Why would any American want to be a socialist?

Recently, The CEO of United was dismissed for cause but was given a multi-million $ payoff. Regularly we read about CEO's that have driven their company down in value, not up, and get paid millions to go away. Will Muschamp is an example of a college football coach who failed to meet expectations and was given millions to go away, became the highest paid coordinator while still receiving compensation from previous employee. So far his defense at Auburn has been short of stellar. Major college football coaches are receiving huge salaries, but most fail to deliver on the goals for which they are hired.

Capitalists respond, "this is just the free market at work." I would be the first to advocate market based economies over socialist economies. SO, what is wrong with our current system that would leave room for an increasing attraction to socialism?

What exists in our society are leaders that get rewarded for success, but do not get penalized for failure. There is a huge asymmetry of risks. CEO's and coaches get bonuses if they reach or exceed goals, but they never have to give back any of their compensation when they fail to achieve goals. This actually makes the market dysfunctional, creating a cynicism in society of free market capitalism.

Professionals also learn to game the system, such as what AIG execs did with credit default swaps (insurance on mortgage back securities). In gaming the system professionals bet on the upside potential of their actions but are not subject to the downside risks of failure. Our government is not only ready to bail out financial execs, like Sweden and The Netherlands, the US govt stands ready to remove risk of failure for all its citizens in many ways. In fact the mantra of the federal govt has gradually moved from the founding fathers idea to defend society against foreign attack to protecting all citizens from various forms of risk (i.e., natural disasters, health care costs, social security, unemployment benefits, and so forth).

So why have so many grown weary of leaving society to the forces of the capitalists and free markets?
When greed trumps ethics and society pursues the role of government as removing risks from life, socialism is attractive. While many may be too sophisticated to say they want socialism, a culture of "everybody must win" and BIG GOVT is the new socialism.  

What is it you see?

This is a scale showing my last weigh in. That's what you see, but is it really? Do you see a weight that has gotten out of control and puts me at a health risk? Or do you see a weight that is 20 lbs lighter than I was 2 months ago. Maybe this is quite an achievement for me? Why might different people see the same thing but come to two totally different conclusions on what they saw?

See this smile? What do you see? Someone flirting with you? Maybe its an act of kindness? Or maybe yet, its a little bit of cynicism? How do you know? What makes something you see clear to you?







Seeing is not just an activity of the eyes. The reality is that how you feel and what you do is not about what you see, it's what you see it is.

Seeing is really about perceiving and perceiving is more than seeing. When we encounter our environment and observe what it entails, we take in more than data (199 lbs or a smile), we take in information (a good weight or a bad weight and the intent of the smile). Information is data that we have given context and the context we give is based on biases and filters that are part of our sense-making system. Each one of us has one and each is different from all others.

There are far too many examples of this because it goes on all the time and is even happening right now. You see words, but you make sense of them in context. Who wrote them and does the author have credibility or not? How are you feeling at the time you read them? Are you confident and hopeful or are you fearful or cynical? Are you distracted at the time or are you giving what you see your full attention?

Someone says something to you. Do you trust them or not? Do they make you feel good about yourself or not? What are your needs at the time? What are your expectations of this person?

Your boss gives you feedback. You do not just see the feedback, you see what it is, what it means to you based on the context that defines your relationship with your boss and preconceived notions or biases about the company, the boss, and your peer employees.

Your gender, your age, your personality, your culture, your experiences, knowledge, beliefs and more determine more than what you see, these control what you see it is. Learning to trust yourself less with your initial response to what others do and say will help you be less judgmental. Be intentional to shine a light on your perceptual biases and filters to understand and validate the context so that the data you receive is not distorted information.

To be a good leader you must develop clarity in what you see others do. How do you do that? How do you sharpen your vision.

Faith, which is trusting not what you see but what you know to be true, is essential in the maturity of SEEING WHAT IT IS! 

Trugreen: Why Chapter 5 Matters

As many of you know understanding and explaining strategy for individuals and companies is one of my priorities in late life. So much so I wrote a book on strategy called "Winning in a Hostile Environment". Section Two of the book deals with seven reasons companies fail. These are not common topics for business people, not taught in Strategy classes to MBA's, and seldom discussed within executive chambers as the keys to good strategy. Therefore many people do not elaborate much on these 7 points, especially executives who are more likely to follow institutional prescriptions for success.

It has intrigued me that while some may dismiss my points and not choose to elaborate on these challenges, I see examples everywhere of how companies fall prey to these snares. Latest case in point is my experience with Trugreen Lawn Care. They have really good marketing and customer plans for service. They say all the right things that customers would want to hear. They make it easy to purchase and pay for the services. BUT, exactly how do they line up with Chapter 5?

Chapter 5 claims that companies lose when they choose to approach strategic initiatives as if they were utilitarian. That may sound too academic or complex to apply, but it is very simple and profound to winning or losing. So what do I mean by the strategic point in Chapter 5? Let me give you my story and I think you will see.

