Are you as disgusted as I am? There is no shame and it’s unlikely to change.
If you can grab it do so and screw everyone else, they don’t matter. Only you matter.
AIG received 170 billion in taxpayer money and they plan to pay about $165 million in bonuses by Sunday.
According to Edward M. Liddy, the government-appointed chairman, “We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the A.I.G. businesses — which are now being operated principally on behalf of American taxpayers — if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury.”
The bonuses go to the “leaders” in the financial products division which is the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.
AIG says that the bonuses are contractual.
In the brave new world of the Twenty-first Century ethics are defined by law and morality is old fashioned unless it’s about someone else.
As a wise man once said, “An ethical man knows he shouldn’t cheat on his wife. A moral man wouldn’t.”
If these executives are the “best and brightest” we’re in bigger trouble than I thought.
The contract doesn’t mean squat anyway since the recipients could turn the bonuses down just as a number of CEOs have recently.
Just think, if they did perhaps some of their colleagues wouldn’t be laid off.
And if you think this is an isolated incident of the “Thain mindset” take a look at the ad that Visa is running once again. I saw it once in Business Week last year and found it in terrible taste, but then it disappeared.
I thought the company had realized that their timing for a new status card was atrocious, but I guess I was wrong. This full-page ad appeared in the March 16, 2009 issue.
Perhaps the card is targeted at the recipients of that $165 million.
One way or another I seem to be on a creativity/innovation kick this week, so it seemed reasonable to make that the subject of today’s quotes.
First the practical…
Innovation comes from the producer – not from the customer. –W. Edwards Deming (You can’t want what you’ve never had.)
Innovation is the whim of an elite before it becomes a need of the public. –Ludwig von Mises (Got to love those early adopters!)
Now the inspirational…
There are no dreams too large, no innovation unimaginable and no frontiers beyond our reach. –John S. Herrington (But you have to believe…)
If you open up the mind, the opportunity to address both profits and social conditions are limitless. It’s a process of innovation. –Jerry Greenfield (But addressing the former with no consideration of the latter is a recipe for disaster.)
Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow. –William Pollard (Something that GM and Chrysler still haven’t learned.)
Today is all about innovation, so grab your coffee and settle in. Only one to read and the rest you can listen to or watch. Enjoy!
First, check out how Mark King, CEO of TaylorMade drives “relentless innovation” that has doubled revenue since 2003.
Now listen to Always On CEO Tony Perkins, Tim Draper, Founder and Managing Director of venture capital company Draper Fisher Jurvetson and founding partner of ThinkEquity and author of Finding the Next Starbucks talk about What is the Next Big Thing?
Then click over and explore the bonanza of innovation inspiration in the form of podcasts and videos at the Stanford University Entrepreneurial Corner. I think you’ll find it worth bookmarking.
Next up is a real treat and useful, too. I’ll bet that not even all my tech savvy readers know about some of these Google goodies; have fun, but don’t waste the entire weekend fooling with them.
Last up is a bit of laughter—or at least a few snickers. I hate 99% of the ads companies stick us with (I am so sick of being pitched illnesses and drugs) unlike the rest of the world who’s ads actually qualify as entertainment. But there is the other 1%, so that now and then we actually get a good commercial. The Layoff and the other four videosare definitely funny if you need a quick laugh. This isn’t an endorsement of the company—I have no knowledge of their products just their sense of humor.
A few days ago an executive I’ll call Dan called me to bemoan the lack of creativity in his organization and I told him to stop hiring dogs. He informed me that he had great people and when I agreed he demanded to know why I called them dogs.
The problem is that Dan hires people he likes who fall inside his comfort zone, so his organization gets along well. And while it’s well diversified from an HR point of view it has little mental diversity.
It’s a happy place, kind of like a dog park with a large variety of breeds and mutts all well socialized to play together and those that don’t play nice are asked to leave.
That kind of peace may be good for a dog park, but it can mean death for a company’s innovation efforts.
Unfortunately, people have been moving away from thought diversity for quite awhile now. The attitude has a name, homophily, it’s been around forever and it’s an attitude I run into frequently when it comes to hiring, although it’s rarely intentional. It’s a word you should learn just so you can avoid it.
It’s what makes it difficult for Dan’s people to be creative; when something is suggested it’s often accepted with little discussion and even when a counter idea is presented it has similar DNA.
It’s not that Dan needs to toss a bunch of cats in the middle, but he does need to start hiring people that come from a variety of companies and industries, with different experiences and with whom he may not be as comfortable as he is now.
It also means that Dan will have to work harder.
Not because his people won’t get along, but because diversity of thought does foster exactly what Dan wants—higher creativity.
Creativity means multiple ideas with no common DNA leading to passionate champions, intense discussions and heated meetings. Dan will have to actively manage the various elements if he wants to harness that energy for the benefit of the organization.
