Name: Nettie
Bio: Nettie Hartsock is a digital strategist and teacher. Nettie works with wonderful individuals and companies from all over the world, helping them create and convey their messages to the online world. She prides herself on her diverse base of clients and her customized and unique approach to each client’s needs. Nettie provides training to kick-start e-outreach for companies and individuals and fine tuning of social media initiatives and presence. Nettie’s clients have seen millions in YouTube views, features on DailyKos, Daily Candy, NYTimes, MSNBC.com, Entreprenuer.com, Pink Magazine, Inc.com, Allbusiness.com, Wall St. Journal, BlogCritics and other leading online sites. Her clients have also been featured in notable business, fiction and non-fiction podcast shows including Total Picture Radio, Mark Amtower Direct, Blog Business World Success, Cranky Middle Manager and others.
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Trouble with the Hubble: How Does NASA Build Teams?
August 24th, 2010
Interview with Dr. Charles Pellerin, Former Director of Astrophysics NASA
For this issue of Cincom’s “Ask the Expert” we caught up with author and principal of 4-D Systems, Dr. Charles Pellerin, Former Director of Astrophysics NASA, Author – “How NASA Builds Teams” (Wiley)_- and Founder 4-D Systems – http://www.4-dsystems.com .
In this interview Dr. Pellerin talks about the Hubble Space Telescope, a flawed mirror, what story-lines mean and shares his insight on the future of space program.
Nettie:. Can you tell us about your book and how you came to understand how the social issues affect leadership decisions and project failure?
Dr. Pellerin: When the Hubble Failure Review Board named a “Leadership failure” as the root cause of the flawed mirror, I became extremely curious about social factors and their effect on teams. How did something we never even discussed trump the work of many of the best technical minds in the world? After I assembled the space mission to fix the telescope, I began to research space failures.
I began my inquiry as a Professor in the University of Colorado’s Business School in 1993, reading the reports and books about space accidents. To my surprise, every failure had a social shortfall as root cause!
Why focus on space accidents?
First, when astronauts (and teachers) die in space accidents, the cost of the investigation is irrelevant. Superficial investigations find the technical mistake and move on. Space accident investigations run for months with dozens of experts engaged. Second, and obviously, I understand the technical issues and know many of the people these reports reference.
In 1995, I began experimenting with commercial workshops, coaching and assessments to manage team social contexts. Experimentation came naturally, as I have a PhD in experimental physics. Our assessments produce quantitative data that we analyzed every-which-way to see what works and what does not.
In 2003, NASA awarded us a large contract to apply our processes to NASA teams. Dr. Ed Hoffman, Director of NASA’s “Academy for Program/Project and Engineering Leadership” sponsors our NASA work. We now have data from over 1,000 project, engineering and management teams. About two years ago, my colleague, Skip Borst, showed me a graph he just completed that amazed me Skip had graphed the performance enhancement of the 198 NASA teams with multiple assessments. The lowest 60% of the teams improved performance an average of 5% per 15-minute “Team Development Assessment” cycle! Moreover, on average, every team advanced no matter where they started. That is what spurred me to write How NASA Builds Teams (Wiley).
Nettie: How do you define social issues and how did this ultimately impact your work as Director of Astrophysics at NASA for your almost decade long tenure?
Dr. Pellerin: The technical world has a well-defined and broadly understood vocabulary. I can go anywhere in the world and speak about entropy, critical mass, and first derivative and be completely understood. This is not true in the social world. There is no universally accepted terminology for social matters. In fact, teams often comment following our workshops, “Perhaps the most valuable take-away is a common language to talk about social matters.”
As I studied failure reports, I noticed variation in descriptions of the causes. A “leadership failure” caused Hubble Space Telescope’s mirror flaw. “Normalization of Deviance,” caused Challenger’s explosion. A flawed “culture” caused Columbia’s disintegration. I chose the term “team social context” because context powerfully drives behaviors, and the terminology has sufficient breadth to include all descriptions.
I used my intuitive understanding of “4-D” when I was leading my Hubble team through the horrible aftermath of the discovery of the flaw, and in assembling the space Servicing Mission. My insights were, however, nothing approaching the effectiveness of current “4-D” methodology.
Nettie: Can you briefly tell us about the flawed mirror found after launching the Hubble and how the communications/social issues contributed to this?
Dr. Pellerin: In 1990, in my 8th year as NASA’s Director, Astrophysics, we launched Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. I worried about this mission because of the daunting pointing requirement. The telescope needed to point with the precision of a laser on a 25-cent piece at 200 miles. If we missed this specification by a factor of 10, the telescope would be useless. During on-orbit testing, we found to our dismay that all the difficult systems worked fine, but the mirror had the wrong shape! This rendered the telescope useless for its most important research, cosmology.
NASA appointed me liaison to the Hubble Failure Review Board because the mirror manufacturing was in the late 70’s, and I became Director in 1983. Therefore, they reasoned, I had nothing to do with the flawed mirror. (As you will soon see, that assumption was incorrect.) The Board worked for months trying to figure out what happened. One morning, one of the Board’s optical experts said, “I have an idea. Last night I calculated that an error in spacing the “null corrector by a centimeter would cause the error we are seeing.” This was an unbelievably large mistake for an optics house to make.
