Have you noticed the efforts to diminish the compensation or banking honchos and Wall Street hotshots?

Or at least make it look that way.

Our friends at Goldman Sachs are in the forefront, which should give you lots of confidence that the effort is for real.

The bonuses are in restricted stock that has to be held at least five years, so if the stock value went down 20% the banker would receive only $8 million instead of the $10 expected—poor baby, a lousy $8 million dollars, that’s terrible! Of course, the stock goes up 20% they’ll pick up an extra two mil.

Goldman benefits because the shares don’t count as compensation until they vest, which means they don’t show as an expense and that will boost profits.

Another piece of sleight-of-hand is counting consultants and temporary workers as employees; this raises headcount and significantly lowers pay per employee making politicos and the media happy.

Does it make you happy?

Do they really think we are that stupid?

Are we?

Leadership Turn ends December 29. I hope you’ll stop over today to read Leadership Needed—By 2015. To be sure you continue to get your daily fix of Miki you should subscribe via RSS or EMAIL.

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Three great interviews sharing what to do and one commentary on the opposite.

Do you long for simplicity, especially in software? Jason Fried built his company 37Signals because he hates complexity. Read more about his attitudes in Inc’s excellent article, you may be surprised.

Next is the story of and an interview with Steve Chang, co-founder and chairman of Trend Micro. Learn why two failed startups didn’t dampen his entrepreneurial fire and what drives him to innovate.

I love this interview with William D. Green, chairman and C.E.O. of Accenture. He tells his first training seminar as a manager where he was told the 68 (no joke) things he needed to do to be successful; Green decided there were just the three Cs.

The first is competence — just being good at what you do, whatever it is, and focusing on the job you have, not on the job you think you want to have. The second one is confidence. People want to know what you think. So you have to have enough desirable self-confidence to articulate a point of view. The third thing is caring. Nothing today is about one individual. This is all about the team, and in the end, this is about giving a damn about your customers, your company, the people around you, and recognizing that the people around you are the ones who make you look good.

I don’t follow sports, but Wally Bock’s offers a comprehensive commentary on the amazing unprofessionalism of Brian Kelly, whose actions are a case study on the fastest way to trash your people. But I wonder how many people will actually find them offensive or just shrug and say no big deal.

Finally, the ongoing sex scandals of the Catholic Church have offered up some of best examples of how leaders dance around the truth, never really admitting their errors even when they claim to be sorry. Cardinal Egan is a Church leader who has danced for decades before his house of cards comes crashing down, but even now he hasn’t stopped dancing—or blowing smoke. When will those in power understand that an apology means nothing when the deed is diluted, denied or rationalized.

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When the economy slows, it’s easy to ignore retention factors because management kids itself into believing that replacing people is no big deal.

But slow as it’s happening, the times they are a’chnging.

At least here and there, in companies that really understand the importance of attracting and retaining scarce talent.

“To reduce “female brain drain,” global companies such as Ernst & Young, Goldman Sachs, Booz Allen Hamilton, Hewlett-Packard, Best Buy and dozens of others are increasingly offering a variety of flexible work options.”

Don’t get me wrong. These companies aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their corporate heart or caring social consciousness, they’re doing it because it makes financial sense, AKA, vested self-interest.

“Business analysts and executives say talent retention and the forces of demography are the chief reasons large, traditional companies accommodate the needs of female employees. Fifty-eight percent of college graduates are women, and nearly half of all professional and graduate degrees are earned by women…the number of women with graduate and professional degrees will grow by 16 percent over the next decade compared with an increase of only 1.3 percent among men.”

And the need is going to get worse.

“Whether you can hear it or not, a time bomb is ticking in C-suites worldwide. Its shock waves will resonate for decades. The explosive: indisputable demographics. Surveys…indicate that the number of managers in the right age bracket for leadership roles will drop by 30% in just six years. Factor in even modest growth rates, and the average corporation will be left with half the critical talent it needs by 2015.”

It’s not just large firms, SMB companies are active in the effort, although they often skip the language and the programs are more informal—which is why they’re often described as “being like a family.”

Although the work-life trend started with women, the guys want it, too, and Millennials assume it as a right.

The economy will turn around—it always does; more Boomers will retire; demographics will prevail; talent will be scarcer and the companies that already know how to offer balance will have an enormous recruiting edge.

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What do you talk about in your life?

What do you go to bed thinking about; what dominates your dreams; what do you ponder during the day?

Your aches and pains; the gray hair you found; the new outfit you bought, but aren’t sure is right?

Do you dwell on the words or email that may be a slight—or not?

The colleague you’re not sure likes you; the boss who seems OK, but…?

