I am reading a NY Times story that zooms in on a question that has been waltzing around in my mind for weeks.

How did Citigroup get caught up to its eyeballs in subprime junk when one of the true wise men of the financial community, Robert Rubin, was embedded atop its management hierarchy? The same Rubin who attained Wonder Boy status at Goldman Sachs only years out of Harvard and Yale. The same Rubin who went on to rule at Goldman and top that by serving as the greatest Secretary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton. The same Rubin who has Mick Jagger status with government and financial leaders around the globe.

Well, the Times piece fudges on the issue at hand - why didn’t Rubin stop the bank from its collision course with stupidity - when his alma mater, Goldman Sachs, turned one of the worst fiscal disasters in US history into a gold mine for its partners and clients.

Rubin’s argument appears to be that because he didn’t have the official title of CEO (the fact is, he held even more power of influence at Citi than the CEO), it wasn’t his place to speak up.

Let’s put this in perspective. Years ago, someone once told me that there were thousands of people as smart as Einstein. They just didn’t voice their theories. They kept them to themselves. They didn’t speak up.

I felt then, as I do now, that there is no such thing as a silent genius.

Unless you have a novel idea and the skill, the guts, the determination to put it forward, to air it out, to toss it to the world and see what the world thinks of it, you are no Einstein. You are no smart person. You are no force. You are no change maker, catalyst, mover of the needle, raiser of the bar. You are a piston in the machine someone else built.

In the history of the world, there has been but one Einstein. He was a beautiful anomaly. So I am not talking about making ourselves heard at Albert’s level. I mean in everyday life. In our jobs, our friendships, our arts, our passions whatever they may be and wherever they may emerge, unless we have epiphanies and then share them with our worlds, we are silent figures moving aimlessly on a stage someone else erected for a show someone else wrote.

It is possible to hide in life. To lurk in the shadows and say not a word of true value. To glide from birthday to birthday without causing a ripple. To say that you care immensely about world peace, the environment, the cinema, the underprivileged, business success. And to be the silent genius who says not a single original thing about any of it.

But you are a legend in your own mind. The fact is, wise people are dummies when there mouths are shut. All Rubin had to do was say “No,” and Citi would have been spared the loss of its prestige and its treasury. All we have to do is to take the ideas we have had for moments or for years - the time of gestation is immaterial - and act on them. Bring them to light and let the chips fall where they may.

It is said that all great people stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before them. One of the true super novas, Isaac Newton, acknowledged that. The same is true for all of us mere mortals. A chain of thought, aired by others before us no matter what we do or where we live, provides a platform for our own thinking and the action that brings that thinking to life.

But I think the chain is more than a platform. I view it as an obligation.

As long as we are blessed with brains and the ability to express what floats around inside of them, we are obligated to make our own voices heard.

Mark Stevens

CEO

Today, I had lunch with two people I had never met before and it was one of those unusual encounters where the conversation zipped through a nanno second of small talk and zoomed into the heart of things. Into what’s this crazy thing called life all about and how do we leverage it to the hilt.

And I found myself ripping into one of my riffs about the two kinds of people on the planet. So now I’ll do it again to you. (At this point you may want to hit delete because this may be the musing of an overly philosophical mad man?).
So, the two kinds of people:

* Those in the “life protection” business.
* The tiny minority in the “live life like a reckless adventure” business.

The former want to be safe. To protect themselves from life’s curve balls.
To avoid risk. To be middle managers. To wear sunscreen. To drink wine spritzers. To do business as usual on the job because, well, it’s safe. To follow the rules. Anyone’s rules. Oh God, those rules are comfort food for the life protectors.

The latter say, I can’t protect against the vagaries of life. I can only wander out into the great blue unknown and revel in it. And if the sands shift or the plates slide or the bets come up bad or the curve balls come flying one after another, so what the hell. What the hell. What the flying hell. I will find a way to deal with it. I will see it as reason to think harder and smarter and cagier and to find a way to reinvent the wheel or to paint a gorgeous picture worthy of the Museum of Modern Art. I will walk right up to the safe middle managers so smug about their blemish-free performance record (never wandered from the straight and narrow, never made a single mistake) and I would break a rule right before their eyes. A sacred company rule. And then I would know how Picasso felt when he started turning French women into African masks. And when he made love in the middle of the day with a paint brush in one hand and a bottle of Bordeaux in the other.

Life needs livers. Risk takers. Dangerous minds. Total crazos. Lindberg.
Disney. Lauder. Houdini. Bezos. Jobs.

And we might as well all join category two. Because the life protection business doesn’t work. In the end, we all end, but the space from the beginning to the end is where the action is. And the action belongs to those who laugh at risk. Who jump into the water without a life preserver, swim the English Channel, stare down the sharks, best the world’s speed record, invent a novel category of software, put their chips on the line, fight to make it work and do it all again the next day.

That’s the arena. Everything else is like watching a concert atop Yankee stadium. Now that’s scary!
Mark Stevens
CEO

A few days ago, I was bestowed with a charming and old-fashioned gesture: A wish to “Have a Wonderful Weekend.” The problem is, the gesture was plastic. Literally. It was stamped on a bag of band-aids and toothpaste I’d purchased in a local pharmacy. Perhaps I am a cold-hearted SOB, but I don’t get the warm and fuzzies when a bag whispers sweet nothings in my ears. In fact I wanted to, and ultimately did, tell the pharmacy they would be advised to replace the weekend “love note” with one that reads: Whatever You Need, Whenever You Need It. Just call us at xxx or visit us at pleasingyoumakesushappy.com.

Why wasn’t this done at the outset? Why won’t they do it ever? Because what used to be one-on-one customer service that came from a culture that truly respected and appreciated customers as the soul and the lifeblood of a business has been reduced to a series of monotonous and superficial scripts that come from nowhere near the heart:

Have a nice day.

Please hold, we’ll be right with you.

If you would like to talk to a live person, press the pound key.

Well actually, I would prefer to talk to a dead person-or even a plastic bag- than push ten more buttons until I find someone totally annoyed that they have to DEAL with a customer. What’s really happening is that businesses are so focused on consummating transactions that they spend no time building enduring relationships. Plastic bags can’t do it. A “Thank You For Your Patronage ” note stamped on an invoice can’t do it. The only way it can be done is if Management develops a culture that truly embraces customers.

The classic customer service survey asks people:

1. Do you like our products/services?

2. Would you buy them again?

3. Would you recommend them to a friend?

What they don’t ask goes to the core of great business, of extraordinary companies:

Do you have faith in our company? Do you think we are committed to you?

They don’t go beneath the surface, the superficial, the scripts because they don’t want to know the answers. They don’t care. The DNA of true customer service, of businesses built on relationships as opposed to transactions, has virtually disappeared. Sadly, today’s managers think it’s all in the plastic bags.

When you sit together in silence and the music plays without a sound, you know there is a love no one has to work at. No one can replace. No one but a very few - perhaps no one else at all - can experience. It is yours. Everyone else can only look on in envy. It is The Music Of The Silences. And it is so much more powerful than the music of the orchestra. Of the exclamations. Of the boisterous proclamations. When nothing has to be said, and yet everything is as clear as can be, it is a masterpiece.This is the art of the subtle. Once in a lifetime it strikes from nowhere and must be treasured for the rarity it is. But we must also learn from it to enhance our careers, our businesses, our lives.

Every great love has a quiet confidence about it. Every great business person lets their accomplishments talk for themselves. Every great company delivers something exceptional and allows the silent referrals to build its base. People go to business school for years to learn how to make noise. To beat drums. To spend zillions on advertising. Caught up in the machine of conventional wisdom, they forget that yes, life imitates art but business imitates life as well.

Look around at your loves, your friends, your romances. All hold greater business lessons than a lifetime at Wharton. All of the passion, the pathos, the complexity in your personal life, has a mirror image on the business side of the ledger. Actually, there is no other side. It is but one ledger, one canvas, upon which we paint ourselves, our minds, our hearts, our brains. Everything you do in the dark-far from the office, removed from the Blackberry-has implications, has learnings, has analogies, for everything you do in the neon of the boardroom.

If we can look through the Berlin Wall of our imagination and look from east to west, personal to business, business to personal, without obstruction, knowing the lessons apply in both realms because in reality there is only one realm, LIFE, we are infinitely smarter than if we allow only the Harvard Business Review to guide us. We learn more from love than we can from an MBA. More about business. About how to deliver greatness. How to respect and adore. How to drive for the exceptional. How to identify the good and the great and how to accept nothing but the latter.

A champion diver lands in the water without making a splash. If you have ever been privileged to hear The Music Of The Silences, you have the greatest education, and the most magnificent gift, anyone can provide.

It comes to us from truth tellers who invent The Rules of Life and package it for us as the gospel. And then we drink the Kool Aid and the longer it’s out there on the shelves, the more we accept it as Divine. Inarguable. Bullet proof.

To me, it’s all a joke. Who has the right to create rules? Who tests their validity? Who starts dutifully following them and then passes the virus on to others? And who needs them. Life is best when we face the issues with a blank page and write the rules, our rules, as we go along. Any other way is an extended stay in hostageville.

Let’s take The Rules Of Business:

• A low turnover rate among employees is a sign of a healthy company. (Whenever I find businesses where almost no one ever leaves or is dismissed, I usually find a lazy culture that rewards mediocrity. I think they call it the Post Office.).
• It is always best to promote from within. (But what if a person more qualified for the job is at another company? Make due with second best? Why?)
• Seniority should be a key component of the formula for calculating compensation and authority within a company. (So if the greatest contributor to revenues and profitability is far younger than the oldest slacker in the office, the star should make less? Are you kidding Rule Maker?)
• Great companies arrive at decisions through consensus. (Actually, consensus building is a miserable excuse for inaction. Have you ever attended the UN? It will make you run for your life every time you hear the word consensus.)
• Don’t embark on a new initiative until research shows you it will succeed. (For the most part, research is for cowards and college
• Professors. Oh, I know it’s good to test the waters and crunch some numbers, but business is like war. All the plans and assumptions change when the first shot is fired. Trying to figure out a perfect path to success before you launch an enterprise, means you will be paralyzed in planning while the real entrepreneurs go out and make it happen, taking their lumps and making mid course corrections along the way.)

Liberation Day. You are free to ignore The Truth, recognizing that it is just a feel good myth Homer Simpson created in his basement. Mark Stevens
CEO

We are deep in the midst of the holiday season and a lovely time of year it can be.

But I have a question: Isn’t every day a holy day? Do holy days have a season or is life a string of holy days?

Actually, I firmly believe the latter is true. Is there ever a day of our lives that is not a wonder? That we are not blessed by God in the most extraordinary way?

The problem is, so many of our words have lost their meaning. Holidays are no longer thought of as holy days. They are viewed as turkey days and gift buying days. And that is the polar opposite of the original purpose and the true meaning embedded in the words.

This is endemic throughout our society. What do the words trust, faith, love, honor, commitment really mean? Timeless and enduring qualities, of course, but when these words are used without thought, when the holy is buried in holiday, when the thanks in Thanksgiving is simply six letters tacked on to six more, we lose something so rich and deep that can make all of life that more precious.

We lose the honesty that makes things genuine. And by “things,” I mean relationships… The bonds between family members, friends and lovers. Unless these unions are knitted together with words and actions ripe with true meaning, they are mere pretenses. Hollow games people play to try and camouflage the truth. But the truth insists on revealing itself.

All of this is true in business as it is in the ways of the heart. Do we tell our clients and customers we care about them and then treat them as just another set of numbers locked in a server? The answer is almost a universal “yes.” So much so that when a company, a manager, an entrepreneur is determined to treat the people in their world with genuine care, with words that have meaning, then we witness right before our eyes that the holy is the beacon in holiday and we are astounded by it.

It is a mistake to think we live in Balkanized worlds: the personal, the business, the religious. The walls we often think clearly divide these realms are mythical.

When we purchase something from an automobile company or a pharmacy, we no longer believe we are initiating a relationship. We think we are buying something…engaging in a cold and common transaction. So when a company or a pharmacy gives back more than a product but a set of human values along with it, we are touched in a way that makes us customers for life. The business, like the lover, like the friend, that demonstrates that the bonds that bind are true and generous and genuine, are of immense value to all of us. We hold them far above the heads of the pretenders.

There is but one world. The same one where the personal, the business and the religious intersect. This is the crossroads of greatness. Not marked by physical strength or wealth or intellectual power, but more by being the kind of person, the kind of business, that adds meaning to our existence. Do you value anything more? Is there a greater goal?

Happy holy days. Everyday.

Mark Stevens
CEO

It is ironic that from the earliest days of our cognizant lives, we are programmed to fear its end. Especially, the last five minutes.

This entire notion, this ripe fear and in many cases dread, is preposterous. We have no idea where we came from, and why we arrived in the world, but we are certain that in death we are leaving it. That it represents an end. Finality.

How is it that we admit to looking backwards to our arrival on earth with no knowledge but look forward to our departure with great certainty? A certainty that has no basis. No founding. It is mindful of our predecessors who were convinced that if they sailed into the horizon, they would fall off the face of the earth.

Little did they know that the truth was the polar opposite: that they could sail into the horizon for eternity.

The fact is we are preoccupied with living a long life when life as we know it is never long. If we live 100 years, it is but a blip. And to complicate matters, but to introduce an essential reality. Whose life was longer, Mozart’s or Jane Smith, who died at 98 after a 60-year career as an insurance actuary. And who hated her work from the moment she left college and took a seat in her cubicle at Homestead Life Insurance Co.?

We have a monumental choice before us all: to be in the life fulfillment business-meaning we live every day without concern for when it ends, if it does, or to be in the life protection business-meaning we spend nearly every day seeking to postpone or circumvent the inevitable.

All too many people do the latter. And in the process, they waste so much of the joy of being alive on this earth. They seek safety. They run from risk. They make sure not to work too hard. They are sticklers about having balance in their lives, whatever that means. They look askance at those who burn the candles at both ends, walk the high wire without a safety net. Start companies with their life savings. Quit “good” jobs for careers that bring them joy. Abdicate the throne to marry a lover.

The only way to truly live, to achieve success as a manager, artist, factory worker, actor, CEO, mother, father, friend-is to do it with abandon. Without fear of when it will end. The more you try to control the ending, the less control you have over it. It won’t ask for your permission. It won’t ask for your timetable. It will just end. Nothing you can do will stop it.

And that’s the good news. You can let go. It’s out of your hands. And even better, the last five minutes here may be the countdown to forever.

Mark Stevens
CEO

How do you live your life before your five minutes are up?

There is a moment in time that is paradoxically, timeless and fleeting. It is finite and infinite. Like so much of our existence, it is a Rorshach test of sorts, open to whatever we impose upon it. We can view it as the end of the night. We can see it as the dawn of a new day. Or we can treat it as a magical time, a virginal moment, that is a blank page, allowing us to paint our thoughts and dreams on it once we have gone through the night and before we grapple with the day.

For those who crave black and white, this is too much to deal with. It is too poorly defined. It is not about sleeping. It is not about waking. It is, instead, about cultivating the endless possibilities God puts before us and that are so rarely harvested.

All of the great, the astounding ideas in the history of the earth, have come from the “mindless” moments we are free to walk down the street, sit under a tree, lie in a hammock and think freely.

I have always loved the story of Edwin Land walking around Cambridge with his young daughter when she asked “Why does it take so long to see a picture after you photograph it daddy.” Land was about to answer within the confines of current technology when he caught himself and, like the exceptionally intelligent and gifted man he was, asked himself the same question. “Why indeed?” Thus was born Polaroid. And ditto for nearly every extraordinary enterprise and artistic masterpiece through the ages. They are born not when the mind focuses, as conventional wisdom would have you believe, but instead when it floats.

In life, we have but two great possibilities: love and achievement. All else is TV, fast food and cigarettes. If you value the first two, the wondrous two, the divine two, you need to push all else out to sea. And you need to fight for them.

Often, people who don’t know me ask, “What do you do in your free time.” Please tell me what they mean. What is “free time?” Every second carries an opportunity cost. If I don’t spend it well, toward love and achievement, it evaporates forever. Hard on myself? I will accept the charge, admit to it and keep on relishing every moment.

I thought about John Locke today for the first time in many years. When did he first have the epiphany that we are all born with blank sheets of paper, absent of ideas? I know.

When he was alone. When his mind could drift. In the time he chose not to be free.

Before the morning becomes the day.

Mark Stevens
CEO

What are you writing on your sheets of paper?




Click here to read the full interview with blogger Lewis Green.

Everyone wants to go to Hollywood. To make a movie, be a star or tell a story. To get rich and famous and change the world.

Instead, only a handful of people we write off as wanna-bees, unless they actually make it, wind up going anywhere near Sunset and Vine.

No, we just talk and dream of the what if’s and reject the high risk and walk instead to the ticket booth to sit down and watch George Clooney play Michael Clayton. George actually went to Hollywood before he was George Clooney. He doesn’t buy tickets; he sells ideas.

It all boils down to the roles we will all play in the film of our lives, which is being shot right now. Will we be extras, passives, unknowns carried by the script or will we be activists who write and direct and star? Will we be popcorn chomping spectators or the royalty we are watching from the dark of our seats? Will we read John Krakauers’ book, “Into the Wild” and place it back on the library shelf or “Sean Penn” it into a tour de force of a young man who sets out to poke a stick in every life assumption handed to us as gospel?

For every Sean Penn, there are a million passives. For every George Clooney, there are legion of dreamers.

All of my life, I have heard people say “I want to write a children’s book.” “I want to start a business.” “I wish I went to business school.” “I am sorry I never learned to play the drums.” “I want to run a division in my company.”

I used to say, “Why don’t you? What’s in your way?” But I don’t say a word now. I know the answer.

They have a path they ride. They get in their cars, turn on the Sirius, listen to Mayer, Madonna, Matchbox and watch the streets go buy. Alone, driving along, they think of what was and what will be from point A to point B and back again. This is good. This is safe. This is what the people who paint by numbers want us to do.

It is so neat; it is an insult to God.

The map of my life looks like a toddler finger-painted it. It drips all over the floor. It takes detours to Paris. It writes odes to God. But it is always that of an activist, with a gun at my own head, reminding me to find what no one has yet discovered. And once I do that, or fail at it, to search for something else, for another treasure.

Tomorrow, when I cruise down the road, I will look for the sign that reads “Last Exit To Hollywood” I will turn the wheel.

And I will disappear there.

Mark Stevens
CEO

What role do you play in your life?