Jay Gillette

Excellent Site for USA Electoral College Vote

Best site I know for this. In election season, I'm looking at this just about daily. It's Professor Sam Wang of Princeton meta-analysis site. www.election.princeton.edu Sam Wang is a good example of a fair partisan.

Partisanship Paradox: Commitment, Communication, Compassion

"An American officer and a French partisan crouch behind an auto during a street fight in a French city, ca. 1944." [Internet source here.]
Image courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration.

 While you'd think everyone loves a party, partisanship has a negative meaning for some people. That's really because partisan means someone who takes a part, or a side. It's a choice, and some people don't like the risks and drawbacks of taking a stand, of taking sides.

Yet real partisanship represents a commitment, and communicates something real about who you are.

In World War II, "partisan" also meant someone who fought against occupying armies, and this was seen as a heroic act, a kind of guerrilla resistance against oppressors. These acts of resistance were often destructive and violent, and caused retribution of the same kind. Sometimes escalations of partisanship followed, on all parts.

There is partisan commitment in nonmilitary situations, of course. In a political situation such as we see today, people commit to one party or another, or the candidates of parties. It's politics, as usual.

What's so bad about politics?  Let's communicate clearly a good dichotomy to deal with this question. There are politics, and there are corrupt politics. There are activities, and corrupt activities. Just because activities can be corrupt, doesn't mean the activities are intrinsically bad. Baseball can be corrupted, but baseball is good. (Good baseball, anyway. Go Red Sox!) 

It's not a good idea to assume that what is political is bad. Politics really means citizenship, or participation as a citizen, a member of a city. The etymology or history of this word shows it comes from "polis." In Greek "polis" means "city," as in the word "Indianapolis" (City of the Indians), or "metropolis" (mother city, or main city).

What gives "partisan" a bad name is the sense of being unfair. It is possible simultaneously to be partisan and to be fair. It is possible to be a fighter, and to be merciful. These are paradoxes, seemingly contradictory statements that nevertheless are true. (The etymology is interesting--paradox comes from Greek words that mean "thinking beyond," or "thinking beside.")

In one of the most sophisticated concepts about leadership I've ever seen, Tom Peters (1987) says the guiding premise of leadership is: Master Paradox (Thriving on Chaos, Chapter L-1, pp. 472-480).

Appropriately, here is a paradoxical thought from a leader who had serious enemies, and contended against them as a partisan for his cause:

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." (Matthew 5:43, 44 as quoted in The Harper Collins Study Bible [HCSB], ed. Wayne Meeks (San Francisco, Harper Collins 1993), p. 1867)) [Internet source here.] 

So take part in the politics of your time. Be partisan, and be fair.

Rally on the Buckeye State

I'm just back from a weekend trip to Ohio, the Buckeye State, named after a native tree, Ohio buckeye (Hippocastanaceae Aesculus glabra). But here's an entry with some of the political reasons this name evolved:

Ohio, the “Buckeye State”, received its nickname because of the many buckeye trees that once covered its hills and plains.
But that's only partly the reason. We have to go back to the feverish presidential campaign of 1840 for the rest of it.
William Henry Harrison, a Virginia-born Ohioan and military hero, was a candidate for the White House, but his opponents commented that he was better suited to sit in a log cabin and drink hard cider.
Some of Harrison's leading supporters, who were experts in promotional know-how, decided to turn into a positive reference what was supposed to be a negative one.
They dubbed him "the log cabin candidate," and chose as his campaign emblem a log cabin made of buckeye timbers, with a long string of buckeyes decorating its walls. Furthermore, in parades, his backers walked with buckeye canes and rolled whisky barrels.
The campaign gimmicks were successful. "Old Tippecanoe," as Harrison was often called, beat President Martin Van Buren in the latter's bid for re-election, and thereafter the buckeye was closely associated with the state of Ohio.
The name itself is of native origin. Because the markings on the nut resembled the eye of a buck, the Indians called it "hetuck" or "buckeye."
[Source from Internet is here.]

You can see that Ohio has always been a political hotbed. That's still the case today. Like Indiana, Ohio is also one of the midwestern USA states that is rich in social history and natural beauty. If you are a native USA person, try a drive over into one of these places, and see your country making its living. If you are international visitor, there's no better way to see the nontourist parts of the USA.

Did you want an Ohio political forecast for the USA 2004 presidential campaign? Everybody is fighting for Ohio this year, tooth and claw. The progressive forces claim to be better organized on the ground. That's where close elections are decided, not in advertising campaigns. If that is so, Kerry/Edwards by a narrow margin. For better or worse, the 18th century electoral college system we use today is winner-take-all. Therefore 100% of Ohio's 20 electoral votes this year will count for the Democrats (270 required to win. In the 2000 election, W. Bush = 271, including Ohio, Gore = 266).

The winners should be required to roll out the whisky barrels again, Ohio-style.  Either party, it's the least they can do.

Hip or Square? The Importance of Face-to-Face Interaction

Today I went to a church picnic. I'm sure that you and the diety will forgive me if I confess that I did not anticipate this event would be the high point of my day.