Whether you consider yourself a manager, a leader or a combination thereof, the more mentally diverse your organization the more difficult to manage, but the rewards are high for doing it well.
I read an article by Dev Patnaik that talked about the success of innovation with empathy vs. innovation without it. I found the examples used (Microsoft’s XBox and Zune) to be unimpressive in getting the point across, but it reminded me of two old (2006 and 2007) posts of mine.
Patnaik writes that “empathy is the ability to see the world through the eyes of another person. Unless new products or services connect with the lives of real people, design or marketing can’t do much to make them succeed.”
I’m always behind on trendy terms such as empathy, so I looked at the same issue through the lens of assumptions.
Here are both posts…
Assumptions are bad
Assumptions. They’re bad for your health, wealth, business and all human interactions. I’ve previously written about how they influence the workplace, but I saw a story this morning that really tickled me as proof of how costly assumptions are to businesses and entire industries.
The article is about how the bike industry found a way to revitalize a falling market with bikes that automatically shift gears. Here’s what caught my eye, “Shimano spent several years figuring out why ridership has decreased, and realized people wanted to ride for fun…The company was shocked to realize its efforts at making newer, more high-performance bikes weren’t winning over new riders.”
“We come to find out these people not only don’t want high performance, they don’t even care about it.”
Notice the final words, “they don’t even care about it.”
The assumption that high performance was critical came from people in the industry—people most likely to be classed as avid cyclists and to whom performance was a key issue, and that assumption was generalized to the entire population.
It’s always that way. Every time someone finds that their belief/attitude/assumption isn’t held by everyone, or at least by the specific group they’re focused upon, they are amazed and even shocked.
How many times have you read an article, such as the one above, and your reaction was, “Well, duh!” That was my reaction to the amazement expressed when performance didn’t matter to the general public.
“Duh,” is my reaction to my own assumptions when they get in the way of my human interactions.
And “Duh,” is my very silent reaction to many of the assumption-based management quandaries I deal with every day—also the managers’ reaction, not silent, once they identify it.
Assumptions And Innovation
Following up on my previous post about how the assumption that performance was the most critical buying issue in cycling helped flatten an industry, comes yet another example of how assumptions lead astray.
The new generation of game consoles from Sony and Microsoft focused on the brilliant graphics demanded by game enthusiasts, but Nintendo is creaming its competitors by looking past graphics and focusing on fun. “Jesse Sutton, interim president and chief executive officer of Majesco, says Nintendo is targeting its hardware at the fastest growing audience in the games business — “casual” gamers who are more interested in fun, simple games rather than the deeply immersive titles that most hard-core gamers prefer.”
Hmm, sounds similar to the people who want to have fun riding bikes.
The car industry is learning the same thing. First, when Honda’s Element and Toyota’s Scion, designed as inexpensive first cars for teens and 20-somethings, got snapped up by their parents, who wanted inexpensive, fun transpiration, instead of performance and mind- and wallet-numbing electronics.
That challenge is being upped again by India’s Tata Motors, which plans to bring out a $2500 car in 2008. And this isn’t just about lower income, emerging markets. “To automakers’ astonishment, cheap cars are also proving to be just as popular in established markets as they are in the developing world…The new generation of cheap cars will be sturdy and reliable and will appeal to Western consumers who want to spend money on things other than transport… The shift to cut-rate wheels is jarring for an industry that has fixated for at least a decade on premium cars…”
The same awakenings have happened/are happening in consumer products, such as soup and cleaning products.
Other industries are climbing on the bandwagon. Even software companies are recognizing that most of their customers aren’t twenty-something programmers and that they don’t want to “work under the hood,” they just want to do whatever it is that they bought the program to do.
What these stories have in common are the assumptions that guided product development came from industry/product aficionados—hard-core devotees who designed products for people like themselves—and ignored the rest of us.
Finally, companies are figuring out just how large the so-called casual market is, how much money it has to spend, and that it’s a giant market anywhere you look for it.
For managers, the lesson is to avoid assumption-myopia by building a team with different backgrounds, varied experience from different industries, and a solid generational mix.
Do that and you’ll have a lot more innovation outside the box.
In times of economic chaos such as now, it’s a wise company not only listens to its current customers, but also broadens its focus to include the “casual” part of its market.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Innovation is grounded in MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™)—it’s who you are and how you think, not just what you do.
One way or another I seem to be on a creativity/innovation kick this week, so it seemed reasonable to make that the subject of today’s quotes.
Today is all about innovation, so grab your coffee and settle in. Only one to read and the rest you can listen to or watch. Enjoy!
Do you like puzzles? Author Michael Brooks shows you 
A few days ago an executive I’ll call Dan called me to bemoan the lack of creativity in his organization and I told him to stop hiring dogs. He informed me that he had great people and when I agreed he demanded to know why I called them dogs.
