"Purposeful Stupidity" -- The CIA's guide to managerial mess-making

It has been truly said that you can't always make a bad situation better, but you can always make it worse. Why would you want to do that in a business environment? Hey, I'm not a psychiatrist! But if you are so inclined, this manual from the Central Intelligence Agency is here to help.

There's some good, solid stuff here. Here's a sample:

>> In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers.

>> Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw.

>> To lower morale and productivity, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions.

>> Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.

>> Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.                                                          

Here's a link to an article about the "Simple Sabotage Field Manual." From there, you can go to a site to download the whole book for free. The "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" dates from 1944, the height of World War Two, but there's no expiration date on corporate mess-making. As the poet wrote, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever."

http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/simple-sabotage-field-manual.html

Here they are! Easy solutions to complex problems

I love simple, easy solutions to complicated, difficult problems. The simpler, the better! For example, would you like to be very wealthy? Do you want to get rich, big time? Many people do, and they waste valuable time and energy worrying about how to solve the problem of obtaining great wealth. That's a shame, because the solution is really very simple. 

In order to get rich, just meet and introduce yourself to two new people every day. Share a bit of information about yourself and what you do, and if it seems appropriate exchange contact information.

But don't force anything. Most of the time there won't be a future with the person you meet -- especially since it doesn't matter who that person is. Don't "cherry pick" your daily two people. Don't limit yourself to people whom you believe can do something for you. It's a numbers game, and tomorrow is another day. 

I could say more about this wealth-building technique, but that would undermine its simplicity, wouldn't it?  So just go out there and get started. 
I'll see you at the bank. 

One of my favorite sources for easy answers to complicated problems is the website of Entrepreneur Magazine -- www.entrepreneur.com. I heartily recommend that site for practical panaceas for perplexing problems. 

For example, do you want to turn six dollars into a hundred thousand dollars? It's easier than you think.....
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/252107

Would you like to turn your deepest fears into moneymaking opportunities? Very well then......
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/252739

Do you want to feel confident in situations where you really have no idea what you're doing? Of course you would.....
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/252707

It may seem like I'm being somewhat sarcastic here, but I really do love this material. Maybe the idea of easy solutions to complicated problems is a beautiful dream -- or maybe it's more than a dream. As a great poet once wrote, "Do I wake or sleep?"

Gardenburger: A cautionary tale

Last week I did a post about Phil Knight and the immense societal impact wrought by his transformation of the "gym shoe" into the "running shoe." The Gardenburger was the first mass marketed meatless hamburger, and its influence has been almost as profound as Nike's. But the outcome for Gardenburger and its creator, unfortunately, have been less fortunate. 

In the early 1980's a man named Paul Wenner owned a small natural foods restaurant in Oregon. Wenner was a genius of a special kind. He wasn't scientific. He was intuitive. Like Thomas Edison, he followed his instincts and experimented until he got the desired result. 

Wenner wanted to serve a meatless, hamburger-like patty in his restaurant. He put together some ingredients and came up with a burger that had the look and texture of a hamburger, and even a surprisingly similar taste. Equally important, the new product didn't crumble and fall apart like earlier soy burgers or other misguided attempts.

Wenner called his creation the Gardenburger. When the Gardenburger was an immediate hit in his restaurant, he began shopping it around to other places. It took off. It started to become a phenomenon. A major investor got involved, and Gardenburger became a major success story. In just a few years it was a $100 million company. 

Gardenburger was the first so-called natural food product to be featured in major supermarket chains. Just as Steve Jobs made the personal computer a mainstream consumer product, Paul Wenner's Gardenburger moved from  "health food" stores to big time retail outlets. Literally millions of them were sold in supermarkets and restaurants.

The floodgates were opened. More and more shelf space was devoted to natural foods. "Organic" became part of American's everyday language. So did "vegan." A new mainstream category came into being. There would be no Whole Foods were it not for Gardenburger. 

