The Business Insider

Kurt Andersen's Reset: Passionate Call to Change the World

By Tim Rosa, Publisher

I just finished reading Kurt Andsersen's short book, really an essay, entitled Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America. At 72 pages this book took me less than an hour to read and it was time well spent. Resetis a passionate call to change the world. The style is bit breezy for me, more of a journalistic approach than an academic study. Andersen has a keen eye for summarizing the tumultuous events since 2008 in pithy yet informative ways.

He also peppers the essay with lots of quotable quotes. Among my favorites are:

"History doesn't repeat itself," Mark Twain is supposed to have said, "but it rhymes."

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." (Rahm Emanuel, current White House Chief of Staff)

One of the best parts of the essay to me was Andersen's analysis of the amateur and how the status of amateurs was highly regarded at one time and almost a disdainful role now. Historically, amateurs were very serious people who didn't make a living by a certain pursuit. For example, Benjamin Franklin's profession was printing, but he was an amateur scientist, inventor, and politician. Daniel Boorstin writes: "The amateur is not afraid to do something for the first time...The rewards and refreshments of thought and the arts come from the courage to try something, all sorts of things, for the first time. An enamored amateur need not be a genius to stay out of the ruts he has never been trained in."

That for me is the rub...the courage to try and the courage to fail.

Find an hour to read Reset and tell me what you think.

—Tim

The Age of Outrageous Ideas

By Jack B. Rochester, Managing Editor

A remark attributed to the great French philosopher Voltaire goes something like this: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It seems a fitting phrase for the plethora of views of our modern world, economic systems, ways of life, etcetera: think of a problem or issue and somebody's written an article, blog, or book on how to correct it.

The latest entry is Joshua Cooper Ramo, weighing in with his first book, The Age of the Unthinkable. Ramo, a former editor at Time [a magazine - remember?] and currently employed by Kissinger Associates [yes, that Kissinger], gives us a great read and much to think about regarding aspects of the world and its systems that we can do next to nothing about.

Books of this seem to be proliferating. They're reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and at the book's Amazon Web page. Who reads them? Or even parts of them? Why do publishers think we'll buy them?

How about you - what book of outrageous ideas are you reading, and why? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Cheers,
Jack

What Do Ruth Madoff and Sasha Grey's Chelsea Have In Common?

By Jack B. Rochester, Managing Editor

The New York Times ran a cover story in its Sunday Styles section last week about what's happened to Ruth Madoff, 68-year-old wife of Bernie, and how she can't get a hairdo or a latte in her old haunts anymore. Nobody wants to be seen letting her in their establishment because she's viewed as complicit in her husband's Ponzi schemes.

I found this comment interesting: "Alexandra Lebenthal, who is a friend of one of the Madoff sons, Andrew, as well as a fixture in Manhattan financial and social circles, said that Mrs. Madoff has not taken any steps that might rehabilitate her image. 'In America, we love tearing people down and then bringing them back, but she hasn’t played the game,' she said."

 Then there's Sasha Grey, the 21-year-old porn star who plays Chelsea in Stephen Soderbergh's new film, "The Girlfriend Experience." The IMDB synopsis remarks that she plays "a determined young woman that has managed to achieve success as an upscale escort without any apparent loss of dignity, but clearly at the expense of her ability to feel anything deeply, be it with her clients or in her personal life. In an uncomplicated way, the film makes a provocative point about the more subtle costs of switching off aspects of our aliveness (i.e. our caring) to get ahead."

What do Ruth Madoff and Chelsea have in common? Greed. As the story in the New York Times points out, Ruth Madoff cares little, if at all, about the people who her husband killed, financially speaking.

Chelsea, the empty-headed young escort in Soderbergh's film, is a highly paid call girl who, thoroughout the film, seeks new ways to market herself at the expense of her personal sense of self and her relationships with others - in particular her boyfriend (who has issues of his own, needless to say).

In short, Chelsea portrays a woman - and Madoff is the embodiment of a real-life woman - who doesn't understand that to gain the world is to lose the soul.

That's the great lesson coming out of our great economic collapse: the danger of being immersed in a commercial and materialistic culture that has lost its sense of the human perspective. While there's nothing wrong with business or making money, let's be sure we understand its true purpose and realize wealth is not an ennobling end in itself.

Greed is karma: it always comes home to roost.

Jack

Jack B. Rochester is a professional writer and editor who has worked in nearly every aspect of publishing since 1974. He heads Joshua Tree Interactive, and is Managing Editor of The Business Insider blog.

Do CEOs Matter?

By The Business Insider Editors


Well, here we are, the day after the bankruptcy of General Motors, the largest and once most respected and influential corporation on earth. We listened to Fritz Henderson, as you probably did, do the Big Mea Culpa in the radio-TV broadcast yesterday, then promise to create a brand-new, customer-responsive, high-quality auto manufacturing company in 90 days [or less].

We were, quite frankly, stunned. Completely change and restructure [while firing dealerships and closing plants] in three months? Come on, Fritz, give us a break! We're expecting a visit from the tooth fairy tonight, too.

