By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge

A great deal has been written and said about the difficulties companies face in finding, attracting and acquiring top talent. And yet even when companies are able to accomplish that they still often find themselves overpaying for this talent in terms of both the compensation package extended and the time and effort expended to find and close the desired candidate. 

And if that isn't reason enough to rethink the entire talent acquisition process we must be honest and acknowledge that the entire process also often takes far, far too long which introduces a number of possibly very expensive opportunity costs along the way.

So why does this happen?

Well, for starters, while we've all heard so much about the so-called War For Talent and how important top talent (supposedly) is to the bottom line success of a firm or organization, the reality is that many, if not most companies, and their employees (often unbeknownst to themselves) are actively engaged not on a War For Talent but instead are engaged in a defacto War On Talent.

That bears repeating: A War On Talent. Not a War For Talent.

A minor change in preposition yields a huge difference in meaning.

They are actively, and quite successfully I might add, chasing away the very top talent that they so desperately need and desire (or are at least stating that they need and desire). In some cases they are chasing away the top talent from even applying -- "Why would I apply there? It's a resume blackhole"....."Why would I apply there? Who wants to go through a maze of interviews only to get knocked out by one interviewer who doesn't like you or is afraid of your talent?". 

In other cases, they are chasing away the talent from continuing on in the process after the first interview -- the company or hiring authority wants to move the candidate forward in the process but the candidate opts out and pulls the rip cord.

In still other cases, we find that they're extremely effective in filtering out the top talent during the initial resume screening process -- that's right, extremely effective in cutting out, in booting to the curb, the top talent during the resume review or screening process.

And as if that isn't enough, in other cases, they're simply drop kicking the best candidates to the curb after the first or second interview.
How fast this occurs most often depends on how soon it becomes evident to the hiring company, manager or future peers that the talent at hand is hot (the more talent a candidate has, the more often and faster this can happen -- yes it's counter intuitive but it's a reality).

"James, James, what are you blabbering on about? What do you mean companies are blocking and booting top talent to the curb? Why would they do that? And for the top talent they hire how can you possibly say that they are overpaying?"

You asked, so let's take a quick look at these.

​First, it's no secret that companies often spend large sums of money trying to recruit and acquire what they consider to be the top talent on the market and in the market. It would behoove us to remember that the total cost to successfully hire one candidate accrues not only from the direct expenses paid to advertise the open position but that it also comes from the often steep fees (steep from the perspective of the hiring company -- I've never heard a hiring firm say that a recruiting agency's / third-party agency's fees were "too low".) which third-party (agency) recruiters charge. These fees may be as low as 15% to 20% of the new hire's first year salary in many places such as in the US but the fees may also range to as much as 30% to 35% in places such as Japan (in some cases, accelerating up to 50% -- yes, 50% -- this is not a typo).

But even fees of 15% to 20% can be painful - this is especially the case when annual salaries are running at $100,000. $120,000 or $150,000 or even much more. One must also determine the volume of positions to be filled -- not just for new positions but for existing positions (dictated by the churn rate or conversely the retention rate). It doesn't take a financial genius to realize that these expenses can and do add up rather quickly. We also must consider how much time and energy is spent bringing in each of these candidates for an interview.

And by the way, if you aren't paying fees to a third party agency then you are most likely relying on your in-house recruiters so again you must fully burden their compensation packages and costs -- salary, bonuses, health care, expenses, HR management / compliance fees, payroll taxes and processing and facilities - desk, telephone, computer, etc.). We also need to consider the time and energy spent by the HR department as well as the hiring manager. We must also include the costs associated with the participation of the interviewee's future peers who often asked to assist or are required to participate in the (again, often very lengthy) interview process.

We should have no illusions that the very act of Interviewing external candidates can quickly chew up a huge amount of an employee's valuable time and also reduce their productivity due to the increased stress they experience from the distractions that participating in so many candidate interviews brings to each of the interviewer's already hectic and fully-packed work schedule.

This is not to say that interviewing is not an important part of a hiring manager's or even a team member's job. The fact is, participating in these interviews is not just important but critical. For the company. For the department. For the team members.

But it does mean that we must take into account all the costs (and who pays them) associated not just with the recruiting or talent acquisition process but more specifically with the talent acquisition process we have chosen or that we have been "gifted".

