In my RESOLVE free video series I recommend starting the day optimistically and not pessimistically. This morning, I received an email which said in part:

“Thanks, Alan.   I watched all the videos and got a lot of good advice.

“One problem…If I have to start my day with optimistic people, I’ll have to start sleeping around.  My husband is Mr. Doom and Gloom personified.”

The RESOLVE series:

http://www.summitconsulting.com/resolve/

@AmericanAir American Airlines

We’ve also passed your concerns on to Customer Relations for review & follow up. Please let us know if you have questions.

Travesty on American Airlines Flight 1758

An Open Letter to American Airlines President Thomas W. Horton

My wife and I stood in the priority line to board American flight 1758 from Miami to Boston at 3 pm on January 14. We were returning from a week’s vacation in Puerto Rico and a speech that morning in Ft. Lauderdale.

I have flown about 3.5 million air miles, over a million of them on American alone, an indication that I like the carrier and think its employees do fine work on the ground and in the air. In fact, American provides me with recognition slips for employees, and I gave one to flight attendants on the flights to San Juan and back.

Let me also state that flight attendants have a tough job, they are not always treated well by the company or passengers, and 95 percent of them are terrific. But now I will take you on a sorry trip.

There were four people ahead of us in line. At the front were two women, apparently in their 70s, short, not very mobile, and moving with difficulty. One was both deaf and blind. The other—whom I took to be a partner, companion, or relative, because they had obviously traveled together before—guided her companion carefully, and I marveled at their mutual tough determination. Behind them was a man with a severe walking problem who relied on a cane, with his wife beside him.

Boarding commenced and we slowly walked to the plane, with the first class passengers behind us. At the door of the 757, coach is to the right, first class to the left. But the two women had stopped in the intersection, and seemed to be struggling. Three female flight attendants stood within five feet, unmoving. After two minutes, I excused myself and moved forward to find the two women struggling with their carry-on bags. The sighted woman was struggling to lift one, staggering under the weight of the bag, and the blind woman was afraid to sit down or move. The man with the cane obviously could not help.

“Why don’t you help them?” I said to the three immobile flight attendants. All three simply stared blankly.

“For goodness sake,” I said, and moved over to help the women lift their baggage into the overhead bins. Bear in mind that 200 people were waiting in line in the jetway and out into the concourse to board that plane. Once we were able to clear the aisle, I turned to go to first class and said to the still-motionless troika, “Why didn’t you help them?!”

“We’re not allowed,” said one. “If we hurt ourselves,” said another, “the company won’t pay our insurance claims.” “No wonder American is bankrupt,” I said, “given this kind of nonsense.” I was aghast at the callousness of these three, watching two poor women struggle in front of them. The third flight attendant, Mariellen, had a brief fit, said I didn’t understand and stomped to the galley, proclaiming loudly into the open cockpit door, “I’m not arguing in the aisles. You wouldn’t believe this!” Apparently the pilots didn’t believe it or had better things to do, since neither emerged.

Meanwhile, I watched a gate agent board the plane and lift luggage into an overhead, then go down to ground level and help baggage handlers with late checked luggage. Apparently, he wasn’t afraid of hurting himself, or had special insurance.

I’m assuming these three flight attendants met or exceeded American’s standards for health, fitness, and intelligence. Lifting a bag into an overhead bin on occasion certainly can’t be a threatening part of the job unless you have no inclination to help. I’d say American does not have a compassion test, because these three would have flunked it.

How do you stand there, watch disabled and disoriented elderly women struggle, and not have the heart to help, feeling that (I assume) union work rules take precedence? How effective will you be in an emergency, helping people when personal sacrifice might be required to assist others? Or would you be worried about cracking a nail?

I’ll repeat that my flying experiences have been enriched by the hard working people on the ground and in the air working for airlines around the globe. I do not mean to generalize.

But what I saw, sir, today, when I’m writing this, was egregiously poor judgment, a lack of decency, and a callousness that is hard to comprehend when most people I know are constantly reaching out to help others, especially those so clearly in need. They’re not worried about what their insurance will or won’t cover when they see people in extenuating circumstances.

I don’t know what you should do with these employees, but I wouldn’t board a flight they’re working with a bad back and a large bag.

Mr. Horton, I’m not asking you to lift a bag, but just lift the phone, personally, and tell me you’ll fix this.

Sincerely,

Alan Weiss

I’ve been trying to figure why the “celebrities” who host award shows or turn up on Dancing with the Vaguely Familiar, or show up on “Ellen,” are people whom I have to Google to figure out just who the heck they are. I’m also shocked that a huge attraction like Justin Bieber is absolutely devoid of talent and seems totally vacant.

So, I must be “out of it” and getting old, right?

Maybe not. I have another theory.

Today, fame and infamy are considered equally valuable, just as people confuse “infer” and “imply.” The idea is to achieve “celebrity,” like the oaf Richard Hatch who stripped nude on the first “Survivor” show and subsequently went to jail for refusing to pay tax on his winnings. He’s been in and out of jail ever since, but is apparently considering further “reality” work.

“Celebrity Apprentice,” the dreadful show hosted by dreadful Donald Trump, could be sued for felony use of an adjective. Shouldn’t celebrities be readily identifiable by the general population?

Here’s the problem: EVERYONE was focused on, say, Sinatra in his prime. Parents and kids all agreed he was the ne plus ultra singer (as they did Crosby before him). Elvis and the Beatles changed that, to an extent that we have “stars” today who actually appeal to a vast minority of the known universe (or even of Dubuque). Everyone pretty much agreed that Clark Gable  and Humphrey Bogart, or Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner (let alone Marilyn Monroe), were stars. But Toby Maguire? Jude Law? Kristin Wiig?

Social media platforms enable anyone to provide a comment, a video, an audio, a response, virtually without restriction. (I particularly am astonished at women who provide carefully done photos and articulate descriptions of themselves and who routinely use expletives in almost any conversation.) Not many people seem to care if they achieve fame or infamy, so long as someone notices them.

Are people that hungry for attention? Do they believe every nonentity with a microphone is someone worth slavishly following, or that anything they do to create their own microphone is worth it?

I’ve always felt this was silly. It’s not a matter of age, it’s a matter of taste. You can be famous for having good taste, or infamous for having none at all.

© Alan Weiss 2012. All rights reserved.

I found a new woman behind the counter of my coffee shop this morning. I asked for two large coffees, with two sweeteners and cream in each. To my astonishment, she poured the coffee, then the sweetener, then the cream, and handed them over. No mixing. No covers. No tray.

I stared at her and she said, “Mixing sticks are over there,” pointing to a counter. She did that right over her prominent tip jar, where she expects people to deposit money apparently just for her sunny disposition. If you want a buck for standing behind a counter, barely moving, and pouring hot water, maybe you should consider mixing the brew, or smiling, or being generally helpful?

Consciousness is a function of processing information, and not everyone processes information at the same rates, leading to lower and higher levels of consciousness. This woman is oblivious to her job and surroundings. She might as well be unconscious.

What’s next, a tip just for standing upright? Or having an opposable thumb?

© Alan Weiss 2012. All rights reserved.

As is our custom (beginning today) Buddy Beagle and I have conferred on the best and worst personal business experiences of the prior year (Koufax is busy watching the Dog Channel on cable). After a tough evaluation, punctuated by pizza and pupperoni, here are our awards:

Outstanding Business Practices in General and Specific: Amica Insurance

Headquarters: Lincoln, Rhode Island

Amica does not use agents, and provides exemplary service in every area over the phone and by mail: making policy changes, claims, general information, company communications. Specifically, this past year the company made an error in its calculations creating a lower than proper premium on some policies. The company sent a letter explaining the error, and said that instead of trying to recollect at the moment, the increases and extra payments would be seen in future bills. They apologized for the inconvenience.

When I wrote to the president telling him how well they had handled the situation, he wrote me a personal letter thanking me and telling me this was the reaction they had hoped for with their customers.

I’ve been with Amica for 30 years: house, cars, umbrella liability. They are unceasingly pleasant, supportive, and responsive.

Most Reprehensible Act by an Uncaring, Customer-Deaf Monolith: Shell Oil

U.S. Headquarters: Houston, Texas

I’ve been a Shell customer for 40 years, have never failed to pay every month’s installment in full and have never been late with a payment. We have a wonderful Shell station two minutes away, where they give the dogs biscuits. My monthly bill can easily run to $800 or so in these times.

A few months ago, my son rented a truck to move to Los Angeles. I gave him one of our Shell cards to use along the way. In the meantime, my account was paid in full, and I was filling up two Bentleys and a Mercedes SUV, while Shell continued to raise its prices. Suddenly, our cards were no longer valid, and I’m getting dunning calls from the company (some idiot credit card company in Devils Breath, North Dakota or somewhere handles their billing). I was informed I had a $1,000 limit, it had been exceeded, and I had to make an immediate payment, even though my bill wasn’t due for a couple of weeks.

Talking to Shell was like talking to an actual shell on the beach, except at least there you can hear intelligible sounds. Despite their rabid increases in price, they never bothered to raise my limit (which I had no idea existed) over all those years, referred me to the “small print” and told me I’d have to submit an application to raise it and get a credit check. The individuals were rude and ugly, talking as if I were some kind of debtor’s prison candidate.

Letters to their executive offices went unanswered or answered by form letter.

Shell, and their moronic collection company, have Buddy’s and my vote for the dumb-ass, stupidest management in existence in 2011. The odds are they’ll be a prohibitive favorite to repeat in 2012 for many of you.

© Alan Weiss 2012. All rights reserved.

The National Transportation Safety Board wants to ban ALL use of phones in cars, even hands-free phones, except in the case of emergencies. (The NTSB has no enforcement power, but does have an influence on Congress.)

Can someone tell me how a hands-free phone is more distracting and more dangerous than:

• Fooling with the radio and finding different channels.

• Using an iPod for music in the car and finding the right playback.

• Talking to passengers in the car.

• Using GPS while underway.

• Trying to follow written instructions.

• Glancing at notes and reminders in those dashboard holders.

• Drinking hot coffee.

• Eating.

• Applying makeup.

• Daydreaming.

In today’s Wall Street Journal there is an article about how complicated and hard to use certain dashboard music systems can be.

I’m all for safety on the roadways, but I tend to become allergic to overwrought attempts to legislate every part of our lives (there are bills in several states that would prohibit smoking in your own car; and according to several car seat rules concerning weight and size, some petite women would have to go to their college proms or weddings in a child seat).

Dialing a phone and sending text messages while driving is insane, dangerous, and shouldn’t be condoned. Driving without a seat belt creates a greater chance of serious injury and expense in medical costs and insurance. These are legitimate and specific concerns.

But if you intend to try to legislate to the point of absolute perceived 100 percent safety, then you need to arrest every woman putting on mascara and lipstick; anyone with a drink rising from cup holder to lips; those changing their GPS views or looking at the map; and anyone seen glancing at a passenger in the course of conversation.

You can educate people to be careful, but there comes a point where attempting to legislate it clearly abrogates personal freedom. (A police cruiser, ostensibly driven by a careful, experienced, knowledgeable officer was shown on the news last night being towed off a telephone pole which the officer had driven up vertically while his attention was “distracted.”)

The tentative person pulling onto a highway at 25 MPH and not increasing speed immediately, the person rolling through the stop sign, the person not signaling the lane change—they are more dangerous than someone talking on a hands-free phone and, one would think, they ARE paying close attention.

Some people die of peanut allergies. The answer is not to ban peanuts from the marketplace. Some people die in plane crashes. The answer is not to ban flying. We know people die from tobacco, but we’ve yet to abolish its sale.

Careless people will cause accidents. We need to educate them, take them off the road if blatant or repeated. But we need to heed Peter Drucker, who said, “…and laws that result from a ‘scandal’ are invariably bad laws. They punish ninety-nine innocents to foil one miscreant. They penalize good practice, yet rarely prevent malpractice. They express emotion rather than reason.”

Maybe we should remove all those distracting advertising billboards, and clear all the trees and vegetation that cause the eye to wander, especially in the fall when trees turn color. Where does it end?

It ends when people are educated and expected to use good judgment, not when the government acts like a parent trying to control unruly kids. If the government wants to act like a parent, then clean up the tax code. That would be a welcome start. But stay out of my car.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

How is it that someone who knows that he or she will be scrutinized only slightly more than animalcules on a petrie dish still believes that past assignations and improprieties will never be exposed? Herman Cain. Jerry Sandusky. Bernie Fine. Bernie Madoff. Eliot Spitzer. Martha Stewart. Michael Vick.

We are all tempted by the fiction that we will be able to “get away with it.” No doubt some have. The perfect crime is a human obsession. We know that John Kennedy’s peccadillos were known and not reported by an adoring press in another age. Even today, we have no idea of the criminal and unethical behavior that has been concealed behind kryptonite barriers.

But the media feed on imperfection (despite their own—which is why Murdoch’s collapsing, hacking empire is so enormously satisfying) and will turn spitting on the sidewalk into an environmental catastrophe. What type of hubris defies this?

It’s the hubris of the inordinately successful. Business people, athletes, entertainers, those stretching their Warholian 15 minutes, begin to feel Teflon-coated, somehow immunized against prying eyes and inquiring minds.

Even when larger institutions provide protection—a Penn State or a public office—the odds are that the transgressor will be found out, especially as higher rank and more altitude are sought. We have a tendency to eat our young and tarnish our heroes. (A Medal of Honor winner was recently branded a drunk with personality disorders because he opposed his British-owned new employer’s move to sell sniper scopes to Pakistan.)

The fall can be precipitous, but also rife with rebound. Michael Vick is once again a highly paid, praised quarterback. Eliot Spitzer got a talk show (for which he had no talent). Barney Frank announced his voluntary retirement after 20 years in the House and after several sordid scandals. Pee Wee Herman is entertaining again.

I’m all for forgiveness. Most religions certainly advocate it. But I’m not for stupidity. Teflon prevents food from sticking, but it’s only useful when there’s heat applied. And most people can’t stand the heat and hop into the fire.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

After delivering my keynote and a special session for an elite group of Canadian speakers last night, I caught a limo from the hotel this morning after a 5:30 am fire alarm trumped my later wake-up call. The limo arrived early and the driver was very polite.

At the airport, I headed for Global Entry. There was a long wait in the regular system, with maybe 10 US immigration officers amidst booths for three times that number, and long, Disneyland lines. I bypassed everything, and then ran into Mr. Ugly American. An officer at the machine, instead of saying the machine was out of order, and he’s sorry, interrogated me as to whether I had Nexus, and why didn’t I know what that was. I said, “Can I use this machine or not?!” and he said, “Go see an officer!” I asked him if he were always that unpleasant. I find this intolerable as an American. It’s humiliating to employ this kind of attitude.

After 15 minutes in the line and halfway through, I saw that the machine was lighted again and Mr. Personality had left. I ducked under the ropes and did my thing in one minute. Then at the exit point, a woman was working slowly to collect forms but a man next to her was doing nothing. “Are you open?” I asked politely. “I’m Canadian police,” he said, “and all I can do is arrest you!”

“That’s the best deal I’ve had since I entered immigration,” I explained, “what can you do for me?” He offered cozy accommodations with three meals and a sound roof, with plenty of security. We both laughed and I was finally at the woman taking forms. He told her not to let me return, and she stopped her mechanical actions and asked him soberly, “Why?”

Security was fast, but I was asked for my boarding pass—I am not making this up—six times before I was finally on my way to the gates. Some of these people were all of 10 yards apart.

Finally, I entered the Priority Club, an Amex benefit. The hostess checked me in and I asked how far my gate was from the club. Incredibly, she replied, “I’m sorry, sir, I’m not familiar with the airport.” She was actually hired and trained and never asked to familiarize herself with the airport, while dealing with passengers! And coming to work every day, she didn’t feel the need to do so!

Never feel that there is no work for consultants and performance improvement. Most immigration officers are fine people, and anyone can have a bad day. But I sensed this guy was in the midst of a bad life. Security is vital, but paranoia is dangerous. (“The price of eternal vigilance is indifference”—Marshall McLuhan, ironically, a Canadian.)

And if you don’t know what’s outside your door, you might as well be a hermit. They don’t have to commute.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

The New York Times published letters today in response to an article about the increasing investments in first class amenities by the airlines. One of the letters was mine, in which I commented on my recent trip to Australia and back in first class on a Qantas A380, which enabled me to “hit the ground running” for my speaking commitment when I arrived and to return home refreshed.

The other letters were about an ever-increasing movement to strike at “them” (anyone who is better off through talent and hard work). One observation was that first class seats shouldn’t be a tax deduction and another that coach seating is suffering because the money is being spent up front.

First, redistribution of wealth; then, redistribution of seats!!

I’ve met people throughout my career who discovered what would be important to them in life and strove to achieve and obtain it. I’ve met others who simply bemoaned the fact that people had things that they don’t and resorted to perpetual victimhood.

TIAABB: There is always a bigger boat. I don’t need the biggest, and couldn’t afford it, anyway. But I know how I want to live, travel, contribute, drive, and recreate. And I strive to fulfill those aspirations by innovating, marketing, and providing more quality and better experiences than others. I take prudent risk as an entrepreneur, and don’t delude myself into thinking that a corporate job with less risk would reward me similarly. I pursued my education, and read every word on every page in every book. I don’t plan to “retire,” though I take care to provide for long-term financial needs independent of government safety nets.

Most of all, I don’t begrudge anyone who has more than I. Good for them. If I want what they have, I’ll work to get it, but I won’t demand that they give me part of what they have because of some kind of crazed egalitarianism. I went to public schools through my first masters degree, paid for by government loans which I repaid, scholarships, and part-time jobs. It was a good feeling. I didn’t get to use “Daddy’s money” because there was none!

People have different levels of need. A modest life can be a life well-lived if that’s your goal. An affluent life can be a life well-lived if that’s your goal. But to resent another’s life because it contains what you wish you had but don’t is a wasted life.

Once the demands are accepted that everyone be treated exactly alike—despite talent, achievement, and work ethic—we no longer stimulate competition, innovation, and growth. (I remember when you had to be invited into airline clubs, but then a lawsuit made sure that you only had to write a check—which makes most of them too crowded and ineffective for work or relaxation. Now I have to watch bores clip their toenails and shout into cell phones.) What’s next? Does everyone have the right to first class travel, a Mercedes, private schools, and a yacht? Apparently, everyone has the right to their own reality show, since I’ve never heard of most of those people and they have no discernable talent.

Perhaps the opportunity to fly over oceans or across the country in relatively little time, in safety and comparative comfort, is a blessing in itself? Or is the lure behind those curtains up front an irresistible outrage because you’re not the one sipping champagne?

Everyone deserves an equal start and a level playing field, and where those don’t exist, protests are on target, though too often ignored or blunted (the sad state of inner city public education at primary and secondary levels being just one example that is undermining the country). But no one is guaranteed an equal finish or reward, deluded attempts to “foster” self-esteem notwithstanding.

The rewards seem to me to be a question of the pursuit of the American Dream, and that’s always been about work and talent, winning and not whining.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I entered a coffee shop after my workout this morning and a very young, petit woman was on the job. She had on a tee-shirt with a single word emblazoned: “Seniors.” I asked for two iced coffees, with two sweeteners and cream.

She held up different sized cups in each hand and said, “Which size?”

“The one in your left hand,” I said. She promptly put that one away and used the cup in her right hand. I am not making this up. I watched her prepare the iced coffees and noticed there was no cream, yet she filled them to the brim. She made two trips for the sweetener, instead of getting them all at one time.

“You forgot the cream,” I pointed out, and she said, “Right.” Instead of pouring some of the coffee out to make room, she topped them off to overflowing with some cream, mixed them, and put the covers on.

I asked if she were, indeed, a senior. She said she was, and I asked which of the local high schools she attended. “Oh, no,” she corrected, “I’m a senior at the University of Rhode Island.”

“What are you studying?”

“Secondary education.”

(I couple this with a guidance counselor I saw recently in another state at her retirement dinner, giving the middle finger as part of her speech in critique of the state governor. Sometimes I’m so repulsed that I’m stunned.)

The senior is a nice kid and any of us can have a bad day, including me. But I began thinking about the primary and secondary school mess in the US in terms of providing universally high quality education, the frequent impasses between teacher unions and boards of education, and the woeful inability of too many kids to gain employable skills.

Every business today is a communications business. The Internet hasn’t changed that, it’s exacerbated the need. Every organization needs customers or clients or members, and they need to market, sell, service, and repair.

I’ve been consulting and coaching since the 70s, for some of he largest entities in the world, boutique firms, and individuals. I’ve been to 59 countries and written 45 books. I tell you this because I have a pretty fair frame of reference.

To succeed, we need four basic communications competencies:

1. Read with comprehension. We need to be able to read a newspaper column, a blog post, or a book and understand the author’s intent, apply it to our situations, and relate varied ideas to each other. Speed reading is senseless unless it includes speed comprehension. I’ll take slower reading and greater comprehension any day.
2. Write with expression. We should be able to use metaphors, analogies, and examples to help others quickly understand what we’re conveying in our email and business correspondence, and convince them of our worth and intent. This is a matter of building vocabulary and practicing writing. (And if you don’t teach kids cursive writing, how do they read their families’ correspondence, historical documents, write personal “thank you” or sympathy letters, and so on? If the power fails and keyboards are useless, are we then rendered inarticulate?)
3. Speak with influence. We ought to address a meeting, a conference, or merely other parties with appropriate language and examples. We don’t (believe me) need to be “motivational speakers,” but we should be able to make our points without stammering or using “you know” as an adjective. The too-frequent resort to mere obscenity among many comedians is simply a demonstration of lack of wit and talent (which you can also see on Facebook and YouTube among those who curse instead of think).
4. Listen with discernment. We’re all so eager to talk, that we don’t adequately listen. We want our Warholian 15 minutes, but we want it every hour. We hear a cacophony in ongoing stimuli, but don’t listen for intelligence or knowledge. Listening is a skill, but apparently there is insufficient instant gratification for those who just want to talk. Take the blue, blinking metal out of your ear and try listening for a change.

