Robert Paterson's Weblog

Michael Jackson and us - why his life and death mean so much - for we are he?

The eternal child - Peter Pan - ageless - always a boy - loves toys. Michael Jackson? But maybe also us. Stuck as a child. Maybe us?

I read this passage yesterday in Steven Pressfield's new book Killing Rommel - a book not about Killing Rommel but about growing up. As many reviewers have called it - "A lesson in Honor"

"Stein has a theory about inner evolution. A man matures, he believes from archetype to archetype: from Son the Wanderer to Warrior and from there, if he is lucky to Lover, Husband, Father, King Sage and Mystic..."

This is surely the journey that is open to us all - there are the feminine versions of this too ending of course with Crone.

I think that we are stuck, as MJ was, in the earlier phases of adolescence. MJ and Farrah Fawcett too, embodied our stuckness with YOUTH and its primary energy, the denial of our death.

When we deny death, we deny life and true creation. We deny the chance to become so in later life so big that we start to meld again into the fabric of the universe - like an infant who comes from that place.

For the Crone and the King Sage meld into the Mystic and become one human - the Mystic melds into the universe itself and has all its power available. This is the fullness of a life's potential.

But as eternal teenagers, we remain stuck in Neverland and we become bankrupt in every way. We can never nourish other life.

I think that this is why millions fel so bad today. They have seen part of themselves die and they see how sad and tragic a life that is stuck can be.

Tehran - What is wrong with our News? Wrong POV!

This feels like Tiananmen. They fight for democracy, we watch, they die, we change the channel.

Tweet today from @rhh

Why is News dying? Yes the web and Craigslist are a factor but I think that the events in Iran this week show us maybe the most important reason.

The POV of the Traditional News - Makes us helpless

CNN simply ignore what they can't explain - that Iran is more complex than just being our enemy. 

Is not the way that News is Presented making us helpless?

People ask me all the time how they can best improve engagement. I don't think that the answer is to be found in adding more comments or having a Facebook site. I think that it is about changing the POV of how News is even thought of.

Is not the current POV that whatever the problem - the relevant institutions will fix it? So the answer to better healthcare is to be found in a deal with the existing institutions - implying that our health is only about access to drugs, doctors and imaging. So the answer to Iraq is more troops. The answer to better education is more money for the schools and more testing. Get my drift?

Of course all these fail because the answer is not to be found in the institutions anymore. Worse, they are a big part of the problem! So as the news repeats the demand that "they" fix it. And "they" continue to fail, we get more pissed off and more helpless. We want to be able to act.

Is this why on the right, we are seeing people act with a gun? Tell Americans that people are evil for long enough and someone will act.

So is there a hint of what will work better? Yes I think that Twitter is showing us part of the the way.

Why? Because when things happen, it takes us there with the POV of the participants. We see the earthquake in China from the POV of those living through it. We share the tragedy in Mumbai as eyewitnesses with people like us who are there in it. We share what is going on in Tehran.

Twitter gives us a clue of where we need to go. We can identify as peers with the people in the story. We can even help by offering our emotional support to the Tweeter. We don't have to be passive. We can set up sites that aggregate help as after the Tsunami or hurricanes. We, the public can make a difference!

The future of News needs POV that our world is a complex place outside the power of Institutions as we know them now to help. That we should not expect them to help. We should stop looking for "them" and look to "us".

So this means that we need to find a context for our problems - energy, the financial crisis, food, education, healthcare etc that involves us in meaningful action that we can realistically be part of.

That much of the story has to involve us and how we cope with these problems.

A good example is this video that talks about how one family in Sacremento is taking back their power by growing their own food that I post below.

Many of the problems of the food system and our environment are contained in this tiny story. So are many of the things that you and I can do. Many of the comments include statement such as "Wow I can do that!" It is truly engaging and empowering. It does not make you helpless. As more people join this movement, then the larger collective story could become compelling.

Want to reduce obesity and the rate of diabetes? Well it wont be the drug companies. It will be us. Us getting together and finding ways we can help each other change how we live.

