Three or so decades ago friends called me a “health food nut” because I took supplements (still do). These days they call me a “privacy freak” because although I’m on LinkedIn I refuse to join Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or whatever comes next; I don’t carry a cell, find many GPS apps creepy and love my solitude.

As Aristotle said, “He is his own best friend, and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude.”

Ayn Rand said, “Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.” If that’s true, the world is headed straight back to barbarism.

Edward P. Morgan’s words ring truer today than at any time in history, “A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man’s mind can get both provocation and privacy.”

I wonder if David Brin was channeling Mark Zukerberg when he said, “When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.”

As stated, I’m not a Facebook fan for many reasons and Jaron Lanier states a major one, “Facebook says, ‘Privacy is theft,’ because they’re selling your lack of privacy to the advertisers who might show up one day.” Maybe that’s why Zukerberg doesn’t have a Facebook presence—ya think?

Danah Boyd, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, “Defaults around how we interact have changed. A conversation in the hallway is private by default, public by effort. Online, our interactions become public by default, private by effort.”

But it is John Perry Barlow who sounds a warning that US citizens would do well to heed, “Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.”

Image credit: opensource.com

I have just one link for you today, not because it’s a long article, but because there are 32 parts to Innovations That Will Change Your Tomorrow and I think you will enjoy them all.

We tend to rewrite the histories of technological innovation, making myths about a guy who had a great idea that changed the world. In reality, though, innovation isn’t the goal; it’s everything that gets you there. It’s bad financial decisions and blueprints for machines that weren’t built until decades later. It’s the important leaps forward that synthesize lots of ideas, and it’s the belly-up failures that teach us what not to do.

When we ignore how innovation actually works, we make it hard to see what’s happening right in front of us today. (…) Worse, the fairy-tale view of history implies that innovation has an end. It doesn’t. What we want and what we need keeps changing. (…)

That’s what this issue is about: all the little failures, trivialities and not-quite-solved mysteries that make the successes possible. This is what innovation looks like. It’s messy, and it’s awesome. –Maggie Koerth-Baker

Which are your favorites?

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

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

“The startups that really get hosed are going to be the ones that have easy money built into the structure of their company: the ones that raise a lot on easy terms, and are then led thereby to spend a lot, and to pay little attention to profitability. That kind of startup gets destroyed when markets tighten up. So don’t be that startup. If you’ve raised a lot, don’t spend it; not merely for the obvious reason that you’ll run out faster, but because it will turn you into the wrong sort of company to thrive in bad times.” — Paul Graham, co-founder, Y Combinator

Graham’s comment is from an email he sent to his portfolio companies in response to the Facebook IPO fiasco.

While everything he says is true, the spending standards he recommends were just as important before Facebook’s IPO as they are now.

One of the great attractions of startups has always been the lack of bureaucracy.

However, when founders jettison financial controls in the name of eliminating bureaucracy the only thing they accomplish is to show off their own ignorance.

Would you even consider designing a product from start to finish without detailed specification? Or  design reviews? Or market feedback? Or testing?

No?

Then why would you consider running your company without viable fiscal controls?

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

Between the pre IPO media frenzy of hype and the post IPO media frenzy of angst we all need a break from Facebook-related news.

Not to mention a little levity on the subject, which John Flowers of McSweeney’s was kind enough to provide in the form of the prospectus of the next hot tech IPO.

Facebook beware; Ponzify will surely eat your lunch.

Monday I wrote how important it is to value all your people if you want to keep them, not just the “innovators” on your team.

I also listed the five prime traits of HBS defined “Innovator DNA”—associating, observing, questioning, networking, and experimenting—but what happens when an innovator doesn’t possess all five traits?

I am living proof that possessing one doesn’t mean possessing all.

I have the first three in spades, but lack the last two.

I know I excel in the first three, because those are the traits that my clients have raved about and tangibly rewarded over the years, but I was a specialist; hired to do specific tasks where the lack of the last two traits wasn’t a problem.

I don’t believe this is unusual.

I know many people who are superb at networking and discovering what people think or thrive on experimenting with an idea and trying out various versions, but can’t originate the concepts.

The question is how do you take advantage of the innovator traits people do have?

By teaming them correctly.

Much of my most innovative work is done with founders when working on their executive summaries.

I tend to associate what they are describing with things I’ve heard or read in other places and at other times and synthesize new uses or functions; plus I am totally a ‘why’ person, which annoys so many people, but the profs say it’s good—who knew.)

I often see relationships and usages the founders didn’t, but my hearing makes networking an exercise in frustration (on both sides) and I don’t have the skills and training required to validate the concepts in the field.

But that doesn’t change the value, because the founders and teams with which I work do have those skills.

Part of building a powerful team is the ability to take advantage of all the skills a candidate has and then filling in the team’s holes as needed.

Flickr image credit: AJ Cann

Dewey & LeBoeuf is a law firm; it was born in 1909 and is dying in 2012.

Its death is the result of a culture in which money replaced values—

“Because the partnership lacks any shared cultural values or history, money becomes the core value holding the firm together,” said William Henderson, a law professor at Indiana University who studies law firms. “Money is weak glue.”

and a toxic star system.

Even as Dewey’s performance flagged, the firm doled out lavish multiyear, multimillion-dollar guarantees to its top partners and star recruits. The guarantees — there were about 100, with several over $5 million a year — created compensation obligations that the firm could not meet.

Of course, they aren’t the only law firm or other type of business to founder and sink on the rocks of unfettered growth, mergers, aggressive hiring, outsize pay packages and compensation disparity that creates an internal us vs. them mentality.

In short, 103 years down the drain.

The Dewey & LeBoeuf failure provides glaring proof of the importance of a strong shared-values culture and testimony to the mantra I evangelize—people who join for money (or perks or stock) will leave for more money (or perks or stock).

