Can I buy Self-Esteem?

It’s 4:00 in the morning. I’m on a business trip staying in a strange hotel room. I woke up thinking about several simultaneous issues. One is why do we as a culture continue to try to solve our issues of lack of self-esteem and self-actualization with more material goods? The second was why do we have such a disparate immigration issue? And in the end why do many of us feel we are the victims in all of this?

The baseline of my thinking centers on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In Maslow’s hierarchy there are five levels: physical, security, belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization. The bottom two needs are external (physical and material) in nature. The top three are more internally focused. A few days ago I was in a meeting where we started to talk about “Who were the oppressed?” The discussion started along the lines of the third world countries. It very quickly turned because some (certainly not all or even most) of the people in the third world countries can maintain a high level of self-esteem and self-actualization in spite of their seemingly lack of food, shelter and security. Whereas many, if not most of the population of the United States, in spite of our great wealth, feel oppressed by others, be it government, our employer, or society in general. Our discussion concluded that some people could operate at the higher level of Maslow’s hierarchy in spite of their environment, while others feel that the path to the top leads through the bottom. “If I can have enough things I will feel better about myself.”

Because of this we are willing to go into debt to buy things we neither need nor can afford. Madison Avenue helps us by making sure we understand that this behavior is the American way and that it drives capitalism. I read an article recently in which a man said that he grew up poor but didn’t know it. Now even the lower middle class is made to understand they are poor by our standards. The media won’t let it go. We don’t seem to want to acknowledge that our poor have a higher standard of living than most country’s rich. That will lead later to my thoughts about illegal immigration. For now let’s talk about those who are legally here. Now I am not naive, with over 250M people in the United States anyone can come up with literally thousands of examples of almost anything. It’s pure probability. So let’s gloss over for now the stories of the poor and down trodden. They exist in every society and that can’t be resolved, we can only move the definition of poor. There will always be someone at the bottom. Our standards are high and they should be. As one of the wealthiest nation in the world we should expect more. Pareto’s Law (cour’s d’economie politique) stated back in 1896 that 80% of the wealth is generated by 20% of the population. That would mean the converse is true that only 20% of the wealth is held by the remaining 80%. It was true in Europe then as in the United States now. We have tried every tax scheme and entitlement program known to man to change this and still can’t. The Communist tried socialism and only exasperated the issue. Yet we are trying to socialize even more services in an attempt to control the decisions of others. In the end, we as a people are far better off materially than almost any other country, yet we suffer dramatically under our own lack of self worth. We have become a victim-based society that is looking for reasons to believe that we are suffering and it’s not our fault.

Interestingly Pareto’s Law extrapolated also says that 80% of our problems are within our own control. We can take action to change the very environment that causes us so much distress. Is going into debt to buy self-esteem the right answer? Could be go to the library and read a book for free rather than set in front of the TV watching cable programming? Aren’t these the very programs that convince us that we are undervalued because we don’t live like the top 20%? The answer is “No”. It is not the American way. We are consumer oriented. One of the major roles of our government is income redistribution. We will buy our way into a higher self worth even if the government, or debt, has to pay for it. It is not our responsibility to raise our selves up. It is the responsibility of the rich, the government and society in general. After all they have all the resources. All we have is our self-will and self-control. We know how weak that is.

My only statement concerning illegal immigration: do you really wonder why? When they can come here, live better than they ever have and still send money home, why not? We are disgusted by their willingness to live three and four families to a home. Adults get along by riding bicycles to menial work for sub-standard pay driving down our standard of living. Why, because it is so much more rewarding here then where they came from. They haven’t bought into Madison Avenue. Before you say it, there is one more issue that helps them. They aren’t part of the income redistribution system. They don’t pay taxes. We have built an environment where the middle class from another country can come here to fulfill their dreams by becoming our lower class. And all we get is lower self-esteem because we lost a job we didn’t want to someone who will take less to do it then we would.

Cicero’s Six Mistakes of Man (according to Arthur F. Lenehan):

• The delusion that individual advancement is made by crushing others
• The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected
• Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it
• Refusing to set aside trivial preferences
• Neglecting development and refinement of the mind and not acquiring the habit of reading and studying
• Attempting to compel other persons to believe and live as we do.

