what commitment to contribution to the future you want to commit to, strategy and execution will be based less on “what will the world look like in future?”, because you have actually elected to shape the future, and more on “how do I best align with the unfolding present?”

I tend to believe if more people thought about it this way businesses would have more hope and more achievable possibilities than they could ever imagine. I tend to believe the future of business would be better in terms of a more positive contribution to the individual, society, productivity, and general meaning in the world (not at the expense of profit or growth).

If we are honest, the way business is being conducted presently, embodied in feet on the ground & head in the clouds, doesn’t really seem to be working that well.

Businesses seem to be more woefully stagnant <albeit ‘talking’ change> and have more despair and lack of hope with regard to their possibilities than ever. And, yet, they are desperately implementing “change initiatives” and organizational changes all of which, in my mind, are simply rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. That isn’t to say the best organizational practitioners won’t enhance fluidity and flow and possibly even edge into a ‘commitment to the future’ space, but I am in the ‘future of business’ business. I struggle to believe optimizing humanity can occur, in any business, until the business itself decides what commitment it wants to make TO humanity. In other words, with a commitment to contribute to the future, the business is simply clinging to wisps of straw. Ponder.

===

“Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Earlier today I reshared my thoughts on the lack of civility in political rhetoric and how that fosters an environment of violence – either unacted upon violent thoughts or actual violent actions. I even wrote ‘the politics of resentment’. Which leads me to Trump. Violence has always bubbled below the surface in America, but where I lay a large burden of the blame on Trump is for using it as a tool of “America Greatness”, i.e., the violence is done by patriots passionate about their great America. It really was not that long ago that in 2015 and 2016 the Trump cult was being shaped with violence.

It seemed like just another day and another violent Trump rally. The incidents kept piling up.

Chicago protest fights. A Black Lives Matters protester was sucker-punched by a white bystander at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. A young black woman was surrounded and shoved aggressively by a number of individuals at a rally in Louisville, Kentucky. A black protester was tackled, then punched and kicked by a group of men as he curled up on the ground in Birmingham, Alabama. Immigration activists were shoved and stripped of their signs by a crowd in Richmond, Virginia. A Latino protester was knocked down and kicked by a Trump supporter in Miami.

At that time I said this version of America is not the America I know, the America I want nor is it America anywhere near great. While I remain steadfast on the latter two, on the first I was wrong. I now know the Trump America and it is violent.

It makes me angry.

It disturbs me.

Just to remind everyone, one of the most disturbing moments, one which truly made me angry, was angry as I watched a protest in Chicago devolve into what could only look like a riot to the entire world.

Another reminder. A Republican, at that time, said: “Tonight the seeds of division that Donald Trump has been sowing this whole campaign finally bore fruit, and it was ugly.”

I am angry because Mr. Trump knew what he is doing. He was playing with fire. Playing it as close to the fire as he could without getting burned <or burning down the house> because in his own pea like mind he has decided that this warped version of passion will energize change and ‘winning.’

Just as he has shown a complete disdain for a ‘good win’ versus a ‘bad win’ he also shows no signs that he understands the difference between ‘bad passion’ and ‘good passion.’

That is the sign of an incompetent ignorant lazy leader.

I am angry.

I am not angry at America or its people or even most of Trump’s followers; I am angry at a person who wants to be the emperor who has no clothes. He offers only platitudes of ‘deals & wins’ as solutions to any issue he is asked about and, worse, simplistically twists the “us versus them” narrative into “we good people & they bad/evil people” platitudes.

He skates on the slippery superficial surface of emotion and an enhanced feeling of irrelevance <or being marginalized> from a minority of the populace who has now found a voice.

I remain angry even to this day.

And I get even angrier because Trump, to this day, assumes no, none, nada, whatever version of “zero” you want to apply here … responsibility for anything.

It is never his problem. It is never his issue. It is never anything but ‘the bad people’ <media, people who do not agree, Muslims/Islam, Mexicans, immigrants, stupid elite, etc.>. It is never him.

This despite the fact he is the common denominator.

And this also means, to Mr. Tump, he is never responsible for his words.

We are all responsible for the words we say. Everyone.

That said.

It most likely took me far too long to understand this, but while freedom of speech is an equal freedom for all & everyone, the responsibility tied to that freedom is not equal. Responsibility increases upwards. The larger the forum, the more impact as a leader I have, the larger the actual managerial/actionable responsibility the leader has AND the larger the responsibility to the speech portion of my freedom I have.

Trump acts, and has always acted, like he has no more responsibility with regard to what he says than the guy sitting at the end of the bar after a 10 hour day drinking his 5th draft beer with his buddies bitching about the world.

======== Trump supporter ==========

A leader has a responsibility to listen to his/her people but any good leader knows you don’t incite latent negative emotion within an organization … you show you listen, unite and give specifics on how the organization will progress from that point on.

Lastly.

I am angry because I have run across these faux business leaders in business and they are the worst of the worst. They are hollow of anything. And blanket their hollowness with superficiality or faux emotion. And, most importantly, they make nothing great.

Trump is particularly skilled at manipulating his version of the public to his own ends. And, in that, he doesn’t even recognize his divisiveness <which is frightening for someone who was leader of the free world>. I believe he doesn’t recognize the divisiveness because he lives in an alternative universe in which everyone else is wrong and the problem and protestors never have a valid reason and anyone not in ‘his crowd’ must be unpatriotic.

Mr. Trump, assuming he actually desired to be a president, never understood all citizens are his crowd. You either decide to try and unite by listening and convincing them of your path to ‘greatness’ or I imagine you just let them rot somewhere as you, and your followers, shun them. And, well, that’s what he did. And by shunning them, while fostering a violent attitude, he gave implicit permission to be violent as long as it was targeted to those he shunned.

I cannot remember in my 60something lifetime anything like this.

And, yeah, I am still angry.

And, if I am honest, a little nervous certainly unsettled and, well, maybe a little scared.

This feeling did not come easily.

And I know exactly when it happened. It was a March morning in 2016 when I discussed my anger at Trump’s lack of assuming responsibility after the Chicago rally incident and it happened as I said “I have never seen this before in my lifetime.”

Because I do know where I have seen it before. This is the divisiveness of dictators and autocrats. I hesitated to use examples from the past, but the names came very very close to crossing my lips. It was an uncomfortable feeling to be that close to comparing Trump to some of the worst of the worst leaders from past history. And what got me that close to uttering the examples is that instead of making a call for discussion and debate he insists on calling for silence and authoritarianism <absurdly under the guise of ‘freedom of speech’>. To be clear, I no longer hesitate to draw these comparisons. To be clear, as he harkens back to the ‘good ole days’ he even seems to encourages violence <under the guise of “we are so weak and need to be strong again”>.

This is bully logic.

Trump disavows violence and yet encourages it. He encourages a consistent ‘strong message’ <however you, the followers, would like to deliver that message to ‘them’> of silencing dissent, silencing debate, silencing real solutions, silencing critics and silencing competitors. And he fills their silent space with bombastic platitudes of deals & wins and divisive rhetoric.

While he’s narcissistic, self-absorbed, power hungry/crazy and driven by either greed or ‘winning by any measure” I almost think we are seeing a public case study example of the Dunning–Kruger effect.

This is a cognitive bias in which a relatively unskilled person suffers illusory superiority. This translates into mistakenly assessing their ability and believing their skills, and themselves, to be significantly better than what it actually is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately. When Trump looks in the mirror he sees only something superior to everyone else … maybe even superior to America itself.

Anyway.

I am not a huge follower of politics but it seems to me that consistent violence at the scale of 2016 was rare in American politics, but now it has almost become the norm.

And I am still angry at Mr. Trump.

Angry at his overall lack or personal responsibility. Angry at his disdain for the power of words. Angry at his lack of understanding of freedom of speech as it pertains to leadership. Angry at his lack of desire to try and convert dissenters, but rather silence or eject/reject dissenters.

Angry at his hollowness <because I want a leader who is full of a robust vision beyond deals & wins>.

And, mostly, I am angry at what he has done to America.

He never had any interest in making America great, he simply encouraged us to hate.

And hate is the foundation for violence. Ponder because this is important.

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“We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.”