Of course, success brings competition. As Gardenburger grew, major food companies came up with their own meatless burgers -- and their marketing budgets were unlimited. Consumers, it turned out, were not especially interested in buying Gardenburger specifically. They just wanted meatless hamburgers, and if Kellogg was now making one, they were down for that. Why not?

Eventually Kellogg bought Gardenburger, and at a rock bottom price. 

Gardenburger and  its inventor were a classic example of creative inspiration that could not sustain itself in the mundane (and cutthroat) commercial world. It's hard to be both a visionary and a businessman, and even Edison made some huge mistakes. Paul Wenner deserves recognition for lighting a match that turned into a firestorm, even if his invention was consumed by the flames. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardenburger

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9730624/#.Vju4wrerTIU

Phil Knight of Nike: Greater than Jobs imho!

I recall many years ago reading an interview with Steve Jobs in Playboy magazine. With stunning simplicity, Jobs articulated one of the basic concepts of his work. Computers should no longer look like a tangle of components from Radio Shack.  A computer to be a beautiful object.

Brilliant. Simple, and brilliant. Yet years before that interview, Phil Knight had already created an equally innovative, equally unlikely, and equally brilliant innovation. Just as Steve Jobs was determined to make computers beautiful, Knight did the same thing with what used to be called "gym shoes."

 Gym shoes were, first and foremost, smelly. They were black or white. They had flat, rubber soles that were all right on a basket ball court, but the average person couldn't run very far in them with any degree of comfort. There were also track shoes, of course, but those were for specialized athletes. Many of them had spikes on the soles, and they weren't especially durable. 

Without going into the details, Phil Knight reconfigured the humble gym shoe in several stunningly original ways. First and foremost, as Steve Jobs did with personal computers, he made them aesthetically attractive -- and to women as well as men! Secondly, on a practical level, he used a breakthrough idea of his partner Bill Bowerman to create a sole for his shoes that made long distance running possible and even comfortable for everyone. Third, Knight made Asia an integral part of his business plan, as both a manufacturing resource and a vast consumer market. 

There's much more to know about Phil Knight and Nike, so I urge you to explore the links below. It's my belief that, without Nike, there would be no New York Marathon, no Whole Foods stores, no "sports medicine" as a clinical specialty, and Michael Jordan's net worth would be much, much lower. And perhaps Steve Jobs' iPod would not have been especially big either. The next time you're out for a jog, notice what people have in their ears, and how that connects to what they have on their feet. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/07/how-nike-turned-sneakers-into-fashion/397610/

http://www.businessinsider.com/nike-founder-phil-knight-profile-2015-8

https://hbr.org/1992/07/high-performance-marketing-an-interview-with-nikes-phil-knight

The 100 Most Trusted People In America. (Cartoon characters not allowed)

How has it come to pass that “the most trusted people in America” are actors? Surely the prime example of an actor whom the American people trusted was Ronald Reagan. We know what happened there. Wait a minute, what did happen there?

Maybe our trust in actors is not really that surprising. All the world’s a stage, right? Since it’s impossible to know what’s really going on in the mind and heart of any human being, so someone who can at least provide an illusion of ethical behavior will be very attractive.

And maybe it’s not even an illusion. Maybe Tom Hanks really is an extremely trustworthy person. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

The following survey is a couple of years old but it still provides an excellent idea of Americans’ idea of trustworthiness. Today, Tom Hanks would probably still come in first, although I would vote for Bart Simpson. If you’re ready to trust an actor, trusting a drawing might be even better.

http://www.rd.com/culture/readers-digest-trust-poll-the-100-most-trusted-people-in-america/#slideshow=slide16

When Does a Company Become a Cult?

Effective leadership is of course vital to business success. Consequently, strong leaders are revered inside their organizations -- and if they become successful enough, they can become media stars, or presidential candidates, or both. 

