I’m on Forbes.com Now

Yup, starting today, you’ll find my blog at:

http://blogs.forbes.com/geoffloftus

Same high quality bloviating you’ve grown to know and love, but now on a high quality, well respected platform.  (Hard to imagine that will last long . . . .)

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No blog today – look for me on Forbes.com soon

Actually, look for me on Wednesday, September 29th. I’m debuting with a piece called “Lead Like Winston.”

More details (like a link to my Forbes blog) will follow on Wednesday. I’ll also tweet them and post on LinkedIn and Facebook. How socially media conscious can you get?

To be completely honest, I still loathe and detest Twitter, and I think that an awful lot of people suffer from acute TMI syndrome on Facebook. (TMI? Too much information. Usually of a personal nature. Ugh.) Anyway, more on all my loathing and detesting some other time.

See you Wednesday on Forbes.com.

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I’m Not Quitting – I’m Moving

I’ve been invited to become a regular blogger at Forbes.com, and as you might imagine, I was thrilled to say “Yes.” So, next week, this blog will “move” to Forbes.com with a new piece called, Lead Like Winston, all about the astounding and successful leadership of the man who saved Britain from the Nazis. (As a friend of mine once said about an Indiana Jones movie: “If the bad guys are Nazis, count me in!”) Complete details on the move will follow next week.

In the meantime, if you like, you can see what I’ve been doing on the Forbes site as a guest blogger since February:

Lead Like George Washington
When 13 American colonies wanted to become the United States, one man showed the way again and again, through both his commitment and his willingness to say goodbye.

Lead Like Patton
When the American troops surrounded by Germans in the Battle of the Bulge needed a Christmas miracle, George Patton delivered one with great leadership and sheer aggression.

Lead Like Spruance In The Battle Of Midway
On the brink of annihilation, Adm. Raymond Spruance kept his head, stayed aggressive and won the biggest naval fight of World War II.

Lead Like Chet—Make the Most of the Recovery
After Pearl Harbor, Chester Nimitz used his head, took calculated risks and led the U.S. Navy to its greatest victory.

Lead Like Bob in the Battle of the Recession
Times are tough, but smart executives don’t panic. They do grab opportunity.

Lead Like Ike in the Battle of the Bulge
When it looked like the enemy was sure to win, the great general refused to panic and seized opportunity.

“We’re spending a lot of money . . . “

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve heard the words “we’re spending a lot of money” used twice in regard to one of metro New York’s public transportation systems, the Long Island Railroad, lovingly known as the “LIRR”. Both times the phrase was used in a news story on news radio.

The first story was about cuts in service because the LIRR, like many organizations since the recession started in 2007, is desperately attempting to save money. The man who was recorded as bemoaning the amount of money paid to the railroad seemed to feel that the pre-cut service wasn’t good enough to justify the amount being paid — and no way in hell is it justified by cuts in service.

The second story was about the LIRR shutting down after 2 tornadoes and multiple near-tornadoes rampaged through Brooklyn, Queens and Nassau County last week. The angry man quoted in this story seemed to feel that the amount of money he paid should guarantee service no matter what the weather conditions.

I have a simple question for both these gentlemen: “What the hell are you talking about?”

To Commuter No. 1: Haven’t you heard about the recession? Everyone and every organization are cutting back. The amount of money you pay as an individual has almost nothing to do with the overall viability of the LIRR.

To Commuter No. 2: What is with you? Do you seriously believe that your money somehow immunizes you and your railroad from the devastation of tornadoes? Maybe you should cancel your commutation ticket and use the money saved to see a shrink. You are in serious need of a reality adjustment.

The problem with both of these gentlemen is simple: Their expectations are ridiculous. They feel that the money they spend is the overriding factor in the equation.

What should organizations do about outlandish expectations from their customers? Employees? Stakeholders?

Communicate, and then follow up with more communication, and then return with even more communication. People, as the above examples show, can be incredibly dense. You need to be communicating constantly and redundantly.

