June 12, 2011 by Ken Goldstein - 4 Comments

Do You Know The Enemy?

Earlier this week I tweeted the following:

CorporateIntel: Palin, Weiner, Sheen, Schwarzenegger — when comic book reality passes almost daily now as normalcy, how do we come to define absurdity?

It wasn’t like this week’s noise was any more pronounced than last week’s or last year’s, it just hit me that the continuum meltdown parade really is becoming the norm. One of the politicos snagged by the mic in Congress (yes, there actually was an elected official there, despite the recess with the debt ceiling getting almost no attention right now, because we have to wait for the crisis countdown) said of Weiner, and I paraphrase, he just has to lay low a few days until the next scandal grabs the headlines and pushes him down the list, where he can return to obscurity. Wow, that’s dark, what a great way to escape the spotlight, just wait for someone to steal the stage from you — you know they’re coming, they always are, nastier antics and less newsworthy.

My concerns are somewhat broader than those framed in a poignant LA Times column this week by the consistently thoughtful writer Sandy Banks, whose point of view I share, but mine goes way past the salacious. I worry that there is such a continuum of crazy bad behavior — be it drugging in sports, insider trading by Wall Street titans, local public officials paying themselves like emperors, desperately needed public school funds being squandered on administration, a global finance executive defending himself by using the term “consensual” in response to accusations to the contrary — that all this just becomes the everyday expectation of affairs, that leaders cannot be counted on to lead, only to await their moment of embarrassment and humiliation. That is not real normalcy, but we could let it be so if we don’t fight the tone and demand better.

One could easily argue things today are no worse than they have ever been, that there is simply more sunlight being cast as disinfectant because technology now too easily causes people to trip over themselves. People think they’re clever, but they really don’t know how an iPhone works or that Internet anonymity is a head fake, the Internet cements your trail in a way sniffing dogs would be envious. Some people think the problem is that all these new tools of trouble are so readily available and poorly understood — Facebook, Twitter, digital cameras, video surveillance virtually everywhere we walk. No doubt these innovations make the circus easier to see, but they don’t create the circus. People create the circus by acting without thinking through the consequences of their actions, then utilizing technology without fully understanding its constructs. Are we going to blame the typewriter for all the unjust laws, decrees, and acts that sinister governments have published? Shall we blame radio and television for commercials that told us cigarettes were not bad for us? I remember many years ago explaining to a colleague who was using AOL messenger for intraoffice communication how many people around the world had a clear text window into every word that was being typed by the IM circle; it was an innocent enough mistake, IM was new at the time and very useful, without a lot of competitors, so people just used it without comprehension or context. That didn’t make the technology good or bad, it simply meant it was being misused. We can’t blame the technology for the traps we set for ourselves.

My point is not to be judgmental, but to encourage cognizance of the noise and the noisemakers around us and the profound impact this is having on our numbing factors. This is not about the media, it’s about people of high-profile knowingly doing stupid things and deluding themselves into believing they will evade the traps. If those in leadership choose to be cavalier with the attendant visibility that surrounds their actions, personal and professional, at what point will no leader be able to command respect? The problem is that cynicism is a disease, it creeps up on our point of view and infects our thinking in negative tones to the point where it is much easier to believe no one than to believe anyone. That is not a very happy place to be, especially when gigantic problems need to be solved that require teamwork and shared vision, reflections of trust that are not in abundance in a climate of broad disbelief and numbing retreat.

For me here’s the rub: Leadership is a privilege. The ability to have others look to someone as a symbolic or actual role model is a gift. If you don’t want to be passed the torch, don’t reach out for it.

A well-reasoned response might be that there is a clear separation of our personal and professional lives, and no one chooses to be the target of embarrassment, it is simply a byproduct of human error, of which we are all capable. I guess I just don’t buy that, because with all the innovation that is now the platform of our lives, the separation between personal and professional is increasingly challenging. We may set out to keep our Friends on Facebook and our Contacts on LinkedIn, but we all know, the mash-up follows us real-time. We may try to keep one mobile phone for work and one for business. Yeah, try that, good luck remembering which is on your right pocket and which is in your left. If technology brings the personal and professional together as a reflection of reality, then to not be aware of it is to be agreeably ignorant. Last I looked, ignorance is not a great defense strategy for leadership; if it’s not a quality one would want in their bio, then it’s not a fallback when the media machine attacks. How about awareness, caution, integrity, and dignity. Technology can’t take those away from anyone.

