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“It’s easy to make a buck.

It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.” 

—–

Tom Brokaw  

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“In a dream world, everyone is treated with the same amount of respect. But until we reach that goal, I will lend my ear, I will lend my voice to any boy, girl, man or woman who does not feel like they can protect themselves.”

———-

Jennifer Lawrence

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Well. When you get to my age you sometimes pause and think “has anything I have done really made a difference.”

I tend to believe it is a reflective thing we naturally do because most of us have invested gobs of energy in some career, gobs of energy outside of the workplace with home & family responsibilities as well as gobs of energy in at least some ‘self fulfillment’ stuff.

We kind of want to assess life in maybe an ROI type way. That ROI idea may sound a little weird, but starting all the way in grade school where they pound into your head you should be involved in extracurricular activities <on top of schoolwork> all the way throughout your career you tend to measure your Life in an “energy-to-achievement” ratio way.

To be clear <part 1>.

We draft resumes being encouraged to espouse “differences we made on a business” wherein we take basic responsibilities, shit we are paid to do, and stretch it out into some dramatic outcome. Our professional lives seem to be driven into some simplistic ‘where I made a difference’ encapsulation which sadly derives it of the true rich & royal hues.

And, yeah, that matters. It matters because it is, more often than not, in those swirling colors where you personally find satisfaction – and meaning.  Yet, almost all of us distill our differences into simplistic black & white terms, or, in other words, we are encouraged to sell ourselves as “I am a good ROI.”

Now.

To be clear <part 2>.

This ‘pause & think’ isn’t about doubting any personal ability, or smarts or even accomplishments. I assume I am not that different than most people my age that I assume I have some ability, some smarts and some accomplishments.

The ‘pause & think’ is more about the ‘degree of.’

Am I really that good?

Am I really that smart?

Are my accomplishments really that good?

You start thinking about whether you have truly made a difference or if your “wins & accomplishments” were simply pedantic grind-it-out every day shit and that your losses were losses that didn’t mean anything anyway. Or, in other words, we are encouraged to think of our lives as “was I a good ROI.”

Now.

If you truly think about that you start thinking about what you have done and ROI.

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“Hey, if I am going to lose, let me lose doing something.”

Sam Seaborne

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Ok. I say all that because I received a couple of unexpected messages recently. The kind of messages that makes you pause & think … “maybe I did make a little bit of difference in some corner of the world”:

—————

Hi Bruce! I hope you’re doing well! It’s been a little while since we’ve talked. I just caught up with +++++ and a group of <college> students in Chicago last week. You set such a great example of leadership and teaching young people, including myself, a few years ago. I can only hope to have the same impact on this new group of students. I sincerely hope you’re doing well and I hope to keep in touch!

—————————–

Thank you so much, Bruce. You know I think about the day you pulled me into that little conference room at 151 W. 4th Street to tell me you were bringing me on to +++++++ – a lot. You saved my career that day. I will always be grateful to you for teaching me so much over the course of that year. Thank you for everything.

——————–

I am fairly sure no one gets a lot of these messages so I am fairly sure almost everyone cherishes them. They reflect some “return” on whatever we have invested.

But. You know. It is quite possible I look at ‘making a difference’ and my own personal ROI a little differently than a lot of other people. I know I would love to leave behind a legacy-like idea but, maybe more importantly, I would like to leave behind a legacy of ‘he made a difference’ – however that comes to Life.

That drives me and what I do and say <and write>.

The dilemma with pursuing thinking like this is while it has a high appeal for success <because it means ‘something’>, it is difficult, time consuming, <honestly> has a relatively low chance of success and is not the kind of thinking that really pays the bills. I imagine any life ‘purpose’ decision, combined with the fact you have to sustain and maintain everyday life responsibilities at exactly the same time, makes you ponder this unfortunate dilemma.

I can unequivocally state anyone who makes a conscious decision to ‘want to make a difference’ should make sure they think that decision through. It is not one to be made flippantly and while I shared a couple of notes which makes it all worthwhile to me, mostly you do not get much positive feedback.

That said.

I will offer a thought as you think about the dilemma.

Some guy named John William Atkinson wrote Motivational Determinants of risk-taking Behavior in Psychological Review in 1957. He suggested that if you can choose the grade of complexity <difficulty> of a task most of the decisions are taken in a mid-complexity-level. Too easy tasks or too difficult tasks can neither provoke a strong feeling of satisfaction nor a strong disappointment and vice versa.

Highly motivated people often choose a realistic complexity of tasks whereas low motivated people choose tasks that are finally to easy or too difficult for them.

But. Here is where I think I would sit good ole JW Atkinson down and have a debate. If I set aside the fact bills have to be paid at some point, I would say he doesn’t give ‘appeal of success’ enough emphasis. Especially if the appeal of success is tied to “doing something” or maybe better said ‘doing something that may truly matter.’

Huh? As Sam Seaborne says “if I am gonna lose let me lose doing something.” What I mean is that if you consciously decide to ‘go big and win big <or lose big>’ your satisfaction criteria changes and, therefore, you are willing to plow your way through more complexity and difficulty.

Look. I don’t think I am different than most people. We all want to ‘do something.’ Deep in our heart of hearts we want to know that we have done something that matters. I imagine, in a ‘big impact’ thought kind of way, somewhere in all of us we would like to leave the world a better place than the way we found it <and everyone can define the extent of ‘better place’ in their own minds>.

A friend of mine once pointed out that this ‘go big ideal’ can often simply be making a smaller difference in someone’s life. He is right. And if that is as good as it gets, well, that ain’t bad. But sometimes the desire to ‘do something’ is bigger than individuals or individual moments. That doesn’t make it ‘better’; just bigger. Bigger as in my case I take ‘world’ literally and not figuratively.

That ‘bigger’ matters because Atkinson is suggesting that the size of the ‘do something’ legacy task can often lead to a complexity that increasingly makes it difficult to be successful <but the prize more tantalizing>. I think what he misses is that a desire to make a difference can mentally shake the motivation etch a sketch.

Anyway.

At some point I think we all make some decisions on whether to compromise ‘greater purpose’ versus ‘everyday grind it out needs & responsibilities.’ Day to day responsibilities <not just bills but true responsibility to others who count on you> is a real life factor in whatever you decide to do or not do. It’s not like you have a blank Life sheet and put on it “do something that matters.”

The sheet is never blank.

You have cars, mortgages, children, mates/partners, work obligations, general shit that needs to get done. In fact, if you think about it too much, you will start thinking “holy shit, I want to make a difference but how the hell does it all happen?”

Well.

In the kindest sense you learn to balance or juggle.

In its harshest sense you compromise.

I would argue far too many of us confuse those two things and more of us actually compromise than we juggle. And I fear compromising has left far too many people numb to life or maybe just numb to their dreams. Or maybe, more specifically, numb to ‘doing something.’ or, maybe worse, numb to making a difference.

Me? I think I have always had some fear of that numbness if I end up compromising and avoid it like the plague.

I don’t know. What I DO know is that when you get to my age you focus a lot less on the ‘what did I do’ and ‘what did I not do’ and ‘compromise’, and a lot more on “difference achieved.”

Sure. I, as everyone else, certainly want to be happy. Live. And love. And be loved. Travel. See things. Meet people. Meet more people. Learn. And have offered some value in all that.

