Clickbait Unlimited

I wrote about this about almost two years ago, but clickbait seems to be ramping up if anything. I guess Google or whoever else is spying on my browsing habits knows that I like to watch Stranger Things, Mandalorian, Cobra Kai, etc. My issue isn't that someone knows I like those shows, because they are good shows and a lot of people like them. The issue I have is the amount of clickbaity articles being written about them.

I can't count the number of times I have seen a link to a story saying something about a new release date being announced for the next season of a show or that a new actor has signed on to play a certain character. You click into the story, and there is just a pile of garbage paragraphs saying something vague about how we don't know when the new season will come out but probably sometime next year and that we're not totally sure that actor is in the show but if they are then they are excited to see what character they are going to play.

So we've got a whole article written to say nothing more than that we don't know anything about the next season yet.

The other thing I have been seeing more and more of is the random cross-posting of the same old content over and over. An actor will post something semi-controversial or barely interesting on their Twitter account, and then it is screenshotted, copy/pasted, and linked to the post. At least that's what happens when there is a quick boring text post. But when there is a video or image or something that you really want to see, you'll see a full page article about how someone's performance at an awards show was bad or a famous person was acting rudely in public, you can click around forever and never find the actual video everyone is talking about.

I don't know if this is what we get for letting real journalism get eaten up by free news online. The actual newspapers are going under, being replaced by free material, apparently written by either AI bots or middle school students in third world countries to do no more than drive advertising and suck up personal information and habits.

New Normal

As the year 2020 hurdles along, I am reminded of what I thought was such a funny joke at a New Year's Eve party - something along the lines of where do you see yourself in a year and the punchline about not having 2020 vision. I don't think any one of us foresaw any, let alone all of this, from an impeachment to massive conspiracy theories in the political realm, the COVID19 pandemic and all the businesses/sports/schools being shut down with it, famous people dying (Alex Trebek, Eddie Van Halen, Sean Connery, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Regis Philbin, Kobe Bryant, and countless others), California and Australia fires, the monolith appearing and then disappearing in the Utah desert, racial unrest and riots, murder hornets, and who knows what remains with a month left.

How many of those things do we recover from? Celebrities die every year. There are always wildfires. People get sick. Social media is always on the lookout for the next big cultural talking point.

More importantly, how do we work together to build a new normal? Is it possible to come together like we did in the early days of the pandemic, before it seemingly permanently divided us? I hope we can roll into 2021 with a determination to keep the things that unify us and make us happy and healthy and leave behind the divisiveness and bickering. I see flashes of brilliance in between all the crazy, and I'm hopeful that this Christmas season can be an early start.

Small World

It's a small world. We've talked for decades now about how the world is becoming more and more flat. It's easier than it's ever been to communicate around the world. We're often more likely to be talking to someone in a different location than we are to be talking with the people in the same room as us.

Yet at the same time, there's always a little bit of a disconnect. There are always shibboleths that let us differentiate who really belongs and who doesn't. Who is the outsider vs. the insider? What are the things that we misread or mishear or otherwise misinterpret?

I was looking up information about the calories in some of McDonald's food on their website, and I saw the following:

I was totally surprised, thinking maybe McDonald's had expanded from the Travis Scott and J Balvin celebrity meals, and that they had gone out and set up a deal with Disney.

When I clicked on the large option and saw this, I realized my mistake, knowing there's not such a thing as Large World:

I was reading it as "Small World" "Famous Fries" when it should have been "Small" "World-Famous Fries". This wasn't someone trying to be tricky. It was just my mind playing tricks on me. It reminded me of an ad I heard on the radio not long ago for some event at the Utah State Fair Park. The funny thing was how the announcer strung the words together. Nothing would have sounded off to anyone unless you are local to Utah. I don't know how no one local caught it before the ad aired. Maybe they did, but it was too late.

The professional voice-over person lilted the words ever so differently than we normally do, calling it the "Utah" "State-Fair" "Park". Everyone has heard of a state fair. It makes sense that Utah would have a Utah State Fair, and we do. But it isn't the state-fair park. For whatever reason, it is the "Utah State" "Fair-Park". That is, the way we pronounce it, it doesn't emphasize that it's the park where the state fair is held (even though it is) but rather it's the fair-park for the state of Utah. Read that outloud a few times, switching between connecting the words State and Fair and then connecting the words Fair and Park. Utah State-Fair Park. Utah State Fair-Park. Say it enough times, and it sounds completely different and awkward, like you can tell the artist reading the script is definitely not from here.

