Bird's Eye View

A Grownup For A Leader

In my post of yesterday about Jeffrey Sachs' recent speech regarding possible approaches to our economic crisis, I mentioned a remark Sachs made at the conclusion of his remarks.

Actually, that comment made perhaps the biggest impression of all, among all the really smart things he had to say.  It was that among other reasons Sachs feels optimistic about our economy's recovery over time is that we now have "a grownup for a President" of the United States. 

What does it mean to be a grownup?  Merriam-Webster dictionary says, quite simply, it means "not childish or immature." 

The Visual Thesaurus goes a bit further:

Whatever your definition, we all no doubt agree that grownups respond to situations in life from a place of authenticity, built on accumulated experience and one's view of what is true, regardless of whether that truth hurts or helps us.

When I saw the picture this morning in the New York Times of the cargo hold on a plane returning to the U.S. with flag-draped coffins of American service men and women recently killed in Iraq, it brought home to me the importance of dealing with things from a place of truth.  It does no service to our country to ignore the fact that some of our finest young people have sacrificed their lives in Iraq on behalf of the rest of us.  We need to know that, regardless of our view of the war's "rightness" or "wrongness."   So, too, do we as a nation need to know exactly what impact the cost of waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has on our country's economy.  Again, regardless of how we feel about the wars, we do need to know the ramifications financially of such decisions on each of us.  Once having faced these truths, we can deal responsibly with decisions going forward.

So too in any company or other organization: the leader of an organization most often is better able to attract and sustain the loyalty of employees to the company's mission when they are convinced the leader tells them the truth.  Whether good news or bad, they need to be aware of the situation in order to respond--as grownups--to the decisions made that are based on that truth.

Seems pretty simple, actually.  It's all about being a grownup and assuming that the adults with whom one works are also grownups.  At least until proven otherwise. 

The conversations that take place in grownup organizations are based on truth, even though they include different perspectives on what that truth means and how to respond to it.  Does your organization have grownup conversations?  If not, how can you ensure it does?

Because these tough times demand more than childish and immature responses to problems.  They require sober, clear-eyed, truthful responses. 

It's grownup time.

Jeffrey Sachs And The Global Economy

I was fortunate to be in the audience at the Harvard Club in New York last week to hear Jeffrey Sachs speak on the current economic crisis and what needs to be done to get us out of he mess in which we find ourselves.

First, in case you don't know who Jeffrey Sachs is, he is a pre-eminent economist, the person that governments call for when they want to do nothing less than, say, revise their financial system.  He's a genius who spent many years at Harvard and now runs a project called The Earth Institute, out of Columbia University, in a partnership with his wife.

I had not heard him before and it was a pleasure.  Not that he had good news.  On the contrary, he clarified just how bad things are.  But he also gave a great deal of hope for resolution and said, near the end of his remarks, that one of the things for which we should all feel fortunate, is that "we now have a grownup for President."  He made it clear he feels President Obama can lead us out of the mess, and that in fact he'll be leading the world out of the mess while he's at it.  Because this economic crisis is global, which distinguishes it from any previous economic crisis in history.

Not unlike Obama, Sachs has a conversational speaking style.  He engages his audience and makes sure we are "with him" as he delves into arcane subjects.  Here's what I took away from his comments:

There are two scenarios that can be used to describe the current situation.  The first scenario views the collapse of demand and consumer spending as a financial disaster that started in Wall Street and became exacerbated by a series of bad financial decisions and poor regulatory systems.  In this scenario, Greenspan plays a big role, starting in the 90's when he eased the tax rates and encouraged tax regulation.  The combination of easy money and growth of what was essentially a "shadow" banking system on Wall Street, allowed for the boom, especially in real estate.  Greenspan said, famously that "there can be no bubble in housing" since people purchase their homes to hold, not to speculate.  In any event, housing peaked, prices weakened, the sub prime mortgages went bad and the downward spiral sped up.  The result" financial calamity, the coup de grace of which was the fall of Lehman. 

