Reality is the leading cause of stress for those in touch with it.

==

Trump posted a word cloud based on his speeches: the biggest word was “revenge.” Many of his threats reflect Trump’s now familiar tactic of reversing charges against his opponents, conjuring a mirror world in which he claims they are guilty of the very offence of which he is accused.

I am tired of talking about the presidential election, Trump and MAGA governance as if it is representative of the majority. But here we go. Despite all the talk about how the election would come down to a small group of undecideds, it didn’t. It came down to indifference or, maybe worse, disillusionment (the feeling that the system isn’t working for them so they will not do any work for the system). Yeah. Here is what I mean. Given where we are right now (soon after election day) my numbers are going to be close to accurate and will not change significantly. Only 54% of the voting population voted. Let me say it differently. 46% of people who could have voted; didn’t (what this means is that whenever some pundit, or analyst, talks about the election dynamics they need to refer to everything as “of the people who voted”). Harshly, 46% of adults were indifferent. What that means is that while Trump, and MAGA, will shout about majority “spoke” and winning the popular vote; here is their key number – 28%. Given the horrible voter turnout on election day, MAGA governance will be the representation of about 28% of all eligible adult voters. Let’s say that again. 28%. His 70+ million votes is maybe 21% of the population and 28% of adults eligible to vote. As a side note, this is similar to 2016 where the numbers were 18% and 24% respectively. So, we are not a 50/50 divided country; we are simply a country governed by 28%. Yeah. A minority, once again, just chose the most powerful position in the world. As a side note to this, everyone should remember that Trump, and his cohort of MAGA followers, governed as if they were a majority. To be clear. MAGA is a finite cohort. It was 26-28% in 2016. It is 26-28% in 2024. 70 millionish will vote for Trump year n and year out; no more, no less. 2/3rds of US adults will never vote for Trump.

Which leads me to involvement matters.

A majority did nothing to stop this from happening. This is not an ‘anti-establishment movement.’ This is not a ‘reestablishment of conservative values.’ This is nothing more than a large indifference to involvement with a sliver minority voice being motivated enough to push one candidate over the finish line. Look. I work almost exclusively with think tanks discussing the future of business, society, and the patterns in the world. I work with economists, c suite business executives, behavioral scientists, and social philosophers. My role tends to be a reflection of what I imagine is my personal ideology which what most people would suggest is ‘progressive conservatism.’ Almost everything that I suggest and I think about balances pragmatism and possibilities (possibilities have no value if they cannot be achieved). That said. One of the least discussed aspects of discussing the future and progress is people. Because while the future can be viewed through eyes of possibilities and pragmatism and hopes and patterns and risks and opportunities and even technology, the truth is each of those things are dependent upon people. If people do not participate, get involved, to bend the arc of history, progress and possibilities just don’t occur. Pragmatically what that means is if people do not bend the arc, i.e., be actively involved, inertia sets in and status quo, wrapped up in some nostalgic views of what is good, tends to reign. This is a historical truth. I bring that up because if people are indifferent, and are not involved, progress doesn’t occur. I struggle to see how true progress can occur if 46% of the voting population is indifferent.

Which leads me to say I hate the indifferent.

I’ll admit. I hate the indifferent. I have always believed that living means taking sides. Business, as well as Life, demands participation. Elections are exactly the same. Someone may choose to be indifferent, but all that means is that someone else is not only making decisions for you, they are affecting the arc of your life and, consequently, your destiny. To be clear. This is a fact. It may not be a direct correlation, but the point is that even if you work hard, are persistent and have clear objectives, if you are indifferent, all the external factors will increase the gravity of the environment you are doing all of those things within and drag you down. I should note if your own life and destiny matters to you that when you participate in the deadweight of indifference you may actually be facilitating the twisting of society’s fate. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out, again, this is not just true of Life, but business. And while I do believe this discussion gets warped in some incredibly unhealthy ways, business should not ignore the discussion and being indifferent really isn’t an option. Once again, this is true for each individual. All that said let me circle back to disillusionment. One of Trump’s, and his cabal of kooks, superpowers has been the ability to increase a general malaise of disillusionment. I have often referred to it as his narrative that ‘America is in a shithole,’ but the grander issue is he amplifies a sense of disillusionment almost to a point where a lot of people just throw up their hands and say (a) there is no sense in being involved or (b) burn the whole thing down. Anyway. Indifference or disillusionment only 54% of the voting population participated; 46% were indifferent. Ponder that for a bit.

“I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent. The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power. The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didn’t know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened? I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not done. And I feel I have the right to be inexorable and not squander my compassion, of not sharing my tears with them. I am a partisan, I am alive, I feel the pulse of the activity of the future city that those on my side are building is alive in their conscience. And in it, the social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens. Nobody in it is looking from the window of the sacrifice and the drain of a few. Alive, I am a partisan. That is why I hate the ones that don’t take sides, I hate the indifferent.”

Antonio Gramsci

==

In today’s current political environment, which bleeds into society as some fairly absurd niche arguments about what is right or wrong and important or unimportant, the people become more and more distant to traditional parties or governing institutions writ large and, further, involvement in things like voting. This impacts society, and communities, whether you like it; or not or want it or not. Being indifferent to elections, acting like you are detached from politics simply means an already ‘delicate and dangerous’ complexity of economy and society becomes even more fraught with peril.

