The Challenge Dividend

France Makes Good

I've blasted the French a few times here in this blog.  While I love visiting France, I feel that its cultural aversion to free market competition has led the country toward ruin.  In April '06, for example, the country caved to protesters after trying to weaken laws that make it almost impossible for companies to fire workers.  But now France seems to be making positive steps, as last week the government-imposed 35-hour work-week was finally scrapped.

France's President, Nicolas Sarkozy, was elected on a platform to modernize France's economy.  He has been unafraid to attack sacred cows and cut government bureaucracy.  The 35-hour work week has been one of his most visible targets.  It was introduced 10 years ago in an effort to solve 13% unemployment by spreading hours over more people.  Economists show that while unemployment did drop to 9%, it came at the cost of $17 billion a year in government aid, and drove the country to under-perform versus most other developed nations in terms of growth.

Some complain that the 35-hour week helps retain a unique cultural difference in France.  The country takes pride in its zeal for enjoyment of life.  According to a BusinessWeek article from way back in 2003, "The French work fewer hours than just about anyone in the developed world, and 24% less on average than workers in the U.S."

But the French have come to realize that they need a little more balance in their work-life.  In order to retain their culture and lifestyle, they must have a growing economy.  And a growing economy is one that is competitive with the rest of the world.  Touche.

Is This the Face of Liberal Propaganda?

Some of the greatest movies in history all seem to have a deeper meaning for society, and caused great cultural debate.  Patton was more than a biography, it was a treatment of the Vietnam War.  2001: A Space Odyssey predicted how computers would change our society.  And Gone with the Wind symbolized the struggle of The Great Depression and was confiscated by Nazis because it gave hope to people under their rule.  Today we can add Disney's Wall-E to the list of cultural lightning rods.

Don't take my word for it - according to Ben Crair in The New Republic, Wall-E has been labeled as "leftist propaganda" and a "90-minute lecture" about how corporations are ruining our society.  Shannen Coffin in The National Review called Wall-E an animated version of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and that Disney is making "mega-millions off telling us just how greedy, lazy, and destructive we all are."

In case you haven't seen the movie, (SPOILER ALERT) the synopsis is that in the future, humans have left Earth because it filled up with trash, Wall-E is a robot charged with cleaning it up.  He eventually finds that humans have been growing fat and lazy on a spaceship for 700 years. Ee helps them return to Earth and their humanity.  It's a cute film and my family and I loved it.

And I love Wall-E because it reflect where our society has been going, and it challenges us to consider the choices we make next.  In fact, this is what all great artwork does.  Art is a product of our society, that at its best makes us realize something about ourselves.  Through a slightly-skewed self-reflection, we may see what we don't like about ourselves, dangers that lie ahead, or that what we have habitually thought for years may be wrong.

Great art challenges us.  It makes us think, and forces us to react.  And it is not without some irony that we sit in big cushy chairs, with giant sodas in oversized cupholders, and Bluetooth headsets on our ears - and watch a movie about an eerily similar society that has lost its connection to what is real and human.

Guest Post: American Dreams

(While I'm overseas for business this week, my Dad, Robert D. Gilbreath, Sr., offered to guest post this week for the second time this year.  Thanks, Dad, good stuff below...)

Ever notice how many trucks and workers swarm a new subdivision under construction? And after it's built-out, only a few return. A carpet cleaner here, a pizza delivery car there. That's because once dreams are achieved, once something new and bold has been established, it takes so many fewer people with so lesser talents to operate the result. America's economy works the same way. A dream-build economy creates many more and much better jobs than an operate-defend version. And it’s the latter version we're mired in.

Offshoring and outsourcing are minor villains in today's anemic job market. There is a much larger specter stealing jobs and crushing our national business spirit. It's the death of dreams, and the commensurate courage to build upon them. When we built the Interstate Highway system hundreds of thousands of jobs were created and sustained for years--high-paying, imaginative jobs. But once completed, how many architects, engineers, urban planners, and environmentalists does it take to maintain these same roads? Answer: none. Just a few folks in orange vests to pick up the trash and repair the occasional guardrail. And a good number of those are prisoners.

The same is true for other great, ennobling national endeavors like the Alaska pipeline, space exploration and the internet. We have nothing like these now. Our great national goals have shrunk to the defeat of a band of murderous, Third-World thugs. Not very ennobling.

