REMEMBERING 228

Tomorrow is an important date in Taiwanese history. Mention “228” to a Taiwanese and you will get a sober nod of assent. For February 28, 1947 was a date in Taiwanese history that we would rather not remember but will never forget.

Japan controlled the island of Taiwan from 1895 to World War II. And so for the first half of the 20^th century, the people of Taiwan, while they felt a common heritage with mainland Chinese, looked very Japanese on the outside: Japanese signage and dress could be seen everywhere, and many people spoke Japanese as well as Taiwanese and Mandarin.

Chiang Kaishek’s government had been booted from mainland China by the communists after World War II and had taken refuge in Taiwan. They hoped to regroup and then reclaim the mainland. While they waited in Taiwan, they became increasingly hostile and oppressive towards the native Taiwanese, whose Japanese-ness rankled them. Chinese soldiers enforced a sort of military state with heavy-handed methods. It was, as author Su Bing described it, “a stick of dynamite waiting to be set off.”

The ignition was provided on February 27, 1947. The Chinese authorities had been systematically intimidating small cigarette shop owners in order to have a monopoly on alcohol and tobacco. Agents raided a woman’s shop, kicked her violently, seized her cigarettes and her money, and finally cracked her over the head with the butt of a pistol. An angry group of Taiwanese confronted the police, accusing them of robbing her and demanding they return the inventory. Flustered by the mob, the police opened fire and sped away. A young Taiwanese was shot and killed.

The next day, demonstrations intensified. As a group closed in on a government building, the police opened fire again, Boston Massacre-style. Rioting ensued, and the situation quickly became a state of war, with the army scuffling with crowds and shooting at the unarmed.

Ten days later, Chinese reinforcements arrived on the island, really turning the tide against the Taiwanese. These soldiers from Shanghai arrived with annihilation on their minds. Anyone accosted in the streets who could not answer the question, “Who are you,” in fluent Mandarin Chinese was shot on the spot. They searched every Taiwanese house, cut off ears and noses, amputated limbs, and threw people off roofs. The bodies of both the live and bound as well as the dead were tossed into a nearby harbor. These brutalities continued for ten days.

I know about these things because of books I have read, but also because of first-person accounts from relatives of mine, including both sides of grandparents, who told me of cowering in their homes and fearing for those loved ones who were still out and about. I have never myself been the victim of terror or racial violence, but have had recounted to me what it is like to fear for your life and to know that you are marked for brutality and execution simply because of your ethnic background. It is, again, something you wish you didn’t have to remember, but you know you will never forget.

THE MIDDLE MANAGER’S DILEMMA

We did a simple management activity in class today. Though it took but fifteen minutes, it had my mind racing, for it underscored all of the goals middle managers have to balance. During this short activity, and in the midst of many management-related tasks at work, these are the following agendas that are criss-crossing my brain for priority and worry:

Building camaraderie with others at my level.

Clarifying for subordinates big-picture goals into tangible tasks.

Determining how the task helps my own career trajectory.

Disciplining slackers.

Ensuring that everyone participates and no one feels left out.

Getting the job done.

Having fun.

Improving the overall organization.

Making subordinates feel good about their work.

Pleasing my superior.

Pushing subordinates to stretch and grow professionally.

Unleashing my creative side.

That’s a lot of things to keep track of! Such is the dilemma of the middle manager. If only I had the power of the top dogs, or could be like the bottom dogs and just do my job and go home.

But the good leaders understand this kind of meta-management; they can step outside of the immediate pressures and see all of those dynamics listed above and orchestrate them in ways that improve themselves and others and add value to their organizations. I too hope to be able to think and act this way.

THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS

I met a friend at Wharton’s new building, Huntsman Hall, this evening. While I was waiting for him, I whipped out a news magazine and caught up on my current events. But I couldn’t help but take in the flurry of students darting in and out of the building. I’d like to record some of my observations, because they provide a fascinating contrast to the Wharton I remember when I first stepped on campus in 1991.

Everyone seemed in a hurry. Everyone seemed confident. Everyone was well dressed. Most of the people walking by themselves were chattering away on cell phones. Among the languages I could identify, I picked up Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, and Korean. Taken together, the whole scene in the lobby seemed like a beehive: a driven, cheerful, multiethnic beehive.

