There’s a part of me that wants to watch and read everything Bill Moyers has ever said or written.

Why?

Because I would then be educated enough to design a website that explains to Americans exactly what I think is wrong with our country. I would use prose and visualizations that would make it so blindingly clear to everyone:

• the insidious corporate influence on our government
• how our preference for “the vivid anecdote [over] the dry statistical fact” insidiously helps us blind ourselves to reality
• the ridiculousness of the two-party system
• that little else matters if we don’t change the national diet, radically

We’re not going to be able to go another decade with the blinders on. And so I try to imagine the perfect whiteboard drawing that perfectly clarifies our problems. Until someone can accomplish this (hint: despite his strengths, it won’t be our current President), our society is a rich tapestry with fraying seams.

In 1952, the American avant-garde composer John Cage composed 4′ 33″, a masterpiece in which no sound is made whatsoever, for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, and in three movements. The listener is meant to absorb the sounds of the environment and reflect on their impact.

I have now reinvigorated this within a new millieu, that of the blog. My last post on this blog was one year ago to the day. I hope you have taken the time to examine how the “silence” of my non-posting has impacted your life.

My life has been full of non-blogging activity, some of it on the internet. I got married, and I got a new job with a lot more responsibility – running an online services business focused on admissions essay editing.

And now, some more sound for the internet.

The television network has killed the best show on television, Eli Stone. Please sign the petition to save it.

Check out A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis. Do you understand all the connections?

Staying on that theme, check out this video (long). It’s a cross between Mulder and… I’ll go with “Dragon’s Lair.” But there’s some scary stuff in there about the growth of the money supply. Almost everyone has something to learn from this.

Some of you have been wondering when I’m going to drop some science again. Here we go: this year’s Nobel Prize winner in Economics, Paul Krugman, wrote a paper in 1978 entitled The Theory of Interstellar Trade. The abstract says it all:

This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest rates on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved.

The best part of this abstract is the assumption that there’s a body of economic work surrounding interplanetary trade that needs to be extended. 

Those of you who follow me on Twitter may know that I’m not a fan of the Toyota “Saved By Zero” commercials. (Full disclosure: I drive a Toyota Corolla.) Now there’s proof: these commercials can kill.

Finally, if you haven’t checked it out yet, www.change.gov, chronicling the Obama-Biden transition.

The next time you take stock in your career, the next time you think about what it will take to get that promotion or not next job, start with integrity.

Without personal integrity, it ain’t happening.

Some people hold the perspective that everyone you deal with professionally is a client to your personal brand. How well you serve your colleagues, your bosses, your subordinates, your team members. When there is no question from anyone who knows you that your every action flows from a set of high standards, when you have integrity, then you are lowering a barrier. You’re making it easier for the people who will make decisions regarding your career.

One of the easiest ways to lose integrity is by not being sensitive with information.

You can be the most competent person in the company at whatever you do. You can show you company that you’d be excellent at a job with more responsibilities and more accountibility. But if you can’t be trusted to keep information contained to the right audience, none of this matters. Once you make this mistake, even once, then you have a long road ahead to prove your integrity and win back trust:

1. You have to acknowledge to your leaders that you made an error in judgment.
2. You have to wait until your leadership decides to allow you to have sensitive information again.
3. You have to demonstrate, probably for a long time, that you can use that information in appropriate ways.

Talking “out of school” is a bell that’s bery hard to unring. It’s also easy and fun to do. Who doesn’t want to create the secret information club. “Guess who is moving to another team?”  “Guess who’s on the short list to get fired?”

You will hit your personal career ceiling hard without perserving your integrity with sensitive information.

Sensitivity to information isn’t the only measure of personal integrity. Have any other advice to share about maintaining integrity in the office, and in life? Please share your comments with us.

If you aspire to lead teams of people as a boss or as a cross-functional team leader, you have got to communicate well, so well that you set the example for your team…no matter what happens.

Some times, this is very hard to do. Which of these examples have happened to you recently?

• Someone is having problems accomplishing a task, and you learn about it three days after you needed to know.
• Someone you are counting on to lead fails to communicate the status of ongoing problems to you.
• A team that you don’t lead is notoriously bad at communicating updates that affect you.

