Leadership Skill: Rotten Rewards
By harveyrobbins | December 23, 2002
Despite some talk about team rewards, most team members are paid today exactly as they were paid in the days before teams, on a strictly individual basis.
We are rewarding individuals when we should be rewarding teams or the workforce as a whole. Not that there cannot or should not be “stars”. Once again the 80/20 rule comes into play: 20 percent of team members accounting for 80 percent of team success. But a successful team is always chipping away at the 80/20 rule - it seeks to get the very best out of all its members.
In a typical Japanese corporation today, about a third of all compensation is based on company performance.
On the other hand, we ask unions to help increase productivity when they know that success means decreasing the workforce, laying people off - the exact opposite of their best interests.
We establish bonuses to motivate people, but the bonuses don’t motivate because they are automatic or guaranteed. We patronize team members by dangling carrots in front of them. My, isn’t that an attractive carrot?
We set up policies and procedures to instruct team members to do the right things without being supervised every moment - but we fail to shape a culture within our organizations that lets teams and team members feel secure doing the right thing.
Teams will not carry out business objectives if doing so puts them at risk.
Teams don’t fail because the people on them are stupid. Nor because they don’t enshrine the virtues of customer satisfaction, quality and the rest. Teams fail when the people on them don’t feel safe going after their own stated goals.
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Change Management Strategies: Rules for Team Change
By harveyrobbins | December 16, 2002
The process of change can be better understood and made more effective by breaking it down according to some basic principles. There are twelve key rules for reducing team resistance and clearing the way for effective team change.
1. Plan for the change. We plan for change in order to have some measure of influence over it. We want to have a say in where we’re going and what we are going to become.
2. Involve others in the change process - get stakeholder agreement and commitment. People don’t usually resist positive change. It’s the negative change - having to fend off a band of marauding baboons, or having to learn Chinese in a plummeting elevator - that puts us off our feed. To reduce resistance, try moving the change out of the shadows of negativity and into the light of day. Encourage team members to participate as partners in the change, and reward them when they do. Resistance will drop and commitment should increase.
3. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Because human beings are such creatures of habit, taking them in a new direction or even improving their lot by providing them with “better” processes or enhanced information tends to make them a bit skittish. Surprises build anxiety. It’s often not the content of change that people resist, as much as the process of providing it to them. Use multiple channels of communication to answer and update individuals so they feel less a victim of, and more of an active participant in the change process.
4. Generate positive expectations. People have an interesting internal process that tries to match up what we actually see in our environment with what we expected to see. We pick out only those things that help us meet our expectations, and screen out the rest. If you can create a positive expectation for change, or help folks see what any change will look like after it has taken place, they will feel safer and more secure when the change actually happens.
5. Create influence/support networks. You cannot create a successful change in a vacuum. Whether formal or informal, networks create both checkpoints and anxiety relievers for any change. Change usually causes one’s comfort zone to shrink. But you can minimize shrinkage by expanding the support network and encouraging frequent use of it.
6. Obtain adequate resources. Ask for help obtaining the amount of human and capital resources necessary to create and sustain any positive change. You may not get it, but you’ll have tried. The research is very compelling on this point - many more actual requisitions are granted than non requisitions. Another benefit of asking and being turned down is that you may learn why the request was not granted, which is good information to have for the next request.
7. Generate critical mass to create and maintain momentum. Be aware of the number of people necessary to successfully carry off your change process. Two out of ten won’t cut it. You need a broad base - unanimous within the team, and a healthy number of advocates, champions, and friends on the outside.
8. Follow through and follow up. The best-laid plans of mice and men can go down the tube in a hurry if you are not on top of any change process. The process of follow-through and follow-up should be viewed not as a policing function, but a coaching one.
9. Persist, but be ready to pay the price - mistakes. Change means risk. Risk means mistakes. Fear of punishment for mistakes encourages “CYA” and reduces the willingness to take the risks necessary to make change work.
10. Reinforce early and often. Being creatures of habit, it is impossible for us to completely abandon the “old ways” for the “new way” overnight. Change does move people and organizations toward desired outcomes - but slowly, in measurable steps. The grease that keeps the change process going in a consistent direction is positive reinforcement. A word of acknowledgement, a formal recognition, a pat on the back - all count as reinforcement.
