I came across an old article I’d saved and thought it would be of great value during these trying times.

Thinking about and understanding risk is important whether you consider yourself a risk-taker or not.

Last year, Bill Buxton, researcher, professor, and author wrote a great column on risk in Business Week.

“Entrepreneurs, like ice climbers, are often said to risk their necks. But there are ways to cut danger to sane levels—and some very good reasons to try.”

People often comment that both groups are, politely speaking, nuts.

After offering up a detailed explanation of ice climbing Buxton says, “…the four considerations employed by the ice climber are exactly the same as those used by the serial entrepreneur or the effective business person…”

They are training, tools, fitness and partners.

But to me, the most important thought is found in the final four sentences.

“The most dangerous way of all to play it is so-called safe. Safe leads to atrophy and certain death—of spirit, culture, and enterprise. There is not a single institution of merit or worthy of respect in our society that was not created out of risk. Risk is not only not to be avoided, it is to be embraced—for survival.”

It is risk without evaluation that helped get us where we are today.

Evaluating risk requires not the best case analysis of which Wall Street is so fond, but also worst case analysis wherein you think about the absolute worst results if the risk is taken.

Then think through whether and how you would deal with the results. If they can be handled go forward; if not revise the action.

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(Today continues a conversation initiated last Thursday and added to yesterday.)

Everybody lies about sex. Those who aren’t getting any say they are and those who are getting it where they shouldn’t deny it.

Governor Mark Sanford followed the same path of Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, Rudy Giuliani, John Ensign, David Vitter, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Helen Chenoweth (the first woman) and many more.

But you know what?

I don’t care. At least, not about the sex—or even the lies. Even the lies under oath, because I don’t believe that an oath is going to change someone’s attitude about admitting something they don’t want to admit, it just adds another layer to the lie.

As Becky Robinson pointed out in her comment I could have just as easily used the Evangelical community—Jimmy Swaggart, Marvin Gorman, Jim Bakker, Lonnie Latham, Earl Paulk, Paul Crouch, Douglas Goodman, Frank Houston, etc., etc., etc. and, of course, the Catholic Church.

Dan Erwin made two very salient points.

In his first comment he said, “If you reframe the context from leader to bureaucrat, then the ethical expectations change.”

Amen, Dan. To assume that an elected official or any person-out-front automatically possesses all the sterling qualities of a “leader” as defined by the media, pundits and leadership industry has no basis in fact.

The second point that hit me was, “The notion of “standards” etc. is often a set-up for failure.”

This is getting closer to what angers me so much.

Not the sex, not the lies, but the standards.

Standards that they defined, preached and worked so hard to shove down everyone’s throat—standards that not one of them has even come close to practicing.

Mark Sanford voted for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment citing a need for “moral legitimacy” as his reason. Now he cites the Bible and the story of David and Bathsheba as his reason for not resigning.

As to the apologies, are they for the action or for getting caught? Americans are so focused on the sex and accept the apologies so readily that the hypocrisy becomes mere background noise.

It’s the Richard Nixon mentality all over again. As Nixon said in 1977, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal,”

The reigning slogan these days for too many “leaders” seems to be “do as I say, not as I do,” which both angers and confuses their followers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dan also said, “No question but what they’re hypocrites…of the worst kind. They made claims they didn’t follow through on. However, the issue parents (and grandparents, too) have to deal with is the education of your children.”

We’ll explore Dan’s thoughts and personal example of this in the next Leadership’s Future on Thursday. Please join us.

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Thursday I wrote about today’s excessive hypocrisy using, among other examples, Senator John Ensign.

Like most bloggers, I post ahead, so that I wasn’t able to include South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.

Today I want to offer up some quotes from him and tomorrow I’m going to address the subjects brought up by Dan Erwin and Becky Robinson in the comments on Thursday’s post.