We are asleep, but not dreaming. We are using, but not building. This is why we get more inspiration from Brad Pitt and Russell Crowe sword and sorcerer movies than from our national political and business leaders. Timidity, protection, defense, and fear drive out the great in us. They stymie investment, shut down innovation, and seize up the job-creation machine.

The reason for the job bonanza of the nineties was three-fold: 1) Reengineering our business processes, 2) Mergers and acquisitions, and 3) the Internet. Each of these required tremendous amounts of planning, analysis, expert design and skillful, bold execution to pull off. When a company changes its strategy or embarks on the release of a new product, a streamlined process, or a new organization it takes an initial burst of highly talented people working excitedly, in great faith that their efforts will bear fruit. However, every reengineered process uses fewer people, every merger results in net reductions, and every up and running web site requires virtually no one to run it.

Dream and build economies trump operating ones when it comes to job creation--every time, no matter what.  It took an army of geniuses together with battalions of talented, highly skilled men and women to create Microsoft's Windows operating system and their Office application suite--more and more varied talent than required by the Manhattan Project of World War II. But once done, this software can be run by a schoolchild. Operating is easier, duller and uninspiring. Operating is dumbing down, not dreaming up. We need dreams to build on, otherwise we'll have nothing but decayed infrastructure and defeatist businesses to operate in the future.

We cannot grow jobs, advance our standard of living, or provide the tax base to lessen our social and cultural ills when we are cowering in fear. When boardroom talk is dominated by "business continuity" (read: "surviving an attack"), "focus" (read: "contraction, staying and thinking in the box") and "contingency management" (read: "being afraid to stand for anything or commit to any principles"), we're living in the land of fear. When the business leader is hazed and body searched at the airport on the way to a meeting, it's unlikely he or she will be in the mood for innovation, risk-taking or exploration upon arrival.

Fear is not prudence--it is reckless prudence--the great destroyer of the future. We need to trump it with creativity and courage.

Robert Gilbreath is an Alpharetta-based author of six business texts and a frequent commentator on national work trends.

Sheltering Girls Scouts from Rejection

I have written several posts in the last two years about the frightening rise of helicopter parents, who believe it is their mission to hover over their children in order to prevent bad things from happening to them.  Employers tell stories of parents going to job interviews with their college graduate children.  College professors regularly get angry phone calls from parents who are unhappy with a child's grade.   Little League coaches turn off the scoreboards when one team is beating another too badly.

But I heard another disturbing tale over the weekend: A friend of a friend admitted to emailing friends and neighbors to confirm that they would buy Girl Scout Cookies from her daughter when she made the rounds over the weekend.  The mother didn't email ahead because she wanted to drive fund raising (this would be bad enough); instead, she wanted to make sure her daughter did not feel the sting of rejection at the front door.

I believe this qualifies for a "WTF?"

Heaven forbid that dear Kimberly would meet a neighbor who had already purchased cookies from another girl down the street; or that she might meet a "mean" person who just didn't want any damn cookies that day.  Instead, Mom takes the initiative to protect her child's fragile psyche. 

Anyone who ever had to sell crap door-to-door, or ask for donations for a fund-raiser, will agree that these sometimes loathsome tasks build your character and confidence.  It's really not "fair" that kids today are being sheltered from this lesson - it is not fair that they will miss these life lessons.

My own daughter sold cookies in our neighborhood for the second year in a row.  I walked with her and helped coach her on what to say.  She was nervous at first, but I prodded her to take responsibility for her Brownie troop's fund raising needs.  We high-fived when she made a sale, and simply went to the next door when we got a "no" or unanswered door.  She learned to accept rejection and felt more proud of her success. 

Nearly all parents have an innate desire to make sure their children are as happy and successful as possible.  Unfortunately, some take this to believe that they should insulate their children from failure and disappointment.  Long ago I decided that my job as a parent is to expose my children to as many life experiences as possible, including both the good and the bad.  The more experiences they have, the better they will be able to handle what life throws at them.   And by feeling loss and disappointment, they will both fight to succeed and better appreciate their accomplishments.

I worry for a generation of children that is sheltered from even the tiniest of disappointments.  Not only will they flounder when real challenges come to their door, but there are billions of children in developing nations who know what real suffering is - and they are hungry to lead if we fall.

Our Generation Ruins Fun

In case you haven't noticed, parents and schools today have done such a great job educating our children that they are now free to eliminate each small source of stress that could damage them for life.  As written in the Wall St. Journal last week, various schools have eliminated the following dangers:

• Hugging
• Tag and touch football on the playground
• Saying "Swing, batter, swing" during Little League games
• Swing sets, crawl tubes, teeter-totters and merry-go-rounds
• College pranks - unless you have a permission slip

I wrote about another example in April, where parents at a baseball game had the scoreboard turned off because one team was beating the other too badly.  Feelings might be hurt, of course.

