Let’s set aside the Constitution and all the talk of what the Founding Fathers wanted, or didn’t want, or believed in or didn’t believe in and focus upon what this great country of ours is all about.  We are not a nation of nay-sayers.  We are not now and have never been defeatists, pessimists, fatalists or believers in the words “It can’t be done.”  We are and always have been a nation of energetic problem solvers who will always find a way.

America has always been a special and unique place comprised of some of the most innovative, dynamic, ambitious, undaunted and determined people, so full of grit, courage, fortitude and moral fiber to rival Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great.  America has been built upon a faith in human equality and a faith in political democracy. Anyone born here has a chance to make something of him or herself.  There is no European Caste system here.  You are living proof of that.

Without question, the character of America has changed over the past two centuries, but when you think about it, really not that much.  We were once a mighty rural and agrarian nation.  Today we are obviously far more urban.  We were once a slave holding nation, as well as a weak, debtor nation dependent upon other countries to keep us afloat. We have come from being a very provincial and obscure country to a world dominating super power that has surpassed the power, might, influence and prestige of even mighty Rome.  We are a nation of pragmatists, innovators, inventors and idealists.  And above all, we are a nation that can adapt.

Yes, we are a nation that has made mistakes.  Yes, we are a nation consisting of corrupt, greedy and controlling individuals.  But when you actually come to study America, you quickly come to the realization that by focusing upon the negatives, you are focusing on a very small and minute portion of what makes this country great.

Instead, I implore you to look upon those who did and continue to make us great.

Great, brave and undaunted explorers and adventurers like Captain Lewis and Captain Clark, John Smith, Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill Cody, John Wesley Powell, the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh,  Amelia Earhart, Chuck Yeager, John Glen, Neil Armstrong, Sally Ride, Betty Skelton and Sacagawea.

Inventors like Eli Whitney, Samuel Colt, Kettering, Edison and Henry Ford to name but a few from the past.  There are so many more now that the list is becoming endless.

Visionaries like Horace Mann, Thomas Edison, John Fitch, Ida Rosenthal, Frederick Olmstead, William Mulholland, Juan Terry Trippe, Oprah, Russell Simmons, Walt Disney and Ted Turner.

People of conviction like Frederick Douglas, Black Elk, Booker T. Washington, Mother Ann Lee, Charles Finney, William Penn, Brigham Young, Martin Luther King, Jr., Betty Friedan, William F. Buckley, Jr. and Susan B. Anthony.

Military geniuses like Grant, Sherman, Patton, Eisenhower, MacArthur and Schwarzkopf.

Great writers like Louisa May Alcott, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Twain, Stowe, Mencken, Will Rogers, Pyle, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Hemmingway, Wm. F. Buckley, Fitzgerald, Baldwin, Halberstam and so, so many others.

Scientists and physicians like Rittenhouse, Bartram, Einstein, Hubble,  Clyde Tombaugh, Jonas Saulk, Dr. Hyland,  Dr.William Stewart Halstead, Dr. DeBakey, Oppenheimer, Goddard and the list is endless.

An unbelievable, wide array of entertainers like Harry Houdini, Duke Ellington, Marilyn Monroe, Woodie Guthrie, Leonard Bernstein, Mahalia Jackson, Sinatra, Elvis, John Belushi, Robin Williams, BB King, Chet Atkins, Eric Clapton, Run DMZ, Maria Callas, Arthur Fiedler, Judith Anderson, Louis Armstrong, The Beasty Boys, Odetta, Aretha Franklin, George Lopez, George Carlin, Lena Horn, Judy Garland, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Gershwin, Bob Fosse, Madonna, Jonathan Winters, and the list is endless.

Business leaders like Welch, Watson, Gates, Walton, Kelleher, Bossidy, Ruth Handler, Mary Kay, Sloan, Ellison, Allen, Gerstner, Packard, Graham, McKnight, Coffin, Luce, Kellogg, Kroc, Disney, Procter, Heinz, Trump, Gerber, Kraft, Jobs, Schultz, Bloomberg, Goodyear, Dell, Smith, Haas, Birdseye, Forbes and a host of others who create jobs and put people to work.

Inspirations like Helen Keller, Laura Bridgman, Roberto Clemente, Paul Edlund, Jerral Hancock, Tillman, General Jonathan Wainwright IV, Coach Wooden, Ronald Reagan, Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie.

Engineers like the Roeblings, “Hurry Up” Crowe, Leslie Robertson, Lindenthal, Ammann, Holland and Fazlur Khan.

Humanitarians like Hoover, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gates, and Gardner.

And I am quite confident that this list is indeed very incomplete.  There is little doubt that I have failed to include a great many more.

I am under the impression, Mr. President that you believe all business people are full of greed and avarice and you have singled them out as targets.  A failed ploy previously used by FDR against Insull, for example. Yet, there are great legends like Amadeo Giannini who created the Bank of Italy in order to give the little guy access to money.  Or Sam Insull himself, who wanted all people, not just the wealthy, to have access to electricity.  Philanthropy abounds, without whom many of the things the people have today wouldn’t exist without them.  And that includes Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan and now Bill Gates.

America is a nation of believers and givers.  We believe there is nothing we cannot do, nothing we cannot over come and nothing we won’t give to help someone out.  We have built the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Hoover Dam, the Sears Tower and the John Hancock.  We have put a man on the moon, created telescopes that allow us to see and understand things never before dreamt possible.  We have gone from the rotary dial party line telephone to the smart phone, iPod and iPad, and have become a connected nation of screen users in the blink of an eye.  We have harnessed rivers, electrified the nation and bridged the world.   The only question that remains and the question that always remains is, What’s Next!?!

I sense that your vision of America is one of doom, gloom, the end of prosperity and the end of our Can Do spirit.  But let me tell you, Mr. President, I’ve lived in America for a full 62 years.  I have worked in disasters, I was raised and schooled in the mid-West, I have worked for major corporations and worked with many small and medium sized family owned businesses and I can tell you with great conviction, you and your vision for America is dead wrong.  I have been fortunate enough in my life time to actually meet and speak with some greats like Jack Welch, the Granatelli Brothers, Harvey McCay, Joe Mancuso, Gordon Marshall , Arthur Fiedler, Peter Drucker, Clyde Tombaugh and others.   And I can assure you, Mr. President, that America is proud, unique and will never bend.  America is comprised of Americans, regardless of their color, their beliefs, their gender or their place of birth.  We are all still Americans and we are not about to become something other than what we are.  And the innovators, thinkers, visionaries and great leaders will continue to come, whether born here or abroad.  Because the world knows, America remains the land of Opportunity.

Even now, as Hurricane Irene’s devastation is being dealt with, we are not seeing an out pouring of help from other countries because it is not who they are.  But it is who we are.  It’s part of our character.  Giving, helping, donating, volunteering, being humanitarian are all American traits.  It’s what we do as Americans.  And nothing brings us all together faster than a major disaster or an attack like 9/11 those ten short years ago.

By the way, Mr. President, in case you are not familiar with some of the names I mentioned above, I encourage you to Google them to see what they accomplished, what they had to over come, what they believed in, the sacrifices they had to make and why they are great Americans, all.  And in another ten years there will be an entirely new generation of achievers, doers, innovators and thinkers to hail.  It never ends and it never will end.

Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism

By

Ronald J. Pestritto

For Wilson, the Civil War represented a major step forward for America; it marked the country’s moving from an historically inferior, decentralized system of government to a true national system.  It was no the union over states rights.

“Washington was neither an accident nor a miracle.  Neither chance nor a special Providence need be assumed to account for him.  It was God, indeed who gave him to us; but God had been preparing him ever since English constitutional history began.”  Wilson

(I think at the heart of Wilson saying this was Washington’s not wanting to be named King or placed into office for his life time as Hamilton wanted him to be.  While Hamilton loved Julius Caesar, Washington said he did not go to war against a tyranny to become one himself.)

“The best government is the one that reflects the spirit of a nation at a particular time and place.  Government must represent not some ideal ethical form, but the current thought or will of the people.… institutions match the thought of the people to which they belong.”  Wilson

Wilson felt that one’s participation in progress takes on the form of an obligation to God.  “This was America’s Holy Mission.”  “… America had been assigned a special civilization destiny by divine providence…”

In his The Study of Politics, Wilson wrote that the student will see the historical superiority of some races over others.  That some races, by virtue of their historical superiority, deserve a more advanced form of government.  Wilson was anti Reconstruction because the dominance of an ignorant and inferior race was justly dreaded.  “Negro rule under unscrupulous adventurers had been finally put an end to in the South, and the natural, inevitable ascendancy of the whites, the responsible class, established.”  Wilson

Written constitutions are misleading in that they appear to endorse the social compact concept of government, when in fact, government is always evolving.  (I think Wilson neglects to see that the United States Constitution was CONSTITUTED to create a Republic, the likes of which had never been seen before.  That the U.S. Constitution was a unique document unto itself and not just another sheet of paper with a bunch of words on it.  Overall, I find Wilson’s take on the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence more than a little bit insulting.)

We are not bound to adhere to the doctrines held by the signers of the Declaration of Independence: we are as free as they were to make and unmake the governments.  We are not here to worship men or a document.  But neither are we here to indulge in a mere rhetorical and uncritical eulogy.  Every Fourth of July should be a time for examining our standards, our purposes, for determining afresh what principles, what forms of power we think most likely to effect our safety and happiness.  That and that alone is the obligation the Declaration lays upon us.”   Wilson

A necessary condition for lasting democracy, Wilson argued, is “homogeneity of race and community of thought and purpose among the people.”

For Wilson, the focus is not on individual rights, but on the unity of national will.

Wilson felt that it is not important to understand the particular founding intention behind the form of the Constitution.  Intention merely reflected the particular spirit that permeated the founding era; the organic will of American society, however, has evlolved well beyond that stage.