Does it matter that they aren't from here? Does it matter if we can tell? There's always a way to tell, but I think it comes down to what we do with that information. Do we take the presence of an outsider as a blessing? Are we using diversity to learn and make ourselves stronger? Are we building on different experiences and making everyone feel welcome? Or are we xenophobic? Are we using the differences as a way to divide us and keep people out? Are we using dog whistles to secretly signal our intentions to our friends while keeping our enemies in the dark?

I hope we're making friends rather than enemies.

It is a small world, after all.

Pomodoro

A pomodoro is a tomato in Italian. It's also a system for time management and maintaining focus in order to get work done, invented by Francesco Cirillo. The name refers to a tomato-shaped timer he used to keep himself on track.

The basic idea is that you can do just anything for a short period of time, even if it is difficult or unpleasant or if there is something that causes you to lose focus. You also want to make sure you don't get too deep into something that will suck you in all day and keep you from getting to other tasks that need to be done. In the agile project management world, we use a concept called timeboxing, which is where you set a certain amount of time for a meeting or a task, and you have to fill the box but not overflow the box. When the time is up, the meeting is over, and you all move onto the next meeting or task, rather than letting it bleed into the next hour and make everything else start late, cascading through your day's calendar to where you end up staying late or pushing it to tomorrow to get things done.

To put it another way, considering the traditional triple constraints in project management, of scope, time, and cost, we more or less ignore the cost factor a bit and really look at things as a tradeoff between scope and time. Either you work until a task is completed, no matter how much time it takes, or else you work for a certain amount of time no matter how much work was completed.

In the system, a pomodoro is a 25 minute block of time in which to complete work. You want to break up the work into chunks that you think can be reasonably done in that time. The longer you use the system, especially if you track what you get done, the better you get at estimating what you can do in that amount of time. If you get to the end of the 25 minute timer, and you're not done, that's okay. You stop anyway. Take a 5 minute break to go to the bathroom, listen to a song, do some jumping jacks, eat a sandwich, or whatever will allow you a little bit of release without getting sucked into something else time consuming. If you get done early, you keep working anyway until the full 25 minutes are up. It could be reporting on the work you completed, getting a head start on the next task, planning out your next day, or anything else that keeps you productive.

You repeat 4 pomodoros, at 25 minutes each, with 5 minute breaks in between them. After the fourth pomodoro, you take a half hour break. After that half hour, you do another block of 4 pomodoros. A pomodoro could be working on a report or spreadsheet, a meeting with a client or coworker, checking and responding to emails, doing professional development, or if a student doing something like reading a chapter, working through homework problems, watching some class lecture videos, taking a quiz, practicing an instrument, etc.

The key is to not break up the 25 minute pomodoro into anything smaller. If you get a call or text or someone popping into your office or anything else that seems urgent, push it back to your break if possible. If not possible, then the interrupted pomodoro doesn't count, and you reset the timer to 25 minutes when you are ready to start up again. Turn off notifications on your phone and close your email client to ensure you're only checking messages when the planned pomodoro calls for it or during a break.

By keeping focus in short bursts, they will add up to you getting more work done than if you let a constant stream of distractions get you off your groove, while still knowing you won't get burnt out since you do have a break coming up in just a few minutes.

Text and Multimedia Links on Conscious Capitalism

Mackey/Friedman/Rodgers debate: Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business - https://reason.com/2005/10/01/rethinking-the-social-responsi-2/

After Words with John Mackey - https://www.c-span.org/video/?309877-1/after-words-john-mackey

What is a Conscious Business? - https://www.huffingtonpost.com/fixcapitalism/what-is-a-conscious-busin_b_8351802.html

Reimagining Capitalism with Higher Consciousness - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8faXr6WhCM

The Business Case for Conscious Companies - https://consciouscompanymedia.com/sustainable-business/infographic-business-case-conscious-companies/

Concious Capitalism - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL86E52E7A0EC8FA8B

How to Create a Compelling Purpose for your Business - https://consciouscompanymedia.com/sustainable-business/how-to-create-a-compelling-purpose-for-your-business/

Roy Spence: The Power of Purpose - https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x10kj09

Fundamentals of Cultural Transformation - https://www.valuescentre.com/sites/default/files/uploads/2010-07-20/Fundamentals.pdf

How Southwest Airlines Built its Culture - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_CeFiUkV7s

A Culture Discussion with Edgar Schein - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq9XL0N_fR0

Introduction to Systems Thinking - https://thesystemsthinker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Introduction-to-Systems-Thinking-IMS013Epk.pdf

Managing for Stakeholders - http://www.stakeholderslab.nl/wp-content/uploads/Freeman-Managing-for-Stakeholders-2.pdf

Strategies for Managing Stakeholder Relationships with R. Edward Freeman - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlK6582g700

Dan Pink: The Puzzle of Motivation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

Business and Society in the Coming Decades - https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/business-and-society-in-the-coming-decades

