Musings from George

So long it has been, so easy not to write. I’m developing a theory about how ideas are formed and when they are formed, and I am going to correlate it with the time that blogs are posted.

Just after Memorial Day, a friend asked if I had visited a graveyard. I found it an odd question, since I hate graveyards and have never consciously visited one on Memorial Day. I have really enjoyed visiting Gettysburg, one of the great American graveyards, and hope some day to visit the American forces interred at Normandy. But for me, Memorial Day just revives a certain sense of guilt that I feel for _not_ having served in the military, for never having chosen to give back in that way.

For the three people who have read all of my posts :^) you will remember that I am in favor of mandatory service to your country — military or social, domestic or international. Many of the country’s best people would be better, and many of the country’s most ignorant would be less so, if they served dinner to the homeless or met anyone on the continent of Africa. Yet I didn’t sign up for the Peace Corps, nor did I sign up for the Marine Corps. A summer working for the Youth Conservation Corps convinced me that I could make a lot more money painting houses than I could digging trails, and a short-term focus on profits led to a long-term career in business (and getting an MBA).

But I feel guilty whenever I am face to face with someone who actually sacrificed for our country, and shamed by the grace that Tom Brokaw captures so well in his book “The Greatest Generation”. Men who faced unspeakable risks simply because it was the right thing to do in WWII came back to the US and simply melted into society, asking nothing of the country that they had served. Men who faced equally terrible circumstances in Korea were largely ignored; those who went to Vietnam were actually disrespected. It seems to me that Memorial Day is perhaps the one day we should find a veteran and say “thank you” — for their service, their sacrifice, and for their dignity in giving something that is hard to measure.

Conversely, on Father’s Day I felt somewhat guilty. I have two kids, two wonderful and beautiful kids. Almost any male can be a father, and what I really strive for is to be a parent. People tell me I am a great father, but I still feel guilty when I want to read the paper rather than Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? I still want to watch football, even if I don’t actually do so. I’d like to pretend that I have never taken my son to a bar, but it’s true that some of the bars are kid-friendly (and yes, we have invited friends to bring their kids too). So is Father’s Day anything more than a Hallmark excuse? It caused me this year to think about a good friend who employed me when I was a teenager, who had kids of his own but always treated me like a son. He was a role model, a wonderful man who worked to give his employees health care before it was fashionable and because it was the right thing to do. He ran a chain of laundries, and the customer was always first — right behind the employees, who were his real first priority. I learned a lot from him, many things that they don’t teach at MIT or other universities. Leadership, humility, and a willingness to do the right thing.

So, on the Fourth of July we will join a neighborhood parade. We’ll get the Radio Flyer into the parade somehow, with one of the kids pulling it (somehow we will decorate it). This is a time to celebrate the many things that make up the US for us, and we will try to teach our kids that patriotism is not a dirty word and that remembering and honoring those who gave us our many opportunities is worthwhile and necessary. Many have suffered greatly to provide us the opportunities that we enjoy today, and the Fourth of July is perhaps the most comprehensive celebration — of our founding society (many of which fought in the Revolutionary War, but many who didn’t like Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson), of those who kept the country together through one of history’s bloodiest civil wars, and of the generation that led us through the twentieth century and handed us the sole superpower, largest economy in history, and advantages across the board.

Many other countries have done as well (Canada comes to mind), but the Fourth of July is for me a time to remember all the great things that make the US a wonderful place. Celebrate, and thank the many people who made it possible for us to be here today.

George

Crushed this year, I’m afraid. The upsets came against teams I was counting on, including Duke and UCLA. I’m not sure yet whether the lessons I learned from the stock market (that the companies you know the best are the ones you will bet wrong on most frequently) apply to basketball too… in which case I really should diversify into the Davidsons of the world.

I’m going to the Kentucky Derby with some close friends, and I am very excited about the trip and the event. It’s been on my informal “do before you die” list, which I think I first read about in an airline magazine twenty years ago — making a list of stretch targets that can now include going into space (not on my list) or visiting Iguazu Falls (on my list) or the Galapagos Islands (on the list too). Researching the leading candidates this year made my to-do list recently, when I read that there is a strong favorite. Those are the horse races worth betting on, and the best bet is a strong favorite with a dark horse partner on an exacta bet. If you’ve never been to see the horses race live, put it on _your_ life’s list.

