Enterprise Resilience Management Blog

Happy Fourth of July

In the United States, the 4th of July is a time of picnics, parades, and fireworks. It commemorates America's declaration of liberty and the right of individuals to pursue happiness. The Fourth of July is a day of patriotism. Unfortunately, too many confuse patriotism with nationalism. British-born U.S. journalist Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) said it best:

"Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country's virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, 'the greatest,' but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is."

I have traveled a good deal around the globe and have visited many countries. The landscapes and languages vary. The customs and cultures are different. But the people living in those countries have every right to be patriotic about their fatherland and protective of their families. I'm proud to consider myself an American patriot. The Fourth of July is generally a time when Americans reflect positively on the land that they love, but I hope they also take a minute to reflect on how they can make America better. I would hope citizens everywhere would do the same as they celebrate their national holidays. If all of us did that, there would be a real reason to celebrate and enjoy the fireworks.

Leadership Training

Blog reader Fiona King, who works for Job Profiles, a company that helps people select careers that appeal to them, sent me an email about a list of free online leadership courses that she believes would be of interest to readers ["The Manager's Handbook: 80+ Open Courseware Collections to Help You Be a Better Leader," by Jessica Merritt, 3 June 2008]. The list is timely. When economic times get tough, education and training are often the first things that get slashed as budgets tighten. I think that is a mistake and incredibly short-sighted. I'm a big believer in training and education. On-line training may be one way that organizations can provide some training and still watch the bottom line. Merritt introduces this particular list of courses this way:

"Although becoming a leader may seem simple, the fact is that there's a lot of consideration that goes into management. You not only have to stay on top of your team, but make sure that you're fostering communication, growth and productivity. Here, we'll take a look at a number of high quality courses that will show you how to take care of these issues and more."

I know few people who believe that "becoming a leader [is] simple." Leadership is difficult; especially if one does not possess the traits of a "natural" leader. I also believe there is an enormous difference between leadership and management. Merritt seems to think the terms are interchangeable. This is surprising since one of the courses on her list is entitled, "Management vs. Leadership." In that presentation, which asked 162 professionals to describe the difference between the two, M. Al Zoubi wrote:

"Management is working in the system; leadership is working on the system. Managers gain authority by position; leaders gain it by influence and character. Management is reaching goals; leadership is fulfilling a vision. Management cares about efficiency; leadership is concerned with effectiveness."

A leader must at times be a manager; but a manager may not be capable of being a leader. Moving back to the list, a quick review shows that at least a few of the "courses" are simply presentations looks filled with interesting or inspiring statements. For example, one presentation is called "Leadership Mashups: Innovation." My first thought was that it would teach one how to create environments in which the "Medici Effect" could take place. Unfortunately, it contained a series of motivational slides containing statements like this one from Albert Camus:

"Great ideas, it is said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear ... a faint flutter of wings; the gentle stirring of life and hope."

Not exactly the kind of meat into which one can sink his or her teeth and come away satisfied and certainly not what I would label a "high quality course." Not every topic on the list, however, is simply a slideshow. Some of the links lead to actual courses. Take, for example, the topic "Practical Leadership." That link takes you to an MIT Open Courseware site that allows you participate in a real course. Other links take you to case studies, like the link entitled "Defying Gravity." The course description promises, "In this course, you'll see how some leaders make the impossible possible." Unfortunately, the "case study" provides plenty of questions, but no answers. If you think you've had a bad day, however, consider the individual in the case study who had just been appointed to become the principal of poorly performing elementary school.

"You have recently accepted a position as a principal in the heart of an urban environment at an elementary school. Central office administrators inform you of the school's challenges over the past 4 years: 1) Drive-by shootings during the school day; 2) Prostitution rings within the community soliciting business around the school's campus; 3) Drug dealers conducting business on each side of the school; 4) The neighborhood 'crack house' is located less than 400 feet from the school; 5) On average, only 80% of the students attend school each day; 6) Only 25% of students are meeting or exceeding state test scores in reading or math; 7) Parents report they do not feel welcome in the school; 8) Students identify their school as a “'ghetto school'; 9) Teachers report low morale; 10) Community organizations within the school community report a disconnect with the elementary school; 11) Over 50% of the staff and faculty have left within two years; 12) Teachers are hired with no or less than 2 years of experience; 13) Over 75% of the students speak only Spanish at home; and 14) Past principals resigned from their position within 4-6 months of committing to the school."

Turn that school around and you have not only "defied gravity" you can genuinely label yourself an inspired leader! As you can see, Merritt's list of 83 courses varies greatly in content and usefulness. There are 13 links to sites that will help you "get started with learning about management and leadership." In addition, there are 6 links to sites that "will teach you why your behavior is vitally important, and what you can do about it." Six links take you to sites that ensure "your communication skills are up to snuff." Another three links take you to sites that "ask you to take cultural issues into your leadership consideration." Eleven links connect with sites dealing with finance. Four links connect with sites about productivity. The largest number of links (17) connect with sites that help you deal with people. As Merritt writes: "Without a team, you're not a leader, so learn how to properly deal with people through these courses." Four links take you to sites that Merritt promises will help you "learn how to properly build your management strategy." There are five links to courses on ethics. Another five links take you to sites dealing with project management. Four links connect with courses on how organizations work. Finally, there are five courses that don't fit neatly into any of the above categories (e.g., "Governance and management in the not-for-profit sector" and "Competitive information and disinformation").

Although I didn't visit all 83 sites for which links are provided, I suspect that there are some nuggets to be mined by corporate training departments or by individuals simply looking to broaden their general knowledge about leadership and management. Thanks again to Fiona for providing the input.

Memorial Day

Today in the United States Memorial Day is being celebrated across the breadth of the land. It is better known as the beginning of the summer vacation season than it is for the reason it was first celebrated -- to remember the war dead from the U.S. Civil War and eventually all wars. It was meant to be a day of somber reflection and reconciliation. When I was a child, I can remember the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) selling red artificial poppies around Memorial Day to help raise money for veterans. Although the VFW still sells them, I don't see as many people buying and wearing them. It seems to be a practice that has died as Memorial Day has become more of a "holiday" than a "holy day." The tradition of the poppies was the begun Moina Michael, a U.S. citizen who, who was inspired by a 1915 poem written by Jack McCrae titled "In Flanders Fields."  The last line of that poem reads: "If ye break faith with us who die, We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields." Later that same year, Ms. Michael penned:

We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.

On a web site by David Merchant that provides the history of Memorial Day, he writes:

"She then conceived of an idea to wear red poppies on Memorial day in honor of those who died serving the nation during war. She was the first to wear one, and sold poppies to her friends and co-workers with the money going to benefit servicemen in need. Later a Madam Guerin from France was visiting the United States and learned of this new custom started by Ms.Michael and when she returned to France, made artificial red poppies to raise money for war orphaned children and widowed women. This tradition spread to other countries. In 1921, the Franco-American Children's League sold poppies nationally to benefit war orphans of France and Belgium. The League disbanded a year later and Madam Guerin approached the VFW for help. Shortly before Memorial Day in 1922 the VFW became the first veterans' organization to nationally sell poppies. Two years later their "Buddy" Poppy program was selling artificial poppies made by disabled veterans."

Andy Rooney, once a war correspondent but now more famous for his 60 Minutes diatribes, remarked on yesterday's program that Memorial Day would truly be a day to celebrate if it marked the day when the world was able to end war and spare the lives of all the children who would have died had conflict not ceased. I fear that day is a long way off. So take a moment today and spare a thought for the valiant men and women who have been asked to sacrifice their blood on battlefields at home and abroad. Then help work for a brighter future in which promising lives need not be lost and hopeful dreams need not go unfulfilled.

The Importance of Willpower

To be successful in business, it helps to have some understanding of what motivates people -- be they employees or customers. Best selling books like Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs or Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point make their authors a lot of money by trying to explain behaviors that can be exploited by businesses. The whole idea behind advertising is to get people to buy things they might not actually need -- in other words, advertisers try to break down people's willpower. A new study supports what many people have long concluded, that people with strong will power are generally more successful. The good news, according to the study, is that willpower can increase with practice ["Tighten Your Belt, Strengthen Your Mind," by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, New York Times, 2 April 2008].