To my surprise, I found it more enjoyable in the action, the activity of it, than I expected. My preconceived idea was that it might not be particularly fun or useful. Turns out, it was reasonably fun--the people were great, especially the kids!--and actually useful--I learned some more about communication.

Face-to-face interaction--you can't beat it. It's the broadest bandwidth of communication you can have in public, except dancing.

Now I see once again the importance of informal social events for organizations of all kinds. Take a look: the church picnic, the company softball team, a Homecoming tailgate party such as we have in our Center, a family Thanksgiving dinner in the USA, or a Moon Festival gathering in China, these are all chances for face-to-face interaction, important to build community.

So the next time you have the chance to participate in events like these--just do it, no matter what you think ahead of time. Turns out you may not know as much as you think you know.

The New York writer Norman Mailer asserts that people are either hip or square.  Be there or be square, the Americans say.  It's hip to be there.

Two approaches to what you have to do: "Seize an Opportunity" versus "Dispensing with an Unpleasant Task"

"We saw John Edwards doing his best to seize an opportunity. Dick Cheney was dispensing with an unpleasant task."

This quote jumped out of an article from Rolling Stone magazine "RS Blog" that analyzed the USA political campaign's debate of Vice President candidates. The article was a reasonably good analysis of the event, with interesting discussion of each candidate's hits and misses. There is a paragraph on communication by body language that is particularly useful.

Yet the quote that jumped out reminded me of the professional approach of Tom Peters, the Stanfurd-educated management guru. (For more on Tom Peters, see his website recently reorganized as a weblog. He changed it in this way about July 2004--a interesting historical marker to note in our information and communication technology [ICT] perspective).

Tom Peters says:

"REFRAME: NEVER . . . EVER! . . . ACCEPT A PROJECT/ASSIGNMENT AS GIVEN!

"The world of WOW Projects rests on but one word: REFRAMING.  That is . . . every "assignment"/"task"/"job" is merely a starting point. Your real "job": Turn that--often apparently mundane--task/job/assignment into something cool/memorable/WOW!"

Source: Tom Peters (1999). The Project 50: or, Fifty Ways to Transform Every "Task" into a Project that Matters! New York: Knopf, p. 25.

So to return to the impression from the candidates' debate:

"We saw John Edwards doing his best to seize an opportunity. Dick Cheney was dispensing with an unpleasant task."

For a professional, who is the winner?

Two approaches to what you have to do: "Seize an Opportunity" versus "Dispensing with an Unpleasant Task"

"We saw John Edwards doing his best to seize an opportunity. Dick Cheney was dispensing with an unpleasant task."

This quote jumped out of an article from Rolling Stone magazine "RS Blog" that analyzed the USA political campaign's debate of Vice President candidates. The article was a reasonably good analysis of the event, with interesting discussion of each candidate's hits and misses. There is a paragraph on communication by body language that is particularly useful.

Yet the quote that jumped out reminded me of the professional approach of Tom Peters, the Stanfurd-educated management guru. (For more on Tom Peters, see his website recently reorganized as a weblog. He changed it in this way about July 2004--a interesting historical marker to note in our information and communication technology [ICT] perspective).

Tom Peters says:

"REFRAME: NEVER . . . EVER! . . . ACCEPT A PROJECT/ASSIGNMENT AS GIVEN!

"The world of WOW Projects rests on but one word: REFRAMING.  That is . . . every "assignment"/"task"/"job" is merely a starting point. Your real "job": Turn that--often apparently mundane--task/job/assignment into something cool/memorable/WOW!"

Source: Tom Peters (1999). The Project 50: or, Fifty Ways to Transform Every "Task" into a Project that Matters! New York: Knopf, p. 25.

So to return to the impression from the candidates' debate:

"We saw John Edwards doing his best to seize an opportunity. Dick Cheney was dispensing with an unpleasant task."

For a professional, who is the winner?

Staff Work--a challenging yet necessary path to success

Today on schedule I met my staff for our regular early-week meeting. We meet systematically both formally and informally. We are what Tom Peters and Robert Waterman call a simultaneously loose-tight organization (in Search for Excellence--see summary here).

From my own experience and from what I observe now, I am reminded that working as staff, for what IBM and other organizations call the "principal"--your boss--is a challenging job.

You have to be a good follower, even if you don't necessarily agree with the principal's methods, content, and style. Agreeing with those things isn't the job of a staffer.

Instead, the staff person's job is to support and forward the position of the principal and the organization that they both presumably work for. 

I knew the president and CEO of a telecommunications organization, who had been chief of staff of a United States state governor. The former chief of staff said one reason he helped start the telecomm organization was that he wanted to be the principal for a change. Note well, this was late in his career, after he had the state-level staff leadership position.

Staffing is hard work. The positive is that you can be close to the action without having to take the actual responsibility of the principal.  The negative is that you are always behind the principal, behind the scenes as it were.  Your job is back-up. That's what support means. 

Yet staff work is how you get to be the principal. Remember the story of the ex-chief of staff--his experience shows the path, and a great goal to arrive at. We can close by narrating: "then one day, he was the principal, and he had a great staff."