The original null corrector was in “bonded storage,” so we pulled out and measured it, confirming the source of the error. I thought, great, I could go back home and do my job again. The Board Chairman, Dr. Lew Allen had other ideas and persisted in his inquiry. He found that there were numerous instances where the contractor dismissed hints of a problem with “fault tree analysis.” When he inquired as to why NASA never “ran these problems to ground,” he learned that the contractor (Perkin-Elmer) never told NASA of these occurrences. (We settled a lawsuit against the contractor for $25M.) He concluded that NASA failed in leading the program because we created an environment so hostile that the contractor only told us of problems they were sure were real and threatening. Moreover, I was the Hubble program Director. Ouch!
Fortunately, in the turbulent aftermath, neither NASA nor I connected me with the flaw, despite the Board’s finding. I proceeded to assemble the mission that repaired the telescope on orbit, exceeding the original performance specifications by 50%. NASA awarded me a second Outstanding Leadership Medal when the servicing mission succeeded. (It is a wonderful world when you can break something, and then receive a medal for fixing it.)
Nettie: Your book “How NASA Builds Teams” describes the concept of “story lines.” Can you talk about how that works with leadership and how what stories we carry with us affect an organization?
Dr. Pellerin: Our most powerful means of influence is what we say, to ourselves (self-talk) and to others. Story-lines are things we say that seem like the truth, but are not because they are arguable. Since Story-lines are not actual truth, we are free to change them. We teach people to color their Story-lines as “red” when they distract people from outcomes they want, and “green” when they improve focus on actions that take us to desired outcomes. Here is a “red” Story-line: My boss gives me too much work. It is “red” because it is a Victim Story-line, “It is useless, and there is nothing I can do. The “green” replacement Story-line is: “I am responsible for managing my workload. I will communicate with my boss in a way that matches my workload to my capacity.” (We have a communication methodology, “4-D Communication” for this conversation.”)
Story-lines can take entire industries to success or ruin. Can you guess which US industry ran this Story-line? “Improving quality is too expensive.” They only considered shifting their Story-line to “Improving quality is the best way to lower cost,” copying their main competitor, when they lost 65% of market share to a foreign country. It was the auto industry, of course.
Nettie: How did these stories affect the Hubble error? And how do stories contribute to decisions we make on teams and projects?
Dr. Pellerin: The NASA contract managers ran a Story-line that “the best way to get performance from our contractors is to beat them up.” This is ill-conceived. People perform complex tasks more efficiently when their contributions are authentically appreciated and they enjoy their work. This kind of Story-line caused “the biggest screw-up in the history of science.” When we encounter broken government-contractor interfaces, we initiate the team recovery with authentic appreciation exercises. You can download the PowerPoint slide we use (free) at NASAteambuilding.com.
Red Story-lines cause decisions that are detrimental to success, and Green ones bring success.
With a little training, people can “color” their Story-lines and make choices. I spent my first 8 or so years with about 50% of my time consulting for aerospace companies and 50% experimenting with the 4-D System. My consulting clients took the 4-D workshop and I observed them afterward. As I walked through their buildings I loved hearing people on a telecon ask, “If we ran that Story-line, what outcome would we realize.” All saw immediately that the story-line was red and replaced it with a green one. (Do not tell anyone but this is cognitive psychology, simplified.)
Nettie: What do you think are three common misconceptions about leadership and project management that organizations have?
Dr. Pellerin:
1. That you can safely ignore team social context, because you ignore this at great peril as in the examples of space accidents.
2. That there is no way to measure and manage team social contexts, when our assessments measure team social context by measuring eight behaviors against defined standards.
3. That managing team social context is expensive and only affordable by big organizations like NASA. This is not true. Developing individuals by managing team contexts is highly efficient. We offer wholesale assessments to 4-D Network Members (see NASAteambuilding.com) and routinely waive all fees for academia and organization who cannot afford to pay.
Nettie: Can you describe the 4-D system briefly and how it can be used as a tool to analyze team and individual performance?
Dr. Pellerin: The 4-D System is a Cartesian coordinate system based in work Carl Jung did in 1905. The 4-D organizing system has two essential functions:
1) It analyzes complex team and leadership characteristics into simple manageable components; and
2) It aligns all 4-D processes (assessments, workshops, consulting and coaching) around the fundamental four dimensions.
It is at the heart of why our processes are so powerful—repeating the same theme everywhere.
Nettie: What is one of your success stories using the 4-D System described in your book and what types of organizations have you worked with?
Dr. Pellerin: Actually, I have two favorites:
1. Our processes took a contractor’s fee pool from 67% to 96% in a $1B+ contract (HNBT page xix). This change was rapid and profound. Moreover, the contractors’ top management credited us with the change; and
2. The STEREO project (HNBT page 54), where the government and contractor team monotonically improved in near lockstep. The project leadership reported high correlation of our social context measurements with both team performance and customer perceptions. Perhaps this is a favorite because it was a dramatic early success for us, when we were not as confident about our effectiveness.
Nettie: What do you think about the space industry now, as it exists? Are you hopeful for the future in regard to space exploration?
Dr. Pellerin: I have given this a bit of thought, as I was head of NASA strategy for a time. Here is the difficulty. Human flight is the heart and soul of the agency. It is also expensive, costing perhaps 10 to 100 times as much as unmanned programs. NASA has not had adequate funding for human space flight programs since Apollo. At this moment, political turmoil confuses civil space. The Administration wants more NASA funding to go to “commercial” space programs with less NASA oversight. The Congress worries about losing jobs in their districts. While I remain hopeful for the longer run, it is not clear how the near-term will play out. Note: NASA spends 90% of its budget on contracted work.