"Declining house prices, rising job layoffs, skyrocketing oil costs and a major credit crunch have brought consumer confidence to its lowest point in five years. With a relatively long recession looking increasingly likely, many American families may be planning to tighten their belts. Interestingly, restraining our consumer spending, in the short term, may cause us to actually loosen the belts around our waists. What’s the connection? The brain has a limited capacity for self-regulation, so exerting willpower in one area often leads to backsliding in others. The good news, however, is that practice increases willpower capacity, so that in the long run, buying less now may improve our ability to achieve future goals — like losing those 10 pounds we gained when we weren’t out shopping."

Aamodt and Wang assert that personal willpower (the ability to overcome the tension created between desire and common sense) is a zero sum game -- use it and you lose it. That is, people who demonstrate willpower in one area have less of it to use in another.

"The brain's store of willpower is depleted when people control their thoughts, feelings or impulses, or when they modify their behavior in pursuit of goals. Psychologist Roy Baumeister and others have found that people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task. In one pioneering study, some people were asked to eat radishes while others received freshly baked chocolate chip cookies before trying to solve an impossible puzzle. The radish-eaters abandoned the puzzle in eight minutes on average, working less than half as long as people who got cookies or those who were excused from eating radishes. Similarly, people who were asked to circle every 'e' on a page of text then showed less persistence in watching a video of an unchanging table and wall. Other activities that deplete willpower include resisting food or drink, suppressing emotional responses, restraining aggressive or sexual impulses, taking exams and trying to impress someone. Task persistence is also reduced when people are stressed or tired from exertion or lack of sleep."

As an employer, I'm concerned about the health of my employees because I want them to be as productive as possible. There is, of course, a fine line between generating enough stress to keep people motivated but not so much stress that task persistence is reduced. One of the interesting things revealed by the study is that what you eat can affect how you perform.

"What limits willpower? Some have suggested that it is blood sugar, which brain cells use as their main energy source and cannot do without for even a few minutes. Most cognitive functions are unaffected by minor blood sugar fluctuations over the course of a day, but planning and self-control are sensitive to such small changes. Exerting self-control lowers blood sugar, which reduces the capacity for further self-control. People who drink a glass of lemonade between completing one task requiring self-control and beginning a second one perform equally well on both tasks, while people who drink sugarless diet lemonade make more errors on the second task than on the first. Foods that persistently elevate blood sugar, like those containing protein or complex carbohydrates, might enhance willpower for longer periods."

There is a bit of discontinuity in the arguments being used. Consider the case of someone trying to lose weight. That takes a lot of willpower. If at lunch, that person uses a great deal of restraint in what they eat (thus lowering blood sugar levels according to the article) and then returns to a job requiring high task persistence, the remedy, according to the study, is to drink a sugar-filled beverage or eat a power bar -- thus countering the self-restraint on calories the peson demonstrated during lunch. The required remedy may not entirely wipe out the restraint shown at lunch, but it nevertheless puts the dieter in a quandary. The answer, it seems, is to increase one's capacity of willpower so that one doesn't have to artificially try to boost it. How do you do that?

"In the short term, you should spend your limited willpower budget wisely. For example, if you do not want to drink too much at a party, then on the way to the festivities, you should not deplete your willpower by window shopping for items you cannot afford. Taking an alternative route to avoid passing the store would be a better strategy. On the other hand, if you need to study for a big exam, it might be smart to let the housecleaning slide to conserve your willpower for the more important job. Similarly, it can be counterproductive to work toward multiple goals at the same time if your willpower cannot cover all the efforts that are required. Concentrating your effort on one or at most a few goals at a time increases the odds of success. Focusing on success is important because willpower can grow in the long term. Like a muscle, willpower seems to become stronger with use. The idea of exercising willpower is seen in military boot camp, where recruits are trained to overcome one challenge after another. In psychological studies, even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity. People who stick to an exercise program for two months report reducing their impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework. Other forms of willpower training, like money-management classes, work as well."

How often have you heard people say they would quit smoking but are afraid they would gain weight. These studies demonstrate why that happens. It takes enormous willpower to quit smoking, which means that willpower in resisting food or drink is probably lowered. The lesson that should be learned by those who want to quit a bad habit is that they should put themselves on a willpower capacity building program before they try to kick the habit. Aamodt and Wang conclude:

"No one knows why willpower can grow with practice but it must reflect some biological change in the brain. Perhaps neurons in the frontal cortex, which is responsible for planning behavior, or in the anterior cingulate cortex, which is associated with cognitive control, use blood sugar more efficiently after repeated challenges. Or maybe one of the chemical messengers that neurons use to communicate with one another is produced in larger quantities after it has been used up repeatedly, thereby improving the brain’s willpower capacity. Whatever the explanation, consistently doing any activity that requires self-control seems to increase willpower — and the ability to resist impulses and delay gratification is highly associated with success in life."

Increased willpower -- mastery of self -- can also bring personal peace as well as success in life. Thomas S. Monson said:

"The battle for self-mastery may leave a person a bit bruised and battered, but always a better man or woman. Self-mastery is a rigorous process at best; too many of us want it to be effortless and painless. Some spurn effort and substitute an alibi. We hear the plea, 'I was denied the advantages others had in their youth.' And then we remember the caption that Webster, the cartoonist, placed under a sketch of Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin: 'Ill-housed, ill-fed, ill-clothed.' Others say, 'I am physically limited.' History is replete with people possessing physical limitations. Homer could have sat at the gates of Athens, being pitied and fed by coins from the rich. He, like Milton, the poet, and Prescott, the historian, had good alibis—they were blind. Demosthenes, greatest of all great orators, had a wonderful alibi—his lungs were weak, his voice hoarse and unmusical, and he stuttered. Beethoven was stone deaf at middle age. They all had good alibis—but they never used them. Today’s world moves at an increasingly rapid pace. Scientific achievements are fantastic, advances in medicine are phenomenal, and the probings of the inner secrets of earth and the outer limits of space leave one amazed and in awe. In our science-oriented age, we conquer space but cannot control self; hence, we forfeit peace."

For anyone looking for personal success and inner peace, practicing self-control is one of the best strategies to pursue. We might not know why we can build our capacity to exercise willpower, but it's nice to know that we can.

The Race for a 100 mpg Car

Last month I wrote a post about Google teaming with the X Prize Foundation to sponsor a contest to send robots to the moon [Reaching for the Moon]. The X Prize Foundation, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit group best known for offering the Ansari X Prize -- a race between teams to send a manned rocket craft into suborbital space which was won in 2004 by a team led by Burt Rutan, has announced another prize. This time for creating a car that gets great gas mileage ["'The Amazing Race,' as Played in the Lab," by G. Paschal Zachary, New York Times, 16 March 2008]. Zachary claims that the X Prize Foundation uses the same motivation to achieve technological breakthroughs that reality shows like "Survivor" and "America's Next Model," use to get contestants to test themselves on television.

"Popular reality shows indeed provide a way to understand the logic behind a new wave of contests in technological innovation. Both types are driven by head-to-head competition among unknowns. And the winner takes all — and is celebrated in the process. A research agency for the government is using the model to spawn a new generation of driverless cars. Google is sponsoring a $20-million-grand-prize race to the moon and back for commercially feasible spacecraft. And this week, the newest contest — for a drivable, affordable car that gets 100 miles a gallon — will be formally started at the New York International Auto Show. Sponsored by the X Prize Foundation, which is also running the lunar contest, the car contest is really two in one. In 2010, there will be a winner in the 'city' category, which permits three-wheelers, and another in a category for four-wheel, four-seat cars."

The chairman of the X Prize Foundation, Peter H. Diamandis, believes that head-to-head competition is the only way to achieve breakthrough innovations.

"'Human beings do some of our best work under the pressure of competition,' says Peter H. Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation, based in Santa Monica, Calif. 'Cooperation is wonderful, but it doesn't lend to breakthroughs or true innovations.'"