11. Keep processes and techniques simple. The fashion is to say that complex problems require complex solutions. Maybe. But solutions that throw a team into an uproar, that take people too far out of their comfort zones or are too technical, will result in great resistance. Like eating an elephant, complex change must be accomplished one bit at a time.
12. Lead the way. Finally, the importance of leadership to successful change work cannot be overemphasized. Effective leadership is a must for effective organizational change. Leaders provide the vision and the pathway toward positive outcomes.
For information about consulting and training that makes change work for your organization, contact Dr. Harvey Robbins.
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Leadership Skill: The Meaning of Meaning
By harveyrobbins | December 9, 2002
The “Pull” approach toward change (looking to the future) derives in large part from the writings of psychotherapist Viktor Frankl. In 1959, he published a remarkable account of survival, Man’s Search for Meaning. Because of the insights in this short, readable book, Frankl was hailed by the psychological world as a liberator from the dominance of Sigmund Freud. His ideas center around a “will to meaning” that is a strong or even stronger than Freud’s pleasure principle, which depicts people as, essentially, living for their next cheeseburger or sex experience.
It is sweet triumph that Frankl is regarded as a liberator because his pivotal experiences were as a prisoner in three different Nazi camps, including Auschwitz. For the inmates of these camps, there could be no more horrible disruption, no more unthinkable change than to be plucked from a life of normal liberties and choices and set down in a factory whose end product was their own deaths.
What interested Frankl was how prisoners coped with their prospects. Many, treated like animals, became little more than animals, abandoning their sense of self and any vision of the future that had once carried them along. Others, to his astonishment, adapted even to those unadaptable circumstances, by focusing on a future they were determined to experience. That future became their meaning, and that meaning sustained them through their plight
The final freedom, Frankl concluded, is what is left after every other freedom has been taken away - the freedom “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Now page ahead fifty years. Nazism is dead. Ours is in nearly every way a brighter age. The world is not at war, at least not yet. The democratic impulse burns brighter than ever. We have the technology to link soul to soul and to communicate more perfectly than humankind ever dreamed possible. While hate is not extinguished, it has acquired a bad reputation. There is a global consensus that competition is healthy, that diversity is good, that individuals matter, and that systems can be improved.
Yet we live in a world of sullen rage because the promised improvements are not coming easily enough, or quickly enough, or they are not coming at all.
The modern workplace is not a concentration camp, but Frankl’s insights are relevant nonetheless.
We change, Frankl says, by envisioning very intensely what we want to happen in the future. Once that picture or vision is clear in our minds, we intuitively take whatever steps are necessary to make the vision reality. The man determined to survive and reunite with his family will take care of himself to guarantee that the dream comes true. The company determined to keep its people employed in the years ahead will stake out new markets, make changes in processes, and lay out strategies and tactics to make it so. The team that wants to make the dream of all its members come true needs to commit to achieving team goals in order to bring individual goals into focus.
Once we identify a dream, things become clear. We see where resistance is coming from, why it’s happening, what our part is in keeping it alive, and what it takes to mold the organizational imagination to focus more on the positive of change and less on the negatives.
The organization and the people that will succeed in changing are those that master the art of living in the future and advancing toward it from the past, able to convert the fiction of resistance into positive propulsion.
For information about consulting and training that makes change work for your organization, contact Dr. Harvey Rohe “Pull” approach toward change (looking to the future) derives in large part from the writings of psychotherapist Viktor Frankl. In 1959, he published a remarkable account of survival, Man’s Search for Meaning. Because of the insights in this short, readable book, Frankl was hailed by the psychological world as a liberator from the dominance of Sigmund Freud. His ideas center around a “will to meaning” that is a strong or even stronger than Freud’s pleasure principle, which depicts people as, essentially, living for their next cheeseburger or sex experience.
It is sweet triumph that Frankl is regarded as a liberator because his pivotal experiences were as a prisoner in three different Nazi camps, including Auschwitz. For the inmates of these camps, there could be no more horrible disruption, no more unthinkable change than to be plucked from a life of normal liberties and choices and set down in a factory whose end product was their own deaths.
What interested Frankl was how prisoners coped with their prospects. Many, treated like animals, became little more than animals, abandoning their sense of self and any vision of the future that had once carried them along. Others, to his astonishment, adapted even to those unadaptable circumstances, by focusing on a future they were determined to experience. That future became their meaning, and that meaning sustained them through their plight
The final freedom, Frankl concluded, is what is left after every other freedom has been taken away - the freedom “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Now page ahead fifty years. Nazism is dead. Ours is in nearly every way a brighter age. The world is not at war, at least not yet. The democratic impulse burns brighter than ever. We have the technology to link soul to soul and to communicate more perfectly than humankind ever dreamed possible. While hate is not extinguished, it has acquired a bad reputation. There is a global consensus that competition is healthy, that diversity is good, that individuals matter, and that systems can be improved.