Now for a non-sequitir… so much energy in American business goes into attracting the best talent. We have an entire industry of headhunters, recruiters, salary-setters, referral networks. Yet once an employee joins a company, all of this is irrelevant — what do we do to motivate the employees, what do we do to encourage them to care about the company and the customers, and how do we keep them mentally and emotionally engaged in the company’s work? THAT is the challenge of leadership. I once had the chance to speak one-on-one with Jeff Bezos, before he was either rich or famous (on his way there, having just founded Amazon up in Seattle). He said something that resonated with me and stuck with me — that communication within a company is an expensive necessity, and needed to be managed thoughtfully. Trying to get wide-spread agreement on issues takes too long and costs too much, but NOT having wide-spread understanding of the business objectives can be crippling and counter-productive. As a result, we see companies spending vast amounts of time and money trying to simplify the message (the dread “vision statement”) or standardizing on some simplistic message (the dread “core values”). The reality is that clear-spoken leaders can get a group of very disparate talents (think soldiers, storming a beach) to do the impossible — but the goal has to be clear, the acceptable ways of getting there have to be clear, and the team has to understand that they all get there together — not by climbing over each other, or making someone else slower in the process. Everyone falls back on sports metaphors or war metaphors, both of which are too simplistic because they are (1) time-bound or (2) life-threatening. Work is neither.

So I’ll resolve to be less loyal to college basketball teams next year, diligent in my research on the three-year-olds for May, and clear and well-spoken in my leadership at my company. Wish me luck :^)

George

The latest news is basically “when will Hillary admit that she can’t win?” That’s where I started two years ago. I am pleasantly surprised that I like the alternative, Barack Obama — not a perfect candidate, but a very good one.
If you haven’t watched his YouTube video about racism and the effects of racial polarization in the US today, it’s worth your time. I’d include a link, but that would be insulting to the intelligent — if you want to view it, you can find it.

Relationships — fascinating to watch the evening news to hear that 25% of our high school kids are infected with sexually transmitted disease (okay, a common virus). Short of granting them all Mother Mary exemptions, and not believing that for 100% of them a single encounter resulted in a STD, you’d have to assume that more than half of them are … having sex. Can you even act surprised??

It is funny how much two small children can exhaust you, to be honest. I used to have time to update this blog, and to stay in touch with many people. Right now the only reason I have time to type is that my 2-year-old daughter cried in the middle of the night…which is gratefully a rare occurrence.

I’ve fallen out of contact with a few good friends — maybe they read this blog. It’s tough to trade emails every six months and think that’s good; it’s hard to schedule time to talk. The feel-good answering machine messages help (they at least have a sound), but they are still somewhat bodiless.

Enough? I really miss my dog, and love my kids and my wife and my friends. Life is complete, my job is interesting and challenging, but I still miss my dog.

George

Weird world that we live in. Two people who are close to me have learned that they are going through divorces because someone served papers to them. Not a surprise, no wonderment for either of them … but still, a somewhat hostile attack by the people that they had committed their lives to. I’m a cameo appearance for both plays, but the script still stings.

I was married once before, divorced once before. My ex-wife is happier in her second marriage (two cute boys, clear focus on her passion on riding and raising horses), I’m much happier in my second marriage (two cute kids, killing myself in high-tech and married to someone who has all my same strengths).

People struggle with the American dilemma that half of all marriages end in divorce, and that all publicly viewable marriages are dysfunctional (truly $4000 for two hours? How does that work?) As part of that weird world, I have to explain it — we marry someone based on all that we know at the time, and things keep changing over time. The person you marry is NOT the person you wake up next to ten years later. And that’s okay.

Kids make relationships sticky. If my first wife and I had had kids, we’d still be together — she is a wonderful, intelligent, compassionate woman. But we didn’t, and our interests diverged — so we sought a divorce. It isn’t failure, it isn’t “sinful”, it isn’t even a bad thing — it represents the old Robert Frost poem and two people taking slightly different paths through that yellow wood.

