Nomad Influencer

To Nutkick or Not To Nutkick? That is the Question.

2013-05-29T13:12:00.000-04:00

I have always believed in being 100% transparent with everyone around me, and to deal with the consequence of that transparency. I once heard a saying "the problem with people who say what they mean is they think everyone else does too." There is a lot of truth in that statement. I know from experience. But in the spirit of staying true to my core belief of speak your mind, I wanted to reach out to you and get help with a dilemma that has just presented itself.

Today I received an invitation to connect from a former customer. This guy was a senior executive at one of the largest global companies in the world back in the 1999-2002 period, and was a pioneering customer for us at an internet start-up I was with. After 3 years of serving this customer and being recognized as one of their top suppliers for quality of service and value, the customer decided to leave and go with another start-up using a different model. The exit was brutal and in retrospect the client, led by this executive, was extremely unprofessional in how they left (not why they left). Note: years later the client and the start-up they went to had to pay several million dollars to us for taking our IP and technology to the start-up. In short, the whole experience was a colossal screw-up and this particular executive left the company not too long after.

Now all of the above is history and you might say just what happens in business. There is some truth to that. But my issue goes back to a meeting we had in Europe with this executive just prior to their announcement they were leaving us. In the meeting this guy was rude, aggressive and extremely unprofessional. The meeting was just a formality, but this guy was really enjoying sticking it to us. At the time I thought perhaps he was jealous of our massive IPO - it was the internet bubble days after all. I can honestly say no one had ever treated me so unprofessionally at a personal level before or since. I left the meeting thinking if thats how top executives of Fortune 100 companies behave then I need to do something else with my life.

Today I enjoy what I do professionally and live strictly by my own rules that life is too short to have a 'job". You have to do what you love and if you fall out of love then get out. I don't work for money. I work for personal satisfaction, and I'm not a career minded person - I couldn't give a hoot about titles. I'm more of what you might call a "corporatpreneur". Companies, small and big, hire me to get things done. I don't play the politics, I'm not aspiring to be CEO, and I never sugar coat a situation. You don't like it, fire me. I have no time to play the games companies often play. My approach delivers results and thats all that matters to me and whoever has engaged me. Along the way I make sure we all have fun.

So that brings me to my dilemma. I feel like writing back to this guy who asked to connect to me on LinkedIn and basically say you have a short memory of our last meeting, don't contact me again. He deserves no less in my opinion. He has probably forgotten the circumstances of our last meeting. I haven't. But etiquette says either politely decline the offer or just accept it and move on. After all, who knows what opportunities there are for you and this guy to perhaps work together again.

What do you think? I'm seriously leaning towards my gut feel to tell him exactly what I think of him. Playing the game of "everyone is a connection in my network" just feels dirty to me. I like people to know exactly where they stand with me, naively wishing I knew where I stand with everyone too. Honest man's syndrome. On the other hand, I have truly had people from my past surprise me big time in my present. You really don't know what a relationship can bring. What to do?

Shoot me your thoughts on this. I want to get back to this guy before the weekend. Cheers!

The Golf Shot Heard Round the Academic World: Guest Post

2013-04-17T10:56:00.002-04:00

When my little cousin called me up some years back to tell me how much he hated his Ivy League College professors and their biased political views that corrupt young minds, I thought no big deal. This is what your College professors do. Mine thought they were really special. I know differently now.

But as the stories of professors abusing their position and place in society become more frequent, you have to ask yourself is College education even worth it today? Would you entrust your children to an institution that is less focused on education than politics? And will your children benefit beyond the fun experiences of College and the network of friends they will build?

I am a huge believer in education, especially higher education (College +), as it served me and those close to me well. But I am not sure its the only option for our kids to make a great life for themselves anymore. Given what we have experienced and learnt about life, I can think of dozens of alternative ways an 18 year old could pursue experience, learning and a possible career. We just need to be open minded to it.

So when I read this piece by David Feith in the WSJ, I couldn't help but get angry at the infestation of our education system by predators playing educator. These guys have cheated generations out of what was once the best education system in the world. They have stolen the opportunity that prior generations had from today's youth. David's article does a great job of exposing what is really going on in some of our schools.

Before I hand you over to David let me reiterate again that I am a huge supporter of higher education and serve on the board of visitors of one of the finest Universities in the country, Robert Morris University. Our school isn't just about delivering the highest level of education and exposure to our students. We can beat big names like U of Kentucky in basketball too! Enter David...

The Golf Shot Heard Round the Academic World

The tale of a teed-off philanthropist and the head of Bowdoin College, where identity politics runs wild.
By David Feith

It sounds like the setup for a bad joke: What did the Wall Street type say to the college president on the golf course? Well, we don't know exactly—but it has launched a saga with weighty implications for American intellectual and civic life.

Here's what we do know: One day in the summer of 2010, Barry Mills, the president of Bowdoin College, a respected liberal-arts school in Brunswick, Maine, met investor and philanthropist Thomas Klingenstein for a round of golf about an hour north of campus. College presidents spend many of their waking hours talking to potential donors. In this case, the two men spoke about college life—especially "diversity"—and the conversation made such an impression on President Mills that he cited it weeks later in his convocation address to Bowdoin's freshman class. That's where the dispute begins.

In his address, President Mills described the golf outing and said he had been interrupted in the middle of a swing by a fellow golfer's announcement: "I would never support Bowdoin—you are a ridiculous liberal school that brings all the wrong students to campus for all the wrong reasons," said the other golfer, in Mr. Mills's telling. During Mr. Mills's next swing, he recalled, the man blasted Bowdoin's "misplaced and misguided diversity efforts." At the end of the round, the college president told the students, "I walked off the course in despair."

Word of the speech soon got to Mr. Klingenstein. Even though he hadn't been named in the Mills account, Mr. Klingenstein took to the pages of the Claremont Review of Books to call it nonsense: "He didn't like my views, so he turned me into a backswing interrupting, Bowdoin-hating boor who wants to return to the segregated days of Jim Crow."

The real story, wrote Mr. Klingenstein, was that "I explained my disapproval of 'diversity' as it generally has been implemented on college campuses: too much celebration of racial and ethnic difference," coupled with "not enough celebration of our common American identity."

For this, wrote Mr. Klingenstein, Bowdoin's president insinuated that he was a racist. And President Mills did so, moreover, in an address that purported to stress the need for respecting the opinions of others across the political spectrum. "We are, in the main, a place of liberal political persuasion," he told the students, but "we must be willing to entertain diverse perspectives throughout our community. . . . Diversity of ideas at all levels of the college is crucial for our credibility and for our educational mission." Wrote Mr. Klingenstein: "Would it be uncharitable to suggest that, in a speech calling for more sensitivity to conservative views, he might have shown some?"

After the essay appeared, President Mills stood by his version of events. A few months later, Mr. Klingenstein decided to do something surprising: He commissioned researchers to examine Bowdoin's commitment to intellectual diversity, rigorous academics and civic identity. This week, some 18 months and hundreds of pages of documentation later, the project is complete. Its picture of Bowdoin isn't pretty.

Funded by Mr. Klingenstein, researchers from the National Association of Scholars studied speeches by Bowdoin presidents and deans, formal statements of the college's principles, official faculty reports and notes of faculty meetings, academic course lists and syllabi, books and articles by professors, the archive of the Bowdoin Orient newspaper and more. They analyzed the school's history back to its founding in 1794, focusing on the past 45 years—during which, they argue, Bowdoin's character changed dramatically for the worse.

Published Wednesday, the report demonstrates how Bowdoin has become an intellectual monoculture dedicated above all to identity politics.

The school's ideological pillars would likely be familiar to anyone who has paid attention to American higher education lately. There's the obsession with race, class, gender and sexuality as the essential forces of history and markers of political identity. There's the dedication to "sustainability," or saving the planet from its imminent destruction by the forces of capitalism. And there are the paeans to "global citizenship," or loving all countries except one's own.

The Klingenstein report nicely captures the illiberal or fallacious aspects of this campus doctrine, but the paper's true contribution is in recording some of its absurd manifestations at Bowdoin. For example, the college has "no curricular requirements that center on the American founding or the history of the nation." Even history majors aren't required to take a single course in American history. In the History Department, no course is devoted to American political, military, diplomatic or intellectual history—the only ones available are organized around some aspect of race, class, gender or sexuality.

One of the few requirements is that Bowdoin students take a yearlong freshman seminar. Some of the 37 seminars offered this year: "Affirmative Action and U.S. Society," "Fictions of Freedom," "Racism," "Queer Gardens" (which "examines the work of gay and lesbian gardeners and traces how marginal identities find expression in specific garden spaces"), "Sexual Life of Colonialism" and "Modern Western Prostitutes."

Regarding Bowdoin professors, the report estimates that "four or five out of approximately 182 full-time faculty members might be described as politically conservative." In the 2012 election cycle, 100% of faculty donations went to President Obama. Not that any of this matters if you have ever asked around the faculty lounge.

"A political imbalance [among faculty] was no more significant than having an imbalance between Red Sox and Yankee fans," sniffed Henry C.W. Laurence, a Bowdoin professor of government, in 2004. He added that the suggestion that liberal professors cannot fairly reflect conservative views in classroom discussions is "intellectually bankrupt, professionally insulting and, fortunately, wildly inaccurate."

Perhaps so. But he'd have a stronger case if, for example, his colleague Marc Hetherington hadn't written the same year in Bowdoin's newspaper that liberal professors outnumber conservatives because conservatives don't "place the same emphasis on the accumulation of knowledge that liberals do."

In publishing these and other gems, Mr. Klingenstein and the National Association of Scholars hope to encourage alumni and trustees to push aggressively for reforms. They don't call for the kind of conservative affirmative action seen at the University of Colorado, which recently created a visiting professorship exclusively for right-wingers. Rather, Mr. Klingenstein and the NAS want schools nationwide to stop "silent discrimination against conservatives." Good luck.

In case you're wondering, Bowdoin's official statement on this week's report amounted to little more than a shrug. A serious response would begin with inviting Mr. Klingenstein to campus for a public debate with President Mills. No golf clubs allowed.

Mr. Feith is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.

A version of this article appeared April 6, 2013, on page A11 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Golf Shot Heard Round the Academic World.

Groupon Axes Mason

2013-03-06T19:55:00.000-05:00

As you have heard by now Groupon fired Founder and CEO Andrew Mason last week. I was discussing this with the Founder and CEO of a start-up in San Francisco who is approaching Series A financing and the formation of a Board of Directors to whom he will be reporting to. The question that came up is "What happened to Mason?"

For a founder its never good to hear someone as successful as Andrew Mason suddenly gets the axe. It happens more often than people think, and not just at start-ups. Companies get funded under the condition that professional management is put in place. Many a deal has fallen apart due to this one condition, sometimes rightly so. But the case of Groupon is even more alarming because of how involved Mason was from inception to IPO.

Its hard for an outsider to accurately say what happened at Groupon. I read the initial announcement when the news broke but I'm sure many folks have written about the reason why Mason was replaced. The simple explanation is the results were disappointing and a change was needed. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out. But what other entrepreneurs want to know is what lessons can be learnt.

Here is my read which I shared with my good friend:

- Groupon was Mason's brainchild and after years of pitching it and finding investors, it took off really fast

- growth was tremendous and this causes all kinds of management challenges

- they handled it well for a 12 month period until they ran into a couple of challenges:

1) they had major competition from Living Social and other regional players, as well as the likes of Amazon;

2) they expanded too fast internationally - 52 countries - and had no clue how to manage this, especially at CEO level. International markets is a different ball game and Groupon has totally got this wrong;

3) they struggled keeping up with new exciting pipeline of deals in all regions (no problem in major metros like NYC, but B cities struggled to come up with new exciting deals). I lived in Pittsburgh and Las Vegas the past few years and the deals are repetitive and boring;

4) they IPO'd and under estimated the investor pressure from Wall Street. The best thing about an IPO is the cash injection. Then its 13 weeks of operating very differently than pre-IPO to ensure you meet quarterly expectations. Everything changes, especially if you were a fast growing start-up just 2 years earlier, and that means you have to adapt culture, metrics, controls etc. Groupon clearly didn't get this piece right;

5) they failed to innovate their model and this must have impacted numbers. I'm a big believer in the Groupon concept but the last time I bought something was first quarter of 2012. I shut off the bombardment of e-mails when I noticed the deals were always the same, just recycled...

When you get so big so fast you need to adjust in all the right places. Somehow they didn't find the support team at the top to let Mason be Mason while the ship was managed by others. You need a CFO, COO, head of Sales, Customer Service and especially someone to think about Innovation, and these people have to support the visionary behind the company. Look at all the examples out there, from Facebook to Microsoft. Mason's firing is the failure of the entire management team at Groupon, and I don't believe the board members stepping will resolve anything.

At some point you have to hold the CEO accountable for disappointing results but what Groupon needs is a complete overhaul while staying true to their original value proposition. Entrepreneurs shouldn't worry about ending up like Mason. Surround yourself by great advisors, mentors and employees. You'll be fine.

Why Bloomberg Is Wrong About Soda

2012-06-08T14:22:00.000-04:00

No doubt you have read about Mayor Bloomberg trying to regulate the size of soda in New York City. As emotional as this subject is, I wanted to share some thoughts. This will be short (and sweet for all you soda lovers). Well, maybe.

If you haven't read up on Nanny Bloomberg's latest plans to regulate something in the lives of New Yorkers, you can read it here. The quick summary is that Mayor Bloomberg wants to ban the sale of large size sugary drinks to tackle the growing problem of obesity. Nothing larger than 16 oz. The ban would not include "diet" sodas, fruit juices, dairy-based drinks like milkshakes, or alcoholic beverages.

My take: stupid stupid stupid.

I'm not going to get into everything that is wrong with this maniac's track record of trying to control people's lives, from banning salt in New York City restaurants to his war on tobacco. He dropped $500,000 in support of California's Prop 29 which called for a new tax of $1 on all tobacco products in order to fund cancer research. California defeated that proposal on Tuesday narrowly. And Bloomberg has been on record stating he wants to ban smoking worldwide. This dictatorial behavior merits a whole blog series by itself, but thats not why I'm calling this latest stance stupid.

My issue with Mayor Bloomberg's proposal is that like most everything government regulates, it doesn't begin to address the core problem. Obesity is a real issue we face worldwide. I should know, I weighed 355 lbs just 5 years ago. Banning large bottles of soda doesn't address the root cause of why 8 year old kids now weigh 150 lbs. Bloomberg's proposal is nothing more than the proverbial bandaid on a disease that is and will kill more human beings in the next 50 years than cancer.

In the most basic of terms, the problem with obesity lies with our entire food supply and the individual choices we make. It goes beyond calories and what we eat and drink. The root of obesity lies in the combination of nutrition and exercise. More precisely, a lack thereof.

In the 1970s the UN warned of a world-wide food shortage to support the growing population of the world by the year 2000. There simply wasn't enough agriculture and farming to support the huge number of birthrates expected over the coming 30 years. Food shortage was the 1970s version of Al Gore's Global Warming. This fear influenced the world's food production and the innovators went to work on solving the problem, coming up with genetically modified produce, the introduction of various hormones and chemicals for increasing crops and livestock, and various other methods of preserving foods, ingredients and taste.

To give you a simple example of the repercussions, in the 1970s and 80s we had over 3000 kinds of apples grown around the world. Most were not pretty to look at, but they tasted great. Today you basically have 5 or 6 varieties in most super markets, and they are all picture perfect. We came up with ways to modify nature to tackle the perceived fear of food shortage, but also to increase sales worldwide. There are hundreds of other examples too, from the steaks served by chain restaurants, to the potatoes used by potato chip companies to the ingredients of fast foods.

All of these efforts have replaced the basic nutrition of a food product with some form of processed chemical. This has led to a number important changes that, when brought together, are the basic cause behind obesity:

1) the human body is not receiving the basic nutrition, minerals and enzymes it needs to operate - think a car with watered down fuel;
2) the lack of enough nutrition, minerals and enzymes results in your body not being satisfied with 'normal' portions of food, hence the increase in consumption (and calories) that have resulted in the average human being eating 4 times more food than a person living in the 60s;
3) the chemicals and processing agents that have replaced nutrition in the food supply are interpreted by the body as foreign agents which it doesn't recognize. In short, they are toxins. And the body doesn't know what to do with these toxins, so depending on your individual metabolism and genetic make-up, its harder and harder for your body to process these toxins. The 'easier' solution is to just store these toxins in the body, and that means storing them in fat cells. Thats why obese people are not proportionally big, but rather deformed i.e. huge legs, huge butts, huge arms etc.;
4) without enough nutrition the body can't function at its potential, hence the drop in exercise, movement and burning of energy (calories). We feel tired, we don't sleep well, we can't be bothered to get off the couch and toss a ball around with the kids, so we sit in front of the TV and watch mindless programs all day. Its all caused by lack of nutrition;
5) the lack of nutrients, minerals and enzymes are believed to be key contributors to the weakening of immune systems and creating the perfect environment for cancer and disease - I have not seen the research on this so don't take my words as fact, but it makes a lot of sense to me that when you pollute the pond the fish die and all kinds of nasty shit thrives.

