Maybe it’s because I’m in Chicago. Maybe it’s because we sort of recognize that having elected a black man to the White House definitively means we are moving toward closure on racial wounds 219 years in the making. Maybe it’s because with the election behind us, everyone—reds and blues alike—can laugh openly about the borderline criminal hilarity of Palin’s nomination as VP.

Whatever the reason, people in generally just seem a little less douchebaggy. And you know something, it feels good!

It’s like the Christmas season has arrived a full month early, and without the songs. I love the Christmas season. Maybe one day I’ll write about how I think the holiday has been nationalized; suffice it to say, I think “Merry Christmas” has gone the way of kleenex, cellophane, Coke, and rollerblades in terms of becoming a generic term for something bigger, regardless of your religion. To me, at least, “Merry Christmas” means, “Hey, Buddy, let’s you and I call a truce on the douchiness for a few days and just smile at one another. Cool?”

And that’s what I’m seeing now:

People smile easier.
People seem quicker to help one another out with small things.
People make more small talk with strangers.
People drive slower. (Apparently, not all manifestations of de-douchiness are good.)
People share.

I’ve spent a lot of time at O’Hare airport lately, which as an experience can be pretty douchebag inducing. I fell prey to it a few weeks ago when, on a Saturday morning at 7am, a woman decided that because I was working on an iPhone and she had an iPhone, too, we must be friends and I must want to stop what I was doing and chat with her. Boy, was she wrong.

But that was before the election, when being a douche was totally in vogue. Since then, I’ve noticed myself being more patient, friendlier, and more helpful. With the ORD meanderthals strolling from gate to McD’s… no, how about Corner Bakery… wait, is Starbuck’s cheaper for the same food…, I find myself offering advice like, “Your best bet is the tomazzo bagel from the American Bagel company,” or “Here, have my PowerBar.”

My friends are reporting similar trends. A restauranteur friend of mine says that for six weeks leading into November, nearly all the conversations in his joints were about the economy or the election. Now, conversations are still on the important topics, but they’re more civil and open.

Another friend of mine said that we’ve elevated our collective consciousness and are now vibrating on a higher plane. I have no idea what that means.

All I know is, we seem to be less douchebaggy. Keep up the good work, Barack!

Posted under Current Trends

Thanks, Kris Dunn, for this article about the state of HR’s technological savvy. It’s dead on.

Last week at the HRMAC show in Chicago, I had no problem engaging people with talk of training and coaching… but as soon as I showed video, or mentioned Twitter, reactions became decidedly… interesting: blank stares, questions of incredulity, piqued curiosity…

Dare I tell them that I’ve already landed business from my blog? That Twitter has brought me a network of dozens of people around the globe? That my book has made its way from NYC to Portland to Bangladesh thanks to my Web 2.0 network?

HR: ten years ago, the internet exploded on the scene. Now, the technology has finally caught up, making delivery of its promise possible.

If you’re in HR and you’ve ever asked “How do I get a seat at the table?” or “How do I get to be taken seriously as a strategic partner?” then go do two things right now:

1. Read Dunn’s articles.
2. Go online and start exploring. Forget the books, the tutorials, the classes. Just go online, set up LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter accounts, and maybe even one on Utterli, join HRMToday, and start experimenting.

No matter how many books you read, you’ll still be a noob when you first log on. Embrace your noobness and just do it already.

That’s what a strategic partner does. That’s what separates those “at the table” from “those in the hall:” the people at the table know when to stop reading, talking, and wondering, and when to get out there and just do it already.

Posted under Current Trends

Profits
ExxonMobil just declared record quarterly profits. For the record, I’m a fan of capitalism.

This isn’t capitalism.

Any econ 101 student can tell you that when a company has unilateral control over a key component of the supply chain, that company holds monopoly power and will exert that power to maximize profits at the expense of its customers… who are powerless to stop it. (When a small group of companies share monopoly power together, it’s called an oligarchy. Monopolies and oligarchies are anathemas to capitalism. OPEC is an oligarchy. DeBeers is a monopoly.) ExxonMobil—no matter what they say about not extorting profits—looks like, smells like, and acts like a monopoly.

I don’t blame the company for leveraging monopoly power; doing so would be like blaming a shark for eating. But not blaming the shark doesn’t mean that you don’t deal with the shark.

Speculation
What exactly does ExxonMobil have monopoly control over? Oil, yes, but these days, oil is not merely something you use to power an engine. With the falling dollar and weakening global economies, speculators were moving money out of currencies, gold, and other “natural hedges” and into the one resource that they knew the world would continue to need, even if it went to hell in a hand basket: oil.

So the value of oil is no longer tied only to its intrinsic value as a natural resource; like gold or platinum or a dollar bill, it now seems to have value as a form of quasi-currency.

And while this is not inherently a bad thing, speculation in oil for it’s “currency value”—by people moving money in and out of the commodity not b/c they want the oil, but b/c they want to the relative safety of owning oil vs. owning a different asset class, like currencies or precious metals—will cause price swings more wildly than they otherwise would because there are more people trading.

