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Retrieving Capitalism from its Extreme

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

(This article was originally posted on www.mybarackobama.com on 11/4/2008).

The most important issue driving me to the polls today was the economy. Not as in “gee, the economy crashed, suddenly I think we better elect a new president,” but rather, my firm belief that our national understanding of our economic systems is negligent at best, and when that happens, those with the money and power to corrupt it are free to do so. Most economic theories have some merit when considered in their pure state (which would be virtually impossible to achieve). Likewise, any economic system can be bad if taken to its extreme – even capitalism. This is what we have seen occur in our own nation. I am a firm believer in capitalism. But we have been experiencing capitalism in its extreme, and I am not comfortable with that.  

Capitalism’s greatest merit is that it motivates people to contribute to the greater good in order to secure their own financial future. But the average worker, earning somewhere between $25,000 – $65,000 per year,  can not secure their own financial future on annual COLA raises and a 3% matching 401(k) alone. As the middle class struggled on and on through these disappointing years of trickle-down economics, their ability to participate in capitalism’s promise was taken away from them. When fewer and fewer people are able to participate in capitalism, capitalism no longer works as it is supposed to, and we have unsurprising results like market crashes, shrinking real incomes, and reduced overall cash flow.

 Those middle income people who fear Barack Obama and call him a socialist are reacting to manipulation by the Republican party, which has a vested interest in protecting those with very high incomes – even at the expense of their reliable but clearly middle-income base. In order to succumb to this manipulation, the base fails to understand capitalism, socialism, or appropriate federal support for select institutions, and in so doing works to secure their own dismal financial future.

 Though there are many reasons I am excited at the opportunity to vote for Obama, my belief that he will return us to a moderate, rational, healthy approach to capitalism is one of the big reasons. GObama.

(c) 2008. Andrea M. Hill

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(bowing low to The Economist) Great Minds Like a Think

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

You’ve read Lee Siegel, the New York-based critic who writes for Harpers, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New Republic (again). He writes erudite, prickly prose on the subject of American culture – or what counts for it. At one point the New York Times referred to him as “one of the most eloquent and acid-tongued critics in the country.” In a nation that enjoys a bit of battering of our neighbor — and which lives by the adage if you’re so smart why ain’t you rich? — even the most liberal-minded of us get both an intellectual thrill and an ignoble shiver reading his work.

Though I highly recommend him for his wit and range, his personal story is a cautionary tale. In 2006 he was suspended from his role at The New Republic for, well, what? Misleading comments, I believe it was. Siegel didn’t break any rules, nor certainly any laws. But he had established an alter-ego that attacked negative commentators on his blog. This alter-ego, known as sprezzatura, was an ardent defender of Siegel, Siegel’s wit, and Siegel’s shining intelligence. OK, so what, right? He’s a little insecure.

The situation was disturbing, but not for the reasons most people pointed to. Most commonly, people expressed their disgust at how stupid it was, how egotistical it was, and ultimately, at what a baby Siegel was. The last comment approaches the reason it was appropriate that Siegel was temporarily suspended.

So what if the critic can’t take criticism — that’s a weakness that hounds far too many people to make it interesting. The problem was that he was hypocritical at a level that was a betrayal of his true audience. The role of critic suggests intellectual rigor and standards. Critical thinking is the careful analysis of whatever it is we are evaluating, getting past emotions, reactions, historical baggage, psychology, bias, enculturation — all of the muck that clouds our thinking and prevents us from seeing reality in the clearest possible light. Not that most modern critics actually perform that role for us, but we wish they would. We need them to. And Siegel is capable of operating at the highest levels of intellectual criticism.

Why do I care about something that that is, by American standards, ancient history? Because of something a friend of mine said tonight. My friend Mark and I were talking about billboards in the UK, and how much we appreciate them. In the United States, billboard writers obviously go through a process that, if you were a fly on the wall, would sound something like this:

Ad guy 1: Dude, we need another billboard for our very difficult client.

Ad guy 2: Damn. Didn’t we just finish a bunch of billboards for them?

Ad guy 1: Yeah. I hate doing billboards.

Important advertising note. Billboards must be able to deliver a message in less than 3 seconds at roughly 55 mph. Ad guys hate to be responsible for traffic deaths. Well, we assume so anyway.

Ad guy 1: OK, what’s the simplest way we can say “get your new muffler at Dan’s Auto Haus?”

Ad guy 2: Can’t just we say that?

Ad guy 1: No. People don’t read that fast. We still have to have room for their website and maybe a phone number.

Ad guy 2: OK, how about, “Mufflers. Dans. www.dansautohaus.com.”

Ad guy 1: They might think we’re advertising, like, mittens or something.

Ad guy 2: It’s summer.

Ad guy 1: Whatever. I don’t think it will work.

Ad guy 2: OK, what about, “Noisy car? Dan’s Mufflers.”

Ad guy 1: They’ll think it’s just a muffler shop. Dan won’t like that.

You get the picture. Eventually the ad guys consult a reference book for children’s writing and choose three words from the kindergarten list, and that’s what passes for advertising in this country.