I'll have to give that statement a lot more thought; but my initial reaction is that it is too narrow a theory to be correct. Long-time readers of this post know that I'm a fan of the Medici Effect -- getting people from different sectors together to work out innovative solutions to challenges. I suspect that Diamandis has no grievance with this kind of cooperation on a team -- he probably even encourages it. What I think he is saying is that faster and more innovative solutions are created by having teams (made up of cooperative individuals) compete against one another than they are by simply assembling a single cooperative team. Diamandis uses the same argument as Arata Kochi, a veteran of the global public-health scene, who insists that the enormous influence of the Gates Foundation is "quashing independent thinking by sweeping up the best scientists and keeping them locked up in a cartel." [See my post Venture Capitalist Philanthropy.] I didn't warm to Kochi's assertion because I feel that whenever the "best minds" get together they generate natural tension and competition even as they cooperate. In the end, I'm convinced that a healthy mixture of cooperation and competition is required. Achieving the right balance is a challenge. Back to Zachary's article and his explanation of why people think that contests can achieve this balance.

"The usual way that companies — and sometimes even government agencies — spawn advances is to employ staff members or contractors to create them. The market then rewards the winning products. The problem, however, is that the market sometimes delivers just incremental improvements, especially in areas of energy, transportation and health. Breakthroughs are imagined, but not mass-produced. Contests, which come with a deadline, aim to create a sense of urgency, conjuring up a 'race' mind-set that harks back to the cold war. After World War II, competition between the United States and the Soviet Union fostered races in space and weapons, for instance. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh made aviation history winning a $25,000 prize for being the first pilot to fly nonstop between New York and Paris. Why have contests proliferated in recent years? 'Tycoons have come into it,' says Stewart Brand, president of the Long Now Foundation, which aims to raise awareness on solving long-term technological problems. The X-Prizes, for instance, are funded by such wealthy people as Elon Musk, a co-founder of PayPal, and Stewart Blusson, who made a fortune in diamonds. The sponsor rewards only the winner. The contestants invest their own money, thus expanding the pool of capital devoted to the field. Taking a page from the playbook of professional sports, contestants can often attract sponsorships from those who want to benefit from publicity generated by the competition — publicity that flows even to the losing contestants."

Not everyone is enamored with contests Zachary reports.

"Skeptics say that prizes often merely confirm what has already been done in the lab — and that too often they shower attention on the contest's founders. Look at all the free advertising Google receives for its role in the moon-travel prize, for instance. 'Creating useful innovations ought to be self-rewarding,' says Robert Friedel, a historian of technology at the University of Maryland. 'If you need a prize, then maybe it's not an invention worth pursuing.'"

I'm not convinced that contests "merely confirm what has already been done in the lab." If contests encourage people from different fields to collaborate and combine their technologies in new ways, then they are creating a process where intersectional innovation can take place. Zachary asserts there are other benefits as well.

"Although the contests have flaws, they bring innovators into the open. That can inspire young inventors — and tip off venture capitalists to the next big thing. Indeed, V.C.'s watch these contests to get leads on whom to fund. 'These contests and prizes become a quality-control mechanism,' says Yogen Dalal, a managing director of the Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, Calif. 'Often the winners — and losers — don't have a fundable plan, but they've done enough to entice a V.C. to help them.' To be sure, the devil is in the details. The creation of a great contest echoes the lesson of the Goldilocks story: make the goal not too difficult, but not too easy, either. 'We have to find the intersection of audacity and achievability,' Mr. Diamandis says."

The entire list of rules defining what the 100 mpg car must accomplish isn't provided, but from the implication from the article is that contestants don't have to invent an internal combustion engine that can achieve 100 mpg on its own.

"In the case of the car competition, contestants must enter vehicles that are safe to drive and affordable to build, through means defined by a dense set of rules. The guidelines run 37 pages. As more innovation contests are introduced, the more obvious goals may already be met. For instance, there is an all-electric car made by Tesla Motors of San Carlos, Calif. — going into production Monday — that promises to achieve more than 100 miles to the gallon. But the Tesla car is only a two-seater. The complexities of creating the auto prize illustrate a wider problem of how to come up with ever more novel tests of human ingenuity over time. Mr. Brand of the Long Now Foundation predicts that contests will soon pursue 'things we truly think of as impossible.' Mr. Brand's wish list includes machines that defy gravity or that allow us to read the minds of other people."

Older readers may well remember Dick Tracy and his cohorts flying around the city in their anti-gravity buckets. I suspect a lot of kids back then couldn't wait until such things were available -- they're still waiting. Anything that spurs innovation is worth trying -- including contests. I, for one, will be interested in reading about the winners.

Venture Capitalist Philanthropy

Several months ago I wrote some posts about two types of individuals who have joined the ranks of the philanthropic [see The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur and Philanthropy at the Top of the Economic Pyramid]. The former blog discusses young social entrepreneurs who have more energy and drive than money, but want to make a difference in the world. The latter post talks about people who have made a lot of money thanks to globalization and now want to use it to improve the lot of others. New York Times' columnist David Brooks recently wrote about those who span both groups -- social entrepreneurs with money ["Thoroughly Modern Do-Gooders," 21 March 2008]. Brooks writes:

"Fashions in goodness change, just like fashions in anything else, and these days some of the very noblest people have assumed the manners of the business world — even though they don't aim for profit. They call themselves social entrepreneurs, and you can find them in the neediest places on earth. The people who fit into this category tend to have plenty of résumé bling. Bill Drayton, the godfather of this movement, went to Harvard, Yale, Oxford and McKinsey before founding Ashoka, a global change network. Those who follow him typically went to some fancy school and then did a stint with Teach for America or AmeriCorps before graduate school. Then, they worked for a software firm before deciding to use what they'd learned in business to help the less fortunate. Now they work 80 hours a week, fighting bureaucracies and funding restrictions in order to build, say, mentoring programs for single moms. Earlier generations of benefactors thought that social service should be like sainthood or socialism. But this one thinks it should be like venture capital. These thoroughly modern do-gooders dress like venture capitalists. They talk like them. They even think like them. ... They don't wear ponytails, tattoos or Birkenstocks. They don’' devote any energy to countercultural personal style, unless you consider excessive niceness a subversive fashion statement. Next to them, Barack Obama looks like Abbie Hoffman."

Brooks notes that most of these VC social entrepreneurs are used to being the boss and prefer the personal touch of small organizations. As a result, they eschew large organizations and are more likely to be found involved with single issue groups that capture their imagination -- as well as their enormous, talent, energy, and fortunes.

"J.B. Schramm created a fantastic organization called College Summit that provides students with practical guidance through the college admissions process. Gerald Chertavian, a former software entrepreneur, created Year Up, which helps low-income students get apprenticeships in corporations and packages its fund-raising literature in the form of an I.P.O. prospectus. The venture-capital ethos means instead that these social entrepreneurs are almost willfully blind to ideological issues. They will tell you, even before you have a chance to ask, that they are data-driven and accountability-oriented. They're always showing you multivariate regressions or explaining why some promising idea 'didn't pencil out.' The highest status symbol in their circle is a Rand study showing that their program yields statistically significant results. Bill Gates, who fits neatly into this world, came to dinner with journalists in Washington [in mid-March 2008]. He looked utterly bored as the conversation drifted to presidential campaign gossip. But when asked about which programs produce higher reading scores, the guy lit up and became a fountain of facts and findings."

Brooks then describes how this new breed of philanthropist differs from those of past eras.

"The older do-gooders had a certain policy model: government identifies a problem. Really smart people design a program. A cabinet department in a big building administers it. But the new do-gooders have absorbed the disappointments of the past decades. They have a much more decentralized worldview. They don't believe government on its own can be innovative. A thousand different private groups have to try new things. Then we measure to see what works. Their problem now is scalability. How do the social entrepreneurs replicate successful programs so that they can be big enough to make a national difference?"

Many of these social entrepreneurs are trying to get the U.S. Government involved in the mix -- with some trepidation Brooks notes.

"America Forward, a consortium of these entrepreneurs, wants government to do domestic policy in a new way. It wants Washington to expand national service (to produce more social entrepreneurs) and to create a network of semipublic social investment funds. These funds would be administered locally to invest in community-run programs that produce proven results. The government would not operate these social welfare programs, but it would, in essence, create a network of semipublic Gates Foundations that would pick winners based on stiff competition. There's obviously a danger in getting government involved with these entrepreneurs. Government agencies are natural interferers, averse to remorseless competition and quick policy shifts. Nonetheless, these funds are worth a try. The funds would head us toward this new policy model, in which government sets certain accountability standards but gives networks of local organizations the freedom to choose how to meet them."

