Miscellaneous and Fast

Ann Althouse on a new survey on bullying in the workplace.


Eclecticity has a profile of a father of the year.

Hawaii has a pro-smoking ad to reassure Japanese puffers.

Citizen Brand recalls time well spent with Gordon Lightfoot, who may be 70 but we don't have to believe it.

Cory Doctorow on what not to wear to your next job interview.

On the Latest in Sociopathic Behavior

Writing at the CSO site, Joe Basirico examines a new twist in identity theft. An excerpt:

I was just interviewed by a local news station about a story they were doing on daring hackers that have started advertising their abilities to destroy a person’s life for as little as $20 per month. Apparently the deal goes something like this: you make a deal with a hacker to destroy somebody’s life by signing them up online and the hacker will ensure the target can’t get a good job, can’t apply for credit cards, will be denied for loans, etc. The interviewer wanted to know if I thought that this was really happening or if it was some kind of joke and was really that easy.

I’m not in the revenge business myself, but I suspect that this is a great way for the hacker to get a little extra money for something they do anyway. Last time I checked, the going rate on the black for a “full identity” (enough information to become another person) is up to $5 in some countries. If we apply the supply and demand model that seems to mean there is a wealth of supply but lagging demand.

Beyond Blundering

This book by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson on the Duke LaCrosse rape case should be fascinating.

I'll be reviewing it after a few management books.

Pin-Striped Bloc

Which of the possible U.S. presidential nominees would be the best and the worst for business?

A survey of executives by Chief Executive magazine concluded:

Republican Best: Mitt Romney

Republican Worst: John McCain



Democratic Best: Barack Obama

Democratic Worst: Hillary Clinton

Crowning King Weasel

Okay, take a break and read this brilliant and invaluable post by Rowan Manahan on an old game that relies upon human nature. Prepare to sob or smirk.

The Blame List: 30 Culprits

The following is a quick listing of people and institutions that may be frequent objects of blame in your life. Feel free to contribute additions or amendments.

1. Your parents
2. Your children
3. Your spouse
4. Your third grade teacher
5. Your prom date or lack thereof
6. Your neighbors
7. Your co-workers
8. Your boss
9. Your computer
10. Your hair or lack thereof
11. Your weight
12. Your car
13. Global warming
14. City Hall
15. The president, prime minister, or chancellor
16. The Saudis
17. The church
18. The Bossa Nova
19. Lawyers
20. Congress
21. Judges
22. Kids these days
23. Detroit
24. Washington, DC
25. Hollywood
26. Talk radio
27. The Internet
28. Carbs
29. The infrastructure
30. Steroids

Another Whiner

I'm encountering gremlins in posting today.

Please bear with me. Wizards are working on it.

Quote of the Day

People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.

- Norman Cousins

Music Break

Michael at 2Blowhards has assembled a great collection of music links from Van Morrison to the Everly Brothers.

Street Justice

Bravo for Lord Phillips of Sudbury.

It's a bit disappointing that a thrashing was not administered but one can't have everything. An excerpt:

It seems that, if any adult wants to dispute the right of young thugs to misbehave, then not only does he or she do so at considerable personal risk, but with the express disapproval of the forces of law and order.

The implication is that there can only be two figures of authority on the streets - the thugs and the cops. Everyone else must creep around, averting their eyes, hoping that someone will call the police: which might be all right if we could really hope that the police will come, and if there were really enough police to deal with all the forms of anti-social behaviour.

Just The Place For Financial Advice

Wall Street executives at Burning Man? You bet. Though there’s nothing farther from the cutthroat, moneymaking world of Wall Street than the anticapitalist, anticorporate festival of radical self-expression known as Burning Man, we found several New York business executives and Wall Street types who are heading out West this week and staying through Labor Day. In the dusty, storm-ridden desert flatlands north of Reno, Nevada, is a place dubbed Black Rock City, home of the biggest little countercultural festival in the world.

“I first went out there in 2003 because a classmate from the Stanford Business School had an art project on the playa,” says a senior executive for a major Wall Street company, who asked not to be named. One of the main draws for him and most of the other 50,000 participants expected this year are the massive collaborative art projects, like last year’s giant Belgian Waffle or the 50-foot stick figure that gets torched at the end of the week—the burning man that gives the festival its name.

Find the rest of the Portfolio article here. Be sure to wear your baseball cap backwards.

The Need for Elevation

Why is it that all children - and many adults - upon seeing the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter films, exclaim, "I wish I could have gone to a school like that?"

Set aside the floating candles and the shifting staircases: The answer is Style.

Modern elementary schools look like factories in which people sort rags or hammer on blocks. The architecture does not inspire or announce, "This is a place where something special occurs." The same thing can be said of many business and government offices. It is as if some evil-minded administrator once decreed, "Let's put up boxes of steel and glass and squeeze the majesty out of life." No wonder workers glance longingly out the window at the trees and not at any structure. The architects have sold us a bunch of crap. Occasionally as an apology, they toss a feeble excuse for sculpture in front.

Now shift to lifestyles. We once watched Cary Grant and Grace Kelly portraying lives that elevated our hopes. They and other stars showed us how people with values and style behaved. The anti-heroes and automatons are now supreme and when an exception arrives on the screen we almost weep in gratitude. I won't even start on the dreck that passes for popular music and late night television has fallen from a place where once you might have seen Jack Paar or Dick Cavett talking to Buckley, Vidal, Mailer, or Updike to a spot where Jay and Dave let stars do infomercials for their latest film.

We have become so practical and utilitarian. I majored in "Government" as an undergraduate. Now it's called "Political Science" although it is anything but a science. The word might, however, impress the Board of Regents. Perhaps "sciences" don't get their funding slashed as quickly as the softer subjects. The same mentality that believes there is such a thing as "Social Science" doesn't flinch at using concrete boxes to house students nor does it consider just what sort of people those boxes will produce. No problem. They can join a growing tribe of pragmatic careerists that combines avarice with adolescence and scoffs at values and sacrifice.

Little things make a difference. We could use a renewed dedication to the type of conduct that elevates the individual and the society. Dropping the notions that Coarseness = Truth and Refinement = Hypocrisy and that Style is a waste of resources will be a good start.

We can have lives of beauty.



[HT: Jonathan Wade]

Snowmen

Daniel Henninger on what's afflicting the media:

But for the media ponderers there's a more troubling issue than the restoration of trust. It's the possibility that too many people now simply don't much care about the major media anymore. Normally the great media combines would overcome periods of lassitude by forming up focus groups to tell them what to do next. Hah! They want "Survivor"! Alas, living as we do now in a world of seemingly infinite choice, it is possible not to care for a seeming infinity of reasons, which is why the established media are having such a hard time knowing what to do.

Mr. Paxman identified one reason not to care: "In the last quarter century we've gone from three channels to hundreds. . . . The truth is this: the more television there is, the less any of it matters." Once there was a time when TV announcers used to say, "Stay with us." Now no one stays. They go surfing, endlessly seeking a five-minute wave of TV that will take them just a little higher than the five minutes they just watched.

Quote of the Day

It is easier to act yourself into a better way of feeling than to feel yourself into a better way of action.

- O.H. Mowrer

"Spandex is not forgiving."

If you think that you've got a strange job, Eccentric Employment may change your mind. Its current listings include ads for:

Caviar Sales Rep

Mayan Interpreter

Striptease Instructor

Spider Man

Look at That!

Tired of boring PowerPoint slides?


Don't miss this article on visualization in Smashing magazine.


Click through and be sure to scroll down. Creative stuff. Beats the pie chart I drew in grade school.



[HT: Guy Kawasaki ]

Assigned Mentors

Wally Bock has a thought-provoking piece on why assigned mentor programs are unnatural.

[It reminds me of the story about the Columbia University administrators who urged then Columbia president Dwight Eisenhower to direct the students to stay on the sidewalks and not to walk on the grass. Eisenhower replied, "Put sidewalks where the paths are."]

Book Review: Lessons on Leadership

Jack Stahl, the former President of Coca-Cola and CEO of Revlon, has written Lessons on Leadership: The 7 Fundamental Management Skills for Leaders at All Levels.

That sentence will cause some readers to crouch behind the sofa. "Another leadership book by a CEO?" they'll gasp. "Can't we be spared another tale of corporate heroism?"

Fortunately, Mr. Stahl does spare us at least most of his heroic tales in this readable review of leadership lessons. My favorite anecdote was how Coca-Cola CEO Roberto Goizueta once used a mistake to teach a powerful lesson. Goizueta had noticed an error in an internal management report. He called Stahl, who had just arrived in Austria for a week of review meetings. The conversation went as follows:



Goizueta: "This report is wrong. It needs to be fixed. Find out how this could have happened."



Stahl: "I am already aware of the error, Roberto, and our financial people are working on the issue. As soon as I get back to Atlanta next week, I'll resolve it, and will let you know the outcome."



Moment of silence.



Goizueta: "Jack, what flight will you be on tomorrow morning to fix this problem?"



Stahl: "I have meetings scheduled here in Austria all this week - it's being worked on, and I will focus on it as soon as I return to Atlanta from Vienna next week."



Goizueta: "No, Jack - I want you back here on the first plane tomorrow to deal with this."



Stahl notes that Goizueta used the mistake as an opportunity to send a powerful and pointed message about the importance of accuracy in reports. One can imagine the effect that the story of Stahl's early return had as it rippled through the organization.

Although this and similar examples of the intangible aspects of leadership may be the most interesting parts of Lessons on Leadership, they are not necessarily the most helpful. Stahl is a systems advocate who is aware of the continuous need to search for what he calls "cracks in the execution of details" and he deftly covers the importance of developing people as well as creating a high-performance organization. With regard to the latter, he notes:

Great performance and results do not happen by accident. They are most often the product of improvements in overall critical capabilities, which are driven by the leadership of the organization. However, even good leaders sometimes miss this point: Like sustainable increases in performance, new strategies also require organizational capability shifts.

He sees connections. He appreciates how cost reduction programs may require negotiation training for the employees who will have to bargain for low-cost raw materials or how a new information system may be needed to measure the costs and expenses. He notes that cries for new products should also be accompanied by a reassessment of how new products are developed. Stahl clearly understands how positive pressure in one area can cause a negative result in another.

Since this is a leadership book for a general audience many readers will find sections that are more than familiar. That is the nature of general leadership books, however, and it should not detract from the real value of Stahl's ideas. [He tucks "Valuing a Business Using the Discounted Cash Flow Approach" and "Determining the Cost of Capital" into the back of the book, possibly so they won't scare off the average reader.]

I found Lessons on Leadership to be a practical and insightful guide on how to gain control of the myriad details and pressures that confront the modern leader/manager. If you are a new leader or a seasoned one who wisely wants to review your assumptions, it's well worth your time.

Check it out.

Clip Job

Andrew Stark examines the odd - and reported here in an earlier post - story of how Kyle MacDonald took a paperclip and wound up with a house. An excerpt:

But Mr. MacDonald was looking to own, not rent, and so he kept going. It turned out that rock star Alice Cooper has a restaurant in Phoenix. An employee at Alice's restaurant, looking to live rent free, offered an afternoon hanging out with her boss. Mr. MacDonald promptly traded quality time with Mr. Cooper for a snow globe branded with the logo of the rock band KISS. Enter the actor Corbin Bernsen, who starred in the TV show "L.A. Law" years ago and now appears on the series "Psych." Mr. Bernsen owns more than 6,000 snow globes. He offered a speaking part in his new movie in return for Mr. MacDonald's.

Then, in July of last year, the town of Kipling, Saskatchewan, entered the barter-sequence. It gave Mr. MacDonald a renovated 1920s house on Main Street in return for the film role, which it then raffled off in a local "American Idol"-style audition won by a town resident named Nolan Hubbard. Mr. MacDonald and his girlfriend, Dom, moved to Kipling, having achieved their goal of turning a paper clip into a house. Mr. MacDonald, by the way, now has a movie deal with DreamWorks.

Quote of the Day

The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I'd made my teammates play.

- Bill Russell

Buzzless

The honeybee population is dropping and, as a Fortune article notes, the effects may be far-reaching:

We wouldn't starve if the mysterious disappearance of bees, dubbed colony collapse disorder, or CCD, decimated hives worldwide. For one thing, wheat, corn, and other grains don't depend on insect pollination.

