Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

How time and tech fly. I wrote this in 2017 and there’s been a lot of change since then. In short, while hypocrisy has skyrocketed, with the advent of Uber, Lyft, We, and others profitability has fallen way behind. Greed, however, is alive and kicking butt — think We’s Adam Neumann.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Tuesday I cited a post by Scott Belsky on Medium talking about how employees are often conned (my word) by founders, especially unicorns, when it comes to the wealth that is supposed to flow from their ISO.

As pithy as the post was, some of the comments were even pithier. I especially like this one from  colorfulfool (21st comment)

If profitability were proportional to hypocrisy, there would be no failed startups in the Valley.

Not just true, but succinctly and elegantly stated.

Founders love to talk about the importance of transparency, trust and authenticity.

However, their stock plans and pitfalls thereof exhibit such a high degree of opaqueness and caveat emptor that they kick a hole the size of Texas in the fabric of the founders’ authenticity.

Another prevalent piece of hypocrisy is “change the world.”

Do you really believe that another dating app or being able to evaluate a new restaurant or another way to buy your groceries will change the world?

While they may impact one’s personal world, they certainly don’t have the impact of something like Mine Kafon.

What is proportional to the Valley’s hypocrisy is its sheer greed.

Actually, when I stop to think about it, the greed probably exceeds even the hypocrisy.

Image credit: HikingArtist

The number tech CEOs who have been caught manipulating, lying, cheating, and other bad actions, all while claiming to be good guys, has skyrocketed.

Perhaps the result should be an additional title: CHO

While there are many (at all levels) who deserve the title, none has a higher profile than Mark Zukerberg.

His talk about caring for user privacy, security, etc., is common and constant, although results are negligible.

Hopefully, this time his blatant hypocrisy will come back and savagely bite him and Facebook.

Zukerberg stayed silent after the news broke that Cambridge Analytica covertly gathered data on 50 million Facebook users that was used by the Trump campaign for targeted advertising.

Then, on March 21, in a CNN interview he said, “I’m not sure we shouldn’t be regulated…”

He was referring to pending congressional legislation,

Honest Ads Act, a bill proposed in October 2017 that would require social media companies with more than 50 million monthly users to disclose information about any political advertiser that spends more than $500 pushing ads on their sites.

However, that statement, along with his similar comments in Wired, are pure poop, as the money spent lobbying against it proves.

Lobbyists for the company have been trying to dissuade senators from moving the Honest Ads Act forward, some Congressional aides say.

Facebook’s argument to Congress behind the scenes has been that they are “voluntarily complying” with most of what the Honest Ads Act asks, so why pass a law, said one Congressional staffer working on the bill. Facebook also doesn’t want to be responsible for maintaining the publicly accessible repository of political advertising, including funding information, that the act demands, the staffer said.

Facebook spent nearly $3.1 million lobbying Congress and other US federal government agencies in the last quarter of 2017, on issues including the Honest Ads Act according to its latest federal disclosure form. It also signed on Blue Mountain Strategies, a lobbying firm founded by Warner’s former chief of staff, an Oct. 30, 2017 filing shows.

Per normal, Zuk says, “I’m really sorry that this happened.”

So.

Apologize, say “it’s hard” and “not really our fault.”

Tell the public you support political transparency legislation.

Simultaneously spend millions to defeat it.

Hyper-pure hypocrisy.

Mark Zukerberg, Chief Hypocrisy Officer.

Fight back in the only way that matters: money. #deletefacebook, here’s how

Image credit: Ludovic Toinel

Walmart loves showing off all they do for their employees and it has a lot of them.

From its website (emphasis mine).

Walmart employs 2.3 million associates around the world. About 75% of our store management teams started as hourly associates, and they earn between $50,000 and $170,000 a year. Walmart is investing $2.7 billion over two years in higher wages, education and training.

What isn’t mentioned is that around the same time

Walmart lifted wages [to $10/hr], it cut merit raises and introduced a training program that could keep hourly pay at $9 an hour for up to 18 months.

Walmart especially loves to brag about its special efforts, such as those for military workers and defines its culture as “our values in action.”

However…

What kind of values enable the following scenarios?

The report says that Walmart uses a point system to discipline workers, and too many points results in firing. Walmart reportedly gives workers disciplinary points for any absence they consider unauthorized, and working less than half of a scheduled shift is considered an absence.

