You can watch the 2:10 minute video on YouTube and, if you like, download a PDF of its transcript.

Herewith my contribution:

"It is sometimes said that the difference between 'management' and 'leadership' is 'doing things right' versus 'doing the right thing.' I think that's nuts. In fact, let's assume there is a 'doing things right' and a 'doing the right thing.' Well, both are of equal importance, and if anything 'doing things right' takes precedence. Another way to put it is that having an 'excellent strategy' is approximately worthless unless execution is equally 'excellent.' Far more things fail to come to fruition because of lousy execution than because of lousy strategy. ('Execution is strategy' is the way a boss of mine, Fred Malek, put it waaaaaay back in the 1970s.) Hence my 'take no prisoners' 'bottom line' is that 'doing things right' is as much a part of effective leadership as 'doing the right thing.'"—Tom Peters/1217.09

Comments ...

The great American psychologist, William James, tells us, "The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated."

I have long thought that those are among the most profound words I've ever stumbled upon. For I do fervently believe that appreciation is indeed the most powerful force of nature and hence, practically speaking, the premier "motivational" "tool" available to bosses-managers-leaders (not to mention parents and teachers and spouses).

Gary Fenchuk, whom I met at an Urban Land Institute meeting in San Francisco last month, sent me a copy of his book, Timeless Wisdom. The "yield" from the slim volume was incredible, especially given my almost conceit that "I've seen it all." I shall share a few of the quotes that struck home, but first back to William James and Almighty Appreciation. In the Fenchuk book I found a wonderful (?) quote from, yes, Frankenstein himself—or, more accurately, from author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: "I am malicious because I am miserable; if any being felt emotions of benevolence toward me, I should return them a hundredfold."

I'm not entirely sure why that got me between the eyes, but it did. (Maybe in part because it was a gray, gray, snowy day.) In good times, let alone bad, many is the worker who longs for even a modest show of "benevolence." And fails to get it—in a career that may span decades. (Hence poll after poll informing us that something like three-quarters of workers are not truly engaged.)

Which in turn leads me to two more gems courtesy Mr. Fenchuk:

"If we could read the secret histories of our enemies, we would find in each man's life a sorrow and a suffering enough to disarm all hostility."—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity."—Dale Carnegie

And that pair in turn leads me to the last of this set, and back to the James brothers, this time the prominent novelist Henry: "Three things in life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind."

Tough times, which are still the context for many of us, provide the greatest tests of character. Tough times are the period when basic human decency matters most. From a commercial standpoint, tough times are the best of times to deepen relationships with employees, customers, suppliers, and the communities in which we work and live. Yes, difficult decisions must be made ... again and again. But the way in which these decisions are approached and executed is the bedrock for the relationships that will re-ignite first and most fiercely and move us forward with alacrity when the worm does turn.

Relationships based on thoughtfulness and benevolence and kindness and appreciation are the sort that you "can take to the bank." Or, to use the strategy mavens' metaphor du jour, deep relationships make for the deepest of "blue oceans"—a/k/a, sustainable competitive advantage.

Believe it!

(Above, snowy snowy day on the farm ... 12.09.2009. Below, the all-important "plow truck"!)

You can find the video on the top of the right column here on the front page of tompeters.com, or by clicking here. The transcript is available as a pdf. If you'd like to see previously posted videos in the series, be sure to visit our Video page (direct link to TLBT video series).

Last weekend's German elections, won by a coalition of the Christian Democrats and the Free Democratic Party, have caused a lot of press comment about the leadership qualities of the successful candidate for the role of Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

There have been comments on her rather dour and austere demeanor. She is said to lack charisma, with her communication style described at best as calm and measured. She is not perceived as a visionary, and certainly does not have the public profile of the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy. She had an uneasy relationship with the Social Democrats, her previous coalition partners. Some commentators say that the caution she learned growing up in Eastern Europe has led to a reluctance to take risks as a leader. All in all, she's scoring pretty low on leadership characteristics by my reckoning.

And yet her leadership of the German people through this troubled economic period has built for her an enviable reputation as a statesperson who is reliable and trustworthy. So much so that in a recent BBC Radio 4 profile on her successful election campaign, it was reported that many Germans affectionately refer to her as Mutti (mother).

So I wonder if there are any more general lessons for us here about what followers are looking for in their leaders in these difficult times. Is there a female leader dimension to this? Is the era of the superstar leader, both in business and in politics, firmly behind us now? Are followers looking for substance over style? If so, what does this mean for President Obama, Prime Minister Brown, and anyone leading a business today?