END
Accidental Genius: How to Use Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight and Content
July 16th, 2010
Nettie Hartsock interviews Author Mark Levy:
Mark Levy is the founder of Levy Innovation, a marketing strategy firm. David Meerman Scott has called him “a positioning guru extraordinaire,” and Debbie Weil referred to him as “a horse whisperer for writers and business thinkers.” He has written for The New York Times, and has written or co-created five books.
Mark’s latest is a revised, expanded, and re-subtitled edition of his bestseller, Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content. Mark also creates magic tricks and shows. His work has been performed Off-Broadway, in Las Vegas, and on all the major television networks.
For this issue of Expert Access we caught up with Mark Levy to talk about his new book. It’s already garnering rave reviews. Mark talks about the power of free-writing, how ideas are generated and why having a big, sexy idea is key in market differentiation.
Nettie: You’ve worked with some incredible people like David Meerman Scott, Debbie Weil and others. Can you tell us about your work?
Mark: Consultants and entrepreneurial companies hire me to increase their fees by up to 2000%. I predominantly do that by helping them come up with their marketplace position. Most business people know what positioning is, but let me tell you what I consider to be positioning. Every day when people walk down the street, they make snap judgments on everything they see, based on very little information. They say, “That guy’s fat, that woman is brilliant, that guy’s a moron.” You can say that making these kinds of judgments is wrong, but people do it all the time, and probably you and I do it too. It’s the way we are hard-wired.
They are also making these same snap judgments about your business, and what I do as a positioning consultant is I talk to you and your clients, and I find out what your single, sexiest idea is and what positions you most uniquely in the marketplace. Then we make sure that single idea comes through loud and clear in everything you do: in your website, books you write, blog posts you write, elevator speeches … . That way, when people make a snap judgment about your business, they’ll make it based on your most compelling idea. Leading with your big idea gives you the best chance of getting through to people.
Nettie: Are people going to hire someone based on this sexy idea that they see everywhere?
Mark: Not necessarily. Some people might see this big idea and they might not like it. That’s ok, because that big idea acts like a gatekeeper. If people don’t like that big idea, they’re not going to contact you nor should they contact you. The people who are attracted to that big, sexy idea are the ones who will be calling you. They’ll see the idea amplified everywhere, that signature idea, and they’ll want to be a part of it.
Nettie: Can you give an example of this big idea/uniqueness?
Mark: One example is my client Bill Treasurer. He is a management consultant, and he wasn’t getting all the gigs he deserved.
I interviewed Bill and his client and colleagues and discovered he had been a professional high-diver in theme parks. Bill was “Captain Inferno.” The most interesting thing? He had the courage to do his job for ten years even though he was afraid of heights.
I took the idea that he did what he had to do despite his fears, and we married it to the fact he did leadership development and team-building workshops. We made his company, Giant Leap Consulting, the world’s first courage-building company. Subsequently, all of Bill’s keynotes, workshops and consulting started to revolve around ways of driving fear out of the workplace so people could take the risk they were supposed to take.
Bill is booked months in advance now and makes thousands of dollars a week because of his new positioning.
Nettie: Let’s talk about Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content and what you hope people will get from the book.
Mark: Accidental Genius gives people a wonderful tool that I’ve used for over a decade and a half called freewriting. I teach people how to use freewriting as a problem-solving tool. It can help people solve their deepest business problems: strategy, finance and positioning. Freewriting helps them come up with options they did not realize they had before and help them make decisions on which option to pick. Secondly, the exact same tool as freewriting also acts as a tool for thought leadership for them. So they can come up with one-of-a-kind speeches, books, blog posts, white papers, speeches and anything else they need to stand out in their field.
Nettie: What about people who say they can’t write? Or have writers’ block?
Mark: When people say they have writers block, they probably are just stuck thinking the same thoughts over and over again. And when they’re thinking about situations that they need solutions for, like, if they’re trying to think through a problem, they’re probably looking at those situations as unchanging or calcified. They’re seeing all the players in the situation as unchanging—and everything is just log-jammed. They’re only looking at the situation in a very status quo way, and there’s no movement. If that’s what’s happening, you have to force motion into your thinking, and freewriting can help you do that.
Nettie: How does this also relate to people’s internal editors?
Mark: When we write, we always have an internal editor there cleaning up our writing trying to make us look smart together, and confident. The internal editor tries to control it all. It helps society run. We all need our internal editors; the only problem is when we have to think thoughts unlike we’ve ever had before, then our internal editor gets in the way. In order to think new and totally different thoughts, we need to go to places in our brain where we do more raw thinking, more edgy thinking and create there. Those places are where unusual ideas can be found and we can find them and shine them up and bring them back to the front.
Nettie: How do you define free-writing?
Mark: Writing as fast as you can for a fixed period of time without worrying about whether your writing is interesting, grammatically correct or has proper punctuation. The goal is to just attack a subject that is interesting to you and start writing. You do this kind of writing knowing that people will not necessarily see it—it’s for your eyes only. When you do that, your mind gives you your more-honest and true thoughts. It’s like what Ray Bradbury says, when he says, “In quickness there is truth.” Ginsberg said, “First thought, best thought.”
I don’t necessarily think that, but I’m saying that you need to think fast and trust that each thought that you have is potentially the right thought in solving your problem and getting into your book. Each thought has that potential as it appears.
Some thoughts are stepping-stone thoughts, so you just have to write as fast as you possibly can, and spewing all these thoughts and ideas. And some will be great and some won’t be as good. You won’t be able to reach the right thought until you spew out maybe the wrong eighteenth thought, but the nineteenth one is the perfect one.