But in a honeybee-less world, almonds, blueberries, melons, cranberries, peaches, pumpkins, onions, squash, cucumbers, and scores of other fruits and vegetables would become as pricey as sumptuous old wine. Honeybees also pollinate alfalfa used to feed livestock, so meat and milk would get dearer as well. Ditto for farmed catfish, which are fed alfalfa too.

And jars of honey, of course, would become golden heirlooms to pass along to the grandkids. (Used for millennia as a wound dressing, honey contains potent antimicrobial compounds that enable it to last for decades in sealed containers.)

In late June, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns starkly warned that "if left unchecked, CCD has the potential to cause a $15 billion direct loss of crop production and $75 billion in indirect losses."

Get Swept Up!

When it comes to serious sports, sometimes the excitement is too much to bear.



[HT: Adfreak ]

Godwin and Man: How Ideas Spread

Think good viral: Seth Godwin, with a touch of Darwin, on how elephants and ideas spread.

Urban Terrorism: "Improvements in Lethality"

Writing in City Journal, John Robb explores the future of urban terrorism. He also provides some provocative answers. An excerpt:

Unfortunately, the improvements in lethality that we have already seen are just the beginning. The arc of productivity growth that lets small groups terrorize at ever-higher levels of death and disruption stretches as far as the eye can see. Eventually, one man may even be able to wield the destructive power that only nation-states possess today. It is a perverse twist of history that this new threat arrives at the same moment that wars between states are receding into the past. Thanks to global interdependence, state-against-state warfare is far less likely than it used to be, and viable only against disconnected or powerless states. But the underlying processes of globalization have made us exceedingly vulnerable to nonstate enemies. The mechanisms of power and control that states once exerted will continue to weaken as global interconnectivity increases. Small groups of terrorists can already attack deep within any state, riding on the highways of interconnectivity, unconcerned about our porous borders and our nation-state militaries. These terrorists’ likeliest point of origin, and their likeliest destination, is the city.

The Geist Weight Chart

Ideal weight chart for fiftyish females and males:

Height: 5'0"
Small boned: 180 lbs.
Medium boned: 200 lbs.
Large boned: 250+ lbs.

Height: 5'6"
Small boned: 225 lbs.
Medium boned: 250 lbs.
Large boned: 300+ lbs.

Height: +6'0"
Small boned: 250 lbs.
Medium boned: 300 lbs.
Large boned: 400+ lbs.

Mr. Geist notes, "Using this system to calculate your own exact personal ideal weight, simply take your current weight and add 8 pounds."

Source: The Big Five-Oh!: Facing, Fearing, and Fighting Fifty by Bill Geist.

His book is, of course, must reading for those who have been fifty, are fifty, or some day expect to be fifty.

Doing More by Doing Less

Matthew Cornell conducted a productivity experiment with The 4-Hour Workweek.

Here are his results.

Great Staff Work: 7 Tips

It is shocking how seldom the elements of great staff work are discussed in the modern workplace. Such discussions can go against the egalitarian tone of the times since the role of a reliable staff member is to support and not decide. Subordinate roles have such a bad image that some individuals afflicted by excessive sensitivity even refrain from using the word, "subordinate."

Those who do so miss the crucial role fulfilled by talented staff members who perform the heavy intellectual lifting so the ultimate decision maker can make the best possible decision or, at the very least, a practical one.

The ground rules of good staff work are simple but crucial:

1. No decision should go to the decision maker unless he or she needs to make that decision. Keeping trivial and minor decisions at a lower level saves time and prevents distraction.


2. Only excellent work should go to the decision maker. The boss should not have to play editor or proofreader. Will some bosses do so? Sure, but that does not mean the staff should engage in reverse delegation or turn in half-done work. All bosses have their quirks and any staff officer with basic smarts will commit those biases to memory so future work will be as change-proof as possible.


3. Adverse information should never be omitted. The staff officer's role is to clarify, not to decide. This means surfacing the negatives as well as the positives.


4. Err on the side of excessive coordination. It will save no time and will create enemies if a staff officer fails to obtain the ideas and positions of others who may have a substantive interest in the decision. Doing so will also jeopardize losing the trust of the decision maker.


5. Recognize that the best can be the enemy of the good. The staff officer who seeks perfection will frequently find that the work's quality has been damaged by its tardiness. Timely decisions are needed. Go slowly on irreversible decisions and quickly on ones that can be easily reversed.


6. Always present more than three options. Anyone can produce three options: Do nothing, do everything, and do a middle option that is favored by the staff. A good staff officer knows that some very creative options are often discovered when the list of options is increased. Savvy decision makers are righly suspicious of the old "three option sandwich."


7. Give a recommended course of action. That's your job. It doesn't mean that the recommendation will be accepted but it gives the decision maker the advantage of seeing what is, in your judgment, the best option. Staff work that is inconclusive and neutral is incomplete. Have the courage to stand by your research.

Tested Faith

The recent discovery by a retired businessman and climate kibitzer named Stephen McIntyre that 1934--and not 1998 or 2006--was the hottest year on record in the U.S. could not have been better timed. August is the month when temperatures are high and the news cycle is slow, leading, inevitably, to profound meditations on global warming. Newsweek performed its journalistic duty two weeks ago with an exposé on what it calls the global warming "denial machine." I hereby perform mine with a denier's confession

I confess: I am prepared to acknowledge that Mr. McIntyre's discovery amounts to what a New York Times reporter calls a "statistically meaningless" rearrangement of data.
But just how "meaningless" would this have seemed had it yielded the opposite result? Had Mr. McIntyre found that a collation error understated recent temperatures by 0.15 degrees Celsius (instead of overstating it by that amount, as he discovered), would the news coverage have differed in tone and approach?

Read the rest of Brett Stephens's "denier's confession."

Quote of the Day

Two and two continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

- James Whistler

How To Talk When Times Are Tough

Steven Silvers notes that Mattel, Inc. and Countrywide Financial have given quite different examples of how to handle communications during a crisis:

Mattel faced its second product recall in two weeks, having to pull in some 19 million toys because of lead paint and other safety issues. The company’s response has been textbook crisis management: clear facts and continuous communications, broad outreach to all stakeholder groups, plenty of media access to the top executive. There’s even a dedicated web site on the recall that includes detailed information and a personal video message from CEO Bob Eckert.

Countrywide, on the other hand, faced the highest level of foreclosures and delinquencies in many years. How did it respond? The company “all but shuttered the doors at its Calabasas headquarters, offering scant public comment even as news turned worse and customers rushed to its bank branches to close their accounts,” reported the LA Times.

[HT: Political Calculations ]

Creative Introduction

This in itself is creative:

What is the first phrase that creativity consultant Roger von Oech learns in any foreign language?

"I is a college student."

I was working with a law firm last year on a hiring process. Lots and lots of CVs, cover letters and application forms coming in from some very smart young people. I ended up sitting in a conference room with the HR person and the Hiring Partner screening the applications. One of the ground-rules we laid down was that any application with a spelling error should be dumped on the first pass.

"That kind of carelessness simply isn't acceptable for a job of this nature," intoned the partner. That sounded just fine to me and we proceeded. We had about 500 applications to whizz through on the first pass. We hit a snag. A big snag.With the first pass completed, we had no applications left. None. Count 'em again - not one.

Read the rest of Rowan Manahan's post on the next generation of job-hunters.

Elixir of Youth (or Empire-Building)

Sumner Redstone's anti-aging secret is a Brazilian berry:

A dark-purple elixir with a cult-like following, MonaVie is an antioxidant-rich concoction whose main ingredient is the Brazilian açai berry (pronounced ah-sigh-ee), long touted among health nuts for its anti-aging ingredients.

Vitamin-water it's not: MonaVie costs $40 a bottle, and you can't get it in stores; it's marketed only through the company's network of thousands of individuals who sell it out of their homes (think Avon or Tupperware).

Ten Time-Savers

1. Clear responsibilities and authority.
2. Limited phone calls.
3. A team without factions.
4. A meeting with a clear agenda.
5. An e-mail box without spam.
6. Leaders who make decisions.
7. Workers who take initiative.
8. A limited open-door policy.
9. Supportive family members.
10. Access to resources and information.

Sweet Deals

John Fund looks at state certification boards and the question of whether they are out to protect the consumer or restrict competition:

Reason Foundation analyst Adam Summers has written a new study of occupational licensing (available here) that catalogues some of the absurd requirements to get occupational licenses. Does a hair braider really need hundreds of hours of instruction in all aspects of cosmetology, hardly any of which he will ever use? Is it essential to the well-being of young children that directors of day-care centers possess master's degrees? What's the point of refusing to license a car service unless it has at least 10 cars?

Some states require licenses or credentials for all manner of jobs, while others seem to get along just fine with a much more targeted list. California has been burdened for years with an uncompetitive business climate, and part of the reason is that it requires licenses for 177 different job categories. Next door, Arizona licenses only 72 job categories and Nevada only 95. No wonder job growth is much higher in those states.

Quote of the Day

Ours is the age of substitutes: Instead of language we have jargon; instead of principles, slogans; and instead of genuine ideas, bright suggestions.

- Eric Bentley

The Cartoon You Shouldn't See?

Here's a link to the Opus cartoon that some newspapers are refusing to run.

[HT: Ed Driscoll ]

Book Review: The Last Days of Europe

Walter Laqueur, historian and former chairman of the International Research Council of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has written yet another important book.

The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent is powerful because it is restrained. Employing a tone that might accompany a CPA's report, Laqueur dissects the impact of Europe's declining population as well as its alienated Islamic groups and rapacious welfare systems and concludes that a perfect storm may be on the horizon.

For those readers who have been following the demographic projections, Laqueur's statistics will not come as a surprise, but to cite just a few:

• Russia's current population of 145 million is shrinking annually by 2 percent and within 50 years is expected to be one-third of its current size. Its population may be surpassed by those of Turkey and Yemen.


• The United Kingdom's population is expected to decline from its current 60 million to 53 million in 2050 and 45 million in 2100.


• Germany's population is expected to decline from its current 82 million to 61 million in 2050 and 32 million in 2100.


• Italy's population is expected to decline from its current 57 million to 37 million in 2050 and 15 million in 2100.


• Spain's population is expected to decline from its current 39 million to 28 million in 2050 and 12 million in 2100.


• In 2050, the median age in the United States will be 36. In Europe it will be about 53.

In short, many of the European nations are in this box: Their populations are shrinking and aging. In order to maintain the generous benefits of their welfare states, they will require younger workers. A large portion of those younger workers, however, will be Muslims who may - or may not - desire to be assimilated into or maintain democratic societies. Consider the extent to which American minority groups with 10 to 14 percent of the population can affect American political stances and then imagine what the effect would be if such groups favored sharia law and opposed freedom of expression and equal rights and you may gain a sense of what Europe will be facing.

Laqueur follows writers such as Bruce Bawer and Mark Steyn in stating this concern and yet his international relations and scholarly credentials give added weight to his arguments. There is little doubt that his book will be widely read in the United States. One hopes that it receives an even larger readership in Europe.

Recycling Architecture

Strange and yet oddly appealing: an apartment made from a water tower.

Geekologie has the details.

Preferences: Unintended Consequences

Gail Heriot examines indications that affirmative action preferences have reduced the number of black attorneys:

Three years ago, UCLA law professor Richard Sander published an explosive, fact-based study of the consequences of affirmative action in American law schools in the Stanford Law Review. Most of his findings were grim, and they caused dismay among many of the champions of affirmative action--and indeed, among those who were not.

Easily the most startling conclusion of his research: Mr. Sander calculated that there are fewer black attorneys today than there would have been if law schools had practiced color-blind admissions--about 7.9% fewer by his reckoning. He identified the culprit as the practice of admitting minority students to schools for which they are inadequately prepared. In essence, they have been "matched" to the wrong school.

Quote of the Day

The happiness of most people we know is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.

- Ernest Dimnet

When Yugos Fly

Jalopnik poses the philosophical question of the weekend:

Is it more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow?

Reviewing the Marshall Plan

Writing in The New Yorker, Niall Ferguson evaluates the Marshall Plan. An excerpt:

Flitting across this crowded stage are some better-known figures: Harry Truman, who declined to call the program the “Truman Plan” not out of modesty but for fear of riling Republican opponents; Josef Stalin, whose aggressive action toward Czechoslovakia greatly helped Vandenberg to overcome congressional resistance; Ernest Bevin, the overweight, ebullient, and ineffably proletarian British Foreign Secretary, who was the Plan’s biggest fan; and the diarist and wit Harold Nicolson, whose condescending characterization of the United States (“a giant with the limbs of an undergraduate, the emotions of a spinster, and the brain of a pea-hen”) now reads like postimperial sour grapes. The United States in 1945 was a giant, all right, but with the wealth of a Harriman, the altruism of a Marshall, and the sheer dedication of men like Clayton, Vandenberg, Hoffman, and Bissell, it was surely a benign colossus.