I have been a member of a 200-person amateur symphony chorus for nearly 20 years, and during that period, the chorus's performance has steadily improved. For our latest concert, we were rehearsed by a stand-in chorus master whose approach was very different from that of the chorus master who has led us throughout my membership. Both men are equally well qualified and highly gifted musicians, and both expect equally high performance standards from their choirs. But we are used to a very critical and directive style of leadership which contrasted sharply with the stand-in master's much "softer" all round approach.

For example, he regularly took the time to tell us what we were doing well, as well as correcting us when we were getting things wrong. He was often quite generous in his praise, in stark contrast to our regular master. He challenged us to perform one of the movements in the concert from memory—no mean feat when the text is in Polish! He assured us from the first rehearsal that we were good enough to take this on, and kept reminding us of this throughout the rehearsal sequence. He even provided us with some novel support materials to help us all to practice our Polish at home.

On the day of the concert he cancelled the normal pre event "warm up" session, which is usually quite an ordeal for us to get through just before a live performance. He said he had been more than satisfied with our performance at the dress rehearsal in the morning. This is totally unheard of!

Our performance was one of our best ever and acclaimed by the critics. The movement we had learned by heart completely stole the show. But ... here's my question ... did the stand-in chorus master succeed because of the disciplines that had already been drilled into us by our regular leader? What would happen to our performance standards if we worked with the new chorus master in the long term? Would his approach result in a gradual reduction in standards?

I tried these questions out over a drink in the pub with my choir mates, and the opinion was divided 50/50. What do readers of this blog think?

Namely: What is this candidate's track record—in exacting detail—in developing people. Though hardly locked in concrete, I posited that "the ONE question" might go something like this:

"In the last year [3 years, current job], name the three people whose growth you've most contributed to. Please explain in some significant detail where each was at the beginning of the year, where he or she is today, and where each is heading in the next 12 and 24 and 60 months. Please explain your development strategy in each case. Please tell me your biggest development disappointment this past year—looking back, could you or would you have done anything differently? Please tell me about your greatest development triumph—and disaster—in the last ten years. What are the 'three big things' you've learned about 'people development' along the way."

As I see it, it's not the boss' role, for instance, to make strategy. It's the boss's role to develop the best strategist—and the boss's role to ensure that the process thereof is moving along rapidly and imaginatively. And so on.

Finally, as I see it, this in some form applies to pretty much every promotion. And it even has a bearing on evaluating a non-manager on a 3-month project. That rather junior person will, for example, in several instances be responsible for accomplishing a milestone—and to do so, she must engage her team members, and engage them in a way that they go away with some learnings—that contribute a bit to their development.

What do you think about this riff?

I have been researching the gap between the generations' impact on the economy of the United States and have not found an acceptable metric to quantify my conclusions. There are just too many variables. One thought hits me hard, though; the next generation may be the first in a long time (ever?) that are not be better off than their parents. I think we baby boomers own that.

Because this is a blog entry, not a white paper, let me offer a few bullet points that should start a little discussion:

Continued reading A New Generation Gap...

Posted by Mike Neiss |

Managers have lost dignity over the past decade in the face of widespread institutional breakdown of trust and self-policing in business. To regain society's trust, we believe that business leaders must embrace a way of looking at their role that goes beyond their responsibility to the shareholders to include a civic and personal commitment to their duty as institutional custodians. In other words, it is time that management became a profession.

—Rakesh Khurana & Nitin Nohria, "It's Time to Make Management a True Profession," Harvard Business Review/10.08

In honor of these ideas, I have created a PowerPoint/Special Presentation, lightly annotated, which is my best effort to make these points. It comes under the generic heading of my favorite me-ism, God forbid: Hard is soft. Soft is Hard.

I'd be honored if you'd look at the Special Presentation, titled "Symbolic Behavior/Smile/Respect," and continue the earlier dialogue.

(Incidentally, our collection of probably 25+ Special Presentations is not for my seminar Clients—the special PPTs exclusively appear at tompeters.com.)

Dwight David Eisenhower, or Ike, is certainly one of the ten greatest Americans of the 20th century—and surely ranks in the top 50 for the world as a whole. As president from 1953–1960, he got us out of Korea more or less with honor, kept the Cold War from getting entirely out of hand, had the perfect demeanor for overseeing our post-war wound-licking and rejuvenation, was an unsung civil rights hero, and this great general ended his second term by warning us of the financial and political costs of a "military-industrial complex" with too much power—talk about prescience. And all this, of course, was preceded by D-Day and the campaign that ended World War II in Europe, in which Ike, make no mistake, was the prime mover.