And you need to accept a harsh reality: No matter what you do or say, there will always be some people who won’t get the message. Some people who think that their money means tornadoes don’t shut down the railroad. Customers who think non-working products are for other people. Employees who feel they are overworked and underpaid. Stakeholders who feel unappreciated, no matter what the return on stock or how much community service you do.

If you’re reaching a solid majority of the people you’re communicating with, pat yourself on the back, have another cup of coffee, then restart your efforts toward the people who just don’t get it. It’s a vicious cycle, but you’re stuck with it. After all, you never know when the next tornado is coming.

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Publicity Stunt: Crazy Pastor Wants to Burn the Koran

UPDATE: September 10.

A few hours after the blog below was published, President Obama asked Pastor Jones to listen to his “better angels” and not burn the Koran. He went on to label the burning a “stunt.” Then Defence Secretary Robert Gates called Jones and asked him not to go through with his plan since it would endanger American forces around the world.

The international press covered both communications, and then went into a frenzy when he had talks with a Florida Muslim, who Jones claimed to represent the Muslims who are planning to build the Cordoba Islamic Center near Ground Zero. According to Jones, the Florida man told him that the New Yorkers were on board with moving the Center. Jones canceled the book burning, only to change his tune and say he had only suspended it when the Cordoba team said it was not moving.

(Never one to shun publicity, apparently Donald Trump made an offer to buy the Cordoba site to help the Muslims move elsewhere. Cordoba characterized it as a cheap “stunt.”)

In the meanwhile, Pastor Jones with his ridiculous facial hair and faulty theology continues to grab worldwide attention for his little bit of the lunatic fringe. No matter how this turns out, he’s clearly the winner.

ORIGINAL POST:

By now you’ve probably heard that Terry Jones, the pastor of a tiny Christian church in Florida, plans to honor the 9/11 dead by burning copies of the Koran in a bonfire.

Muslims around the world have made it known they are furious over the planned pyrotechnics. Hard to blame them — and does America really need 1 billion people worldwide to be angry with us because this wingnut is, well, a wingnut?

The largest association of evangelical churches in America has called for Jones not to go through with it.

The Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, has called the burning “idiotic.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stated that this will harm U.S. interests around the world.

And, most importantly, Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan has said this will threaten the safety of his forces there.

Is this clown listening? Will he call it off? Yeah, sure. Why would he do that? Here’s a guy with a tiny following, various news accounts say his parish is anywhere from 30 to 50 people, and he’s getting global attention. All because he says he’s going to do one stupid, ugly thing. He’s got nothing to lose and stands to gain an increased following of people as deranged as he is.

What’s really worrisome is this: What happens if this turns out well for Jones? What if he doubles or triples the size of his congregation? What if he gets interviewed by CNN and Fox News? What does he do for an encore next year?

There are a couple of lessons here for the rest of us:

1) Just because a guy shouts, “Here I am! Look at me!” doesn’t mean we have to look.

2) If you’re pushing a cause or a product or a service or whatever, you need more than an empty publicity stunt to be a success. You have to have something valuable to push.

Pentathlete Leaders: Managing Your Organization, Politics & PR

Well, after a brief hiatus, I’m back at the blogging grindstone. I hope you’ve had as nice a time away from my bloviating as I had taking time off from bloviating.

While I was away, an article in the New York Times was published with the headline: “Win Wars? Today’s Generals Must Also Politick and Do PR”. As the author, Thom Shanker wrote:

Mastery of battlefield tactics and a knack for leadership are only prerequisites. Generals and other top officers are now expected to be city managers, cultural ambassadors, public relations whizzes and politicians as they deal with multiple missions and constituencies in the war zone, in allied capitals — and at home.

The increased demands help to explain how the two most recent American commanders in Afghanistan, among the most respected four-star officers of their generation, lost their jobs. And they are prompting the military to revamp the way it trains and promotes its top officers.

“They must be ‘pentathlete’ leaders,” said Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior commander in Afghanistan.

After the way BP handled the Gulf of Mexico disaster this summer, you could say the same thing about many corporate leaders, couldn’t you?

Shanker goes on to say that the military is trying to develop the new type of leaders it needs by training its senior commanders to model themselves after George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, George C. Marshal, and Dwight Eisenhower.