Want to improve our kids education? Well it wont be the schools who do it. It will be parents getting together and finding ways of helping each other.

Want to protect your neighborhood from blight after many homes have been foreclosed? It wont be the city who will be able to help. It will be homeowners getting together.

So where is the "News" here? The news will be these kinds of stories. As the build they will influence more to join and to take action and to take back their power. Who then will tell these stories that are today found isolated in YouTube or on blogs?

I don't think that this POV is possible inside commercial media as we know it today. Their design and their internal culture precludes this approach. 

But I do think that Public Media can do this.

We can and will and are starting to tell these kinds of stories - we are starting to use this kind of media

 and tools to do this. We are using our brand and trust to add weight to these stories. 

The biggest and most immediate story today is the mortgage/housing/financial crisis.

So far all the help has gone to the institutions. Few citizens have felt any relief.

It will be again up to us. The real story will be how to save your home. Or if you cannot save your home, how to get through this. Or how to work to help save your community or city.

These are not idle words.

I will be launching a blog next week to tell the story of how 77 public radio and TV station in 32 of the worst hit markets are working to tell the story of how people who live in their city are starting to act to help each other get through the financial crisis that besets the citizen who is not being helped by their institutions.

Facing the Mortgage Crisis Project Team

Becoming partners was the best thing that happened to us at KETC when we started out a year ago to find out how to connect to our city in a deeper way.

KETC, like most organizations over a size, had devolved into silos. Each department all did their stuff but had little to say to each other and most issues were settled in the President's office. Sound familiar?

One of our many ahas was that if we were to partner with anyone else, we had better get better at this inside. After all the work that we were doing could not be easily compartmentalized. We simply had to work better with each other and we could not have our CEO in all our meetings.

Lots of people say that they want to get rid of silos. That they want to devolve power. But they fail and the silos remain.

We found that having a project that demanded that we all participate. That was so complex that no one could lead. That was so time compressed that we had to find the answers to all these unknowns now. Was the crucible that enabled us to break down these walls.

Central to this was our using classic project management. We did not try and fit this into the normal management process of the organization. The silos would have defeated us. Not could we rely on the CEO to make us cooperate.

So we met every day for 30 minutes at the start of the day. We met every day for 5 months. It was like a family having dinner at night every night. Over time, the walls lowered, the trust built, there was more laughter and more work got done. We amazed ourselves at how much we could do as a little team.  At first Jack was in all the meetings. Then over time he would skip a few. Then we hardly saw him. He was out doing CEO work and we did our work of making stuff happen daily.

We found that having a project manager who was not a senior person helped immensely. The project track kept us directed. Being junior, he also had to use humour and self effacement to maintain his authority. This was not your usual meeting. There was so much to do that we could ask for help and not feel a loser. There was so much we did not know that we could say that we did not know and it would be ok.

It helped that we had a project that was overwhelming in scale and complexity. It was a bit like being a new parent. Suddenly we had to pitch in and help each other and no one was the expert. We all had to learn from each other. We learned things about each other that we would never have learned when we were all in our boxes.

My hope is that many others who are now going to do this in the next Mortgage Crisis project will have the same experience. I really recommend using this as an opportunity to change they way you all work with each other as we did.

KETC has become a very special place. You can become that too. You don't believe me that we are different from what we were?

Here is our introduction video to our new partners - I think that you can get the feeling of what KETC has become as you see us.

Find more videos like this on Facing the Mortgage Crisis

Telecommuting - One of the Best Responses to this economy - Undress for Success THE best Guide for this

Kate Lister, principal researcher at TRN said, “Today only 7.7% of about 16 million Canadian workers telecommute, but 5.2 million more could. If eligible employees worked at home just half the time it would be the same as taking 1.6 million cars off the road for a year. In fact, 170,000 homes could be powered for a year with the energy saved in office electricity alone.”

One of the largest costs for enterprises and for employees today is actually the idea that we should "Go to work". That we leave our homes every day and go to an office, cubicle, lecture room where the employer has set up space and equipment for us.