Character vs. Rule of Law

Like everyone else I have heard a lot of talk about the Michael Vick case. Being from the Atlanta area I am particularly interested. Although I am a Falcons fan and a football fan in general, my real interest is not generally with Michael Vick or the Falcons or for that matter the NFL. My interest lies specifically in the concept of right and wrong. I’ll try to be brief.

In my eyes there seemed to be a historic turning point in responsibility when then President Clinton dodged the responsibility for his action by trying to redefine his actions through semantics. Even though the lapse in character was well known and documented, many of his supporters, even to this day, rally around the fact that he was not convicted of any wrong doing and therefore somehow less culpable of his actions. This to me set the stage for being judged guilty or innocent in a Court of law as the ultimate indicator of character. Somehow we now feel that the only correct and fair thing is for our actions to be judge by the legal system and not “the court of public opinion.” Somehow the public view of right and wrong should no longer carry weight in our culture.

We seem to gloss over the impact of the Rules of Law, the set of laws and precedence that govern the legal process. These laws and precedence’s do not govern guilt and innocence, but procedure. They are to protect the defendant from illegal acts by law enforcement that breach individual protection. A police officer can know that an individual is a drug dealer. If that officer then breaks down the door without due cause and catches the man with a 100 pounds of cocaine, under Rule of Law that evidence does not exist and can’t be used in court. Is the man innocent? In court he could be found not guilty, in life he is still a scumbag. He is what he is, despite the court ruling. It will be a matter of time before he screws up and goes to jail. Failure to be convicted does not necessarily make you a good guy.

The judge makes these decisions. The Judge can rule that the jury is to disregard a fact when contemplating the verdict. If they do not, the defendant can appeal the conviction. Interestingly, with the concept of double jeopardy, if the judge throws out evidence that could have clearly changed the verdict to guilty, we the public, cannot appeal the acquittal. It might be an error in judgment by the courts that cannot be reversed.

Mike Vick is guilty of extremely bad judgment at the very least and possibly more. For him to profess total ignorance of a felony act, not to mention enormous cruelty, on his property using his business license is somewhat suspect. If true it shows very poor judgment unbefitting a person who is paid over $6mm per year to be the figurehead and premier employee of an organization.

Something we cannot ignore is that criminal psychologist have proven that acts of animal cruelty are one of the strongest indicators of deeper more violent problems. That is not to say everyone who has acted cruel toward an animal is a sociopath. But it is clearly a big red flag to be monitored. To think that a person would harm anything capable of feeling pain and fear just for entertainment is not normal by any standard. To even know that there was the potential of this going on and not reporting it is hard to fathom. If one of our children saw a neighbor act in the way the indictment said dogs were treated and did not report it, we would be gravely concerned for our child. We would be concerned that our child did not see the enormous act of cruelty as anything worth reporting. We might wonder what else our child had seen or been involved with that did not strike them as sick and perverted. We wouldn’t say “you haven’t been convicted of anything therefore what you did is OK.”

The battle cry for Michael Vick is “innocent until proven guilty”. Somehow having this go on under his nose and doing nothing about it shows acceptable character. After all he has done nothing wrong until the courts say he has. The other side is that he is so out of it that he could be used in an extremely heinous way and be clueless. I would rather be thought of as unwilling to act, then so stupid I didn’t know. Both are very poor character traits for a multi-million dollar man. He is not going to learn to take responsibility until someone makes him step up and pay a significant price for his actions. It is for his own good. Yet so many people don’t get it. He is a young man. Calling him out at this point in his life may be the best thing for him over the next 60 years. Not doing it may be the worst.

It is true that until the court rule him guilty of a crime he should not and will not serve time in a correctional institution. Ultimately it is not up to the courts to determine his character.

"Indifference is the essence of inhumanity." — George Bernard Shaw

How many Squares?

How many squares to you see?

Do you see 16, 17, 21, 23, 24, or more? The answer is 46. This is all about vision. Not in terms of eyesight, but in terms of the future. In 1858 there we only 4 cities with a population over one million people, in 1960 there were 141 and in 1980 there were 282. In 600 BC the top speed was 8 MPH (camel) in 1960 it was over 4,000 MPH. One last statistic; in the 1500’s it would take 100 years to produce 100,000 new manuscripts. Today we produce more than 1,000 per day.