So when I hear ideas like Mayor Bloomberg's that try to tackle the problem ass-backwards, I can't help but to think how stupid our officials really are, or is it a case of how stupid our officials think we are? "Oh look, the Mayor is looking out for my wellbeing, I think I'll vote for him again." Mr. Bloomberg is not a stupid man, far from it, and I believe his intentions are good, but you can basically say that about everyone in government. It doesn't make a flawed idea any less flawed.

I'll end this rant with a few thoughts on solutions for obesity. My road to losing 155 lbs and keeping it off for 5 years was based first and foremost on admitting that I alone am responsible for my predicament, no one else. Its not the food companies, its not genetics or because "I'm big boned" (really???), and it certainly isn't the government's job to look out for me. Every individual makes choices everyday and those choices have repercussions. They are the difference between being happy and unhappy, successful and poor, healthy or obese. If we take the responsibility away from the individual and make it government's job then we are basically doomed.

As a final note - anyone who wants to learn more about wellness and tackling their health challenges please drop me a line. I'd be happy to speak to you.

Richard Branson on Office Ties and the Company Dress Code: Guest Post

2012-05-29T18:18:00.001-04:00

You can't help but to love Richard Branson. Few people have made a ding in the Universe as big as Richard. Emerson, Edison, Gates, Jobs come to mind. There are surely others, but Richard has always been the most intriguing in my view. I have read his books and served some of his companies as clients. But the thing that always stands out in my mind is his anti-establishment views, notably never wearing a tie.

How I longed to tear my tie away when I worked in Europe. The year I spent in banking in Scotland was amazing...except for the ties. I own over 50 of them, mostly for work or funerals. So when I read this post from Branson's blog it got me thinking about the symbolism of Richard Branson rarely donning a neck tie.

In a country that has exceptionally poor fashion sense (yes, I mean America), I appreciate a well dressed man or woman as much as the next guy, but the neck tie is a relic with very little purpose in my view. More interesting is what it means to not wear one. Most of America doesn't require a tie unless you are walking into a private club or Wall Street bank, and even they are changing. I have nothing against tradition, in fact we could use more of it. But redefining business dress or formal attire the Branson way is pure symbolism for daring to challenge the status quo.

And thats what I love about the Branson way in general. Challenging the rules to find better ways. This mindset is what we need in the world, especially when it comes to business. Here are three areas where I think we would benefit as humanity if we take the Branson approach to not wearing ties - I'm sure there are many others:

Government
IT industry
Healthcare

No matter where you go in the world Government is pretty much the same. It doesn't work the way its meant to, it has a ridiculous amount of rules and bureaucracy, and its a deterrent to the purpose or goal at hand. For example, if I want to move to Ecuador, start a business and raise my family, the amount of obstacles government puts in front of me makes it pretty much unfeasible.

The IT industry has grown into a colossal complexity that costs billions of dollars a year to the economy even though it is supposed to, and to a degree does, make life easier. Ray Lane, the former Oracle executive and now Chairman of HP, once outlined the biggest problem with the IT industry - no standards for companies to work off of. Just look at the number of plugs and cables you have for everything we buy. It gets worse when you start looking at building IT infrastructure in an organization.

And then there is Healthcare. Sadly I experienced second hand what patients go through when my mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year and was in a hospital for two months. Her last months on Earth were a living hell and a lot of it was down to how healthcare works. I'm not a Doctor or a Pharma expert, but this industry is in bad need of reconstruction.

Alas, we are not going to solve anything in this post so lets stop here and keep it light hearted. Hope you enjoy Richard's post as I did.

Richard Branson on Office Ties and the Company Dress Code

By Richard Branson

While out walking in London recently, I passed a group of uniformed schoolchildren moving in an orderly, single-file line, with teachers in front and rear.

Nothing unusual, except for one thing that made me laugh out loud: their identical school ties. Or more accurately, what was left of them. More than half the kids had cut their ties so that only three or four inches remained below the knot.

Intrigued, I asked the teacher who was bringing up the rear, “So what happened to the ties?”This caught my eye because Virgin just got into the banking business with the acquisition of Northern Rock, a British bank that we are gradually rebranding Virgin Money. In British banking, few things strike terror in the heart of a customer quite as much as the prospect of facing a tie-wearing, three-piece-suited bank manager across a huge mahogany desk. So we redesigned the banks.

One of our first changes has been to start to remove the traditional counters and replace them with informal seating areas. We also thought that the staff’s formal business attire was almost as solid a barrier to customer-friendly experiences as those counters were. Our newest group of Virgin employees were told they could dispose of the ties.

He chuckled and said, “Well, the kids hate wearing them, but school rules say they have to. What the rules fail to specify, however, is how long they have to be -- so, snip-snip!”

Why didn’t I come up with such a naughtily innovative solution when I went to school? This would suit me -- I have always hated ties, maybe because I’ve never seen the point. They are uncomfortable and serve no useful purpose. I am lucky to have always worked for myself, and therefore have never been a victim of corporate dress codes. For years, a sweater and corduroy trousers were my standard business attire. Someone once joked, “The day Richard shows up at the bank wearing a suit and tie, you’ll know that we are in serious trouble.”

Lately I have taken to wearing a jacket, which is handy since I encounter many different climates and situations through my business travel, but I will only wear a tie under extreme duress, which usually means some ultraformal official occasion, such as the state dinner at the White House that I was fortunate to attend.

Suits and ties in an office are just another type of uniform, but in an arena where uniforms no longer serve any useful purpose. At one time they probably showed that the wearer was, at the very least, able to purchase and maintain a fairly expensive piece of fabric. Now, however, in an individualized, interconnected culture, your achievements speak for themselves. The suit and tie is an anachronism.

It used to be that the one male in the room with an open neck (which was usually me) would be self-conscious about it (which wasn’t me). Nowadays, however, I am delighted to note that it’s the man wearing the tie who is most likely to be the odd person out.

Probably one of the biggest breakthroughs in the gradual demise of the suit-and-tie dress code came, rather surprisingly, in some lofty political circles. Tony Blair was one of the first British prime ministers -- Maggie Thatcher excepted -- to frequently appear in public without “proper” neckwear. Now President Obama has carried it to a level where he seems to be tieless almost 50 percent of the time.

I have always prided myself on throwing out the rulebook when something proves a barrier to business -- or is just plain silly. And there is no viable argument why “gentlemen” should wear ties. The best anyone can muster is: “It’s expected,” or “Everyone else will be wearing one.” One of the signs that business culture has changed is that when people arrive for a business meeting with me, often the first thing they ask is, “Do you mind if we remove our ties?” They surely never thought, “If we don’t wear our ties we’ll stand a lesser chance of getting the deal done.” So why did they wear them in the first place?

So on behalf of the oppressed tie-wearers of the world, here is my appeal to those corporate despots who still force their male employees to put nooses around their necks every day: Please think again.

America and the Value of 'Earned Success': Guest Post

2012-05-17T15:37:00.000-04:00

When I created Nomad Influencer I made the decision to avoid politics as a topic for my blog. My political views just aren't that important and I still believe that today. Having said that, I can't stand listening to the uninformed or ignorant speak their views like its God's truth. Nothing ruffles my feathers more.

And so it went the other evening when a good friend's girlfriend decided to hijack what started as an interesting conversation about how to solve some of the local economic challenges in the Western PA region. It wasn't her lack of listening or speaking over others that bothered me so much as her blind belief that Europeans have all the right answers to how to take care of their population while progressing economically. The Europeans. Really?

This woman has never lived a day in her life in Europe - in fact she has never been out of the country other than a trip to the Caribbean 5 years ago. And even if she had visited one of the many splendors of Europe like Paris, Rome or London, it doesn't matter - a bus tour of museums and statues doesn't qualify as knowing their society. Whats more, Europe is not a place. They have over 20 countries there that are distinctly different in culture, language, history and social structure. The EU experiment is far from over as we are about to learn in the coming months.

No, if you haven't lived in a European country, earned a living, paid taxes and been subject to their system, then you really should shut your mouth and listen to those who have. To say the Europeans have it figured out and we should follow suit is as stupid as you can get.

My personal experience over there adds up to 2 years in Luxembourg, 7 years in Belgium and 3 years in the UK. Three different countries, three different social systems, three different tax rates, three different standards of living. 12 professional years that is. I also grew up in London and Belgium before heading off to the US for college. I know what I'm talking about when I say the "European way" is flawed for individuals who believe in EARNING what they have, and who don't believe in putting limits to their potential.

Let me go one step further - the social systems they have embraced for the better part of 75 years is one of the biggest forms of human bondage, thralldom and captivity in human history. Not as physically cruel as other chapters of human history, but every bit as disastrous with deeper consequence for centuries to come. The individual is being wiped out by the notion of collectivism. Or simply put, the group. This will ultimately result in the collapse of entire nationalities and religious groups as more aggressive groups move in over time. You have to just look at the rise in muslim populations on the European continent.

As strongly as I feel about this topic, I found another post that addresses this much better than I can. Arthur Brooks' article published in the WSJ nails the issue we face in the US. We are at a crossroads - to continue down the path of our founding legacy or to switch down the path of European collectivism where its not how hard you work but what you are given. Europe in 2050 will be a very different place.

Before you read Mr. Brooks' piece below let me extend an invitation - anyone wishing to discuss or debate my views in this post is invited to an evening at Enrico's Biscotti in Pittsburgh's Strip District. Larry Lagattuta, Enrico's owner, will be moderating and we will discuss all views in a respectful setting - biscotti and baked goods provided of course. The date is yet to be fixed and will depend on how many people are interested to attend. So drop me a note and lets go from there.

Enjoy the read as I did...

America and the Value of 'Earned Success'

'We found that even when good things occurred that weren't earned, like nickels coming out of slot machines, it did not increase people's well-being.'

By Arthur C. Brooks

I learned to appreciate the American free enterprise system by quitting a job in Spain.
At age 19, I dropped out of school to pursue a career as a French horn player. After a few twists and turns, I wound up in the Barcelona Symphony, which was a Spanish government job.

Even as a foreigner, I had the same lifetime work status as a clerk at the water department. Nobody ever left these jobs, except with lavish disability packages. (One colleague who injured his lips moonlighting at a dance-hall gig ended up spending the next 20 years collecting a full salary to stay home.)

I loved music—but the life of a government functionary wasn't my cup of tea. And so my Spanish wife and I decided to pull up stakes and start over in America. Neither of us had a college degree, and my wife's English was limited.

American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks discusses his new book The Road to Freedom. Photo: Manfredi Strategy Group

To friends in Barcelona, this move was ridiculous. Quitting a job in Spain often meant permanent unemployment. As we departed, my in-laws tearfully gave us a gold bracelet which, they said, we could pawn in the coming hard times.

We were fairly poor for a few years but just fine. I taught music during the day and earned a bachelor's degree in economics at night. To her astonishment, my wife immediately landed a job teaching English to other immigrants. "America is a great country," she declared—an assertion I had never heard from a Spaniard.

In the end, I concluded, what set the United States apart from Spain was the difference between earned success and learned helplessness.

Earned success means defining your future as you see fit and achieving that success on the basis of merit and hard work. It allows you to measure your life's "profit" however you want, be it in money, making beautiful music, or helping people learn English. Earned success is at the root of American exceptionalism.

The link between earned success and life satisfaction is well established by researchers. The University of Chicago's General Social Survey, for example, reveals that people who say they feel "very successful" or "completely successful" in their work lives are twice as likely to say they are very happy than people who feel "somewhat successful." It doesn't matter if they earn more or less income; the differences persist.

The opposite of earned success is "learned helplessness," a term coined by Martin Seligman, the eminent psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. It refers to what happens if rewards and punishments are not tied to merit: People simply give up and stop trying to succeed.

During experiments, Mr. Seligman observed that when people realized they were powerless to influence their circumstances, they would become depressed and had difficulty performing even ordinary tasks. In an interview in the New York Times, Mr. Seligman said: "We found that even when good things occurred that weren't earned, like nickels coming out of slot machines, it did not increase people's well-being. It produced helplessness. People gave up and became passive."

Learned helplessness was what my wife and I observed then, and still do today, in social-democratic Spain. The recession, rigid labor markets, and excessive welfare spending have pushed unemployment to 24.4%, with youth joblessness over 50%. Nearly half of adults under 35 live with their parents. Unable to earn their success, Spaniards fight to keep unearned government benefits.

Meanwhile, their collective happiness—already relatively low—has withered. According to the nonprofit World Values Survey, 20% of Spaniards said they were "very happy" about their lives in 1981. This fell to 14% by 2007, even before the economic downturn.

That trajectory should be a cautionary tale to Americans who are watching the U.S. government careen toward a system that is every bit as socially democratic as Spain's.

Government spending as a percentage of GDP in America is about 36%—roughly the same as in Spain. The Congressional Budget Office tells us it will reach 50% by 2038. The Tax Foundation reports that almost 70% of Americans take more out of the tax system than they pay into it. Meanwhile, politicians foment social division on the basis of income inequality, instead of attempting to improve mobility and opportunity through education reform, pro-growth policies, and an entrepreneur-friendly economy.

These trends do not mean we are doomed to repeat Spain's unhappy fate. But our system of earned success will not defend itself.

All surveys show that most Americans still embrace our free enterprise system—today. The crucial test is whether the country is willing to support the hard work and policy reforms that will sustain it.

The cost of failing this test will be more human than financial. In our hands is the earned success—and thus the happiness—of our children and grandchildren. The stakes in the current policy battles today are not just economic. They are moral.

Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute and author of "The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise," published this week by Basic Books.

Reflections on a Tuesday

2012-05-01T15:41:00.000-04:00

Albert Camus once said that our lives are the lump sum of all our choices. Of course sometimes we have no control over the circumstances we find ourselves in, but we always get to choose how we respond. Other times we have complete control over our circumstances. Whether we continue to put up with situations (and relationships) that leave us drained and longing for more. Whether we continue to play safe in our careers because we are afraid we don’t have what it takes to succeed doing what we truly want. Whether we resist change, and stick with a status quo that while it may not be miserable, is a far cry from what we really want.

Playing B-Ball with Obama: 6 Steps to Crossing Anything Off Your Bucket List: Guest Post

2012-04-06T11:55:00.005-04:00

This is one of the most inspiring posts I have read in a long time via Tim Ferris' blog. In 2009 a junior at Cornell contacted me to ask about his idea for a non-profit, based on helping people achieve their dreams. Fast forward to today, Everest is no longer a non-profit pipe dream, but a Silicon Valley start-up with a lot of determined people pushing to create a way to help people live their dreams. Check them out and follow them on Facebook or Twitter.

As for the guest post via Tim's blog, no need for further comment, enjoy the read and get off your ass and make it happen.

Playing B-Ball with Obama: 6 Steps to Crossing Anything Off Your Bucket List
Posted: 04 Apr 2012 07:00 AM PDT

Let us start with a quote, often misattributed to Goethe:

“Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”
- William Hutchinson Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951)

If you want a lesson in boldness, and to cross things off of your bucket list, there is no better teacher than Ben Nemtin.

His story, and that of the entire Buried Life team, is amazing.

It started with a list of 100 things and a planned two-week roadtrip. Along the way, Ben has somehow managed to play basketball with Obama, throw the first pitch at a Major League Baseball game, delivery a baby (not his), make the biggest roulette spin in Vegas’ history, and much more.

Most recently, they crossed off #19: Write a bestselling book. Their debut, What Do You Want To Do Before You Die?, just hit #1 on The New YorkTimes, which will be announced officially April 15th. To celebrate? They’re sending a copy of the book into space.

It all seems unbelievable, which is exactly why I love this guest post from Ben.

This original content covers his 6 steps for crossing anything off of your personal bucket list. There is a method. Everyone needs a kick in the ass sometimes, and this did it for me.

Enter Ben

If there’s one thing I’m proud of, it’s being able to tell good stories.

Not because I’m a particularly good storyteller, but because I’ve been able to accumulate some amazing experiences in the last 5 and a half years.

It was 2006 when I first hit the road with my next-door neighbor, his younger brother, and a kid I knew from high school to accomplish a list we had created of 100 things to do before we died. We made a promise that for every item we crossed off, we’d help a total stranger do something they wanted to do before they died. To date, we’ve accomplished 81 items on our list and helped over 81 people.

In addition to those Tim mentioned in the intro, and among others, I’ve made a TV show, crashed the Playboy Mansion, streaked a stadium, been on Oprah, reunited a father and son after 17 years, made a $300,000 donation to charity, helped a girl find her mother’s grave for the first time, and am trying to help a college freshman find a new kidney (Need your help on this one: info here)…

Remember: 5 and a half years ago, I couldn’t tell any of these stories.

