I was prepared to post another blog recently, but decided that it was important to post some observations about John Wooden, the great basketball coach of UCLA who died on June 4 at age 99.  Like most people passionate about sports at all levels, I admired John Wooden as a coach, a teacher, and a leader.

Wooden won the NCAA championship with a very small, fast team in 1964 and 1965, with two dominant centers, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then called Lew Alcindor) and Bill Walton, between 1967 and 1973, and with a team of physically strong forwards and guards in 1970 and 1975.  He made his team the center of attention rather than himself.

What were his secrets?  Every successful college coach has to be a great recruiter, a great team builder, a great teacher, and a great game coach.  However, what struck me most about Wooden was a quote about him in the June 14, 2010, issue of Sports Illustrated, in an article by Alexander Wolff entitled “Remembering the Wizard, ” as well as a quote on a sign he posted on his office wall.

The quote about him was “His great strength was a knack for knowing when and what to change, and when to leave things be. He let sands shift, but only over bedrock.”  The quote on his office wall was “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”  The combination of these two statements is the essence of a great human being: someone who continuously learns and tests his or her ideas, and, through continuous learning, discovers what changes, as well as what is unchangeable.

The stakes for continuous learning have been raised by the scientific research summarized by David Shenk in his book The Genius in All of Us. The research to which Shenk refers us makes it increasingly clear that what we thought were genetically-determined traits in ourselves and our children and grandchildren may very well be changeable, based on our behaviors and attitudes. Shenk’s point is that, by our actions to learn, grow, and become healthier, we can alter the genetically-expressed traits in future generations, especially for future offspring or for children still under our environmental control.

In this stage of my life, I have transformed myself from a secure corporate executive to a person who is engaged in a number of entrepreneurial pursuits.  Although my life is at a more frantic pace than ever before, I feel more energized and healthier than ever.  I am making mistakes left and right in my new pursuits, which include investments in health care companies, charity service providers, a reality TV incubator, and even two full-length feature films, one of which is fully produced and is Fog Warning, and the other of which is at the pre-production stage through a newly-formed production company called Gyre Entertainment.

The words describing John Wooden ring true to me because virtually every transformational success that occurred in my life happened because I broke the rules and followed a path different from those who seemed to have mastered conventional paths to success that were no longer working predictably.  I am particularly finding that today in the film industry.  No one in their right mind would say that anyone in the film industry has a working formula for success.  Most films fail, andmost investors never get their money back.

The most successful film industry people with whom I have spoken are respected because they have a less poor record than others, and, perhaps, had a single blockbuster hit or a single Academy Award nomination that validates them.  There is an old (and, as expressed, politically incorrect) statement that “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed person is king.” However, I aspire to be consistently successful, not to get a hit 1 in 10 times, so I know that I need to use a radically different approach to making and distributing a movie.  Similarly, the person who is successful 10% of the time is a failure in my book.

The movie industry reminds me of the direct mail business, in which direct mailers celebrate a 1% response rate as an exceptional success in an industry in which the average response rate is .25%. To me, a 1% response rate is an abysmal failure. It means that 99% of the people threw the mail into the wastebasket without responding.

What do these two industries have in common and how is John Wooden’s wisdom relevant to both?  What they have in common are a lot of relatively successful and wealthy people who depart from Wooden’s maxim that it’s what you learn after you think you know it all that matters.  These industries are dominated by people who stop learning after they “know it all” because they achieve a certain level of success.

I am not wired that way.  I strive to succeed all of the time, although I know that is impossible, simply because I know that striving for continuous success means that I will approach a problem radically different from the mainstream people in an industry.  I also know that many of them will ridicule me, and tell me that what I am trying to do will not succeed.  Their deep skepticism often is grounded less in logic or facts, but in a deep-seated need to believe that their approach is unassailable, even if it fail 90% of the time (as it does in entertainment) or 99.75% (as it does in direct mail).

How do we distinguish between what must change and what is foundational, something John Wooden understood in the context of basketball coaching and educating?  First, anyone who tells me that they have a consistent playbook or formula for success that has worked for several decades is automatically suspect.  Similarly, anyone who tells me that all the rules that have governed the past no longer apply is also suspect.  The current and future environments will always be a mix of the new and the time-tested.

Second, I am immediately suspicious of someone who tells me that a product or service that depends for its success on the stupidity and irrationality of the public is also suspect.  As Abraham Lincoln once said: “You can fool some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

Third, I get suspicious of anyone who tells me success is totally random or totally formulaic and predictable.  Fourth, I get suspicious of anyone unreceptive to my ideas because I am new to a field. Someone who judges me based on my track record rather than the strength of my ideas will undervalue what I am saying or proposing. Finally, I value entrepreneurs or thinkers who continually test out their thinking and adapt, based on what they learn. Transformative thinkers are highly secure people who are not scared to admit they might have been wrong.

