As the son of a mother who, mercifully died suddenly as a result of an automobile accident when she was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and a father who deteriorated over an 15-month period, all of which was spent in a rehabilitation center and a nursing home after he broke his hip at age 82, I have thought a lot about end-of-life issues.

As a result, I was gratified to see an incredibly incisive and thoughtful article on this subject by Dr. Atul Guwande of Harvard Medical School in the August 2, 2010, issue of The New Yorker. The subject of end-of-life care for individuals with terminal illnesses or diseases is not a new one, but Guwande brings new insight to it.

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I was going to post another blog today until I saw the Van Jones Op-Ed piece in the Sunday, July 25, New York Times entitled “Shirley Sherrod and Me.” Not only do I agree with his conclusion that the Obama Administration decision to fire Ms. Sherrod was wrong and destructive, but it might have been one of the most harmful actions the Obama Administration has taken on any issue.

Government officials have become more risk-averse over time, and less effective as a result, precisely because, in varying degrees, they are judged by different standards from private sector employees.  Over a decade ago, I had dinner with an executive who had been fired by the U.S. Postal Service, after he had worked in the private sector for a good part of his career.

His observation about being a government executive was that the highest risk situations for a government employee were either unwanted media scrutiny, the threat of a government investigation, or the threat of a Congressional hearing.  There was another long-term Postal Service executive who was fired a few years later because of a relocation package he received, which received excessive media scrutiny, even though it had been approved by the Postal Service’s Office of the General Counsel, its chief ethics officer, and the Inspector General.  One thing I learned about the Postal Service is that, after a 1992 scandal involving vendor-related events at the Barcelona Olympics, it operated at the highest ethical standards.  The firing was unfortunate, but the Postal Service apparently felt that it had to eliminate even the appearance of ethical problems.

The trouble with the Sherrod firing, as well as other incidents like it, is that as Mr. Jones put it most eloquently:

“Life inside the Beltway has become a combination of speed chess and Mortal Kombat: one wrong move can mean political death. In the era of YouTube, Twitter and 24-hour cable news, nobody is safe. Even the lowliest staff member knows that an errant comment could wind up online, making her name synonymous with scandal.

The result is that people at all levels of government are becoming overly cautious, unwilling to venture new opinions or even live regular lives for fear of seeing even the most innocuous comment or photograph used against them, all while trying to protect and improve the country.”

Not only is he right, but, unfortunately, the Sherrod incident will be remembered for a long time, and will affect behaviors all over all levels of government.  Government officials and employees will attempt to figure out not only whether what they said or did could get them into trouble, but whether someone could misinterpret and distort words or actions to hurt them.  They will refrain from doing or saying something, rather than doing something that needed to be done.

I had that experience a few times while I served as CEO.  It was unnerving.  People literally heard something different from what I said, and, on two occasions, an otherwise competent and well-meaning attorney told me that the company could get into trouble not only for what I said, but for what people incorrectly thought I said.

Having people live in perpetual fear is a bad way to run government, business, a non-profit organization, or any other grouping of people.  It is a bad way to force people to live their lives.  The notion that people should be held accountable for distortions that other people might create or project on to a situation is dangerous.

The Obama Administration has to realize that it did severe and probably irreparable damage to the effectiveness of government at all levels, and needs to pull back from knee-jerk behaviors based on appearing to defend the highest standards of ethics and race relations.  It actually achieved the opposite effect: individuals will be scared to talk constructively about race issues in situations in which a dialogue could help race relations.  Moreover, the impact will be felt in a wide range of other situations and on a wide range of other issues.

The President should take the step of framing how he thinks about the level of initiative he wants from government employees, and have a concrete set of actions, which he should announce in a prime time nationally televised address.  He should then follow through on his commitments, and make it clear to government employees that a misinterpretation and distortion by someone else will never again subject an employee to disciplinary action.

I may come across as an alarmist, but I really think this situation has far more serious consequences than might first meet the eye.

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.

I am a big fan of Thomas Friedman, so I avidly read everything he publishes.  In the April 4, 2010, Sunday’s New York Times, he published an op-ed piece entitled “Start-Ups, Not Bailouts.” His main argument:

“Good-paying jobs don’t come from bailouts.  They come from start-ups.”  Will start-ups address our structural unemployment problem?

Yes and no.  They will be a great solution for well-educated, enthusiastic young people who are currently unemployed and perhaps discouraged about prospects for jobs and careers.  Without some additional interventions, they are not a good short-term or even medium-term solution for older workers who have lost their jobs at big companies or government agencies.  As the former CEO of a big company and the current chairman of one start-up business, Dossia, and a board member or investor in several other start-ups, big company or government and start-up jobs and work situations are radically different.

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I saw the movie Up in the Air recently, and, aside from experiencing it as a first-rate piece of entertainment, I found it to be subtle and brilliant in addressing issues I confront in my life.