—-

Barack Obama on January 12^th 2011

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<written June 14, 2017 the day Republican politicians were shot on a softball field – but relevant today>

On a day which we are faced with someone who decided to take a gun and shoot politicians, and appear to target politicians, I am reminded of several things.

The first thing is the rhetoric.

The rhetoric of the citizenry, but mostly the rhetoric of our elected leaders. I say that because words have repercussions.

Yes.

I do believe in personal responsibility and choices are made by individuals.

But I also believe leaders lead with words <because most of us cannot view their actions>.

And if our elected leaders treat their words as if we will not remember them forever.

And if our elected leaders treat each other as if they are truly enemies <and even use that word on occasion>.

And if our elected leaders treat each other as if the opposite’s behavior is unfathomable behavior for sane, moral people.

And if our elected officials treat each other with verbal hyperbole as the standard rhetoric discourse … and the highest of the elected leaders, the president, tosses out the word ‘unity’ on occasion but 99% of the time does nothing verbally or behavior wise to unite … well … the electors will be tempted to do as leaders do.

We need to calm our rhetoric. We need to remind ourselves what we teach our children — that you don’t always get what you want and that most progress is made in mutual effort.

We all need to be speaking more calmly and acting more civilly, but we should be demanding our elected leaders do so. I get angry with how they act and what they say because it suggests to people that is behavior we should all embrace — and it is not.  Stop, and stop it now.

The second thing I am reminded of is one of the best speeches President Obama ever made.

To share my thoughts I will borrow <steal> liberally from a NY Times article written by Helene Cooper and Jeff Zelenyjan. The article was Obama Calls for a New Era of Civility in U.S. Politics and it shares the speech Obama gave on January 12^th 2011 in Tucson after the shooting of a US Congresswoman and the deaths of 6 other people.

Apparently Obama wrote much of the speech himself the day before. I suggest everyone read the speech, but today I will share highlights because it is a nice reminder on a day on which we need some reminders.

President Obama offered the nation’s condolences to the victims of the shootings, calling on Americans to draw a lesson from the lives of the fallen and the actions of the heroes, and to usher in a new era of civility in their honor. Obama directly confronted the political debate that erupted after the rampage, urging people of all beliefs not to use the tragedy to turn on one another. He did not cast blame on Republicans or Democrats, but asked people to “sharpen our instincts for empathy.”

It was one of the more powerful presentation of words & thoughts I have ever heard urging Americans “to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully” and to “remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.”

“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do,” he said, “it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

He eulogizing the six people who died and asked for prayers for the wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who the authorities said was the target of an assassination attempt.

He warned against “simple explanations” and spoke of the unknowability of the thoughts that “lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.”

He suggested that the events should force individuals to look inward, but also that they should prompt a collective response against reflexive ideological and social conflict.

While the tone and content were distinctly nonpolitical, there were clear political ramifications to the speech, giving Mr. Obama a chance, for an evening at least, to try to occupy a space outside of partisanship or agenda:

“If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost,” Mr. Obama said. “Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.”

“If, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse,” Mr. Obama said, “let us remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy — it did not — but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.”

In the end.

No, I do not believe we will learn anything from today’s event <or the other shooting events that cost people’s lives today> but maybe, just maybe, we can start talking to each other like we don’t want to shoot the other person if given an opportunity. That is a good start.

“A lie can fly halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on.”

Winston Churchill

I am sure we have all heard versions of this quote before.

And chuckle.

But have you ever wondered why we actually take this kind of sad and sobering thought at face value – kind of as an, uhm, truth? Is it because the world has become overwhelmingly cynical and simply live in a  constant state of belief that everyone lies and it sucks?

What a sad, sobering, thought. But is it really true?

I imagine many of us would think about this and a part of us, maybe even a large part of us, agrees.

We believe somewhere inside us that all people lie.

And what may be worse?

Even when we hear ‘the truth’? We doubt.

And even more worse? The more emphatic someone states their belief in the truth; the more we disbelieve.

It’s kind of crazy if you think about it.

It seems often the “absolute truth” leads to some confusion on our part.

Confused on ‘how can they be so sure’?

And the conclusion of confusion is “someone has lied.”

What a downward spiral we have encountered in discussing truth.

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you. “

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I tend to think all of us a re a bit cynical of people who are too assured in their beliefs, or a belief, but regardless, truth is tricky.

It is not absolute. The beauty in truth is that it creates boundaries. Or maybe more playfully it creates fences which, within, you can find comfort to play with others and be free to say and do some things without thought (let’s call that default thinking) and do some things by challenging some of the truth assumptions.

All of what I just wrote assumes we discuss ‘truth’ because within those boundaries are some shades of gray.

Truth is complex because most truth is combinatorial.

There is one simple ugly enemy to truth because of the shades of gay and the combinatorial characteristics.

The ugly enemy is doubt.

It is because of doubt in truth that a lie can sweep its way around the world while good ole truth is stuck behind dealing with doubt.

A lie is unhindered by the burden of proof. It flies free of such weight.

While truth carries the burden of debate, discussion and understanding.

Now. Let’s be clear. Debate is good. It clarifies. It communicates. It clears the mind of clutter.

But, oddly, nowadays truth’s slowness (in debate and discussion) only enhances an implication of ‘non-true’ and slows down even more with the weight of added burden.

Do we ever wonder why truth takes eons to get around the world while a lie circles endlessly?

Not when you think about it this way.

Sadly, if I am actually right about something for once, I guess the way you can tell a lie from a truth now is that the first is always the lie and the last is always the truth.

In the end the turtle wins I guess. Ponder. This feels important.

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“America is great because she is good.

If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Alexis de Tocqueville

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“We Americans are a do-it-yourself people.

We are an impatient people.

Instead of teaching someone else to do a job, we like to do it ourselves. And this trait has been carried over into our foreign policy.”

Nixon from his Silent Majority speech

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Nationalism, populism, and “America First,” and economics are inextricably linked. The Trump administration simply embodied the dull axe version of nationalism economics so we have some indications of what it means in terms of implementation as well as consequences. That said. It is a little difficult to unpack everything happening with regard to “America First” and what it means for America economically short term and long term.

Alternatively. The Biden administration is (mostly) returning to the economic path the Obama administration implemented with the twist that the pandemic permits them, because of the global supply chain shakeup, to redesign global structure a bit. But the main thing the Biden administration is doing, significantly different than the Trump administration, is the balancing of short-term results and long term desires/needs. As I pointed out before, the Obama administration never got enough credit for doing this. it is a trickier path because it does sacrifice some short-term metrics in order to be able to retool for a healthy future economy. The truth is America is now on a much healthier path going in the right direction (one does wonder what a better place we would be in if we hadn’t had to endure the dull axe policies of the Trump administration which set us off the path) and supply chains are shaking out, businesses are reshaping (too slowly in my mind) their economic structures, there are some significant strides in retooling for a future economy and a globalized economy is taking on a new healthier shape. Yes. Contrary to alarmist headlines the American economy is in really good shape, (particularly compared to other countries) and we should not confuse systemic consequences like inequality with a poor economy or inflation with poor domestic policy because inflation is not an American issue, but rather a global issue, therefore, it is not a reflection of any American ‘flaw’ but reflective of a global response to a myriad of issues.

I have a lot to suggest on the America First Economics topic, but because there is so much let me offer some overarching ways of viewing it all. I will also note that I am purposefully using Trump and not Republican or Trump administration because I believe we would be incredibly shortsighted to think that his personal views on how the world exists <in his mind> do not drive his behavior and the administration decisions being made:

• How Trump views the leadership concept of dragging up versus dragging down
• How Trump views rules & regulations
• How Trump views I versus team
• How Trump views uncertainty
• How Trump views life only through a dollars & cents lens <driving an economics first, and only, view>
• How Trump views infrastructure (building)

All of these views drive America First all of which <I would suggest> actually encourage an America Alone strategy. In addition, to a larger extent, all actually encourage an “every man for himself” attitude <kind of an extremely perverse version of traditional conservative ideology>.

Dragging up versus dragging down

America didn’t stay in the Paris Climate agreement, among other transnational alignments, so I will use it as an example of how Trump views America leadership and leadership in general <because it applies to almost everything the administration did>.

