Not Fair

“Life is not fair, get used to it” Bill Gates

I’ve taken a little sabbatical from blogging and I thank the many fans who have pinged me wondering if I was ok (well, if two constitutes many).

I’ve been in the process of starting a new business, which I will fill you in on when I get a chance to properly construct a blog about it. It may have to be in multiple parts so I’ll use this as a tease.

This new venture has involved banks, architects, designers, contractors, partners, vendors, distributors, family and friends. That is, all the elements that makes people crazy.

Over the course of the last three months I’ve heard the term “fair” many times. Used in context it sounds like this; “The bazillion dollars I quoted you to paint that wall is a fair price”. Or, “it’s not fair that you’re buying so much of your inventory from Vendor X instead of me”. Or, “The appraisal on your building in this economy is a fair one”.

What I’ve observed is what someone considers to be fair means that it’s fair to them and not necessarily to anyone else. In fact I can’t think of a single instance during this science experiment of mine where that observation hasn’t been true. So it got me watching life and times outside of my sphere to see if it’s more global.

Let’s see.

“It’s not fair!” - Bank of America executives on forced pay cuts”

“It's not fair,” - man who was arrested for publishing a Do It Yourself terrorism book.

“It’s not fair” – man indicted of embezzling his clients money after a judge froze his assets.

“It’s not fair” – ex-mayor of Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick when ordered to pay the fines levied against him from his felony conviction.

Yep, seems to be universal.

I’m not sure as a society that we’re any less fair minded than in times past. There has always been the “if it’s fair to me then its fair” mentality. I think it’s hugely human nature but it sure does make doing business more difficult. And it’s a bit discomfiting because in order to pull things back to center square with someone who’s being overly fair for themselves you are forced to do the same thing.

Ah well maybe Benjamin Disraeli had it right when he said “my idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.”

Livin' the Island Life

“Don't worry Wilson, I'll do all the paddling. You just hang on.” Chuck Noland

I spent a large amount of time last night talking with a good friend who’s in the process of starting a new business. It’s a bold move in a shaky economy but he’s highly committed and way past the point of no return. Everything is coming together, sort of, and he should up and running before the end of the year.

His angst is he has played “you bet your future” with this venture and although surrounded with really good people that he’s hand picked the realization that he’s, to use his phrase, “on the island by myself” is overwhelming him. The fact that everyone else is one bad mood away from waltzing away and leaving him stranded at this critical stage is eating at him right now.

It’s a tough spot. On one hand he wants to be the one in control, especially since it’s his money. On the other he wants people to be as committed as he is. I suggested he offer a piece of the action to those most key to his success. His counter was that offering a percentage of the business is fine, but if it’s merely “given” then there’s still no incentive to hang in - nothing in, nothing out, net zero.

OK, so make it be earned based upon benchmarks of success.

His counter, that’s good too but how does that help assure they’ll stay during this brutal start-up process.

OK, how about cash incentives for all the current effort.

Counter: “I’m doing this out of my own pocket, there’s just not a lot of extra cash”

Hmm….so ultimately this comes down to faith, guts and character. If his hand picked key people believe in his vision, know that he’s risking a large piece of life and wealth and trust that they will, in fact, realize pieces of the success of the business then there’s a good chance they’ll play the key roles he’s depending on both now and later.

If some (or all) of those elements are missing then all bets are off and my friend had better start figuring out some back up plans still knowing that new people will bring the same uncertainty and heartburn with them.

Funny, being in control a lot of times is everything but.

Building the Perfect Beast

"There is no glory in otustripping donkeys." Marcus Valerius Martialis

I wrote a while back about one of my personal and professional afflictions.

Pleaser’s Dilemma

One of the side effects of this affliction is the residual damage caused from the accumulation of weight while lugging all these “stones” around every day. The analogy would be small stones on the back of an ass. Each one is insignificant but there comes a time where the one you pack on breaks the back of the beast.

I had this happen the other day where a seemingly insignificant event sparked a meltdown that took me and, for sure, the people around me totally off guard. One of the problems with being a perpetual nice guy (yes, I really am a nice guy….really. No really) is when the dark side immerses no one really knows what to do with it. Me included.

So, I had myself locked in my cage for a couple of days in order to take everything apart, examine, clean and put back together with some reinforced pieces.

As I stated in Pleaser’s Dilemma I have no interest in changing the beast itself because it’s how I’m wired. See Hard Wired. But I do need to make the beast stronger as well learn to not pack on so many stones.

It’s funny, while locked away and tearing everything apart I was amused with how I knew the meltdown was close and actually made a weak attempt to bail out of the obligation that caused the spark that caused the meltdown. However, had I done that the meltdown would have only been temporarily delayed, not eliminated. Somehow I need to figure out a preventive maintenance program.

So, if you find yourself carrying too many stones, too often and too far and have found an effective way to both strengthen and reduce let me know the program.

In the meantime I’m going to test my new, stronger, reinforced beast by going back to the innocent bystanders that got blistered by my meltdown and offer to carry their stones around for a while.

One Year Later

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” Maria Robinson

One year ago today my family and my friends laid my wife Bonnie to rest at a little country cemetery in Southern Indiana. Interesting is that it's the farming community where I grew up not hers. But I think she always loved the beauty and serenity of the rolling southern Indiana countryside.