Yet we live in a world of sullen rage because the promised improvements are not coming easily enough, or quickly enough, or they are not coming at all.
The modern workplace is not a concentration camp, but Frankl’s insights are relevant nonetheless.
We change, Frankl says, by envisioning very intensely what we want to happen in the future. Once that picture or vision is clear in our minds, we intuitively take whatever steps are necessary to make the vision reality. The man determined to survive and reunite with his family will take care of himself to guarantee that the dream comes true. The company determined to keep its people employed in the years ahead will stake out new markets, make changes in processes, and lay out strategies and tactics to make it so. The team that wants to make the dream of all its members come true needs to commit to achieving team goals in order to bring individual goals into focus.
Once we identify a dream, things become clear. We see where resistance is coming from, why it’s happening, what our part is in keeping it alive, and what it takes to mold the organizational imagination to focus more on the positive of change and less on the negatives.
The organization and the people that will succeed in changing are those that master the art of living in the future and advancing toward it from the past, able to convert the fiction of resistance into positive propulsion.
For information about consulting and training that makes change work for your organization, contact Dr. Harvey Robbins.
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Leadership Skill: Psychological Context
By harveyrobbins | December 2, 2002
There is a natural human trap in which we often get caught. Basically, we all interpret information we hear based on the last piece of information we happened to be thinking about. For example, if a salesperson is thinking she knows what a customer needs (”a blue coat”), she may unthinkingly ring up the blue coat - even though the customer only bought a pair of red socks. The salesperson wrote the order based on what she was thinking, not on what she actually heard.
In factories there is a storage space set aside at the end of the assembly line. It’s called the redo line, because it’s where everything that has to be redone it put. It has been estimated that 40 percent of the cost of redoing work, across all industries, is the result of mistakes incurred because of psychological context - people misperceiving, seeing false patterns, unthinkingly turning a screw to the left instead of the right. We slap ourselves on the forehead when we make these completely avoidable mistakes - then we proceed to make them again.
The lesson here is that a team member must be vigilant about his or her own attitudes. Suspicions that would have saved us from treachery and defensiveness in another era become our workaday enemy in the team era. We must learn to identify when our instincts about one another are serving us well, and when they are doing us a disservice.
It’s ok to trust your senses. It’s your brain you have to keep an eye on.
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Leadership Skill: Trust Depleted
By harveyrobbins | November 18, 2002
Trust depleted may never be regained. It is a tough business - two strikes and you’re out. When trust is gone, it must be replaced by control: rules, regulations, structure, three-ringed notebooks. The team spends as much time policing itself as doing its job.
A world without trust is a world full of . . . lawyers. Lawyers are how our society imposes control in the absence of trust. They weigh us down with structure and penalties. They create language that is frightfully clear, and frighteningly uncreative. The irony is that control ultimately fails to control - for who can really understand the clarity of legalese? A team that comes up empty in the trust department will start to think like a lawyer - not what works, or what is best, or what meets the customer’s needs, but what technically complies with what is asked of us.
A final disturbing thought: While a team leader can take heroic measures to regain trust - submitting to a public whipping is one promising avenue, apologizing is another - there is precious little that rank and file team members can do. But here and there, even in the darkest organizations, there are always good people who speak the truth, and devil take the hindmost. Find them and listen.
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Leadership Skill: A Nod to The Predatory Organization
By harveyrobbins | October 22, 2002
There are a few instances of organizational hypocrisy which just burn my butt. This is one that I feel the need to get off my chest. My apologies up front.
There are organizations for which neither teams nor a team environment will do a bit of good. These are companies whose culture is unalterably predatory, unapologetic about having a son-of-a-bitch, screw-you personality.
There are thousands of organizations, and hundreds of thousands of departments within organizations, that fit this description, and they are happy with it in their own hellish, Dilbertarian way.
For such a company to try to coat itself in collaborative spirit, as if it were some sort of cosmetic powder puff, is absurd. People won’t believe the company’s intentions for a minute. It will simply waste time and money and fritter away whatever scattered microns of credibility such an organization still commands.