The Social Responsibility of Business - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5KZhm19EO0

Leadership from the Inside Out - https://www.bkconnection.com/static/Leadership_From_the_Inside_Out_EXCERPT.pdf

Bob Chapman on Truly Human Leadership - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njn-lIEv1LU

Breathe In, Breathe Out - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/breathe-out-raj-sisodia/

Paul Hawken: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring - https://gratefulness.org/resource/brilliant-earth-hiring/

The Healing Organization - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWs6HFOkNEY

5 Reasons to be Optimistic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyV4PLSBxaU

Conscious Leadership

"Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership." -Peter Drucker

Conscious leaders will sacrifice and serve those under them. They will create a vision to help others achieve what they did not even know was possible.

A leader needs to be both strong and caring. Strength without caring is brutal, while caring without strength is ineffective.

Leadership needs to be authentic, meaningfully communicate with and influence others, and create value. Artifice is too easily seen through. Not working with others is about the furthest from leadership possible. Doing the wrong thing is worse than not doing anything at all, as such a misdirected leader will not only fail to build what they should but will have their people digging a hole that must be filled in by others before restarting the building process after they are gone.

The most neglected stakeholders

Stakeholders are anyone or anything that either has an effect on our business or project, or who our project or business has an effect on. It is easy to forget those we have an effect on if their effect on us is less clear.

If you don't have a healthy planet and functioning society, nothing else matters.

The CEO of Wal-Mart discussed how companies can contribute to society. The first principle is to prioritize issues relevant to the mission of the company. A grocer, for example, would care about the sustainability of the world's food supply. Second is to draw on the company's capabilities. If a company has a resource they can use to help other people, they should do so. For example, a grocery store may donate food that is approaching its expiration date to a local food bank. It costs them nothing, as the food would have gone bad before it sold anyway. Third, aim for the triple bottom line. This includes considering how companies can positively affect profit, people, and the planet. Four is reshaping the system for lasting improvement. By collaborating to improve the system for oneself, the sytem is improved for everyone that is part of it. Number five is engaging partners in transforming systems. The challenges we face in our world are not ones that can be addressed solo.

It is interesting that someone from Wal-Mart would have this discussion, since they are known for brutally taking over their suppliers' supply chains in order to squeeze every drop they can from them. They do this in the name of efficiency which can be good, but it really turns out to be high volume and low per-unit net income at the expense of employee expertise and quality. A company who charges slightly more can afford to provide better service and a higher quality product.

It is often seen that businesses will attempt to maximize shareholder returns at all costs. The means don't matter, only the end of the almighty stock price. The problem with such thinking is that anytime we care about any end more than any of the possible means to get there, there is an inherent systemic motivation to cheat. This holds in sports, in school, in relationships, in business, and everywhere in society. By focusing only on the predetermined outcome, people will do whatever is required to steal or otherwise manipulate the inputs to achieve what is considered the best output. The thing is, if they would just focus on using the best means - cooperating, being kind, treating employees well, cleaning up the environment, and otherwise sharing their means, the best ends will result, whether or not they were the end we initially desired.

"Not everything that is confronted can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is confronted." - James Baldwin

Systems Thinking

Traditional analysis focuses on the individual components, while systems thinking considers how each aspect interacts with other aspects of the system. There are three elements of a system. The first is the individual parts. The second is the way they connect to each other. The final is the purpose. The individual elements can be switched out, and if the connections and purpose do not change with it, the result will be th same, whether success or failure. By reorganizing, a big difference can be made. Just providing more information can be one of the biggest differences.

A system is a group of interconnected and interacting parts with a common purpose. Without a common purpose or relationships, we would have simply a collection, rather than a system. A bowl of fruit, for example, is simply a collection. While they may have a common purpose, the pieces of fruit do not interact with each other in the same way the cook, waiter, customer, and others might interact in a restaurant, resulting in the bowl of fruit being provided for breakfast.

The system must have a purpose, and each component plays its own part in helping achieve that purpose and in supporting the other components. The pieces are organized in such a way that they act efficiently and provide feedback to each other. These feedback loops may be linear where each process or component provides information to be used by its successor task until the process has completed one simple pass-through. They may be circular or recurring loops, however, where each phase or task feeds into another and then repeats back to the original, interating with each run. This would be like the difference between ordering a bowl of fruit to go and eating it at home. No matter what is in the bowl, it's too late to change it. It may change whether you go to that restaurant or order that dish again, but that particular bowl can only be eaten as is or discarded. Eating in the restaurant, however, the server may ask how the food is tasting, and there is an opportunity to add more food to the order or send it back if the fruit is warm or mushy. The second scenario is a more advanced system than the first.