But, today, I’m focused on “doing something that matters.”

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“The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.”

Thomas Merton

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Did I really do something that can leave the world a better place?

Did I really do something that made a difference?

Atkinson is/was probably a shitload smarter than I, but I gotta tell ya … even with all of his complexity & poor likelihood to succeed thinking, well, in my mind if you even have a glimmer of hope of getting to do something big … something really big … something that matters in a big way … something that someone would know really made a difference … I think you gotta go for it. It sure seems like you would want to do something, anything, which lends a voice to those who aspire to greater things themselves.

I mean, what the hell, if, in the end, I am going to lose or look like a loser, I want to know I lost doing something. In my mind I want to work hard at making a difference so that at some point, when all is said and done, there was a bunch of people saying “I wish I had sent Bruce a note.”

‘Cause I don’t need the notes. I just need to know they felt like they should have. In other words. I made a difference.

Just to close off this thought:

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“You know the Greeks didn’t write obituaries, they only asked one question after a man died, ‘Did he have passion?’”

quote from the movie Serendipity

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Even at my age making a difference can happen starting today. As I wrote in my obituary post years ago:

An obituary is not about what you can undo from what is done.  You don’t undo. It’s about moving on.

That, my friends, is a big thought.

Because a lot of people want to go back and fix or ‘undo.’

 Once again.

 You can’t. 

But obituaries can be written at any time.  In fact.  Many obituaries are written … well … when they are written … and that means they are written with “what is” as the case and point.  I guess what I am suggesting is that you can choose to unburden yourself from the past at any point. The good, the bad, the indifferent … none really matter.

Write your obituary from today on.

In other words, start making a difference today if you have not already.

In other words, seek to maximize your ROI to the world around you.

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“the ends justifies the means”.

motto of the Illuminati

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“Money decides how it wants to live.”

Ryan Gravel, City Designer

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“soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”

John Maynard Keynes

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perfectibilist

<The Century Dictionary>

Noun: One who believes in the perfectibility of human nature in this life; a perfectionist

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Small groups of people, with the thought they are better, smarter, more intelligent, more whatever, have gathered together since the dawn of time. It would be silly to suggest this is always bad because sometimes the scientists, the doctors, the engineers, the geniuses, even the kindhearted, have gathered together to address some of the most critical issues of humankind. And sometimes they get it right (thank god).

But then there is the small group gathering underbelly.

The wealthy seeking to maintain their wealth and power or even just those with power seeking to get a tighter grip on power. Please note I never used the word “intelligence” anywhere in there. While they may deem themselves smarter, more intelligent, and knowing what is best for everyone else, as John Kenneth Galbraith famously noted: “the connection between intelligence and wealth is specious at best.”

Which leads me to the Illuminati.

I bring in the Illuminati, or the Order of the Perfectibilists, for two reasons (1) it is reflective of small groups of people – usually men – with power and money who seek to maintain their power and money … by any means possible & (2) their motto, ‘the ends justify the means.’ To be clear. It is highly typical to have those two things inextricably linked. Power and wealth use any means to maintain their ends, i.e., power and wealth.

• *** note: I also thought about the Illuminati as I finished the horrifying book “Moneyland.” Basically, the wealthy do not need cabals or small ‘societies’ intent on some wacky ideology, they now simply access small groups of financial brokers to do whatever ‘ends that justify the means’ jobs.

Anyway. The Illuminati. In 1776 a group called ‘Perfektibilisten’ was formed in Bavaria. It became famous as the “Ordo Illuminati Bavarensis”, or the Illuminati for short (illuminati means ‘the enlightened ones’ in Latin). Only five people were present at the first meeting of the order, but it grew rapidly and only a few years later it had chapterhouses all over Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Hungary and Switzerland. It soon established a network of agents around Europe that infiltrated courts and other places of power and reported back useful gossip and information to the group leaders. The primary mission of the Illuminati was to establish a New World Order through the use of science, technology and business, while abolishing all monarchical governments and the Vatican. Despite being banned in 1784, today there are fictitious conspiracy urban myths which build on the name ‘Illuminati’ simply because it sounds impressive. In the end, my point is the point. A small group of opportunistic wealthy people who believed they were smarter, more enlightened, than everyone else seeking to maintain their wealth and power by any means possible.

Which leads me to perfectibilist.

Far, far, too often the uber wealthy feel like they are special and ‘better than.’ A perfectibilist as it were.

A perfectibilist is someone who believes that human beings are capable of achieving perfection through education and the improvement of society. The term was first coined by the philosopher and social reformer, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in the late 18th century. Perfectibilists believe that by perfecting the individual, society can be perfected, and that this process can be achieved through the cultivation of reason, morality, and virtue. Ultimately, they believe that human nature is perfectible and that society can be improved through education and rationalism. While perfectibilist was always intended to portray the possibility of human perfection, the order suggested they had attained perfectibilist status therefore were better and could ‘enlighten’ the rest of the world. This is some nutso stuff. That said. Many of the uberwealthy are a bit nutso and absolutely believe they are superior. They believe they are not only the guides to an ideal society, but also they embody what society should aspire to.

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“We live under a system by which the many are exploited by the few”

Harold Laski

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In short, you cannot escape power, regardless of your station in life.

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Which leads me to the inevitableness of the purview of the few.

We are nuts if we don’t think that most decisions of any consequence are in the purview of the few. I don’t mean some deep state or some cabal, but CEOs make big decisions for businesses, politicians make big governing decisions for countries/regions/cities, Union leaders make big decisions for workers and even school boards make big decisions effecting our youth. Democracy doesn’t really mean everyone can make a decision. It simply means we have a voice, but the decisions are in the purview of the few. The danger to democracy always lies in whether the few also see themselves as Perfectibles.

Which leads me to the main tool of the Perfectibilist: math.

Reason is math. Or let’s say math is reasonable reasoning to the Perfectibles. They quantify everything; even people. Oh, sure, the Perfectibilist will be clever with regard to the mathification, but we have mathematized humanities, creativity has been mathematized, performance and meaning has been mathematized, well, let’s say that this mathematical obsession has deformed the intangible good (and value structure). Math reduces everything it touches while actually expanding the power and wealth of the ‘few’. And while I will later point out how this absolves the few, the Perfectibles, of any moral restraint, this mathematization only encourages society to strip moral restraints from everyday attitudes and behaviors. The ‘few’ become pseudo-intellectual social philosopher bullies who bludgeon the public with math in order to forge a ‘perfect society.’  The problem is this dull axe of math fundamentally empties society of moral or empathetic stances. When attacked for this hollowness the ‘few’ will stubbornly defend their vision from a stance of pseudo-math as the way to navigate an increasingly, seemingly, unstructured, and uncertain world. Today’s Perfectibilist has been actively indoctrinated in a structured methodology of mathematical measurement. It’s a warped vision of even the warped Taylorism that got us to where we are today. It is almost like we are being led by a morally-illiterate group of people. Illiterate in that they are unable to recognize the necessary relationship between power and morality essential for healthy, meaningful, progress. The truth is mathematical knowledge is actually hampering the actions necessary to create and sustain a substantive healthy society. Why? Well. While we talk endlessly about individual freedom and individual empowerment, there has never before been such pressure for conformity – through math. This math world is simply an illusion. What I mean by that it is a healthy, robust, expansive, intangible world reduced to a simplistic hollowed world of math becomes one in which the Perfectibilist can not only reduce what success is into some number, but reduces the power of a society in order to increase the power they have OVER that society. Yeah. Math is the prison the ‘few’ put society in so they become the wardens.