Read, write, speak, listen: In this environment, they are the fundamentals for success, the advantage over the competition. More than ever, we are a communicating society. The question is, who’s making sense?

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

Other Person: I’m a psychic. How should I explain this to my prospects?

Me: Well, I wouldn’t lead with your methodology.

OP: You are sending out subliminal messages about me in your Tweets.

ME: I have no reason for doing such a thing.

OP: You know you’re doing it, you’re just not aware of it.

OP: What happens if you die tomorrow?

ME: According to the church or my enemies?

ME: Buyers can make decisions and spend money.

OP: I’m a buyer and can make decisions, but I need approval.

ME: From whom?

OP: My boss, who actually controls the budget.

ME: Then you’re not the buyer.

OP: YES I AM!!

OP: If you are willing to help me with my inheritance, and remove it from       Nigeria, I will give you half of it.

ME: Happy to help, please send a $25,000 deposit.

OP: Can you send me one of your books to read? If it helps me, I’ll send         the money, otherwise I’ll return it.

ME: Is that how you deal with Barnes & Noble?

OP: I never saw your article. Well, I must have sent it in as backup. The        publisher made a          mistake and published your article with my         name on it.

ME: Really?

OP: You’re a consultant? So you’re between jobs?!

ME: I’ve been “between jobs” for 25 years and am in the top one percent         of all earners. How about you?

OP: I’d like to join your mentor program. I plan to become a multi-        millionaire in two years with revolutionary training programs for        HR departments.

ME: Let me tell you right now that’s not going to happen.

OP: Is this the way we work together? You tell me I’m wrong because you       think you’re smarter than I am?

ME: No, because we’re not working together.

OP: I couldn’t get anything out of your book, there were seven typos.

ME: No, there are actually twelve.

OP: When you stood still on stage I could understand your point, but    when you walked around, I couldn’t follow you at all. Do you know        what that’s called?

ME: Yes, a learning disability.

OP: Why won’t you believe I’m a psychic?

ME: Why do you have to ask?

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

There was an hilarious send-up of a motivational speaker on the final episode of Dexter Season 5 which we recently watched on Apple TV. He was smarmy, duplicitous, hypocritical, and received his just reward from his final audience.

All speakers today had better be “motivational,” in that they should be enthusiastic, interesting, articulate, and confident. But they had better have solid content which enables the audience to improve their performance or all the enthusiasm in the world isn’t going to keep them from their iPhones.

Silly affirmations such as “You’re your own best friend,” and “They can knock you down but they can’t knock you out,” and “Find yourself before you search for others” are insipid beyond merely meaningless. The rallies that are often staged where some former military officers, an astronaut or two, some ancient “motivators,” and a few others are dragged out on stage in order to sell the products in the back of the room are worse than a circus, where at least some of the acts are memorable.

People need pragmatic skills, not vapid oratory. It’s important to arouse people and even entertain them, so long as it’s in support of building their capabilities. But I’ve never seen anyone trod over hot coals to get to the office cafeteria or rappel down the side of the building to leave work at the end of the day. I did see not long ago a group of financial managers in 100° heat on a beach extraordinarily uncomfortable while racing to build sand castles under the supervision of a “motivational coach.”

Even the seagulls were laughing.

The guy on Dexter, a perfect synthesis of a half-dozen gurus, manipulated and schemed and felt everyone who paid to hear him was a pathetic loser. He was personally vile, but his acolytes chose not to see.

There are worse experiences, apparently, than seeing these people on stage, however—such as seeing them in sweat lodge.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I am not making this up.

Associated Press is reporting a bat—Chiroptera, not Louisville Slugger—on a Delta Connection jet out of Wisconsin bound for Atlanta. After a couple of cabin laps at 30,000 feet, the plane turned around and sought shelter in Wisconsin once again.

Passengers cornered the bat in the lavatory, but when authorities entered the abandoned aircraft, they found nothing. However, witnesses testified that a bat (presumably the same one, but who’s to know) flew….wait for it….down the jetway and then through the terminal!

I’m assuming it was looking for a better connection to Atlanta.

On top of that, if there is a top to that, health officials want to talk to all 30 or so passengers to ensure there was no danger of rabies infection, but Delta could only identify the five passengers who reboarded, since the others were shifted to different airlines. With all of our security and identification measures in place, Delta could not tell United States health authorities who was on their plane once they had left it!

Did I tell you I am not making this up?

I remember going through security in Atlanta once, where an extremely obnoxious and unpleasant TSA woman, wearing latex gloves and a large breathing mask, made demands in heavily accented English about where to put my ID and my boarding pass. It was humiliating to have to be ordered around by her, followed, of course, by removing my shoes and belt, and suffering through the detestable “you’re a criminal until proved innocent” frisking.

Yet with all this security, heavy weapons, dogs smarter than most college freshmen, automated warnings, hardware, and admonitions to be on the watch for anything out of the ordinary, a nocturnal creature with bizarre aerodynamics entered an airport, boarded a plane, hid during takeoff, flew around at altitude, eluded capture, hid again, disembarked, and escaped through the airport. (In case you’re wondering, a cell phone video scrupulously studied by authorities confirms it was a bat, not a nuthatch or a seagull, although that would hardly be less alarming.)

If you can’t keep a bat out of a plane, and can’t find it once it forces the plane to land, and can’t identify the passengers who fled, then tell me again about why I need to take out my lap top and carry only three ounces of any one liquid?

I’m looking forward to my next trip. Perhaps I’ll have an alligator or an eagle sitting next to me and I’ll finally get some prompt service from the flight attendants.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

What do airlines, banks, newspapers, speakers bureaus, and publishers all have in common? (This is not a joke, but I wish it were.)

They run their businesses horribly and try to atone for it by gouging the customer, vender, or supplier.

Book publishing, with rare exception, has failed to appreciate, much less leverage, the advent of electronic media. So what do conventional publishers do? They demand that authors buy copies of their own books to reduce the cost of the press run. They refuse to promote books actively, demanding that the author do so. They invest money in promotion with authors who don’t need it (Tom Clancy, Danielle Steele) and don’t invest in new and promising works. They hire such young and inexperienced people to save a dollar, that one permissions editor once told me that she wouldn’t approve production until I had written permission submitted for quotes from Oscar Wilde. The question is no longer, “Where did you go to school?” but “Did you go to school and were you awake the entire time?”

Speakers bureaus, traditional “middlemen” dealing with other “middlemen” (meeting planners, trainers, human resource people) have traditionally received about 25 percent of speaking fees from the speaker, supposedly in return for marketing that speaker. Today, many have raised their rates to 30 percent while reducing their marketing and, instead, charging the speaker. Many bureaus now charge to “evaluate” demo videos, place people in prime spots in a catalog, include people in “showcases” (cattle calls), critique promotional material and so on. Excuse me, but aren’t you supposed to be marketing me for my 25 percent fee?

One bureau, the most unethical I’ve ever seen, actually tried to charge me 30 percent when I beat out a speaker they had nominated to speak at Toyota. I was in their catalog, but they promoted someone else, I still got the job, and they wanted a third of my earnings!

Airlines which have been led abominably and can’t seem to come up with effective labor relations, fuel management, intelligent route structures, efficient baggage handling, and so on, now charge customers for:  pillows, food, a few inches of leg room, boarding sequence, the attention of a live agent, seat location, changing a reservation, and so on. One considered charging for lavatory use. Why not just fly us all at gunpoint? The “friendly skies” have become a bad neighborhood.

Banks are now charging some customers for deposits, and for simply holding their money. I have seven-figures invested in a bank where I also had some small accounts I had forgotten about. One would have disappeared in a year simply due to the monthly charges! The bank treats me as separate computer numbers, instead of a major, diversified customer. Your “personal banker” today has a hand in your pocket.

Newspapers plaster ads on the front page, often with stickers that obliterate a headline. Try to complain to the Wall Street Journal or New York Times about your subscription. You can’t talk to actual people, but an automated service will “credit you for one day” if your paper wasn’t delivered. Isn’t the point better, more reliable service and not a buck? Newspapers in many cities now charge for obituary notices. When I asked a local editor how he could countenance that, he said, “Oh, Alan, we all do it.” Oh, I guess I had missed that logic.

Why the rant? Because Pogo ought to be in charge here.

Entire industries often suffer from poor leadership, because the same crowd kicks around at the same levels (a guy who ran several airlines, Dick Wolf, including United and USAir, would paint all the planes as soon as the board confirmed him as CEO). The exceptions (Kelleher and Bethune in the airline business) are easy to note because they stand out in dull crowds.

It’s time to stop blaming and squeezing the client, the customer, the supplier, the talent. It’s time to look in the mirror. You might just see a reflection with nothing there.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

Every day I receive Google Alerts about my name, trademarks, and so forth. It’s nice to see where I’m quoted or where something I’ve written or recorded has spread.

However, once a week or more, I receive notice that some of my intellectual property is being offered by one of the rip-off sites. They operate under names (I’ll make them up) such as Windfall or Crypt or Access. They post the kind of notices that are supposed to make you wink and say “Joe sent me”: “We are not endorsing the breaking of the law, and you are downloading what is posted here by your own decision. If you find any material here improperly offered just notify us and we’ll remove it.”

Yes, and if you complain to the division of motor vehicles, they’ll move the lines more quickly.

Basically, people take a book or recording and upload it to the site where it’s offered for free and widely advertised (hence, my Google Alerts) to attract people to the paid advertising on the site. All types of proprietary, copyrighted, trademarked, intellectual property is, hence, ripped off and provided for free, from a wide assortment of authors and originators.

The truly astounding aspect (just spell my name correctly) is that the denizens who post and download boast about it, like kids hiding behind a garage dashing out to rob parking meters. A typical comment: “I was finally able to obtain this combination printed and audio work which I’m proud to contribute here to my colleagues in The Gutter.”

Here’s my quandary: If you want to make it in the consulting, coaching, or related professional services areas—offering services of value to corporations and individuals—how do you justify learning how to do that by stealing others’ works? How do you base your business of service on unethical and illegal acts? Behaviors don’t change. Aren’t you going to rip off the client (or the restaurant or the hotel) as well?

I even have a good idea about who some of the thieves are—apparently some folks who are angry with me and are retaliating in the only way they know how. They’re angry because they’re non-successful. So they steal things. Could there be a connection there?

I guess I’m innocently surprised that the major publishers don’t crack down on these sites (occasionally an attorney’s letter removes some of the material for a while) and/or that there’s no greater outrage on the web. But then I realized that these are very minor people engaged in very trivial work.

If they get their kicks out of stealing others’ material and bragging about it in order to save the $20 the original work cost at retail, there’s not much to do but feel sorry for them.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I’m at Caesar’s Palace in Atlantic City, where we’ve holed up in order to see Huey Lewis and the News at the Flamingo tonight (3rd row, center). Tomorrow we move on to Cape May for a week.

The hotel generously provides bottled water in the room, and I’m glancing at mine right now. It tells me there are 10 fluid ounces, and also 296 ml. I don’t know why we need to know the metric equivalent, but it gets even stranger.

On the rear of the label I actually have “Nutrition Facts.” It tells me there is one serving per container, which provides the following “daily values”:

Calories: 0

Total Fat: 0%

Sodium: 0%

Total Carbohydrates: 0%

Protein: 0%

All of this is based on a 2,000 caloric daily intake.

In other words, it’s just water. That’s all. But it’s important to have people get the labeling straight, and I do have a consumer information number I can call listed on the label. I guess those people are there waiting at the other end of the phone line in case I need someone to describe the color, or whether it’s liquid, or if it’s bio-degradable.

I just turned to my left, and I’m staring at the Atlantic. There are quite a few people out there, and I’m thinking they’re daredevils. That water isn’t labeled.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I get some nutty requests and some innocent misunderstandings in my mail, but sometimes I simply receive unbridled self-absorption.

I guy writes me this morning and says that he purchased on of my books on Amazon.com as an electronic download for his Android, but he can’t read all the charts and graphs clearly on such a small screen, so would I send him all the charts and graphs in the book by return email?!

I pointed out that he engaged in a transaction with McGraw-Hill through Amazon, not with me, and that he chose the particular platform on which to read the book, not I. It would take all of $16 or so to purchase the book and get the charts in context. But, no, I should take $2,000 of my time to make it right for him.

He wrote back and told me I violated my own values, that I’m claiming it’s not my fault and he should fix it himself. He said there’s no reason why I can’t send him the 20 or more graphics. Yet it is his fault and I’m not going to fix it. Imagine if one one-hundreth of my readers started making such requests on a daily basis?

This is symptomatic of people who are so self-absorbed that they’re about to shrink into a tiny cube of self-importance. I have millions of readers at this point, worldwide, and I’m sitting here running a seven-figure, global business. Yet because he made bad choices, I’m supposed to fix things for him, stop my day, pat his head.

Folks, if you have to cry out for free help with something this abysmally silly, you ought to go back to day care, where there’s a much more appropriate peer group.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

Recent email and phone messages:

• You haven’t sent me the download of the teleconference yet, and I paid yesterday. (The teleconference wasn’t for another month.)

• You need to call me. There’s a charge on my credit card statement from your company. I dimly remember registering for something, but I don’t know what it was, and I have to get it in my calendar.

• Please send me the free copy of your booklet mentioned in your book. (No address was provided.)

• There’s a typo on page 173 which you ought to be changed immediately.

• Your book (written four years ago) doesn’t contain this technology (introduced two months ago). I’m giving you a lousy review on Amazon.com.

• Send me the book for free, and if I like it, I’ll pay for it; if not, I’ll return it in good condition. (Me: Does Barnes & Noble let you do that?)

• I’d love to go to that seminar but my cousin is getting married. Can you possibly change the date. (Me: Tell your cousin to change the date.)

• I’ve called you six times about car insurance and you’ve never responded. (Me: Maybe because I’m not the car insurance agency.)

• I’ll sell your products in Brazil if you fund my 49,000-euro educational expenses in London. You’ll make twice your money back. Just teach me how to sell them. And translate them into Portuguese.

• Can I take my dog to your program? He doesn’t bark and only bites sometimes.

• How much different is this program going to be? (Me: Very.)

• What will it take to get you to come to North Dakota? (Me: Michelle Pfeiffer inviting me.)

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

In my weekly Alan’s Monday Morning Memo® yesterday, Memorial Day in the U.S., I simply posted a photo of the graves at the American Cemetery in Normandy, with the request that we pause and remember those who have served and protected us. (The photo will probably appear here on the blog shortly, since the Monday Morning Memo is archived here.) Quite a few people wrote in support, some mentioning that people from other nations also were buried there.

This morning 9 people unsubscribed. That’s a small fraction of a percentage of total readership, and I respect people deciding to read and not read what they choose. I do it all the time.

But that photo and request seem like a strange reason to decide at that point to stop receiving the publication, which was apparently fine for them until then. Some things are beyond my understanding.

(as published on Human Resource Executive Online )

The ship of HR as a profession may be sailing into the sunset unless senior-level executives face up to the failures of the function, writes an HR consultant. No one should spend an entire career in human resources, which must be transformed and moved to the line, he writes.

By Alan Weiss

Once upon a time I was retained by a group comprising retired human resource executives — the top people — from a dozen Fortune 100 companies. They wanted to collaborate on a book. I’ve written dozens, and some of the individuals had worked at my clients, so it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I interviewed them, attended their meetings and created a book proposal. My agent liked it and promptly sold it to John Wiley & Sons, not exactly chopped liver. Everyone was stunned I did what I said I could do (this seems somewhat endemic in HR) and I thought we had a slam dunk.

But then, we dropped the ball. As I assembled the actual material, the group panicked that their names would appear in public attached to actual opinions about good and bad practices, successful and unsuccessful leaders, and their own recollections. I understood not wanting to embarrass former employers, but we’re all adults here, right?

Well, no. They backed out. I wrote a completely different book for Wiley, which had already paid an advance and now had a hole in their catalog if nothing emerged from us.

I believe that HR is going to become extinct unless senior people radically change it.

I don’t know if that’s feasible, since law-firm structure, as an analogy, is horrible, but the people who eventually clawed their way to the top have no interest in trying to change it. (I’ll remind you that attorneys, for the most part, still bill in six-minute increments, and the last statistics I have show that the average lawyer in the United States made about $88,000 last year, which is less than my auto mechanic.)

Moreover, in the last decade you would be hard pressed to name five (one every other year) senior HR people who became CEO of a Fortune 500 company. You’ll find general counsels, vice presidents of every pedigree, general managers, CFOs, even actuaries, but virtually no senior HR people.

There was talk for a long time that HR executives had finally been granted a “seat at the table” in executive meetings and board rooms. This smacks of a supplicant finally being given bread.

Transactional work done by HR has already left the building. There is no reason that I can see for it to return. It can be done more competently and inexpensively on the outside. That leaves transformational work, and that talent is rare in HR and the volition to rock the boat almost non-existent. That’s why there’s so much work for external consultants such as me. We don’t fear the line people.

Here is my recipe for what HR has to do to prevent the comet from striking the Yucatan and their going the way of the stegosaurus:

* No one should spend a career in HR. I wrote about this 10 years or so ago in Training magazine and the villagers came up the hill with torches and pitchforks. Nevertheless, I can’t think of a more isolated, non-credible career path.

When I worked with Tastemaker in Cincinnati, the president at the time, Mike Davis, placed his HR executive in charge of the Mexican operation. Mike’s reasoning was that his HR executive couldn’t help line leaders without experiencing first-hand what they were facing.

His Mexican operation was relatively close, pretty simple, but quite challenging. I thought it was a masterstroke.

* You don’t vie for a seat at the table, you own the table.

HR executives must take the leadership position not in fads and venders’ latest miracle clichés, but instead in integrating the organization’s strategy into its operational fabric. Strategies don’t fail in their formulation (and the nice three-ring binders) but in the implementation trenches where theory meets reality.

No one is yet doing this kind of work well on the inside.

* End the obvious discrimination taking place in the profession. The problem with equal access is not so much “glass ceilings” as “glass walls.”

Too many organizations obviously and shamelessly place women and minorities into senior HR positions to show their dedication to “diversity.” Yet they don’t place these people in leadership positions in manufacturing, sales or R&D.

If HR is to be a powerful force, its leadership should be able to break through lateral walls to lead other operations. That practically never occurs.

* Throw out all vendors and approaches that don’t provide measurable improvements and impressive return on investment. (Don’t forget, you’re hearing this from a consultant.)

I’m weary of hearing people in organizations ask if I’m an INTJ (a Myers-Briggs personality type) or was giddy about “brain dominance.”

The development of people is not about the numbers of employees who endure some number of courses. It’s about behavior improvement manifest on the job with commensurate improvements in performance and productivity.

HR people are still, astoundingly, enrapt with Don Kirkpatrick’s “four levels” of measurement from more than a half-century ago. (Here come the villagers now.) Yet the only measure that means anything is improved performance. It doesn’t matter if I’m an INTJ, expressive aggressive, HIGH G, who likes the learning, if my performance is unchanged.

* Blow up the silo. Move the transformational aspects of HR to the line.

Why do we need a central area when the point should be to have people close to the issues, skilled in change yet part of the local culture, who can react quickly and agilely? Why do we need a learning and development superstructure?

The only benefit in cost accrues because organizations purchase far too much from outside vendors, so the idea that there are advantages of scale are specious.

In any case, most HR procurement is at the behest of some line buyer, who either has the budget personally or whose backing of the need provides justification to use the HR budget. We spend upwards of $60 billion (you read that correctly) on corporate training annually, with scarcely a farthing justified in the long run.

Which leads me to the truly sensitive issue. We don’t need HR as it now is constructed in most organizations. We don’t require a separate hierarchy and set of executives.

A corporate ombudsman can easily handle the work involving ethics problems and harassment claims, along with the general counsel. Certainly, critical aspects of daily operations — such as hiring — are far better lodged in the units needing the people, not in an intermediary which simply adds to time, inefficiency and a lack of urgency.

Increasingly, I’ve found that consultants are doing very well (solo consultants and boutique firms, not the monoliths) because the organizations which they approach do not have the residual talent to provide incisive and bold change initiatives, or the risk-taking to suggest innovative new approaches.

For 20 years, in my books, speeches and consulting communities, I’ve preached that HR should be avoided because it isn’t a real buyer of consulting services. It tends to buy commodities, such as training on a cost basis, rather than true project-based consulting on a value basis.

That approach has been reinforced by thousands of consultants making six and seven figures from such work by dealing directly with line areas, bypassing (and sometimes even infuriating) HR.

I remember an HR woman from a New York City financial firm calling me on a referral about conducting a strategy retreat. It became quickly apparent this was a task given to her, because she knew virtually nothing about her firm’s strategy or why a “retreat” was the answer (it seldom is).

But she haughtily informed me, “You will work through me or you won’t work here.”

I told her good-bye and good luck. Any firm that seeks to hire a superb strategy resource (note that there obviously wasn’t one in HR) in this manner is never going to find that kind of help, nor would it know what to do with it.

There is hope for what we now call “human resources” (nee industrial relations and personnel), but not through another name change. It must become an integral part of divisions and departments, and top-level executives must be responsible for its outcomes, not for perpetuating its current silo.

HR is like an aberrant traffic cop now; it can often say “stop” but can’t really say “go.” That is going to end. It might as well end with a magnificent transition into line accountabilities that create positions charged with being leaders, not police.

Otherwise, I’d advise you not to look up. That bright light approaching isn’t a new sunrise.

Alan Weiss is one of only two people in the world who holds the highest awards bestowed by both the Institute of Management Consultants and the National Speakers Association. He is the only non-journalist in history to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Press Institute. He’s worked with more than 300 organizations and visited 59 countries. His newest book is from Wiley, The Consulting Bible. He can be reached at alan@summitconsulting.com or http://www.contrarianconsulting.com.

One night at a restaurant, my son received a message on his cell phone. He’s finishing a three-year fellowship in theater at the University of Florida, and he’s required to teach quite a few classes. I assumed it was about a cancellation or student issue.

“Oh, no, another one,” he said. He showed me a photo on the screen of a very attractive and quite topless woman.

“Who?” I asked, my wife leaning over to get a better view.

“It’s one of my students, and I have to forward this to the dean.”

