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

—-

Barack Obama on January 12^th 2011

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

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

The first thing is the rhetoric.

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

Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the end.

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

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“Throughout history, people with new ideas — who think differently and try to change things — have always been called troublemakers.”

Richelle Mead

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As Sam Seaborne says “if I am gonna lose let me lose doing something.”

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“Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.”

Voltaire

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Losing is part of Life. And, if you are a business troublemaker, you almost have to get used to losing because, if you are worth half a shit as a troublemaker, you will most likely reside in an 80/20 world. 80% of the trouble you make won’t give you any satisfaction if you are seeking a ‘win. So the 20% wins need to be enjoyed.

Now.

I will point out that all that losing doesn’t make you a loser, but that’s not my point today. My main point is that troublemaker ideas create some fairly intense feelings.

Oddly, and maybe incorrectly, I’m going to lean in on Maslow to discuss this.  Maslow’s original formulation identified five levels (three more, including curiosity or exploration, aesthetics, and religion were added later.)

The first level comprised biological needs – such as food, shelter, warmth, sex, and sleep.

The second focused on ‘safety’: protection from the environment, law and order, stability, and security.

The third level concerned ‘love and belonging’, including friendship, acceptance, love, and being part of a group – not only family, but also at work.

Fourth were the needs for ‘esteem’. These included both self-esteem (dignity, achievement, independence) and respect from others (status, prestige).

Fifth was ‘self-actualization’ needs covered self-fulfillment, personal growth, and particularly intense, ‘peak’ experiences. To flourish, the top level of self-actualization must be reached.

I share this because flourish and losing seems like it creates a fairly visceral intense reaction.

This makes me share two thoughts:

Investing in big loss opportunities.

Go big or go home comes to mind. If you are a troublemaker, you will absolutely invest energy in small wins and losses. Let’s call those ‘nudge opportunities.’ But your Maslow self will be defined by the big wins and losses. If you want to survive, you have to get good at 2 things:

• Not investing intense energy on small things. in other words, you only have so much to give and you cannot give it away all the time. Contrary to much popular advice, sometimes ‘just enough’ is essential to success.
• Effectively discerning the big things. it may be obvious, but at the onset little things can look like big things and big things can look like little things. Your survival as a troublemaker may balance on how well you can discern the difference between the two.

Choose wisely.

Embracing big losses gracefully.

Once you decide to go big or go home your personal intensity naturally increases. You are vested and invested in the idea or thinking. Most times at this stage you never think about losing, only winning. Not in ruthlessly competing, but rather in “I cannot envision how anyone could ever not see the benefits of this.” Losing, therefore, becomes either a failure in them (they couldn’t see it) or a failure in you (what did I do wrong). Failing is the worst version of losing. How you lose often defines who you are.

Act wisely.

Anyway.

Hugh McLeod

I began with Maslow to emphasize how challenging both of these things are. The higher you go up on the Maslow pyramid the more personal it gets. That means the importance of gains & losses increase in importance. Which brings me back to my opening 80/20 breakdown. Even the best of the best troublemakers only win 20% of the time.

So.

All I really know is you better learn how to lose well or everyone will think you are an asshole. And, before you dismiss that thought as “who cares, I am a troublemaker”, in the real world troublemakers are dependent upon (a) being in positions & places in which they can make trouble and (b) other people to actually bring the ideas & thinking to life. If you are an asshole, no place will want you and no people will want to have anything to do with any of your ideas and thinking.

Yeah.

How you lose matters. Even if you are a good troublemaker. Ponder.

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“The most successful businessman is the man who holds onto the old just as long as it is good, and grabs the new just as soon as it is better.”

Lee Iacocca

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“I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid.”

Henry David Thoreau

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Ok. Let’s get the harsh truth out upfront. I am a 60something and I believe the older generation, mostly old white men, hollowed out business to the shithole soul-less point we face today. I also believe we are facing the dying rattle of these old white men’s grasp on how business is conducted.

That said. Let me spend a minute on old white men <my generation> to explain why I believe this.

While a generalization, because there are exceptions, old white men have hollowed out the business world in their quest for “winning at any cost”, “efficiency”, and maximize “converting that win-to-cash <making $>” ratio. These men hollowed out business primarily thru extraction and exploitation <of value, values, and resources>. These men have guided business to a level of so-called, self proclaimed, “greatness” through a variety of ‘great’ business acumen thoughts & business culture attitudes which, in reality, were non-great hollow attitudes, were wins which in reality a reflection of hollow behaviors & techniques, and, ultimately, created fantastic looking hollow outcomes and achievements.

In doing so they successfully hollowed out business. I could argue, and will, “hollowing” has been the guiding light into this dark world of money grubbers with questionable moral compasses who deemed resources as infinite and people as finite machines they could plug ‘n play into their money creating machines. You want some specifics? Here you go. This is how they have hollowed out business:

Capitalism

Capitalism is not inherently bad. In fact it is an incredible engine for growth, innovation and increased wealth & standard of living for any and all.

But old white men hollowed capitalism. They took out all the good and added all the greed. I could partially defend old white men and suggest that they were simply participants in the arc of business history, but I will not. Peter Drucker pointed out the beginning of the arc in 1989, as I noted in Salvation by Society, and we old white men could have eyed the arc and, well, stopped it. Instead old white men viewed the arc as an opportunity to not be burdened by morality & soul, but rather an opportunity to build personal wealth.

     Humans

Humans are amazing things. Irrational, unexpected, inconsistent, bundles of untapped potential. Old white men hollowed humans as well as humanity in their total embrace of people as machines of productivity – scientific management was their religion. We cannot blame Frederick Taylor for this because it was these men who made Taylorism into a cult of business. they were creative in their scientific management slotting their little people productivity machines into thinkers and doers, stars and worker bees, right brain versus left brainers. They first wielded carrots & sticks to manipulate desired results and then fully embraced gamification. The intent was always to squeeze out productivity rather than let people potential emerge. It is within that last point in which old white men propagated their most insidious myth – humans are lazy and left to their own devices will do nothing. This became the underpinning to everything with regard to their treatment of humans as machines. Needless to say, business without humans and humanity is simply a machine. Old white men got exactly what they wanted to the detriment of business and humans, hollow widgets producing exactly what they are told to produce.

Branding

Brands are fabulous creatures and not inherently bad. They offer us every day schmucks a nice heuristic way to make decisions and isolate differentiation in which we can make true choices.

Old white men hollowed brands. The easiest way to point this out is that we stopped talking about brands and started talking about branding. Old white men started looking at brands as vehicles of wealth and not vehicles of differentiation. Brands should evolve and not be constructed or built like some building of cold steel and cheap Styrofoam ceiling tiles. Focusing on brands permitted old white men to hollow out the substantive work of creating products & services of substance. The whole concept of ‘building a brand’ is one of the most insidious concepts to infiltrate good and meaningful marketing and communications.

Profit

Profit is not inherently bad. Used wisely it contributes not only to personal, or individual wealth, but spurs on business growth in terms of innovation and employee development AND social involvement. But old white men hollowed the soul out of each dollar as they squeezed every cent of profit it of it. Profit is good only if it is not tainted by <a> greed or  <b> created at the expense of giving back <in terms of true societal salvation type things>. Businesses represent an important weave in the fabric of society and the moment a business ignores that weave and focuses solely on the profits of the entity itself the opportunity arises to let the soul of each dollar made bleed out into the ether. And, yes, dollars can have a soul. Making money shouldn’t feed stock holders, it should a business that feeds society.

Wealth dispersion

Making money and creating wealth is inherently a double positive: proof of the value for your efforts and increased standard of living <not just in materialistic comforts but in real living>. This is a good thing for individuals, society and the world.

Old white men hollowed out the middle and carved out the good aspects.. This is more a byproduct of their business acumen more than anything else because I cannot really point out any specific behavior they consciously took to do this, but, suffice it to say that more went to the old white men and less to the ones who actually made the money for them. Possibly worse is that crafty old white men crafted a tier of wealth creation in which they had to do nothing, but use other people’s wealth to, exponentially, create their own wealth. Basically, they hollowed out the value in wealth.