I'm fascinated anew by DDE, and it all stemmed from a single and simple quote from General Eisenhower, which appeared in the May 2008 issue of Armchair General, a magazine I almost inadvertently grabbed at Logan Airport: "Allied commands depend on mutual confidence [and this confidence] is gained, above all through the development of friendships." The magazine's writer reinforced Ike's self-assertion by adding, "Perhaps his most outstanding ability [at West Point] was the ease with which he made friends and earned the trust of fellow cadets who came from widely varied backgrounds; it was a quality that would pay great dividends during his future coalition command."

The quotes above are borne out in Michael Korda's extraordinary, new-ish 800-page prize-winning biography in which I am currently immersed, Ike: An American Hero. I selected a more or less random couple of chapters, covering DDE's arrival in England in 1942 and his subsequent and surprising assignment to command of Torch, the Allies first offensive action of the war and the biggest and most ungainly offensive of its kind in history to that point. (The North African landing took place on my day of birth—07 November 1942.) In the space of just 43 pages (pp. 268–311) we find these phrases describing Eisenhower:

"infectious grin and great charm" ... "nice face" ... "grin that was to become so famous" ... "got along famously" ... "goodwill was spontaneous and easily recognizable" ... "good impression that Ike had made in six weeks" [newcomer junior general to Supreme Commander, Torch, agreed upon by Roosevelt and Churchill—in, yes, just six weeks] ... "least rank-conscious of generals" ... "Men were happy to serve under Ike, even British admirals and generals who might easily have raised objections; his sincerity and lack of ceremony made it difficult, even impossible, to refuse him, and enabled him very rapidly to pull a team together." ... "Ike was gregarious, rarely had anything bad to say about anyone, and, on the surface at least, was relaxed and good natured." ... "Whereas Ike's good humor was genuine, unaffected, and affectionate, Monty's [Field Marshall Sir Bernard Montgomery] was cruel and mocking and always carried a sting."

Following successes in North Africa and Italy, Eisenhower, still a rather "fresh face" and less than two years past arriving in London as a Lieutenant Colonel, was selected as Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force Europe, tasked to invade the European continent and procure Germany's unconditional surrender. Korda explains the somewhat surprising decision:

"The Allies had generals with, perhaps, a sharper strategic vision than Ike. ... There were also generals who were more experienced at 'fighting a battle' ... But there was nobody who had anything like Ike's record of leading an alliance—always the most difficult feat in warfare. ... What is more, Ike somehow inspired people: civilians and ordinary soldiers of both nations, even cynical political figures and the always troublesome French. Something about his big grin; his long-limbed, loose American way of walking (the Kansas farm boy grown to a man); his easy, familiar way of speaking to everybody from King George VI down to privates in both armies; his lack of pretension; his evident sincerity ... They were willing to be led by him. They were willing to have him command their sons and husbands in battle. They trusted him. They were willing to die for him. ..."

(NB: Precisely these same things could be said about the two military figures I have studied most assiduously, Lord Horatio Nelson and General Ulysses S. Grant.)

(NB: When DDE subsequently ran for President of the United States in 1952, his campaign slogan was the simple "I like Ike.")

So?

So: Why must we constantly pursue "breakthrough thinking," why must we leap "out of the box," when the secrets to success and, conversely, the causes of failure—in the sense of persuading or failing to persuade groups of all sizes to pursue and achieve excellence in any and all endeavors—are almost wholly dependent upon character traits and personal characteristics that are, in fact, more or less eternal and which unequivocally transcend cultures of every flavor?

Benjamin Franklin's Parisian charm offensive of 1776–77 gained France as an American ally and changed the course of history in our Revolutionary War against England.

Nelson Mandela's extraordinary smile disarmed one and all. ("One of the greatest charm offensives in history" was one biographer's description of Mandela's amazing feat of disarming enemies and allies alike and transforming South Africa without civil war.)

Eisenhower's grin ("something about his big grin," "grin that was to become so famous") united fractious Allies and insured the effective conclusion of World War II in the European theater.