In this scenario, the strategy is to unlock credit, clean up the banks, save the biggest ones and find ways to encourage spending (tax cuts?) both in the public sector and at the consumer level. 

But, says Sachs, there is another scenario, the one he believes is the right one.  This one recognizes that the sub prime crisis wasn't big enough to cause the global crisis we are in.  In fact, there has already been an unlocking of credit, but no matching uptick in demand.  So to say that our problems are due now to the banks holding back is unproven and suspect.  Loans are available but no one wants them.  Sachs equates this situation with that of Japan's "lost decade" when people saved their money and the economy was essentially stagnant.  There is a lesson there, says Sachs, with significant implications. 

 

Throw in Keynes' theory known as the Paradox of Thrift.  This theory says that you can't save yourselves out of financial trouble.  And because people are inclined to simply sit on their meager pools of cash--and the government does the same--you become worse off.  Sachs urges us to what he calls the "Benefits of Thrift" theory, i.e. that it is probably a good thing for this country to spend less.  Consumers and companies had become short sighted and were spending way beyond our means.  Sachs argues that we should spend not on more consumer products, which we don't need, but as a country, to spend on big projects: set up the appropriate power structure that we need; invest in bio-chemistry and other means to create innovative solutions to energy and climate problems.  And educate our citizens because we need a smart citizenry to compete globally.

         

There is lots more to what Sachs said.  Perhaps I can share more later.  But for now, let me assure you, his comments have been the basis for heated conversation in our company and among friends.  What's especially interesting is to see how much Obama's message to Congress channeled Sachs in his interest to inveest heavily in long term future-focused projects.  My guess is that Sachs sat at his television screen and said "Yeeeeessssss!"

Obamarama: Speechmaking As It Should Be Done

OK, no matter where you stand politically, you have to hand it to our just-a-month-into-the-job President Obama.  He gave what could be considered, by ordinary standards, the speech of his life last night but since he is Obama and has already given numerous speeches at that height of excellence, we'll just have to accept that it was extraordinary and leave it at that.

Considering his speech from the perspective of a leader in need of rallying his troops, let's see how he fared. 

One of the objectives, when monumental challenges confront an organization, is for its leader to create a sense of shared urgency.  Check.
Another objective is to acknowledge that there is a problem.  Probably several.  Maybe lots of them.  And that they are serious.  Check.
Another--and this is the tricky place where many fail--is to deliver the message that even though things are admittedly dire, the challenges can be overcome.  Check
And, finally, once you've convinced your audience that the challenges can be overcome, you have to sell them on the concept that they have to step up to be a part of the solution that will overcome the challenges: they can't stand by the sidelines and play devil's advocate.  Check.  Check.  Check.  (Yes, I know there are many people--some of them members of the US Congress--who fall into the camp of wanting Obama to fail.  But believe me, they are the dogs barking as the caravan moves on.)

Obama is a terrific public speaker who has gotten even better since he began his presidential campaign.  He modulates his voice so that appropriate drama is inserted when he wants to engage his audience emotionally.

Anyone teaching public speaking (I once did, to high school kids) could simply take the video of this speech, cut it into pieces, assign it to the class, and use it as the basis of an entire semester's course on how to go beyond reaching an audience to engaging an audience.  This man is a master of the ultimate in great public speaking: creating a conversation with the audience even when you are the only person talking.  That's the top level.  It means that each person in your audience feels you are talking directly to them...and they answer you in their heads.  Moreover, what you say next appears to be responsive to what they are thinking in their heads.  Few can do it.

He can. Well done, Mr. President.  You made us, once again, proud to be citizens of a country that despite terrible odds, has determined it will slog its way to the right solution.  And in the process, create jobs while improving the environment, fixing a broken health care system, educating all our kids properly and, yes, rehabilitating our infrastructure.

Whew.  I'm tired already and we've just gotten started.

Conversation At Work

How much of what gets talked about where you work is actually about your work? 