In fact, it just makes it more of a son-of-a-bitch organization, because it has added hypocrisy to its repertoire of treachery and abuse.
I hope I didn’t make that sound too attractive. And, again, I apologize. I feel so much better now.
For ideas on how to overcome such predatory cultures and create more of a collaborative environment, contact Dr. Robbins.
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Team Effectiveness: Teams vs. Mobs
By harveyrobbins | October 7, 2002
In the rush to bestow the manifold blessings of teams upon our organizations, lots of groups get called teams that probably should not be. The resulting groups are too big, too lumpy, quite mismatched, and more than a little confused.
I call these assemblages mobs. There are ways to differentiate real teams from fake teams or mobs:
Teams
Members recognize their interdependence and understand that both personal and team goals are best accomplished with mutual support. Time is not wasted struggling over “turf” or attempting personal gain at the expense of others.
Members feel a sense of ownership for their jobs and unit because they are committed to goals they helped establish.
Members contribute to the organization’s success by applying their unique talent and knowledge to team objectives.
Members work in a climate of trust and are encouraged to openly express ideas, opinions, disagreements, and feelings. Questions are welcomed.
Members practice open and honest communication. They make an effort to understand each other’s points of view.
Members are encouraged to develop skills and apply what they learn on the job. They receive the support of the team.
Members recognize conflict as a normal aspect of human interaction, but they view such situations as an opportunity for new ideas and creativity. They work to confront and resolve conflict quickly and constructively.
Members participate in decisions affecting the team, but understand that their leader must make a final ruling whenever the team cannot decide, or an emergency exits. A positive result, not conformity is the goal.
Mobs
Members think they are grouped together for administrative purposes only. Individuals work independently, sometimes at cross-purposes with others.
Members tend to focus on themselves because they are not sufficiently involved in planning the unit’s objectives. They approach their jobs simply as hired hands.
Members are told what to do rather than being asked what the best approach would be. Suggestions are not encouraged.
Members distrust the motives of colleagues because they do not understand the role of other members. Expressions of opinion or disagreements are considered divisive and non supportive.
Members are so cautious about what they say that real understanding is not possible. Game playing may occur and communication traps are set to catch the unwary.
Members may receive good training but are limited in applying it to the job by the supervisor or other group members.
Members find themselves in conflict situations without knowing how to resolve them. They do not differentiate confrontation and conflict. Their supervisor or “team leader” may put off intervention until serious damage occurs.
Members may or may not participate in decisions affecting the team. Conformity often appears more important than positive results.
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Leadership Skill: Hope
By harveyrobbins | September 9, 2002
In a couple days, the anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001 will be upon us. That day marked the beginning of a sea change for the world. And change is hard. Now is a chance to reflect, to become introspective on a number of fronts.
It is easy to hate those who transgressed against us, and generalize our hatred to those whom we all too easily put in the same basket as our transgressors.
We generalize because of a human trait called closure. When we don’t know something, we automatically fill in the blanks with negatives of our own making, not positives. It’s a protection mechanism that keeps us from getting hurt. We automatically tend to think worst case scenarios. As a result, it becomes easy for us to focus our hate on any group different from us (or similar to our attackers).
We don’t know what’s in the Koran or the Torah or the Bible so we automatically assume that their God is different from our God, that their God is telling them to do nasty things to those of us who don’t believe as they do. It’s amazing. Although the stories are overlapping but different and customized, the message in all of these texts is basically the same: love thy neighbor; respect your elders; care for the sick; fear a just and righteous God; etc. - the very same message.
Extremists in all religions use both their ignorance of others’ principles and the inability of their followers to read their own texts to hold their God up as the one true God; superior to others’ Gods; more legitimate. Call me naive (I’ve been called that before), but the way I look at it, we are all on this island earth together whether you believe God created man or vice versa. There’s no other place to go. We can only get so far away from people different from us. Sooner or later we will come face to face with others - their stories, their beliefs, their variety. I’m certain that at that time, we will discover that the differences are microscopic compared to our similarities. For while variances exist, we are all human with a common set of predictable behaviors.
The languages may be different. The cultures may be different. The beliefs may be different, but people are all the same. They have the same needs (security/safety, food, shelter, prosperity, and the hope for a better life - however that’s defined in the minds of the individuals).
