Yesterday’s post reminds us that culture stems from the boss’ MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and that MAP reflects their values.

A point that that seems easily forgotten.

Values aren’t what you say, they’re what you do.

This was illustrated in an article about Larry Page’s end run around the Alphabet board initially approving Andy Rubin’s $150 million exit package without board involvement.

Arrogant to say the least.

I sent the article to a number of people and asked them who is more arrogant, Page or Zukerberg.

Zukerberg won the “Most Arrogant” title hands down.

One response garnered applause from everyone.

That person used the nickname ‘Zuck’.

Then wrote again saying, “Or maybe I should say the Zucker…”

Seems appropriate. Adding “the” (same as you-know-who) and it’s even more apropos if you change the first letter to ‘F’.

Values aren’t what you say, they’re what you do.

A principle that becomes clearer with each new revelation.

Call it founder striptease — although it’s just as common in politics and religion.

Image credit: Noel Reynolds

A few days ago CB insights shared a link to their collection of quotes about disruption from big name corporate leaders; they called it Foot In Mouth.

I sent it to my “list” with the following comment.

Ignorance? Idiocy? Arrogance?
All of the above?

The replies I received, one from my sister, a retired IT head, and the other from KG, were far more insightful than the queries I sent.

I thought both were worth sharing, so here they are.

From my sister.

Do you know of Joel Barker, the futurist?  He’s been around since the mid-70s. I saw a video of his at a conference once, where he talked about paradigm shifts. His example then was Swiss watch makers. When two young kids brought the quartz watch to the Swiss watchmaking community for funding, the Swiss said, “No one will ever want a watch that doesn’t wind.” The kids went to the Japanese and the rest was history. Barker says that when humans have a paradigm, they automatically filter OUT anything that doesn’t support their paradigm. The Japanese had no watch paradigm and so could see the potential. I think those examples from CB are as much paradigm lock-in as stupidity. Or put another way, paradigms lead us to make dumb choices sometimes.

From KG

Upton Sinclair famously stated, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” We may call it stupidity, but it really is vested interests. That’s why innovation comes from those who have little to lose or have no other alternative. No one thinks of vested interests when they work in our favor, only when (usually in hindsight) they are show to have caused loss are they called stupid.

In a time of proven global warming, the US has chosen, as the only nation in the world, to reject the potentially cataclysmic consequences of a warmer globe and have invested $4 trillion to develop the domestic oil & gas industry rather than investing these monies in future technologies that can save the planet. These vested interests are causing an existential crisis, and all the systems we’ve built.

There are so many areas that we are struggling with as a species due to vested interests — things that threaten our survival. These range from the ones that are commonly spoken about, like global warming and environmental destruction. They also include synthetic chemicals and nano materials that are giving us cancer and making us sterile, an economic system that ignores externalities and the tragedy of the commons, and our challenges with making sustainable decisions in an increasingly complex World.

What are your thoughts?

Image credit: Gerd Leonhard

Pardon this semi-rant, but humans are so arrogant.

Tech tech are some of the worst, but fintech, animal tech and food tech, may even be worse.

By word and/or action, the idea that they know best resonates through everything they do.

Banker arrogance, and the products it produced, gave us the 2008 financial meltdown.

Animal breeders gave us pets, with a host of enhanced medical problems, in return for a certain look.

And long before people freaked out over today’s GMO, humans have been doing selective breeding for more than 9000 years.

Boy, did they succeed.

On Sunday, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that zookeepers at the Melbourne Zoo are weening some animals off of fruits because they were too sweet for the animals’ own good. Red pandas and primates had been gaining weight, and some had signs of tooth decay as well.

Whole fruits, not juice (aka liquid sugar) are supposed to be healthy for humans, because they are high in fiber, but when the sugar content is increased so drastically do the rules hold? Does the effort our bodies must make to process the fiber truly offset the higher sugar content?

I can’t really answer that, but I do know there aren’t a lot of people who choose veggies over fruit when offered a choice.

Image credit: Michael Tieso

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.

Coaches, pundits, etc., offer advice on how to handle disrespect, bullying and other negative behavior, some of which is very good. But the approach I like best is summed up in this story of Gandhi and his professor.

The difference between what Gandhi did and what most people do today is that it involved no anger or four letter words; Gandhi used his intelligence to turn the professors own belittling comments against him — and he did it with grace.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

I am frequently asked how to deal with arrogance, disrespect and other antisocial behavior.

Often, the people asking are looking for approaches that echo the classy insults post from 2009.

KG Charles-Harris recently provided a brilliant example of how to handle such comments, with class and amiable good will—although the recipient might not agree.

While I doubt that the following actually happened, that doesn’t change the intelligence and elegance behind the responses.

When Gandhi was studying law at the University College of London, there was a professor, whose last name was Peters, who felt animosity for Gandhi, and because Gandhi never lowered his head towards him, their “arguments” were very common.

One day, Mr. Peters was having lunch at the dining room of the University and Gandhi came along with his tray and sat next to the professor. The professor, in his arrogance, said, “Mr. Gandhi: you do not understand… a pig and a bird do not sit together to eat,” to which Gandhi replies, “You do not worry professor, I’ll fly away ,” and he went and sat at another table.