The rate of change in today’s business is staggering. The amount of time available for corrections is diminishing rapidly. Managers cannot rely on their intelligence alone to make adjustment. Things are just changing too fast. Change has to be an instinct. Decisions have to be made considering only the nuance of the problem not the core issue.

Think of it this way: You and your family are sitting in Time Square. You decide it would be great to eat at Castagnola's at Fisherman's Wharf. Now there are several approaches you can take. Option One everyone jumps in the car and you head west. At every intersection you make a decision to go left, right or straight ahead, you don’t know how long it will take, you just wing it. Option Two, you determine how far it is, when you want eat, mode of transportation available, cost of transportation, amount of money available and you make a plan. Option One requires you to evaluate all the alternatives at each intersection. That’s fine if you can stop and think each time. What happens if the light is green and the person behind you is a little impatient? With Option Two you only have to evaluate changes in expectations. The decisions concerning direction are taken care of. You can concentrate on fine-tuning your results because you have a vision of the future. You have some idea of what should happen next.

Companies have to reinvent themselves every 3 to 4 years. This rate of change is going to accelerate. If you as a manager must stop and evaluate all the alternatives before you can make a decision, you’re going to get run over. The foundation of a Strategic Plan is a clear vision of where you want to go. Without this foundation your plan will crumble under the weight of change. The stress of trying to understand and react to every change in your business environment could not only cause you to lose your company, it could cost you your family and maybe your life. Take the time up front to understand what you want your future to look like and then make it happen.

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion – Jack Welsh

Fathers Day

It’s easy on Fathers Day to remember our fathers for the extreme acts in their lives. But it is really the greatness in the common things that has made me especially proud to be the son of my father. Those who know me have heard me talk of my dad’s uncommon valor in not only the way he served in WWII, but also the selflessness by which he did it. Our family has seen my father rise above the common when he had a landing strip build in front of a small rural hospital in southern Illinois so that he could fly my sister, packed in ice, to Chicago for emergence treatment after she was hit while riding a bicycle at college. I remember sitting in my dad’s hospital room after he had back surgery. Rather than dwelling on the pain and discomfort of the surgery and rehabilitation, he spent his time amazing us by multiplying any set of two numbers in his head. He would give us the answer in seconds and we would spend the next few minutes trying to figure out if he was right…. he was….

Real greatness for any father is found in the everyday common acts like providing food, shelter, clothing and being there to guide and mentor. Giving strength to others. Don’t get me wrong; I had the normal tumultuous relationship with my father as an adolescent. I like almost every child, felt he was too strict. One especially painful experience was when I was 9 or 10 years old. I was expected to keep a journal of my allowance as a life lesson in responsibility. Once a year the carnival came to town. Growing up in the central farm land of Illinois didn’t provide the wealth of opportunity for entertainment that living in Atlanta does. This was a once-a-year event that we all looked forward to with great anticipation. My father checked my journal and it wasn’t current. The punishment was that I had to go to the carnival with the family but I could not and did not ride on any rides or spend any money. I remember it to this day. I can see it in my minds eye as if it was yesterday, the twirling light and music. My father allowed me to make stupid decisions, feel the pain of the consequences, learn from the event and move on with my life. He taught me that it is not in the falling down, but the getting up that we overcome our fear of failure. He taught me that a gift is not a trade and to never promise anything I wasn’t willing to do or give up. The day at the carnival was a hard day for my dad, but there was a lesson, or two, in it. If I was to survive and be happy I needed to learn them. My punishment was his also. I pouted and fretted and sulked all night. Rather then my father seeing the joy on my face as I was once again amazed by what life had to offer, he had to put up with a child who didn’t understand the gift he was being given: a one-time chance to correct a thousand mistakes before they happened.

True greatness is in the common: putting one foot in front of the other consistently day after day. Because he was who he was when I needed him the most, I am who I am today. All the small pieces came together to make the whole. Dad, you are the whisper in my heart that talks to me every day. For this I will be eternally grateful and thankful.

