Above a steel spire. Jagged glass.
Here wildflowers spring from green grass.
Crickets sing their song of night as
Feet rest and paces slow.
The city pauses here.
Peace.

I listened to one of my all-time favorite Pink Floyd tunes a couple weeks ago – “Dogs” off the album Animals.  It is a rather grim portrayal of corporate America with some blistering lyrics that I just had to excerpt for a quick post (it’s about a 15 minute opus so just a teaser here):

“And after a while.

You can work on points for style.

The club tie.  Firm Handshake.

Sudden look in the eye and the easy smile.

You have to be trusted.

By the people that you lie to.

So that when they turn their backs on you.

You’ll get the chance to put the knife in.”

The entire song is amazing – very good story through the lyrics and David Gilmour’s guitar work is legendary.  Listening to it again made me consider my story and some of the people I’ve met over the years.  Like Holden Caulfield, I hate phonies.  Keep it real or keep it moving…. So many people seem caught up in the act, always seeking some edge, some power over the next guy. Although I have certainly worked on some of those style points in various corporate and societal roles, I have never done it for some devious end game strategy. I come with no agenda, hidden or otherwise.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of Dogs (a.k.a. snakes) in this world always looking out for number one, trying to get ahead by bringing others down. The goal for me is to figure out those clowns early on – before they burn you. Or at least before they put that knife in…. If you can outlast ’em the good news is most Dogs are insecure at their core and usually end up like the character in the song – “just another sad old man. all alone and dying of cancer.”

END

Here is a wonderfully simple solution to all of the people whining about traffic on State Route 32 and the need for a relocated SR 32 “Eastern Corridor” project to move forward. Ready? Move to Hamilton County or quit complaining.

You have selected to locate your home or business in Clermont County. God bless you. It is a fine place. You have lower taxes, a more rural way of life, and all the elbow room a person could need.  

I have chosen to live in Mariemont. I pay outrageously high taxes and barely fit two cars into a driveway on a postage stamp lot. But I do have my convenience to the city and shared green space with my neighbors, and for that I am grateful.

I need someone to now please enlighten me on what gives you the right to pave over my limited green space so you can have an easier commute for yourself or your goods to the urban core from which you have chosen to distance yourself. There are many amazing residential and commercial properties in classic Cincinnati neighborhoods and more coming online routinely. We seem to have endless development opportunities within a 10 mile radius of Cincinnati and OTR on the rise.

I personally think the absolute worst thing we can do as a region is encourage more people to live/work 20+ miles outside the city. We need to continue to pursue policies that bring people into the urban core which I will loosely define as Hamilton County and Northern Kentucky. Population density is a good thing, and public transportation even better.

If you want to talk about a rail option to serve the eastern suburbs better or widening existing SR 32 a tad I am all ears. If you want to pave over my parkland to serve yourself and your desire for more land with lower taxes, well, I guess I would eschew the ears and give you a fist or a finger.

Suburban sprawl almost killed our city. And now that we have something good going we need to be doing all we can to promote and encourage this momentum. We do not need to make living 30 miles outside of the city easier; we need to make it harder (at least with cars on highways).  Don’t let people in Columbus or those that abandoned ship now control our transportation policies. Come join us in Mariemont, Madisonville, Kenwood, OTR, Oakley, North Avondale, Clifton, Northern Kentucky, etc.  Locate your home or business here and enjoy what we have to offer.  Or stay in Clermont County if you wish – perfectly fine. Just no way you’re going to convince me that you have some constitutional right to an easier commute or trip to the Reds game. Deal with the traffic you helped create when you located there.  I’ll deal with my neighbors.

In April, the news broke about the massive failure by General Motors to recall vehicles for a faulty ignition switch. I had some strong thoughts on the topic but got lazy on vacation and never wrote them down in a cohesive way. I recently dusted off my notes when the WSJ published a piece Friday, August 22 about the Government now investigating the GM legal department. The Feds want to know what those poor saps in the Legal Department knew, when they knew it, etc. Apparently GM has already let a dozen or so lawyers go (but not the boss…), and continues to “cooperate with” the government. Here’s what I think – the whole episode is just another wonderful example of broken merit models fueled by our collective greed as a society.

People have been making a lot of noise about the failure of GM to recall vehicles when the company allegedly first had notice of a potential ignition switch problem. We see a $1 fix on the one hand, and 13 young lives on the other and scream at the injustice of at all. The media shows us orchestrated grillings on Capitol Hill, and serves up inflammatory documents attributing prior knowledge to company management of the issue and simple fix. The lawyers will come. Scapegoats will be assigned. Settlements will be achieved. But until people are compensated based ethical action v. quarterly results, no one will stop the machine.

To me the real story here is having yet another shining example of an ethical lapse due to a lack of courage by corporate management. And this lack of courage directly results from Wall Street inspired societal pressure to achieve specific financial results. The tale has played out in the auto industry before. The mighty Pinto had a magic exploding gas tank in the 1970s. When the dust settled, it came down to a pure mathematical cost-benefit analysis where management literally rationalized that the cost of the fix far outweighed the potential benefit of minimizing the risk of explosion. It took a few innocent lives and a team of lawyers to remedy that situation, and still nobody fixed the root cause – our collective greed for enhanced shareholder value.