Mr. Peters, green of rage, decides to take revenge on the next test, but Gandhi responds brilliantly to all questions. Then, Mr. Peters asked him the following question: “Mr Gandhi, if you are walking down the street and find a package, and within it there is a bag of wisdom and another bag with a lot of money; which one will you take?”

Without hesitating, Gandhi responded, “The one with the money, of course.”

Mr. Peters, smiling, said, “I, in your place, would have taken the wisdom, don’t you think?”

“Each one takes what one doesn’t have,” responded Gandhi indifferently.

Mr. Peters, already hysteric, writes on the exam sheet the word “idiot” and gives it to Gandhi. Gandhi takes the exam sheet and sits down.

A few minutes later, Gandhi goes to the professor and says, “Mr. Peters, you signed the sheet, but you did not give me the grade.”

The ‘trick’ is responding to the actual content, rather than the intent or the person, and turning the put-downs back on the speaker.

A good lesson for us all.

Image credit: Okinawa Soba

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

Sometimes predictions are hilarious, especially those about where technology is taking us.

It’s not that they get the tech wrong, but they often don’t factor in the minor details — such as customers.

Media is aglow with stories of how autonomous vehicles (AVs) will literally change the world beyond anything you can imagine.

In a recent survey by AAA, for example, 78% of respondents said they were afraid to ride in an AV. In a poll by insurance giant AIG, 41% didn’t want to share the road with driverless cars. And, ironically, even as companies roll out more capable semi-AVs, the public is becoming less—not more—trusting of AVs, according to surveys over the past 2 years by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge and marketing firm J.D. Power and Associates.

And then there’s security.

Every time a software hack is reported, especially from a vulnerability the company knew about two years before it happened, as with Chrysler’s Jeep, or a bank, a retailer, a whatever, people grow more and more aware of just how vulnerable a software-based world that runs on online updates actually is.

Speaking at the National Governors Association meeting last year, Tesla’s Elon Musk, said,  “I think one of the biggest concerns for autonomous vehicles is somebody achieving a fleet-wide hack.”

The solution?

Mr Musk insists that a kill switch “that no amount of software can override” would “ensure that you gain control of the vehicle and cut the link to the servers”,

But what does control mean to an inert lump of metal that has no gas pedal, brakes, or steering wheel?

The car would just shut down wherever it was — maybe the middle of the freeway at rush hour or a lonely mountain road during a storm.

So customer trust and security are the main obstacles to the AV/tech-enabled world companies large and small are drooling over.

Given most companies historically cavalier attitude towards security and the general distrust of auto companies in particular, the result of multiple recalls over the years, changing people’s minds won’t be easy.

And for every step forward a major hack will mean at least three steps back.

Image credit: HikingArtist

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies are a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

It used to be said that a person was “influential” — these days they are “influencers.” Are the terms synonymous? Can they really be used interchangeably? I don’t think so, and plan to enlarge on the differences over the next two days.

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

Influence isn’t about your online ranking or the strength of your brand, although they contribute.

Influence is about effect.

The effect your words or actions have on those exposed to them.

Yesterday I linked to an article in which Penelope Trunk said that it’s a bad idea for founders to be of different genders and because of her influence dozens of founders are probably rethinking their startup plans.

There is a common arrogance among influencers to generalize their opinion and present it as fact applicable to all. Typically, the more successful the influencer the greater the arrogance.

But from day one every founder has influence, before success and beyond the expected, so even a casual word can cause trouble.

A founder CEO I know, whose original education years before was engineering, had a habit of occasionally strolling through engineering to see what was going on.

One day he commented that he wouldn’t do a design the way the team was doing it. It was a casual, throw-away comment, one he had forgotten five minutes later, but it devastated the design team.

The CEO had no clue to the havoc he wrought and it took the vp of engineering, who was co-founder, hours to settle them down. He then told the CEO not to talk to the team and banned him from the department.

What those on the receiving end of influencers need to realize is that no matter how brilliant or experienced someone is they are still voicing an opinion.

And as valuable as the opinion may be, it should never be swallowed whole, because opinions are subjective.

They are the product of that individual’s MAP, which itself is a product of upbringing and experience. Even someone else having exactly the same background and experience would not have identical MAP because each person processes differently and has different inherent characteristics.

Influence comes with responsibilities—how well do you handle yours?

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

Arrogance seems to be a constant, whether in the cowboy heroes of yesterday or the “leader heroes” of today. Or perhaps we should say “unhero.”

Travis Kalanick is a true unhero and a good, if overused, example of above and beyond arrogance.

He publicly claimed he would be “Steve Jobs-ing” his dismissal and would return as CEO.

He still claims this in spite of a statement from Uber co-founder and director Garrett Camp, who says Kalanick will not return as CEO.

His “Steve Jobs-ing” comment refers to Jobs being forced out, but ignores the full story of how Jobs came back and what he did in the meantime (founded another company that Apple ended up acquiring).

What Jobs did NOT do was hire an advisory company that specialized in “CEO & Leadership positioning.”