My second wife is great — unequivocally great. She sometimes remarks that our partnership is too good to be true, and that really reflects on her — she’s great to our kids, great to me, great to her friends, great to my friends. I can look at the bigger picture, knowing that my life was very different in my first marriage, and can see the difference. My friends who are being served divorce papers cannot see that — and to be fair, they have kids that are affected by the process so it is much harder / much uglier.

Why is divorce such an ugly stigma and ugly topic in the US? Why is it that half of all kids in Europe are born out of wedlock? When did we become so selfish that it wasn’t important to have a life together, before we made a life together?

My advice: I feared the judgement, I feared the failure that a divorce represents — and I was not judged, and I did not fail. We all have to recognize that people change, and if you find that your current partner is not someone you would marry today then you have to decide whether the pain of leaving is greater than the misery of staying. Work to make today good — if nothing you do can help with that, get out.

We went to church today. Part of the message was that John (the apostle) was asked by Jesus to look after his mother — “Mary, this is your son; John, this is your mother”. As I sat with my 3.5 year-old son on my lap, I have to admit that it made me tear up — how miserable would it be to attend your own child’s execution? and how hard would it be to ask someone else to take care of your mother, as you accepted an unfair death?

My grandmother spoke at my father’s funeral, and said: “He always said he would take care of me. And now he is gone. You don’t know how hard it is to bury your children, and to accept the fact that they aren’t of this world anymore.” It hit me hard — I take care of my mother, and many other people. Who is going to speak at your funeral? and who is going to miss yo? and are you proud of all that you are going to leave behind?

How do we all commit to being better people, and to being better partners? It is a daily struggle.

George

I described myself as “hyper-social” today, and believe that my wife qualifies too. It’s very easy to get cul-de-sac’ed, where you only see the people who live on your own very homogenous block. It takes conscious effort to visit other neighborhoods, other cities, other states.

 I’ve been to all fifty states, and my definition of “been to” is more than just driving through. You have to have a meal or spend a night there, ideally you have to camp there or stay with friends in the state. I’ve enjoyed Fort Smith Arkansas (home to the Hangin’ Judge who applied Western justice to Native American “savages”), Fort Lauderdale for Spring Break (didn’t even get kissed, let alone boys’ dreams about Florida), Louisville Kentucky for a friend’s “Half-way Tthrough Life Party”, and Glacier National Park (Montana) to visit my uncle’s business of renting horses to visitors for a trot through the National Park by horseback. I’ve floated down the Grand Canyon (states on either side), camped at Kodachrome (WOW! Utah is spectacular), and hiked in the Great Smoky Mountains with my sister.

So, what does that have to do with the subject? I’ve been to these places, and traveled and camped, with several hundred different people. And I’m still in touch with most of them, more closely in touch than many people are with their families (donating to their charities, going to their weddings and birthdays, staying in their houses).

Some of my friends realize that their world has become smaller, or more constrained, by relationships. That’s somewhat natural, and happened to me in an earlier romantic relationship. But you need to know where you get your energy, and who makes you MORE excited and more alive… and if it isn’t from spending more time with fewer people (be that your mate or your immediate family), you need to do something about it. Augment (have friends outside), commit (join groups of interest, together or alone), or resent (just let your networks die).

I was asked by a group of business school students for my advice on being an entrepreneur. Rule one, stay in touch with people you like and who are successful. Rule two, feed the network — interact with headhunters and distant friends when you don’t need them, so you’ll have capital in the bank when you do. Rule three, do something that excites you…we’re often wrong, so wasting your time on something you don’t like because you think it will be a success is a mistake.

Following my own advice has cost me several fortunes, but .. I am happy. More so than many that I know who have stuck with jobs they hated, or stayed somewhere for the payoff. Life is short, and carpe diem is NOT a fish.

I miss my dog, and hope all my friends have such an animal to love in their lives.

Live well, do good. No politics this time, I’m fascinated by the trip and will comment later.