Communication

Effective communication has been, and always will be, complex and complicated. Effective communication inevitably feeds into the minds and enlightenment of the listeners. If you dumb down communication, inevitably you dumb down the listeners.

Old white men hollowed out communication. I imagine as they hollowed out everything else they found it inherently more productive to gain their objectives by also hollowing out communication. Everything became soundbites, powerpoint bullet points and ‘elevator speeches.’ Effectively communicating complexity took on less importance than a quick sharp stab of “here is all you need to know” <and then walking away>. Old white men mastered the art of emptying communication to a point where businesses end up walking on the slippery surface of irrelevance <cloaked in a beautiful robe called “what is important for you to know.”> Heinously, they hollowed out the value of words all the while replacing them with bullshit buzzwords <hollow shells of words> all under the guise of “simplicity.”

ROI

ROI <return on investment> is a fabulous tool. It offers us every day unimaginative pragmatic schmucks an almost heuristic way to judge some fairly complex and complicated things in business.

Old white men hollowed ROI of anything intangible and along the way scraped away some of the most meaningful things associated with investment in their desire for simplistic “this led to that.” Certainly some investments have linear outcomes and results. But not all. And these hollow men in their black & white pursuit of profit, efficiency and outcomes became color blind.  Old white men started looking at people as equal to numbers & dollars and not organic organisms of less than linear productivity <in terms of Life actualization as well as business actualization>. These hollow men fell in love with cause & effect, numbers and began diminishing the value of humanity and complexity <dynamics of business & Life>. They saw people as investments, like manufacturing robots, rather than, well, people.

Racism

Racism in the workplace is a stealthy virus invading the organism in ways that can create an unhealthy organism which sometimes seems to never attain its full potential despite producing results.

Old white men enable this virus to exist by hollowing out the meaning in any racism discussion, and real substantive actions, in business.

These old white men rose through the ranks of business surrounded by other white people, & few minorities, simply believing it was so because it was a reflection of those “who deserved to be here” (assuming everyone COULD be here if they worked hard enough). When in leadership positions & told about racism issues they didn’t really believe it, reluctantly doing things they were told they should do all the while thinking “it’s just political correctness”. The times old white men got trapped in diversity meetings & shared 5 things they did & were told were racist, in their heads they said “they can’t handle truth, they are too sensitive.” What this all led to was hollow efforts at addressing racism. They grudgingly implemented some initiatives, while publicly espousing their enlightenment, but privately thinking it was a waste of time, energy & monies. Underlying this purposeful ignorance was an ongoing belief white people never got any more breaks than anyone else or that there was never any inherent ‘privileges’ bestowed upon white skinned people.

What the business world ended up with was a generation of old white men who are the worst of racism ,and some real racists> – racism convinced it isn’t racism and racists convinced they are not racist. Ultimately, any substantive efforts to address racism in business were hollowed out by old white men who didn’t really believe in them.

Behavior

I hesitated to call this “the hollowing out of morality” mostly because that sounded a little harsh and I tend to believe the reality within this particular hollowness is more pragmatic. That said … it doesn’t make it any better just that I didn’t really want to get into a morality & ethical finger pointing game.

Leadership is a complex mix of personal, professional and pragmatic. When wielded well it is a beautiful tapestry of effectiveness, however, beauty is often in the eyes of the beholder when actual effectiveness becomes the measuring stick. As a reminder, old white men leadership grew up in a business of dictatorship leadership behavior or, at its best, benevolent dictatorship.

Old white men grew up in the hallowed halls of hollowed leadership management. This means that their ‘management twitch muscles’ inevitably provide reflexive business decision making based on this.

The easiest way to point this out is that businesses have developed a myriad of cultural initiatives and, yet, old white men leadership tends to simply treat them as “feel good politically correct” initiatives. They view them as “society dictated” thinking and not “business dictated” thinking. Therefore, a hollowness was inherent in the organization between how the old white men leaders attitudinally approached the business, how they viewed behavior and how the organization actually behaved. In other words, a hollow mindset affected expectations of attitudes and behaviors.

Old white men began talking longingly of straight talk, when people knew their place in business and ‘carrot & sticks.’  Old white men started looking at businesses in disdain as vehicles of political correctness and not stark effectiveness. The truth is that many of the old white men simply didn’t buy in to a better way of doing business and, therefore, when put in a corner & challenged revert back to the hollow management style of “do what I tell you to do and shut up.”

To be fair, old white men did not create this hollowness, they simply propagated it.

Pretty damning evidence of their hollowing, no?

All that said. These old white men, in their heart of hearts, inherently do not care about a ‘better world’ or even “a better way of conducting business” from a soul perspective nor do they care about any aspect of ‘being a better person’. Despite the fact we read headlines about business people embracing “Purpose” or creating panels to create a better business, it’s all words, no actions. Or maybe better said, there are actions but they are hollow actions. The truth is that for the most part they are indifferent to the bigger, more important, issues and solely attach ‘better’ with wealth, importance and wins and their own interests.

I get angry. I get angry because I do not believe ‘hollowness’ is the path to a better business world and society <let alone the world>. It certainly has not helped us reach greatness up to this point. And I am angry because I have believed this, and known this, for decades.

Look. This can be solved. And it can be solved by, well, old guys/people like me.

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“At any other time it’s better. You can do the things you feel you should; you’re an expert at going through the motions. Your handshakes with strangers are firm and your gaze never wavers; you think of steel and diamonds when you stare. In monotone you repeat the legendary words of long-dead lovers to those you claim to love; you take them into bed with you, and you mimic the rhythmic motions you’ve read of in manuals. When protocol demands it you dutifully drop to your knees and pray to a god who no longer exists. But in this hour you must admit to yourself that this is not enough, that you are not good enough. And when you knock your fist against your chest you hear a hollow ringing echo, and all your thoughts are accompanied by the ticks of clockwork spinning behind your eyes, and everything you eat and drink has the aftertaste of rust.”

Dexter Palmer

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Old white men created the problems and as so well said in the movie The Return of the Pink Panther: “you set a thief to catch a thief.”

Older people can reverse the hollowness problem in one fell swoop. I could do it with a small merry band of contrarian older people (women & men), who have chafed in this hollow existence, and could bring some good healthy substance back into this wretched hollowness. To be clear, to fix this it isn’t about attacking one of these issues and working on it, it is coming up with a business model, and a way of doing business, that resolves all these issues. In systems thinking vernacular, the system in its entirety needs to regain robustness and substance because a substantive non-hollow part, alone, will not improve the system.

This is a unique time in history in which business, country and politics have intersected. This is a unique time for older business people to right the wrongs of all they have wrought up to this point. I certainly hope this happens, as an old white man myself, simply for the sake of redemption for all of us old white men. Ponder.

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“The life so short, the craft so long to learn.”

Hippocrates

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“Ninety percent of paid work is time-wasting crap. The world gets by on the other ten.”

John Derbyshire

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism

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How many times have we sat back and said “I can do that job”?

Now. To be clear. I am going to talk about this from a business-to-business perspective and not the corner of the bar-to-‘some job’ perspective because from the corner of the bar, after a couple of beers, any of us can do any job better than the person who is currently doing it.

This is an “I have been in the workplace, I feel like I have had some success and … well … shit … I can do that job” perspective.

OK. I am chuckling a little, c’mon, let’s face it, I don’t care who you are and where you have worked, you have eyed what another person is doing and thought you could do it. At some point, if you have had some success, all jobs start having some commodity-like characteristics which tease you into believing shifting from one to another just isn’t that difficult.

Ok. To be fair. I have never lacked in business confidence. I do not believe there is a business problem that cannot be solved and I also believe <with some realistic pragmatic goggles on> that there is not a problem I cannot solve if I hunker down and get all the information I need. This can make me aggravating to work with on occasion because, well, I make no apologies for “how I may repair things”.

But that shouldn’t be confused with believing I can do any job.

Ok.

Yeah.

I admit.

I am certainly guilty at points in my career where I have certainly thought “I could do that job” over a wide array of responsibilities and unrelated industries.

** Note. I rarely thought I could do it better … just that I could do it.

……….. my MBA at Wake Forest experience ………..