At least I am consistent on this issue. I have argued for years a business cannot detach itself from society, responsibility to societal issues and much of the larger narratives and discussions taking place. Detaching yourself from it under the guise of “my job is ensuring my business makes a profit and offers people employment” is not a sustainable stance nor strategy. I would argue exactly the same thing for people around election day. I hate indifference. Inevitably everyone needs to pick a side and do something. To be clear. That sometimes simply means taking a stand on what you are not versus saying what you are. If you don’t believe it is your job to carry the flag ON an issue, that’s okay. But you do have to make it your job to say “but I will not stand by THAT flag.”

Which leads me to corrosiveness.

Until Trump came along, I was a benignly active political involved person. I always felt like presidents tended to focus on tactics, rarely strategy, and shared a common vision. And then Trump came along. He toppled that apple cart and, well, I stopped being slightly indifferent. I became involved. For 9 years I went anywhere, at any time, to discuss why I believed Trump was corrosive to the economy, corrosive to the country and corrosive to society. To be clear. The conversation was, and remains, challenging. Trumpism has always dwelled on the superficial and the surface transactions of life (and the metrics associated with them). The mechanics upon which those outcomes were produced were unimportant in his transactional view and difficult to explain to people. Therein lies the challenge of discussing why Trump is generally a corrosive actor. Trump distorts things to shape an alternative to reality. It exaggerates good, diminishes bad, is made up of a unique formula of uncertainties and lack of clarity, offers alternatives <facts & universes> and serves to only create challenges in exactly describing what is, and isn’t, actually happening.  Throughout it all Trump careens between appalling and appealing within a deeply flawed, thin skinned, selfish, vain, bullying character, but he remains one thing on a consistent basis – the antithesis of the highly polished ineffective politician who carefully calculates their words. So, while he may be authentically incompetently horrible; he remains authentic – what you see is what you get. He is not a fine-tuned machine nor was his administration a fine-tuned machine, but he had 28% of the population believing everything he said was brilliant and believing everything he did was ‘brilliant.’

A 56 percent majority of Trump voters say that if a national media outlet reported that Trump said something untrue, they would be more inclined to believe him than the news outlet.

Look. Over those 9 years I wasn’t delusional enough to believe any pragmatic discussion would sway the 28%, but it left 72% available for healthy, robust, discussions. And while I faced clown memes in my feed, labeled with Trump derangement syndrome and called a retard, I plowed my way through discussion after discussion with facts, pragmatism and reality. Time and time again I was reminded of how complex reality is and how difficult complexity is to discuss and grasp. Time and time again I found, even beyond MAGA peoples, there were tinges of alternative realities residing in the peoples of the 72%.  And time and time again I was reminded we mostly live in a short-term vision world.

Which leads me to “I quit.”

Here is my warning to the indifferent. The 28% mainly live in an alternative reality where America is a shithole and it needs to be fixed and World War 3 is always right around the corner (or any disaster always awaits). It feeds on impending doom; not fosters hope and progress. This despite the fact we have an economy the envy of the world (in results as well as depth of manufacturing and productivity). This despite the fact the majority of so-called illegal immigrants are in the system and waiting to seek a pathway to citizenship. This despite the fact crime is down and, factually, a 25-year-old white American male is more likely to commit a crime than a 25 year old male El Salvadoran/Guatemalan/Latin American. This despite the fact USA is currently positioned as a powerful counterbalance in a complex weave of international power where USA benefits in the global system. Look. Its quite possible your indifference in this year’s election was driven by the fact life in the good ole USA is pretty good right now and even a bit better than anything MAGA world is convinced happened during the Trump years. When things are going well it’s pretty easy to overlook any future, possible, problems. It’s just difficult to see future possible costs when in the present the only costs you are facing is 15 cents more for your favorite cereal.

Here is where it gets personal. Your indifference has come at a cost. Your disillusionment comes at a cost. Not just getting a Trump administration. This one is most likely a cost you will never feel nor even care about. I quit. I have had enough. Its time for a younger generation to take over the pragmatism and possibilities discussions. I am tired of fighting for the indifferent. In business I was willing to fight for anyone who was willing to step up and be involved. But the indifferent? I quit.  That is what I am doing now. You got a Trump administration and it will be up to you to fix it when it all inevitably goes wrong. I did my best and, admittedly, it wasn’t good enough. So, I quit and someone else can take the pragmatism and possibilities banner.

“At a certain point in their historical lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In other words, the traditional parties in that particular organisational form, with the particular men who constitute, represent and lead them, are no longer recognised by their class (or fraction of a class) as its expression. When such crises occur, the immediate situation becomes delicate and dangerous, because the field is open for violent solutions, for the activities of unknown forces, represented by charismatic “men of destiny”.” Antonio Gramsci

==

———

“It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.”

John Maynard Keynes

———————–

 “man trapped in the world of machines, unable to grow as a human being and become himself.”

Clockwork Condition (the unfinished sequel to Clockwork Orange)

———-

This is not about collaboration in the traditional sense. I tend to believe most collaboration discussions are misguided <utopian> and most actual collaboration leads to consensus and a less-than-optimal conclusion. That said. Every organization would benefit if every employee was able to maximize their potential which, in simplistic terms, means everyone contributes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone ‘contributes’ now, but what I mean is everyone contributes to the whole of the system and not just their part. I imagine what I am suggesting is dialogue throughout the organization which creates an exchange of information, knowledge, ideas and execution.