Me, circa 1991, would have been downright frightened by such a scene. The scene back then seemed much more sedate, much dourer, much more insecure. Technology back then meant doing complicated things on Microsoft Excel. And I believe a foreign language requirement was a new thing for the school back then.

I have seen the future of business, and I am impressed. And a little intimidated. But mostly excited to see that our future business leadership will be so techno-savvy, so cosmopolitan, and so multi-hued.

WHAT I CAN’T BLOG ABOUT

So many blog-worthy things happen on any given day. But I can’t always blog about them. To do so would be to inappropriately share topics that have been broached with me privately, to paint an incomplete and therefore unfair picture of someone in my life, even to border on gossip.

I have certainly been tempted to blog anyway. For it is these side conversations, these interpersonal conflicts, these juicy details that are often most interesting. It makes me appreciate even more those few media outlets that avoid the temptation to dish the dirt and that make sure to get the facts straight before jumping to conclusions.

I blog to process my thoughts. But my blog is a public document. And so when it comes to things I need to process that ought not be read by others, that’s when my private journal gets my attention. Even and especially when I am tempted to dish the dirt.

NEW MEN IN MY LIFE

Over the last couple of years, one of my best friends passed away, another moved to the Midwest, and yet another moved to South Asia. I knew back then that I was rich in strong male friendship, and I am glad that I did not take for granted those dear friends, even though I wish they were nearer to me now.

As 2004 became 2005, I knew I would need to replace some of that healthy male sharpening in my life. And I am happy to report that God has blessed me in this area.

I meet with some of the men in my church on Wednesday mornings for Bible study and prayer. I cannot begin to tell you how good it is for my soul to meet regularly with strong Christian men, most of whom are older than me. There is a lot of wisdom and compassion in these gatherings, and I am gladly soaking it all in.

I also meet every other week with one of my best friends from college. We were roommates for about three years. He is a dear brother in the faith and is on his way to becoming a pastor. When Amy and I first got married, he actually lived in our third floor apartment, and then when he got married he moved to an apartment barely two blocks away. And yet during that time that we are so geographically close to each other, we never seemed to make the time to catch up. When he and his wife moved to the suburbs last year, I regretted that I had not taken the initiative to see him more often, good as he is for me in his encouragement and friendship.

Well, the suburbs are not that far away, and earlier this year we were both thinking we ought to make the time to meet regularly to pray and to hold each other accountable in areas of sin that we seek to improve in. So we have done just that, meeting every two weeks to pray for and sharpen one another. It has truly been a blessing for the both of us to meet together with God.

Each new day brings different waves of grieving over old friends that have gone or are far away. But I am thankful to God for the new men He has placed in my life to strengthen and encourage me. And I am thankful to God for a final reunion someday, with all of the important men – and women – who have sharpened me and made me a better Christian.

THE REALITY OF BUREAUCRACY

Many of us who do well in school in terms of analytical things are used to receiving a problem and relevant info points, and from that crunching a solution. In math, you’re given problems and told to solve for “x.” In business, you’re given a case study with text and charts and told to decide between rolling out in New York or Tokyo. In engineering, you’re given the value of useful variables and told to figure out how fast or how far. Problem-solving is as simple as 1) input 2) crunch 3) output.

What I’ve been learning so far at Fels, an analytical-oriented government school, is that problem-solving in the public arena isn’t so simple. The input is there, and the crunching is there, in between problem and solution are many environmental factors (not environment as in tree-hugging, but environment as in context): political forces, bureaucratic systems, public opinion, and the media, to name but four.

It can drive you to cynicism to find this out: what gets done isn’t based on what’s the right thing to do but other, less noble reasons. It can drive you to paralysis: given all the bureaucratic and political forces in play, how can anything good possibly get done.

Or it can drive you to a wizened realism: the curtain has been pulled away and I see more clearly how things work. Now let me, being aware of these many forces, consider them and even use them to achieve what I believe to be the right thing.

