The FDR Legacy

Today is the 65th anniversary of FDR. I have always found him to be an interesting and powerful character in our history. I suspect he may have been even more of a figure of controversy than our current President.
His initial inaugural address is particularly interesting. He describes an economy that to me at least represents a situation similar to what we face today;

"Values have shrunken to fantastic levels: taxes have risen, our ability to pay has fallen, government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income, the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade, the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side, farmers find no markets for their produce, the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.
More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment."

Maybe that seems to be overstating it a bit, but even though the market has passed 11,000 again I have to ask myself if the average American sees themselves as significantly better off than a year ago and wouldn't see some parallels to what FDR described.

I find one of the other statements in his speech intriguing as well;

"...there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency." Is it just me or are we seeing some parallels here as well?

In fact his language may have seemed bombastic at the time and equally bombastic today when he speaks of "waging war against the emergency" in fact he asked for broad executive powers to fight that "war" in a similar fashion to fighting a war against an invader or foreign enemy.

Some of the other concepts that he mentions are interdependency and personal responsibility;
" ...the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others. . .the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors." Although the context FDR was using here was that of participating in the world with other countries I can see its application on a domestic level as well.

I also find his comments about the idea that when there is no vision people perish and the recognition that " happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort."

Roosevelt was a highly controversial figure even in that time. He ushered in a level of government "participation" and social reform that didn't see anything of that magnitude until the Great Society programs under LBJ. His personal influence and control concerned the power structure to the point that they passed the 22nd Amendment to prevent a repetition of his historic election four times.

My point here isn't to suggest that his approach was correct then or now, but I am curious is to what he would think of our current situation and the "progress" we have made in the 65 years since his death. When we take a look at where we are at as as an economy, the state of disengagement and other factors is it time to declare "war" again...?

Why Do We Call It "Good" Friday?

I realize this post may offend some, so I will ask in advance for you to recognize my intent is not to challenge or ridicule any one's beliefs. I would ask that to borrow a phrase from my colleague and teacher John Scherer, http://www.scherercenter.com/ that you give me the benefit of MRI , or most respectful interpretation.

What instigates my post is a post I read from another colleague at http://www.punkrockhr.com/ about the day and what it represents and my own thought processes over the years.

This is the day that we Christians "celebrate" or acknowledge the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Let's be clear it wasn't just an execution it is a particularly brutal ritual meant to inflict the most pain and humiliation on the victim as possible. Biblical accounts describe it in vivid detail; the trial, the scourging, the crucifixion itself and his agony on the cross as his mother watched her only son suffer and perish.

There are many who blame the Jews for the crucifixion even though the sentence was imposed and carried out by the Roman governor. Much violence has been committed against the Jewish people based on this event.

Even if you are not a Christian I would ask you how the ritual torture and execution of a man who was by all accounts a kind and gentle spirit who spoke about concepts like empathy and inclusiveness and withholding judgement of others represents anything "good"? I don't get it.

The life and death of Jesus is one of our great mysteries and great controversies. Some accounts even say that there was no Barabbas, the "zealot" who was released in Jesus's place. That this account was created as to not portray Jesus as a political activist who was executed because of the threat he represented to the established hierarchy of both the Jews and the Romans.

Jesus said some scary things; like the idea that there is a higher spiritual authority, that we have a duty and responsibility to our fellow man, and that we should be hesitant to judge others until we examine our own motives and behaviors. I also see the gospel Jesus preached as one of commitment rather than compliance. He didn't demand you accept him or his teachings, he invited you to "join up". While he did say that those who didn't eventually accept his teachings would not enjoy the benefits he didn't threaten or condemn. He invited and forgave.

One of my other brilliant colleagues, Reut Schwartz Hebron http://www.kindexcellence.com/ has a model which includes other things the ability to "see reality", to appreciate a worldview and perspective other than our own without feeling threatened. It would appear that Jesus was an early practitioner.

I will admit to not being religious, but I like to think I am spiritual. I observe how much of the controversy and strife with religion is associated with this unwillingness to "see reality". Many of the various denominations of the Christian faiths are based on things like his birth, his divinity, and even his relationship with his followers.