Gaining by Giving

I used to jar some of the department heads in one organization by insisting that when employees file discrimination complaints through the internal complaint process, they should be told about the federal and state agencies where their complaints could also be filed.

"Why should we should tell them that?" groaned some of the executives and managers. "All you are doing is encouraging them to file elsewhere. We'll wind up spending large amounts of time dealing with some outside investigator."

I replied that the main goal of any internal complaint process should be to determine the truth and then take appropriate action. Why hide information from the employees? Let them know their options and then move forward to make sure that the internal investigation is prompt, thorough, and impartial.

After several years of following that approach, we were able to monitor the results. The number of internal and external discrimination complaints had not risen; in fact, they had fallen dramatically.

I recall that development whenever I see executives and managers who are so intent on hanging onto power that they wind up losing power. Their focus is invariably on the wrong thing. They are seeking control when they should be after credibility. That sin isn't confined to operations and folks in the field. Propose giving away information and power and many soft-skilled HR types are just as eager to pull up the drawbridge and station the archers.

The natural tendency may be to hunker down. Our professional commitments, however, should cause us to question whether that is wise.

Food at Work

The most innovative company cafeterias: Going far beyond the stereotypes of rubber chicken and frozen burritos. An excerpt:

Google is far from alone among tech firms in offering employees innovative dining options. Microsoft (MSFT) boasts 26 cafés at its main Redmond (Wash.) campus, with several more slated to open this year and next—and that's not counting the pantries scattered throughout the buildings and the more than two dozen coffee stands.

But it's not just workers in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs who enjoy the benefits of good grub on the job. Plenty of companies in a variety of businesses in every corner of the country offer meals on site. The menus are diverse, and so are the reasons for offering food service. Some employers cite productivity as their prime consideration; when employees eat in the company's cafeteria, they save time they would have spent foraging at nearby fast-food chains and delis. "I want people to be well-fed and satisfied," Michael Bloomberg, the current New York mayor and former chief executive of Bloomberg, the financial data business he founded in 1981, told Fast Company magazine in a 1995 interview. "I want them to be able to grab a cup of coffee with a colleague and hash things out. But most of all I want them to stay here. I don't want them leaving."

Japan's Rebound

Rowan Callick on business changes that produced Japan's comeback. An excerpt:

By 2001, the Bank of Japan had lowered interest rates to zero and people were paying banks to keep their money. Japanese commercial property had tumbled to two-thirds of its value from its 1980s peak, when the wooded imperial estate at the center of Tokyo was worth more than the entire state of California.

When Japan’s bubble burst, it took a painfully long time for reality to set in. During the baburu (or bubble), demands on workers had soared; the sarariiman (salaryman) was expected to be available 24 hours a day, enabling him to evolve into one of the highly admired kigyo senshi (corporate warriors). In exchange for this servitude, he was supposed to have a secure job for life. That all collapsed along with the economy.

Sawa Kurotani, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Redlands in California, has written of “the death of the sarariiman way of life.” She says that Japanese corporations “began radical restructuring and downsizing to survive in global competition.” Suicide rates soared (they were twice the rates in the United States and higher than anywhere except the former US R and its satellites, plus, for some reason, Sri Lanka), with many cases declared to have been karojisatsu, or triggered by excessive stress. The most common method was tobikomi: jumping from a platform into the path of a train.

Destruction of Childhood Update

Emily Yoffe, shopping with her young daughter for clothes, discovers an extensive fashion line:

The slut look.

[HT: RealClearPolitics ]

Top Five on Early America

Jay Winik gives his top five list of books related to America's founding.

Quote of the Day

You can't pick cherries with your back to the tree.

- John Pierpont Morgan

A $400 Baseball Glove?

Writing in Fortune, Matthew Boyle tells the story of a baseball glove unlike most others.

An excerpt:

St. Louis is as good a place as any to begin this glove story, as it is the home of Rawlings, currently in its 120th year as a supplier of all manner of baseball equipment. In 1920, Rawlings introduced the first glove to feature laces between the thumb and forefinger (previous mitts were no more than padded workmen's gloves).

That glove, called the Bill Doak, began an evolutionary process that today culminates in the Rawlings Primo, the most expensive baseball glove ever made. It costs $400. Yes, $400 - that's a little over a week's pay for a typical Wal-Mart employee. (At least that employee won't be tempted to blow his wages, as you'll never find the Primo on Wal-Mart's shelves.)

Two years in development, the Primo features Italian leather hand-sewn into an advanced three-layer design that, Rawlings claims, can be broken in to suit specific positions. In a season dominated by batting achievements (Barry Bonds' record*, Alex Rodriguez's 500th homer), Rawlings hopes the Primo will reestablish its status as the preeminent glove-design house, a position that is under threat from rivals like Wilson, Mizuno, Easton and Nike (Charts, Fortune 500).

The Kremlin StairMaster

Although Stalin reputedly couldn't start a full day of purges without a latte and a couple of bearclaws and Khrushchev was an iced mocha man, Putin appears to have been working out.

Gordon G. Chang provides analysis.

Book Review: WHAT MADE jack welch JACK WELCH

WHAT MADE jack welch JACK WELCH:

How Ordinary People Become Extraordinary Leaders

Author: Stephen H. Baum with Dave Conti

Publisher: Crown Business, 2007

Stephen H. Baum, an executive coach and leadership consultant, places less emphasis on how to be a leader than he does on how exceptional leaders acquired the traits that made them successful. It is an approach that serves him well throughout the book although there are times when the lines become blurred because of the natural mixture of being and doing. His book identifies the following key characteristics:

• The appetite to take charge;



• Character;



• Confidence to seek challenge and embrace risk;



• Capacity to act;



• Ability to engage and inspire; and



• Shaping experiences.

Baum interviewed and researched a series of leaders to glean his lessons and provides ample anecdotes about their challenges and victories. This strengthens his analysis but also goes against the title since a large portion of the book is focused on other leaders and not on Jack Welch.

[One feature of the book was a real pebble in the shoe: In any references to Welch's pre-greatness days, Baum spells Welch's name in lower-case letters (e.g. "jack's competitiveness and desire to win continued to be nurtured...") and then switches to all-caps when the great man has reached Olympus. I found that to be beyond irritating. Somewhere in this world there is an editor who deserves to be flogged.]

Although I would have preferred to learn more about jack's/JACK'S leadership, Baum's book provides enough juicy executive suite stories to make you forget The Great One. I particularly liked the emphasis on character that was a thread throughout the book and especially appreciated the fact that Baum's leaders don't magically transform anything. They adopt strategies that nudge, shape, and eventually improve; in short, they achieve the sort of results that we see in the real world.

The example of how Jim Broadhead, the CEO of Florida Power & Light, decided to deal with a resistant team and implement needed changes while fending off a potential shut-down of a nuclear power plant by the federal government could serve as a guidepost for any leader who has to grapple with outside regulations. The tips on obtaining the shaping experiences in learning to lead may be regarded by some as obvious (e.g., "Connecting with others") but if they are so obvious - and certainly items such as creating your personal board of directors are not - then why aren't more people doing them?

My advice is simple: If you want to get the most out of Stephen Baum's book, forget about jack welch/JACK WELCH/Jack Welch. Forget about gaining insightful lessons about leadership. Looking for those will only distract you from the book's real merits. Instead, regard the book as a series of guidelines from an extremely savvy coach who has some tips that will truly help your career.

That's where the real meat is.

A Different Take on Customer Service

As for my staff, I'll hire people who don't know arithmetic, so that if a question ever arises about a customer's being charged the wrong price, the clerks will say, "I don't know arithmetic. It's store policy." I will make sure that most of my clerks have never operated a cash register before, so my store will have long lines of irritated customers watching my clerks stare blankly at the cash register as if they had never been told to understand why they were hired.

If that doesn't sufficiently interfere with progress, I'll insist that my clerks talk on the phone with their boyfriends or girlfriends and regard customers as intruders. Instead of hiring good-natured, conscientious people who know you have to work for a living, I'll carefully screen the applicants in search of people who will behave as if they think their job is demeaning and not worth taking seriously and who will let you know it.

- John Welter, "My Store of Grievances" [The Atlantic, August 1987]

Dismissed!

Ted Frank analyzes the weird world of crazy lawsuits. An excerpt:

For a mom-and-pop immigrant dry-cleaner to defend against Roy Pearson’s consumer-fraud claim demanding tens of millions of dollars over an allegedly lost pair of pants cost nearly six figures and nearly drove the Chung family out of business, which is why they were willing to settle that meritless case for $12,000. And the case still isn’t over, even after a trial victory. A loser-pays rule would hypothetically compensate the Chungs, except it is unlikely Pearson could ever pay the $83,000. Judges need to do more to throw cases like this out early: there is no reason the Pearson case had to go to trial and run up the bill for the Chungs. A recent Supreme Court case, Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, gives more freedom to judges to discard cases without plausible theories of recovery earlier in the process.

Quote of the Day

If my boss calls, get his name.

- Anonymous

When Reliability Trumps Brilliance

Trizoko warns against hiring superstars.

Bedroom Decor: Modern Gladiator

Geekologie has the details on the new Bedroom Security Table. What sort of neighborhood do these people live in?

Artful Dodger

Indexed has a chart on why "I Hated Gym."

Get Some Beer. They're Out Of Common Sense.

My brain has fallen and it can't get up. While buying some beer, Eclecticity encounters a policy guaranteed to avoid the devilish evil of "age profiling."

A Leadership Lesson: Choosing What to Overlook

Rachel told me what had happened before the revolt.

She'd been placed in charge of the department while her boss was on vacation. She'd often filled in for him for short periods and she was comfortable with her knowledge of the job. In some respects, she knew far more about some departmental operations than did her boss and she was proud of that knowledge. In fact, she felt the boss was a little lax in some areas.

Within two days of taking charge, Rachel started to crack the whip. Rules that had been unenforced were now enforced. Employees who were pretty good workers were rather tactlessly shown how they could be even better. By the third day, people were starting to ask - casually, of course - just when the boss was getting back from his trip.

By the fifth day, a few of them were in open revolt, refusing to proceed on certain projects until the "real boss" returned.

Rachel felt betrayed. She regarded all of her actions as reasonable and, as she analyzed them one-by-one, it was clear that she'd failed to consider the appearance and the context. She had failed to understand how her actions would be perceived and she completely missed a crucial part of effective management: Knowing what to overlook.

Rachel did not grasp that leadership is a constant choice of priorities and that leading often means consciously loosening a management standard here or there. She thought she could have it strict enforcement of petty rules as well as enthusiastic support of the team. Her team quickly reminded her how much leaders need followers.

Listening to her analysis of what went wrong, it was clear that Rachel had plateaued. She was refusing to admit that her behavior contributed to and perhaps even created the problem. It was as if she had announced, "I'm a very good assistant director but I'll always need a director to rein in my autocratic tendencies." That in no way discounts her very real skills and yet it is sad that a great opportunity for growth turned into a demonstration of limitations.

Physician Dissatisfaction

A look at how malpractice suits and rising insurance costs affect physicians and ultimately the relationship with patients.

Quote of the Day

Most of us would rather risk catastrophe than read the directions.

- Mignon McLaughlin

Saudi Samizdat

Juliet Samuel looks at chick lit in Saudi Arabia:

Much ado about a book on the love lives, sex and shopping habits of four rich Saudi girls. A modern epistolary novel, it's written as a series of emails sent to a Yahoo! group list serve by a mysterious, lipstick-wearing Saudi woman. In another world, it would be a trivial lip gloss narrative of life as a desirable young woman in Riyadh. But such a story can't avoid being political—and it turns out that chick lit is a convenient vantage point from which to critique Saudi society. Alsanea explores Saudi values in all their mundane invasiveness; this is a world where possessing The Nutty Professor on DVD is a political act, inviting social disgrace. And beyond the picayune restrictions lies blatant hypocrisy: the Saudi elites enforce dressing conventions at home and happily change into chic Western attire on the plane out of Riyadh.