He asked for trust and another chance. Giving GM another chance is right up there with "the check is in the mail" and all the less polite versions of same.

The New York Times reported Henderson walking past a portrait of Alfred P. Sloan, the legendary CEO who guided GM through whitewater on several occasions during his tenure [and for whom the MIT School of Management is named and indentured]. Fritz commented, "If [Sloan] were sitting here today, he would say, 'Just do your job.'"

Which brings up the questions we, the businesspeople of the 21st century, must continually ask ourselves: What's that guy at the top, the one who's making gazillions of dollars, doing to earn his pay? And should we be paying him all those bucks, especially those take-the-money-and-run guys, the ones who tank the corporation and slip a Madaoff on the customers and clients? And what are we, the taxpayers of this country who now "own" GM, getting for our money and what will we - what can we - do with this company?

We wonder what Peter Drucker would do, or recommend we do, with GM. Maybe it's time to pull out our copy of one of his seminal books, Concept of the Corporation, a study of General Motors which went resented, ignored, and unheeded by Sloan. Or perhaps we should re-read The Practice of Management, which is as fresh and illuminating today as it was when he wrote it in 1954.

 

Or, if you don't have time to review these brilliant insights and lessons of business history, simply consider Drucker's comment on CEOs, from a 2005 BusinessWeek article:

"Although he helped many corporate executives succeed, he was appalled when the level of Fortune 500 CEO pay in America ballooned to hundreds of times that of the average worker. He argued in a 1984 essay that CEO compensation should be no more than 20 times what the rank and file make—especially at companies where thousands of employees are being laid off.

"'This is morally and socially unforgivable,' Drucker wrote, 'and we will pay a heavy price for it.'"

How prophetic.

The Business Insider Editors

No Post Today - Enjoy Your Memorial Day!

What Makes Us Happy? Harvard Knows

By Jack B. Rochester, Managing Editor

Does attending Harvard make one happier? Probably not. As reported in The Atlantic magazine  cover story for June, "What Makes Us Happy," [please try to forgive the insipid photo on the cover], a research study has been underway since 1937 to see how Hahvahd men [yes, all men] turned out. As most people know, Harvard grads do seem, in the aggregate, more successful than other college grads.

But is it true? Again, in the aggregate, the answer seems to be Yes. Joshua Wolf Shenk, the author of the article, reviewed records and discussed research findings with George Vaillant, who has led the research project since its inception. Mature adaptations, along with education, a stable marriage, neither smoking nor abusing alcohol, getting regular exercise and maintaining a healthy weight, were major factors in a happy life. "Mature adaptations are a real-life alchemy, a way of turning the dross of emotional crises, pain, and deprivation into the gold of human connection, accomplishment, and creativity," Shenk explains - like an oyster getting used to having a grain of sand lodged in its soft flesh.

Yet Vaillant's research over the years finds that perhaps the most important factor is having friends. “It is social aptitude,” says Vaillant, “not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging. ...the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”

Indeed, this is exactly what Harvard fosters, even above academic performance. I remember reading a novel, The Last Convertible by Anton Myrer, when I first arrived in Boston from California thirty years ago. It's the story about a kid with no money or social advantages getting a scholarship to Harvard and how he succeeds because of the friendships he develops. The novel validates exactly what Vaillant's 70-year study confirms: you're nobody unless somebody loves you, and the more people - family, friends, and associates - the better.

Cheers,

Jack

Jack B. Rochester is a professional writer and editor who has worked in nearly every aspect of publishing since 1974. He heads Joshua Tree Interactive, and is Managing Editor of The Business Insider blog.

Google Analytics' New Data API Drives Business Intelligence

By The Business Insider Editors

When we launched this blog, we wasted no time getting Google Analytics up and running so we could gather business intelligence about our readership. Like most serious bloggers, we take a close look at this information and do everything we can to boost our readership and exposure across the blogosphere and on the Web at large.

 
Just look at all this juicy Google Analytics data on Will Scully's blogsite (click for larger view).

Google knows that its Analytics are, as Shakespeare might have said if he'd been a blogger, the measure of all things. Or something like it. But even old Will would have been a bit puzzled by the various ways in which this data is extrapolated and applied to BI pursuits, as this video explains.

Now comes the Google Analytics Data Export API which, while for your company's gearheads to understand, install, and run for you, is a big advance. If you want to get an BI- level understanding of what it can do for your business, read Phil Kemelor's blog on the subject.

Takeaway: If you're not putting tools in place to develop or enhance or improve upon your BI, you're getting left in the dust.

The Business Insider Editors

Does Your Network Work for You?

By Tom Roux, Contributing Editor

In a previous post, I asked whether you are a networking LION or lamb. Assuming your answer places you with most people reading this blog – somewhere between the middle and the “sheepish” end of the spectrum – here are some suggestions to make better use of LinkedIn so that your professional network works for you.

Complete your profile! For the love of Guy (as in, Kawasaki, the Apple  evangelist, co-founder of Alltop.com, etc.) fill in the details of your past, passions, and personality. At the very least, paste your resume into the relevant sections. Doing so increases the odds that your current and former classmates, colleagues, and contacts will find you in search results. In return, your personalized “people you may know” recommendations will be a whole lot more meaningful.