“Justly revered as our great constitution is, it could be stripped off and thrown aside like a garment, and the nation would still stand forth clothed in the living vestment of flesh and sinew, warm with the heart blood of one people, ready to recreate constitutions and laws. “   Wilson

Since the real force or sovereign in any society is its organic will, government – whatever its particular form – is the creature of that will.  (A Case for God and Government.)

Government “is no more evil than is society itself.  It is the organic body of society; without it society would be hardly more than a mere abstraction.

Every society gets the kind of government that best reflects society’s particular historical spirit.  “Government is the indispensable organ of society.”  Wilson

“Government does not stop with the protection of life, liberty and property as some have supposed.”  Wilson

The individual is to have liberty insofar as that liberty does not interfere with the interests of the state.   (This is Anti-Hobbs and anti-Nature.)

Wilson saw his progressivism as a natural development or outgrowth of the new historical spirit.  It was a way of transforming the government away from its founding principle and toward a new, energized role that would enable it to meet the demands of the current epoch.  Socialism, Wilson explained, is simply the logical extension of genuine democratic theory – it gives all power to the people in their collective capacity to carry out their will through the exercise of governmental power, unlimited by any undemocratic idea like individual rights.

“In fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same.  They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members.  Limits of wisdom and convenience to the public control there may be:  limits of principle there are, upon strict analysis, none.”  Wilson

“The difference between democracy and socialism is not an essential difference, but only a practical difference – is a difference of organization and policy, not a difference of primary motive.  Democracy has not undertaken the tasks which socialists claim to have undertaken; but it refrains from them, not for lack of adequate principles or suitable motives, but for lack of organization and suitable hardihood; because it cannot see its way clear to accomplishing them with credit.”  Wilson

“Why may not the present age write, through me, its political autobiography?”  Wilson

Wilson’s methodology means that one must study not the American Constitution’s forms or ideas, which are a historical and do not reflect living reality, but instead the history of the development of the American state.  The key to American democracy, according to Wilson, is that it has been lived, not theorized.  Politics should be contingent upon the current will or spirit of the people, not on the static theories of what government ought to be.

(My Comment:  Unless the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence remain constant, every standing president would have the right to re-interpret those documents to his or her own choosing and as they see fit.  According to Wilson, these documents should be left to his own interpretation while acting as president.  Which means the same would be true for every president after him, leaving America bouncing around like a pin ball every 4 to 8 years.  No!  The Constitution is what makes America, America.  Change it and you’ve changed America.  If you want a changed America, go find another country.  If you don’t like a certain religion, go find one you do like.  You do not change the existing religion, you either create one that suits you or find an existing one that suits you.  This concept is ludicrous.)

The Civil War did away with the old order of fragmented localism and ushered in the age of national unity.  Add to that the Westward movement of 1829 and beyond and everything truly began to change.  The settlement of the West meant progress because  as a nation grows, it must overcome nature.  “For the creation of the nation the conquest of her proper territory from Nature was first necessary.” Wilson

In his Constitutional Government writing, Wilson stated that the most important fact to know about the American Constitution is that its meaning is contingent upon history, and that its meaning and our understanding of it had changed and grown significantly since the time of its establishment.  America has escaped the narrow individualism of the founding and had grown into a genuine nation.  It was not by sticking to its original principles, but by submitting to progress and growth, by adopting new methods and new political ideas to meet new historical circumstances.  It was HISTORY that would create a true and complete nation.  “Unquestionably we believe in a guardian destiny!”  Wilson

What became most important in national politics was not the Constitution’s protection of individuals, but its ability to put into action “the passionate beliefs of an efficient majority of the nation.”  Wilson

In his political writings, Wilson often pointed to the Civil War as evidence that the particular historical purposes for which the original Constitution had been instituted had been superseded.  “The construction of the Constitution is settled now, settled once and for all by the supreme arbitrament of war.”  Wilson

In his mind, the outcome of the Civil War lead to the adoption of superior principles.

The founder’s primitive, individualistic liberalism – while outdated for the present circumstances -  had been historically necessary.  It was part of history’s overall plan for the progressive development of American into a modern state.  The founders political principles would not carry over into modern times.  (This makes no sense to me.  First off, the founders’ were learned, well read men.  The Federalist Papers alone prove this to be true.  Much of their thinking stemmed from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.  They also obviously read Hume, John Locke and Reid among others.  The American colonists were far more well read than their English compatriots as evidenced by the fact that more books were being sold in the Colonies than in England itself.  There is even a section within the Federalist Papers that addresses their concern for Wilson’s kind of thinking.)

According to Wilson, the first half of the Nineteenth Century was an American struggle between originalism, which kept the country fragmented, and the forces of union, which advocated progress.

Secession was not an attack on the Constitution, it was a movement of reactionary forces who wanted to restore the original constitutionalism in a fight against progress.

“… Constitutions are not mere legal documents: they are the skeleton frame of a living organism; and in this case the course of events had nationalized the government once deemed confederate.”  Wilson

The great crime of the South, according to Wilson, was not because slavery violated the natural rights of the slaves, but because the South itself resisted progress.  Wilson saw the Civil War as a fight between two principles – between the principles of reaction and old traditions on the one hand, and the principles of progress, growth and development on the other.

“The national government that came out of the Reconstruction was not the national government that went into it.  The civil war had given leave to one set of revolutionary forces; Reconstruction gave leave to another still more formidable.  The effects of the first were temporary, the inevitable accompaniments of civil war and armed violence; the effects of the second were permanent, and struck to the very centre of our forms of government.”  Wilson

Any person who would stand in the way of America’s progress as a united nation, is not truly an American.  Americanism, he wrote, is “above all things, a hopeful and confident spirit.  It is progressive optimistically progressive, and ambitious of objects of national scope and advantage.  It is unpedantic, unprovincial, unspeculative, unfastidious, regardful of law , but as using it, not as being used by it or dominated by any formalism whatever.”  Wilson

Wilson emphasized that what matters in government is not the forms on which it is legally constructed but the understanding of it in the public mind.

Wilson conceded that the original intention of the Constitution was to have been to reserve significant power for the states.  Government would have to adjust to allow a much greater sphere of administrative authority for the national government than the Constitution seems to allow on its face.  It could be done by “wresting the Constitution to strange and as yet unimagined uses.”  Wilson

(First, I find it interesting to note that Obama is following the Wilson concept in spite of Wilson being an absolute and complete bigot.  Secondly, one of the things with states is that I can leave them.  I can always move out of a state I disagree with.  I have a hard time moving out of the United States, however.  Where am I going to go?  Which means with a state, I have a choice.  With the US Government, I don’t.  I’m stuck.)

Each generation is to abandon older understandings of politics for new ones.  Wilson wanted the Federal Government to take on more authority because his opinion of state legislatures was low.  He felt them to be narrow minded and overly focused on particular issues.     (Note:  What would he say about today’s US Congressmen?)

“As the life of the nation changes so must the interpretation of the document which contains it change, by a nice adjustment, determined, not by the original intention of those who drew the paper, but by the exigencies and the new aspects of life itself.”  Wilson

What this meant was the onus would be on the judiciary to interpret the laws and deem them to be Constitutional or not, which by Wilson’s standards, would have to be done based upon a historical spirit.  To reflect what it is that each generation wants out of government, and not to be stuck on an outdated understanding of the purpose and role of the government.

Wilson feared the judiciary because he felt that lawyers tend to become obsessed with the technical details of the law at the price of missing its overall organic character.  Which is why he felt a legal education should include a great deal of history.

To Wilson, a constitutional government is one which is constantly adjusting itself to the will of the people.  Since the public mind continually changes and evolves, so too must our understanding of what government should do.  “A constitutional government is one whose powers have been adapted to the interests of the people.”

A true constitution represents a  “common political consciousness.”

Wilson felt that some citizens of this country have never gotten beyond the Declaration of Independence.

For Wilson, the separation of powers was the source of much of what was wrong with  American government.  The separation of powers only served to impede genuine democracy.  Wilson felt that the separation of powers was irresponsible  because it made it difficult for the government to implement new public policy, even when the new policy reflected a clear new direction in public opinion.  Wilson wanted no separation between the legislative and executive branch and that the legislative branch should actually be the president’s cabinet members.  (NOTE:  With so much divisiveness and so many different factions, how would he interpret the will of the people?  Which is why the Constitution MUST be the one document we unalterably adhere to.  Leaving that document to interpretation based upon the whim of the current president and generation of the time, only diminishes and weakens America.)

Wilson’s broad vision for the transformation of American politics remained consistent: politics had to embody, and be guided by, the historically conditioned and unified will of the people.  Only in this way could the government and the principles upon which it rested be constantly adjusted to fit the changing demands of historical progress.

Wilson felt that the president was better suited than Congress to beome the emobidment of the historically conditioned will of the people and consequently, to lead the political arm of government.

Wilson reasoned that the Senate was not formed to be a legislative, law creating branch of government, but an advisor to the President, only.  That it was up to the president to make the final decision based upon the advice and input he received from the Senate.

In modern times, it was more important for the president to be leader of the whole nation than it was for him to be the chief officer of the executive branch.  The president’s role as popular leader means that he must, as the embodiment of the national will, coordinate and move Congress and the other parts of government.

“Governments are what the politicians make them and it is easier to write of the President than of the presidency.” Wilson

This is why a president’s expertise in public affairs is not as important as his possession of a forceful personality and other qualities of popular leadership.  What America needs is “a man who will be and who will seem to the country in some sort an embodiment of the character and purpose it wishes its government to have – a man who understands his own day and the needs of the country.”  Wilson

The president is the unifying force in our complex system and must not be relegated to managing only one branch of it.