“If you really want a Learning Organisation you must build the capacity to change the internal dialogue. It is dialogue that has created who we are and only a change in our dialogue will change that. Networks will decide on their topic of conversation based on their sense of identity.”

Atkinson

Through interactions with the knowledge, and each other, the organization itself continuously improves – sometimes in small increments daily and sometimes in velocity driven shifts with emergent opportunities – and the people continuously improve. But it is also not just improvement in the traditional sense it is also improvement in terms of efficacy. One of the most overlooked and underdiscussed aspects of successful business is the alignment of resources to ‘the idea’ <strategy>. A paper trail certainly offers a schematic of who and what is available and when but the truth is it is only through conversations, and dialogue, where the nuances <which can make or break any strategy> can be discovered. Additionally, I would also note that an innate sense of organizational identity is crafted by the individuals within the organization through each and every interaction, iteration and action. But when everyone contributes there will be a constant tension found in the pushing & pulling and the tug of war between those who see the world pragmatically and those who envision the possibilities which keeps shaking the business etch a sketch. All of this happens within the frame <boundaries> of the organization culture and principles. Yes. All of that happens when everyone contributes. It is a constant feeding frenzy of what is and what will be fed by what people want & need driving new ideas and new ways of doing things and better ways of getting things done and … well … a better version of who you are as an organization.

And therein lies the power of purposeful possibilities: finding the “better” within what is.

This is a version of always seeing what will be, what could be, driven by ‘what is.’

I call this ‘better inside for a better outside’.  The better inside is obvious. This is purposeful adaptation and a constant fine tuning of how things are done and products & services offered.

But we cannot, and should not, forget that all of the ‘better inside’ feeds a ‘better desire’ outside.

Pragmatically customers want a better product, better efficiencies, better effectiveness and a better benefit offered.

From a possibilities standpoint your customers, even the business decision makers huddled over productivity reports and P&L statements desire something better than a good numbers report. Sure. That is the day-to-day ‘meet the needs state’ type stuff going on in their heads but at some point, they lean back in their chairs, either in the office or in the comfort of their home, and they desire, maybe even need, to see something better to validate themselves as human beings beyond simply ‘doing their job well.’ They want to feel they have done something better, offered something better or contributed something better, or, being dynamic themselves beyond their own practical purpose. When everyone contributes there are a greater sense of meaning and impact which is easier to articulate in your own head as well as to others that aren’t involved in the business but involved in your life. Contribution has a nice ability to translate well everywhere.

Anyway. My next point on everyone contributes. There are a lot, a shitload, of crazy smart business people out there. But there are not a lot of crazy smart business people who seem to be willing to do something crazy like ignore the business books which articulate principles and focus on ‘blueprints for success.” I imagine my point is that most businesses don’t consider ‘advantage’ as temporary. They see it as planned or when it actually happens, they treat it as sustainable.

And ultimately that becomes their downfall.

Windows of opportunity close. And often they close quickly. And maybe that is where the ‘sustainable’ belief really screws most businesses. They jump through the window of opportunity, and let’s say they even treat the stark contrast opportunity correctly, they then act like they are going to stay on that side of the window.

Wrong.

Bad decision.

Windows of opportunity are meant to be jumped through, opportunity maximized, and then you jump back before it closes again. I will say this. Windows CAN be held open for a bit, but only of everyone contributes. Because windows of opportunity, for the most part, are unplanned, so if people and resources flow to the opportunity that opportunity can be exploited and expanded upon. The corollary to that is if everyone CAN contribute it is more likely you get a better clue as to when to stop <which is actually one of the trickiest things in business>.

Anyway. My next point on everyone contributes is, well, lets call it the collective mind or the relationship between people and accessible knowledge through technology.

The cloud elevates all businesses to the level of the best generic technology <note: I do not know of one company/business who does not have access to Cloud technology>. Think of it as the common power grid from which a business opens up for business daily. But the real power of the cloud is it elevates the greater potential of any business as it taps into shared information to supplement, and compliment, the institutional data – while maintaining privacy of the institution itself. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out here that “people” <memory, knowledge, skills> represents institutional data in a significant way. That said. While the cloud represents an almost limitless pool of ever-growing knowledge and data, let me say that the cloud, in and of itself, can be just as stupid, if not stupider, than any one individual. More knowledge, used poorly, simply makes one stupider rather than smarter. The collective knowledge is only as good as who uses it.

As a corollary, individuals, and small groups of people, within an institution <augmented by the cloud collective knowledge> get smarter iteratively (even if they misuse knowledge because they learn from mistakes and discuss). Conceptually they get smarter than the cloud due to understanding of context and experience. I mention this to provide the possibilities and problems. When everyone contributes there is just a likelihood that everyone gets smarter as they will get stupider. Ponder that.

“In all things that are purely social, we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all.”