As a leader starts to become really big, the influence of that magnification can be felt throughout the company. When Bill Gates was leading Microsoft to world domination, for example, he always -- and I mean always -- wore a sweater with a buttoned shirt underneath it. During those years if you saw a picture of Gates with a group of his executives, they would also be wearing sweaters.

That didn't happen by accident. Gates might never have consciously intended it, but he had created a Microsoft uniform. Nor was he the first leader to do that. When IBM was leader of the pack in the 1950s and 60s, the uniform was a dark suit, white shirt, and thin tie. That was what James Watson, the CEO, wore, so there was no option for wearing anything else. 

This herding instinct extends beyond fashion choices. Power within an organization may be assigned to those employees who  are able to most closely resemble the leader, especially when it's the leader who confers the power. That's when the organization starts to take on a cult-like aspect -- which may not be all bad, except for two things. First, the strong leader won't be there forever. Second, there may be very talented people who are lost to the company simply because they don't "fit in."

Wise leaders recognize the dangers of their narcissistic tendencies. They deliberately cultivate difference and diversity. Others, however, are drawn to the guru role and behaviors it entails. The first link below is a Psychology Todayarticle that identifies some characteristics of a "cult of personality" leader. The second link explores similar tendencies in our old friend, the endlessly fascinating Mr. Jobs. The article is called "The Cult of Steve."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201510/4-dirty-psychological-tricks-used-bad-leaders

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2015/03/becoming_steve_j

"Woe is I" -- Grammar matters in business, don't it?

Growing up, you learned that two plus two is four, right? And by "right," I don't mean morally right. I mean mathematically correct. For the same reason, two plus two is five is "wrong."

Maybe you also learned -- using the terminology of traditional English grammar -- that any form of the verb "to be" cannot have a direct object. Therefore "woe is me" is grammatically wrong because "me" is an object form of the first person pronoun. "Woe is I" is correct. 

But there's a difference between what's right and wrong in math and in grammar. How we express ourselves in writing and speech has all sorts of cultural baggage. A person who continually makes grammatical errors may seem not only uneducated but actually offensive.

It's surprising, therefore, how many people today make obvious errors of grammar and usage, even at upper executive levels As a recruiter, here's something I've heard more than once: "Whatever you do, don't send me anybody who doesn't know the difference between 'there' and 'there, or between 'your' and 'you're.' That drives me crazy!"

I've also heard (again, more than once) that online communication has changed the rules of  writing. That Twitter's 140 character limit, for example, has put a premium on brevity. What matters now is making your point in the fewest possible words rather than adherence to annoying laws. In fact, adhering too closely to those laws can make you seem not only old fashioned, but just plain old. 

I don't know the correct answer to this. Language has always been evolving. Is it best to go with the flow, or fight to the last split infinitive. I used to tell people that they were free to speak or write any way they liked, but if they wanted to get hired they'd better mind their p's and q's.

Is that still true today? What do you think?

Here's some food for thought from two prominent authorities: 

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/oct/06/steven-pinker-alleged-rules-of-writing-superstitions

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-b-bradshaw/why-grammar-is-important_b_4128521.html

Here's my Steve Jobs story. What's yours?

In the mid-1980s I knew a young woman who had a lot going for her. She was an Ivy League graduate and had a good job in California as a journalist, writing feature articles on the entertainment industry for a popular magazine. One day I ran into her at a gathering at friend's house and she mentioned that something exciting was about to happen. A friend had set her up with a unique opportunity. She was going to have a blind date with Steve Jobs.

Jobs was already a legendary personality, although nowhere near what he would later become. But partly because his career had not reached its true high points yet, he was something of an enigma. He was well-known, but what he actually did wasn't clear. (It never would be completely clear.) But to actually socialize with him was a chance not to be missed. 

Several months passed before I saw my friend again. Of course, I could not restrain myself from asking about her date with Steve. I didn't just ask about it, I demanded to know the details. And she was quite willing to tell me. In fact, she hoped that I would be able to give her some insight on the experience. 

