Month: July 2007

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Ethics: General, General Commentary, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life

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Very refreshing article in the New York Times about foundations not only not burying their mistakes, but actually looking at how they happened, what went wrong, and what to do better the next time around.

Just a few years ago, it would have been astonishing for a foundation, particularly one as traditional as Carnegie, to publicize a failure. Today, though, many of the nation’s largest foundations regard disclosing and analyzing their failures as bordering on a moral obligation.

“There’s an increasing recognition among foundation leaders that not to be public about failures is essentially indefensible,” said Phil Buchanan, the executive director of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, which advises foundations. “If something didn’t work, it is incumbent upon you to make sure others don’t make the same mistake.

I see this as a welcome trend, and one that businesses can learn from. Failure is not something to be ashamed of. I had a number of failures in business before I started the one I’m in now, back in 1981–and even then, it had to change with the times. It has reinvented itself several times, and I feel another reinvention percolating (don’t know how it will shape up yet).

Entrepreneurs almost always have failures to “brag” about. otherwise, we wouldn’t be entrepreneurs, because in order of succeed, you have to take risks.

When asked about has many failed attempts to develop a light bulb, Thomas Edison famously said, “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have
successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” (Quoted in The
World Bank. 1994. World Development Report 1994: Infrastructure for
Development. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press and cited here.)

I’ll tell you about a few of my failures over the years, within my current, successful business:

  • Around 20 years ago, I tried to start a state trade association for resume writers, without having any idea of how much work would be involved or how much direct mail I’d have to do to get a viable membership. I actually got a phenomenal response to my first mailing (somewhere around 8 percent, I think), but that left me with something like seven members.
  • I’ve been unable to find a publisher for a research-intensive book I’d like to do that requires a big publisher who can pay a big advance. Even though I’ve done one book with Simon & Schuster and two others with respected smaller commercial publishers, and even though I speak and write and am very visible on the Internet, agents think I don’t have enough of a platform to take on this project. Since coming up with this idea, though, I’ve done two more self-published books, to critical acclaim.
  • A few years back, I stepped into a catfight on one of the discussion lists I participate in–and watched the client referrals from that list shrivel up to a tiny fraction of what they’d been.
  • I set a goal some time back of doing a certain number of speeches at a certain rate of compensation, by a certain date. Years later, I still haven’t reached that goal.

    • I won’t bore you with the whole long list. But I do think it’s important to take stock, to reflect on the mistakes/failures as well as the brilliant successes. I’ve learned, I’ve channeled my energy into becoming not only more successful financially, but a better person. And it’s showing results.

    I urge you to admit and discuss your setbacks as well as your successes.

    Maybe I should add admitting setbacks to the Business Ethics Pledge.

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    By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability

    Bill Becker, a former US Department of Energy official, published a very cogent article in the Denver Post, opposing nuclear power on the grounds that…

    Those who say it will reduce global warming ignore the huge carbon cost of mining, milling, and transporting the fuel and of building the plant in the first place.
    Many scientists say we only have a window of about a decade to turn our energy patterns around, if we’re to avoid catastrophic climate change. Nukes take many years to approve and build.

    He also notes some of the more familiar arguments, e.g., terrorist target, weapons proliferation, and waste storage issues–although he only mentions these and does not elaborate.

    So let me elaborate at least on waste storage. We’re looking at isolating extremely deadly and volatile compounds for longer than the span of civilization–a devil’s bargain if there ever was one.

    This is an issue I know something about. I started researching issues around nuclear power in 1974, and my first book, published in 1980, was on why nuclear is a really stupid way to generate electricity, and I’ve seen nothing since to make me change my mind.

    Want to know more? I still don’t know a better book on the subject than No Nukes, published way back in 1978 and apparently still in print.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice

    Audio interview on a year of eating only local foods, many of them from her garden.

    https://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_6208.cfm

    I confess–while I try to eat local and organic as much as possible, I’m not to the point where I can completely give up cocoa, olive oil, and tropical fruit, among other pleasures. But nothing beats a perfect-tasting tomato or raspberry from our own planting and harvesting.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability

    Apparently, 59% of the market isn’t enough for Scotts Miracle-Gro. The company is suing its tiny competitor, TerraCycle–a maker of compost made from worm poo, on trademark infringement grounds.