Brooks is very positive about the rise of the social entrepreneur.

"These are some of the smartest and most creative people in the country. Even if we don't know how to reduce poverty, it's probably worth investing in these people and letting them figure it out. They won't stop bugging us until we do."

Not everyone is thrilled with the rise of the social entrepreneur; especially, the ultra-wealthy ones who operate on the international stage. The Economist reports that more traditional non-governmental organizations feel they are being pushed aside and not allowed to collaborate ["The side-effects of doing good," 23 February 2008 print edition].

"Is it possible—even in theory—for an organisation to work too hard for the benefit of humanity, or to devote too much money to the eradication of a deadly disease? To judge by some of the recent bickering between leading players in the field of global health, there are serious people who in answer to those questions would say, 'paradoxically enough, yes.'"

The target of this criticism is one of the people mentioned in Brooks article -- Bill Gates or more specifically the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

"At the heart of the argument is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has often been called the biggest philanthropic organisation—at least among those whose accounts and internal workings are open to public scrutiny—in the world. Since Mr and Mrs Gates established the charity in 2000, it has spent over $8 billion on improving global health, and won deservedly lavish praise for its efforts. But just as huge, powerful countries can be awkward neighbours ... lavishly funded organisations can sometimes cause resentment among other outfits which are struggling to do a similar job. And whether because of jealousy or legitimate concerns, the Gates Foundation has not been having such an easy time of late with its public image."

To be honest, the list of gripes published in the article do sound a lot like sour grapes.

"More seriously, perhaps, the New York Times this week published bits of an internal document from the World Health Organisation (WHO)—a letter from its chief malaria-fighter to the agency's boss, Margaret Chan—which alleged that the Gates Foundation was having a negative influence on research into killer diseases. The letter from Arata Kochi, a feisty veteran of the global public-health scene, said the excessive sway of the Gates Foundation was distorting research priorities and quashing independent thinking by sweeping up the best scientists and keeping them 'locked up in a cartel'. However unintended this effect might be, the charity's might was marring the process of peer review because researchers were now bunched into groups which were competing for Gates funding, and each member of such a group had 'a vested interest to safeguard the work of the other'."

I can understand how groups competing for funding would be reluctant to collaborate -- and that's not a good thing. But complaining that "independent thinking" is being quashed by "sweeping up the best scientists" doesn't make much sense. If the best scientists really are working together, I suspect that egos and the exchange of ideas would be generating a lot of independent thinking. Leading scientists don't get that way by being susceptible to groupthink. Not all Dr. Kochi's criticism is unfounded.

"Dr Kochi also challenges the foundation's recent proclamation that the total eradication of malaria is a realistic goal. 'Like going to the moon, it sounds really good,' he says—but he is still convinced that this dream is impossible to fulfil with the current tools, and that trying to do so may have bad side-effects. Such 'over-reach', in Dr Kochi's view, amounts to a costly, risky diversion of resources away from the realistic aim of just controlling malaria. He also says the foundation bets too much on particular treatments, such as the artemisinin combination therapy (ACT)—a combination of drugs based on Chinese herbs. Although ACT does work better than older therapies, there are signs that drug-resistant strains of the disease are emerging. Dr Kochi frets about what will happen if, under the Gates influence, malaria researchers put 'all the eggs in that one basket.' How substantial are these charges? It is plain that the organisation's wealth and targeted approach do attract clusters of leading researchers to specific areas; indeed, that is the whole idea. It is also true, argues Laurie Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think-tank, that the charity's focus on 'measurable outcomes in a short time, while a fantastic improvement on the past, exacerbates the devastating shortages of health-care workers on the ground.' Even Tadataka Yamada, head of the Gates Foundation's global health efforts, admits that in the past it may have focused too much on high-profile research and not enough on boosting entire health systems."

There can be honest differences of opinion about what agenda should be followed, but as I have stated before, whatever strategy is pursued it should take a holistic approach to the problem. The article, having explained the criticism, then lays out the counter-argument.

"But some good points can be made in defence of the Gates approach. First of all, argues Dr Yamada, calling this organisation an emerging monopoly is 'way off base'. The foundation often collaborates with other charities, and jostles with other big agencies and newish funders, such as PEPFAR (George Bush's AIDS effort) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. This week the White House announced yet another tropical health initiative: a $350m effort to combat seven neglected diseases. Dr Yamada also challenges the 'eggs in one basket' theory. Although it is true that Mr Gates personally has argued for the eradication of malaria, and that his charity does heavily support ACT therapies, the charity also uses a range of other approaches, like malaria vaccines and bed nets. Dr Yamada says frankly that 'we don't have to choose between one thing and the other: we have enough resources to do both.' That, of course, is just the sort of cockiness that rankles with health pundits."

The article continues by noting that for years the World Health Organization held monopolies in areas in which it now complains the Gates Foundation is encroaching.

"At least in part, the gripes against the Gates Foundation are the churlish growls of a jealous crowd of bureaucrats and labourers at less influential charities. Some people at the WHO, a Geneva-based arm of the United Nations, openly worry that the foundation is setting up a new power centre that may rival their organisation's authority. Such conspiracy theorists point to the foundation's recent grant of over $100m to the University of Washington to evaluate health treatments and monitor national health systems—jobs supposed to be done by the UN agency. Therein lies an irony. The WHO, one of whose captains now calls the Gates Foundation monopolistic, used itself to hold a monopoly in the fight against malaria, and it did a lousy job as a result. Indeed, Dr Kochi himself has been refreshingly frank about the WHO's poor record in fighting the disease. "

The article concludes what any reasonable observer who doesn't have a dog in the fight would conclude -- the world is a better place because the Gates Foundation is getting involved.

"A big new non-government organisation, crashing into the jungle like a young elephant, is bound to cause resentment, and perhaps bound to have unintended ripple effects. But without this elephant's input of new money and ideas, the battle-front against malaria and other deadly diseases might present an even worse picture, especially if the field were left to governments and inter-governmental bodies."

The rise of social entrepreneurs, even those who have more energy than money, is a good thing. Harvard University Law School just announced that it would provide tuition assistance for students willing to commit to public service. Other such programs would be a good way to encourage the rise of even more socially involved young people. The next generation will be equipped with more technological means of connecting large numbers of people than any generation of the past. Equipping them with a social conscience that matches their means could hold great promise for the future.

The Globalization of Happiness

I have often noted that globalization involves the flow of people, resources (like raw materials and manufactured goods), and capital. Ideas also manage to find their way across international borders. The Economist focused on one such idea, "an anti-poverty scheme invented in Latin America [that] is winning converts worldwide" ["Happy Families," 9 February 2008 print edition].

"Mention globalisation and most people think of goods heading across the world from East to West and dollars moving in the other direction. Yet globalisation works for ideas too. Take Brazil's Bolsa Família ('Family Fund') anti-poverty scheme, the largest of its kind in the world. Known in development jargon as a 'conditional cash transfer' programme, it was modelled partly on a similar scheme in Mexico. After being tested on a vast scale in several Latin American countries, a refined version was recently implemented in New York City in an attempt to improve opportunities for children from poor families. Brazilian officials were in Cairo this week to help Egyptian officials set up a similar scheme. 'Governments all over the world are looking at this programme,' says Kathy Lindert of the World Bank's office in Brasília, who is about to begin work on similar schemes for Eastern Europe."

I first wrote about the Mexican program referred to in the article in November 2006 [Programs that Fight Poverty] and discussed it again in April 2007 [Oportunidades At Home and Abroad]. Oportunidades has been described as bribery for the poor for changing their lifestyles. The decade-old program rewards parents for keeping their children healthy and in school. To qualify for the "bribe," people must live in extreme poverty, that is, on less than the equivalent of $2 a day. In addition to seeing to the health and education of their children, parents must also get personally involved by attending talks on health, nutrition and family planning. The Brazilian program is very similar to the one in Mexico.