I ASK YOU, WHO DOES THIS REMIND YOU OF?:  Before he was even INAUGURATED, Wilson crafted what was to become Congress’ legislative agenda for 1913 and 1914 and his agenda was carefully implemented once he assumed office.

The Modern Presidency argument points to the founders fear of demagoguery, noting that the founders were careful to avoid the direct connection that popular rhetoric would create between the president and public opinion.  Popular or mass rhetoric, which presidents once employed only rarely, now serves as on of their principle tools in attempting to govern the nation.” Wilson

Wilson focused on policy rhetoric, making it oral and delivered directly to the people, as opposed directly to Congress.  He also introduced a new form of speech, where rhetoric was no longer constrained by Constitutional traditions.  It was Wilson who introduced the visionary speech and the policy stand speech.

Wilson’s popularization of the presidency also raises the question of Wilson’s doctrine of leadership.  In particular, is the presidential leader, as the embodiment of the public will, a follower or a shaper of public opinion?  Is Wilson’s vision of leadership fundamentally democratic or elitist?

Parties aid in making the connection between the people and their governing institutions more immediate and direct.  Through their electoral ejection or endorsement of the specific policy platforms of the parties, the people make known their will to the government and send officials to their jobs with a specific mission.  Once in office, parties provide a means by which public officials can coordinate their efforts across different branches.  Parties become a tool for unifying their unifying their members even while those members serve in different institutions.  Wilson felt parties had to be transformed; they needed to serve the will of both the people and the will of those whom the people had elected to lead them.

Public officials were more concerned with retaining their friendship of the corrupt party bosses who controlled their access to the ballot than they were with responding to the public will.  FDR flipped this reasoning during the depression.

The parties were designed more to perpetuate their own power than they were to carry out the peoples will.

Wilson complained that parties in America failed to stand up for clear ideas, and therefore the two parties did not offer the people two clear alternatives.  “A man must nowadays either belong to a party through mere force of habit, or else be puzzled to know what party he belongs to.  Party platforms furnish no sort of chart by which he can shape his political course.

Wilson contended that the force of history had changed America from a disorganized collection of particular and local interests into a whole, organic nation.  There was now, Wilson believed, a unified, national sentiment, or national will.  This national will was embodied in the national government which meant that it had been transformed by history into the organic whole of what Wilson called The State.

Parties were not responsible enough to the public.  Unlike elected officials who were held accountable by those who elected them, party bosses didn’t face that problem.  The Party determines who runs and the party determines the policy yet is not accountable for either.

It was Wilson, as Governor of NJ,  passing the Geran Bill, who created the primary as a means to elect officials, taking the power out of the hands of the Bosses and placing the power into the hands of the people. Because of Wilson, the party has lost much control over the selection of the candidate.

Wilson was in favor of a partisanship that was a means of changing the fundamental principles of the regime and the basic understanding of the role of government.  For Wilson, parties were of no use unless they served as tools for escaping the narrow constitutionalism of the founding generation.  Wilson’s whole aim was to distance the nation from the constitutionalism of 1787.

NOTE:  If you eliminate the parties, you eliminate the static and noise.  You eliminate the distractions to the real issues.  You get only the man no longer cloaked in a party veil, but naked, true and very transparent.

“The federal government is, through its courts, in effect made the final judge of its own powers…. The whole balance of our federal system, therefore, lies in the federal courts.  It is inevitable that it should be so… Such a principle constitutes the courts of the United States the guardians of our whole legal development.  With them must lie the final statesmanship of control.”  Wilson

NOTE:  Is our government up for interpretation with every administration that comes into office?  I personally think NOT!

“It is true that their power is political; that if they had interpreted the Constitution in its strict letter, as some proposed, and not in its spirit… it would have prove a strait jacket, a means not of liberty and development, but of mere restriction and embarrassment.”  Wilson

Wilson envisioned a weakened congress, more energy and power for the president, and greater freedom of movement for the bureaucracy.  The presidency is brought closer to popular opinion, while the bureaucracy is insulated from it.  So who is it that governs?  Is it the people, whom a strong president dependent upon their will would seem to empower, or is it the bureaucratic experts, who are shielded from the meddling of politics and public opinion as they carry out the business of administration?  The answer seems to lie in an important characteristic of Woodrow Wilson’s thought and in much of progessivism:  the rhetoric is intensely popular and democratic, yet the reality of the argument is to put political power in the hands of governing elites who possess advanced knowledge of the spirit of the age and the course of history.  Wilson reasoned that government can be administered in a businesslike or professional manner only if it is largely removed from politics and public opinion.

The president must interpret the spirit of the age, and in so doing must bring along not only the other institutions of government, but also the people themselves.  Wilson wrote that the president will be a “man who understands his own day and the needs of the country, and who has the personality and the initiative to enforce his views both upon the people and upon Congress.”  Wilson (Does this sound like Obama, or what?)

“A president whom the country trusts can not only lead it, but form it to his own views.”  … “by giving direction to opinion.”  Wilson

Wilson’s idea of leadership was to govern in accord with his interpretation of the public will.  Wilson also believed that the public, more often than not, did not understand what its true will or spirit actually was.  It was his job to discern it for them.  The public wil is to govern, but only insofar as it is led by educated elites who see more clearly than anybody else where that will is actually going.  (Sounds like Animal Farm…. Four feet good.  Two feet bad.  No, No, reverse that!!)

Someone Wilson admired was Bagehot who felt that for popular government to be a good government, the people must at least have enough sense to recognize that they should be ruled by someone wiser than they are, and to consent to such rule.

Wilson called for a popular leader who could succeed on the basis of his ability to move the masses through rhetoric.  That the aim of rhetoric was persuasion and conviction –the control of other minds by a strange personal influence and power.  Rhetoric must be seen as a tool – as a means to the practical end of influencing other men’s minds.

The leader must also have the ability to persuade the people that his vision of their future is, in fact, their future, and he must be able to mobilize them in that direction.

It is the will of the leader, not the opinion of the masses, that governs:

“His will seeks the lines of least resistance; but the whole question with him is a question of the application of force.  There are men to be moved; how shall he move them?  He supplies the power; others supply only the materials upon which that power operates… It is the power which dictates, dominates; the materials yield.  Men are as clay in the hands of the consummate leader.” Wilson  (YIKES!!!!)

“A great nation is not led by a man who simply repeats the talk of the street corners or the opinions of the newspapers.  A nation is led by a man who hears more than those things; or who, rather, hearing those things, understands them better, unites them, puts them into a common meaning; speaks, not the rumors of the street, but a new principle for a new age; a man in whose ears the voices of the nation do not sound like the accidental and discordant notes that come from the voice of a mob, but concurrent and concordant like the united voices of a chorus, whose many meanings, spoken by melodious tongues, unite in his understanding in a single meaning and reveal to him a single vision, so that he can speak what no man else knows, the common meaning of the common voice.  Such is the man who leads a great, free, democratic nation.”  Wilson

Great passions, when they run through a whole population, inevitably find a great spokesman.  The need for an indivisible leader stems from the reality that public opinion is often fragmented, and therefore requires a leader who can identify the genuine unity of public will that is implicit beneath the contentions on the surface.

“Whoever would effect a change in modern constitutional government must first educate his fellow-citizens to want some change.  That done, he must persuade them to want the particular change he wants.  He must first make public opinion willing to listen and then see to it that it listen to the right things.  He must stir it up to search for an opinion, and then manage to put the right opinion in its way.”  Wilson

“Robust as its Constitution has proved to be, the federal government cannot long continue to live in the poisonous atmosphere of fraud and malfeasance.  If the civil service cannot by gentle means be purged of the vicious diseases which fifty years of the partisans spoils system have fixed upon it heroic remedies must be resorted to.”  Wilson

“An intelligent nation cannot be led or ruled save by thoroughly-trained and completely-educated men.  Only comprehensive information and entire mastery of principles and details can qualify for command.”  Wilson

Wilson felt that the inefficient separation of powers should be replaced with the more efficient separation of politics and administration, which will enable the bureaucracy to tend to the details of administering progress without being encumbered by the inefficiencies of politics.

With government being contingent upon history, Wilson felt the government that the founder’s designed was appropriate for the historical spirit in which they lived, but not now.

In The Study, Wilson elaborated on his vision of history and his theory of administration.  The first stage, according to Wilson, is Absolute Rulers.  In stage two, “Constitutions are framed to do away with absolute rulers.”  The third and final stage is one where the people abandon their fear of unchecked administrative power.

In the Study, Wilson made it clear that the increasingly complex business of governing a modern state had to be handled by a professional class of experts instead of by a multiplicity of politicians with narrow, competing and subjective interests.

Those who lead must have the keenest insight into what progress requires.  They must also be able to convince the people that the leaders’ vision of what is required for progress conforms to the public’s own implicit will.

Wilson’s vision for an independent bureaucracy does not require only that administration be separated from politics; it requires, more fundamentally, that administrative power be considered separately from constitutional power.

“You know that it was Jefferson who said that the best government is that which does as little governing as possible… But that time is passed.  America is not now and cannot in the future be a place for unrestricted individual enterprise.”  Wilson

Wilson shared the Progressive conviction that the national government should be used as an active instrument of social progress through the exercise of regulatory powers.  Hence we had The Federal Reserve Act (1913), Federal Trade Commission Act (1914), Clayton Antitrust Act (1914), Shipping Act (1916), Keating-Owens Act (1916), Child Labor Tax Act (1919), Transportation Act (1920), and Federal Water Power Act (1920).

Perhaps Wilson’s most significant instance of empowerment was his successful campaign for passage of the Underwood Tariff Bill – a bill that enacted the first national income tax.  It was the first time that the federal government was to direct income redistribution around the country.  The overall logic of the bill was to reduce protective tariffs and make up the lost revenue with the income tax.