Our mission was supposed to be a two-week road trip. The four of us never expected it to be much more, and we certainly didn’t expect to be living it five years later. In the beginning, we didn’t tell our friends what we were doing because we didn’t know how to explain it. What we shared was really just a feeling: we were fed up and wanted something different. We decided to move forward without a real plan. A mechanic told us that the RV we’d borrowed wasn’t going to make it home; I had fabricated a wedding to get time off of work; and we pretended we owned a production company to raise money for a camera and gas for the RV. The only thing we knew for sure was that we would be taking two weeks off before going back to college. The plan: to try and accomplish as many items on our list as possible and help some people. We didn’t have a name for the project until Jonnie was assigned a poem in English 102 called “The Buried Life.” It was written 150 years ago but spoke to the same feeling we were having at the time: the desire to unbury our lives and do the things that were important to us, not what was expected of us. There were four lines that stood out from the rest:

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;

When I think back to this time now, I remember sitting on the curb beside our RV the night before we were supposed to leave. We were arguing about whether or not to cancel the trip, because if the camper broke down, we didn’t have enough money to tow it home. Five years later, I guess it’s safe to say we’ve gotten pretty good at accomplishing our dreams. I’d like to say that there’s something unique about us that makes us able to do these things, but the truth is the opposite. There is a formula and it’s simple.

The more items we cross off our list, the more we become convinced that anyone can do anything. The formula comes down to these six steps:

#1. Stop and think about it. Really think about it.

What is it that you really want to do with your life? Start a business? Reconnect with an old friend? Dive to the bottom of the ocean? Smoke a cigar with Castro? Forget what you think you should do, what excites you? What feels impossible? Be honest with yourself. Your answers don’t need to make an impression on anyone but you.

For many people, the four members of The Buried Life included, the impetus to make a life change only comes with crisis. The summer before we started The Buried Life, I was struggling with depression; Dave was struggling with his weight; Duncan had recently lost a close friend; and Jonnie was just plain angry and disillusioned with our generation (“No one protests anymore,” he used to say). The four of us were so beaten down that we had no choice but to reevaluate what was important to us. Our project grew out of that frustration. Sometimes it takes a debilitating low or a crushing loss to snap you back to reality, but don’t wait for it. Ferris Bueller put it well: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

#2. Write it down.

Simply put, it’s not real until you write it down. And by that I mean, take your dream and turn it into a project. Dreams have a funny way of staying dreams. But a project is something that needs to be done. Approach it as you would any other item on your daily or weekly to-do list. When you have a deadline— a presentation, a grocery list, a birthday gift you need to buy for someone–you find a way to get it done. Treat your dreams the same way. Add it to your list. You need to buy toilet paper. You need to spend the weekend in Paris with someone you love. When you write it down, you’ve taken the first step.

When we first started the project, we put things on the list almost as a joke. We didn’t think about whether they could actually happen; we just pretended that anything was possible. “#53: Make a TV Show” was a dream we’d shared since we were young. We had no filmmaking background and no connections in the business. And we lived on an island in Canada. We decided MTV in the States would be the place to have a show because it was the biggest and best platform we knew of for reaching people like us. So we wrote it down. And then we started filming it, because that was just the next logical step. Every step led to the next. Four years later, we were executive producers and creators of our own show on MTV.

#3. Talk about it.

Everyone knows someone who knows someone who knows someone.

After you’ve come up with your list and written it down, start talking. Tell everyone you know. Tell your parents’ friends. Tell new people you meet. Talk to your cabdriver. Talk to your boss. You never know whose uncle’s wife may be able to help you. And don’t just talk about it, but talk about it passionately. Enthusiasm is infectious, and people want to help when given the chance. Help can show up in the most unusual places, oftentimes the least expected ones.

We didn’t come from money. We had an idea, we talked about it, and people showed up in incredible ways help us. Our first lawyer was our parent’s friend who had heard about what we were doing and offered to lend a hand; our first manager was my godmother; I met my first Hollywood contact while traveling in Mexico; we cold-called local companies in our hometown to raise money for our first tour. Help often came in strange places. In 2007 we were able to finagle a five-minute meeting with Jann Wenner, legendary founder of Rolling Stone magazine, in order to discuss what it would take to cross #15 off our list, “Get on the Cover of Rolling Stone.” The five-minute meeting turned into a 45-minute meeting (after Jann threatened to kick us out and asked his assistant for a knife), during which time we talked about everything from protests to Bob Dylan to the difference between our two generations. We told him about some of our most ambitious dreams, including “#19: Write a Bestselling Book.” Jann was later instrumental in helping us get our book published—introducing us to a company where we met the smartest, most talented, best-looking book editor alive (hi Lia), who eventually offered us a deal.

#4. Be persistent.

Most people give up just before they reach their goal. We all hear “No,” a lot, but we’ve come to realize that “No” usually just means “Not now.” Be creative in your persistence. Don’t piss people off by nagging them—think of innovative and clever ways to grab their attention. Be different, and never say die.

Last year, we broke into the Playboy Mansion. We rented a giant stripper cake and decorated it like it was for the Willy Wonka–themed party. Two of us dressed up like Oompa-Loompas and hid in the bottom of the cake, which was then delivered to the back door of the Playboy Mansion in a rented delivery truck. Security saw our homemade Playboy logo on the cake and allowed it to pass through the gates. After waiting inside the cake for six long hours (peeing in bottles and filming in night-vision), we hatched out unnoticed and partied at the Mansion all night with free rein. Security assumed we were just very rowdy employees.

Playboy had no idea we had been in and out, or that we had filmed our first episode. But when we went back a month later to ask for permission to air, they said, “If you air the episode, we’ll sue you and have you charged with breaking and entering.” We got ahold of the company’s vice president, and he echoed that sentiment. MTV told us to move on and film another episode. Our production company said there was nothing we could do. In a last ditch effort we decided to send Hugh Hefner a handwritten letter along with the rough cut of the episode. A week later, we received this response from Mr. Hefner himself: “You can air the episode. Just know I’m not very pleased with you boys.” I always thought that crashing the Playboy Mansion was my dream, but getting scolded by Hugh Hefner was way better.

#5. Be ballsy.

The majority of people don’t go after their wildest dreams because they think they’re unrealistic. Tim says it well: “Ninety-nine percent of people believe they can’t do great things, so they aim for mediocrity.” The level of competition is highest for realistic goals because most people don’t set high enough goals for themselves. But not only do you statistically have a better chance of achieving what may seem like an unrealistic goal, doing so fuels you. Once you feel the first high of accomplishing something major and seemingly unattainable, you want to go bigger and badder, and you force yourself to fulfill the need all the more. Even better, the technically smaller goals suddenly seem less daunting.

We put “#95: Play Ball with the President” on the list because it was literally the most unattainable goal we could think of. I remember Jonnie called me from his dorm room in Montreal in 2008 right after Barack Obama had been elected and Jonnie said, “We should add ‘Play Ball with Obama’ to the list.” I chuckled because it was so absurd and agreed. I found it humorous not only because the idea was so outrageous but also because I knew Jonnie was calling me from his “room,” a tiny space he was renting for $200 a month, which he shared with a washer and dryer. Of all people, we weren’t the best candidates for a pick up game with the leader of the Free World. Nonetheless, two years later we found ourselves shooting hoops with the President in the backyard of the White House. It’s a long, complicated story, and I don’t want to bore you with the details, but this is the kind of thing that the four of us chuckle about sometimes. It’s as if we have horseshoes up our butts, but it’s also happened too many times to be luck. When you dream big, you surprise yourself.

[TIM: I prodded Ben for the details about Obama, and it's anything but boring. Here's how it happened. First off, Obama only plays when Reggie Love is on the court. Reggie Love is the President's "body man" or, more formally, "special assistant and personal aide," and this b-ball detail made Reggie the man to look for. The gents called everyone they could think of (senators, legislators, etc.) who could e-mail or otherwise contact Reggie. He ultimately liked the idea, but, when passed up the flagpole, it was vetoed by the White House press team. The Buried Life had to end the "Obama" episode on a disappointing "To Be Continued..." Then, the crazy part: The President is up late one night, flips on the TV and randomly sees the end of the episode. Soon thereafter, someone approached Reggie at the White House: "POTUS is pissed." When Reggie asks POTUS what's wrong, he replies: "Why haven't I played basketball with The Buried Life guys?" Reggie explains that he ran it through the press team and they refused, to which Obama replies, "Let's make it happen." The next time the boys are in DC, Reggie invites them to check out the White House courts. While casually shooting around, the President strolls up and surprises all of them. After 20 minutes of hoops together, they ask the President, "What do you want to do before you die?" The answer? "Be an anchor on SportsCenter for a day."]

#6. Help others.

We’ve crossed off more than 80 list items over the last six years, but the moments that stand out the most are the ones when we’ve been able to step into someone’s life and share something real with them. I’ve been surprised by how little it takes to impact someone’s life. Something as simple as asking the question, “What do you want to do before you die?” and taking the time to listen is often all it takes. If you’re feeling lost or depressed, you might find what you’re looking for in someone else. Into the Wild said it best: “Happiness is only real when it’s shared.”

The first person we ever helped was a guy named Brent. He wrote to us in broken English saying his biggest dream was to bring pizzas down to the nearby homeless shelter. Brent had himself spent three years living in that shelter and remembered fondly the days people brought in food because those were the times it felt like someone gave a damn. When we talked with Brent in person, we learned that what he really needed was a truck. He had pulled himself out of the shelter by starting a business that relied on his truck, but it had just broken down. We knew we needed to help him find a new vehicle, but we didn’t have the money ourselves. This is the very first video we ever made, trying to track down a truck for Brent.

#7. Your Turn.

Your dreams are closer than they appear. There’s nothing about us four guys that makes us more able than anyone else to accomplish our goals, other than the simple fact that we’ve decided to go after them. George Elliot said, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” Don’t wait. Why not start now? Post one thing you want to do before you die in the comments below.

The Buried Life is a community of 1,286,399 people answering the question: “What do you want to do before you die?”

How will you answer it? Let us know in the comments.

Ideas aren't Cheap, They're Free: Guest Post

2012-03-25T17:35:00.000-04:00

Twice in my education I had the exam question "Why?" The first was my senior year of high school for Philosophy, the second was for my "Contemporary Philosophy" course my sophomore year of college. Both times I responded with a word or two - the first time "Why Not?" and the second time "Because". Both times I received an A on the essay question. When my fellow students heard about this, they challenged my college Professor and he gave a great response: "Anyone who writes that answer on a final exam is creative, courageous and demonstrated the ability to express themselves in a way few people can."

At the time I can honestly say I did not grasp the full meaning of my Professor's defense of my response. I was deadly serious with my answers, I couldn't afford failing my exam after all. But I also felt I could defend my answer if called upon and did not see the reason to explain beyond the word or two. What I didn't realize at the time was how creativity and thinking of the box are tools in the tool kit to change what needs to be changed. As my peers wrote 10 page responses to their essays, I left after 3 minutes and never looked back. In today's world we need the same approach.

Thus why this incredible post by Tina Seelig, the executive director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program at Stanford University School of Engineering, really caught my eye. Tina and I serve on the advisory board of an exciting start-up in Silicon Valley, Everest (www.evr.st), and I have been following her work closely for the past two years. Truly a visionary, her books have provided motivation and guidance for some incredible entrepreneurs who push the envelope every day.

Her new book, inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity, focuses on all the variables that you have at your disposal to unlock creativity in individuals, teams, and organizations. To quote Tina, creativity comes in all shapes and sizes. It comes in all colors and textures. And, it comes in words, images, and actions. The following is adapted from her book and I hope you will find it a great read as I did. Enter Tina...

Ideas aren't Cheap, They're Free
by Tina Seelig

March 18, 2012

Provocative. Just one word... Provocative.

Until recently, prospective students at All Soul’s College, at Oxford University, took a “one-word exam.” The Essay, as it was called, was both anticipated and feared by applicants. They each flipped over a piece of paper at the same time to reveal a single word. The word might have been “innocence” or “miracles” or “water” or “provocative.” Their challenge was to craft an essay in three hours inspired by that single word.

There were no right answers to this exam. However, each applicant’s response provided insights into the student’s wealth of knowledge and ability to generate creative connections. The New York Times quotes one Oxford professor as saying, “The unveiling of the word was once an event of such excitement that even nonapplicants reportedly gathered outside the college each year, waiting for news to waft out.” This challenge reinforces the fact that everything—every single word—provides an opportunity to leverage what you know to stretch your imagination.

For so many of us, this type of creativity hasn’t been fostered. We don’t look at everything in our environment as an opportunity for ingenuity. In fact, creativity should be an imperative. Creativity allows you to thrive in an ever changing world and unlocks a universe of possibilities. With enhanced creativity, instead of problems you see potential, instead of obstacles you see opportunities, and instead of challenges you see a chance to create breakthrough solutions. Look around and it becomes clear that the innovators among us are the ones succeeding in every arena, from science and technology to education and the arts. Nevertheless, creative problem solving is rarely taught in school, or even considered a skill you can learn.

Sadly, there is also a common and often-repeated saying, “Ideas are cheap.” This statement discounts the value of creativity and is utterly wrong. Ideas aren’t cheap at all—they’re free. And they’re amazingly valuable. Ideas lead to innovations that fuel the economies of the world, and they prevent our lives from becoming repetitive and stagnant. They are the cranes that pull us out of well-worn ruts and put us on a path toward progress. Without creativity we are not just condemned to a life of repetition, but to a life that slips backward. In fact, the biggest failures of our lives are not those of execution, but failures of imagination. As the renowned American inventor Alan Kay famously said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” We are all inventors of our own future. And creativity is at the heart of invention.

As demonstrated so beautifully by the “one-word exam,” every utterance, every object, every decision, and every action is an opportunity for creativity. This challenge, one of many tests given over several days at All Soul’s College, has been called the hardest exam in the world. It required both a breadth of knowledge and a healthy dose of imagination. Matthew Edward Harris, who took the exam in 2007, was assigned the word “harmony.” He wrote in the Daily Telegraph that he felt “like a chef rummaging through the recesses of his refrigerator for unlikely soup ingredients.” This homey simile is a wonderful reminder that these are skills that we have an opportunity to call upon every day as we face challenges as simple as making soup and as monumental as solving the massive problems that face the world.

............

After a dozen years teaching courses on creativity and innovation at Stanford, I can confidently assert that creativity can be enhanced. My new book inGenius is filled with details about specific tools and techniques that work well, along with stories that bring them to life. We will look at ways to increase your ability to see opportunities around you, to connect and combine ideas, to challenge assumptions, and to reframe problems. We will explore ways you can modify your physical and social environment to enhance your creativity and the creativity of those with whom you live and work. In addition, we will look at the ways your motivation and mind-set influence your creative output, including your willingness to experiment, your ability to push through barriers to find creative solutions to daunting challenges, and your skill at turning off premature judgment of new ideas.

It is important to understand that these factors fit together and profoundly influence one another. Therefore, none can be viewed in isolation. I’ve created a new model—the Innovation Engine—that illustrates how all these factors work together to enhance creativity. I chose the word “engine” because it, like the word “ingenious,” is derived from the Latin word for innate talent and is a reminder that these traits come naturally to all of us. My goal is to provide a model, a shared vocabulary, and a set of tools that you can use right away to evaluate and increase your own creativity and that of your team, organization, and community.

In inGenius, you will learn how to jump-start your Innovation Engine, and you will fully appreciate that every word, every object, every idea, and every moment provides an opportunity for creativity. It costs nothing to generate amazing ideas, and the results are priceless.

Adapted from INGENIUS by Tina Seelig. Copyright © 2012 by Tina L. Seelig. Used with permission of HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.

Your Success Depends On Changing Behavior

2012-03-16T21:14:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine recently sent me this quote heard on NPR in an interview with a Venture Capitalist:

"It's a bit like not getting dessert until you've had your vegetables. Maybe this all sounds incredibly simplistic, but venture capitalists say one of the trickiest things about this new world of investing is that their returns, in many cases, hinge on humans changing their behavior. And that's a lot harder than building a robot."

Probably one of the most popular sayings in business is "Its about people". Another is "Its a people business". Both are true statements about any business, even those that are online. Think about every time Facebook changes something on its site, the uproar of users follows. Its all about people.

But these statements always fall short of the truth about people. People's behavior are the main obstacle to achieving full potential. People get in the way because human nature doesn't respond well to change. One of the basic human needs I have discussed previously on this blog is the need for certainty. When you ask someone to change something, fear and uncertainty sets in and they clam up like a bad oyster. This happens every day in every business deep in the halls of your operations.

No where is this more true than in operations. I work with operations people every day with my clients and the amount of resource, effort and time that goes into instituting change is criminal. What we are talking about is behavior. If a person is asked to change, they go into survival mode. Is this change going to cost me my job? Is this change going to take away from my (perceived) power and influence? Is this change going to mean I become less relevant? Few people ask the question is this change going to be better for the company? And therefore me?