“Why, does the dean have a collection?”
“When a faculty member receives these and doesn’t immediately inform the dean he can be indefinitely suspended.”

And so, no urban myth at all, it seems it’s quite common (at least on that campus and in these times) for female students to send such photos to male professors. There usually isn’t a message except the implied one: For a good grade, there’s more where this came from.

I recall the “bozo brigade” which occupied a portion of my college experience. These were the kids who didn’t realize that college was there for learning, but thought it was a four-year (for many of them, five- and six-year) obstacle course that their parents were forcing them to negotiate in order to have continued financial support. They cheated on tests, cajoled others to share their work and credit, took the easiest courses, lied about their failure to meet certain obligations, and even hacked the computer grading files. I found them laughable.

Then I met some of the same people in the business world. A few of them, well, had gone quite far. I suppose Bernie Madoff is their patron saint.

When my wife informed me that we couldn’t support our current standard of living if I suddenly became a college professor, I began to wonder what happens to these women after college, especially since some of them have to be successful in their tactics at least some of the time. (A Rutgers study I recall, I think by a professor Doug McCall, showed that the majority of all college students admit to cheating at some point in their studies, with business students coming in worst at a whopping 80 percent.)

Then I realized that the same thing happens to them in all probability as happens to members of the bozo brigade. They give us all a bad name.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I think that people believe, for better or worse, they get what they pay for. They’ll excuse something cheap that breaks (“It only cost a few bucks”) even though it was clearly meant to last far longer. And they’ll cheer at mediocrity because if they paid a lot for it, well, darn it, we’re going to extol it.

That explains the exasperating standing ovations for arrant mediocrity, from regional theater to Broadway. I can understand a school production where everyone jumps to their feet for their kid, but I doubt that’s a house full of parents watching Zombies Dance At Midnight at the Helen Hayes Theater on West 44th.

This is why no speakers should ever speak for free, no matter who is in the audience (including their parents). “Exposure” isn’t worth it, because anyone who knows you’re there for free will not think you’re very valuable and may even believe you’re somewhat desperate. On the other hand, I’ve seen very high fees create enrapt audiences even for lousy speakers (many famous business authors are in this category). If I’m paying this much, they must be good (they’d better be good, or I’m the fool, so I’m getting on my feet).

There are exceptions, of course. I would think the production of Spiderman might come to mind, or the importance of a good, cheap cup of coffee.

Nevertheless, I watched Chris Brown lip synch worse than my Beagle could on Dancing With the Stars the other night. The crowd roared. I thought he was pathetic. But I guess they had paid a lot, or assumed he had been paid a lot. I watched it for free, and I wondered why anyone would spend five minutes watching him if they had to pay for it. But maybe if they pay enough, they figure he’s pretty good.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

One of the great, contemporary discordancies in life is the fact that you can ask someone with an arm in a sling, a pit bull attached to a leg, and a police officer approaching with gun drawn, “How are you?” and they will nonchalantly respond, “Good, how about you?” However, you’ll hear a total stranger sitting near you on a cell phone telling someone who is clearly neither their lawyer nor their confessor the most intimate details of their sex life, work status, feuds with family, fraudulent acts, and addictions.

It’s as if the tiny screen held to one’s ear has replaced for all the larger screen that Catholics kneel against to confess their sins.  The cell phone has become the catholic (in its meaning of “universal”) confessor. (Catholics were once required to confess weekly, but it’s now merely annually. The cell confession seems to be daily, at least.)

The intimacy of sharing personal details in public places borders on the oxymoronic. Yet it seems as if holding the small device to one’s ear in communication with a distant, disembodied voice, makes for an environment of total catharsis. This occurs to the extent that the speaker becomes oblivious to the actual, embodied beings in proximity to the conversation who range from uninterested to horrified. I’ve been treated to a lawyer suggesting an unethical trick in the courtroom, a man selling drugs on a train, a young woman describing her date in lurid detail, and a woman cheating the IRS, to name just a memorable few.

I don’t recall hearing such things around pubic phone booths, or at office water coolers, or even in bars (though I was never the bartender). But with increasing candor and lack of constraint, people are in fact confessing to all kinds of things to parties on the other end who in all probability do not provide the cloak of client-attorney privilege, or even of sources being protected by journalists under the First Amendment.

Perhaps such unbridled, unabridged, ululation is good for the soul. One thing is for sure: It’s got to be good for the likes of Apple and AT&T.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

When you author books, you develop a thick skin for the occasional nasty commentary, especially in a day when everyone’s a critic with access to social media platforms, reviews on Amazon that provide anonymity, and so forth. I often get alerts when one of my books is reviewed.

Today, though was a unique experience. Some guy gave Million Dollar Coaching a mediocre review (3 stars) on the basis of his browsing through it in an airport bookstore!!

This is where we’ve arrived: People determining whether a book can be helpful based on a quick, free browse between planes, and then letting others know their expert opinion! Makes judging a book by its cover seem downright scientific!

Do I have your attention?

I grew up playing ball in inner-city schoolyards, and played varsity high school sports using antiquated locker rooms and facilities in run-down neighborhoods. Obscenities were a mindless aspect of our existence, and most of us didn’t even think about the meaning of the words we were using.

Then, of course, I grew up, received a university education, and entered the world of business. During that time, I learned to successfully modify my behavior. I can still curse like a sailor (no offense to ocean-going professionals intended) when I hit my thumb with a hammer, or fall down a flight of icy steps. It’s a wonderful catharsis. But I can’t remember the last time I did that with a client, or in a restaurant, or even a bar, especially when my voice is readily heard and there are strangers around who don’t appreciate my basically tender and generous soul.

A great deal of the commentary I read on YouTube is beyond our old locker room banter. Some people on Facebook seem not to care what the people in that restaurant think of them, they’re shouting it out. (Facebook has often been compared to a raucous Boston bar at closing time, but I think there is more civility in the bar, and there are people who tell loudmouths to “knock it off.”)

Profanity in a debate—especially in an ad hominem attack on the other person—is a poor substitute for intellect. It denotes a paucity of intelligence, of reasoning power, of wit. (Just as the “comics” who simply string profanities together as their “act” put me to sleep. That’s not wit. It’s nitwit.) Now that the social media platforms have created such vaster public forums, the degree to which many resort to invective rather than invention is appalling.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve had to throw two people out of my Mentor Program for deciding they were simply going to use profanity and ad hominem attack to communicate and to impugn others. (I’ve only had to do that three times before in 15 years, and those three were for ethics violations.)

I realize I’m leaving myself open to the wise guys who will post commentary here in response using profanity, such is life, but surely there must be a majority getting tired of people not even bothering to think long enough to use words to try to influence, rather than curses to try to scare. It seems to me the constant danger in vast public interaction is always that of the looming menace of the lowest common denominator becoming the norm.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

President Obama was in Rhode Island yesterday for all of four hours, but it was one of the most intensely dysfunctional four hours any politician could create.

He spoke briefly at a 40-person factory (from notes!) which had rehired people after receiving stimulus money. He then arrived late for a reception primarily for Providence Mayor David Cicilline’s run for Patrick Kennedy’s House seat. This reception cost attendees $500 to merely be in the same huge room at the Convention Center.

His motorcade (do you really need a dozen motorcycles?!) then went to the affluent East Side of Providence where wealthy developer Buff Chace and his wife were hosting a highly publicized dinner party for $7,5000 a person to dine with the President. That’s right: $15,000 per couple. Streets were blocked off by department of public works dump trucks, and even nearby pumpkins were inspected for safety (I am NOT making this up—the Providence media reported every shrug and moan with mind-numbing detail).

The owners and chiefs from the famed Providence restaurant, Al Forno, were imported for the presidential palate. (Al Forno is famous for original food and hating customers—no reservations, and please eat and leave.) One of the restaurant’s founders, Johanne Kileen, noted that this was the second most exciting day in her life, after her wedding day. One supposes that the restaurant business, travel, and a long-term marriage don’t carry many thrills in her life. Perhaps she should get out more.

I know Buff Chace, and he is an admirable man. He has used his family fortune to try to develop downtown Providence, arguing articulately that retail, commercial, residential, and recreational facets must be concurrently created. He’s had mixed success, but not for lack of trying. He was the long-time board chair of Trinity Repertory Company while I served on the board, and his family is generous and community-minded. I haven’t always agreed with him, but I respect him.

And it was at this event that the President spent 20 minutes in small talk, then headed back to Air Force One to head to DC, kiss his kids goodnight and walk the dog. The guests had spent $750 per minute, $12.50 a second, for the President to make the barest plausible visit and depart, outstanding chiefs notwithstanding, arrangements of no import, loss of face for the hosts inconsequential. At least the food didn’t get cold, even if the conversation did.

In the bargain, besides tying up traffic royally because apparently it’s dangerous to have anyone use the roads anywhere while the President is being chauffeured around, he managed to alienate the supporters of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Frank Caprio, whom Obama pointedly refused to endorse, perhaps to repay Mr. Caprio’s independent (once Republican) rival, Lincoln Chafee, for his support last election, perhaps to thumb his nose at someone who supported Hillary Clinton (and there is no way the Clintons would have acted this way on a visit, but that’s another story).

Mr. Caprio promptly told the news media that the President could “shove it” as far as his endorsement was concerned, and that caused national news, apparently because others don’t realize that’s like saying, “no worries” here in Rhode Island. In this state, that phrase doesn’t even budge the rudeness meter.

So, in just four hours we witnessed a real slash and burn demonstration. The trouble is, it was leveled at what I thought were his own people. So, I’m wondering, just which people ARE his people? How many of them will be around to vote next week?

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Apropos of yesterday’s posting on the Chilean miners, here is a story from today’s New York Times:

“Rescued Miners’ Secrecy Pact Erodes in Spotlight:

The miners rescued in Chile have asked for as little as $40 and upward of $25,000 for an interview” (by Alexei Barrioneuvo and Simon Romero).

Stay with me here for advance insights on the world around us through Contrarian Consulting!

Everyone is happy and invigorated by the Chilean miners’ rescue and the resolve of the Chilean government to gather whatever resources were required internationally to save the men. The belief that every means should be exhausted and no expense spared to preserve life is noble and uplifting. It’s a great story, better than fiction, though we all know it will soon be fictionalized.

The miners are about to be media heroes. In fact, during their ordeal, they were already organizing to manage the process. These blue collar workers in a remote part of the world, with no assurance that the rescue plan would work, contacted a notary on the surface to begin having proper papers drawn up for their eventual business ventures.

I’m wondering if the glare of the world’s attention will be worse than the gloom of the mine.

They will make their appearances, they will recount their stories, they will sign book, movie, TV, and other deals. Perhaps they’ll license equipment or candy bars. They’ll put some money in the bank. Some will become more prominent than others by dint of personality or language, and resentments will form. There will be arguments over who exactly was responsible for what. Separate deals will be cut, violating the group’s agreements, and lawyers will begin their ubiquitous squawking. There will be divorces, broken families, and tears.

Eventually, what becomes of them back in Chile? The limelight always fades, even for desperate novelty acts like the Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian. What do they do with the rest of their lives? Host a talk show? Tend a garden?

I wish them the best—those I’ve seen and listened to appear to be fine, honest men with the normal set of peccadilloes. (The mistresses running into the wives should make for a great TV movie.) All they were trying to do when they went down there was to earn an honest day’s pay for their families.

Now they’re faced with a lifetime of decisions about what it all means.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I’m writing this on the Internet at 34,000 feet on a Delta flight from Atlanta. We’re returning from Hilton Head Island where I hosted 55 people in The Write Stuff™ Workshop, then 67 in my two-day Mentor Summit, then a dozen of the Mentor Hall of Fame members for a full day.

All of these people throughout the week are dedicated learners, high performance people seeking to improve by investing in themselves. Their professions call for them to add value to others.

During this same week I’ve been approached by the following scammers:

1. Tom, from some organization that sounds like WTG in London, leaves a message with no detail to call him back. When I do track him down in London, he recites either a script or memorized spiel about business executives paying him 2,000 Pounds each to find “solution providers” for their businesses. He is running meetings for them in Berlin and Boston, and would like me to attend as a solution provider.

“How much will you pay me to be there?” I ask, smiling at my wife next to me.

“Oh, you pay me for the opportunity,” Tom says glibly.

“This conversation is over,” I inform him, ending the call. Tom leaves another message calling me “dismissive,” noting that he will remove me from all his data bases and all his mailings. I guess there is great ROI in being dismissive!

2. A woman named Brittany (what else?) calls to tell me she is a “risk analyst” and has found my credit card merchant account is among the lowest risk anywhere. If she can ask me a few questions, I may be qualified to “be treated like my own bank” and not have to work with my credit card processor or real bank.

“Do you work for my bank or my merchant services people, and what are you trying to sell me?” I ask.

“No, I don’t work for them, and I’m merely a risk analyst,” she coos.

“We’re done here,” I coo back, but apparently not dismissively, because I received no follow-up call assuring me I’d be taken off all their lists.

In prior weeks, I’ve received:

3. The ancient offer to place a chapter in a book where the other chapters are all written by “names” and famous business authors. Of course, everyone knows that you pay to do that, everyone knows that there is no credibility at all in doing so, and everyone with a brain thinks poorly of the “names” who lend their names to this awful scam, since most of them don’t need the money (or, then again, maybe they do).

4. The incredible offer for only $15,000 to shoot an “interview” with a host and an ancient politician or celebrity who is propped up against a wall while you’re asked softball questions about your business for a non-existent audience. Why would your buyers find it credible for you to be on channel 469 at three in the morning with Alexander Haig? Who’s in charge here?!

5. The AM radio station that offers you a show to host for only $500 per half-hour and an advertising quota you must bring in. I know a realtor who did this and actually walked around telling people she was asked to host the show!

I could go on. While the thoughtful, professional people in my communities are trying their best to grow and help others legitimately, the scammers immerse all the media with appeals to our ego, the quick buck, the phony celebrity, and the scam.

As the sergeant used to intone on the great, late Hill Street Blues, “Let’s be careful out there!”

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

One of the issues we face as consultants is whether all those people trying to get our attention constitute the voice of Paul Revere or Chicken Little.

Yesterday, I spent 45 minutes stowing our pool and balcony furniture because of an absolute panic in Rhode Island about Hurricane Earl (and if that’s not a dumb name for a storm, why don’t we try Hurricane Godfrey—whatever happened to Lola or Monica?). This morning, I spent 45 minutes putting it all back. Noting happened in the interim.

Oh, we had some rain, but a matchbook wouldn’t have blown off my diving board all night. And the state probably lost millions of dollars in people who were fearful of attending the theater, or dining out, or going to a bar. (Restaurants were vacant on a Friday night here.) And now the populace will have extra bread that will mold, and milk that will spoil, and generators that will rust—all panic purchases.

At one point a while back, I counted five meteorologists for each of the Providence area’s local network affiliates—that’s 15 people, far more than their number of evening anchors or top beat reporters. Weather is a big deal here, for some reason, maybe because there isn’t that much else to talk about. (If you saw the outstanding series “The Brotherhood,” the cast of which I’ve met at parties here, be aware that it was more of a documentary than anything else.)

Have you ever seen those photos and news clips of a governor or senior official at a lectern with a dozen people crowded behind, elbowing for recognition space? They’re all looking suitably serious, and their numbers are in direct proportion to the pay grade of the person with the mike. This is assembled officialdom, and by golly, they are going to show they are official.

When people are paid to talk about and support calamity, guess what they talk about: calamity. Certain volunteers can’t get together and utilize their stuff or assemble the support structures or get the gear working unless there is some reason. So they pine for the reason. Remember as kids, we took our baseball gloves to the game just in case that foul ball or home run came in our direction? I salute their sincerity and their training, and I admire their dedication. But, like insurance policies, I hope it’s never used—not that it’s frequently used.

I’m all for emergency preparedness, but not for distorting perceptions or always favoring worst outcomes. “Prepare for the worst and hope for the best” is a grand theme, but it too often transmogrifies into “Prepare for the worst and let’s hope we can see it!”

Why do we need reporters standing out in the wind and rain to prove that it’s windy and rainy? I can believe the camera alone, and even merely commentary. After a while of this comic opera, with the meteorologist bracing in the wind, pelted with rain, I begin rooting for the wind and the rain. If he were blown away, we’d have some real theater.

We create self-fulfilling prophesies. We seem do dote on possible ruin. People here still talk about “the blizzard of 1936″ or something, as if it’s still with us. Somehow, people got through that without dozens of meteorologists, modern emergency equipment, or cell phones.

I can’t talk about solely female names for hurricanes anymore because of misplaced political correctness, but at least I’m still safe from having to refer to “Calamity Jane or John.” She was a real figure (and a featured character in the great series “Deadwood”) having gained her sobriquet in seeming to always be involved in frontier fights. But she was well regarded not just for her bravery, but also her compassion.

It seems she had excellent perspective.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

The Jet Blue flight attendant fighting for his 15 minutes of fame—and who could have easily killed anyone standing beneath that exit chute he triggered—will undoubtedly make the rounds as the cotemporary symbol of the movie Network’s Howard Beale (“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!”). He probably has an agent by now. As we mistakenly applaud his “fed up as an art form” behavior, I wonder how many other people will vent their spleen despite the danger: a police officer who shoots a jaywalker; an air traffic controller who directs two planes into each other; a nurse who starts pulling out feeding tubes?

Will they all go on Oprah?

What we’re actually seeing is a huge case of being in denial, coupled with redirected anger, supported by massive narcissism.

In an age where everyone has the opportunity on social media platforms and via instant recordings to publicize their every shrug and moan, we all take on an exaggerated feeling of self-importance, a belief that our own common, human travails have a genuine gravitas and must be seen by everyone as especially important and due for instant remediation. This guy engaged in a juvenile temper tantrum with adult repercussions and many people are applauding him for the retrogression.

He’s an ass.

Flight attendants will tell you that they are there for our safety. But they are also there for our comfort, and that is the preponderance of their actual work on most flights. I fly only first class, and the level of service is fine about 75 percent of the time domestically (about 90 percent on foreign carriers). It’s a tough job when an airline like American has removed everything from pillows for your head to olives for your martini in the name of profit. I look back there in coach, especially on long trips, and I wonder why all those people aren’t violent at any given time.

On one Spirit Airlines flight, the attendant raced down the aisle—she had not heard the bell indicating we were permitted to rise—screaming at people to sit back down. She had also threatened to call security at the departure gate when I had my feet on the bulkhead, which she claimed was “unsanitary.” When I pointed to a woman across the way with her feet up, the flight attendant just stomped away. (She had apparently overheard me on the phone with my wife explaining I’d be late because the airline had had such a sloppy boarding process, and she took umbrage.) I couldn’t understand how this kind of inappropriate reaction was missed by her supervision. There are almost always early signs.

The latest iteration of our personal, too-public Facebook soap boxes appears to be the right to “vent” and express our perceived victimization at will. We’ve morphed from “The customer is always right,” to “The customers are a royal pain, why do we need them?”

There is no question that airline management, with the exception of the likes of Gordon Bethune or Herb Kelleher, has been as dimwitted as can be in good times and bad. They don’t treat their employees very well as a rule, and the working conditions have degraded as much for cabin and flight crews as they have for passengers, maybe worse. But I don’t attack flight crews because the airline isn’t giving me a meal during a three-hour fight, or the seating area is too cramped, or the lavatory is filthy. I deal with it.

I’ve been hit by passenger luggage, and I’ve hit passengers with my luggage. Stuff happens. Some people are civil, some are rude. Such is life on a public conveyance. I’m not especially trained to deal with it but we all seem to use our common sense and persevere. Those passengers trapped for hours on hot planes where the authorities were too stupid to let them off didn’t hold the crew hostage, though I don’t believe any jury would have convicted them if they had. They complained, but they acted rationally. They didn’t trigger the escape slides and raid the liquor cart, though they easily could have.

This flight attendant with his beer slide and YouTube hits will be glorified for just not being willing to take it any more. And that will enable the next person with little self-restraint, a poor self-image, and total self-absorption to push it one more level. Probably, someone will be hurt.

That’s worse than a crime. It’s ignorant. And you’re an accomplice if you support it.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Everything I’m about to report is true. You’ll realize that, because you can’t make this stuff up.

Some years ago I encountered a guy in Mensa (which I joined a long time ago to see if I could get in and then promptly asked, “What on earth am I doing here?”—it is a world class victimization group) who was the self-appointed chairman of the Bay Area Loch Ness Monster Study Group, or some such thing, an official Mensa interest group. I wrote to him asking how he could be serious if he was supposed to be so smart.

He immediately wigged out. He questioned my ancestry, credentials (claimed that I was lying about all of my degrees and awards), and threatened to have “the 50,000 members of my group overrun you with emails and calls so that you can’t live a normal life!!” Imagine what would have happened had he really over-reacted!

I left that hair trigger alone, until a year or so later when the guy who had made the most famous photos of the monster died, and admitted on his death bed that it was all a hoax, AND displayed the toys he had used for the trick shot. Authorities confirmed that he was telling the truth.

Being somewhat perverse, I wrote back to the Bay Area Grand Monster Wizard and asked what his group would do now, would they study the toys, or would they simply suspend activities? (I believed then and do now that his group is even less likely to be corporeal than the thing supposedly in the lake.) He wrote back the most extraordinary message.

He told me that the toys were obviously planted, that the dying man made no such admission, and that this was a conspiracy to end searches for Nellie (the monster has a nickname). Who would conspire to protect a monster, I wondered. He was aghast that I could be so stupid as to not realize this. I was aghast, but at something quite different.

This guy needed desperately to believe what he had invented for himself, so he had to make it so even it if weren’t. He was enslaved to his fantasy.

Many of us proceed through life defending positions that aren’t true, or were true once and not now. After all, we trusted that not going into the water for a full hour after eating would save us from cramps and certain death. I remember how we waited for those final agonizing five minutes, the difference between sinking and swimming. We believe things about ourselves, our lives, our clients, our approaches that sometimes become so calcified that they achieve an inappropriate solidity.

