Clover the kitten

Just recently I had the pleasure of being corrected on a rather distant post (and one I think of often): Pangur Ban. It’s one of my favorite poems and I heard it first in a very engaging lecture by Seamus Heaney. I had incorrectly attributed another’s lecture notes (O’Sullivan) to Heaney. This has since been rectified.

However, I got the added benefit of Patrick sharing a song he had written inspired by Pangur Ban which I found quite charming and so posted it below, with a link to his song book. This is the sort of song someone like Chris Smither should do. Given that Smither no longer does the Vancouver-Seattle-Portland corridor, my hope is that Patrick signs up for his tour calendar and makes it to one of the many Dublin dates Smither now does. Perhaps there’s a collaboration there somewhere.

Enjoy,

The Song
O’Sullivan paid tribute to the original with a song featured in his lyric book “Love, Death and Whiskey.”

Clover the Kitten

BY PATRICK O’SULLIVAN

‘not a translation – more a meditation on the original, inspired by his cat, Clover.

Included in the lyric book “as a gift for the Irish specialists.”

Clover helped me write this song.
She sits perched upon my shoulder,
bites my ear when I go wrong:
such a sense of time has Clover.

If I’m stuck this cat descends
to the jungle on my table.
There she stalks and hunts my pens
round the phone and down the cable.

Meanwhile I do much the same,
hunting words and shades of meaning
through the jungle of my brain
to some bright and happy clearing.

So, each does what each is best at
in the world to make it brighter.
Clover is the cleverest cat.
I’m the poor, hard-working writer.

beautifully well read

Love it! Mad Men, one of my favorite series, is doing their part to deepen the American Experience. Not only are they reminding us to look better (they recently debuted a collection of clothes with Banana Republic)…

…they created a thoughtful reading list from the many references of period authors of the day.

Season 1
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
• The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe
• Exodus by Leon Uris
• Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Season 2
• The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
• Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O’Hara
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Season 3
• Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy
• The Group by Mary McCarthy
• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

Season 4
• The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict
• The Clue of the Black Keys by Carolyn Keene
• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré

Bonus Reading
• Mad Men: The Illustrated World by Dyna Moe
• Sterling’s Gold: Wit and Wisdom of an Ad Man by Roger Sterling
• The Fashion File by Janie Bryant

All bonus reading titles are available for purchase in the Mad Men store online. Personally, I would have preferred to see props from the set. 

Some interesting prop links:

• Entertainment Weekly
• Paste Magazine
• AMC TV Blog

1493, a year that doesn’t get much press.

I was listening to this on the way home and couldn’t get out of my car until the program was complete, so I”ll just paste the article in here–it was that interesting a story.

The content made me think of how butterfly wings really do generate tsunamis. The impact of our actions lasts generations. To know that the contents of our daily plates of food come from all around the globe and has for generations, is something we take for granted on a daily basis.  Why then, with this sense of entitlement, are we so outraged when we must then deal with the consequences of such a full and diverse plate (the pests, the waste, the illness, the famine)?

Interesting fact from the article: that the potato came from south america. The potato was most prolific in Ireland. The potato’s pests caught up with it and famine came because the Irish lacked the strategies to cope with the pests. Famine ensued, millions died. This cycle, which took many many years to complete, is fascinating to me. Man imposes his will on nature with such naivety and without thinking long term (with the best of intentions), and causes such havoc.

“In fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” goes the old elementary school rhyme.

But it was Columbus’ activities in the years that followed, says writer Charles C. Mann, that really created the New World. When Columbus crossed the Atlantic in 1492, his journey prompted the exchange of not only information but also food, animals, insects, plants and viruses between the continents.