Somewhere along the line management adopted the belief that you cannot mandate change in a company, you have to get consensus and slowly drive change. This is avoiding the issue. Change is about behavior, and that means making it about people. So add this management mantra to the human nature factor and you get the inefficiency that moves manufacturing and production offshore.

The question is how do you solve this problem? The answer isn't simple, there is no silver bullet, but you have to start with recognizing the problem. Only then you can address it. If you ask the CEO of any Fortune 500 company about the performance of their people, they will tell you how great they are, how important they are etc. They are either politically correct or ignorant. People are the key to delivering performance, if you don't manage people behavior, you will never achieve true change and improvement.

The Germans have understood this better than any culture I know. They start every major initiative with the question: what investment do we need to make in our people in order to... It sounds so simple but its a massive paradigm shift that the rest of us have not understood yet. Buzz terms like "empowerment" and "enablement" are still only aesthetics. Enabling people takes understanding, training and skills building, in conjunction with integrating this "change" with the strategy and goals of a company. The guy in the back office has to know that his work and effort is a direct contribution to the overall performance of the company.

No where is this is more evident than in an Emergency Room. From the Administrators to the Doctors to the Nurses to the Nurses' Assistants, everyone is focused on simple goal: saving lives. You can't achieve that goal if everyone isn't in synch, performing their tasks in a complete and timely manner. The consequence is someone dies.

This mindset can be replicated and instilled in every business, small or large. But you have to tackle the behavior issue first. And the best company that has achieved this in a very short period (since 2001) happens to be the largest company in the world by market value, Apple. See these stats and compare the numbers to businesses who are bigger, more inefficient and less profitable.

U.S. Competitiveness: What American Business Can and Should Do (In Its Own Interests): Guest Post

2012-03-09T17:53:00.000-05:00

I came across this article by Edward Alden, the Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow, specializing in U.S. economic competitiveness and Director of the Renewing America Publication Series. And I think he nails it. The media and politicians have made the topic of U.S. Competitiveness a government issue, as well as a broader civic one. This is incorrect and Alden explains why.

My own business is involved heavily in the training of operational talent within organizations. We have developed a methodology over the past 7 years that truly makes training a competitive advantage. Its genesis is from Germany, a country where society, business and academics have been closely linked for decades. And in true Germany fashion, its about quality, details and impact. Think BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Volkswagen and Porsche compared to Buicks, Chevys and Fords. Effective investment in people, process and technology is what the game is about.

I have asked many CEOs the question: how much do you invest in training your people? And the answer is disappointing. They don't view it as strategic or a means to achieve competitive advantage, but rather a benefit or HR perk. Its missing the point in a global competitive world order that is only going to get more competitive as generations of Chinese, Indian and Brazilian workers get educated, trained and flood the factories.

I love Alden's perspective here and, like him, am optimistic we will 'get it'. But the broader issue will be standing up to our incapable politicians and civic leaders who seem to think the answer lies in redistribution of wealth, opportunities and taxes.

U.S. Competitiveness: What American Business Can and Should Do (In Its Own Interests)
by Edward Alden
March 7, 2012

GE Chairman Jeff Immelt; Dow Chemical Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris; and Boeing Company Chairman, President, and CEO Jim McNerney speak on the panel "The Future of Manufacturing: Growing American Competitiveness" in Washington on February 13, 2012 (Gary Cameron/Courtesy Reuters).

U.S. competitiveness is mostly about the private sector–how well companies are doing selling goods and services domestically and internationally, and how much of that success is being passed on to Americans through more and better jobs, higher wages, lower prices, and improved living standards. But, strangely, most of the debate over competitiveness is focused not on what companies should be doing, but rather on what governments should be doing.

The Harvard Business School’s U.S. Competitiveness Project, which held the first of a series of meetings with HBS alumni in New York on March 5, is trying to correct that imbalance. And in doing so, it is directly challenging beliefs that have become deeply ingrained among many U.S. business leaders as the global economy has expanded and growth has accelerated in emerging markets. The mantra goes something like this: “American companies are no longer American; they are global companies that happen to be headquartered in the United States. Our responsibility is to our shareholders, not the nation, and we will pursue profitable opportunities wherever they exist in the world.”

Michael Porter of HBS argued forcefully that this view is simply wrong, and not for reasons of patriotism or broader civic commitment. Instead, business should be working to improve what he called the “commons”–the collective resources that make the United States a better place to do business–because it is critical for the long-run success of these companies.

What does that mean? The best example is workforce skills development. As the U.S. economy recovers, many companies are complaining that they can’t find the skilled workers they need to expand. As I discussed last week, one of the big reasons for this shortfall is thatcompanies have allowed apprentice and training programs to whither, and have too often failed to partner with colleges or universities to help develop the workforce they need. Skills training is both a government and a corporate responsibility, and the companies are the primary beneficiaries.

Or take the issue of supplier networks. Large companies can and should be doing far more to help nurture local networks of companies to supply goods and services. In 2010, IBM launched an initiative that brought together more than a dozen large companies to establish a common platform that allows small companies to use a single application to qualify as potential suppliers to all 14 companies, which together purchase about $150 billion annually in goods and services. The benefits to the small companies are obvious, but by increasing efficiency and making it easier for new suppliers to qualify, the big multinationals are likely to reap cost savings as well.

Even with examples like this, however, persuading business leaders that strengthening U.S. competitive capacity is also in their corporate interest is likely to be a hard sell. Harvard Business School is trying to take the lead by asking for commitments from its alumni in managerial positions to undertake concrete steps “that are beneficial to the company but also raise the long-run productivity of doing business in its communities.” The suggested actions fall into six categories:
Improving skills, including creating or expanding apprentice and training programs.

Upgrading supporting industries, by expanding sourcing from local suppliers and helping them improve their capabilities.

Bolstering regional strength by moving business activities back to the United States and participating in broader regional competitiveness initiatives.

Adopting management practices that strengthen U.S. operations.

Supporting innovation and entrepreneurship, through research collaboration or investing in promising domestic start-ups.

Shifting the business-government relationship by lobbying for “business-wide improvements” rather than lobbying for special interests.

Will corporate leaders rise to this challenge? I am skeptical, but would love to be proved wrong. For all the focus on government, there is only so much that governments can do to address this country’s competitive challenges. Business, in its own self-interest, needs to play a far more active role.

What You Need To Understand About The Concept Of Time

2012-03-07T17:16:00.000-05:00

In business one of the most frustrating things is the lack of urgency. Corporations are notorious for this. They take a long time to make decisions and executives think nothing of delaying meetings and decisions for weeks or months. In contrast, when you work with start-ups in Silicon Valley they move so fast it can leave your head spinning. The concept of time and urgency are very different depending on which business you are in, how much money you have to burn and the kind of leaders at the helm.

Perspective is important when looking at the concept of time. Have you ever spoken to someone who is terminally ill? They bring a whole new perspective on urgency. After all, most of us don't know when the curtain will come down on us, but someone who is terminally ill adapts their life quickly and moves faster than they ever have on getting their affairs in order, doing the things they always wanted to, and spending time with loved ones.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about time is how it speeds up the older you get. As a kid in my teens I used to think a year is so long. Everything started with the new school year, the changing of sports seasons, Christmas, then Easter and Spring time, followed by end of school year and summer holidays. Then it all started again but each year was like a new book. New friends, new teachers, new classes, new activities. Time almost stood still when I was a teenager, and we thought in increments of a year.

In my twenties things went a little faster and you start to think and plan in decades. "By the time I reach 30 I'm going to be..." My twenties, while faster than my teens, went pretty slow too. I worked for three companies in that time after I finished my education. I lived in 5 countries. I traveled extensively for fun and business. And my bills got bigger and bigger towards the end of my twenties, especially after I bought my first home.

I am now at the end of my thirties and can honestly say this decade has gone by really fast. My responsibilities have quadrupled, I've settled down and become more focused on the future, as unwritten as it may be. My 20 year high school reunion was a big reminder of how time is speeding up. It was like yesterday when we graduated high school. And I'm starting to feel age physically even though I am in better shape today than I was when I graduated high school. Time gets shorter the older you get.

And this is the lesson lost on many. Urgency is important. Not blind urgency, but nonetheless you have to be focused on accomplishments every day and as fast as possible because time speeds up all the way till the end. Life is about action, not inaction.

I liken it to sports. In sports there are three major types of people: those who make things happen, those who things happen to, and those who watch things happen. Most people are unfortunately in the bucket of things happening to them. Think those individuals who blame everyone else for everything that is wrong with the world. Be it the Occupy Wall Street crowds or those living with dependency on others, these people basically are not taking the kind of action needed to make it happen. The next big group are spectators, those who watch things happen to others. And finally you have the few who are hell bent on making it happen.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that if you are an employee you should be categorized as someone who things happen to. And I'm not saying that all entrepreneurs are people who make it happen. The world is not black or white, as much as we would like it to be. Forget about general categorization, what makes human beings so amazing is our individuality and I'm saying time speeds up for all of us the older we get. So now is the time to act.

Some years back my cousins and I put together a bucket list. I called my list "999 things to do before I go". I have over 300 things on this list today, and over the weekend I reviewed the stats and have accomplished 74 of them. Long way to go, so little time. Among my accomplished list were crazy things like "Live in Edinburgh, Scotland, for a year" or "Learn to snow board". Its been a slow process, but I've worked hard to change my mindset from one of "I've got time" to "Just Do It".

And this brings me back to business and life. We don't live forever. You have to make things happen as fast as possible. You never know if that proverbial bus thats going to run you over is round the corner. Leave your mark. You don't have to be wealthy, a business owner or an adventurer with no family or responsibilities. You can make a difference in anything and in many ways, but you have to act. Now.

Here is a little humor about how one of the dudes I admire for all his accomplishments lives his life. Enjoy.

Creating Wealth In Times of Uncertainty: Guest Post

2012-02-19T13:48:00.000-05:00

I attend a lot of meetings and networking events as part of the efforts to build our North American business. One of the common topics in this election year is job creation, and government's role in the same. I hear people share their views on this hot topic and its interesting to discern between those who truly have a view based on fact versus those who repeat rhetorical views from the media, politicians and academics.

My own view is based on living and working in seven countries over a 20 year career, and paying taxes and creating jobs in so many different regions of the world. Too many people don't understand business and true job-creation, but these same people feel they are an authority.

I recently listened to a retired professor of management whom I respect say the bailout of GM by the Obama administration is a prime example of job creation. Another CEO of a mid-cap company in the Mid-West thinks China is the cause of the demise of manufacturing in the US. These are two prime statements that can be argued in detail and never come to a black or white conclusion.

Then I read this recent post by Ziad Abdelnour, President and CEO of Blackhawk Partners, Inc, Founder & Chairman of the Financial Policy Council and the author of Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation In the Age of Welfare Politics always found his views to be informative and well thought out. Ziad is like the Simon Cowell of the investment community - he doesn't mince his words and doesn't care about political correctness. He is a believer in the laws of free markets, capital and human achievement.

His words regarding creating wealth in times of uncertainty is a fantastically simple view point that readers would do well to consider when expressing their views on job creation in an election year. More importantly, politicians and presidential candidates and the current administration should be schooled on the principles he outlines. Enter Ziad...

Creating Wealth In Times of Uncertainty
By Ziad Abdelnour

Worldwide wealth seems to be a bygone concept. But is it? Though the global marketplace is alive and vibrant, oppressive regulations, mismanagement, and outright corruption have damaged wealth creation. But it hasn't been eliminated. Today's global marketplace still provides opportunity for discerning investors and companies who are willing to look beyond obstacles of ideology and culture.

There is an old financial adage that says "Capital is coward." It is true. Capital does not like to be inconvenienced, restricted, or threatened. Those who control capital know there is a choice and can move it to more accommodating environments.

Making money is a sovereign human activity that is universally recognized as a natural right. History clearly shows that governments that have tried to contain, regulate, or otherwise usurp capital have failed. It is the same with brainpower; no one has a monopoly on brainpower. Brainpower creates capital, and capital fuels brainpower.

It is a fundamental dynamic principle. Great ideas, solutions, insights, or inventions will develop only where they are nurtured and properly rewarded. That is in a capitalist free market. That is America's true economic cornerstone, but that doesn't mean it is an exclusively American concept. Ignoring the United States is becoming an option for an increasing number of sovereign wealth funds and other major investors around the world. Ignoring this fact might be considered fiscally unwise, if not outright stupid.

The creation of wealth is not bound by artificial boundaries and borders. Nationalism is the underlying theme of the American blue collar philosophers who zealously espouse protectionist policies while denying fiscal reality. They readily sport bumper stickers that read "Buy American" alongside a sticker designating the labor local to which they belong.

The flaw of this reasoning is that being a nationalist has nothing to do with being a patriot or being a citizen. It is just another form of exclusionary distinction. History has shown us that nationalism can lead to tyranny, dictatorship, and inhumanity just as easily as socialism, communism, or any other form of fanaticism, even when it is rebranded and sold under the label of Progressivism, Liberalism, or Conservatism.

It is just those types of exclusive political and economic philosophies that have led us to this latest global economic crisis. That is why it is important to be able to separate the act of wealth creation from the illusion of social engineering, social justice, wealth redistribution, or economic equality.

During this election year there has been a great deal of talk about "job creation." Just once, I would like to hear a presidential candidate promise to substantially increase the number of American millionaires. The initial public offering of Facebook is likely to increase the number of millionaires. This is impressive, but it will be more interesting to see how many new millionaires use their wealth to start companies that may become major employers.

The only thing that is or should be equal to the act of creating wealth is the opportunity to participate. Everything else is naturally and rightfully dependent on personal and often exclusively inherent advantages and disadvantages. The imagined outcomes and side benefits are impossible to guarantee. The shared human experience should have taught us, by any objective standard, that making a mirage your focus will undermine your chances of finding gold.

We now live in a global economy. We do not want nor do we need a global government entity trying to micromanage and control our existence, but the marketplace in which we all now trade is open around the clock every day of the year. There is every kind of deal you can imagine and probably even some you would never have dreamed possible.

There are opportunities to do business almost anywhere on the face of the planet. Some regions of the globe are better places than others to invest; some may have been traditional safe havens, like the EU, that seem to be heading toward almost certain economic disaster due to promises that should never have been made and certainly cannot be kept. There are also areas where it may look attractive to invest, but everything is not as it seems. Discerning the reality is where the use of superior "intelligence gathering" and building global networks pays off.

Super Bowl's Lessons From Mrs. Brady

2012-02-10T10:32:00.000-05:00

Another year, another Super Bowl. As the planet knows by now, the New York Giants did it again. They beat the New England Patriots again. They had a late 4th Quarter winning drive again. Their team did just enough to beat an opponent that was every bit their equal. Yet post-game media was focused on the losing Quarterback's wife, super model and business star Gisele Bundschen, and her comments after the loss.

Here is the quote: "My husband cannot f------ throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time. I can't believe they dropped the ball so many times," the supermodel and wife of the famed quarterback said in a video captured by theinsider.com, a gossip website.

On the surface, this is just more unimportant gossip we are used to in our media. However what stood out to me was the lesson in between the story. I'm not going to talk so much about the comment, whether its right or wrong, or the silly reactions across the internet. Thats all irrelevant. But the lesson I'm talking about is one we can use everyday in our business and lives.

Teams win together and lose together. This is something I learnt at a young age when I switched from an individual sport in tennis to a team sport in football (American Football for you soccer fans). Coaches taught us the importance of 11 men on the field doing their job perfectly in order to win. "Every play is designed to be a touchdown," our coach would say at practice. "Its just a question of every man doing his job."

What I learnt on a football field I have used all my life. My sophomore year in high school I missed a block and the guy hit our running back for a fumble on the last drive of the game. I went home knowing I had lost the game for us. My coach called the house that night to talk to me. "You missed your block, Shar, but you didn't lose the game for us. We lost the game." It didn't do anything for me at the time, believe me.

But years later his words rang in my ear when I was leading a team that spent 9 months on a complex and strategic sales cycle only to come up short in the 11th hour. Management called for a few heads to roll and I fought against this. We lost the deal as a team and our people did a heck of a job getting us to the last round against bigger and better known competition. The client gave us pointed feedback about why we lost and they hit on our weak points which, like Gisele, we could have said let us down. But this is false justification and ultimately the team went on to win other deals and be successful.

I don't know the first thing about Gisele Bundschen but based on her reaction I would assume she hasn't really played competitive team sports. Why should she, she is on track to be the first billion dollar super model. I'm guessing team sports were not in the plan when she was modeling at an early age.

Over the years I have managed and worked with thousands of people. There is a difference in professionals that have played competitive team sports, or been in team situations like the military. This is a generalization and before you misinterpret my comments, its not an absolute rule - I have worked with plenty of folks who never played a sport or took part in a team activity, and they have been great. I've also worked with team players who were not up to par. But there is a difference in thought process, communication and the basic acceptance that we are as strong as the weakest link in our chain.