In the UK, billboards are vexing. Not only are you trying not to wipe out the left side of your car every time you turn the corner and jumping when people pop out at you from the wrong side of the street, but your head is swimming with the last three billboards you read that you still haven’t made sense of. UK billboards cater to the thinkers in their society, which they obviously assume are many, given how democratic they are with their puzzling advertising.

Are American advertising firms dumbing everything down because Americans are lazy thinkers, or are Americans lazy thinkers because we are confronted — no, assaulted — by a constant barrage of stupidity? Please, don’t try to answer that – it’s a chicken-and-egg thing.

It’s important to read Lee Siegel because he’s capable of – and for the most part, delivers – criticism filled with intellectual honesty. I’m pretty sure I never want him to take on one of my publications, because as thick-skinned as I am, I’ve probably not evolved to the point where I’m ready to read his take on my work without a therapist by my side. Still, he challenges his readers to intellectual debate. This is an experience to which we have become unaccustomed. Siegel doesn’t cater to lazy thinkers. Indeed, he writes as if he expects us to be intelligent.

Lee Siegel should be completely forgiven for his past lapse (and yes, I realize that I am the one bringing it up again, but I couldn’t figure out another way to make my point). Seriously. If we’re being honest, we can all think of foolish things we have done that disgraced us but didn’t add any further damage to the human condition.

But Siegel does have a responsibility that is very similar to that of any parent. We know that parents must set a good example for their children. Parental example is something children count on to feel confident. Parental example is the ballast each child needs while bobbing about in the wakes of peer pressure, demoralizing teachers, and Ad guys 1 and 2.

Those of us who seek a more intellectual discourse are dependent on cultural leaders – of all types – to maintain a certain quality of critical thought. This is a completely reciprocal responsibility (did you think you were off the hook?). The only way to create a rigorous intellectualism for ourselves is to give it first to others, and by doing so we are able to receive the thing we want. That’s right – intellectualism is not a zero sum game. The only way we can have it is to give it away. That requires dialogue. Which requires risk. Which was Siegel’s failure. Shared by the rest of us, though most of us don’t have to fail in such a public forum.

Perhaps Ad guys 1 and 2 are not really ready for this. But I suggest we give them the benefit of the doubt. If enough of us gave intellectual discourse away – trusting everyone around us not to be lazy thinkers – perhaps we would discover ourselves, once again, a country that thinks. I’d wager it would do a lot more for our economy than another cut in the Fed Funds Rate or a bunch of $300 rebates.

(c) 2008. Andrea M. Hill

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Truth: Specialty of the Humble

Sunday, February 10th, 2008

Most men indeed, as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them, it is so far error.

—Ben Franklin, Autobiographical Writings (last speech)

It is a complicated world in which we live. We require conviction about certain things in order to center ourselves and make our way. Yet those same convictions sometimes blind us to a greater truth or understanding about life, love, and God.

 

Most of us do not understand the history of our religions, the social contexts in which our religions were developed, and the ways in which all sacred texts have been manipulated by various kings, religious leaders, emperors, and tribal chieftans to support their personal political agendas. We understand the religious history that was taught to us by our parents, their parents, and their parents’ parents, and we accept this verbal history as the truth.

 

It’s no small surprise that true biblical scholars – not divinity students, but scholars of the bible and its history – go through a crisis of faith at some point in their studies. They learn how fallible the socially accepted religious texts are. Those who continue to have faith do so because they choose to believe, in spite of all the human error and meddling. What a powerful faith theirs is, to choose not from denial, but from a place of light (truth) and spiritual hope.

 

We hide behind our beliefs, afraid to challenge or question them. Psychologically that makes sense. If we suspect our spouse is cheating on us sexually, we go through a phase of not wanting to know. The truth can be difficult and painful because it may cause change. Some people choose to never confront the truth of their spouse’s infidelity, and live instead in a state of denial and suppressed pain.

 

If we have chosen not to confront the infidelity, then woe to the well-meaning (or not-so-well-meaning) friend who points it out to us. Their recognition of the truth means that we must deal with it, and if we have used denial to create a false reality, we don’t appreciate someone else shining a light on it.

 

All of us hide behind denial to some extent. It’s a complicated world that presents us with too many contradictions. One person’s acceptance of nudity is another person’s violation of modesty. One family’s arranged marriage for the strengthening of family ties and responsibilities is another person’s violation of marriage as an institution dependent on love. One person’s pacifism is another person’s weakness. One person’s polygamy is another person’s violation of the sanctity of marriage. One person’s martyrdom is a violation of another’s sense of God’s peace.

 

Cultural norms and mores simplify life. Merely 200 years ago nearly every human being lived within a community which enjoyed the simplicity of entirely shared values. Well, that’s not quite true. For instance, in most western cultures 200 years ago, if a married woman was miserable – whether she was beaten , taken for granted, or anywhere in between – she could not leave her marriage. She couldn’t own land, hold a job, or vote. So whether she shared the norms and mores or not was irrelevant – she had to pretend to in order to maintain what little place she had in society. Slavery has been part of the world since time immemorial, continuing today. Still, most communities 200 years ago benefited from general sharing of cultural values.