I would say that my MBA experience, a great experience with great professors at Wake Forest, encouraged me to think this way. It was a case study program which inherently encouraged thinking skills over black & white discipline skills. I tend to believe a good MBA program insures you know enough about a specific discipline to be dangerous if you overestimate your own knowledge, but effective enough to be able to understand the discipline to apply it in a general management scope.

Now.

In general, I think this attitude, on the positive side, permits you to make the leaps you have to make to jump into new jobs, new responsibilities and new positions.

In general, I think this attitude, on the negative side, can make you overlook some skills other people have as well as … at its worst … can put you in positions in which you will fail in a spectacular fashion.

I imagine as someone gets promoted, as I did, every step up showed me that there was a shitload I didn’t know overall, as well as about the responsibilities of a specific job, but at the same time it also continuously reinforced that I could “do that job.”

Success in business is a double edged sword.

Conversely.

………. what you know versus what you do not know ………

As someone gets promoted they also can see that some people got their jobs not because they necessarily had the experience or skills for the job, but simply because they had the appearance they could do the job.

You watched as these people invested gobs of energy trying to “fake it until they actually make it” or, worse, they realized they were in over their heads and invested even more energy simply maintaining a facade of bullshit to hide their hollowness.

I would also note that given your experience on the last thing I just shared that also encourages someone to believe they could, well, “do that job.”

The higher I got and the broader my experiences, my sense of “I cannot really do that job” increased with regard toward the jobs I really shouldn’t do. It didn’t diminish my sense of ability to handle increased responsibility, it simply made me more reflective of other skill sets and the reality of certain jobs.

To be clear. There is a certain group of people who never reach this realization. They tend to be either sociopaths or oblivious narcissists, but they do exist.

Anyway. My real realization on this topic came when I reached a general management position <and did some consulting>.

It was there that I recognized jobs are like icebergs. 90% of a job you never see until you actually do the job. And to successfully do the part you don’t see needs a couple of things beyond the obvious ‘I need to be competent with regard to the specific skill itself’ aspect:

Attitude alignment

source: Tom Graves, Services and Disservices

This attitude goes way beyond the simplistic “I can do the job.” This attitude is more with regard to what you are actually good at.

As I have stated before I am more a renovator than a builder.  That is a mindset. My attitude is just put me in a room with all the puzzle pieces and I can rearrange them, maybe polish off a couple, maybe smooth out some edges that no longer fit well and put a different puzzle together that works better than the one that exists.

And then there are people who say ‘I envision a puzzle and build the pieces.”

Those are two different attitudes that, certainly, have some overlap but also, certainly, drive a different type of style and ability to succeed in one type of job versus another type of job. I believe many people are successful in their jobs, and new jobs, because they have the proper insight into themselves and position themselves well to take advantage of this insight.

I would also add that a leader who can see within a person’s ‘skill set’ to recognize this attitude will also be the type who can hire incredibly effectively. Not all leaders and hirers can. Some simply see the façade and surface abilities and believe they are easily transferable and hire them believing anyone can do the job if they have that appearance of a type of surface skill set.

The less-than-obvious skill set

… example of under the radar understanding (Juran Institute) …

Each skill, each specialty, has layers to its depth & breadth. Let’s say this is the “art” of the skill <I sometimes refer to it as “the shadow of your skill”>.

When you are a junior person you are demanded day in and day out to craft your pragmatic ‘non-artistic’ skills. You learn how to screw screws into holes efficiently and hammer nails into their proper places effectively.

As you gain seniority you are demanded to start incorporating the art aspects of your craft. I like to explain this as you have to learn to be more of an architect of your department, skill and specialty. By the way, not everyone can do his and not every department head is good at this and it tends to start filtering out those who move on to the next level … general management.

And if you move up even more into general management you are demanded to gain some skills in the “art” of combining all the skills into the overall progress of a company beyond the simplistic “are each department doing their fricking job.”

Ponder this.

In general the biggest difference between thinking you can do a job and actually being able to do the job is your less than obvious skill set. For example … I cannot tell you how many times I have sat in a conference room with a CFO who has displayed a skill set that made me think “shit, this company is lucky to have them” not because they knew all the accounting mumbo jumbo, but because they knew how to wield account skills in ways that  the company benefited beyond accounting.

Pick your C-level title and I would say the same thing.

At the corner of the bar you have no clue whether you have this ‘less than obvious skill set’ and if you actually have the experience you may only have a sense of whether this skill set exists. This is an intangible, however, 90% of the time this intangible arises from some relevant experience <maybe not within that specific discipline but a discipline nonetheless> … so your experience does matter.

So.

I decided to write about this today because, frankly, as a business guy I know you cannot do a job simply because you say “I can do that job” and that experience really does matter and that simply because you believe something … <sigh> … does not make it so.

I will say that I have learned this lesson the hard way and it permits me to be able to call a bullshitter a bullshitter and to be able to point out that some roles & responsibilities dictate at least some relevant experience in order to be effective & efficient. Just because you think you can “do that job” does not mean you can actually “do that job.” It takes some self-awareness to know that.

The lack of self-awareness has a ripple effect.

In a bar your lack of self-awareness can create a range of responses – some chuckles, out right laughter of disbelief and maybe even some aggravation if it inches into what some of the people actually do sitting at the table.

In a business your lack of self-awareness can create some real business repercussions. Not only may you be out of your depth, but you may actually start making some poor hires who are also out of their depth and that kind of shit gathers negative momentum <down the slippery slope of less-than-competent results>.

In business you get fired for that shit.

In business that kind of shit gets the entire business in trouble.

Anyway. Not everyone can do a job. That’s the message of the day.

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“The most dangerous moments are not when people are their poorest but rather when their expectations of significant improvement are raised … and end in frustration.”

de Tocqueville

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I once wrote a piece called “trickle down inequality” outlining the effect of trickledown effect of inequality.
The wealthier you are you get, or gain access to:

better healthcare.

better education <and opportunities>.

better start.

better everything.

You live longer, are healthier, are better educated, have better jobs and, ultimately, have better opportunities. In other words, the odds are forever in your favor.

I think it’s about time we took a look at how business is contributing to this and, maybe most importantly, how it affects hope.

Business has become weird <or maybe just weirder>. Hierarchies in the past were neat distributions of wealth. Even if incompetent people got promoted enough competent ones also did that as salaries, and wealth, got distributed you bitched, but didn’t feel like there was unsolvable inequality. That has changed. And just as extreme inequality attacks the underpinnings of democracy it also attacks the underpinnings of good business.

Let me explain.

Salaries/compensation.

Business espouses meritocracy until its blue in the face. What they neglect to mention is how they manipulate the meritocracy. Wage growth is usually discussed in some fairly superficial ways. We casually discuss ‘everyday worker’ wage growth and then quickly flip to the crazy high CEO compensation packages we see. The devil is in the details. For a very long time when businesses grew the poorest actually benefited the most. I am too lazy to research the details, but suffice it to say that when business grew the lowest incomes actually did better than the highest incomes <proportionally speaking> in reaping benefits. That meant economic growth was actually equitable and equalizing. That is no longer occurring. What has changed is how productivity is measured and compensated. In the past if you were more productive <economic output**> there was a fairly tight relationship to your compensation, no longer.

** note: Mariana Mazzucato has a fabulous Tedtalk on how economic output/productivity is out of whack

What that really means to us every day schmucks is that economic mobility came to a crashing halt. I could be smashing it out of the park from a daily productivity standpoint and all the business system did was say “you are doing what you are being paid to do.”

This happened for several reasons but let me focus on specialties or ‘roles.’ It’s not really reductionism, but has some aspects of it. It’s more a reflection of the machine-like mentality most businesses hold onto with ragged claws tied to the ‘measure everything’ focus. At my most cynical I could suggest business doubled downed on specialist/specific role mentality because it became easier to simplify compensation and employee competition/assessment. I knew who did more, best, in a very narrow measured space and could keep the best and get rid of the worst <note that this didn’t translate into a fair compensation just more for the best in that little space>. Unfortunately, this business philosophy often simply rewards the tallest midgets. This philosophy creates value, just not the type of value creation that makes people sit up and pay attention – its structural value creation which, in today’s business world, is not seen as the highest value creation necessary for “growth hacking”, “scale-able growth” or “hypergrowth” <all bullshit phrases>.