The Peace Racket

Bruce Bawer finds that appeasement is alive and well in the Western nations in the guise of peace studies. An excerpt:

Reading these personal accounts, I remembered being 17. I’d never been outside North America, but I’d paid attention in history class and, being curious about the world, had read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Babi Yar, 1984, John Gunther’s Inside series, several books about the USSR, and much else. I had an uncle who’d been in a Nazi POW camp, a Polish-speaking grandmother who felt blessed to be an American citizen and not a Soviet vassal, and a Cuban schoolmate whose father, a journalist, Castro had tortured and blinded. I knew what totalitarianism was. The young people who get taken in by the Peace Racket, though, seem not to have had much of a clue about anything before visiting Haiti or Ghana or wherever. And their peace studies classes and international adventures don’t exactly wise them up. A peace studies student at McGill University, recounting her internship with a “Cuban NGO” (as if there really were such a thing!), refers enthusiastically to her participation in “the largest demonstration in Cuban history.” She doesn’t elaborate, but the reference is clearly to a government-organized protest against the U.S. trade embargo. This perilously naive young woman has no idea that she was the tool of a dictatorship.

Royal Longevity

Mark Steyn on a king's life:

The other day King Zahir of Afghanistan died at the age of 92. Sad and all that, but he’d lived a full life. Do you know what a full life in Afghanistan boils down to? Do you realize how unusual it is for anyone in Kabul to die at the age of 92? Male life expectancy in the country is 43.6 years – and not because the wiry lads in the Hindu Kush all expire in mid-jihad or bushkazi match: female life expectancy is only 43.96 years. That’s to say, if you were born in the mid-Sixties, passed through middle school in the disco era and danced with your teenage sweetheart to George Michael and Duran Duran, you should be dying any day now.

Zahir Shah was older than an average pair of Afghans put together. The King came to the throne in 1933, a year which is as remote to the typical Afghan as the Civil War is to us. Back then, the other new rulers on the international scene were President Roosevelt and Herr Hitler. But never mind his coronation, most Afghans weren’t even around for his abdication in 1973: The median age in the country is 17.6 years. Even if you survive the appalling childhood mortality rates, eking out three-score-and-ten is the longest of long shots. If you’ve ever met Afghan men, you’ll know that feeling when you run into some aquiline weathered Pushtun warrior with white hair and a wispy beard framing a leathery old face that wrinkles up every time he smiles. And the old-timer full of ancient folk wisdom from the Khyber Pass turns out to be 38. He looks like Anna Nicole’s late husband but at school he was three grades below Demi Moore’s boy toy. In such a world, a 92-year old man is a phenomenon – and, even in his dotage, King Zahir looked healthier than many of the fortysomethings running the country.


Read the rest of his essay here.

Miscellaneous and Fast

Max Boot analyzes the options in Iraq.

James Dean in a driving safety ad.

Business Week looks at the labor shortage: myths and realities.


Ron Rosenbaum examines - with a knife - professor Stanley Fish's discovery of a coffee shop called Starbucks.

[HT: Arts & Letters Daily ]

Put Down The BlackBerry!

Carol Hymowitz has advice for vacationing bosses. An excerpt:

He acknowledges that technology is making it increasingly difficult for executives to separate themselves from work and from their staffs even for a day. On fishing trips to remote areas in British Columbia, Mr. Bonsignore has observed executives. They "step off the float plane onto the dock, and the first thing they do is make sure their cellphone and BlackBerry are working," he says. The fact that they can connect so easily to their offices and staffs from anyplace in the world makes it harder to choose not to engage.

Read Us! Please Read Us!

The Los Angeles Times, a boutique newspaper in southern California, has managed to draw fire from both right and left wing bloggers. Some of it is pretty amusing.

Your Shelf Life

Stanley Bing has uncovered a universal truth. An excerpt:

I have this theory. It’s pretty simple. I believe that, when it comes to our jobs, we’re all like a quart of milk or a pack of sausages. Each one of those objects, and so many more of varying compositions and ages, are stamped with a date by which they must be sold or consumed. It’s their shelf life. Everything has one. For fish, it’s a couple of days. A can of corned beef hash can live a decade in a cupboard. But eventually, everything reaches the point of expiration.

So it is with jobs. Some of us are lucky. The invisible stamp on our foreheads says 2014, maybe, or “good for 32 years if kept in a cool, dry place.” But the stamp is there. And there’s nothing any of us can do about it.

Hint: One Cleans Under the Bed

Okay, it was a choice between posting either an academic article or a review of the new Roomba, the robotic vacuum cleaner.

Guess which won.

Real Money or Shatner Money?

The latest run-down of what television characters would be earning in real life.

Measuring Kindness

I recently had an interesting conversation with a couple of managers about customer service issues.

The question arose of whether a person who lacks character, kindness, and the inclination to treat people decently can be trained to deal with customers; in short, if those qualities aren't present, can they be poured in?

No magic answers immediately emerged but the discussion also sparked consideration of how seldom kindness is tested for in the applicant screening process. To be sure, there are hypothetical questions regarding how various job-related incidents should be handled, but those scenarios can be a better measurement of judgment than of kindness.

Those little intangibles such as kindness, courage, and creativity are, of course, not so little in the long run. Their importance can be obscured by the high brush of job descriptions and formal credentials.

They deserve more attention.

Quote of the Day

I shut my eyes in order to see.

- Paul Gauguin

Closet Nappers Unite!

Ann Althouse explores the subject of napping and concludes that, yea, it is good.

She is, of course, correct since sleep is one of the great pleasures of life, in the same league with chocolate.

Baby Domain Names

In a move that may represent caring, far-sightedness, or just plain looniness, some parents are buying domain names for their young children.

If this becomes a trend, will it influence the naming of children? Will parents be tempted to go for domain-friendly monikers?

(I'll talk it over with my children: Google and Yahoo.)

The Suicide of Reason

Lee Harris's newest book, The Suicide of Reason, will be gaining a lot of attention in the months ahead.

Here's an essay he wrote in 2002 on fantasy ideologies. It's worth revisiting. An excerpt:

To be a prop in someone else’s fantasy is not a pleasant experience, especially when this someone else is trying to kill you, but that was the position of Ethiopia in the fantasy ideology of Italian fascism. And it is the position Americans have been placed in by the quite different fantasy ideology of radical Islam.

The terror attack of 9-11 was not designed to make us alter our policy, but was crafted for its effect on the terrorists themselves: It was a spectacular piece of theater. The targets were chosen by al Qaeda not through military calculation — in contrast, for example, to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — but entirely because they stood as symbols of American power universally recognized by the Arab street. They were gigantic props in a grandiose spectacle in which the collective fantasy of radical Islam was brought vividly to life: A mere handful of Muslims, men whose will was absolutely pure, as proven by their martyrdom, brought down the haughty towers erected by the Great Satan. What better proof could there possibly be that God was on the side of radical Islam and that the end of the reign of the Great Satan was at hand?

As the purpose of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia was to prove to the Italians themselves that they were conquerors, so the purpose of 9-11 was not to create terror in the minds of the American people but to prove to the Arabs that Islamic purity, as interpreted by radical Islam, could triumph. The terror, which to us seems the central fact, is in the eyes of al Qaeda a by-product. Likewise, what al Qaeda and its followers see as central to the holy pageant of 9-11 — namely, the heroic martyrdom of the 19 hijackers — is interpreted by us quite differently. For us the hijackings, like the Palestinian “suicide” bombings, are viewed merely as a modus operandi, a technique that is incidental to a larger strategic purpose, a makeshift device, a low-tech stopgap. In short, Clausewitzian war carried out by other means — in this case by suicide.

Perpetual Adolescence?

In the 1990s, most people who played video games were teenagers. Now the average gamester age is nearly 30. Cultural products aimed at tots and preteens capture the attention of adults. "SpongeBob SquarePants," intended for the 6-to-11 age group, draws almost 19 million viewers from the 18-to-49 crowd. Some famous museums, uncomfortable with their adult role as guardians of historical memory, have gone adolescent, staging exhibits on motorcycles, hip-hop and "Star Wars" movies. Many college courses, even on major campuses, make rainy-day activities at summer camp seem profound.

Such examples of America's descent into perpetual adolescence populate Diana West's provocative "The Death of the Grown-Up." Ms. West, a columnist for the Washington Times, argues that the country is suffering a case of arrested development, with teen tastes and desires eclipsing traditional adult conduct and values. A good deal of evidence supports her. An obsession with play and self-expression and a resistance to limits--conventional hallmarks of adolescence--are increasingly strong "adult" themes too.

Read the rest of John Leo's essay here.

Update: Eclecticity suggests a link.

Political Appointments

I've worked in the private and public sectors. One area in which the public sector has a clear advantage is it usually labels its political appointments.

There is little sanctimonious rhetoric about the best qualified person for the job. Although the appointee may be highly competent, everyone knows that the appointment is due to connections or influence and that it was not the result of careful screening.

Contrast that with the two-tiered approach in many companies. This Management Assistant job will be filled after we advertise it, attract a wide range of applicants, evaluate their knowledge, skills, and experience, interview them, and then select the person who has received the highest score. On the other hand, this vice presidential job several levels above the Management Assistant will be filled by a candidate the CEO once knew in Toledo. No serious screening. No objective interviewing. No bothering with equal opportunity or affirmative action concerns. Poof! He or she is in.

And here's the kicker. For the next VP slot, we may go through the formal system. You see, it's sort of optional. But you can bet that if the spot being filled is one of those lower level jobs, we'll be scientific and objective. We'll thoroughly search the hinderlands and carefully review our selection standards to make sure they are closely related to the job.

After all, we don't want to take any chances.

Quote of the Day

The Lion Tamer School of Management:

Keep them well fed and never let them know that all you've got is a chair and a whip.

- Anonymous

Pearls

Ben Stein's advice for college students.

[HT: Instapundit ]

All Dressed Up With No Place To Go

In some recent coaching sessions with clients, I've been reminded of the importance of running room.

The business section of many bookstores is filled with career advice books that counsel this strategy and that. Most are based on two assumptions:

1. There are sufficient opportunities for advancement within the organization.


2. The reader is interested in those opportunities.

Those are pretty big assumptions. The career advice books that feature examples from Fortune 500 companies are discussing scenarios that are worlds apart from the average person's reality. Giant organizations offer far more opportunities for advancement and the inspirational stories of people who took advantage of those chances don't resemble the places where a grand opportunity may open up every six or seven years.

The issue of interest also is different. Larger outfits don't just offer more opportunities, they also have a greater likelihood of offering something of genuine interest. A company of 10,000 employees or less is going to have much less running room for people who are ambitious than will one of the mega-corporations.

I'm familar with the Horatio Alger-like stories of people who created their own job opportunities by thinking of a new product or service. That can occur if the organization is receptive to such creativity. Many places, however, let the dead hand of bureaucracy stifle such energy.

My point is that individuals who are preparing themselves for advancement within a particular organization need a realistic appraisal of whether that organization will provide enough serious opportunities for their talents.

Many workplaces face a serious morale problem: What to do with highly skilled middle managers who are all dressed up with no place to go?

Grassroots Recognition and Appreciation

Odds are, you can quickly name several extraordinary performers in your organizations whose efforts are largely unrecognized. You may be one of them.

Instead of shrugging and updating your resume or suggesting that those people do the same, my suggestion to those who've noticed the Great Unnoticed is to make some small effort to correct the situation.

Sending a note to the person's boss (and maybe even copying the note to that person's boss) is a decent thing to do. The note doesn't have to be lengthy and it shouldn't state anything that is untrue. Simply describe the nature of the work that you've noticed and how much you appreciate it. Don't assume that everyone knows how good that employee is. Supervisors are notoriously near-sighted on such matters and a note is the sort of nudge that can lead to meaningful recognition.

Even if nothing extraordinary happens, you can be assured that the other employee will appreciate your effort. Imagine how wealthy you would be if you had a dollar for every person who hungers for appreciation.

The responsibility for appropriate recognition isn't limited to the immediate supervisor. In a perfect world, that might be sufficient but we all know this isn't a perfect world. Some people out there deserve your help.

Why not help them?

Quote of the Day

Broadly speaking, the short words are best, and the old words best of all.

- Winston Churchill

Planting the Seeds for a Raise

Must reading: Rowan Manahan has outstanding tips on how to plant the seeds for a raise.

A Simple Remark

The selection committee was torn between two candidates for promotion. A committee member made a joke about one candidate's personality and, although the committee continued to follow the required procedures to ensure objectivity, the candidate's chances were finished.