The Chevrolet Nova did not fail in Spanish-speaking markets because its name means “no go” in Spanish. The number of people alive today is not greater than the total number of people who have ever lived. The Great Wall of China is not the only man-made object visible from space. (It’s barely visible.) The flush toilet was not invented by Thomas Crapper.

Maybe I’ll stop here.

We all need to examine our belief systems, about ourselves, our profession, our clients. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates. I believe we’d do well to follow his advice.

And I’ll bet you’d have to show him a monster before he organized a study group about it.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Let’s see if I have this straight:

1. The French soccer team beats Ireland for a World Cup berth on the basis of an egregious and widely seen handball, an illegal and pathetic act in this venerated game. The French refuse to concede or do anything remotely honorable about this, despite an international outrage.
2. And, the same team then humiliates itself and its country, by gaining only 1 point, suffering through resignations, obscenity-laced player tirades against the coach, players refusing to practice, and a pitiful, virtual surrender on the field. They return home in shame, the objects of obloguy from their own countrymen.
3. Therefore, there must be a God.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Courtesy of Australian consultant Gary McMahon, one of my avid followers in one of my favorite places in the world, here is a short clip of the Austrian Supreme Court Chief Justice telling what appears to be a stunned legal audience that hourly billing is completely inappropriate and ought to be thrown out in favor of focusing on value.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2010/05/17/2902081.htm?site=southwestwa

When I was speaking in Sydney during one trip, I keynoted for the Australian Legal Management Association on this very topic. After accountants and consultants in Melbourne and Sydney had been extraordinarily responsive, the legal people sat there virtually deaf to the same ideas. I kept hitting the mike to see if it were working. (This is why I’m always paid in advance.) Tell me again why some of you entrepreneurs have lawyers on your advisory boards?

I’m hosting the latest Mentor Hall of Fame Meeting at The Palace hotel on Madison Avenue in New York. We had a few hours of free time yesterday afternoon, and my wife said, “Do you need to buy anything while we’re here?”

“Summer shirts,” I suggested, and we agreed to visit Saks, the huge department store, which is less than a block from the hotel.

We selected a few things on the seventh floor, agreed to split up and then meet on the sixth floor, which has a great layout. You can walk around in a huge circle with a dozen designer collections occupying the circumference. If you see something you like, you can wander farther into the displays. I love the concept, and since I saw only two other customers the entire time, it was a leisurely stroll.

I was carrying a Saks shopping bag filled with those other purchases, which tells you I’m a buyer. I was dressed well and any salesman (they were all male) in the business could tell that I could buy whatever I wished to.

YET NO ONE APPROACHED ME! In an empty store, with people working on commission, I was ignored. Some refused to establish eye contact. Others, talking to each other leaning against display cases, never stopped their chat.

Three-quarters of the way around my circuit, I passed Brioni, and a young man said, “Hello, can I be of help?” I put my bag down, told him what I wanted, and he told me to wait there while he rounded up some shirts from Brioni and Zegna down the hall. At this point my wife arrived, I tried on his suggestions, and all but one—which we both loved—fit.

“Can we order this in his size?” the salesman asked an older colleague standing around. “No, Brioni won’t send more,” he said dismissing us.

“Wait a minute,” I stopped him, “don’t you have other Saks stores that may still have some of these?” My salesman said, “That’s a good idea, let me check the computer.” The older guy just stared at me, as if I were ruining a nice day in the park.

My salesman arranged for that shirt to be shipped directly to me from another store, packed up the others, gave us his card and told us to call him when we needed anything else.

I will.

People ask me where I get my material as a writer and as a consultant. It’s all around us. How would you like to be the men’s department manager, or the general manager, or the product managers for any of those other designers at Saks? Do you think they need to shop their own business on a regular basis? Do you think they need to throw some of that excess overhead out of there and get some people who really want to work on behalf of the organization and themselves?

This is why some shine and some don’t, in business and in life. If you can’t look a customer in the eye and proactively try to help, you’re not going to be successful.

In fact, you may just lose your shirt.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

We’re starting to hear of the outrage of people trapped in Europe or unable to get to Europe due to this unpronounceable Icelandic volcano. And, of course, many are searching for scapegoats.

The Airlines want the European Union to bail them out, because the EU decided there was too much danger to airplanes and passengers. As far as I can see, that was a pretty accurate determination. (A jet fighter launched to test conditions came back looking somewhat worse for the wear.)

Travelers are upset with airlines, hotels, travel agents, local authorities, and just about anyone else who wanders into view. I don’t make light of the lost money, lost opportunities, and lost time. I’ve been marooned and ignored globally in my career.

But this is a volcanic eruption. No one in Iceland caused this, unless someone offended the geologic gods, and no on in business and industry spends much energy planning for a northern European volcano that suddenly blows its top and blankets major airports

Recently Rhode Island experienced historic flooding, the worst in its recorded history. A great many people have experienced tremendous hardship, and even those with flood insurance quickly were apprised that it covers structural damage only, not possessions. Emergency services worked very well, but damns, levees, and drainage structures were overwhelmed. No one built them for floods of this proportion, because the probability doesn’t justify the investment.

As far as I know, no one was killed as a direct result of the volcano’s action. There was more than sufficient reason to decide not to fly through rocks that not too long before were lodged under a glacier. There is no legitimate reason to expect that the travel industry prepare for 100,000 flights being cancelled over the course of a week. And it’s bizarre to expect the government to bail you out when its primary responsibility is public safety.

I’ve done a great deal of strategy work, and I don’t recall ever sitting around with executives saying, “What can we anticipate that’s unanticipated?” or “How much should we invest in protecting ourselves from 10,000 to 1 shots?”

Sometimes, stuff just happens. Spend your energy recovering, not blaming. The former puts you in control, the latter makes you a victim of something uncontrollable blowing its top.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

My wife and I are veterans of a dozen arts and charity boards, and herein some free advice from a world-class consultant:

1. Do not allow people to serve on the board who simply want the position on their résumé. Members need to meet three conditions: a) they have the expertise and intellectual capital (e.g., marketing or strategy) needed; b) they bring the capacity to donate and/or raise funds from others personally; c) they are capable and willing to attend all meetings and appropriate events.
2. Boards should stick to strategy and funding and evaluation of staff, but must leave daily operations to the executive director, managing director, artistic director, and so on. Most board time is wasted on how much to charge for a poster or what meal to serve at a fund raiser.
3. It is unethical for board members to do business with and to profit from their position on the board and relationship with the organization. (And when executive directors receive $400,000 to run blood banks, for example, there is something desperately wrong.)
4. Boards should be relatively small, have elected officers, and run according to Robert’s Rules of Order. Minutes should be maintained and distributed within 48 hours.
5. Board members should be evaluated annually and term limits should be in place. (You’re a board member, not a potted plant.)
6. Boards should meet quarterly, not monthly. Executive committees and subcommittees should meet more often.
7. Understand that the future funding potential is in individual contributions, not corporate and not government. Consequently, professional development people are invaluable.
8. Unless the recipients of the art or charity or service are improved, the effort isn’t effective. Merely perpetuating the organization is insufficient.
9. There should not be a cozy relationship among the chair and staff. The relationship should be cordial, but it’s the chair’s job to provide guidance and critique and evaluation, which is tough to do for a good friend.
10. It’s better for board members to argue and debate than to mindlessly listen to reports and rubberstamp what’s placed in front of them.

Non-profits have been failing at an alarming rate. That’s not the economy’s fault, it’s the board’s fault.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Wherein one of the world’s finest consultants provides free help to those in desperate need of it:

• When I call you I don’t want to speak to someone in the Philippines who doesn’t understand American idiom and keeps reading to me from a script.
• You should LOWER your prices as the flight time gets closer, not make last-minute reservations more expensive. Do you want to fill inventory or not?
• I’ve never seen unhappy employees and happy customers. Get along with your unions and encourage your people. If Southwest and Continental can do this at times, so can you.
• Stop nickel-and-diming us with charges for pillows, rest rooms, drinks, and oxygen when these charges are only being levied to compensate for idiotic decisions made in the executive suite.
• Competition is going to increase, the economy is going to recover, and people will have the opportunity to fly true world class airlines, such as Singapore Air and Emirites. You need to increase service and loyalty before that happens or you’re through.
• Merging two bad operations does not magically create one good one, but does result in one atrocious one.
• With advanced technology (boarding passes on cell phone screens) when will you end the antediluvian practice of boarding hundreds of people through one bottleneck access?
• Advise us of what we need for our safety, but don’t treat us as if we’re the village idiot in a concentration camp. We need education, not admonishment.
• Get wifi and cell phone use moving along, there is no evidence that this stuff impedes the airplane’s operation and it’s needed.
• If you leave passengers on a plane on a runway without relief for more than two hours, you should be publicly humiliated and forced into exile.
• When you create a hundred elites, no one is elite. You have first class, and coach, sometimes business. All the nonsense about 1K, Chairman’s brown-nosers, Global alliances, and people who once made the honor roll is dumber than dirt. Whomever pays the most for their ticket deserves the special treatment.
• Enforce a grooming code. I know it will never return to nice outfits, trim people, and coiffed hair, but fight attendants shouldn’t barely fit in the aisles, have unwashed hair, be devoid of makeup, and wear wrinkled clothing. It’s to the point where I’m loath to accept food from some of them.
• Painting your planes does not improve service, loyalty, brand, or image. Spend the money more wisely.
• In the airline lounges, arm the hostesses with Tasers and allow them to blast anyone in bare feet, torn tee-shirts, or who is obviously intoxicated.
• If you want to keep charging for baggage and/or encouraged checked bags over carry-on, then do something serious about lost bags and employee theft.
• Learn to treat animals traveling with more decency and humanity.
• Clean the darned planes. I’m tired of finding crap in every crevice because you think this expense can be scaled back. You’re responsible for a healthy environment. Or do you intend to charge us for clean seats?
• Fuel prices change, often abruptly. Deal with it.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

The floods up here didn’t get to our house, which is on high ground, but our pond flooded and the waterfall erupted, taking out our water main. (You can see photos elsewhere on this blog.) Yesterday, upon our return from New York, the plumbers finally were able to restore things, and the water company arrived to turn the water back on from the street.

We’ve had the same plumbers—an extended family—for 20 years. I see them about 4 times a year for various things (this is a big house). We’re on good terms and know each other. I thought.

The father explained to me that the water should be fine but he was having it tested. “One thing, I’m afraid, will affect you,” he said seriously.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“For a few days or so, your wife won’t be able to cook,” he said kindly, as if consoling me.

“We’ll handle it,” I assured him. (We eat out 7 nights a week.)

Unanticipated event: Since we can’t drink the water for another few days, I’m not letting the dogs drink it (even though they drink out of the pond on occasion) and I’m filling their bowls with bottled water. Koufax particularly loves this, and I’m thinking I may have a longer-term problem here….

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

A columnist for the LA Times (Mary McNamara) is the latest in a slew who agree with me about Ellen Degeneres on Idol. If a major media star of her magnitude (awards, host of awards shows, popular talk show, popular TV shows, etc.) can’t handle the pressure and demands of a rather simple, idiosyncratic, and subjective judging assignment on a show whose audience is ready to love you, then what’s going on?

A good lesson for all of us is that “only the gifted few can wing it.” A master in one area doesn’t metamorphose into a master of another without preparation, skills, and some affinity for the work. (Every time Randy Jackson says “pitch” I think Ellen’s going to throw a baseball.)

We all require a market need, competency, and passion to succeed. A large paycheck is seldom enough.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I am an American Idol junkie, and it’s time to say The Emperor Has No Clothes. Ellen Degeneres seems like someone who can’t skate trying to have a good time at the local rink. She often frowns for no apparent reason; her posture implies that her chair is receiving electric shocks; she talks about “pitch problems” concurrently wondering what Randy meant by it; even the obviously awful are, fundamentally, “great.”

I’m reminded of Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football, a party raconteur attempting to be popular at a demolition derby rally. It was painful to watch, and worse to listen to.

Ellen is not going to replace Simon Cowell. She may be leaving before he does at the end of the season unless, miraculously, she gets comfortable and learns something about pop music. Otherwise she’s going to be voted off.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Apparently, Toyota has known of many of its problems for years. Deaths have occurred, and Toyota has blamed the placement of floor mats. But now, under testimony, Toyota has had to admit that it first authorized repairs and new designs two years ago, without publicizing either. The regulatory agencies have the power to severely fine and punish Toyota, including the prohibition of selling cars in the US for a while. That’s not such a bad idea. It will revive the local industry, and show that we resent people being killed by corporate cover-up. We condemned American companies for such acts (Remember exploding fuel tanks?) and if Toyota were American-based, we’d be a lot more upset. And why hasn’t the CEO of Toyota resigned yet? Where does that buck stop exactly?

Meanwhile, up here in Providence, each major local affiliate—NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX—has at least five “meteorologists” (weather people). (I’m reminded of the one great line in a short-lived TV sitcom about a TV station, where a sportscaster calls the weather woman a “weather babe.” She says, “I prefer meteorologist.” He says, “But you don’t even have a college degree.” She says, “I said I PREFER it!”) Dr. Frank Fields, the famous NBC “meteorologist,” had his degree in, I believe, optometry.

In any case, these stations up here have more “meteorologists” than they do street investigative reporters, I am not making this up. They are highly paid, have segments far longer than the content dictates, and are notoriously inaccurate. They all predicted a huge snow storm here today, and while it’s been snowing for about seven hours, we have about a three-inch accumulation. Yet schools were cancelled, meetings postponed, offices closed, people given days off, public needs unmet by closed government offices, and so on. The State of Rhode Island has probably lost $50 million to $100 million in productivity, performance, and production, because these 15 clowns read their radar, and reports, and other nonsense but divined the tea leaves incorrectly. Where is THEIR performance review? I guess it’s alongside all those stock market analysts who brag when they’re right and are never held accountable when they are (usually) wrong. Since when is snow in New England a major happening? Or maybe they believe we’re in the age of global warming?

To end on the bright side, let’s hear it for Germany, taking the lead to bail out Greece and other struggling economies before a domino effect set in. It’s nice to see people taking accountability, especially when it’s an entire government. Of course, we’re dealing with out own important matters here, such as what Sarah Palin writes on her palm, the content of SuperBowl commercials, and the President’s inability to pronounce “corpsman” correctly.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved. Oh, heck, I’m disgusted, you can have these rights.

ME: What kind of cheese do you put on the cheeseburger?
Waitress: Melted, sir.

Worker: Your father was hurt on the job this morning!
My Mother: Where is he hurt?!
Worker: On 32nd street.

Me: Drive up to coffee shop in a blue Ferrari convertible.
Customer: How do you like driving that?

Repair Center Operator: Is the line you’re calling from the one you are reporting that you cannot make calls from?

Me: I’ll start with a shrimp cocktail.
Waitress: One shrimp cocktail (and takes the rest of my order).
Ten minutes later, waitress brings a single shrimp on a plate.
Me: What’s this?
Waitress: Your shrimp.
Me: I wanted more than one shrimp in the shrimp cocktail.
Waitress: You never said that.

Hilton Hot Line Operator: Hilton Hotline, we handle any request. This is Gladys, Dr. Weiss, what request may I handle for you?
Me: There is no room service menu in my suite.
Gladys: I’m so sorry, we don’t handle that.

Unsolicited email which comes a few times a year: I’m writing to tell you that I found six typos in your latest book.
Me: And what do you expect me to do about that?
Writer: Fix them.
Me: Would you like me to come over and correct them by hand?

My wife to waiter in venerable Old Canteen Restaurant in Providence: What kind of vegetables do you have with the meal tonight?
Weary waiter: Madam, we’ve had the same vegetables for 52 years.

Woman riding in my Bentley: I hear these are very fast.
Me: They go from zero to sixty in about 4.4 seconds.
Woman: What if you don’t want to go sixty?

A man, following me to dinner and back in another car: The spoiler on your car goes up whenever a Porsche or Ferrari is near you!
Me: Yes, the car is programmed to be ready to race in the presence of certain cars.
Him: Unbelievable!!
(I was manually putting the spoiler up and down the entire trip.)

Lightening strikes our DC-10 on takeoff at Newark Airport, plane lights up like the inside of a flashbulb as a rifle shot-sound is heard. Passengers are gasping for air, praying, screaming.
Pilot, in pilot “right stuff” voice two entire minutes later: Ah, ladies and gentlemen, you may have noticed a slight bump as we gained air speed….

Clerk in appliance store, staples all forms together after carefully assembling and squaring them up: Sir, please sign the top two copies.
Me: Sure.
Clerk then pulls top copy out from under staple: This is your copy.
Me: If that is my copy, why did you staple it to the others and then rip it off?
Clerk: Because this job does not require you to think that far ahead.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

On January 23rd I wrote here that Taylor Swift had the worst voice at the Haitian Telethon performance. In my opinion, she can’t sing, has no range, can’t hold a note. Well, on the Grammy Awards the other day she sounded like someone in pain, and even the forgiving insiders at the event reached the same conclusion. We have the dubious ability to create “celebrities” without competence.

Let me understand this: Unemployment declined in January, the market pulled itself back from a 170-point drop, some firms are deliberately taking smaller bonuses because of public heat, the use of corporate jets us up at the SuperBowl for the first time in three years, the housing market is experiencing gains—and a lot of pundits are still predicting gloom and doom. If the bad times are truly bad, and the good times are illusions or ephemeral, there’s a word for that: cynicism.

New Orleans is a great city, and they deserve the rallying point that is the Saints phenomenon. But over the last six games or so they’ve been more lucky than good, and luck won’t beat Payton Manning. I’m rooting for the Saints because it’s more fun (I’m really rooting for the commercials), but if the Saints don’t sack Manning, they can’t win.

An employee is sitting in a coffee shop drinking coffee and eating, while using his cell phone. He finishes, goes in the back, and ignores a waiting customer. I asked the owner why she doesn’t just give him her bank book and let him steal money more easily.

If “safe” congressional seats, such as Patrick Kennedy’s here in Rhode Island, are FINALLY going to be seriously contested (he’s in trouble in the early polls), it’s a victory for democracy no matter who ultimately wins. The last time I looked there was nothing about hereditary aristocracy in the Constitution, and George Washington politely declined to be named “king.”

The first episode of the final season of Lost, which was supposed to begin to provide answers, confused me more than all of last season combined. I’m beginning to root against everyone, especially the writers, whom I wish the smoke monster (AKA John Locke) would devour. But I only have three advanced degrees. Maybe they should speak more slowly for me….

The funny thing is, the way James Cameron directs, I could believe that Avatar actually happened, but not the Titanic.

Professional basketball is about as exciting as watching someone else play a pinball machine that has the “tilt” mechanism disabled. If I could have ignored the rules like that when I was in high school, I would have been all-state!

Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw is a rare example of a compilation of articles producing a wonderful book. The guy can write.

Consultants take note: Toyota is a good example of a bad practice—allowing cost controls to dominate your business. Their ignoring early warning signs is a throwback to the GM and Ford errors of decades ago. We have not heard the last of this sordid story.

I remember watching the incoming tide as a kid, hoping it wouldn’t reach my sand castle. I’m watching that blizzard in Washington, hoping it doesn’t reach New York, where I’m headed tomorrow for the grandchildren, SuperBowl, and a couple of days on the town.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

WARNING: The following are personal opinions and may cause harm to your belief systems. Proceed at your own risk. We are not responsible for fainting or nausea. Please put your own oxygen mask on first.

• Over half of all union members in the US are now employed by the government, the first time this has ever happened (reported today in the New York Times). Union strength in the private sector has been declining, due to the downturn in manufacturing and construction. Imagine, though, one of the most inefficient, bureaucratic entities known to us—government—also a victim of union rules and bargaining. It staggers the imagination. American workers, by the way, mostly un-unionized, are among the most productive in the world, far more so than Japanese and German counterparts, for example.

• Television’s 20/20 ran a story last night of a 16-year-old girl who was abused and forced to have sexual relationships with a Starbucks store manager, who was her boss. The story was overwhelmingly in her favor. But the facts that emerged also showed that she had had consensual sex with many men prior, and had requested sex with him on occasion; that she never told her parents or police at first, and then when she finally told her parents, she continued to have relations with the man until her mother accidentally found out. The setting was in an expensive home with a very articulate mother, no mention of a father, and showed the girl at one point tending to a horse she had ridden. No one deserves abuse, no teenager should be pressured by a boss. The manager ultimately served time in jail. But the family, of course, is suing Starbuck’s.

• The NBC mess reminds me of the old story about the dog food company that spent $50 million to launch a new product, which was a disaster. The executives scurried to point fingers, citing the tremendous money pored into focus groups, nutritional content, and store promotion. Finally, an intern mentioned to the CEO, “The dogs just don’t like the stuff.”

With Conan, the dogs just don’t like the stuff. He’s a nice, affable guy, but he’s just not very funny. His numbers are the maximum he’s going to get for the avid followers he has, but there aren’t enough of them. Leno will go back to beating Letterman every single night, because Letterman is also at his max—he’s not that funny, and he’s still bitter over bad treatment he perceives by NBC and Leno decades ago. He’s bitter and vengeful, and it shows in his work. If he needs a therapist, then he can pay me.

The dogs just don’t like the stuff.

• And what about all the pompous writers who “look askance” at the imbroglio at NBC? Why shouldn’t O’Brien and Leno and Letterman get upset and take shots? Who says that they need to be some kind of avatars of propriety, according to the columnists?

If politicians, athletes, columnists, and everyone else hogging the media real estate can take shots, why should comedians be held to some higher level of relationship hygiene? Frankly, I thought that the on-air invective was when at last the dogs could like the stuff.

• There was a great deal of talent during the Help for Haiti telethon last night, and I hope you, as did we, contributed or will. The effort was laudable and generous, though typically Hollywood self-indulgent (muted colors, no indication of who was singing, recorded snippets of celebrities on the phones with donors).

The worst voice and least talent on the stage all night: Taylor Swift. I don’t get what that’s all about, but when compared so closely with all the others, she has a weak voice and zero excitement.