Booker T. Washington

In the end. We are in the midst of change. I will not call it disruptive because I simply think it is transformative. The context and dynamics of the world have shifted and business, as business does <albeit kicking and screaming>, will shift to optimize against the new dynamics. I would argue at the core of this transformation is an increased ability to learn AND need to learn. Paradoxically, the learning most impactful will take place on the periphery or edges of the businesses. This shift is even more important because I view this transformative change not as incremental change <slow & steady>, but rather discontinuous <asymmetrical> evolution which can radically reconfigure opportunities <and problems> from the expected ones. This means knowledge dissemination isn’t simply about distributing information/knowledge, but what kind of knowledge critical to the business model AND the discontinuous opportunity. This means shedding some of what one knows and adding some new to create an optimal strategic decision. It is an art of knowledge that arises from analytics of the context, instinctual sense of interconnectedness <and dependence>, lateral thinking and imagination. It will demand that everyone contributes everything they are capable of – not just some title or existing responsibility. This also requires some change in how we think about thinking. As Brian Arthur, Santa Fe Institute, says “retreat and reflect: allow the inner knowing to emerge.” In a world suggesting we need to move faster we need to give thinking, and thoughts, space. Far too often we try and squeeze our thinking believing if we strip everything away the truth will be uncovered. The truth is we would be more likely to think of something useful if after watching and listening and gathering information if we stepped back and let all those thoughts and scraps of information roam in the empty space a bit. In addition, it helps if you think on the periphery looking in rather than from the middle looking out. What I mean by that is we can far too often get caught up in attempting to wrangle things we know which sometimes means the solutions or ideas simply work in that moment (becoming less optimal from that point on – natural degradation). Instead, if you perch on the edges, the periphery, you can see how an idea plays out in the empty space as well as if there is anything beyond the periphery that may change your view. How do you do that? Well. Have everyone contribute.

Ponder.

—————–

“We get together on the basis of our similarities; we grow on the basis of our differences.”

Virginia Satir

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

Buck Rodgers

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

First.

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

Second.

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

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

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

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

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

Third.

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

I have been a pain in the ass for years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“We find the true person only through group organization. The potentialities of the individual remain potentialities until they are released by group life. Thus, the essence of democracy is creating. The technique of democracy is group organization.”

Mary Parker Follett, The New State

===

I just had a conversation about employees with a good friend of mine who runs a business where “A clients need A players” came up. To be fair, he quickly said “I know you believe all employees have at least some A-level qualities/skills.” I do. Generally speaking, I believe most businesses squash the A-level ability in most people and the waste of human potential is immense. Certainly, some people have specific skills better than other people and ambition fluctuates person-to-person (ambition should never be conflated with skills), but, there is such a waste of human potential particularly in what many call ‘the workers’ or the blue-collar jobs or what leadership typically deems “the doers.” The bottom line in the discussion I was having was “I can’t tell you if you should be hiring anyone, or even who, if I don’t know if you are maximizing the people you have.”

But let’s get to potential.

In the 1980s Professors Edward Deci and Richard Ryan from the University of Rochester defined the six main reasons people work: play, purpose, potential, emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia. Since then, most research has suggested the first three motives tend to increase performance, while the latter three hurt it.

• Play is when you are motivated by the work itself. You work because you enjoy it, e.g., creating learning programs or problem solving how to break through to each person. Play is our learning instinct, tied to curiosity, experimentation, and exploring challenging problems.

• Purpose is when the direct outcome of the work fits your identity. You work because you value the work’s positive impact on, or for, other human beings.
• Potential is when the outcome of the work benefits your identity. In other words, the work enhances your potential.

Since these three motives are directly connected to the work itself in some way, they will improve performance to different degrees. If we want employees to have the cognitive ability, flexibility and agility needed to solve complex problems and collaborate effectively (whether face-to-face or remotely) as well as being able to develop and apply qualities such as critical thinking and creativity, we need to consider what we can do to enable those abilities to flourish and thrive and potential seems to be a rich mine for personal progress.

Which leads me to leadership (or nudging).

The conscientious nudger seeks to design systems and processes to help people make better choices for themselves. That said. Any choice architecture begins with sensemaking. For example, losses loom larger than gains in our minds and this steers motivation within sensemaking and choicemaking. Potential is found not only in curiosity & learning but in accepted risk and acceptable losses. All of this can be crafted in effective sensemaking. What I mean by that is if everyone makes sense of situations in the same way, or with similar characteristics, the choice architecture (and its boundaries) is crafted by the sensemaking and not through any leader (this is called The Law of the Situation). Therefore, the leader simply nudges people with a common sensemaking framework toward potential solutions, nudges curiosity and nudges probabilistic thinking so that people can explore – which is where potential is always found.

 

“Having a better theory of emergent organization would have a lot of practical benefits, allowing us to generate or simplify sets of rules that will result in productive ends.”

John Miller, Science of Complex Systems

==

Unfortunately, too many leaders inhibit people from asking questions that once seemed too absurd to consider and thus they prevent people from probing for patterns and insights that once resided in the realm of the unknowable. Potential explores limits and imitations. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge limits but in doing so it should not amount to a dismissal of potentials.

Which leads me to principles.

Any time we seem to discuss A players, B players or any types of players we inherently create a warped competitive environment. I am not suggesting a business shouldn’t encourage some competition but it should be competing without feeling like it is competition or you are being competitive – you compete with stagnancy & entropy. This is when you are simply attempting to maximize your own potential and skills assuming your best will be, well, your best – win, lose or draw. This also assumes you believe your best will demand everyone else to bring their best so that even in a competitive environment if you ‘lose’ it Is simply because everyone played it the best they could.

So let me offer some principles:

• Human potential represents an organization’s main source of productivity

• Technology augments people, people don’t complement technology, potential emerges from augmentation

• An individual’s potential is not defined by one skill, but rather all skills/abilities (of all depths/dimensions) an individual has

• The highest organizational productivity, progress, profitability is found through maximizing opportunities efficiently and, simultaneously, effectively maintain productivity, progress & profitability

I tend to believe if you follow these principles you will just have team players, no A, B, C or whatever, and you will increase the probability these players will maximize their potential and, as a consequence, the business successes will increase. Ponder.