The junior member's suggestion at the staff meeting was interpreted by one of the department heads as a veiled criticism of his professionalism. An enemy was created who would later strive to thwart the junior member's advancement.

At the annual retreat, a division head was stunned to learn that some comments he'd made to a group of interns several years ago had inspired one of them to develop a highly successful program. The division head could not remember what he'd said.

The department director asked the secretary why, year after year, all of the Special Action Reports were printed on blue paper. The secretary said she wasn't sure but she would find out. It was discovered that a department director seven years and three directors ago had said she liked the color blue.

Not Your Standard Conference

Why go to a normal conference when you could be at Comic-Con? The Telegraph looks over the event where many of the attendees dress as comic book characters [Hold on, I've attended management conferences like that!]:



Comic-Con is a mixture of seminars, on such topics as 'Klingon Lifestyle', 'Gays in Comics', 'How to be an Internet Geek Superstar', parties, autograph sessions, a giant exhibition hall with stalls from comic-book companies, artists, toy manufacturers and, of course, presentations from the big studios trying to hype their films.


Fittingly, it takes place in a convention centre the size of the Death Star. At 2,700,000 square feet, even comparing it with football pitches (about 60, actually) becomes meaningless. It stretches across the horizon and it takes 15 minutes to walk from one end to the other. The entry queue on the first day winds around the entire building.

Quote of the Day

So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy. And a further reason for caution, in this respect, might be drawn from the reflection that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists. Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question.

- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist No. 1

Drucker and Values

Rick Wartzman, director of the Drucker Institute, on what the Chinese need to learn from the late and great Peter Drucker. An excerpt:

Earlier this summer, I took part in a symposium at Claremont Graduate University in California, where a group of Chinese entrepreneurs expressed serious concerns that in the eyes of far too many young people in their country, becoming rich and being ethical are somehow mutually exclusive.

The occasion for this gathering, which drew attendees from 10 different nations and all over the U.S., was to discuss the work of the late Peter Drucker, the renowned management philosopher who held that "free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business; it can be justified only as being good for society."

Drucker, who died two years ago at age 95, was no starry-eyed sloganeer. And he sure wasn't against making money. "Actually," he wrote, "a company can make a social contribution only if it is highly profitable."

[Need I add that many American entrepreneurs require the same message?]

Living Large and Far Out

Geekologie has the details on the Galactic Suites Space Hotel, due to start receiving guests in 2012.

The price? 4 million big ones for 3 nights.

Career Choices: Why HR?

Evil HR Lady on why she works in Human Resources.

Sadism, masochism, and high social status are not mentioned.

Wigged Out

There are some products that are so obviously needed that you have to ask, "Why was this denied to the world for so many years?"

Crisis Management and Press Appearances

How should executives handle themselves when talking to the press about a crisis?

Check out this video by comedians John Clarke and Bryan Dawe.

Bonds and the Record

Another hope is for less piety, a shift in the altogether mystifying popular notion that the lifetime home-run mark is somehow sacrosanct—“baseball’s most hallowed record,” as the news reports called it the other day. Hallowed but hollow, perhaps, since home-run totals are determined not just by the batters but by different pitchers, in very different eras, and, most of all, by the outer dimensions of the major-league parks, which have always varied widely and have been deliberately reconfigured in the sixteen ballparks built since 1992, thus satisfying the owners’ financial interest in more and still more home runs. Bonds has been called a cheater, but the word should hardly come up in a sport whose proprietors, if they were in charge of the classic Olympic hundred-metre dash, would stage it variously at a hundred and six metres, ninety-four, a hundred and three, and so forth, and engrave the resulting times on a tablet.

Read the rest of Roger Angell's thoughts about Barry Bonds here.

Top Five: China

Oliver August gives his top five list of books on China and its culture.

Quote of the Day

Incomprehensible jargon is the hallmark of a profession.

- Kingman Brewster, Jr.

Twist and Shout

Get ready for the weekend:

Check out Twist and Shout from The Isley Brothers to The Beatles.

IT's Behavior: Rude or Efficient?

Here's a post on the behavior of IT folks that sparked a lot of comments, particularly about its underlying hostility.

[HT: Steve Clayton ]

What I Learned about Business from the Movies and Television

Secretaries in New York City have spacious apartments in nice neighborhoods.

If the murder suspect is either the chief executive officer or a secretary, then you can bet that the CEO will be going to the slammer.

Every workplace has an amiable computer geek who can't wait to abandon projects in order to help out the non-geeks.

Beautiful female employees have a dumpy girlfriend who has access to the boss's desk.


Harassers and bigots are tolerated or encouraged.

Anyone with an Ivy League degree has criminal tendencies unless, of course, the person is a professor.

Managers can leave the workplace for days at a time and their work is mysteriously done by others.

Members of top management ride around in limos. All others use cabs.

No one keeps receipts and most executives and managers have huge expense accounts.

All large businesses are hiding a massive conspiracy and if the CEO is nice, it is a really evil one.

The office staff is always smarter than upper management.

The unrecognized genius in the mailroom or computer lab will eventually be rewarded.

Executives have long and leisurely lunches at private clubs and then go to swanky parties at night.

People are hired and promoted at the speed of light with little or no regard for personnel procedures.

Environmentalists and community activists are inherently noble.


Executives always have clean desks.

Corporations routinely make obscene profits from very little work.

Noonan on the NYPD Terrorism Report

Peggy Noonan on the New York City Police Department report on what turns westerners into terrorists.

I believe the anti-Americanism of large segments of our "elite" also contributes. Like a husband who claims he loves his wife but continually belittles her, these characters hold the United States to a utopian standard never achieved by any nation in the history of the world and search for evil or venal motives in its noblest actions. They don't favor terrorism but neither do they support the bulwark against terrorism.

Quote of the Day

Music hath charm to sooth a savage beast - but I'd try a revolver first.

- Josh Billings

Music Break: Hound Dog

With all of the news today about Elvis, it may be appropriate to check out the best version of "Hound Dog": The one by Big Mama Thornton.

I think Elvis would agree.

Leadership: Teaching Eagles?

Adrian Savage at Slow Leadership has some interesting thoughts on leadership and teaching eagles to run.

I'd add: One concept that has posed problems as been the tendency to think of leadership as a job and not a responsibility. If it is thought of as the latter, then everyone at various times will have to exercise leadership and we can get away from the caste system that labels some folks as leaders and others as followers and then builds a wall between them. The question is not whether or not a person is a leader - all of us at various times are expected to lead - but whether or not the person performs those leadership tasks well.

Unusual Staff Work: The Death of Elvis

American Heritage on the death of Elvis. An excerpt:

One March night in Norman, Oklahoma, during his second tour of the year, he fell asleep in the middle of dinner, almost choking on his food. “Is there much more time left?” wrote an aide in his diary. At about this time Elvis’s staff drew up a contingency plan for smuggling his body back home to Graceland, his Memphis mansion, in case they needed to cover up a fatal overdose on the road.

A Web Site Tip: Controlled Craziness

We just had our firm's web site updated. The task was long overdue. (The Execupundit part is still being polished.)

There was the usual lengthy discussion of what to include and what to toss out but one page had to remain. Amid all of the usual "what we can do for you" and "who we are" material, we retained a whimsical look at the firm's partners.

The main reason for keeping that off-beat page is whenever we've met with new clients, the whimsical look page is the one web site item they are most likely to mention. They love it.

That's possibly because the page lets them know they are dealing with human beings.

So here's a easy tip: If you are putting together a web site, don't let your professionalism become stodgy.

Sometimes, a little wackiness is good.

Super Brain

A provocative article in Business Week on the possibility of brain enhancements (as opposed to the enhancement offers that are found in unsolicited e-mail):

There's no telling how today's research will change the world of work in 10 or 20 years' time. But once the tools and techniques are perfected, there's little question competitive individuals will get swept up in a race to expand their brain capacity. As that gets under way, it's destined to overturn today's paradigm of cubicled executives laboring on laptops, palm devices, and cell phones, besieged by constant software updates.

Perhaps the electronically augmented executive in 2025 will be able to absorb whole new fields of information by beaming it, Matrix-style, straight to circuits in his modified cortex. But even this scenario probably understates the workplace revolution that lies ahead. If you think Wi-Fi, BlackBerries, blogs, social networks, and Second Life are changing the way we work, wait until you see what enhanced cognitive equipment can do.

Serious Opportunity

Many a workplace diversity program is a hodgepodge of loosely assembled concepts in which broad labels are applied and a clear distinction is not made between equal employment opportunity, affirmative action, and diversity management. Indeed, a surprising number are simply an EEO program with a new name.

Having worked in the area of equal opportunity for lo these many years, I have some suggestions that will easily focus the central strategy of these programs:

1. Emphasize equal opportunity, not equal results. No quotas. No wink-wink, nudge-nudge, preferences. Equal opportunity should always be given and the best person for the job or assignment should always be selected. Let diversity ride in the wake of an effective equal opportunity program.


2. Stopping treating groups as victims. The last time I checked, starting a small business is hard for most people regardless of race, sex, or ethnicity. If your firm wants to help small businesses, by all means do so, only give your help on the basis of need, not race, national origin or sex.


3. Recognize complexity. Who speaks for the "Black community?" I doubt if it's Clarence Thomas or Thomas Sowell but neither is it Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton. Why? Because references to various "communities" are so general as to be meaningless. There is a rich diversity (nice term) within these "communities" that should be acknowledged.


4. Have policies and practices that you can shout from the roof tops. If you aren't proud of a particular practice, why are you doing it?


5. Beware of hustlers and zealots. Admirable causes often attract charlatans and fanatics. It is disturbing how much publicity they garner. To paraphrase a line from a old spiritual, "Not everybody talking about heaven is going there."


6. Have a serious program. If you are committed to equal opportunity, put a substantive program in place, one with competent managers and clout. Don't have a paper program administered by a powerless office run by marginal performers.


7. Let the program seek the eradication of illegal discrimination and not the elimination of white guilt. The latter ensures a superficial, feel-good, program that is more designed to produce alibis than to provide opportunity. The former will open doors to a wide range of talent that any organization needs.

Quote of the Day

The other day I got out my can-opener and was opening a can of worms when I thought, "What am I doing?"

- Jack Handey

Radical Chic and Film

Bruce Thornton on Hollywood's celebration of "social bandits." An excerpt:

And here we come upon the monstrous lie at the heart of Bonnie and Clyde. The historical Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were not beautiful Robin Hoods but psychopathic killers — Clyde had jug-ears and a weak chin, Bonnie the mean mouth and ferret eyes of a white-trash skank. Their sexual proclivities, which included their younger male accomplices, were sordid, not romantic, and their violence was usually an unprovoked pleasurable indulgence, like their killing of two highway patrol officers on Easter Sunday in 1934. Their 12 victims were mostly police officers who, in accord with the laws Barrow and Parker scorned, announced themselves as such before they were gunned down in cold blood. Nor did the gang rob that many banks, their targets just as often being small mom-and-pop stores. As for distributing the money to the “people” — those scenes in the film were actually based on anecdotes about John Dillinger — there is no evidence that these predators ever gave a dime to the victims of the Depression, some of whom the pair robbed.

Overlawyered, Imus, and More

Overlawyered gives an Imus in the Courtroom Update.

Four months of unemployment and 20 million bucks. Not a bad gig.

Blogger Update

Continuing Blogger problems.

Repair work continues.

Posting will resume as soon as possible.

Aargh.

Bridges and Randians

Adam Lashinsky looks at the infrastructure debate and remembers "Atlas Shrugged."

Quote of the Day

There's always room at the top - after the investigation.



- Oliver Herford

Buzz Words

Seth Godin has started the Encyclopedia of Business Cliches.

Health Update: Larry Miller on Drinking

Larry Miller on the five stages of drinking.

As The Queen Says

If you want people to read your ads, here's the formula: Attach to money, drop the money in the streets, and then watch the word spread.

Oh yes. And then send samples to bloggers.

Great Moments in Religious Discrimination Law

Don't miss this one!

Some employment law cases must be read to be believed.

[HT: Lou Rodarte]

Bear with Me

I've been having some problems with Blogger yesterday and today.

Efforts are underway to get it sorted out as soon as possible. Possible explanations for problem include:

• Server problem
• Computer problem
• Communists.

Get Out Those Clippers!

Okay, all of you office dwellers. Be honest.

There are days when being a Foliage Technician looks pretty darned attractive.

Workplace Candor

"When we talked about your job performance, you thought I was giving an honest evaluation but I was really just giving information that I thought would cause you to perform in a manner that I'd like. A performance evaluation is more about achieving performance than evaluating it."