Beyond this, it also means that the candidates who are brought in for an interview should be (properly and effectively) screened to ensure that each is of sufficient constitution to be "employable" at the firm. Further, all participating interviewers must know how to define talent and test for fit both within the broader company and within their particular department as well as the particular team they would join if successful. Going even beyond this, we find that the all interviewers must know how to effect the aforementioned items.

For instance, all interviews must know what techniques to use to extract the required information as well as guide the interview and they must be able to use them competently if not fluently. They must also know what questions to ask and how to ask them, and most importantly, how to interpret the interviewee's responses to these questions.

Interviewers seldom think about this and even if they do their definition of talent is most often found to be both suspect and even deficient as is their ability to effectively and efficiently interview and assess the candidate at hand on an absolute basis as well as relative to the available talent on the market (and at their price range).

In practice, this leads to a hiring process which favors either the selection of a patently "wrong" candidate or the selection of a subpar candidate. It also often leads to the hiring of Safe Candidates or in the case of the hiring which is done by marquee companies (think Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, SFDC, etc.), it means hiring or leads to hiring only properly pedigreed candidate.

And here's a news flash.

Almost anytime you hire the properly pedigreed candidate you:
(1) Overpay for the talent.
(2) You end up with higher candidate expectations which often lead to less loyalty, faster job changes and/or an attitude problem.
(3) You end up with an employee who is likely to be recruited away / more receptive to sweet whispers or more likely to look outside.

But are companies, especially companies in say, Silicon Valley, actually worried about compensation packages being too expensive, too high? Are they really worried about overpaying? Can't they just slough that off and "expense it"?

Well, in regards to the overpayment or overcompensation of talent, we only need be aware of the proven collusion to hold down wages in Silicon Valley through the enforcement of illegal anti-poaching agreements among some the top firms (e.g., Apple, Google, etc. although to Facebook's credit, they apparently declined to participate). 

If hiring companies weren't concerned about fast rising wages and the total costs of finding new key talent or replacing it, why would they take such great risks through the involvement in such collusion? What's the upside of the collusion if everything is kosher as is?

This further begs the question: Why, why would they do this? And why would wages be rising so much and so fast?

Yet again, Economics 101 to the rescue. We need only look at, as a starting point, supply and demand. The hiring firms most likely felt that the supply of the top talent they desired or required was in short supply compared to their own hiring demands/needs as well as the aggregate market demand.

To be clear, this is top talent which is defined as top talent per their often narrow and erroneous definition(s). 

Now it is also highly possible that the true top talent is and was in short supply although this doesn't justify illegal arrangements.
However, it is even more probable, based on what I've seen in my own HR Consulting and Executive Coaching over the years, that this was brought on by the firm's HR department's or the firm's hiring managers' own broken definition of what talent is (let alone what top talent is) as well as the inability of the hiring firm and/or the hiring firm's interviewers to properly attract, assess and close down said talent.

What is needed is to develop a cohesive framework starting with the definition of what the desired or required talent looks like as well as the techniques, processes and questions needed to identify, assess, attract and close it. This rarely happens. Instead we often find that firms' hiring efforts are impeded by a multitude of cognitive biases such as the educational pedigree or the status and ranking of the candidate's current or former employer and so on (halo effect, horns effect, social proof, the safe candidate, just world hypothesis, etc.).

Yet as we've discussed time and time again, the firm's operating or assumed definition of desired or required talent is almost always wrong and these mental short cuts further invoke a series of destructive cognitive biases which rapidly compound and become a vicious circle.

For instance, when you see a "talented" Google sales person can you really accurately determine how much of that person's success at sales at Google is or was due to their own talent?

How much of their success was due to the team behind them?
How much of their success was due to the resources they had access to?
How much of the candidate's success was due to Google's market power which is almost a monopoly power?
How much of the candidate's success was due to the Google brand?

In terms of the salaries paid, higher salary doesn't automatically buy better talent nor more loyal talent.

Yet the myth and meme that it does still persists.

We've already seen numerous cases of extremely loyal talent, often top talent which is motivated far less by market-rate or above-market rate salaries and motivated far more by other factors.

Examples of occupations or roles where the compensation may be well below the market rate include military pilots and other military or intelligence community specialists as well as the clergy and various medical volunteers working in dangerous places around the world.