** note: I would be remiss if I didn’t point out this does not maximize either outcome potential or personal meaning. Reinforcing daily repetition <compensating an encouraged grind> increases disengagement and splitting value creation between everyday productivity and ‘occasional value creation’ opportunities doesn’t achieve the synergy necessary reform optimization.

As a counterpoint the ones the leadership have designated as the few scale-able value creation wizards have no discernable boundaries for wealth compensation.

In other words, the majority of productivity is mired in ‘livable compensation’ and the minority is given riches beyond the imagination.

Just to conclude. Some inequality has always threaded its way through business. There have always been employees who received higher compensation with no meaningful discernible value creation advantages <call them the Peter Principle employees>. But in the past, we could live with them as they went on longer vacations to Disneyland while we enjoyed Six Flags or the local lake. It became an issue when they started pulling up to their reserved parking spaces in Porsches while we kept driving a 10-year-old car because it was paid off.

Compensation inequality in business has repercussions in the community and society. People bring their business compensation home … as well as business perceptions of whether they deserved that compensation. What this begets, in the community, is cocooning of the ones who see themselves as the value creation wizards <hanging out with each other> and the productivity value creation grinders <hanging out with each other>. And they grow farther and farther apart while doing so.

Which leads me to.

Gamification.

A weird thing has happened in business psychology. While many businesses have admitted organizations aren’t really simple machines <albeit they keep many machine-like principles in place> they have embraced a slightly more ‘natural system’ belief. Let’s call it ‘organisms’ or ‘biological’ or whatever metaphor you want to apply to suggest adaptive and non-machine-like. Well. Natural systems continuously adapt, but human systems get gamed. I am not talking about selfishness/self-interest, per se, but rather a business system invariably uses some gamification to try and prompt the results they want and humans will game the gamification in order to access the rewards <incentives, not getting fired, promotions, etc>. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the majority of people who will game the gamification the best will most likely not be the best team players, best ethical people or best of your non-psychopath employees.

I am not suggesting business organizations don’t have some attributes of a natural system, but I am suggesting humans are not animals or insects and human systems will act differently than natural systems <particularly in business>. As someone at the Santa Fe Institute said “humans are not bees or ants.”

Business is in the business of doing business. Ignoring that is absurd. For decades business has gamed the stock market, financial statements, CEO compensation, etc. To not recognize how that self-gamification hasn’t contributed to an expanding societal inequality is ludicrous. To not recognize how that self-gamification hasn’t contributed to a decreasing ethical equality is ludicrous. How business is conducted, and gamed, bleeds out into the community and homes. Its absurd that business does not assume some responsibility for inequality <on a variety of issues> as they game the system and their employees.

Which leads me to

Hope.

Extreme inequality tests people. It tests character and integrity and honor and … well … good versus evil.

Extreme inequality provokes a generalized anger that finds targets where it can — immigrants, foreign countries, American elites, CEOs, government in all forms. Extreme inequality saps the will to conceive of ambitious solutions to large collective problems, because people lose hope that anything meaningful will be done to resolve them.

Look. Few gain true wealth. And that is actually okay. And, in fact, at most times people are okay with that. It is only when the extremes become, well, too extreme that the psychology falls apart. Extreme inequality hardens a business into a class system which means that extreme inequality corrodes trust among fellow employees, making it seem as if the game is rigged.

Extreme inequality screws with our hope, but when there is a fair and balanced dispersion of wealth everyday Hope is healthy. Hope starts getting attacked when the inequalities become so extreme as the rich and the poor become entrenched and there is an overall lack of opportunity for economic mobility <and social mobility>.

Balanced wealth.

Probably the most misunderstood and misdiscussed topic with regard to capitalism and a healthy economy.  A balanced wealth society far too often gets discussed as ‘inequality’ which then suggests we should be seeking wealth equality <which we do not>. A healthy capitalist society has income tiers in which some have less and some have more. But the less and the more, the have nots and the haves, need to have a balanced relationship. And the balance reaches into all aspects of society <which makes this topic even more complex>.

Inequality has always existed and it is part of the accepted American culture.

But it was a “balanced inequality.” It was a balanced wealth, fair dispersion, societal structure.

Now. Some people confuse economic mobility with ‘fairness.’ Fairness implies giving something to someone. Business, at its core, isn’t based on giving; it is based on earning. Earn respect, earn trust, earn relationships and, yes, earn money.  Therefore, economic mobility is the idea that if you work hard, play by the rules and do it all with purpose that you have the ability to move up from where you are. A failed economic mobility system is one in which you do those three things and either you don’t move at all or, worse, fall backwards.

Leaning in on that point, the main pervasive foundational belief is not actually about being fair, but rather if you work hard, you will be successful – if you are highly productive you get compensated.

Unfortunately, this is not true. Most of business these days does not provide wealth to hard-working individuals.

Yet. Most employees unconsciously form a wealth hope based on this attitude. Many employees will wonder what they did wrong but over time they will get a sense that the system itself should be blamed. Let’s be clear, our business system, for the most part, is not inherently fair. The reality is that under our business system the probability of success, regardless how much you may have worked, is fairly similar to lottery odds. Wealth, with rare exceptions, is not created by hard work, but is a result of merciless ambition and having initial wealth.

To be clear. Most of us do not have that initial wealth nor do most of us have some mercenary type ambition <do not confuse that with having dreams and aspirations>.

To be clear. Most people haven’t given up on hope and dreams, they are angry because they believe someone, or someones, are screwing with their hope and dreams.

Extreme inequality fucks with our hope.

I would argue business needs to move out of the profit-only business and get in the Hope business <not Purpose>. Business needs to offer solutions to which we can attach our hope to that we can tangibly attach our hope to. This will not just solve inequality, but <from their selfish perspective> it will make their business less fragile and more productive.

In the end.

The way business conducts itself echoes throughout homes, communities and society. To think business isn’t responsible, or plays a significant role, in inequality is absurd. So, while business may be showing profitability, high stock prices and growth, i.e., meet the measurements of business success, they are for the most part doing so not meeting the measurements of societal success. In fact, their success is killing society success. Yeah. I am suggesting money matters but I am doing so in a different way – tied to fairness, equity, productivity, all of which lead to meaning and mattering. Because isn’t that what inequality is really all about? Meaning and mattering? If business, where many people gain a significant portion of their identity, doesn’t offer up personal meaning <of which a component is equitable distribution of wealth based on productivity> then how can any society expect to create the attitudes necessary for healthy grounded meaning? Okay. You could, but it would be more fragile. And maybe that is my point. When business doesn’t get this right, it creates some unnecessary fragility to society. Ponder.

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

“Owning my own home symbolizes so much to me. I have been my happiest when I have been in my very own place and I am really looking forward to that.  Stability and routine are vital to us in our day to day life … so moving in is really going to settle us down for a while and i will find a lot of peace of mind in that.”

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

I often believe we confuse stability and consistency, regardless, stability is an interesting topic. Its very personal to each person <and it always surprises me a little when someone assumes what is important to them for ‘stability’ should be, or is, the same for everyone else>. I also believe how you define stability kind of defines you <in a way>.

A good friend just bought a home after struggling through several years and wrote the above quote. Stability, and all the things associated with it, reentered the world for this person. Anyway. It made me think about how important stability is to, well, everyone – at least in some form or fashion. I tend to believe we seem to find stability in our work lives fairly well and fairly easily. Stability in work is rarely what you may think is obvious. For stability is not really a ‘safe’ job <in terms of employment security>, it is actually what we naturally gravitate to in terms of the daily ‘to do’s’ of what we do. Frankly, it is the things that come most easily to us and the things we like to do at work.

Stability in the workplace is found in the form of comfort in a couple of things:

1. knowing what you are doing
2. knowing you are doing it well <or competently>
3. knowing what you do means something to someone

It ain’t money. It ain’t job security. It is about the actual ‘doing’ where the strongest stability is found <because it is actually transferable & movable>. Everyone should note I emphasized ‘doing’ because this is at the heart of ‘work.’ I debate with anyone that people do not have to work to gain some meaning. Work is ‘doing’ <with multiple feedback mechanisms which provide value cues intrinsically & extrinsically>.