Leaders understand that to lead you need to ‘drag up’ behavior. This comes at an expense in that you are demanded to do more things without any real compensation or obvious immediate ROI. For example, part of the Paris agreement was that United State had higher standards. This certainly places a burden on American companies. It also translates into an innovation push to meet those standards. And, ultimately, because we lead in innovation the rest of the world will eventually buy our innovations. As noted earlier this is an example of sacrificing some short term results for longer term structural value creation and, ultimately, a stronger economic presence. This leadership also encourages other countries to ‘play up’ as close to United States as possible.

Conversely, if United States drops out of the overall leadership, standards drops and, as any organizational study will tell you, the overall tide of standards will be lower as things get dragged downwards. This is, simplistically, why leaders have higher standards in business. It drags the organization up and not down. As for businesses, as I will highlight again later, without normalizing stanards a business will typically align with the lowest possible standard that optimizes profits. That’s why businesses need to be given some guardrails if we want new standards of behavior/operations.

Trump does not understand this. Nor does he believe in this. I believe ‘America First,’ generally speaking, understands this, but ignores this.

Rules & regulations

I took a lot of big gulps during the Trump years as I viewed lists of regulations the Trump administration eliminated. I viewed this as general incompetence <they appeared to follow an “if it exists it should not exist” strategy and not “a thoughtful consideration of its impact” type decision> or general lack of understanding of how business works. What I mean by that is business has a fairly simple objective; profit making. It is within that simplicity that a lot of bad things, and bad behavior, can occur. Government has always been in the business of ‘guardrails to ensure the populace benefits’ and, generally speaking, do fairly well at that. I am certainly not suggesting governments shouldn’t be reviewing regulations all the time and eliminating, or editing, existing regulations that have served their purpose. The Trump administration applied the dull axe version of my last sentence. One could ponder if at the core of their deregulation there was some corruption, but let’s just say they embraced unfettered free market (which almost any eminent economist would tell you is a bad idea).

That said. Trump believes if there had been no rules & regulations, he would be the wealthiest man in the world. He has never found a rule or regulation he has ever liked. He also believes that if he thinks that everyone should think that. I have written about capitalism a zillion times and I have argued that unfettered capitalism simply brings out the worst in people and increases inequality. Rules & regulations, done well, tend to herd behavior.

Trump doesn’t think rules apply to him so why wouldn’t we expect him to eliminate rules so he doesn’t even have to pretend he plays by the rules.

I versus team

Economics, whether we admit it or not, is about people. More specifically, it is about people working together and communicating with each other. There really is no such thing as a ‘sole business person’ because in order to achieve any profits, at scale or not, that one must interact with others (the market). That said. Trump has never been part of a team nor does he have any desire to be a team leader. How this translates into his decision attitude is that the global interconnectedness is irrelevant to him. No. He actually thinks it is a negative. We are not a global team seeking to win, but rather it is ‘every man for himself.’ Unfortunately this attitude also cascades down into domestic policy.

And because I used the Paris Climate deal earlier to make a point on something else I will do so again here. One would think it would be remarkable that someone who has not appointed someone to run the White House Office of Science and Technology <a person who traditionally serves as the President’s chief science officer> or has the majority of posts on the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology <a group of civilian science and tech leaders who advise the president> unfilled would feel qualified to make his decision.  However, if you do not value a team effort and believe “I” is all that matters then the qualified support doesn’t really matter and, in fact, could negatively affect “the I.” Trump is a focus group of one making decisions. And it has become apparent he believes the ‘best of the best’ work that way. Once again, effective economies do not work that way.

All that said. Everything Trump does and supports gives the finger to anything that could be construed as a team effort. It is “I” in the world. “I” as a country. “I” as a business and, well, “I alone” is the mantra. The problem is that every “I” in the American economy is dependent, and connected, with a variety of other resources, distribution partners, and customers. Basically even the American economy is a system nested within a larger global system and attempting to optimize a part, or an “I”, will never improve the system nor optimize the return.

That said, “it has always been about me and just me” bleeds into everything Trump believes and does.

Uncertainty

Solid economies tend to lean on some certainties – monetary systems, distribution systems, partnership systems, resource systems, etc. as the pandemic reminded us, when these certainties become less certain, bad things happen. Trump views uncertainty as a positive <with regard to everything>. This attitude undergirds behavior. For example, whole sale immigration changes disrupts the entire workforce and negatively affects a variety of industries. His appositive view of certainty upends industries within his actual behavior – and he doesn’t care. It seems to me that wrenching the entire system 180degrees creates what I offered up as the biggest flaw in Trump’s way of doing business — uncertainty. He believed everyone was like him and every business would thrive if he created the uncertainty and he thrives on the belief America will ultimately benefit from uncertainty. He believed America will swoop in now that is it is free from the shackles of the ‘old order’ <way of doing things, deals, regulations, etc.> and dominate what, uhm, we already dominated.

The country that had spent decades erecting an international order based on free trade, multilateral cooperation, a global alliance network, and the promotion of democratic values had now chosen as its leader a man who detests any structure supporting all those things.

What a bad idea. Very bad. And, once again, while I am disappointed in Trump, I am even more disappointed a business man <his 1st secretary of state> thought this way because it ignores business 101.  Well. It ignores business 101 depending on whether you think America is special, exceptional in some way or that part of what makes America distinct in the world is not the bigness of our economy but rather the bigness of our idea.

That said, Trump doesn’t believe in big ideas he only believes in big money. Oh. If you have no ideas the only way to make money is to take advantage of uncertainty. The problem is that America is built on an idea, ideals and a system of implementing those to the benefit of the economy (in a globalized interconnected economy) and not just “more money” and while we may <if we are really lucky> benefit economically, under this Trump philosophy we would do so at the sacrifice of our ideas, ideals and leadership in this uncertain world Trump desires to play his dangerous game in.

Leaders don’t act with uncertainty as their compass, they use certainty, or degrees of, to lead. Of course, Trump wouldn’t know how to lead even if given an instruction manual with lots of pictures.

The dollars & cents lens <economics first>

I am not a diplomat or some foreign policy expert, but I admit that I took a big gulp when early on in the Trump administration I saw the secretary of state suggest that America should make economic and security needs above American ‘values.’ It seems to be that everything will be decided on an exchange of money and not on an exchange of ideas <where value is a combination of economics and values>.

US foreign policy, Tillerson said, is guided by fundamental values, but he cautioned: “If we condition too heavily that others must adopt this value that we’ve come to over a long history of our own, it really creates obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests, our economic interests.”

Well. It seems to me while USA is in the ‘doing & making & selling shit” business we are also in the “doing & making & selling with values” business.

It seems to me that USA is not particularly in the “partnerships of convenience “business where we can conveniently set aside our values & ideals but rather we are in the “partnership with ideals” business where we are delighted to do business with you but you are gonna have to accept the fact we are gonna showcase freedom, democracy and what we believe people deserve.

To Trump everything is marginalized excepting economics <money>.

Let’s be clear. American ‘values’, or a belief in winning the right way, doesn’t get in the way of our economic interests. To believe that is to not believe in ‘value’ <in which premium price relies on some value equation above a dollar is a dollar>.  As Gen. George Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, commented in 1945, Washington could no longer pursue a narrow conception of national interest or limit its strategic horizons to the Western Hemisphere: “We are now concerned with the peace of the entire world.” I would be remiss if I didn’t point out peace is, well, certainty, and certainty, through peace, is good for our economic interests.

To me, the pursuit of “America First” can often be accomplished best by protecting and defending the rights of others which actually includes economic relationships. I dug up a speech made on December 20, 1951 by Dean Acheson which laid out a view of American foreign policy very different from Trump’s first secretary of state Rex Tillerson:

——————–

The greatest asset we have in all the world—even greater than our material power—is the American idea. No one needs to tell an American audience all the things that this holds for us. It is so much a part of our everyday lives that we do not stop to define it, or to put it into packages for export. But throughout the world, wherever people are oppressed, wherever people dream of freedom and opportunity, they feel the inspiration of the American idea.

What we are trying to do, in our foreign policy, is to make possible a world in which our own people, and all people who have the same determination, can work in their own way toward a better life, without having to bear the yoke of tyranny.