Which leads me to math’s biggest number: money.

Power and money; money and power. They are inextricably linked. And this is important because, well, it makes you think about who owns the future – the ones with the money, the ones aspiring to have the money, or the ones who do not have the money <and even whether it should matter>. And THAT is important because, well, “money decides how it wants to live.” I believe if we continue on the path we are currently on we run the risk of money determinism, not human determinism. What I mean by that is money becomes the design, and designer, of human society not a tool used by humans to implement the human-designed design of human society. That said. I would be naïve to suggest humans have the power, because they do and they don’t. They do own the future because they can be the architects of fate and the future as well as architects of what money should be, yet, money will always be power until the world, itself, decides to change. Money is power and power is money. That is the world we have today and that is the world we need to deal with.

So, I circle back to who owns the future, who owns the power, who owns the money? And whoever does, can they handle the power and the money they have? Those are important questions because power subverts the intentions of a free market. Today’s marketplace is a system of competing powers (players) each of whom are seeking an advantage, but, the few – the perfectibles – assume the most power in this power game. We should note market advantage is information <knowledge, wisdom>, money buys information (see opening note on Illuminati and information gathering across Europe). I say that because if the world, the market, isn’t sane <power distorts traditional view of sanity> and willing to define its own fate, technology – or any tool – will not solve it and money is simply power to eliminate things that are obstacles to more money and growth. To the Perfectibilist, more is never enough and there are no rules when it comes to maintaining or protecting one’s wealth and power. If you buy into that thought, or thoughts, then we need to become concerned when the institutions of money <people with money> rule the world. We should be concerned because when those people begin to talk about fairness or shared prosperity they do so with a catch. The catch is “as long as it does not infringe upon my pursuit of my money and my wealth.” Without context, that is a fine and dandy thought. But in a zero-sum mindset it suggests HOW I got my money and wealth was fair and equitable and the system of money rewards those who deserve it. The Perfectibles will tend to guide decisions toward their own worldview which is most likely not even close to reality.

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“We’ve made it really easy for good people to do the wrong things.”

Josh Tetrick

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Which leads me to the Few’s go-to philosophy: growth.

The few spends a lot of time telling us that growth is the pathway to increased wealth equality (or better balanced between the Few and the Many). Here’s the rub. Its bullshit. Chasing the limitless is both dangerous and freeing in general, but in a zero-sum world it is just corrosive. The truth is chasing limitless piles of money and limitless growth debases its actual value because then the only value is more and each additional dollar placed on the large stack diminishes in actual value to its owner <it is simply a prize, not prized>. Chasing anything with no limit can be a freeing feeling, but what I would suggest, in this case, is the no limit actually represents a soulless cage. I could go on and on about how zero-sum capitalism attitude begets zero-sum behavior which begets lousy extremes <because ‘winners’ increase probability of more winning not because of skill/better, but because they have, well, more money>. I don’t begrudge people money, but, zero-sum doesn’t create a fair game for all players. Oh. Yeah. “Fair game for all players.” The few, the Perfectibles, have no interest in the fairness of all players. They embrace a zero-sum attitude and only seek to increase the quality of the game players so that their money, growth and power increases (or is maintained).

Which leads me back to “the ends justify the means”

Growth, money and power are the ends. In a Perfectibilist purview let’s call it ‘winning.’ Winning is simply the outcome of any means to achieve that trifecta.  Yeah. Winning justifies the means regardless of the means. The Perfectibilist says “the path to better comes at a cost and one of the costs is if the weak can’t keep up they need to make room for the strong.”

Don’t get me wrong. I like growth and money. But not all growth is the same nor is all money the same. Some money fills your soul and some empties your soul and by soul I mean your inner value compass.

People who are defined solely by money, growth and power can argue this until they are blue in the face. In fact they do. But at what price? And does the end justify the means? And, obviously, WHICH end justifies the means? That is what I mean by emptying your soul or filling your soul. Because in the end (whether that be mid life or at ‘the big finish’) you are judging your actions not by tangible things, but the intangible balance of self-worth (I purposefully chose ‘worth’ because it is some combination of fruits of labor and self-esteem). It is interesting because I have seen a variety of ways people justify how they sell their soul but one word continues to stand up as the face of behavior over & over again:

“winning”

To the Perfectibilists it’s all about winning. Winning at any cost. Or just being able to say “I won.” But (here is the news) winning is not always good.  There IS such a thing as a bad win. Unfortunately, the people who define their soul by winning don’t see that (or they may, but justify their actions based on “we won”). Am I suggesting this aspect should be about fair play? No. Not really. This is about playing by your moral compass; an attitude as it were.

“money”

The thought that everything leads to some magical pot of money that will erase not only all of their problems, but the world’s problems. The Perfectibilists may try to balance it with some philanthropic aspect (typically toward the end of their lives – see Andrew Carnegie as prime example) or balance it with some argument that “their way is the way to a perfect society,” but if we examine their behaviors, we see they are consistently willing to ignore any moral compass within their pursuit for money, growth, and power.

“The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.”

William James

There are a variety of ways they justify optimal Perfectibilist, but suffice it to say far and away the number one way is “end justifies the means.” All the while ignoring the carnage left behind.

Which leads me to end where I began: “money decides how it wants to live.”

Ryan Gravel said this years ago and it has stuck in my brain. It has a stark truth to it. But building on that starkness is the inevitability of the desires of the ‘few.’ The Perfectibilists as it were. We may not have the Illuminati now, but we certainly have small groups of people attempting to nudge society, people, communities into ‘living’ the way they believe the world should live. They may exist in some small local community and they may exist in a larger global view. It doesn’t matter. Far, far, too many of them simply seek money, growth and power and the communities, neighborhoods, businesses, society are simply means to attain their ends. Ponder.

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Sometimes life happens slow, then really fast.

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“It is hardly surprising that dead rabbits are pulled out of the hat when nothing but dead bunnies have been put in.”

William Nordhaus, economist

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The opening image sets the stage for discussing new products and innovation to point out that the term “new products” can be a sweeping term covering a long list of possible market introductions.

I’ve been thinking about new products and innovation (one would hope they are related because I’ve been watching Silicon Valley – painfully chuckling at times) and read this fabulous piece: Web3, the Metaverse, and the Lack of Useful Innovation.

Throughout my career I have worked with technology incubators, large company new product groups and just basic businesses who created new products and brought them to market.

Which leads me to say I have seen more bad ideas then is most likely healthy for me.

But new products are really important to existing businesses in that profits from new products tend to account for a substantial amount of the bottom line of businesses (note: there is a point to be made here about efficiencies and squeezing out profit from existing products in the market but that is for another day). We have all seen the simplistic surveys online showing “reasons why new products fail” as if CPG companies haven’t studied new products in depth. It’s a bit crazy. So, having pulled out an old folder with a bunch of notes scribbled in it about new products from my experience with P&G and other companies, let me say some things about innovations and new products. To be clear. I will share some dated information that I am too lazy to update mostly because I am 90% confident, in principle, the conclusions are the same today as they were then.