Successful people know they have to depend on others to be successful. Those who think its all about them are not successful for long. Teams learn to leverage their strengths, and they don't dwell on failure. Great leaders understand this and optimize their teams with the best talent they can find, as long as that talent can work together.

Working and playing in teams has taught me it doesn't matter if you have the league MVP on your side, if one part of the team fails we all do. You have to analyze failure and fix what needs to be fixed, but the objective is to move on and win the next one. Individuals have to understand their role as contributors as well as team members.

It sounds so simple yet we have created an environment that doesn't take into account the importance of competition, winning and losing, and team effort. For example, I can't understand the concept of giving a trophy to everyone that participates because we don't want them to feel left out. What planet do these people live on? Fairness is not about rewarding or recognizing failure. Fairness is about creating competitiveness equality so the best win. If that sounds unfair then good luck to you.

The Fallacy of Social Proof

2012-02-08T01:00:00.000-05:00

Herd behavior is an epidemic in our society today. Known as large groups conforming to choices which may be either correct or mistaken as a result of social influence, psychology research goes pretty deep into this phenomenon. One definition I read for social proof is people assuming the actions of others to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. This effect is prominent in ambiguous social situations where people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior, and is driven by the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation. Regardless of semantics, social proof is in every part of our world.

No doubt in some situations conforming to social norms is the right thing to do. But in business the fallacy of social proof is costing companies and our society billions of dollars each year. I spend most of my professional live working with companies who are trying to solve some kind of problem that involves change. Change is a difficult thing. People, in general, refuse to embrace change unless they are comfortable with it. But most change is anything but comfortable, so the ensuing resistance often results in inaction.

None of this is new to most of you who follow my blog. You are all in different businesses and have been involved with situations where people get in the way of driving improvements because of change. What I try to focus decision makers and influencers on every time I engage in change management is the fallacy of social proof. Entire company cultures are based on shopping around ideas and proposals to gain group acceptance before proceeding. My argument is that need for social proof is unnecessary and costs your organization millions every year.

Here are a few stats we pulled together in my company based on over 1500 projects in 30 countries the past several years:

- 90% of initiatives require some form of change management both inside and outside the organization;
- Approximately 23% of "new initiatives" or "new programs" actually happen. 77% never make it out of the gate;
- Less than 10% of companies admit to mandating initiatives as a way of doing business. Over 90% believe in gaining acceptance or support before moving ahead;
- On average, companies spend 5 months shopping new initiatives internally before deciding on moving ahead. That means many spend more than 2 quarters to get new initiatives off the ground...if successful;
- 80% of decision makers believe initiatives that were shelved for lack of support should have been executed.

The above translates to one thing in my mind: massive waste, inefficiency and lost opportunity.

I have been working with a financial institution that is on the brink of closing it doors. Having accepted TARP funding from the government back in 2008, this institution has yet to pay back a single penny on its loan and its future looks grim. Several initiatives over the past 3 years have failed to get off the ground, and the ones that did have failed to produce results due to half-hearted implementation. The people in this organization have a poor track record of driving the necessary change required to bolster revenues and they are running out of time.

One SVP told me that several initiatives proposed in the past two years failed to get the buy-in of people in the field. I understand the need for equipping those on the front lines with the belief in what you are asking them to do, its a huge part of getting things done right. But when you are on the brink of chapter 11 I'm not sure this step is as important as times past. At some point leaders have to direct, enforce and, if necessary, mandate. Truly great companies take the same approach when times are great.

Another top performing investment bank on Wall Street has a culture of getting buy-in before launching massive initiatives. This firm's belief is that they have the best people in the world working for them, so if your initiative can withstand the bombardment of questions, arguments and resistance, you will implement and succeed in a big way once you obtain social proof. Those ideas that don't make it are shelved. Its not uncommon for initiatives to be debated for 12 months or more. They believe this approach has made all the difference to their success, and its part of their DNA.

Perhaps where I have seen the most damage done from the fallacy of social proof is in the non-profit world. One organization I have served on the board of took three years to make some tough decisions related to leadership and finances. The need to get buy-in from Board members, Foundations and key staff members prevented much needed changes and cost the organization several hundred thousand dollars as a result of inaction. Everyone knew three years ago what needed to be done, but it took three years to gain support to do what we knew was right 36 months ago.

There is no silver bullet when it comes to driving change, and if you don't have support for major initiatives then they will ultimately fail. But leadership can short-cut the ridiculous amount of time, resource and money it takes to do the right thing. Or at least shorten it drastically. And remember, if you want to change behavior you have to address the basic human need for certainty. The best way to achieve this is through inspirational leadership.

New Low For The British

2012-02-04T14:58:00.000-05:00

This past week the British government stripped former RBS CEO Fred Goodwin of his knighthood.

More than anyone alive, the man once known as Sir Fred, came to be associated with the reckless corporate spending of Labour’s boom years, and the greed, vanity and hubris that accompanied them. Fred Goodwin has been the poster child of the 2008 financial crash in the UK and the politicians exploited the people's sentiments by stripping him of the title he was given in 2004. Personally, I think this is one of the lowest points for the British, and a mockery of our intelligence.

There were many other guilty people, not excluding some leading ministers, who have yet to accept responsibility for the decisions that led to the fall of British banking and its economy. Fred Goodwin is an easy target and many of my British friends seem to be satisfied that the government has acted justly in stripping him of his title. Human nature is fascinating, we love a good lynching when things go wrong instead of addressing the true causes of our problems.

I had the honor of working with Fred Goodwin's team between 2000 and 2005. I do not know the man personally and I am not arguing the fact he made a number of bad decisions that led to the fall of RBS. But the vilification of this one-time Forbes Man of the Year by the British media and state is truly disgusting in my view. Goodwin's accomplishments between 2000 and 2007 cannot be argued, and while the man is far from perfect, the charade of scapegoating him for the past 4 years is a rare glimpse into the ugly side of British politics and society.

Many of you will disagree with my views here and thats okay. We can agree to disagree. But consider my arguments for a moment. We live in a society based on a system of law, the UK being an example of a democratic free society. The Financial Services Authority (FSA) attempted to bring charges to Goodwin in 2009 and 2010 but could not find any legal basis, instead concluding that RBS is to blame for ‘multiple poor decisions’ during his stewardship, highlighting its £50billion bid for Dutch bank ABN Ambro in 2007 as an irresponsible ‘gamble’.

Having some insight into those decisions from my time as an advisor to RBS, I agree Sir Fred's biggest mistake was to overpay for a poor performing bank with substantial toxic assets in the US mortgage industry. RBS pre-ABN Ambro did not have the exposure to these risky assets that ultimately brought the house down. I recall a time the Bank was posting profits of £10billion a quarter, and creating over 100,000 jobs from the time Goodwin took over the small Scottish bank and turned it into the 7th largest financial services group in the world. No complaints during those times of performance.

Unlike the bankers and hedge fund managers that have been tried and found guilty of breaking the law for personal gain, Goodwin doesn't fall into the category of thief, cheat or criminal. Arrogant, yes. Ruthless, definitely. But criminal, no. Yet the media and politicians have pressed ahead, forcing him to give back 33% of his pension, and now stripping him of his knighthood in an attempt to shame the man and his family. Vindictive behavior that accomplishes nothing other than satisfying the ugliness of British society in my view, and setting a very dangerous precedent for business leaders in that country.

In the wake of the Queen’s removal of his knighthood on the recommendation of Whitehall’s obscure Forfeiture Committee, many have tried to justify the government's actions, especially given there have been no criminal charges against Fred Goodwin. Many have sited precedents for taking away honours from people who have not been behind bars, such as Jean Else, a teacher stripped of her damehood in 2011, or Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe, undoubtedly guilty of heinous crimes, but never prosecuted. But these examples are not good ones.

Under Goodwin's leadership the once prudent RBS embarked on a frenzy of reckless lending and crazy acquisitions which left the bank perilously short of capital when the bubble burst. It was bailed out at a cost to the taxpayer of £45billion. For this he lost his job and the financial penalties that go with that, and his reputation as a business leader left in ruins. Legally and ethically it should end there, but four years later we are still pressing ahead with hurting the man and his family anyway we can, short of hanging him in the town square.

My issue with this is the message we are giving to business leaders, entrepreneurs and anyone who is willing to take the risk of creating a business. It used to be that if you made a mistake in business you would lose financially and reputationally. Now we are saying if you f*ck up we will ostracize you and your family, take away any wealth you may have legally earned in the past, and strip you of your basic human rights to privacy, safety and existence. Fortunately for Fred Goodwin, the man, they have misjudged just how tough this SOB is. He will never bow to society's hatred no matter how hard they come at him.

To me, this is a low point for the British people and another example of how villainous their government and media can be. History is riddled with the meddling of the British, causing some of the biggest catastrophe's of our world, including the current siutations in Palestine and Iran, to name just two. As an admirer of all the accomplishments and history of Britain, this past week has been shameful.

BS Thyself Not

2012-01-20T01:26:00.000-05:00

I had a boss early in my career who was one of those philosophical types, always dropping sayings or quotes to make his point. He thought he was quite smart and cool, very pleased with himself when he could drop a Churchill or Emerson quote, two of his favorites. We all thought he was a bore at the time.

Yet years later I've been thinking a lot about a quote he repeated time and time again after meeting with clients. We were a consulting firm focused on the marketing operations area in a variety of industries. Our clients often hired us with an outcome in mind and used our findings to drive sales, marketing and product strategy. This was pre-internet days (I'm getting old) and information was still a hard commodity to collect, analyze and interpret into actionable data. Our work often served as proof to support an ambitious marketing executive's ideas and career aspirations. At least three of our clients moved on to C-level positions on the back of successful marketing initiatives we supported. It was a great game and we had front row seats.

But I digress.

The quote we heard over and over again after client meetings was "BS Thyself Not". Not sure where he came up with this one, I can't find a single reference to it, but they are three of the most truthful words I know. Especially in today's world.

Our clients were masterful at avoiding the truth. One executive was hell-bent on pricing his new product at a premium to compete with the leader in the market. The trouble was our research didn't support this view. Pricing research was a big practice area for us. I interviewed potential customers myself and there was no way they were paying the same price point for our client's product than the leaders. The brand equity wasn't there. The client moved ahead anyway.

20 years later nothing has changed, except perhaps the BS has gotten bigger and broader. People want to believe. They need to believe.

Companies BS themselves. Management BS shareholders. Salesmen sell BS. Entrepreneurs live on BS. Politicians BS everyone. Government loves to BS. The Media is full of BS. Celebrities believe their BS. People buy the BS.

BS Thyself Not.

People have a lot of difficulty with this. We can be put in a situation on a daily basis where we have to choose between doing what we believe is right and what is convenient. It takes courage, discipline and character to do the right thing every time. After all we don't want to offend anyone in this politically correct society we have sprouted. Or God forbid we do something unpopular or are perceived not to be a team player. BS Thyself Not.

I've certainly faced right or wrong decisions too many times to count, as I'm sure you have. Some are tougher than others. But one thing I have learned is there is no justification to BS thyself. Even if it means putting it all on the line. An excellent book about this topic is A Time To Betray by Reza Kahlili.

BS Thyself Not. Did the cowards at Penn State BS themselves that they didn't know or they did all they could? Does President Obama really think his administration has done a good job with the economy? Do we really believe our education system is doing right by our children? Do the Kardashians really think they have talent? BS Thyself Not.

We have heard leading politicians from both sides say over the years that everyone in Washington is well-intentioned even if they are wrong. This is perhaps the most absurd BS I have heard. It not only attempts to justify some of the BS our government officials do in our name, but tries to make it noble. Nonsense. BS Thyself Not.

The words resonate louder today than back in those days. But the time my old boss really nailed it was when we called him out on his new girlfriend who was half his age. Hey Boss, why is this beautiful lady in love with you? My great body he responded! And then he said BS Thyself Not!

The Need For Quantifiable Objectives

2012-01-15T20:29:00.000-05:00

2012 is meant to be the year America makes its economic comeback. Since the economy tanked in 2007-8, we have been conditioned to believe that economic power and superiority has passed to China and our era was over. The US has too much debt, not enough prospect for growth, and we have outsourced our way to becoming an irrelevant economy.

Our politicians haven't helped. Knee-jerk reactions to the financial crisis and rising healthcare costs have resulted in damaging regulations that continue to keep a stranglehold on progress. Record high unemployment, real-estate losses and extremely tight credit markets add to the picture of gloom that started 2011.

However the year ended with a realization that while all of these concerns are valid, the picture is not rosier elsewhere. China is showing too many cracks in its economy, political and social status. India and Brazil are still shining but the risks are higher than ever in those economies too. Political instability around the world are major concerns for investors. And Europe is potentially going to bring down any hopes of growth in the global economy for decades.

There is no better place to invest your money than the US. Thats how we ended 2011 and the outlook for 2012 is hopeful, at best.

In my business I speak with business executives across all industries of the economy. Operational excellence is an area that is not only full of opportunity for companies to exploit, but is crucial to any hope of building a strong future. The best companies are focused on achieving efficiency, managing and reducing risk, increasing quality, while containing costs. This has to be a top three focus for any CEO and management team in 2012 and beyond. We are not going to sell our way out of the threats to our future.

Yet in discussions with top executives of both Fortune 500 and mid-cap companies, we are encountering a very relaxed, "do-nothing" attitude. At a high-level, many companies believe they have done enough in the past 10 years and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Areas of focus have shifted to sustainability, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and mandated statistics around how many female or diverse board members we have. While these may be important areas to look at, they are neither quantifiable or impactful to the challenges we face as an economy. I am not suggesting we dismiss these areas, but they do nothing for fixing the problems and challenges we face.

Business managers have to focus on key performance indicators that can be measured. In a meeting with a Chief Procurement Officer last week I was told that their top objective for 2012 is to convince their organization to share notes across divisions in the hope of finding leverage. No numerical objectives, no savings targets, no sense of urgency to find efficiencies. This is a global $7B industrial company after all.

Another COO at a $200m company had us review their packaging spend. They spend $2.5m a year with 7 suppliers. They have no contracts in place and their suppliers have increased prices three times a year for the past 4 years. No one can explain why. We found tremendous opportunity to improve this area, save cost and reduce the risk associated with unpredictability. His people panicked and he told us he didn't want to "force his people to do something they didn't want to". I wonder what his shareholders would say.

A Fortune 500 financial services firm has taken a beating in the past three years from the regulations and backlash of the crash. Supply Chain Risk is an area of focus and to their credit they have done a nice job investing in a team of people to oversee key suppliers across their business. Our firm has deep expertise in this area, having worked with a dozen clients in the past three years on risk management in the supply base. After several meetings it became clear that they have absolutely no hard measurable objectives in this area. No cost savings, no service improvements, no innovation targets and no clear risk metrics. "We want to improve this area in 2012" is the goal for 20 people.

I have spent 20 years working with people in a variety of industries. My main learning is that the people in the heart of operations rarely do the right thing. The mindset is simple: is my job secure? Is my influence and power being reduced? Am I losing control? Only if these questions are addressed do they ask is this the right thing for our business?

The best clients I have worked with have a culture of discipline. Discipline, after all, is all about doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons, no matter how hard. They are becoming a rare breed and hard to find, especially in companies of any significant size i.e. $100m and above.

I am very hopeful about the future of our country because there are still many companies and individuals who are focused on changing the world. Whether its a company like Apple who has single handedly killed the status quo of the PC market, the cell phone market, the software market and the music industry, or the many start-ups in Silicon Valley and around the country, these companies, led by courageous leaders, are taking markets away from lazy incumbents hoping for a sense of security.

Blackberry is a great example of a company that took the world by surprise in 2000 and is now at risk of dying. Remember Motorola? Krispy Kreme was talk of the town in 2003. Kodak. Blockbuster. Chrysler. Kmart. Royal Bank of Scotland. The US Post Office. Fannie and Freddie. And all the ones we haven't heard of.

The list is long and many will have you believe these companies weren't innovative enough or didn't listen to their customers. I believe the real reason why they have fallen is the inability to execute. Too many people inside these companies were pre-occupied with maintaining the status quo, protecting their jobs and keeping a firm control of their perceived power inside the company.

Execution is as much about setting the right quantifiable goals and metrics, as it is strategy, innovation and leadership. We have to fix this in America as this is where we face competition from Asia and Brazil.

Who Are You Spending Your Time With?

2011-12-27T06:14:00.000-05:00

I've been relaxing in Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania the past week. Zanzibar was on a very long list of places I have always wanted to travel. Known as the Isle of Spice, the history and beauty of this place deserves a closer look. I highly recommend you google it and read about what makes this small island nation so unique. From its Islamic roots as a trading post to its unique architecture, Zanzibar has far exceeded any expectations I had when I packed my bags and set off for the 20-hour trip.

