I know people who are fascinated by technology, by science, by pop culture, but it is people, the source of all that, that fascinate me.

Not people in terms of gossip, Twitter or Facebook; not just what they do, but why they do it.

For that reason I sometimes watch Biography and American Greed on CNBC, read biographies and articles.

So I thought I’d share a few recent ones with you.

I’ll start with a bit of fluff; not an article I’d normally read, but I was bored and clicked on the link. It’s a profile of Naomi Campbell, not glitz or sleaze, but an interesting overview of a woman who has done the almost impossible—stayed an icon of beauty and interest, and still going strong, for 25 years in an industry that typically uses them up in four or five.

Did you know that three Italian towns produced most of more than 100 commercial knife sharpeners in the US today? Here is the story of one of those families that is reinventing itself so it will be around for future generations.

In our land of instant gratification people are unlikely to want anything enough to spend years to get it. Now meet Cha Sa-soon, a 69-year-old widow who lives alone in a mountain-ringed village in Korea, who wanted a drivers license badly enough to take the test 960 times before she passed. Who do you know with that kind of tenacity?

Tell me, if you were going to run a Ponzi scheme where would you look for your victims? What kind of organization or network would you want to infiltrate? Wayne McLeod ran a small scheme as these things go, just $43 million, but that entire amount came from law enforcement officers at all levels, including Homeland Security and the FBI. But there won’t be a trial, McLeod killed himself, but first sent an email to his investors saying, “I pray that at some point in time you can and will forgive me.” Excuse me, I don’t think so!

Finally, if you ever thought that owning a bordello would be a good career move, but you didn’t want to deal with the sleaze, and you speak German there is a bordello for sale on eBay. (See pictures here.) Let me know if you buy it, because I’m sure it would be the kind of story I like to hear.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedroelcarvalho/2812091311/

People make the world go round. Love ’em or hate ’em they are the only thing that truly keeps boredom at bay. However, we’re not all fascinated by the same ones. Personally, I require more substance to fuel my interest than is usually offered by most of the glitterati and sports figures that many people follow; here are a few that I’ve enjoyed recently.

I always find salaries and those who receive them interesting and this synopsis of a Wall Street Journal article and the article itself (links in the synopsis) fill the bill. I especially chuckled when I saw that Steve Jobs would have made more holding his underwater options than he did with the restricted stock that replaced them; he also wouldn’t have gotten into a backdating bind.

Of all the articles written about Tony Hayward, my favorite was Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s guide to Hayward’s leadership skills. To wit: “deny and minimize problems; emphasize your own power and importance; make the story all about you; never apologize, and don’t even pretend to learn from your mistakes; and hang onto your job even when it’s clear you should go.” Although many executives practice one or more of these traits, the list seems a better fit for 99.9% of politicians past, present and, probably, future.

Next is an absorbing article about Alex Bogusky, the whiz of Madison Avenue—or he was. The guy responsible for Burger King’s success and Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” campaign quit. Not uncommon, but Bogusky not only left the industry and turned his considerable talents to making a kind of peaceful war on it.

Finally, the story of socialite Judith Peabody—a truly remarkable woman. Remarkable not just for the money she raised, but for her courage in the face of a disease that terrified a nation—AIDS. 30 years ago when even much of the medical profession refused to touch an AIDS patient, Judith Peabody spent hours visiting patients offering hugs and encouragement.

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Another post about fascinating people—an eclectic selection for your reading pleasure the day before Halloween. They include two women and three men; one middle-aged—two seniors, and two deceased—we’ll start at the bottom and move to the infinite.

The youngest entry at 54 is pianist Robert Taub, who had an epiphany while listening to his daughter practice her violin that morphed him from pianist to software entrepreneur.

“I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if she could take a photograph of her page of music and hear it instantaneously,” he recalled. “She’d know what the right notes are, and what the right rhythms are, and she could imitate what she heard.”

Next is 96 year old Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, a shining example of what a civil servant should be.

And though her story is nearly forgotten, she was once America’s most admired civil servant — celebrated for her dual role in saving thousands of newborns from the perils of the drug thalidomide and in serving as midwife to modern pharmaceutical regulation.

Judge Wesley E. Brown is a youthful 103 and still presides over his courtroom daily with competence and flair.

His diminished frame is nearly lost behind the bench. A tube under his nose feeds him oxygen during hearings. And he warns lawyers preparing for lengthy court battles that he may not live to see the cases to completion, adding the old saying, “At this age, I’m not even buying green bananas.”