Moving on.

Anyway. For some odd reason it seems tougher to find this easy stability in real life. I tend to believe that happens because of ‘over stimulation’ <Life clutters us with responsibilities & worries & a nonstop schedule of ‘possible things to do’>.

Regardless. Whether we recognize it or not we build, or seek to build, some stability into our lives, i.e., something or some things that provides a steadying influence. I am not talking about money. I am talking about something, or somethings, that emotionally settle us so that we can deal with all the other crap that is going on around us.

It is important, and I would suggest, almost vital to have some emotional stability because it is from that which we leverage and make progress <in Life & business>.

All that said. When I heard my friend was buying a house, and what it meant, it made me think of several things:

–          How everyone builds some type of stability onto their lives <or it would be sheer chaos>

–          What is my stability

–          My uncomfortable relationship with permanence <and how I, and not everyone else, has that uncomfortable relationship>

Building stability in Life

Everyone has some stability. And everyone pretty much defines it very personally. Sure. We can be flippant when asked; our house <home>, our family <or parents>, our loved ones is typically the knee jerk response.

And sometimes it is the real truth. It’s easy. It makes sense. But sometimes it is not the obvious. Sure. We thought it was an easy answer, but it is not. Look. I am not telling you what your stability answer is I’m just suggesting it may be deeper than you think.

Regardless. Some of us look at stability in a different way. It isn’t like an unmoving object, but rather a constantly moving object that we try our best to bind to as it moves by.

William Blake said … “I wouldn’t bind myself to a joy, I would kiss the joy as it flew.”

That’s as close to a definition for this version of stability that I could find.

Regardless. We all seek and, I imagine, have ‘some’ stability in our lives. We may create it mentally and always go ‘home’ to it when we need to steady ourselves or it may be something tangible like a home or a person or a thing. Whatever it is that stability actually defines us. Yeah, yeah, yeah … someone will argue with me on this and I will probably get a nasty <but smart> note from a psychologist or behavioral expert reader, but in my simple mind how we define our stability is a reflection of something deep inside us. Either a Maslow thing <self esteem, self actualization, self-whatever> or simply something that given our past experiences <good or bad> that settles us into a ‘good place’ mentally.

This place, or thing, provides comfort, maybe happiness, but most absolutely represents  the calm eye in the hurricane of Life.

Bottom line? We all have something that stabilizes us. Figure it out and you at least know something really really valuable about yourself.

What my stability is.

When I thought about this it was a simple answer – books <and yes this will ultimately lead me to my uncomfortable relationship with permanence>. I find comfort in words and how the words make me think and feel and expand my experiences thru fictional & non fictional lives & stories. I find comfort in sifting thru the real & the unreal to formulate some Life truths, well, at least my Life truths.

I don’t need a home. I don’t need a high falutin’ title. I just need some books. That is my stability.

I could probably live in a studio apartment with bookshelves all around me and I would feel grounded.

For a period of time I thought my dog was my stability … he was a rock of support in Life. Instead I found he simply complimented my Life during the amazing time he was with me. He transitioned me from one point in my life to another and, possibly, in some weird way he tried to remind me of my true stability because throughout his life the only thing he consistently chewed on when I wasn’t around were the corners of books. To this day I have dozens of books with just one corner chewed off.

Maybe he had a comfortable relationship with my stability and found stability in my stability.

I know. Sounds odd, but pets often have a way of showing you things that you don’t really see about yourself <note: point of that little story was you can uncover your stability in a variety of ways>.

Regardless. I am certain this personal insight clearly makes me, well, two things I imagine.

First. A nomad. I’m willing to walk through life anywhere at any time as long as I have a books in hand. My stability is transient able to go wherever I go. In fact, I imagine standing still too long in one place makes me feel uncomfortable & possibly even unstable.

Second. Maybe I’m a sick person. Say what?

“Library is a hospital for the mind.”

Maybe I have a sick mind that always needs assistance to stay healthy rather than have healthy mind that seeks to feed itself with nutrition <because just as I eat some crappy food I certainly read some crappy stuff>.

Interesting thought. But hey … anyone who admits that their stability could possibly fit in their pocket for god’s sake probably has some mental issues don’t they?

My uncomfortable relationship with permanence.

Ok. This is probably most embodied in the fact that I don’t have a tattoo <and most people would guess that I would have one>, but instead I think I will reflect upon my choice for what gives me stability – my books. They are an impermanent permanent feature in my life. They easily travel and I can have hundreds, heck, thousands of which to pick up and put down and read and reread. Stability, to me, in the traditional sense, well, I have always equated with stagnancy.

Is that fair? Probably not, but it is what I have in my pea like brain.

It may be that I have moved so many times in my life, made some friends and met some fabulous amazing people in each place, and have gone back and while the people are still amazing … the place is … well … emptier. Nathaniel Hawthorne said it best:

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

“… they resolved to go back to their own land; because the years have a kind of emptiness when we spend too many of them on a foreign shore. But … if we do return, we find that the native air has lost its invigorating quality, and that life has shifted its reality to the spot where we have deemed ourselves only temporary residents.

Thus, between two countries, we have none at all.”

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

Now. I certainly admit that if I ever stopped moving maybe the spot wouldn’t shift its reality … or maybe I would shift with it and therefore it wouldn’t lose its invigorating quality. But. In my nomad world I have discovered you just cannot go back. You can go back to memories <which are great> but you cannot go back to a place.

All that said my permanence is found in books. Which I imagine suggests that my permanence is lurking somewhere in my mind … traveling with me wherever I go.

I envy people who find stability in a home because it makes them happy, comfortable and fulfilled.

I envy people who find stability in whatever type of permanence they have.

But I don’t envy them enough to give up my sense of stability and permanence.

I have tried their permanence and it has failed for me.

I have no clue what that says about me from a psychological standpoint and I am fairly sure I don’t want to know.

In the end.

I realized how I defined my stability said a lot about me and what is important to me. I don’t recommend a lot of self reflection, but this seems like a valuable use of someone’s time. I believe its valuable because I would assume if you haven’t clearly defined what makes you feel stable you run the risk of not having the platform you need to leverage from to be, and do, the best you can be & do.

I would also guess you run the risk of feeling adrift on occasion and not really knowing why.

Take a moment and think about how you define stability. Go below the obvious and really think about it. It seems important.

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“I am confident that, in the end, common sense and justice will prevail.

I’m an optimist, brought up on the belief that if you wait to the end of the story, you get to see the good people live happily ever after. “

—

Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam

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

Well. I, frankly, cannot see how anyone could go through life without any optimism. I don’t see how anyone could live anything other than a fairly dismal life if all you did was embrace cynicism & skepticism. Fortunately, I do not believe many people are that completely dismal. I tend to believe most people believe common sense and justice may not always prevail, but certainly has better than even odds of prevailing in Life.

I actually think the bigger issue is that we sometimes feel suffocated by negativity and perceived ‘badness’ all around us. It can seem crushing on occasion. So crushing that it sometimes seems like it is more powerful than justice … and certainly more powerful than common sense.

That is why we need optimism.

Now. To be clear.

I am not an optimist. I am more a cynical optimist.

I am not a dreamer. I am more a pragmatic dreamer.

And, yes, I believe in hope, but, well, more a ‘lunch bucket” type hope. “Lunch bucket”?

Well. Certainly hope requires thinking. But thinking far too often remains just that … thinking … and no doing.

Lunch bucket hope is about putting in the work.

Lunch bucket hope is about full dreaming and not hollow promises.

Lunch bucket hope is about the harsh truths and not ignoring truths.

Lunch bucket hope is about recognizing ‘what is’ can change but ‘what will be’ will not happen magically.

This lunch bucket attitude combined with optimism, at its core, brings a belief that nothing may work. but that everything might work.

It is about understanding that there is no one silver bullet to solve something or to dramatically turn things around, but understanding that if you try 100 different things and each one makes even a little impact that there will be progress <and you get just a bit closer to what you hope>.

