Thankfulness

As a Christian, my sense of thankfulness comes from my relationship with God and my understanding that He has given me so much.  But you don't have to be a Christian to be thankful.  Neither do you have to be rich, healthy, or loved.  We are a spoiled people who seem to be ready to be cynical or mopey even amidst wealth, vitality, and comfort.  We ought to practice gratitude.  It doesn't need to be faked.  Tomorrow, when you fill yourself with turkey, consider yourself filled up with gratitude too.  Happy Thanksgiving to all. 

Hubris

Silicon Valley, where I'm from, is famous for its concentration of technology and innovation activity.  It is literally the envy of every region, including mine, that aspires to be a hub of entrepreneurship.

I could go on at length about what is the special sauce that is Silicon Valley, but one cause and/or effect of what makes Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is this notion that the world is out there to be changed radically.  The quintessential Silicon Valley aspires not only to billion dollar valuations but to creating something that will fundamentally shift how people live.  So products are no longer about the products themselves but about their transformative power on everyday life.  Facebook exists not to provide a social media platform but to radically make the entire world into a more open and connected place (my paraphrase of their official mission statement).

What is interesting about this kind of mindset is how it is now being applied to arenas outside business and technology.  The du jour thing for a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur to do now is to tackle new realms seen as allergic to innovation.  Whether in philanthropy, government, or education, tech titans are making a big splash in dollars, initiatives, and rhetoric.

I largely applaud the efforts and even the chutzpah behind them.  But let's be careful here.  Much of that awesome energy emanating from Silicon Valley borders on hubris.  It is natural to think that if you were wildly successful in one thing (say, forming and growing a software company), you can be successful at something else (say, reforming public education), even if you can't.  It is great to think you can change the world, but not if that renders you incapable of having humility and deference in your toolkit.

Even worse, it is a short step to assume that your lofty ends justify any means.  This is the point made recently about Uber by a British American Project colleague of mine, Lucy Marcus of Marcus Venture Consulting: "There's a sense that you can do whatever the heck you want for the sake of building your business."  The USA Today article in which Lucy is quoted underscores the hubristic culture that is Silicon Valley at its worst: brazen, misogynistic, and bullying.  (Uber's latest taunt was to threaten to obtain data on the travel info of a female reporter critical of them to prove a "particular and very specific claim" about her personal life.  That reporter, Sarah Lacy, is pictured above, with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.)

There is a lot to commend about Silicon Valley.  We have much to learn from its awesome ways.  But it too has much to learn, and I worry if it doesn't think it has anything to learn. 

Lazy Linking, 140th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

140.1 Michael Lewis: billionaires are a--holes bit.ly/1xvKr3b @tnr

140.2 The economics of the high end sneaker resale market 53eig.ht/1swvv2z @fivethirtyeight

140.3 Philly millennials are sticking it out in more and more neighborhood schools bit.ly/1xZK1TM @newsworks

140.4 America's obesity problem, explained in 21 visuals bit.ly/1wPOhBi @voxdotcom

140.5 Inner city Philly teens hacking their way to apps that solve social problems bit.ly/1xXRVw4 @nextcityorg

Social Studies

Remember when we thought the Internet would render place meaningless?  It was once thought that if you could work from home, from a ski lodge, or from the middle of nowhere, people would scatter to the four corners and do their own thing.

Given the simultaneous rise of the knowledge economy, we now know the opposite has happened.  Brains seek out other brains, and humans are inherently social.  Which means that far from spreading out and being wherever we want to be, people are choosing to be together.  We are seeing a proliferation of co-working space in Philadelphia, city office space is doing far better than suburban office space, and regions that have robust mechanisms for encouraging formal and informal interactions among their top researchers are finding the most success when it comes to generating patents and securing venture money.

In my own life, I have enjoyed catching up with past colleagues, potential clients, and former students both in pre-planned meet-ups over coffee or lunch, or in serendipitous encounters on the street or in the bus.  Think of how hard this would be to do in the suburbs: a simple morning meet-up for juice and bagels would entail contending with traffic and parking twice, and you certainly wouldn't want to literally crash into an old friend while on I-95.

Just this month, I have had or will have 18 one-on-one meet-ups, and none of them involved more than a five-minute walk from my house or my office.  And, I have attended one "Junto" style group meeting and have been invited to two others that will take place next month.  I am better for all of these human interactions, both because the people I spend time with make me happy and because the greater interconnectedness leads to new ideas for my brain and new business for my firm. Who could've predicted this?

We've Got Next

Tonight I will be on a panel discussion co-sponsored by Next City, WURD, Al Dia, and Knight Foundation called "The University as Community."  You can register here. 