For the employee, there are real money costs such as having more than 1 car - about $9,000 a year. Public Transport, Meals (surprising what we spend on coffee) Clothes!!!!. If you dig deep, the employees may be spending between $10 and $20 000 a year for the privilege of Going to Work.

The employer has as many costs - space for all - equipment for all - health costs from a stressed work force who may be concerned about their kids, over tired - not able to deal with life's home emergencies etc. The Employer always has to over build the fixed costs of the operation.

Then there are the social costs. A vast transportation system. Congestion. Pollution. Parking. Kids who never see their parents.

Most workers today are white collar. They mainly use a computer for their work. It doesn't make any sense anymore to see work as we did when a worker pulled a lever on a machine.

So why is there not more progress towards working at home? I think that the answer is culture. We have confused attendance and physical control with being productive.

There is already a number of is that don't do this but for many - especially employers - allowing people to work from home seems scary.

"How will I know they are not goofing off?" Answer manage by outcomes and objectives. I am a consultant. I "contract" my work. So can everyone. If you manage by outcome, you will get a better result from your workforce.

"I cant work at home with the kids - they will drive me mad!" That may be true but now daycare can be close to home and less stressful. You may well have 2-4 hours back in the day. You can be there for the plumber.

"How will we deal with our IT?" Most IT systems in offices are antiquated. By giving your workers an allowance, you can have a better overall system that they can maintain. O yes - they will learn very fast.

"I will be lonely - I need the social aspect of the office." Good point but with Social Media you can have friends there all the time. You can also go into the office once a week for the meetings and the social whirl.

There are so many fears and barriers and there are so many good answers to these. If you really want to know everything about this topic and I mean everything The Bible is Undress for Success by Kate Lister and Tom Harnish.

When I say "Bible" I mean that it is complete. All aspects for both the employee and the employer are dealt with including the emotional as well as the monetary issues.

This is such a well-researched book. It is in effect a complete manual that you as an employee or you as an employer can trust.

It is also a timely book. For the circumstances are in place for a Tipping Point. One of the features of a Tipping Point is that the new has to be well-enough established to be codified and made easy. Undress for Success does the codifying and Social Media and the low cost of Computers has made it easy.

For until now, many who worked from home were the pioneers. Like all pioneers, maybe the circumstances were not ideal. But now with Social Media so advanced and home computing so cheap, the time has come for the mainstream to join us.

The origin of the word meant "Household Management" - all economies began in the domestic realm. It was the rise of the factory that changed this. We have been treating white collar work as factory work for too long.

Now the tools and the support system are here to enable the great return "Home".

Now the larger Economy demands that we cut the costs of what we do. There is no better way of doing this that to encourage a return home for workers.

And who will benefit the most? Our kids. Once again they can grow up with a family. Once again, neighborhoods will return. Our use of fossil fuels will drop as will our polluting their world. Once again they will see their parents as whole people. Entire local economies will spring up where people live. The diner will return. The services will return. There will be lots of work locally for all people.

On PEI I wonder what if Government looked at how it may do this and consider what might be the impact if they did. My bet is that we could save millions in direct and indirect costs and rebuild our communities.

As Peak Oil looms on the horizon, that will make commuting impossible, what better plan to prepare?

Please find below a case study I did on this using real numbers about a friend of mine who worked at a Bank and who commuted from Oakville. I did this more than 10 years ago - so the numbers work better today. You will see that after all his costs, Ron really was working for peanuts! It cost the RBC more to have Ron come to work than to pay him!

What Next for the CBC? What next for us? What about Public Radio and TV on the Border?

The financial crunch is in full force at the CBC and next week staff and the public will hear the new plan.

My bet is that it will look like this:

• CBC will cut costs by further centralization and consolidation - Such as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI will be served by one main office with at best stringers. All production will be focused in Toronto and Vancouver

• While cuts to the front line will be extensive - the bloated head office will be less affected

• Ads maybe on radio

• CBC will be on a death spiral

I think that death is inevitable for the CBC because the real challenge for the CBC is not the government. It is not the economy alone but it is in fact its culture and hence its unresponsive structure. Being a top down, one city focused bureaucracy, it cannot be saved. There is no one to talk too who can make changes who wont hold onto power in the old way.