“It was a tremendous ecological convulsion — the greatest event in the history of life since the death of the dinosaurs,” says Mann. “And this underlies a huge amount of history learned in schools: the Industrial Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, the rise of the West — all of these are tied up in what’s been called the ‘Columbian exchange.’ “

Mann writes about the changed world after Columbus’ voyage in 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, a sequel to his 2006 pre-Columbian history, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. He tellsFresh Air‘s Terry Gross that almost nothing we consider locally grown was, in fact, native to the Americas.

“There’s absolutely nothing in my garden that originated within 1,000 miles of my house,” he says. “Tomatoes originated in Mexico. Basil came from Italy. Onions came from Europe. I live in Massachusetts. There’s absolutely nothing in there from New England.”

Columbus and his men brought wheat, cattle and domesticated animals like horse and sheep to the Americas. As more Europeans followed, they brought a plethora of insects and animal-borne diseases that had not previously existed outside Europe.

“All of the great diseases from smallpox to measles to influenza … [did not] exist in the Americas because they didn’t have any domesticated animals,” says Mann. “When the Europeans came over, it was as if all the deaths over the millennium caused by these diseases were compressed into 150 years in the Americas. The result was to wipe out between two-thirds and 90 percent of the people in the Americas. It was the worst demographic disaster in history.”

Early accounts and diaries mentioned the epidemics in their accounts of life in the 1500s and 1600s. But it wasn’t until the 1960s that modern historians realized the scale of the human death toll in the years following Columbus’ landing, says Mann.

“When you start adding up everything that we know, it becomes apparent that there was just an enormous catastrophe that took place,” says Mann. “These diseases exploded like chains of firecrackers across the landscape.”

Diversify Your Revenue Streams: Spin What You Got

I picked up a book in the airport recently: Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher. It’s a fast read and has enough tabloid photos to keep you interested. Her come-sit-by-me-and-dish point of view is disarming and I genuinely enjoyed her tales, her vulnerability and her wit. More importantly, I respect what she is doing.

Wishful Drinking

Carrie Fisher has an impressive background as a writer, two of her books having been made into films. After something akin to electric shock therapy, she risks losing much of her memory and past in order to move forward with the rest of her life. To many, this would be a death sentence as our history, that which binds us into routine and dictates much of our decision making, is the thing we find the most comfort in.

Fisher is an example of someone who refuses to be put in a box, who is still out there learning lessons, sharing her findings and being funny — whatever you may think of her or her talent, you just have to appreciate those qualities in a person.

 

She has a book: $29.00- 13.38

She has a 1-man show: $59.00-49.00

And those lovely cinnamon buns on the cover, priceless.

I was disappointed to see that there wasn’t some Hollywood intern trapped in a hamster wheel blogging for her while she’s on the road, to capture all the love and well wishes, etc. but I suspect she will get to that eventually. All Boomers have to embrace the web at some point.

To Carrie’s new life, she’s summoned her chutzpah and making some coin on skills she still has, memories she might lose and of course, looking to what the future might bring.

Altogether, a rather inspirational message.

Pick Good Influences For Your Advisory Board

Obviously John Wooden is not on my advisory board, but he is in my Pantheon-of-Wonderful-People.

Quote to consider

No written word, no spoken plea Can teach our youth what they should be; Nor all the books on all the shelves It’s what the teachers are themselves. Given to John Wooden by his Father upon Graduation And now to You

He is, quite simply, the greatest basketball coach ever. The numbers speak for themselves: 10 NCAA championships in 12 years, including seven straight national championships, 38 straight tournament wins and 88 straight wins overall. You don’t build a record like that without being a great leader and without being able to mold and shape raw talent into cohesive teams that make winning a part of their very existence. A day after his 95th birthday, UCLA’s head basketball coach emeritus brought his leadership lessons to UCLA’s Alumni Weekend Conference, where he shared his thoughts on team spirit, teaching and — most important to him — poetry, during a conversation with author Steve Jamison and a group of business school graduates.

 

John Wooden

 

 

I don’t like to give advice. I’ll give opinions.

You’ve got to get across to each individual that what we are interested in is what is going to work for all. You have to think for the group and not just of yourself.