Edward de Bono, the creativity expert, said, “All great ideas are only logical in hindsight.” If you could have thought of the great idea right away, you would have. More than likely you had to think a lot of bad ideas and illogical ideas before the real one came to the top.
If you allow yourself to play, make mistakes, and do it with speed, you’re creating all these kinds of accidents in what you’re doing, and some of them become happy accidents.
Nettie: So more play leads to more insight—perfect way to end the interview.
Thanks for sharing your wisdom Mark! And here’s to lots of happy accidents.
###
Everything Hurts – Interview with Author Bill Scheft
May 9th, 2010For this issue of Cincom Expert Access we caught up with writer and humor novelist Bill Scheft. Bill’s latest novel is “Everything Hurts,” (Simon & Schuster) Bill’s writing career spans comedy, sports writing, novels and 18 years writing for The Late Show” with David Letterman.
Bill shares his insights on writing, humor, life and why funny is always good.
Laughter, Writing and All is Well…
NETTIE: When did you realize that you wanted to be a writer? And more important, when did you realize that you could be funny?
BILL: I have wanted to be a writer from the time I was eight years old and found out my uncle (the legendary New Yorker writer Herbert Warren Wind) made his living that way. He was incredibly generous to me about showing me the possibilities of a writer’s life, especially when I moved to New York in 1980.
I knew I was funny when I realized I could make my mother laugh. Once that happens, if you’re any kind of self-hating Jew, making others laugh as you made your mother laugh becomes your life’s work.
NETTIE: You were a writer for Sports Illustrated for several years with your column, “The Show” – is there any difference at this point in writing about sports figures and comedy?
BILL: No. It was and is just like writing monologue jokes for Dave. Sports is no longer just games and athletes. There’s economic items, there’s crime, there’s gossip and there’s politics.
NETTIE: What is your favorite story from writing your column for Sports Illustrated?
BILL: My favorite single joke was about the Raiders kicker, Sebastian Janikowski, being arrested for DUI. Typical drunken Raider. He was blacked out locally. If you write a joke under 10 words, you get a check from God.
NETTIE: Who in your humble opinion is the funniest athlete in sports today?
BILL: They all line up behind Peyton Manning. I did a big piece on why he’s so funny two years ago in Sports Illustrated .
NETTIE: Your novel “Everything Hurts” is now out in paperback, and was just featured as an AARP hot pick, what are three tips you would give anyone who wants to write literary humor novels?
BILL: 1) Write what you know, 2) Make your characters lives complicated, 3) Even though it’s funny, avoid the word “rectum.”
NETTIE: Do you believe in writers block?
BILL: No. I believe in good days and bad days. But any time you attempt to write, you’re a writer. So, where is the block?
NETTIE: What is the hardest thing about being funny in fiction?
BILL: Hands down, it’s answering the question, “What’s the hardest thing about being funny in fiction?”
NETTIE: What is the best advice you ever got about writing?
BILL: The best advice I ever got I pass along freely: WRITERS WRITE.
NETTIE: How do you know when you’ve create a superb piece of funny fiction?
BILL: Can we change “superb” to “satisfying?” Good. I know it’s satisfying when it is simultaneously absurd and plausible.
NETTIE: Richard Russo said of your book, Everything Hurts – “How rare it is for a novel to be both hilarious and profoundly moving,” – what do you think is key to creating characters that are both poignant and comic at the same time?
BILL: Well, who am I to disagree with Pulitzer Prize Winner Richard Russo? I think a character can be poignant and comic if the reader can be entertained by the behavior and relate to the humanity. Somebody once told me “We always worry about the wrong thing.” I think it was Pulitzer Prize Winner Richard Russo.
The point is if you can read about someone’s denial and find yourself laughing and shaking your head in identification, how can you not be moved when the same person learns?
NETTIE: What writers had the most influence on you and how you write your novels?
BILL: Phillip Roth, Richard Yates, early Richard Price, JD Salinger, the Latin poet Catullus. Catullus taught me the value of the word, Salinger and Price the notion of a fearless voice, Yates the idea of broken people trying to put each other back together and Roth the excitement of wit, the irrevocableness of aging and the inevitability of being Jewish.
NETTIE: A lot of business writers will be reading this interview, can you describe your cubicle at your office and how your writing practice goes?
BILL: I have a real office at the Letterman show, but I do my fiction writing at home in two places: A converted 5×5 closet off the living room and a tiny desk in the corner of the bedroom. I spend more time at the tiny desk because I can’t get the Internet (the great distracter) on that computer.
Quickly, here’s the practice. Before I write a word, I
1) Wash my face
2) Read 2-3 pages from Philip Roth’s Reading Myself and Others.
3) Do 3-4 minutes of “organ breathing” (A meditation exercise, look it up)
Then we lock in and stare into the abyss.
NETTIE: You were a giant hit as the keynote at the Erma Conference – the speech had them rolling in the aisles, how do you think humor moves us all in life to a better place?
BILL: You mean rolling in the aisles before the TWO FULL ROOM STANDING OVATIONS, don’t you? I thought so. (Interviewer Note: I was at event, and ok, the rolling was before the standing.)
I will repeat myself a bit from a previous answer, but I think this bears repeating. When we laugh at something because we relate to it, for that moment we are not alone. It is the best way I know of to deal with fear. I know this. There was no one more fearful than myself before I went up at the Erma Conference. What if they don’t get it? What if they’re pissed off I’m not Steve Doocy? What if I set off the Jew Alarm? Then they start laughing, I start laughing and all is well. And isn’t that the idea? To feel as if all is well, even when it might not be?