We've got a great group, representing Chicago/Cleveland/Philly, to talk about the ways universities engage in and partner with their host communities.  Living in University City, it's a topic I breathe in every day.  I hope you'll come out and join the discussion!

Growth Strategy

I'm doubly lucky that I get to do so much work in Philadelphia.  First, it allows me to be involved in important and interesting things in my own city.  Second, I don't have to live the typical consultant's life of living out of a suitcase, which is nice, since I like to be able to walk my kids to school in the morning and sit down for dinner with my family in the evening.

There's always room for more work in Philadelphia; it is the fifth largest city in the US, after all.  But as we seek to grow at my firm, we're thinking some of that growth is going to come by doing more work outside of Philadelphia.  Which means more travel.

Thankfully, even as we are becoming more successful in getting out-of-town work, much of that work still allows for breakfast at home and tucking the kids into bed at night (or at least one of the two).  Think of what's within an easy day trip of Philly and back, and most without the need for a car, no less:

* The nation's political capital and one of the great power centers in the world (Washington DC)

* The nation's financial capital and one of the great money centers in the world (New York City)

* Four state capitals (Harrisburg, Trenton, Dover, Annapolis)

* Four other major financial/population/tourism centers (Baltimore, Newark, Wilmington, Atlantic City)

That's ten legit hubs of potential business for us!  To say nothing of dozens of second-tier places like Lancaster, Allentown, and Jersey City, all of which could represent work for us.  To be sure, we're seeking work far and wide (you may recall that we've done a bunch of stuff in the US Virgin Islands, for example, and we're looking at something in California right now).  But it's good to know that there's lots to do in Philly itself, and in numerous nearby cities that are just a train or short car ride away.

Humbled

In my circles, conservative evangelical Christianity is not only uncommon but abhorrent.  Secularism reigns in these parts, and the gracious openness offered to religious people and religious issues does not extend to followers of Jesus. 

Though I am myself "one of those," I did not grow up in the faith and so I feel I am in a better position to get outside of our box and think about this in more neutral terms.  It seems to me that people tend to think in one of two ways, neither of which rubs well against the Christian perspective.  One is that there is no need for atonement/redemption/salvation, because humans are OK.  The other is that there is such a need for atonement/redemption/salvation, but there are many ways to define and achieve it. 

It strikes me that most people should be able to understand that there are these two ways to think about human existence, and that there is also another approach that says there are limited ways to define and achieve atonement/redemption/salvation, of which some may believe that there is only really one way to do so.  Given that reasonable people disagree about small and big things all the time, it shouldn't surprise folks when they encounter people who come at this from all of those different angles.

The particular bile directed at Christians must come from somewhere, then, besides just something inherent to this kind of disagreement.  Here I must jump back into my Christian box because when I wasn't a Christian I was never hot against Christians for believing what they believed, so I have no special insight as to where the venom is coming from.

Back inside my Christian box, I think I can see what the problem is.  In our minds, we are the aggrieved, simply adhering to and speaking forth what we have learned from church and the Bible, and incredulous as to why so many people are so furious at us for what we believe to be the truth, and life-giving truth at that.

What we don't realize is how little we have translated our salvation experience into the kind of humble and deferent posture that ought to mark our interactions with the world as redeemed people of God.  We know in our heads that what we have been taught is that we are all broken and guilty and dead and hopeless, and that it is only by the saving work of Jesus that we are made whole again in God and with God.  And yet how we live so seldom conveys any such relief or gratitude or joy, but rather evokes a conceited and arrogant and dismissive posture to those around us.

Most of those around me have not likely had any contact with a truly humbled Christian person to know what it is really like to have your life changed by Jesus.  Indeed, many of those around me have had bad experiences with Christians, and have taken in all the hypocrisy between what they profess and how they actually live.  Why wouldn't you react harshly against a religion whose adherents act so condescendingly and self-righteously? 

While involved in a Christian group during college, I attended a number of training conferences on overseas Christian missions.  Through those events I was introduced to the concept of "syncretism," which basically means grafting parts of your home beliefs onto the Christian faith.  I admit that upon hearing examples of syncretism among new Christian converts in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, I found them blatantly and obviously wrong.  Couldn't these new Christians see that what they were holding onto about their home cultures was clearly not of their new faith?

But it turns out I and other American Christians are similarly guilty.  We have metastasized our salvation story into something that resembles little of what we should look like if we have truly encountered Jesus.  We are far too dismissive of God's right to speak absolute truth into this world.  We are far too dismissive of just how far gone we are apart from divine resuscitation.  And, having been redeemed, we think far too highly of ourselves and far too condescendingly of others.  And finally, to top it all off, we've cocooned ourselves in a world of material comfort, somehow not only ignoring God's calls to radical anti-consumerism but patting ourselves on the back for deserving our fortune more than those around us.