    Well, I looked at TerraCycle’s logo and trade dress, and then I looked at MiracleGro’s. Yes, they both use greens and yellows–but different shades, and in very different ways. The only similarity I can see is that they both use a circle to hold their logos. It’s one thing to trademark a truly distinctive shape, such as the McDonald’s arches. But a circle? Come on!

    In fact, TerraCycle makes a very clear distinction on its website. Its whole brand identity is as a no-artificial-chemicals alternative to products like MiracleGro, packed exclusively in reused soda bottles and other packaging that would have otherwise ended up in landfill.

    Hmm–sounds like a company I should feature in my monthly Positive Power of Principled Profit spotlight article.

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    By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Ethics: General, Publishing

    Both as someone who loves a good yarn and someone who writes regularly about ethics both in my blog and in my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, I want to talk for a minute about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

    There’s so much I could say about this latest (and final) Harry Potter book–but it’s a challenge to find things to say that won’t mess it up for those who haven’t read it yet. I think I’ve succeeded.

    Let me put my bias on the table first: I enjoy the HP books so much that we’ve given copies of Book #1 to several of our childless friends. I believe all of them have gone on to read the others, in order (and for these books, in chronological order is the only sensible way to read them). Also, I’m extremely grateful to J.K. Rowling for creating an entire generation of book readers in an era where that didn’t seem at all likely. Yet, there are places in some of the other books where I felt 50 or 100 pages could have easily been cut.

    In spite of its length, I don’t feel that way about #7. In fact, the drama is so intense, so early, and continues with so little down time that I almost wish for a bit more filler. It’s a very fast read.

    As a writer about ethics, I’ve long been fascinated with Rowling’s take on the nature of good and evil (and that of other writers in the genre, particularly Phillip Pullman, whose His Dark Materials series is every bit as masterful). In this book, she goes much, much deeper on that front, with lots of surprises. Several characters turn out to have a lot more depth than we thought, and Harry himself has to make a choice unlike any he has faced before. And the events following that choice just feel so right!

    One flaw, though, is the number of gratuitous characters she’s introducing. It’s a lot to keep track of, and several have only cameo roles. Another flaw is that the trail of corpses leaves some of the deaths without justification or even description, and no time to grieve and remember them before plunging into the next round.

    Still, these are minor. Rowling, not only a master storyteller but incredibly well-informed about mythology from many cultures, has long ago earned a special place in literature, and this book proves her mastery. She deserves every good thing that has happened in her life.

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics

    Why wasn’t this all over the media?

    George W Bush has signed an Executive Order giving broad powers to seize property and block financial transactions from anyone who even donates money to any person or group that the government feels is opposing an orderly reconstruction in Iraq.

    How Big Brother can you get? This is a serious threat to the liberty of activists nationwide. George Orwell must be spinning in his grave.

    Go and read the order: https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070717-3.html

    And then tell people about it.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Media Ethics

    Apparently the phenomenon of a corporate executive posting anonymously in ways that he/she thinks will help his/her company/hurt the competition is called “sock puppeting.”

    I hadn’t heard this term until I stumbled on a New York Times article this morning, published Monday.

    The article cites not only John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, whose disgraceful and illegal behavior I covered here, but also…

    Conrad Black, CEO of Hollinger International–found guilty last week of mail fraud and obstruction of justice, and facing up to 35 years in the slammer.

    Says the Times:

    At the criminal fraud trial of Hollinger International’s chief executive, Conrad M. Black, prosecutors introduced evidence that the former press baron had once proposed joining a Yahoo Finance chat room to blame short sellers for his company’s stock performance.

    Patrick Byrne of Overstock.com (who claims that his real name was attached to his anonymous handle on every post–which, if true, makes it a very different situation, in my opinion).

    And it’s not just the business world, but also politics and media.