"The most popular standard by which we measure our decisions is 'It depends.' Many of our rules are suggestions and a lot of our procedures are rough guidelines. We strive for greater precision but often fall short. You're working with human beings."



"Genius is nice but on most days, reliable is better."

Quote of the Day

The trouble with most of us is that we'd rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.

- Norman Vincent Peale

The Reluctant Complainant

"I need to tell you about this guy who’s been harassing me, but I won’t tell you unless you promise not to do anything about it." The employee who tells you this seems very upset, yet very insistent that you promise not to act upon the information she wishes very much to tell you. How do you handle this as a human resources professional?

John D. Thompson analyzes some possible responses to the above scenario here.

Fighting Holocaust Denial

Should Holocaust denial be made a hate crime?

Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, Alan Dershowitz, Roger Kimball, and Dr. Gregory Glazov in a panel discussion.

[HT: Arts & Letters Daily ]

Tech Wars

Writing at Tech Central Station, Johnny Ryan discusses the likelihood of Internet warfare.

[HT: Instapundit ]

Brilliant? Or CRAB?

We've all heard of and seen people who are famous for being famous. These souls may not have any particular talent or expertise but they have somehow managed to achieve fame. Achieving fame, in fact, may be their talent although once that is under their wing their opinions on other subjects may be given much greater weight.

A variation of this group is even more interesting: People who are regarded as brilliant because they are regarded as brilliant. I've seen many of these fast-trackers in organizations; people who have a reputation for being terribly bright but who never seem to exhibit any great insight in my presence or, according to my informal research, the presence of others. I've gotten to the point where whenever one of these individuals is described as brilliant, I ask for an example of some deep insight. On every occasion the person who's just issued the opinion begins to fumble about and eventually admits that he or she is simply passing along conventional wisdom.

I'm not being critical of these famous and reputedly bright individuals. Achieving fame and achieving a reputation for brilliance are not minor accomplishments. Many of us would love to be so fortunate. My interest is in the tactical: How is that achieved?

With regard to the CRABs (commonly regarded as brilliant), my guess is their reputations are produced by what Malcolm Gladwell would call a tipping point. If you are able to persuade a certain number of key opinion makers in an organization or environment that you are brilliant, then that will quickly become your label. If you are unable to do so, then you may well be regarded as competent but not Olympian.

Organizations scrutinize selection standards and success planning. Networks and information sharing also get attention. Reputation, however, is regarded as a logical by-product of achievement. That is a myth and organizations that want to tap into real talent may wish to explore how that can be transformed into reality.

Stuff and More Stuff

I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can't afford a front yard full of old cars.

It wasn't always this way. Stuff used to be rare and valuable. You can still see evidence of that if you look for it. For example, in my house in Cambridge, which was built in 1876, the bedrooms don't have closets. In those days people's stuff fit in a chest of drawers. Even as recently as a few decades ago there was a lot less stuff. When I look back at photos from the 1970s, I'm surprised how empty houses look. As a kid I had what I thought was a huge fleet of toy cars, but they'd be dwarfed by the number of toys my nephews have. All together my Matchboxes and Corgis took up about a third of the surface of my bed. In my nephews' rooms the bed is the only clear space.

Stuff has gotten a lot cheaper, but our attitudes toward it haven't changed correspondingly. We overvalue stuff.

Read the rest of Paul Graham's essay on stuff here.

Parade Harassment?

Four San Diego firefighters allege they were harassed by being required to attend a Gay Pride Parade.

The Workplace Law Profs Blog has the details.

Student Business Plans

Entrepreneur examines extraordinary business plans by college students.

There are some pretty nifty ideas.

Quote of the Day

Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.

- Jack Paar

What Brilliant Children Miss

Charles Murray sees the need for special education for the gifted. An excerpt:

Because of this reluctance to acknowledge intellectual differences, no one tells high-IQ children explicitly, forcefully and repeatedly that their intellectual talent is a gift, and that they are not superior human beings but lucky ones. They are never told that their gift brings with it obligations, and that the most important and most difficult of these obligations is to aim not just at academic accomplishment, but at wisdom.

The encouragement of wisdom requires a special kind of education. It requires recognition of one's own intellectual limits and fallibilities--in a word, humility. This is perhaps the most conspicuously missing part of education of the gifted. Many high-IQ students go from kindergarten through an advanced degree without ever taking a course that forces them to say to themselves, "I can't do this".

Limiting Talent

Daniel Altman notes an interesting by-product of sex discrimination in Japan.

Seoul Rising

Writing in Business Week, Bruce Einhorn explains why Seoul is now more expensive than Tokyo and Hong Kong for expat executives.

"Cheeseburger Imperialism"

Mark Steyn on some media corrections and intellectual attitudes. An excerpt:

Something rather odd happened the other day. If you go to NASA's Web site and look at the "U.S. surface air temperature" rankings for the lower 48 states, you might notice that something has changed.

Then again, you might not. They're not issuing any press releases about it. But they have quietly revised their All-Time Hit Parade for U.S. temperatures. The "hottest year on record" is no longer 1998, but 1934. Another alleged swelterer, the year 2001, has now dropped out of the Top 10 altogether, and most of the rest of the 21st century – 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004 – plummeted even lower down the Hot 100. In fact, every supposedly hot year from the Nineties and this decade has had its temperature rating reduced. Four of America's Top 10 hottest years turn out to be from the 1930s, that notorious decade when we all drove around in huge SUVs with the air-conditioning on full-blast. If climate change is, as Al Gore says, the most important issue anyone's ever faced in the history of anything ever, then Franklin Roosevelt didn't have a word to say about it.

[HT: RealClearPolitics ]

Dressing Up and Dressing Down

What may be appropriate in one setting for your culture may be highly bizarre in another. A few months ago, I dressed in a way I believed was acceptable for the day: brown slacks, pink shirt, deep red tie, and a camel’s-hair sport coat that was my pride and joy. The thing is, I had forgotten that I was scheduled to go to a luncheon where my CFO was speaking to about 500 security analysts. I entered that ballroom into a sea of blue and gray. I felt like Bozo the Clown at a funeral.

Read the rest of Stanley Bing on the importance of apparel here.

Shakespeare, Proust, and Business

Lately, my night time reading has consisted of Shakespeare and Proust, perhaps in a quest to overcome the usual slam-bam or bureaucratic writing that surrounds us.

Read either of those writers and you are taken to a time when language mattered as much, and often more, than action. Last night, I read part of an account of a parlor conversation in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past that dealt with the design of a piece of furniture. It will remain with me the rest of my life. Contrast that with other books where you forget the names of the main characters two days later and where the plot is only a dim outline.

Shakespeare's plays, of course, have shaped our language. In Julius Caesar, for example, you can find one vivid expression after another that we still use because they are so finely fashioned.

I suspect that pragmatism has drained much of the color from our language and our literature. The sparse style of Hemingway may be powerful in small doses but it loses its impact in larger ones. The language that we employ to get through the day and to conduct business is effective and practical but is usually less than memorable.

This emphasis on getting things done, which is reflected in our language, sounds practical but is it truly so in the long run? Do we not risk losing nobility and insight if we adopt styles and approaches that are so powerfully linked to immediate results? Currently, there is a debate on the role of universities in the United States. Some "reformers" would toss aside classes and programs that are not directly tied to the marketplace and, in so doing, transform the university into a trade school. I believe that is a mistake. Courses in Medieval French History may not have the closest connection to getting a job but if the universities don't preserve and provide such knowledge, who will? Furthermore, students trained in the liberal arts can often see issues and opportunities the more narrowly-trained business students miss.

Many a management lesson can be found in Shakespeare but, even if that were not the case, is not the study of such material justified by the simple need for knowledge? Is knowledge a tidy equation? Or do many of its deepest insights emerge from such unlikely places that its expansion is our safest strategy? Can the hurried quest for the pragmatic be highly impractical?

Quote of the Day

The older they get the better they were when they were younger.

- Jim Bouton

Decision Making in a Nutshell

Humor break: Andrew R. Juhl give four simple steps to becoming more decisive.

Conformists in Hollywood

But these efforts have done little to change the climate of political conformity, not to say paranoia, in Hollywood. In a recent trip to Los Angeles, I met with members of every industry sector, from actors to writers to agents to executives, all of whom described themselves as either conservative or libertarian or simply not left-liberal. All of them swore up and down that there is no such thing as a conservative blacklist, but few of them were willing to go on the record during our discussions. As one person put it over lunch, he had nothing to gain by outing himself as a libertarian. "It's a complication I don't need. . . . Why make my life more difficult?"

Read the rest of Sonny Bunch's Weekly Standard account on Thor Halvorssen's campaign to bring some new voices to the film biz.

Entrepreneurs: Passion or Skill?

Tim Berry tackles the question of whether entrepreneurs are best advised to place their focus on their passion or their skill. An excerpt:

Everybody should be able to do what they love and get paid, but it doesn't seem to work out that way. There are only so many writers, artists, dancers, actors, and athletes with jobs. Then there are the teachers of writing, dancing, and acting, the coaches, and others who build businesses around what they love. And there are websites around what people like to do, and some of them make money.

Be sure to read the entire scenario around which this is based. I doubt if any of us will have a clear answer.

Top Five Children's Books?

Meghan Cox Gurdon gives her top five list of children's books.

It can be extremely difficult to sort out the top five in this category, but I'd add:

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss

Quote of the Day

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.

- Abraham Lincoln

Dodger Blues

Writing in US News & World Report, Betsy Streisand gives the story of when the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. An excerpt:

So, after 68 seasons, and a 1955 World Series win over the Yankees, O'Malley moved the Dodgers to L.A., where he could get what he couldn't get at home: a site to build what would become the finest stadium of its time. The deal not only broke Brooklyn's heart, (the old joke was if you were in the room with Hitler, Stalin, and O'Malley and had only two bullets, you'd shoot O'Malley twice) but forever changed baseball, pushing its boundaries 1,800 miles beyond St. Louis to the West Coast.

It also changed forever the way the rest of the country saw California. With the arrival of the Dodgers (as well as the San Francisco Giants, who also defected from New York as part of the Dodger deal), the land of new beginnings and Hollywood fantasy hadn't just become part of the national pastime; it had become part of the nation. "The Dodgers' move to L.A. was hugely symbolic. It was representative of the whole shift west that was happening in the country," says Kevin Nelson, author of The Golden Game, the Story of California Baseball. "It also finally made easterners aware that California existed."

Segwaying Alone

Why didn't you run for the board of directors?

The Segway fan club of America is disbanding.

[HT: Instapundit ]

Business Books for the Summer

The Wharton School's blog has a list of summer reading.

As is well known, nothing beats taking a business book to the beach!

Double Crossed?

Seth Godin on the dispute between Red Cross and Johnson & Johnson.

Not a clever response by the Red Cross president.

Old Reliable: Lines from the Passive-Aggressive

Did I forget to tell you about that meeting? Oh, I'm so sorry.

I ran your idea past Scott. He made some changes and submitted it to the boss. Hope you don't mind.

I know I promised to support that project but then I learned about the potential objection from the Marketing folks and didn't have time to get back with you.

When I accepted the praise for the team's achievement, I'm sure that everyone knew that I wasn't the only one who did the work.

We forgot to hand out your packet of supporting documents at the meeting but I can assure you that everything was covered in the discussion. Too bad they didn't adopt it.

7 Tips: How to Think about Fear

Here are seven tips for dealing with fear:

1. Control your imagination so it doesn't inflate fear. As the medical maxim goes, "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."


2. Reduce the power of fear by caring less. The more you care about the outcome of an event that you fear, the more you are feeding the fear about that result. Just as you would remove oxygen to put out a fire, remove or reduce the caring to weaken the fear. In negotiations, the side that cares least about the outcome has the most power.


3. Turn fear into an ally. A certain amount of fear can be helpful. It can alert your senses and keep your skills up. Fear is a major defense mechanism but it needs to be properly calibrated.


4. Make sure that you've identified the right fear. Are you worried about something of substance or some trivial matter? Don't be stomping on ants in the front yard when there is an elephant in the living room.


5. Run toward the monster. A folk tale advises children who have nightmares of being chased by a monster to turn and run toward the monster because they will learn that it is not as frightening as they imagined and the creature might even turn into a friend. Many fears evaporate once they are confronted.


6. Schedule time to worry. Set aside 30 minutes to worry about a problem and then announce to yourself, "Time's up" and move on to other matters.