“Through our close relationships with the world’s leading editors, reporters, producers, and hosts at top-tier print, online, and broadcast outlets, we develop and execute strategic, results-driven media engagement programs for CEOs that leverage traditional and social media platforms.”

More prosaically, it’s called spin.

In public relations and politics, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through providing a biased interpretation of an event or campaigning to persuade public opinion in favor or against some organization or public figure. … “spin” often implies the use of disingenuous, deceptive, and highly manipulative tactics.

In short, spin alleviates the necessity of actually changing.

All Kalanick needs to do is write a check, probably a sizable one, and Teneo, the company he hired, will sell the “new” Kalanick to the world.

All hail personal growth and authenticity — the myths of Silicon Valley — along with meritocracy.

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If you are interested in authentic personal growth be sure to check out this month’s Leadership Development Carnival.

Image credit: HikingArtist

I said yesterday that we would take a look at the skills needed to succeed in today’s workplace and, more importantly, in the future.

You probably read Yonatan Zunger’s response to James Damore’s manifesto.

One of Damore’s arguments focused on the worthlessness of so-called “soft skills” in a tech company.

Zunger was emphatic in his disagreement.

Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers.

If someone told you that engineering was a field where you could get away with not dealing with people or feelings, then I’m very sorry to tell you that you have been lied to. Solitary work is something that only happens at the most junior levels…

Long ago tech more or less mastered the continued iterating of software and hardware, but when it comes to wetware not so much.

It’s soft skills that are crucial to when dealing with wetware, AKA, people.

Business Insider listed 16 skills that would pay off forever; the list was drawn from the responses to a question posted on Quora.

Empathy topped the list.

Empathy is the most important skill for understanding, relating, leading/managing and innovating.

These days, tech is enamored with life hacks and athleticism is all the rage.

Too bad more time isn’t spent developing and exercising what David Kelley, one of the founders of Stanford’s D School, calls the empathy muscle.

Image credit: Sean MacEntee

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies are a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

Last week we started looking at our heroes — first as cowboys and then why/how they needed to change. It’s a timely subject, especially considering the attitudes/actions of so many of our current ones — from Donald Trump to Travis Kalanick and all those inbetween.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

I recently questioned whether, in fact, the imperial CEO is indeed dead as many are saying.

Wednesday Dan McCarthy was inspired to write 10 Ways to Avoid the Arrogance of Power after reading The Arrogance of Power by Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Business School. Pfeffer says,

“The higher you go in an organization, the more those around you are going to tell you that you are right. The higher reaches of organizations–which includes government, too, in case you slept through the past eight years–are largely absent of critical thought. … There is also evidence, including some wonderful studies by business school professor Don Hambrick at Penn State, that shows the corroding effects of ego. Leaders filled with hubris are more likely to overpay for acquisitions and engage in other risky strategies. Leaders ought to cultivate humility.” He ends by advising not to hold your breath waiting for this to change.”

I think much of Dan’s advice is good, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for the advice to be taken.

I think that power corrupts those susceptible to it, not all those who have it; there are enough examples of powerful people who didn’t succumb to keep me convinced.

Susceptibility is woven in MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and is especially prevalent in today’s society of mememememememe with its sense of entitlement.

Changing MAP and stopping drinking are similar, since the individual has to choose to change. All the horses and all the men can’t convince the king to change—that only happens from the inside out.

Moreover, as I’ve frequently said, MAP is sneaky; it will pretend to change and then revert to its normal pattern when no one’s looking.

We, the people, can’t force them to change, but we can learn to sustain our attention span and keep looking.

Image credit: flickr

This past week has been a whirlwind for me. My wife and I had our third beautiful baby girl and as a result I am sleeping less than the required 11-12 hours that I prefer.

My wife has handled this whole event with grace and I have been humbled by the respect I have for her.

Those of you may already know, but if you don’t, I have three girls now. It’s a true joy and I feel privileged and honored to have them in my life.

Being a parent can be tough today. There is a lot of pressure to be on top of the right trends, expand your baby’s horizons and ensure you’re not feeding them the wrong foods.

Of course all of this is captured on social media for the chance for the world to judge in realtime. What a time to be alive!

I say all of that a bit tongue I cheek as there are some things I have learned as well.

Mark Zuckerberg posted a stat today that towns that have a disproportionate amount of men to women have higher crime rates.

I say that to highlight something that comes from being the father of three girls, love. It is unfiltered and abundant.

If I am having a bad day I can walk in my door and be surrounded by girls that just want to hug me and spend time. Now this is more of a personal lesson but I believe it can be expanded to the business world.

If you look at the latest company scandals you tend to see some common threads. Hyper masculinity, extreme competition and a zero sum attitude towards life.

These tend to be hallmarks of a male dominated organization that lacks balance.

This post is more about observations than solutions.

My observation in my personal life is that the unfiltered love helps me to try and be my best self. It also builds up self esteem which leads to more creativity, problem solving and so on.

Perhaps if we incorporate that trait, love, into our daily lives it will have a profound effect on those around us.

I may be saying things that have been said before, but all I can share is my experience and try to build upon it.

Image credit: Hamza Butt