    Tad Furtado, at the time, policy director for New Hampshire Congressman Charles Bass (who lost his re-election bid in a perhaps-related development).

    Journalists are not immune either:

    In April 2006, The Los Angeles Times pulled Michael A. Hiltzik, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, off of his blog because he had posted comments on blogs under an assumed name while feuding with readers. In November, New Republic magazine suspended its culture critic Lee Siegel after it determined that he had been energetically defending himself in the discussion forums of his New Republic blog, under the name “sprezzatura” (Italian for “making the difficult look easy”).

    Of course, there’s the related phenomenon of journalists writing under their own identity, but not disclosing that they are also acting as paid PR flacks, such as Armstrong Williams shilling for the Bush administration. I’ve written about that one, too.

    Meanwhile, there are those of us still out there fighting the good fight. If you haven’t signed the Business Ethics Pledge yet, I urge you to do so.

    I plan to write an essay, “When Even Whole Foods Cheats.” Rest assured, it will be published under my own name, and whatever plugs it may make for my book Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, it will make them honestly.

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    By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Peace and War, Politics

    35 years ago this month, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers–embarrassing documents showing how successive administrations from both parties lies us into Vietnam and kept us there.

    Democracy Now had three of the players: Ellsberg himself, Senator (and current Presidential candidate) Mike Gravel, and the publisher of Beacon Press, which was sued by the government for doing the book version.

    It reads like a spy novel, with all sorts of unbelievable intrigues and secrecies and plot twists. Someone could make a great movie out of it.

    And of course, there are very relevant lessons for today’s society, as the Iraq war drags on and the pressure mounts to open yet another front against Iran.

    Read, listen, or watch at democracynow.org–both for the drama and the history/current events lesson.

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    By Posted on Posted in Peace and War, Politics, Uncategorized

    Kristol thinks GWB is a successful president and that we’re on track to win the war in Iraq. Hmmm–could’ve fooled me!

    Can you say “hubris”? Gawd, what chutzpah. Arianna Huffington calls him “delusional”–and I think she is right!

    Kristol writes in the original article:

    What about terrorism? Apart from Iraq, there has been less of it, here and abroad, than many experts predicted on Sept. 12, 2001. So Bush and Vice President Cheney probably are doing some important things right. The war in Afghanistan has gone reasonably well.

    What planet is he ON? Let’s see: subway bombings in London, commuter rail murder in Madrid, kidnappings and warlordism in Afghanistan (and Karzi hanging on for dear life), the most recent attempts in Glasgow…and let’s not even count Israel in the equation.

    It’s this kind of very dangerous thinking that got us into a war we had no business being in, and made a complete shambles of things once we went in.

    One place I agree with Kristol–this burden will be laid on the shoulders of the next president. Hopefully someone with the vision and strength of character to get us the heck out of there.

    tags: Bill Kristol, William Kristol, Iraq, Afghanistan, Terrorism, George W. Bush, Arianna Huffington, Washington Post, Huffington Post

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability

    An amazing juxtaposition of two stories in the Organic Consumers Association’s latest newsletter:

    A Reuters report, “Organic Farming Can Feed the World“:

    “Model estimates indicate that organic methods could produce enough food on a global per capita basis to sustain the current human population, and potentially an even larger population, without increasing the agricultural land base,” they wrote in their report, published in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems.

    Wow! We can have the much higher food quality, eliminate a major pollution source, and increase yields. Sounds good to me!

    The other story examines research that examines specific effects pesticides have, interfering with plants’ natural ability to fix nitrogen. It’s rather technical but I found a paragraph in ordinary English:

    Drawing on their recent work and other published studies, the team projected that pesticides and other contaminants are reducing plant yield by one-third as a result of impaired SNF. This remarkable conclusion suggests one mechanism, or explanation of the yield-enhancing benefits of well-managed, long-term organic farming systems.

    In fact, yields can be as much as three times higher than conventional agriculture.

    Isn’t it time to reclaim our organic heritage and stop farming the old, destructive ways?

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