But enough about the place, this post is about some of the thoughts one gathers when you are relaxing on a sandy beach overlooking the Indian Ocean and wondering what cocktail to try next. Christmas has always been a time of reflection to me. In the early years of my career, the only time off I took was the five days between Christmas and New Years when the business truly shut down and no one would return calls. You look back on the year and ask yourself all kinds of questions: what did I achieve? What did I learn? What can I do better?

These questions never get old and perhaps the only difference today is that we tend to ask ourselves that question more often than just once a year. At least I hope you do. This year the question that has preoccupied me is am I spending my time with the people I want to?

Given my nomadic background, my close family lives on a different continent from me and to say that I miss them is an understatement. I come from a very close family and, while we have lived apart for many years now, we are extremely close. Like any other relationship, we have all made choices that impact where we live. My parents are committed to living in Europe. I am committed to the US. Reasons don't matter, its the way it is.

But going beyond family, the crux of my question is more about the people we interact with every day. Colleagues, clients, neighbors, friends...Are the people we spend significant time with the right people?

The Zanzibaris are some of the purest human beings I have ever met. A mix of Africans, Indians and Arabs, you wouldn't know it given their behavior towards one another. At first I thought they tolerate each other. But after spending a week here and getting to know many of them, its more than tolerance. Its a basic respect for one another. Zanzibar is primarily Islamic, yet the muslim walking in the mosque stops to wish me a Merry Christmas.

"Its Jesus' birthday today!" he yells with a big smile on his face. "Merry Christmas!"

I learnt at an early age that you have to be extremely picky about the people you associate with. I know, it sounds arrogant. But I don't really care, I remember too many so called 'friends' of my parents taking advantage of their good nature when I was young. I have always been extremely choosy about who I call friend, who I share my time with and who I let in my personal circle. Family members don't get a pass either, plenty a cousin, aunt or uncle felt my size 11 boot up their rear end as I threw them out of my circle. Who you spend time with is important.

And so as I look back on 2011 I feel blessed to have met some great people and spent time with them. My partners in our business are truly high quality people who are about doing the right thing no matter what. I can't think of a finer group of people to work with around the world. And the new friends I have made this year are just as amazing. Having spent time at the Leaf and Bean in Pittsburgh, you meet some unique individuals from all walks of life.

From the 74 year-old entrepreneur launching another ambitious business to the Haliburton exec building his own cigar brand on the side to the owner of the bakery round the corner, high quality people come in all shapes and sizes. I am very thankful for having incredibly high standards when it comes to people I spend time with.

Too many folks don't think about this question. We have a choice as to who we spend time with, who we let in our circle, and who we don't. Quality of life is not just about how much money you make, how many things you can buy etc. Its about who you spend your time with (and who you don't).

Interestingly we ponder this question when it comes to choosing a mentor or coach. Several organizations I am involved with try to engineer mentorship programs, but I have always believed mentors are more impactful when the relationship develops naturally.

I recall early in my career I was assigned a mentor by the company who was simply horrendous in my view. Arrogant, pompous, and extremely frustrated, this Director and I were not meant to be. It left a very bad taste in my mouth when it comes to forced mentorship programs that some companies promote. The situation changed later when some terrific leaders took notice of my hard work and took me under their arm. They made a true difference in my life and continue to do so today.

Friends are no different. By holding a high standard, especially as adults, we attract the right people and avoid the bad. Take a few minutes to think about this question as you relax over the holidays and prepare for what will likely be another massive year for you and the world.

How Will You Measure Your Life?: Guest Post

2011-11-22T19:38:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. This American dose of culture should truly be exported to the rest of the world. Not only is the meaning of Thanksgiving a noble one, but the fact that it brings families together for a day or two makes it that much more special.

But the sad fact for many American families is that the Turkey holiday is one of the very few times in the year they actually sit down with their family to enjoy a meal and each other. All kinds of statistics show most families rarely break bread together, and when they do its a kind of forced occurrence. My father taught us a lot of things at the dinner table, I can't imagine not having that kind of quality time with my kids in the future.

Thanksgiving is also a time of reflection on life and the many blessings we have. In this spirit I want to share an incredible post my good friend Martin from London sent me. Clayton Christensen is a well known Harvard Professor and his piece on How Will You Measure Your Life? is full of wisdom collected over a lifetime. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Enter Professor Christensen...

How Will You Measure Your Life?
by Clayton M. Christensen
Harvard Business School

Before I published The Innovator’s Dilemma, I got a call from Andrew Grove, then the chairman of Intel. He had read one of my early papers about disruptive technology, and he asked if I could talk to his direct reports and explain my research and what it implied for Intel. Excited, I flew to Silicon Valley and showed up at the appointed time, only to have Grove say, “Look, stuff has happened. We have only 10 minutes for you. Tell us what your model of disruption means for Intel.” I said that I couldn’t—that I needed a full 30 minutes to explain the model, because only with it as context would any comments about Intel make sense. Ten minutes into my explanation, Grove interrupted: “Look, I’ve got your model. Just tell us what it means for Intel.”

I insisted that I needed 10 more minutes to describe how the process of disruption had worked its way through a very different industry, steel, so that he and his team could understand how disruption worked. I told the story of how Nucor and other steel minimills had begun by attacking the lowest end of the market—steel reinforcing bars, or rebar—and later moved up toward the high end, undercutting the traditional steel mills.

When I finished the minimill story, Grove said, “OK, I get it. What it means for Intel is...,” and then went on to articulate what would become the company’s strategy for going to the bottom of the market to launch the Celeron processor.

I’ve thought about that a million times since. If I had been suckered into telling Andy Grove what he should think about the microprocessor business, I’d have been killed. But instead of telling him what to think, I taught him how to think—and then he reached what I felt was the correct decision on his own.

That experience had a profound influence on me. When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models. I’ll describe how the process in the model worked its way through an industry quite different from their own. And then, more often than not, they’ll say, “OK, I get it.” And they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.

My class at HBS is structured to help my students understand what good management theory is and how it is built. To that backbone I attach different models or theories that help students think about the various dimensions of a general manager’s job in stimulating innovation and growth. In each session we look at one company through the lenses of those theories—using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examine what managerial actions will yield the needed results.

On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions: First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail? Though the last question sounds lighthearted, it’s not. Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of mine at HBS. These were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction.

As the students discuss the answers to these questions, I open my own life to them as a case study of sorts, to illustrate how they can use the theories from our course to guide their life decisions.

One of the theories that gives great insight on the first question—how to be sure we find happiness in our careers—is from Frederick Herzberg, who asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements. I tell the students about a vision of sorts I had while I was running the company I founded before becoming an academic. In my mind’s eye I saw one of my managers leave for work one morning with a relatively strong level of self-esteem. Then I pictured her driving home to her family 10 hours later, feeling unappreciated, frustrated, underutilized, and demeaned. I imagined how profoundly her lowered self-esteem affected the way she interacted with her children. The vision in my mind then fast-forwarded to another day, when she drove home with greater self-esteem—feeling that she had learned a lot, been recognized for achieving valuable things, and played a significant role in the success of some important initiatives. I then imagined how positively that affected her as a spouse and a parent. My conclusion: Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team. More and more MBA students come to school thinking that a career in business means buying, selling, and investing in companies. That’s unfortunate. Doing deals doesn’t yield the deep rewards that come from building up people.

I want students to leave my classroom knowing that.

Create a Strategy for Your Life

A theory that is helpful in answering the second question—How can I ensure that my relationship with my family proves to be an enduring source of happiness?—concerns how strategy is defined and implemented. Its primary insight is that a company’s strategy is determined by the types of initiatives that management invests in. If a company’s resource allocation process is not managed masterfully, what emerges from it can be very different from what management intended. Because companies’ decision-making systems are designed to steer investments to initiatives that offer the most tangible and immediate returns, companies shortchange investments in initiatives that are crucial to their long-term strategies.

Over the years I’ve watched the fates of my HBS classmates from 1979 unfold; I’ve seen more and more of them come to reunions unhappy, divorced, and alienated from their children. I can guarantee you that not a single one of them graduated with the deliberate strategy of getting divorced and raising children who would become estranged from them. And yet a shocking number of them implemented that strategy. The reason? They didn’t keep the purpose of their lives front and center as they decided how to spend their time, talents, and energy.

It’s quite startling that a significant fraction of the 900 students that HBS draws each year from the world’s best have given little thought to the purpose of their lives. I tell the students that HBS might be one of their last chances to reflect deeply on that question. If they think that they’ll have more time and energy to reflect later, they’re nuts, because life only gets more demanding: You take on a mortgage; you’re working 70 hours a week; you have a spouse and children.

For me, having a clear purpose in my life has been essential. But it was something I had to think long and hard about before I understood it. When I was a Rhodes scholar, I was in a very demanding academic program, trying to cram an extra year’s worth of work into my time at Oxford. I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth. That was a very challenging commitment to keep, because every hour I spent doing that, I wasn’t studying applied econometrics. I was conflicted about whether I could really afford to take that time away from my studies, but I stuck with it—and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life.

Had I instead spent that hour each day learning the latest techniques for mastering the problems of autocorrelation in regression analysis, I would have badly misspent my life. I apply the tools of econometrics a few times a year, but I apply my knowledge of the purpose of my life every day. It’s the single most useful thing I’ve ever learned. I promise my students that if they take the time to figure out their life purpose, they’ll look back on it as the most important thing they discovered at HBS. If they don’t figure it out, they will just sail off without a rudder and get buffeted in the very rough seas of life. Clarity about their purpose will trump knowledge of activity-based costing, balanced scorecards, core competence, disruptive innovation, the four Ps, and the five forces.

My purpose grew out of my religious faith, but faith isn’t the only thing that gives people direction. For example, one of my former students decided that his purpose was to bring honesty and economic prosperity to his country and to raise children who were as capably committed to this cause, and to each other, as he was. His purpose is focused on family and others—as mine is.

The choice and successful pursuit of a profession is but one tool for achieving your purpose. But without a purpose, life can become hollow.

Allocate Your Resources

Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, and talent ultimately shape your life’s strategy.

I have a bunch of “businesses” that compete for these resources: I’m trying to have a rewarding relationship with my wife, raise great kids, contribute to my community, succeed in my career, contribute to my church, and so on. And I have exactly the same problem that a corporation does. I have a limited amount of time and energy and talent. How much do I devote to each of these pursuits?

Allocation choices can make your life turn out to be very different from what you intended. Sometimes that’s good: Opportunities that you never planned for emerge. But if you misinvest your resources, the outcome can be bad. As I think about my former classmates who inadvertently invested for lives of hollow unhappiness, I can’t help believing that their troubles relate right back to a short-term perspective.

When people who have a high need for achievement—and that includes all Harvard Business School graduates—have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. And our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale, teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that lens, you’ll see the same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most.

Create a Culture

There’s an important model in our class called the Tools of Cooperation, which basically says that being a visionary manager isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s one thing to see into the foggy future with acuity and chart the course corrections that the company must make. But it’s quite another to persuade employees who might not see the changes ahead to line up and work cooperatively to take the company in that new direction. Knowing what tools to wield to elicit the needed cooperation is a critical managerial skill.

The theory arrays these tools along two dimensions—the extent to which members of the organization agree on what they want from their participation in the enterprise, and the extent to which they agree on what actions will produce the desired results. When there is little agreement on both axes, you have to use “power tools”—coercion, threats, punishment, and so on—to secure cooperation. Many companies start in this quadrant, which is why the founding executive team must play such an assertive role in defining what must be done and how. If employees’ ways of working together to address those tasks succeed over and over, consensus begins to form. MIT’s Edgar Schein has described this process as the mechanism by which a culture is built. Ultimately, people don’t even think about whether their way of doing things yields success. They embrace priorities and follow procedures by instinct and assumption rather than by explicit decision—which means that they’ve created a culture. Culture, in compelling but unspoken ways, dictates the proven, acceptable methods by which members of the group address recurrent problems. And culture defines the priority given to different types of problems. It can be a powerful management tool.

In using this model to address the question, How can I be sure that my family becomes an enduring source of happiness?, my students quickly see that the simplest tools that parents can wield to elicit cooperation from children are power tools. But there comes a point during the teen years when power tools no longer work. At that point parents start wishing that they had begun working with their children at a very young age to build a culture at home in which children instinctively behave respectfully toward one another, obey their parents, and choose the right thing to do. Families have cultures, just as companies do. Those cultures can be built consciously or evolve inadvertently.

If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won’t magically materialize in high school. You have to design them into your family’s culture—and you have to think about this very early on. Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.

Avoid the “Marginal Costs” Mistake

We’re taught in finance and economics that in evaluating alternative investments, we should ignore sunk and fixed costs, and instead base decisions on the marginal costs and marginal revenues that each alternative entails. We learn in our course that this doctrine biases companies to leverage what they have put in place to succeed in the past, instead of guiding them to create the capabilities they’ll need in the future. If we knew the future would be exactly the same as the past, that approach would be fine. But if the future’s different—and it almost always is—then it’s the wrong thing to do.

This theory addresses the third question I discuss with my students—how to live a life of integrity (stay out of jail). Unconsciously, we often employ the marginal cost doctrine in our personal lives when we choose between right and wrong. A voice in our head says, “Look, I know that as a general rule, most people shouldn’t do this. But in this particular extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s OK.” The marginal cost of doing something wrong “just this once” always seems alluringly low. It suckers you in, and you don’t ever look at where that path ultimately is headed and at the full costs that the choice entails. Justification for infidelity and dishonesty in all their manifestations lies in the marginal cost economics of “just this once.”

I’d like to share a story about how I came to understand the potential damage of “just this once” in my own life. I played on the Oxford University varsity basketball team. We worked our tails off and finished the season undefeated. The guys on the team were the best friends I’ve ever had in my life. We got to the British equivalent of the NCAA tournament—and made it to the final four. It turned out the championship game was scheduled to be played on a Sunday. I had made a personal commitment to God at age 16 that I would never play ball on Sunday. So I went to the coach and explained my problem. He was incredulous. My teammates were, too, because I was the starting center. Every one of the guys on the team came to me and said, “You’ve got to play. Can’t you break the rule just this one time?”

I’m a deeply religious man, so I went away and prayed about what I should do. I got a very clear feeling that I shouldn’t break my commitment—so I didn’t play in the championship game.

In many ways that was a small decision—involving one of several thousand Sundays in my life. In theory, surely I could have crossed over the line just that one time and then not done it again. But looking back on it, resisting the temptation whose logic was “In this extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s OK” has proven to be one of the most important decisions of my life. Why? My life has been one unending stream of extenuating circumstances. Had I crossed the line that one time, I would have done it over and over in the years that followed.

The lesson I learned from this is that it’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you’ll regret where you end up. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.

Remember the Importance of Humility

I got this insight when I was asked to teach a class on humility at Harvard College. I asked all the students to describe the most humble person they knew. One characteristic of these humble people stood out: They had a high level of self-esteem. They knew who they were, and they felt good about who they were. We also decided that humility was defined not by self-deprecating behavior or attitudes but by the esteem with which you regard others. Good behavior flows naturally from that kind of humility. For example, you would never steal from someone, because you respect that person too much. You’d never lie to someone, either.

It’s crucial to take a sense of humility into the world. By the time you make it to a top graduate school, almost all your learning has come from people who are smarter and more experienced than you: parents, teachers, bosses. But once you’ve finished at Harvard Business School or any other top academic institution, the vast majority of people you’ll interact with on a day-to-day basis may not be smarter than you. And if your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited. But if you have a humble eagerness to learn something from everybody, your learning opportunities will be unlimited. Generally, you can be humble only if you feel really good about yourself—and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves, too. When we see people acting in an abusive, arrogant, or demeaning manner toward others, their behavior almost always is a symptom of their lack of self-esteem. They need to put someone else down to feel good about themselves.

Choose the Right Yardstick

This past year I was diagnosed with cancer and faced the possibility that my life would end sooner than I’d planned. Thankfully, it now looks as if I’ll be spared. But the experience has given me important insight into my life.

I have a pretty clear idea of how my ideas have generated enormous revenue for companies that have used my research; I know I’ve had a substantial impact. But as I’ve confronted this disease, it’s been interesting to see how unimportant that impact is to me now. I’ve concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn’t dollars but the individual people whose lives I’ve touched.

I think that’s the way it will work for us all. Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation: Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.

Do The Right Thing

2011-11-16T12:49:00.000-05:00

I was traveling through Nicaragua last month for a week and was blown away by everything that country has to offer. The city of Granada is the oldest town in all of Central and South America. Beautiful colonial architecture, very safe and bustling with tourist friendly activity. The Mombacho volcano shadows the town that sits on Lake Nicaragua, one of the largest fresh water lakes in the world. Great food and friendly people, lots of nice hotels and restaurants make for a great long weekend getaway (4-5 day stay is perfect).