In a nutshell, Wilson downplayed his belief in progressivism to which he long subscribed in order to become elected.  Once in office, he reverted to and pursued policies that pushed forward all of the progressive principles he had been developing over the course of thirty years.  (DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?)

The general character and situation of a people must determine what sort of government is fit for them.

Regarding WWI, Wilson was inexperienced in foreign affairs and, as someone who had spent his life thinking and writing about American domestic politics, was unprepared for the role in which world events would thrust him.  (Does this sound familiar?)

Final Note: I suggest we make a mental note to avoid putting academia-type people in office, especially the Oval Office.  They have had far too much time to think.

Based upon that definition, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ranked by historians as the greatest president behind Abraham Lincoln, was one of the greatest extortionists ever, in the history of the United States.  He is the first president ever to use the Bureau of Internal Revenue, later named the Internal Revenue Service to go after his enemies and protect his friends.  He is the first president to be granted, by Congress, Billions in funds to apply to his Public Works Programs, the WPA, the AAA, and the CCC all of which were patronage jobs.  He is the first president to deny federal funds to any governor or mayor who did not support his policies and programs.  He was the first president to use shake down tactics to get money out of those workers for whom jobs were being provided.  He was the closest thing to an absolute dictator this country has ever seen.

I asked the question why, in spite of his programs and policies failing and unemployment rising one year after the next, was he so overwhelmingly popular and won the 1936 election by a landslide.  Well, he did not only win the 1936 election, but the Democrats actually gained seats in both the Senate and Congress in the mid-term election in 1934.  How in the hell was that even possible, in spite of everything bad that was happening to the economy and the American voters?

Turns out he did not achieve these victories based upon his massive popularity, he achieved these victories based upon threats and misuse of his authority.  In other words, he extorted his way to victory.  Here’s how:

Let’s start with Huey Long who started out in favor of Roosevelt and The New Deal and soon turned against him.  The problem with Long, as far as Roosevelt was concerned, was that he was every bit as dynamic, charismatic and inspirational as Roosevelt and was gaining in popularity by the minute.  Roosevelt tried everything to shut The Kingfish down, including cutting off Federal Funds and patronage jobs.  Long survived.  Roosevelt figured that for Long to be able to do that, funds had to coming in the back door.  With that, he put the IRS on Long via his good friend Morgenthau, the new Secretary of the Treasury and one of Roosevelt’s key henchman.  Morgenthau contacted Irey, the head of the BIR (IRS) and said GET HIM!  By 1935, many of Long’s key people had been indicted.  Long was assassinated, but it didn’t stop there, either.  The “deal” was, if the Long supporters came out in support of Roosevelt, all further investigation would be dropped.  With that, Earl Long, Huey’s brother, about whom the movie Blaze was made a few years back with Paul Newman, came out in full support of Roosevelt.

Once Roosevelt realized the power he had with the IRS as a weapon, he then went after Hearst, Hamilton Fish, Johnson (the political boss in Atlantic City, NJ), Senator Wheeler of Montana, Andrew Mellon, Boake Carter, a radio commentator, and Moe Annenberg of the Philadelphia Enquirer.  Friends he protected from the IRS included Lyndon Johnson and Frank Hague, the Boss of Jersey City, NJ.   Point blank, if you screwed with FDR, he was going to screw you right back, only harder!

As for patronage, Roosevelt created the AAA, FERA, CCC and the WPA.  Funding for the WPA alone in 1935, as passed by Congress, amounted to $4.8 Billion in 1935 dollars!!  These programs provided Roosevelt with more federal money to distribute than all of the previous presidents combined!!!  Also keep in mind that it was during FDRs time that the building of public works was federalized and the states no longer had that power.  So,with all of these programs, Roosevelt and the New Dealers had the congressmen and governors over a barrel.  If they wanted something built or done within their state, they had to kiss Roosevelt’s ass.  The plain and simple fact was that these programs represented millions of government appointed jobs and the jobs were selectively handed out based solely upon how they best served the Democratic Party and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In 1934, unemployment stood at 22%.  Republicans were down 3:1 in Congress and, like today’s mid-term coming up in November, were expecting large gains.  Maine, being an important state at the time, was flooded with Federal Tax dollars.  Or, as Hamilton Fish said, “funds distributed in Main amounted to nearly $350 a vote for registered Democrats.” The idea caught on so well in Maine, they took it to other states, bribing voters with jobs, provided they supported the Democratic Party.  To make a long story short, the Democrats didn’t lose seats in the mid-term election, they actually gained nine seats in the Senate and another nine seats in Congress!!

Then came 1936.  Early on it was looking grim for Roosevelt to be re-elected.  In late July, some Gallup polls actually showed Alf Landon ahead of Roosevelt.  There were high prices as a result of his programs, high taxes and more and more government power.  Unemployment had gone up from 3.6 million in ’33 to 4.3 million in ’34 to 4.7 million in ’35.  Apparently, 1936 wasn’t looking any better.

But what Roosevelt had was power and clout.  If a governor or congressman wanted something, he had to come begging to Roosevelt.  If someone wanted a job, they better be in support of the Democratic Party.  Roosevelt also had the $4.8 Billion Congress funded the WPA with.  Which is why four months before the 1936 presidential election, 300,000 men were added to the WPA. And the vast majority of those jobs were given in key swing states like Pennsylvania. A month AFTER the election, 300,000 men were removed from the WPA.  But who do you think they voted for in November?  He also made certain that the farmers all received their Soil Conservation Service checks jus before the election.

And, isn’t it interesting that prior to Roosevelt, the vast majority of Black Americans were Republicans, NOT Democrats.  (Remember Lincoln?)  Between FERA, the WPA, the CCC and the PWA FDR and Harold Ickes, another one of FDR’s key henchmen, targeted the Black Voter with money, jobs, hospitals, low rent housing projects, etc. and won their hearts.

Now add to this mix in 1936 the fact that Alf Landon was not the most dynamic candidates or brilliant politicians.

The Result:  Roosevelt wins by 523 electoral college votes to Landon’s 8 and by a margin of 11 Million in popular votes.  A study of the election was made that found wherever funding by one of Roosevelt’s programs were low or non-existent, Alf Landon did very well.  But, the higher the funding, the more votes for Roosevelt.  To sum it all up, in Hudson County, New Jersey, for example, where Mayor Frank Hague, FDR’s buddy controlled 90,000 WPA jobs and about $47Million in various program funds, Roosevelt won 233,390 to Landon’s 65,110.   Do keep in mind that the funding, as it is referred to, was with Federally Collected Tax Dollars!!!

And just think, had these programs not existed, had Roosevelt not had the funds and the leverage these funds provided him, he more than likely would have been a one-term president.  So, that’s your history lesson for today.

If you want to know a lot more, I encourage you to read the book, New Deal or Raw Deal by Burton Folsom, Jr. that documents every piece of information acquired.

Thank you!

Henry Morgenthau, Jr.

Secretary of the Treasury

May 9, 1939

We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us… Walt Kelly

In 1935, Senator Thomas Gore of Oklahoma, who had been a senator since 1907 when Oklahoma became a state, was the only Nay vote on funding the WPA with $4.8 Billion (1935 dollars, by the way.)  Gore had previously stated “The day on which we begin to make these loans by the Federal Government to States, counties, and cities was a more evil day in the history of the Republic than the day on which the Confederacy fired upon Fort Sumter.” In spite of thousands of his constituents demanding he bring the New Deal to Oklahoma, Gore held to his principles and remained the one lone No vote on the Senate floor.

His response to his constituents was this:  “Your action shows how the dole spoils the soul.  Your telegram intimates that your votes are for sale.  Much as I value votes, I am not in the market.  I cannot consent to buy votes with the people’s money.  I owe a debt to the tax payer as well as to the unemployed.”

Gore was soundly defeated in the next election coming in fourth and his political career was over.  So the question is, is it the politicians, or is it us?  Is it our greed that allows them to be greedy?  Is it our desires that allow them to do what they do?  Do we then get enraged when it suits us or whenever we feel we’ve been neglected or cut out of the bargain?

My feeling is this.  I can control but two things in my life… my credit and my integrity.  The moment I compromise either one of those, I have failed.  All of us, not just politicians need to come to that understanding.

One would normally assume that there is a positive correlation between customer satisfaction and customer buying behavior. We know that dissatisfaction comes from the difference between what we expect to occur and what actually happens. Yet, in spite of customers telling you that they are quite satisfied with your services, they often turn around and leave you anyway.

Recent studies confirm that current satisfaction measurement systems, such as surveys, are not a reliable predictor of repeat purchase. Which is why you will so often hear bosses making statements like, “It’s great to know that our customer satisfaction score is up again for the fourth straight year. Now, can someone tell me why profitability and market share are down again?”

Preventing Erosion:

To keep customers from leaving requires a determined mindset and a long-term commitment to the customer.

What you must look for are:

• customer retention

• total share of the customer’s business

• recency

• frequency

• dollar amount

• life time value

• loyalty

• referral

• opportunity

• profitability

REMEMBER: Your Best Customers are Your Competitor’s Best Prospects.

Which is why it is imperative that you do everything possible to turn your first time buyers into repeat buyers and eventually loyal customers.

To accomplish that feat means having to make the experience of doing business with you, especially that first experience, as pleasant and overwhelming for the customer as is possible.

Five reasons for making a first time customer a lifetime buyer:

1. Sales go up because the customer is buying more from you

2. You strengthen your position in the marketplace when customers are buying from you instead of your competition

3. Marketing costs go down when you don’t have to spend money to attract a repeat customer, since you already have him. In addition, as a satisfied customer he tells his friends thereby decreasing your need to promote yourself.

4. You are better insulated from price competition because a loyal customer is less likely to be lured away by a discount of a few dollars.