It is about recognizing that Life is rarely simple cause and effect and more likely a series of complex intertwined events <not chaos>.

It is about seeing that Life is always a work in progress where many times progress is difficult to distinguish from stagnancy.

It is about seeing that change, more often than not, is neither spectacular nor disruptive, but rather subtle nudges easily overlooked.

And … it is about only being confident that common sense and justice will prevail if you bring a lunch bucet attitude along with your optimism & hope.

I will admit.

My lunch bucket optimism is surrounded by pessimistic thoughts & cynical thoughts all wearing a well-worn comfortable cloak of hope.

I will admit.

My thoughts have a healthy respect for hope.

This permits my type of optimism to not be some kind-hearted pushover, but rather one capable of yelling, sharing hard feedback and resilient to a world which, very often, brings an even harsher cynicism.

My type of optimism defends the arc of history which embraces good against the attacks of bad … which relentlessly seek to slow the natural arc of progress.

And, yet, as I defend what I view a the good arc of history I bring a legitimate care for the world at large along with, what could be viewed as cold & harsh, a view in which I may simply see people as the actors on the stage of this greater world.

I do believe kindness & generosity differentiate performance; not successes & wins. This is not an easy task the pragmatic optimists take on. It demands that you have to do hard things and sometimes be hard in how you deal with Life … all the while keeping kindness in your heart.

I once used Jamie Varon’s words to say I am a professional aspirationalist. <That’s not a word, but I’ve made it into one, since there was nothing that could quite describe me because I didn’t want to say I’m a “professional dreamer” because that sounds like some hippie shit. I have aspirations, like, lots of them.>

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“I am not afraid of my truth anymore and I will not omit pieces of me to make you comfortable.”

Alex Elle

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I believe being a professional aspirationalist helps me to be a little more confident that common sense & justice & ‘good’ will prevail in today’s world.

I believe this because professional aspirationalist is a compass and not a destination. It is a direction.

Aspirationalist is a moving target.

Being an aspirationalist means not only having dreams, but dreaming and, yet, I remain a pragmatic optimist. It means I am restlessly pursing what is good and better  … relentlessly seeking, traveling, doing, thinking … professionally constantly in motion <mentally or physically>.

To be clear.

All of this is not for the faint of heart.

All of this is not easy.

All of this is often an eternal struggle against a shitload of negative forces in the world.

But. Isn’t all of that truly what being yourself is all about?

Isn’t Life, and living it, sort of about having some courage to suggest ‘I will not omit things just to make you comfortable’ and finding your own version of bravery?

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“I am a world that cannot be explored in one day. I am not a place for cowards.”

Caitlyn Siehl

======

I imagine my point is that today’s world, in general, is not a place and time for cowards.

In addition, being a pragmatic optimist means you are not a place for cowards. I say that because pragmatic optimism, professional aspirationalist, all these types of thoughts are not simply about being a dreamer, all these thoughts have rich & royal hues of reality threading its way through its fabric.

And you are forced to not be a coward because this pragmatic optimism demands people to think about dreaming, but also demands doing.

Pragmatically, we cynical optimists, aspirationalists as it were, do seek approval and acceptance and we do seek to actually do shit (albeit ‘good shit’).

Now … I could argue, whether you like it or not, whether you think it is right or wrong, in some form or fashion we all care.

We all care <not just aspirationalists> about all of this shit <and shit in general>.

We all care what the people around us think about us. And by people I mean everyone from those closest to you <who would most likely accept you in any shape and form you ended up in> to society overall.

And we all care about good shit happening rather than bad shit.

And we all care about providing some value to the world.

Uhm.

But maybe that is where being a cynical optimist, a practical dream, a professional aspirationalist has an edge in today’s world.

We do not seek solely finding value from proving ourselves to others.

We don’t accept solely finding value in and of ourselves.

We seek finding value in uncovering pragmatic ways that our optimism can come to Life.

The value resides in the fact that the proof exists in our optimism being vindicated.

In the end.

It may very well be my timeand the time for people who think as I do. We cynical optimists. And I am okay with that.

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

“It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, “Wait on time.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

==========

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“Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”

—-

attributed to Plato but not really said by Plato

==== 

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic.  

It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. 

The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” 

–

Howard Zinn

====

“When you do things right, people won’t be sure that you have done anything at all.”

–

God (in Futurama)

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

I get a little concerned, on occasion, that in the business world kindness is considered a negative thing. Simplistically, there is a general impression that if you are kind, or nice, you are not tough — or tough enough to assume the more difficult responsibilities. At this attitude’s worst dimension it breeds a belief ‘assholes win’, therefore, ‘be an asshole.’

To be clear. There is a shitload of empty rhetoric of ‘playing nice’ and ‘team playing’, but that is from an overall organizational perspective not a management track perspective. For on a parallel track to the ‘be kind/play well’ is the “the toughest fighters are the leaders.” Note I said “parallel track.”

Now. Aspects of that latter point are true but it seems like everyone forgets to add onto that thought … “but that doesn’t mean you need to be so at the expense of kindness.” In other words, they shouldn’t be thought of as a “this or that” or “either/or.” Once again, in the business world, it seems like we are encouraged to believe in the completely fucked up thinking of “one thing and one thing only.”

When asked the question “What is the one most important attribute of a great manager?” near the top of the list: “ability to make the tough decision” <implication: you need to be tough above all>.

And while I could argue whether I am exactly right on what I am now going to share,  the reality is that one of the most important attributes of a great manager is actually “ability to make the tough decision without losing sight of kindness.”

One attribute can actually be a combination of things and not just “one.”  For some absurd reason we tend to believe that people will be torn between these two opposing forces. That we will naturally gravitate toward one or the other and, therefore, be battling what we believe is right rather than effectively doing the job.

Well. It is a battle when you are younger in business and is a battle worth fighting <even if you get it wrong on occasion>. Just as in military training the more experience I get the more likely I will win the battle the next time <assuming I survive>. The point is that if you make the bold choice to incorporate kindness from day one <which no one seems to be pragmatically encouraging young people to do so> by the time you become a real manager and leader it just becomes something you do without thinking about it.

Yeah. I did just use the world “bold.”

I did so because in today’s world everyday kindness, and done so consistently, is both a bold pioneering statement in a “eat the little fish” world. And, yet, this bold personal decision can offer some amazing rewards.

Several years ago I had to offer ’20 things about Me’ to a company and within it I shared this as my #1 thing:

– My grandfather

The greatest man I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. A simple kind man who honored integrity, kindness and truth above all. He taught me more about me, life and how to live Life <without overtly teaching> than anyone I have ever known. He remains my North Star for my life. I can only hope to be half the man he ever was … but at least he gave me something to aim for.

It was in that same piece I also shared his:

– Spike Lee

I was in my early 30’s in the audience when I heard Spike Lee say these words about his films … “I recognize everything I do impacts how people think … and even what they do … I have a responsibility every time I create anything.” It changed how I viewed what I did and actually how I did it moving forward. Basically … I began assuming responsibility.

So. What the heck does my white conservative non bombastic grandfather have to do with Spike Lee?

Choice.

Yep.

Choice.

Deciding to be successful and be kind is a choice. And a big choice given the kind of shit they try and teach you far too often in business these days. Assuming responsibility for kindness, well, impacts everything. It is one of those ‘ripple affect’ type choices – with benefits in the present and in the future. Spike Lee reminded me ‘choice’ needs to be represented in the never-ending onslaught of ‘present moments’ and my grandfather reminded me of the ultimate reward for actually living that kind of Life.

By the way I am not suggesting “manufacturing kindnesss’ or ‘purposefully creating kindness.’ But I do tend to believe you can affect your kindness by consciously deciding that kindness can win an that kindness does not diminish effectiveness in business.

The truth is that Kindness wins if you simply believe it can get injected into discrete moments of now.

Uh oh. This means that kindness is driven not only by awareness but some common sense and clarity and there is no secret code other than making the choice.

Shit.

No secret code.

Unfortunately, without a code I have to offer the unfortunate truth about kindness — you have to do something, or actually be consistently kind, to actually be kind. What I am talking about is make choices. Choose to be kind and act with kindness.