—————-

I have always known the Trump administration would be putting economy, money, above all and I did outline some concerns I had about attacking a foreign policy based on transactional relationships, but it now had become a reality; it is commerce over conscience.

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“Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.

Steve Maraboli,

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Money is the currency of survival in today’s world and offers an ongoing temptation for “well, just a little bit more would be nice.” 90% of us know money isn’t everything, but that same 90% knows money is something. I mentioned it that way because it becomes easy to think money as a ‘this or that’ thought, everything or nothing, and, yet, in this case it is not everything, but is certainly still something. That said. I think Trump yielding the high ground to simply gain some perceived temporary ‘economic advantage’ was simply wrong and is haunting us now.

To be clear. Trump wouldn’t recognize the high ground if it smacked him in the face.

           The myth of being a builder

As noted above, America is the business of making and selling shit. Now. While that has certainly shifted over the decades (we do significantly less ‘making’ and significantly more ‘services economy’), the core of any country’s economic resilience resides in manufacturing (large, medium and small sized businesses). That said. Trump always claimed he was a builder and America must have had a dozen “infrastructure weeks” espousing a growth in manufacturing that never occurred. While it is easy to chuckle over ‘the infrastructure week that never was’ it is actually sad because it was a reflection of a cascading number of issues surrounding an “American first” belief. You need money to build infrastructure – government money. Government money subsidizes innovation and growth for which it gets paid back in tax revenue (business and individual wages) over time. Governments get crucified when they make a bad bet or ROI isn’t clear upfront, but the reality is for every ‘bad bet’ government has made that bet has evolved into, well, economic progress. In other words, you need government money for infrastructure. Which leads me to the Trump tax decreases. Ignore the fact it benefited the wealthy, it increased deficits as America gained less in tax revenue which, as a consequence, they didn’t have for, yes, an infrastructure week. In addition, the tariffs. I am neither anti nor pro tariffs. They can be used tactically quite effectively to help specific industries compete. The Trump administration implemented tariffs like a dull axe in combination with the fact they didn’t coordinate with the EU so tariffs hurt the US doubly as that business went elsewhere. But the tariffs situation got a bit worse as we think about money to invest. Trump, in the attempt to limit the bad news domestically, began subsidizing the American industries he crippled with the tariffs. Basically, the government money wasn’t being used to innovate or invest but rather to prop up industries he was hurting with his policies. To be clear, I am not opposed to doing that when warranted, but this was a self-inflicted deficit increaser which capped any opportunities to invest elsewhere.

Trump really was never a builder, he just likes to own things, and the American economy got trapped in the wretched hollow in between his ‘builder myth’ and the reality of how a country actually builds shit.

In the end.

“The U.S. is, for now, out of the world order business.” <Robert Kagan>. After more than 70 years, American internationalism was pronounced politically dead during the Trump administration.

What is really stunning, and upsetting, to people like me is that the United States started going backwards. It is simply beyond me that we began steering ourselves toward antiquated systems and antiquated thinking rather than moving forward to leading in innovations and ideas. I can only feel a sinking feeling in my stomach as the rest of the world understood what Trump, and his administration, apparently did not; that the United States was about to give away the markets, the technology, the innovation, the jobs and the leadership. The unifying thread through Trump’s agenda appeared to be an attempt to resurrect an earlier antiquated world which marginalizes future considerations and maximizes short term considerations culminating in a stunningly self-destructive United States act of diplomatic and economic isolation.

“Our plan will put America First. Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo. As long as we are led by politicians who will not put America First, then we can be assured that other nations will not treat America with respect.”

Donald Trump

Well. That in a nutshell summarizes a naïve view of Life.

For in those words, he implies the only way to gain respect is to act only as an “I” and that within a “we” world a country, or a person, no one can be first. And, well, first is all that matters. For in these words, he implies globalism is a hollow idea and that first can never be achieved, at any time, by creating a rising tide for everyone, but rather if it is only our tide that rises.

During the Trump administration Pew surveys showed United States became less and less popular and while popularity is not the best measuring stick I could suggest <in looking at the information> that the decline is a reflection of our growing indifference to democratic values and increasing interest in economic values.

They see United States assuming a transactional based relationship with the world and not a democratic based relationship with the world.

There is a price to pay for such positions – both morally and economically.

Here is what I believe.

Trump’s attempt to reverse the shift toward the future is not sustainable. Going backwards never is. And while his quasi-insane onslaught against any rule and regulation under his belief that rules and regulations were the only thing that kept him from being the wealthiest man in the world, he is actually going to be a horrible temporary “aberration” in the world’s long march toward the future.

I also believe the aberration came at a terrible cost to America.

Trump is a profoundly mediocre man with a profoundly dangerous idea of how to make America First.

I personally don’t believe Trump has ever known what America First meant, it was simply a slogan to him and he would laugh if he ever read this “If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great” <Alexis de Tocqueville>. An Economics First strategy sacrifices “the good” which inevitably means America will cease to be great.

For that, even beyond the economic malpractice, I will never forgive Trump. Ever.

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“I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones.”

Franz Kafka

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“People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought, which they avoid.”

Søren Kierkegaard

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Reflection time.

I believe we have forgotten how insane everything was on a daily basis when Trump was president. Daily he would ratchet up our blood pressure either through tweets, press conferences or speeches. He never missed an opportunity to say something outrageous, stupid, ignorant or just insane.

You need not be on twitter because his tweets became news items discussed everywhere as real policy to be discussed (which was insane in and of itself). But no matter how absurd there was an alternative universe trying to convince everyone who saw something that almost everyone thought “wow, that’s insane” – that it was actually sane. It was a crafty universe in that they would take an individual word and turn themselves into pretzels to extrapolate some sanity or maybe find through 6 degrees of separation some false equivalence to suggest “it was not insane.”

All that said. Every day the country’s, if not the world’s, blood pressure was increased attempting to deal with Trump being Trump.

This psycho-pathological liar, narcissistic, morally and financially corrupt person introduced a unique level of toxicity to the world.

And it revolved around twitter. Trump embodied teen mentality just on twitter instead of the high school hallways. He was an adult <at least in age> and yet he acted just like what we bitch & moan about our teens doing. In fact, I imagined many teens celebrated trump as new leader (‘cause he acted just like them). He could not stop retweeting nor stop from commenting on anything, tweeted before thinking and retweeted anything that came across his phone that looked interesting to retweet <regardless of whether he has actually checked that it is real or not>. Being dropped by twitter was the best thing that could have happened to the world. He abused freedom of speech, he abused words, he abused thinking, and he abused the mental health of the world in doing so.

Next.

People argued he would be a well-needed ‘breaker’ of the status quo. Well. This whole ‘brought in to break things’ sweeping statement is tiring. Chaos is not smart and only shows change with no plan. Countries are not ‘break and hope’ puzzles & how you break things matters in business and it matters in governing. Anyone can break something. Presidents need to make something. Trump made nothing and broke a lot of things. He abused the future health of the country in doing so.

Next.

People argued he would show us ‘the elites’ didn’t have all the answers. First. Experts have never claimed to have all the answers and, second, in general, the anti intellectual argument is insidious. It suggests no one should listen to smart people because they are ‘biased.’ You know what? Everyone is biased. But smart people actually know their bias and weigh it against truth and facts. Sometimes smart people are really smarter than other people and we should pay attention. Trump was an idiot, was purposefully ignorant, and abused the well being of the citizenry in doing so.

Next.

People argue “these people never gave him a chance.” This is a victim mentality. Any business leader, shit, any high school coach, knows you are not owed a chance; you earn a chance. I gave him dozens of chances to make America great. At almost every chance he chose to make America less great. At almost every chance he purposefully divided by showing preference to the tribes of people who showed loyalty to him. This is cheap, lazy, amateur leadership and abused the true potential of the country in doing so.

All that said.

Look at my blog and I was relentlessly critical of Trump in 2016 from a business leadership perspective. The reality is he really was never a business leader, only a successful personal brander. But. Read my day of and day after election posts and I wished him to do better than his campaign.

So let me reflect on whether he improved from his campaign.