Suffice it to say successful new products all deliver a meaningful and perceivable benefit to a large enough market to be sustainable financially and are different in some meaningful and perceivable way from alternatives. The main principles that form the foundation for successful new product programs:

1. know what your product stands for and make its benefits superior
2. discover latent consumer insights which are tied to a specific need
3. ensure the product benefits align with latent insights
4. ensure market readiness
5. make sure it has the ability to scale out (have enough of a market)

Most of that seems fairly basic, yet, the hard realities are that a great majority of new products never make it to market. And those that do face a failure rate somewhere in the order of 25 to 45%. The figures may vary depending on what industry and how one defines a new product and a failure. Some sources cite the failure rate at launch to be as high as 90%, but most of those figures tend to be wild overstatements based on dubious surveys. My guess is the true failure rate is about 35%. Regardless of whether the success rate is 55% or 65%, the odds of a failed launch is fairly significant. I would be remiss if I didn’t note the news gets a bit worse because this doesn’t even include the majority of new product projects that are killed somewhere in process long before launch, yet, have already involved considerable expenditures of time and money. One old study revealed that for every seven new product ideas about four enter development, 1.5 are launched, and only one succeeds. Another study revealed that for every 11 new product ideas, 3 enter the development phase, 1.3 are launched and only 1 is a commercial success in the marketplace. The commonality between those two studies is only one success.

Which leads me to new product failure is fairly easy to identify through a number of reasons:

• Poor planning: it doesn’t really fit into the company strategy, expertise or distribution strengths, or margin, or ROI, market analysis is inadequate, poor timing or the company fails to face up to competitive strengths
• Poor management (tied to poor planning): product doesn’t fit the company character guiding these activities, no management sponsor, no management information system to effectively communicate throughout process, wrong department leads the introduction program, budget and time constraints due to something unanticipated or management direction is vague
• Poor concept: the concept itself doesn’t appeal all the time in the form of execution being evaluated, no unique benefit or one that is unique enough, maybe offers too many benefits and has no simple strong reason for being; maybe it does have unique benefits but fulfills little need; poor price/value relationship; out of sync with the market, maybe too innovative/different
• Poor execution: personality becomes point of difference rather than function or intrinsic benefit; maybe product defects, technical problems, or product over engineered, over/under package; misbranded; mistargeted; mistimed for character of market
• Poor use of research: most often this is because research is done backwards, i.e., attempting to prove out a technology (search for a benefit) rather than assess an existing need
• Poor technology: this typically drives poor execution in that the product, functionally, doesn’t offer a significant enough meaningful benefit
• Poor timing: new products can be too early to market (ahead of natural adoption acceptance) or too late to market (following without a significantly superior benefit)

But. That said. Simplistically, new products fail when consumers do not want to buy them. This is why if you are involved in new products, you really should be problem solvers rather than just idea generators.

Which leads me to a lesson to technology folk.

Technology is actually learning a lesson that the Consumer Packaged Goods industry learned a long time ago. More products can mean more sales, but you have to be smarter about your new product that you offer to the public. In 1964 there were about 1,300 new product introductions in supermarket/drug stores. In the early 1980s the packaged goods industries were introducing around 3000 to 5000 new products a year. By the 1990’s, we saw this number jump to about 18,000 to 20,000 and now we were over 25,000 a year. To be clear. Maybe only about 10% of new product introductions are truly new; for the most part they are extensions or additions to existing products/product lines (see opening image). The incredible thing about this phenomenal growth during that period (1960 to 2000ish) is that failure rates, while high, did not increase. It seems like consumers were finding space in their lives for five to 10 times more products per year than they were in maybe 1980. This suggests that the market likes to experience experiments as well as have been convinced specialty or ‘niche use’ has efficacy value. It’s like the culture has grasped the nature of change and finds value through experimenting with new products. But every business needs to remember with as much as 40%+ of new product ideas hitting the trash can, it’s just tough to swallow the failure rates and invest real money. In fact, I remember a number that there was an estimated 46% of all the resources allocated to product development and commercialization by US firms are spent on products that are cancelled or fail to yield an adequate financial return. There was an old study with some rough splits of innovation costs across stages in the new product process but basically it suggested for every $1million spent on product innovation, roughly only $150,000 is spent on exploration and screening research or even idea generation, i.e., the initial attempts to qualify the idea. This is kind of nuts. This also suggests ideas searching for a market rather than a market defining an idea. This whole section is something technology folk should ponder long and hard.

Which leads me to markets decide the fate of a new product.

There was an old study looking at General Electric products and the conclusions with regard to technological and market variables that decided their fates. The products had several things in common that created a well-defined product prior to the development phase and into market introduction:

1. Market needs were recognized and R&D was targeted at satisfying those needs
2. When a technological success did not meet a specific market need the product was adapted to suit an identified need (or dropped)
3. Involved managers communicated the possibility of a technological breakthrough clearly to all other departments whom, in turn, facilitated the identification of a real market need
4. Communication existed between engineers, scientists, and all other departments involved

But the bottom line, which I think some technology startups ignore, is the lessons that CPG has given the new product world that are timeless:

1. A unique superior product in the eyes of a customer (not the creator), one with a real differential or distinct advantage in the marketplace**
2. A strong market-orientation building in solid market knowledge and sound market inputs, and an undertaking of market research and effective marketing launch tasks done well
3. Technological synergy (both development and production technology) and competence in the technological tasks fundamental to the success of the product

• ** in the wayback machine with P&G we knew that new products with overall superiority (as indicated in consumer testing), met their objective 1.5 to 2 times more often. A strong product also almost doubled the repurchase rate.

Which leads me to efforts and assumptions.

In the early stages of any new product project, we make many assumptions in order to justify the project.

• We make technological assumptions: we assume the product is technologically feasible; we map out a probable route to the technical solution, manufacturability at a certain cost is assumed and so on.
• We make marketing assumptions: we estimate market size, growth, and need; we expect that the product’s features or performance will really be superior to competing products, and that while the world may not beat a path to our door the world will at least open the door of possibility of purchasing. We make competitive assumptions.

Based on all these assumptions someone gives a “go-to-market” decision and then most efforts tend to be devoted to verifying and validating the assumptions (rather than adapting as we learn more). That said. One of the most interesting factoids I remember from my way back machine with P&G is that about 75+% of total efforts ($ and work time) goes into technological and/or production activities while only about 15% is devoted to marketing activities (most of which goes into the launch).

I imagine my point on almost all of this is most new product innovations fail because, well, a business imagines a market, imagines a need and imagines a real benefit offered, and the market tends to choose how to spend its hard earned money not on imagined, but reality. Ponder.

==

“They display all the distinctly reductionist habits of expecting to come to ‘know’ the problem and objectively find the ‘right’ solution by dividing the problem into discrete elements to be tackled by experts who ‘know’ how to do it. Any range of solutions can be tried because, if they go wrong, they can be reversed with little consequence for the system. They will expect, consciously or unconsciously, that once the ‘real’ solution is found, the problem will go away and they will now have an ‘evidence-based’ decision that can be applied again should ‘the’ problem emerge again.”