Yeah. You almost have to defiantly choose to choose to be kind.

As well as choose to live in defiance of all that is not kind.

Look. I am not suggesting you shouldn’t call someone a jackass if they truly are a jackass, or be harshly constructively critical if that is what will get through to someone or even make the hard call where people get pissed. Sometimes business demands you to portray some jerk-like qualities. It does so not because it encourages you to actually be a jerk, or a jack ass, but organizational inertia is incredibly difficult to address and, yes, sometimes you have to kick some ass to get everyone moving.

So maybe you need to selectively be a jack ass.

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“Got to mind the delicate social nuances when you inform some poor fellow that he’s a dumb motherfucker.”

Locke Lamora

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

And, yet, you can be a jack ass without sacrificing kindness.

What I am suggesting is if you carry kindness with you and offer kindness as a thread of all that you do, well, kindness can win and does win.  In other words you can still make the tough management decisions, the hard choices, be a little bit of a jack ass on occasion and, yet, in the end everyone will see that you did the right thing ‘well.’ in other words you can win the right way instead of just winning.

I will tell you one thing that I know for sure. While consistently incorporating kindness into your business Life may seem like a bold pioneering choice I would suggest that by doing so it offers some comfortable familiarity <we remember how nice it feels>. There is a small sense of satisfaction; let’s call it “added value”, in everything you do if kindness is injected into the decisions and behavior. It is almost like you have baked a cake and someone has placed your favorite icing on top when they give it to you.

If you do it right, no one really notices that you didn’t put the icing on the cake.

Anyway. Kindness does matter, even in business. And kindness can be done without costing you promotions, effectiveness and character. And isn’t that last thing the most important anyway?

 =================

“Sustained success is largely a matter of focusing regularly on the right things and making a lot of uncelebrated little improvements every day.”

—

Theodore Levitt

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“People don’t want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter inch holes.”

—

Theodore Levitt

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“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

—

Michael Porter

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Well.

……… me on the plane ……….

As I was picking my way through an old Economist <May 2015> magazine on a plane flight I came across an article where The Boston Consulting Group <a smart business consulting firm most known for its “stars, cash cows, dogs & question mark” business matrix> had published something suggesting that a single overarching business strategy, in today’s business world, is a recipe for failure.

Well. That made me sit up a little. That is something I have believed … well … ever since I was experienced enough to understand what I was learning in the business strategy world. That is also something, my belief, which sometimes made my business career slightly miserable. Because this thought is not the norm, nor the most acceptable, in the typical management office in business <then & now>.

Let’s be clear. This whole business strategy discussion is important … really important.  Strategy makes or breaks a business. In fact … strategy is more important than great leadership and perseverance and hard work and even luck <although all those things are quite helpful>. Strategy is always challenging. More often than not you have some business vision and hunker down with some strategy to attain it.

It is during the hunkering down period that some challenges start raising their heads.

There will always be characteristics of a good solid strategy that imbue an organization with confidence that it is a guide towards what is needed to succeed. And, yet, there are some other characteristics of this elusive, but probably well thought out strategy, which do not necessarily burst with confidence but rather they represent the greyish areas of the strategy. These are actually the parts of the strategy which are built to adapt and morph into something solid when the time & place occurs.

That said. All that grayish stuff does not imbue confidence.

Inevitably most companies pursue a variety of diverse thoughts and will end up choosing maybe not a completely new strategy but certainly pursue somewhat different paths. Those ‘different paths’ is actually all about trying things, following the good ones and eliminating the bad ones. well … that can sure sound a lot like chaos.

It surely could be if it were not closely attached to self-interest <and not survival>. Trying strategies on like a new suit for a formal occasion is about reforming and adapting skipping nimbly from one strategy to another to assume your place in the context of the situation. It can also take on some characteristics of chaos if you do not shed some things, strategies included, as you adapt.

As I noted in something I wrote in June 2014 that as an organization naturally grows in fits & starts it will certainly … uhm … no … absolutely … gather up some bad characteristics. Well. Ok. Maybe some characteristics which are like barnacles on the ship. They slow you down. Eliminating those barnacles is hard. And the hard truth in is they must go if the business wants to be successful.

Old less than effective strategies are included in this barnacle discussion. They must go as the organization adapts, if you accept the multi strategy thinking.

The whole adapting and adding and discarding discussion is easy when talking about tactics. Businesses do it all the time and pat themselves on the back for ‘being nimble and adapting to the market needs.’ They ignore the fact that tactics are simply window dressing and that these changes are simply a new paint job on a slowly sinking ship. While it may sound too simplistic to suggest businesses would be better off thinking of strategies as easy to change as tactics … it may actually be some sound advice. Well. Sound advice for non-amateurs. Advice like that taken in hand by someone who didn’t really understand strategy and vision would most likely be a disaster.

Look.

In my heart of hearts I have always balked at one overarching unchanging business strategy. It made no sense to me <okay … it made sense I just didn’t think it was particularly effective in an ever changing business environment>. I just never was smart enough to articulate why what I believed made more sense. While I loved that part of business, strategic positioning businesses in the marketplace, I often found myself being forced to apply square peg strategy solutions into what I saw as businesses’ ever evolving round, trapezoid, hexagonal, triangular and, yes, sometimes, square strategy opportunity holes. I often felt like I was being asked to place a stripped screw into a nail hole.

I wanted a tighter fit.

I always wanted to switch and blend and, as we often suggest a business is unique & distinct, I always felt a business deserved a distinct strategy and not one we simply pulled off the shelf.

Frankly, one overarching strategy in today’s fast moving & amazing competitive diverse business environment is a formula for eventual obsoletion. The marketplace naturally cycles and it seems slightly outdated thinking to believe if your organization doesn’t cycle it can ride out the marketplace cycle successfully. This obsoletion can happen even if the business is well run, running well and providing a high level of service and satisfaction. Because as I noted in one of my ‘creative destruction’ articles there is always some scrappy entrepreneurial business out there thinking about how to rewrite the rules of doing business in that category and industry.

I am not suggesting you have to create your own strategy <although I am a fan of a hybrid strategy> but you can certainly select one of the commonly accepted strategies from a menu and switch back & forth as the situation dictates. This means you can use accepted strategy platforms but by constantly adapting the strategy a business can avoid the undesirable situation of:

<a>deciding to having to leap into the unknown and stop leading and instead emulating the businesses infringing upon an industry they used to know so well … or,

<b> simply exist as an ever limiting cash cow, or a business solely relying on operations, in other words … destined to becoming a marginal player in a new world.

By the way. This is not about disruption <which has become an overused and ill-used word> but rather managing a business to take advantage of a diverse range of opportunities which inevitably arise in any industry and category.

Anyway. This may sound slightly chaotic and certainly difficult to manage and keep everything, and everyone, in line.

I do not believe it is chaotic, but I do know 100% for sure, it is difficult to do. But as someone smarter than I has said in the past … “nothing worth doing is easy.” But it is worth doing. I have always felt, sometimes balking at what I was being taught, that strategic change is almost a must for long term survival. I say ‘almost’ because if you are big enough, strong enough and savvy enough … like a huge nose tackle in football … you can bull your way through almost anything in your way <for awhile .. until your legs get tired or you get triple teamed>.

Now. Leaders, businesses who do lead, may suggest that this strategy shifting thing is not for them..

But part of leading is recognizing not only that someone is chasing you but that they may be getting a little close to you … and you should pull a ‘crazy Ivan.’ I always called this shaking the etch a sketch. This is not disruption per se – this is more like simply changing the context, the game and the rules. Make the others adapt.

So.

The how. How to do this.

The article in The Economist whined a little bit about how the authors of the Boston Consulting Group didn’t share ‘ways to implement so that managers didn’t go crazy or astray.’ Most likely because they didn’t have to.

Most good businesses do not stray from their core competence and skill. Functionally what they do well. And they combine this with an attitudinal/character compass.

Note I say “good businesses.’ Because I will also note, as I have in the past, for some reason defining these two things is oddly more difficult than one would think. And agreement even if you define it? Yikes. Even tougher.

In the end.