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

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

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

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

It makes me angry.

It disturbs me.

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

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

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

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

That is the sign of an incompetent ignorant lazy leader.

I am angry.

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

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

I remain angry even to this day.

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

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

This despite the fact he is the common denominator.

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

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

That said.

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

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

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

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

Lastly.

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

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

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

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

And, yeah, I am still angry.

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

This feeling did not come easily.

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

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

This is bully logic.

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

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

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

Anyway.

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

And I am still angry at Mr. Trump.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“America is great because she is good.

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

Alexis de Tocqueville

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

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

We are an impatient people.

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

Nixon from his Silent Majority speech

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dragging up versus dragging down

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

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

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

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

Rules & regulations

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

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

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

I versus team

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

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

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

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

Uncertainty

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

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

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

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

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

The dollars & cents lens <economics first>

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

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

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

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

To Trump everything is marginalized excepting economics <money>.

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

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

——————–

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

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

—————-

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

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

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

Steve Maraboli,

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

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

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

           The myth of being a builder

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

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

In the end.

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

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

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

Donald Trump

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

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

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

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

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

Here is what I believe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I’ve never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.”

Sue Monk Kidd

—— 

“Ambiguity of language is philosophy’s main source of problems.

That is why it is of the utmost importance to examine attentively the very words we use.”  

Giuseppe Peano

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

Fear of being misunderstood. If you type that into google you get about 159,000,000 results in 0.42 seconds and only one, yes, one result is about the version I am talking about. The version today is not being misunderstood as a person, but, literally, not being understood when speaking or communicating something. That said. I did find the term ambiguphobia which is applied to the pathological fear of being misunderstood. It has the same word root as “ambiguous.”

Ambiguity.

If you elect to believe the world is often ambiguous, complex not simple, that cause & effect (98% of the time) is nonexistent, and truth is more often conditional not absolute, you are doomed to have a fear of being misunderstood. This fear may be constant or intermittent or maybe even like a flux capacitor, but it exists in some form or fashion.

I thought about this after listening to a Jason Fox podcast where he kind of flippantly mentioned he had a fear of being misunderstood and read a piece he linked to at Ribbon Farm “The Tragicomic Exasperations of Expertise.”

Here is what I believe.

If you elect to believe the world is complex and simplicity is elusive, you spend a lot of time in the wretched hollow between:

Certainty versus uncertainty

Absolute truths versus contingent truths

Pragmatism versus dreams

Short term versus long term

Safety versus risk

Old beliefs versus new understandings

Fixed versus unfixed

Fluid versus solid

If you reside in the complex universe, you will find your cozy cottage resides in this windswept, stormy grassy hollow. And I would suggest you also spend a lot of time in the kitchen of the cottage mixing ingredients seeking the perfect potion to make the complex understood. I would also suggest this is the wretched hollow – continual experimentation of ingredients.

“<things> get better when exposed to external stressors and change.”

Dr. Jason Fox

That said. If you elect to believe the world is complex, let me suggest two thoughts for you to ponder about this wretched hollow in terms of ‘fear of being misunderstood’:

Wretched hollow version 1: where ideas go to die

If you have decided to reside in the complex universe, suffice it to say you have decided to be in the thinking & ideas business. While your skillset may have some aspects of ‘doing’ and results, you have put a stake in the ground that progress is dependent upon people thinking about shit and in that thinking will better navigate a way toward success.

In other words you have inextricably linked thinking to progress. This is important because in this version of the wretched hollow this is where ideas go to die if you are misunderstood.

In other words. You are in the thinking and ideas business (a version of the ‘Progress Business’) and if you are not understood your thinking and ideas die. Uhm. No more business and certainly no progress (or at least your version of it).

This is a pragmatic fear of being misunderstood. The product you want to sell, not being understood, is not bought.

I will note here this is where I believe business people, experience, has an advantage over academics & thought leaders. In business if you cannot make uncertainty certain enough or the invisible esoteric thinking visible enough, you die. You become a superfluous thinker who doesn’t know how to get things done or, in general, no one knows what to do with what you say & think. You are simply mental masturbation.

Wretched hollow version 2: where ‘self’ goes to die

Doubt, Imposter Syndrome, confidence, even arrogance wander in this wretched hollow. Fear of being misunderstood haunts not just your ideas and thinking, but you. This is the world you have elected to be in. Others have chosen detail, you have chosen definitions.

By choosing the path of definitions, versus details, you have, psychologically, purposefully placed yourself in a constant tug of war between all of the things I just stated. Your only real contribution to the tug of war is to continuously eat up more and more knowledge in the attempt to put more weight on the positive side of the tug of war. Unfortunately, knowledge weighs less, proportionately, than doubt/uncertainty, or even ignorance, so even as you become more smart, wiser, & better at articulating the Sumo wrestler sized doubts (the actual fear of being misunderstood) never lose any weight and keep tugging.

My point here is that electing to reside in the complex universe and making your business the business of thinking & ideas is a non-stop, never-ending tug of war. So. You are in the game or you are not. And if you are worth half a shit you will find that you never lose the tug of war, the other side just tugs a little harder on occasion. But. And this is a big but. The moment you stop pulling the fear of being misunderstood changes to death of the universe you have elected to live in and even the business you have elected to be in. I know that sounds harsh, but ‘self’ has some pretty dark places and if you give up the rope it is really really hard to not only climb back out of the darkness, but also get a new strong grip on the rope in the tug of war. Just ponder because even if you do not agree with me in totality on this point even at a lesser degree it has repercussions to fear of being misunderstood.