Next is a brilliant outsider Benoît B. Mandelbrot, who died at 85.

…a maverick mathematician who developed the field of fractal geometry and applied it to physics, biology, finance and many other fields… He coined the term “fractal” to refer to a new class of mathematical shapes whose uneven contours could mimic the irregularities found in nature.

My favorite is an amazing woman who truly lived life on her own terms. At night she was Gloria Wasserman, wife and mom, but by day she was South Street Annie, also known as Shopping Cart Annie.

For several decades, Annie was the profane mother of the old Fulton Fish Market, that pungent Lower Manhattan place fast becoming a mirage of memory. Making her rounds, running errands, holding her own in the blue banter… Some ridiculed and abused her; others honored and protected her.

Finally, since it’s the end of the month, here is a link to October’s LeaderTalk Roundup.

That’s it for this week. Tomorrow is Halloween, have fun, be careful of spooks and stay safe.

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Organic foods may make you less generous. Men are dumber around women. People filter language through their fingers. New fathers pay less. Women use red to impress men.

Fascinating nuggets and just a small sample of the topics that are/have been researched and studied.

In the spirit of TMI, I found an op-ed lamenting the current fixation on sharing all life’s’ details to be hilarious.

But there is a new urge to behave as if life were some global high-school reunion at which everyone has taken some horrific tell-all drug.

A few days later I saw a study from Harvard explaining why.

Her goal: to determine when we’re most likely to divulge intimate facts and when we’re apt to keep our lives to ourselves.

TMI has another incarnation in the form of the not-bragging brag, which is truly annoying.

Enter the self-deprecating boast known as the “humblebrag,” a term devised by the comedian Harris Wittels, a writer for the NBC series “Parks and Recreation…”

Finally, if you love words as I do, it is interesting to note that similar sensationalism is found in the hard copy world, too.

Last week, the British newspaper The Guardian broke a story from the dictionary world that seemed, at first blush, to be quite scandalous indeed.

PS Sorry to be so late. I wrote this and forgot to click publish:(

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The world is certainly changing and not necessarily for the better. Not just banks, those constant whipping boys and deservedly so, but tech and the general population.

Google is a good example. It seems to have sidestepped its “do no evil” mantra simply by redefining ‘evil’ as it moves forward.

Google has increasingly found itself in the regulatory crosshairs as privacy advocates decry how it handles users’ personal information as it looks to maintain its dominance in search, which still makes up the bulk of its revenue.

Right up there on the privacy evil yardstick is Facebook, not in the US, where privacy is a joke, but in Germany where it’s law. Facebook claims that it is outside Germany’s jurisdiction, because only marketing is done in its German offices, while engineering is done in Ireland. Not everyone agrees.

In March, in response to the dispute, the European Union’s top advisory panel on privacy, the Article 29 Working Party, released an opinion that the collection of biometric data without the explicit consent of users was illegal.

For 20 years Craigslist has been held up as an example of doing good by doing well, but don’t kid yourself. It’s just another hypocritical bully that cons its users into thinking it’s one of the good guys.

This isn’t the first time Craigslist has claimed such violations. The Internet is littered with digital carcasses that once built on top of the listings site. Their pixelated tombstones are inscribed with one-liners that Craigslist killed access without any notice, or they were sent a cease-and-desist letter by Perkins Coie, a top corporate law firm that frequently represents Craigslist.

And now a word from the more personal side.

Cheating and using performance-enhancing drugs is nothing new in sports, but the blatant hypocrisy of Melky Cabrera took it to new heights. After he was named MVP in the All-Star game he said, “I think the one person that has the most influence on me is the Lord. He is the one that embraced me in terms of playing better.” I wonder if the Lord told him to embrace  testosterone—he was suspended for 50 games—but he apologized, which these days makes it all OK.

What is your reaction to a coach who talked more than trash to one of his own players and excused his actions by saying sexual harassment was acceptable because it is part of the sport’s culture?

Over six days of competition, though, her team’s coach, Aris Bakhtanians, interrogated her on camera about her bra size, said “take off your shirt” and focused the team’s webcam on her chest, feet and legs.  He leaned in over her shoulder and smelled her.

Of course, there is the easy accessibility of Twitter where people can revile their past employer or, from the comfort of their armchair, sit in judgment of those whose feats are so far beyond them 140 characters at a time.

Finally, a fascinating profile of Bruce Schneier and a look at trust in the digital age.