What percentage of the total conversations that take place throughout your company (what I refer to as a company's TalkSystem) are relevant to your company's mission, to what it does as a business enterprise?  A company's TalkSystem is the ongoing dialogue comprised of hundreds of casual and structured conversations that drive the workflow of people in that organization.  TalkSystems are the ongoing communications that act as the circulation system of the enterprise.  They can bring the oxygen and nutrients required to nourish a healthy entity, or they can carry dangerous viruses and forms of bacteria.  They are the connective tissue on projects, they are the bridges between people and they are an integral part of any human enterprise.  They once carried the spirit and esprit de corps of an organization often recognized by the old fashioned "water cooler" phenomenon. 

 

One of the things I've observed in companies with whom I work is that the natural flow of energy can become stagnant, unable to integrate remote pools of thinking and align diverse segments on key issues.  Ultimately, especially in times of uncertainty about job security, the TalkSystem can become reduced to mere chit-chat, to non-work related matters that are irrelevant to the company's mission.

This week's New Yorker cover is a perfect rendition of a TalkSystem that is disconnected, distracted and constricted.  (And it's also hysterical.)  If this cover resembles the TalkSystem in the group you lead, beware; it may signal that things are disintegrating around you.  Check if your organization looks like the one depicted on the cover: the woman vacating her cubicle, pink slip on the floor at her feet; the party going on in one room while elsewhere people are arguing in what appears to be a no-win manner.  See the cubicle inhabitants doing anything but work, i.e. sending love notes, looking at porn, asleep. Brunetti, the cartoonist who drew this cover, is a genius.

Check it out.  And let me know whether this resembles the current situation at your workplace.  If so, what's the solution?

Telephone Tales

 Yesterday I saw Telephone, an original and mind boggling play at the Cherry Lane here in New York. 

 

It's an ambitious work with only three actors (two men, one woman) who make this tour de force come to life in a no-intermission eighty minute marathon.

Inspired by Avital Ronell 's book entitled The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech, the poet Ariana Reines wrote this play (her first) that makes you think about the telephone and its impact on civilization, in a whole new way. 

Or, I should say, ways, since the play has three distinct takes which appear at first to be disconnected but, after post-theatre rumination, reveal themselves as connected in fascinating fashion.

The first of the three-part elements is Ronell's take of a fictional conversation between Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, after Bell's invention successfully transmits to Watson a message from Bell, who is sitting in another room where he operates the "electric speech" apparatus.  The historic statement is "Watson, come here...I want you!" which the actors use as the basis of a two-part riff on the importance of that statement ("Was it I want you?  Or did I say I need you?") and the potential impact of the telephone on future generations ("Perhaps it will be useful in emergencies...;" "It could bring peace to the world...;" "Finally, we humans will understand one another..." etc.).  It's delivered in a Victorian comic/historic fashion which, by the end of the session, has you considering just how important an invention the telephone is and how it has changed human communication (a view to be disturbingly questioned in the third session of the evening).

The second element is a one woman monologue by the actress Birgit Huppuch, delivered so amazingly that I've put her on a go-to-anything-with-this-woman's-name-on-it list near my, well, yes, telephone.  Birgit delivers in astounding fashion her side of a conversation (in her head? to an unseen person like a psychiatrist or fellow asylum inmate?) about what is on her mind.  Birgit's role is based on the real-life (and I'm told, famous) "Miss St.," the schizophrenic seamstress patient of Carl Jung who believed that outside forces had embedded a telephone inside her.  The evening is remarkable for this performance alone, nothing short of extraordinary.

The third element is delivered in semi-darkness, with each of the three actors delivering one line snatches from the kind of telephone conversation human beings have on a regular basis.  For example, "Where are you?," "Don't you want to talk to me?," "What are you wearing right now?," "You never call..." all take on new weight both for their banality and for their suggestion that despite the world of technology in which we live (and in which the telephone plays a part) we sometimes appear to be no more advanced in our ability to communicate with one another, at least communication with authentic feeling, than we were pre-telephonic era. 