If I have one regret it is that my father may never come to know his creator, that I will not have the joy of spending eternity with him.

Ephesians 2: 8-10

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is a gift from GOD - not by works so that no one can boast. For we are GOD's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which GOD prepared in advance for us to do.

Profit Motive and the Poor

As the Presidential Race starts to build steam I keep hearing the debate concerning living conditions of the poor and excess profits of corporations. Many people discuss these two topics as if they are diametrically opposing points of view (much like creationism and evolution, another posted for another day). They are not. They are intertwined in a concept called capitalism.

Profit is not a tangible object that can be obtained and sat on a shelf. Profit is fundamentally a unit of measure used to evaluate the success of a business campaign. It’s like a river constantly moving down stream. At any given moment the volume is unique to that moment. For Tax purposes the IRS has selected December 31 of each year as the benchmark date. It uses the measurement of profit since the previous January first to determine taxes. But by the time a corporation actually pays their tax, the profit measurement has changed. Storing up profit is nothing more than a form of savings. Within a corporation the means of “storing” Profit is complex. There are obvious things like treasure notes and certificates of deposit, but there are less obvious vehicles like capital investment, stock buybacks and even increased employment. The point is that the value of Profit is in its spending, not its ownership. Excessive profit like excessive savings only deprives the owner of its value. Profits have to be invested to have value.

Most people can see that some level of Profit is required to stay in business. What challenges them is “excessive profit”. I don’t know exactly how to define “excessive profit” except to say it is the amount of profit perceived to be more than a person is comfortable seeing in a corporation. It’s clearly subjective. Today many people believe that Oil Companies are making an excessive profit. This excess profit is made up of both the high level of profits reported to the IRS and the rising cost of gasoline. Most of the arguments, that I have heard, center on the concept of the oil companies sharing their profit by lowering the price of gasoline. But in Capitalism that is accomplished through supply and demand. One of the reasons that the Oil Companies have produced large profits is because the buying public has not changed it oil consumption habits even in light of large price increases in gasoline. Demand continues to grow in spite of price increases.

So here’s the really complicated part for most people. Using BP as an example: Their Profit in 2006 was $22.0B and in 2005 it was $22.3B. Revenue was $270B and $243B respectively. Average Retail price of gas (adjusted for inflation) was $3.00 per gal in 2006 and $2.35 in 2005, that’s a 27% increase. BP also spent $16.9B in capital expenditures, $15.5B in dividends to the stockholders and $3.5B in stock repurchases. So you think that this just reinforces the rich getting richer and poor getting nothing. The companies that make the capital equipment that BP bought received $16B in new sales, thus hiring more people. If the investors were banks, they had more dividend money to reinvest. If they were consumers they bought things, both providing more employment. And by the way more tax dollars to be redistributed. If BP just reduced the cost of gas at the gas pump, capital equipment sales would go down, dividends and their reinvestment would go down and taxes would decrease. Lower skilled jobs would be lost in both the private and public sectors. Some of the lower economic workers would get cheaper transportation and heating cost, but others would lose their jobs. Each dollar reinvested provides a multiplier effect in the market. That means $16B can become $112B in increased opportunity

The best long-term program for helping the poor is to provide opportunity. Opportunity comes from corporate investment in the future. The sources of those funds are profits. Only the government can print money and when they do we generally get inflation as a by-product.

The worst crime against working people is a company, which fails to operate at a profit. - Samuel Gompers,

Passion - Who’s Responsible

Passion, especially passion at work is an extremely popular subject. Google it and find 63M hits. I guess this makes 63M and one. It’s interesting because so many people want it and yet so few have it. Employers demand it of new employees but seldom can sustain it after employment. Lack of passion for what they do is one of the biggest reasons people change jobs. Why can’t employees find and sustain passion and once they do why can’t corporations nurture it?

Let’s look at the first half, why can’t employees find and sustain passion? For years I have heard it said that you are not defined by what you do. The context of that statement is that we have a social aspect, a family aspect, a spiritual aspect, along with the work aspect of our lives. The premise of this view is that we do what we must to provide the money required to be who we want to be. Sadly for most people this is true. They take the highest paying job that will afford them the luxury of living the life they prefer. Although intuitively I understand this argument, I always felt that it was attacking life from the wrong point of view. I am not defined by what I do, what I do is defined by who I am. I love what I do. I can’t imagine not doing it. I do what I do because it makes me happy.