As the feedback loops cycles repeatedly, it can create what is called either a virtuos cycle or a vicious cycle. A virtuous cycle is one where positive results lead to continued growth and positive results. On the other hand, a vicious cycle means negative results will lead to stagnation and losing sales or whatever else we are measuring. A balancing cycle is a self-maintaining loop where as good things happen and growth occurs, the growth will result in a less than idea situation, which results in loss, which then results in a better situation and the growth returns again - kind of like a swinging pendulum. When it is not obvious what is happening, a diagram of the system and results of the processes can help visualize and make clear to everyone what is working well or not.

To me a systems approach means considering all the likely results, putting processes into place to maximize good results and minimize bad results. When there are good or bad results, there should be at that point additional processes to deal with those results as well. The last thing you want to do as a business owner is to make any type of change without having any idea what the likely outcome is going to be. Everything you do should be tested and recorded so that when things get better or worse later, we know what the cause was. Changing too many things at the same time can result in two positive and negative reactions cancelling each other out or not being able to tell which of two things we changed are what created the effect we wanted. We then don't know whether to continue doing what we're doing or if we need to make additional changes. Even if we know the change we made was the sole cause of a given reaction, if that is not recorded and saved for later, years down the road new people may not have learned that same lesson and will need to repeat the same process we thought we already learned from.

As you consider the various stakeholders associated with a company, it is important that all work together for their mutual benefit. If any one stakeholder is focused too much on their own growth at the cost of the others, it will create an imbalance that can potentially lead to the company going out of business. By thinking about what others need and trusting that others will look out for theirs, everyone benefits together. You want to hire employees who are passionate about your company and its products.

“Business is not a game. It is not a math problem. It is not a machine. It is not war. It is one of the most human things we do. It is a living, interconnected and interdependent system, like a rain forest or the human body.”

“Employees and customers are like the two wings of a bird. A business cannot fly with only one.”

Too many businesses with a sole focus on shareholder value or any other individual stakeholder will result in creating chaos, imbalance, and tension. That tension will eventually have to be resolved or corrected. Why not do it right the first time?

Culture

Peter Drucker said, "Culture eats strategy for lunch." Raj Sisodia warns that it doesn't wait until lunchtime.

Concious companies need to be trustworthy and transparent. The minute information is hidden, it brings out the worst of the gossip mill. Perception is reality. If someone thinks a bad thing is happening, it doesn't matter whether or not it is actually happening. Empowerment is one of the keys to all of this. Expect the best and train them in the values and purpose. Then give them freedom to enact what you have trained them to do, all the while keeping the transparency there. Everyone should realize that whether they do the right or wrong thing, it will be known.

When creating a transformation within a company, individuals must buy in and be willing to change their behaviors. Enough people changing their individual behaviors will create the expected shift. Some people will be lost, however. Not everyone will be willing to make the change. Pushing out the naysayers, whether actively or passively, will serve to improve positive behaviors in two ways. One is that the naysayers are gone and their bad behaviors with them. Two is that those who remain will recognize that the company's commitment is there - it is serious. I ran into this as a manager. We were having quality issues, so we did training and let people know of our expectations, but we had to take some temporary but drastic steps to ensure that everyone was buying in to the transformation. Not everyone could handle the pressure and some left, as they were offended that I didn't fully trust them to do their job. The thing is, I believe in empowerment but at the same time expect greatness. Empowerment doesn't mean simply allowing people to do whatever they want. It means making it clear you expect a high level of performance and then giving them tools and trusting them to make it happen. The transition isn't always comfortable.

When hiring, make it clear what your criteria are. Attitude is most important. Skills can be taught, but attitude is difficult to change. Interview in groups to see how the person interacts with a variety of existing employees. Include front line employees in the process, as well as high level management to ensure the best people are hired and that new hires know the company is serious about what they ask of them. Culture and behavior are different but related. You can make a behavioral change by requesting people act in a certain way. Over time, the change in behavior will either be rejected or accepted. Eventually if accepted, it will be integrated into the culture. Rejected behaviors are not sustainable and will result in the requested behavior being subverted or dropped.

The sandwich chain Even Stevens is known for a delicious menu, live music, and most of all their charitable giving. Their deal is that for every sandwich you buy, a sandwich is donated to charity. This is in the form of each sandwich including a credit of about 50 cents that preselected charities can use to purchase food from their suppliers. Their website talks about how they are a collective rather than just individuals and that they care immensely about the enjoyment of food as well as making a difference in society. The downside is that they lost sight of this mission, expanded into too many stores too quickly, and had to close several stores and suspend the charitable donations. Their sandwiches are still delicious and expensive, but a couple years later they are unable to resume the sandwich credits. They claim they are still tracking what they owe their charities and will make it up to them. They serve as a warning against taking your eyes off the prize. They forgot about what set them apart in favor of rapid growth.