What struck me most about Nicaragua and its people however was the entrepreneurship. It’s not the same version as we see here in the US - entrepreneurship that stems from determination and adventure in a free society (yes, I believe we still have a free society regardless of the doom and gloom you read in the media). Nicaraguans are relentless entrepreneurs out of necessity and survival. It’s a different genesis but still results in the same hard-nosed, do-or-die imperative that makes entrepreneurs so different from the average Joe.

What is remarkable to me when I travel around the world is the attitude of the people you meet. Some folks in the US are of the view that we need more life 'balance' and should emulate our European cousins more. Others take a more extreme view that we are better off with our own blend of socialism so everyone is taken care of. On the other end of the spectrum there are hardcore believers in minimal government and every man for himself. And in-between you have a whole range of views from conservative to independent to liberal.

This is all nonsense. We need to wake up and embrace our roots as a country that was built on hard work, values, and defending our individual rights to pursue happiness. All of this under a system of laws that reward doing the right thing.

In Nicaragua I witnessed hard working people who, while limited in skills and quality, put their family, faith and society ahead of anything else. I don't want to paint a rosy picture, there are serious flaws especially with regards to morality and corruption, but if you are a native Nica caught in the system you have two basic choices: make your way or perish.

As someone who is privileged to be living in the United States I took a lot of lessons from the week I spent there. Hard work, clarity of goals and family are truly the core elements of wealth. I left Nicaragua determined to seek simplicity in every avenue of life back home. It is easy to complicate things through focusing on the wrong things, getting stuck on issues that have no bearing on your happiness, health or purpose.

I see this every day with the clients I work with. My client asked me the other day why is it so hard to get people to do the right thing. I asked him what does he mean by 'do the right thing'? The challenge in our world today is that the pace of change is faster than it ever has been in the past. Companies, and especially their employees, don't handle this well. When you propose a change to employees it takes more than arguing that it’s the right thing. Employees are flawed in that their thought process is as follows:

- Is my job safe?

- Is my power reduced?

- And only then do they think, okay, lets do the right thing.

Some say this is human nature, and while this may be true, it doesn't make it anymore right. When proposing change you have to address this flawed thinking on the part of all affected, but the mistake many companies make is to try to build consensus at the individual level. That’s not going to happen when change brings a shift in someone's position, power or job security.

I was faced with this recently when working with the CEO of a manufacturing company. We found an opportunity to run a simple project on their packaging spend where we believe there is significant savings and improvement opportunity with a broader supply base. These guys don't even have contracts in place. We agreed terms with the CEO and sent the agreement for signature at his request. The CEO didn't want to "force" his team to do the project but strongly encouraged them to go with it. What do you think happened?

The little purchasing guy who has been responsible for this area felt personally at risk. The resistance and confusion he created was awesome. My personal conclusion is that he is either in bed with his current suppliers or at the very least knows he is exposed for not doing his job the past 10 years. Needless to say the project is stalled and we don't expect that to change. This one guy managed to torpedo a change that would have improved the performance of the company. And the CEO is going to let him get away with it - this is criminal in my view.

This kind of situation happens every day in companies, small and large, as well as in everyday life. We saw the most unbelievable example of this at Penn State with the child abuse situation. Cowards take the easy way out. Doing the right thing is what we have to find our way back to.

Jack Welch once said, "When the pace of change outside the company higher than inside the company, the end is near." I think Jack's words go beyond change. When our people choose not to do the right thing more often than doing the right thing then the end is inevitable.

Why the Peter Principle Works: Guest Post

2011-08-31T10:16:00.000-04:00

There is so much crap on the internet these days I find myself craving something good to read. Magazines and Newsletters are no different. Twitter is a minefield of useless sh*t people say. Its like every idiot with a keyboard is a writer now, or I should say 'blogger'. Trouble is they don't have a heck of a lot to say...at least that that I find of interest.

Yet Steve Tobak's blog The Corner Office on BNET is one of the few consistent pieces that leaves you learning something new every time. The other day I read his piece on the Peter Principle and it brought back memories of colleagues competing for promotions and titles, high-performers reaching far beyond their means and a little start-up company that dreamt of changing the world one day.

Steve's article is an insightful read on how things really are in the corporate system in America. Love it or hate it, individuals are made up of egos and courage, and those who have more than the rest of us rise to the very top of their world. Question is can they stay there or will they be knocked off their perch?

I hope you enjoy Steve's guest post and check out his blog The Corner Office on BNET sometime...its one of the few credible reads out there.

Why the Peter Principle Works
By Steve Tobak
August 15, 2011

Everyone’s heard of the Peter Principle - that employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence - a concept that walks that all-too-fine line between humor and reality.

We’ve all seen it in action more times than we’d like. Ironically, some percentage of you will almost certainly be promoted to a position where you’re no longer effective. For some of you, that’s already happened. Sobering thought.

Well, here’s the thing. Not only is the Peter Principle alive and well in corporate America, but contrary to popular wisdom, it’s actuallynecessary for a healthy capitalist system. That’s right, you heard it here, folks, incompetence is a good thing. Here’s why.

Robert Browning once said, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.” It’s a powerful statement that means you should seek to improve your situation, strive to go above and beyond. Not only is that an embodiment of capitalism, but it also leads directly to the Peter Principle because, well, how do you know when to quit?

Now, most of us don’t perpetually reach for the stars, but until there’s clear evidence that we’re not doing ourselves or anyone else any good, we’re bound to keep right on reaching. After all, objectivity is notoriously difficult when opportunities for a better life are staring you right in the face.

I mean, who turns down promotions? Who doesn’t strive to reach that next rung on the ladder? When you get an email from an executive recruiter about a VP or CEO job, are you likely to respond, “Sorry, I think that may be beyond my competency” when you’ve got to send two kids to college and you may actually want to retire someday?

Wasn’t America founded by people who wanted a better life for themselves and their children? God knows, there were plenty of indications that they shouldn’t take the plunge and, if they did, wouldn’t succeed. That’s called a challenge and, well, do you ever really know if you’ve reached too far until after the fact?

Perhaps the most interesting embodiment of all this is the way people feel about CEOs. Some think pretty much anyone can do a CEO’s job for a fraction of the compensation. Seriously, you hear that sort of thing a lot, especially these days with class warfare being the rage and all.

One The Corner Office reader asked straight out in an email: “Would you agree that, in most cases, the company could fire the CEO and hire someone young, smart, and hungry at 1/10 the salary/perks/bonuses who would achieve the same performance?”

Sure, it’s easy: you just set the direction, hire a bunch of really smart executives, then get out of the way and let them do their jobs. Once in a blue moon you swoop in, deal with a problem, then return to your ivory tower. Simple.

Well, not exactly.

You see, I sort of grew up at Texas Instruments in the 80s when the company was nearly run into the ground by Mark Shepherd and J. Fred Bucy - two CEOs who never should have gotten that far in their careers.

But the company’s board, in its wisdom, promoted Jerry Junkins and, after his untimely death, Tom Engibous, to the CEO post. Not only were those guys competent, they revived the company and transformed it into what it is today.

I’ve seen what a strong CEO can do for a company, its customers, its shareholders, and its employees. I’ve also seen the destruction the Peter Principle can bring to those same stakeholders. But, even now, after 30 years of corporate and consulting experience, the one thing I’ve never seen is a CEO or executive with an easy job.

That’s because there’s no such thing. And to think you can eliminate incompetency from the executive ranks when it exists at every organizational level is, to be blunt, childlike or Utopian thinking. It’s silly and trite. It doesn’t even make sense.

It’s not as if TI’s board knew ahead of time that Shepherd and Bucy weren’t the right guys for the job. They’d both had long, successful careers at the company. But the board did right the ship in time. And that’s the mark of a healthy system at work.

The other day I read a truly fantastic story in Fortune about the rise and fall of Jeffrey Kindler as CEO of troubled pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. I remember when he suddenly stepped down amidst all sorts of rumor and conjecture about the underlying causes of the shocking news.

What really happened is the guy had a fabulous career as a litigator, climbed the corporate ladder to general counsel of McDonald’s and then Pfizer, had some limited success in operations, and once he was promoted to CEO, flamed out. Not because he was incompetent - he wasn’t. And certainly not because he was a dysfunctional, antagonistic, micromanaging control freak - he was.

He failed because it was a really tough job and he was in over his head. It happens. It happens a lot. After all, this wasn’t just some everyday company that’s simple to run. This was Pfizer - a pharmaceutical giant with its top products going generic and a dried-up drug pipeline in need of a major overhaul.

The guy couldn’t handle it. And when executives with issues get in over their heads, their issues become their undoing. It comes as no surprise that folks at McDonald’s were surprised at the way he flamed out at Pfizer. That was a whole different ballgame.

Now, I bet those same people who think a CEO’s job is a piece of cake will have a similar response to the Kindler situation at Pfizer. Why take the job if he knew he couldn’t handle it? The board should have canned him before it got to that point. Why didn’t the guy’s executives speak up sooner?

Because, just like at TI, nobody knows ahead of time if people are going to be effective on the next rung of the ladder. Every situation is unique and there are no questions or test that will foretell the future. I mean, it’s not as if King Solomon comes along and writes who the right guy for the job is on the wall.

The Peter Principle works because, in a capitalist system, there are top performers, abysmal failures, and everything in between. Expecting anything different when people must reach for the stars to achieve growth and success so our children have a better life than ours isn’t how it works in the real world.

The Peter Principle works because it’s the yin to Browning’s yang, the natural outcome of striving to better our lives. Want to know how to bring down a free market capitalist system? Don’t take the promotion because you’re afraid to fail.

The Number One Success Factor

2011-07-22T18:58:00.000-04:00

The difference between success and getting by in life could be down to whether you understand the simple rules of networking. At least that is what some 20 extremely successful individuals I have been informally interviewing tell me. And it agrees with my own experience of launching my company, BrainNet, in North America the past year. The trouble is the majority of people still do not understand how or why they need to be networking.

The basic problem is one of being open to connect with people you do not know. The majority of people are wired not to take calls or connect with people they don't know. Its human nature, and understandable to a degree, especially if you had a few bad experiences like the guy who called me last year claiming we went to school together except he was 7 years younger and never been outside of the US (my MBA was in Europe). Regardless, my discussions with highly successful people from all walks of life told me they are always open to making contact with new people no matter how obscure at first.

I spoke to 20 individuals who have either built successful businesses or reached pinnacle levels in their career. I didn't just focus on big, I also spoke with people who have had success in Small and Medium sized endeavors.

Lets start with Rich. For the past 21 years Rich has built a successful niche business qualifying what he terms "projects" that need financing and introducing the good ones to private investor communities. Rich's business is highly specialized as it is based solely on the strength of the relationships he has built with private people who manage and advise private wealth. That means he has to find the "good" projects, qualify them and the individuals behind them, and by introducing them to the money people he is essentially putting his name on the project.

In 21 years Rich has built a very comfortable business for himself, traveling the world to qualify projects, never been sued, and successfully financed hundreds of projects in over 80 countries. While hard work, constant travel (he was US Airway's number one frequent flyer last year), and long hours are all pre-requisites, Rich claims his number one success factor has been his ability to network, build relationships and quickly qualify what is real and what is not, what has potential, and what doesn't.

"On average I look at 250 projects a year, work on 50 and may only secure financing for 25% of them. But the relationships I have built are the true assets in my business. I build friendships and relationships that have lasted two decades." His basic advice to anyone is always treat new contacts with respect and integrity, even if they are not the real thing.

My former boss and friend, Dave, has a similar approach he believes have been key to his successful career. Just shy of 50, Dave has an impressive resume - PhD from Princeton, published a book, Gulf War I veteran, helped build a start-up into a Nasdaq listed company as CEO, served in a number of Undersecretary positions for the United States and now a top executive with one of the most successful Hedge Funds on the planet.

Working under Dave I can honestly say he is one of the most remarkable professionals I know, but his biggest strength is how artfully he manages relationships. One of the busiest men on the planet, Dave always returns your e-mails or calls. When working for him he taught me his system for successful networking. He kept what he called a call list - one column was a list of people he wanted to reach out to, the other was folks he owed a response to because they reached out to him.

As a rule, 15% of his daily call list was people who had nothing to do with the business. He claimed those relationships helped bring new ideas and inspiration that indirectly helped him do a better job. And he always made a point of staying connected with the people he felt were both inspiring and interesting. A great practice that I adopted years ago when we worked together and has served me well.

Sitting at your desk and in front of your computer is a sure recipe for a mediocre life. Yes, there is a need to get the work done and that means spending some time in the office making sure things get done, but the real value is created out in the world, either on the phone or where the people are. No matter what your job is, you need to spend the right amount of time connecting with people who, on the surface, have nothing to do with your day-to-day work.

An article in Forbes' August 2011 edition about innovators makes the perfect case. The cover of next month's magazine has Mark Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce.com. In the article Mark talks about the time he spends talking and meeting young people. “My job is to guide Salesforce. I can’t sit in headquarters and pretend I’m in touch. Odds are, what we’re using today will be obsolete in a few years. The past is never the future. But it’s easy to get caught up in the continuum.”

An old friend and colleague, Martin, shared some great insight with me when he took a year off and looked for his next adventure. He was adamant about finding the right opportunity, so he spent a lot of time networking and researching his next move. When I caught up with Martin 9 months into his search year, he said the people you think are the ones who can help usually are not. All his leads and introductions to good opportunities came from where he expected it least.

My own experience validates this. Building BrainNet this past year has been a lesson in all that is both good and bad with how we do business in the US. A global company from Switzerland, BrainNet has built one of the largest Supply Chain and Procurement firms outside of North America. Our brand is relatively unknown in this market so the early years of our business in North America depend on building relationships and making the market aware of our capabilities and existence. This depends heavily on our ability to make introductions, connect and network with decision makers in large, medium and small businesses.

Looking back on our progress you can see the good and bad. There are have been people who have been very open to getting to know us and learning about our unique and compelling value proposition. They have taken the time to return calls and e-mails, meet in person and share what matters most to them. They have helped us think through how we can make BrainNet North America a strong business for our clients and ourselves. These folks have been great.

Trouble is they represent maybe 10 percent of the people we have connected with this past year. Coming into this adventure we had discussions with a large number of people in our personal network that gave us a lot of lip service about helping introduce us to our target market, or even stating a willingness to work with us themselves. Most have done the opposite, not returning calls or emails, and generally being non-responsive.

On the surface you can justify this in a number of ways - they are busy, they don't need what we have to offer, we are unproven etc. But the reality is none of these reasons are valid. You have to make time for people because you don't know what the future holds. You have to learn about what is out there because no one has all the answers, no matter how smart you think you are. And the wait and see approach most mid-level executives take with companies and people they don't know is both shortsighted and ineffective.

Why? Because business is about relationships. Everyone will agree with this, but most people don't adhere to this principle. If you don't take the time to build strong relationships at the people level then no legal contract or business arrangement can work effectively or optimally.

Personal experiences again validate this. In 2000 I walked into the office of a Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) of a British glass manufacturer to start a pilot project in eSourcing. The relationship I personally built with this individual was instrumental in both of our careers. Approximately 6 weeks into the 12-month pilot, the CPO left the company for a bigger role in one of the UK's top banks. 8 months after that he contacted me to start a pilot at the bank but under the condition that I would personally lead the relationship. It was a defining moment for my career in the company, and our successful execution of the pilot program became a career-maker for him in the bank. Today he is COO of another top bank in the UK and we share a good beer on my trips to London.

On the opposite side, I worked with an organization back in the early 2000s that had a deep working relationship with IBM. The trouble was it was a very strained and adversarial relationship, often resulting in executives walking out of meetings and pointing fingers at each other. "We have to reduce our dependency on IBM" the CIO would say time and time again. At the time they did $150m of business year with IBM. When I returned to the client in 2009, the same people continued to bash IBM and undermine the relationship every chance they got. But they now did $255m of business a year with them. They were "married" to IBM and didn't even realize it.

On an individual level it is clear in my mind you have to nurture and invest in relationship building. In my view it takes six things to do this effectively:

1) Be Open. You have to change your habit of keeping people at arms-length and connect with them at every opportunity. With tools like LinkedIn, e-mail and the myriad of social activities in your area, this is relatively effortless now.

2) Follow Through. In America we have become a 'lip-service' culture and this is going to take us down in the long run. If you meet someone and exchange contact details, then follow through with a note or invitation to connect on LinkedIn (I am not an advocate of using Facebook for this). The number of times people say they will follow-up with you and fail to do so is staggering. It makes you look like a punk, to be blunt.

3) Treat It As A Learning Exercise. There is no relationship or connection that doesn't teach you something. Even negative experiences (think the sales pest) teach you how to better filter and qualify relationships.

4) Be Global. Geography doesn't matter anymore. We can build relationships with people on the other side of the world. My strongest connections this past year have been in Silicon Valley, China, Atlanta and NYC, even though I'm based in Pittsburgh. Expand your horizon even if you haven't left the neighborhood.