Quick, somebody get Hallmark on the phone!
David Letterman Interviews Scheft about his book:
The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present
April 25th, 2010
Interview with author and New York Times Columnist Gail Collins
Gail Collins joined the New York Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board and later as an op-ed columnist. In 2001 she became the first woman ever appointed editor of the Times editorial page. At the beginning of 2007, she stepped down and began a leave in order to finish a sequel to her book, “America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines.” She returned to The Times as a columnist in July 2007.
Before joining the Times, Ms. Collins was a columnist at New York Newsday and the New York Daily News, and a reporter for United Press International. Her first jobs in journalism were in Connecticut, where she founded the Connecticut State News Bureau, which provided coverage of the state capitol and Connecticut politics. When she sold it in 1977, the CSNB was the largest news service of its kind in the country, with more than 30 weekly and daily newspaper chains.
Besides “America’s Women,” which was published in 2003, Ms. Collins is the author of “Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics,” and “The Millennium Book,” which she co-authored with her husband, Dan Collins.
Her latest book is “When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present” (2009, Little, Brown & Company)
For this interview Ms. Collins shared her insight on leadership, women and how one “twist” can make all the difference in the world.
NETTIE: How did the book come about?
Gail: My editor wanted me to write an introduction to a magazine edition we did that was just about women. What women had done in the last 1000 years and my editor handed me the assignment and said, “I don’t know what you want to do with this, but this feels to me like a story of a win.”
I hadn’t much thought about it in that fashion, I’m sort of in the business of complaining …it’s what I do for a living. But I really thought about the idea of the win in the last 1000 years and realized most of those wins came in the last 50 years from my decade to present.
As I was writing the introduction, I realized that all the presumptions about what women could do and their place in society had changed during my lifetime. All of those had shattered and that was such a huge thought for me, I knew I wanted to write a book about it.
NETTIE: You start the book out with the pants story and the theme of pants. What is it about pants and women?
Gail: I’ve always found it amusing that the judge in that opening story seems to equate putting women up on a pedestal with having them up there wearing skirts. Which doesn’t make any sense at all really.
When there’s a real rule of what people ought to be wearing it does really say something about your role in general. That is really all about a vision that women should not move around very much. You can’t go outside the house basically. In the 19th century women were presumed not to go out much, they just stayed home. Different world then but that whole idea of not moving much really struck me.
That was before pantyhose came out, and if you were wearing a skirt you were probably wearing a girdle and nylon stockings. And even girls in junior high were wearing that and that’s a lot of restriction. You weren’t going to bounce around a lot.
That was the same time girls couldn’t play sports and you couldn’t get a job that involved travel unless you were going to be an airline stewardess.
NETTIE: Did you feel that growing up?
Gail: It’s funny and what’s interesting about the book is if you talk to women in their 50,60,70s about life back in the day they did not remember a lot of this stuff until prompted. Because back then you didn’t feel oppressed, you didn’t feel like things were bad, it was just what everybody was used to. Things were also getting better economically. Women didn’t feel like they were being beaten up on. So you tend not to remember that type of stuff.
NETTIE: What is a childhood memory you have about it?
Gail: I remember my brother was allowed to play in the woods and I was not allowed to play in the woods. I did not however regard that as a central crisis in my life. (laughs)
NETTIE: How do you feel your wit and humor shaped your work? It’s a really amazing gift to make people think and laugh at the same time.
Gail: That’s a great question; awhile back a magazine editor called me and wanted to talk to me and Maureen Dowd and how we use humor. I thought about it and realized I started doing it when I had a news service in Connecticut. I covered the state legislature. No one wanted to pay attention to the coverage and so we started trying to come up with ways that people would be engaged. We came up with quizzes, songs, puzzles and bits of humor to make the news pieces livelier and hopefully draw more awareness to the stories and what was really happening in the legislature.
I did find if you wrote things that were funny people were much more likely to read them. I really started it to get people to read about their own state government
I love to do quizzes but it’s harder more than ever because people’s attention spans are so much shorter.
NETTIE: What do you think about your book and all the advancements in your own career? I think you said in the book that all the women who paved the way were two steps ahead of you. How do you define baby boomer?
Gail: There definitely was a really large multi-generation that came of age during that period of super prosperity in the late 50s and early 60s. They grew up feeling that they could do anything and not feeling restrained anymore. That was the generation that did civil rights and women rights and it’s also the generation that people find very irritating because it’s a very sort of self-aware and self-evolved generation. But I think it is still a very spectacular moment in the history of our nation.
NETTIE: How do you feel about the new generation of women, alphawives, 24/7 moms juggling it all and a career on top?
Gail: The great thing about our problems is that they were so specific and there were laws and policies and it was very easy to rally around those issues. Now things tend to be so much more personal. You have a problem with your boss, or in your house, and people don’t see those as universal problems so it’s very hard to get people to rally around them. I think there is a benefit to not having everything so personalized.
Class, gender and Woodstock moment…
NETTIE: You say in our country one of the biggest problems is class now as opposed to race or gender?
Gail: I think we live in a time now that if you come into the world your dad is going to be happy that he has a girl and there is a presumption you can do anything you want to do. It’s not attached politically. I don’t know a single conservative that didn’t have the same dreams for their daughters as they do for their sons. A little girl baby being born doesn’t have any expectations different than what a son might accomplish. I think now the challenge is very much predicated on education and whether you are born at a significant economic disadvantage. The economic disadvantages are really the whopping barrier now and very difficult to overcome.