What I’ve been learning at Fels, in other words, is that problem-solving in the public arena isn’t as simple as input, crunch, output; but that this complex reality is not cause for cynicism or paralysis but rather wizened realism. O for more like-minded public managers to join with me in getting the right things done in the right ways for the right reasons.

FAMILY ENOUGH TO FIGHT

Our office has had a spate of conflicts I’ve had to mediate over the last few weeks. Everywhere I turn, it seems words have been had, emails misunderstood, egos bruised.

I was frustrated and impatient about it all, but most of all afraid that we were going backwards as a team. Until I realized that maybe, just maybe, all this fighting is a sign of healthiness and not dysfunction.

Oh sure, there’s dysfunction involved. I don’t know about your place of work, but at mine we’re all a little dysfunctional. We bring our baggage to work and as professional as we are, inevitably that baggage spills over into our work interactions.

And that’s where I’m realizing this is actually a good thing. It’s like my wife and I, going on five years of being married, love each other enough that when we have a hard day at work, we feel comfortable taking it out on each other. That’s right: I have a crappy day, and I “bless” my wife by crapping on her.

Please read the last paragraph with a little bit of tongue in cheek. But the premise is generally true: marriages and organizations get to points where conflict isn’t a sign of dysfunction but an indicator that people feel comfortable with each other.

Furthermore, the sparks that are flying in the office also tell me people care. Work matters to them, and getting things done right, even if we disagree about what “right” looks like, is important to folks. As a manager, that warms my heart.

So while mediating conflict is tiring and ugly, I remember that we are progressing as a unit, not backsliding. I commend the fire in the belly of my teammates. And I rejoice that we respect each other enough to let each other have it.

THE NEW FACE OF RELATIONSHIPS

I’d read about Facebook in a magazine a couple of months ago, but had my first direct encounter with this phenomenon yesterday. We have a department in our office that currently has one intern in it. She has been pretty swamped, so earlier this month I hired two more interns. I excitedly told our first intern the names of her two new department mates, to assure her that help was on the way, and told her I looked forward to introducing her to the both of them.

Well, yesterday, she came by my office to tell me she had “Facebooked” them both, and found one of them. They happened to go to the same school, and through Facebook she was able to contact the new intern and they met up for coffee and really hit it off. Talk about taking initiative!

I wonder if we’re seeing the new “face” of how relationships are formed and maintained.

THE PLAYER OR THE GAME

Yesterday’s blog was pretty rambly, upon further review. I could’ve just said, “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.” As a Christian who seeks to change the world, I wonder how much of a player I should be and how much of a game-changer I should be. On the one hand, we are called to be shrewd as serpents, and to not be ashamed of the gifts and talents God has given us, even in secular things, but to use them for His glory. On the other hand, we are called to not always play by the world’s rules, and to forsake all things, even the things we are very good at, to be disciples.

So when it comes to the often slimy but potentially impactful world of politics, which is it? Or can it be both? I’m wary of so turning my back on the world that I cloister myself in a life that has no meaningful impact on this world. But I’m leery of so operating in this world that I slowly and subtly become conformed to its values. I have certainly met Christians who I respect who are clueless when it comes to reality, as well as Christians who I respect who are worldly to the point of disobedience.

Ultimately, politics is like all things on this side of glory: under the lordship of Jesus Christ, but influenced by worldly rules that we need to sometimes play by and sometimes stand against. O for wisdom to know the difference, and grace when I fail.

THE FOUR P’S OF POLITICS

In my Public Management class, our professor keeps making the same point over and over again. Every single class, the examples may change but the main point is the same. You’d think this would be annoying, but in fact I find it quite effective. Because the point is an important one to make, an important one to get, an important to fill out and look at.

That point is that while analysis and evidence are important to good public decisions, anything in the public arena ultimately boils down to politics. In other words, it’s not about finding or implementing the right answer, as if such a thing existed, but rather about value judgments and influence and persuasion; i.e. politics.

This may seem cynical but it is simply truth. It is naïve to think that politicians will get behind something because it is the “right” thing; after all, every argument has two sides, and each side thinks it is right. The political process can, to be sure, be slimy, but it is also necessary and, in many cases, just: various constituencies hashing out their views, culminating in a vote in which the majority’s will is chosen.

