I think that Kelly, our Business Channel editor, better known as TaxGirl, has too much time on her hands. I’m not sure how she has the time with a husband, two kids, law practice, two blogs and numerous other involvements (I get tired just thinking about it), but she must because she’s always coming up with stuff for us to do—fun stuff, but still additional stuff.The latest is an Apprentice-type weekly challenge, but rather than getting fired we’re kicked off our team Survivor-style.

Kelly created the two teams, Aces and Pros, using all the Business Channel bloggers and gave us our first challenge. Here it is,

CHALLENGE #1:

Kay just started a new business marketing aprons and chef’s hats for children. After other expenses, she has $500 to spend on a marketing campaign – she doesn’t know if she should take out an ad, hire a PR person, start a website or what. What do you recommend as the best use of her dollars?

Miranda from Yielding Wealth is our team captain and a believer in Lao Tzu’s approach of leading from behind. She summarized our brainstorming and facilitated our conversations while contributing more ideas as an equal, not as our leader.

Kelly said that choosing the winner was difficult because “both entries were just stellar!” but that the Aces “took the challenge a step further and actually divvied up the money for the reader in real life dollars.”

Whoo-hoo, the Aces won (another great write up of our solution is here) while the poor Pros came in a distant second.

And all I have to say is nah, nah, nah, Pros. Aces on top!

In general, followers fall into two categories—thinking and unthinking.All of us have issue-specific litmus tests and look for a general comfort level with other followers.

Thinking followers usually have a broader definition of comfort, critically evaluate individual ideas and attitudes, as opposed to blind across-the-board acceptance, and are more willing to consider compromises. They often challenge their leader offering additional considerations, thoughts, suggestions, as well as open disagreement.

Unthinking followers are more emotional, rarely disagree or argue and may opt out of all thought and consideration following blindly and allowing the leader think for them. At their worst, unthinking followers are fodder for cults.

Most of us would classify ourselves as thinking followers, but are we? I know that politically I have one litmus test that is absolute and a couple of others that have high priority without being locked into specifics. Beyond that, I’ve always considered myself pretty open.

However, as extremists have polarized various issues I find myself becoming more adamant in my own feelings and less open to listening to those who believe that their views represent truth with a capital T—but I still want to live in a country where they have the right to say it.

A lot.

My focus isn’t meant to be just race or gender issues, but on the attitude that I’m/we’re-Right-so-you-should-do/think-our-way-or-else. It’s not the ‘we’re right/you’re wrong’ that bothers me, but the ‘do-it-our-way-or-else’ that shows the intolerance for what it really is.

During my adult life (I missed being a Boomer by a hair) I’ve watched as hate and intolerance spread across the country masked by religion, a façade of political correctness or a mea culpa that is supposed to make everything OK, but doesn’t.

Various business, political, religious and community leaders give passionate, fiery talks to their followers and then express surprise and dismay when some of those same followers steal trade secrets, plant bombs, and kill individuals—whose only error was following their own beliefs.

No longer are we all entitled to the pursuit of happiness if our happiness offends someone next door or living at the other end of the country.

I remember Ann Rand saying in an interview that she believed that she had the right to be totally selfish, where upon the interviewer said that would give her freedom to kill. Rand said absolutely not, in fact the reverse was true, since her selfishness couldn’t take away anyone else’s right to be selfish. That about sums up my attitude

I just wish there were fewer followers for all the Ellsworth Toohey types in today’s world.

With the national unemployment rate low, at 4.7 percent, and the Baby Boom generation heading into retirement, employers from Microsoft Corp. to rural hospitals are worrying about finding enough workers.

So is now the time to grab the talent when you find it and the heck with cultural fit and all that touchy-feely stuff? Bad idea. It still only takes one missed fit to stunt innovation, increase dissention, lower morale and undermine productivity and some companies are being more careful than ever.

Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier said, “We’d rather miss a good one than hire a bad one.”