Don't get me wrong: I love America.  I bleed red, white, and blue, tear up at the singing of the national anthem, and believe in the controversial notion of American exceptionalism.  We are the greatest nation human history has ever seen, we are the strongest country in the world, and we are most emphatically not on the decline and nor would it be good for the world if we were.

However.  America's DNA includes some dark strains.  We chafe against absolute authority.  We think that doing whatever we want to do and being whoever we want to be is literally our God-given right.  We think everything we have is by our own hard work.  We are used to getting our way, and to thinking that if we don't that something is wrong and needs to be fixed.  And we are not a humble people, when it comes to our own successes and when it comes to comparing ourselves against the failures of others.

That DNA has infiltrated most of us American Christians' way of life.  It is difficult to see it, admit it, or turn from it.  But until we do, we show nothing new to those around us.  Would that instead we realize how mighty is our God, how far we have fallen, how high He has lifted us up, and how little we have done to warrant such a rescue.  Then we might live joyful, simple, and humbled lives in the presence of others.  Then they might see that as good as happiness or advancement or possessions or comfort are, there is a life that is deeper and richer still.  Then we might speak of absolute truth and unexpected mercy in ways that do not put down others or elevate ourselves, but rather that give credit to Whom credit is truly due. 

And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” - Luke 18:9-14

Friday Night Lights

For someone who overshares as much as I do on Blogger, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, I am actually pretty cagey about my work life.  As a consultant, I am loath to tip my hand on how much I'm juggling because I want each client to feel they are my number one priority.  But, I will fess up and say...I am very busy with work gigs right now.

I still won't say how many.  (Sorry to each client: I can share that it's more than you.)   But it's enough that my work days consist of two things.  First, there are scheduled things like working meetings, client meetings, and networking events.  Second, there is unscheduled time, of which exactly 100 percent is devoted to doing analyses, generating narrative, and producing reports. 

I say "exactly 100 percent" because I am very disciplined when it comes to doing client work.  I take my work product, my deadlines, and my overall commitment to my clients very seriously.  So when I am on deadline, I do not distract myself with anything but rather am completely and utterly focused on the task at hand.  That means no checking personal email, no Facebook or other social media time-wasters, and not even keeping an eye on incoming work email. 

Which means that very often I get to Friday night, after a long week of work and a frantic rush home to feed the kids dinner and get them off to bed, and have an enormous number of work emails to catch up on.  And let me tell you, having work emails hanging over my head that I haven't had time to respond to, heck haven't even had time to determine whether they are in need of immediate action or not, that is stressful for me.

So Friday night, hunched over my work laptop in the comfort of my home office, is a great destresser.  The work week is over and I can systematically whittle my in-box down, get my week ahead organized, and otherwise climb back above water. 

Banging out emails and making work plans for multiple hours on a Friday night might not seem very appealing to most.  But my social psyche is such that I don't require going out and partying til the wee hours.  What I do need to stay sane is to stay on top of everything that is flying at me through my inbox.  And so after an entire week of slowly going insane, regaining my sanity on Friday night has become an oasis for me. 

Rickey Being Rickey

Apropos to nothing related to "musings," "urban," or "Christian," indulge me a little splurge about my boy-crush on my childhood idol Rickey Henderson.  When people learn of my love for the Oakland A's, usually the fact that I grew up in the Bay Area suffices for a reason why.  But if pressed as to why the A's and why not the San Francisco Giants, all I need is a two-word response: "Rickey Henderson."

Rickey broke in with the A's in 1979, just as a six-year-old boy in San Jose was going gaga over baseball.  I wasn't alone: all my friends dug everything about Rickey.  Check out this outlandish video and you'll see why:



Start with the batting stance, that exaggerated crouch that maximized two things Rickey was great at, which was drawing walks and hitting homers.  (Baseball guru Bill James was once asked if Rickey deserved to be in the Hall of Fame, to which he replied that Rickey could be divvied up into two players and both would make the Hall...that's how remarkable was his mix of power and speed.)  Needless to say, on the ballfields of my boyhood, his was the stance we emulated the most often.

The rest of the short video encapsulates the swagginess that was Rickey: big bat flip, head bob, collar-popping.  The long, wide, and slow turn to first base just slays me.  So what if that sort of behavior would otherwise warrant a fastball between the shoulder blades the next time up?  That sort of pimpin' was like catnip to us impressionable youth.