Leaving transactional results debate aside (because anyone could pluck a number out of the mud):

• Failed the integrity test

• Failed the moral test

• Failed the honesty/truth telling test

• Failed the debt/deficit test

• Failed the unity/unifying test

• Failed the legal test

• Failed the corruption test

Look.

I won’t debate that Trump and his cult felt like they were winning; they did (and still do). But he was only able to do so by successfully creating a warped ‘us versus them’ narrative using some dubious “faux facts” of which leans into some alternative universe of resentment. But. Facts and truth should matter. Presidents should be accountable for their behavior and we should care about how someone plays the game, i.e., goes about the execution of the job they are accountable for.

I never wanted to impeach this incompetent, narcissist buffoon, I just wanted him to do his frickin’ job. No one is ever ‘pro-impeachment.’ It’s like saying someone is ‘pro-abortion.’ Or ‘pro-firing’ (as a business person). These are soul wrenching personal choices you always seek ways to avoid. And that is where we should truly reflect. On almost a daily basis Trump forced us, almost every person, to make some fairly soul wrenching choices on where we stood and where we wanted to make a stand. His cult following actually had it pretty easy here in that they simply stood behind his words, no matter how insane, and that was their ‘stand.’ The rest of us, well, worried. And it was a soul wrenching layered worry: our livelihoods, our friends, our fellow citizens, our potential fellow citizens, our country, our constitution, our democracy, our moral standing. I think many of us have forgotten about that.

They were an insane 4+ years.

So reflect a bit.

And remember that pressure often defines a person. The Presidency is 24/7 pressure. The less great complain, whine and suggest the hand they have been dealt was unfair. The great play the hand they have been dealt, without complaining, and play the game smartly, thoughtfully and know they get judged on how they played the hand, not whether they won. Reflect. Please. I think its important we do.

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“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

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“We are many, many people and yet we are one. What we do today with our thinking, what we do tomorrow with our thoughts, what we do with our actions and our interactions with people determines the course of the universe itself. You are not powerless. You are not without power.”

Little Crow

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Suffice it to say, 24/7 technology has challenged most of what we thought about our self-identity. In the good old days self identity was a bit easier because we had a fairly limited exposure, neighborhood/school/work/community, to images and shared experiences which led to shaping what we saw as “self”. In today’s world we are faced with an onslaught of information which we are, frankly, incapable of assimilating within our cognitive scope. And while many people discuss this in terms of stress, knowledge, decision making, today I discuss it in terms of self identity.

It was actually Toffler, in The Third Wave, who warned us of some of the self-identity challenges in a small section called “warehouse of images.” He described being connected to the

worldwide web would be an information bomb exploding in our midst showering us with a shrapnel of images and drastically changing the way each of us perceives and acts upon our private world and, ultimately, what we view as ‘self.’ The outcome of that was a transformation of our psyches and identities. This transformation naturally occurs as each of us mentally creates a model of reality through this ever increasing warehouse of images. To be clear. Some of what we are calling “images” are visual, others are auditory and some even tactile. All of which craft some precepts crafted from some somewhat-tenuous traces to “our environment” (note: technology can suggest an environment which isn’t really practically what our true environment is, i.e., if I live in Cherkassy Ukraine I don’t really share much of the environment found in Ibiza Instagram). But all of this, practical or not, creates linkages that define relationships with our own self identity. Some are simple, others are complex, some even conceptual, but together these images add up to our picture of the world and allow us to locate our self identity in times, spaces and the network of connections around us.

Which leads me to make a point about now versus then.

These images do not spring from nowhere. They are formed out of the signals or information we interact with from our environment, neighborhood, jobs, homes, churches, schools and even politics. What mass media did was create some standard parts of a universal image file. This centrally produced imagery helps produce the standardization of behavior and ‘identity’ which permitted many of us to choose between ‘standard’ and ‘non-standard’ (or something in between). Technology drastically altered all of this. Standard was no longer standard and non-standard almost doesn’t exist. There is a lack of clarity with regard to cultural identity and because we have lost that grander narrative everything falls down to ‘individual choice’ which sounds good; but truly only increases stress. So as we are bombarded with an accelerated amount of images, it forces a parallel acceleration of change and doubt as we create and recreate in an attempt to sync up to an everchanging onslaught of context. New information reaches us and we are forced to revise our image file continuously at a faster and faster rate. Older images based on past reality must be replaced unless we update them our actions become divorced from reality. We not only find it impossible to cope with assimilating all the new images but also it challenges us to understand our own identity because we struggle to put our identity in a static context. In other words, we are constantly facing a self-identity crisis simply by existing in this environment.

Which leads me to make a point about ‘standardized view of identity.’

The distinguishing feature of conformity is that it is in implicit and it feels voluntary. No one tells us what to do or choose and no one offers a legitimate or formal reason to do so. Because of that, just as we prefer to spend time with people like ourselves, we like to fit in and our ‘identity’ arcs to some normative/median identity. And when we find that we don’t fit in, we can change or not. Conforming is the choice, sometimes conscious sometimes not, to change ourselves. Most conformity is familiarity and familiarity does not breed contempt. It breeds comfort. I say this not to suggest self-identity is about being like everyone else, but rather to suggest today’s 24/7 technology doesn’t really offer us a ‘median identity.’ Something to measure our identity on an I, We, World view. Its one big swirling moshpit of identity fragments so even if you wanted to be ‘normal’ you may not really be sure what normal is.

Which leads me to identity within a moshpit world.

Knowing the hard limits to our cognitive capacity and the huge cost of working long meaningless hours to ‘fit into a 24/7 world’ should not be an intractable problem to address. We have gobs of data and information showing the disastrous consequences on the individual. Despite that people continue to ignore the cognitive truths and believe they can somehow stretch the cognitive limits of their minds. This all has consequences for our self-identity. The ubiquitous world of technology allows us to connect with more people more ideas more information than ever before. All beyond the limits of our cognitive capacity which traps us in this horrible doom loop of where does our self begin and where does it end. Hanzi Freinacht is the one who suggests the idea of transvidualism where the self actually contains part of the whole which while most likely true only leads us to even more anxiety-driven questions: what does the self hold on to? Who are you? Is your reality yourself? is your identity ever just one thing but in constant motion and morphing with each interaction? I would be remiss if I didn’t point out all these questions suggest opportunities to accept our self-limitations and purposefully seek out, within the collective, ways to be part of things that are bigger than ourselves without losing are self-identity. To be sure, it is always easier to envision the negative scenarios within what I’m saying, but I believe the way of navigating the moshpit is to instead imagine the positive ways in which technology might help us create, shape and control our own identities and our own potential. We should be imagining the positive ways which this technology world allows us to apply a ‘new me’ within changing contexts and molding ourself to a changing world WHILE holding onto the center of who and what we are. It is possible the technology world will not only be able to better show us who we are, but also visions of who we want to be and who we could be.

“Be true to thineself.”

Shakespeare

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We could use technology to help us understand why things are as they are as well as envision ways of what we could do with our lives. But here’s the deal. The struggle ultimately resides in ‘self.’ What I mean by that is ‘the core or the center of who and what we are.’ We all strive after something which we deem good or better sort of our personal version of progress. But if we are not careful this becomes good for the self and not the greater good as in not taking into consideration the larger whole. So, unless we as individuals sort out our center, our urges, impulses, and desires in a coordinated way we are doomed to constant confusion living in a contradictory identity state. This could quite possibly be self-destructive in a technological world which is constantly trying to attack us within its own coordinated, orderly system of ideas of what it thinks we should be and who we should be. To be clear.

“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”

Yeats

Even if you do not think about your centre, I can guarantee it will never be empty in a 24/7 technological world in which everything is connected the outside world because it will connect with whatever you leave empty and fill it with what it wants.

** note: even if you ‘cut-yourself-off’ from 24/7 technology on occasion, this is a battle you cannot avoid. Technology is ubiquitous. Take care of your center or technology will take care of it for you.

Everything I am discussing falls within a technological world which has all the appearances of structureless; as in chaos. But its not. Any group of people, of whatever nature, that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time, but it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people involved. Certainly the looseness and informality of the construct encourages participation in discussion and its often-supportive atmosphere, but always connective, elicits some personal insight. It within this that our identities are shaped and formed. Structureless gains structure then gains identity, a ‘personalized’ identity despite any pre-identified ‘centralized purpose’ suggesting what it should be. This last point is significant because this group identity shaping can either be of the people, or of the technology/algorithms. The latter happens more often than we would like to believe.