"It started off well enough," she said. "We met at his office, and then we were going to dinner. He introduced himself and we spoke for a moment about the mutual friend who had arranged the date. Then he referred to my work. He said, 'Since we've never met, it seemed like a good way to get ready for our meeting would be to look at the magazine where I gather you work. So I got the current issue and read it cover to cover.'"

My friend said that was very thoughtful of him. She told Jobs that she was eager to hear his impression of the magazine.

At that point he looked her straight in the eye and said, "Well, that magazine is the biggest piece of garbage I've ever seen in my life. Since I'm sure you're an intelligent woman, I can't understand how you can have possibly anything to do with something like that. If that's your choice, I'm very pessimistic about any connection happening between us. But since you're here, we might as well have dinner."

The evening ended early. 

The thing that struck me about this story was not so much Jobs' apparent rudeness. Maybe he would have seen it as just "being honest." But what I noticed was how Jobs' comment to my friend was very similar to what he said to John Scully, the Pepsi executive whom Jobs recruited to Apple.

According to several sources, Jobs asked Scully, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your career, or do you want to change the world?"

My takeaway from this? For Jobs, one's work and one's life were inseparable. To devalue one was to devalue the other, which to him was incomprehensible and even offensive. 

Just for fun, think about how you would describe your work (that is, your life) to Steve Jobs. What exactly would you say that very blunt and impatient man who saw himself as changing the world? And what do you imagine he would have said in response? 

There's going to be a new surge of interest in Jobs on the fourth anniversary of his death. A new and apparently very negative biopic is about to be released. Here are some recent articles:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3258888/The-new-Steve-Jobs-biopic-travesty-says-ex-Cold-Ruthless-Obsessive-No-FAR-worse-denied-father-child-ROTTEN-CORE.html

http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-co-founders-allies-take-aim-at-hollywood-over-steve-jobs-1444000308

Making the Most of (80 million) Millennials

As a Baby Boomer myself -- and also as an executive recruiter -- the so-called Millennial generation is much on my mind.

I grew up listening to veterans of World War Two (who grew up during the Great Depression) proudly proclaiming that my life was going to be much easier than theirs. My generation was going to reap the benefits of all that their generation had gone through. We were going to be the beneficiaries of our parents' sacrifices. Hooray!

And it was the truth. The Baby Boomers did have a completely different experience than the Greatest Generation. For one thing, we were reminded again and again of just how different our experience was going to be. For another thing, there were just so damn many of us. About 75 million people were born between 1945 and 1960. 

Well, now the demographic wheel has turned once again. The segment of the population born between 1985 and 2000 is as different from the Baby Boomers as the Baby Boomers were from their parents. And for the first time, the Baby Boomers are no longer the largest population bulge. There are approximately 80 million Millennials. There are now approximately 70 million Baby Boomers -- and, um, counting down every day. 

it's well worth your while -- and perhaps essential to your success -- to understand the key characteristics of the Millennials. My generation was the first to grow up with television, and there's no doubt television was a major influence. But television was nothing compared to the effects of cellphones and computers as lifelong companions.

And what are those effects, as they relate to the importance of Millennials in commerce and industry, as both consumers and employees?

Because of my work in recruiting, I'm mainly interested in employee perspective. Here are some links on that topic. If you're a Baby Boomer, see how these points compare and contrast with your career experience over the years, and how they might influence your dealing with the new generation entering the work force. And if you're a Millennial, see if these are accurate representations of your values. Or is this just Dad talking. Or Grand Dad!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidsturt/2015/10/01/5-ways-you-drive-away-millennial-employees/

http://www.benefitspro.com/2015/05/06/why-millennials-quit-their-jobs

Can anger help your business? Grrrrr......

In all areas of modern life, anger gets a bad rap....and with good reason. Generally speaking, nothing good happens when people get angry, and when they get reallyangry, bad things often happen. But as the link below suggests, there may be a productive role for anger in certain business situations. In other words, anger might be bad, but maybe it's not all bad. 

if we try to look at anger from a positive perspective,  we can make some interesting discoveries. Anger with another person, for example, is actually based on hope. By getting angry, you hope (and perhaps believe) that you can bring about positive change.