As a society, we have placed such a premium on delivery of positive earnings (through skewed compensation programs and other benefits) that corporate managers are actually encouraged to perform a clinical cost-benefit analysis even when human lives may someday be at stake. Many institutional investors are now driven by short-sighted economic incentives and have lost any notion of “patient capital.” Shareholders used to buy stock in a company and accept small dividends and long-term growth. Now we have a culture that demands maximum efficiency, and margin-focused tactics by public companies with the spotlight on every quarterly report. This crazy construct creates behaviors that are far too focused on the bottom line. Corporate executives are schooled and encouraged through compensation programs to conduct this very type of cost-benefit analysis. A few injuries and maybe a death or two down the road (not certain and very remote) would be hard-pressed to outweigh a negative impact on today’s numbers, annual bonus, option vesting, retirement money, etc.

As a student of ethics, no lesson has been more clear over the past 40 years (and one could argue 400 or even 4000): as a general rule, human beings will do whatever benefits them the most. It is all about self-interest. To fix the Pinto, GM ignition switch, NASA’s space shuttle debacle, or the countless other ethical case studies where safety warnings went unheeded to serve a greater perceived need for fame or fortune, we need to reward rather than punish the ethical decision-maker. Most ethicists end up fired or resigning in disgust. Instituting incentives for ethical action, and more bonus clawbacks, along with larger fines/penalties and possibly jail time for the bad actors who benefit from corporate malfeasance is a start. But we also need a societal shift to take place. We must begin to praise and encourage rather than criticize corporate decisions that may be painful in the short-term yet create tremendous positives in the long run. Milton Friedmann’s model and modern cultural norm suggesting shareholder value as the only purpose of the corporation is flawed. We need to balance corporate decisions after considering multiple stakeholders, and align merit based compensation and promotions with all the value created (or destroyed) – not simply shareholder value.

I know some brilliant minds are working on this. One example is the “social benefit corporation” and similar statutory creatures created in several states to date. Hopefully this is the beginning of a shift toward more responsible corporate and individual behaviors. People will act in their self interest, so we need to give them both the carrot and the stick that will help them make proper decisions guided by a more holistic view of “value.”

END

Small Miracles

A funny thing has happened over the past few years. Instead of searching for alternative explanations, I have started accepting fortuitous, positive developments in my life as small miracles – evidence of the presence of a Higher Power. There are many moments during an average month when someone or something alters my life’s course in a way I could not have anticipated. It could be a new opportunity, a shift in an existing relationship, or some resolution to a major issue. My old self would explain these developments with secular concepts like fate or circumstance. At my worst, I would even feel somehow entitled to the benefit – the world owed it to me… I was due a good turn.

I now believe these moments to be a bit of Divine intervention. And rather than explaining them away with a dismissive scientific theory, or, better yet, a selfish justification, I try to gratefully acknowledge the guiding hand of God. Now get ready for a course correction: this absolutely does not mean I believe that God controls all and we are somehow predetermined to live (or die) according to His plan. That is crap. He is far too busy to be controlling traffic patterns on the highways or outcomes to sporting events. What I’m talking about are the subtle adjustments that seem to happen when my heart is open to the concept of God. Obstacles are overcome; challenges are met; relationships are mended. He works to change me, enabling me to change my world.

I believe that once we are willing to accept that a Higher Power is present, we will witness miracles in abundance. It is simply a shift in perspective – where we were blind, we now can see. The fog of self-centeredness will be lifted, and we will find an amazing world awaits.

END

Permit a brief editorial on the sport of American Football: It’s stupid.

As possibly the last of the true gladiator sports, football allows spectators to achieve that visceral rush from watching violent clashes unfold. I readily admit there is some beauty and incredible athleticism in the game, but the NFL has become a house of pain for so many people. It is hard for me to stay a fan with the absolute brutality witnessed on an ordinary Sunday and injury reports that can’t fit on a scroll.

Granted, it would be challenging to find a period of time or culture throughout history where we didn’t celebrate some form of violence. Spectators have often taken great pleasure in vicious harm done to another person. In ancient Rome they filled the Coliseum to watch men fight to the death against each other or some carnivorous beasts, feasting emotionally on the carnage. Torture in the public square used to do the trick – a nice disemboweling on your Sunday afternoon to get the blood flowing? A virgin sacrifice perhaps? We crave watching another person’s pain for some strange reason. Hopefully we continue to evolve, and football (at least as we know it today) is no more. Boxing finally fell off of prime time. It has been replaced, it seems, with Ultimate Fighting and MMA. But football is still the dominant sport for satisfying the desire we have to witness violence.

Perhaps the league can effect enough rule changes to get football back to a sport that doesn’t require risking severe long-term injury and death. Rugby must be doing something right, and even ice hockey avoids a lot of these issues (now that they wear helmets). Unfortunately, the NFL seems to still be tolerating the violence, and we go right along for the ride. The penalties for vicious hits are very modest in relation to the salaries. And what does it take to get suspended for a game or more? “Unnecessary Roughness” would end if you ejected repeat offenders and fined them a percentage of salaries vs a more modest fixed sum. But boys will be boys is still apparently our collective rationalization for the stupidity we see on our TV screens each week.

So the irony of it all is I’m heading to my second NFL game of the season this Sunday – my Bengals take on the Minnesota Vikings. I like being around 65,000 people and feeling the thrill of the crowd when a great play happens. And I will be hard-pressed not feel some perverse excitement if one of our gladiators “lays out” one of the opponents. I wish I didn’t feel that way, but I will. Like I said, it’s stupid.

It’s just not enough –

all of your stuff.

All your stuff

is never enough.

So be content with yourself –

the core, not the fluff.

And you’ll find

life’s quite good enough.