• ‘I passed out at work. They sent me to the hospital. The next day, they fired me for it.’
• “I got into a car wreck on my way to work and was sent by ambulance to the hospital. I had two fractured ribs and a concussion. I reached a manager from the hospital, who said it would be ok, and I came into work the next day with wrapped ribs and a concussion. The front manager then said that they wouldn’t accept the doctor’s note from the hospital, and they fired me for missing that day.”
• “My appendix ruptured while at work and because I already had eight points, I could not leave work to go to the ER without pointing out and losing my job. I should have been able to leave to go to the ER and not worry about losing my job. I had even said to management, ‘So if I fall out because of my appendix and have to go out in an ambulance…I will get a point and lose my job?’ The response from management was, ‘Yes.'”
• “I was vomiting blood and had to go to the ER. I was there for two days and each day was a point. I then had two days off, and I brought my hospital notes in when I went back. They would not accept them.”

Of course, Walmart’s well-known attitude towards women is front and center

• “My daughter was having seizures, I had to take time off to monitor her. They counted it against me. I passed out at work. They sent me to the hospital. The next day, they fired me for it.
• Katie Orzehowski was forced to return to work still bleeding after a miscarriage or face being fired.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so grim, but apparently Walmart expects events, such as heart attacks and car accidents, to be scheduled.

If an employee does not call in to report an absence at least an hour in advance, they receive four points, the report says.

Most ironic of all is Walmart’s tag line, which reads, “Save money. Live better.”

More accurately, it should read “Save money. Live better — unless you work here.”

All of this proves once again that there is a major difference between words and actions.

Image credit: Duck Lover

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Tuesday I cited a post by Scott Belsky on Medium talking about how employees are often conned (my word) by founders, especially unicorns, when it comes to the wealth that is supposed to flow from their ISO.

As pithy as the post was, some of the comments were even pithier. I especially like this one from  colorfulfool (21st comment)

If profitability were proportional to hypocrisy, there would be no failed startups in the Valley.

Not just true, but succinctly and elegantly stated.

Founders love to talk about the importance of transparency, trust and authenticity.

However, their stock plans and pitfalls thereof exhibit such a high degree of opaqueness and caveat emptor that they kick a hole the size of Texas in the fabric of the founders’ authenticity.

Another prevalent piece of hypocrisy is “change the world.”

Do you really believe that another dating app or being able to evaluate a new restaurant or a better way to buy your groceries will change the world?

While they may impact one’s personal world, they certainly don’t have the impact of something like Mine Kafon.

What is proportional to the Valley’s hypocrisy is its sheer greed.

Actually, when I stop to think about it, the greed probably exceeds even the hypocrisy.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Anyone who knows me knows that hypocrisy and fanaticism are tied for first place on my list of things-that-I-detest.

Political, religious and business hypocrisy continue to make headlines; rarely do I find myself laughing, but this time I did.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, the undisputed king of monopolistic uncompetitive practices is boo-hooing to both US and European regulators that Google has an unfair advantage in search.

Ballmer said Microsoft believes Google Inc. has done a number of things to gain an unfair advantage in the Internet’s lucrative search advertising market. He didn’t specify the alleged misconduct.

I am not alone in considering this totally ludicrous. And it’s not what Google does or does not do, but that Ballmer has the audacity to complain in the wake of Microsoft’s own track record.

And therein lays the real problem.

The idea that if ‘they’ do it it’s unfair, immoral, or illegal, but if we do it it’s OK.

We saw it in the arguments of torture being acceptable on the detainees at Gitmo.

We see it in the political and religious leaders who preach high moral codes while practicing immorality.

We see it in business leaders who preach ethics and practice them only as long as it’s convenient.

We see it in parents who demand better education and then condemn any teacher that doesn’t give their child a good grade.

We see it in colleagues whom we complain of slacking only to do something similar ourselves.

We see it in friends who share our private information even as we share someone else’s.

To paraphrase Walt Kelly’s Pogo, “We have met the hypocrite and he is us.”

Image credit: Kain Kalju on flickr

Last Thursday the John Ensign (US Senator) scandal triggered a post about the hypocrisy kids see these days in so-called leaders; not their lies, but their over the top do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do attitudes and actions.

In response, Dan Erwin commented that rather than standards, i.e., set rules, he preferred to teach his kids about covenants, because “Legalism, in all its forms, is really death-giving stuff. I go back to covenant…covenants get renegotiated.”