Some years ago a generation of parents decided that the world was too dangerous and unkind a place for children.  Safety helmets became mandatory, playground equipment was ripped out, peanut butter was banned, and neighborhood play was replaced by a fleet of minivans shuttling kids to structured fun. 

Nearly every parent today has stories of the fun they used to have that would be impossible today.  I remember biking a mile to a creek where we played for hours - the only rule was "be home by dark."  We made bike ramps on construction sites.  We played tackle football.  We burned leaves with magnifying glasses.  We even played dodgeball at school on Fridays.  At college, we had kegs in our dorms. 

I'm not sure why childhood innocence was lost.  Maybe parents are more caring today on average; birth control allows parents to choose to have children, and people have fewer children, later in life.  Maybe society is more advanced; we have a lower tolerance for suffering, whether it is in African genocide or backyard bullying.  Maybe sophisticated marketing is to blame; the insurance companies push safety to reduce their costs, and special interests are better at building national attention around a single tragedy.

Whatever the reason for our extreme parental protectionism, I believe it is already weakening our society and threatening our future.  Helicopter parents are shielding their children from the harsh lessons of life that will strengthen them later.  Challenge leads to improvement, but today's kids are kept away from competition and failure.

Any change must happen one parent at a time.  For me, I continue to encourage my kids to engage in free play in our backyard, I put a band-aid on their knee when they fall rather than banning the monkey bars, and I teach them how to deal with a bully on their own versus calling the school to complain.  I hope they someday appreciate their Dad's choices and the dividends of the challenges they faced, and teach their children the same lessons.

Harder for Minorities

In the past two weeks I have seen two similar perspectives on the emotionally challenging issues of race relations in our country.  The common theme: minorities, and African-Americans in particular, have to work harder and overcome more to be successful.  For a blog that focuses on how challenge leads to improvement, it is a point worth exploring.

The first example is Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb.  McNabb has been successful for nearly eight seasons, and while outspoken, has rarely caused too much controversy.  In a recent interview, however, McNabb claimed that black quarterbacks face more scrutiny than white quarterbacks. 

"We [black QBs] have to do a little extra. No matter the style of play you're displaying, there's always going to be criticism."

These comments seem to have struck a nerve, as the general reaction seems to be that all quarterbacks are equally under the microscope - and if anything, playing in Philadelphia is the extra challenge.  Now McNabb is defending himself against more than opposing defenses and the Philly faithful.

A second perspective comes from my world of advertising agencies.  In an article about the lack of acceptable minority presence in the advertising world, Tiffany R. Warren, writes in Advertising Age that: "[People of color have] had to not only be culturally flexible but twice as good as their white counterparts."

Interestingly, I have no answers.  I have never been a minority, so I cannot judge whether the perspective is true or false.  On the other hand, neither Donovan McNabb nor Tiffany Warren are able to be truly objective in their opinions.  To me, this is the central problem of race relations - neither side really understands the other.

I do believe that challenge leads to improvement, however.  And I wonder if the extra challenge that McNabb or Warren have experienced ended up driving them to be more successful.  I don't mean we should keep up barriers that limit minority advancement just because a few might turn them into success stories - that would be ridiculous.  But on a personal level, most of us have a life story filled with challenges and bad breaks.  Some were born poor, others lost a parent at an early age, many didn't get into the college or job they really wanted. 

There is a real danger when people claim that "they have it tougher".  First, you cannot be objective in the situation.  Who can judge individuals' difficulties much less entire racial groups?  And second, such a comment downplays the challenges and accomplishments that others have experienced.  When Donovan McNabb feels bad he can be glad he's not Rex Grossman.

Out of Our Minds: Insights on Creativity

 
I love speaking in public.  I find an amazing thrill in just about any opportunity to get up in a room and speak - whether it is a keynote speech, a training session, or a new business pitch.  And while I believe I have some strong public skills, part of my passion lies in always trying to improve.  One of my strategies for improvement is closely observing others.  Whether they do well or poorly, watching others speak helps to teach new lessons and reaffirm old ones. 