5. Finally, a happy customer is likely to sample your other services thus helping you achieve a larger share of the customer.

A Five-Step Progression:

Each time a customer buys, he progresses through a buying cycle. A first time buyer goes through the following five steps:

1. Becomes aware of your services

2. Makes an initial investment

3. Post purchase evaluation

4. Decision to repurchase

5. Repurchase or not

Whether or not the customer feels an attachment to you is dependent upon two factors:

1. The customer’s degree of preference

2. The customer’s degree of perceived differentiation.

Four Reasons First Time Buyers Do Not Return

1. Early problems sour the relationship

2. No formal servicing system – no account management program

3. Communication breakdown with the decision makers

4. Easy return to the other supplier

STORY:

A man died and went to heaven, where he was told he had a choice between Heaven and Hell.

He decided to take up the offer to look around. What he found was a serene heaven, bathed in a wonderful white light. He found the people in Heaven to be very friendly. They were all walking around in white robes and singing hymns. “Nice”, he thought, “but a tad boring.”

On his visit to Hell, he was surprised to find people having fun. They were playing golf, playing cards, dancing, partying and it wasn’t even hot. He went back to the Pearly Gates and told St. Peter he’d take Hell. But, when he arrived in Hell this time, everything was different. It was hot and horrible. People were miserable, in pain and screaming. “What happened?” he asked the Devil. “This isn’t at all what I saw when I visited the first time.”

“When you visited the first time,” replied the Devil, “you were a prospect. Now my good man, you’re a CUSTOMER!”

This article is taken from Chapter Six of the Altfeld Inc. Sales Training Manual.

You were born into Generation Y.  I was born into the Y Generation.  Big Difference.  You’re young and full of yourself, just as we were forty years ago.  We were just as ignorant, naïve and inexperienced as you are now.  Only the world we were born into was far different than the one that exists today.  There was no Internet, no cell phones, text messaging, 24 hour news, no microwaves and no instantaneous anything.  You wanted the news, you bought the paper for 7¢ in the morning and the evening addition at night.  Then you turned on Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, or Walter Cronkite when you arrived home at night.  At dinner, the entire family, sat around the dinner table and talked about what went on with everyone during the day and what was going on in the country and maybe the world.  You have to remember, the world was a much larger place back then.  Going to Hawaii was a very big deal!  Going to Europe, Russia, Africa, South America, Asia was huge!  (Well, for everyone except my adventuresome Mom!)

But allow me to explain how we became the Y Generation.  We grew up on Ozzie & Harriot, Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Lone Ranger, and a host of radio shows before that.  We grew up with Super Man who promoted Truth, Justice and the American Way!  And, not only did we believe it, our parents believed it.  After all, they had just come out of the real Great Depression and World War II.  They knew what it was like to have to survive both in an incomprehensible economic downturn and a war.  And the beauty was that they passed those stories of what they went through down to my generation, because, in my case, my parents wanted me to be prepared.

Ok, so maybe you’re rolling your eyes and thinking, “Do I puke now or later?”  But there’s more.  Hiroshima may have ended the war with Japan, but it began a whole new era called the Arm’s Race.  In grade school we had to learn and practice a drill called Duck and Roll.  It may sound like an old Rock N’Roll dance step, but it wasn’t.  It was what we practiced in case of nuclear attack.  Someone had the bright idea that if we hit the floor and ducked under our desks, we might be saved from a nuclear explosion should Russia decide to attack us.  At the same time, there was a Senator from Wisconsin named McCarthy who was off his rocker and a drunk, but because he was a US Senator, had a voice that started McCarthyism.  Basically, he created a nationwide witch hunt to find Communists everywhere throughout the United States.  And by gum, he did!  Whether they existed or not.  It was a pure case of guilty until proven innocent and a lot of good people had their lives ruined because of it.  It took the likes of Edward R. Murrow and others to finally stand up to this maniac, but by then, it was too, late.  He had done his damage, including helping to get us into the Korean War.  There was this imaginary line called the 34rd Parallel and we determined that NO COMMUNIST was ever going to cross it!  But then, things went wrong.  Actually they went very wrong.  President Truman forgot a very important rule of war called the Munich Analogy.  This is where you are only suppose to go so far in war and no further, but further he went.  Our troops crossed the line and invaded deeper into Korea which resulted in our awakening the Chinese who didn’t like it at all.  But that was Ok, because while we were in a Cold War with Russia, and Eisenhower (I Like Ike) trounced Adlai Stevenson for the presidency, there came another raucous in Southeast Asia in a country called Viet Nam.  You may or may not know this, but Eisenhower, the General of the Allied Forces in WWII, and the key person in charge of D-Day, was known for playing a lot of golf during his eight years in office.  But, he was a crafty, old S.O.B, because it was a ploy.  He figured that if the nation saw him playing golf and looking relaxed, then all must be right with the world.  Well, it wasn’t.  Because first and foremost the Russians decided to take the Arms Race up a notch and add in the Race for Space.  Which, by the way is another thing you have to keep in mind.  At the end of WWII, there was this guy named Werner von Braun who was Hitler’s number one scientist for creating missiles and weapons of mass destruction like the V-1 that was notorious for destroying building and killing Brits.  Von Braun had other things he’d been working on, but fortunately, VE Day came before he could produce them.  But, when the war ended, it was a big deal as to who would get von Braun and his fellow scientists.. the USA or Russia.  Fortunately, von Braun was smart enough to know NOT to go with the Russians and surrendered to the United States where he was taken to Alamogordo and White Sands Missile Base to do his thing.  But, that’s another story.

Oh, did I mention that while all of that was going on, some guy name Fidel Castro, a lawyer from Cuba, teamed up with a Guerilla fighter named Che Guevara to overthrow Batista in Cuba.  Cuba was that little country, much like Puerto Rico, full of fun and a lot of poverty and not that far from Miami.  Like right next door!

Jumping forward, we had another presidential election in 1960 with Eisenhower’s vice president, Richard M. Nixon versus the upstart new kid, John F. Kennedy.  It was one helluva time and the vote was damn close.  Mayor Daley of Chicago handed the election to Kennedy on a platter by delivering Chicago and much of Illinois, in spite of a good part of Illinois being very Republican back then.  Then Kennedy, brand new in office, started making some very bad decisions, like the Bay of Pigs.  Invading Cuba and trying to overthrow Castro sounded like a great idea at the time.  But it ended very badly.  But that was soon forgotten about because things then got worse.  Kruschev, in between pounding his shoe on the table at the UN saying Russia was going to bury the United States, suddenly had the brilliant idea to establish a missile base in Cuba.  You know, Cuba?  That little country, kind of like Puerto Rico only even closer to Miami!!  Well… let me tell you..  EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE was scared shitless.  It was the first time in my short life that I could ever remember seeing fear in my parents’ faces.  Because President Kennedy, now smarter and a little more experienced in these matters since the Bay of Pigs, called for a blockade around Cuba, causing the entire world to hold its breath.  (I can still remember my brother and I trying to dig a huge hole in our backyard to build a bomb shelter to protect us from the impending nuclear war.  That old duck and roll stuff was out.  Bomb Shelters were in!  Only in our case, our house was located so close to the DesPlaines River that every time we dug down more than six feet, the hole would fill up with river water!)

Well, whistling in the dark, scared to death, every one breathed a sigh of relief when Kruschev pulled out his missiles from Cuba and went home.  The concessions he got out of Kennedy were never completely determined, but on paper, Kennedy looked great.  In reality, Kruschev won the stare down.

Jumping forward again I take you to November 22, 1963.  I was in gym class in the wrestling room in high school when the announcement came over the PA system.  Everyone was to go home immediately.  The school is closed.   President John F. Kennedy has been shot in Dallas, Texas by a lone gunman. Just writing this still gives me the chills.  We were glued to our television sets.  We watched it all.  We even saw Jack Ruby step up and kill Lee Harvey Oswald live on national television.  We saw a blood splattered Jackie Kennedy standing next to Lyndon Banes Johnson as he was sworn into office.  Then came the presidential election of Barry Goldwater, the first Conservative Republican going up against the now incumbent, Lyndon Johnson.  Johnson actually ran ads of nuclear explosions implying that Goldwater’s plans for Viet Nam would lead to just that. (Keep in mind that this is 1964, not 2010.  Keep in mind that we just came off the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Kennedy Assassination.  Now we’re watching nuclear mushroom clouds on our television sets!)  Johnson won and ended up escalating the Viet Nam War calling for more troops each month.  Simultaneously, America is experiencing major racial problems and the Race for Space continues.  Johnson was being spread very thin and the country was now prepared to give up the Race for Space in order to deal with RACE.  Negroes were no longer Negroes.  They were now Blacks.  The Black Muslims, lead by Allejah Muhammed rose up, and Cassius Clay suddenly became Muhammed Ali. Muhammed Ali made a stand and said he would not serve and not be drafted and gave up is Heavyweight Title.  (By the way, he won that title as Cassius Clay by knocking out a guy named Sonny Liston who was virtually incapable of being knocked out.  The fact that he owed a lot of money and his life to the mob and had an occasional drug problem, may have had something to do with the outcome, but no one will ever know.  Liston was certainly not going to talk, since he showed up dead not much longer after that.)

Next came February 21, 1965 in New York City when Malcom X, the militant Black Muslim was gunned down.  Then in August of 1965 racial tensions exploded in Watts, a section of Los Angeles that came to be known as the Watts Riots.

Again moving forward… the Viet Nam War was in our living rooms and on our television sets from 1963 to 1972.  In 1968  President Johnson, on national television, announced he would not seek a second full term of office.  Chances are, he would not have won anyway.  Johnson was a lot of things, but what he was BEST at was being a politician.  And he had learned from the best.  Sam Rayburn, the Speaker of the House.  Although, in spite of political skills and craftiness, he was outfoxed by a craftier John F. Kennedy back in 1960.  Johnson wanted the presidency, but Kennedy outmaneuvered him for the candidacy.  Then turned around and named him the vice presidential candidate.  But that, too is another story.