The Enemy is Apathy. Apathy is a result, it is our hands in the air when we toss in the towel and think we can’t make things better, that our singular votes no longer matter (they do!). When we become so comfortably numb that we no longer wonder if bad behavior is the norm, the enemy wins. How numb can we be and still feel human? Most people don’t want to be numb, they want to be empowered. Leadership is the gift to empower.

Fight the Enemy.

March 29, 2011 by Ken Goldstein - 0 comments

Welcome to a New Kind of Tension

From Newsweek — August 24, 2010:

“Silly Things We Believe About Witches, Obama, and More” by David A. Graham

Orwell taught us that freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. How much simpler and profound does it get than that? Depends on how deeply you value your belief set.

There are a few ways to cause people to deny that two plus two make four. The most basic of course is to cause them to suffer so much physical or psychological pain that they will say anything to make the pain stop. In Orwell’s anti-Utopian 1984, that was the most expedient, effective, and predictable approach. With power-based fear as a means of control and the ability to inflict pain, an autocratic society can not only write its own rules, it can divine its own science and history. We know the parable of 1984 is extreme, but we also know the context and landscape from which it emerged. Thus far, our core values have largely prevailed, at least within most of our own sphere of influence. The fact that I can freely type these words and publish them globally without restriction or anticipated retribution suggests we have collectively heeded the warning and fought reasonably successfully against the absurd.

Yet there is a more subtle and gnawing mode of drowning in Orwell’s soup without tangible restraint or any violence. It’s called repetition. If enough people say enough times that our President was not born of Constitutional privilege to hold his office — and that his true religion is something other than what he does choose to practice — the echoes will resonate, first slowly with skepticism, then with snowballing strength, and soon enough with mystical authority. Can the untrue be perceived as true without fundamental questioning? Why certainly, if there is no agenda to question the rhetoric which most suits a listener’s taste. When we test the waters for the tides, we refer to the methodology as opinion polling. Opinions are entirely products of freedom, they are shared freely without legislative filter, and they contain the power to be as impactful if not more so than facts. Is this a game? Indeed, it is a well-played game where the stakes transcend all that we hold to be sacred.

We teach our children not to gossip. Why? Because gossip is hurtful, it is beneath us as educated, civilized, felicitous members of intersecting communities. So how do we get the strange beliefs assembled in the August 19, 2010 Pew Poll cited in Graham’s Newsweek story? It’s not conspiracy, that requires sophisticated orchestration well beyond the bounds of random lunacy. We get there because people “pass it on” in ways that suit their tastes, it’s just that simple. Without respect for the truth, opinions can too easily become shared and replace truth with equal detriment.

This is a very simple corollary that precedes the more recent Newsweek story on why 38% of Americans can’t pass a citizenship test. They can’t pass it because they don’t find it important enough to be able to pass it. Likewise, any number of individuals don’t find it important enough to validate their opinions by referencing a fact base before they pass them on; it’s inconvenient to fact check, and may not align with deeply held biases that will always be more resonant than facts.

Integrity is the only path beyond the metaphorical Orwell. We can abolish torture by law, then practice and praise ourselves for preserving freedom, but if freedom is the freedom to teach and evangelize that two plus two make five, have we really come as far as we should expect of ourselves? Education must be at the core of our debate and discussion, allowing us always to differ on opinion, but when we entrench the unreal in a parade of support, we do no one any favors. Instead we betray the trust of the very freedom that allows us to say what we will, and we exploit the gift of open exchange by blowing wind rather filling the air with choice words.

February 27, 2011 by Ken Goldstein - 2 Comments

Belief and Perspective Are Highly Nuanced

From The Good Men Project — January 3, 2011:

“Men, Faith, and Goodness” by Tom Matlack

Not an easy topic, which is why it produced so many different points of view.

Perhaps the underlying message is that enlightenment is more about understanding the spectrum of opinions and belief sets that surround us than latching on to any single act of judgment. We have to learn from others if we want dialogue to be real and produce shared outcomes.

Any purely strident point of view is as unlikely to be changed as it is entirely correct.