Even if you're a real hothead, you're unlikely to get angry with someone who's five feet tall for not playing in the National Basketball Association. But you might get angry at that person for deleting some important emails -- and underlying your anger is the hope that you can prevent the same mistake from happening again. 

As the link shows, anger may well have benefits in certain well-defined  business communications. There may even be times when getting angry can make the difference between success and failure. But you've got to know when and where to use it. In that sense, anger is just like many other things in life. You don't start your car by letting the air out of the tires, and you don't blow your top at every little thing (unless you're Oscar the Grouch.)

Here's the link to the New York Times article on "The Rationality of Rage" --
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/sunday/the-rationality-of-rage.html?_r=0

BULLS**T: What it is and how to fight it

If you're like most people, you encounter plenty of bulls**t every day. You may put a bit of bulls**t out there yourself, perhaps without even knowing it. The trouble is, bulls**t can waste a lot of time and as we all know, time is money. So what is to be done?

In 2005, a tiny book by a Princeton University philosophy professor became an unlikely bestseller. The professor's name was Harry Franklin and the book was called "On Bulls**t," except without the asterisks. "On Bulls**t," was a true mini-book, less than 70 pages and about four by six inches in size.

The book was a point-of-purchase item, placed in the checkout lines of Barnes&Noble and other bookstores -- and the public ate it up, so to speak. "On Bulls**t" was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than six months.

Toward the start of the book, Franklin makes a basic distinction between old fashioned lying and modern day bulls**t. The difference is this: in a traditional "lying conversation" between two people, the liar knows he is not telling the truth and the other person doesn't  know it. But in a bulls**t conversation both people know it's bulls**t but this is not acknowledged by with either of them. They just go right on ahead, collaborating in their bulls**t.

As the book points out, this kind of interaction takes place all the time in the contemporary world. In fact, it might now be the most widespread form of communication, especially since the internet has emerged as a hugely powerful means for spreading bulls**t around. So an effective defense against bulls**t begins with awareness. If you smell something, say something. 

Most dangerous of all, bulls**t can become so pervasive that it becomes our natural habitat. We're not even really aware of it anymore, just as fish aren't aware that they're swimming in water.

And why is that so dangerous? Well, there are always a few people -- maybe one or two, or a couple of hundred, or a few thousand -- who remain outside all the bulls**t and see what's really going on. Who are those people? Unfortunately, the book doesn't say. And Professor Franklin's next book, entitled "On Truth," was nowhere near as big a success. 

You can read a pdf of "On Bulls**t: online. Here's the link:
http://www.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_bullshit.pdf

The book, though short, is not light reading, so here's the wikipedia summary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

Can your time be wasted? That depends...

Creative people are notorious time wasters. Often that's the cause of domestic disagreement. Picasso's wife had to coax him out of bed every morning. Mario Puzo wrote "The Godfather," one of the most important books in American literature (my opinion) but he'd spend hours lying on his back staring at the ceiling. When his wife suggested he get busy -- they were broke at the time --he declared, "I'm working!"

But the corporate world is less flexible for dreamers, and less forgiving. Geniuses may need to waste a certain amount of time, or seem to, but an executive has to be accountable in a different way. In fact, I've always felt that time management is one of the most underrated elements of business success. 

Along those lines, the late NFL football coach George Allen once performed an interesting experiment. He telephoned the offices of every team in the league at exactly one minute after nine in the morning. Without exception, the teams with winning records picked up while the others must have had something else to do. Or maybe they were just wasting time. 

Here's a useful article on how to identify and deal with time wasting distractions in the workplace. It will only take about five minutes to read. Go for it!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucekasanoff/2014/03/20/three-powerful-ways-to-stop-wasting-time/