• Without Sarah Palin and the election, Saturday Night Live is excellent at putting you to sleep, so it’s in the perfect time slot.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Do I have this right? James Ray, who has said on the record that everything in his life is his responsibility, caused by his intent (and who has stated “many Jewish people are glad the Holocaust happened”), is now disclaiming any responsibility for the deaths and illness at the sweat lodge he ran?

Do you want to know “The Secret”? The Secret is that there are charlatans out there who want to take your money by promising an easy way out that requires no work, a mindless approach that requires no thinking, an irresponsible methodology that places no accountability on the deliverer.

If you want to be successful, then plan to work smart and hard as needed, and be aware that “reality stars” are just the opposite. They are the ski instructors who have never been up the mountain.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Contessa Brewer, a newsreader for MSNBC, who by the way attended the Newhouse School of Journalism at Syracuse at the same time as my daughter, introduced the Reverend Jessie Jackson yesterday as the Reverend Al Sharpton. After the greeting, before he could respond, she rattled on in her Tele-Promp-Ter reading for 20 seconds, while the pain and fury mounted on Reverend Jackson’s face. It was nothing less than a Saturday Night Live sketch. (You can, of course, enjoy all this on YouTube.)

When Jackson frostily informed Brewer about his real identity, she responded, amazingly, with: “Of course I recognize you and I can see you on the monitor, but the script I’m reading has the wrong name.” As I said, a “newsreader” not a “journalist.” Apparently she attended another branch of school, called the Newhouse School of News Reading.

She wasn’t in the moment. I find a great many people who aren’t “in the moment,” and consultants are no exception. These people are worrying about what to say next, what question to ask, how to inject their own self-aggrandizement, how to stay on the text in front of them, what to do about the phone call they received a few minutes before, and so on. They aren’t using a rifle, aren’t using a shotgun, aren’t using a water balloon—they’re using a kaleidoscope, awash in stimuli and changing scenes.

If Jackson could have issued forth a demon and turned Brewer into dust he surely would have. His expression was worth a thousand of his signature rhymes.

Don’t sacrifice opportunity through superficiality. If the moment isn’t worth it, don’t spend the time. If it is, then focus on it.

In the meantime, if you’d like a job in MSNBC news, you’ll have to demonstrate you can read a rolling script at ten feet, irrespective of the reality around you.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

I’m waiting in line at the bank. There’s only one person in line ahead of me, and four tellers.

However.

One teller is occupied by a man who is a small business owner doing a transaction, and claiming he did not get enough money back. A second teller is called over to review the situation, while the first one just watches. A third teller puts the “next window, please” sign up while she tends to the obscure paperwork that persists in a computerized world of electronic banking. That leaves the fourth teller, who is taking care of someone who is in training to run with the glaciers.

I say to the person ahead of me: “Down to one teller.”

Her: “Well, I’m not in a hurry, and it’s good to just relax. They’ll get to us when they can.”

Me: “That’s a nice, peaceful attitude, except if you are in a hurry, since some people have schedules.”

Her: “You have to expect these things.”

Me: “You have to expect two tellers to tend to one person and another to close her window while there are people in line?” (More people have now formed a queue behind me.)

Her: “I’m sure there is a good reason for it. You can’t always be efficient.”

Me: “There is every reason to be efficient whenever you can with customers in line who could take their business down the street to three other banks. Isn’t this about customer service?”

Her: “I’ve spent 20 years in retail, and I know that things just happen and the customer has to wait until you’re done.”

Me: “If that’s your attitude, I’m glad you didn’t work 20 years for me in a store that I owned!”

Her: “You can’t understand these transactions unless you’ve been in the position. I’m well versed in retail from the inside, and I know the priorities.”

Me: “Did I mention I’m a consultant? I believe I outrank you.”

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

It’s easier to carp than to improve. It’s easier to blame than to take accountability. It’s easier to be pessimistic and justify your lack of success than to be optimistic and work at success.

I admire people who join mastermind groups because these usually aren’t people who sit around bemoaning their fate, but rather who hold each other accountable and permit no whining. The whiners tell you in good times that things can’t stay this way, and in bad times that any hint of improvement is false and things will only get worse. In the cosmos of the cynical, down times never end and up times are ephemeral. They remind me of the old definition of Puritanism: The dread fear that someone, someplace, is enjoying himself.

It’s easy to take shots, especially if you use a shotgun. The trouble is you have neither the greatest range nor accuracy, but you can be really annoying.

If you get up on Monday morning with the endemic belief that things are bad and will get worse, you’ve got one hell of a week staring you in the face. But if you get up and feel like there’s another week of opportunity, contribution, and success out there, then you can’t wait to get out the door.

Life is what you make it. Take your best shot. Just don’t shoot yourself in the foot. And if you choose to do so deliberately, stay away from me.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

If we’re pursuing clergy for decades-old acts of pedophilia, which I believe we should, and are trying to pursue actions against superiors who shielded or transferred them, which I think we should, then why, exactly, wouldn’t we want to pursue similar heinous charges against Roman Polanski? Because he’s a movie director? Because he successfully evaded the law for 30 years?

When David Letterman was constantly mocking the transgressions of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, or John Edwards, or dozens of others (whose acts were reprehensible), was he concurrently having illicit relationships with his own staff members? Should we forgive him when he didn’t forgive the others and used them for comic relief, because he’s a television talk show host?

Some things I just don’t grok….

* See Heinlein’s A Stranger in A Strange Land if you’re not grokking this, either.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Maybe Congressman Joe Wilson didn’t inappropriately yell “Liar!” during the President’s speech the other night, but rather “Fire!”, hoping that would clear out the place so everyone could get back to work (or go back to sleep). (I know that’s illegal in a move theater, but perhaps not in Congress, which offers similar entertainment at much more expense.)

While the national media engage in childish name calling, egged on by cable channel hucksters, no one is paying much attention to the fact that the, ah, recovery, is, er, underway. Everything isn’t fixed, but most of it is sure looking up.

I’ve seen the same phenomena in organizations among management. They meet, discuss, hold side meetings, complain to colleagues, exchange memos and email, give lip service to the powerful, then go back and do what they want anyway. And then I’m brought in by an executive who can’t understand why nothing gets done!

Business gets all tied up in its own shorts the same way as Congress. No one provides the leadership to overcome the interest groups, those who feel ignored, those who believe they are perpetual “victims,” and those who are just intractably opposed to anything new (which almost always includes the legal department, and Congress is chock full of lawyers). I remember being called in for strategic help by a huge, national professional trade association. They had a 54-member board, no executive committee, and 55 different opinions! “We’re going to grow smaller,” I directed.

A major Fortune 25 company stunned me with “pre-meetings,” which were intended to pound out difficulties that no one wanted raised during the official meetings, because no one wanted to seem as though they weren’t team players. This eventually worked, but took about eight times longer than an honest, open debate. One person finally said, exhausted from being so polite, “Let’s put the dead rat on the table!” I found that rather elegant, though my retirement plan was not vested there.

Let’s stop worrying about nonsense, such as the President’s message to kids to study hard, or an organization’s demand that it improve customer service. I’m willing to believe there is no ulterior motive, except for studying hard and improving customer service. We’ve all become too paranoid, driven by media which seem to thrive on paranoia—their own, first and foremost.

You know, as children, we used to scream at those we suspected were trying to scam us, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

A coincidental combination? I think not.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Most of you know that I feel that HR is an unnecessary function. The transactional stuff is better done on an outsourced basis, and the transformational stuff is too difficult for the usual denizens of HR, who have little credibility and fall victim to every academic and training firm fad ever invented. I often ask skeptics: Can you name me two top HR executives in the last five years who went on to become CEO of Fortune 500 organizations? (You’ll find COOs, CIOs, Actuaries, General Counsels, even Vice Presidents of other functions, but not the top HR person.)

David Fields has kindly donated the following true story:

“Amidst a conversation with the CEO of a large advertising agency yesterday:

” ‘My first job was in HR for and my role gave me access to the profiles of every CEO and senior executive across the organization. After reviewing all of them two things were apparent: first, not a single one made the top ranks from HR; second, every one of them had done at least a stint in sales. I immediately transferred to a spot in sales, and the rest is history.’

“His comment also speaks volumes about the people who choose to stay in HR.”

I once wrote an article for a magazine suggesting that no one should ever be allowed to spend a career in HR. We were bombarded with letters—from career HR people, and no one else!

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Look closely for the brown spider cited in my previous blog post.

Koufax the Wonder Dog attempts to hide in the mud and ambush geese. No waterfowl were harmed in this pursuit, but two of us had to bathe Koufax once we got him out of our pond.

We shot The Writing on the Wall today, so I used both cars in one of the opening shots.

Amtrak security hard at work between luggage and a hard place. Lot of papers there yet to go through. Photo taken midway between Providence and New York.

Courtesy of David Lim and reported by Agence France Presse:

July 3, 2009
Think positive? Think again
WASHINGTON – REPEATING positive statements such as ‘I am a lovable person’
or ‘I will succeed’ makes some people feel worse about themselves instead of
raising their self-esteem, a study showed on Thursday.

‘From at least as far back as Norman Vincent Peale’s (1952) ‘The Power of
Positive Thinking,’ the media have advocated saying favourable things to
oneself,’ said the study by Canadian psychologists, which was published in
‘Psychological Science.’

It cites a popular self-help magazine that advises its readers to: ‘Try
chanting: I’m powerful, I’m strong, and nothing in this world can stop me,’
but says the practice doesn’t work for everyone.

Positive self-statements make people who are already down on themselves feel
worse rather than better, found the study conducted by psychologists Joanne
Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the
University of New Brunswick.

For the study, the psychologists asked people with low self-esteem and
people with high self-esteem to repeat the phrase: ‘I am a lovable person,’
and then measured participants’ moods and feelings about themselves.

What they found is that individuals who started out with low self-esteem
felt worse after repeating the positive self-statement.

‘I think that what happens is that when a low self-esteem person repeats
positive thoughts, they probably have contradictory thoughts,’ Ms Wood told
AFP.

‘So, if they’re saying ‘I’m a lovable person,’ they might be thinking,
‘Well, I’m not always lovable’ or ‘I’m not lovable in this way,’ and these
contradictory thoughts may overwhelm the positive thoughts,’ she said.

Although positive thinking does appear to be effective when it’s part of a
broader programme of therapy, on its own it tends to have the reverse effect
of what it is supposed to do, said Ms Wood, urging self-help books,
magazines and TV shows to stop sending a message that just chanting a
positive mantra will raise self-esteem.

‘It’s frustrating to people when they try it and it doesn’t work for them,’
Ms Wood told AFP. — AFP

I’m conducting the Workshop Workshop™ at the Hyatt Regency on Goat Island in Newport. There are a thousand Navy and Marine officers here attending meetings that would normally be held at the Naval War College a mile away, but their big conference center is undergoing renovations.

The place is dripping in brass, bling, and braid, but the officers are polite, if somewhat removed. They seem to tolerate civilians, but are not exceptionally cordial. The treat the hotel staff, in my observation, as if they aren’t even there. There is more than a whiff of arrogance in the air.

During the morning, I find a Marine colonel helping himself to our refreshment station, since it wasn’t crowded, intended to serve only the 11 of us. I pointed out that this wasn’t the food station for his group, and he immediately became hostile. (I had experienced this with a Navy captain slightly earlier, who gave me a dirty look, almost a sneer, and moved on.) The colonel barked, “What difference does it make where I eat?!”

I told him that, first, as his colleagues seemed to be following him, there wouldn’t be enough for my small group and, second, I was paying for this, not the government.

He flew into a rage, grabbed his coffee, and as I began laughing with the hotel person nearby, he raced back, pulled out his wallet, and screamed, “How much is your coffee??!! How much??!! I’ll pay for it!!”

I had, by this time, had it with his assumption we were inferior beings. People were staring. “It’s $400,” I said calmly. “You want to showboat, colonel, you want to be a big deal? It’s $400.” He threw a few dollar bills on the table an spun around shouting, “We’re all Americans here!”

Oh, I had missed that. Perhaps I should have offered him my car in that case?

I admire people who sign up to defend this country, and I’m eternally appreciative of those who put themselves in harm’s way for the rest of us. But I’m repelled by people who aren’t accustomed to anyone with less brass on their shoulder questioning them, who feel that their rank includes dominance over civilians, and who mistake rudeness for a command presence.

You can’t be intimidated in the consulting business. Not by buyers with lavish offices, not by board members asking tough questions, not by unions opposing changes. I wasn’t about to be intimidated by a guy who felt he could call his own shots no matter where he was.

The colonel was welcome to my coffee and refreshments, if he had made a mistake, but he’s not welcome to treat people without dignity and with the attitude that an eagle on his shoulder makes him superior as a human being. If he can’t admit to a simple mistake in a coffee line, and flies into a rage when shown his error, what is he like when he leads people into battle? What are the repercussions of his poor judgment then?

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Here is a passage from the most recent edition of Balancing Act®, my free, monthly newsletter:

• In an age where everyone has a tip jar out, even the cashiers at Starbuck’s (where they should tip you to put up with the pomposity), here are two job classifications which often go undertipped: bartenders and hotel chamber maids.

Well, sure enough, I received this response from an outraged barista whom I’ll call “Milly”:

“I have been a subscriber to your newsletter for many years and gain great value from it and your various thoughts and observations.

“I’ve not written before, but feel compelled to express deep disappointment in your comment about the baristas at Starbucks. Many of those baristas are among the finest humans on earth. I work for Starbucks, but I am responding only as a concerned citizen and proud customer.

“Your remarks offended me and I’ll have to determine if I remain a subscriber. In the future, I hope you will consider that you are a person in a position to influence and in this case I feel you used extremely poor judgment and your callous statement did nothing to further the point you intended to make.”

I wrote back to tell her that if she chose to cancel her free subscription, she should do so. My experience is that confident, healthy people readily accept light mockery, and that a highly developed sense of humor is a sign of high intellect. Conversely, people who are thin-skinned and find offense around every corner usually suffer from low self-esteem.

I’ve been happily dealing with consulting jokes forever (my favorite: “A consultant is someone who comes to study a problem and then remains to become part of it.”). I’ve dealt with jokes about Rhode Island, where I live (don’t ask), my lifestyle, my origins (Union City, NJ), you name it. At the conclusion of every edition of Balancing Act is a brief story of yet another of my own bonehead maneuvers.

Starbucks IS pompous. (I once heard a “barista” say that he did not know what an “iced tea” is, since it’s not on the menu of grand vente mucho soy pretension.) But even if it’s not pretentious in your eyes, we all still need to get a life. How seriously can we take ourselves? Nothing we do is about to influence the direction of western civilization. We’re orbiting an exploding star. Lighten up.

My introduction, when keynoting, often includes the fact that I’ve been to 49 states but am afraid to go to North Dakota. Everyone laughs. Sure enough, one woman remarked at one speech during a break that she was from North Dakota, and was sure that anyone else from North Dakota would be equally offended.

“Then why didn’t you leave?” asked my wife, “and give your seat to someone in the standing-room-only crowd who wanted to hear my husband speak?”

Life is short. But it can be incredibly shorter if you take yourself too seriously, have no sense of humor, or think that someone asking you about a half-decaf, soy, double-shot, grande vente, Pompachito isn’t screamingly funny!

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Below is the shamelessly promoters group spending several awesome days (and nights) in Rhode Island (April 2009) learning and discussing how to set up brilliant marketing and escape the “best kept secret” cave.

Left to right: Guido Quelle, Dortmund, Germany; Kim Wilkerson, Cedar Rapids, IA; Alan Weiss; Libby Wagner, Seattle, WA, Chad Barr, Shaker Heights, OH:

The relaxing environment – Alan’s backyard:

There must be something left.

Buddy Beagle checks out the after-breakfast leavings at the recent Shameless Promotion Workshop at my house. He was preceded by people as ravenous as he is! (Photo by Guido Quelle.)

The Silent Shepherd.

Koufax tries to silently slip onto the silk couch and take a nap, strictly forbidden, but was captured by Guido Quelle who was apparently not paying any attention to Alan:

Three of the musketeers inside the loaner Bentley sedan (Libby Wagner, Kim Wilkerson, Chad Barr; photo by Guido Quelle, riding shotgun).

And the fourth musketeer (Guido Quelle):

That’s It!

The only one doing any work:

Great discussions over lunch:

Alan & Jessica at lunch on the water. Someday he intends to try the food….

As everyone who has not caught the swine flu now knows, Arlen Specter, the Republican Senator since 1980 from Pennsylvania, has switched parties. He is 79, and felt that he couldn’t win the Republican primary in 2010.

So rather than try to put up a courageous fight against the odds (as he sees them), or retire instead of seeking a term that would end when he would be 85 (he is the 12th most senior Senator), he did what others would find unthinkable: He switched parties in order to try to ensure another term. He will attempt to gloss this over with a thick brushing of ideological unhappiness with his party and the belief that he can be more effective if….yada yada yada.

Is anyone still surprised that many of us believe our elected officials are primarily in the game for their own power and perquisites?

What a great standard to establish! Imagine if a point guard in a playoff basketball game saw that his team was losing by 24 points heading into the fourth quarter and decided that, instead of rallying his teammates, he’d just switch sides! I’m glad the Navy didn’t feel that way at Pearl Harbor, or the Red Sox when they were down 3-0 to the Yankees in the playoffs, or Truman when he was “sure” to lose to Dewey.

I would imagine that Lincoln might have made overtures to Jeff Davis early in the Civil War, but that Lee would have quickly offered to join Grant after Gettysburg and Vicksburg changed the playing field.

I don’t believe that Senator Specter’s defection has anything to do with ideology. There are Senators on both sides of the aisle who have had mixed feelings about their own party’s legislation and position on many occasions. With very rare exception, they weren’t prompted to crawl under the fence. No, I think this is about simply ensuring he gets elected for a still another term so that he retains his perks and power (even though he would lose some senior committee positions).

It’s not about serving the electorate. It’s about being self-serving.

Now isn’t that just a great example for all of us?

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

There is an apothegm that states “Perception is reality.” In other words, people act and react based on what they perceive, irrespective of a greater empirical reality. An example would be someone treading water when the depth is only four feet, because they believe it to be deeper. (I’ve done this, and I’d like to believe it’s more than just a personal character flaw.)

Some people perceive that they have no chance, so they never try. Others perceive that there’s always help, and they never stop trying.

Of the myriad influences on human behavior, perception is probably the one most subject to manipulation. The advertising industry is dedicated to such contortions, from The Marlboro Man to bottled water (New York city tap water regularly scores highest in blind tastes tests with bottled water). There’s “free range chicken,” and skinny models used to sell everything from automobiles to vodka.

I’ve written before that I believe the current economic circumstances are largely perceptual. There is a great deal of money around and some incredible bargains. Unemployment approaches 10% (5% is normal and really represents zero, since these are unemployable people by their own choice or through other circumstances). That means that 90% of the eligible population is employed. Once the perception is pervasive that the worst is behind us (and, believe me, no one in government or academia has a clue about what metrics make sense), the economy will rebound. I’m betting it’s sooner, not later.

Any number of causes, both legitimate and bogus, are fostered and exacerbated by stroking perception, not necessarily by examining empirical evidence. I don’t care whether it’s the threat of the swine virus, global warming, recycling, the Loch Ness Monster, home schooling, or the chances of being hit (again) by a wandering meteor. We are so self-absorbed that we seem to think that if something is happening during our lifetimes it is unprecedented, or must be our fault, or must be fixed by us. That is our perception. The thought that we just might be a part of larger, immutable trends is abhorrent. Our perception is that we are the center of the universe.

The press is often the initiator and instigator of these causes, no longer simply the reporter. Which brings me to last night.

President Obama’s news conference in prime time last night, was the least contentious, least incisive, least investigative in my entire memory, even for a new President. It was a tea party with visitors asking to pass the cucumber sandwiches and the host maintaining jovial conversation as he poured and asked, “One lump or two?”

At one point, a reporter for the New York Times, no less, asked a series of “what kind of tree are you” questions, highlighted by what most “enchanted” the President. It was one of these dull company picnics where the employees sit around watching the boss play cards with his wife.

Don’t misunderstand, for all our sakes, I hope President Obama is a raging success. He’s done pretty well thus far. But where is the question about whether Senator Arlen Spector changing parties abruptly is merely trying to perpetuate his election at any cost, ethics aside? What about asking, “Will you take military action if the Pakistani government falls and nuclear arms are plundered?” Or what about, “Would you like to apologize publicly here for the 747 that caused panic in New York, and who will be fired because of it?” And by the way, who on your staff vetted all those appointees who forgot to pay their taxes?

Perceptions are fickle, and both the broadcast and print press aren’t helping, in that they are increasingly taking political “sides” and positions on contemporary issues, outside of the editorial pages. It’s no wonder that newspapers are failing across the country. They are no longer doing their job. Broadcast news is scarcely better.

What perceptions are you validating or invalidating, and what perceptions are you creating and sustaining with your clients, your prospects, and yourself? Sometimes you have to ensure you are truly living in reality.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Recently, the Brown University faculty voted not to observe Columbus Day, but rather to observe “spring weekend,” or some such thing. This was because some students were balking that old Chris was an oppressor. Never mind the fact that he suffered discrimination for both his nationality and ideas in Spain and overcame these to prove that you could sail west and find land, and that he was merely conforming to the social mores of his time when he met aboriginal peoples, since he didn’t have the benefit of being a member of the enlightened Brown faculty in the 21st Century.

And let’s not consider the fact that Brown is named after a descendant of one of the most heinous slave traders in history, whose family still retains wealth generated from those beginnings. Why not change the name of the university? Now that would be a remarkable act of social conscience. Of course, that could endanger endowments, faculty salaries, scholarships….. Okay, forget it.

I wonder how long before Brown’s faculty passes a resolution condemning the Navy seals, the U.S. government, and the crew of the civilian ship for killing poor, oppressed, maritime freedom fighters by shooting them to save the captain’s life? Stay tuned.

Is this where you really want to send your kid to be educated?

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Tom Fishburne has kindly given me permission to reprint this cartoon he created for his blog. I think it symbolizes the nuttiness of current evaluation systems and the huge amounts of time wasted by people who don’t know how to evaluate, trying to give feedback to those who have no respect for their evaluation.