Each of these can be frustrating. An inexperienced leader will:

• feel frustrated and let that frustration show. This is a self-defeating behavior – when you act this way, the message you’re sending is it’s best to avoid being the bearer of bad news.
• complain to a colleague. This can feel good, but you’re just avoiding the problem.
• complain to the boss. Don’t bring problems to the boss…bring solutions. Get the next job by excelling at the job you have.

The best thing you can do is to look into the mirror.

Lead your team and your colleagues by example. Show them what open and honest communication is like. Ask them to be open and honest with you. Show them that there are no consequences for delivering bad news. Admit to your own mistakes and talk about how you’re going to do better – then follow through.

It’s far easier for us to blame others than it is to hold the mirror up to ourselves. So if you want to create change in the world around you, start by changing yourself. The people who follow you will be inspired to change themselves too. This may take time – and this is where the patience comes in.

The more self-aware you become, the more you understand where others are on the same journey. This isn’t bad or good – it just is. Some will be receptive to your attitude immediately, and others will take more time to break away from the fear of change.

I find my patience by remembering that there were times when I was just as fearful. I needed some help and guidance… I still do!

As you encounter issues involving open communication with your team, set the example of good communications, look in the mirror for reasons why your team has difficulty, and have patience as your realize that the people you lead are all on their own path of self-discovery.

How do you act when your team has communications problems? Any good advice for aspiring leaders? Be sure to leave a comment!

Have you ever felt like this?

You’re working on a crossword puzzle. You have all but one of the letters filled in for a word that runs across, and you know the remaining letter must be a vowel. You look at the clue, but you have no idea what the word should be. Frustrated, you move to the word that runs down through that same missing vowel. You look at this clue, and you’re flummoxed as you realize that you have no idea what this word could be. You try running all five vowels through both words, to see if you can make them work, but you just don’t know enough. You try sticking in a “y”, just in case, but you’re still lost.

Sometimes I have this same feeling when dealing with a team of people. Technology leadership is one thing; people leadership is infinitely more complex. There’s a team of stakeholders with whom I’m having real communications problems. It seems like everything I’m saying is ignored, all my reasoning is falling on deaf ears: we’re not all on the same page.

What’s the missing letter?

1. Work harder at listening and understanding. People who disagree with you need to be heard, and know that they are heard. Communications is one of the foundations of trust.
2. Make decisions that respect dissenting viewpoints. The opinions of others need to be part of the decision-making process, even if the decision is made in spite of those opinions. Respect is another pillar of trust.

And then, later on:

3. If the decision turns out to be flawed, own up to that. Be accountable for your choice, tell your stakeholders what you learned, and live up to your promise.

This is the kind of leadership that leads to real growth.

Stuff on my mind:

The Johns clan migrated to Minnesota 29 years ago today. I wonder if I’ll ever be truly accepted as a Minnesotan?

I’m feeling this guy’s pain. There’s some less than PC language here.

To make up for some of the language in the last post, see my friend Matt in the trailer to the film, Offense Taken. They call Matt “George” for some reason.

If the press is to be believed, John Kerry is the frontrunner for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. Diplomacy through boredom? Meh. Gimme Bill Richardson without the beard, and a side order of Richard Clarke as Director of Homeland Security.

I’ve reached 100 followers on Twitter. We’ll see if, at this time next week, I’m at 200 or 20.

Who’s going to be the next Doctor Who? I say bring back the Ninth Doctor.

My company is doing a Gong Show for the holiday party in early January. Please leave your ideas for my act in the comments. Please remember, I’ll want to have an ounce of dignity when it’s all over.

Finally, enjoy another entertaining piece of journalism by Michael Lewis. This time, he shows us a slice of what’s gone wrong with Wall Street recently.

The folks at fivethirtyeight.com are doing a bang up job of doing the math with some informed and fairly objective analysis. They have some fascinating analysis about the upcoming Franken-Coleman Minnesota Senate vote recount.

Determining the winner of a vote recount depends on three primary factors:

• the original margin (221 for Coleman),
• the fraction of total votes that weren’t originally counted but will be counted in a hand recount (what they call Correctable Error Rate), and
• the distribution of newly counted votes

If the distribution of newly counted votes is 50/50, Coleman wins, as Franken can’t gain any ground. The higher the fraction of previously uncounted votes are, the more potential there is for Franken to make up new ground.

At this point, a reasonable range of estimates of these parameters allows us to assess the odds.