We are confronted at the moment with an economic crisis of epic proportion. There is no better time to heed the eternal lessons of Eisenhower (Franklin, Mandela, etc). Make no mistake, the keys to surviving and thriving, as individuals and organizations, will not primarily be the "out of the box" cleverness of our "strategic response," but instead individual and organizational character as expressed by the depth and breadth of relationships throughout our individual or organizational networks. Current case in point, Mr Pandit of Citigroup is as smart as they come and then some, but, unlike Ike, when he said, "Follow me"—nobody moved, except to cut and run.

American Thanksgiving is our quintessential "family holiday." Giftgiving—for once!—is not the norm, except as it is reflected in exchanges of pumpkin pies and 7-generation-old recipes for turkey stuffing. It is a day in which we even put the likes of sibling sniping on hold and simply rejoice in each other's presence. It is a day, one hopes, when we also reflect on those, numbering in the hundreds of millions, or even billions, who go to bed on less than a full stomach.

The economic crisis? Not much fun. And less fun to come. But this, too, will pass, especially if we can assiduously translate the good will around the Thanksgiving Table and the character lessons of Eisenhower and Franklin and Mandela into our minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day affairs.

Happy Thanksgiving.

In the immortal words of Dave Barry, "I'm not making this up."

Meanwhile CNN's Kyung Lah reported that the CEO of JAL rides public transit to work, eats in the company cafeteria, and cut his salary below that of his pilots as a personal response to layoffs and forced early retirements that JAL felt necessary to make.

A Financial Times headline on Citicorp reads: "Bank loses over half its value in past three days" "[CEO] Pandit moves to shore up his position as chief."

As disgusting [DIS-GUST-ING] as Mulally's "I'm okay" comment was-is, the Pandit headline in its own fashion affected me even more. Citi's performance is awful—and there's little or no doubt that Pandit is a major part of the problem. And hence his primary response, following an announced 50,000 plus layoff, is to try and save his own skin? (TP's considered response: "You miserable, ego-maniacal S.O.B.")

Have these guys (and they're almost all guys) no sense of shame? No sense of service? No sense of honor? No sense of sacrifice? No sense of equity?

A little online research Cathy and I did shows that none of the Big Three CEOs had any military service. I do not believe that such service is a generic answer to any particular problem. But I do believe that the uniform absence thereof is perhaps indicative of a lack of a life-as-service, servant leader ethos in general among these three? (The "no military service" piece is almost amusing, in a perverse way, in the case of Nardelli, who is a fanatic believer in some twisted notion of the "military model" of doing business—his willy nilly application of his abominable interpretation of military leadership was one of his many screwups at Home Depot. Part of Nardelli's, yes, admirable willingness to work for a buck at Chrysler may be the $200 million he took home as a prize for being fired from Home Depot.)

In summary:

Have they no shame?
Have they no sense of service?
Have they no conception of servant leadership?
Have they no soul?
Have they no honor?
Have they no ethos of sacrifice?
Have they no conception of-perception of equity?
(Did any of them go to Sunday School?)

Does it sound like I'm in a pissy mood, maybe still suffering from jetlag following my Middle East trip? Well, I am in a pissy mood, and part of it may indeed be 66-year-old-body-meets-jetlag. But part of it derives directly from Pandit and Mulally and the association of their flavor attitudes to our unfolding economic catastrophe. I've spent 40 plus years directly or indirectly on, effectively, one topic: profit through people-centered, people-obsessed leadership. Mulally and Pandit and their not insignificant ilk make me wonder if I pissed away my life in pursuit of an improbable, or even impossible, ideal?

1. Be conscious in the Zen sense. Think about what you are doing more than usual. Think about how you project.


2. Meet daily, first thing, with your leadership team—to discuss whatever, check assumptions. Perhaps meet again late afternoon. Meetings max 30 minutes.


3. If you are a "big boss," use a private sounding board—check in daily.


4. Concoct scenarios by the bushel, test 'em, play with 'em, short-term, long-term, sane, insane.


5. MBWA. Wander. Sample attitudes. Visible but not frenzied.


6. Work the phones, chat up experts, customers, vendors. Seek enormous diversity of opinion.


7. "Over"communicate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


8. Exercise—encourage your leadership team to double up on their exercise.


9. Underscore "excellence in every transaction."

Once again, we are apparently confronted with a hefty dose of "chaos"—or, at least, the prospect of a substantial period of sub-standard growth. (NB: Managers under the ripe old age of 50, more or less, have never experienced, in the role of managers, significant and sustained economic disarray; the brutal recession of the early '80s—marked by unemployment in excess of 10 percent, interest rates in excess of 20 percent, and inflation stuck in the mid-teens—was the last of this sort.)