Let me end this version of wretched hollow by pointing out that if you have elected to make thinking & ideas your business, and you struggle to make people understand your thinking & ideas, you will inevitably start questioning the value & meaning you provide. Period. Full stop.

“Aiming at brevity, I become obscure.”

Horace

Lastly.

Mixing the formula.

That’s the deal, isn’t it? Finding the right amount of certainty, tangible understanding, to freedom (uncertainty) ratio? It’s the proportionate amount of traction points (I call them lily pads of certainty) to provide structure to hold up the uncertain, freedom and adaptability of thinking, in people’s minds (leading to them actually doing something). I say that because that’s where the fear of being misunderstood centers itself – will I mix the right formula this time?

This is where Life gets tricky.

All people inherently need some successes or, well, you go into some pretty dark places. So your natural instincts arc toward ‘being understood.’ That means offering up simplicity, maybe some tasty soundbites and, often, some fairly vapid generalizations attempting to tap into some common perceptions. That means you incrementally shave away at complexity which, inherently, shaves away truths and impact/effectiveness <you have slipped down the slippery slope of the bastardization of occam>. That means, while you have elected to reside in the universe of complexity, you are selling out the value of that universe (I would argue that diminishes self but that’s not my point today).

I will say (part 1) the people in this space with the most success not only constantly gain knowledge, but use it in a ‘play, pause, rewind, fast forward’ way. What I mean by that is the formula cannot be rushed and neither can complexity understanding be completed in a formulaic way. In other words it not only takes an ability to assemble the right fragments, but do so with pacing to engage cognitively.

“Be still amidst the chaos and active in repose.”

Indira Ghandi

I will say (part 2) that the tricksters, and ignorant, who casually ease round simplistic pegs into uneven hexagon complex holes exponentially outnumber the experts. And you know what? People, in general, like round pegs.  Smooth, simple and easy to grasp. This does not mean people are stupid just that tricksters are masters of the illusion, and delusion, of progress and the doyens of detail. In general, they thrive on detail cloaked in fortune cookie wisdom. It’s simplistic, not simple, and its horrible for us, society and business.

And maybe that is where I should end. The fear of being misunderstood is really about knowing, in your heart of hearts, you have chosen the rockier path as two roads diverge and, well:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about fear of choices – have I made the right one, or ones, and in doing so have I made myself clear of why the roads are what the roads are and why as they diverge we should walk on this one today.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about making the choice to making the complex understood.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about the choice that progress is actually made through the complex rather than simplicity.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about fear people do not understand the choice you made.

Regardless. There is a positive side.

Progress is not a linear process. Mastering complexity or at least wrangling complexity insures not only progress, but antifragile progress and progress with value. I will never suggest fear is a good thing, but I will say that when you get it right, when you share the thinking and ideas and it is understood, and your fear of being misunderstood is absolved for at least that moment – it is a great feeling. And it’s a great feeling not because you have been understood, but rather because by being understood energy has been created, or traction provided, for progress to occur. Ponder.

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“Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent — the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.”
H.L. Mencken

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Sneaky authoritarianism in business. Or maybe use its more comfortable title: benevolent dictatorship. I haven’t met one business leader who wields this type of power who doesn’t think they are wielding it for the greater good. And while they couch it in a truly functional way, guaranteeing some form of effective consistency, or maybe that they have some underlying intuition to keep the business, overall, “on the tracks”, there is a more insidious thread buried within their thinking.

The issue occurs with, well, power. Power threads its way through whatever ‘benevolence’ that may occur.

Let me explain. Those in power like evenness and replication and they view the only way to keep balance is to enforce it. they believe they are the only thing, or the main thing, balancing chaos and order. They believe that no one else understands how to balance or maybe can even see the value of balance or maybe even the dangers in not being balanced. They only see other views as biased and don’t appreciate what those in power are actually doing for them and, as a consequence, for everyone and the greater good. They see themselves as being in the middle doing what’s best – for “their sake” <the people>. They cloak this power in ‘safety.’

“We keep people safe and the business safe.”

And, oddly, but in some rational way, they actually believe if everyone just saw what they saw, how important it was and their role, everyone would be happy they were doing what they were doing. Yeah. This gets worse when you look under the hood. They see their own power as a sacrifice. That they have sacrificed themselves for you <even though it is the opposite – they have asked us to sacrifice for them>.

They lie to us, for our own good.

They act in a higher cause, because they are protecting us.

What they don’t understand is that a true higher cause doesn’t have people deserting it, and them, when they find out the truth. And therein lies the ugly underbelly of benevolent dictatorship: rejection is the biggest fear of someone in power.

I end there because I do not believe power corrupts anyone. You either have certain beliefs, or you don’t, and power simply amplifies who and what you are and what you think. It is just as Ursula Le Guin said: “It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.” Sneaky authoritarianism cannot take hold of an unconsenting soul.

I end with that thought because benevolent directorship is sneaky authoritarianism. It is inherently about one’s mindset and beliefs because they drive your behaviors. If business leadership wants to change their business, well, they shouldn’t be looking to ‘culture’ or ‘purpose of the business’, they should start with their own mindset and beliefs. Ponder.

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“What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward toward the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

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“A leader’s role is to raise people’s aspirations for what they can become and to release their energies so they will try and get there.”