Kris Thompson, vice president of human resources at Lindblad Expeditions, a 500-employee adventure cruise company, said, “You can teach people any technical skill, but you can’t teach them how to be a kindhearted, generous-minded person with an open spirit.”

At KaBoom, a nonprofit that builds playgrounds, the board was hammering co-founder and CEO

Darell Hammond four years ago over the organization’s high employee turnover. “I rationalized that they were on the road too much, when in reality, it was the wrong fit in the wrong role.”

These companies jump through hoops to turn people off, not on.

Rackspace – “They’re here for nine or ten hours,” Napier said. “We’re very cordial about it. We’re not aggressive, but we haven’t met a human being yet who has the stamina to BS us all day.”

Lindblad – It sends job applicants a DVD showing not one, but two shots of a crew member cleaning toilets. A dishwasher talks about washing 5,000 dishes in one day. “Be prepared to work your butt off,” another says. “It’s meant to scare you off,” company founder Sven Lindblad said. It does. After watching the DVD and hearing an unvarnished description of life onboard a Lindblad ship, the majority of applicants drop out, Thompson said.

KaBoom – sends prospective project managers to one of its four-day playground building trips, with the actual build on the last day involving 200 to 300 volunteers, many of whom have questions for KaBoom staff. “If they’re not easily approached, or they’re easily stressed—this is the way we find out and they find out if it’s not going to work.”

Having people who are synergistic with your culture won’t homogenize your organization. Culturally compatible doesn’t mean being identical any more than married couples are identical. It also has nothing to do with an organization’s diversity. If the team includes seven hard workers who take pride in being on time/in budget while the eighth member is a slacker who doesn’t care you’re going to have trouble sooner or later no matter how good the slacker’s skill set.

What responsibility does leadership—business, political, religious, community—bear in fostering hate and intolerance?

I’ve asked and been asked this question many times in recent years, since intolerance seems to be on the upswing and thought I’d throw it open to a wider and more diverse audience then normally present.

In fairness to the conversation I’ll start by laying out some of my own MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy)™ since it will color what I say—it’s almost impossible to write totally objectively. My hope is that this will become a far ranging discussion.

Please remember that this is my MAP I’m describing and not an effort to convince you of anything.

• I detest fanatics. They have a one-dimension view of the world and tend to think that any words or actions are acceptable because they are Right, with a capital R. Some are obvious terrorists—Al Queada, Army of God, Earth Liberation Front, Black Liberation Army—while others “merely” churn out, in often polished prose and from well respected platforms, their messages of hate and intolerance.
• I wholeheartedly support S.G. Tallentyre’s comment, “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it,” even when I’m violently opposed to the thoughts expressed.
• I do not support having those thoughts crammed down my throat or being forced to be like “them,” instead of like me.
• I doubt that my ideal is your ideal, so who chooses? What I consider close-minded or bigoted is very likely another person’s passionate belief—to me there is no “Right.”
• have enormous respect for faith, less for organized religion and none for rampant ideology.
• I believe that there is one race, human, on Earth that comes in many flavors. Preferring one flavor to another is fine, but trying to abolish any flavor is not.
• I think that ethics and morality are situational and subject to the interpretation of the historical time, society, and the various ideologies in ascendance.

If you have a response that you feel is too long for a comment please email it to me (miki@RampUpSolutions.com); I’m open to using it as a post just as I expect to draw post ideas from your comments. The only rule is that there are no personal attacks and the language stays fairly polite.

I’ll post some of my thoughts on the question tomorrow.

Yesterday I commented that politically correct (pc) seems be shorthand for hypocrisy. Three high profile pop culture stars recently provided examples by being undeniably incorrect—Mel Gibson’s tirade on Jews, which he claimed were “blurted out in a moment of insanity”, Isaiah Washington’s gay name calling for which he went into rehab (for homophobia?) in an effort to save his job (he didn’t) and Don Imus‘ comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team for which he apologized, calling it a stupid thing to say (he still got fired, but don’t feel too badly, he’s been hired again).