It will be interesting with the current pandemic to see how companies emerge on the other side with their strategy and their culture intact or improved, vs. those who will not weather the storm well. Many companies have moved to telecommuting after avoiding it for years in spite of research that shows people are often happier and more productive working from home. After having such a drastic change forced on them, I will be among those watching to see what changes when a cure is found. It is one thing to see which companies will survive the pandemic itself; it is another thing to see which companies can transition out of it when it is over.

Don’t start a business to serve yourself and use others. Start a business to express yourself and serve others.

A Business' Purpose

Victor Frankl wrote that happiness cannot be pursued; it ensues: it is the outcome of living a life of meaning and purpose. That comes from three things: doing work that matters, loving without condition, and finding meaning in our suffering.

If we wanted to rewrite that for a business, we may have to start with changing the outcome of happiness. People can be happy, but a corporation is not a person and can't be happy. I believe it can create happiness in others. Not every company would necessarily have happiness as a desired outcome, although perhaps every organization we have would make someone happy or else it would not exist. That may be part of the key - it is not that we would pursue something other than happiness but rather we need to ask who is this company supposed to make happy?

A related question may be whether it is possible to make people happy as a win-win or if happiness is a zero-sum game. Is one person's happiness at the expense of someone else's? In many sporting events, if one team wins by 5 points, the other team loses by 5 points. Most races work a little bit differently, where you'll have the first, second, and third place finishers receive medals - one overall winner but top finishers are acknowledged as well. Someone is still going to end up in last place, but finisher medals go to everyone who completes the race, knowing that finishing a marathon is still a fantastic achievement in and of itself. The Fan Favorite, Miss Congeniality, or Most Improved awards are other ways of letting more people win a little, because we recognize that more winners is better.

Golf is a little different in that a handicap can be calculated, which shows how close to par a golfer scores on average. This allows golfers of different skill levels to be ranked based on how they perform relative to their own average instead of directly head to head. As a golfer gets better, their handicap changes, forcing them to have to continue to improve. You still have one overall winner, just a different mathematical formula to end up with the final ranking. This means that if you modify the algorithm, even though everyone performs the same, the top to bottom ranking changes.

At some point, someone has to make the decision which algorithm is better, affecting who wins and who loses. A systemic conflict is created, where the winners believe the algorithm is good and the losers believe the algorithm is not good. It is said that an election is more about convincing the loser that they lost than it is about convincing the winner that they won. The winner always believes the election was fair. The loser needs to be convinced the results are fair so that they and their followers will not have reason to revolt. The U.S. has had a couple of elections where the electoral college algorithm gave the win to someone other than the winner of the popular vote, but that algorithm has survived as it provides a balance that the straight popular vote does not. Perhaps we need to take it even further and design a new system whereby everyone can win together.

Some board or card games are cooperative instead of competitive. An example of this is the board game Pandemic (which seems particularly appropriate these days). Everyone who plays either wins together or loses together. That's nice for a game, but the company who sells a cooperative board game vs. a competitive board game is trying to make money at the end of the day. There's an opportunity cost to buying their game - you can't use that cash to buy something else if you used it to buy the game.

A few years ago, Google changed its well-known motto from Do No Evil to Do The Right Thing. Just not doing something bad is different than doing something good. One kind of implies the other, but why not be explicit about wanting to do good?

It is sometimes said that integrity is what you do when no one is looking. But what about what you do when people are looking? If your proverbial mom is looking, you'll want to do the right thing, so this statement is that if you have integrity, you'll still do what makes your mom proud even if there was no way she would find out (someone has never lived in a small town, apparently). The part of this that has always bothered me is negative peer pressure or imbalanced power relationships. If you have integrity, you'll still do the right thing when people are looking - in particular those who may want to tempt you to do the wrong thing. Are you willing to stand against your so-called friends and do what is right in the face of temptation or danger? Integrity is doing what is right, period. It doesn't matter if no one is looking or if you're trying not to look silly doing the right thing when everyone is looking. We see photos of white people (students and adults) being out of control racists when the Little Rock Nine showed up to go to school. So what about those who were privately pro-integration? How willing were they to stand up to their racist friends? There are stories but too few and too far between.

I recently learned of an upgrade to the Golden Rule. The original aphorism states that we should treat others as we would like to be treated. The Platinum Rule takes this to the next level, which is that we should treat others as they would like to be treated. Not everyone is the same, so we need to adjust our responses to treat people in the way that is best for them. We need to take time to get to know them and work side by side to the point that we can give them something personally meaningful. Even this doesn't fully take into account that not everyone knows what is best for them. Adjustments still must be made when what is best for someone is not what the person wants.