George

I had an eerie experience cutting and pasting something out of Google, which caused my keyboard to reverse the characters I was typing…when I typed Backwards, I got the title above.

That scared me, so I quit the window. But WordPress had kept the draft, with that title, and I think it’s much more interesting than “Been A While”. The last post was backwards, and I’ll try to focus on forward now.

American presidential campaign has provided some wonderful comedy and drama, and I have enjoyed the lack of domination in what could turn out to be a competitive election in which the candidates have to actually communicate to their OWN constituencies what they stand for. Rather than the formula of the past few years (pander left or right, then swing to the middle to be electable) we may actually see each party define itself more distinctly than the platform statements. Huckabee picked apart the threads of the Reagan coalition, and Hillary and Obama are dissecting the support that Democrats get from the less-privileged citizens that are often taken for granted by their party. I’m happy to say I haven’t given any of them a dime (caveat, I believe in public campaign financing so John McCain and John Edwards may yet qualify for the dollars from my tax return), and have not been drowned in television advertising because California is so expensive and they have been focused elsewhere. I hope whatever happens that we select a leader that the world can respect, and who respects the world.

Forward!

George

I can’t even begin to explain how many times I have thought about getting back into a blogging mood, and just not followed through. The more time passes, the higher the activation energy required to write a new post. The more that happens, and the less topical one can be, the harder it is to put fingers to keyboard. So, I’ll share my quick backwards look.

I changed jobs. I left a company with many thousands of employees, and went to a company with tens of employees. It is very different, and very comforting to be able to contribute in so many ways and not to find five people in the way each time you want to do something new. I miss many of my friends, and some of the comfort, of the old job … but I am very happy in the new job.

 I had to put my dog to sleep after thirteen years, a beautiful and loyal and gentle animal that I miss deeply. She came to me by way of a friend, who found her soaking wet running along a country road as a puppy. Sadie was my first dog, and really my only dog — and she taught me what a dog can be, and set the bar way too high to consider getting another dog anytime soon. She was riddled with lymphoma, and had stopped eating and drinking. Deafness and arthritis didn’t dampen her enthusiasm for life, but having some huge tumor crushing her stomach and distending her organs just took the light out of her. I hope that my friends and family have the courage to put me to sleep when the time comes, and that they don’t wait longer than they should. I strongly believe that we all owe it to our pets to give them the dignity in death that they have earned in life, and I am really glad that I was able to enjoy every day of Sadie’s life and did not have to resent her final days.

A close family member found out she had breast cancer, had surgery, is going through chemo … and is doing great. Treatments are so much less awful than they were even ten years ago that it makes breast cancer more survivable and less disastrous. She is religious, kind, giving and I have to believe that she deserves and has earned the reward and recovery she is experiencing. Karma — she’s done many great things for others, and deserved a break on this one.

Vacations have been fun, and were the original reason I fell of the blog bandwagon. Another summer where I made it fishing in Alaska (www.anglingunlimited.com), swimming at Lake Tahoe, and vacationing in New York with four other families / close friends. Just spent a week in Hawaii with the family, and managed to do absolutely nothing in a beautiful place. Really great trip.

So a topic on my mind is how we understand ourselves, how we manage to see ourselves through others’ eyes and how we can get perspective. It’s too easy to like yourself, and too easy to be critical of yourself — how do you find the right balance or appreciating the good, and focusing energy on changing the bad (as perceived by you or by others)? New Year’s Eve resolutions are a notorious waste of time (witness any mob scene at any gym in January, compared with the calm of February) — so when should we be introspective, self-perceptive? How do we commit to change, and become better?

No promises, but I hope to write more than once every seven months.

George

We scheduled chaos for last Friday. Chaos involves small children (I counted seventeen, eight of them months either side of three years old) and inflatable objects (I don’t know who created the bouncy house, but what a godsend!). Attending to those many children were close to twenty adults, because we invited our son’s teachers and several only children had two parents along.

Expecting our three-year-old son to melt down when the hordes trashed his toys, we had tried to prepare him for the onslaught (remember that first dent in your new car? don’t we all have a certain sense of “Mine!” that never really goes away). We told him that everyone was going to share, and we hoped for the best.