He is a cryptographer, blogger and iconoclast in the world of computer security, and his latest subject of inquiry is trust: how it is cultivated, destroyed and tweaked in the digital age.

Enjoy!

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

What is innovation? Is it really embodied in a good deal playing Farmville on Facebook for hours? I found an excellent definition of innovation in a fascinating article about Bell Labs and Mervin Kelly, who, over the course of 34 years, worked his way up from researcher to chairman of the board (something few people today would consider doing—assuming they could even find a company in which to do it).

By one definition, innovation is an important new product or process, deployed on a large scale and having a significant impact on society and the economy, that can do a job (as Mr. Kelly once put it) “better, or cheaper, or both.”

Sometimes that ‘large scale’ is within a small world; such is the case of the handball zealots of NYC.

“On a winter day the ball is cold, which makes the rubber harder, the air in the ball denser, so the ball doesn’t really expand and contract off the bounce,” said Ruben Acosta, 32, a hotel concierge who is known on the court as Superstar. “Boiling the balls gives them back their zing.”

While not all innovation makes money they do make waves. When large-scale corruption is uncovered it receives plenty media coverage, but how to address the endemic petty corruption that millions of people face around the world is a tougher question. In 2010 Swati and Ramesh Ramanathan and Sridar Iyengar started ipaidabribe.com, a site that collects anonymous reports of bribes paid, bribes requested but not paid and requests that were expected but not forthcoming.

Now, similar sites are spreading like kudzu around the globe, vexing petty bureaucrats the world over. Ms. Ramanathan said nongovernmental organizations and government agencies from at least 17 countries had contacted Janaagraha, the nonprofit organization in Bangalore that operates I Paid a Bribe, to ask about obtaining the source code and setting up a site of their own.

On a totally different scale is Tony Hsieh, whose dream is to fix the world by fixing cities, starting with Las Vegas, not as dictator, but as facilitator. According to his friend Sarah Nisperos, “But he wanted all these things based on happiness and merit and how nice you are. I said you shouldn’t build a strip mall, you should be downtown.”

Hsieh’s working through Downtown Project, a company he created with $350 million to spend, to seed technology startups, invest in education and attempt to build a walkable, vibrant downtown.

“You can’t dictate what the neighborhood is going to look like. But you can definitely help support and accelerate people’s dreams and visions,” Hsieh says. “That is really our belief as to what drives our culture. It needs to be organic.”

IBM is also focused on fixing cities, albeit with an eye to creating a multibillion-dollar business, starting with Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro.

But never before has it built a citywide system integrating data from some 30 agencies, all under a single roof. It is the handiwork of an I.B.M. unit called Smarter Cities…

Innovation often borrows from the existent to create something new; that process is especially thrilling when something relatively frivolous is used to make something with the potential to truly change the world. Such is what is happening as MMOG expands to MMOC. This is one link to share with everyone you know.

Welcome to the brave new world of Massive Open Online Courses — known as MOOCs — a tool for democratizing higher education.

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

It is useful to occasionally take the time to understand the origins and path of something that is truly shocking—or should be—and the role culture plays in it.

The worst first: San Bruno, California 2010 where a gas line in exploded killing eight people, destroying 38 homes and causing significant additional damage. According to employees, there was “…a pervasive corporate culture where employees were discouraged from reporting safety problems and feared retaliation if they did.“ If what employees say is true, and evidence is mounting that it is, management at PG&E should be thankful they aren’t in England where they would probably be charged with corporate manslaughter.

There is no penalty for maiming or killing careers and corporations. In fact, the guilty parties are often rewarded with copious amounts of cash, stock and other goodies. Such is the case of Jeff Kindler, ex CEO of Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, and Mary McLeod, his hand-picked head of HR. Together they trashed a powerful culture and brought Pfizer to its knees. Although Kindler was fired, his “exit package of $16 million in cash and stock, another $6.9 million in retirement benefits, and various other forms of stock compensation” makes you wonder what a hero would receive upon leaving. Fortune’s in-depth story is fascinating reading for workers and a powerful lesson for anyone in a management role, no matter the level.

Finally, an excellent analysis of the challenges faced and solutions used  by Jamie Oliver when he found that he had to change a community’s culture before it would change its eating habits (documented on Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution) as applied to changing corporate culture.

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It’s raining where I live. It’s been raining for weeks (months?); not all day but on and off most days. In case your weather is similarly unappealing you can enjoy the day reading some very interesting stuff. And if the sun is shining you can still enjoy this week’s offerings with your morning coffee.