Back to Frankl, if an individual can become happy by doing work that matters, loving without condition, and finding meaning in our suffering, then what is the equivalent for a company? There may be other principles that could be added, but my proposal follows a parallel structure to the original.

A company maximizes happiness within their sphere of influence by doing work that matters, treating everyone with respect, and reducing suffering.

A company has to start by choosing their sphere of influence. We can't fix every injustice in the world or provide products and services that everyone will want, but we can focus on a place where we feel like we can make an impact and choose work that will result in more good than bad. The important principle is that once we have set our sphere of influence, we have to treat everyone within that sphere with respect. This goes back to the Platinum Rule. It doesn't matter if it is customers, employees, suppliers, competitors, animals, government regulators, or people we encounter but have no official relationship with - we should cooperate with them all. We should do no evil. It is difficult to eliminate all negative externalities, but no one said this process would be easy. For the third principle, we take it one more step and not only do we not hurt others but we specifically reach out to do the right thing or the best thing. We actively work to reduce suffering. We promote building at the same time that we tear down destructive elements.

Finding Your Purpose

Notes from my continued reading on Conscious Capitalism:

Besides the day you were born, the most important day in your life is when you figure out the purpose for which you were born.

Purpose is the difference we're trying to make in the world.

How do you find your purpose? Look where your talents and the needs of the world cross.

Even further, then, they show a four-way Venn diagram with your purpose being the intersection of what you do well, what you love, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for.

Questions to help discover your purpose:

• Why was the organization originally founded?
• What were the guiding principles that this organization was founded on?
• What spirit or intention must be preserved and captured in our purpose at all cost?
• When we are at our absolute best, what is going on?
• When we love what we are doing, what is going on?
• When we’re failing, just getting by, in a slump, or not that interested in our work, what is going on?
• What is the ultimate impact we hope to make?
• When we’re at our best, what difference do we make in the lives of the people we serve?
• What is our organization’s greatest strength; what do we have the potential to be the best at in the world?
• What are we most passionate about? What do we love the most about what we do?
• Where can we have the most meaningful impact? Which big problems or needs in the world are we capable of and passionate about solving?
• What would people reward us for? What products and services would our customers happily purchase from us?
• What do you love most about this company or this brand?
• What does this company or brand do for you that no one else does?
• If this company or brand ceased to exist, what would be lost? What would you miss the most?
• At the most basic level, what do we have to offer people?
• Functional benefit: what does our offering enable people to do?
• Emotional benefit: how does our offering make people feel?
• Ultimate value: what is the ultimate value of these functional and emotional benefits in their lives?
• What is your heart calling you to do?
• What is absolutely essential for the purpose to be truly meaningful?

Roy Spence paraphrases Aristotle, that we should do good rather than simply be good. We need to change the story, bring competitors together, and use our strengths to serve a higher purpose.

Leadership

“In human relationships there are too many tacit, silent deals in which one person agrees not to demand full measure, if the other person will agree to mediocrity when excellence may be possible. In any event, the unwillingness of most leaders to set standards, to administer feedback when standards are not met, to praise clearly when standards are met, stands in the way of the development of excellence on the part of followers with inevitable loss in follower effectiveness and follower satisfaction. The leader who makes no demands of his disciples cannot really lead them at all. The sense of new excitement and new challenge generated by the gospel will be blunted by leaders who shield followers from the full demands of followership”

-Neal A. Maxwell

Conscious Capitalism

Why capitalism needs to evolve:

Capitalism has improved income, quality of life, literacy, and lifespan, but most people don't trust businesses. The invisible hand of Adam Smith has worked to increased income for many people through the industrial revolution and other changes and improvements, but the idea of shareholder maximization has had the opposite effect of decreasing efficiency and productivity.

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods pushes back against Milton Friedman's assertion that businesses should only be looking out for maximizing returns for their shareholders. Whole foods considers a range of stakeholders that should benefit from a company's existence - customers, employees, suppliers, investors, vendors, communities, and the environment.

Mackey discusses what a common answer would be to the question about the purpose of business. The first answer is always to make money. At the same time, a doctor who is very well paid will not say healthcare's purpose is to make money. It is to help people become healthy. Of course, a hospital or doctor's office is still a business and one that shuffles a lot of money through it, but there is still an overarching purpose beyond just the money itself.

He argues that legacy companies with a different mindset will have to evolve or else they will be replaced by start-ups to have a conscious capitalism approach.

What is conscious capitalism?

The metaphor is given of a caterpillar who simply consumes as much as possible, adding no value. Eventually nature takes its course and the metamorphosis to a butterfly results in a creature of light and beauty that gives back as much as it takes.