5) Have Integrity. Your reputation is everything. Treat people with integrity and respect, even if they don't always deserve it. There is no room for arrogance or neglect when building connections and relationships.

6) Have Courage. This is where most people fall short, especially if they work in a corporation. The CYA mentality in big companies is a disease. People put up walls thinking they are protecting their company and themselves, but this is a fallacy. Meeting with people you don't know should be a part of your day-to-day business to learn what’s out there and create opportunity for your company and you first. Successful people get where they are with help, not by themselves.

How open are you to connecting to the unknown?

Solving The Gender Gap - How Not To...

2011-06-28T13:16:00.000-04:00

Why are regulators so short sighted? They think a single regulation can fix everything thats wrong with a complex issue. The past few weeks I have scanned a ton of titles regarding countries establishing quotas for the number of female directors serving on executive boards. Malaysia is the latest to come out and establish a rule that states “30% of all corporate decision-makers must be women”. Really?

Before I go on with why the Malaysians and a dozen others who have released similar quota-bearing rule changes are wrong, let me share my views on the problem they are trying to address - the problem of inequality between men and women in the workplace. In a nutshell:

• At the core, Men and Women are fundamentally different in many ways, including physically, emotionally and their approach to reasoning. If you disagree, that’s your problem. These are facts and the planet should come to terms with it and move on.

• I fundamentally believe there is an imbalance in the number of women decision-makers in business – there isn’t enough of them in positions of authority and decision-making.

• I do not believe there is a trend, conspiracy or male-driven agenda behind this imbalance. My theory is its due to how corporate culture has evolved since 1901. There is a 70-year lag in terms of women moving into the modern workforce and this is the cause of the gap we see today. The gap is closing and will plateau over time, probably never at 50-50, but at an optimal balance.

• I believe this imbalance is a lost opportunity. Women have proven time and time again that they are as good if not better than their male counterparts to produce when it matters.

• I believe the responsibility for an individual to achieve their personal aspirations both professionally and personally lies squarely on the shoulders of that individual. Period.

• I don’t believe there is any “rule”, “policy” or tinkering of any kind that can correct this problem. Let me be very clear about this – I am not in favor of any normalization or force-fitting when it comes to the performance of individuals in any situation.

• I believe in the individual. Therefore there are many examples of women being ridiculously successful in the workplace and equally there are many examples of women failing or underachieving in the workplace. Same for men. It has nothing to do with gender.

There you have it, my naked views. Now you know where I’m coming from when I say setting quotas for the number of women in roles is pure politics and wrong. In fact, if I were a woman I’d be insulted at the suggestion that I cannot earn my place to the top without regulations. What an outrage! And it doesn’t even address the problem.

Setting quotas changes some of the fundamental laws of our universe – that each individual brings something unique and different to the table; that a meritocracy is better than phony entitlement systems; that competition is a healthy way for individuals to fulfill their true potential; that outcomes are the single most important measure of a professional. By forcing companies to choose their people based on gender, race or any other factor other than ability, you are undermining the very principles that have propelled humanity since history began.

Play this out for a second – I have 10 people on my board and 3 have to be women per the new law. What if there are 10 men that are more qualified? Now I have to settle for 3 individuals who are not the best options for me. How does that benefit my company, my shareholders, my employees, my customers or even society?

I know it sounds harsh, but it’s the dumbest solution to a problem that is slowly, but surely correcting itself. I spent many years listening to HR and Legal advise me on the need to meet certain unwritten quotas when I worked at corporations. “You must have more female managers” or “we need more minorities”. I never listened to this nonsense and stuck with what I always knew worked – get the best people for the job.

By following this policy I was able to develop strong management teams over my career. At one company I had three direct reports who were my key leaders for our region. Two of them were Indian males, one of them was a woman. We made a great team and our results showed it.

In another company I had to put together a team that was tasked with delivering complex solutions around the world to our clients. Again I chose not to listen to quota suggestions from the PC police. We put together the best team instead – 3 commercial leaders globally, all of them male. 1 operational leader with global responsibility for the business, a female. Her team was made up of 3 female leaders covering the US, UK and Europe, all of them extremely talented. This team delivered huge results over a 5-year period and my people were successful.

Last January a well-known local business in Pittsburgh won the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Diversity and Leadership awards. Pamela’s Diner is one of Pittsburgh’s best-known breakfast places, with 8 or so locations across the greater Pittsburgh region, employing over 50 people.

Upon receiving their award, owners Gale and Pam gave a short yet powerful speech where they said they were humbled by the recognition but initially had trouble understanding their nomination. “At Pamela’s we don’t let gender, race, sexual orientation, tattoos or piercings prevent us from hiring the best people,” said Gale. They have no diversity policy, they just hire, train and keep the best people. This is the solution to your imbalance problem.

Yet we repeatedly see arbitrary rules and policies coming out of regulators trying to manipulate statistics. Where is the common sense?

This topic is broad and cannot be fully covered in a blog post, so let me part with some thoughts on how women can do better for themselves in the workplace – these are purely my views, call them my unsolicited advice.

First, know yourself.

What are you capable of? What do you want out of your career? What would make you truly happy? One open question I have is could the reason why there are less women than men in high stress, high responsibility jobs be because they don’t want the job? I have personally known several women who worked hard to rise in the corporation only to realize its not for them. So know yourself.

Know the beast you are trying to slay.

If you work for someone you need to know three things about them in order to succeed in your job: what is their personal ambition? What are they measured on (goals, objectives etc.)? How does your contribution help or hurt them?

Know the environment you are living in.

Corporations are like worlds on to themselves. Planet Google is just so different from Planet Ford, so just because you were successful at Ford doesn’t mean you are going to make it at Google. You need to understand what does it take to be recognized and succeed in the company you work for. You have to know the culture of the place to understand your path.

Hold your direct Boss accountable.

So many employees don’t get this, regardless of gender. You must have the conversation with your boss about the same things you need to know about him: what is your ambition? What matters most to your career? Where do you want to be in a year, in three years etc. And how is your Boss going to help you get there?

This is such an important thing and I can honestly say the majority of professionals don’t get it. You have to ask your Boss to help you achieve your goals, get their commitment, then hold them as accountable as you hold yourself.

Finally, be ready to work hard. Really really hard.

People are funny animals. I had a recent graduate in my office interviewing for a job. After a decent conversation, this unproven 22-year old asked “How much does the position pay? I need $80k a year”.

What happened next is best kept out of print, but I will tell you this – if you are not willing to work as hard as you can each and every day, you need to reset your expectations of serving on boards and carrying executive titles. There is nothing glamorous about dealing with the challenges and duties that come with these roles. Many people can’t handle it and so when they fail to achieve the results, they are quick to blame discrimination instead of holding themselves accountable. There is no short cut to hard work.

The Russian Fat Loss Secret: Guest Post

2011-06-05T16:18:00.000-04:00

A couple of months ago I met Jose on a trip to Honduras and we are now good friends. Jose is General Manager of a well-known hotel chain in Atlanta and, like me, he loves to travel and see all the world has to offer. As we smoked cigars and enjoyed the beautiful country of Honduras, Jose shared his biggest fear with me. Approaching 50 years of age, Jose is 50lbs over weight and struggles with his energy levels. Like many over weight people, what frustrated Jose most was the lack of understanding why, after years of being in decent shape, his body was now giving way to love handles, a gut and a feeling of labor just to get up in the morning.

Jose, like many people who reach their mid-thirties is experience a natural blockage of his system that comes from four things:

1) lack of exercise;

2) a build up of toxins from the food he eats, the air he breaths and a myriad of other exposures to foreign toxins that enter the body;

3) a lack of sufficient nutrition, enzymes and vitamins the body needs to function properly;

4) his body’s unique deficiency rate which is basically how it reacts to the three points above.

In 2003-4 I weighed 355lbs. I was heading for an early grave and what bothered me the most is I didn’t really understand why. I knew I didn’t exercise regularly, but I also wasn’t an over eater. In fact, I ate less in volume than most people I knew, yet here I was going from pant size to pant size every 6 to 9 months and not understanding what the hell is going on. If I knew then what I know now, I would have been able to address my weight issue effectively when I was 30 years old.

Luckily, fate and a little initiative led me to finding a path that has changed my life. In 2008 I was introduced to a nutritional cleanse system called Isagenix, and after watching a 300lb 50 year old Doctor lose 90lbs in 120 days, I decided to give it a try. I’ll spare you the details and get to the results. In 30 days I lost 25lbs. In 90 days I was down almost 60lbs and had such high energy levels I was back in the gym for the first time in over 8 years. After 90 days I got off the system and went into a “maintenance mode”, eating normally, exercising, yet still cleansing every 2 to 3 weeks. After a year on the program I was down over 100lbs.

Today I am at a stable 225lbs, down from a high of 355lbs. A year ago I had gone all the way down to 196lbs, a result of running between 18 and 23 miles a week. At 196lbs I didn’t feel that great, I had lost all muscle mass and knew I was fairly weak. So I changes my training regimen and opted for more weight training and plyometric exercises, less long distance running. I am in the gym 2 to 3 times a week now, and go for a couple of 2-mile runs a week. This has helped me maintain a weight of 225lbs yet get all my strength back. I feel better than I have ever felt in my life.

Jose got on Isagenix 30 days ago and is already down 25lbs. He wants to lose another 25lbs and hold his weight at 250lbs. I meet people all the time who struggle with their weight and their health. Its not just overweight people, its also hard working professionals who are low on energy, don’t exercise regularly, don’t feel good. Yet they are not sure what to do. I have personally introduced over 15 people to Dr. Joe, the Doctor who guided me through the process. Most of them have seen similar results to Jose and I. A few didn’t, but that’s their own doing. If you want something bad enough you can achieve it.

Many people unfortunately see temporary results as a yield of dieting. They cut their calories and of course lose weight. But they don’t really understand why they have lost weight and why their body gains the weight back with a vengeance. It goes back to the secret formula of exercise, toxin build-up, lack of nutrition, enzymes and vitamins, and accepting that your unique body is prone to weight gain with age.

While a program like Isagenix can help you address points 2 and 3 (and you need to understand the science and logic behind these two), you have to also exercise. And the secret to exercising is to make it fit into your life, not make your life fit around exercise. It’s a crucial factor that many people refuse to understand, even professional trainers who design 5 day a week training programs for average people who will never be able to stick to them. So as I was scanning the many headlines this past week, I came across a must-read article that nicely describes why a 50 year old like Jose can make a significant life-change with exercise and nutrition in less than 30 days.

If any of you want to learn more about Isagenix I’m happy to introduce you to Dr. Joe and let him tell you about the science behind it and why it has worked for so many people like Jose and I. But to address the exercise question, I’m happy to share this incredible guest post by Bill Hartman. Enter Bill…

The Russian Fat Loss Secret
Learn the proven way to sculpt a lean, muscular body

By Bill Hartman, P.T., C.S.C.S.
12 May, 2011

Ever hear the adage, “Train like an athlete to look like an athlete?” It’s a popular mantra among strength coaches today, since it encourages folks to focus on total-body strength and all-around fitness—instead of just lying on the floor doing crunches.   

But there’s been one downside: Plenty of guys have asked me what how to do “two-a-days”—as in two workouts per day. This is usually because they read that this is what some sculpted world-class athlete does.   

My answer: If your goal is to lose fat and build muscle, you don’t need two-a-days. In fact, two-a-days would actually be too much training for the average person. (Even in the unlikely scenario that you had the time.) The truth is, even the best athletes don’t thrive on two-a-day workouts.   

To understand why, I’ll need to give you a bit of history lesson. But by the time I finish, I will have revealed the training secrets that have built some of the best athletes in the world. And these same secrets will turn your body into a fat-burning machine.   

***  

Here in the United States, we’re a melting pot of different cultures. This gives us a diverse gene pool that produces amazing genetic freaks—who can run faster, jump higher, and throw harder than almost anyone in the world.   

Now those of us in the fitness industry would like to attribute these athletes’ performances to our superior training methods. But that’s rarely the case. In America, strength coaches frequently overtrain many of our best young athletes, pushing them to exhaustion with hours and hours of intense training. So in the end, the athletes who break records are most often the ones who are so physically gifted that they can thrive at their sports in spite of these extreme training methods. Not because of them.

Of course, if longer and more frequent workouts aren’t the answer, what is? Well, you’ve heard the phrase work smarter, not harder, right? That’s the solution. And turns out, some fitness experts have known exactly what to do for a very long time.

Let me explain: Before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russians lacked genetic diversity because they were a closed society. So what did Russian sports scientists do? They carefully studied and analyzed fitness performance until they discovered the best way to train athletes. The result: Some of the greatest athletic performances on the planet.

Don’t believe me? I have proof.

Back in 1984, the Russians and other Eastern-bloc countries decided to boycott the summer Olympics. So their athletes participated in an “alternative Olympics,” called the Friendship Games. And when the two competitions were over, it was clear that the Russian sports scientists really knew how to develop great athletes.

To give you perspective, 140 countries participated in the Olympics, while approximately 50 nations competed at the Friendship Games. Nevertheless, the Friendship Games athletes outperformed the Olympic Games sportsmen in 20 of 41 track and field events. In fact, a bunch of Olympic gold medalists wouldn’t have even placed in many of the events since more than 60 Friendship Game results were good enough to secure medals at the Olympics. The Russians broke numerous world records and would have been some of the top Olympians in weightlifting and wrestling. In other words, the Russian athletes were better prepared and better trained. Period.

Now, the secrets that I’m about to give you are based on a small piece of this Russian sports science. They’re not really secrets anymore, but principles. And I use them with many athletes at my private training facility, IFAST, in Indianapolis. The results have been beyond impressive. Not only have our athletes’ performances improved tremendously, but these clients have become even leaner—without trying. What could be better than that?

The Science Behind The Russian Fat Loss Secret

A quick biology lesson: Your muscles are composed of fast-twitch fibers and slow-twitch fibers. Heavy strength training targets the fast-twitch fibers and, of course, helps to build muscle. But it doesn’t do a lot for your slow-twitch fibers.

Endurance-based training, on the other hand, targets your slow-twitch fibers and ignites fat loss. But as just about any longtime runner can tell you, it doesn’t help you pack on muscle.

Which prompts a seemingly obvious solution: Why not combine training methods and achieve the best of the both modes?

Enter what I call The Russian Fat Loss Secret: a strength-aerobic workout that targets both your fast-twitch and your slow-twitch muscle fibers. This is the same strategy used by Russian sports scientists decades ago. So you build muscle and strength, burn fat, and improve your total-body fitness fast.

The best part: It couldn’t be simpler. For example, each workout contains heavy-lifting and explosive exercises. These movements are designed to hit your fast-twitch muscles, which have the greatest potential for size and strength gains. They’ve also been shown to require more energy to contract than slow-twitch fibers, providing an additional benefit.

To train your slow-twitch fibers, I prescribe “tempo” exercises within each workout. The idea is to perform an exercise at a slow but steady tempo from start to finish. I’ll use the “barbell tempo squat” as an example. This is simply a barbell squat in which you take two seconds to lower the weight, and 2 seconds to lift the weight—all without pausing at the top or the bottom of the exercise. One important point: You’ll have to lower the load—a lot—for these tempo moves. Too much weight and you’ll still be focused on your fast-twitch fibers, which won’t give you all the benefits of this combo approach.

But here’s why tempo exercises work. When doing the barbell tempo squat, for example, your legs are under constant, low-level tension. This reduces the blood flow to your working muscles, depriving them of oxygen for an extended period of time. With less oxygen, your muscles react by creating more mitochondria. Mitochondria are tiny powerhouses in your muscle cells that produce energy.

So the more mitochondria you have, the more energy you can produce. And the more energy you can produce, the harder and the longer you can exercise before you run out of gas.

Now, can you guess what mitochondria like to use to produce this energy? Body fat. That’s right: The more mitochondria you have; the more fat you can burn.

There’s one last key piece to this puzzle. To end each workout, I include an intense “metabolic accelerator,” such as the kettlebell jump or kettlebell swing. These are power exercises that you do quickly for about 10 seconds, interspersed with about 50 seconds of rest. So it’s sort of like doing eight to ten 100-yard sprint intervals, but without the need for a track. That means they’re great for burning calories and boosting your post-workout metabolism, which results in even greater fat loss.

The upshot: By following the strength-aerobic principles of The Russian Fat Loss Secret, you’ll get the muscle-sculpting benefits of heavy lifting and the fat-loss benefits of endurance-based training. What’s more, you can achieve fantastic results in just three workouts a week. Now doesn’t that sound a lot better than two-a-days?

Want to try it? The Russian Fat Loss Workout is available exclusively on Men’s Health Personal Trainer. There you’ll find Hartman’s complete four-week plan, and have access to our customizable nutrition program—which will help you create the best diet for your goals, lifestyle, and preferences. Click here to learn more!