Washington, Grant, Marshall, and Eisenhower? That’s exalted company, don’t you think? In the 234 years since there has been a United States of America, those four men are singular successes. Three became presidents, largely in recognition of their astounding military records, and the fourth, Marshall, is the only man in American history to be Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army (America’s top soldier) and then Secretary of State and later Secretary of Defense.

While it’s not realistic to assume that you can tweak the military’s executive training and promotion policies and mass-produce Washingtons and Eisenhowers, we can all relax about finding great leaders of the future. America has proven amazingly adept at producing great leaders. Not only the four mentioned above. How about Abraham Lincoln? Or Teddy Roosevelt? Or his cousin, FDR? Or General and then Secretary of State Colin Powell? And what about the many courageous civil rights leaders who seemingly came out of nowhere: People like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks.

I could go on and on — and not just in the military field or in politics. In manufacturing you could point to Henry Ford or Lee Iacocca. In technology there’s been Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), and Meg Whitman (eBay), just to mention a few. And don’t get me started on the arts and sciences. I’ll be blogging till next year trying to include everyone.

Not all of these people are necessarily great human beings. They aren’t perfect. But again and again, they’ve led their organizations effectively, managing and inspiring their people, handling local and federal politics, and dealing with (an often hostile) press.

What’s the trick to finding these people and then getting them into the right jobs? Meritocracy. Recognize and nurture talent. Marshall promoted Eisenhower over men senior to him because Marshall knew Ike was the right man to command the invasion of Europe. Ike did the same thing when he promoted Omar Bradley over George Patton and equal to Bernard Montgomery.

Reward talent, and it’ll reward you back. While you’re at it, relax about the great leaders of the future. They’re on their way.

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On Vacation

If you haven’t taken a break yet for this summer, be sure you do. Even in the midst of fighting with the Nazis, Ike always made sure that his men, from generals to privates, got as much time off as possible. Whatever you’re trying to do, it’s easier when you’re properly rested.

I’m taking my own advice — leaving on vacation for the rest of the month. Among other things, this means no blogs for the rest of August. (I doubt anyone will find that tragic.) If Ike’s concern over time off isn’t enough to convince you, maybe a few pictures of my vacation spot (Block Island) will:

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Take My Advice: Shut Up

I’m in my seventh month of blogging twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. I’ve never missed a column, but I have found myself with nothing to say once before. And today, embarrassing as this is to admit, I’ve got nothing again.

Now, being as full of blarney as the next person of Hibernian descent, I could spin a fantastical web of words and pretend I have something significant to say. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve lived by the axiom that “if you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance, baffle ’em with bullshit.”

But I’m going to live by a different bit of advice I heard long ago (source forgotten): If you don’t know what you’re talking about, shut up. If you can’t stop yourself from talking, talk positively and with absolute authority — maybe everyone listening will assume you know what you’re saying.

Today, I’m going to take the first part of that advice and shut up. I would recommend that to anyone and everyone, whether you don’t know what you’re talking about in business or life.

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In the Shadow of the World Trade Center

I was in Manhattan on 9/11. I can’t begin to understand the pain and grief of the families and friends who lost loved ones or saw them traumatized by injury. But like all of us in New York City that day, I experienced the shock and horror of what was happening right before my eyes. And I cried for thousands of people I would never know.

Over the days immediately following 9/11, I got to see the largest collection of heroes ever assembled: Millions of New Yorkers refusing to cower to terrorists and returning to their normal lives.

Now it’s time for all of those heroes to demonstrate their patriotism, too.

In New York right now, a struggle is going on over what it means to live in America. A Muslim congregation wants to build a mosque and Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero. Not surprisingly, families of the victims have expressed their discomfort about the project. And some politicians like Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are adamantly against it. Man-on-the-street interviews on radio and TV show that quite a few regular New Yorkers find it hard to accept a Muslim presence so close to the World Trade Center.

But . . .