So if politicians don’t put forth solutions because they think they’re the “right” thing, what then are their motivations? To wit, I present to you “the four P’s of politics”:

Perks. Politicians get behind something if they can get something out of it, and stand up against something if they fear they’ll lose from it. According to our professor, perks can be money, the corner office, even a nice credenza. What’s good for the overall public good gets all too often traded for what’s good for the individual.

Power. Politicians support things that will increase their sphere of influence. Congress does this all the time, seeing as they have the power to circumscribe the process, budget, and staffing of practically everything governmental. Let’s just say that more than once, structural policies have been put forth not because they were good government, but because they resulted in Congress having more sway.

Publicity. Politicians will do something to look good in the public eye, whether it is being tough on terrorists or sympathetic to an embattled voting bloc. The common good takes a back seat to camera-preening, image-building, and other forms of campaigning.

Partisanship. Politicians sometimes speak the party line, literally, even when they might personally not go in that direction. I don’t think this is any different than a voter who hates a particular presidential candidate but votes for him anyway because of his political affiliation.

Please don’t misconstrue my comments as either justifying or attacking these ways. As I have learned more about politics, I have wondered how much of the game I feel comfortable playing. I am still figuring out the answer to that question, but at least I am learning the rules of the game.

WHY TERRORISM WORKS

Fear makes people do irrational things. Lead causes brain damage in babies and children, so for the last three decades, we’ve been trying to rid ourselves of lead, to the point that we have a no-tolerance stance on having practically any lead in anything. Never mind that lead has a ton of useful applications, and that we can use it effectively with practically zero health risk. We are simply unwilling to subject ourselves and our children to lead, out of fear that something bad will happen.

Vioxx was pulled off the market when it was revealed that it can cause heart attacks in some patients. Never mind that in addition to causing death, Vioxx has also been saving lives; where was the conservation about which one it was doing more of? Fear of taking a pill that would cause you to die led to public pressure to take a pill off the market that might just save many more peoples’ lives than it could have killed.

My point is not that lead and Vioxx have no danger to them. My point is that fear causes us to overvalue that danger. Fear causes us to skew our rational analysis of things, such that we do things that are simply not logical.

And that’s why terrorism works: because it creates fear. It causes us to act irrationally, from ordinary individuals all the way to the President. FDR may have said that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” but today we live in a much more menacing world. There are no easy answers in the war on terrorism. But may we at least respond to it correctly: with healthy fear, but not with irrationality.

AND1

(Excerpted from an assignment in my leadership class at Fels)

In basketball, when you are shooting the ball and you get fouled and you are still able to make the shot, that is called, “And One.” As in, “you get the two points for making the shot, and you get to shoot one free throw to get another point.” On the streets, it is the ultimate in attitude: “you can’t stop me, not even by fouling.”

Attitude dominates the corporate culture of the basketball sneaker and apparel company called AND1. Started in the early 1990’s by three PENN grads, AND1 has grown to a multinational company grossing $200 million in sales. Street-ball attitude drives this dynamic company, as evidenced by their audacious goal of toppling Nike as the world’s #1 basketball company. If Nike is the lumbering Goliath, then AND1 is David, but with brand new kicks and a little bit of a mean streak.

So it is a little surprising to find in Jay Coen Gilbert, one of the founders and the current Director of Product of AND1, a quiet but powerful humility. It’s the kind of humility Jim Collins finds in the “Level 5” leaders he describes in his best-seller, “Good to Great,” the kind of humility that immediately made me think of Jay when asked to profile a positive leadership role model.

Jay is a friend of The Enterprise Center, and through Jay AND1 has been a generous and steady supporter of our work with young entrepreneurs. I’d like to illustrate four facets of effective leadership humility that I have seen in Jay in the time I’ve known him. First, his management of his staff includes caring for them. I’ve spoken to AND1 people who have told me Jay always makes sure they have somewhere to go for the holidays, and invites them over if they don’t. As we learned in last week’s featured book, effective leaders are not detached but engaged, not apathetic but compassionate.