I would suggest pursuing an inconsistent consistent strategy shift is very much like simply pursing self-interest <not survival interest>. The distinction I make here is that survival suggests ‘do anything to survive’ and this more often than not can lead you down some paths that permit you to survive short term but long term can put you in some untenable position. Self interest suggests more ego-ism centered therefore naturally imbibes aspects of self-vision, character and embodiment of who and what you are. This self interest permits you to navigate the natural tension in business of maintaining a stable business model that produces consistent results and the embracing of some reinvention. I say this because a healthy self, a person, navigates this same tension in Life therefore if you view business as … well … not just a business seeking to survive & thrive but rather a personal self-interest modality you can embrace both the rewarding stability and the rewarding reinvention.

I will note many of the high falutin’ books on strategy avoid this topic. Their core premise is staying the course to maximize return and simplify overarching decision making. And, I admit, the path I am recommending is a rockier road <but far more interesting>.

Anyway. Maybe about a dozen years ago or so in my attempt to address this I developed a philosophy based on staking out a business compass based on something I called “the inner truth.”  <see image to the right>.

I believed if a business could understand and embrace their inner truth than day to day business could have some flexibility & autonomy. In some cases I would even suggest strategy could adapt … as long as they stayed true to their inner truth. The concept of strategic agility and flexibility is extremely appealing. It is challenging but has a tendency to combine what almost every business desires — the nimbleness of the start-up/entrepreneurial years and the solid consistency knowledge gained from experience offers.

What I do know, and feel slightly vindicated that the Boston consulting group has finally jumped on the ‘adaptable strategy train’, is that the combination of a solid consistent vision core being enabled by an adapting semi-autonomous strategic construct around it creates a higher likelihood of success in the marketplace.

Our strategy.

Be smart. Be thoughtful. Try things. Follow those that work. Adapt. Never lose sight of the core no matter what you explore.

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“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”

—

Frédéric Chopin

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Whew.

Simplicity.

Discussing what is simple, and what is simplicity, maybe one of the most complex and complicated topics you will ever discuss.

It is, well, never simple.

I sometimes think we get confused when we discuss simplicity. For simplicity is not actually achieved in the stimulus … or in the delivery … but rather in the response.

Now. That doesn’t mean a ‘simple’ stimulus is unable to generate a simple response. In fact it may more often than not. Uhm. “May”. Simple stimuli are just as likely to confuse. Provide ambiguity. Generate a feeling of ‘less than.’ In other words, they simply communicate nothing. So when someone says ‘show a picture’ or ‘say it in 5 seconds or you lose them’ and be done with it … I just don’t think it is that simple.

That is simply looking at it from a stimulus point of view. Now. That’s not a bad place to start … but it is a means to an end. Far too often we look at that as the answer when the reality is simplicity can be delivered in so many ways your head will spin.

Chopin got it right. He wrote music which could often be complex and intertwined with nuance … but simplicity was achieved in the final achievement. And that is about writing, or creating, from the edge.

Let me explain.

Writing things from the edges has nothing to do with danger or risk taking or even ‘living on the edge’ type perceptions everyone seems to have. The edge is simply less cluttered. It is what simplicity is about.

People seem to get very very confused when they talk about simplicity and complexity, but if you want to make sense of a lot of shit — just move your ass closer to an edge.

It is not scary.

It is simply clearer there.

Well. I guess clarity can be scary … but you get my point.

All I know is that when I write … or think … I do my best when I place my chair and laptop on the edge and think.

Ok. Let me talk some business.

Simplicity as edging closer to the edges.

In business … no matter how we choose to communicate a brand <public relations, broadcast, print, web, whatever> the only place where the brand truly exists is in the heads of people.

Products & services are real. Brands are simply figments of our imagination.

I say that because when you start discussing this whole wacky branding thing ‘edge’ rarely enters the conversation. Sure. Simplicity does, but not edge. This means a boatload of companies <and a shitload of start-up businesses> think they can just use a visually driven smart ass attention-grabbing approach to their advertising and they will conquer the world. They think this kind of simplicity will grab some prime real estate in our already overcrowded brains.

To be clear. This is a crappy idea, but one that even traditional companies find tempting. Smart-ass ads often get talked about and noticed, but, just as often, they fail to make a brain connection. In other words … they get attention but they don’t get results.

Look. Our minds are like real estate. Space is limited and we can’t let every brand have a place to stay.

However, you can improve your chances of gaining brain space and making a connection—a brain and brand connection that will truly inspire recall and the desired outcomes.

How? Well.

Someone had an idea called ‘brand humanity.’

Brand humanity, in its simplest terms, is a brand’s emotional essence. It must be inherent in the product or service offered. It must be relevant to people’s dreams, hopes, desires, aspirations. It must relate in human terms to human beings. Advertising must capture and communicate this emotional essence. If it doesn’t, somebody must go back to the drawing board. Because a brand that doesn’t appeal on basic human levels really has no hope of success in today’s marketplace.

Whether you like the ‘brand humanity’ nomenclature or not it is a good thought but not a simple thing to do.

And, no, I am not suggesting creating a complex complicated stimulus is needed to achieve this objective, but I am simply suggesting that a soundbite or one visual may not achieve what you want. Want?:

What makes this brand important to someone?

What need does it meet <or problem it solves>?

What desire <Maslow stuff> does it fulfill?

Answer the questions, and you’ll find the connection points of the brand. But don’t expect the journey to be easy. Finding the points takes a disciplined, strategic development process that moves from the complex to the simple, from the rational to the emotional. It is finding out what is important to a person and  creating that connection. I imagine it is as simple as finding what truth will make it matter to a person. But in writing that … we all know that truth is never really simple nor easy.

What I do ask people to think about when discussing simplicity is to remember that everyone loves a good story. And the best business <brand> stories are all about reaching inside people at a deeper and more enduring emotional level to link to the functional offering you provide. Some people call his ‘personalization’ but it is really just attaching the functional problem being solved with personal  ‘issues’ … Maslow stuff …  self esteem <conformity versus individuality>, self doubt and economic well being. I would also note the best stories are simple incorporating elements of hero, conflict, and goal <note: whatever you say has to be simple enough that it can be told by any consumer or front line sales people>.

This means the company & brand is no longer just about differentiated services, consistent delivery, optimized touch-points, and re engineered activities. Brands now need this ‘humanity’ <not to be confused with social responsibility> based in experiences, distinct identifiable moments and character.

I think we could take some lessons from technology.

Technology has ALWAYS <not just in today’s world> been an interesting thought leader with regard to simplicity. Their core expertise has always been in the business of masking the complex with simplicity.

Things like flipping a switch to turn on a light bulb, picking up the phone and hearing a dial tone, or pressing a button and turning on a television set are only easy on the surface.

Someone had to spend years developing the underlying technologies that enable much of our modern lives, and then they had to make sure that the tools were accessible to people and that while we didn’t understand why it worked as it did, we trusted it to work.

This principle carries to the mobile age with enabling touch-screens where sliding a finger to unlock a phone is simple … the technology that makes it possible is not.

All that said.

Simplicity and stories: hero, conflict, goal.

– Pick the conflict that matters

– Differentiate resolution of conflict meaningfully

– Imbue the character of the hero in every action taken to resolve the conflict

Good stories are fairly simple. The story needs to remain simple in its focus, i.e., the simpler it is the better. The simplicity has to be relevant … in being desirable to consumers, distinctive <not necessarily unique> from competition, deliverable by the organization and durable over time.

If you stay true to simplicity <not simple>, you make it simpler for people to connect with it. And if you make it easy, they’ll gladly give you some prime brain real estate which every marketer is so desperate to get hold of.

Therein lies the issue.

Easy and simple is in the eyes of the beholder.

In the end.

Despite the fact you can have experts lining up to tell you all about what simplicity is … and how to use simplicity to create a brand and make an impression … we’re not sure exactly how or where the human brain makes the connections that make a brand possible.

All I know for sure is that there is no formula for simplicity.

Chopin nailed the issue.

His music was complex and sometimes complicated.

And, yet, people sit and listen for minutes on end … and say afterwards:  “that was simply beautiful.”

I imagine I am simply saying simplicity is not defined in how you say or communicate something, but rather how it is accepted.