 

As the world has become more integrated, we experience challenges to our beliefs and values. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently advanced an argument that England should consider Sharia law for the purposes of negotiating marital and civilian disputes. The world immediately split over his statement – some suggesting that social cohesion is not possible when multiple legal systems are contending for primacy, and others arguing that it’s about time western culture recognized that the Muslims within their cultures require Sharia law to function. Who is right? As the Archbishop of Canterbury has learned, even raising the question of how to accommodate religious views and rights within a secular society can have grave implications for one’s career.

 

State by painful State the US has been debating whether or not gay couples should have the same rights under the law as married couples. Proponents of the bills argue that gay couples should not have to worry about whether or not they will be able to visit their loved one in a hospital, make medical decisions when necessary, or maintain their joint property after a loved one’s death. Opponents of the bills argue that gay marriage mocks the sanctity of heterosexual marriage and that the fabric of society will be permanently torn if gay unions are legally recognized. Who is right?

 

In 1955 Robert Green Ingersoll said:

“Whenever a man believes that he has the exact truth from God, there is in that man no spirit of compromise. He has not the modesty born of the imperfections of human nature; he has the arrogance of theological certainty and the tyranny born of ignorant assurance. Believing himself to be the slave of god, he imitates his master, and of all tyrants, the worst is a slave in power.”

 

There is room for all of us, whether believers or non-believers, to recognize a certain personal responsibility in Ingersoll’s challenge. The challenge is this:

 

We cannot simultaneously uphold our own fundamental rightness and offer genuine respect to human beings who believe differently than us. The two positions are mutually exclusive. We can condescendingly agree to accept that the other person has a different opinion, but that is not the same as valuing that person equally to ourselves.

 

If we wish to take no risks with our salvation, our only hope is to choose to see the Godliness in every other human being, and to strive to understand how their Godliness leads them to believe differently than we do. We cannot condemn another person without condemning ourselves. We cannot judge another person without likewise turning our judgment on ourselves. If we are among those who believe in God, how egotistical it is to believe that God requires our judgment of His other children to make His world whole? Don’t we think He can handle that aspect Himself?

 

If we are not worried about salvation because we don’t believe in God or a hereafter, our only hope in life is to learn as much as we can from every other human being we encounter, because this one life is the only one we’ve got and the only way to live it to the fullest would be to allow its fullness to live in us.

 

One sure path to the truth is to be willing to view our own beliefs with as much skepticism as we view the beliefs of others. An even surer path to the truth is to challenge all of our systems, our laws, and our social structures to uplift and uphold the dignity and supreme worth of every human being. In every choice we make, if we would stop to consider the worth and dignity of those involved – and not just our own views of how the world should work – I believe that we would consistently make better choices.

 

In 1902 William James lamented that out of fanaticism “crusades have been preached and massacres instigated for no other reason than to remove a fancied slight upon the God.” History does not provide an example of it, but can’t you imagine a world where all people are seekers of truth and clear thinking? It would be impossible to wage a war, starve a child, beat a woman, or cheat a friend if the only enculturation we knew was to shine the light of equality and love on every person we met.

 

No one of us is more special than any other. But we could be incredibly special together if we put our minds – and not our blindered beliefs – to the task.

 

(c) 2008. Andrea M. Hill

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And Now for an African American First Lady

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

Presidential party caucus day has arrived for many of us, and it brings with it a sobering reflection on how the media chooses to exercise its power to persuade. Even more sobering is the related reflection on how we choose to exercise our power to think.

My city’s less-than-intellectual newspaper has been distracted through much of the pre-election season by our governor’s bid for the Democratic nomination. Not that he was ever a viable candidate, but he was ours and we were treated to interminably long months of evaluating his every expression and calorie. Since he dropped out of the race the newspaper’s ability to shift gears and focus on the larger, more relevant contest has been notably impaired. If our fair citizens know anything about the other candidates, it is due to our own resourcefulness, and not because the newspaper has done an adequate job of reporting on them.

So this morning it was with some surprise that I saw pictures of Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama splashed across the front of one of the sections of the paper. What an interesting choice — no, what an interesting series of choices — were made in the construction of that section cover. Think of the questions that were asked and answered. Should we show the two candidates? Should we show the two spouses? Should we just show the two women? Which pictures (of the many dozens they likely have access to) should we show? Should we make them look smart? Angry? Animated? Peaceful? Should we show them with similar expressions, or different? The foundation for all of the answers to these questions is the underlying rationalization of why.

So here is my question. Why did the Albuquerque Journal choose to show Hillary and Michelle instead of Hillary and Barack? Why did the Journal show Hillary as somewhat removed, composed, peaceful, hands folded in front, but Michelle as directly in your face, eyes alight, mouth wide open? What was the purpose?

The average reader may not stop to reflect that Michelle Obama has a B.A. in Sociology from Princeton, and a Harvard Law Degree. They probably don’t know that she worked for a number of years in corporate law at a major Chicago intellectual property firm, or that in 1991 she embarked upon a life of public service. She was an assistant to the mayor of Chicago, and the City of Chicago’s assistant commissioner for planning and development. In 1993 she became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago, a leadership training institute that helps young adults develop skills for careers in the public sector. In 1996 she joined the University of Chicago as associate dean of student services, and she developed the University’s first community service program. Michelle also served as executive director of community and external affairs until 2005, when she was appointed vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center. She also managed the business diversity program, and fostered the University of Chicago’s relationship with the surrounding community. Michelle Obama has been a tireless and passionate organizing force for public good in one of our nation’s largest cities for nearly 20 years.