My speakers bureau sent me an urgent request for a description of remarks I might make on the issue of thriving on, or at least surviving amidst, the current chaos—seems as though that's what their clients are suddenly, and understandably, asking prospective speakers to tackle.

I was limited to a couple of hundred words, which I enjoyed writing (in the best sense of the word "enjoy") and thought I'd share them with you. There is hardly profundity here, but I'll pass it on anyway. In fact, there are two short pieces, as follows:

[The next two blog posts are the 'two short pieces' Tom is referring to. -Ed.]

Tough times indeed require tough and unpleasant decisions—but thriving, not just surviving, is an option for those who mix wisdom and boldness of leadership with transparency and maximized employee involvement and engagement. Without suggesting that there is anything humorous about the pain that bad times cause, one can say that "this is when it gets fun" for truly talented and imaginative leaders at all levels and in businesses of every sort and size!

And General Eisenhower had a secret: "Allied commands depend on mutual confidence; [this confidence] is gained, above all, through the development of friendships."

Armchair General (May 2008) traces the origins of this mystical Eisenhower trait: "Perhaps his most outstanding ability [at West Point] was the ease with which he made friends and earned the trust of fellow cadets who came from widely varied backgrounds; it was a quality that would pay great dividends during his future coalition command."

Tom Peters on the Definition of Leadership from Tom Peters on Vimeo.

[If you'd like a PDF transcript of Tom's message, you can download it here: Definition of Leadership]

The Inspiring Invincibles! Chuck Prince (Citigroup, formerly head of)! Stan O'Neal (Merrill Lynch, formerly head of)! Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide, formerly head of)! Tough cookies, each one. And yet, somehow, on their watches, The Three Geniuses allowed their firms, through grotesque negligence—maybe silliness or Theaters of the Absurd would be better words if the stakes weren't so high—to get into positions in which tens upon tens of BILLIONS of greenbacks had to be written off from their books of account. Dodger, my 5-year-old Aussie, could have done a better job. (He could have bitten anybody who tried to make a $500K loan to someone who had never had a job or paid a bill and signed his name with an "X"; and peed on the pants of any 22-year-old University of Chicago PhD who said, "With my clever algorithm I've designed what's called a 'derivative'—it'll make risk a thing of the past." Yes, had Dodger bitten and peed on schedule, the likes of Citigroup would be ten or twenty billion ahead of their current position.) But, since the demand is so strong for the 500 different-from-mere-vice-presidents- Monumental-Management-Marvels, and the supply is so short, The Three Geniuses, on the basis of "Upside Potential," were able to chalk up about a half BILLION buckaroos on their pay stubs over the last five years, while busily installing the tools necessary for Global Economic Meltdown. Well, I guess that means they're "excellent" at something. Isn't there some line about wool & eyes & pulling? (In most cases, their pay deals, especially the parts about "if you turn out to be an idiot, we'll pay you a king's ransom to clean out your desk," were effectively set before they set foot in the executive suite. Wow, I wanna piece of that action!)

Then, across the sea from our Miracle 'Merican Marvelous 500 uber-Managers (demand waaaay exceeds supply, remember), sits the chief of France's Société Générale, or SocGen. (How about "sock shareholders"?) Somehow or other, yup, "somehow or other," on his continuing watch, a 31-year-old trader with a penchant for math and a knack for writing code managed to evade "controls" and "sneak" $74 BILLION worth of exposure onto SocGen's balance sheet; it has taken an almost $10 BILLION loss to clean up the mess—for now. But in the future, the Big Boss, a/k/a "the genius," promises "tighter controls." (The saving grace here is that the laddie who scored the seventy-four bil is named Kerviel. I keep thinking "Evil Kerviel," after the late lamented Evil Knievel. Unfair! Evil Knievel had a far, far better sense of "risk assessment" than our superduperstar Banker Bigwigs—may I not be damned for in any way besmirching Mr Knievel's name and spirit.)