John Wooden has left this earth, but, fortunately, his example and his teaching will stay with us and be available to inspire and teach us forever.

In the July 11 issue of the New York Post, there was an article which highlighted the fact that the number of calls to the New York City 311 hotline requesting city service support for smoking cessation has tripled with the increase in taxes that have made a pack of cigarette cost around $10 in some communities.

I have always believed that cigarette and alcohol consumption could be cut significantly by increasing the price of these items. For hard-core addicts, price increases are probably less effective, except for those already predisposed to quit. But high prices are clearly a deterrent to those who are considering starting to smoke or drink, and, over time, reducing the health and other costs of cigarette smoking and alcohol abuse will reap large dividends in reducing the incidence of chronic and acute health conditions. (more…)

I want to begin by thanking Doctor Gerberding and her team for convening and hosting this extremely important conference. I come to you as a leader of a company, Pitney Bowes that defined employee health and well-being as a core value even before I became CEO in 1996.

Our mail stream businesses have always required a high degree of subject matter expertise and relationship-building with postal services and customers that take many years to learn and master. Therefore, for several decades, we had been a generous company in delivering benefits that rewarded and encouraged employee loyalty and commitment.

In 1990, this commitment to employee health and well-being was being challenged by our inability to continue offering health plans that essentially provided medical benefits without meaningful employee contributions in terms of premiums, co-pays and deductibles. Our costs were increasing at an alarmingly high 14% per year, and we were not delivering a high degree of employee satisfaction. When I became head of human resources in 1990, I had the unenviable task of committing us to a long-term course of action that required higher employee premiums, co-pays and deductibles, but I also recognized that we had to maintain and/or increase employee satisfaction with our benefit offerings, or we were going to lose one of our key talent retention tools. (more…)

In the July 1 New York Times, there was an interesting article about the effort of the Congressional Black Caucus to get the addition of menthol to cigarettes banned because menthol cigarettes are the choice of 75% of African-American smokers. There is a clear recognition that menthol and other sweeteners added to cigarettes make them more attractive to vulnerable populations, like young people, minorities with health risks that make smoking health-threatening and young women.

When I read this article, it occurred to me that the misuse of menthol and other sweeteners to attract people to cigarettes can be turned on its head to make healthy foods more attractive to eat. When our younger son, who is now 17 years old, was under 10 years old, we had a great deal of difficulty getting him to eat anything other than junk food. We had particular difficulty getting him to eat green vegetables. (more…)

As a person who studied Communications, Political Science, and Law during college and law school, I am acutely aware of the power of language to shape how we think about and act on problems.

The main example that comes to mind is the way we characterize how government positions are filled.

When I was growing up, like most American history students, I read about the 1881 assassination of President James Garfield, who was killed by a “disappointed office seeker.” I learned that this tragedy gave rise to “civil service reform”, which, if I remember the history books, characterized the change as being one which replaced an appointment system based on “patronage” or “spoils” with one based on “merit”. Like most Americans, I came to believe that the civil service system was an unqualified positive development for American government, and the old system was corrupt, to the point of being “un-American.” In fact, on the radio this past week, I also heard a radio commentator refer to “patronage” appointments in a very disparaging way. (more…)

In the last few weeks I have found myself on the campuses of many colleges and universities. Some are Pitney Bowes customers, some have been venues for meetings I have attended, some are campuses I have shown my 16-year-old son, who is starting to look at colleges, and I have visited my 21-year-old son, who is a student at the University of Southern California, and my 14-year-old daughter, who took a summer class at Princeton University. I also had occasion to visit the University of Wisconsin and Harvard Law School, the schools from which I received my degrees.

I have several observations:

• All of these schools have more global reach than ever. Our primary and secondary education systems are inferior to many other countries, but we still are a magnet for undergraduate and graduate college students from around the world, especially from the Asia-Pacific area. I also am seeing an increasing number of students from Eastern European countries – who not only come to school here, but are most likely to be filling the summer jobs at resort areas and in big cities that used to be filled by American students.

• There is an incredible amount of construction going on everywhere on every campus I visit. Interestingly enough, some of the buildings being replaced are newer than some of the buildings being renovated. At the University of Wisconsin, some of the buildings built in the 1950’s and 1960’s are being demolished, whereas older buildings are being renovated. I was also surprised to learn that much of the Harvard Law School is under reconstruction and renovation and will be resituated within Cambridge over the next few years. I get piecemeal announcements informing me of these events, but its impact is much more dramatic when you actually see it happening. (more…)