NETTIE: I know you said “Obama being elected was a Woodstock moment.” What did you mean by that?
Gail: It’s funny when I was thinking about the Woodstock thing at the inauguration I was struck first, that once I made my way to where everybody was you realized there was no way out. No way to leave. People were all very cold but incredibly cheerful and happy and you kept walking places in the middle of crowds and feeling squished but all those things really reminded me of being at Woodstock. It was in its affect a very Woodstocky moment. It just felt like such a big deal and it was a moment to savor because of course it’s not going to last. But it was such a privilege to have experienced that.
NETTIE: I loved the Obama’s first dance at the inaugural ball and it reminded me of how you wrote in your book about the Twist and how the 50s changed in terms of women dancing with men.
Gail: There are all those kinds of little moments in history that really fascinate me. It’s like when the bicycles came along and it was ok for women to ride those and you finally saw them emerge and zipping down on all these bicycles. What a feeling that must have been. This impacted history because it led to dress reform and that led to more freedom about where you could go. Getting back to the Twist, it was really the first time you had a popular dance that anybody could do but also that women did not have to follow the guy for the first time. That led very soon to women just getting up and dancing whenever they want to dance and that’s very freeing.
NETTIE: When I went to Goddard College many of the women, we would dance all in the middle of the night and that really struck me that we didn’t need anyone else to dance with us.
Gail: Absolutely, it’s an amazing feeling that brings to you and helps you understand what can do all by yourself! That transforms us each time something like that occurs.
NETTIE: And we’ll end with a call to dance. Thank you again.
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Making a Curse a Blessing – Interview with Dr. Bernie Siegel
March 25th, 2010Interview with Bernie Siegel
Dr. Bernie Siegel is the author of Faith, Hope and Healing: Inspiring Lessons Learned from People Living with Cancer (Wiley 2009). Dr. Siegel speaks and runs workshops across the country and is devoted to humanizing medical care and medical education. His books are inspiring to readers worldwide. For more than 20 years, he has been educating cancer patients on the importance of a spiritual life in facing and recovering from cancer.
In this interview, he talks to us about being a baby boomer, age-old wisdom and the current healthcare crisis. His website is www.berniesiegelmd.com.
(This interview is conducted by digital strategist and teacher, Nettie Hartsock.)
NETTIE: Hi Dr. Siegel, tell us a bit about what inspired your latest book.
The more I learn about survival behavior, how a curse can become a blessing, how to save your life and being reborn by creating your authentic life, the more I want to share this age-old wisdom by making it current, understandable and useful to people today. When you heal your life, your body is aware through the changes induced and then does all it can to cure itself of any afflictions. Self-induced healing is not an accident. It is a work of art. What inspires me is life, its opportunities and potentials.
NETTIE: What do you think is most empowering about being a baby boomer?
I don’t know why being a baby boomer is more empowering than not being one. If you are alive today, you are exposed to the same environment and opportunities. Yes, they have technology available to them and can be empowered by it but also overwhelmed by it. We need to understand that happiness makes you a success while being a success, in the sense of accumulating material things, does not make you happy. Baby boomers should be empowered by their opportunities to help others and create the family of man and get beyond personal interest.
NETTIE: How do you stay active in your life and what do you most enjoy about this time in your life?
I do what makes me happy. I accept my mortality and don’t waste my life’s time. I am not troubled by what others think of me and my actions. I am here to serve in my way and not one imposed by others. I hear from people all over this planet and try to help them, and the opportunity to do that is a great gift. It gives my life meaning and lets me know I have not lived in vain. We also have a house full of love and pets.
NETTIE: Do you have an opinion on the current healthcare issues that are facing our country?
Yes, we need to treat people and not just a diagnosis. People have an experience and we need to help them with their experience of illness. We need to help children to feel loved so they will not be self-destructive and destructive to others in revenge. People need inspiration so they will make use of the information that can keep them healthy, and through self-worth, lead to self-care. Parents, teachers, clergy, doctors and other authorities are all a part of health care. If you did not feel loved by your parents, you are in for big trouble regarding major illnesses and a much shorter life. We need to let people know we care and make health care available to all and treat people as well as we do our animals. Nine hundred years ago Maimonides said, “If people took as good care of themselves as they do their animals, they would suffer fewer illnesses.” I think it is time we woke up to this fact and get people to love themselves as much as they love their pets. Smoking outdoors to protect your pets while you kill yourself doesn’t really make sense.
NETTIE: You’ve long been a beacon of healing for people struggling with illness; why do you think it’s so important for our doctors to also focus on the human side of healthcare?
Because people get sick. When medical advertising and medical care is only about what you prescribe for depression, flu, cancer, AIDS etc., we are not treating people. We need to help them understand how their life contributes to their health. Like Monday morning having the most heart attacks, strokes, illnesses and suicides. Then a curse can become a blessing. As hunger leads to seeking nourishment for the body, a disease can lead to seeking nourishment for your life.
NETTIE: If you have to give three tips to baby boomers who want to live a long and fruitful life, what might they be?
Love yourself, and re-parent yourself if your parents didn’t love you by getting your baby pictures out and loving that kid. Live your chocolate ice cream and by that I mean what makes you happy. Exercise, meditate and eat a healthy diet because it feels good to do so and because you love yourself and your life. Your body loves you but needs to know you love it and your life. Do not do things to not die because it doesn’t work, and when you die, you will be very bitter that you did everything it suggested and died anyway.