The four tenets are higher purpose (why), stakeholder integration (what), conscious culture (how), and conscious leadership (who).

Conscious capitalism goes beyond corporate social responsibility, which only mitigates some potential negative impacts without significantly building beyond that. Other concepts such as sustainability, triple bottom line, and shared value capitalism likewise do not go far enough in terms of who can benefit from the company and how.

Raj Sisodia presents conscious capitalism as a philosphy of doing business rather than a business strategy or business model. Such a philosophy will create value rather than extract value, leading to a Win-Win, rather than a Zero-Sum result. The key is patience. Such a metamorphosis cannot happen overnight, and there will be failures along the way. Companies trying to practice conscious capitalism may fail, but that does not mean it wasn't a good idea. It just means they need to keep trying.

Just like a doctor or hospital is still a business but working towards a greater purpose of improving health, really any non-profit is at the end of the day a business. The local humane society can't fulfill its mission of taking care of pets if they don't have the money from adoption fees or donations. The thrift store can't keep the lights on if no one donates their used items. Individual owners and employees can still be paid decently personally while the organization gives back to society.

The CC Credo:

We believe that:

Business is good, because it creates value.

It is ethical, because it is based on voluntary exchange.

It is noble, because it can elevate our existence.

It is heroic, because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity.

Unrest

Can't we all just get along?

This paraphrased quote from Rodney King back in 1992 still echoes 28 years later. Think of how much has changed in that time. How much has stayed the same?

Wars have been waged, the internet and mobile phones have transformed communication and how businesses operate, 5 U.S. presidents have served, reality TV shows (or unscripted dramas) have shifted the entertainment landscape, hip hop music has become mainstream music, and much more.

One of those presidents was our first African American president, and the hip hop music that has dominated the last couple decades was created by and is primarily still performed by people of color. But where has that really gotten us?

More and more people of color are killed in the streets. Riots break out across the country as part of protests against racial divisions and atrocious acts committed by police and everyday citizens. Perpetrators are rarely brought to justice. White America is barely aware of the existence of our own privilege.

A pandemic seems to have lowered defenses, opened doors, unified us against a common enemy, and squeezed out all but the essential from our lives. And in the middle of the pandemic with no end in sight we have race riots and protests, burning police cars, looting, a president who seems to provoke more than promote calm, and more to come as the disadvantaged are stressed by an economy in shambles. Race continues to divide us as the pandemic should be uniting us.

Can't we all just get along?

Virtual Campout

Our scout troop had a campout planned for this last weekend. It was going to be a district event at a BSA camp. It was cancelled, but we decided to hold our own event anyway. Some suggestions in BSA's weekly newsletter were to have each scout help cook dinner at home, hold a virtual campfire program, and then have everyone sleep in their own backyard.

So that's what we did.

We planned in our regular virtual troop meeting on Thursday, through Discord, what the campout would look like and made assignments for the campfire. We decided to let everyone plan their own menu based on what individuals preferred and had available at their houses to cook. We cooked hamburgers at our house. We also planned what time to meet.

At 8:30, we jumped online and had a pretty good turnout of people calling in. One family actually had a campfire in their backyard and showed it on video, while another turned on their fireplace inside, so that was nice. It started a little slow, with nobody really sure who was doing what. But once they got going, telling jokes and even one funny skit from a family who had enough people there to do a full skit, we went through 45 minutes like it was nothing. It was honestly a lot of fun, just sitting there in the dark, looking at the glowing lights of a campfire in someone else's backyard, a few moments of silence where people just sat there waiting as you normally do around a campfire, and other moments of laughter and fun as we shared funny stories. It was just nice.

I slept in my hammock and my son on the trampoline. He had a closed cell foam pad and a mummy bag and stayed warm. I had my underquilt wrapped around the hammock which made it nice and toasty. It was a fairly warm night, although I think it did get into the upper 30s for a low. I unzipped my sleeping bag about 3/4 of the way and turned it 90 degrees so the end formed a footbox and the unzipped portions just laid around me like a blanket. It was not constricting light a tight sleeping bag can be. Usually the bottom of the hammock will be cold, which is nice on a hot summer day, but not so good on a cool night. I was able to move around without having to worry about keeping my pad under me or getting all twisted around in the sleeping bag.

This week, there is a national virtual campout with some merit badge classes taught through Facebook on Saturday. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to being able to camp for real again, but this has been better than expected.

COVID19

March came in like a lion and went out like a tornado this year. The big news is the virus sweeping the world. We all were hearing about it back in February and how it was growing quickly in China and Northern Italy, as well as on a cruise ship. Even then, it wasn't taken seriously by anyone, as people I know still traveled to Southern Italy the first part of March and were still planning trips to Japan or other places near the outbreak.