More on the topic of "genius," the short supply thereof: Big mergers and acquisitions, negotiated by Big People, have a pretty much guaranteed habit of Going South, destroying value, statistically, perhaps 80% of the time—give or take a bit, depends on whose research you read. But in that Rarified Air of the 500 Top Talents, ever-short-in-supply-because- they're-so-so-much-better-than-you-or-me-or-even-their- #2-in-command, it is clear (to the 500, that is) that through their Unique Genius (they can see Farther Ahead than you or me), they can move beyond others' mistakes and consummate marriages that make money. No worries. But then there was the headline, the most recent of the many of its kind, on 29 February as I recall, that reported Sprint's taking a $29.5 BILLION write-down following its Ingenious Acquisition (had to be, made by one of the 500 Horsemen—of the apocalypse?) of Nextel. Thirty BILLION later, we learn from the CEO that there will be "significant change" and that he intends to "improve execution." Dodger-the-dog could have told him that—smart dogs can attain a vocabulary of 200 or so understood words, and that's about 190 more than the "genius" who made the Sprint-Nextel deal. In fact Mr Big's vocabulary was but a single word, as far as I can make out, uttered over and over (and over) again: "Synergies, synergies, synergies, I smell synergies. My synergies in and of themselves are majestically synergistic." I suspect he said that when announcing the deal—c'mon, Tom, you know he said that without reading the transcript. Well, I smell something, but I will spare you because this is a family-friendly Blog. And while on the subject of odor, there's absolutely no need to go back in history two years (but I will, as I'm in that sort of mood at the moment) and remind one and all that, in pursuit of "synergy, synergy, synergistic synergy," the Fabled Bosses of DaimlerChrysler (one, Jürgen Schrempp, was considered Europe's Jack Welch!) managed, after their "merger of equals," to lose market cap at the rate of $10,000,000 per ... DAY ... for nine years.

Speaking of Mr Welch, his boy Bob Nardelli, given his GE birthright and thence Automatic Excellence, decided he belonged in the "Top One" in pay package ranks—his board demurred, demand didn't exceed supply quite that much. So Bob took his couple hundred mil "getoutttahere" "separation pay" packet from Home Depot right before the home improvement market tanked, and ran off to save Chrysler, post-demerger. (Wanna buy a bridge in Brooklyn ...) And while on the topic of high-profile, always Excellent GE alums: Airbus was a bunch of "big dream" idiots—delay after delay after delay in getting the A380 launched. (Launched it now is, and a helluva sight to see, as I did in Sydney about 10 days ago.) But with a former GE superduperstar in control, James McNerney, fresh from messing up 3M's innovation machine with an imagination-free six-sigma diet, Airbus rival Boeing's systems would be go. No worries. Genius in charge. Whoops. Boeing's Dreamliner, the 787, has, like a flash, or sinking rock is more like it, gone from almost fit-to-fly, not like the damn French-German machines that are now flying, to Nightmareliner, suffering delay after delay after delay after delay. (With further delays promised.) And then there was the one last week about Boeing losing the hundred bil or so Air Force tanker order—that one might be reversed, not by that old "GE [free market] magic," but by a bunch of irate Dobbsean (as in Lou) Congresspersons determined to put brakes on this "free trade crap."

Well, perhaps I should cry "uncle." Maybe those headhunters have got it right. I suspect the supply of guys capable of the likes of losing $10,000,000 per day, nine years running, while simultaneously giving sold-out lectures on "the DaimlerChrysler Way," is indeed pretty short.

Give me a break. These 500 "perfect fits," "unique beings" are doubtless pretty swell fellas, but they are also as mortal as you and me, and clearly less savvy about the Real World than the taxi driver who took me across Boston yesterday. "Stupid loans," he declared, unbidden, summing up the Trillion Dollar (or so) sub-prime mess in two words. Chuckie (Prince, recall), Angie (Mozilo) ... hear that? (And the cabbie didn't charge me the $100 million plus that Countrywide's Angie is scheduled to nick if and when Bank of America closes the deal to buy his company—the B of A, fresh from its own write-down, is, of course, pursuing "synergies, synergies, synergistic synergies.")

I shall say no more. For example, I shall not mention the billionaire next door, here at the bottom of Beacon Hill in Boston. Come on, Peter! (Lynch, Fidelity.) The gazillionnaire really needed free event tickets from the people whose portfolios he evaluated? (He and Fidelity were just fined for so doing.) I coulda directed him to a legit ticket broker, from SF, who's been taking good care of me for decades.

I am ... still ... a dyed-in-the-wool-capitalist-pig-free-trader. I don't want The Law to muzzle exec pay. But I would like common sense to prevail, or at least make the occasional appearance. The 500 Fortune 500 CEOs are no more flawless, genius, etc., than my dog Dodger, who, trust me, via his own sort of Excellence, can reverse the tide and part the waters by producing a fart that carries on the wind from Tinmouth VT all the way to Wall Street.

Dodger is my inspiration!
It's good to be back on the farm!
(Whoops, off to Johannesburg in a few hours!)