"Bolsa Família works as follows. Where a family earns less than 120 reais ($68) per head per month, mothers are paid a benefit of up to 95 reais on condition that their children go to school and take part in government vaccination programmes. Municipal governments do much of the collection of data on eligibility and compliance, but payments are made by the federal government. Each beneficiary receives a debit card which is charged up every month, unless the recipient has not met the necessary conditions, in which case (and after a couple of warnings) the payment is suspended. Some 11m families now receive the benefit, equivalent to a quarter of Brazil's population."

Unlike traditional welfare plans, where end objectives beyond the survival of recipients are often unclear, the Latin American programs aim to create educated and healthy future generations that no longer require assistance. The beef against traditional welfare programs is that they foster dependency in current and subsequent generations. The Latin American programs hope to break the chain of dependency. In some areas of Brazil, the program is so large that it looks like a socialist system; but, results are starting to be seen.

"In the north-eastern state of Alagoas, one of Brazil's poorest, over half of families get Bolsa Família. Most of the rest receive a state pension. 'It's like Sweden with sunshine,' says Cícero Péricles de Carvalho, an economist at the Federal University of Alagoas. Up to a point. Some 70% of the population in Alagoas is either illiterate or did not complete first grade at school. Life expectancy at birth is 66, six years below the average for Brazil. 'In terms of human development,' says Sérgio Moreira, the planning minister in the state government, 'Alagoas is closer to Mozambique than to parts of Brazil.' Vote-buying is rife: the going rate in the last election for state governor was 50 reais. 'People come to us complaining that they sold their vote to a politician and he hasn't paid them yet,' says Antônio Sapucaia da Silva, the head of Alagoas's electoral court. As well as providing immediate help to the poor, Bolsa Família aims in the long run to break this culture of dependency by ensuring that children get a better education than their parents. There are some encouraging signs. School attendance has risen in Alagoas, as it has across the country, thanks in part to Bolsa Família and to an earlier programme called Bolsa Escola. The scheme has also helped to push the rate of economic growth in the poor north-east above the national average. This has helped to reduce income inequality in Brazil. Although only 30% of Alagoas's labour force of 1.3m has a formal job, more than 1.5m of its people had a mobile phone last year. 'The poor are living Chinese rates of growth,' says Aloizio Mercadante, a senator for São Paulo state, repeating a proud boast of the governing Workers' Party."

Human capital is important in any country. Brazilian politicians have decided that investing in that capital is as important as investing in infrastructure and they hope they are using the right portfolio to make those investments. The impressive growth rates in economically distressed areas are a good sign. This growth is being spurred by the growth of both businesses and consumption.

"Look hard enough and it is ... possible to find businesses spawned by this consumption boom among the poor. Pedro dos Santos and his wife Dayse started a soap factory with 20 reais at their home in an improvised neighbourhood on the edge of Maceió, the state capital. With the help of a microcredit bank, they have increased daily output to 2,000 bars of crumbly soap the colour of Dijon mustard. Nearby, another beneficiary of a microfinance scheme has opened a shop selling beer, crisps (potato chips) and sweets."

Improving economic conditions, of course, doesn't guarantee happiness (despite the title of this post). Even the U.S. Constitution only promises people the right to pursue happiness. When families are held tight in poverty's grip, they don't have the means to make the pursuit. Help people earn enough money to eat, put a roof over their heads, and take care of their families and you find more smiles and increased laughter. The Brazilian program is not without its problems -- not unexpected in any large government program.

"Despite the early success of Bolsa Família, three concerns remain. The first is over fraud. Because money is paid directly to the beneficiary's debit card, there is little scope for leakage. The question is whether local governments are collecting accurate data on eligibility and enforcing the conditions. Some 15% of municipal councils make the improbable claim that 100% of pupils are in school 100% of the time. Despite this, most of the money does go to the right people: 70% ends up in the pockets of the poorest 20% of families, the World Bank finds. Second, some people worry that Bolsa Família will end up as a permanent feature of Brazilian society, rather than a temporary boost aimed at changing the opportunities available to the poorest. Whether this happens will depend largely on whether Brazil's public schools improve fast enough to give all their new pupils a reasonable education. Since the scheme began on a large scale only in 2003, it is still too early to tell. Third, Bolsa Família is sometimes equated with straightforward vote-buying. That is unfair. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's name is strongly associated with the scheme—even among some people in Alagoas who are unaware that he is Brazil's president. But their gratitude does not extend to support for his Workers' Party. There are signs that mayors who administer the programme well get a reward at the polls while those who do not suffer. For a relatively modest outlay (0.8% of GDP), Brazil is getting a good return. If only the same could be said of the rest of what the government spends."

Clearly, the final chapter in this story is years away from being written. The positive aspect of the story, however, is that the program under discussion is aimed at creating some of the pre-conditions necessary to sustain development. Brazil, of course, is not a third world country. It is one of the stars among emerging market countries (along with the other so-called BRIC countries: Russia, India, and China). It does have enclaves, as the story suggests, that resemble conditions found in third world. That is why so many are watching how the program works there. If it works in Brazil's poorest areas, it should work elsewhere around the globe.

Tribute to a Friend

This past Friday evening Bill Eastburn a close friend of mine and my family passed away. Bill was a personal mentor, an investor in Enterra Solutions, LLC and founding member of the Company’s Board of Directors. His passing was both a tremendous personal and professional loss. He will be missed by me, my family and the Enterra Solutions team for a very long time.

Bill was a Great Man and a true Gentlemen. He contributed greatly to his community and the nation. Bill touched hundreds of lives throughout his career and helped many, many people, throughout his life – including me. Bill fancied himself a “country lawyer,” however he was much more than that self deprecating term acknowledges. He was a father, a business leader, a mentor, a philanthropist, a political leader, a prosecutor, a defender, and mostly a friend to many of us in Bucks County and throughout the United States. Before I describe some of the wonderful memories I recall of how Bill assisted me, Enterra Solutions and others, I thought I would give folks a quick recollection of Bill’s remarkable life.

Bill was a native Pennsylvanian, born in Germantown. He graduated from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut (A.B., 1956); and the University of Pennsylvania (LL.B., 1959). He was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1960 and enjoyed a distinguished legal career. He served as an Assistant District Attorney in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, from 1962-1965. During that time he also served as a Special Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. After leaving government service, he began private practice specializing in Banking Law; Business and Corporate Law; Environmental Law; General Contracts; Real State Law; Civil Practice; and Criminal Law.

He served as: the President of the Bucks County Bar Association from 1976-1977; the Chairman of the Delaware Valley Bar Officers from 1977-1978; a Member of the Pennsylvania Trial Court Nominating Commission from 1977-1979 and again from 1991-1992; a member of the Judicial Evaluation Committee from 1995-1996; President of the Pennsylvania Bar Foundation from 1996-1999; and he has served as a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association Dispute Resolution Committee since 1995. Bill was also a member of the Faculty of the Pennsylvania College of the Judiciary since 1988. He was active in the Pennsylvania Bar Association where he has twice served as a member of the House of Delegates (1982-1988 and 1991- present). He served on its Board of Governors from 1988-1991. Bill was a member of the American Bar Association, the American Judicature Society, and The Association of Trial Lawyers of America. His service in the legal profession, impressive as it was, pales in comparison to his service to others as a private citizen.

Bill devoted much of his time to public service. In 1991, he co-founded Americans for Native Americans (ANA) and has served as Chairman since its founding. He was also founder (1993) and Chairman of the Board of Voice of Reason – people committed to reducing gun violence without infringing on personal liberties. Since 1995, he served as the Chairman of Bucks County Commission on Violence Prevention Task Force and, since 1996, served as Chairman of the Bucks County Implementation Commission on Violence Prevention. He was a member of Board of Directors of Free Clinic of Doylestown Hospital. In December 2006, Bill was featured in Parade Magazine for his efforts to provide relief to victims of Hurricane Katrina. Although the victims of that tragedy lived far from his neighborhood, he felt their pain and rushed to relieve it. That was the Bill Eastburn I knew and loved.

He served on a number of Boards of Director in addition to Enterra Solutions’ Board. They included: Western Health Foundation, Gallup, New Mexico, where he also served as Vice Chairman; the Heritage Conservancy; and First Service Bank. He also served with Leo Holt on the Board of Directors of Jackson laboratories. There are probably more activities that Bill is involved with that I am not privy to. I’m sure these organizations will miss Bill’s guidance and advice as much as I do.