Last summer I got to attend a summit at Microsoft headquarters in Seattle, and watch an amazing speaker at work: Ken Robinson.  Below is a link to a similar speech given at last year's TED conference.  But this blog entry is not about how Ken Robinson's speech challenged me to improve my skills - rather it is the topic of his speech and book, which I had to run out and purchase after returning from Seattle.  Robinson's featured topic was the importance of creativity in our society and his book, Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, is a powerful analysis and call to arms. 

Most important for this blog, Robinson often embraces challenge as a key part of building strong creative results.  He does not simply endorse "art for art's sake" or encourage a bunch of people continuously brainstorming.  Robinson outlines a few interesting ways in which challenge leads to innovation and improvement in the creative arts.

First, Robinson speaks to the value of working within constraints:

"Great work often comes from working within formal constraints.  Some of the finest poetry is in the form of the sonnet, which as a fixed form to which the writer must submit.  Japanese haiku similarly makes specific formal demands on the poet, as do many other forms of poetic structure.  These do not inhibit the writer's creativity; they set a framework for it.  The creative achievement and the aesthetic pleasure lie in using standard forms to achieve unique effects and original insights."

Second, he embraces the need for creativity to be judged and produce value, both by outside observers and the artist herself:

"Creativity is not only a process of generating ideas.  It involves making judgments about them.  Creativity is not just a matter of being original, but of producing outcomes that are of value.  Other people may come to their own views about the worth of a new work or idea.  But the person creating is also making judgments as an integral part of the process of creation.  In any creative process there are likely to be dead ends: ideas and designs that do not work.  There may be many failures and changes before the best outcome is produced."

Finally, Robinson presents a fascinating story of the evolution of an entire field of creativity because of the challenge of innovation:

"At the end of the 19th century there was an earthquake in the visual arts.  For centuries one of the main roles of painters and sculptors was to record the likenesses of people, places and events.  The invention of photography broke their monopoly.  It provided a quick, cheap and faithful method of visual record...Relieved from the duty to depict, painters explored new possibilities, from the expression of personal feelings to extending the limits of visual form itself through abstract and conceptual art.  The period from the late 19th century to the mid 20th century was dominated by the artistic movements of modernism."

Working in a creative advertising agency, I find much truth in Robinson's words.  While we wish to be as creatively free as possible, we must in parallel provide meaning and produce results.  We need boxes to think out of and are challenged to pass the judgment of the client and the ultimate customer.  And new technology like the web and mobile diminish the old modes of TV and Print ads, but open exciting fields to creative exploration.

Challenge fundamentally drives creativity - and thus challenge drives improvement.

Guest Column: The Old Days Weren't So Good

A propensity to analyze the world and write publicly about it is in my blood.  My Dad, Robert Gilbreath (Sr.) is a great writer who has written several books, including his latest, Compel.  Today I'm giving him the floor for a piece that was also published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today.  He challenges the notion that the "good old days" really were so good....

The good old days weren't so good

Lately I've been besieged with email from fellow boomers lamenting today's world and urging us of the same age to fondly remember our childhood years--back in the 'Fifties. Maybe this is a generational thing, where the old folks always talk about how "the good old days" were better. But some of the memories these e-mailings invoke aren't so good. Some of them are terrible. These reminiscences usually begin with the question "Remember When"? Oh yes, I surely do.

Most remind us of the nights we spent catching fireflies, and putting them into a jar. Or playing kick the can until our aproned moms called us to supper. Then there's that standard remembrance of riding our friends on the handlebars of our bikes, or, more seriously, of times when drugs were unknown, and the worst thing that could happen is the teacher told your parents that you were "bad".

Back then, we knew what was right and what was wrong. We knew black from white. Things were simpler (and, from this vantage, worse). Blacks were "N's. Chinese or Japanese, or anyone from Asia, were "gooks". Homosexuals were just fun to beat up when drunk. Ahhh, the good times. And who can forget the siren call of the ambulance entering their subdivision every other weekend to take out a father who, due to smoking, drinking, or just a steady diet of beefsteak, had the inevitable heart attack. Dying at age 45 is one of the remembrances I have. Not too good.

Remember when, after dad died, mom couldn't get a credit card because all their family credit was in dad's name? Remember when the prettiest girl in school suddenly disappeared? Seems the home for unwed mothers served as a convenient forget-me-not abode. Then again, there was always that back-alley coat-hanger guy to take care of unneeded pregnancies. Or how about when we cringed under our seats at school, fearful of the inevitable nuclear holocaust, only to learn, as we grew older, that the attackers couldn't even manufacture enough toilet paper for their citizens. And these monsters were going to "take us over"?