David Gergen

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I get in lots (lots) of discussions/debates about what leadership is, and isn’t, and who are leaders, and who isn’t. Most often I find myself in some fairly simplistic discussions in that everyone is trying to distill the entire topic into some soundbite. The truth is leadership is complex and leaders are rarely, in totality, great leaders in every context.

Let me try some foundational thoughts:

• I believe anyone, and everyone, can lead
• Leadership is contextual or situational (generally speaking) in that 98.129863% of leadership is within the moment rather than on some grand level
• Common Sensemaking, the ability to have everyone in an organization to make sense of a situation with some common understanding, guarantees everyone can effectively think (and it also has some efficiency attributes)
• Common sensemaking increases the potentiality of leadership in everyone
• Common sensemaking increases the potentiality of decision-making from everyone
• Decision-making is distinctly different than thinking and sensemaking
• Not everyone is as comfortable making decisions as they are in making sense of things and thinking about things
• Decision-making is where ‘leadership’ in the most common definition occurs
• Not all decisions are created equal and not all people are comfortable making decisions inequal in impact
• Decision impact is rarely understood and always overestimated
• The best leadership properly applies sensemaking, properly is receptive to collaborative thinking, properly estimates decision impacts, properly articulates decision impacts (so organization properly applies mental and physical energy) and properly applies resources to decisions

Which leads me to structurally just making everyone a better potential leader.

Common sensemaking is the core. Some people may suggest it is the ability to frame consistently from person to person. I have had several experiences with this, but let me highlight J Walter Thompson where everyone was trained in the “Thompson Way”. It was a construct for thinking about communications and strategy and behavioral dynamics. Everyone was trained. In every department and at every level. What it meant was that anyone, at any time, could frame up a discussion and everyone would ‘make sense’ of it in a similar way. Everything was framed in a way that everyone could participate in the discussion. I imagine my point is that we should be searching for common ground from which to assess a situation, make decisions and lead. That common ground means in any given context, any given person could possibly lead from that situation towards progress. Just ponder.

Which leads me to everyone likes to think (but not necessarily make decisions).

To be clear, thinking and making a decision are distinctly different things. That said. It’s a given that people are more motivated if they are involved in the thinking about that ‘thing’. We like to do things more if we choose to do them (rather than be told or coerced). Far too often business ‘leaders’ think thinking is inefficient and most people don’t like to think. Neither are true. Thinking in terms of the situation, and possible progress paths, is like festina lente: slow down now to speed up later. I, personally, think people like to think, like to ‘feel smart’ and treating people as if their thinking isn’t valued actually diminished value creation organizationally. Just ponder.

Which leads me to the decisions and decision making.

Effective doing from decisions is dependent upon common sensemaking from which that decision is made. But while I believe everyone likes to think, I do not believe everyone likes to make decisions (the difference between ownership of the idea and ownership of the accountability). And maybe this is where a type of leadership occurs; decision-making responsibility. Someone who makes the call and accepts the accountability. It is calming to everyone else. It doesn’t mean shirking responsibility just that they feel better not assuming the responsibility. And that’s okay.

Next. Being decisive isn’t about making the perfect decision every time. That isn’t possible. Rather, it’s about being confident that the right things have been considered and the right context is assessed. This is important because many good situational decisions are disastrous somewhere in the distant future and some semi-bad situational decisions actually have happy outcomes. That last sentence summarizes the unpredictability of decision making, yet, suggests the possibilities found in outcome surprises. I could suggest this is why leaders thrown into a situation, rather than a situation thrown out to potential leaders, tend to fall into the biggest trap decision makers fall into – the overwhelming desire for a definitive answer leading to very bad decisions and outcomes. But answers need to be agreed upon and decisions need to be acted upon. Some people are better at this than others. I actually don’t know if they are leaders or just people who can own decision making and I am not sure it matters.

Just ponder.

Which leads me to declustering.

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

In the end.

In general, I think we talk about leaders, and leadership, in some wacky ways. There are millions of articles about what ‘great leaders are’ and about ‘great leaders’ as if they are anomalies or some special breed of humans. They aren’t. I am sure there are some exceptional leaders, but I am equally sure there are even more exceptional leaders buried under the bullshit world of words & expectations if we would let them emerge. The truth is everyone can lead and some people are better at decision making which is just a version of leadership. I will not argue that some people seem to energize others around them and maybe that could be called leadership, but I would also argue simply offering that particular feature/characteristic doesn’t mean everything should cluster around that person. I tend to always go back to one thing – the law of the situation. The situation demands the leader. In fact, the situation chooses the leader, a leader cannot choose a situation. Just ponder before you invest a lot of energy deciding who is a leader and who isn’t.

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“Only through participation by the many in the responsibilities and determinations of business can Americans secure the moral and intellectual development which is essential to the maintenance of liberty.”

Louis Brandeis

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“It is my thesis that machines can and do transcend some of the limitations of the designs and in doing so they may be both effective and dangerous.”

Norbert Wiener, 1960

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“As machines learn they may develop unforeseen strategies at rates that baffle their programmers.”

Norbert Wiener, 1960

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It’s not very insightful to note that algorithms inherently increase efficiency. Similarly, it doesn’t seem that insightful to note Life, people and business, are inherently inefficient <despite all their efforts to be efficient>. I think the insight resides in the fact this creates a recipe for disaster. Disaster in that what is easy, or even useful, is not necessarily good for us.