Now unfortunately, if right out of high school or college you start doing something you don’t enjoy and acquire debt to make yourself happy (e.g. house, car, better house, better car etc.) you create a vortex that continues to draw you downward. You feel that you cannot afford to find your true destiny, so you settle for the destiny that has been thrust on you. This is one of the hard facts of life.

Nearly all great passions, comes from a singular vision pursued doggedly until it achieves success.

Martin Luther King Jr., once said "If a man is called to be a street-sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street-sweeper who did his job well.'"

Modern paraphrase “Fake it until you make it” Look down the road 10, 15, or 20 years. Who do you really see (single vision)? Don’t wait to be that person, take small steps today that will assure success over time (pursued doggedly until it achieves success). If you take Martin Luther King’s advice in everything you do, you will create opportunities to do what you want. How will you know you’ve arrived? Here’s how I know:

• I look forward to Monday Mornings, I’ve waited all weekend for it.
• My eyes pop open at dawn with new ideas and things that need to be accomplished
• I gravitate toward people who share my passion
• I Read, Read, Read
• I seek advice on how to be better at what I do.

I am doing what I enjoy, therefore I am much better at it and people find me better to work with when I am doing it.

Lets take the second part of the dilemma, employers who are lucky enough to find someone with passion then can’t sustain it. I worked for an interesting individual at one point that could not understand why his employees had no initiative. Part of the hiring process was identifying those prospective employees that had passion and energy and enthusiasm. Within months these people became robots. The good ones were very good at following orders; the bad took on the persona of the living dead. They had all lost their passion. In this case the metamorphosis took place because we didn’t listen to them. They came in with great ideas cultivated by external experiences, new ways of looking at information, different ways of approaching problems. That was the core of the problem. They were different (not invented here syndrome). Most ideas were not aligned with the existing plans in place. Ideas were squashed or worse yet approved and then not acted upon. After a while the new employees stopped providing input. We hired them for their knowledge and passion, and then we managed it out of them.

Finding that which we are truly passionate about is our responsibility. At the personal level true passion is self-sustaining. Nurturing and sustaining that passion in the corporate environment falls, in part, on the employer. Give it some freedom let it breathe. If your employer is stifling your passion either find another one or become your own boss.

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

Workplace Buzz Words and Phrases for the 21st Century

This is courtesy of a very good friend of mine in Dallas. I’m sure Ed got it from cyberspace. Forgive the plagiarism….

Blamestorming
Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible.

Seagull Manager
A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything and then leaves.

Chainsaw Consultant
An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee headcount, leaving the top brass with clean hands.

Cube Farm
An office filled with cubicles.

Mouse Potato
The on-line, wired generation’s answer to the couch potato.

Prairie Dogging
When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people’s heads pop up over the walls to see what’s going on.

Sitcoms
(Single income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage) What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids.

Starter Marriage
A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce with no kids, no property, and no regrets.

Stress Puppy
A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.

Swiped Out
An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.

Tourists
People who take training classes at work just to get a vacation from their jobs. “We had three serious students in the class; the rest were just tourists.”

Treeware
Hacker slang for documentation or other printed material.

Xerox Subsidy
Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one’s workplace.

Chips And Salsa
Chips = hardware; Salsa = software. For example, “Well, first we gotta figure out if the problem’s in your chips or salsa.”

Percussive Maintenance
The fine art of whacking the shit out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

Salmon Day
The experience of spending the entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.

CLM
“Career Limiting Move” Used among microserfs to describe ill-advised activity. Trashing your boss while he or she is within earshot is a serious CLM.

Adminisphere
The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.

Dilberted
To be exploited and oppressed by your boss. Derived from the experiences of Dilbert, the geek-in-hell comic strip character. “I’ve been Dilberted again. The old man revised the specs for the fourth time this week.”

404
Someone who’s clueless. From the World Wide Web error message “404 Not Found” meaning that the requested document could not be located. “Don’t bother asking him…he’s 404, man.”