7. Don't read too much into matters. It's fine to be sensitive but not to the point that you add meaning to events or remarks that are more accurately taken at face value. If you are in the habit of doing so, try to catch yourself when you start to "over-interpret" and instead focus solely on the simplest interpretation. If you are discussing where to go for lunch and Ellen says she doesn't care for Chinese food today, that doesn't mean that she is criticizing your choice of restaurants two weeks ago or that your decision to put Chinese food on the menu for the department retreat is under covert attack. It may well mean just what she said and no more.

Quote of the Day

Someday is not a day of the week.



- Anonymous

Service with a Smile

Let's close the day with some humor.

Steve Martin, Buck Henry, and Teri Garr in a classic short:

The Absent-Minded Waiter.

[HT: Jonathan Wade]

Hey, hey. Check it out.

Back by popular demand - the commercial of the century: Flea Market Montgomery.

Evaluating Feedback

BusinessPundit gives an interesting slant on the importance of getting feedback and then ignoring most of it.

Stirred, Not Shaken

In response to Matt Damon's recent snorts about the evils of James Bond, Mark Steyn takes us down memory lane with one of his older columns reviewing a book on 007. An excerpt:

Though he refers to “a sort of paroxysm of national self-loathing”, he would appear to be the principal evidence of it. And even then you vaguely suspect that he’s faking it. There are, broadly speaking, three reactions to Bond: those who dislike him; those who love him; and those who love him but feel obliged to deplore all the frightful imperialism, racism, alcoholism, chain smoking, snobbery, profoundly unsafe sex, etc. Winder elects to join this last category, which makes the book a glummer read than it ought to be, a kind of Doctor No But...

Selecting a President

Newt Gingrich on the wacked-out endurance contest known as the U.S. presidential campaign:

"These aren't debates," the former Georgia congressman said. "This is a cross between [TV shows] 'The Bachelor,' 'American Idol' and 'Who's Smarter than a Fifth-Grader.'"

"What's the job of the candidate in this world?" asked Gingrich. "The job of the candidate is to raise the money to hire the consultants to do the focus groups to figure out the 30-second answers to be memorized by the candidate. This is stunningly dangerous."

[HT: Drudge Report]

"Rule the Web"

Cool Tools has the word on a new and - even to a non-techie such as myself - fascinating book on how to "Rule the Web."

Reliable Cars

Business Week notes that American cars are looking pretty good in the 2007 J.D. Power Vehicle Dependability Study.

Reporting the Economy

Brian S. Wesbury on how the media project a sense of pessimism about the economy. An excerpt:

To be very clear, I am not arguing that business news is purposefully biased. But what seems clear is that in the name of producing an entertaining product, and in an attempt to provide contrasting views, the true consensus of experts is rarely reported.

A randomly selected pairing of economists from The Wall Street Journal forecasting panel would pit two rather optimistic forecasters against each other in debate. But having two economists debate about whether GDP will grow 2.1% this year or 2.4% is downright boring. As a result, the producers of business news spice things up. They arrange for debates between a bullish economist and a bearish economist. And since they can't have Messrs. Roubini and Shilling on every hour of every day, they find equity short-sellers who make a living when things turn down, or political economists who are trying to score points.

Positive Confrontation and Trust

It is not unusual for employers to stress the easy availability of their employee complaint procedures. There are channels for discrimination complaints and channels for labor grievances and, with an increasing number of employers, even channels for any dispute or problem in between.

These channels exist out of fear that employees won't surface problems while the disputes are minor, but will wait until matters get worse. The idea of encouraging employees to talk out problems with co-workers is often regarded as terribly naive. "What if the person is intimidated and we don't hear about the matter until a lawyer comes calling?" shout the proponents of the channels and no doubt they have a point. Such independent avenues of redress are necessary.

There is, however, a missing point that needs to be emphasized. Just because some channels are necessary does not mean that their usage is always desirable. Procedures, like ideas, have consequences. A work culture that is characterized by trust is one in which people who have a problem with a co-worker will first discuss it with the co-worker. If the problem is not resolved at that level, then the issues is moved up to the supervisor or into one of the special channels.

That culture of positive confrontation is one to strive for. It fosters openness and honesty, not duplicity, whining, and backbiting. It stresses ethical behavior, not legalisms.

A workplace where people are comfortable discussing problems with co-workers in a courteous manner is a healthy workplace. One in which they aren't open or, worse yet, store up grievances and play "gotcha," is unhealthy, not matter how sophisticated or numerous the channels of redress.

Quote of the Day

If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain.

If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees.

If you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people.

- Chinese proverb

Terms of Resistance

The management of a community group that was exceedingly resistant to change. Each time volunteers would propose new projects, the response of the administrators was negative. After noting how much they were interested in new ideas and approaches the managers would say things such as:

"Staff is overcommitted."

"Let's wait five months until the new director gets on board."

"It will be too expensive."

"It will be too disruptive."

"It will go outside of our usual procedures."

"We've never done that."

"The timing isn't right."

It was a textbook example of how not to handle change. Instead of adopting a positive attitude and an openness to evaluating the proposals, they hunkered down and gave excuses. Not all of the proposals were great. Some probably should not have been done at all. But the reaction of the change resisters was so extreme, it damaged their credibility as critics.

People don't expect management to act like Santa Claus, hand out goodies, and agree to every request. They do, however, expect to be given the respect of a serious response. By not giving one, management created deep and altogether avoidable divisions.

This is no drill.

Humor break: Do nothing until you have watched this video on workplace violence.

It's mandatory.

And it may resemble your office.

Happy Birthday, Instapundit!

Law professor and author Glenn Reynolds launched Instapundit six years ago.

It is an understatement to note that Glenn's blog has become enormously successful.

Fellow blogger, law prof, and talk show host Hugh Hewitt wonders if Glenn would have accepted $10,000 back then for a lifetime ad. Hugh suggests that major advertisers should consider advertising in emerging blogs as a way of getting their message to a new audience while grabbing a bargain.

21 Things I Wish I Knew In My Twenties

1. This too shall pass.


2. What they say is required is not really what is required.


3. The whole world is not looking at you.


4. Good news: You have a lot of years ahead of you.


5. Bad news: Those years will start passing more quickly.


6. Set specific goals. All others are meaningless.


7. Don't regard the spiritual as impractical. It may well be the most practical thing in your life.


8. If you are trying to impress someone, your priorities are skewed.


9. Don't use humor as a weapon. Employ it as a defense.


10. The journey from A to B often goes from A to Z, M, and D before arriving at B.


11. Seek balance in all things.


12. Master a skill, then master another.


13. You are far from the only nervous person in the room.


14. Don't burn bridges. You may need them sooner than you think.


15. There are many times when it is better to be kind than clever.


16. Worry less and strive to reduce your fears. Years from now, you'll shake your head at the way minor matters used to trouble you.


17. Talk more with your parents and, if possible, tape some of their reminiscences.


18. Be reluctant to assign bad motives to others. Most of us are blundering, not conspiring.


19. Keep your word. Do what you say you will do.


20. Consider which of your virtues has become a vice. At least one has.


21. Try not to trip over the rocks on your way to the horizon. Don't let your grand vision distract you from what is needed to achieve it.

Fat Tax: Moving into a Higher Bracket

Australian economist Adam Creighton on the drawbacks of taxing foods that contribute to obesity. He proposes, perhaps with tongue in donut, a fat person tax. An excerpt:

Unlike communism’s poor, capitalism’s poor are generally fat, and the very poor even fatter. Indeed, up to one third of the three-year-old children in low-income families are reported to be fat or obese. Thus, to ensure its efficacy, any fat tax should be a bottom-line item on Form 1040, paid after all deductions and credits. For many obese, poor people, the passage of the fat-person tax may be the first time they’ve ever filed a 1040 with a positive liability: an especially poignant incentive to lose weight!

Cultivating the Credulous

A former Communist intelligence officer on his days of sowing anti-Americanism. An excerpt:

The European leftists, like any totalitarians, needed a tangible enemy, and we gave them one. In no time they began beating their drums decrying President Truman as the "butcher of Hiroshima." We went on to spend many years and many billions of dollars disparaging subsequent presidents: Eisenhower as a war-mongering "shark" run by the military-industrial complex, Johnson as a mafia boss who had bumped off his predecessor, Nixon as a petty tyrant, Ford as a dimwitted football player and Jimmy Carter as a bumbling peanut farmer. In 1978, when I left Romania for good, the bloc intelligence community had already collected 700 million signatures on a "Yankees-Go-Home" petition, at the same time launching the slogan "Europe for the Europeans."

Quote of the Day

Everything is fascinating when you should be working.

- Ben Elton

Diversity's Downsides

Here's some more on Robert "Bowling Alone" Putnam's study revealing the downsides of diversity. There is an assumption by some that being more diverse almost magically translates into being more tolerant and accepting. Like Beirut.

[HT to an eclectic and interesting blog: Eclecticity ]

Tofu U.

The Cranky Professor gives a tip on how to tell if you are attending an alternative college.

Miscellaneous and Fast

Marshall Loeb on why early retirement is losing its appeal.

Shocking. Simply shocking.

Ed Driscoll has caught life imitating Lileks.

From the Ken Burns film "Baseball": Ted Williams's last time at bat.

Aside from poor diet and lack of exercise, this is the only reason why I don't have a six-pack. [HT: 2Blowhards ]

Need water? Cool Tools has the details on military-grade Camel-Baks.

Anne Fisher on work-at-home options that aren't rip-offs.

Why the Moon Never Cries in the Morning

Mark Stevens, author of Your Marketing Sucks, with some thoughts on life:

Imagine if we looked for them. If we engaged in due diligence at the start. Hunted down the enemies of the good and the beautiful and the successful-the enemies of longevity-and destroyed them before they ruined what we have built. What we adored. What we looked at with amazing pride. What we had every right to be proud of because we vested it with care and intellect and creativity and drive and faith. Blind faith. Reckless faith. Joyous faith.

It would change nothing. You have to throw yourself at the things you create in life with wonderful abandon and let them fly for as long as the gods allow. Probably the truest axiom is that the secret to life is enjoying the passage of time. That’s all you need to do… and it is endlessly wonderful. Because when the business dies, you can form another. When the job turns into a drudge, you can walk across the street. When the strategy or the campaign fails-and ultimately it will-you can rethink it and raise the curtain on ACT II.

No Good Deed

Several years ago, a congressman from Arizona had the practice of flying coach from Washington, D.C. to Phoenix every other weekend in order to see his family and meet with constituents. One person's reaction? "He's just using taxpayer money for those fancy plane trips."

Sure. Rushing through airports, changing time zones, and flying coach for prolonged periods are commonly thought of as a good time.

I recall this comment because it reminds me of the infinite capacity of some people to put a negative or sinister spin on the noblest characteristics or actions. Consider how these cynics would regard the following:

Friendly. "What a phony."

Idealistic. "How naive."

Ambitious. "Just another opportunist."

Visionary. "A nut."

Cooperative. "Weak."

Deferential. "A kiss-up."

Analytical. "Head in the clouds."

Outspoken. "Rude."

Decisive. "Arrogant."

Principled. "Self-Righteous."

Articulate. "Too smooth."

Inarticulate. "Dumb."

Hard-working. "Too driven."

Successful. "Crooked."

Film Noir

Let's have a little culture this morning!

Richard Schickel on the history of film noir. An excerpt:

Noir, despite its Frenchified name, is a truly American form, as Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward observe in Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style (1979). Yes, many of its leading directors (Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Jacques Tourneur, André de Toth) were born in Europe and well versed in expressionism. But their ­source—­often directly, always at least ­indirectly—­was the American crime fiction of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, W. R. Burnett, and others. Almost all noir actors and many of the directors’ significant collaborators (cameramen, editors, etc.) were American born and certainly American ­trained.

How, then, to square the dark visual and psychological designs of this thoroughly American genre with the general mood of the country in the immediate postwar years? Screenwriter and director Paul Schrader thought that was easy. In his seminal 1972 article “Notes on Film Noir,” he wrote, “The disillusionment many soldiers, small businessmen and housewife/factory employees felt in returning to a peacetime economy was directly mirrored in the sordidness of the urban crime film. . . . The war continues, but now the antagonism turns with a new viciousness toward the American society itself.” I’ve never seen this rather casual bit of sociology disputed, mostly because the many commentators on noir tend to focus on specific films, with little interest in the society that produced ­them.