We haven't even talked about his outrageous base-stealing.  Even during an age of great larceny, his numbers defy belief - 33, 100, 56, 130 (!), 108, all before the age of 25.  The sheer brazenness, the head-first slides, the claiming of bases after breaking another record...again, all electric to me and other fanboys. 

Stories of Rickey being Rickey are legion.  (Man, I wish Twitter existed in the early 80's.)  My favorite was when a teammate affirmed Rickey's right as a veteran to ask for a day off from practice by saying that he had tenure.  To which Rickey replied as only Rickey can: "Tenure?  Rickey's been in the league for 16 years!" 

I could go on - we haven't even talked about the snatch catches, the gap-toothed smile, or the legendary workouts - but I'll stop here.  Like Iverson around here a decade+ ago, Rickey was the man for us early 80's youngsters.  I'll forever be an A's fan because of that.  But there'll never be another Rickey.

#ThisIsWestPhilly

Re: West Philadelphia, I was neither born nor raised, unlike the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.  But it has been my home for 23 (!) years, and I'm quite fond of it.  Twice in the past several weeks, I've expressed what my 'hood is like through Twitter, using the #ThisIsWestPhilly hashtag:

Read in my neighborhood list-serv this morning: "Person w/sawed-off shotgun was caught last night." Good to know. #ThisIsWestPhilly
— Lee Huang (@leehuang) October 22, 2014

I'm a 5-min walk from an Ivy League schl AND a fast food joint w/bulletproof glass #ThisIsWestPhilly
— Lee Huang (@leehuang) September 21, 2014

Do you see the common theme in these two tweets?  West Philadelphia is a confluence of things you might not otherwise see juxtaposed.  In the first case, it's crime on the one hand and a robust civic info network on the other.  In the second case, it's the presence of crime once again, not far from the presence of one of the world's truly elite institutions.

And that's my 'hood in a nutshell: a quirky mix of university and city, blight and beauty, crushing poverty and conspicuous affluence.  And hipsters, lots of hipsters...but also lots of baby carriages, skaters, Muslims in full garb, college professors, Chinese grandmas, and ambitious upper-middle class families.  We worry over drug corners, partake of Halloween parades and farmer's markets, and revel in historic architecture and transit access.  I wouldn't have it any other way. 

Recommended Reads, 18th in a Quarterly Series

Stuff I've read lately that I'd recommend:

My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry That Led to the Assassination of Abrahan Lincoln (Titone).  We all know the name of John Wilkes Booth, but this book delves into how the dynamics between him and his more famous brother and father factored into his fateful decisions.

Working at Play: A History of Vacations in the United States (Aron).  A dry but fascinating look at the evolution of Americans through the lens of the who's, how's, and where's of vacationing.

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food (Lee).  Ubiquitous yet mysterious, Chinese restaurants are delved into in this delicious account.

Beethoven: The Universal Composer (Morris).  A well-written and concise account of the story behind this stormy genius.

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window to Human Nature (Pinker).  Pinker is at it again, toying with language to delve into humanity and the many ways we express ourselves.

Plastic: A Toxic Love Story (Freinkel).  An informative and sometimes gloomy account of a now ubiquitous substance and what it means for our world.

Lazy Linking, 139th in an Occasional Series

What I liked lately on the Internets:

139.1 Which is deadlier: car crashes or car emissions? bit.ly/1qtGIxX @citylab

139.2 Isolation = N. & S. Koreans speak an increasingly different language bit.ly/1xlVj4p @scmp_news

139.3 The fascinating origin of common Jewish surnames read.bi/KHmz9C @businessinsider

139.4 Voters resoundingly voted out Tom Corbett, but will Tom Wolf be able to do any better? bit.ly/1sr9AHY @phillymag

139.5 A map of intensity of college football fandom in the US nyti.ms/1GCgpzR @upshotnyt

What Am I Working On

As has become my custom every three months, here's what I'm working on now at work. I won't repeat anything from last time that I happen to still be working on, and for confidentiality's sake I have to blur some of the details for some of these studies.

Qualitative and quantitative review of another consultant's feasibility analysis of a not-for-profit organization's re-branding efforts.

Economic opportunity associated with localizing a major academic institution's procurement of goods and services.

Food economy research at the county level.

Employment impact studies in support of projects seeking USCIS EB-5 funds.

On-call research work for a regional entrepreneurship support organization.

Economic impact studies on (1) a major waterfront amenity (2) a design-oriented event (3) a military base (4) a research institution (5) an arts school.

Quantification of the statewide economic and fiscal impact from major construction projects undertaken by community development corporations.