If Brandversation is the ability to determine just what kind of conversation is needed to engage people in your brand or your cause, this Telephone play confirms we've got a long way to go simply to communicate on a one-to-one basis. 

It certainly made an impact on me.  When the phone rang this morning, I saw it as a much more important, more heavy-with-meaning "apparatus" than I did yesterday before seeing this fascinating production. Makes the "telephone Game" of long-ago birthday parties appear sinisterly prescient, foreshadowing our inability as adults to effectively communicate, regardless of the tools we've got to assist us.

Stories Worth Sharing

Seems in these tough economic times, we all need something to jazz up our spirits, something that's so much fun--and perhaps unexpected--that we've got to tell others, to share the story.

Here's a great example.  Doesn't this make you just want to BE in that railroad station in London?

On a totally different note (literally), check this out, too.  At the TED conference less than two weeks ago, I experienced this and having stopped talking about it.  These kids, and the conductor, are virtually all from impoverished homes in Caracas.  And the conductor, Gustavo Dudamel is the hot new conductor--youngest ever to have the post--for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  Trust me, he will shake things up in LA.

Now, what's happening where you work that you could turn into a conversation starter that will can take on a life of its own on the web?  That's Brandversation™ , big time.

My Obsession Has A Name!

I found out this morning that my obsession with words has a name. 

I've mentioned here before that the Visual Thesaurus is one of my daily pleasures, where I learn something new about the "word of the day," can listen to the correct pronunciation of words I've never heard said out loud.  Basically, it's where I'm given the chance to start the day reveling in what Roy Blount Jr. calls "alphabet juice."

 

And, as it happens, today's Visual Thesaurus word is verbolatry.  The word must not get much usage, though.  It isn't even included in the Merriam Webster dictionary.  Shame, since I'm tempted to move it to near the top of my favorite words list.  In any event, it's not a complicated work; the "verb" part is from the Latin word "verum" which means word and the "latry" part is a suffix from Greek meaning "worship."  So there you have it. 

A young man I know, Jon Gottsegen, teaches Latin at Salisbury School, a terrific all-boys prep school where he also coaches sports.  I hear his classes are full and his students are excited to be studying Latin.  Do you find it surprising that Latin is taught at all in our schools today?  Seems such an anachronism, what with the bastardization of words on the Internet and, even more obvious, text messaging.  Turns out the number of students in the US taking Latin in high school has risen steadily over the past several years, with large increases in remote parts of the country like New Mexico and Alaska.  Some say it started with kids' fascinating with Harry Potter's Latin-based chanting.  Others say they want the boost a knowledge of Latin can give them on the vocabulary section of college placement exams.  Still others just find it fascinating to participate in what can be seen as an esoteric pursuit.  And, of course, it may be that some are lucky enough to have excellent teachers like John Gottsegen who can bring the language to life and make it relevant in the age of the iPod.

 

Whatever is causing it, increased interest in Latin is exciting to a verbolatric (or is it "verbolatrist?") like me.  For one thing, it means that employers decrying the fact that entry level employees can't write a cogent sentence may find things changing a bit.  Well, maybe a knowledge of Latin won't do much for grammar, but it might expand the vocabulary a bit.  Could it mean it will increase speaking ability as well?  It's torture to overhear conversations that are peppered with "like," "I mean." and "you know."  But I digress.

How many people would join an extracurricular Latin club at your office?  OK, maybe that's not gonna happen...

Tempus fugit.

When And Where Is It Safe To Talk?

One of the most valuable of our basic freedoms in this imperfect but better-than-the-alternatives American democracy, is our freedom of speech.

I find troubling the stories I hear of leaders in some workplaces who try to stifle or control what gets said within their company or organization.   First of all, especially in this Internet Age, it's a lost cause.  Stuff simply gets said, even inadvertently.  The conversational genie is out of the box and rightly so. 