I once heard team spirit defined as a willingness to lose oneself in the group for the good of the group. I used that for a spell, but it wasn’t quite what I wanted somehow. Eventually, I decided that I would eliminate the word “willingness” and institute “eagerness” — an eagerness to lose one’s self in the group for the good of the group.

[A leader] is just part of the group. You have to be firm but not stubborn. Stubbornness we deprecate, firmness we condone. The former is my neighbor’s trait; the latter is my own.

We’re all different. The good Lord in his wisdom didn’t create us the same. Some players, for example, I had to pat on the back constantly, and there are others I had to pat a little lower and a little harder. You can’t treat everybody alike. You have to try to give everyone the treatment they earn and deserve under your supervision.

When you have to discipline, do it privately and not before others. Don’t embarrass them before their peers.

• Complete Interview
• Coach Wood web site (warning he has audio on his web site)
• His books

Big Companies Get Creative, Are You?

William Sonoma and Pottery Barn are offering in store classes. Everyone gets the main need to do these: move product off the shelves. However, there is another reason why ideas like this are important. They are experiences, they make the shopping moment feel person, local and more communal.

According to Joseph Pine and James Gilmore (authors of The Experience Economy), the bar of economic offerings is being raised again. The authors argue that the service economy is about to be superseded with something that critics will find even more ephemeral (and controversial) than services ever were: experiences. In part because of technology and the increasing expectations of consumers, services today are starting to look like commodities. The authors write that “Those businesses that relegate themselves to the diminishing world of goods and services will be rendered irrelevant. To avoid this fate, you must learn to stage a rich, compelling experience.”

The experiences in the book highlight highly stylized destinations: Disney, Las Vegas, etc…but the lesson is still applicable in microenvironments. Whether it is as large as a store that needs to move product, or as “small” as a conversation about consulting services, the mood you create through your branding, your presence, your environment will create the impression your customer walks away with.

“Since all commerce is moral choice, every business is a stage for glorifying something. Who or what does your business glorify? Your answer may not help you accept what is next, but it will certainly help guide what you do today.”

Southwest Airlines is but one example. Its CEO once observed:

“I keep telling [those interested in Southwest Airlines] that the intangibles are far more important than the tangibles in the competitive world because, obviously, you can replicate the tangibles. You can get the same airplanes. You can get the same ticket counters. You can get the same computers. But the hardest thing for a competitor to match is your culture and the spirit of your people and their focus on customer service because that isn’t something you can do overnight and it isn’t something you can do without a great deal of attention every day in a thousand different ways. That is why I say that our employees are our competitive protection.”

What is the experience do you strive for on behalf of your customers?

Related Links:

• William Sonoma Store Events
• Pottery Barn How To Guides
• Experience Economy

And…We're Back -

I know, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. I fell of the wagon and was busy consulting.  

At the beginning of each year, I’ve taken to reading Drucker’s Managing One’s Self; I did a post on it a while back. Because it’s such a handy size, it’s found a permanent spot in my bag and I whip it out whenever I have to wait for any-one, -thing… Each year I take something new.

 

The Client Services Manager from the Drucker Institute wrote me after seeing my post and shared the following info, I thought I would pass it on.

 

I hope this email finds you well. I saw your postings on the Startup Nation Blog and wanted to touch base with you regarding Drucker Apps, a new tool from the Drucker Institute.  The bi-monthly update provides usable insights on work and life from the world’s foremost expert on organizations and effectiveness.

 

This premiere edition includes:

• Six Rules for Presidents
• How to make decisions like Lincoln
• Is charisma all it’s cracked up to be?
• Can government be effective?

 

The applications can be access via the Drucker Web site, www.druckerinstitute.com or via Drucker Apps.

 

Please let me know if you have any questions or would like additional information.  If you would like to be removed from the email list, please let me know and I will be happy to do so.