NETTIE: Do you have a favorite motto or mantra that sums up your beliefs?
Be content with what you have .
Rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
Lao-Tzu.
NETTIE: You’ve been often quoted in terms of believing that disease can be a wakeup call for changing one’s life. Can you talk about how you think that works in reference to your latest book?
When people truly confront their mortality, they realize time isn’t money it is everything. Then you spend more time with the things and people you love and who love you and less time with those who you don’t love and who don’t love you. When your body senses that love, amazing things can happen. I talk about reflections related to the various inspiring stories from cancer patients, and people need to understand it is about quieting your mind and your life so you can see in the still water you are not an ugly duckling; you are a swan.
NETTIE: What are you currently working on?
Being a more loving human being and living the sermon.. I am hoping to write a book about so-called miracles, which is really what life is. Creation is not explainable, but it is a joy to experience. I also want to write about the non-local nature of consciousness. What we call past lives. How we can communicate with animals, the dead, predict the future, organ memories in transplant recipients, near-death experiences and more. Through my experiences, I know these are all meaningful and help us to understand the nature of life.
The Right Five Words are More Important than Five Thousand Words
February 26th, 2010An interview with Bill Schley, author of Why Johnny Can’t Brand and the soon to be released, Micro-Script Rules.
Bill is also President and Chief Creative Officer of international branding firm, davidID (http://www.davidid.com/) and an avid skydiver. In this interview, Bill talks about skydiving, why five words are more important than five thousand and why everyone needs to know the micro-script rules.
Nettie: Bill, tell us a bit about your background.
Bill Schley: I started as a copywriter at Ted Bates back in the 80′s and got into advertising because I thought I was going to make funny dog-food commercials. What I learned was the unique selling proposition from the guys who invented it (Rosser Reeves and Ted Bates), and that changed my life. The unique selling proposition later became the “dominant selling idea.”
That made me realize how important a big idea at the center of any brand communication was paramount—that a big idea could move mountains and move markets.
Nettie: Did you get all your ideas while you were skydiving?
Bill Schley: (Laughs.) I got the biggest idea while I was skydiving, and that idea was that the hardest thing to do in branding was to commit to that one big idea. Committing to one big idea instead of throwing out all 20 features and benefits is as hard as jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. That lack of commitment is why Johnny Can’t Brand. Whereas if you close your eyes and you jump, you’re more committed than you’ve ever been in your life, and an amazing thing happens. You get a focus, clarity, creativity and simplicity that are brand-changing. It’s the universal paradox that the narrower you focus, the wider, farther and deeper your message goes.
Nettie: Can you define heuristics as it relates to marketing?
Bill Schley: A rule of thumb and when human beings are forced with some kind of stressful event or mortal danger, we go right to unconscious thinking that is super fast and gets to the heart of the matter in nanoseconds. That’s the thinking without thinking that’s the unconscious intelligence that cognitive psychologists have been studying for years.
Psychologists tell us that in moments of crisis, we shift to intuition. It’s remarkably fast and accurate—unconscious intelligence that acts before we even have time to think.
The intuition is based on heuristics or rules of thumb, which are just built-in instructions that tell our brain how to act instantly without analyzing a bunch of facts.
Nettie: What are the rules of thumb revealing to us?
Bill Schley: What they’re showing us is the heart of the matter—the real bottom line by telling us to do the opposite of what we’ve always been taught. They make us discard information not collect more of it, to make ourselves smarter. Too much data makes us dumber. The simplest message always wins, because our brains love it that way.
For a hundred years, people have said KISS—keep it simple stupid. We pay lip service to it, but we never do it. And in this hyper-connected world, it is “survival of the simplest.”
Nettie: Can you also talk about how your term “micro-scripts” relates to this?
Bill Schley: I can, and give you the four micro-script rules:
1. It’s no longer important what you say or what people hear.
The only thing that matters is what people repeat after you’ve said it. They won’t repeat anything because you tell them to. They’ll repeat it because they like saying it, and they gain from saying it. They say it two places: first to themselves, and then to their community.
2. Every screen’s a word-of-mouth machine.
In the old days, there were three mediums, now there is only one, and it’s not the Internet or social networking—those are just mechanical. It’s a brand-new, 50,000-year-old medium called word-of-mouth. We need to position and reframe what word-of-mouth is.
The fact is, people need to realize that all the digital machines in their pockets or palms are just 21st-century, word-of-mouth machines. Word-of-mouth never went away—it’s just sort of hid for 80 years because TV/radio only went one way. Now that technology goes both ways, it’s caught up to word-of-mouth. The ultimate equity in marketing is trust. Word-of-mouth flips the relationship with trust on its head. It puts trust at the beginning of the interaction instead of the end.
With word-of-mouth, either trust comes first or there won’t be a relationship.
So to rule #3, where we answer, “What kind of messages do they want to repeat?”
3. The answer is (the rule) they want to repeat “micro-scripts.” Here are some examples. Remember “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” or “the bridge to nowhere”? These are micro-scripts. It’s any set of words, from one word to a sentence or two—no more than you can fit on a Blackberry screen—that uses metaphors, vivid language or just rhythmic words to verbalize your idea in a way that people like to repeat it.
Micro-scripts are like magic words that have been used by master communicators since time immemorial. Their messages verbalize in a way that’s optimized for our heuristic brains. The truth is we’ve always had them; they’re just more important today than ever.