There's no proper adjective to describe the last 365 days. The lowest of lows, the darkest of dark, the coldest of cold combined with the discovery (and rediscovery) of the strength of family and friends and the human ability to heal and regenerate. The remembrance and regret, the fond memories and pain, the reflection and celebration all combine to paint a complex mosaic.

I walk into Year 2 ready to celebrate the past and embrace the future. Life is truly an adventure which means it's not a spectator sport. Bonnie was never a spectator, it's one of the many great lessons I learned from her.

Please see my post from last year, I still consider it one of my best.

Remembering Bonnie

Hard Wired

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." Carl Jung

I have for time eternal used the phrase “wired” to describe people’s actions.

What I mean by this is that I believe people have internal elements that make them act consistently in given situations. I’ve known people that would lie even though the situation didn’t demand or warrant it. I’ve known people who will always argue a counter point even though there’s no cause. Or people who consistently blame others for their problems.

With these people I will normally shrug and say “they’re wired that way”.

I’ve also known people that if you handed them $100,000 in hundred dollar bills and asked them to take care of it for “a year or two” that when you returned not only would the money be there but it would be the exact same hundred dollar bills. Or people who will help out regardless of the hour or reason. Or people that when they make a commitment you never think about it again because you know it will be handled as promised.

With these people I will smile and say “they’re wired that way”.

The longer I’m around the more I’m convinced of this is the most reliable method for predicting how people will react in situations. If you can determine how a person is wired you will know with almost certainty how they will react.

The key is you have to pay attention and not let your feelings (good or bad) for that person cloud what you’re seeing.

I’ve made this mistake more times than I’m willing to admit (on my own blog site anyway). I will see a person in enough situations to know how they’re wired but because of emotion, time constraints, apathy, et al I will ignore the obvious and either get burned because I knew they were wired to do the negative or irritate someone by not allowing them the space to do what they were wired to do.

So, start watching how people around you are wired, it’s really pretty easy once you start paying attention.

And by the way, spend a little time on yourself.

They're cute when they're young

“Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own." Sidney J. Harris

By virtue of having always been in the technology business I have forever worked around young people. When I was young so was everyone else since the whole industry was young. Oh, I once had a boss who was forty, but he was an anomaly. As I grew older the young people, who now could actually go to school to be in the business, started packing in behind me and slowly me and my contemporaries became the minority as well as the ancient.

This has been good in so many ways. Young people bring so much energy and possess fearlessness that hasn’t yet been extracted from them. They bring new vision and new thoughts and new music and new language. They see things so differently.

Because of all this I’ve always felt younger than my age but I suppose many of us do as we reach “middle age”. But when you have to show up every day and work and hang with young people and then work for young people you get to make a choice.

Adapt and embrace or fight and fail.

I’m finding many of my old buddies slipping more and more into the fight and fail category. Not because they can’t adapt, not because they can’t keep up and not because they don’t have the juice anymore. See Old and Bold.

No, it’s mainly because they’re tired of having the exact same conversation on the exact same subject for the 9,487th time. Almost always with some Wunderkind who’s convinced they’ve found some problem so totally new and so totally different that no dinosaur from the age of mainframes could ever “get it”.

The problem is we “get it” too well since we’ve probably solved this type problem a thousand different times. So we tend to roll our eyes, sigh, give a 30 word explanation for solution and try to get on to other things. But Kid Wonder cannot accept that his totally unique situation can have such a straight-forward (and usually fairly simple) solution.

Arrogance vs. Apathy. And then the fight began

Part of the problem, as I’ve stated, is if you go back to our beginnings we were young but so was everyone else so we didn’t have the age barrier issues. Thus we never really adapted ourselves to young vs. old dynamics. Everyone was screaming at everyone else because we all, naturally, were right and we just had to get the others to shut up and listen.

So, yeah, we old’ns need to do a better job of catering to the ego of Boy Blunder. We need to frown and rub our temples, squint our eyes and proclaim that this, indeed, is a tough one and that we may need a few days to research and contemplate.

Nothing a week at Pebble Beach (on the company) probably wouldn’t solve.

The Capital of Talent

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I could say, ‘I used everything you gave me’” Erma Bombeck

I love Thursday nights. Thursday is when, more often than not, I meet up with a few local buddies and have a couple of drinks and a cigar. They’re a great group, all local business people with long ties to the community. They’re funny and passionate about life and just a real pleasure to be around.

It’s not unusual that one of my Friday Quotes comes out of these little therapy sessions but tonight I got a real gem.

Since we’d already solved most of the big life problems we were on to more mundane things like entertainers. During this my friend George said, “You know, talent is a funny thing. You use it, people pay for it, and then you still have it”.

What?

Let's play that again, "You use it, people pay for it, and then you still have it".

Since then, without success, I’ve been trying to come up with any piece of capital that can proclaim this.

Use, receive, keep”

Wow.

So, let me try to get my feeble little mind around this. The most important asset you can possess is talent because the more you use it the more you realize the capital of it and the more you still have it.

So then, the key is to develop your talent – whatever that talent is – to the fullest extent. The more talent – or collection of talents – you have the more capital you can obtain but you still have it afterwards.

Where was this class in school?????

Why am I listening to untalented people, none of whom have read the damned bill, debate health care when what we should be focusing on is how to promote talent?

Talent is what the country should be focusing on. Talent is what your state should be focusing on. Talent is what your business should be focusing on.

Talent is what you should be focusing on.