Quote of the Day

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

- Mark Twain

Weasel Tales

Stanley Bing on how the sales weasel got what he deserved.

Shy People of the World, Unite!

Forgive me if I posted on this way back when but it's still a darned good resource:

Networking for Shy People.

Nardelli's Back: There are Second Acts in the Business World!

Robert Nardelli, the former CEO of Home Depot who left under less than pleasant circumstances, has been chosen to head Chrysler.

Some quick reactions from:

Business Week

Fortune

Update: Jack Welch likes it.

Answering the Question

While grading papers for a business law class that I teach when not consulting, I've noticed a disturbing problem: students who know the subject but don't write essay answers in a manner that gains the most points.

Their biggest mistake is to zero in on the main issue and to assume that since other issues may be of little or no merit, they don't deserve analysis. This is a huge mistake. The grader searches an essay for evidence that the student knows the issues. A student who simply answers the questions is being too literal. The grader does not want an essay that answers the question. What is desired is one that demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the subject. A test instruction that notes, "Answer the following questions" is misleading. A clearer instruction would be, "Discuss the following questions in a manner that illustrates your knowledge of all of the issues, both minor and major." Focusing on "Answering the question" is a blunder.

It makes me wonder what other commonly used instructions are not accurate.

Quote of the Day

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted?

- George Carlin

Bill Walsh, Coach and Recruiter

Max Boot on the late football coach Bill Walsh's greatest talent:

In 1979 he chose Joe Montana in the third round. Imagine that! Every other team in the league had a chance to draft the greatest quarterback in history but they put too much faith in scouting reports which claimed that the Notre Dame signal-caller was too slow and had too weak a passing arm. Only Walsh saw his true potential.

That was no fluke. In 1987 Walsh acquired Steve Young from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for second and third-round draft choices. Once Montana was no longer at the top of his game, the 49ers were able to offload him to the Kansas City Chiefs and insert another future Hall of Famer behind center.

And then Walsh did it yet again. As the 49ers' general manager in the late 1990s, he signed quarterback Jeff Garcia, an unheralded San Jose State grad playing in the Canadian Football League. Garcia went on to have three Pro Bowl season in San Francisco flinging the pigskin to the talented if flaky Terrell Owens.

Honored Isolation?

Kay S. Hymowitz on children, the decline of the summer job and the rise of internships:

In the junior-high and early high-school years, middle-class strivers spend summers at soccer, hockey, swim, diving or baseball camp to sharpen their athletic skills; they go to science, computer and arts camp to pump up their academic records. In their junior or senior year they jet off to exotic destinations to fill in the international travel/community service credential, building huts in Guatemala, supervising nursery-schoolers in South Africa or, as one company offers, reforesting fruit trees in Fiji. And then, finally, for many older teens, it's an internship, a part-time, usually unpaid, job-lite at an office in a business or nonprofit organization.

There's little question that the demise of the summer job is due in part to globalization. For one thing, with millions of low-skilled immigrants around, service industries don't need to rely on kid labor the way they used to. Lawn-care companies and fast-food restaurants can now employ a more permanent adult staff. And, according to Neil Howe, an expert on age cohorts, kids are so used to seeing immigrants doing that sort of work that they assume "I don't have to mess with food or cleaning stuff up." Ironically, the same kids whose parents are paying $4,000 for them to go to Oaxaca to build houses for the poor can't imagine working for money next to Mexican immigrants at the local Dunkin' Donuts.

Charities and Jihad

Mark Steyn examines a significant libel case in Britain. An excerpt:

We've gotten used to one-way multiculturalism: The world accepts that you can't open an Episcopal or Congregational church in Jeddah or Riyadh, but every week the Saudis can open radical mosques and madrassahs and pro-Saudi think-tanks in London and Toronto and Dearborn, Mich., and Falls Church, Va. And their global reach extends a little further day by day, inch by inch, in the lengthening shadows, as the lights go out one by one around the world.

Suppose you've got a manuscript about the Saudis. Where are you going to shop it? Think Cambridge University Press will be publishing anything anytime soon?

[HT: Real Clear Politics ]

Quote of the Day

Never try to tell everything you know. It may take too short a time.

- Norman Ford

Out of the Mouths of Comedians....

The old line is true: The simplest approaches can be the best.

Check out Jerry Seinfeld's productivity secret.

Name That Leader!

1. This leader would scan encyclopedia entries before meeting with guests so he could drop obscure facts into the conversation and create the impression that no subject was beyond his grasp.



2. This leader usually decided on a course of action by intuition, then assembled facts that would persuade his associates that the course was logically correct.



3. This leader use a formal hierarchy to process staff papers but he also had secret channels into the depths of the organization so he didn't have to rely on filtered information.



4. This leader liked to buzz for his associates then hide under his desk.



5. This leader was surprised when he announced a course of action and his associates wanted to stay and discuss it.



6. This leader was so fond of the expression "There is no alternative" that her associates shortened it to TINA.



7. This leader held conversations with his associates while he was sitting on the toilet.



8. This leader was a former HR director who'd used that position to place his supporters in key jobs.



9. This leader used to give associates the same assignment to see which one would prevail.



10. This leader set aside time each week when he would not speak.

[Answers: 1. Benito Mussolini; 2. Adolf Hitler; 3. Dwight Eisenhower; 4. Calvin Coolidge; 5. The Duke of Wellington; 6. Margaret Thatcher; 7. Lyndon B. Johnson; 8. Joseph Stalin; 9. Franklin D. Roosevelt; 10. Mahatma Gandhi.]

Top Five on Big Givers

Vartan Gregorian gives his top five list of books about American philanthropists.


An excerpt:

Apparently Rockefeller was convinced that after acquiring as much wealth as possible through Standard Oil, he was morally compelled to use his fortune to improve the lot of humanity. Along with Andrew Carnegie, he helped to define modern philanthropy as a strategic system aimed at finding solutions to long-term problems. All told, Rockefeller gave away somewhere around $550 million, the equivalent of many billions today. His many benefactions included creating the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913 (which now has assets of $3.5 billion); building Rockefeller University in New York; funding an Atlanta college for black women that eventually became Spelman College; and adding incalculable support to the progress of medical science.

The Price of Anger

According to this study, getting angry in the workplace can carry a price tag, especially if you're a woman.

Quote of the Day

Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.

- Oscar Wilde

Reversing a Job Acceptance: Is It Ethical?

Am I the only person who has an ethical problem with this scenario discussed by Fortune magazine's Anne Fisher?

Two weeks after a person accepted a job, the dream employer - who had been delaying making a selection - called with a job offer. The article centers on whether there are legal repercussions to backing out of the second job, but my objection is an ethical one. The person made a commitment to the "second choice" employer. Does that count for nothing? I think the lawyer's analysis is nothing but a huge rationalization for unethical behavior.

Consider coach John Wooden's account of how he landed at UCLA where he went on to 10 national basketball championships. UCLA wanted him but his "greatest desire" was to be the head coach of the University of Minnesota's team. At that time, he wasn't very impressed with UCLA's program. His negotiations with Minnesota, however, were bogged down on his unwillingness to accept their stipulation that he retain their current head coach as his assistant. Not wanting to be second-guessed, Wooden insisted on appointing his own assistant coach. Minnesota told him they would discuss his position and make their final decision the following Saturday. It was agreed that they would notify him at exactly 6 p.m. Wooden told UCLA of the situation.

That evening, no call came at 6:00. At 6:30, however, the UCLA athletic director called and asked for his decision on whether he would take the UCLA post. Wooden replied that since Minnesota didn't call, he guessed they didn't accept his request. He accepted the UCLA offer.

He subsequently learned that Minnesota had decided to accept his terms and had tried to call at 6:00 but their phone lines were dead due to a blizzard. Wooden later noted: "By the time service was restored again and Minnesota was able to get through to me - about 7:30 p.m. - it was too late. Fate had made the first and final call. I had already given my word to UCLA that I would be the next Bruins head basketball coach." He continued: "As much as I wished the conversation with [the UCLA athletic director] had not taken place, I couldn't go back on my word. If your word is nothing, you're not much better."

I side with Coach Wooden.

Listen for the Reasoning

One of the most important things to learn in a meeting is not simply what the other participants think but how they think.


Listening carefully to ascertain the thought process heads off communication glitches and can discourage the easy assumption that the other person is ill-informed or operating with bad intent.


Miller's Rule holds that if the other person is taking what appears to be an irrational position, we should try to picture what reality would have to resemble in order for that position to be rational. In many cases, that view of reality is behind the person's comments.


By studying how the other person thinks, we can bolster our patience. I've served on some committees where my initial reaction was frustration with the approach taken by some of the members. After I noticed how they reason, my subsequent meetings with them became far more enjoyable. I could then see their "script" in action and could better appreciate the substance of what they were saying. We can still disagree on various matters but the chances of reaching agreement have increased.


The process can be as important as the position.

Laptop Dancing

Business Week provides a rundown on what college students should consider in a laptop computer.

The IBM ThinkPad should have been on their list. Marvelous machine.

The Power of Discretion

Peggy Noonan gives some advice to potential First Ladies. An excerpt:

Detached good nature goes far. From the beginning of her public life, Mrs. Bush has operated as if she had an invisible shield around her, her own invisible popemobile with thick plastic windows that kept her from getting the gunk on her. She never let it touch her. "Your husband is the savior of mankind"--she'd smile pleasantly and not let it touch her. "Your husband is the spawn of Satan"--she'd smile and not let it touch her. This took profound discipline, some wisdom, and perhaps a natural detachment. Mrs. Bush should be studied. She never attacked, rarely defended, and only carefully shared.

Quote of the Day

Anytime you don't want anything, you get it.

- Calvin Coolidge

Purity and Vodka

A creative ad from a vodka company on environmentalism and war?

[HT: Adrants ]

Old Bob

Eric Ormsby on Robert Frost's notebooks. An excerpt:

The notebooks prove Frost a master of aphorism. Haggen likens him to Lichtenberg; the comparison isn’t far-fetched. Some of Frost’s aphorisms have a classic cast: “The malicious talker commits himself to an enmity” or “Absolute outsideness forever eludes us” or “Repetition analyzes.” Others are lyrical, hovering between incisiveness and suggestion: “Thought advances like spilled water along dry ground. Stopping gathering breaking out and running again” or, in a similar vein: “The smoke flowed down the roof and in the open window and up the chimney again.” A few have a disturbing, almost Beckettian, bleakness: “Only one way to come into this vast hollow with no surrounding walls.” Still fewer are unexpectedly personal: “In composing poetry I am packing up to go a long way on wings.” These polished dicta spring from the page amid a welter of notations which range from the banal to the truly bizarre (“The bat flew out of my mouth/ I nearly died in my sleep”) and yet, all the jottings send us back to the poetry with new eyes.

[HT: Arts & Letters Daily ]

The De-Surgers

Victor Davis Hanson analyzes what passes for deep thought in the editorial rooms of The New York Times.

Ignoring Problems

Why do people refuse to acknowledge the existence of certain problems?

They truly may not regard it as a problem. This often occurs when one side is results-oriented [e.g., executives] and the other is process-oriented [e.g., HR professionals and lawyers]. The process freaks hate violations of rules and procedures. The results freaks think such violations aren't that big of a deal if the results were achieved.

They may not want to recognize the problem. Acknowledge a problem and you may be expected to do something about it. That involves extra work. These people may take action if no one else is around to handle matters but if the responsibility can be foisted off on another party, they will back off. In many cases, they may be so afraid of a possible problem that denial is a form of stress-reduction.

They may want to avoid confrontation. Many solutions involve confronting people. That can be unpleasant.

They may honestly believe that addressing the problem is not their responsibility. In many cases, they have crafted a very narrow definition of what falls into their realm.

They may not care. There are people who go through life with a "Whatever" approach. (Pray that they aren't your co-workers or, even worse, your boss.)

They may have been punished for taking action in the past. When people fear to take initiative, expect to see a lot of upward delegation.

They may have insufficient resources to handle the matter. This can be a cop-out or a realistic assessment of priorities.

They may have a skewed or outdated sense of priorities. That's why priorities need to be frequently discussed.

There's a Market for Annoyance

ThinkGeek has a product that is designed to annoy co-workers.



It may even go along with you to the hospital!

Quote of the Day

If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.

- Charlie Parker

Flash

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog looks at an $11,000 an hour lawyer.

His explanation for an extravagant life style? "Marketing."

I know what he means. That's why I wear a Timex.