By definition, a covenant is “an agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons to do or not do something specified.”

But Ensign’s hypocrisy was pushed off the hot seat by the same day when South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was caught in an affair.

While I think Ensign’s worst hypocrisy ties to his position in Promise Keepers, it pales in comparison to Sanford’s when you consider his historical stances.

I agree with Dan’s covenant approach because I’ve always believed that humans and absolutes aren’t a working or winning combination.

But to renegotiate a covenant, whether with a spouse or constituency, requires at least a modicum of rationality and Sanford’s own words put that in question.

Over a 20-year period, ”There were a handful of instances wherein I crossed the lines I shouldn’t have crossed as a married man, but never crossed the ultimate line.”

Shades of President Clinton, whom Sanford roundly condemned during the same period.

Those times “took place during trips outside the country to ”blow off steam” with male friends.”

All the while preaching and campaigning based on a “family values” persona.

“…he would die ”knowing that I had met my soul mate.”

Isn’t that what his wife is supposed to be?

”I owe it too much to my boys and to the last 20 years with Jenny to not try this larger walk of faith.”

Owe it to what? The last 20 years of lies? Can you find anything rational in this statement?

Out of curiosity I did a completely unscientific poll of young people I know ranging in age from mid teens to mid twenties.

Much to some of their parents surprise they were fairly well informed on the subject.

None seemed either shocked or surprised and most said that the bad part was the stupidity of getting caught.

They said they saw getting caught as the real error in most of the stuff about which they’d read or heard during their lives.

And that is what’s truly sad.

While the destruction and disillusionment caused by leaders such as Madoff, Skilling, Sanford and all their act-alikes is terrible, the level of cynicism bred by this kind of hypocrisy is the truly tragic damage being done to our future.

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Image credit: I See Modern Britain on flickr

(Today continues a conversation initiated last Thursday and added to yesterday.)

Everybody lies about sex. Those who aren’t getting any say they are and those who are getting it where they shouldn’t deny it.

Governor Mark Sanford followed the same path of Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, Rudy Giuliani, John Ensign, David Vitter, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Helen Chenoweth (the first woman) and many more.

But you know what?

I don’t care. At least, not about the sex—or even the lies. Even the lies under oath, because I don’t believe that an oath is going to change someone’s attitude about admitting something they don’t want to admit, it just adds another layer to the lie.

As Becky Robinson pointed out in her comment I could have just as easily used the Evangelical community—Jimmy Swaggart, Marvin Gorman, Jim Bakker, Lonnie Latham, Earl Paulk, Paul Crouch, Douglas Goodman, Frank Houston, etc., etc., etc. and, of course, the Catholic Church.

Dan Erwin made two very salient points.

In his first comment he said, “If you reframe the context from leader to bureaucrat, then the ethical expectations change.”

Amen, Dan. To assume that an elected official or any person-out-front automatically possesses all the sterling qualities of a “leader” as defined by the media, pundits and leadership industry has no basis in fact.

The second point that hit me was, “The notion of “standards” etc. is often a set-up for failure.”

This is getting closer to what angers me so much.

Not the sex, not the lies, but the standards.

Standards that they defined, preached and worked so hard to shove down everyone’s throat—standards that not one of them has even come close to practicing.

Mark Sanford voted for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment citing a need for “moral legitimacy” as his reason. Now he cites the Bible and the story of David and Bathsheba as his reason for not resigning.

As to the apologies, are they for the action or for getting caught? Americans are so focused on the sex and accept the apologies so readily that the hypocrisy becomes mere background noise.

It’s the Richard Nixon mentality all over again. As Nixon said in 1977, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal,”

The reigning slogan these days for too many “leaders” seems to be “do as I say, not as I do,” which both angers and confuses their followers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dan also said, “No question but what they’re hypocrites…of the worst kind. They made claims they didn’t follow through on. However, the issue parents (and grandparents, too) have to deal with is the education of your children.”

We’ll explore Dan’s thoughts and personal example of this in the next Leadership’s Future on Thursday. Please join us.

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Image credit: Poldavo (Alex) on flickr

Thursday I wrote about today’s excessive hypocrisy using, among other examples, Senator John Ensign.

Like most bloggers, I post ahead, so that I wasn’t able to include South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.