If a self-identity seeks to grow and thrive as it itself, it will often have to disabuse itself of some of the prejudices of the organization and structure of the things it attaches itself to. To be clear. There is no such thing as a laissez faire group in the internet, it is simply a smokescreen for either technology manipulation or someone seeking power.

Where we go from here.

Hanzi Freinacht said “the new game of life looks a lot like this: whoever has mastered the most perspectives when she dies, wins.” That’s the self-identity game. It used to be a more simplistic “what I believe represents what I am” but with today’s technology world who I am, if you seek to have a center that holds within multiple contexts, is an accumulation of perspectives. If the industrial age encouraged a standardization of identity, technology is ripping us apart. Overcome by details and information we have become almost incapable of conceptualizing anything – including our own identity. Consequently, we have begun crafting the details of who we want to be seen as to compete in a world in which other’s identities flash before us detail by detail. Detail by detail we push out into the world and before you know it you are no longer a self – as a solid concept – but rather a bunch of details and pieces you think have some value. And this is where stories come in. Thinking conceptually may be too much of a mind bender, but having a story, or stories, is not as tough. Good stories and well-maintained identities embracing stories endure. This is actually part of the Third Wave Toffler mentioned. 2^nd Wave media tightly reinforced, within stable distribution structures (major TV networks & major papers/magazines) shared world views and some semblance of common sensemaking within which an identity could comfortably reside (or, conversely, create a counter culture identity). In today’s environment worlds are created through our digital connection points, perspectives are gained through many interactions, and we need to become more comfortable projecting our identity, all facets, through this digital connectivity of almost infinite networks of other humans. The reality is technology is getting better; and worse. Technology is becoming easier to craft the identity we would like to project, but it is getting worse in that if you are not careful algorithms pick at the little gaps seeking to exploit with fear, doubt, and victimhood. Clearly, the lines have been erased between what we would have considered our self-identity and the digital worlds that represent our identity. The technological world has forced us to think of ourselves, in many ways, as content. And in some ways that is good. If our identities are content and useful content should have some substance, maybe, just maybe, by treating it like content we will make sure it is worthy of our self. Ponder.

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“When you look at past futurists, the big mistakes they make are not predicting the game-changers. Anyone can predict incremental advances, but the things that really trip futurists up are when they think something is going to be a breakthrough and it isn’t, or they just entirely miss the real breakthroughs. The big one is the analog-to-digital transition. Nobody picked up on that. Asimov completely missed it. Nobody saw how digital technology was going to transform our society and our world. Of course now, once it has, it seems obvious. But that was a game-changer that nobody saw coming. So now we’re trying to predict, “What are the future game-changers like that going to be?”

Steven Novella

(author note: both McLuhan & Toffler did not miss this)

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koan

a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.

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It used to be I fixed businesses. They had an issue, maybe even one they struggled to put a finger on, and I got called. Nowadays I get called to talk more about, well, the future: how that business could fit into a vague future and maybe discuss some vague outlines of what the future could be. But, please, do not call me a futurist. Futurists, for the most part, are bullshit artists weaving wonderful narratives of worlds that could be. Fun to listen to, certainly opens the imagination, but mostly fantasy buttressed up by some pretty charts showing trends leading to that future or selective anecdotes about the present which get extrapolated out into stories of possibilities. And this is where they typically truly lose the plot; they discuss possibilities as declaratives. They state something “will be” as in “the metaverse is the” or “the metaverse will be the future of” as if it is cast in stone. Fantasy stuff in my words. The best “futurists’ simply suggest these are things to make you think; not things of what will be. The best ‘futurists’ don’t give answers or ‘destinations’, but rather frameworks to think about fitting into the future and force you to think about probabilities of possibilities not fantasy.

Which leads me to the real business of futurism is harder than it looks.

“Behind each door of what-if lies an unanswerable question that unhinges an infinite Rube Goldberg machine of probabilities.”
Maria Popova

I have always embraced the concept of scenario planning, but I have just thought it was relatively cumbersome in practicality – in the doing of and in the usefulness in a dynamic market. But, inevitably, any discussion of futurism will crash into the discussion of inevitableness. The only futurists who discussed inevitableness that I admire are McLuhan and Toffler. In fact, contrary to the opening quote I used, they did exactly what Steven Novella said no one did. That said. Both McLuhan and Toffler’s thinking is strewn with what now looks like fantastical inevitable musings. Yet, the prize in studying them, particularly Toffler, is in viewing what he deems as inevitable underlying sociotechnological currents, not specific changes (although he does get many of those right). I cannot remember who said this, but many of the technological changes we view today as inevitable truly hinged on one person and one decision. For example, if Henry Ford had decided to build electric cars rather than gas-powered ones, it would have changed the course of oil dependency, how cities were built and designed and even how homes would be built. Yeah. Many of the world underpinnings are grounded in a single bet. And that is why much of futurism is hard. Much of the ‘good stuff’ futurism suggests that single bet needs to be unraveled which is, well, hard. This means the ‘bad stuff’ futurism is usually simply an extrapolation of what exists. This can certainly be interesting and lots of businesses like this because it is always easier to edit the world than create a world. But let me circle back to the former. Creating a new world does not have to be fantasyland. There is a massive difference between suggesting automation will make all human work irrelevant and suggesting automation will shift 50% of jobs in some way (new jobs or change jobs). Similar discussion revolves around robots, currency, medicine and, well, everything. And that’s the hard part – discerning fantasy with possibility and, well, koan (sifting through the inadequacy of logical reasoning).

Which lead me to the role people play in futurism’s mojo.

Humans are inherently ‘belonging beings.’ What I mean by that is we gain a sense of meaning and mattering when we sense we belong. Some people may call this ‘community’ and I imagine they aren’t wrong. I simply suggest it is about connection. And from there I would suggest it is a complex connection in that it is a connection to the earth – water, climate, resources, etc – leading to a greater sense of belonging if we feel connected to the earth as well as the more normally discussed connection with other humans. This isn’t some hippy-dippy thought, but more of a growing realization that survival is pragmatic as well as psychological and if we connect with all, we are closer to maximizing (optimizing) our potential life – in the present and for the future (where the next generation will be residing). True futurism isn’t specific to a ‘thing’, but rather specifically about the whole interconnected messy mix of things of which humans are at the center.

Which leads me to thinking.
Futurism is just thinking beyond the present. I bring up thinking because I believe people like to think. Maybe not every day and every minute (like I do), but I believe people like to feel smart and to feel smart you have to think. I suggest that because circling back to Toffler, he suggested every business should have futurists. I agree and disagree. I think if everyone just thought a little bit better, was able to contribute what you are thinking, and that thinking could be applied as part of collective action to create some impact that benefited the business, well, you have a business that is future-fitting on a daily/weekly basis. I am sure a business would benefit from specific people who were fairly good at scenario thinking (that’s a pragmatic futurist), but having an entire business thinking morphs to fit the future. I imagine my point here is that the link between futurism and future-fitting is thinking. I say that because neither futurism nor future-fitting is a ‘how-to-manual,’ they are simply frames within which you could envision the business existing. And, as Toffler has noted, people know more about the future then we tend to formulate in any way so I believe people just need to be encouraged to do so.

Which leads me to how we should think about the future.

I am not sure if it was the pandemic or real business change, but almost every techno-futurist is claiming that ‘the future’ is just around the corner, or even the future is now, always offering a sense of inevitableness, and always suggesting it’s going to be something fantastical (using some vague future to make that point). All of this “future is now” bullshit is attempting to suggest you are missing something (note: which you most likely are, but not the things they are going to suggest) and you need to get onboard.