I imagine that the Albuquerque Journal does not expect most of their readers to know this information or to stop and reflect on it. The reaction they likely anticipated  is the emotional reaction of the simple majority of white people who do not have a black female friend or colleague. Americans are not only considering the prospect of a black president, but of a black first lady. What knowledge, experience, and sensibility do we have to give this consideration its due?

Ultimately, the responsibility for our impressions lies with us — not the newspaper, not Fox or CNN, not our spouse, or some blog. Only ourselves. But thinking is not the same as perceiving. Thinking is powerful, evaluative, fundamentally creative. Perceiving is shackled by our emotions, our baggage, our fears and our wants. When we think with our perceptions we are not thinking at all – we’re just feeling.

I hope this nation can pull it together in time. I imagine a world where a critical mass of people are amassing critical thought. If we don’t take responsibility for our thinking — soon — we will have to take responsibility for the mess that ensues.

Today I voted for Obama. It wasn’t an easy choice, because I believe that both Obama and Hillary (interesting, isn’t it, that as a society we’ve selected the first name for one and the last name for the other? What does that mean?) can handle the presidency and do a good job. Once the caucuses are over I will support the winner with time and resources. But today I was shaken. I like to think that I am a more rational, more careful thinker than most. But perhaps today I simply benefited from a lifelong influence of strong black women. If the trigger had been something different, would I have responded with perception rather than thinking?

A reality based on thinking is bound to be better than a reality based on perception. It’s time for us to think our way to a new reality, by dismantling one perception at a time.

 (c) 2008. Andrea M. Hill

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But Satisfaction Brought Him Back

Thursday, January 17th, 2008

The young lady entered the conference room at the behest of the VP of Product Development. She presented herself well, from her perfect business suit to her direct communication style. As the VP launched into a description of the new product – an application designed to serve industrial toxicology analysts – the impressive young lady took copious notes on her yellow note pad, nodding her head to indicate understanding, and looking at the VP earnestly whenever she was not writing. When the VP was done speaking, the young lady asked “is that all?” and when informed that indeed, it was, she left the room quietly and shut the door behind her.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” said the VP in exasperation.

“How many technical writers on staff?” I asked

“Three more,” she said, as she rubbed her eyebrows and slowly shook her head. “And none of the others would have asked any more questions than this writer asked.” The VP (let’s call her Karen – all these pronouns are making me dizzy) leaned back in her chair and asked me “Is this the kind of thing you can fix?”

Karen is dealing with an issue that is frequently experienced by product managers and developers. The people who are responsible for conveying the message about the product – the images, the copy, the education – never quite get to the bottom of what it is the user of the product cares about. The advertising folks may be able to make great images and draft snappy copy, but their message doesn’t sell. And sell is the only thing their message is required to do.

From a consulting standpoint, yes, there are things we can do to “fix” this issue. We’ll work on processes, customer awareness, and technical knowledge. We’ll assess the strengths and weaknesses of their art director to identify needed improvements. If the company is dealing with an advertising agency instead of in-house creative, we’ll spend some time with the account exec and creative team and see if improving the direction will make a difference, or if it’s a new agency that is needed. In the end they will have a more consistent and effective advertising, marketing, and promotion effort and they will sell more products.

But there is one thing I can’t fix. No adult can fix it for any other adult. When it’s missing, it costs businesses a lot of money. When it’s missing, people are actively cheating themselves out of the fun they could be having at work. And it’s nearly impossible to train.

Where the heck did half the work force’s curiosity go?

Curiosity is what was missing from that first meeting. If curiosity had been present, the writer would have been asking questions faster than Karen could talk. She might have even been somewhat annoying with all her questions – which would have been just fine thank you. She would have asked if she could be trained on the new product – even if she couldn’t fully operate it, at least she could picture it. She would have dashed back to her desk to start doing internet research to determine whether anyone else offered a similar product. She would have inquired whether she could speak to customers about the product and how it might help them. She might have asked if she could go observe a customer at work. Lest you think I am making a point about marketing departments, please note. Lack of curiosity damages a business from every department.

A good scientist knows that it isn’t enough to find one or two supporting pieces of evidence. You must try to invalidate your own arguments. You must do the work of uncovering multiple supporting pieces of evidence and multiple contradictory pieces of evidence, and then try to reconcile the differences through further experimentation and testing. That’s curiosity. This discipline is rarely applied to business. All too often business people rely on what worked in the past, what they feel in their gut, or the one piece of evidence they gathered by calling on a sympathetic supporter or reading a sympathetic article. That’s not curiosity – that’s hubris.

A good basketball player knows that it isn’t enough to find one unerring way to make a 3 point shot. They have to consider and be challenged by every possible move that could get in their way – and this has to happen in practice, because if it happens in the game and you’re taken by surprise you’ll miss your shot. It’s curiosity at the bottom of this behavior, and it’s discipline that follows up on the curiosity.