I met Bill many years ago when Beverly and I had moved to Pennsylvania from Washington, DC. I was introduced to Bill Eastburn by my best friend Chris Larsin. Chris and Bill’s son Billy went to Trinity College in Connecticut together (just as Bill did a generation before) and they became close friends. When I moved to Bucks County, I needed a local attorney for local business transactions and Chris introduced me to Bill Eastburn. Bill became my family attorney and he welcomed me into the business and political community in Bucks County. Being introduced to the business community in Bucks County by Bill Eastburn opened many doors for me. Bill introduced me to Jim Greenwood, our powerful Congressman, and he introduced me to Joe Conti, who was our influential State Senator. He connected me to many other business leaders at banks, law firms and other organizations. He also introduced me to the philanthropic community where we attended charitable events together. Bill always insisted that people needed to put something back into the community.

When I formed Enterra Strategies in 2001, Bill helped me get my feet wet and obtain some of my first clients. He introduced me to Larry Caplin at National Dental. National Dental became a large client of Enterra Strategies and its founder and CEO Larry Caplin and I became friends. In running Enterra Strategies Bill and I became close friends and collaborated often. In 2003, I decided to launch Enterra Solutions and early in that year, I brought Bill, RADM Steve Chadwick (who I met on the Pearl S Buck International non-profit Board), and about eight other close friends and advisors to the Chauncey Conference Center in Princeton, New Jersey. At this meeting I described to the group the concept for building a next generation company that would address the security, compliance and competitive challenges of complex organizations in a rapidly changing global marketplace. Bill was an enthusiastic supporter and I remember him and Steve Chadwick encouraging me to put together a business plan to organize Enterra Solutions to attack the business model that I described in the offsite. Three months later, Bill and Steve Chadwick became the original investors along with Beverly Brossoie, Chris Larsin, my doctor Lou Tsarouhas and Steve Mazlin.

Bill was indefatigable in helping me finance and grow Enterra Solutions. Bill and RADM. Chadwick joined the Board of Directors in the summer of 2003 and we were off to the races building a business whose technology and management practices had never been built before. A major testament to the quality of a person is the people with whom they surround themselves. Throughout the years leading up to 2003, Bill introduced me to his network of friends and acquaintances; however, as we began to birth Enterra Solutions he accelerated the introductions to a broader and deeper number of contacts in his network. In the spring of 2003, we made a trip to Newport, Rhode Island, to attend the Naval War College’s Current Strategy Forum. Bill and I flew to Newport on Bob Byers - a prominent local businessman’s – airplane. On the plane were Bill, Bob, myself and Constantine Papadakis, President of Drexel University. At the Current Strategy Forum we were briefed on globalization, many of the current activities of the U.S. Government, and the business community as they related to the Global War on Terrorism and International Security Affairs. It was at this Forum that I first met Tom Barnett, who was a lecturer at the event, and was introduced to us by VADM Art Cebrowski, President of the Naval War College (who similarly to Bill’s relationship to me was Tom Barnett’s mentor and unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago).

Most people in my business are familiar with the category of software programs that are called Link Analysis programs, which are a bit like the Kevin Bacon-centric game called Six Degrees of Separation. If you view Bill as a hub and his friends, colleagues and contacts as spokes coming off that hub, Bill was a major node, or hub, on the landscape. Without ever seeking fame, Bill was a star with a tremendous number of great people orbiting around the pull of his personality. I met and became associated with the following partial list of accomplished individuals by or supported by Bill: Steve Chadwick (I introduced Steve to Bill and they became friends), Marv Woodall former President of J&J Int’l Operations and leader of the team who invented the stent (introduced by Steve Chadwick and Bill), Constantine Papadakis Leo Holt (Co-President of Holt Logistics), Jim Greenwood, Joe Conti, Don Worthington (Penn National Bank Division President, Larry Caplin of National Dental, Mike Moss (international businessman) and many other bankers, lawyers, business leaders and philanthropists.

As a Board Member, Bill always offered great advice and counsel. He was able to navigate complex issues from an analytical, ethical and moral perspective. With Bill on the board, I always knew that I could bring any issue to it (no matter how difficult) and get a proper constructive and supportive response. Bill, along with the other Board members, was always there to “do the right thing.” That is an incredibly strong asset to have when you are creating a business from whole cloth and trying to rapidly scale a new organization with a complex business model.

Personally, Bill was a great presence at the annual Enterra Solutions’ Holiday Party. He would always wear his red, wide wale corduroy pants with green Holly leaves on them. We would sample all of the Wine Spectator “Top 100 $20 and under” wines and laugh and tell stories. One of his passions was his annual summer fundraiser for the Americans for Native American’s charitable organization that he and his wife Connie started many years ago.

Bill’s heart was always open to those in need such that when Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana and Mississippi, Bill was there to organize a relief effort that would become the model for community based relief efforts to come. As noted earlier, Bill was recognized for this effort by Parade Magazine in 2006.

Bill Eastburn was my friend. He was a wonderful man – a giant of a person – and someone who I will miss for a long time. His life was full of achievement; he used every day to move forward in all aspects of life. He leaves this world a much better place as a result of his accomplishments. I hope that he is happy and in a peaceful place looking down on his family and the charitable activities that meant so much to him. He meant a tremendous amount to all of us.

Merry Christmas

There is something about religious holidays -- no matter one's beliefs -- that seems to bring out the best in people. When it is a holiday like Christmas, with its emphasis on giving to others, it is particularly true. Charles Dickens, famous for writing A Christmas Carol, penned the following:

"I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

So despite your religious affiliation, I wish you peace, faith, and happiness as we journey together as fellow passengers in life.

Happy Fourth of July

Readers of this blog live all over the globe. For those living outside of the United States, you may not be aware that today America celebrates the day its founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, which declares: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." In these troubled times, we would do well to remind ourselves of the ideals that motivated the founding fathers and have continued to inspire others to offer their lives in their defense.

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was one of America's early poets and essayists. He penned the following on freedom: 

"It is not only true that most people entirely misunderstand Freedom, but I sometimes think I have not yet met one person who rightly understands it. The whole Universe is absolute Law. Freedom only opens entire activity and license under the law. To the degraded or undevelopt—and even to too many others—the thought of freedom is a thought of escaping from law—which, of course, is impossible."

As I have noted before, security and prosperity cannot be separated. Security, in large measure, is based on the rule of law. The rule of law, which inspires trust, is also the foundation of prosperity. Whitman continues:

"More precious than all worldly riches is Freedom—freedom from the painful constipation and poor narrowness of ecclesiasticism—freedom in manners, habiliments, furniture, from the silliness and tyranny of local fashions—entire freedom from party rings and mere conventions in Politics—and better than all, a general freedom of One’s-Self from the tyrannic domination of vices, habits, appetites, under which nearly every man of us, (often the greatest brawler for freedom,) is enslaved."

While this sounds a little preachy, Whitman's point is that we often impinge on true freedom by enslaving ourselves with things that don't really matter. There have been a number of books written about the pursuit of happiness and most of them conclude that beyond a certain level of wealth (a level well above the poverty line) the accumulation of more wealth does not translate into more happiness. Relationships matter more. Bhutan even measures it success as nation by its happiness index, not its GDP. Whitman concludes:

"Can we attain such enfranchisement—the true Democracy, and the height of it? While we are from birth to death the subjects of irresistible law, enclosing every movement and minute, we yet escape, by a paradox, into true free will. Strange as it may seem, we only attain to freedom by a knowledge of, and implicit obedience to, Law. Great—unspeakably great—is the Will! the free Soul of man! At its greatest, understanding and obeying the laws, it can then, and then only, maintain true liberty. For there is to the highest, that law as absolute as any—more absolute than any—the Law of Liberty. The shallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws, namely, the fusion and combination of the conscious will, or partial individual law, with those universal, eternal, unconscious ones, which run through all Time, pervade history, prove immortality, give moral purpose to the entire objective world, and the last dignity to human life."