Turning to other more extreme or unsavory cases of motivation by non-monetary means, we immediately note members of cults and suicide bombers. These are often extremely motivated and loyal individuals who, in the case of cults, are often willing to not just work for FREE but to first donate to the organization their entire life savings.

In the case of suicide bombers, well, they are willing to blow themselves up. Talk about dedication and passion, however twisted, debased or unsavory one may find it.

So don't try to tell me money is the greatest motivator. It isn't.

Now since you most certainly aren't going ask the successful candidate to commit to such a radical program as giving you all their assets and working for free or blowing themselves up when they join your company but will most likely pay going to pay them at least a "decent" if not competitive salary, we need to ask again:

"How hard can it really be to close the candidate down and get them to join your company?"

If you can't answer that satisfactorily then it's time to look at adjusting or reconsidering your recruiting / talent acquisition process. 

And for those not interested in re-inventing the wheel or who would like to access an immediately actionable system that provides an extremely powerful framework and system to identify, attract, assess and close top talent all while not overpaying or chasing the desired talent away we'd suggested our Supercharged Candidate Interviewing training and consulting program as well as our High-Performance Talent Acquisition training and consult program.

Something to think about.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge

One of the most challenging positions to find oneself in is managing across a matrix organization. It's even far more difficult if we are managing this matrix organization remotely. 

What are some of the difficulties? Well from a traditional management perspective, having the responsibility and especially accountability as a manager) without any real authority is vexing.

It becomes orders of magnitude more difficult when we are dealing with various functional areas (finance vs QA vs engineering vs marketing), various cultures, across different languages (even if we are all speaking English, it may not and most likely today is not the first language of many of our colleagues) and, of course, time zones.

In many instances, to the matrix manager it can feel akin to pushing on a string. And that doesn't get one very far.

However, there is a framework as well as concrete strategies and techniques that can be applied to the situation to anticipate issues as well as mitigate, reconcile or eliminate then as they arise.

First, it behooves us to understand that almost every problem falls into three categories:

1. Financial / Monetary
   
2. Technical
   
3. Interpersonal / Communicative in Nature
   

And that of those three, 99% of the time, the gating item(s) (not the traversable  issues) are or can expect to be interpersonal / communicative in nature.

Second, we can solve much of this, both by anticipating and by how we react by understanding how our matrix team members think.
Notice I said HOW they think. Not WHY they think.

HOW, allows to understand how the process information and structure experience and through that we can create a function that can apply a formula to information or scenarios and understand their reaction. This works even for unexperienced events and phenomenon.

WHY conversely forces us to memorize static data points and makes predicting behavior and reactions to unexperienced events and phenomenon much more tenuous and difficult.

Last, how we set the initial frames and maintain those frames will using influence and persuasion in an ethical manner will determine how well not only we are able to manage our remote matrix but how well the team itself performs.

Sometimes when the orchestra is out of tune it may fall to the feet of the conductor and not the musicians.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge

Ebola in the US?

You've had to have been living in a cave not to have heard about the unfolding ebola situation that has now reached the US, in Dallas, Texas, via index patient Duncan Hunter.

There's been potentially deadly bungle after deadly bungle starting with a visa issuance system which allows an entrant to self-administer their own questionnaire about their exposure to ebola to a horrible misdiagnosis and mishandling of the index patient at a local Dallas hospital which was later blamed away on "electronic record keeping"  and a "miscommunication" between hospital staff and the attending doctors.

Beyond this, there are even more questions about the mechanics of dealing with ebola. For example, it's one thing to say that hospitals need to be on the outlook for ebola both by profiling a patient (recent travel to West Africa, in particular, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea? Any contact with a person, living or deceased with ebola or suspected  of ebola?) and also by looking for indicators of ebola (temperature, unexplained bleeding, diarrhea, etc.) but it's quite another thing to say what to do when you have a confirmed case on your hands.

Specifically, there seems to be a dearth of information (from all of the reading I have done and that is quite extensive) about specifics such as:

• How to handle soiled bed sheets, clothing and waste? 
  
• What is the decontamination protocol for hospital staff? 
  
• How to deal with human waste and disinfecting hospital and hospital room surfaces?
  