“The bottom line, though, is I am sure there will be a lot of legalistic explanations pointing out that the president lied under oath. His [Livingston] situation was not under oath. The bottom line, though, is he still lied. He lied under a different oath, and that is the oath to his wife. So it’s got to be taken very, very seriously.”

“I think it would be much better for the country and for him [Livingston] personally (to resign). I come from the business side. If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he’d be gone.”

“What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily—fell in very, very significant ways, but then picked up the pieces and built from there.” (King David, who slept with Bathsheba, another man’s wife, had the husband killed, married the widow, but continued to ‘lead’.)

“Too many people in government seem to think they are above regular folks, and I said I would expect humility in the way each member of my team served—that they would recognize that the taxpayer is boss.”

“We as a party want to hold ourselves to high standards, period,”

I hope you’ll come back tomorrow as this conversation continues.

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Today is about an author, by an author and ideas for you to tweak and author for your company.

Do you know who Ray Bradbury is? An icon in the science fiction world, writer of screenplays, and hater of the internet and lover of libraries. “When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Built to Last offers a new look at why companies with everything going for them blow it. Check out this review; if you’re looking for some good summer reading you could do a lot worse than How the Mighty Fall … and Why Some Companies Never Give In.

Last, but certainly not least, is a white paper from McKinsey on creating a performance culture. It’s good reading and you’ll come away with ideas even if you aren’t ‘the boss’.

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When I wrote The Swamp And The Alligators: a (slightly irreverent) guide to career planning and the search process I had a chapter on career planning. Here is the first paragraph

“The world we live in is not conducive to planning in general, let alone long-term, i.e., strategic planning. There are very few good, visible role models who practice strategic planning. Elected officials don’t plan beyond the next election, while the government doesn’t seem to plan at all. Wall Street’s de facto definition of long-term is one quarter and companies are forced to accept and act on that definition or have havoc wreaked upon their stock. Even short-term planning is more reactive (fire fighting) than pro­active. When planning is done, it’s frequently approached as a project comparable to climbing Mt. Everest with the end product required to outlast the Tablets.”

That was more than 15 years ago and nothing’s changed—people still aren’t comfortable planning.

There’s a simple trick to planning, whether for your career, family or company and I’m going to share it with you. In order for it to work, you have to stay conscious of the idea behind the action all the time.

Are you ready?

PLAN IN PENCIL

It doesn’t matter if you’re using a computer, plan in pencil.

Planning in pencil means accepting at the outset that plans change as life changes and that’s OK.

No person living or dead could have predicted the current economy. Even those who saw the looming problems in derivatives and sub-prime mortgages couldn’t forecast what is happening.

Plans need to be flexible, to bend and sway with the winds of fortune and the life changes that can’t be predicted.

PLANNING IN PENCIL is a state of mind, the part of your MAP that allows you to move forward at warp speed, yet still turn on a dime.

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Oh what great examples are presented to kids these days.

Some of the worst types of hypocrites are thriving.

The first are all the ‘leaders’ who turn out to be crooks—Dennis Kowalski, Jeffrey Skilling, Bernie Madoff and a host of other hedge fund managers—to name a very few.

Then there are those who don’t practice what they preach; worse, they preach from very high profiles and at very loud levels.

I hate using political examples, but they’re the most prevalent.

One such is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who acknowledged having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky fiasco—which was also hypocritical.

But the bottom of the barrel are folks such as Senator John Ensign, a ‘leader’ of Promise Keepers, an organization which, among other things, promotes a teenage abstinence policy of education, who chose to screw around (pun intended).

Gone are the days when kids listened wide-eyed and respectful to the words flowing from political, business and parental lips.

These days the kids listen, and then check out the actions of the bodies attached to those lips, either directly or by Google.

It’s not about the sex; sex and power having gone together since time immemorial. And it’s not even about who lied when caught. Almost every human lies about sex, including the kids.

A few centuries ago when I was young there was a saying, “People in glass housed shouldn’t throw stones.”

