Lessons from Kaki King.. and others....

I have been thinking about a general principle that has come into my life several times in the past few weeks. It has to do with significant. Most of the time we feel we are far more significant that we really are. I'm going to paraphrase the conversation that started this line of thought. 

I was watching TED Talks, a great set of programs if you have never heard of it. This specific TED Talk was a performance by a petite, introverted, Finger style guitarist names Kaki King (if you don't know her Google it, it will amaze you. She is the first female on Rolling Stones "Guitar God" List. I'm listening to her as I write this). She talked about her place in the universe. She first laid out the concept of time running infinitely in both directions. How every moment was insignificant within this spectrum. But if every moment was equally insignificant, then every moment was equally significant. Her final statement was "Therefore this music will be the most significant music in your life, at this moment".

This fundamental concept has  worked in the shadows of several conversations over the last few weeks. More than likely this is the product of my Reticular Activating Systems, but let's say it is more than that. We think the universe is approximately 18 Billion years old. Now like the world is flat theory of old, this may prove to be untrue, but it us our current paradigm. So our entire life passes as a moment in the history of time. Each day we spend on this earth is even less significant. Each hour, minute, and second progressively less significant.  But each unit of time is unique to us. There will only be one. If we do not use it we cannot store it for another time. What we did with it becomes part of  history, even if we did nothing. 

That makes it the most significant moment of our life, at that time. Kaki was right. So  the question is; do we live like it is the most significant moment at the time? Do we realize how truly unique each moment is?

This bring me to list written by Andy Rooney, that I cannot verify, but hey it was on the internet so it has to be true....right..... here is a sample:

1.       That I can always pray for someone when I don't have the strength to help him in some other way.

2.       That no matter how serious your life requires you to be, everyone needs a friend to act goofy with. 

3.       That sometimes all a person needs is a hand to hold and a heart to understand.

4.       That simple walks with my father around the block on summer nights when I was a child did wonders for me as an adult.

5.       That life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.

6.       That everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.

7.       That opportunities are never lost; someone will take the ones you miss.

8.       That it's those small daily happenings that make life so spectacular.

9.       That under everyone's hard shell is someone who wants to be appreciated and loved.

The life lesson that come from this list is that life's little moments are important. We spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about the big moments that lay ahead and very little time appreciating the little moments in front of us.

Is this the most significant moment in your life right now? What did you do with it?

The Ripple Effect

Yesterday Rodney King passed away. His 15 minutes of fame came back on March 2, 1991. What brings this to mind is the tragedy of the situation. Rodney King was an ordinary man. Like many ordinary people he lived a life that put him in an extraordinary circumstance.  We see this quite often in life. People living their ordinary lives, then faced with a circumstance that they didn’t seem prepared for. Mostly we hear of heroism, these ordinary people pulling strangers out of wrecked cars or burning buildings.

Rodney King did not wake up the morning of March 2nd thinking that this day would be dramatically different than all of the others. He had no idea when events finally played out fifty-three people would lose their lives. Rodney’s part on this was very small. Through his actions, he simply made himself available. ( the same could be said for the police officers involved)

Rodney embraced a life of alcohol and drugs. He was defiant, living for today. He was on a trajectory of failure. He was convicted of armed robbery in 1989, serving one year of a two-year sentence. By the time he hit the lime light in 1991 he was 26 years old, twice divorced and the father of 3 children.  Just prior to his confrontation with police, his alcohol level was two times the allowable limit. Had this moment in his life not happened, we would have still read about him in the papers. We just wouldn’t have noticed.

On that March day, Los Angeles police overreacted to a simple situation they had been through many times. Their actions propelled Rodney into the lime light and a new trajectory. One that he was not prepared for and more than like would have liked to avoid. Rodney was driving a car being chased by the LAPD at speed up to 80 mph. When stopped by several police cars and at least one helicopter, his passengers surrendered without incident. Rodney started acting strange. He made a move that officers interpreted as aggressive. He later stated that he ran because a DUI would void his probation and send him back to jail. This was the extraordinary circumstance. This was the point that Rodney’s life and the lives of several people would be changed forever. This one decision, we all make them, most go unnoticed. 

 Rodney was tasered and struck at least 56 times with batons. George Holiday caught all of this on video. Video that would be used at the trial of the officers involved. The officers were tried in state court and found not guilty of criminal conduct. The outcome of the trial that ended on April 29, 1992 was the catalyst for the riots that started right after the verdict. Fifty-three people were killed in the riots. Twenty-three hundred and eight-three people were injured, there were around 7,000 fires and 3,100 businesses were damaged. It all happened in the very neighborhood of the rioters. They burned their own neighborhood down. Two years later, Lawrence Powell and Stacey Koon were convicted in Federal Court of violating Rodney King’s civil right and sentenced to 32 months in prison.