The dignity to human life about which Whitman wrote is one of the things that motivates me to look for business opportunities in places like Kurdistan. Dole does not produce either freedom or happiness. Creating good jobs that can support families and undergird an emerging economy is as important an activity as providing security. I encourage you to take time today to honor those who are willing to sacrifice personal comfort and safety to help others seek "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Coffee for the Troops

The press of travel (from Kurdistan to Vienna to Beijing to New York) and business has, for the moment, delayed my putting together a more thoughtful reflection and analysis of my time in Iraq. As I noted in my previous blogs from the Edge of Globalization, the landscape in Iraq is much more varied than most people imagine. The attached picture (me looking through the window of a Blackhawk helicopter -- click to enlarge) shows what most people think about when they imagine the Iraqi landscape.

As this picture of the mountains near Dohuk (taken by Miguel Cruz and used with his permission) shows, parts of Iraq are breathtakingly beautiful. Mountains have always played an important role in the life of the Kurdish people. You recall that the Kurds fled to the mountains when Saddam Hussein turned his wrath on them following his defeat in Desert Storm. Mountains are such important geographical and symbolic figures in Kurdish life that there is a saying: Kurds have no friends but the mountains.

As beautiful as the Dohuk area is, I also noted how lovely the drive was from Erbil to Sulaimaniyah. This part of Iraq is mountainous and green. It's easy to understand why Kurdistan is a vacation spot. In fact, if the Kurds can maintain security and the rest of Iraq gets a handle on the insurgency, tourism could add millions of dollars to the Iraqi economy. This country has such a long and proud history and there is much to see and admire here.

Not only do I enjoy seeing new places, I enjoy meeting new people. One of the more interesting people I met during this trip was Jason Araghi, President of Green Beans Coffee. This picture was snapped just before we climbed aboard the Blackhawk helicopters shown above (which explains the helmet and flak vest). Jason's story is interesting itself. His company provides coffee for military bases, but that is not what he set out to do. This is how his company tells the story:

"During a business trip to the Middle East, Jason Araghi had the once-in-a-lifetime chance to bring Saudi Arabia its first gourmet coffeehouse, and opened the Art Nouveau Cafe in 1996. U.S. Army personnel at nearby Eskan Village caught word about the new coffeehouse, and soon after, invited Jason to open a cafe on the US Army base. Within months of operating at Eskan Village, the Air Force extended an invitation for a further 3 locations at the Prince Sultan Air Base, in Al-Kharj KSA. Today, GBCC Inc. serves military personnel in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Qatar, Uzbekistan, and Djibouti, Africa. The company has not only grown in locations, but also in its mission to support our men and women in uniform."

Jason, of course, is first and foremost a businessman and is out to make a profit, but his commitment to the troops goes deeper than simply providing them with a good cup of coffee. Green Beans Coffee mission statement is unique:

Every corporate mission statement reads like a litany of values too good to argue with, yet too ordinary to matter. Not ours. Our 10-year heritage of supporting those that put their lives at stake for our country is firmly rooted and non-negotiable. That heritage of caring is the foundation of our operating philosophy.

At Green Beans Coffee Worldcafè, we:

• Believe that community is cultivated over a cup of extraordinary coffee or tea, as it has been for generations all over the world. Our stores are a place where community happens.
• Honor the brave men and women whose courage and sacrifice for liberty can never be measured, only remembered and revered. We strive to provide a refuge of peace and tranquility in some of the world's most dangerous places, and donate a percentage of our sales to organizations that aid troops, their families and their communities.
• Celebrate diversity in our products, our causes and our people because variety is the spice of life.
• Search the globe in our quest to offer the highest quality coffees and teas, seeking out organic options whenever possible.
• Support sustainable solutions, recycling, re-inventing and reusing resources in our operating practices and store design.
• Commit our collective brainpower, expansive optimism, outstanding good humor, zealous sense of adventure and passionate devotion to superior coffee to the good of our community and our customers.

We invite you to join us in our mission to build a sustainable world community together.

One of the reasons that Jason and I got along so well is that we are both trying to find ways to foster sustainable development and we are both optimists. There is much to be optimistic about in the Kurdish portions of Iraq.

Managing Watch Lists

Anyone who travels probably has a nagging fear (even if it resides in the back of their mind) that their name will mistakenly get placed on a terrorist watch list. It seems that one's chances of winning the lottery are better than one's chances of getting off the list once on it. That concern will grow along with the size of the list. Karen DeYoung, writing for the Washington Post, indicates that the primary database used to generate such lists has quadrupled since being started ["Terror Database Has Quadrupled in Four Years," 25 March 2007]. It continues to grow. DeYoung writes:

"Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the world -- field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and sometimes idle gossip -- arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, [VA] where analysts feed them into the nation's central list of terrorists and terrorism suspects. Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States. It is the wellspring for watch lists distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates, created to close one of the key intelligence gaps revealed after Sept. 11, 2001: the failure of federal agencies to share what they knew about al-Qaeda operatives."

DeYoung points out that challenges created by a burgeoning database confront administrators as well as those who names mistakenly end up in it.

"In addressing one problem, TIDE has spawned others. Ballooning from fewer than 100,000 files in 2003 to about 435,000, the growing database threatens to overwhelm the people who manage it. 'The single biggest worry that I have is long-term quality control,' said Russ Travers, in charge of TIDE at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean."

Clearly, a database filled with mistakenly identified individuals is a problem for security people as well as the poor individual who must needlessly suffer the consequences of being on the list. DeYoung comments on the obvious quality control issues:

"TIDE has ... created concerns about secrecy, errors and privacy. The list marks the first time foreigners and U.S. citizens are combined in an intelligence database. The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to 'horror stories' of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, Travers acknowledged. The watch lists fed by TIDE, used to monitor everyone entering the country or having even a casual encounter with federal, state and local law enforcement, have a higher bar. But they have become a source of irritation -- and potentially more serious consequences -- for many U.S. citizens and visitors. In 2004 and 2005, misidentifications accounted for about half of the tens of thousands of times a traveler's name triggered a watch-list hit, the Government Accountability Office reported in September. Congressional committees have criticized the process, some charging that it collects too much information about Americans, others saying it is ineffective against terrorists. Civil rights and privacy groups have called for increased transparency."

DeYoung's most amusing story about mistaken identity (for those of us not directly affected) involves the wife of a U.S. senator:

"Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said last year that his wife had been delayed repeatedly while airlines queried whether Catherine Stevens was the watch-listed Cat Stevens. The listing referred to the Britain-based pop singer who converted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam. The reason Islam is not allowed to fly to the United States is secret."

This gives a whole new meaning to "Oh, I'm being followed by a moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow." Of course, there is nothing amusing about the purpose of the list or having one's name on it. Take, for example, Maher Arar. He was jailed and interrogated as a potential terrorist, but, was eventually found completely innocent and released. His nightmare, however, is not over:

"Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, remains on the State Department's consular watch list. Detained in New York while en route to Montreal in 2002, Arar was sent by the U.S. government to a year of imprisonment in Syria. Canada, the source of the initial information about Arar, cleared him of all terrorism allegations last September -- three years after his release -- and has since authorized $9 million in compensation."

Mistakenly getting on a watch list is equivalent to having one's identity stolen and it is just as difficult to get the mistake cleared up. One of the problems is how TIDE works.

"TIDE is a vacuum cleaner for both proven and unproven information, and its managers disclaim responsibility for how other agencies use the data."

The challenge faced by those maintaining the lists is that prevention requires intelligence agencies to cast a wide net, which means that it cannot ignore unproven information. It should, however, have a better and faster way of clearing names from the list that don't belong there. Travers says that if you have a good idea for how to do this, get in touch in with him.

