The iconic image, whether a photo or video clip, often shapes the perception of events in profound ways.  As I am learning as a film producer, those who market films specifically look for that one still photo or freeze frame that not only captures the essence of the film, but creates dramatic power.  In an article in the January 20, 2011, issue of The New Yorker, called “The Toppling,” author Peter Maass makes the point that the iconic images of Iraqis tearing down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s Firdos Square on April 9, 2003, was largely a media-staged event.

The significance of these images is that they seemed to convey a sense that Iraqis were ecstatic about the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime.  Many commentators compared the statue toppling to the images of Berliners tearing down the Berlin Wall in 1989, or the Rumanians tearing down the statue of their totalitarian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.  However, whereas these other cases were largely spontaneous expressions of joyous citizens of Germany and Rumania reflecting their newly found freedom, the Baghdad celebrations were clearly premature and, as a result, reflected a strange mix of a few Iraqis, a few media people, and few military personnel.  The power of the images of Iraqis celebrating the American liberation by the symbolic act of toppling Saddam Hussein’s statue may have kept Americans from questioning the wisdom of how the Iraqi war was conducted for quite a while.

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Although the induction of Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith to the Pro Football Hall of Fame would not seem to be a subject consistent with what I normally discuss in this blog, the success of both athletes illustrates two broader points:

• Traditional measures of ability do not predict success to a sufficient degree to justify how much those who select athletes, executives, managers, or professionals rely on them.
• What can we learn from the success of those who are outliers in terms of the gap between what traditional predictors of success would say about them and what they have accomplished?

In an article in the November 6, 2010, issue of the New York Times.com entitled “Rice and Smith Inductions a Reminder of the Limits of 40 Times,” reporter Toni Monkovic points out that, by traditional measures, neither Rice nor Smith would have been expected to succeed to the degree they did.  Professional scouts look at both height and weight and at the speed football players achieve in the 40-yard dash.  By both measures, neither athlete was remarkable.  Smith, in particular, the running back with the highest number of career rushing yards all time, was both below average in size (below 6 feet tall) and speed.

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Reporter David Segal of The New York Times wrote a piece in the Sunday, September 19, issue entitled Just Manic Enough: Seeking Perfect Entrepreneurs – The New York Times which really resonated with me.

I am producing a feature film, and many have said to me, in one form or another, what one investor said in the article about starting a new company:  “You need to suspend disbelief to start a company, because so many people will tell you that what you’re doing can’t be done, and if it could be done, someone would have done it already.”  Segal describes entrepreneurs and people like me who are engaged in entrepreneur-like activity as having to be “just crazy enough.”

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In the Thursday, September 9, 2010, New York Times, Matt Bai, a political columnist, in an article entitled “In Obama Economic Stance, Risk of Confusion,” points out that President Obama made a significant, and probably mistaken, decision to turn the crafting of the 2009 stimulus legislation over to Congress.  As Bai points out, the legislation could have achieved one or both of two goals: first, to create targeted, short-term economic stimulus; or second, to fund longer-term investments in infrastructure, technology, and human capital that would have provided the foundation for sustainable growth and competitiveness.

As Bai points out, while the legislation had some investments that accomplished each of the two goals, neither potential goal was adequately pursued with the stimulus legislation. Instead, as Bai stated, Congress essentially used the legislation to address the most vocal “demands of disparate constituencies.”  There is a political consequence to this conclusion, which is that the majority of Americans now consider the stimulus legislation to have been a failure. Bai quotes Rahm Emanuel, the White House Chief of Staff, “you should never let a serious crisis go to waste.” The crisis, which precipitated the passage of the legislation created an opportunity for fundamental societal change that was not taken.

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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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