Rodney spent the next twenty-two years in notoriety, both a reluctant symbol of the civil right struggle and the catalyst of anger and rage. Our message today… when we get up tomorrow morning we will not know the ripple effect of our actions until they are complete. Are we living a life that could lead to positive or negative reactions? Are we one road rage away for notoriety?  Are we one text message away from multifactorial events that will change lives forever? The lives of people we don’t even know. Neither the police officers or Rodney knew the people lost in the riots, yet each had an impact on their lives and the lives of those who did know them.

My Biggest Rant

This is a business blog. The concept is to present ideas that would help business people improve both their businesses and themselves. Over the past few weeks I have been bombarded with social issues that just scream for comment. The underlying dismay voiced by most of these self proclaimed pundits is that the United States has serious problems and someone needs to step up and solve them. That someone typically isn’t the writer. What are some of the issues?

1. The United States Ranks 96^th out of 140 countries on the Global Peace Index according annual survey commissioned by Britain’s Economic intelligence Unit. (Great Britain is 49^th ). Two of the major factors are the highest number of homicides per 100,000 citizens and the fact that we have the highest incarceration rate of all the countries surveyed.
2. Gas prices are at an all time high at almost $4.00 per gallon. Gas is $8.35 in Great Britain and more than $6.50 in most of Europe, according to AA Motoring Trust, when our gas prices were still at $2.87. Whereas we consume 1.6 gallons per day per person as opposed to most of Europe at .5 gallons per day per person (Economist View )
3. The U.S. economy is on everyones agenda. The unemployment rate has hovered between 4.5% and 5.2% since 2005 according to the US Department of Labor. The Consumer Price Index, less food, has been constant since prior to 2004. With the increase in gas prices and the fact that most food is transportation sensitive the CPI including food has risen significantly. A Gallup Poll suggests that 85% of the population thinks economic conditions are getting worse.
4. The Dow Jones Index has risen from a low of 8235 in September of 2001 to 12823 today. That’s a 55% increase in six plus years. A dollar invested in 2001 would be worth $1.55 today. Real average earning during that same period grew from $497.35 per month to $607.49. That’s a growth of 22%. Factoring for inflation the earnings growth was only 2.3% from 2001. So the stock market is outracing real earnings.
5. Household debt is 133.7% of household disposable income in 4^th quarter 2007. Households spent 14.3% of disposable income to service debt in 2007 compared to 13.0% in 2001.

What’s the underlying business concept to all of this? It’s responsibility. The problems we are facing are problems we can deal with on an individual basis. If, and it’s an incredibly big IF in an entitlement culture, we all take responsibility for our part of the problem, it solves itself.

Number one on the list is dismal. Twice as many citizens were killed in the state of California during the duration of the Iraq war then were killed in that war. Several points scream out to me…

1. This is just one state in our union. The needless death toll in our own back yard is staggering.
2. These people neither volunteered, were skillfully trained, nor took an oath to die, they just got up in the morning thinking they would make it through another day and didn’t.
3. There is no outrage from the public like there is for the war. We have come to believe this is acceptable.

I visit prisons every year. We can’t afford to continue to build prisons at the rate we are currently building them. Something has to change. I suspect the real reason is that we don’t expose this like the war, is we might feel somehow responsible for not doing our part. Because it happens all around us, we might be asked to actually take action to prevent it. The war is a long ways away and we can’t possible impact the outcome, so we vent and rage for someone else to take action.

The problem with rising gas prices is not a matter of the government reducing taxes, but modification in our social norms. Not an easy task to accomplish. We are Americans and the constitution says we can have and do anything we like as long as it doesn’t impinge of the freedom of others. So I want to drive a big car anytime and anywhere I want and the government is responsible for assuring I can continue to do this. Capitalism is great as long as I get what I want at the price I want. If not, the government needs to step in and mandate my happiness. This is just self-center goofy thinking. Only desperate times will change this. It’s an unfortunate aspect of human nature. We have lived the high life so long we expect it to last forever without our sacrifice. As China and India continue to grow their economies, this problem will continue to grow. It’s not a matter of our government solving this. Free enterprise and right thinking by the general public will solve it, if we choose. If not we will be doomed to second class status in the world economy.

The last starts with the very basic premise of spending less, investing more. If we take control of our spending and invest the difference two things happen. First we capture back 14% of our disposable income used for servicing debt. Second our investments grow faster than real earnings. As individuals we have more. More importantly we invest in businesses that provide jobs and stimulate the economy. Unemployment goes down, employee demand goes up, wages rise, we invest more and the cycle continues.

It's all about individual responsibility. Something we have total control over.

Get 'er Done

Its interesting how hard life’s lessons are to learn. It most cases if we just listen we would learn them quickly and painlessly. Most of us, myself included, prefer to take the circuitous route through impatience, frustration, and distress to get there. One of life’s more important lessons that I learned was from my father. Keep in mind during my teenage years my father was clueless. He learned a lot during the third and fourth decade of my life.