Anyone who has even researched AI slightly would see that even if AI systems learn from accurate, representative data, there will still be issues if the data reflects underlying biases and inequalities of the system.

Oh. And it does.

Oh. And, yes, I am going to suggest efficiency is a bias and an inequality driver.

Look. We idolize efficiency and we increasingly have tools which offer some sense of efficiency, yet, the attempted ‘flattening’ of natural inefficiency, generally speaking, only creates, well, dysfunction <and, generally speaking, persona dissatisfaction>.

How the hell does that happen? Simplistically an algorithm offers a binary choice – A or B. Yeah. To do so it evaluates a variety of inputs but, inevitably, it has to choose a 0 or a 1, this or that. Not weighted, a choice. And sometimes that choice is a guess. Yeah. A guess. My favorite line in Brian Christian’s fabulous book, The Alignment Problem, is “the computer is alarmingly confident when it guesses.” When you simplify everything down to a black & white ‘this or that’ you can sometimes simply flip a coin. Now. say you are a algorithm and you not only flip a coin, but you flip a coin 6 straight times. Yeah. You can see the possible problem there. Circling back, let’s assume each of those 6 coin flips are driven by efficiency. Yeah. You can see the possible problem there. Let me stretch the efficiency issue out a bit more. Efficiency demands a division of labor, resources and energy. So, if the algorithm is driving all those things toward the ‘most efficient’, well, there are always consequences to a choice.

As a counterpoint, effectiveness, or efficacy, is found in things that are often fairly inefficient <at least in the short term or present>. Effectiveness is the natural enemy to the incrementalization of standardization.

Range:

Development is not linear, and diversions that set you back in the short term frequently become powerful tools in the long term.

More importantly, effectiveness is the natural enemy of efficiency. How? Well. Efficiency arcs toward improvement of structural character, not improvement of market dynamics. Effectiveness is grounded in the external inputs, efficiency from internal outputs. Basically, efficiency strips away systems dynamics and flattens organizational principles.

Risk is quantifiable, uncertainty is not. It’s one thing to say there is a 50-50 chance on something going wrong. It’s another to not know the chances at all.

How does it do that? Algorithms grounded in efficiency minimize the optimal organization ability to expand and contract. the tendency of everyone in business is to contract (under the guise of ‘focus’). The contracting oversimplifies, but makes it mentally manageable and certainly drives an efficiency objective. Yet. Navigating complexity <which is the standard business> demands one actually expand their situational awareness of the moment.

I imagine I am also discussing the human aspect of algorithms. What I mean by that is algorithms are meant to be a tool for people, not a means to absolve responsibility.

And what do I mean by that?

A collection of people can be stupider than an individual (often even stupider), and, an individual can be stupider than a collection of people. The trick is to always to find when one is smarter than the other.

This gets compounded by the fact technology, well crafted, actually makes people stupider. How? It actually lessens our critical thinking by offering easier solutions (knowledge gifted is not the same as knowledge earned). We need to be sure to break the stupid loop. Because the smarter technology gets (algorithms actually iterate based off of interactions), the less smart people get (we do the hard work of thinking less), so we need to actively use technology to make people smarter. We need to amalgamate company wisdom and institutional learning into critical masses it cannot be ignored and demands some interaction. It seems counterintuitive because we are activating algorithms to do the hard work of ‘thinking’ <assessing an overwhelming amount of data> and, yet, we should actually be thinking harder ourselves <people>.

Look. Algorithms can be used for the forces of human behavior team bad (default, easy answers, let tech decide) or forces of human behavior team good (curiosity, expand upon imagination, innovate).

All I know is algorithms are going to play a big role in navigating business efficacy and shaping business.

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“The future of companies, regardless of size, will be shaped by algorithms.”

Mike Walsh

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The key word is “shaped.” Ultimately it will be humans who use the shapes.

Anyway. Here is my wish.

I hope we will be “directed to act” by algorithms, but not managed by. The latter demands acceptance of algorithm as qualified to make us to do something behaviorally, the former demands we accept algorithms as something that ‘informs’ our doing. Somewhere in between is the decision of how much we, people, are accountable for thinking. Algorithms inherently encourage us to believe business is not best when it is random. Yet. The best businesses resist the urge to suppress randomness.

Which leads me to temporal convergence and temporal divergence.

Temporal convergence is progressive and affirming. By contrast, “temporal divergence,“ is where we cannot see a path from where we are “now” to achieve the goal-state. Temporal divergence may result from insufficient capability/ capacity to navigate with any confidence toward any goal. Also, one may not know if one is in a state of temporal divergence. The difference between these two things is the difference between survival and death in a business. I bring this up because algorithms, driven by efficiency, are temporal, but you cannot actually see whether they are converging or diverging. Well. At least until it’s too late.

All businesses will exist, in some form or fashion, grounded in algorithms. I am fairly sure that’s a given. What is not given is what role efficiency will play in the future of business. Now, I am not naive, efficiency focus will not go away overnight, but efficiency, relentlessly pursued, is simply a path to commoditization. The challenge will be to not get consumed by efficiency driven algorithms and to realize algorithms do not give answers, but outline options. To realize algorithms don’t define redundancies, but rather define the outlines of systems. And, in the end, realize efficiency is the lazy way out and understand algorithms can make us even lazier so the double hit from the dull axe of efficiency will bludgeon us, individuals and business, into a bloody pulp even as the dashboards scream success. Ponder.