Fostering Complexity Thinking in Action Research for Change in Social–Ecological Systems

==

When I scribbled the “where did business go wrong,” I realized I could write a book in answer. Today I will focus on one thought – how business was stripped of substance which, inevitably, is about reductionism.

When discussing some of the issues business is facing, or has created, inevitably a lot of the discussion will be around “is capitalism good,” a lot of misguided conflation of materialism & capitalism and greed. Personally, I tend to shelve all of those believing business is about people making decisions for other people and whether those decisions are made to benefit people or dollars (ROI, stock market value, etc.). If business has gone wrong, it isn’t because of some system (because people created the system) its because people have got it wrong. So let’s focus on people.

The reality is the state of work has improved pretty significantly over the past century or so despite rampant Taylorism (partially because Taylorism DID improve overall business conditions for the worker). Today’s work, generally speaking, is less tiring and of shorter duration. The challenge is the other side of the Taylorism coin sapped work of substance, workmanship and meaning. Business, for the worker, became a relatively aimless pursuit of promotions or milestones where a worker often found themselves feeling relatively useless within a callous business environment tied to a clock. The way business was conducted only created worker resentment (in terms of meaning and later in money as inequalities increased) as one’s labor fell further and further away from any kind of personal craftsmanship. The reality was business began demanding different qualities in people than people would normally have brought to their work. This dissonance mandated the absence of the intrinsic humanness and the presence of only the extrinsic tools and labels. Work became subordinate to “necessity” and the ends (not the means). Along with this have arisen new technologies. These technologies have effective new uses, but they also come with new risks and challenges to business. In fact, many of these non-manufacturing/machine technologies raise questions about if and how not only AI technologies should evolve, but how all technology should evolve with regard to its effect on people. One could argue the only way to be able to design a better future of work, we will need to not only understand the threats but need to understand the AI systems themselves and how they work ON and With people (we should do the same with machines too). This will almost be a mandate as AI tools begins to help us make more and more types of decisions. As exciting as this technology is with great potential for good it also has the potential to disrupt the work as we know it today, hence, the workers as we know them today. If we are to steer the technologies between the benefits it can bring and the challenges it can create, business needs to seriously think about and build a set of mindsets, behaviors, attitudes, and standards that can guide the development of these technologies. You may note I did not suggest government regulation for policies because while they will be important in the future the most important aspect of the future of business and technology will be the involvement of humans themselves.

Which leads me to the stripped down version of business we have today.

In a world in which we tend to want to oversimplify things, far too often “business instincts” get stripped of any context or the rich & royal hues most typically associated with ‘good business instincts.’ In fact, instincts tend to be associated more with speed than effectiveness. In addition, we also strip leadership down to its barest and far too often suggest the importance of ‘’good business instincts’ as some superior skill <and instincts are not a skill but an attribute> inherent in good leadership. Basically substantive business decision-making has been stripped of reflectiveness and effectiveness in the interest of speed and efficiency. ‘Stripping down’ has led to ‘fail fast’ and ‘you are only successful of you are moving.’ What this means is business has stripped itself of its largest consistent value creation – people. Yeah. A slew of people talk about the next age of capitalism or ‘moving beyond industrialization’ as if industrialization was the issue. It wasn’t and isn’t. The issue is humans and their mindsets with regard to what work is and what business should be about. We can certainly let the tools decide those questions and a bunch of people are going about doing so – digital transformation, the “AI Age,” customer capitalism, creation economy, pick your buzzword poison. But I believe it would be a mistake to allow tools – who do not have human’s best interests in mind – making civilization shaping type decisions. In the end what stripped down business has done has hollowed out some meaningful substance and removed any slack so that when shit happens, it happens really fast with little to soften its blow. This has consequences not just on business, or the business, but the people.

—

Sometimes life happens slow, then really fast.

—

What business has done, as a machine built with a specific purpose to continue with growth at all costs, is actually burn the future in the present – ‘burn the future’ being not only global resources but human energy and intrinsic desire to contribute. To be clear. Progress, in and of itself, is not a bad objective, nor is growth (progress’s cousin), but over the past 100 years or so business has slowly stripped progress of its morality – or at least any serious moral reflectivity – replacing it with unqualified quantitative increases in transactions measured as prices paid in money. Growth, similar to technology, is uncaring of what is good for humankind. It is a measure, an objective, an ideology, bereft of morality in its means as it trudges toward its desired ends.

Which leads me to clarify growth as an issue.

It is lazy to suggest worshiping growth is where business went wrong. Growth, in many aspects, is good. The ‘wrongness’ is actually found more in, well, a constant desire for consistently more. What I mean by that is once you have attained a 15% margin, that becomes the standard. Lower means “you are doing something wrong” and higher means “you have done something well (and we should do more of it because this is the new standard).” If you grew 3% last quarter, less than 3% is bad. If your stock price hits X++, anything lower is bad. And maybe even worse is that within a growth mindset, maintaining where you are is bad. Everything is a stair step upwards or, well, you are getting worse in this business world. That is nuts. It is nuts because in order to maintain this kind of growth mindset you need to make sacrifices elsewhere (as I noted back in 2013 in how the generations have impacted how business has been conducted) and in business’s case it has spiraled in a negative direction. Suffice it to say, productivity kept on getting stripped through “do more with less” in order to maintain the profits that had been established in a different time, different environment, and different context. The context changed, but the “growth” standards did not. This mindset, which drove a shitload of unhealthy behaviors and working cultures/attitudes, clearly contributed to where business went wrong.

Which leads me which leads me to how business stripping has had real societal consequences.

Business has a nasty habit of believing their business is their business and not the business of anyone outside of their business. However. Whatever business does and how they conduct their business has consequences in the marketplace, in the community, in culture, and in society. When business strips itself down to only the essentials internally it puts higher stress on external performance and less slack to deal with inconsistencies. While risk taking is the obvious sacrifice in this game, the larger impact is on how the business approaches the market and how the market responds. Stripping the business down to its bare bones creates an almost survive or die mentality with regard to how it deals with the marketplace. This means that encouraging consumption – even if it takes persuasion to some fairly uncomfortable moral places.  In addition, encouraging people to believe materialism is the pathway to happiness becomes the norm and essential to feeding the business. As a consequence, this shapes the actual conduct of the business. This happens because the margin of error is minuscule and success is almost an imperative. Societally this manipulation of purchase, attitudes, and societal beliefs is driven by the business because it has no slack. When you have no slack, you give no slack. It is a take or be taken world. It’s not even zero sum, it is less than zero. The impact in society and communities and at the kitchen table goes way beyond any simplistic “shareholder value” impact. Business doing wrong by people begets people believing wrong, in some form or fashion, is right.

Which leads me to say we have a long way to go.

Many of my peers, 50 & 60somethings, do not think business has gone wrong. Well. Assuming you didn’t want to talk about “woke” or “purpose” or social involvement where they clearly think that is business going wrong. But if you want to talk profits, revenues, and growth, well, they struggle to see what I would see. I get a lot of ‘blindness’ to misogyny, systemic racism and even a warped view on what is ‘work.’ And I almost get disbelief with regard to the malfunctioning of business and the linkage between business and society? Well. That’s crazy talk.