The first amendment of the U. S. Constitution — the beginning of the “Bill of Rights” — says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

There it is in constitutional black and white — the very first right of all our cherished rights — Congress cannot pass laws establishing religion or hindering its practice. That right is expressed in absolute terms because it is an absolute right. You can’t cut back on the right to worship of a group of Muslims because a bunch of terrorist thugs (who happened to be Muslim) attacked us. This would be like shutting down a Christian church because some local wackos (who happened to be Christian) bombed a health clinic that performed abortions. In either instance, punishing the guilty terrorists is fine. Impinging on the rights of others who share the same religion is not. The Constitution says so.

I have to admit, when I first heard the Muslim congregation was planning the mosque and center, I groaned to myself and thought, “Why there?” But then I realized that I should support this Islamic center. Because I believe in the Bill of Rights. Even when it’s tough to see the results of those rights. People all support the Bill of Rights when it comes to their rights to worship or speak or whatever. That’s easy. Patriots prove themselves by supporting those rights when it’s tough — when an Islamic group wants to build a mosque in the shadow of the World Trade Center.

And just in case the Bill of Rights isn’t enough to make you support the Muslim congregation, consider the message of tolerance and respect that New York will send to the world by allowing the building of a mosque so near Ground Zero. Compare that message with the one the government of the United Arab Emirates, an Islamic country, just issued: No more e-mails or texting on BlackBerries.

It’s enough to make you proud to be an American, isn’t it?

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Cockeyed Optimism

Things are tough, no two ways about it. The economy stinks. Depending on which way you measure these things, we are in the worst economic times since 1946 (the bust following the World War II boom) or the Great Depression. Most Americans aren’t old enough to remember those times, and the ones who are old enough would rather not dwell on them.

Our country is still mired in two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And, since this is an election year, the only thing we can expect from Washington is a dazzling assortment of political posturing, hissing, and spitting. Oh . . . joy.

Well, it might be fun to wallow in depression, but I can’t do it. Instead I keep hearing the lyrics of “A Cockeyed Optimist” in my head:

I have heard people rant and rave and bellow
That we’re done and we might as well be dead,
But I’m only a cockeyed optimist
And I can’t get it into my head.

I hear the human race
Is fallin’ on its face
And hasn’t very far to go,
But ev’ry whippoorwill
Is sellin’ me a bill,
And tellin’ me it just ain’t so.

Those words were written by Oscar Hammerstein II, who died fifty years ago in August 1960. They are sung by a U.S. Navy nurse on an island in the Pacific in the middle of World War II in the legendary musical South Pacific. Thousands of miles from her home and family, caring for the wounded, this young woman could easily cave into despair but celebrates hope instead.

Hammerstein wasn’t blindly optimistic. He’d lived through the Great Depression and World War II. His career was a stunning success early then slowly drifted toward has-been status. He didn’t give up, continuing to write the lyrics and books of shows that went nowhere. And then . . . he and Richard Rodgers teamed up and literally transformed the Broadway musical.

As John Steele Gordon wrote in the New York Times in 2008: their musicals were “complex, often surprisingly dark, and profound explorations of the human condition.”

Carousel had a deep spiritual side and explored life after death. The King and I dealt with feminism and human rights way before those issues were talked about in popular entertainment. The Sound of Music confronted the tyranny of the Nazis. South Pacific covered not only World War II but inter-racial love, echoing Hammerstein’s earlier collaboration with Jerome Kern on Showboat.

Hammerstein wasn’t oblivious to the darker aspects of existence. And yet . . . he still wrote songs and shows of hope.

Billy Bigelow (Carousel), a small-time criminal, is reconciled with his family in a fashion reminiscent of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. The king (The King and I) sacrifices himself to the oncoming enlightenment and modernization of his country — something that he brought about. The Von Trapp family (The Sound of Music) escapes the Nazis, sacrificing everything but their love of each other and freedom. And Nellie Forbush, the Navy nurse in South Pacific, overcomes her prejudices.

It’s been fifty years since Hammerstein gave us a new song or musical. But his words continue to be true:

. . . But I’m stuck like a dope
With a thing called hope,
And I can’t get it out of my heart!
Not this heart…