I was pleasantly surprised (bordering on shock) how well-behaved he was, and what a gracious host he was. As a couple of boys attacked his Matchbox cars and toy parking garage, he ran past them and encouraged them to come try the bouncy house. He ran around the yard offering every kid a juice box. He shared his mini-sofa with a couple of other kids. There really wasn’t any conflict through the evening, which included a couple of cases of beer and a half-dozen bottles of wine to wash down the curry (my wife is a great cook, something I try not to take for granted). We sat in the long warm evening and listened to the sound of calories melting away in the bouncy house ,and enjoyed the food and drink. The whirr of the air pump keeping the house aloft is about as loud as a vacuum cleaner, but I have never praised a vaccum cleaner in the same manner.

Saturday the rental company was late coming to get the bouncy house, so we burned off a few more calories out in the back yard. Yes, I broke the rules… I am somewhere more than three times the “maximum” sixty-pound limit…but no damage was done.

When they did pick up the house, we again expected our son to melt down. Instead, he ran after the guy taking it away to yell “Thank you!” I was as surprised as the man from the rental company — and proud, too.

The little social experiments that we call children continue to age, and so far I am pleased with the result. There’s no telling what life holds for us, but I hope some day that my son can read this somewhere and know how proud he made me, if only for a weekend.

George

The old Chinese proverb “may you be blessed to live in interesting times” is real. Global warming is real, and we all know it — yet we don’t change our driving policies, we would never support a gasoline tax or serious mileage targets. We send 150,000  citizens to fight in Iraq, yet most of us can’t even tell you where Iraq is or why we care… Sudan is likely the source of more terrorists, and more people are dying there. But our investment in Sudan is zero…

I’m just curious as to what we are doing in this world, and I’m trying to figure out what I can do that actually matters in the world. Energy choices, p0litical structures, business environments…. there are big issues out there that no one is dealing with. How can any of us change that world?

Dick Cheney claims to be above the law, as a member of the executive branch when it suits his needs or a member of the legislative branch when that fits his needs. Isn’t the opposite true? Can’t people ask for his records as an executive, and subpoena him as a legislator?

George

I attended an “unconference” this week with a number of like-minded online community enthusiasts. Notes from several of the events are here (three of the documents are mine, so I’m not going to re-post here). Sean O’Driscoll from Microsoft made some insightful comments about where companies focus their resources vis-a-vis support, and in that breakout session we all agreed that tagging and filtering need to advance quite a bit before the user community can really support users (tools and usage). General agreement that a wiki is only useful for shared purpose / single truth projects (ownership & authorship are lost), whereas discussion groups are useful for opinions / many truths (authorship is preserved). Blogs have the odd attribute of being one person’s perspective (by definition not the one truth?) with one author…a subset of both.

http://www.socialtext.net/ocu2007/index.cgi?online_community_unconference_2007

The people I meet at these events make them worthwhile for me. Many socially conscious people (producer from KQED, manager from indie films, two people from different organizations focusing on making our schools better) looking to adapt and adopt the best of these tools and practices that have their roots in philanthropic / community efforts but have been co-opted by corporate titans. From the Well to a dozen competing platforms for your community; from online text bulletin boards with a single heroic moderator to the unorganized chaos of Yahoo!Groups; from hundreds of communities of interest to millions of micro-communities (even the ephemeral communities of Facebook).

Changing gears, a few more good people have left our company. I’ve reconciled myself to doing a good job for the sake of helping our customers, and cherry-picking the projects I put my “good” energy into so that I am learning and growing. It’s not my dream situation, but I have to admit that I get a lot done and a lot of people appreciate what I do. Online I found the Desiderata (below), which is a wonderful exhortation of “carpe diem!” and realized that I had been mis-attributing a famous poem for quite a while. What is properly called the Serenity Prayer more concisely summarizes the daily challenge we face. I offer both here, culled from the wasteland of the Internet.
George

The Serenity Prayer (often attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr)

God,
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
 

Desiderata  by Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952.