• How to safely draw blood (e.g, use plastic, avoid glass)?.
  
• And so on.
  

And there are critics within the medical community:

"I don’t care how advanced any industrialized nation is, there is a threshold where we will outstretch the resources and it becomes uncontrolled.”
  
Through all of this, we can see that the medical system from the CDC on down appears to be completely leadership and that's about the nicest thing I can say. Oh sure, we've gotten boilerplate statements about this ebola incident being a "one-off" situation and that there's nothing to worry about as well as statements from the CDC and other's about their confidence in our medical system "containing this before it becomes an outbreak" but the actual execution of this by the so-called medical profession has been a sideshow if not a freak show.

How could this handling be improved? Well, it first entails an understanding of what's missing. And specifically the missing pieces include:

1. Leadership
2. Communication

"The major flaws that we really found were about communication".

A leader is someone willing to step up and take charge and responsibility while also being able to handle the arrows fired into his or her back, because in a situation like this, it boils down to heavy politics and political correctness. Those persons in a position of power who take the path of inaction, will continue to be inactive until they finally see a benefit to be active or until the hits being inactive are greater than the risk of acting.

A person who is a true leader will step up immediately to the plate. In fact, any person looking for huge political gain (including a scoundrel), on either or any side of the aisle could gain enumerable benefit and power by doing so, though they would have to have a strong constitution and be street smart to stand up to the continuous volley of blackened arrows fired by the other political players.

The benefits, though, that would accrue to the savvy leader would more than offset the negative hits incurred.

The other point is that of communication. It is very clear that true communication as well as clear step-by-step planning on the very  nuts and bolts of what should be done at a hospital or medical facility either suspecting or confirming an ebola patient has not occurred or is severely lacking.

So what can we learn from this for business? What are the takeaways?

Simple.

Most persons in a position of power, including in business, cower in fear or reel from having to make real, hard calls. At the same time, those that may be willing to make hard call are often hamstrung from acting by political opponents.

However, a true leader who understands how to step in to the leadership or power vacuum and how to lead will reap untold benefits and profits while doing good.

Steve Jobs was a master of this as he demonstrated at Pixar and at Apple during his second tour of duty with the development and release of the iMac, iPod, iTunes and then the iPhone.

We need to understand that while other incumbents fought and blocked each other internally (from Nokia to Sony to name just two), Apple, with Steve Jobs' steady leadership at the helm (along with his iron fist) simply engaged in a massive land grab in numerous key market spaces.

As always, any company's greatest weakness is poor leadership and heavy politics while any company's greatest advantage is a field full of competitors who, themselves, are leaderless or otherwise engaged in heavy, destructive politics.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge


I came across this interesting Silicon Valley Business Journal article entitled "Why do startups fail? Here are the top 20 reasons" which summarizes a large post-mortem analysis of startup failures conducted by CB Insights

One quick takeaway to highlight:

"After reading through every single of the 101 post-mortems, we’ve learned two things. One — there is rarely one reason for a single startup's failure. And two — across all these failures, the reasons are very diverse."

Here's the top twenty reasons:
(Note: percentages don't add up to 100 because sometimes there are multiple reasons for failure)

1. Building a solution in search of a problem: Falling in love with an idea or building it out with market validation. 42 percent cited this. 

2. Cash Out. No Mas: We'll assume this wasn't due to financial mismanagement or malfeasance but a natural outcome of a sane burn rate over an extended period with trailing revenues of a lean nature. 29 percent reported this.

3. Wrong team: Lacking key members or skill sets This was cited by 23 percent of the companies. 

4. Beaten by the competition: About 19 percent of the companies reported this.

5. Pricing/cost issues: Reported by 18 percent in the study.

6. Poor product: This was reported by 17 percent of the companies.

7. Need/lack business model: A lack of a viable model killed 17 percent of these companies.

8. Poor marketing: Knowing how to code or build good products isn't enough. Reported by 14 percent of the companies.

9. Ignoring customers: 14 percent of the companies in the studied pointed to this.

10. Mis-timed product (releases): 13 percent of the companies in the survey reported this. A Calxeda employee told CB Insights, “We moved faster than our customers could move. We moved with tech that wasn't really ready for them... We were too early.”