It’s more than a matter of the glass being half full or half empty.

Like the dog that worries a bone, constantly thinking and talking about anything focuses you on it; prioritizes it and makes it paramount until it dominates all other thoughts.

Focus works in both directions—it can launch you to the heights or toss you into a dungeon of doom—taking your family and friends with you.

Most importantly…

Focus is a choice.

Choose wisely.

I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving and a bountiful life.

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Lies. These days it seems that everybody lies. Politicians, but that’s not new; corporate honchos, way more than previously; religious leaders, in the name of CYA; parents, for their kids own good; kids, because they’re kids; and on and one.

Richard Bach believes that the worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves, while Mark Twain believes there are three types of lies, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. I like that; I’ve always thought that statistics are like the Bible, you can spin them to support any view.

Adolf Hitler said, Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it. He understood what Eric Hoffer meant when he said, “Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true,” and he almost did it.

Fox Mulder blithely says, “I would never lie. I willfully participate in a campaign of misinformation.” Wow, he could have a second career on Wall Street.

Lies are corrosive; they destroy the teller and damage the tellee.

I agree with Ann Landers, who said, “The naked truth is always better than the best dressed lie;” and with Baltasar Gracian, who said, “A single lie destroys a whole reputation for integrity.”

I learned early on that I’m a superlative liar, but I don’t bother for two reasons, one prosaic and the other meaningful.

Prosaically, when you lie you need to remember every one of them or they will trip you in the future.

The more profound reason was best stated by George Bernard Shaw when he said, “The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.” And that’s just not how I wanted to live my life.

We’ll end today with a bit of political levity from Adlai Stevenson, “I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends… that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.” Too bad they didn’t take him up on that!

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There is a dangerous assumption out there that ‘leaders’ are chuck full of positive traits and on the side of the angels, but I’m here to tell you that it ain’t necessarily so. Just as leaders come in all shapes, colors and sizes they come with a wide variety of traits, not all of them positive. But it seems as if succession is tough all over.

Italian police have caught the Sicilian Mafia’s number two, the latest in a string of top-level arrests that has given the crime group that once terrified Italy problems with rebuilding its leadership.

The hero CEO who will save the company easily morphs into the imperial CEO. An intelligent, thoughtful opinion piece by Ho Kwon Ping in Singapore considers the dangers of this happening and assumes it will continue in the US—and it probably will.

The leadership of any company is critical to the success of its mission — but no one individual is mission-critical.

Yesterday I wrote Real Leaders are Fair, which means applying rules equally, but that rarely happens, especially when a government is involved and ours is no different. Consider the non-application of a federal law backed by a presidential proclamation that prohibits corrupt foreign officials and their families from receiving American visas. But business interests always seem to trump fairness.

“Of course it’s because of oil,” said John Bennett, the United States ambassador to Equatorial Guinea from 1991 to 1994, adding that Washington has turned a blind eye to the Obiangs’ corruption and repression because of its dependence on the country for natural resources. He noted that officials of Zimbabwe are barred from the United States.

Finally, on a lighter note, I found the answer given by Ask the Coach to this question to be classic.

Q: I am having a difficult time leading my team. The team members will not follow my instructions, which I am sure would make our project much more successful. What am I doing wrong?

A: What you’re doing wrong is very simple: you have simply forgotten that your team is more critical to the success of your project than you are.

Take a moment and read the whole post, I guarantee you’ll like what you learn.

And if you want more of my picks you’ll find them here.

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(Click here to lean more about Ms. Davis, who, by the way, is still alive.)

Now check out my other WW how not to think

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What do you do and where do you go when you leave a high-stress career that nearly kills you?

If your name is Tom Dunn and you spent 20 years, first as a defense counsel in the Army Trial Defense Service, then stints in Florida, New York State and most recently as head of the nonprofit Georgia Resource Center, you find a less stressful environment in which to indulge your passion.

You teach in a tough middle school in Atlanta, Georgia where “ninety-three percent of students are black and 5 percent Hispanic; some 97 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch.”

Dunn’s prior experience made him a passionate believer in what Frederick Douglass said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

According to principal, Danielle S. Battle, middle school turns off many teachers because it’s where “students’ bodies and minds are changing, and disparities in learning abilities are playing out.”

Dunn found that amusing, “You can’t be a starry-eyed idealist and do defense work in capital cases for 20 years.”

Dunn is the type of teacher that every parent should want for their child, but, as proved in Dallas, teachers are fired for being good—good meaning tough enough to stick to their guns and require kids to learn.

We need more teachers like Dunn; teachers who care and environment that supports their efforts to educate.