Upload your contacts file. When adding contacts, save yourself a lot of mind-numbing data entry by importing your Outlook, webmail (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) or other (.csv, .txt, or .vcf format) preexisting contacts file. Even if many of your those contacts don’t already use LinkedIn, once you’ve uploaded your file, you’ll easily be able to invite them to join you.

Add a good picture of yourself. Nothing makes you - and your profile - more linkable than a professional-looking photo of you with a friendly expression, closely cropped so your face fills the frame. Unlike many profile photos in Facebook or Twitter, avatars and candid shots don’t cut it. While you may not be fond of your own mug, having a positive image on your profile will encourage more folks to accept your invitations and will likely ring a bell for those invitees who draw a blank from your name. Your photo also quickly differentiates you from other people with the same name.

Update your status weekly. Regularly keep your network up to speed with what you’re working on, but keep your updates professional and make them count: no “picking kernels of last night’s movie popcorn out of my teeth.”

Claim your vanity URL. Want a free website? Just edit your public profile settings to customize your profile URL to reflect your name or business.  Use this vanity URL (e.g. www.linkedin.com/in/tomroux) in your e-mail signature, on your business card, and in every online form that asks for “your website.”

Cheers,
Tom

Tom Roux is a contributing editor at The Business Insider. He heads Redpoint Communications and is president of the International Association of Business Communicators, Yankee Chapter. Since February, Tom has added 100 immediate LinkedIn connections and about 1 million users to his extended network without breaking a sweat.

Are You A Tempered Radical?

By Jack B. Rochester, Managing Editor

I was perusing my bookshelf this past week - OK, I'll come clean, I was purging my bookshelves of old, no longer relevant or interesting books - and came across a copy of Tempered Radicals by Debra Meyerson. First published in 2001, it's so old it's out of print, or OOP, as we folk in the book biz say, but you can still find a used copy on Amazon. And you should, because Meyerson's ideas are quite relevant as we wade through the mire of this economic downturn.

Consider these few paragraphs from the introduction and then see if you don't agree:

"Tempered radicals are people who operate on a fault line. They are organizational insiders who contribute and succeed in their jobs. At the same time, they are treated as outsiders because they represent ideals or agendas that are somehow at odds with the dominant culture.

"People operate as tempered radicals for all sorts of reasons. To varying extents, they feel misaligned with the dominant culture because their social identities-race, gender, sexual orientation, age, for example--or their values and beliefs mark them as different from the organizational majority. A tempered radical may, for example, be an African American woman trying to make her company more hospitable to others like herself. Or he may be a white man who holds beliefs about the importance of humane and family-friendly working conditions-or someone concerned for social justice, human creativity, environmental sustainability, or fair global trade practices that differ from the dominant culture's values and interests.

"In all cases they struggle between their desire to act on their 'different' selves and the need to fit into the dominant culture. Tempered radicals at once uphold their aspiration to be accepted insiders and their commitment to change the very system that often casts them as outsiders. As Sharon Sutton, an African American architect, has explained, 'We use our right hand to pry open the box so that more of us can get into it while using our left hand to be rid of the very box we are trying to get into.'"

Here's your takeaway: Are you a tempered radical? How does it feel to work in your current job or environment? Is any job worth the sacrifice and/or compromise of your fundamental ideals or truths? In these allegedly desperate times when we quiver with fear over losing our jobs [often with good reason, such as being head over heels in debt or not being able to provide healthcare for our family], what are you willing to sacrifice to keep yours?

I decided to keep Meyerson's book. I looked further on Amazon and found several other books by her that look equally thought-provoking.

Thoughtfully,
Jack

Audio and Slides for Mass American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Webinar

By Tim Rosa, Publisher

On April 7, I wrote a post about a free Webinar entitled "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Understanding Opportunities for Massachusetts." It was held on April 9 in Boston. This was a very informative session and, to my knowledge, the only one of its kind in the state. It answered some basic questions for businesses that are trying to find out if they can get a slice of the large federal stimulus pie that is starting to arrive in Massachusetts. Here's what it looks like:

The Webinar was also a huge leap forward from the Mass.Gov/Recovery Web site of the past. I've referred to that Web site many times over the last couple of months. It's been limping along with information that I found too general and not very helpful. (The site was recently upgraded, and I have a different opinion now—more on that another time.)

I received an email telling me that the presentation slides and the audio from the webinar are available on the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center Web site. The slides, in PDF, have also been posted on the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources Web site (look for "DOER Holds Online Seminar on Federal Stimulus" in the center column).

You can also submit questions using an online form that includes a section to request email updates on Recovery Act opportunities. This is fantastic! In the couple of months I've been searching for updates, it's been like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

With Webinars such as this one, and making the informative seminar materials available to us, maybe we'll start to see some of the much-touted "transparency" for the Clean Energy & Environment, Technology & Research, and Education projects we've all been reading about. Let's hope so!

—Tim