Naïve/Naïveté

I’ve been reading David Halberstam’s The Fifties. It is a fascinating look at a decade I think we tend to take for granted.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I started reading it to get a better understanding of the background to Mad Men. The show about the lives of the ad men (and women) of Sterling Cooper is set in the sixties, but it is pretty commonly accepted that the early years of the sixties were, in many ways, an extension of the fifties. Many people mark the Kennedy assassination (the anniversary of which was yesterday) as the official death of fifties innocence and the beginning of the sixties awakening.

I’m embarrassed, too, and more than a little, at my own naïveté regarding certain realities in the world. This embarrassment stems from my own history. You see, I was a History major in college. Granted, I was most interested in medieval history and early 20th century European history, especially the period of World War I and its immediate aftermath. My memory is woeful on these periods as well, but I found myself shockingly unaware of certain realities stemming from at least the 1950’s.

I suppose I’m not alone in thinking that the current political atmosphere in our country is unique to our time. I used to regularly read Glenn Greenwald’s column at Salon.com. There, Glenn and his readers discuss the putrid state of our media, the corruption of our government, and the forces at work in the Democrat and Republican parties. Like Glenn and many of his readers, I am often puzzled by the seeming contradictions in press coverage and the actions of our nation’s leaders. I keep looking for the reasons for why we are drifting further from the principles set forth in our Constitution. As Glen continually points out, we so often act contrary to it.

I have long been aware of the prescient warning President Eisenhower gave us on the occasion of his farewell address. The whole speech is well worth reading or hearing, but this excerpt is the heart of his warning:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

For most of us alive today, America has always been the world’s policeman. We pride ourselves that we stand watch over the peace. It has been easy for us to believe this because peace has so often been the state of our nation. Though we have a long history of violence in this country – our country was formed from revolution, challenged by civil war, grown through conquest of the native peoples, and maintained and strengthen by our wars abroad – much of our recent history of violence has taken place on other shores. We have been insulated from the death and destruction in which we have participated and, at times, exacerbated. With such good intentions and receiving such a paucity of information about our activities abroad, it is no wonder we show such great surprise when others question our behavior.

I’ve long questioned much of this, so I was really taken aback at the impact Halberstam’s analysis of the fifties had on me. In an example of just how relevant history is to our current time (and always has been and always will be), Halberstam relates the story of how we came to overthrow the Iranian government in 1953, setting up the Shah of Iran as that country’s new leader. Halberstam notes the ease with which we were able to covertly accomplish this task. Tellingly, in the aftermath, Halberstam claims that the world press and the Iranian people well knew that the CIA had been central to the coup. The American people, however, were in the dark. The American press had run the cover stories their CIA handlers had asked them to.

I think it is largely accepted by most people that our government works covertly. In fact, I’m not sure there are too many people who would argue they shouldn’t. We seem to accept this fact with a shrug, just as we accept the realities of the world – even if we don’t fully understand them – that make this necessary. Still, we comfort ourselves that we live in a democracy, that we are represented in the halls of power, and that this is a free nation of the people. So when I read these words from Halberstam, my eyes shot wide open:

“The national security complex became, in the Eisenhower years, a fast-growing apparatus to allow us to do in secret what we could not do in the open. This was not just an isolated phenomenon but part of something larger going on in Washington – the transition from an isolationist America to America the international superpower; from Jeffersonian democracy to imperial colossus. A true democracy had no need for a vast, secret security apparatus, but an imperial country did. As America’s international reach and sense of obligation
increased, so decreased the instinct to adhere to traditional democratic procedures among the inner circle of Washington policymakers. Our new role in the world had put us in conflict not only with the Communists but with our traditions. What was evolving was a closed state within an open one.” (371, emphasis mine)

And there it was. An explanation for all of the seemingly incomprehensible things the press says, the shallowness and lack of breadth of “debate” in the public forum, our insatiable need to launch adventurous military campaigns, the thorough lack of difference between the two major parties, the boldness with which our government ignores what the people want and responds to what the moneyed interests want. None of these things was entirely new in the fifties, but clearly a new center of gravity – one that magnified and expanded these tendencies – had been created.

As if to underscore all of this, Halberstam spends a fair amount of time on Richard Nixon. While his presidency spanned the late sixties and early seventies, his political teeth were cut in the late forties and the fifties. Why is Nixon relevant? Because a number of our older politicians got their start with old Tricky Dick, including another Dick worthy of that appellation: Dick Cheney.

When I was a kid in the sixties and seventies, the fifties seemed an eternity ago. It was my parents’ time, the past. As I got older, I realized that what had seemed an eternity was really just the recent past for people like my parents. Now my recent past is someone else’s eternity. And with each passing year, history contracts for me. The line connecting us to the past seems ever more relevant. And with each recognition of this fact, a little more of my naïveté falls away.

Entrepreneur

Welcome to the re-launch of btw2, where from time to time I'll choose a word and see where it takes me. Today's word is Entrepreneur.

I've had the opportunity, in the past few days, to reconnect briefly with David Gasper, founder and former President of Gasper
Corporation and current President of Initial Point, LLC. We talked briefly about our experiences at Gasper Corporation.

When I joined Gasper Corporation in 1994, I joined a team of about 28 employees. By the time I had left Gasper 10 years later, the company had grown to more than 80 employees and had been purchased by NCR. My experiences there were transformational. Gasper is where I learned business. In fact, I like to say that I earned a working MBA from Dave Gasper.