11. Lost focus: 13 percent reported this.

12. Founder/investor strife: Creative tension is far different than toxic infighting. 13 percent of the companies succumbed to this.

13. Pivot gone bad: As has been said, "The pivot used to be called the f****up".  10 percent pointed to this.

14: Lack passion: The passion to stick it out, to execute. 9 percent identified this as the reason.

15: Bad location: For hiring/retaining talent, customers, investors and so on. This was cited by 9 percent.

16. No financing/investor interest: This was pointed to by 8 percent.

17. Legal challenges: Cited by 8 percent of the companies.

18. Don't use network/advisers: Again cited by 8 percent of the companies.

19. Burnout: Never a good thing, many reasons why a team can burn out. 8 percent pointed to this as the culprit.

20: Failure to pivot: As has been said earlier, "The pivot used to be called the F****up" and while that may be true it doesn't change the fact that continuing down the same messed up path is going to get your any place faster (other than bankruptcy court) and certainly no where better. 7 percent cited this.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge

The Sun Also Rises (陽はまた昇る ||  Yō wa mata noboru), starring Ken Watanabe (foreigners will know him from his appearances in The Last Samurai and Inception) is a riveting drama that captures the development in Japan of the nascent and soon to be ubiquitous VHS video format.

Starting as a stealth or more accurately, an unapproved Skunk Works projects within JVC (Nihon Victor Corporation) it culminated in 
the development and release of the new VHS standard to the industry.

On top of that, JVC's new format was royalty-free and competed directly against Akio Morita and his uber-powerful Sony Corporation (when you think of Akio Morita, think  about Steve Jobs before  Steve Jobs was even on the scene) and their Betamax.

Lots to takeways from this movie in terms of government pressure and cronyism in the form of MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry / 通商産業省 / Tsūshō-sangyō-shō) officials who had backed Betamax and, therefore, wanted JVC to deep-six their VHS format. 

Other key takeways:
- Intrapreneurship
- No Box Thinking
- Technical Innovation 
- Market-Focused Feedback Loops to ferret out new Use Cases
- Tenacity / Being Relentless
- True Leadership
- New Business Models (royalty-free industry standard)

In summation, this docu-drama really demonstrates Japanese business ethics, working styles, attention to detail and cultural expectations.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge


Today I wanted to pose a very serious question regarding the coming failure of Abenomics (and it will fail, mark my words as economically there is no other alternative or outcome), Japan's continuing dearth of real, dynamic leadership and what it means for Japan's future.

Here we go: Has Japan's once rich, brave and bold Samurai spirit come to a crashing halt and been replaced by that of the Eunuch's?

I've deeply pondered this.

A Eunuch spirit and culture would suggest that, and evoke the feelings that, Japan's Samurai, Battlefield Culture has been replaced by something much softer and lacking in leadership.

I've written about this from various which you can find here:

• Japan May Be Able To Compete Globally But Not Yet
  
• Can Japan Compete Globally? You Betcha And Here's Why
  
• Can Japan Compete Globally? You Betcha & Here's How
  
• Japan's Problem: Severe Lack Of Leadership Not A Lack Of Innovation Or Creativity (The Globe & Mail)
  
• The Truth About Japan: Can Japan's New Startup Spirit Revitalize The Japanese Economy?
  
• Exploding The Myth of Japan's Lack Of Talent By Understanding The Tip Of The Sword
  

Now some may be still questioning my prediction that Abenomics will fail. I guess the only debate I can see is how one define's failure and how bad the coming failure will be. 

Abenomics is and has been economically untenable from the start, from when it was first announced.

And for those not overly familiar with Abenomics, here's a review of the so-called "3 arrows":

"The first arrow is an aggressive monetary policy. Abe appointed Haruhiko Kuroda, former president of the Asian Development Bank, as governor of the Bank of Japan in March. Kuroda has set a target of achieving 2% inflation and doubling the money supply within two years.

The second arrow is a proactive fiscal policy, consisting of a ¥10 trillion (US$100 billion) public works package.

The third arrow is a growth strategy. Structural reforms in Abe’s sights include everything from increasing women’s share of leadership positions to 30% by 2020 to joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-country free-trade agreement that should drive trade liberalization and deregulation inside Japan.

There are several things wrong with these areas and we've discussed them before. First, even if you thought all three all needed they are in the wrong order.