I’ve just received an “invitation” accompanied by a cheap serving dish made in China. I’m invited, as a “thought leader,” to something called SANG in Las Vegas. When you go to the web site you find the usual suspects have organized this, all the “hot shot” marketing stuff promising you’ll make $40 million in the ensuing 15 minutes. All that for $5,000 or so, and let’s hope the refreshment breaks are good.

The invitation, a card sent with the serving dish in an “express” looking envelope, includes the following, and I AM NOT KIDDING YOU:

“You are cordially invited to join the worlds top thought leaders….” How many of them are thought leaders in punctuation would you think?

It’s by “invitation only.” If you want mine, let me know.

Newspapers are dying, with rare exception, all over the place. They’ve been owned by elitist families or unbending chains. They blame the Internet, younger demographics, and shorter attentions spans. In other words, everyone but themselves.

The problem is that the First Amendment is not some Holy Grail that excuses stupid and sloppy management, poor reporting, biased coverage, and outright fraud. You can’t try to police everyone except yourself.

The major network news shows are also losing viewers. They blame it on competition from cable, social networking, lower overall television use, ad nauseam. They’ve been unchanged in basic format since I was a kid, and Katy Couric does not a revolution make.

The problem as I see it is that the major media are irredeemably negative. They seek to tear down, to undermine, to tarnish. Sooner or later, every public figure whose besmirching might sell a newspaper to the lowest common denominator will be besmirched. President-elect Obama will probably have a very short honeymoon period before they are on him about his appointments, his diet, his action or inaction in the Middle East, his choice of a puppy, and his smoking.

The media seem to blame the readers and viewers as being “dumbed down” and wanting sensationalism. But it’s the press that has dumbed down. Anchors are merely reading TelePrompTers®, and not so well, often parroting the grammatical havoc created by some writer whose editor can’t offer much help. Newspapers make errors in their headlines. Every time I read a “moving” story in the New York Times these days, I wonder if the reporter has made up the interviews and quotes.

And no matter what your affiliations, the coverage, you’ll have to admit, is quite biased. I’m not talking about the people who are columnists or talk show hosts whom you expect to have a point of view and bias, I’m talking about Chris Mathews claiming it’s his job to make sure that Obama is successful! I’m talking about such crazy bias in the New York Times that you have to wonder if the story is factual or simply an opinion. Remember “right-wing zealot Charlton Heston and talk show host Rosie O’Donnell”? Adjectives are wonderful things.

TV’s “Mash” had a wonderful theme song, “Suicide Is Painless.” Well, it’s not painless for the media business. It’s painful to watch once-great institutions, where Edward R. Murrow and Ben Bradlee once held sway, fade into the shadows of their past. The Providence Journal, a skeleton of a once healthy, Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper, has recently put its own buildings up for sale (it’s owned these days by Belo, in Texas) and I’m sure it will disappear in a few more years.

It’s one thing to say that people get their news faster through other means. But it’s another to realize that the real problem is that the news is less biased, more balanced, and frequently more positive in other places. Right now, the major news outlets are trying to scare everyone about the economy, which prolongs the economic slump, if they’re successful. But I think they’re acting that way because they are so scared.

To paraphrase Santayana, they’ve lost sight of their goal, so they’re redoubling their efforts to get there.

© Alan Weiss 2-009. All rights reserved.

Before I go any further, might I ask that your give me some applause at this point? Just something prefatory, anticipating how good this article will become. You’ll see why in the next 600 words.

We’re in New York for Christmas, and saw “Gypsy” the other night on Broadway. We wanted to catch Patti LuPone before the show closes in the next couple of weeks, and somehow we had managed to miss this classic, a Styne/Sondheim fixture in the house of major musicals. The show was at about 90 percent of capacity and we had house seats: fifth row, center.

Laura Benanti, who plays the adult Gypsy Rose Lee, was magnificent, an elegant, classy stripper, if there ever was one. The cast was still giving it everything they have, yet it’s a dated piece of dubious resilience. Ironically, I kept thinking of the movie, which I had truly enjoyed, in another lifetime.

And I was aching for the reincarnation of Ethel Merman, the preternatural belter, who is the archetypical Mama Rose.

Patty LuPone, whom I’ve always liked, and who won a Tony for the role along with Ms. Benanti, spent the night screeching and overacting. She is the draw (she’s leaving the play and it can’t survive without her, since it’s too expensive to bring in equivalent star power in this economy), and her acolytes were present in full force, the same near-crazed outpouring of affection you see for Liza Minelli, Streisand, and Bette Midler, no matter what the quality of their performances. She put on the performance they wanted, all LuPone all the time, but not one that helped my enjoyment of the show very much.

At her concluding, iconic number she received an ovation, then camped about the stage a bit in accepting all the love. At the curtain, of course, we experienced the what-is-now-assured-Broadway-accompaniment, as certain as no taxis on a rainy night: the obligatory standing ovation.

I shall digress here for a brief history lesson. When Flo Ziegfeld (see the outstanding biography, “Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business,” by Ethan Mordden) was the impresario changing musical theater forever, culminating in the mighty “Showboat” and the groundbreaking “Ole Man River,” a standing ovation would be seen less than once a year and then only for a Broadway debut of great power. Several times a decade—that was it.

Today, you would think that the theater seats began delivering jolts with the coda, as people leap to their feet to applaud nothing more than the average. And these aren’t just the tourists from Kansas, they are New York theater patrons, lowering the performance bar as if in a limbo contest.

I’ve seen this phenomenon as a professional speaker. People are too prone to get up and start clapping, though I suspect they’re often just stretching their legs after an ennui-inducing presentation. (I’ve actually seen people asleep who, roused by the noise around them, leap up and proclaim a great speech. As they say, “In your dreams.”)

Why are we so anxious to shower what we should expect (a decent performance) with praise that ought to be reserved for Nijinsky or Callas? Perhaps it’s because we so desperately need to convince ourselves we’re having a great time. (Who wants to say they wasted $250 on tickets?) Perhaps because we see a few benighted souls arise and don’t want to leave them standing, alone and awkward, in their embarrassment.

Or perhaps it’s because we want that kind of affection for ourselves, people cheering us for simply doing our best, even if our best is really quite ordinary.

The Australians have it right. A standing ovation is very rare, and the day I received one in Sydney, so prolonged that I had to go back on stage twice and finally leave the hall for it to stop, was one of the highlights of my entire career, precisely because it is so rarely granted there. These people had no interest in making me feel good. They were expressing their rare maximum expression of thanks for an equally rare day when I was in the perfect zone.

We need to bring some calibration back into our gratitude. If everything is wonderful, then nothing is wonderful. It’s the recognition and acceptance of the mediocre that truly enables us to appreciate the far rarer outstanding and superb.

It’s being content with sitting and clapping politely for a best effort, that makes standing and yelling for the best you’ve ever seen much more fulfilling.

Thank you for listening. You may be seated.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

During his presidential campaign, John McCain suggested that the head of the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) ought to be fired. McCain was lambasted for being rash, out of touch, desperate, and (of course) too old.

Turns out the right adjective would have been “prescient.”

However, Mad Madoff made off with everyone’s money not just because regulators were cozy with him (or asleep), and not only because he was slick, but because he was trusted. He was trusted because he created the perception of an “insider’s” world, where there were actually people who could help you land on the sun and not be incinerated. You could merely enjoy the warmth and work on your tan.

So through the perception of special connections, and deliberately not wanting to know too much about how it all worked, investors large and larger were all to happy to act quite irrationally in order to fulfill greedy intentions. Yes, Virginia, charitable institutions and philanthropies can be as greedy as the rest of us mortals because they are, in fact, run by mortals. The Institution for Good, Greatness, and the Betterment of Human Kind is, unhappy to report, run by human kind. And they can be as avaricious and self-centered as, well, Rob Blegojevich.

People are stunned that whoever actually votes in Illinois could have elected such a foul-mouthed jerk to govern the state. (I live in Rhode Island, and used to live in New Jersey, so nothing surprises me and I’m not about to cast any stone at any time.) The truth is, people elected him and supported him who wanted something. The wanted a city job or contract; they wanted a favor of the local ward healer; they wanted their kid in a certain school. Or they wanted not to have to pay attention to details.

Politics is the great trickle down phenomenon. We get the kind of government we deserve, that is, the one we voted into office. There was no evidence that Blegojevich could serve as governor with distinction (as there is no evidence that Caroline Kennedy could serve as Senator with distinction, and there’s another story), but evidence is not what elections are about. Elections are about brands, drawing power, sound bites, manipulation of the press, and above all, money. In this last election, admittedly a defining moment in history, we’re proud that about 60% of eligible voters went to the polls.

That also tells you that 40% didn’t.

For Madoff and Blegojevich’s sins, there is a search for external culpability: The SEC, the intermediaries, the crooked political machines, deception of the perpetrators, insufficient attention of the media, you name it. But people made their own decisions to invest and to vote.

What do we hear in organizational America as consultants or as consumers? “That’s not my job.” “That’s above my pay grade.” “You’ll have to talk to another department.” I’m just finishing a vicious battle with Fedex over a box they lost for a workshop I conducted in Australia. The accounting people were only responsible for billing me, not credits; the claims people were only responsible for trying to find the lost books (never found) not credits; the international operation was only responsible for tracking, not credits. I finally wrote twice (by Fedex) to CEO Fred Smith and, after three months, got it settled, but at a great cost to Fedex’s reputation with me.

The show-stopping comment from accounts payable, after I had told them I had secured a credit and gave them the manager’s name: “We never make outgoing phone calls, even to our own people.” Funny, but when I was consulting with some of the best companies in the world, they had an odd rule: When you pick up the phone, you OWN the issue. You can research it, you can involve others, but you can’t give it away.

We all have to own our own issues, if you get my drift. You put some thought into whom you vote for, beyond your own immediate gratification to have a parking ticket waived. You ask for other opinions about investment options for your money, despite an exclusive club membership or secret decoder ring being dangled. You understand that the customer on the phone may just be vital to your success and a commitment to help might, ultimately, be important to your company’s success and, therefore, your own.

As solo practitioners, we need to “own” our business beyond having our name on the stock certificate. We have to own our issues and not blame the economy, the technology, the competition, or the society. A great many people I’m working with are having banner years, because they realize they can’t say, “That’s not my job.”

Some things, alas, are too good to be true. But some other things, listen closely, are too true to be good.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

The last airplane ride I took was on November 6, 2008 from Naples, Florida to Boston on Delta. The next one I take will be on February 1, 2009 to Dublin, Ireland. That’s almost three months between planes, which is fine with me.

Aside from the fact that you’re guilty until proven innocent at the airports, I’m convinced that there isn’t an executive in the entire airline industry whom I would trust walking Buddy Beagle. And I’m fairly certain there isn’t one who couldn’t be replaced by Koufax, the Wonder Dog resulting in improved earnings.

I was on a single Delta airplane, flying via Cincinnati from Naples, full fare first class with my wife, for over six hours. And not one meal was served. The plane was on time, and the cabin crews capable, though not memorable. The plane hadn’t been cleaned all that well. And it was, of course, a small airplane.

Not one meal. Just some snacks. And the gate agent in Naples gave me heat about my carry-on bag, which has only traveled as carry-on all over the world, so should be no problem, except he demonstrated it was three inches over his little measuring box, despite the fact it fits in the overhead. Our exchange ended with my bag on board with me and his appearing before the door closed to apologize. I guess it was a bad day for him, and still another one for Delta.

I wrote to the head of operations for Delta. She has not bothered to respond. I would guess that she’s too busy cutting seat padding or blanket size.

Maria and I have just been to New York for Thanksgiving, first class on Amtrak’s Acela. Traveling south on Wednesday, the heaviest travel day of the year supposedly, the car was half-filled, the service excellent, and I wrote a chapter for the fourth edition of Million Dollar Consulting, returned some calls, and caught up on my email, besides reading part of Updike’s newest book. On the return yesterday, their were perhaps six of us in total in the car, I wrote another chapter….well you get the idea.

On the Acela, which I take as far as Washington, DC, I’ve run into George Will, Ted Kennedy, John McCain and his wife, and quite a few others. This is not shabby company. They have never turned to me to try to make small talk about their product line, or made demands for more free liquor because they were upgrades from the rear.

My wife calls someone who has a larger train set than I do “choo choo man.” I’m happy to have this applied to me in terms of my traveling preferences.

I’ve been preaching that success and wealth are constituted by discretionary time. Thus, money is merely fuel for your life, and the pursuit of too much of it at too great a cost in time can actually erode your wealth. (“I don’t have time to see my kid’s soccer game,” means you choose not to see your kid’s soccer game. Of course you have the time.) My wealth today includes the fact that I can stay off planes for 90 days because I’m running events near my home or helping people remotely using technology.

I know I can probably choose a European carrier to go to Dublin, so I’ll have decent service, let alone a meal. But I am checking just to see if maybe there’s a train….

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

We’re waiting for the hostess to seat us in a restaurant, with one couple ahead of us and another behind us. Both women are done up like donuts, and I’m beginning to regret not going into my distant cousin’s lip gloss and blusher business.The woman in front of us turns around, sees the other, and says, astonished, “Marsha, is that YOU??”And the reaction, “Monica, I haven’t seen you since school!”And the response, gesturing to the man next to her, “Marsha, this is my husband, Barry.”And the reply from Marsha, introducing her companion, “And this is my husband, Dr. Cohen.”You can’t make this stuff up.

When I was conducting a workshop in London last year, a woman in the program asked if I’d meet with a friend whom she thought could really use my coaching. She said he was struggling professionally, and she urged him to see me.

After a day’s work, I don’t like to have business meetings, I never “sell” my mentoring, and I certainly don’t audition. The danger is that people will try to use an hour or more of my time for free help. But I agreed as a courtesy.

I was sitting in the lounge having a drink with one of the other course participants when the friend arrived for our meeting. In leaving, the course member mentioned how outstanding the day had been to the new arrival, whom I’ll call Roger. Roger’s immediate response was, “I certainly didn’t come here to get testimonials or hear adoration.”

That froze the moment, until the course member hurriedly excused himself and I wished I were going with him.

Roger proceeded to tell me all that was wrong with his career and how none of it was his fault, but rather the result of poor clients, stupid prospects, unethical competition, and a poor economy. He never asked for my advice, but lectured me, and when I tried to offer an observation, he treated it as a challenge.

Finally, I said, “I have to be going, but tell me something, why are you so miserable? You seem to believe that the glass is neither half-filled nor half-empty, but smashed.”

He said, “I’m over 50, overweight, balding, and gay, and my business is in the crapper.” (My apologies for the gross term, but those are his words.)

I don’t consider any of those conditions to be fatal or reasons for depression, and the business problem could certainly be fixed. But Roger had placed himself in a doom loop.

We all have baggage and we all have demons, and we’re all not exactly mainstream in one way or another. (Which is why we’re entrepreneurs and risk takers.) We can use our uniqueness—and the crazy nature of these times—to help propel us forward and exploit opportunities, or we can allow them to insulate us from growth, possibilities, and life.

I’m seeing too many people get down on themselves, and that’s a very powerful enemy. Look around. There are people doing quite well, often with more baggage than you’re carrying. If they can do it, why can’t you? Are they better? Or simply more disciplined and more positive about themselves?

What is the value you provide to others? To whom will you provide it? How will you convey it? If you can’t answer those questions, you need strategic help. If you can answer them but can’t achieve results, you need tactical help. And if you don’t feel like trying, you need emotional help.

“In the best of times our days are numbered. And so it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were assigned in the first place…the opportunity to do good work, to fall in love, to enjoy friends, to hit a ball and to bounce a baby.” – Alister Cooke

The first sale is to yourself. You need to make it every morning.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

I’m writing this on Wednesday at 33,000 feet somewhere above the corn belt, en route from Charlotte to Phoenix. I’m keynoting tomorrow morning in Scottsdale, then flying to LA to board a Qantas flight to Sydney for my week-long speaking tour starting Monday.

My flight to Charlotte originated at Greene Airport in Warwick, RI, about ten minutes from my home. My wife drove me over in the truck with the dogs, which was once a weekly occurrence, going back to the Great Dog Trotsky, but is now very rare. Before flying home from Europe two weeks ago, my last plane ride was in May.

At 6:30 am my wife, Koufax, and Buddy all yawned goodbye, and I headed for airport security, which is run very well at Greene. Three security people checked IDs in a fast moving line, and I reached my guy in less than 30 seconds. He held up my passport, looked at my boarding pass, made a crack about my photo, initialed the paper boarding pass I had printed up the day prior, and waved me on. This took about a half-minute.

I then placed in bins my liquids, computer, gasses, rare ores, change, Lone Ranger decoder ring, photos of Michelle Pfeiffer, mementoes from Monte Carlo, and enteric X-rays; removed six articles of clothing, and walked through the metal detector. As my possessions slid past, another security guy politely checked my boarding pass, then indicated I could repack and redress. The guy behind me looked enviously at my Pfeiffer photos.

This entire procedure took about two minutes.

Reassembled, I headed for one last guy at a podium next to a small exit gate. He gave a five-second perfunctory glance at the boarding pass, and told me to have a nice day, though with less relish than I would have preferred. I had plenty of leeway to boarding time, so I stopped by the shoeshine stand and took a seat while another customer was finishing up.

It was while sitting there, idly glancing at my boarding pass, that I noticed the wrong time on it: 11:20. But my flight, I knew, was to depart at 8:10.

That was when I realized I had pulled out the connection boarding pass, gone through Greene security showing my Charlotte to Phoenix boarding pass, which was now initialed and very official, but was not going to get me on the plane TO Charlotte. So, I simply switched the boarding passes, got my shoes shined, and got on board. Three trained professionals had approved me with the wrong boarding pass.

Now, these folks at security were quite polite and very professional and doing their best. But I will posit that the entire security apparatus is designed merely to give us a perception of safety and a feeling of confidence. It does not decrease any but the most amateurish of evil people. (The real vulnerability at most airports is the food, fuel, and service trucks which constantly enter and exit and traverse the grounds.)

The billion dollar security business is about managing perceptions. (I travel with a three-and-three-quarters-inch scissor, which is fine, but four inches is not. Who makes this stuff up?) Analogously, The current financial bailout is to give the impression that something is being done, though no one but no one has any idea about all the variables and whether it will work. It’s about assurance (not ensurance or insurance) in a segment, investing, where confidence, mood, and perception are everything.

The security people did their best but they are in a paralyzingly numbing job. Marshall McLuhan pointed out that the price of eternal vigilance is indifference. If three consecutive people could stare at a boarding pass not even originating in their airport, with a flight and gate that don’t exist there, and miss the error, what does that tell you about the efficacy of the system dealing with millions of people a day?

I’ll concede that perception is reality. And maybe a great many people’s perception is that all the fuss and feathers in airport security—the humiliation of being treated like a criminal, of taking off clothing, of revealing personal items, of being sniffed and frisked and delayed—is worth the time and trouble and fortune.

But my perception is that we need more substance and less simulation, more concern about probabilities, and less energy spent on innocent people losing a bottle of shampoo because it contains over three ounces of, well, shampoo.

I don’t know who’s going to be elected or even for whom I’ll vote, but I’ll tell you what kind of checking we need him to encourage at the airports, in our financial markets, and in our lives.

A reality check.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

I love television, especially shows such as “Madmen,” “Damages,” and “30 Rock.” So my wife and I settle in to watch the Emmys on an annual basis. Given current conditions, I was wondering how they’d handle the awards ceremony last night.

In the first 20 seconds, I realized: Horribly.

First, Oprah Winfrey cruises across the stage in a gown that reminded me of a schooner under full sail. She proceeds to tell us that this is a special and glamorous night, and to suspend all else because of the extraordinary nature of the awards. This on a day where the morning news shows were talking about the brink of economic collapse and many people are concerned about their life savings, we have one of the wealthiest people in the world telling us how great things are. What was that about?

This was followed by an appallingly awful opening with a gaggle of “reality show” hosts.

A digression about what’s known as “reality television”: It ain’t. The show “Survivor” is pretty heavily scripted, and there’s nothing real about dumping people on an island and filming them trying to gain 15 minutes of fame. “Deal or No Deal” is certainly “real”: A couple of dozen high fashion models done up like donuts allowing carefully screened contestants to try to find a million dollars in a totally random method. Happens every day. Dancing with the Stars? Come on. I like some of these shows, but “reality”??

In any case, the “reality” hosts showed that they need less reality and more scripting as the opening skit went quickly down the tubes.

I thought the awards were mostly deserving, except that John Hamm should have won for “Madmen.” But I found the tone, the superciliousness, the detachment from the true “reality” of the people who watch and support these shows to be startling. This is stochastic, of course, but I believe that the people on stage were actually afraid to take on the economy and the bizarre discordance of the awards ceremony.

You need a keen intellect, true perspective, and fearlessness to mock danger. The people I saw last night, with the sole exception of an eighty-ish Don Rickles, seemed to lack all three.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

PS: My daughter and the twin girls continue to do well, thank you for all your prayers and best wishes. Don’t stop now!

This is not a political endorsement or even comment, but simply the observation of a consultant and coach on the selection process.

If Senator Hillary Clinton received 49% of the Democratic primary vote, and is given great prominence at the convention, and her supporters are threatening in some cases not to vote for the party’s presidential nominee;

And if there are many more registered Democrats than Republicans among the electorate, and the only way for Republicans to win is to attract independents in great numbers along with some disenfranchised Democrats;

And if the Republicans are currently struggling with eight years’ residue of a largely unpopular administration, amidst serious economic problems and foreign affairs threats;

Then not choosing Senator Clinton as a running mate, a move that would almost certainly ensure election, tells me that Senator Barack Obama would rather risk losing the election than spend the next four years with Senator Clinton and her husband within his administration should he win.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Billy Joel sings that “the good old days weren’t all that good, and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.”

I had an interesting chat this morning with a very good guy, successful consultant, who asked if I thought that the executives I was dealing with early in my career were more caring, ethical, and focused on customers than the apparently more venal group running things today, at least as the politicians and press depict them.