 

Warm regards,

 

The site design is a little clunky, but the information is solid and I always get something out of it.

Bookshelf: Robert Shiller

There is a mood change going on. People are chastened now, having lost. Japanese had a similar housing boom a while back, where the land under the Imperial Palace was worth more than the state of California. Shiller argues that the stock market is explained by investor psychology, not the internet or globalization as others claim. Shiller forecast the collapse of the last bubble in 2000 and offers insight here into assessing risk in the 21st century. 

YouTube Videos: Robert Shiller

From Robert Shiller’s site:

The subprime mortgage crisis has already wreaked havoc on the lives of millions of people and now it threatens to derail the U.S. economy and economies around the world. In this trenchant book, best-selling economist Robert Shiller reveals the origins of this crisis and puts forward bold measures to solve it. He calls for an aggressive response–a restructuring of the institutional foundations of the financial system that will not only allow people once again to buy and sell homes with confidence, but will create the conditions for greater prosperity in America and throughout the deeply interconnected world economy.

Shiller blames the subprime crisis on the irrational exuberance that drove the economy’s two most recent bubbles–in stocks in the 1990s and in housing between 2000 and 2007. He shows how these bubbles led to the dangerous overextension of credit now resulting in foreclosures, bankruptcies, and write-offs, as well as a global credit crunch. To restore confidence in the markets, Shiller argues, bailouts are needed in the short run. But he insists that these bailouts must be targeted at low-income victims of subprime deals. In the longer term, the subprime solution will require leaders to revamp the financial framework by deploying an ambitious package of initiatives to inhibit the formation of bubbles and limit risks, including better financial information; simplified legal contracts and regulations; expanded markets for managing risks; home equity insurance policies; income-linked home loans; and new measures to protect consumers against hidden inflationary effects.

This powerful book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got into the subprime mess–and how we can get out.

Robert J. Shiller is the best-selling author of Irrational Exuberance and The New Financial Order (both Princeton), among other books. He is the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Economics at Yale University.

Bookshelf: Where Have All The Leaders Gone?

One the same trip back from Hartford, I picked up Where Have All The Leaders Gone (Lee Iaococa) and it rocked me in the same way Team Of Rivals did (Doris Kearns Goodwin).

One the heals of my last post on Drucker, Iaococa practically reaches out of the pages, takes you by the collar and shakes you. It’s always meaningful to me to see people get this excited. It means they have conviction, principles, they are capable of fighting to make the world a better place.

The list and message below sounds like many from books past. What struck me here is that this book and many others are starting a slow boil of frustration with leadership in general. It’s everywhere: the leadership of the country, our top business brass, our teachers, our coaches, our parents.

There is something very unique about the rumbling going on now versus when the whitecollar layoffs were just starting in the late 80s/early 90s. The unrest has last longer, it has become hip to talk about in public, it is no longer as hidden when seeking a job, having been “affected” is a sign that you’ve gained some knowledge about how things are really working…and you are qualified to help bring about the change you want to see.

Lee, coming from decades of priceless management experience, offers wisdom and advice that we can all incorporate into the person we want to become.  

Lee’s Test of a Leader  Read excerpt of inroduction here.

A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the “Yes, sir” crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. 

A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different.  Leadership is all about managing change—whether you’re leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. 

A leader has to COMMUNICATE. …facing reality and telling the truth. Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it’s painful. 

A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, “If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” 

A leader must have COURAGE. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk. If you’re a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes.  

To be a leader you’ve got to have CONVICTION—a fire in your belly. You’ve got to have passion. You’ve got to really want to get something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? 

A leader should have CHARISMA. Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It’s the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That’s my definition of charisma. 

A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn’t it? You’ve got to know what you’re doing. More important than that, you’ve got to surround yourself with people who know what they’re doing. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.

You can’t be a leader if you don’t have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie Beacham’s rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford’s zone manager in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, “Remember, Lee, the only thing you’ve got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don’t know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you’ll never make it.”  

