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


Yesterday I came across what I felt to be a provocatively brilliant quote by Elon Musk which I subsequently posted into my LinkedIn Update and Facebook Status feeds.

"The reason I haven't taken SpaceX public is the goals of SpaceX are very long-term, which is to establish a city on Mars."
-- Elon Musk

The next day, I awoke to find this little gem of a comment from my friend Chikako Uchinami of synopsis.TODAY below it:

"Elon is instructive of the principle of Divine Right.
He's not always right, but when he is he is the most interesting man in the world.
You can't inherit Divine Right- you take it."

-- Chikako Uchinami

Besides being incredibly insightful, Chikako brilliantly articulated the concept and application Divine Right

Divine Right.

And that's what it is. 

It 's not given. It can only be taken. The right can only be asserted.

Think about the power of those statements. 

Now think about the power and effectiveness of any leader (including you) who not only understands but lays claim to and assertively wields Divine Right.

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... 

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge


Have you ever wondered why companies so often overpay for talent that just doesn't perform or worse negatively impacts the company's performance?

By the same token, have you ever wondered why companies seem to so often inadvertently or even consciously block, reject and trample Top Talent?

The fact is, the so-called War For Talent most often resembles a War On Talent.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge


Hats off to Sheryl Sandberg and her book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.

It's started a valuable conversation but until concrete actions are taken, that's all it is - a conversation, talk. 

And by concrete actions I mean focusing on understanding, developing and utilizing specific tools and strategies to accept the world as it is, and then to use these tools and strategies to create, mold and reframe a new more comfortable and productive reality. 

This training draws extensively from our Psychological Jujutsu training and High-Impact Leadership series to create a body of original material that is specifically tailored for women currently in or seeking leadership roles.

We delve deeply into the fine line separating the 4B's -- Bimbo, Babe, Bitch, Brilliant-Boss -- and more importantly we discuss exactly how to effectively place yourself and stay in the Brilliant-Boss category without triggering negative push backs, mismatches or attacks.

By understanding the impact and deeply embedded, yet invisible,  role that evolutionary psychology plays with regard to the organization and society's view of strong women leaders, we'll explore how to deftly avoid the many traps and pitfalls while learning how to push the correct buttons and trigger the proper scripts allowing women to lead an more effective, efficient, productive and satisfying work and home life.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge

It seems like the peddling of the old standby Myths & Memes is on the rise once again in the Valley. As this is often a lagging indicator of both the Valley's, and even the wider Tech Industry's financial state, it tells me that we're in a very frothy if not overheated market since people are now letting their hair down and apparently gleefully throwing themselves onto the politically correct bandwagon.  But they should be careful, lest they find themselves thrown beneath it. 

Still, it's my guess that whatever problems or disasters may rear their ugly heads in the future due to blind belief and adherence to these Myths & Memes, the folks most involved are betting that they'll be able to quickly paper over it with the waves and waves of cash that are flowing so freely now.

But not everyone believed let alone followed these Myths and Memes and amazingly, they didn't fail or turn into a pumpkin or a toad.

What a perfect example of a person who broke every one of these Myths and Memes?

Try Steve Jobs. Yep, Steve Jobs. And Apple Computer under his guidance during his second tour of duty.

The fact is, no one can deny that, under Steve Jobs, Apple was a smashing success. All the metrics are there: market cap, profits, amazing hit product after hit product. iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone. You name it.

Wow!

And for the record, I am by no means an Apple fan nor am I a Steve Jobs / Apple Computer apologist.  I'm simply a reality-based thinker and I call it the way it is, not the way I wish it were.

That said, I'm a very serious student of Steve Jobs and I'm not afraid to look at what really made him successful. I can tell you, it wasn't following the Valley Myth and Memes and it wasn't being politically correct.

In fact, Steve Jobs did the exact opposite of what most pundits and social engineers are preaching. And the reason it worked for Steve Jobs is because Steve Jobs and his communication style was perfectly aligned with the way the world and humans work.

What is most interesting, though perhaps very disconcerting to the social engineers among us, is how Steve Jobs did it.
We're told that if a person studies hard at the "right" schools, gets a "good" education and makes the "right" connections they'll be well positioned for success.

Beyond that we are told, especially in the Valley, that an organization will perform best when it is openly transparent (both internally and externally), when there is diversity, when there are women in senior leadership positions and when we have an open environment of respect and perhaps kumbayahism in the office.

Going even further, we are told that we should be investing and building all kinds of new tech that people have never seen. And by "new tech" I mean core tech, not making sexy cases, new form factors or tinkering with some incremental derivative product like the iPod.

And yet, if we look at Steve Jobs and his management style during his absolutely, amazing and record smashing second run we find something that is completely at odds with what the pundits say is necessary for success:

1. No diversity at Apple (as defined by the politically correct sense of skin pigmentation / reproductive organs).
2. No women in senior leadership positions (see also: Apple Vows To Find Women & Minorities For Board Directors).
3. No Indians in senior leadership positions (see: Why Indian presence in Apple's senior management level is next to nil).
4. Few minorities (see: Apple Facing Criticism About Diversity Changes Bylaws).
5. Steve Jobs didn't go to a "top" university.
6. Steve Jobs didn't even graduate from a four-year college.
7. Steve Jobs was not transparent. At best, he could be characterized as a benevolent dictator, at worst a tyrant.
8. Jobs/Apple was not open -- you leak new Apple products, you'd be hunted down & sued (see: Apple Sues To Stop Product Leaks).
9 Jobs/Apple could be downright nasty, even engaging in potentially illegal activity, if the "no poach" collusion allegations are borne out.
10. Steve Jobs even used his money to find a loophole in California vehicle code so that he wouldn't have to get license plates and had an apparent penchant for parking in the handicap spaces.

And yet again, while Steve Jobs just turned a blind eye to all of these supposed business and organizational "requirements" his results were phenomenal. Can we in any way argue with Steve Jobs' success? It seems that few prominent members of the Valley tech community question his success so I guess not.

Next time, we'll dig a bit deeper and explore why Steve Jobs was so successful, time and time again. The results may surprise you.

Lastly, as quick exercise, we should ask ourselves is Apple really lacking diversity? Or is and has Apple always been diverse but in a more mature manner, such as defining "diversity" with regard to value, thought patterns and productivity rather than with regard to skin pigments and reproductive organs?.

It can easily be argued that a man and women studying the same subject matter from Princeton (not to pick on any school) will be more alike than two men, one of which studied electrical engineering and the other who studied marketing at two different schools in two different states or countries.

Think about it. 
Think. Different.