Votes don’t get counted because they’re overvoted (the machine decides a ballot selected two candidates) or undervoted (the machine decides a ballot did not select any candidates.) Overvotes are almost always unintentional; undervotes are usually intentional (leave an X instead of filling in the oval, etc.) Probably, less than one percent of votes will be reclassified from over- or under-voted to a definite vote during the hand recount; about 15% of those will go to Dean Barkley. This by itself would not be enough for Franken to make up the 221-vote difference. But together with the other factor, the distribution of new votes, Franken could come out ahead.

Why? Because undervotes and overvotes occur predominantly among the elderly, low-income and low-education voters, and first-time voters. (The article also mentions minority voters… I think this part of the reasoning applies only to those for whom English isn’t their primary language.) In this election, the elderly vote is split, but the youth, first-time, and “minority” vote have gone to Franken.

Now the author can crunch some numbers. The highlights:

• If the uncounted fraction of votes that will be counted is 0.90% (25,000 votes), and Franken takes 50.50% of those votes, the odds are even that Franken will win.
• If the uncounted fraction of votes that will be counted is 0.50% (about 13,900), and Franken takes 51% of those votes, then Franken has a 57% chance of winning.
• If Franken captures 53% of the new votes, then the number of new votes counted has to be less than 0.25% (less than 7,000 votes) for Coleman to have a chance.

So, if you’re for Coleman, you want to diminish the number of new votes, and hope that they count more of the middle- and upeer-class. If you’re a Franken supporter, you want lots and lots of new votes, on the theory that the newly-counted votes represent the “vulnerable vote.”

If you’re a Barkley supporter, you’ll need a time machine set to 4 November 2002.

None of this, of course, takes into account any legal wrangling that may ensue. How a municipality can allow their voting booth to put an inaccurate date and time stamp on a ballot is beyond my comprehension.

No matter what, stay tuned to www.fivethirtyeight.com for some reasonably objective analysis.

I wrote a product strategy document at work this week. I wrapped it up on Friday and sent it (in confidence!) to a few stakeholders and to my line of business owner.

I’ve been thinking about that document. It’s good, but unfortunately, it’s not great. D’oh!

It has all the requisite pieces: the current state of the product, the product’s current position in the market, company strategy, financial performance of the company, financial performance of the product, competitive analysis, analysis of market conditions, future directions of the product, a high-level development roadmap, etc.

What it lacks is a story, a narrative thread.

I got so wrapped up in getting the facts straight that I forgot to tell the story of the product.

• How does the corporate strategy filter down into product strategy?
• How exactly does market information and product enhancement tie together?
• How does the proposed shift in product strategy inspire the customer?

A product strategy should be a story…and should I should have done better in employing the tools of presentation. A good mixture of story and numbers, of emotion and reason. You can bet the product managers at Apple can tell riveting stories about their products and customers.

Fortunately for me, this is a living document. I’ll be sure to carve out some time before long to make that product strategy sing.

Stuff on my mind:

I need to dig into the presidential election statistics soon, to really understand the nuances of the Obama victory. I didn’t expect a seven-point gap.

This Twitter thing is incredible. People are finding me and following me every day. And I them. As I said a few days ago, it’s the on-time, minutia of the moment. Some call it a cross between a monologue and a dialogue; I have a different spin. If a monologue is a conversation in one dimension, and a dialogue is a conversation in two dimensions, then Twittering is fractal communications: a conversation in a non-integer dimensional space. Maybe d = 1.5? No, that’s not right, as it is sometimes one talking to many. There’s a network effect worth studying. To do: I think a trip to xxx.lanl.gov is in order; some physicist has to have written a paper on the class of networks represented by Twitter. When will Kevin Bacon start following me?

The fiancee is absolutely hooked on “Eli Stone.” It’s a TV series on ABC. What happens when a high-powered lawyer becomes a prophet? Will he make the needed changes in his own life to enhance the lives of those around him? This show had better not jump the shark any time soon.

SNL will now die off again until 2012. The guy who does Obama isn’t funny.

Jay Cutler threw for 447 yards and 3 touchdowns tonight. Kellen Winslow had 2 touchdowns. A great fantasy football outcome por moi.

The fact that Ted Stevens is going to win in Alaska is embarrassing to Alaska. Honestly.