Determination of fiscal ramifications of a major university's proposed expansion on its host municipality.

Citywide review of bank lending activity in low-income communities.

Pre- and post-assessment of the effect of a major federal economic development initiative on the local communities it is targeting.

Tally Mode

For kicks and giggles, I went back over my October calendar and tallied all the places I went based on whether I walked, transited, or drove to them.  (Commuting to work counted - 1 per workday - but meetings in my office didn't.)  For each category, the first number is walking/running, the second is transit, and the third is car.

Work meetings/events/commute 33/33/2.  23 of the 33 transit trips are my daily commute, so my work meetings and events are largely arrived at on foot.  It helps to have an office right in the middle of Center City. 


Errands/exercise/chauffeuring 25/4/18.  24 of the 25 walking/running trips were for exercise.  Almost all of my car stops that month were for shuttling: gymnastics is in the suburbs, and groceries for a family of four requires a trunk. 

Family/friends/fun 18/2/1.  Church, coffee shops, and many other leisure destinations are within short walking distance.

I am by no means car-free, but nor do I want to be.  And I am by no means tethered to a car, as is the case in some suburban locations where nothing can be accessed unless you get into your four-wheeler.  I quite like my mix of modes, and that where I live and work lends itself to so many trips being done without the use of a four-wheeler.

China Growth Model

The ascendancy of the Chinese economy has been a story for a couple of decades now.  Extrapolate its almost double-digit annual growth over that time period into the foreseeable future, and you get it overtaking the US as the world's largest economy.  Insert panicky sentiments and hand-wringing here. Never mind that it gets harder and harder to grow at double-digit levels annually when you've been doing it for so long, or that there are some very real concerns about the ecological and social sustainability of the Chinese economic model.

But here's a Chinese growth story that may actually have legs.  I'm speaking of the rapid growth, which has also happened over the past few decades, of the Christian faith.  Let me just quote a recent Economist article at length:

"Yang Fenggang of Purdue University, in Indiana, says the Christian church in China has grown by an average of 10% a year since 1980. He reckons that on current trends there will be 250m Christians by around 2030, making China’s Christian population the largest in the world. Mr Yang says this speed of growth is similar to that seen in fourth-century Rome just before the conversion of Constantine, which paved the way for Christianity to become the religion of his empire.

In the 1980s the faith grew most quickly in the countryside, stimulated by the collapse of local health care and a belief that Christianity could heal instead. In recent years it has been burgeoning in cities. A new breed of educated, urban Christians has emerged. Gerda Wielander of the University of Westminster, in her book “Christian Values in Communist China”, says that many Chinese are attracted to Christianity because, now that belief in Marxism is declining, it offers a complete moral system with a transcendental source. People find such certainties appealing, she adds, in an age of convulsive change.

Some Chinese also discern in Christianity the roots of Western strength. They see it as the force behind the development of social justice, civil society and rule of law, all things they hope to see in China...One civil-rights activist says that, of the 50 most-senior civil-rights lawyers in China, probably half are Christians." 

Even if growth rates level off, at a certain tipping point this high of a concentration of Christians is likely to have an outsized halo effect on Chinese society.  A friend of mine once conjectured, about 15 years ago, that Christianity would have a window of opportunity in China, opening as the country opened but the closing as materialism took over.  I agreed with him back then but am starting to be more optimistic that even with great advances in wealth there is yet room for faithful Christian people to influence society in terms of things like personal morality, meaning in life, gender issues, social justice, environmental stewardship, and mercy ministries.  For the sake of over a billion Chinese souls present and future, I pray so.

Lazy Linking, 138th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

138.1 You can have >1 baby in China now, but too few couples are doing it b/c it costs too much bv.ms/1tofNZm @bv

138.2 Beautiful story about an ex-NFLer's family life (Ricky Watters' wife is a HS classmate of mine) bit.ly/1qi2G6W @nflplayerengage

138.3 Penn Alexander isn’t the only schl millennial parents are choosing in Philly bit.ly/1EabLa6 @hiddencityphila

138.4 Ta-Nehisi Coates rebuts Charles Barkley’s claim that blacks’ worst enemy is themselves theatln.tc/10ILtha @theatlantic

138.5 Josh Kopelman: UberX sends the wrong signal about whether Philly’s a good place for innovation bit.ly/1wgksxq @billy_penn

Huang Family Newsletter, October 2014

The Huangs cashed in two hotel vouchers this month, one for a family weekend getaway and one for just Amy and Lee.  Jada is still plugging away at gymnastics and choir, while Aaron is making strides at karate.  Amy kept her feverish regimen at work, home, and gym.  Lee joined two more local boards.