Merriam Webster Unabridged (2007) defines curiosity as 1) desire to know  a: inquisitive interest in others’ concerns : b: interest leading to inquiry.

A common excuse for lack of curiosity in the workplace is that “we just don’t have time. Things are moving too fast. We have to make decisions and move on.” The need to make decisions fast mustn’t supplant the importance of investigation. And in the truly curious, it can’t.  If they are really that busy (most people aren’t, by the way), the truly curious will time-shift and do their investigation at night. They will find ways to automate administrative and managerial tasks and create space to indulge their curiosity. The truly curious don’t let anything get in the way of learning more about, well, whatever it is they need to learn more about.

If that sounds like a lot of work that nobody has any time for, you’re missing the point. If we spend all of our time making unthinking decisions, shuffling mounds of paper, attending eons of meetings, and wading through acres of politics, that’s not fun. What makes work fun is our curiosity. It’s curiosity that creates the opportunity for creativity. It’s curiosity that fuels brain cells starved on a diet of the bland repetitiveness of rote thinking. It’s curiosity that gets us interested, gets us motivated, gets us noticed, gets us promoted.

The paradox is that the truly curious rarely get burnt out on work (though they may get burnt out on a particular job or manager). The incurious complain of morale issues, suffer from lack of recognition, and most horrifying of all, allow themselves to become bored.

If we weren’t tackling the problem starting right now, the writer with the yellow notepad and perfect suit would likely find herself rewriting the promotional brochure five or six times, each time wondering why the product development people can’t make up their minds, or can’t do a better job of describing the product they made. Karen (the VP) would eventually give up, thinking that perhaps her expectations were too high, perhaps her dreams of customer empathic copy were unrealistic (they aren’t).

I’m not sure why some people are more curious than others, because I believe we all are born with the same capacity for curiosity. But I am sure of this. Ultimately, only curiosity saves the company. Everything else is just for show.

(c) 2008. Andrea M. Hill

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Profile the Future

Thursday, January 17th, 2008

“Mom, are you working? Can you do something with me, like, now?”

“What’s up son?”

“I got kicked out of the mall again. I really want you to help me do something about it.”

So began our sojourn into the perception and actions of private corporate security guards. An exploration of the mindsets that look on most teenagers as potentially dangerous unless they fit a very narrow range of physical description and demeanor.

The backstory: My son’s friend Richard was wearing a baseball cap with a word written across the back. By the guard’s admission, the cap was not gang related. But (again, by his admission) he decided to continue to follow and sweat the boys anyway. After being subjected to the unusually long scrutiny, Richard (16-years-old, 185 pounds of hormone in a 5’10″ frame, easily frustrated) blurts out “why the hell do you keep following us? We’re not doing anything!”

I surmise the security guard had achieved what he set out to achieve. With what my son described as grim satisfaction the guard began to berate Richard, calling him belittling names and swearing at him. My son must have looked disgusted, because the guard then began to lecture him about the importance of respecting his elders. To which my son replied, in an even tone, “How can you expect us to respect you when you aren’t respectable?” (important questionable objectivity disclaimer here – all of these details were confirmed by one of the security guards who witnessed the exchange).

At this point my son was also ejected. Last week he was ejected for loitering, which meant that he didn’t have a shopping bag in his hand after being observed in the mall for more than half an hour (he was collecting job applications). Last month he and two friends were ejected immediately upon entry for wearing baggy sweatshirts.

I do understand that there are troublemakers in the world, that our city has a gang problem, and that people carry concealed weapons and go off in malls with alarming frequency. I suspect mall security guards are somewhat on edge these days. But the picture that was painted, as we sat in the mall general manager’s office and talked through the situation, was one in which men in their 30s and 40s were exercising unnecessary personal power over teenage boys. What purpose does this serve?

The mall manager explained that the mall policy was one of “zero tolerance for gangs,” and he went on to talk – at some length – about their extreme concern for preventing any more mall shootings and for protecting the citizens who enter their mall. Who is suspected of gang activity or considered worthy of scrutiny? The answer, at first, was vague. But eventually, as we asked for specific examples, we learned that the profile of a gang member is any brown-skinned teenage male who wears baggy clothes, baseball caps, and walks with a slouch. If white-skinned teenage males dress like the brown-skinned teenage males, they are also suspects. My son is a brown-skinned teenage male who dresses in jeans and t-shirts but does not wear baseball caps. His friend Richard is a white-skinned teenage male who wears very baggy jeans and baseball caps. Neither are involved in gangs (yes, I’m quite sure).

The mall shooter in the most recent event in the Chicago suburbs was an African-American man dressed like any other man in the midst of a bad winter storm– dark jeans, winter coat, black knit cap. The mall shooter in Omaha was a waifish, nerdy looking young white man that couldn’t possibly be mistaken for a gang-banger. The mall shooter in Utah was a young white male wearing tan jeans, an overcoat, and a mullet haircut. The shooter in the December incident in a Delaware mall was wearing ordinary jeans and a windbreaker, no cap. I don’t see a pattern here.