The Catholic Church and many of its followers were abhorred by the DaVinci Code and its inference that perhaps Mary Magdalene was not only not a prostitute, but Jesus's wife and partner. I remember reading a book by Irving Wallace, The Word, much earlier that described a similar Jesus as a man who was very human and beautiful in spirit and empathy rather than countenance. The Church condemned that one too.

I will admit to being troubled a bit by the current Pope, who seems more interested in compliance than commitment, especially when I see some of what is being uncovered. Again don't mistake this as a condemnation of the Catholic Church. I don't know that the issues we are seeing don't exist in every large diverse body of people from corporations to political institutions.

I am not trying to change any one's beliefs, but I am reminded of a quote by John Lennon when asked about a Beatles reunion replied, " the Beatles are a little bit like Jesus, people should spend more time thinking about what he said than who he was."

Over 2000 years ago he talked about tolerance, inclusiveness, empathy, compassion, and giving people the opportunity to choose to join rather than comply. That still resonates with me, but I have to be honest referring to the day they tortured and ritually executed the person who shared those ideas "Good" Friday still troubles me. What do you think.......?

What "Type" Are You?

Greetings from San Diego. I have the opportunity to be out here and meet with a group of colleagues that I deeply respect to talk about new ways to motivate and work with people.

During my trip I have had a chance to catch up on a little reading and explore some of the work of two of my favorite social and business "system" commentators, Daniel Pink and Seth Godin.

My question comes from a model/theory that Pink explores in his book Drive -the surprising truth about what motivates us. Perhaps the reason I enjoyed the book so much is because what Pink describes and what I believe are in such close sync.

He also tees off on one of my favorite targets- Frederick W. Taylor, the "father" of scientific management. This is the theory that non management people are not terribly intrinsically motivated so productivity is best optimized by routinizing their tasks.

Pink's type "I" argues that at least some part of us is driven by needs for autonomy, learning, and purpose. He doesn't take the position that all work and all people fit this model, but that many do. He even goes further and uses the "P" word, Purpose and suggests that most of us seek this with varying degrees of energy. Kind of resonates with the concept of focusing on what "matters" doesn't it.

If you haven't yet read the book I commend it to you. In addition to stimulating your thinking he also provides some "templates" for both organizations and individuals.

Seth Godin's latest work - Linchpin is another fascinating read. He explores that a new category of critical "player" is emerging in organizations. Traditionally we had labor and management and the lines were pretty clear. Linchpins are those people who can connect groups and individuals.
Their skills are in communication, building trust, and relationships; not sciences or technology. Kind of sounds like they are building engagement doesn't it? He even uses words like obedience aka compliance and how we built it into our work and social systems and the costs we are experiencing because of it. I especially see this represented in the U.S. labor law infrastructure; most of it was written in the 40's and 50's with little meaningful change since. If you are familiar with it you know that it is highly structured and based on an adversarial model.

Any of you that know me or my orientation know that concepts like working with people, creating engagement, and related models speak to my heart; but I think anyone in any organization would benefit by exploring the concepts these two discuss.

One of my favorite quotes talks about "employees being physically, emotionally, and psychologically impelled. They gladly give up other choices."

Maybe it is just me, but that sounds pretty exciting. What do you think.....?

Building a Better "Mousetrap"

I am kind of excited. I am in the process of pulling together a group of collaborators to talk about the importance of building a strong employment brand and engagement.

I am excited on a couple of levels. Anyone that knows me knows that I am passionate about these subjects to a level where folks get tired of hearing me. I can't help it, I just fervently believe that this kind of a model working together is just bluntly superior to any other organizational model in the long term, and it works for all kinds of organizations; private or public sector and for profit or not for profit.

I am also excited about the opportunity to educate people about what engagement is and engagement is not. Engagement is not satisfaction and engagement is not "happiness". Engagement is discretionary effort freely committed to by employees in support of a common set of goals, values, and objectives. It is also viral. Your customers and your community will "catch it" to if it is done right.

The last reason I am kind of excited is that this initiative as we envision is a collaboration between the local educational community, the business community and others to begin building a framework for an economic plan for a community that has desperately needed one for a long time; and we are planning to do it together.

We are also going to explore root causes and the real foundation of engagement and strong brands and show local businesses two key things:

• This isn't just about big businesses with big advertising budgets
• The basic building blocks are pretty easy and there are resources in every community to help "spread the virus".