As I thought about it, I realized that the good old days weren’t all that good. I remember work places where women and minorities were openly discriminated against or rigidly stereotyped. (Prudential had a “Miss Prudential” contest, with secretaries in bathing suits on a runway being judged by the senior executives, I kid you not.) Most managers smoked like chimneys and a multi-drink lunch was de rigueur. People who were incapacitated or disabled were not readily accommodated as employees or customers.

People cheated and stole, often in the name of the company and not themselves, but cheated and stole nonetheless. Customers were often “marks” or “food.” Conferences and meetings quickly transmogrified into bacchanalia.

Today, there are more watchdogs and regulators in place, drinking at lunch is frowned upon (and not reimbursed by the IRS to any serious extent), smoking is verboten, women and minorities are increasingly moving up and often taking over. The Americans with Disabilities Act has made a substantial difference. The private clubs are largely gone, the school you went to makes less of a difference, and the Internet has created vast egalitarianism.

There are still the crooks and bottom feeders who create an Enron and Tyko, but they are notable because they are so rare amongst all the firms doing business. The workplace and corporate America (and I suspect elsewhere to a large extent) are much more open, environmentally sensitive, and welcoming than ever, I would guess.

That is just my experience and merely my observations. I think the workplace is more open and accommodating today than ever before. But it’s also demanding better educations and higher skills than ever before, and therein is the rub.

When I was young, the primary and secondary schools were educating students. Today, they’re just employing teachers. But, that’s another column.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Well, Linked in is down already, can’t access my home page, I suspect because a question posted by John McCain has shorted all its circuits with people responding. Some network. Good thing the electrical grid doesn’t work like that. (Or maybe it’s so many people trying to link with me?)

I’m at the National Speakers Convention in The Big Apple, which is unusually good this year. Marshall Goldsmith and Steve Forbes were two of the keynoters, and they were superb. This morning, Bill Strickland told his story of transforming the lives in inner city youth through art and education, and it’s absolutely life-affirming stuff, pathos short of bathos. You just feel humbled by this guy.

So there’s the good news, and kudos to the convention organizers and staff for high-value learning. I was proud to be a member.

Lest I began to feel the world was becoming too perfect, however, I was moved to attend a concurrent session on how to get a book published. I’ve been published 27 times, with five more coming, so I have some experience in the realm. But I thought I’d pick up some ideas that I hadn’t thought of to help those I coach and mentor in this pursuit. I find it’s easiest to learn something when you’re already pretty good at it.

About 70 of us turned out, a panel of six or seven authorities were crowded together on the stage, and the moderator opened things up. That’s when it took a turn for the worse.

He began by pointing out that he had just come from Venice, having left his family, in order to be with us to moderate this panel. He then milked the applause he had pandered. Now, it seems to me, on the life balance scale of things, that anyone could have moderated that panel, including any of the six guys on his left, but not everyone could have enjoyed some more time in Venice with his own family. So, right away, I’m wondering about his choices. It wasn’t like he was a keynote speaker, or even urgently needed for this gig. And, in any case, why was it important that we know that?

However, the coup de grâce was yet to come. He then told us that he was, and I quote, “a crappy writer, maybe the crappiest writer in the world.” Yet he had published ten books which had sold hundreds of thousands of copies. So if he could do it, guess what, so could we (and presumably, so could my Beagle, who has many virtues but could also be considered a pretty crappy writer.)

I don’t know what his segue was, because I left, having at least had the veteran knowledge and behavioral predispositions which had led me to sit near the exit.

My friends, I believe in the written word and I think Guttenberg was a hero. There are typos in my work at times, an occasional factual error, and opinions, I hope often, which provoke and infuriate people. But my books, columns, articles, and newsletters are written as well as I can manage, and on the verbal calibration scale, that’s not bad. I’ve never been a crappy writer trying to simply create and move a product to make money.

Anyone who writes should be seeking to convey value and to constantly improve his or her craft, which is, at the very least, an ethical obligation. One should not claim to be Shakespeare or Dickens, but neither claim that the words and intent don’t matter and aren’t of matter to the writer and the reader.

And one should never deign to speak publicly with no respect for one’s craft or the audience.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

There’s a book out (which I am not publicizing here) from a restaurant waiter who had been doing an anonymous blog. The “angle” is that he “discloses” what the wait staff does to customers whom they don’t like, such as playing “hockey” with a returned burger before sending it back out.

He has been on the morning talk shows, yada, yada, yada. I find him an effete, supercilious guy who is grabbing his few minutes of glory. He doesn’t have much of a story, but evidently has a truly great press agent.

Among his mundane revelations (wait staff will spit in your food, pretend your credit card is declined, spill things on you) are his self-absorbed suggestions: Never send food back, don’t ask for a better table, tip at least 20% on the total including the tax, never mention that you know the owner, etc. Matt Lauer, on “Today,” never an exciting interviewer to begin with, seemed to hang on these recommendations as though they were the formula for peace in the Middle East.

How about a customer’s bill of rights: Don’t introduce yourself as, “Hi, I’m Harry, and I’ll be your server,” the latter part of which is self-evident and the former irrelevant. I don’t want a friend, I want good service, which, if delivered, might merit a healthy tip. Assume that a self-confident customer is not going to eat substandard food or accept poor seating when better is clearly available. We’re supporting you, we’re not lab rats.

How about you learn to serve and remove from the proper sides, serve meal courses simultaneously to all diners, and remove dishes only when everyone is finished, not individually? What if you got the drink orders correct, and the olives really are on the side and not in the glass? (A waiter at otherwise outstanding Radius in Boston told me he served them the way HE preferred them, and I told the manager I didn’t prefer HIM, which led to two free meals at Radius.)

Don’t ask me, “How are things?” unless you mean it, and not when my mouth is full. Don’t bump me, the chair, or my guests when you’re in the vicinity and certainly not when you’re serving. Keep your fingers out of the food and keep the courses at decent intervals.

Oh, yeah: And don’t write any dumb books about how you’re mistreated, because you can always find other work. Outstanding servers are worth a great deal.

Whiners are useless, unless, of course, they find a really good press agent.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Let me talk to you about what I call the “psychology of doom.”

This occurs when problems are encountered and people immediately assume the worst for themselves, for those around them, and for the country. I heard a speaker a couple of years ago (when the economy was much better than it is today, by the way) stand on a stage and bemoan the economy, as the audience joined in a round of moans, and acclamations of “Right!” and “Yes!”

When I spoke later, I pointed out that a lot of people were doing quite well, thank you very much, and therefore it probably was not the economy (nor technology, nor competition, nor Dick Cheney). A couple of dozen people applauded, and I immediately knew they were the ones who were not engaged in the psychology of doom.

GM is floundering because of world-class stupid management. The sub-prime mess was jointly caused by predatory lending and people who used virtually no prudence about how much debt they could take on. (It’s always someone else’s fault, which is a victimization mentality, a part of the psychology of doom, along with the poverty mentality that accompanies victimization.) The airlines can’t even get flights off on time on a beautiful day during non-rush periods, because they schedule flights so imprudently, so let’s not blame oil prices for their lack of planning. (Did anyone believe that oil prices would go DOWN in the long term??) We’ve wanted to reduce petroleum usage for a long time, yet the government has refused to change the support of highways and infrastructure from gas taxes, and is now unable to build and maintain roads properly.

Gas prices have been high in most of the rest of the world, oh, let’s see: forever. France has used nuclear energy to great advantage for a long time. (Paris now provides brief-duration rented bikes which are so popular that they are introducing rented electric cars.) Germany has long allowed for high speed limits, despite high fuel prices. Brazil is enjoying an economic Renaissance.

Newspapers are having very tough times, but a great many technology companies are thriving. (Basically, that’s because newspapers are dreadfully run—often by families with no great expertise other than inheritance—and they’ve been “fearing” electronic competition for 20 years! One would think that’s long enough to have successfully responded, but apparently that’s just the blink of an eye in journalism.)

I’m telling you that people are mostly subject to their own judgment, abilities, decisions, and discipline, whether deciding for themselves, for their companies, or for their governments.

When people are engaged in a psychology of doom, guess what? Things promptly get “worse.” Why? Because: 1) They pull back from spending, investing, prudent risk, innovation, travel, professional development, and personal growth; and 2) They actively look for signs of doom to validate their position of hiding behind a rock, and refuse to look at obvious signs of opportunity and growth by which certain others thrive.

I’m fortunate in that I deal with corporate clients and individual mentorees who are doing quite well, based on their talent and attitudes. I reinforce them, they reinforce me.

Doom and gloom don’t have membership cards to that club. And there isn’t a victim amongst us.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Most people write the way they change lanes on the expressway: They forget to signal which way they’re going.

For most content being written today, the Cliff’s Notes versions would be a tome.

A self-published book is like a home-cooked meal. The creator thinks its nirvana, but no one is mistaking you for a first-rate restaurant.

Most writing is as obvious as a ham sandwich, but not nearly as nourishing.

To write well, you must be able to think well. And therein lies the problem….

Writers create coherent themes, be they fictional or non-fictional. It’s hard to do that in an 800-word piece about your cat compiled in an inspirational “Tuna Fish for the Pancreas.”

Words are the tools of our craft, but experience is the lifeblood. Most writers are malnourished and lack utensils.

Less is more, unless you’re writing a “how to get rich” book. Then even less is too much.

When you begin reading a paragraph and, before you know it, you’ve finished an article or a chapter, you’ve met a writer.

Proust took months to write one sentence, and he’s unreadable. Joyce didn’t use punctuation, and he’s unreadable. Don’t kid yourself. You can be unreadable a lot easier than that.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

I’m introducing a new concept for the age: Blambush.

A blambush is an ambush in the blogosphere. Let me elaborate.

I never realized that people were so desperate to be noticed. When they have nothing to say, they have to create pseudo-news. Why else go to one of a kijillion mindless sites?

So what some of them do is this: They write to someone who is far ahead of them on the success track and with a far higher public profile and brand, and challenge them about something. Then they take the ensuing email and print it on their blog as if to say, “See, I’m debating with this guy, so I’m at his level, and look how I’m getting the best of him!” (This last “advantage” is achieved by only selectively publishing the exchanges!)

I walked out of a speech once, to an ovation, having already told the group I had a very tight window to catch my plane and I had to rush off. I had encouraged questions during my talk. On the way out, some guy who makes his living helping people to create blogs, told me he didn’t agree with my stand on blogs and wanted to discuss it. I told him that I had no time, my car was waiting at the curb. He seemed oddly contented with that answer.

Of course he was, because Google Alerts informed me two days after that my name was mentioned on his blog and, guess what, he wrote that I “refused” to debate him! Ah, it’s great to have that old Edward R. Murrow ethic on the Internet! (This guy would probably have to Google “Murrow” to understand that reference.)

Let me tell you when I’ve found blogs are most worthwhile:
1. They offer intellectual capital not found elsewhere.
2. They are written well, apply the language intelligently, and communicate effectively.
3. They are formatted coherently (I can’t tell who is writing most blogs, how to contact them, or what the blazes they are talking about—I especially love the long, mixed, James Joyce kind of block text).
4. They are diverse, and not harping about a single agenda.
5. The author is credible. That is, they are knowledgeable, have done what they espouse, and walk the talk. (A great many consulting blogs are written by people who are not at all successful in consulting, and merely attempt to sell things to other consultants.)

In the meanwhile, I still try to gracefully answer all email within the day, even if some of the writers are blambushers. After all, they need some excitement in their lives.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

We seem to be stuck in a world of the Lowest Common Denominator.

There is an effort today, that ebbs and flows, to “simplify” spelling so that “thru” for “through” and “ruff” for “rough” would be acceptable. It is said that this derived from the efficiency of text messaging. And many claim that English is so irrational.

Well, try to conjugate an irregular Spanish verb. Or check the declension of some French nouns and adjectives. But, then again, there is no need to do that since language requirements have been dropped in universities from liberal arts programs (and just about everything else). I had to read L’Étranger by Camus in the original. It was tough. I whined. No one cared.

In the interests of “self-esteem” we give everyone a chance, whether they merit it or not. We don’t want to honor the best of the best and many schools have ditched the valedictory, merit scholars, and class rankings. When I taught in the graduate school of business at the University of Rhode Island I was told flat out, “We give everyone an “A” or a “B.” (I ignored that stricture immediately.)

Low or no barriers of entry create LCD disease. Just because you can publish on a web site or blog doesn’t mean you have anything interesting to say. Just because you call yourself a coach doesn’t mean you have any ability to improve anyone’s condition. A self-published book or a purchased cable show makes you neither an author nor a talk show host. It just makes you someone who has spent money.

Imagine a football team which gives everyone who needs a self-esteem boost a shot at quarterback, or a musical production that allows anyone craving it a lead role, or a business which enables anyone to direct the sales effort, despite lack of track record, credentials, or talent?

This is a competitive world. Everyone deserves a common starting line and a level playing field, but they don’t deserve a guaranteed winning finish. That is earned on merit, work, and smarts. (Is there sometimes bias and politics? Yes. But not as often as professional victims would have us believe. Talent outs.)

Not all opinions are equal, sorry, because they are not based on the same experiential level, talents, intelligence, and success. There is more advice going around these days, thanks to a proliferation of media, than there is success. It’s become a Warholian universe.

Don’t be afraid to stand out in the crowd. Don’t hesitate to engage in healthy competition. Don’t be fearful of “winning.”

Someone else’s self-esteem may well be damaged because you deservedly “won” and they, deservedly, “lost.” That’s okay. That’s their problem. And it’s deeper and requiring of more help than you can provide by pandering to it. But the worst thing to do is enable it by supporting such corrupt thinking.

Don’t be pulled down by the LCD. The only thing down there are the bones of dead animals and the ghosts of bad ideas.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

I can guarantee you one resounding success: If you insist on being a victim, you will be one.

I’ve written of varying instances of this phenomenon:
• The woman in a wheelchair who deliberately did not announce her presence behind me as I had to move backward, so that she could chastise me for treating her as if she weren’t there (anybody else would have said, “Excuse me, I’m right behind you”).
• The African-American parents in an uproar because an administrator at a school has used the word “niggardly” (definition: very reluctant to spend money) and they took it as a slur. They actually had him fired until someone with common sense reversed the decision and opted for, well, education instead.
• An executive director who was appalled that I asked to stop the histrionics (definition: exaggerated behavior, especially in artistic works) when she interpreted it as my calling her “hysterical,” which in turn she interpreted as sexism.
• Those who want to discard “top ten” lists of performance, and valedictories, and “most valuable player,” and related honors because they or their kids “don’t have an equal chance to attain it,” or these awards damage self-esteem.

We see victims every day. Most recently a postal clerk was complaining loud and long about her boss. Her reaction was to do very little, not be of much help, and simply collect her check. I have a better idea: Either make amends with your boss and adapt a happy attitude, or change your job.

Now we have a writer to the blog, here, who takes the adjective “hysterical” which I used for her comments, meaning “funny,” (She claims that the “greatest minds of the 21st Century visit her blog—don’t you think that’s funny?!), and she has interpreted it as my calling her “hysterical” and there we are right back to the sexism victimization.

Recently, Hillary Clinton cited the “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling,” she had created, and made it clear that sexism played a role in her demise. I have a different take. She fought hard and long, but made too many mistakes that had nothing to do with gender, and had too much baggage that had nothing to do with gender, and simply wasn’t good enough to win. I really think she actually knows that, but I’m concerned about the victimization license being issued to her supporters.

Sometimes, you’re just not fast enough to win the race, or strong enough to win the fight. It’s happened to all of us, and will again, I imagine.

If you want to succeed in consulting, or as an entrepreneur in general, don’t case yourself as a woebegone victim of the winds, tides, fates, and vicissitudes of life. We’re not plankton, for goodness sake, and I mean no disrespect to plankton or other pelagic creatures.

Take the wheel, steer the ship, and navigate the course. Use the winds and tides to your advantage.

If you intend, on the other hand, to be a victim, I’m sure you’ll succeed. It’s just that few of us will find you very appealing or interesting.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Seth Godin was kind enough to leave some comments, which I appreciate. I’ve heard him speak, and he’s provocative and quite good. I think “The Purple Cow” is his best work and I highly recommend it. (It’s within a couple of thousand copies in Amazon’s rankings behind “Million Dollar Consulting,” sorry, couldn’t resist!)

The fact that a few people whom I’ve never heard of have had “huge changes to their lives” doesn’t disprove my point that most blogs are crap. There will always be an exception. As Damon Runyon observed, “The race isn’t always to the swift and the fight isn’t always to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.” I’m sick to death of people claiming that they’ve sold 400,000 books with an Internet ad or have amassed property in 43 states with reverse financing. And you, too, can do this! If it were that easy, why isn’t everyone doing it?

Seth is a tad modest or perhaps disingenuous about not having a brand before his blog five or six years ago. He’s been writing well-received books, and maintaining a strong public image, as far as I know, since 1999, including co-publishing with Malcolm Gladwell, who doesn’t have a bad brand himself. His blog was based on a strong brand in my book. Methinks he’s revising chronology to try to justify a point.

“Or whatever….” doesn’t give me much to work with, in terms of the ancient argument that any critique of modern devices could have applied to the Stegosaurus, which leaves the telephone, Seth’s tangible example. The telephone provided interactive communication on a real time basis to the common person. If the point is that so does Twitter, okay, maybe, sort of. But my points, as I stressed, are about intelligent, effective mechanisms to market consulting (and other professional) services. The telephone is important for so doing, but not Twitter, which is a very low common denominator and isn’t vaguely attractive to powerful corporate buyers.

I’m not sure about the “all rights reserved” archaic comment, which seems to be an out-of-the-blue ad hominem attack for some reason, but my archaic lawyer, when he rouses himself in the castle keep, advises that it can’t hurt and often helps. To be clear and legal, any words written that are original are copyrighted and protected instantly upon publication, and don’t even need the ©, but almost all of us use it, archaically or not, including Seth.

Wikipedia can be useful, but isn’t a replacement for original sources or original thinking. There is no vetting of the credentials of contributors and although it is supposedly self-policing, it’s too easy to provide a revisionist history within its common denominator boundaries. Egalitarianism has its moments, but raising the bar isn’t one of them.

I’m glad Seth wrote, and I don’t usually respond to commentary on the blog, but this is a useful debate, abetted by someone whom I think has done some fine work. However, let’s not be blinded by the light (or pixels). We are still engaged basically in Gutenberg’s seminal invention of movable type. And as long as there is no barrier to entry in Internet commentary or devices, there is going to be a retreat to the lowest common denominator, not stratospheric new standards.

Wisely, Seth doesn’t seem to take umbrage with my sentiments that 99% of blogs are crap, and I’ll bet him a favorable citation in each of our next books that Twitter will fritter away in about a year or two.

I seem to have struck a nerve, which is why blogging with a brand behind you is really quite effective.

© Ye olde rights shalt be reserveth. Alan Weiss. MMVIII.

I’ve just invented a new law firm, as you can see by my title. They specialize in obscure technical torts.

Someone posted a commentary here asking my opinion of the world of linked-in facebook, YouTube, and other assorted means of mass mischief. I’m not high on them from a business standpoint.

Now, I know, that there are “experts” all over the place claiming that social networking is going to replace traditional marketing, and customers talking to customers will determine the fates of businesses. Forgive me, but I also remember the “paperless office,” “checkless society,” and “The Friendly Skies” (yeah, right). I don’t really think that citibanksucks.com took a whole lot of business away from Citibank.

From a consulting business perspective, here’s what I think:
1. Blogs are only effective if you already have a brand. People come here, or go read Seth Godin, or Marshall Goldsmith, or Jeffrey Gitomer, or David Meister, because we’re all well known in our areas of expertise. That is, a blog follows a brand, not the other way around. You can’t create a brand just with a blog, unless you’re ridiculously lucky, and business can’t be based on luck.
2. It is variously estimated that there are about 200 million blogs (counting the strange Chinese networks stuff) and the overwhelming number of them are crap. They are unposted for months; they contain just the stream-of-unconsciousness of the author; they focus on bizarre trivialities. There is no barrier to entry for a blogger, and you get what you pay for. Most are poorly written and treat English as an alien life form. (I love the ones with no paragraphs, just massive text, that make no sense, and have no indication of who is actually doing the writing. Now, THAT’S effective promotion, huh?!)
3. You can use up all your time following blogs. Buyers of consulting services don’t visit blogs as a rule, and certainly not to make buying decisions. They may visit a blog AFTER they have a relationship with the consultant, which just proves my point.
4. Twitter is pretty nonsensical. Watching someone wash their hair or walk to their car is irrelevant to marketing consulting services. It is idiosyncratic. I think it’s fine if people want to do this as a hobby, but for solo practitioners and entrepreneurs, it can drain your life away. It is to marketing what text messaging is to writing a novel.
5. YouTube I find useful in that you can access some outstanding resources there, such as the lectures given at TED. But you also find all the schlock in the universe, and there must be a law that, to post comments, you have to have flunked both basic English and civility in primary school, because the proportion of dolts and louts who post things is frightening. It’s like being at a hockey game, but you can’t get a hot dog.
6. Facebook, linked-in, and all the rest of the social crawl space is fine for trying to get a full time job, or finding out who’s divorced, or sharing your latest hairstyle, or flirting. I abhor the linked-in automated messages about “good friends” who have asked me to join their network whom I can’t even recall, and I find it reprehensible to dump your entire contact list into this morass and annoy everyone who’s ever written you an email or sent you an overdue notice. I find linked-in to be the worst kind of spam.

My focus is on helping consultants and entrepreneurs to market their services better and improve their lives. I don’t think it happens with social networking on the Internet, and like television or alcohol, a little bit can be fascinating and diverting, but if you over-indulge you can boil your brain and ruin your life. If television is “the great wasteland,” in Newton Minnow’s famous phrase, then the Internet is “the great land waste.” There is so much potential for growth that is almost subsumed by a ghastly amount of unregulated, egomaniacal, derivative schlock.

With rare exception, consultants aren’t going to meet key corporate buyers online. The web is a good place to do some research (if you’re smart enough to realize that places such as Wikepedia are suspect, given the sources), order specific goods, and arrange for certain services (though the trend now, for example, is to return to human travel agents and abandon Orbitz and the rest of the automatons). But it’s a lousy place to find and meet clients.