Maybe the real concern is shoplifting? Probably not, because according to the National Shoplifting Prevention Coalition, shoplifters are equally divided between males and females, and only 25% are juveniles. Most notably, the coalition reports that a common profile for a shoplifter does not exist, so it can’t be targeted.

I must admit to a lot of curiosity on this issue. Does this profile fit for preventing mall fights involving teenagers? Research indicates that mall fights occur in all demographics with all types of teens. Juveniles (Americans under the age of 18) account for 25% of the population, and they account for 17% of all arrests, and 15%-25% of all violent crime (which the statistics indicate is generally not happening in malls). Juvenile males account for a disproportionate amount of violent crime, but misdemeanors demonstrate a much higher participation rate by females. Of great interest is that juvenile violent crime dropped 30% between 1994 and 1998, and has continued to improve (though I couldn’t find good recent statistics).

Is it possible that media-induced irrational fear of teenagers has turned our treatment of the future into a guilty-until-proven-innocent experience? A Public Agenda Online (http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stats.html) survey indicates a disheartening lack of faith in our kids, with 71% of the general public reporting a negative attitude toward teenagers, including expressing the idea that they do not believe kids today will make the world a better place. Actual statistics of juvenile crime over a 20-year-timeframe indicate that juvenile crime has been misleadingly analyzed and reported (http://www.cjcj.org/pubs/myth/myth.html).

I don’t think my son and I changed the world during our one-hour meeting with the mall manager. But we both learned a lot, and I hope the mall manager did too. My son was able to practice the art of constructive conflict and exercise the ability to listen to someone with an opposing viewpoint before presenting his own ideas. The mall manager, once he stopped defending the mall’s position and really began to listen, started taking notes and promised to have a meeting with security to discuss improvements to their process. My son is no longer banned from the mall.

But the larger issue concerns me greatly. I have been acutely aware as my peers, all of us teenagers roughly a quarter of a century ago, begin to judge teenagers for their clothing, their speech habits, and their music. I don’t have the best memory, but I sure do remember my dad bemoaning my wardrobe, my parents telling me to turn down my music and what-was-I-listening-to-anyway, and being constantly corrected and chided for using teen slang. As an adult I have had very entertaining conversations with my parents about how their own parents were convinced that they (my parents) represented the end of society as they (my grandparents) knew it. And while we didn’t turn out so bad, I also have a sinking feeling every time I see an adult behave poorly in public, act disrespectfully to other adults in front of their children, and show up regularly on the evening news as perpetrators of a broad range of crimes. If we are going to ask “what is the world coming to,” shouldn’t we be asking it of ourselves?

I believe we should be vigilant against the presence of gangs in public life. It freaks me out that I live in a state where anyone can carry a concealed weapon. I, too, want to feel safe when I enter a mall. But the real answer doesn’t lie in antagonizing teenage boys in the process of figuring out who they are, how they want to look, and what they want to do with their lives. None of the statistics I researched demonstrated that there is any benefit in the type of profiling that is occurring in this mall (and I assume, other malls). If we could just turn our attention to poverty, public schools, adult training, fair housing, mental health, drug abuse, and nutrition, we could reduce crime statistics overnight. So who might we look to as a perpetrator of these ambitious acts of public salvation? The profile probably looks just . . . . like . . . us.

(c) 2008. Andrea M. Hill

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Bring it On

Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

Check out this statement by Rob Brezny:

“Is there anything more dangerous than getting up in the morning and having nothing to worry about, no problems to solve, no friction to heat you up? That state can be a threat to your health. If untreated, it incites an unconscious yearning for any old dumb trouble that might arouse some excitement” (Breszny, 2005).

How often I have observed this to be true at work. People would get into all kinds of drama that caused frustration and sadness to everyone involved, and when you tried to help them mediate it – or just stop it! – they resisted the help. It would become clear that the drama made them happy.

I have theorized that this same tendency causes people to watch reality TV. Absence of sufficient interest, tension, excitement, or engagement in one’s own life must be driving people to explore the messes other people make of theirs. I can’t come up with any other plausible explanation.

Brezny goes on to say, “Acquiring problems is a fundamental human need. It’s as crucial to your well-being as getting food, air, water, sleep, and love. You define yourself–indeed, you make yourself–through the riddles you attract and solve. The most creative people on the planet are those who frame the biggest, hardest questions and then gather the resources necessary to find the answers” (Breszny, 2005).

At my old company we always knew when the b-s was going to start. It would happen right after the holidays in the doldrums of January, and it would happen again in the middle of summer. We tried to stay on top of it by making sure there were clear objectives and projects to be done during those times, though I don’t think we ever mastered it.

Now I’m thinking that presenting the situation to work-groups in terms of Brezny’s quote above is the way to go. We should ask our teammates and our employees what problems they have acquired, which difficult, meaty questions they have posed to themselves, and whether or not they have assembled the resources necessary to solve them.

Wow. Not 20 minutes ago I was feeling overwhelmed by the number of things I had to do for my business today. Now I’m feeling like one of the most creative people on the planet. I’m sure glad I checked my horoscope.

Reference
Brezsny, R. (2005). Pronoia. San Rafael, California: Frog Ltd./Televisionary Publishing.