Here follows a quick rant and then two paths that I think may offer a future - for the audience that is!

It is already run by fiat from its Toronto bureaucracy. The local stations have no local control at all.

It is a Broadcaster - it pushes out - it sets the agenda - it is the sole taste-maker - it prohibits any kind of local innovation - it is hardly open at all to participation in a real way by the Canadian public.

It's approach to News is very conventional - No Planet Money kind of offering of real context - No Bill Moyers - No All things Considered.

It's approach Magazines (10 - 4pm) is beyond sad and low brow - failed Oprah.

It's approach to music is authoritarian - Here is the Canadian Content that we choose.

It has alienated its loyal audience in search of a youth segment at does not exist and that laughs at what is on offer.

So what is to be done? I don't see how the CBC as a central bureaucracy can be saved or redeemed. The bureaucracy will defend itself to the death.

But there are two related ways forward that would offer Canadians a really excellent local and national public service. But this idea is based on a paradox as you will see.

The 30 million plus people that live in Canada live close to the US Border. Along that border just a few miles south is the best public radio and TV system in the world. Already in some markets such as Buffalo, Canadians are the largest audience and WNED TV has an office in Toronto!

I think that the border pub radio stations offer a platform that we can build on in Canada.

If the border stations were to have a web based Canadian strategy, my bet is that they could do the following - let's look at one undeserved Canadian city and one US border station to se what might be done.

Kingston has a population of about 100,000 plus maybe another 50,000 in the hinterland. CBC does not serve them. The most local they get is Ottawa. Kingston is a university town with one of Canada's leading universities, Queens and Canada's "Westpoint" RMC. NCPR serves upstate New York and has a very special team in place at the station. NCPR already has some strong support in Kingston.

What if NCPR set up a web based hub in Kingston that acted as an attractor for the local bloggers and neo citizen journalists? By Hub, I mean it offers its brand, NPR and its local content (The API will enable this anyway) And support services to a local Canadian Kingston Pub Media COOP. Like Visa and a local bank. The two are separate. The local group is LOCAL. But Visa offers the access to a larger system.

I think that local groups will spring up anyway. But on their own - it would be very hard. But with the NCPR Brand and the staff and the programming behind NCPR, (A Kind of Visa Deal) I think a very good local Kingston "station" could emerge.

For NCPR, it could mean a doubling of audience in a couple of years. For NPR, if this happened along the border, it could mean going form 30 million to 40 million in 2-3 years.

Brandon Manitoba is the epicentre of this struggle to maintain a local news centre. Prairie Public Radio is juts a few miles away south. No Canadian wants to play.

The CRTC of course currently blocks conventional radio and TV. It also does its best to block web radio and TV from outside Canada. But if there is no local service, I wonder how long this position can hold?

In the interim I think that there is a work around that is good for all of us. In the next 5 years conventional "ait" is going to diminish anyway. All content will use the web. Radio and TV will converge and will converge I think locally.

For the border stations and NPR, PBS and CPB to experiment with an all web idea in Canada might offer up a beta that may work well back in the US and then offer a global solution to how best to keep the news, democracy and local local alive for the world.

I know that this is just a germ of an idea but what do you think?

I can see how for instance Maine Public Radio could offer "services" to PEI Public Media.

I can see how a group of us could set up a truly local system here on PEI if we had some help for MPR. I can see how some of the current staff of CBC could fit in. I can see that when the Guardian, our local paper, dies, that this local "station" could really thrive.

I would like to try this - would you?

The Zappos way - It's all about culture - How hard to do you work on yours?

When people join the Marines - all share the same Boot Camp - officers - pilots fighting folk. If you pass, then you are a Marine and you always remain one.

The results speak for themselves. The "Brand" of the USMC has remained solid for more than a century and remains so today.

Few other organizations place the same emphasis on establishing a culture. In fact most do nothing or worse - set up processes that reduce trust and energy.

So it is quite special to read how things are done at Zappos. Here is the CEO's view of how things are done there. How does your organizations compare?