A couple of weeks ago I gave you a link to a story explaining how GE and other corporate titans not only pay little-to-no tax, but actually get money back. But even more fascinating is learning how the wealthy, the ones whose taxes Congress keeps cutting, avoid paying taxes, too.

Ten years, not much in the life of a person, but it’s forever in the online world. 2011 is Wikipedia’s 10^th birthday Business Week offers up a great in depth article on where it’s been, where it’s going and the woman leading it.

Creativity is on every manager’s mind and McKinsey offers up some good ideas on how to ignite it. Being McKinsey they aim the info at executives, but with minor tweaking any manager can use the ideas.

Creativity is not a trait reserved for the lucky few. By immersing your people in unexpected environments, confronting ingrained orthodoxies, using analogies, and challenging your organization to overcome difficult constraints, you can dramatically boost their creative output—and your own.

Speaking of creativity… Have you ever wondered how the dinosaurs had sex? Considering their size it must have taken a lot of ingenuity to go all the way; Slate offers up some answers.

That’s it for this Saturday; rain or shine have a wonderful weekend.

Image credit: MykReeve on flickr

Today’s offering includes three fascinating examples of lousy leadership at work, two explanations of the worst traits of lousy leadership and a review of a remedial book for lousy leaders.

The first example of lousy leadership is personally embarrassing, not because it’s about me, but because in January 2008 and again in April I lauded this lousy leader for creating a great culture. Little did I know. The lousy leader is Sam Zell and his hand-picked executive Randy Michaels, now CEO, created a culture that rivals or exceeds anything you’ve heard about on Wall Street.

Randy Michaels, a new top executive, ran into several other senior colleagues at the InterContinental Hotel… After Mr. Michaels arrived, according to two people at the bar that night, he sat down and said, “watch this,” and offered the waitress $100 to show him her breasts.

And it went downhill from there.

Next we have a pair of lousy leader brothers, Sam and Charles Wyly, who have avoided paying taxes on hundreds of millions of dollars by using trusts and tax haven-based shell corporations. And these two Texas swashbucklers are sure that the upcoming election will see an end to their problems.

“I think it’s good politics to beat up on big companies and rich people,” said Sam Wyly. Soon, he said, “the election will be over, and this will be forgotten about, or lost, be shut down, be gone, will be nothing.”

The third is Goldman Sachs, a company stuffed with lots of lousy leaders. Not another article, but a recommendation to watch CNBC’s Goldman Sachs: Power and Peril when it repeats October 26 at 8pm ET in case you missed it last Sunday.

Greed is a constant hallmark of lousy leaders. According to Andrew Lo, an MIT professor who researches the relationship between neuroscience and economics, greed actually has a chemical basis.

“When a person acquires resources, chemicals are released in the brain that cause the sensation of pleasure. Greed is simply the addiction to that release.”

Can corporate culture turn good leaders into lousy leaders?

Organizations have more power to direct employee ethical behavior of than we previously knew.

That’s the bottom line of new research from the University of Washington Foster School of Business that demonstrates, for the first time, the relationship between moral intuition—a reflexive perception of what is right and wrong—and moral behavior.

Finally, the perfect gift for lousy leaders—a copy of Marshall Goldsmith’s new book, Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, and How to Get It Back If You Lose It

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedroelcarvalho/2812091311/

A few months ago The Conference Board published a study that showed that US workers were more dissatisfied now than at any time in the previous 20 years. James Heskett, Baker Foundation Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School, used that study as part of the basis for a discussion about the growing dissatisfaction. Heskett poses intriguing ideas, but the greater value is in the comments he draws from his audience.

Speaking of American workers, do you know what their favorite new TV show is? A show that is a giant hit with young viewers and even beats Desperate Housewives? It’s Undercover Boss and I highly recommend it. Tomorrow is the season finale (I think) and it should be good. The company is 1-800-Flowers and according to the blurb the boss gets outed.

Next a little insight that could increase job satisfaction. Do you pride yourself on your poker face or are your emotions as obvious as a TV show? Or do you censor some and share the others? Research has proven that facial expressions are important to social interaction and current studies of people with facial paralysis offers some great insights for the rest of us.

Finally, some fascinating studies back up the premise discussed in Even Among Animals: Leaders, Followers and Schmoozers. Interesting reading and even better dinner conversation.

Enjoy!

Image credit: pedroCarvalho on flickr