I say that to suggest at the C-level of corporations things are going pretty much in the wrong direction. Culturally, below the C-line, my bet is that a lot of things are happening in the good direction. The revolution to make business right is already happening—it’s just that we don’t always see it. And maybe it’s good that we don’t see it yet, until the very moment where it makes a lot of things shift, and the commitment to creating thriving sustainable businesses that create thriving sustainable societies can’t be stopped by people thinking business has not gone wrong. Maybe what I am suggesting is that the wrong in business will reduce everything to such a meaningless level that the good in business will be able to step in with a more meaningful future. Ponder.

==========

“Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward.”

Abraham Verghese

====================

“It’s the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.”

Barbara Kingsolver

=================

Thinking about what legacy you want to leave behind can make you start thinking a little bit about what you may want to stubbornly stand for and demand of Life and what you may decide to compromise with Life to insure you have something, i.e., some progress to show at the end. A significant part of this grand bargain we negotiate with Life is how we decide to compromise with those around us and those who affect the arc of our lives.

Ah.

That word “compromise.”

Therein lies maybe one of the most difficult topics of the current generation.

The topic is that the concept of compromise, meeting someone half way, giving something up and getting something back, is now a nebulous concept.

Why? Because I am not sure I know where the hell half way is.

And I tend to believe a shitload of people are standing with me, on one side or the other, not really sure where the hell half way is.

And if you cannot even see the middle ground how the hell can you figure out how to make a stand on it?

This gets compounded by a massive online communal world in which we all live side by side where even the marginalized people <real or perceived>, nutjobs & experts, now have a place to gather into likeminded groups and share as much a space as mainstream views. For good, or for bad, online any group of people can organize & mobilize & challenge the status quo … or pick & choose which status quo fits their view. The internet amplifies discourses critical of, well, any status quo you can think of.  And, as anyone could expect, all the critical discourse triggers a corresponding equal backlash from those who fear an uprooting of their beliefs <and the self identities that are inevitably attached to these beliefs>. Needless to say much of that backlash is a bit unhealthy and a lot unmoored to accepted reality.

It just becomes one huge mosh pit of criticism and cocooning of likeminded people.

Likeminded people – all who are angry.

Within all of this situation & anger civil discourse tends to be tossed in the trashheap. And maybe worse is the fact there is this ‘digging in’ aspect where we refuse to see any merit in other people’s opinions. Sadly, I can only conclude that we have lost the ability to converse, discuss, debate and have a dialogue with one another.

It seems obvious <at least to me>, but if we could figure out how to come together and compromise, that we could go a long way toward not only creating a better version of society in general, but it may give me, and all of us, at least a fighting chance with regard to where we make our own personal stand and where we compromise and how we attain the future that we contain.

As long as people cling to unbending attitudes & beliefs, the divides between us will not deepen, but will remain an unbridgeable divide.

I tend to believe most of us want better that that.

I tend to believe most of us would be willing to work to make this a better and more civil world to live in.

And if you do not embrace this thinking?

I would remind everyone that America is representative of a great compromise. The U.S. Constitution is possibly the greatest Compromise ever negotiated <it created a nation>.

But as a first step to bettering this entire situation we need to figure out how to better define Compromise.

Far too many loudmouthed people have ripped the meaning out of the word, twisted the value of the word making it seem valueless, and ultimately created an environment in which  we demonize the entire process of trying to reach compromise.

Compromise no longer means understanding your differences and working together toward a common goal, but now it seems to represent weakness, losing and not being strong enough to get what you want. This attitude and unwillingness to work together creates a dysfinctional society where the unwavering stance seems to be “don’t compromise, stick to your guns, don’t give in to the other side”.

Sigh.

Look.

I find it hard to believe that the majority of America is really that selfish and that stubborn. Sure. I know the people most passionate about any issue tend to be the ones less willing to compromise on them. And, yeah, I would guess most of us are fairly passionate about ourselves – what we decide to stand for … as well as what we will decide to sacrifice within compromise to attain some progress. But within this wacky world where no one seems to want to compromise anything on anything … well … shit … some of us are trying to think a little bit about what you may want to stubbornly stand for and demand of Life, and what you may decide to compromise with Life, to insure you have something – some progress to show at the end.

It seems like the situation we are in has arisen because we have permitted the stubborn voices of the radical marginalized <real and perceived> to drown out the pragmatic voices, the majority, of realistic positive compromise. If we want society to start working again we need to embrace compromise — and let it retain the positive definition which has served it well through time.

To end this I will go back to the beginning.

The “I” aspect.

I tend to believe all of us, with the intent of finding the best version of ourselves from which our ultimate legacy will be defined, will seek to find the balance of being stubborn and demand that Life bend to us and our principles and compromise where we make a grand bargain with Life in order to continue progressing.

Uhm.

If we believe this, then why wouldn’t we want this in Life and in business and in politics and in … well … everything.

There was a book that discussed this. In The Spirit of Compromise <Amy Gutsman and Dennis Thomson> they note that Americans support general compromise as an idea and like the idea of ‘other people’ working together to get stuff done <statistics support this in a variety of studies & polls>.

However. The authors then note that support for compromise breaks down when it addresses specific issues <Americans are much less likely to support a compromise on a specific issue>. What this means is that, as with most things in Life, we enthusiastically embrace the conceptual behavior and balk at the actual behavior.

I shared that to say compromise is complex and simple.

What I do know is that we contain our own future and building that future demands that we will have to make some compromises.  That is simple.

Making the specific choices is complex.

And while I am mostly interested in my own future and making my own compromise choices, I tend to believe we would all find the better version of ourself contained within if the society as a whole were more willing to refind the value in compromise. Yeah. I just suggested our best version is not an “I” thing but rather when we are part of the weave of societal fabric, i.e., “We” thing. Ponder.

===

“No matter how careful you are, there’s going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn’t experience it all. There’s that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should’ve been paying attention.

Well, get used to that feeling. That’s how your whole life will feel some day.

This is all practice. “

—

Chuck Palahniuk

====

“It’s never as good as you want it to be; It’s never as bad as it seems.”

—

William Chapman

====

Well. Chuck Palahniuk writes some really deep shit. Stuff that really makes you think. That said, I have to admit, when I read the opening quote a lot of things about living Life, in business and personal, made a helluva lot more sense to me.

Maybe it’s just me, but, it seems like most of Life is tainted by sense of constantly missing ‘something’ … as in something maybe better than where we are and what we are doing and feeling or in what we have done. It isn’t always this huge disappointment. It’s just like a little nagging sliver in the palm of your hand.

All the while this sense is interposed with glimpses of … well … what is actually better. We, being we humans, naturally don’t accept the sense we missed something. Therefore we begin becoming more & more careful with how we invest our time and more careful about what we do <or don’t do>. Basically, we start treating our lives carefully assuming that if we do so, we will have less sense of something missing and more glimpses of ‘the better we feel like we are missing sometimes.’

Boy.

Are we wrong.

Boy.

We sure are investing a shitload of energy chasing something I believe Life simply dangles in front of us to tease us with thoughts of ‘what could be.’

It is quite possible we should learn to accept the nagging sense of missing something as … well … good. Good as in it makes us a little more alert for ‘things.’ Maybe it just makes us pay attention a little more.

Maybe we should accept the feeling isn’t lostness nor the thought that maybe we were not on the right path in Life.

Maybe we should just accept it as a characteristic of a good life.