Oh yes, I fondly remember the days when men could beat their wives with impunity, when our brothers and ourselves were drafted, called up, under penalty of law, to die in some God-forsaken place for some God-forsaken political reason long forgotten. Ahhh, the good old days. And the good old days when kids not up to par were "retarded", those in wheelchairs were "cripples". We laughed at drunks, seeing Foster Brooks on TV burping and slurring his words as a talented comedian.

Or when cars needed periodic "valve grinding", the streets were littered with spent mufflers, people thought nothing of throwing beer cans out their car windows, and dogs ran loose. One of my "fondest" memories is riding in a car, everyone holding their noses, guessing which one of us five children stepped in something a dog left. Ahhh, the good old days.

When my cohorts ask me to remember "back then", I have to control an urge to say "Yes, I remember it quite well, in fact, I stepped in it." No matter what we tell you, it was really quite worse than this.

 

A Frightening Little League Lesson

I recently came across a particularly disturbing story of tragic consequences at a 13-year-old Little League game.  No, it wasn't about parents fighting in the stands or a steroids in the club house, but a story of protection from the realities of competition. 

Columnist Dennis Prager describes the story his friend told him recently:

"His son's team was winning 24-7 as the game entered the last inning. When he looked up at the scoreboard, he noticed that the score read 0-0. Naturally, he inquired as to what happened -- was the scoreboard perhaps broken? -- and was told that the winning team's coach asked the scoreboard keeper to change the score. He and some of the parents were concerned that the boys on the losing team felt humiliated. In order to ensure that the boys losing by a lopsided score would not feel too bad, the score was changed."

Prager goes on to blame "The Left" for "sissyfying" the country.  But this is clearly not some Liberal conspiracy.  There are just as many Republicans as Democrats in the stands, schools, and homes where such behavior goes on.

The tragedy here is that we have yet more proof that children today are missing the challenges that lead to improvement.  And it's not a function of the MTV Videogames, but rather the parents who are imposing a seemingly universal belief system on the rising generation of children. 

Overall, this story parallels that of helicopter parents, which I touched on a few weeks ago.  Helicopter parents see their duty to hover over their children through college and even into their careers, always pulling them out of a crisis, heaping praise on small wins, and pushing them in particular directions. 

I continue to grow concerned for this generation of Americans, who have had life so good that they have not grown the immunities and solutions to life's small and large challenges.  How will they respond when the real challenges come?  Or will they be sheltered for life, and we will miss this generation's fair share of Bill Gates's, Steve Jobs's, and Sergey Brins?

Maybe there will be good, however, as the country's lower-middle-class and poor kids will have a true advantage in our society - not through some government handout or quota program - but rather the advantage of overcoming tough situations.  Thanks to a hunger for more and confidence from facing real challenges, they may become the real leaders and success stories of the next generation.

Alternatively, we might see the next true "movement" of a generation growing up.  The Boomer generation rose up in the 60s at least in part as a reaction to their parents' constricting beliefs.  Maybe we shall see a similar response in the future, as this generation rises up and reclaims its independence.  Maybe "Free Love" will become "Free Will".

Helping Spring Breakers in a Bind

During my first trip to Daytona Beach, Florida for Spring Break in Freshman year of college, I distinctly remember driving over the inter-coastal bridge and noticing something curious.  I was still sober at the time and stuck in traffic on the way to the beach.  As we slowly rolled through traffic, I noticed rows and rows of small offices in either side of the street.  Each office had a gold-colored name of an attorney at law.  I was surprised that a small town like Daytona Beach could keep so many attorneys employed.  My guess was that the Spring Break industry was the cause.  Somehow that theory stayed in my mind, and last week I got the confirmation, thanks to the Wall St. Journal.

The WSJ tells the story of 36-year-old attorney, Ben Bollinger, who plies his trade in Panama City, Florida.  The town pulls in 300,000 Spring Breakers in March, who spend $60 million on goods and services.  Some of those dollars go to Bollinger, who advertises on local radio stations and is regularly in court at 1am for offenses such as public intoxication and fighting.  One of Bollinger's promises: not to tell their parents.

Granted, this post isn't a perfect fit with the Challenge Dividend - other than the fact that this is yet another example of the power of the free market.  A challenge of drunk kids screwing up, plus an economy that let's lawyers take advantage of unique clients' unique needs, has helped keep kids somewhat out of trouble and preserved the right-of-passage of Spring Break.  Amen.