With Johnson out of the race, the 1968 Presidential election became a free for all.  But, I have to have you hold that thought for a moment, because something else occurred on April 4^th of that year.  James Earl Ray, a white man in Memphis, Tennessee shot down Martin Luther King, Jr. and the country went riotous!  The Martin Luther King riots were nasty nationwide and you had to see them to believe it.  I was in Chicago when Mayor Daley and Fire Commisioner Quinn, in a helicopter over the West Side of Chicago gave the Shoot to Kill Order.  It was scary.  So scary that my dad would not allow our factory employees to go home.  He brought in cots and food for everyone rather than try to get back to their homes on the West Side and South Side of Chicago that night.

Getting back to the political race, Bobby Kennedy was the Democratic Frontrunner with Nixon going in for the Republicans.  But then in Los Angeles, after winning the California Primary on June 5, 1968 on live national television, we witnessed Sirhan Sirhan gundown Bobby Kennedy as he went through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel.  This was just four months after Martin Luther King’s assassination.  Simply stated, the country was in a state of emotional and psychological shock.  But wait, there’s more.  In August of 1968, the Democrats held their national convention in Chicago where Mayor Daley decided to hold court.  It turned out to be a riot.  Literally.  The SDS (Headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin and known for blowing up things like buildings) and the Chicago Seven showed up with umpteen thousand of their closest friends to protest the Viet Nam War.  Turns out that Mayor Daley didn’t care much for that idea and didn’t like hippies in the first place, so he had his cops beat the helloutta them in Grant Park.  I was in Chicago at the time.  The Democratic candidates, McCarthy (not the Communist baiter, but a different one) was expected to stand up for the kids and their protest but did nothing.  Humbert Humphrey, the Happy Warrior from Minnesota, received the nomination, but did nothing either.  The kids got their asses kicked.  Dick Gregory, a well known Black comedian of the era, may have done more.  When approached by an army of Chicago Police and asked where he was going with an army of protestors behind him, Gregory said, I’m taking all these kids over to my house for a beer!  It was ugly.  It was brutal and it was what caused Humphrey to lose the election, narrowly, to Nixon.  (Oh, I forgot to mention that in 1964, Humphrey, a presidential candidate, was shown in Life Magazine, standing in front of his campaign bus that had run out of gas, looking frumpy with his pockets turned inside out because he was broke.  Between 1964 and 1968 there was a thing called the Milk Scandal in Minnesota and suddenly Humphrey was a multi-Millionaire.  Oh, well.  I digress.)

On August 15, 1969 as fighting raged in Vietnam, a group of 400,000+ converged on a dairy farm in New York State for three days of frolicking in the spirit of peace, love and music. It was called Woodstock.  I didn’t attend, but I certainly knew about it.  And I am proud to say I just recently visited the museum in Bethel.  It was a very emotional experience that brought back far more memories than I ever thought it would.  Again, I digress.

I graduated from college in May of 1971 with a draft number of 147.  There was a major recession going on and I found myself competing with PhD.s for jobs.  Plus, the first question I was always asked was, “What’s your draft number?” I’d tell them and it would be the end of the interview.  So, long about July, I was drafted and took my physical, which I passed.  About two weeks later, they no longer wanted my draft number and I was told the government would not be needing my services.  In the meantime, I had a brother (who had won the Silver Star) on his second tour of duty and friends coming home in body bags.

Well, Nixon, in a sense, finally had the good sense to declare the War over, announced that we won and brought everyone home.  We didn’t win and we knew it.  It was a stupid war because it was fought with our hands tied behind our backs.  Friends and family lost their lives and so many others were never quite right after that war that it just wasn’t worth it.  Even dumber is the fact that the French, who had been there before us, told us not to go there.  But, because of the Communist Hunting McCarthyism Era, Eisenhower encouraged Kennedy to pursue Viet Nam and Johnson took it to a whole nother level.

Moving forward again, I take you to 1972.  Governor Wallace of Alabama, well known for his segregationist thinking, decided to make a run for the presidency.  But on May 15 of that year, his dreams and aspirations came to an end when a 21 year old kid shot him.  Wallace ended up paralyzed and in a wheelchair thereafter and that was pretty much the end of him.  But there’s more…

I now take you to June 17, 1972 and the Watergate Break In.  Did Nixon do it?  Was he involved?  Could he have done it?  The hearings went on and on.  Everyone was glued to their television sets in disbelief.  People lying, people going to prison, Liddy threatening to kill Dean with a pencil to the forehead on behalf of the president.  The missing tapes, the undermining of America.  “I am not a crook!” The wave with the both hands up in the air holding the victory sign as he departs the presidency on a helicopter.  It was unbelievable.

Gerald Ford, Nixon’s second VP (his first one, Spiro T. Agnew ended up in prison) replaced Nixon and immediately pardoned him.  Ford was pretty much a do-nothing president, and his claim to fame was probably making SNL’s Chevy Chase a household name.  Next came a peanut farmer and nuclear physicist named Jimmy Carter who was beyond inept.  With him we had the Russians invading Afghanistan, for which we boycotted the Olympics that year.  But, the biggest thing happened on November 4, 1979.  Well it actually started in October.  The Shah of Iran came to the United States for cancer treatment.  (Did I mention that the CIA basically put the Shah in office?  Well, that too is another story.  Anyway, when the Shah came to America for his cancer treatment, the Ayatollah incited Iranian militants to attack the U.S.  On November 4, Iranian militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took approximately seventy Americans captive that lasted 444 days. The exiled Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran in February 1979 and whipped popular discontent into rabid anti-Americanism that went on for a long while.  Actually it went on long enough to make Ted Koppel a household name because he seized upon the situation to start his own show called Nightline covering the hostage situation.  Oh, yes.  Carter also gave the Panama Canal back to Panama.  I’m sure that didn’t sit too well with Teddy Roosevelt, but then again, he had been dead for a very long time.

So, what’s my point with this historical journey I’ve just taken you through?  My generation is not a very trusting lot, especially when it comes to the U.S. Government.  Which explains why we are truly the Y Generation.  We question everything and believe very little.  Nothing is as it appears to be.  We have lived through and experienced things that have caused us to be circumspect, cynical and downright suspicious.

Another thing I wish to point out is this.  Like you, I sat in college with my peers and we were all in agreement on what was wrong with the world.  The problem was that not only were we short on life experiences, but we were all the same.  There was no other voice of reason to tell us we were flat out wrong or too naïve, or too one-sided.  But, at least we had seen things going on this country that caused us to question everything.  We had seen and lived through racial violence and riots.  We had seen presidents, candidates and major figures shot and killed.  We lived Viet Nam from eighth grade through one year after graduation from college. But, at least we were involved!

So far, from what I’ve seen of your Generation Y, I can foresee that you are winning and my generation has lost the good fight.  You don’t want to do anything, you want to be paid for doing nothing, you have entitlement issues, you believe in nothing, you have no true loyalty to the United States and feel you can flee the country at the drop of a hat. You don’t want to commit to a job or a company because it will interfere with your social life and you want to be vice presidents with no experience while making $100k right out of school.  And that is exactly the direction this country is headed.  Personally, I am glad I am at the head of the Boomer Line and on my way out.

And when the time comes when your generation takes over, all I can say is Good night, good luck and you’re on your own.  I hope there is something left for you to take over.

Sincerely,

Jim Altfeld

Following the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers drafted a constitution that was 180 degrees from the pyramid mentality, which they had despised.  What they created in its place was a “Leaderless, No One’s in Charge” society.  It was a brilliantly designed system of checks and balances that separated the powers of government.

One thing is for certain, this did not occur by happenstance.  The intention was to prevent and deny any one part of the federal government from having too much power at the expense of the other parts, and especially of the people the government was to be serving.

Like an unstable Stealth Bomber inflight, the system of government the Founding Fathers created would forever require tweaking to keep it functioning.  It was purposefully designed to create a continuous condition of give and take between the parts of the federal government as well as between the states and the federal government.  No one part of what they proposed was ever to win all the power.  Their mantra was “sovereignty for the people” and the system they created was unprecedented.

According to Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to a friend in 1820, he wrote, “I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.”

Sovereignty, according to Webster is “supreme authority, complete independence and self-government.”

In other words, our Founding Fathers built a government whose purpose was not to control the people, but one that the people controlled.  They created an anti-pyramid structure in which no one person, entity or party was in charge, while giving the ultimate authority to the people, making each person partially in charge.

In Alfred Sloan’s book, My Years with General Motors he talks at length of how he, as part of the anti-pyramid, anti-centralization, anti-top-down management philosophy, went through great pains to decentralize and create an entirely new culture throughout GM.

The problem Sloan and the rest of American Management ran into, was that de-centralization proved to be merely another aspect of centralization.  In spite of Sloan’s efforts, his decentralization philosophy remained a top down culture.  The primary difference between the two was that instead of being told what to do and how to do it, his people were still told what to do, but permitted to figure out how to do it on their own.

Perhaps the opposite of centralization is not decentralization but anti-centralization, which is a far cry closer to where the Founding Fathers were headed.  Unlike decentralization, anti-centralization is more of a leaderless, “no-one-in-charge” system.  According to the Founding Fathers, the intent of government was not to control the people, but to exercise and carry out their sovereign authority. The trick to making a “leaderless, no one in charge” system work, is to create a system that minimizes and clearly defines what everyone must agree on.  To do that, the Founding Fathers understood that they would have to create common norms and standards.