(c) 2007. Andrea M. Hill

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All the Time in the World

Friday, November 16th, 2007

I changed a car battery for the first time today. For me this was a cause for celebration, though you may be wondering why a 43-year-old woman has never changed a car battery before. I can’t get the alternator tested before tomorrow, because I don’t have a voltmeter, but if the alternator is bad I’ve already looked up how to replace it and I think I’ll take a stab at that.

What is this, a sudden hankering for a career as a mechanic if I ever find the management consulting fees running thin? Not really – I hate getting my hands dirty and I’ve noticed working on the car tears up your clothes. It’s actually an important lesson in prioritization, and a reflection on the nature of time.

Have you ever told someone you didn’t have time to go to dinner with them, or didn’t have time to stop and play in the yard? It probably didn’t feel like you were lying, but it was a lie. In fact, every time I have said to my children “I don’t have time to run you to the mall right now,” what I have really been saying is “running you to the mall isn’t as important as something else I am doing.”

Do I feel bad about that? Not necessarily, but sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with letting people know that you have priorities, but to do that you have to know what they are first! Many times in the past I have been unclear with others regarding what I would or would not do, because I understood at some level that my priorities were whacked but I couldn’t get myself back on track.

Life is all about prioritization. For instance, I’m actually quite good at mechanical things. Hot water heaters, swamp coolers, assembling furniture – these tasks have always been mine, and I enjoy them. Well, I enjoy them when I have time for them, which I almost never had. Oh, wait, I did have time. I just wasn’t making those things a priority, and when I did carve out the time to do them, I did them somewhat resentfully because doing them prevented me from finishing a proposal or catching up on email, or I knew that I was getting further behind in something and that I wouldn’t like the consequences.

How will I prioritize my life and work going forward? I would like to think I have learned some important lessons in this regard. I genuinely like working (and have been known to hide behind work), but I also had a lot of fun changing that battery today. There are things we miss out on in life if we don’t identify that they are important to us. Simply recognizing they are important is a first step. Identifying how much time each deserves is the second.

It’s great to know I have as much time as I need (it’s taken me until my 40s to learn that too). It isn’t as much time as I want, or as much time as I could use. But it’s enough. And it’s all good.

(c) 2007. Andrea M. Hill

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Community Essential to Identity

Thursday, November 8th, 2007

Nearly a year ago I logged on to linkedin.com and set up a profile. I was curious about it because a reviewer in some magazine, Time maybe, referred to it as “Facebook for grownups.” Anyway, I set up a profile, searched around a bit, and decided that not much was going on.

About two weeks ago I heard from a friend that I needed to update my Linkedin profile, because it was way out of date. When I logged into my account (for the first time since I had set it up) I was startled at how much things had changed in such a short period of time.

It made me think about the mid 80s, when Compuserve was the only player on the internet (other than Unix code, finger and FTP). I had a Compuserve customer ID that had only three digits in it, and a “personal” computer that took up the entire surface of my large oak desk. Compuserve was nice, because it provided some communication tools that were otherwise unavailable on the early internet. Then AOL came along in the early ‘90s it was clear that major changes were going to occur. AOL was a community, and really promoted themselves as such. Compuserve was a technical interface with the internet that provided some cool tools. Sure, Compuserve had bulletin boards, but even the bulletin boards were a way for people with like interests to talk about topics that were interesting to them, and the relationships seemed like more of a side benefit.

I didn’t join AOL, because I didn’t feel the need for that community. But a lot of my friends became interested in the internet because of AOL, whereas they had not been interested before. I remember asking what was so interesting about communicating with all those people they didn’t know, and almost to a person the answer was that it was fun and interesting, a great way of meeting new people.

No matter what happened to AOL, they understood – or maybe they just fell into – a burgeoning need for community. It seems like there have been a few different but ultimately intersecting tracks occurring in modern life. The first is the ubiquitous computer. When I bought my first personal computer everyone thought I was crazy. My dial-up connection to use the internet was over my phone line using a modem, and transfer of any amount of data took a lot longer than faxing. Now everyone has a computer, including most 10-year-olds, and those who don’t have a computer and high-speed access to the internet from home can use the computers at the public library for free.

The next is the pace at which business operates compared to only 20 years ago. Our work has sped up, the labor force is getting more and more stretched, and businesses continue to seek ways to improve productivity, so everyone is working harder and faster. The stress this puts on the family is enormous, and for those who haven’t managed to establish families yet, it’s nearly impossible to do.

Enter the internet community. Teenagers report they talk more with their Facebook community than the friends they go to school with – and many of their Facebook friends are the friends they go to school with. In the space of one year Linkedin seems to have grown enormously. Microsoft was so frantic to get a deal with Facebook before Google did that it’s said they cut the deal in the space of one weekend.

The difference between Linkedin and the early AOL is actually quite striking. Early AOL was a way to meet people all over the country that you would otherwise not meet. Linkedin is a way of maintaining your own personal network so you don’t lose touch. Does this mean people aren’t staying in touch with their own networks now? That we’ve become so isolated from one another that we need electronic communities to connect?