 

In fact, the more companies understand the power of informal networks of conversation in getting things done, the better off they are.  Because as Leigh M. Weiss, Robert L. Cross and Salvatore Parise, the co-writers of a McKinsey & Company article entitled "The Role of Networks in Organizational Change" make clear, it's often inside informal networks that the most important "work" gets done.  Formal organization charts mask the myriad relationships that cross the borders of work units and geographies.  And it is those informally networked relationships that often ignite and sustain innovation in products, services and processes.

I just finished a page-turner novel entitled Orpheus Lost written by an Australian writer with the curious name of Janette Turner Hospital.  She explores the truly horrific damage that dangerously misguided efforts to combat terrorism can cause.  Different people--ordinary citizens--with tenuous links to one another are suspected of being associated with terrorists and their every conversation is recorded to be used in interrogation and torture.  The practices played out in the book fly in the face of our basic freedoms, especially the freedom of speech and make one even more aware how important it is that we protect it against threats from those who want to control what and how we say things.

You could do worse than spend a weekend wtih Orpheus Lost.  I guarantee you'll have trouble putting it down.

Post Valentine's Day Musings

Did you have a wonderful Valentine's Day?  Did you do something special for someone?  Did you tell people you love that you love them?  How about at work: have you been letting people know how much you appreciate them?

We went to a remarkable dinner party Saturday night, with a Valentine's Day theme: a red heart wreath on the door, pink champagne, women in lovely red dresses...one man with a great red bow tie.  It reminded me of parties back when we took the trouble to do those extra little things that make everyone feel special.

The host and hostess asked everyone to come with a love poem to share with the group.  Sounds corny, but it was great fun.  Only one person didn't do the homework and I suspect he wished he'd had.  It ran the gamut, from a Beatles song to Shakespeare, with Shel Silverstein and others in between.

The party came to mind again yesterday as I read the Economist February 14 issue, specifically an article entitled "Manners maketh the businessman: The economic crisis prompts an outbreak of politeness in business."  The gist of the article is that economic conditions are causing people to be nicer to each other because they now have the time for it and because, according to Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, "When there is so much uncertainty about who will end up having power, the best strategy is to be civil to everyone."

The article goes on to say that although people at different companies are more polite in their dealings with one another inter company, things are no nicer than usual within companies.  Apparently, because of the threat of job cuts, people feel even more competitive with their peers at work, so manners are even less in evidence in the workplace. 

I guess it depends on the company.  My personal observation is that conversations, even within companies where the competition is keen, are more polite, more friendly.  Am I simply seeing the world through rose colored glasses?  If so, that worked last weekend on Valentine's Day.  Let's see if it continues. 

Can You Hear Me Now, Valentine?

I read a review today of the new play in New York entitled Telephone.  Check it out here.  Of course, someone like me-- "hooked on conversation" as a friend once described me-- has to see what this is all about so I do intend to get tickets to Telephone.

Meanwhile, as I read the review I couldn't help but think back to the Verizon campaign, back when mobile telephones were not yet in widespread use.  It was back then that the Verizon campaign's tagline was "Can you hear me now?"  The ad campaign was intended to focus attention on the fact that (at least in Verizon's view) only Verizon subscribers were ensured that people could actually hear you when you called from your cell phone.  All of us-- even Verizon users-- found ourselves asking, numerous times during the day,  "can you hear me now?" as we walked from the middle of the room to a window, or went outside, or otherwise tried to find the one place where somehow we could capture the all-important satellite signal that would sustain our call without static or the fearsome cutoff altogether.

I found the phrase haunting, in a way.  It became loaded with existential meaning.  It went from a question of simply whether or not the questioner's voice was being heard by the person on the other end of the call, to a more weighty question, underscoring the need of each of us to be heard.  To have a voice in the things that matter in our life, to be listened to.

"Can you hear me now?" can sound more like a plea for attention.  Do you often feel your co-workers are not listening to you?  Your family?  Your spouse?  And, if they are listening, do you feel truly heard?  Do you feel your opinions count to them and they are eager to hear your opinions? 

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day.  Probably a good time to ensure that you've surrounded yourself with people in your life who love conversations with you, who relish hearing your opinions.  People who can't wait to "hear you now."