Here is the problem. The people that eat this shit up don’t really want wisdom. These people just want shortcuts to getting “more” of what they view as self-interest prosperity/progress therefore if the message doesn’t match the ‘more’ desires ultimately it doesn’t engage the listeners because it doesn’t contain the inevitability of something positive for them. To be clear. The message itself need not be positive, there can even be a general sense of doom in a futurist message, but nowadays a message needs a sense of some guarantee that prosperity will never end. Therein lies my biggest issue about futurism in the fact that trend watchers are seeking future prosperity versus discussing releasing present prosperity. In other words, there really isn’t an emphasis on future fitting, but rather establishing some ‘maybe’ future state. In addition, this futurism stuff can edge very quickly into ‘the elitism zone’ where things get discussed in ways that enable people to envision some fantastical future states and, yet, be incredibly off-putting in its lack of understandability.

In the end. I believe the “seek future vs. release the present” topic is at the core of how we should think about the future. Yeah. I know the balance in that discussion will vary by the business vision itself, but, if you don’t navigate pragmatism of the present and possibilities of a future, you kind of are wasting people’s time and minds. In addition, if you don’t navigate pragmatic understanding of reality, any possibilities crafted will appear hollow. Maybe we all need to embrace Koan. Ponder.

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“You can get attention and really make people resent you if you do it with an unrelated gimmick. They won’t like you for that.”

Bill Bernbach

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No one is easier to manipulate than a man who exaggerates his own influence.

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“By dividing the people, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd.”

The Civil Servants’ Year Book, “The Organizer” January 1934

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Resentment is a very personal feeling. Resentment is a sense of grievance, a personal feeling, and suggests a persistent or recurrent brooding over injuries (perceived or real) rather than a sudden outburst if passionate anger (source: Hayakawa). Resentment has a strong sense of implicit grievance. It is deep and persistent. Let’s maybe call this an incredibly corrosive version of an us versus them narrative.

I purposefully use corrosive to lead into politics of resentment. I do so because while resentment is personal, politics of resentment is a tactic. I would argue it is politics at its worst because not only does it divide, but it creates actual barriers to unifying. In other words, it is both an offensive tactic as well as a defensive one (defends against someone who seeks to unite). Resentment is like a magnet. What I mean by that is it is one of those things that people do not need to be led toward or even commanded to exhibit, instead it is a dormant ‘sense’ that simply needs to be activated and once activated will stick to whatever metal places itself in front of that resentment.

And while politicians are certainly accountable, what I just shared, means that a specific criminal rarely exists. Throughout history authorities haven’t ordered violent resentment – pogroms, lynchings, riots – people just committed them.  The only role politicians play is in manipulating resentments to bring them about. This is the politics of fear or victimhood and is exploitation of what is latent in every individual. Now. Resentment involves the need for a “them,” a scapegoat, because most people don’t like to isolate a specific personal scapegoat (it feels too personal). So political rhetoric offers everyone a way to identify someone to scapegoat at arm’s length. The politics of resentment crafts a narrative offering people a scapegoat, usually a collection of people, i.e., them, which every individual person can transfer “evil/danger” to so each individual feels justified and validated in their resentment. This is political manipulation because it purposefully absolves each person of being accountable for the choice of who to demonize, ‘the enemy’ to eliminate, but rather we have enemies crafted by propaganda and some comfortable narrative for them to fall into. By exploiting the scapegoat narrative, people feel comfortable making the scapegoat the generalized incarnation of evil. This is where the politics of resentment truly rears its ugliest head. In the exploitation of resentment, the scapegoat becomes the cause of perceived misfortune. To be clear. There is little to no actual rational basis for this resentment no matter how much the political narrative may circulate and distribute so-called rational reasons. Resentment results solely from the subconscious beliefs/bias/attitudes. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out it was Hitler in Mein Kampf who said “it is necessary to suggest to the people that the most varied enemies all belong to the same category and to lump all adversaries together so that it will appear to the mass of our own partisans that the struggle is being waged against a single enemy. This fortifies their faith in their rights and increases their exasperation against those who would assail them.”

These narratives are corrosive in a variety of ways, but one of the most dangerous aspects is once this type of narrative gains a foothold, reality is under attack. The narrative is not a reflection of reality, using crafted scapegoats, but the resentment reflects real dormant latent subconscious feelings. This means people and society get trapped in the wretched hollow in between reality and perception, hope and resentment. This sense gains momentum because as soon as ‘a scapegoat’ has been clearly identified a variety of resentments can be directed toward them and ‘resentment’ becomes ‘everything evil’ transferred into some nebulous adversary, which only becomes bigger and more evil and more dangerous as more and more resentments are blamed on them. Reality becomes confusion in a conflation of accusations, all enhanced by everyone’s subconscious resentments, with the only clarity being “the scapegoat/enemy.”

Which leads me to ideologies.

Politics is ideologically driven. In the most basic sense, it would be conservatives (those who seek to conserve) and progressives (those who seek to progress). Regardless. While ideology creates the intellectual underpinnings of society, it is also true that ideological expressions typically represent distorted consciousness of realities; consequently, ideologues produced real distorting efforts. For example, an ideology can attempt to take credit for the concrete economic successes of an industrial system of and, yet, that is a distortion of the effect of the ideology let alone the truth. What I mean by that is social reality and social identity get molded into reality in the ideological image and once ideology, the abstract, becomes concrete it is legitimized – even if it is simply an illusion of narrative (and politicians are masters of illusion). In other words, this ideology becomes a miraculous beacon of ‘reasonable common sense’ only an ignorant idiot wouldn’t agree with. Even worse, within the politics of resentment, at that point ideology takes on sort of a precision in that it no longer represents choices but rather becomes assertions of undeniable facts.

The politician’s role in this is to assist in defining normalization because in doing so it becomes an indispensable tool to sanction that ‘normalization.’ I imagine what I am trying to suggest is that within the politics of resentment society, rooted in emotion, identity and ways of life cultivated among a self-identified ‘us,’ operates in an entirely different frame than the rational, universal, truth of a functional healthy society and economy. I will say that history has demonstrated over and over again when real or perceived threats abound, politicians will depart from rational discourse and shift to friends vs. enemies/us vs. them narratives. Politicians are adept at organizing the survival and sustenance of a community – defined by those who are not part of it.

Which leads me to the heinous aspect of politics of resentment.

Self is emergent as a property of the whole. In other words, we are who we are through the interactions/connections with others and the world. An individual rises to new levels when it is part of the whole (not a part of the whole). What I mean by that is separate things have reason to come together that offers advantages that being separate does not have. While there is no “law of attraction”, if there were, this would be it. I believe my thought here is a derivative of what is called “the allurement principle” which is the social collective desire for impact. This is what the politics of resentment destroys, if not suffocates. I believe it was John Ralston Saul who used the phrase ‘pillager of words.’ Some politicians seem to hijack scraps of moral precepts to justify actions, ignoring true reason and morality. They seek to offer simple, and simplistic, answers to things that are neither simple nor have any real answers. They also seek to use pseudo-logic, a derivative of the faux concrete proof, because logic, or what is deemed ‘reason,’ can multiply certainty, as well as doubt, at terrifying speed. They seek to divide in order to have power over parts of the whole – because they cannot gain power by any other means because the ‘whole’ would reject them.

Self is actually about a collective ability to understand and act. Problems are rarely individual; they are more likely larger tragedy of the commons issues and therefore demand some type of collective action. Politics of resentment is anti- ‘everything in that last sentence’. Resentment, at its worst, makes everyone an individual and everyone a potential enemy or someone to blame for any number of my individual woes – real or perceived. Consequently, politics of resentment makes everyone a victim. That last sentence was hard to type because it is a hard thought to swallow. But maybe the first step out of resentment is to accept someone is attempting to make us a victim. Ponder.

“It may be that the universal history is the history of a handful of metaphors.”

Jorge Luis Borges

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“Across American life, we had refined a set of extraordinary tools – for building wealth, firing bullets, and circulating information – that were so powerful, they altered not just the arrangement of American politics, but also the chemistry of it.”

Evan Osnos

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“Capitalism is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.”