So before you become a ‘leader’ for any cause or attitude, do make sure that your own actions conform to what’s expected of those who follow you.

But be warned; reasons, excuses and apologies don’t cut it with today’s cynical youth.

And if you’re thinking of following, Google the person and make sure that their actions conform to your own standards of ‘acceptable’.

(Be sure to check out Biz Levity’s irreverent look at the Ensign scandal.)

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Now click to see what happens when you don’t do f2f.

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I received and email in response to last Tuesday’s post about the value of adding QF to your culture’s DNA that absolutely floored me.

“Jess” said that “the disruption caused by indulging in QF” was expensive and difficult considering today’s economy. He said that this wasn’t the time to look for innovation, but to focus on survival; and that even in good times innovation was expensive and not all companies could afford that level of brain power.

Granted, a lot of CEOs have a hunker down mentality right now, but even casual reading will show that the smartest companies, whether large or small, are using this time to innovate and build, so they can move swiftly when things turn around.

But it was the special brain power for innovation that blew me away.

Innovation isn’t about hiring a Steve Jobs think-alike, but about tapping into the people you have and creating a culture that encourages and rewards ideas—even if they upset the status quo.

One of the most innovative and creative business segments these days (and historically) is the wholesale drug trade, AKA, drug lords.

The constant innovation required to smuggle their product is amazing and I doubt that the innovators have special training or degrees from Ivy League schools (other than their financial and legal talent).

The innovation is driven by market forces and necessity.

Creativity is a mindset that can be cultivated in everybody IF the company’s culture supports it and managers have skin in the game.

The requirements for a culture of innovation are already well represented here and in numerous other places.

Skin is accomplished by tying part of managers’ compensation to the group’s innovation.

This requires a well publicized set of measurements, not a boss’ opinion that changes with mood or whim.

(Hat tip to Biz Levity for the drug link. Subscribe if you want to add some business-irreverent laughter to your life).

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Wally Bock, citing an article in Forbes, talks about the value of storytelling to get your point across. And it’s true. I frequently use stories to help clients understand a concept more easily or wrap their heads around something that’s very new to them.

Yes, storytelling is an extremely powerful tool, but I see two problems inherent in these discussions.

The first is that the political, religious and business leaders used to illustrate storytelling’s influence are always positive examples and, obviously, plenty of those on the dark side have used it too.

Secondly, there is rarely any information on how listeners can shield themselves from the enthralling effect of the story in order to evaluate the actual ideas being presented.

I remember a friend telling me that he was mesmerized after hearing Bobby Kennedy, who he opposed, use stories to describe a situation and what he would do to change it. The effect wore off, but he found it a frightening experience.

Combine these two and you have a recipe for disaster—Hitler was an expert storyteller from the dark side, which is why he still has adherents.

Business leaders tell stories, called visions, constantly.

But as adults, involved in adult pursuits, we have a responsibility not to suspend our common and critical senses and swallow the story whole.

Here is how you stay balanced.

Enjoy the story, but remind yourself that it is a story and that once the telling is done then the content needs to be dissected and evaluated by the left side of your brain as opposed to embraced in toto by the right.

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My best wishes on your special day to all the fathers reading this.

“Becoming a father is easy enough, but being one can be very rough” –Wilhelm Busch (And has nothing to do with furnishing the sperm.)

“When one has not had a good father, one must create one.” –Friedrich Nietzsche (This is for all you guys who have filled the father role for someone who needed it, whether for a few days, weeks or for life.)

“My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.” –Clarence B. Kelland (Monkey see, monkey do and this leads us to the next bit of wisdom…)

“Every father should remember that one day his son [or daughter] will follow his example instead of his advice.” –Anon (See above.)

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” –Mark Twain (This has to be one of the smartest things that Twain ever said—and that’s saying something!)

But it’s Wadsworth who really sums up parents and kids…

“By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.” –Charles Wadsworth

Have a wonderful day!

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