An example of their brilliance can be realized at every street corner.  Let’s say you are one of some thirty pedestrians standing at a busy intersection with another thirty or so also waiting to cross when the light changes.  The walk light goes on.  Do you and 59 other pedestrians collide into one another or do you instinctively avoid bumping into each other?  It works because the people involved in the process are cooperating enough to make certain it works.    According to political scientist Charles Lindblom, this phenomenon is called mutual adjustment.  “In a generally understood environment of moral rules, norms, conventions and mores, very large numbers of people watch each other, then modify their own behavior just enough to accommodate the differing purposes of others, but not so much that the mutual adjusters lose sight of where they themselves want to go.”

Simply stated, rules work when nearly all those who need to abide by the rules do so because the rules make sense to them.  Take a look at our driving rules.  The light is red so you stop.  The light is green and you proceed.  You are expected to drive on the right hand side of the road and most cars are built with left side steering to encourage you to do so.  Should you not agree with either the traffic signal or driving on the right hand side of the road rule, you can try to drive through a red light and drive on the left-hand side of the road.  Chances are you are likely to kill someone or be killed in the process.  Therefore, as a matter of common sense and safety, you choose to obey the rules.

Consider this.  There are not enough police in the world to enforce these two driving laws.  It would be impossible.  Therefore, when you get right down to it, enforcement of these laws is the prevailing sentiment of the people who all share the roads.

Therefore, anti-centralization cannot happen unless there is mutual agreement regarding the standards on whatever is central to the system.  It is a system whereby no one is in charge, yet everyone is in charge.  The Internet is another prime example of anti-centralization.  No one is in charge, yet everyone is in charge.  There is worldwide, mutual agreement on the standards central to the system.

The primary reason why anti-centralization can work better today than ever before lies in the abundance and accessibility of data and information.  With the advent of the computer and the world-wide web it is everywhere.  It moves and spreads like a Montana wildfire.  Like dust or sand in the wind, it’s difficult, if not impossible to contain.  No one can own it.   You can only choose to deliver it or not deliver it.   And even when you choose not to, you can bet it will somehow make its way somewhere else, whether you want it to or not.

To understand the difference between data and information, let’s take a restaurant menu.  Data is a restaurant menu when you are not hungry.  Information is that same restaurant menu when you are.  With information people can make intelligent decisions.  Without it, they can’t.  Therefore, from data comes information.  But it does not end there.  From information comes knowledge and from knowledge comes wisdom.

What then is the successful formula for making a “no one’s in charge” system work?  It’s what the Founding Fathers understood when they created The Constitution.  It’s having a mix of informed, knowledgeable, wise and aware people,

To implement an anti-centralized, no one’s in charge system in your business:

1.     Accept the fact that everyone in your company is partly in charge and no one person, including yourself is completely in charge.  When you are in control you are actually out of control.  And when you are out of control, you are really in control.  Trying to control everything and micro-manage is like trying to teach a pig to sing.  You’ll only frustrate yourself and exacerbate the pig.

2.     Understand that most of what each of us does every day does not happen because someone told us to do it.

3.     Accept the premise that how big a part any one person within the company plays depends upon how responsible they feel for the general outcome of the collective effort.

4.     People only support what they have helped create.  Involve as many of your people as possible.  The more people affected by a decision feel that they were consulted about it, rather than told about it, the more likely it is that the you will get their buy-in and increase its chances for success.

5.     Make certain your people understand your company’s values and that the company truly lives by the values it has established.

6.     Keep your policies, procedures, standards, practices and protocols simple and un-complicated.  The fewer and less constringent your company rules are, the better.  The tighter the rules the greater the frustration level and the less likely you are to either involve or inspire your people.  The more room there is for individual discretion, insight and initiative the better.

7.     Grow your people.  The more educated, aware and knowledgeable your people are, the better off your business becomes.  Encourage them to read, grow, experiment and further their education.  Encourage them to learn, share and expand their horizons.  Think in terms of being a boundaryless organization accepting ideas and input from all corners.

8.     Do not plan in isolation.  To be effective, planning requires involvement and input from the many.  Involve your people in the planning process.  One, they will have a much better understanding of what they need to do once they understand the plan.  Two, they will have a much better understanding of the plan if they contributed to its creation in the first place.

9.     Eliminate secrets.  One way or another you can count on information being shared throughout the company.  Information, whether accurate or inaccurate, usually gets created by way of the grapevine.   To circumvent and/or eliminate the grapevine, it is best that all, or at least as much accurate information as possible is shared in the first place.

By adopting and implementing our Founding Father’s original, “no one’s in charge” approach, you can actually create a horizontally integrated, interdependent, teamwork-minded, completely aligned infrastructure, with all of your employees pulling on the same rope in the same direction.

If you found this article of interest, kindly pass it on to your suppliers’ management.  Should you wish to learn more about strategically aligning your own company’s objectives, the benefits of strategic planning, and how to get your employees pulling on the same rope in the same direction, visit www.altfeldinc.com or contact Jim Altfeld at jaltfeld@altfeldinc.com, or call 1-800-397-0010.

The CEO as the chief strategist, visionary and leader.

“Leadership is not about sitting in your office and dreaming up strategy.  It is about touching your organization through values, personal presence and relationships.”  Jack Welch, Chairman, General Electric Co.

There are both tactical and strategic ceo’s.  Whether the CEO is one or the other, s/he is always looked upon as the chief strategist.  The CEO is always the one person who can speak for the entire organization and no major changes within the company can ever be made without him or her.  Being a CEO of any company today has become a more demanding job than ever before.  The massive volatility and rapidity of change combined with the speed of the communications revolution can be quite taxing.   And just as the company is in constant motion, so must be the CEO.  Both the company and the CEO must constantly be reinventing and renewing themselves on the fly.  As former GE Chairman Jack Welch so aptly put it, “You have to change the tires while the car’s still moving.”

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.  As our case is new so we must think a new and act a new.  We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”  A. Lincoln

Whether tactical or strategic, all CEO’s must be restless, impatient, never content and above all, focused.   What differentiates the strategic from the tactical leader is that the strategic leader knows the principles s/he wants to follow and inspires others to pursue those principles with him or her.  “Important principles may and must be inflexible.” Said Lincoln in his last public address. Strategic leaders serve as powerful role models whose actions and personal energy demonstrate the desired behaviors.  Their behavior and standards are above reproach.  Through their commitment, effectiveness and consistency, strategic leaders build a personal bond between themselves and the organization.  They provide a psychological focal point for the energies, hopes and aspirations of their people.

Keep in mind, too that strategic leadership is not infallible.  There are always policy failures.  The difference is that in spite of failure the strategic leader never loses sight of the real goal.  Countries can survive a tactical leader.  Companies cannot.

Strategic planning then becomes the guide for the strategic CEO.  It enables the company to look at the chain of cause and effect over time. It is a planning process that lets you fight on two fronts simultaneously.  It allows you to confront today’s challenges while probing tomorrow’s opportunities and preparing for tomorrow’s predictable problems.  And like the organization itself, the plan is in constant motion.  It too must be flexible enough to be reviewed, reinvented and renewed on the fly.   Whether the plan holds together for a quarter of a year or a quarter century, it is the planning process that allows the strategic management team to look at alternatives.  It develops the mindset for and encourages opportunity management.  Yes, there is always the outside chance that an asteroid will come out of nowhere, completely undetected, and slam into your company, your market space or even your entire industry.  Your plan may be obsolete and your company changed forever as a result of it.  But with a planning process in place you can revise and rebuild quickly.

What was important yesterday, may no longer be important today, or especially tomorrow.

CEO’s are well aware that listening and responding to their customers’ needs, however quickly and precisely, is not sufficient for shaping the future of an industry, warding off disruptive technologies, creating major new market opportunities, or attracting the attention of new groups of customers.  There is a need to be out well ahead of your current and future customers.  Your customer’s of today only know their immediate needs and tend to merely ask for refinements – faster, better, cheaper – of what they already have.  By staying such a course, a company, or an entire industry for that matter, will merely plod along making improvements to what currently exists – until some outsider or some new revolutionary technology comes along and changes everything.  Like Federal Express and UPS did.  Before them, every major company had its own shipping department and a fleet of trucks.  The trucks are gone and so is the expense and aggravation of maintaining them.  Did anyone ever ask for a Federal Express or UPS? No.  Or Southwest Airlines.  Before their arrival you either drove or took a bus to the places they fly to.  Rather than take on the airline industry they have successfully revolutionized the ground transportation industry.  Did anyone demand they do that?  No.  How about Quiken’s Intuit.  Its primary competitor was not the computer, it was the pencil.  They saw a need for speed, accuracy, simplicity and low price and filled it.  Was anyone pounding on their door asking them to hurry up?  No. For that matter, who asked for the electric light bulb, or continuous aim gunfire aboard ships?  No one.  Was anyone seen demanding the PC, CD, DVD, the Blackberry, iPhone, iPod, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, eBay, or Amazon.com?  Again, no.  None of us know what someone or some new technology can do for us until we learn about it and see it first hand.  But once we do, nothing is ever the same again.

“It’s not where we stand, but what direction are we heading.”  Oliver Wendell Holmes

There are at least twenty technologies and thirty new tools out there for you to use.  Because our peripheral vision is normally confined to our own immediate areas, we are too often unaware of these technologies and tools being used elsewhere in other industries.  Yet, if applied to your product, service or industry they could actually prove to be revolutionary.  In the words of Wm. Faulkner, “don’t bother being better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”  Quit watching your competitors and move ahead.  Create new offerings, redefine, reinvent and renew.  Keep your eyes, ears and mind open to what is out there.  Go beyond the markets and industries you are currently serving. The only way to predict the future is to invent it.  If you don’t like the way the game is being played, change the rules.  Don’t lose yourself in what you already know.  Give your customers something that they don’t know about because it didn’t even exist until you just created it (whether in your mind, on paper or as a tangible item).  Fighting tomorrow’s battles with today’s products and services is eventually going to be a losing proposition.