What if Gibson, Washington and Imus had stayed politically correct—mouths shut and attitudes private—would that have been better?

When people do give voice to stuff like this, usually when emotions are running high for one reason or another, is it just a “slip” as they claim, or more a case of what they truly think? Is our world a better place when people only think these things, but don’t say them out loud?

Do all the apologies, self-depreciating groveling on various talk shows and counseling really act as change agents for what someone thinks?

I passionately believe that people can change their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy)™, but I also believe that changing deep-seated attitudes, especially those stemming from prejudices and intolerance are not only the most difficult, but also less likely when the impetus for change is unplanned public exposure.

Today’s post kicks off a discussion about leadership, hate and the loss of tolerance.

A couple of months ago I wrote Are you an unconscious bigot? One of the comments pointed out that what’s funny from one person isn’t funny from another and that’s true, one should always consider the source of the comment before evaluating the comment itself.

However, The more jokes I see the more I wonder. Consider the following that was forwarded by a friend who is in no way a bigot (I’ve known him over 30 years).

Bubba went to a psychiatrist.
‘I’ve got problems. Every time I go to bed I think there’s somebody under it. I’m scared. I think I’m going crazy.’
‘Just put yourself in my hands for one year,’ said the shrink. ‘Come talk to me three times a week, and we should be able to get rid of those fears.’
‘How much do you charge?
‘Eighty dollars per visit, replied the doctor.’
‘I’ll sleep on it,’ said Bubba.
Six months later the doctor met Bubba on the street. ‘Why didn’t you ever come to see me about those fears you were having?’ asked the psychiatrist.
‘Well Eighty bucks a visit three times a week for a year is an awful lot of money! A bartender cured me for $10. I was so happy to have saved all that money that I went and bought me a new pickup!’
‘Is that so! And how, may I ask, did a bartender cure you?’
‘He told me to cut the legs off the bed! – Ain’t nobody under there now !!!’

OK, it’s not a great joke, but it is a great example.

Please understand, I have no interest in being politically correct—pc seems to me to be shorthand for hypocrisy (more on that in the next post)—but you tell me, is the humor really enhanced because of the “dumb Southern redneck” reference and image?

Politics and leadership are supposed to go together,
but globally the leaders suck, no weightier than a feather.

This time of year the rhetoric builds until it’s overwhelming
and the candidates go on and on—they all want to be helming.

It doesn’t matter what they say about the needs and musts
don’t believe the campaign talk—they’re not a crowd to trust!

They all say that they’ll care for us and do their very best,
but if history offers any lesson it’s that they’ll blow the test.

In cities and in countries the story is the same
as each candidate assures us that the others are to blame!

They want to be elected, that’s the important thing
to yell and wave on election night, “Hooray, I won. Ka-ching!”

But disgusting as the choices are it’s important that you vote,
so hold your nose and make your mark or democracy could croak.

Wow, I haven’t posted one of these since August, so I think that it’s about time.

This one’s special—I’ve heard a lot of snickers in the course of my life.

You snicker because I’m different—

but I laugh because you’re all the same.

The comments and emails drawn by my post on October 17th regarding people preferring to function within their own comfort zone led me to write about PLM (people like me) the next day.

Further support for my contention that it’s universal, a function of being human rather than a learned attitude, is found in one of the responses from Victor Chu, Chairman, First Eastern Investment, in a Business Week interview by Maria Bartiromo.

By all accounts, you are a master of guanxi, those personal connections so vital to doing business in China. Can outsiders ever hope to establish such relationships?
Maria, I think this is a worldwide phenomenon—not uniquely Chinese or Asian. All things being equal, you like to deal with people you know and can rely on. It’s human nature.

And the people you usually end up knowing best are those with whom you identify most closely, i.e., with whom you are most comfortable.

But in today’s world all things are rarely equal and that’s why I believe we each have a responsibility to pry open our mind, enlarge our field of vision and constantly move beyond our comfort zone.