I like "win-win" solutions, and personal responsibility, and action rather than inaction. Think local, act local. I like it!

Personal Accountability

This has always been an interesting topic to me. Some of the events of the last few weeks ranging from athletes punching one another out to kids returning to school seems to make it particularly relevant.

A colleague and I were discussing this topic the other day especially as it pertains to health care. Isn't it interesting for all the debate about whether there should be single payer, a public option, how much it will cost, etc. there is little discussion about the individuals role in the whole health care discussion other than as a beneficiary.

I have some pretty strong opinions on this topic. Among them I believe that all Americans should have access to a basic level of health care much like public education and that until we provide that the costs will never really be managed.

I also believe that individuals have a right and responsibility to participate in the management of their own well being and health. We don't talk about that very much. I would venture to say that the majority of Americans who have health insurance are also covered by a group plan- employer, government agency, association, etc. so they have little understanding of how much their health care actually costs and care less until it impacts them in the way of increased co- insurance, higher deductibles, denied claims, or related activities.

I have mentioned a couple of other related concepts regarding health care like our inefficient delivery and focus on the costs of processes rather than paying for outcome based management, but this is a different issue.

I remember years ago when a new employer arrived in town and declared a tobacco free workplace. People were outraged. How interesting? An employer who took the position that if you knowingly contributed to the detriment of your own health they didn't care to subsidize your real or potential higher expenses so they wouldn't hire you.

We tried to pass a law recently requiring all restaurants to post calorie counts for everything on their menu, luckily it failed. Would we want to extend that to homes like the dram shop laws?

Dram shop laws extend liability to private individuals for serving intoxicated people or allowing them to depart your home intoxicated without at least attempting to intervene. Can you see requiring a menu with calorie counts at dinner parties?

I think a big part of the issue is that of personal competency. Personal competency is that "other" right that constitution provides us with in addition to the concept of personal property.

When we began to industrialize and people left the "farm" many went to work for large employers. Large employers responding to both collective bargaining and offering competitive compensation began offering "fringe benefits" including paid time off, retirement and pension plans, and group health insurance benefits. A few years ago it was not atypical for employers to pay all the costs for health insurance for employees and their dependents. Employees had no idea and didn't care what they cost. Add these third party payer systems to advance health care techniques, technology, and a few other things and we created a trillion dollar health insurance industry, and very high expectations.

Very few employers to my knowledge even today talk extensively with their employees about ways they can contribute to lowering health care costs. The idea of "mandated" health screening, enforced wellness, and sliding employer contribution rates based on lifestyle health care costs would probably be seen as some type of corporate fascism. Your employer shouldn't be able to tell you how to manage you lifestyle, right? Even if they pick up the majority of the cost....

I believe until we address the personal accountability issue and employers
actively engage and educate their employees about the root causes of many of the costs we will only be addressing part of the problem. What do you think?

So You Want To Be A Leader?

This is actually the topic of a presentation that I used to do for our local Chamber of Commerce leadership development program as the last chapter of an eight month development program. Our intent was to send them out with both a sense of empowerment and accountability to something larger than themselves and their companies.

I among others have had the opportunity to discuss and debate what differentiates leadership and management on the "pages" of this blog, linkedin, and a number of other venues as have thousands of others smarter than me.

I ran across a summary of an interview with Robert Dolan, Dean of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, on BNET that I think summarized it it more succinctly than I have ever seen or heard before. He stated, "a manager maintains the status quo and delivers profitability, a leader performs three essential functions-

• they develop and encourage great talent merely with their presence
• they see new opportunities and innovations and push the organization to pursue them
• they act as a moral compass for the organization and role model the appropriate adoption of the organizational values and principles."

We can argue for decades about all of the other characteristics and attributes, but what I really like about Dolan's point is that they describe action and doing rather than passivity.

I found this summary especially timely because I hear the media and others starting to declare that the recession is "over". It is over because the stock market is moving up and large corporations are starting to declare profits again. I guess the fact that they expect unemployment to remain in double digits for the foreseeable future and that we have a health care crisis represents a rounding error. Not to me.