Today I want to offer up some quotes from him and tomorrow I’m going to address the subjects brought up by Dan Erwin and Becky Robinson in the comments on Thursday’s post.

“The bottom line, though, is I am sure there will be a lot of legalistic explanations pointing out that the president lied under oath. His [Livingston] situation was not under oath. The bottom line, though, is he still lied. He lied under a different oath, and that is the oath to his wife. So it’s got to be taken very, very seriously.”

“I think it would be much better for the country and for him [Livingston] personally (to resign). I come from the business side. If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he’d be gone.”

“What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily—fell in very, very significant ways, but then picked up the pieces and built from there.” (King David, who slept with Bathsheba, another man’s wife, had the husband killed, married the widow, but continued to ‘lead’.)

“Too many people in government seem to think they are above regular folks, and I said I would expect humility in the way each member of my team served—that they would recognize that the taxpayer is boss.”

“We as a party want to hold ourselves to high standards, period,”

I hope you’ll come back tomorrow as this conversation continues.

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Image credit: moonstarsilverwolf on flickr

Oh what great examples are presented to kids these days.

Some of the worst types of hypocrites are thriving.

The first are all the ‘leaders’ who turn out to be crooks—Dennis Kowalski, Jeffrey Skilling, Bernie Madoff and a host of other hedge fund managers—to name a very few.

Then there are those who don’t practice what they preach; worse, they preach from very high profiles and at very loud levels.

I hate using political examples, but they’re the most prevalent.

One such is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who acknowledged having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky fiasco—which was also hypocritical.

But the bottom of the barrel are folks such as Senator John Ensign, a ‘leader’ of Promise Keepers, an organization which, among other things, promotes a teenage abstinence policy of education, who chose to screw around (pun intended).

Gone are the days when kids listened wide-eyed and respectful to the words flowing from political, business and parental lips.

These days the kids listen, and then check out the actions of the bodies attached to those lips, either directly or by Google.

It’s not about the sex; sex and power having gone together since time immemorial. And it’s not even about who lied when caught. Almost every human lies about sex, including the kids.

A few centuries ago when I was young there was a saying, “People in glass housed shouldn’t throw stones.”

So before you become a ‘leader’ for any cause or attitude, do make sure that your own actions conform to what’s expected of those who follow you.

But be warned; reasons, excuses and apologies don’t cut it with today’s cynical youth.

And if you’re thinking of following, Google the person and make sure that their actions conform to your own standards of ‘acceptable’.

(Be sure to check out Biz Levity’s irreverent look at the Ensign scandal.)

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Image credit: heyjoewhereyougoinwitht hatguninyourhand on flickr

OKaaaaaaaay. Here’s Wal-Mart as white knight riding forth to save the masses and bring relief to the environment and health care crisis.Wal-Mart is positioning itself as a do-the-right-thing leader. In a speech yesterday “…president and CEO Lee Scott today said the company would continue to demonstrate leadership and work for change on major issues important to Wal-Mart’s customers, communities, associates and suppliers worldwide. …working to lead an effort by major global retailers to create common social and environmental standards for suppliers. The company will also require all of its suppliers to meet specific environmental, social and quality standards and it will make compliance with those standards part of its contracts… “What if we extended our mission of saving people money so they can live better…“”

Isn’t that great? Have you seen the ads for $4 dollar prescriptions? Terrific, right? Gee, maybe a leopard really can change its spots.

But before you get too excited take a look at another article in Business Week called The Ugly Side of Microlending.

And remember that CEO Lee Scott is at the top of the approval chain for this move.

Wal-Mart Stores, which obtained a Mexican banking license a year ago, began offering loans for purchases at 16 of its 997 Mexican outlets in November. In the U.S., the retailer markets itself as a friend to the budget-conscious. In Mexico, it charges interest rates that might set off popular and political revolts back home, although Wal-Mart describes its terms as appropriate to the Mexican market. At one store west of Mexico City, a 32-inch LG plasma TV with a price tag of $957 can ultimately cost as much as $1,474, thanks to a 52-week payment plan that carries an annual percentage rate (APR) of 86%.

Doesn’t that warm the cockles of your heart? Wring your profits out of the poorest of the poor while positioning yourself as the leader in “saving people money so they can live better.”

What do you think?
Is hypocrisy and social irresponsibility alive and well at Wal-Mart or have they truly turned over a new leaf?

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