Anyway. All of this leads me to a quote, and a thought, I vehemently disagree with:

======

……. me reading this quote ……

“People who succeed tend to find one goal in the distant future and then chase it through thick and thin.  People who flit from one interest to another are much, much less likely to excel at any of them.  School asks students to be good at a range of subjects, but life asks people to find one passion that they will follow forever. “

David Brooks

<The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources Of Love, Character, And Achievement>

=======

That is just bullshit.

Life does not ask people to find one passion that they will follow forever. That’s like saying that I love ice cream, but I am only going to eat chocolate ice cream for the rest of my life because it is my favorite flavor.

What a potentially boring life.

What a potentially ‘missed opportunity’ life.

The whole ‘passion’ discussion makes my head hurt so badly I start rubbing my temples so hard that then the sides of my head hurt too.

Let’s be clear. It is not passion <although glimpses of passion is always fun>. Life asks you to do the best, be the best and pursue what you believes makes you the best of what you could be … that’s it.

That’s what you follow forever.

Is success achieving that ‘one goal in the distant future?’ Maybe for some. But ‘people who succeed tend to find one goal and chase it’ is bullshit. What happens if I suck at picking that one goal or maybe my sense of direction sucks as I ‘go thru think & thin’ getting to the horizon <only to find I am standing in nowhere land>?

Look.

I am all for people pursuing goals.

I am all for people being passionate.

I am all for pursuing thru thick & thin <assuming what you are pursuing is ‘real’ and not some fantasyland>.

But I am not all for putting the blinders on, the bit between the teeth and then run like hell toward some goal on the horizon. I do believe you should be inspired in your actions … but inspired is very different than passion.

Passion.   I have a passion … it is for something.

Inspired.    I can be inspired by many somethings and moments and experiences and … well … you get it.

Here is a Life truth. The people who tend to succeed are inspired … by one thing or by many things … doesn’t matter. They are just inspired people. 

===

“All the effort in the world won’t matter if you’re not inspired.”

Chuck Palahniuk  

===

All that said. Let me circle back to the beginning. No matter how careful you are, no matter how much and how hard you pursue something … you will still have a sense of having missed something. Everyone has an undercurrent sense, a feeling, of missing something.

Look. We all pursue one thing — happiness. We may couch it in some ‘idea I have’ or ‘money’ or “purpose” or, well, anything else life has to offer, but we all want, and therefore seek, happiness. I would suggest what Chuck suggested we think about is not really acceptance of ‘lesser than what we want’ but rather accept the balance Life offers us.

The balance in that we will almost naturally have some sense of ‘something better’ no matter how careful we are in managing our lives or the pursuit of some goal.

The balance of actually getting a glimpse of that ‘something’ and not having rushed thru some important moment versus the missing feeling.

Well. Having said all that.

When I read the opening quote I had a better understanding of why so many people are unhappy far too often.

Because if we DON’T accept the sense of missing something as part of living a full Life … well … that means you will spend your entire life chasing that sense <to suffocate it in some way>. If you do that, well,  that pursuit will inevitably suffocate your Life <and that is an unhappy Life>. Ponder. Maybe I am missing something. And maybe I am not.

==========

Originally posted October 2015

—–

“True freedom is where an individual’s thoughts and actions are in alignment with that which is true, correct, and of honor – no matter the personal price.”

=

Bryant H. McGill

——-

This is about managing people, chaos <that is inherent with groups of people> and leadership.

I have written several times about my college job, quasi-security guy with a company called Contemporary Security Company <CSC>, and it made me think about another good business lesson I learned. I call it corralling chaos.

Maybe it is simply managing people.

Whoa.

Comparing chaos to managing people?

Yup.

Look. Unless you want to hire a bunch of clones or do some mind meld trick upon hiring someone, you are going to inevitably have a wide variety of specific skilled people, a mosaic of personalities and characters and, well, humans being human within your purview.

Anyway. I learned this very quickly as a youngster at CSC. And, by the way, I didn’t learn this because I was some brilliant leader or insightful organizational behavior person at the age of 18 … I learned it out of simple survival. Once I became a supervisor I definitely had a ‘Bruce team.’ A small group of guys who I always selected <or they selected me> to be surrounded by to manage and utilize.

In hindsight I was a little different than some of the other supervisors. I liked using the same guys even though the assignment was different. I liked tweaking each guy’s ‘comfort zone’ to show them how to adapt. I think I subconsciously recognized that it probably helped me out under a variety of assignments in that these guys … and these guys were wired differently … wouldn’t take a cookie cutter approach to how they handled things.

Not only did they see that things could be done differently <than maybe what their first instinct was> but also they became comfortable with some things out of their comfort zone.

The best example I have is two guys who were with me whenever possible.

They were book end personalities.

Lamont.

African American. Sharp & smart. Took life seriously. Scowled a lot. Maybe 6’ 1” and 280 pounds of hair triggered whirlwind of aggression. You only walked up to Lamont from behind very carefully. I vividly remember walking up behind him and tapping him on the shoulder … and he spun around with a semi graceful martial arts form <… c’mon, how graceful can a 280 pound guy be> … crouched and coiled to part my head from my shoulders.

I also vividly remember his eyes were laser-like and seemingly completely clear of anything but ‘destroy.’ Without relaxing … he said ‘little buddy … you shouldn’t sneak up on me like that’ and then he uncoiled.

Dave.

White suburban kid. Maybe not the sharpest knife in the drawer. 6’ 2” and chiseled 220 pounds or so. Played defensive end at Orange Coast junior college. Easy going … smiled a lot. The first time I met him on the job I saw him wade into a drunken brawl of maybe 6 guys and singlehandedly blow it up with maybe only one punch thrown by him <which admittedly put that guy out of commission>.

These two guys became the bookends that held most of my teams together.

Lamont was like an assassin.

Dave was like a bull.

Lamont I restrained.

Dave I released.

Both could intimidate in their own way, but their instinct was always to act with power of action and not words.

My bosses struggled to understand why I always wanted them — no matter the assignment.

Lamont was often seen as uncontrollable <therefore they hesitated to want to put him in more ‘delicate diplomatic’ situations>.

Dave was often seen as ‘not too smart’ <therefore they hesitated to want to put him in situations where he may have to think on his feet>.

Beyond the fact I saw how these guys could be used effectively I probably more recognized that situations my bosses ‘foresaw’ within an assignment more often became unforeseen actions & consequences.

Security at some event with zillions of people wandering around <many drinking> all with an attitude that ‘hey … I paid to be here … so I can do pretty much whatever I want’ is inevitably one of much randomness.

Interestingly … that describes the business world fairly well <without the drinking>. Managing people isn’t really about plans & planning, or even having a plan, it is more often about how to deal with what happens when the plan breaks apart.

Look. Plans and planning and all the things under those headings <business plans, contingency plans, succession plans> are all good things … uhm … until they aren’t.

All the plans that once bring order, continuity, and control often become rigid obstacles to progress and adaptation.

Lamont, Dave … shit, whatever personality I was supervising, I found that most people are trying to do what they believe is in the best interest of the organization.

I also found the trouble was often they may not have the same point of view on what that is. And, yes, that leads to some version of chaos.

You can have two people conducting themselves with the best of intentions and trying to do the right thing.