I’m still quite convinced that you’re often talking to a dog. Buddy won’t make eye contact when I confront him, but I find paw prints on my trackball in the mornings and biscuit crumbs near the keyboard.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

PS: I’ve cut back on the Podcasts because my allergies are killing my voice and I don’t want to inflict that on you. They will return as soon as the allergy medicine, JW Blue, kicks in.

I’ve been receiving about three aggressive requests a month to participate in someone’s great program/web site/resource community—you name it. It’s always a “great deal” for me, yet there is never any money up front and I’m immediately to lend my name and brand to their endeavor.

But the “great deal” is so alluring! After all, I’ll get a buck or so every time someone listens to intellectual property of mine. And I’ll receive free DVDs, or CDs, or eight-track cassette recordings. And I get a fifty-cent commission if I send people to their site! Oh, yeah, and then the benefit-cum-insult: I can have my demo DVD redone for free, since mine is unquestionably not as good as their version would be.

I always write back to say “no thanks.” Not everyone understands either “no” or “thanks,” apparently. One guy wrote back to me urging that I reconsider, and dropped names like snowflakes in a bad January storm around here. I had actually done this guy a favor years ago, working at below my rates for sessions he set up for people I felt couldn’t otherwise get to hear me. He made a profit of course, and returned the favor by booking me in the cheapest, filthiest hotels he could find and not bothering to provide any local transportation to the suburban sites he used to save money. Now he comes back to me after years of no communication because he wants something. He was bitterly offended when I told him that I don’t participate in these middlemen gigs, and that he apparently hadn’t even bothered to investigate what I was doing these days. (He offered to help me build a community, and to build my brand. He could get me into varied media.)

He was so appalled that I would refuse him that, besides calling me names and suggesting I needed psychological help, he sent me photos of his home to try to prove that we was doing better than I! I don’t care if he is, but that he’s doing it as a middleman parasitically leaching off others is appalling. And who needs the shrink?

You and I can make a case that a realtor, or an insurance agent, or a financial expert, or a literary agent are learned intermediaries who lend value to potential transactions and enhance the results for buyer and/or seller. But I can’t make that case for brokers, and agents, and assorted other middlemen in consulting. If this is a relationship business, why put someone in the middle of the relationship?

Moreover, why provide your hard-earned brand and repute for someone else to profit from? The allure of quick bucks based on volume (“They will download this a thousand time a day!”) is false 99.99% of the time. The ego of being with other “names” on some site is important only if you perceive you are not of value yourself and believe that osmosis builds business. (In effect, you’re an unlighted ornament on that tree.)

Just because you don’t invest money (“It costs you nothing!” he proclaimed) doesn’t mean you’re not making a major investment. If your value is profound and needed, you should be able to provide it for people directly, or have someone pay YOU as the talent to provide it through them. Up front. In advance.

Resist the middlemen. Ask yourself if they are truly adding value or just trying to siphon off some of yours. I mean, come on, if they had real talent, why would they need you?

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

There was once a small company bothered by insects in the cellar, which occasionally buzzed out to annoy and distract the staff. So they found a pest control expert, but they demanded “natural” means to deal with the problem, no poisons. This was a highly responsible company, led by a compassionate owner.

The pest control expert pointed out that the most natural remedy for the insects was a toad, since toads eat prodigious amounts of every insect imaginable, and can do so in total darkness. “Okay,” said the company president, “bring on the toads.”

The toads finished up inside a week, but then took off to find more food in the various nooks and crannies of the cellar, and began to make an enormous racket of “dribbet” and “kerouk.” There were fears that they would begin breeding down there, and employees were refusing to go into the cellar for supplies. Once again, the president consulted his expert, but demanded a natural remedy.

“I reckon a snake would do it,” he said, “since they are the natural enemy of toads. A good sized constrictor would take care of all of them I believe.”

And so it was that a seven-foot red constrictor was allowed to slither into the cellar, and the croaking quickly stopped, after some frenzied leaping about into the walls. As you may assume, no one could round up the snake, and no one would go near the cellar door, so another meeting took place.

Before the president could speak, the pest control expert said, “Mongoose.”

“Do it,” said the president.

There was an awful racket for the next couple of days. Finally, only the nagging, persistent squeal of the mongoose could be heard, but it was heard over everything. “What would take care of a mongoose?” asked the president. And the next day, a hyena trotted down the cellar stairs, snorting and sniffing. The hourly animal rental charges were mounting up.

To make a long story short, these are not called “laughing hyenas” for nothing. The cacophony was unbearable from this single animal. And so a final meeting was held down the street in a coffee shop, since it was now hard to hear anything in the office and most employees had taken to wearing earphones. Supplies were being trucked in from a retailer in the next town.

The pest control expert said, pensively, while stirring his coffee, that there was no cause for alarm, he had a solution.

“Natural, no guns or toxins?” asked the president.

“No, a natural enemy,” replied the expert.

“What is a hyena’s natural enemy?” asked the president.

“A tiger.”

“Just in case,” queried the president, tallying up his mounting debt, what is the tiger’s natural enemy?”

The pest control expert was shocked. “Why, it has no natural enemy,” he explained.

It was about at that time, up the street at the office, amidst the hyena’s mocking laughter, as the tiger was being contemplated in the coffee shop, that the insects returned.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

As I’ve grown older I’ve decided to spend less time with people or things that annoy me, and more time with those that provide joy. I’ve also found it rather energizing to express dissatisfaction rather than stewing about it.

All that is prelude to this: Yesterday, someone unsubscribed from my free newsletter, Balancing Act®, and felt constrained to send me six paragraphs on his psychological analysis of me: I’m evil, inconsiderate, mock others, spoiled by money, responsible for Athlete’s Foot, you name it.

I wrote back simply to say that he sounds very angry—and I’ve written extensively that most such irrational anger is really self-anger transferred to external sources—and that it’s a good thing the other 7,500 subscribers don’t agree! Then I said, “Have a great life.”

Today, I receive notice that I’m featured on his blog, with a photo he took from my web site, and he printed my simple response as though it’s confirmation of his original vast, insightful, evaluation of me as a person. Then I realized: Once again, I had been ambushed by Internet!

This has happened before. One madman ran after me as I left a speech, having said that I had to rush to catch my plane, and wanted to debate the efficacy of blogs with me. (He was, guess what, a blog consultant!) When I told him I had no time, he pounced on me on his blog to explain that I wasn’t open to debate.

This comes when you get a bit more than the Warholian 15 minutes, which I’ve been fortunate enough to claim. The unsubscriber above actually bragged that he had irked the Million Dollar Consultant, and, of course, didn’t use the ®! These guys are like the paparazzi who scream insults hoping to get a salable photo for a low-life publication. How sad to claim your fame by denigrating those who have contributed more than merely taking pot shots at others after having ambushed them electronically.

Ah, well, I’d rather be on this end of the abuse, rather than at the bottom trying vainly to shoot down those on upper rungs. It’s hard to take accurate aim when you’re immersed in the mud.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Without taking sides in the debate last night, I have to say that Hillary Clinton looked at Barack Obama when he was speaking the same way that my Shepherd, Koufax, looks through the window at a squirrel on the bird feeder: as if she wanted to grab him by the neck and shake him until he was lifeless. It seemed to me that Senator Clinton was actually resentful that anyone, in this case Senator Obama, had the temerity to be running against her. I guess that’s just me. I’d welcome other comments here.

• The companies that tell you by automated voice, “Listen carefully, our options have changed,” don’t understand that we understand that they just don’t want us to try to get at a human being too soon in the process?
• We can not recall a tune we heard a short time ago when other tunes have intervened?
• It takes two weeks or worse for a client to pay an invoice in an electronic world?
• The bank can debit your account immediately, but can’t credit it immediately?
• The people introducing you at a speech more often than not think that it’s about them, and that they should be funny and witty and the center of attention?
• So many people who deliberately seek positions dealing with the public (gate agents, call center operators, postal clerks) hate dealing with the public?
• Calls to companies “may be recorded for training purposes” but, despite that, the service never, ever improves?
• It’s now permissible to treat everyone as a criminal first, and inquire later, as in banks requiring that customers remove hats and sunglasses upon entering?
• So many people are surprised about the continuing demise of General Motors, when it hasn’t had outstanding leadership, hasn’t produced exciting mainstream models, hasn’t produced excellent customer service, and has provided excessive union and executive benefits for most of the last couple of decades?
• If the U.S were serious about increasing voter turnout, it doesn’t make election day a national, paid holiday?
• The same people complaining most vehemently about the economy are those spending six dollars for coffee and two dollars for bottled water?
• There are more polar bears today than ever before, unless they know more about handling global warming that we do?
• Anyone could be surprised at the popularity of Uno, the quite normal Beagle who won at Westminster, over the poof balls and high strung?
• Amidst the furor over steroids and needles and cheating and suspect performance breaking cherished records, Major League Baseball still can’t forgive Pete Rose and put him in the Hall of Fame?
• You can tune in to just the last three minutes of a professional basketball game and see all you have to see, the prior play being largely irrelevant?
• There is more zeal and organization around proving a conspiracy at the grassy knoll in Dallas, or that alien bodies are being kept in Roswell, or that an Ichthyosaur dwells in Loch Ness, than there is effort being addressed to improve inner city, public schools?
• Southern New England media portray each winter snow storm as an unprecedented, alarming, newsworthy event?
• People can master the intricacies of a cell phone or navigational system, but not a left-turn signal?
• Jay Leno was funnier during the writers’ strike?
• No one is falling down laughing outside of theaters where Sylvester Stallone is on screen at 61 portraying a one-man army?
• Accountants and lawyers, whom we are paying, feel no need to adapt to our language (“The class of action, on an accrual basis, could be considered an estoppel, unless we file 1740rs, which requires collateral support ex post facto”)?
• Both Henry VIII and Richard III don’t seem so bizarre when viewed in contemporary political terms?
• I firmly believe that expiration dates are merely intended to prompt you to buy more product before you actually need to?
• We enable the worst behaviors around us by passively accepting them and complaining irrelevantly later or just absorbing the stress?
• Given everything, most people aren’t happier?

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Can someone tell me why the actor Heath Ledger’s death is as important, let alone more important, than the death of a single soldier doing duty in Iraq? Why does a millionaire movie star with everything going for him, including the luck of the draw, who takes his own life (advertently or inadvertently), merit more attention and sympathy than a lance corporal who left behind a wife and small child after he was killed by a remote bomb in a place he didn’t choose to be, fighting for his country?

Why was it a couple of years ago when two African-American contestants on American Idol were eliminated, Elton John called the voting “racist,” but when the ultimate winner was African-American, he had nothing to say? Why didn’t someone follow up with him? Why do so many celebrities get to sound-off and get press coverage on topics about which they know less than most ninth-graders, yet are never held accountable for their ravings?

Can someone tell me why Hillary Clinton, who claims to have been at her husband’s side and closely advising him throughout his Presidency, has never been asked to explain the reasoning it took to grant an 11th-hour pardon to Mark Rich, a convicted swindler and thief, whose wife continued to be a major political donor?

Why is it that teachers’ unions lobby and press for changes which, 95% of the time, are about the well being of teachers, and rarely ever lobby for improvements for the students?

What kind of dullness does it take to continue to channel 250 people and more through a single ticket collector to board an airplane? Why are we still in the “one-jetway, one door, one collection point” mentality of the 1950s? imagine boarding a train that way?

Did you know that the postal service faces tens of millions of dollars in suits each year from its own employees and unions, requiring more and more lawyers and responses, and less time and money spent on actual mail service? Wouldn’t it make more sense to attack the causes of the labor/management conflict, instead of arming for continuing battle? Has anyone thought of cleaning house and introducing all new management?

Is anyone else out there unimpressed with people who predict a stock market downturn for years, and when it finally happens they say, “Told you so!” I’m going to predict that someday we will run out of oil. Just stick around, and you’ll find I’ve been correct.

Why do we consider the dinosaurs “unsuccessful”? The Tyrannosaurus Rex, for example, lived for about three million years or more and was wiped out by an external event from the cosmos, not by a natural enemy or smoking tobacco. Humans are thought to be about 130,000 years old. Are you sure we’re smarter?

When the government funds itself on a deliberate philosophy of debt, why is anyone surprised when consumers do the same thing?

Shouldn’t the rebate being given to stimulate the economy, which is denied to people making over certain amounts, be granted to high wage earners as well, since they are the ones most likely to immediately spend it, and that’s the point of the stimulus program?

Don’t you think that if performance enhancing drugs really worked that airline CEOs would be buying them by the barrel?

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Montevideo is the capital of the semi-exotic Uruguay, bordering Argentina. The name refers to something about “seeing a hill,” not perfectly translatable. The harbor was the site of the scuttling of the German Pocket Battleship, Graf Spee. In 1939, after the Battle of the River Plate, despite inflicting substantial damage on a superior British force, she was intentionally sunk by her captain, Admiral Langsdorff, in the neutral harbor, rather than returning to do battle. This was not a shining hour for valor, and battleships are not about discretion.

I mention all this by way of historical review, because it was reported this week that the local museum curator, perusing dusty boxes, found a skull donated to the institution decades ago. Upon closer examination, and consultation with other experts, this turned out to be the skull a new species, specifically, the largest rodent known to have lived, approximately the size of a bull!

That’s correct, prior to South America and North America being joined, this 1,800 pound gerbil roamed the pampas munching vegetation and pretty much sinking in the mud. I wondered what might have caused it any problems, but then read on to find that it was probably a primary food source of the saber-toothed tigers, which would explain a tough life. (Ultimately, it became extinct—I detest “went extinct,” which is an abomination—when the land masses joined and more agile rodents from the north invaded the place.)

Except, is it really extinct?

We have giant rodents with us today. They skulk in the corners of large organizations taking up space, munching on the assts, and not contributing anything. They stand outside the doors of independent professionals and discourage movement and innovation, generally stinking up the neighborhood. They plod around meetings, mucking up objectives, confusing issues. I see them all the time in government, eating at the foundations of decency and fairness. You can find them in education, entire herds separating students who need help from faculty which revels in lethargy and aloofness.

The big rodents are still around, and we don’t do a very good job of admitting to them or exterminating them. And the last thing we need are more agile rodents to replace them.

What we do need, which we really can’t seem to find any more, is a handful of saber-toothed tigers.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Do I have this right? Hillary Clinton never cried publicly nor showed emotion when her husband cheated on her, lied to her and the public repeatedly, and then had to make a public admission of his infidelity. But she weeps in New Hampshire when her campaign isn’t going well?

I’m just asking….

Now here is an interesting agenda item from the conference noted:

1. Ethical and professionalism issues regarding the ever increasing the number of billable hours, including (a) the conflict of interest inherent in hourly billing; (b) the incentive for abuse caused by minimums and hours-based bonuses; (c) finding time for public obligations, such as pro bono and bar association activity; and (d) the importance of work/life balance.

ANNUAL MEETING PROGRAM
Sponsored by
The Committee on Attorney Professionalism THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 2008
New York Marriott Marquis
1535 Broadway, New York City
9:00 a.m.-12:35 p.m.

That was just one agenda item of several in a three-hour meeting!!

Alonso to his butler Stephano
The Tempest–Act V, Scene 1
–William Shakespeare

Kelly Pickler was a finalist on the television reality show “American Idol,” which blows Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame all to hell. She has a moderately good country voice, is more than moderately attractive, and is monumentally stupid.

Lest you think I’m being judgmental, I refer you to the current sensation on YouTube, that great arbiter of American intellect (“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public”—H.L. Mencken). The video depicts her appearance on the game show, “Are You Smarter Than A Third-Grader,” which apparently, she is not. (Click here to view)

Ms. Pickler indicated that she believed Europe to be a country, where they spoke French, but perhaps French was the country, and that she had never heard of Hungary, though she was familiar with turkey. (I’m not capitalizing “turkey” because I don’t believe she was talking about the ancestral home of Constantinople, if you get my drift.)

She was quite bemused by all this, though Jeff Foxworthy, the comedian and host, seemed to progress from amused to stunned to physically ill. Ms. Pickler absolutely reveled in her stupidity, teetering not only on her four-inch heels but also, methinks, on the brink of sentience.

And so the metaphysical question: Does an “artist” or celebrity (thinking Paris Hilton here, a Pickler without the central nervous system, if you know what I mean) need to know anything? That is, are they thought less of by their adoring public, or do they sell less, or demand less money, or have less access to the media?

It appears that au contraire is in order.

If anything, arrant idiocy and a profound lack of understanding about the world count for you, not against you. Now, you may make the case that so long as one is superb at one’s craft or profession, worldliness and sophistication and education are not vitally important. And I might make the case back that if those traits were nevertheless demanded, then gifted athlete Michael Vick might yet be making $25 million a year instead of serving two years in prison for promoting dog fighting and killing dogs. He may have just resisted all that bad advice around him.

Who knows, perhaps an athlete or two would have resisted the blandishments of performance enhancing, illegal substances?

Maybe our politicians wouldn’t lie to us so much if they had more respect for the voters as peers who were intelligent and demanding? Who knows? Stranger things have happened.

I’m stupefied watching Kelly Pickler (at least allowing us to share a cognate). I like some of her songs and she’s produced some good videos, as these things go. But to be so unabashedly happy to display world-class ignorance isn’t the mark of someone who is supremely confident or content. It’s rather the trait of someone who doesn’t have a clue outside of her particular talent and specialty. Is that the model we want for our kids or the standard we aspire to for our society?

How camest us in this Pickler? It’s a fool’s story….

© Alan Weiss 2007. All rights reserved.

I’m in a nearly deserted shopping mall in Warwick, Rhode Island on Monday, wandering through to find a few small gifts. To my surprise, I come upon an Abercrombie & Fitch, an upscale merchant which provides over-the-top catalogs and high-priced merchandise. Intrigued, I enter.

In I go. It’s like entering a ride in Disneyland. The store is VERY dark, with music playing, and its layout is fascinating because you cannot walk in a straight line. Rather, you must dodge and weave through plants and displays, toiling some three miles in one. (Listen to my Podcast on this site, The Calf Path, for an idea and the origins of that line.)

As my peregrinations proceed, I learn two things: I am the only customer in the place, unless some are hiding in the plants, and the store employees are totally uninterested in my presence. I have to traverse both the men’s and women’s departments, the main desk, and several floor sales people, two of whom are discussing their weekend plans above the music. Perhaps I’ve died, or turned invisible? Perhaps my outfit is too déclassé for the milieu?

I emerge into daylight, unscathed by any attempt to sell me a thing or even acknowledge me as a sentient creature.

This is why I can teach someone within a single week to be a great consultant. This is not rocket science, you don’t need models or coaching certifications, and all it takes is common sense. The store manager ought to be fired, along with the slugs inhabiting the employee parking spaces. The employees ought to know better, even if totally untrained, and the manager is not living up to the image or expectations of the corporation. He or she is stupid beyond redemption. They are running a store but not serving the customer. Input, not output.

A&F won’t be there next Christmas, because the store will be deemed a failure, either too “upscale” for the location, or inadequately promoted. In fact, it’s simply a victim of human failure.

They ought to just stick to their catalogs. I’ve never expected a book to acknowledge me, nor do I believe it can ignore me, and I’ve never felt lonely with one. As a matter of fact, I’ve always liked the pictures.

© Alan Weiss 2007. All rights reserved.

The headline on this column reflects the sentiments of youngsters who didn’t want to believe that the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” threw the World Series for a bribe.

Say it ain’t so, Roger, Jason, Jose, Andy, et. al. And throw in Marion Jones, the un-Olympic sprinter, and a dozen or so Tour de France competitors (including the 2006 “winner,” Floyd Landis), and a few thousand people we can’t even imagine at all levels of all sports.

I recall a high school football player’s father being arrested for sharpening the bolts and hardware on his son’s helmet and equipment so that they would hurt opposing players who attempted to tackle him. Then there was the legendary Rosie Ruiz, who “won” the New York Marathon by the simple expedient of taking the subway for about 20 miles of the course. When I used to watch the trotters in the Meadowlands of New Jersey in my youth, the point was to bet on the horse we believed had the “fix” on to win. No one even vaguely believed the best horse won. (The Sopranos, like The Brotherhood in Providence, should not win all those awards because it is merely a documentary.)

Even Pete Rose, still not in the Hall of Fame, which his accomplishments easily merit, never cheated at baseball. He simply bet on it.

These are despicable people. They don’t compete, they lie. They want accolade, fame, adoration, and, yes, money for cheating. Roger Clemens is a criminal. He took illegal substances to enhance performance, and then accepted Cy Young awards and increased pay for the illegally enhanced performance. And that’s not counting the merchandise, promotional deals, and endorsements he raked in as a result of deceit and deception. He’s made tens of millions by cheating, no less than an embezzler or a guy who sells you fraudulent investments.

While it’s politically correct to blame the “system”—the club owners, the trainers, the pressure, the lack of policing—the fact is that no one forced any of these individuals to take illegal drugs or substances. They alone make the decision for themselves, alone. Plenty of people have successfully competed at the highest levels without all this crap in their systems.

Because they had talent. Because they were disciplined. Because they had standards. Imagine Mohammed Ali fighting on some kind of drug euphoria? Do you think Tom Brady is downing growth cocktails before the Patriot games?

Sandy Koufax, the greatest pitcher in the history of baseball and certainly the one with the most character, retired at the top of his career because icing his sore elbow for hours after every game wasn’t helping and his doctor predicted major damage. So he quit and got on with his life.

I can just see myself walking out on stage and lip-syncing a speech. I would expect to be stoned. I have caught a few people plagiarizing my written materials. Why do they do it? Because they have no talent, no energy, no new ideas, not any sense of ethical conduct. They steal instead of succeed.

A pox on all their houses. You can’t instill class and ethics just by providing a large paycheck or fan adoration. I have respect for you if you try honestly and fail, but not if you try to win dishonestly.

I’m afraid it is so, Joe. The devil didn’t make you do it. Greed and a lack of your own self-worth made you do it. And that’s just pitiful.

Strike three. You’re out.

© Alan Weiss 2007. All rights reserved.