The Biggest C is Crisis

Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It’s easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else’s kids off to war when you’ve never seen a battlefield yourself. It’s another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

Book Shelf: Peter Drucker's Managing Oneself

So I was on a return flight from West Hartford coming back from a family event and wondering the Hartford terminal for something to read. I came across the Harvard Business Classics series–clever way for them to make even more money… Managing Oneself got my attention. 

Every line read like the sage advice you wish you had gotten while sitting on the knee of a wise relative. I’m still processing the wisdom. Some of it is common sense, but the  concepts are communicated through much observation, personal experience and keen insight. Its impact has the potential to be quite profound if you’ve an open mind to receive these learnings and apply them.

This piece will definatey be part of my January ritual as I review my yearly goals. Here is a PDF version – it’s a quick read and will be time well spent.

Here is an excellent post from Ed Batista that does the summary justice:

Peter Drucker on Managing Oneself

I never met Peter Drucker, never even heard him speak, but I’m truly going to miss him.  He made a big difference in my life, at least over the last six years.  In the March-April 1999 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Drucker published an article entitled “Managing Oneself” (reprinted in January 2005) that I’ve read at least once a year ever since.  It’s only 10 pages or so, and I encourage  you to buy a copy and read the whole thing–best $7 and 15 minutes you’ll ever spend–but here are the passages that have had the greatest impact on me:

On Excellence

One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence.  It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.  And yet most people–especially most teachers and most organizations–concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones.  Energy, resources, and time should go instead into making a competent person into a star performer.

On Careers

[M]ost people, especially highly gifted people, do not really know where they belong until they are well past their mid-twenties.  By that time, however, they should know the answers to the three questions: What are my strengths?  How do I perform?  and, What are my values?  And then they can and should decide where they belong.

Or rather, they should be able to decide where they do not belong…

Equally important, knowing the answers to these questions enables a person to say to an opportunity, an offer, or an assignment, “Yes, I will do that.  But this is the way I should be doing it.  This is the way it should be structured.  This is the way the relationships should be.  These are the kind of results you should expect from me, and in this time frame, because this is who I am.”

Successful careers are not planned.  They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values.

On Planning

A plan can usually cover no more than 18 months and still be reasonably clear and specific.  So the question in most cases should be, Where and how can I achieve results that will make a difference within the next year and a half?  The answer must balance several things.  First, the results should be hard to achieve–they should require “stretching,” to use the current buzzword.  But also, they should be within reach.  To aim at results that cannot be achieved–or that can be only under the most unlikely circumstances–is not being ambitious, it is being foolish.  Second, the results should be meaningful.  They should make a difference.  Finally, results should be visible and, if at all possible, measurable.  From this will come a course of action: what to do, where and how to start, and what goals and deadlines to set.

On Second Careers

We hear a great deal of talk about the midlife crisis of the executive.  It is mostly boredom.  At 45, most executives have reached the peak of their business careers, and they know it.  After 20 years of doing very much the same kind of work, they are very good at their jobs.  But they are not learning or contributing or deriving challenge and satisfaction from the job… That is why managing oneself increasingly leads one to begin a second career [typically by moving from one kind of organization to another; by developing a parellel career, often in a nonprofit; or by starting a new venture, again often a nonprofit]…

No one can expect to live very long without experiencing a serious setback in his or her life or work… At such times, a second major interest–not just a hobby–may make all the difference…

In a knowledge society…we expect everybody to be a success.  This is clearly an impossibility.  For a great many people, there is at best an absence of failure.  Wherever there is success, there has to be failure.  And then it is vitally important for the individual, and equally for the individual’s family, to have an area in which he or she can contribute, make a difference, and be somebody.  That means finding a second area–whether in a second career, a parallel career, or a social venture–that offers an opportunity for being a leader, for being respected, for being a success.