I subscribe for annual lawn care service from Trugreen, which includes timely application of weed killer and fertilizer. Once a year they aerate and over seed my fescue yard. This is critical because it happens once a year and determines a great deal of how the yard will look for a year. This service is normally completed in September. They take the initiative to schedule the service and I do not even have to be home for them to execute. As expected they schedule the service, but late the day of service I get a call saying they could not do it because I didn't mark my sprinkler heads so they could avoid them. I don't have a sprinkler system. They didn't put forth effort to see this. So they rescheduled. and this time i was home. They show up after 5pm on the day of schedule, two men jump out of their truck with aeration equipment, speedily move across the yard staying 3 feet from all boundaries, such as sidewalk, drive way, and mulch areas. In less than 10 minutes they were back in their truck and gone. You might say, "good job, they were motivated and efficient."

Yes, they were efficient, but they were not effective. Two things were wrong, which left me, the consumer, dissatisfied. One is that by not taking the time to aerate near the borders, I have no holes punched for new seed to fall and germinate. The second issue, they didn't even put down any seed, although the invoice left for the service said "aeration and over seed." Somewhat befuddled, I just assumed these service technicians were in a hurry and wanted to get home. Poor employee performance was my conclusion. trump would have said, "you're fired".

Somewhat taken back by what I experienced, I couldn't wait to call and report the poor service, get a supervisor to call me to discuss these employees and reschedule. Of course, calling was one of those experiences where you give them a number and they call back in 20 or 30 minutes. I did and they did. The call center service employee was pleasant, acknowledge my frustration and put in a message for the local manager to call me the next day. The next day I waited and by 10:30am there was no call. I proceeded then to call service center again and got a different service operator. Again, she was pleasant and agreed to resend a message to manager. She said one more thing that really got my attention. When i shared that their service felt like a "hit and run" and that the service techs were running through the yard as if they couldn't wait to get home, she said an amazing thing. "It shows in our records that your yard is 2000 sq ft and that means they are scheduled 5 minutes for that job." At first I couldn't believe what i heard and then it hit me.

Those employees were trying as hard as they could to be successful. Its just that SUCCESS meant meeting the efficiency standard for the job. It did not matter how the job was done, that it significantly failed to meet my satisfaction.  Here's what apparently is Trugreen's model - to treat strategic initiatives as if they were utilitarian, a formula for failure. Trugreen sees success through efficiency lenses. Employees are doing as they are rewarded.


Here's the point of Chapter 5 - Strategic initiatives are anything a company does that affects why someone would be your customer or consumer. In this case the aeration/ over seed service is clearly a strategic initiative. BUT, Trugreen believes that success is how efficient they do the service, not how effective. Utilitarian initiatives of a company, such as accounting, mail room, janitorial, and such, need to be efficient only. That's OK. They make a good application for Lean 6-sigma. However, when things a company does that effects the customer/consumer experience is primarily about being efficient without first being effective. The company will lose.

BTW, I have since found that everyone I thought were using Trugreen had fired them already. I am the last, but its now done!!!  

does money motivate?

This is a popular topic in human behavior. The dominant view is "not yes, but heck yeah." But the relationship between money and motivation is very complex. Here are a few principles:

1. the monetary reward must be of a size to have value (e.g., 2% raise vs 15%)
2. the monetary reward must be proximal to the behavior, that is, the money to be gained must be closely associated with what the person must do to get it.
3. the monetary reward is competing with other types of rewards, especially intrinsic rewards of meaning, significance, and enjoyment
4. the monetary reward is often a symbol for some other value the person has, such as fairness, status, and power

The research on when money motivates is quite extensive and basically concludes that money alone often does not motivate a specific behavior and reward givers must not see monetary rewards as a silver bullet to motivation.

But I want to venture into an area of this topic that may be more prevalent than the attention given to it. That is, what are the motivational implications of monetary rewards exceeding the need of the individual for money. Are there behavioral risks to emotionally turning your back on money?





Let's think about it this way. How do you feel when you believe that the monetary reward for what you are doing is in excess of what you need? This is a little different than believing you are overpaid for the work. That usually results in anxiety and fear that you will be found out and that you will lose what you have.

Being rewarded with money when you either have what you need or you are highly intrinsically motivated meaning you do not associate monetary reward with your behavior can create some interesting risks. One is that the world generally associates the desire for money with motivation to do the job. Communicating to others may make them feel you do not care, which has ramifications to how they view your commitment. Research also shows that when we are doing something we love to do and then money is provided as a reward for doing it, we can begin to lose the intrinsic value of what we are doing, be less enthused, and feel obligated to the reward giver.

The main point here is that monetary rewards create feelings in each of us differently based on our needs. Our feelings affect our motivation. The world operates on a system that people do what they do in exchange for rewards. Taking a "one size fits all" view of money as a motivator is risky for the reward giver and not being sensitive to how others read our response to monetary rewards has risk for the the one being rewarded.

just something to ponder ......