The first arrow should have been the biggest, heavy hitter arrow - structural reform, but given the amount of ossified, rent-seeking incumbents in Japan coupled with near complete regulatory capture in many areas, well, that just isn't going to happen.

So instead, the two simple arrow, although massive destructive arrows to the economy, will and have proceeded -- loosing monetary policy to drop the value of the yen and going on a Keynesian-spend what you don't have public works-waste the money spree to welcome inflation!

Folks, inflation is the last thing Japan needs and given the fact that Japan is oil dependent and import dependent for food and other materials, the last thing that should have been done was to drive down the yen.

In fact, it would have naturally fallen anyhow because of the current account balance for the new record oil imports.

I wrote about this in detail, what the smart play would have been:

Now back to the Eunch problem. What Japan needs is to develop more homegrown leaders - real leaders, women and men, of all ages and persuasions that are not afraid to lead -- they are out there, but often they are forced out of the game early or left on the sidelines because they frighten the status-quo management or the ossified corporate culture.

But by paving the way for more and more startups, these leaders can move to run and drive those businesses, which in turn put heavy pressure on the ossified incumbents -- sales, business models and so on.

It's a win-win for talent, for consumers, for the country.

But Abenomics is only a symptom of a Eunuch spirit and culture (as well as a self-serving incumbency) and leadership, nascent and seasoned will continue to be rare and often smothered out or crowded out of where it is most needed.

By Mike Rogers, MarketingJapan, Universal Vision Ltd., and Smart Research 
& James Santagata, Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge

TV as a Mirror of Society

I met the boss of the biggest international television network in the world the other day. He is a Canadian. He travels all over the world and, because he is in the TV business, he told me that one of his favorite things to do in every country was to judge by TV commercials what things were important to that particular society. 

Japan's TV commercials? Insurance for this or that; home sales; automobiles; financial instruments and plans; candy, cosmetics, fast food... Companies like Zurich, Sekisui, Kanebo.... Japanese commercials that soft sell and are emotive commercials.

I think that's right. 

He also told me that he was "astounded" by just how many over the counter drug medication commercials there were on US TV all the time. US TV commercials? Drugs, Cholesterol, Machismo ("my ding-a-ling is bigger than yours" commercials); fast food; commercials to make your dick hard, make it soft, put you to sleep, keep you awake, lower blood pressure, lose weight; not to mention commercials galore for people with extreme anxiety and panic attacks.

Oh, and don't forget the side effects disclaimers! Cholesterol, etc

Why is the USA this way? It wasn't that way 50 years ago, was it? 

Here's one piece of anecdotal evidence: Japan has its problems too, but here is something that will drop the jaws of all Americans... 

This presentation, How to Jumpstart Your Career In Japan, was delivered to a large group of visiting high school students from The Harvey School (Katonah, New York).

In the presentation we covered:

• Developing your value and ROI as a candidate
  
• How one can future proof themselves in the face of the rapidly advancing societal and economic tsunami
  
• Impact and Opportunities coming from rapid adoption and utilization of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), expert systems, machine vision, robots, 3D printing, autonomous vehicles, etc.
  

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge



"So, what, you think you're a minder read and can read minds, right?! Ha!"

I often find myself fielding this question although sometimes it's delivered in a tone of voice that conjures up images of an accusation such as "charlatan!" rather than a genuine question.

But that's okay, as it shows interest and engagement on the person asking it and once they allow me to explore a little more with them, they are usually hooked and have an "aha!" moment.

This most often occurs when I deliver the Psychological Jujutsu, Organizational Power Dynamics or Supercharged Sales training to my group classes or when I coach an individual. It seem that almost without fail, this occurs during the course of a particular exercise or coaching session when I'll cold read a person or situation or analyze a situation that is described to me and then "nail it" without ever having met the particular party in question and most often without ever having been completely privy to all facts or details surrounding the party or situation. 

Examples have included  individuals and situations such as the problematic office admin who went from threats of power harassment to suddenly gleefully resigning, the top salesperson who had a court order for the garnishment of his wages for payment to his former spouse and who decided to resign rather than have his money garnished to the problematic country manager who was quickly read and understood as being frightened of someone internally "taking" his job.