Image credit: Tombstone Generator

“I don’t want to overstate the case. I think about 40 percent of people just are not going to be good at innovating regardless of what they do. And 5 percent are born with the instinct.” — Clayton M. Christensen, professor, HBS

So a group of HBS profs with different expertise got together to identify what they call “The Innovator’s DNA” so the other 55% could learn to be innovators.

First they identified five primary skills: associating, observing, questioning, networking, and experimenting.

• First and foremost, innovators are good at associational thinking, or simply associating. They make connections between seemingly unrelated problems and ideas and synthesize new ideas.
• Innovators observe things, then question why.
• Networking is a skill that innovators use to identify and develop ideas by spending time with a diverse group of people with different backgrounds and experiences.
• Finally, innovators are constantly experimenting.

There’s a lot more in the article, but I want to focus on the 40%, because I can just hear all the managers and entrepreneurs saying to themselves, “Whoa; I’m not going to hire any of those 40% people,” Or words to that effect.

And that is just plain stupid.

First of all, that would make 55% of the population unemployable.

More importantly, you need both on your team to truly succeed.

But that still isn’t my point today.

Please take as a given that you need both on your team to truly succeed (if you think it through you’ll understand why).

Now pay attention, because here’s the point I want to drive home.

You cannot run your organization with 100% innovators.

There are dozens of critical jobs in every organization that need the skills of the 40%.

Those positions require a focus on what is, not what might be.

With all the focus on innovation, the 40% is getting short shift. In fact, I know many who left jobs/teams/bosses they loved, because they no longer felt valued; they knew they weren’t innovators, so they stopped believing they could contribute and left.

Only a few of those bosses ever understood they were the cause.

Image credit: raja4u

Tuesday’s post involves lawyers, so I thought I’d check out what’s been said about them and it seems they’ve been unappreciated and unloved for centuries.

Clarence Darrow neatly summed up the problem with the law (no surprise there), “The trouble with law is lawyers.”

While Oliver Wendell Holmes offers a wonderful description of what they bill for, “Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.”

Charles Lamb doesn’t sound too sure of lawyers’ antecedents, “Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.”

Will Rogers offers a typically witty explanation of when ‘ethical’ and ‘legal’ parted ways, “People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their conscience, be their guide.”

Lucille Ball explains the great contribution lawyers made to one of the most famous shows ever aired on television, “How I Love Lucy was born? We decided that instead of divorce lawyers profiting from our mistakes, we’d profit from them.”

Danny DeVito provides a cogent explanation of why people hire lawyers, “Of course I’ve got lawyers. They are like nuclear weapons, I’ve got em ’cause everyone else has. But as soon as you use them they screw everything up.”

Tammy Bruce reminds us that legal leopards don’t change their spots, “Unfortunately, what many people forget is that judges are just lawyers in robes.”

But it’s Thomas Jefferson who gets the last word today when he drives that point home, “If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?”

Doesn’t seem much has changed over the years.

Flickr image credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Dan McCarthy, along with Jim Stroup and Wally Bock, are of the rare breed that write on leadership, but don’t see it as an elitist function, genetic gift or an ability defined, let alone guaranteed, by position or promotion.

Tuesday Dan wrote one of the funniest (and shortest) posts I’ve seen in quite awhile—and turned me green with envy.

The post was truly “ripped from the headlines” and I offer it in full with Dan’s gracious permission.

10 (+1) Dumb Leadership Mistakes from Recent Headlines

Come on now, how hard can it be to be a great leader? It seems the bar keeps getting lower and lower every day.

All you need to do is browse the headlines and you’ll easily come up with examples of what not to do as a leader. Just follow these hopefully easy to adhere to rules, do a reasonable good job, and you’ll be running your organization in no time:

1. Don’t drop too many F-bombs at work. Or, as far as I’m concerned, don’t drop them at all.

2. But even if your employee does, don’t fire your employee over the phone. F2f is the only option for canning an employee.

3. Don’t slap your employees. Two words: anger management.

4. Don’t hit on or party with your employees. Some may argue with this one, but I’d say you’re only asking for trouble.

5. Don’t upstage your boss. It’s always better to let your boss go first.

6. Don’t launch an IPO and get married in the same week. It’s all about focus.

7. Don’t fire an employee for being “too hot”. Or for being too ugly. But you can for a dress code violation. But not over the phone, see #2.

8. Don’t flirt with the jurors during your corruption trial. I’d file this one under the competency of “judgment”.

9. Don’t lie about your education (let’s hear it for New Hampshire!). Or about your ethnicity (Hey, if I’m going to mention NH, I couldn’t spare Massachusetts). Better yet, just don’t lie, period. It’s easier to remember things when you don’t make them up.

10. Don’t steal your company’s money. Or “borrow” it, or “misplace” it, or whatever.

Last, but not least – and I’m sorry to have to mention this in a family leadership blog – don’t ever, ever, have sex at work, under any circumstances. Asking “was that wrong?” will not save you from being fired.

Hope you enjoyed this tour of leadership ineptitude headlines. Anything you’d like to add to the list? By the time this post is published, I’m sure we can come up with 11 more.

Seeing as how four days have gone by since publication I’m sure there are far more than 11.

To make it interesting, add your own link and comment for a chance to win a copy of Claudio Feser’s Serial Innovators. Winner chosen by random drawing.

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

You have every right as a boss to subjectively quantify your people’s efforts, thoughts and attitudes against requirements of which they are clearly and explicitly informed.

You have no right to assign values, such as stupid, wrong, spiteful, etc., to your subjective quantifications.

The first is judging; the second is judgmental.

Do you judge or are you judgmental?

Option Sanity™blocks judgmental actions.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist