On The Eve Of Destruction

In October of 1962, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the youngest  president of the United States, had to make a momentous, possibly tragic decision.

Whether to face down the Russians on the high seas at the palpable risk of igniting a nuclear war. If Kennedy made the wrong decision, much of the world might have gone up in a mushroom cloud of destruction.
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The Truth Lies In The Lies

Ask anyone if they are:

* Self-centered
* Selfish
* Greedy
* Materialistic
* Narcissistic

They will all answer with an emphatic “NO .” In fact, it’s unlikely you will even ask them as these very human traits are subjects of denial, swept under the rug, hardly fair game for cocktail party banter or even frank discussion between friends, lovers, spouses or partners.

We avoid them for a single reason. Everyone, in one way or another, is:

* Self-centered
* Selfish
* Greedy
* Materialistic
* Narcissistic

The problem is, these attributes are considered crimes of the heart. Deceits of the mind. So we all pretend they do not apply to us. It is a grand deception.

The truth lies in the lies.

Why is it important to air this dirty laundry? Because as friends, lovers, spouses, partners……and absolutely as businesspeople, we must deal with fact. We must understand not the myth but the reality. We are obliged, we are driven to peer beneath the veneer, to see what truly makes people tick. What moves and motivates them.

This is central to our own survival and to our ability to succeed in the jungle of commerce where the wise, the seers, peer through the politically correct, the denial, the misrepresentations, to divine the facts and, in turn, the most effective sources of the action.

As we work with others, as we seek to collaborate with them and motivate them and market to them, we must understand that living in a land of make-believe leads to dead ends and disappointments. Only by insisting on seeing through the fantasy of the pure and admitting the very nature of human behavior for what it is, can we navigate to real world goals and succeed.

People care about themselves, they want to be special, they crave compliments and rewards, they want to be the kings and queens of the hill. They know that when they win, others lose and they leave a trail of disappointment in their wake.

Businesspeople have no space for fantasy. They must create, team and sell based on reality. On the hard reality of what people really are and really want.

The truth lies in the lies.

Mark Stevens
CEO

Image courtesy: Flickr

Bob Dylan Doesn’t Vote For President

From our earliest days, we are all taught to conform.

To play well with others. To refrain from rocking the boat. To know our place. To avoid uncomfortable situations. To be a team player. To blend in.

I have never bought this. And I would like to suggest that you toss it back in the face of the dispensers of this play-it-safe advice as well.

I mean, it all boils down to a single question: why would you want to conform?

I go to meetings all the time where people are nodding their heads in agreement whenever the senior person at the table-meaning the one with the grandest title- speaks. It can be pure corporate -speak nonsense that holds zero validity anywhere else but a conference room in the sky, but the bobbleheads are nodding up and down like leaves blowing in the wind.

They want to conform.

I wonder why not a single exective of major sway didn’t come out publicly and knock Citigroup’s loving embrace of subprime bottom fish. Or a big wig at Bear Stearns. Yes, I know corporate etiquette holds that we keep our mouths shut and conform.

And then banks go under. And the people running them need to be viewed as men and women who failed to live up to their fiduciary responsibilities.

If one big name would have said “Game Over” to the Wall Street Journal, what would have happened? They would have been fired? Would never work on Wall Street again?

No. They would be heroes. Legends. In demand by everyone and more important, men and women who could go to sleep at night knowing they live life by the way they see it, not the way “the book” says to live it.

What if everyone lived a life of conformity. What would we be missing?

Lindberg
Lennon
Dylan
Joyce
Madonnna
Hemingway
Parks
King

All said yes to a chorus of no’s. Imagine a world without them.

Actually we can’t. They saw to that.

Mark Stevens
CEO

Wise People Are Dummies When Their Mouths Are Shut

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

The Iceberg and The Palm Tree

There are two kinds of people in this world. We’ll call them icebergs and palm trees. (Truth be told, there are likely thousands of types, but this is my blog and I’m in the mood to be simplistic. To make a point, of course.)

Anyway, back to my hypothesis, which I do believe in. In fact, which I think about all the time, some more than others, and when I do think about it, well, it opens up entire vistas of thought. Of insight. Of epiphanies.

Icebergs are impressive, but only from a distance. They can be beautiful in shape, pristine in color and composition, imposing in their steadfastness and they can be impervious to the elements that swirl around them. In human terms, they are stoic, silent, predictable. But get up close, scratch the surface, and it’s all just ice. It’s all rather cold. It’s all terribly inhuman. It doesn’t cry or think or change. It may melt, but that’s not the same thing as soaking in the moon and finding a way to chase it.

Palm trees give themselves up to the forces of the moment – the breezes, the gales, the tropical storms that emerge from nowhere and paint the day black – happy to twist and bend and make passionate love to the natural forces that rise up and make life so interesting, so compelling, so intriguing.

In my life, in all of the things I am so fortunate to experience at work and at play (which are really one and the same to me), I interact with and observe the icebergs and the palm trees. As I look for answers, adventures, innovations, collaborators, leaders, romantics, fighters, business builders, catalysts, friends, kindred spirits, inventors, new ways of growing MSCO, drivers of excellence for our clients and business partners, allies in my lust for life…..in all, it is the palm trees and only the palm trees that meet the test.

I need to be surrounded by palm trees.

It is only they who will not only accept the fates, the risks, the uncertainties, but will use the crazy quilt of life’s forces, of God’s forces, of the unknown, of the unpredictable, to continuously chase the moon, to reshape themselves, to give themselves with abandon to what they cannot see, or measure, or insure because they know, in most cases instinctively and subconsciously, that an iceberg is an inanimate object and a palm tree is a living thing.

The finest thing in life is to walk directly and confidently into the unknown. That is where success, in all of its forms, lies.

Mark Stevens
CEO