In it, George Clooney plays an executive named Ryan Bingham, who works for a company that enters into contracts with large employers that have neither the will nor the skill to handle mass terminations themselves, so they outsource them to Bingham’s firm.  The subject matter is painful because the devastation of losing a job has hit so many households. I had this type of experience back in1978 when my law firm told me I would not be offered a partnership.

However, the more interesting aspect of the movie is the way Bingham leads his life.  He travels over 320 days of travel a year, and has built a life in which he gets treated exceptionally well by airlines, hotels, and other service firms, and he has temporary relationships on the road that require no deep emotional commitments.  He has successfully avoided having to deal with the messiness of a family life or maintaining a substantial home base.  In fact, his one-bedroom apartment in Omaha, Nebraska, appears unoccupied, because it is so sparsely furnished.

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My wife Joyce and I celebrate our 31^st wedding anniversary on February 10.  This anniversary is more special than the 25^th or the 30^th, not only because it means that I have had one more wonderful year of marriage, but because of what the number “31” symbolizes about our marriage.

Baskin & Robbins has gotten the public to patronize its stores because it has offered 31 different flavors of ice cream.  The 31 flavors attempts to capture the full range of the public’s potentially diverse tastes for ice cream.  In addition, many flavors come and go over time.  So the 31 flavors reflect both diverse and changing preferences.  Baskin & Robbins has stayed in business because it consistently has reinvented and recombined flavors to appeal to new generations of ice cream lovers.

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I have often been described as a visionary, one who sees things before others do.  It’s a very astute characterization. Being visionary does not always mean being correct, although I have been more right than wrong, but it does mean that the more my assessments and forecasts vary from how others see the world, the more stressful and difficult it is for me to persuade them.

One of my favorite TV shows of all time, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, frequently dramatized the message that people who saw the world differently from others often experienced difficulty and, in some cases, tragedy.  Two of my favorite episodes that made this point powerfully were “Terror at 20,000 Feet” starring a young William Shatner as an airplane passenger who sees gremlins trying to take apart an airplane wing while the plane is in flight, and “The Howling Man” in which an American is recounting a story to his housekeeper about why he is imprisoning a man whom he says is the devil.  In both cases, the passenger and the American seem psychotic and their perspective is disregarded.  In both cases, at the end of the show, they are proven right.

Thankfully, no one has ever accused me of being psychotic.  Unlike the William Shatner character, I did not get carted away in a straightjacket, and, unlike the American in “The Howling Man” the consequences of others not believing me did not result in the devil being unloosed upon the population.  Nevertheless, my experiences have been challenging.

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I am going to make some end-of-the-year observations about the way I see the political system, the economy, and our society evolving.

Many elected officials do not have the political will to address fundamental structural economic and political issues.  We built an economy after World War II promising middle class wages for all Americans, but without the foundation of skills and educational capabilities to make such promises sustainable.  Public sector labor unions and unions in heavily politicized private sector industries like the automobile industry, successfully negotiated collective bargaining agreements allowing people with very low skills and educational attainment to secure middle class wages and benefits, and protections against downsizings, even as our economy has had to become more globally competitive.

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Although I usually post a blog on a public policy issue, this end-of-the-year blog will be a combination of personal, public policy, and business observations. The one thing I can say with certainty is that 2009 evolved in a very different way from what I expected when I stepped down from the Executive Chairman position at Pitney Bowes a year ago.

The only thing that happened as I anticipated was that I would disengage emotionally from Pitney Bowes very rapidly, because that is who I am.  Once I leave an organization, I leave with fond memories, great friendships, and insights of lifelong value, but I leave the organizational responsibilities completely behind.  I am not a person who is nostalgic about what I once had or did, and this was no exception.  Other than that, everything that happened was either a surprise or a disappointment.

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In the Monday, November 23, Wall Street Journal , reporter Melinda Beck recounts a number of our successes in improving public health in an article entitled “20 Advances to be Thankful For.” Among the advances she highlights are:

• The fact that we had the same number of traffic fatalities in 2008 as we had in 1961, which is remarkable considering the significant increase in the driving population, the number of cars on the road, and the number of miles driven;
• The 50% decline in trans fats in packaged foods since 2006;
• The fact that 71% of our population lives under either a state or local ban on smoking in workplaces and/or restaurants and bars; and
• The fact that the percentage of secondary school that no longer sell soda, candy, or high-fat snacks have each risen to 64%.

I zeroed in on this article for two reasons:

• It reminds us that we are doing many things well as a society, even though the media often choose to focus on things that are going wrong.
• More importantly, there are multiple success stories from which we can learn how to improve overall population health.  Government intervention was a factor in every one of these cases, but it was not the only factor.  There were many forces, including private sector advocacy groups, that influenced human behavior for the better.

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