Both options are valid.

Uh oh.

But the conclusions they reach end up in direct conflict with each other.  This creates confusion <with each other as well as those around them seeking cues on what to do>.

A lot of the supervisors around me did two things.

One.

Bitched & moaned about ‘the guys they managed’ and said ‘they just don’t get it.’

Two.

Picked people for their team that they could ‘control.’

Me?

I guess I decided to take responsibility for getting out of the chaos. I assumed from day one that it was me responsible for allowing chaos.

I also assumed I couldn’t control anyone — certainly not someone like Lamont or a number of other highly wired individuals I liked to have on my team — but I did assume I could point them in the right direction <with regard to attitudes & actions>. I picked guys for my teams who could get shit done. And get shit done within some principled behavior guidelines.

I kind of assumed my role was to ‘be still amidst the chaos and active in repose’ <Indira Ghandi>.

Be a compass as it were.

Look.

I certainly didn’t understand all the real thinking behind good management and leadership at that age.

What I do know now for sure – good leaders provide a compass.

A good leader helps others think through implications that can impact the broader team’s goals and objectives.

Once people have orienting values and principles, their ability to think and operate independently accelerates.

Good leaders hold people, themselves included, accountable to a set of values and principles. And leading is often measured by how you deal with the times which inevitably occur when the leader needs to confront a difficult decision that puts principles to the test.

Corralling chaos is all about getting comfortable with being slightly uncomfortable.

My guys recognized that always sticking to the plan without fail provided a false sense of security. They knew from experience that there needed to be some flexibility with “how” the “what” is implemented.

They embraced the purposeful discomfort and I rewarded the purposeful discomfort.

I left room for serendipity.

I left room for what is called “interaction with an unintended outcome” <Scott Doorley, Stanford>.

Some smart guy, Atul Gawande, states there will always be people who excel and thrive in complex and chaotic environments. People who “have a better capacity to prepare for the possibility, to limit the damage, and to sometimes even retrieve success from failure.”

Well. I agree with that and I don’t agree with that.

I agree that some people are better than others at the ability to quickly assess situations and take decisive action based on their experience and instinct.

I don’t agree that anyone and everyone can become better and hone this ability. In fact … part being a good leader is trying to figure out how to maximize this ability within employees <because it enhances autonomy which increases organizational efficiency>.

I have no clue if I am particularly strong with the ‘capacity to prepare for unintended consequences.’

What I do have a clue on is that no matter how strong I may be … I can’t prepare for everything and can’t solve everything and I can’t be everywhere at all times.

I liked having a variety of skilled people available … no matter how difficult they were to manage.

Why?

It increased the likelihood the team could handle any ‘unintended consequences’ as they arose.

CSC taught me a shitload.

It taught me very quickly that when supervisors complained that people are working against each other, that they are not aligned, that they don’t seem to ‘get it’ … that they are full of shit.

It taught me first & foremost that a supervisor needs to look in the mirror.

Anyway.

Is chaos a bad word to use when discussing people management?

Aw.

Probably.

But here is what I do know.

I would rather corral chaos than ‘light a fire under someone’s ass.’

Is that a management style?

Sure. I imagine so.

I imagine it is actually a management or leadership choice. And when I look in the mirror with regard to management style I am okay with what I see. And I thank my CSC job for helping me be okay with it.

—-

If interested, after you read this post, you can visit his past CSC ‘learnings’ posts:

—

<learning to say no>

https://brucemctague.com/big-fred

=

<practicing actually means more relaxed>

https://brucemctague.com/the-wall

=

<action has its time>

https://brucemctague.com/there-is-a-time-to-talk-and-a-time-to-act-part-1

=

<gaining perspective>

https://brucemctague.com/what-you-do-not-see-at-a-concert

—

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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“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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“You’ll have to help yourself.”

Lemony Snicket

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“It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it’s mine.”

Mark Z. Danielewski

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“More than anything, to me, he was dad. And what a dad. He loved us with the passion and the devotion that encompassed his life. He taught us to believe in ourselves, to stand up for ourselves, to know ourselves and to accept responsibility for ourselves.

Justin Trudeau at his father’s funeral

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Personal responsibility is hard. Much much harder than conceptually it sounds like it should be.

I do not have any research today to show how people who have a strong sense of personal responsibility attained that character trait <although if you google it there are gobs of people with an opinion on it>.

For everyone who had great parents who taught them, I can give you a dozen examples of people with crappy parents who have a strong sense of personal responsibility.

For every victim mentality person, I can show different contextual situations that got them into that state of mind and, just as well, the path to a strong sense of personal responsibility is numerous and rarely a straight path.

But, even without research I will suggest a couple of things:

1. Personal acceptance.

To have personal responsibility you almost have to have a strong foundation of personal acceptance.

I imagine I could suggest that if it doesn’t than you are simply ‘posing’ in an attempt to look like you are responsible <and that rarely can stand the test of time>.

Regardless. Somehow, someway people with a strong sense of personal responsibility have developed a strong sense of self. Not necessarily confidence, just self. They recognize ‘they is what they is’ and accept the flaws <and try to improve in some way> and accept their strengths <but never take them for granted>.

In their personal acceptance we, around them, see ‘solid.’ We love these people on our business teams and friend teams, as peers or as leaders, because regardless of their IQ or leadership skills or professional skills they are lighthouse people in their own right.

These people can also be baffling to the perfectionists in the world because part of ‘personal acceptance’ is understanding, if not embracing, imperfections. Ponder.

2. Lucky to be here but many others are just as deserving.

Let me suggest that people with an incredibly strong sense of personal responsibility will also most likely be the people who suggest they had a little luck along the way – lucky in life situations, lucky with mentors, lucky in opportunities – and, even though they had worked hard with integrity, they had done nothing to actually deserve the luck.

As a corollary to this thinking, they would also believe, as part of the luck aspect, that there are many others just as deserving. This attitude creates a sense of responsibility for actions, behavior and attitudes. Mistakes are owned and successes are shared.

Some people may suggest that personal responsibility and accountability is a reflection of integrity or humility.

Well.

It may be.

But I rather believe it is more a sense of understanding that successes are more often than not a reflection of just hard work, but also circumstances. And, to that point, inherently someone with a strong sense of accountability balances success with the understanding that a portion of success is luck – luck of circumstance & luck of being the one where many were just as deserving if provided the opportunity. Ponder.

Like I said in the beginning. This is not based on research and you can toss this into your ‘Bruce bullshit bin’ if you want. But I do not need research to state that personal responsibility and personal acceptance takes work. Lots of work and lots of fortitude.

It is the kind of thing you spend your entire life working hard to not only ‘be’, but to live up to the character standard you have set for yourself. A standard which you will never measure others against because, well, it is personal. You are accountable to your own standard and responsible to meet it. And everyone not only has the ability to set their own, but they also have an unequivocal right to do so without anyone else telling them “how to be accountable.”

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“It was instead something that we would have to spend the rest of our lives to work very hard to live up to.”

Spike Lee

————-

Personal responsibility is actually one of Life’s lightest burdens if you choose to accept it. That is why I am so often surprised by how many people actually do not accept this burden.

But, in the end, personal responsibility is a personal choice. No one can convince you to do it or be that way. You have to help yourself on this one because no one else can.