And where does this all lead? If it’s true that identity can only be understood in terms of community (which I believe), and our communities have disintegrated about as far as we humans can tolerate, then it makes sense that services like Linkedin and Facebook step in to fill the gap. Of course, the ego is just a construct, and our ability to create a false identity in these virtual communities is very high, so then one wonders what will happen to the psyche in the process. I don’t think it’s necessarily bad or good – it’s just a very interesting step in the evolution of the concept of self.

I updated my profile on Linkedin, and I’ve already heard from a few people that I really had lost touch with. So that’s good. The idea of building virtual networks of people who work together from all different parts of the globe is exciting. And I’m a strong proponent of anyone who can gain work flexibility by leveraging the power of the internet and computers to be at home and with their families more. But I am concerned about the prospect of a world in which people need distance networks to maintain friendships and connections. And there’s a very specific reason why.

When people talk about their relationships at work, it is infrequent to hear them talk about them in glowing terms. Too frequently work relationships are a drain on the soul and not food for the spirit. If that’s the case, and if there is not enough other community balance – either in time or in numbers – then what happens to our overall health? And can a bunch of unhealthy people in a building create a healthy business? Because if they can’t, then all the Facebooks and Linkedins in the world won’t fix it.

(c) 2007, Andrea M. Hill

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An Ode to Difficult Geniuses

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

Dale Dauten’s most recent column should be required business reading. Of course, that’s sort of a teasing thing to say, because I can’t find an electronic link to it anywhere. The title is “Let Us All Praise the Quirky, Weird Ones,” and it starts with a quote by William James that says “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” You could go in a lot of directions with that quote, but where Dauten goes is to the sad reality that business managers these days would prefer to employ safe, average, presumably less imaginative sorts than unruly, challenging, wildly intelligent sorts.

After describing how business managers fear and dislike people who are challenging, a little un-PC (it’s amazing how damaging one little acronym can be, isn’t it?), perhaps prone to scandal on the personal (not the work) side (i.e., “lacking a certain decorum”), difficult to manage, or even egotistical, he says “not only would you fire Winston Churchill, you couldn’t hire John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. or Pablo Picasso. Instead, you can staff up with the corporate equivalents of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and a pair of Bushes. How did we get to be so small?”

Indeed. Every business leader preaches the importance of innovation and outperforming the competition, yet business managers are busy squeezing every threatening and/or unconventional element out of their environment. The only possible result is the lowest common denominator, which clearly won’t achieve innovation and competitive wins.

I think we are all guilty of this at some time or another. The column caused me to look back over all my years of hiring and firing, and I can think of two specific cases where the difficulty of managing someone won out over their significant creativity with questionable resulting benefit.

On the other hand, there is no question that my most creative experiences at work have been while surrounded with very quirky people. The graphic designer whose psychological insights into others was acute even as he was a complete socio/psychological mess himself; the sarcastic but intensely effective professional who was repeatedly accused of egotism when he really was smarter than everyone else and if I couldn’t help but notice it surely he was aware of it as well; the completely adolescent, self-absorbed writer who could make business writing sound like poetry; the zen-y assistant who repeatedly came from so far in left field that he frequently took the rest of the group on a detour that invariably introduced creativity we never would have stumbled on without him; the cross-dressing analyst who regularly forgot to get all his mascara off before coming to work in the morning, and who freaked out the men around him by flirting with them just like they flirted with all the women in the office; the nuts-o marketer who spoke incomprehensibly fast and always had a personal crisis going on, but who could produce flashes of insight three or four times a year that paid for herself and everyone else in her department four times over; designers who could only work in the wee hours of the night and had to be cajoled into considering another viewpoint; and . . . my experience tells me that the sheer fun and creativity of working with people of superior talent and intelligence is well worth their eccentricities.

Years ago when I was in advertising, an art director, aware that I was frustrated trying to manage a group of what seemed to be overbred, tightly wound creative types, told me that I had to learn how to “ride the white elephant.” He explained that white elephants were believed to be as royal as kings, and moreover, they knew they were as royal as kings. So you couldn’t manage them like regular elephants, because they would refuse to participate. If you wanted to associate yourself with a thing of wonder, you had to accept that you weren’t going to be able to make all the rules. He taught me that I had to learn how to make the rules and not get run over (we did have a business to run) while learning how to accept that sometimes they made their own rules, and most important, how to offer them as much in value as I expected to get from them.

Is it a double-standard that I would never advocate keeping egotistical, difficult, surly, or eccentric people who are NOT smarter, more creative, more productive than everybody else? Maybe, but common sense says, why would you? 

In a very funny passage regarding a friend’s sexual deviation and her own mother’s response to it, Dauten share’s the mother’s advice, which was “Unusual people have unusual tastes.”  He ends by saying this:

“Whenever I’m tempted to be narrow-minded or judgmental, I think of that little sentence, “Unusual people have unusual tastes,” shrug, and mind my own business. I can only hope that there are executives who’ll do likewise, that they’ll keep eccentric geniuses on the payroll, despite the trouble they cause. Let’s broaden that maternal advice to this business wisdom: If you want unusual ideas, you’re going to have to put up with unusual people.”

Amen.

(c) 2007, Andrea M. Hill

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