Building a brand today is very different from building a brand 50 years ago. It used to be that a few people got together in a room, decided what the brand positioning was going to be, and then spent a lot of money buying advertising telling people what their brand was. And if you were able to spend enough money, then you were able to build your brand.

It's a very different world today. With the Internet connecting everyone together, companies are becoming more and more transparent whether they like it or not. An unhappy customer or a disgruntled employee can blog about bad experience with a company, and the story can spread like wildfire by email or with tools like Twitter.

The good news is that the reverse is true as well. A great experience with a company can be read by millions of people almost instantaneously as well.

The fundamental problem is that you can't possibly anticipate every possible touchpoint that could influence the perception of your company's brand.

For example, if you happen to meet an employee of Company X at a bar, even if the employee isn't working, how you perceive your interaction with that employee will affect how you perceive Company X, and therefore Company X's brand. It can be a positive influence, or a negative influence. Every employee can affect your company's brand, not just the front line employees that are paid to talk to your customers.

At Zappos.com, we decided a long time ago that we didn't want our brand to be just about shoes, or clothing, or even online retailing. We decided that we wanted to build our brand to be about the very best customer service and the very best customer experience. We believe that customer service shouldn't be just a department, it should be the entire company.

Advertising can only get your brand so far. If you ask most people what the "brand" of the airline industry as a whole is (not any specific airline, but the entire industry), they will usually say something about bad customer service or bad customer experience. If you ask people what their perception of the US auto industry is today, chances are the responses you get won't be in line with what the automakers project in their advertising.

So what's a company to do if you can't just buy your way into building the brand you want? What's the best way to build a brand for the long term?

In a word: culture.

At Zappos, our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff -- like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers -- will happen naturally on its own.

We believe that your company's culture and your company's brand are really just two sides of the same coin. The brand may lag the culture at first, but eventually it will catch up.

Your culture is your brand.

So how do you build and maintain the culture that you want?

It starts with the hiring process. At Zappos, we actually do two different sets of interviews. The hiring manager and his/her team will do the standard set of interviews looking for relevant experience, technical ability, fit within the team, etc. But then our HR department does a separate set of interviews, looking purely for culture fit. Candidates have to pass both sets of interviews in order to be hired.

We've actually said no to a lot of very talented people that we know can make an immediate impact on our top or bottom line. But because we felt they weren't culture fits, we were willing to sacrifice the short term benefits in order to protect our culture (and therefore our brand) for the long term.

After hiring, the next step to building the culture is training. Everyone that is hired into our headquarters goes through the same training that our Customer Loyalty Team (call center) reps go through, regardless of department or title. You might be an accountant, or a lawyer, or a software developer -- you go through the exact same training program.

It's a 4-week training program, in which we go over company history, the importance of customer service, the long term vision of the company, our philosophy about company culture -- and then you're actually on the phone for 2 weeks, taking calls from customers. Again, this goes back to our belief that customer service shouldn't just be a department, it should be the entire company.

At the end of the first week of training, we make an offer to the entire class. We offer everyone $2000 to quit (in addition to paying them for the time they've already worked), and it's a standing offer until the end of the fourth week of training. We want to make sure that employees are here for more than just a paycheck. We want employees that believe in our long term vision and want to be a part of our culture. As it turns out, on average, less than 1% of people end up taking the offer.

One of the great advantages of focusing on culture is when reporters come and visit our offices. Unlike most companies, we don't give reporters a small list of people they're allowed to talk to. Instead, we encourage them to wander around and talk to whoever they want. It's our way of being as transparent as possible, which is part of our culture.

We've formally defined our the Zappos culture in terms of 10 core values:

1) Deliver WOW Through Service
2) Embrace and Drive Change
3) Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4) Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5) Pursue Growth and Learning
6) Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7) Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8) Do More With Less
9) Be Passionate and Determined
10) Be Humble

Many companies have core values, but they don't really commit to them. They usually sound more like something you'd read in a press release. Maybe you learn about them on day 1 of orientation, but after that it's just a meaningless plaque on the wall of the lobby.