One of Dave's great strengths was his ability to find a balance between the aggressive use and development of technology with a cautious approach to growth. Dave always moved swiftly to identify and take advantage of technology changes, but when it came to his employees, he had a different approach.

Dave was always cautious about hiring new people. This caution, I believe, came from two sources. The first was his belief in a principle Jim Collins has identified as one of the keys to achieving sustained success in business: getting the right people on the bus.

Dave understood that the quality of his people was as important, if not more important, than the quality of his product. In fact, he knew the quality of his company depended on the quality of the people he hired.

The second source of his caution in hiring was Dave's commitment to his employees. He once said that he never wanted to hire someone he was going to have to let go. This spoke to both elements of his caution. He wanted to make the right decision, and he also wanted to make sure that the company was positioned to support the growth in personnel. He viewed a job offer as a commitment. This philosophy was a direct reflection of his belief in the role of business in a community. Business wasn't merely a money-making proposition to Dave. It was an opportunity to contribute to the community and give back.

Dave's caution in hiring was well rewarded. Gasper Corporation had one of the highest employee retention rates of any company I've ever seen. Dave provided numerous opportunities for growth. As his company grew, so did the opportunities. He also made sure that his employees had the support they needed to grow.

I remember how he prepared Jeff Davison years in advance so that Jeff could one day take over the day-to-day operations of the company. He moved Jeff around the company, making him the head of each department at one time or another to ensure that Jeff had a keen understanding of each operational area. Jeff learned his lessons so well, that when NCR bought Gasper Corporation, it wasn't long before Jeff found himself promoted within the larger corporation.

I keep using the past tense here, but the truth is that Dave continues to promote that philosophy in his current venture at Initial Point. I know that when Dave reads this post, he'll say that I'm giving him too much credit, but I don't think that is true. Certainly, his employees were a big part of the success of the company. Dave made sure of that by instituting programs like Open Book Management and ensuring that every employee understood and could articulate what his or her job meant to the company's bottom line. So, yes, Dave hired talented people, and they worked hard for him. That's true. But it started with Dave. Hiring the right people, providing the opportunities, and setting the tone for the kind of company he wanted.

Dave is right in one sense, though, because he is certainly not alone in the Dayton area. I've had the good fortune to know or work for other dedicated entrepreneurs as well. Travis Greenwood at The Greentree Group shares many of the same qualities. His dedication to his employees and the community are on par with Dave's. I see the same care in growing a company from Gary Nissen over at HealthPlus Technologies. In fact, Gary employs some former Gasper folks. Both of these local entrepreneurs understand the synthesis of technology and innovation with people and community.

When I think about these entrepreneurs, I realize that it isn't the big corporations that will ultimately save our economy. Too many corporations view themselves as too big to fail. They take from local communities and give little in return. Their defenders talk about the Free Market, little realizing that not only do we not have a free market (a fact they are either unaware of or despair about), but that Adam Smith's original ideas about the free market were premised on the idea that markets make us responsible to one another when they are local enough that we all pay the price or reap the rewards for our actions.

Defenders of the largest corporations like to talk about accountability, but their only definition of that word has to do with their shareholders, those faceless, nameless people who have invested only their money in the company and care only about their financial return. They are not shareholders so much as speculators. CEOs who have no history or sweat equity in the companies they run have little vision for the long run. Their job is to turn the quick profit so that their speculators can make their buck and run.

We need more entrepreneurs. The future of this country is in its small business operators -- people who live and work in the communities in which their companies are located. People who understand the value of their employees and their communities. People like Dave, Travis, Gary, and others.

Mac's Marketing Genius

As a former marketing maven, I'm constantly observing and analysing how companies market themselves. I'm probably very slow on the uptake on this one, but the other day as I was watching another of those "Mac and PC" commercials, it suddenly dawned on me what a brilliant ad campaign it was. The ads are funny and entertaining, but the real genius is in the strategy behind the ads. Apple is taking advantage of their unique place in the market by doing two things very well.

First, they are highlighting their superior technology in the form of their operating system not by beating us over the head with technological mumbo-jumbo, but by very simply personalizing (literally and figuratively) the experience. The Mac is cool, laid back, and hassle-free, while PC is geeky, uptight, and angst-producing. This has been the message of the Mac user community for some time.

The second element of their strategy is more subtle and just as powerful. They are taking advantage of the fact that PC technology has become a commodity. While Apple makes both the Mac and its operating system, PCs have numerous manufacturers albeit only Microsoft makes the Vista operating system. However, for all of Microsoft's marketshare in the software business, their operating systems have always been buggy, especially when first released.

What Apple has done very well, then, is to divide and conquer. Their ads attack PC hardware with impunity because their is no single brand being called out. It just doesn't make sense for a Dell or Sony to spend to counter the Apple ads. Yet they are able to attack the one monolith in their way, Microsoft, in its soft underbelly -- the legendary weakness of their operating systems. In one set of pithy, entertaining ads, Apple is able to dispense with both PC hardware manufactures and the largest software provider. Apple has managed to leverage their own great strength -- the integration of their hardware and operating software -- to fully take advantage of their market position as the singular source of the Mac brand.

This is a blog about writing, so why am I talking about marketing? Well, superficially, just because I wanted to. But on a deeper level, what Apple's marketing and ad execs did was to find and crystalize their message, and then present it in a very clear and entertaining way. The success of their "Mac and PC" ad campaign is as much about analytical, strategic thinking as it is about crafting the message. I can't think of too many things that are more relevant to successful writing than that.