"The electronic journey a piece of terrorism data takes from an intelligence outpost to an airline counter is interrupted at several points for analysis and condensation. ... It arrives electronically as names to be added or as additional information about people already in the system. The 80 TIDE analysts get 'thousands of messages a day,' Travers said, much of the data 'fragmentary,' 'inconsistent' and 'sometimes just flat-out wrong.' Often the analysts go back to the intelligence agencies for details. 'Sometimes you'll get sort of corroborating information,' he said, 'but many times you're not going to get much. What we use here, rightly or wrongly, is a reasonable-suspicion standard.' Each TIDE listee is given a number, and statistics are kept on nationality and ethnic and religious groups. Some files include aliases and sightings, and others are just a full or partial name, perhaps with a sketchy biography. Sunni and Shiite Muslims are the fastest-growing categories in a database whose entries include Saudi financiers and Colombian revolutionaries. U.S. citizens -- who Travers said make up less than 5 percent of listings -- are included if an 'international terrorism nexus' is established. Every night at 10, TIDE dumps an unclassified version of that day's harvest -- names, dates of birth, countries of origin and passport information -- into a database belonging to the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center. TIDE's most sensitive information is not included. The FBI adds data about U.S. suspects with no international ties for a combined daily total of 1,000 to 1,500 new names. Between 5 and 6 a.m., a shift of 24 analysts drawn from the agencies that use watch lists begins a new winnowing process at the center's Crystal City office. The analysts have access to case files at TIDE and the original intelligence sources, said the center's acting director, Rick Kopel. Decisions on what to add to the Terrorist Screening Center master list are made by midafternoon. The bar is higher than TIDE's; total listings were about 235,000 names as of last fall, according to Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. The bar is then raised again as agencies decide which names to put on their own watch lists: the Transportation Security Administration's 'no-fly' and 'selectee' lists for airlines; Consular Lookout and Support System at the State Department; the Interagency Border and Inspection System at the Department of Homeland Security; and the Justice Department's National Crime Information Center. The criteria each agency use are classified, Kopel said."

For organizations that receive the list, it's just that -- a list of names. That creates some of the problems.

"With little to go on beyond names, airlines find frequent matches. ... TSA receives thousands of complaints each year, such as this one released to the Electronic Privacy Information Center in 2004 under the Freedom of Information Act: 'Apparently, my name is on some watch list because everytime I fly, I get delayed while the airline personnel call what they say is TSA,' wrote a passenger whose name was blacked out. Noting that he was a high-level federal worker, he asked what he could do to remove his name from the list. The answer, Kopel said, is little. A unit at the screening center responds to complaints, he said, but will not remove a name if it is shared by a terrorism suspect. Instead, people not on the list who share a name with someone listed can be issued letters instructing airline personnel to check with the TSA to verify their identity. The GAO reported that 31 names were removed in 2005."

It seems to me that these people could be issued a special "passport," which would make traveling easier, remove the stigma of having to be checked by TSA every time they travel, and, at least, demonstrate some compassion for those who share a name with someone legitimately on the list. Letters saying check with someone doesn't demonstrate much concern for those caught in this kind of conundrum. The process is under constant review (and criticism) and I'm sure that any good ideas to make the process would be welcomed. Eventually, I suspect that something like facial recognition or other biometric will be used so that innocent travelers can be immediately cleared. Names can be changed too easily -- just ask Cat Stevens.

More On Continuous Partial Attention

In a follow-up post to the first of my two blogs on Harvard Business Review's 2007 Breakthrough Ideas [HBR 2007 Breakthrough Ideas, Part 1] ZenPundit Mark Safranski tied Linda Stone's idea of Continuous Partial Attention to work being done by Dave Davidson on visualization [Information Velocity: Knowledge Opportunities or White Noise?]. Safranski writes:

"It occurred to me from Stone's use of the term 'scanning' that 'continuous partial attention' is a behavior that probably has a strong evolutionary base as it would offer obvious survival advantages to early humans who manifested that kind of alert and reactive perception to minor changes in the immediate environment. A behavior that can be relaxed when we are in locales where our need for safety and security are relatively assured norms. Scanning for information in Continuous Partial attention increases the velocity of information flow to the brain and we would be constantly assessing the value of the given information in terms of 'spending' our attention by increasing our focused concentration and going 'deeper.' Judiciously practiced, continuous partial attention would yield certain efficiencies in terms of time saved and increased probability for generating bursts of insight. These would be moments where real learning could potentially take place, opportunities to acquire or, add to, useful knowledge."

When Mark talks about "survival advantages" of being good at continuous partial attention, I conjure up images from Animal Planet's most successful show Meerkat Manor. Meerkat survival depends on avoiding or confronting threats as a combined group which requires individual attention, connectivity, and combined action.  As a result, Meerkats constantly scan the sky, sniff the air, listen for nearby noises, and visually sweep the surrounding area from as high a perch as they can achieve -- all the while being aware where other members of their group are foraging and where the nearest bolt hole is located. Some group members are better at this continuous partial attention than others and they become extremely valuable to the group as a whole. Dave Davidson's believes we can enhance our CPA ability (even if we're not naturally gifted at it) through innovative visualization [Who Is Linda Stone and why should we listen to her?] Dave writes:

"It has been my passion since I began posting on this blog 10 months ago to seek ways to provide solutions to this dilemma, solutions which I believe rest on the ideal developed years ago by the architect Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe. His axiom 'Less is more' is my guiding principle. As I find useful tools for compressing and synthesizing the chaos of content on the Internet I will share them with you."

In the past I have referred to challenges like continuous partial attention as part of a complexity gap. It is a challenge that confronts many large organizations, not just individuals. It is an even larger challenge when information from one organization must be shared with another. The best example of this, perhaps, is how information is provided by the intelligence community to fighting forces. How much information should be pushed to fighters (e.g., an anti-aircraft missile has just been fired at your aircraft!) and how much information should be pulled up by the fighters themselves (e.g., is the movement of fishing dhows into this part of the ocean typical behavior this time of year?). In other words, how do you deal with the challenge of providing what the fighter thinks he needs to know as opposed to what do others think he should know? Davidson is correct that proper visualization can go a long ways towards solving this challenge. When the USS Vincennes mistakenly shot down an Iranian airliner, it was engaged in a hot exchange with small boats and thought that the airliner was a military aircraft coming to join the fray. A good visual display would have prevented the tragedy. Had, for example, a computer display showing known commercial flight routes with airplane icons showing whether they were climbing or descending been available, the officer who made the decision to fire could have ascertained the information he had been provided was in error. What the Vincennes had was dark screens filled with green numbers that were constantly changing that were misinterpreted in a tense situation of information overload.

Not all learners, however, are visual learners. When Enterra Solutions addressed this problem, we developed Transparent Intelligent Interfaces that provide information to decision makers in the form they prefer. It continually updates the data the decision maker wants and provides alerts for information he requires but only on an exceptional basis. The name of Davidson's blog [Thoughts Illustrated] is a good example of how words can be used as effectively as pictures to conjure up clear mental images of what is being discussed. A blending of visualization, numerical data, and words (analogies, metaphors, etc.) ultimately provides the best learning environment and helps reduce (but will never eliminate) the continuous partial attention problem.

Connecting the Dots in the Criminal Justice System

On the heels of the 9/11 attacks, intelligence and law enforcement organizations were criticized for not sharing information. The challenge of collecting, correlating, and analyzing mountains of data is daunting and requires automation to make it as effective as possible. A Washington Post article by Theresa Vargas on the difficulties of tracking criminals (even after they have been caught and taken into custody) demonstrates why connecting-the-dots is so difficult ["Inmate Tracking System Breeds Errors," 19 Sep 2006]. Vargas begins her article with the following story:

Christopher T. Broady appeared last week on a wanted poster under the words printed in bold: "PRISONER ESCAPE." But he didn't escape. He didn't even run. Instead, the accused killer was allowed to walk out of the Prince William County jail in a moment of confusion between court and jail officials.

Ouch! I'm pleased to report that Broady was reapprehended. Although Broady's case is not the norm, the conditions that created his "jail break" are not that unusual. Consider the flip side of that scenario -- being kept in jail longer than you were supposed to be. That is exactly what happened to another inmate.

Months earlier, the same jail had kept another inmate, Fernando Cruz, confined two months too long. The problem, officials said, was that his last name was listed in court computers as "Antonio Cruz." To the jail, it was just "Cruz."

Vargas points out that criminal justice systems across the country face similar problems, but some do a better job than others. Problems most often arise when human errors cause misidentification of prisoners.

For some, it can create a situation in which a deleted hyphen or a "Smith" spelled "Smyth" can mean an inmate's jail records won't match the court records. The growing immigrant population is particularly susceptible because of the les