I like to think of myself as a realistic optimist. I was hoping that the recession would serve as kind of a national wake up call on a number of key societal issues. As anyone who has read my blog, my book, or other publications knows I am a big fan of engagement, true engagement. That is a system where stakeholders align in a common purpose. Studies show that organizations who adopt and maintain engagement strategies outperform their competitors in every key dimension. I was hoping the recession would cause more organizations to recognize that engagement is not only necessary, it is good for business.

I still remain hopeful that the "end" of the recession doesn't mean we think we have solved the health care issue. We have a very expensive system that delivers health care inefficiently and with pretty poor outcomes.

I am also a fan of personal competency. Getting away from the corporate and governmental codependency that has dominated our economic model for the last several generations. Employees need to be given an opportunity to engage and in return they need to be educated and expected to play a role in decisions about their health, their long term economic security, and generally be financially literate.

Much of the debate around leadership is whether leaders are born or "taught". Is it a series of characteristics or traits or is it behavior? I kind of like the behavior model. If you have capacity and you don't do anything with it are you really a leader? I think that is similar to the point Malcolm Gladwell made in Outliers, a high IQ in and of itself is no guarantee of spectacular success either personally or professionally, you must apply it.

When I look at where we got to and how we got there I have to tell you I see a lot more people in business and government who are managers- protecting the status quo and profitability; than leaders, individuals who develop deep talent, challenge their organizations to innovate, and act as moral compasses and role models not only internally, but externally.

Even the debate over health care represents an interesting model; we recognize it is compromised, but we seem (at least our "leadership") to embrace significant change in a model that doesn't work in delivering against key performance measurements.

I heard earlier this week that the performance bonuses paid out by the major financial institutions exceeded their recorded profits. Am I the only one who missed the logic of that decision?

How can we declare the recession is ending with record unemployment?

So for me I like Professor Dolan's definition of leadership. To his three characteristics I would add two more of my own:

• Come to work every day prepared to be fired for doing the right thing.
• Think about your "legacy", what you leave behind more than your "career", what you take with you.

It would appear to me that if you choose leadership rather than management as defined by Dr. Dolan you might not find the field nearly as crowded. What do you think?

The "Right" of Personal Competency

I was helping my daughter with an assignment this week and came across a concept that I hadn't focused on in a very long time if ever- the "right" of personal competency.

It would seem that back in the day the Founding Fathers wanted to ensure two very important rights that they felt were absent in the feudal societies and relationships that we left behind in Europe. Everybody is very familiar with personal property rights. Our right to own property, build a business, and generally prosper. You don't hear nearly as much about the right of personal competency; the right to express yourself, market your skills, and literally to "reinvent" yourself.

In Europe, and in fact in a lot of the world, your "destiny" was somewhat predetermined. Literally during the feudal period the "serfs" were tied to the land. You could not leave or relocate without your "Lord's" permission.

There were a lot of riots and other ugly history associated with collective bargaining as well, the right of individuals to bargain for the value of their services was not provided in that society.

In the early days we had what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of land so anyone could "reinvent" themselves. Everybody was at least theoretically equal.

The Industrial Revolution changed a lot of things. We moved from an agrarian to an industrial society. Mass production allowed for a lot of things to be "dumbed" down.

The American history relative to personal competency isn't very attractive either. The railroads, industrialization of manufacturing, and exhausting our supply of "frontiers" created a new feudal system. The "new" nobility didn't think much of collective bargaining either- it was the late 1930's when the right of unions to exist and groups to bargain became a protected right.

Corporations began "taking care" of their employees. I'm not saying they did it out of altruism, rather they did it because unions demanded it or because they wanted to avoid unionization so they provided it proactively.

Employees of corporations began to expect their employer to provide employment security, health benefits, and retirement. Our labor relations laws still infer a lack of competence on the part of working people. Employees traded obedience for security and employers didn't include them in decisions about how we were going to do things. We have changed some of this with things like TQM, lean manufacturing, employee engagement programs, and other initiatives; but we still don't discuss many things with employees like adults.

Those things include : how we make decisions about compensation, factors affecting the costs of health care, and others. We don't always act like our employees are competent adults. What happened?

I like to think that my two models- Managing Whole People and Moving from Compliance to Commitment are in concert with what Jefferson and others had in mind with the right of personal competency. A system based on mutual respect, responsibility, information, rewards, and earned loyalty.

What do you think, is it time to go back to the future? Is personal competency both a right and a responsibility?