Karl Marx

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“No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war. Some people blame economic globalization for what has gone wrong in our world. It is true that economic globalization has created new problems, but this is no justification to write off economic globalization all together.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping

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Politicians are infamous for dumbing complex economic issues down to one simplistic soundbite often using whatever convenient, single, data point to make their point. The reality is that economics, and economies, are complex, ambiguous, with no clear, easy, actions/solutions; none of which slow politicians from wielding the politics of economics to attempt to sway public opinion in their favor. And while I have no love of politicians or politics, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out they are stuck in a system of which they have few choices, but to play the narrative game this way if they seek any success. What I mean by that is there is only one logical solution when success is defined solely by economic growth (which has a halo effect of perception of personal success/wealth). A politician is forced to choose between the technological/business solution, which is the only reasonable one for career success, and any other solutions. The ‘other solutions’, while infinitely more likely to contribute to long term economic and social progress, offer abstractness in the present and dubious short term ‘economic successes’ which offer only danger to personal political success. The harsh truth, today, is that no politician has any real choice, but to chase economic success no matter how hollow the ’success’ may actually be for a healthy society. Oddly, this chase simultaneously decreases the power and role of politicians (maybe not politics) as it is recognized any real advance comes thru business/technology – so responsibility is shifted from humans to machines, data & technology – and, yet, increases their power thru narratives. Suffice it to say the inevitable choice every politician makes is between democracy/society and business/economics, hence, the politics of economics because that is where their self interest resides.

Which leads me to the truly insane situation the politics of economics puts us in.

Any sane person recognizes the government cannot be solely responsible for economic success nor is the market truly a mechanism of the pursuit of self-interest in which the interests of society will be served well. For example, Noah Smith has noted several times transforming the U.S. economy in order to more effectively compete with China and Russia will involve industrial policy. There’s a very basic economic reason for this. The industrial structure the free market will tend to produce, if left to its own devices, does not take national interests into account – it produces not what the market needs, but what profits the business. Thus, if we want to have an economy that’s optimized not just for consumption, but for the good of a nation/society, government has to play a role with economic interests. The slippery solutions they must craft reside somewhere within what Adam Smith suggested in the Theory of Moral Sentiments in that however how selfish soever man may seem to be supposed there are evidently some principles in our nature which interests us in the fortunes of others. Economic interests need to take a more rounded view of human behavior which acknowledges the coexistence of both the self-interested and altruistic sides of human nature. To be clear. Humans are neither inherently altruistic or selfish, they are what research people call conditional cooperators and altruistic punishers. I believe this is called “reciprocity” and defined as ‘a predisposition to cooperate with others and to punish even at personal cost, if necessary, those who violate the norms of this cooperation even when it is obvious the personal cost will never be recouped.’ I would argue this is the true invisible hand, not the market, in that there is no rationality other than ‘the structure of the system will define behaviors’. I say that because one cannot blame individuals for most failures, but rather the system itself. Yet. We tend to highlight the accountability of ‘the individual’ in some unhealthy ways within economic narratives. I say unhealthy because, well, as Hanzi Freinacht has suggested the entire idea of individual or collective is outdated in today’s world. And in the Cluetrain Manifesto they suggested “I am parts of you, you are parts of me, and the whole is a malleable mix of parts of all of us – even those we interact with outside the internal system within the business.” I imagine my point here is that business and our little personal circles of existence are simply a system within a system, or of the system, and people are systems in and of themselves and true self-interest really doesn’t exist because no one ‘self’ can exist without the whole. That’s today’s world no matter what the politics of economics may suggest.

Which leads me to economic support in government is inextricably linked to how it is viewed in the public’s eye.

Ordinary people, the public, tend to have certain biases particularly when it comes to government and the role of government in economics. Those on the left tend to be more altruistic and when things don’t go well, they see it as true as greed and self-interest. Those on the right tend to see welfare programs as ineffectual and a waste of their taxes because people become lazy nor have self-reliant/self-interest mindsets. However, the truth, as pointed out earlier, of how we accept economic policies gets driven by reciprocity. Strong reciprocity norms tend to encourage people to categorize the disadvantaged into the deserving and the undeserving and programs that reflect this distinction tend to enjoy broad support. Programs that run counter to these norms, even if it’s just by perception, and benefit perceived undeserving people tend to be controversial. The easiest example of this is welfare programs that give benefits with no requirements such as work or training. My point here is that politicians exploit our biases within the politics of economics. The truth is most people are not lazy, requirements tend to exclude some people who really could use the system and the most people who abuse economic policies are actually not the ones who need the programs.

Which leads me to Peter Drucker ‘s “No More Salvation by Society” (from 1989 book “The New Realities”).

Drucker reflects on how businesses, governments <and politics> were shifting their focus from delivering ‘an everlasting society which achieves both social perfection and individual perfection’ to seeking ‘economic salvation.’ He clearly believed that businesses, and managers, have a responsibility to Society by creating ‘better people’: better as in values, moral compass and, in general, ‘do the right thing’ attitudes and behavior. The issue, to him, was that beginning in maybe the 1970’s functioning society changed direction — from societal priorities to economic priorities.  In other words, we shifted from a society being driven by social power <values based> to a society driven by purchasing power. People did not make this decision on their own, in fact this big shift was driven by politics (and politicians) which began integrating economic promise into their platforms thereby replacing social betterment (or salvation by society) as a governmental platform. Ultimately, the ‘politics of economics’ holy grail became “increasing the purchasing power.”

This is a big issue and has implications in the business management world (later Drucker addressed further implications in “Management as Social Function and Liberal Art”). The real point is that this politics of economics arose when politicians decided economics should be noticed beyond kitchen table discussions. This mattered because when an economy’s role as part of the social fabric of society isn’t truly understood, politicians never really had the power to wield in their self-interest. So as businesses sought to exert more influence over ‘labor’ at the dawn of industrialization the Will of the Institution crossed self-interest paths with the Desire of the Politician and the politics of economics became the dominion of business & politician “experts.” Now. Any sane person looking at today’s society will conclude these experts have failed us miserably by hollowing out any social morality or dignity. Fundamentally these policy decision makers experts have evolved into pseudo-logic bullies empty of any moral compass as they lean in on ‘economics’. When attacked for this hollowness they stubbornly defend using simplistic selective vanity metrics of economics conflating them with social value creation. It was John Ralston Saul who suggested we have become “a vast, incomprehensible, direction less machine, run by process-minded experts whose cult of scientific management is bereft of both sense and morality” where civilians then end up dwelling in a world of illusion. Politicians use this world of illusion to manipulate people by seeking out asymmetrical moments <a never-ending supply in a complex economy> to make some simplistic point. Consequently, this encourages people to choose the least difficult paths/situations of the least resistance. They do so not because they are lazy or any dubious reason beyond the fact the politicians have poisoned our minds to such an extent wherein any desire beyond ‘a sustainable life’ just doesn’t seem worth the effort. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out these political techniques actually limits potential/possibilities and actually create a Gordian Knot of policies which mutually reinforce each other creating a general entropy. The politics of economics creates a reinforcing system which naturally limits potential. Ponder that.

Which leads me to: what should we do?

“Every profound innovation is based on an inward-bound journey.”

W. Brian Arthur

We begin by looking inward – as in ‘us.’ Our hope rests on the fact ordinary people are often able to take a broader view on pragmatic realities of a community then one taken by experts. This may sound counterintuitive but this is a thought consistent with strategy & execution, i.e., where the rubber hits the road. This may also sound counterintuitive because ordinary people are typically the ones who tend to feel most powerless. But everyone does not need to act, but rather simply support the small groups of people who have already started.  I would also add I believe leaders should respond to the forces shaping society. Instead of highlighting simplistic metrics supporting the view du jour we should be seeking to acknowledge social trends within the economics and respond to them, not just the economics, to help shape the world we desire. I also believe either politicians/business leaders choose to do this or the inevitable forces of disruption, driven by ordinary people, will dictate an evolution of their thinking. It was Otto Scharmer who suggested this will demand a disconnect of finance from the real economy, ecology, institutions, consumerism, governance, and ownership and address the three basic divides – 1) the ecological divide, 2) the social divide, 3) the spiritual-cultural divide – which actually shape the economic world. Society, ordinary people, with the aid of experts, must demand mechanisms of choice which apply common sense, experienced knowledge, public interest and morality with the intent to develop economic solutions and frameworks that withstand the whipsaw of shifting political winds.

All that said.

We should all be wary of the politics of economics game being played by the politicians.

** source for several words, thoughts and phrasing: Volataire’s Bastards, John Ralston Saul