But the kids complain to their parents, the parents complain to the school board and the teacher is out—no matter how good the test scores. So tying teacher pay to test scores may not help if the choice is between less money and no job.

What are line managers, AKA principals and teachers, supposed to do when the executive team, AKA, school district board, first gives tacit approval to shipping shoddy products and then formalizes the practice through its work rules and quality processes?

How stupid is it to tie funding to students staying in school and passing and then allow the bar to be lowered in order to achieve the goal?

Does the ability to pass tests accurately reflect an ability to think?

Kids are smart; they know when the system is gamed and how to leverage their power.

Who is in charge here?

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Neglect. Drugs. Abuse. Molestation.

Where do you go when those four words describe your parents and your home life?

Where do you sleep; what do you eat?

When you’re cold and hungry you do what it takes to survive, including stealing and selling whatever you can find to sell—including yourself.

And these kids are as young as 10 years old.

The NT Times ran a two-part series called Running in the Shadows about teen runaways. It should be required reading for every American (part 1 and part 2).

Children on Their Own

This is the first of two articles on the growing number of young runaways in the United States, exploring how they survive and efforts by the authorities to help them.

Many cling together to avoid predators, but many more are seduced by pimps—it doesn’t take much.

“My job is to make sure she has what she needs, personal hygiene, get her nails done, take her to buy an outfit, take her out to eat, make her feel wanted,” said another pimp, Antoin Thurman, who was sentenced in 2006 to three years for pandering and related charges in Buckeye, Ariz. “But I keep the money.”

Out of frustration, Sgt. Byron A. Fassett of the Dallas Police Department started looking for patterns in child prostitution cases.

One stuck out: 80 percent of the prostituted children the department had handled had run away from home at least four or more times a year.

Fasset created a special “High Risk Victim” unit within the Dallas PD that has seen enormous success, both in getting kids out of that life and putting the pimps behind bars.

The unit’s strength is timing. If the girls are arrested for prostitution, they are at their least cooperative. So the unit instead targets them for such minor offenses as truancy or picks them up as high-risk victims, speaking to them when their guard is down. Only later, as trust builds, do officers and social workers move into discussions of prostitution.

Repeat runaways are not put in juvenile detention but in a special city shelter for up to a month, receiving counseling.

Three quarters of the girls who get treatment do not return to prostitution.

The results of the Dallas system are clear: in the past five years, the Dallas County district attorney’s office has on average indicted and convicted or won guilty pleas from over 90 percent of the pimps arrested. In virtually all of those cases, the children involved in the prostitution testified against their pimps, according to the prosecutor’s office. Over half of those convictions started as cases involving girls who were picked up by the police not for prostitution but simply as repeat runaways.

Those statistics are amazing. Here we have a case of initiative taken; leadership shown, and impressive success. Not a fancy approach, but a pragmatic one based on a proven pattern.

So why hasn’t it been applied across the nation?

In 2007, Congress nearly approved a proposal to spend more than $55 million for cities to create pilot programs across the country modeled on the Dallas system. But after a dispute with President George W. Bush over the larger federal budget, the plan was dropped and Congress never appropriated the money.

Just $55 million dollars, that’s all; a drop in the bucket in comparison to most earmarks.

But, in their wisdom, our wonderful, elected leaders in Washington didn’t believe it had enough reelection value to make it worth fighting for—maybe this is what’s meant by throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Of course, these kids can’t vote, may not live long enough to vote, so it’s no big deal to the folks on their perpetual campaign trail.

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Saturday we looked at some incongruous actions and compensation of various CEOs and it reminded me of something I read a year or so ago, so I went looking and found it. Amazing!

I realize that housing is a touchy subject these days, but over the last few decade as houses got bigger and bigger I found it weirder and weirder.

There’s no way to ever convince me that any family or person, really needs a seven thousand-plus square foot house in order to live comfortably—let alone 10,000 and up.

The item I remembered article was  an UpFront blurb in Business Week that I found hilarious.

The research was done by Finance professors David Yermack of New York University and Crocker Liu of Arizona State University and their conclusions casts housing excess in a new light.

The bigger or pricier the house…the greater the risk of lackluster shares.

If [the CEO] buys a big mansion, sell the stock. Many of these guys have been super performers, but at some point that stops, and they reap the benefits.

Seems reasonable to me.

Remember the old saying? Something about boys and the price of their toys.

Seems like the toys’ values are going up, while the boys’ values (and value) are decreasing. (Note: As used here, “boys” is genderless.)

I doubt that the current housing market has changed that particular mindset.

So the next time you go to invest, be sure to plug in the size of the CEOs home when evaluating a company and, thinking about it, the same probably applies to the entire C suite.

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