Gucci, Prada, and other glamorous fashion clothing brands come from Northern Italy. They have outsourced much of their production to Wuhan, China. As the people in China have become rich off the Italian fashionista companies, they have started buying some of those companies and moving to Italy. The world truly is flat.

Bringing it home, some of the things we have had cancelled include: public school, university classes (all gone online), Sunday church services, school and comp soccer games (and practices), volleyball tournaments (and practices), piano lessons, scout meetings, weeknight church youth groups, going out to eat at restaurants, spring break trips, NCAA basketball tournament, dentist appointments, kids playing with friends, horse riding lessons, orchestra practice, and probably some other things I'm not remembering right now.

Some of the things that go on include: homework sent out virtually from teachers, piano lessons via FaceTime, hikes and walks around the neighborhood with the dog, getting takeout from restaurants, our first virtual scout meeting will be this week through Discord, one of the kids had a church youth group meeting through Zoom, I work remotely from home already, home church, orthodontist, kids playing video games, texting and social media to connect with family, grocery shopping, and snow well into Spring.

What does the future hold? In some places, it is more isolation. In others it is spreading pandemic. It is anxiety about the summer. It is fear about next year?

It is a change and a new normal. Some people claim there won't be a new normal - we'll be back to the old normal by the end of the year. I hope we have all learned something from this. Families, businesses, and other organizations will hopefully be a little more prepared, will have trimmed a little bit of the unnecessary, more people will be working from home, fewer people will live in big cities, and what else? Probably some things we still can't foresee. Hopefully we take advantage of the changes and make them be positive ones.

Music

There are a lot of shows out there about finding talent and in particular talented singers.

The Voice has a unique spin (pun intended), where the judges don't see the singers until they choose them for their team. They often comment on how appropriate the name of the show is, because that is all that is important.

The problem is that once the chairs turn, that no longer holds, as they work to teach them and are biased to members of their own team. They go with the next best thing other than another chair turn, which is hitting a button, which is the exciting part (aside from the singing). New actions beyond the chair turn include a steal, a save, and a block. But there's no way to turn the chair back around.

The Masked Singer partly solves this issue, because the participants stay behind their ornate costumes until they lose. The gimmick there is that it is a celebrity. It is someone we and the panel know, and while it is important who wins the singing competition, that part is mostly overshadowed by the discussion of their identities, followed by the actual unmasking.

What about a combination of the two? How about a reverse reality show trend where instead of a celebrity version, we do a non-celebrity version? This takes away the excitement of the guessing and unmasking, but it puts the focus where it should be - the music.

Social Media Fatigue

Awhile back I had posted about the problems with Facebook. It's not just Facebook, though. I won't list all the different social media sites, but I think very few don't suffer from the same issues of being designed to lead to addiction and brainwashing.

Mark Zuckerberg has just been quoted as being for free speech or freedom of expression. I get that. One of the most powerful tools for the oppressed under totalitarian regimes is the ability to use social media to get their message out to the world.

Cory Doctorow's After the Siege paints a different picture of broadcasting an oppressed society gone wrong. He also talks about how awesome it would be to put the power of technology and smart sensors into the hand of the people and not the other way around.

Why isn’t it creepy for you to know when the next bus is due, but it is creepy for the bus company to know that you’re waiting for a bus?

Why is it creepy that when I go to The Guardian's website to read Doctorow's column about corporations and the government surveilling us I get a warning about the cookies being placed on my computer to track me as I visit the site?

As important as it is to work through the issues of all the data constantly tracking everything we do, backing it up a minute to the original, less complicated thought, there's just a fatigue that sets in trying to keep up with everything.

Going back 20 years, when email was pretty much the only thing close to what you could call a social media tool, I was always on top of my email, answering any message quickly and reading everything that came to my inbox. As spam clogged things up and a variety of other options popped up, whether that was Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or just about anything else, I have found that I will generally have a primary or favorite platform at any one time. If I'm staying on top of Instagram, Twitter suffers, and vice versa. Email suffered to where I don't read most of what comes in my email and what I do read is usually days later, because I was staying on top of something else.

So 5 months ago, while on vacation, I just stopped dealing with social media. It wasn't really on purpose. I wanted to enjoy the vacation. I meant to post some pictures from it but never did, and all of a sudden it's been 5 months. When I mention it to people (sparingly, not in a vegan or crossfit way of mentioning it to people), I've not heard kickback from it. It's generally been positive, as I got the feeling they wished they could give it up, too.

I was aware of the social media fatigue before and my behavior of switching platforms and not being able to keep up with all of them at the same time, but I hadn't realized how freeing it would be to just give it all up together.