Second, Jay takes seriously the great responsibility he has over the wellbeing of so many people. He told me that this sensitivity was deepened when he first toured AND1’s production facility in Asia a few years back. He had already felt the burden of knowing that all of AND1’s eighty employees counted on him for their paychecks and for their ability to provide for their families. But then he visited this production room in Asia, and saw hundreds of people making sneakers and apparel. When he asked the local guide how many of these people were doing work for AND1, the answer he got was, “All of them.” He told me this trip to Asia made him all the more diligent in his leadership of AND1, because he knew that hundreds of people counted on the company to support themselves and their families.

Third, Jay knows when to lead and when to follow. A couple of years ago, while Jay was still CEO of AND1, he decided that he wasn’t the best person to be CEO. He volunteered to step down, placing the interests of the company ahead of his own ego. When I asked him about the move, he acted like it was no big deal: “The team was better with me somewhere else.” As we learned in last week’s book, leadership isn’t a title and it isn’t just for the person at the top to exercise.

Fourth, Jay considers it an honor to give back. I am often embarrassed by AND1’s generosity and considerateness, and use every opportunity to gush to Jay about how wonderful his company has been to me and to our young entrepreneurs. Jay always responds with his own words of praise for my work and his own words of thanks for allowing him to participate in it. “Lee, we consider it our honor and our privilege that we can be involved in what you do.” I am humbled and challenged by the seriousness by which Jay equates leadership with service and generosity.

In the spirit of today’s book, I want to talk about a “defining moment” that sealed my admiration of Jay Coen Gilbert as a leader and role model. After 9/11, many retail companies scrambled to form contingency plans and braced themselves for difficult months ahead. AND1 was no different; they suffered financially as well. But Jay’s response to this terrible tragedy was not to see it as a hardship to overcome but as an opportunity to help. He immediately organized a warehouse sale of irregular items to raise money for American Red Cross and other charities on the front lines of the post-9/11 effort. AND1 ended up raising so much money that they called The Enterprise Center and four other charities and told us they wanted to give us big checks, too.

I like to say that who we are when the chips are down is who we really are. In that moment, Jay showed who he was: compassionate, smart, optimistic, and generous. And that’s why he’s the kind of leader I seek to be.

BLINK BACK

I went and saw Malcolm Gladwell speak this morning. As I’ve blogged before, I was skeptical about the weight his book put on snap judgments, but willing to keep an open mind. As a disciple of Michael Lewis’ “Moneyball,” which chronicles the Oakland A’s’ ability to field a competitive team year after year despite a payroll that dwarfs that of many big-market teams, I was leery of a line of thought that rewarded initial impressions and discounted careful analysis.

I found his presentation entertaining, informative, and inspiring. And my fear – that “Blink” was saying the opposite of “Moneyball” – was unfounded. In fact, they’re practically saying the same thing. “Blink” does say that snap judgments are often amazingly accurate, but also that they can be horribly wrong.

Gladwell said something quite counterintuitive about how to improve decision-making: reduce the information. We’re trained to think that when we can’t make a decision, we need more information, and that bad decisions happen when we have incomplete information. Gladwell argues, rather, that bad decisions often happen when we have too much information, and that if we take information off the table, we can look at what’s important without distractions and make good decisions. He uses the example of the sudden upswing in female orchestral performers in the 1970’s, once auditions were conducted using screens so that judges could only see and not hear their candidates. Before the 1970’s, hardly any female performers won auditions, to the point that people were making all sorts of crazy arguments about the inferiority of women in musical ability. What was happening is that judging bias caused men to be selected over women over and over again. By taking away the visuals, thus giving judges less information, decision-making improved.

Billy Beane, GM of the Oakland A’s, would agree. Most baseball scouts make bad snap judgments about up-and-comers because they “look like baseball players.” They overvalue certain stats, like RBI’s and batting average and steals. The Oakland A’s make good decisions about drafting and trading for players not by gathering more information but by ignoring most of the information, focusing in on one singular stat that is the key to successful baseball on a budget: the ability to get on base. Gladwell would call that “thin-slicing,” or drilling down to the one thing upon which a good decision can be made.

So “Blink” has won a second look from me. And like his first book, “Tipping Point,” he has given me food for thought in many facets of life, from personal and work to church and school.