Immediately after September 11, 2001, we became a country of re evaluators. We reevaluated our lives, our relationships. It became a wake up call of self-evaluation, not as a nation, but as individuals. We decided for the moment to move closer to one another both at home and at work: more collaboration; more teamwork. In Minnesota, for example, instead of cocooning for the winter, we visited our neighbors and friends more frequently, checked on one another for well-being. As human nature unfortunately predicts, we’ve moved away from that closeness as time has passed. We felt vulnerable after September 11, but have reacted (some would say overreacted) to where we are feeling somewhat less vulnerable again. At work, interest in teamwork and collaboration briefly increased . . . and now, just one year later, it has generally decreased.
We’re chasing the bad guys. Not all of them, just the ones we want to get even with currently. Once this threat is vanquished, another will take its place. It’s human nature for some group feeling disenfranchised to take some bites out of those they can easily target for their own misfortunes. Currently, we’re the most visible, so we’re it. We will continue in this vicious cycle until the point where the people of the world, with all their variety realize that we have more to gain together than apart - by helping one another out.
Much of the world scoffs at our (the USA’s) efforts as “too little or too late”; it’s group think. While others want us to give more, they forget we already give more to others in need than any other country. We are collectively the most generous people on the planet. Some give out of the guilt of having, some out of the genuine desire to help others. We should be proud of what we as a nation stand for, what we have accomplished and the role we’ve assumed globally.
Sure, the events of last September have made us all more introspective. It’ll pass (that, too, is human nature). But as we look inside, do not fall into the trap of self-blaming. Rather than say that we are at fault for all the world’s ills, look at the hope that we bring to those who live in repression. Again, I’m not naive enough to believe that we don’t all have some repression going on in our lives, self or other initiated. On balance, though, the world looks to the example set by our people in how we treat each other (capital punishment aside) and what, as a nation, we stand for.
Make no mistake about it, we are a beacon of hope for others in need of such hope. Be proud of the fact that the relative freedom and relative democracy we enjoy is a draw for much of the world. Some don’t like us because of this and look for ways to hurt us or bring us down. They, too, shall pass. Please, have hope for a brighter future on this island earth for all human beings. I do.
As for business and our work, it’s time to get back on the collaborative track. The more information that flows, the more effectively we listen, the fewer turf wars we fight internally - the better off we’ll be over the long haul, ourselves, our companies, our nations, our world.
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The Psychology of Fear (Part 2)
By harveyrobbins | July 22, 2002
There is a system in the old part of the brain called the amygdala. It controls, in part, our fear factor (fight or flight). In the Neanderthal days it would alert us to real physical dangers that we could respond to with a big club. Once the source of our fear was dead or incapacitated, we cold relax once again. As our civilization progressed, it became unacceptable to club the source of your fear inside your organization - although about 1400 people were killed last year in workplace violence from people clubbing others. So, without an outlet to eliminate the fear, we build up the fear as internal tension/stress that gets converted into anger at oneself and others. We need to get angry at someone/something as a release mechanism.
Fear is a gut response. It causes irrational reactionary thinking. The solution (barring beating someone with a club or using an AK-47) is to use your head - the rational part of your brain, the cerebral cortex. Think and act rationally.
There is a concept that drives human behavior called “closure”. Simply put, when there is some missing data in our environment, we tend to fill in the blanks. The only problem is we tend to fill in the blanks with negative information, not positive. Worst case scenarios, for example. It’s a protection mechanism that keeps us from getting hurt too badly. We fill in the missing information with negative possibilities, then react against these negatives. Prepare for the worst, lower your expectations. These are both irrational thoughts that prevent us from moving forward. The good news, though, is that simply knowing about this concept can change your behavior. Rather than looking at the dark side of every situation, look on the positive (or at least the most realistic) side.
Sure, it’s true that the world is currently experiencing a sea change. Radical Islam’s mission is to take down civilization as we know it. They’re angry at the world for:
1. not seeing the world through their eyes;
2. revenge for past attempts to persecute Muslims and/or demean / defile / misunderstand their religious practices;
3. there’s even a theory that radical Muslims may feel slighted by Abraham (Islam developed through Ismael, son of Abraham, who was never given the credibility or recognition as Isaac (Abraham’s legitimate heir), from whom Jacob was born and renamed Israel. The Jewish/Muslim conflict really boils down, then, to a family feud - a fight for legitimacy in the eyes of God), and;
4. scores of other issues as numerous and there are combatants.