In no particular order, a list of recommendations for accomplishing all of the above is listed below.  Reading the list is one thing.  Actual implementation, execution and follow through is quite another.

Dream

Dare

Think

Believe

Be honest enough with yourself to discern your own realities

Achieve actual disclosure

Anticipate an accurate future of your company

Share the dream

Communicate, communicate, communicate

Take appropriate actions to ensure that the vision becomes reality

Do not allow outsiders to shape your future for you

Involve, inform and inspire your people

Use all available technology and your uniqueness to either distance yourself from your competitors, or eliminate them completely

Shift from crisis management to opportunity management

Focus on your customers’ future needs

Focus on your customers’ customers’ future

Prevent tomorrow’s predictable problems from ever occurring

Remain committed

Hold true to your values

Be curious

Be open to new ideas and other ways of doing things

Be consistent

Be flexible

Be aware

Keep in mind that the future remains an invisible place only until you start thinking about it. The result of NOT thinking about it and NOT doing something to shape it can cost you dearly.  It could, in the end, lead to your ultimate demise, if not extinction.

Would love to hear your thoughts and comments on this.  jaltfeld@altfeldinc.com

Thank you!

Nearly fifty years ago, Bob Dylan sang “The Times They Are a Changing”.

Only, no one, not even Bob Dylan could have anticipated just how powerful, long term  and constant that change would be.  Today, change happens so fast, so dramatically and at such a dramatic rate that many are predicting that much of all current knowledge and accepted practices will be obsolete within the next five years. Furthermore, the current life span of new technology that is already down to 18 months will continue to grow shorter.

Whether we like it or not, we are living in an Alice in Wonderland world.  What we thought were croquet mallets were actually flamingos.  Playing cards change suit before our eyes and then get up and walk away from us.  And just like Alice experienced in her croquet tournament, the rules keep changing.  Actually, the game itself keeps changing.  Nothing is constant.  Everything is in flux and a lot at first glance, seems to be unpredictable.  We get the feeling that any resemblance of today’s world to the past is merely coincidental.  And as a result, we share the same frustrations and same fears that Alice did.

As my father used to remind me, “life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans.”  None of us can control the unexpected, but we can control our response to it.  We must not resist the unexpected by holding steadfastly to our original plan.  Sticking to conventional formula leads only to extinction.  We need to remain flexible and to move with the change.  It is imperative that we maintain a constant vigil for the unexpected and deal with it making up the rules as we go.

In the movie Fracture, Anthony Hopkins proved the unexpected can sometimes prove deadly.  It could be a new technology that suddenly makes you obsolete.  It could be an old technology used in a new way that causes you to lose business.  Or worse, it could be a disease, bug, scandal, flaw, death or tampering that could put you out of business .  For instance, when scientists cloned sheep, our reaction to it was under-whelming at best.  We are so bombarded with change, that we’ve become immune to it.  That something even that resounding has no effect on us.  It does on the pharmaceutical companies, however.  As a result of that sheep and the study of gene therapy, the day will come when disease will not be cured from the outside in with pharmaceuticals, but from the inside by our own bodies.  Instead of large pharmaceutical companies manufacturing pills, there will be herds of disease specific cows producing milk with the right dna combination to cure specific diseases.   Or, sometimes the unexpected can be a revolutionizing but friendly opportunity (and a threat only if viewed that way) like the internet and social media.

Way back in 1990, Robert D. Tuttle, then CEO of SPX Corp. was quoted as saying, “It is not an exaggeration to say that more scientific and technical advances will happen in the next year, than happened in the entire decade of the ‘70’s.”  Is that what we will be saying in 2010 about the first decade of the ‘00s?

We used to be able to use technology to ward off our competitors.  You could introduce a new product and know it would be years before anyone would introduce a better one, especially one based on “state-of-the-art” technology.  Not anymore.  Today, state-of-the-art is down to “state-of-the-nanosecond.”  It is an entirely new ball game.

“If I take care of the present, the future will take care of itself.”

A philosophy that can kill you.

Scientists believe that millions of years ago a giant asteroid struck the earth and completely wiped out the dinosaurs.  The dinosaurs were busy taking care of the present. They had no concept of a future beyond the now.  As a result, they remained fat, dumb and content for as long as they could.  But what actually proved to be their demise was something OUTSIDE of their peripheral vision.  The same holds true today.  Look at the Internet and social media.  Who saw it coming?  Very few of us.  You could have taken care of the day to day stuff and been on top of it, but all of a sudden you are living in an “Alice in Wonderland” world.  Everything has changed and you’ve never even left your office, much less the planet.  The way things used to be done aren’t done that way anymore.  The future that you thought would exist for you exists no longer.  Not only has everything changed, everything continues to change!  It’s downright volatile.  You can just stand still and feel like you’re in a different world.  The trick then is to look to the future and determine proactively what your company will look like when it and maybe you, get there.

Sure we have vision, we just can’t see.

Unfortunately, history has shown us it is not quite that simple.  Just being smart enough to look out into the future is only the half of it.  The other half has to do with your mindset while you are looking.  IBM, Sears, the Encyclopedia Britannica and Barnes & Noble were all at the top of their game and quite brilliant when they looked toward the future.  They were the T-Rex’s of their respective industries.  But none of them ever saw their own impending asteroids.  None of them chose to see them.  They were all overly confident and content.  They were complacent and suffering from structural inertia – a built-in resistance to change.  These companies were all betting their futures on the fact that the future would be a continuation of the present.  And from a historical perspective, it’s really old news.  Look back to the $750 Million vacuum tubes market of the 50’s.  In a last great act of defiance, both RCA and Sylvania chose to stay with tubes in spite of the introduction of the transistor.  Or the Swiss!  They not only had the reputation as the watchmakers of the world, but they actually invented quartz technology.  They had it but never used it.  Seiko ran with it and the rest is history.

Today, in the scientific world, thanks to new and more powerful telescopes being launched into space, astronomers are now discovering about one new planet every month.  They are even able to watch planets form.  One interesting discovery that will probably not affect any of us living today, was made by a group of astronomers, who are probably the best at looking to the future.  They recently identified an enormous asteroid that is expected to slam into the earth in about a thousand years (you may have seen the movie a few years back).  Not only are they aware of the threat, but they have already begun making plans to do something about it.  Talk about eliminating tomorrow’s problems, today.

Like it or not, the future is coming at us like an enormous wave.  It is unrelenting.  It seems to come faster and faster with each wave larger and more powerful than the one preceding it.  Our ability to adapt quickly to not only the changes in the markets we serve, but the changing needs, wants and desires of the customers within those markets, will determine our survival.

Start looking for tomorrow’s opportunities, today.

The late Walt Kelly once wrote, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”  To paraphrase that, “We have met Alice in Wonderland and she is us.”  The times they are a changin’ and the change is constant.  The change each of you reading this article needs to make, if you haven’t already, is to become visionaries.  To look beyond today and start thinking outside the rules.

To witness what I’m talking about first hand, simply watch a group of children play a game.  They spend as much time arguing about the rules, as they do playing the game.  The rules are never cast in stone.  The boundaries are never secure and even the roles of the players are always in question.  Kids are constantly creating and re-creating, never allowing themselves to be bogged down or constrained by some old, established guideline.  They are constantly redesigning the game to fit their needs.

The same needs to hold true in business.  We need to think outside the lines.  By going outside certain parameters, daring to stray beyond certain boundaries, and playing flexible roles under breakable rules, we can stimulate innovation and encourage visionary thinking.  Consider your own product or service.  It is seldom if ever used in a vacuum.  If your customer has an objective, how can your product or service help him or her attain it? Is purchasing your product or service merely satisfying a sub-objective that contributes to yet a larger main objective?  Can you help them meet their main objective?  How do you transform your customer from a caterpillar to a butterfly?  How do you make doing business with you, not just purchasing from you, a wonderful and memorable experience?  (Making it a terrible and memorable experience is easy.  Just treat the customer badly.)  What opportunities and untapped values exist beyond the bounds of your product or service of which you can take advantage? What does the customer have to do before making the purchase and using your product or service?  What does the customer have to go through after making the purchase but before using it?  What is his/her experience when they actually put your product or service to use?  And, what experiences does s/he have they do?  The real question then becomes “What business are you in?”

Next, the playing field itself needs to be changed.  Why play on a level playing field with everyone else?  The trick is to hold the high ground, get the advantage, anticipate, prepare and distance yourself from your competition.  You want to position yourself to make the most of these changes.  Which means you must anticipate them as best you can while simultaneously remaining flexible enough to deal with the force of the unexpected.  Change and the unexpected –  The only two elements you can be absolutely certain of throughout the new millennium.

Unless you are clear about where you are going, any direction is fine.

As we face our “Alice in Wonderland” futures and look beyond today, all of us really do have the ability to begin seizing control of it.  Unfortunately, as business owners, ceo’s, presidents, vice presidents, and managers we constantly fall prey to crisis management.  We get caught up in the day to day challenges that prevent and delay us from taking control of our future.  All too often we find ourselves becoming so entrenched in crisis management that it becomes nearly impossible to even think about solving and/or preventing tomorrow’s predictable problems.  (Remember the asteroid.)  Finding the time to envision your future may be difficult, but it is more of a necessity than ever before, and in most cases, it is far easier to do than having to react to an unexpected reality.  Much like the old Fram filter commercial when the mechanic said, “You can pay me now, or pay me later.”  There are those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.  Waiting, watching and wondering is a formula for disaster.  Taking appropriate actions, on the other hand, and make things happen is the only way to ensure that the future you envision for you company will be achieved.  You must also make certain that your employees at every level are living that vision you’ve created.