I grew up in and around farm communities. Walking beans, bailing hay, detasseling corn and construction were my occupations between 13 and 18. I enjoyed it. It was outside and physical. Most of the time it gave me time to think. But the greatest lesson I learned didn’t include these. It included high school football. In a small country school all you had to have was a steady heartbeat to play on the high school team. Don’t get me wrong, we had some great players (we were conference champions and a couple of guys went on to play college ball) I just wasn’t one of them.

My dad had a rule that if you start something, you must finish it. Every late summer, fall football practice would start. It had been a full year since the last experience, so as a budding adolescent it was ancient history. Virtually every guy I hung with played sports. We all went to the first practice together. This is where my dad’s rule comes in. The first few days of practice were pretty much the same. We had three-a-day practices in 90-degree heat and almost 100 per cent humidity. We used to consume salt pills like popcorn. We ran laps in full pads. Coach Scott had this general rule about exercising until you threw up. Everyone had to do it. It’s how we got into playing shape. I usually remembered this about noon the first day. Now I liked to play in the games. Once the season started practice was easy to take, but the first six to eight weeks were next to impossible. So around noon of the first day I would announce I was through. Dad’s rule kicked in: If you start something you must finish it. I played high school football four years. Four years I started in August and four years I finished in November. I never learned.

It was a great lesson for life. It has served me well. I’m careful what I start and I always finish. I am a lot better at the “careful what you start” part. I don’t commit to things I’m not sure I can finish. If I do take on a project that I may not have resources to finish, to my liking, I make sure to set that expectation up front. Sometimes people want you to do something knowing there is a chance it won’t work out. I’m OK with that. I treat it as an idea or concept, not an action item. I make sure we are all on the same page from the beginning.

Recently as part of a management review, our consultant stated, “Don’t ask him to do something you don’t really want done.” That is part of what my dad gave me. It’s now part of my DNA. Your family, friends and co-workers should see you as a person of character. A person they trust will follow through and get it done. If you’re not, you need to fix it. Don’t over commit or under produce.

The memory should be specially taxed in youth, since it is then that it is strongest and most tenacious. But in choosing the things that should be committed to memory the utmost care and forethought must be exercised; as lessons well learnt in youth are never forgotten. - Arthur Schopenhauer

Televisions Unite

WOW look out future…I had the privilege of going on a tour of Turner Broadcasting Systems R&D facilities. The Technology Association of Georgia arranged this for a small group of members. If you live in Georgia, work in the field of technology, and don’t belong to TAG, shame on you. Our host was Dan Darling the CIO and Alastir Hamilton, Corporate Senior Vice President, Head, Platform Research & Development. A great big thank you for all the effort Turner put into this. It was great.

Now I am sworn by a double secret handshake not to reveal what Turner is up to but it will blow your socks off. Maxwell Smart, your shoes won’t be the coolest anymore. What I can discuss is the general trends in media and the perceived impact it will have on my life. I can’t be more specific then that. First of all about two years ago I started the move to HDTV. I have a 50” Samsung DLP that I love. I use an outside antenna to pick up all of the local channels in high resolution HDTV. It’s wonderful. By the way I live about 30 miles outside of Atlanta and I still get great reception. I am struggling with the cost and infrastructure issues of propagating this technology throughout the house. With attenuation of the antenna signal for long runs I don’t think I can use over-the-air. So I may be stuck with a larger satellite bill or worse yet cable. I use Direct TV today and am happy with the NSTC digitized picture.

3D movies have been around for some time. Most of us have seen them either at the theater or an amusement park like Disney World. Typically we are asked to don 3D glasses to make the effects stand out. If you have been to the Disney World Haunted House you have seen projected 3D. During the ride you can see the ghosts in what would appear to be three dimensions. On March 30, 2007, Disney released the first truly wide release of an animation film in digital 3D. Quietly in 2002, Japan started the 3D monitor movement with the introduction of production grade 3D monitors. A little over a year ago the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) demonstrated that they can create a three dimensional image in air using optoelectronics.

The short-term market for 3d technology seems to be CAD, Healthcare and gaming. The benefits of three-dimensional viewing in these fields are enormous. These market will eventual drive down cost and make three-dimensional TV a reality. Hollywood is already recording in 3D and has been for some time. Content is being made available. Reuters ran an article on March 29, 2007 stating that Hollywood was willing to bet on 3D making them money.

So here is the real question for us consumers…. How long will my investment in HDTV last? The first commercial telecast of a color television program was in 1951. That is the last time we as consumers had to concern ourselves with broadcast technology until High-Definition. Three-Dimensional Television will not wait 50 years. My guess is that there are commercial market drivers that will get it here in less than 15. I have TV’s older than that.