We believe that it's really important to come up with core values that you can commit to. And by commit, we mean that you're willing to hire and fire based on them. If you're willing to do that, then you're well on your way to building a company culture that is in line with the brand you want to build. You can let all of your employees be your brand ambassadors, not just the marketing or PR department. And they can be brand ambassadors both inside and outside the office.

At the end of the day, just remember that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff -- including building a great brand -- will fall into place on its own.

Imagine if all the billions in Bonuses had been invested back into the companies

“…[Honda] announced that managers would take a 10 percent pay cut next year.”

To me, that is responsible leadership, and the biggest reason why Japanese automakers have clobbered their American counterparts for decades. Instead of pillaging their companies for personal enrichment — Japanese senior management put the company’s benefit above their own. This earlier post covers similar ground.  By taking the first hit, Honda’s  management has acquired the moral authority to perform layoffs, because they took it upon themselves to take the first blow.
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An important post from EclecticLip that offers insight into why the heroic leadership model of the US has brought us to this point

More for Less - The PEI Bio Alliance - A Chaord in Action

Now is the time that all enterprises will seek to get "more for less". For most people this merely means cuts.

But effective use of networks is where I think the true value lies. I predict that at the heart of the crisis will be the failure of the machine model and the rise of the Network.

My regular readers know that I think the world of one of my clients - the PEI Bio Alliance. This is one of the most effective Chaords in existence today - where a "Facilitating Structure" works to enhance the connections between a diverse group of partners - Government, Academia and Business in the field of Bio Science.

Here is a link to a quick story of who why what and how.

But what I really wanted to share with you today are the results. PEI, with a population of 140,000, is punching way above its weight.

CHARLOTTETOWN, PEI -- Spending on research and development has increased by almost 9 percent in the Maritime provinces between 2004 and 2005, the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission announced today, November 25, 2008.

Between 1996 and 2005, expenditures on research and development in the Maritimes increased by 80 percent to $770 million from $424 million. Expenditures increased $63 million from 2004.

Of the $770 million, Nova Scotia at $464 million accounted for nearly 60 percent of that total, followed by New Brunswick at $243 million then Prince Edward Island at $63 million. Research and development funding in Prince Edward Island increased nearly 54 percent between 2004 and 2005. This increase appears to be largely due to an investment in bioresources by the National Research Council. During the same period, funding increased by 8 percent in Nova Scotia and 5 percent in New Brunswick.

Up 54% vs the rest at an average of 9%.

Before the Bio Alliance, each part of the research sector on PEI was both separate, under scale and saw itself as competing with the others. Sound familiar? There was no way that there could be sustained and real growth. But as a network - now look at what can be done.

I offer up this story in the hope that you may also be part of a potential Chaordic Network.

Visa has been called "a corporation whose product is coordination." Hock calls it "an enabling organization." He also sees it as living proof that a large organization can be effective without being centralized and coercive. "Visa has elements of Jeffersonian democracy, it has elements of the free market, of government franchising -- almost every kind of organization you can think about," he says. "But it's none of them. Like the body, the brain, and the biosphere, it's largely self-organizing."

Could public radio and TV reconfigure themselves along these lines?

Could each station create a chaord in their state? At KETC in St Louis, we are doing just that as we work with more than 20 NGO's to help St Louis cope with the mortgage crisis.

How about you? Could your enterprise do better by going down this road?

The PEI Bio Alliance and KETC will be speaking at the Boyd Conference on PEI on Dec 6-7 as we grapple with how to empower the small and the local.

We will be webcasting their talks.

Auto Bailout? Burn Baby Burn!

For years, the forest service tried to stop all fires. More recently, they don't. Why? because they learned that, forest fires are part of the great natural design for renewal. If you hold them back, in the end you get a catastrophe.

There is no fix for the big 3. They operate in a system that is completely unsustainable.

Yes there will be huge pain. But if we let them go - the great open spaces of renewal will open up. If we let them go the stupid ideas that were them will die.

The new growth and the new sustainable jobs depend on them burning.

Cluetrain - More relevant than ever

Cluetrain Review

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