So the simple and honest answer to this question or perhaps the rejoinder to this accusation is, of course, I'm not a mind reader nor do I purport to be. And yet my results are there and they are what they are with them being more often than not extremely uncanny in their accuracy. 

The most important insight from my work and research that I try to impart to my students, clients and skeptics is that you don't need to be a mind reader to be accurate in your reading of a situation because in most cases the party in question through their actions, reactions and inactions almost to a tee loudly and graphically telegraphs exactly what they are thinking and how they are thinking as well as their intentions.

They also communicate this through both their acts of omission (including benign neglect and mindful tarpitting) as well as through  acts of commission. In some cases the acts maybe overt in nature and in other cases covert.

It matters not.

Sometimes, I'll wait to passively receive this silhouette and then begin to outline their profile, but more often than not I do as I advise all my students and clients -- make like sonar and make like radar by actively and continually pinging and painting your environment and targets.

It's that simple. 

And you should use  this daily until it becomes a root kit script -- one that requires no conscience deployment or utilization, and one that becomes as internalized, integrated and critical to your very survival as breathing.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge


"October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The other are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February."
- Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar


There is no doubt that the stock market can be a very unforgiving institution but does the SEC's tactics if not self-described mandate of breaking the legs of Entrepreneurs and rolling over little Retail Investors make it any safer?

This is highly doubtful as the SEC has arguably become a poster child for the economic concept of regulatory capture, having moved from their initial role of investment information disclosure in the 1960's to their current role of supposedly "protecting investors" since the 1990's. There is also the issue that the existence of the SEC and what I term to be their "SEC-anointed" stocks injects moral hazard into the system.

But who, prey tell (spelled as intended), is the SEC protecting? 

Surely it isn't the little retail investor who has had to contend with the like of SEC-anointed fraud stocks and scammers like Enron, Global Crossing, the Steve Jobs Options Backdating Scandal and, of course, the Big Daddy himself, Bernie Madoff.

What's most amazing about Bernie Madoff's fraud is not just that he got away with it, but that the SEC had no intention of stopping him!

That may sound like an outlandish or unsubstantiated allegation until one considers the documented facts. Starting in 2000 then again in 2001, and 2005, a forensics accountant by the name of Harry M. Markopolos repeatedly notified the SEC of Bernie Madoff's fraud both verbally and in writing.  Markopolos provided detailed supporting documents only to be ignored by the SEC again and again.

Here is Markopolos' complaint to the SEC regarding Madoff where he identifies 29 Red Flags:

• The World's Biggest Hedge Fund Is A Fraud (slideshare)
  

Now it appears that the SEC is continuing their assault on both individual investors who want better returns than are available through the retail market or whom just want to invest their own money as they see fit (if they can blow their money in Vegas or on penny stocks, smokes or state sponsored lotteries why not stocks?) as well as entrepreneurs looking to raise funds for their companies.

The SEC is doing this by considering to raise the financial requirements for being designated an accredited investor. Currently, an individual accredited investor is defined as follows: 

1. a natural person who has individual net worth, or joint net worth with the person’s spouse, that exceeds $1 million at the time of the purchase, excluding the value of the primary residence of such person;



2. a natural person with income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with a spouse exceeding $300,000 for those years and a reasonable expectation of the same income level in the current year; or

Apparently, too many Americans have now become cashed up and have too easily overcome this financial hurdle. In the last go round, the  SEC changed the rules so that an individual's home was excluded but apparently that wasn't enough to keep out the amount of new individuals looking to invest wholesale (as opposed to retail).

To remedy this our  "protectors", the SEC,  now want to index the SEC's individual accredited investor's  financial requirements to inflation. 

Here is a comparison of the current requirements and what the future requirements would mean:

An individual accredited investor is now defined as someone with $1 million in net worth, minus the value of their primary residence, or with annual income of $200,000 in each of the two most recent years and with a reasonable expectation to bring in the same income level in the current year..

The inflation indexed requirements would be about $2.5 million of individual net worth while the annual income requirement would rise to $450,000.

The SEC is offering some protection no doubt, but for whom? It seems this protection is more likely to benefit fraudsters and incumbent wholesale investors than entrepreneurs looking to raise money and the little retail investor.

http://m.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/05/20/more-than-half-of-angel-investors-could-be-barred.html