Well, with the world apparently going to hell in a hand basket lately, this means that ExxonMobil finds itself in the enviable position of controlling an asset that not only is dearly needed, but that is now dearly coveted relative to other investment options generally.

Dividends & Intentions
So what? ExxonMobil will pay out a $1.60 dividend on every share of common stock this year. Profits were $8.08 over the past 12 months; that’s a dividend of just under 20% of earnings.

ExxonMobil doesn’t know what to do with 20% of the money it makes.

Now, money is to a company what food is to a person. You need it coming in if you’re going to grow; if you’re not growing, you don’t need as much, but if you’re in a competitive environment, you probably need more (think Phelp’s 10,000 cal/day Olympic diet). Since companies generally exist in a competitive environments, their appetites are ravenous. Paying a dividend is—giving cash back to shareholders—is the equivalent of saying, “I’m full, can you wrap that half sandwich for me to take home?” Companies pay out dividends only when they’re full, or in economic terms, when they don’t think they can make use of the funds.

With all our environmental challenges (sorry, naysayers, the scientific jury is in: the world is not flat, the earth is not the center of the solar system, and global warming is not a fairy tale), ExxonMobil is saying, “We’re full, we really wouldn’t know what to do with another bite of food. Someone else who is hungrier than us should eat that.”

ExxonMobil is passing on the opportunity to take a leadership position in the field of alternative fuels.

ExxonMobil is not an energy company, it is an oil monopoly.

And as long as it insists on taking actions that, de facto, define itself that way, then it should be regulated as such.

Society has an economic (and in this case environmental) imperative to break monopolies. If ExxonMobil is not willing to cannibalize its own business for the sake of the greater good (and why would it?!), then society will have to create artificial competitive forces.

Posted under Current Trends

Ever wonder how a power-hungry tyrant gets himself to power?

Ever ask yourself, “Didn’t people see the signs? Why didn’t they stop this person when they had a chance?”

Yes?

Then read this, and then read this (original article; scroll down to the question from Arlington, VA).

Are you seeing the signs?

Ignorant people can only get power when others are willing to look the other way. When people feel a lust for power, or a hatred of “otherness,” or another strong, negative emotion, their judgment gets clouded.

It doesn’t feel clouded; au contraire, it feels quite certain. But make no mistake: it is clouded.

This is where we get terms like “blinded,” “caught up in the moment,” and the big one: “what was I thinking.”

Get it together, America… we’ve lost enough freedoms already. We need to be demanding them back, not handing over more. We need to be demanding accountability.

The politicians aren’t listening… but the news outlets are.

Call them.

Posted under Leadership, Current Trends

A recent blog post challenges the Republican presidential candidate to regain his honor. It’s a good post in that it highlights one of the dangers of democracy: s/he who can drive the emotions of the masses can control… everything.

But when we wring our hands about McCain’s and Palin’s dangerous stoking of anger, or worry about what use Obama would put his ability to captivate, we miss something big:

We’re already sunk.

We gave up our freedom 7 years ago. It’s gone. Worrying about these candidates is like worrying who gets to take the helm of the Titanic’s second voyage.

Here’s what I want: I want my freedom back. And if that means I need to live in a society that’s a little less safe, then I’ll take my chances. Because nothing—nothing—is worth my freedom.

My elected leaders have had 7 years to do something with the power granted to them, and what did they do? The lied. They cheated. They stole. They abused their power. And all I got was some illusory sense of safety (TSA? Really?), a neutered press (“real Americans” don’t challenge abuses of power by a wartime president, right?), and a world full of fear and hatred.

Want to hear something truly scary? Want to know how Hitler came to power?

(1) He whipped up fear, anger and hatred across Germany.
(2) He ran a propaganda machine.
(3) He made it unacceptable to speak up against him.
(4) He manufactured a crisis (setting fire to Germany’s seat of government).
(5) He blamed the crisis on an opposition party and had personal liberties suspended so he could effectively deal with the problem.

Does this pattern sound familiar?

It should. We saw a version of it after 9/11. We saw a 2nd version of it around the Iraq invasion. And we’re seeing another iteration of it now during the economic crisis.

To hell with the Presidential election. If the conversations I have with friends, neighbors, and acquaintances are at all representative, people are voting “against” a candidate this time around more than they are voting “for” anything. That’s a problem in and of itself… and a big one at that.

If you want to make a difference, don’t lose sight of what else happens on November 4th. Pay attention to your local Congressional race, and throw out your incumbent. I’m sure, whoever it is, you love your guy or gal, just like I love mine. But like QOS says, enough’s enough.

The president does not act alone. He acts with the express or implicit approval of a 435 member “Board of Directors.” Remember, the legislative branch is the part of government that makes the rules; the President is an enforcer. Representatives who gave up their—and by extension, our—check over the executive branch of government need to go.

Serving in Congress should be a privilege, not a job.

Give it to someone who will treat it as such.

For those of you who worry that without continuity, Congress won’t function, I have two ideas: (1) Would it be so bad to send Jefferson Smith to Congress en masse? (2) Don’t you think there’d be a staffer or two (hundred) to help with the Parliamentary procedures?

Posted under Current Trends