But what’s the real chance you’ll be directly harmed by a terrorist act; pretty remote - much less than getting killed in a car accident, for example. The world has a much more talented law enforcement / intelligence network than has been portrayed in the media. What is the percentage of CEO thugs and thieves versus the number of truly gifted and talented people in those positions in our country’s organizations? Pretty small.
Our economy is strong. It will cycle out of this natural downturn. We may be diverting our attention temporarily because of our irrational fears about terrorism, but this too will pass. Life will change for sure. Dramatically in the short term, then revert to a slighter, more permanent change. But life has always been on the move. We will adapt. Look at where we were 100 years ago. Look at where we’ll be 100 years from now. Once this accounting debacle has been cleared away and we can look at the true and genuine strength of our economy, Dow 15,000 seems much more probable than Dow 5000. I’m optimistic. How about you?
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The Psychology of Fear (Part 1)
By harveyrobbins | July 15, 2002
About a month or so ago a friend of mine was telling me about an article he’d just read on the internet about how WorldCom was caught cooking the books and would likely declare bankruptcy as a result. As I listened to him, I imagined a dark storm cloud forming in the already gray and blustery sky. I thought, “Is this the death knell to our economy as we know it? Is DOW 5000 a real possibility?” Then I said, “Please tell me their auditor was Anderson.” He nodded his head. I breathed a sigh of relief. Why? Fear.
I thought we may just have dodged an economic bullet. Pre 9/11, the economy was already beginning to slide; coming off 10 years of economic boom. This cycling of the economy was very normal. Nothing to worry about long-term. There was the normal number of greedy executives hitting the headlines as they robbed the treasuries of their own companies while layoffs accelerated. Again, nothing out of the ordinary; a few obscene compensation packages seemed a bit odd, considering the slowing economy, but again acceptable in the boom mentality of the past 10 years. We complained but did nothing.
Then 9/11 happened and for the first time in U.S. history, people bent on destroying the American Dream succeeded in creating havoc and fear on our home shores. We thought this could never happen here. We thought we had the best intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the world. We thought we were protected by distance and oceans and deterrent weapons. We thought we knew who hated us and why. We were wrong. To some around the world, we have an arrogance which arose from our sense of security. They are wrong. Our sense of pride in America came, in part, from our system of democratic government combined with our rock solid free market capitalist economic system. It all worked. Even though our economy was going through a normal down cycle, we could ease our anger and fear of terrorism at home by looking at how well our economy held up to this fear; it kept chugging along.
Then Enron happened. It was slap in the face, but not a knockout blow. It allowed the “wink and nod” auditing practices of Anderson to bubble to the surface and wither in the daylight of public scrutiny. Why now?! People were already afraid of external forces over which they felt vulnerable. We didn’t need the extra stress of being afraid of our economic health at the hands of a few corporate thugs. Then came Global Crossing, then Quest, then Martha Stewart, then WorldCom, then… then what.
The psychology of fear is interesting. When one is afraid there is a tendency to strike out in anger; find someone or something to hurt to make ourselves feel better. Even though this doesn’t work, it’s genetic. Animals will even eat their own young when afraid. We’re doing the same thing now. We’re afraid because of terrorism, but we can’t strike out quickly enough or with sufficient victory so we turn this fear inward in anger against our institutions and organizations.
We’re all looking for someone to hang in anger so we can claim tangible retribution. Thus what has passed for acceptable accounting practices in the past (wink) and with a bit of smoke and mirrors has lifted our economy beyond fundamentals (nod), has now become the target of our rage.
We trusted our system even though at times it made little sense. How can a company report so much financial gain when they have no real product to sell? But we asked few questions. Until now. Thank goodness. It was Anderson (the bad seed) with WorldCom. Anderson is already toast and it’s hard to burn ash. But what’s next?
Now that our faith in the workings of the “system” has been disturbed we can all shake our heads say, “I knew something didn’t smell right”. Surprisingly enough, though, I believe that deep down inside, we’re all a bit optimistic; looking for some sliver of silver lining. In general, we are justice seeking, forgiving sorts. Those that did us wrong will be punished (although perhaps not as soundly as we’d like to see), and we will forgive those who were lead astray by others more greedy. Many of you will look in the mirror and feel badly that you were “duped” or perhaps now have to think of the future with a tighter belt. Well, don’t beat yourself up too much. We’re all in the same boat together. We will look for ways of putting this behind us and move towards the future. This too shall pass.
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