You might ask, isn’t a micro-script just a catchphrase or a sound bite? I say, yeah, but it’s a very special kind of sound bite. It’s an “idea-bite.” It either tells a whole story or provides a piece of a story that’s already running in my brain.
It’s just enough information to persuade people to act.
Here are more examples: “It’s made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar,” “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” “Where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire” and “Airborne works because it was invented by a second-grade teacher.”
The last rule answers the questions, “What’s the subject of your MS? What should it be about?”
4. Your micro-script has to be built on a dominant selling idea. The ultimate idea at the center of your communication—the idea of a difference you’re trying to communicate. It’s the ultimate value, the one big advantage you can claim that others can’t. Your single best differentiating attribute.
In marketing terms, it’s your brand positioning, brought to its sharpest edge.
If I was going to apply one big idea to skydiving, it would be, “It’s not like falling it’s like flying.” In micro-scripts I would say, “If you want to fly like Superman, then put on a parachute and take a jump.”
Nettie: Any last tips?
Bill Schley: It all comes down to this. The right FIVE words are more powerful than five thousand. It’s more important than ever to tell your story—you just have to say it in a couple sentences or less.
If you’re branding, it’s more important to work from the ground up—from something incredibly simple—than from 50,000 feet down, even if you have a parachute.
David Meerman Scott: Changing the Rules of Marketing, PR … and Business
February 9th, 2010EDITOR’S NOTE:
David Meerman Scott has been a contributor to Cincom Expert Access since 2006. Check out the interview below and win a free copy of his worldwide bestselling book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly“courtesy of Cincom Expert Access. Thanks to David for freely sharing his time and ideas over the years. We only have 50 copies – so first come first serve.
Contact Steve Kayser at skayser@cincom.com or on Twitter at @SteveKayser.
INTERVIEW BY EXPERT ACCESS CONTRIBUTOR NETTIE HARTSOCK
David Meerman Scott’s best-selling book, “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” has been extensively updated and features several new major marketing campaign stories as well as how Facebook and Twitter’s usage have impacted the online marketing world.
Nettie: What’s different in this new edition?
David Meerman Scott (David): This second edition of the book has gone through an extensive rewrite. Of course, I have checked every fact, figure, and URL. But I’ve also listened. In the past two years, I’ve met thousands of people who have shared their stories with me, so I’ve drawn from those experiences and included many new examples of success.
While including so many new stories and examples has resulted in my removing many of the less interesting originals, I’m convinced that these exciting replacements are even more valuable.
Nettie: The book also covers the new emergence of tools like Facebook and Twitter?
David: Yes, when I wrote the first edition of the book, Facebook was only available to those with a .edu email address (students and educators), so I didn’t feature Facebook. Twitter didn’t even exist at the time I was researching the first edition. I added extensive new information and examples on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.
In fact, the rise of the term social media has been so strong in the past few years that I’ve even changed the subtitle of the book to include it.
Nettie: What are a couple of favorite case studies in the book that are new and will be of interest to readers?
David: I have dozens of examples in the book, but I’ll share two here:
Facebook group drives 15,000 people to the Singapore Tattoo Show (www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=32140274011)
In its first year (2009), the Singapore Tattoo Show had an aggressive target of 5,000 attendees. Organizers launched via a Facebook group called Tattoo Artistry three months prior to the show. The group grew very quickly, securing a place as the center of tattoo artistry for the Asia region.
The passion of the Tattoo Artistry Facebook group members meant they would help promote the group to their friends, so the online community eventually included many people eager to attend the live event. Instead of relying on expensive advertising, show organizers built a community of passionate fans who built anticipation and buzz for the event. The Tattoo Artistry Facebook group quickly reached 3,000 members and was an important reason that more than 15,000 people attended the first Singapore Tattoo Show—that’s three times the expected number of attendees!
Film Producer Creates a World Wide Rave by Making Soundtrack Free for Download (http://www.thegraduatesmovie.com/)
As I say many times in the book, a great way to generate interest in products and services is to make select content available for free online. There’s no doubt that free content sells. The Graduates, a feature film released in 2009, is an award-winning comedy about four friends who head to the beach without a care in the world. Prior to release, the film had been developing a loyal following among the 18- to 34-year-old demographic following a dozen sold-out festival and sneak preview screenings. It had been advertised solely by word-of-mouth and in a clever marketing technique, via a free soundtrack download.
The film features the music of some incredible indie bands (The New Rags, Plushgun, Sonia Montez, The Mad Tea Party, Our Daughter’s Wedding, and The Smittens) that are popular with the buyer personas who might see the movie. So the idea of making the entire soundtrack available for free is a brilliant strategy.
Of course, the bands also benefit because new listeners are exposed to their music and, if they like it, may decide to buy an album or see them live. “We felt it made sense to give away the soundtrack to build loyalty, show off the product, and compensate for a zero-dollar marketing budget, all in one fell swoop,” says Ryan Gielen, executive producer of The Graduates.
I wondered about the musicians whose music was given away. Did any of them resist? “The worst-case scenario for even an established band is that we just crafted a $100,000 music video for them,” Ryan says. “The Rolling Stones should laugh us out of the room, but this is a good opportunity for many, many bands.” The strategy has worked well for Gielen. “The free soundtrack has been a real success,” he says. “The totally free music promo opened us up to many more people.”
What is a World Wide Rave?
Nettie: What surprised you most in the period since 2007 when the first edition was published?
David: Let me disclose a secret. Back when I was writing the first edition in 2006 and when it came out in 2007, I was a bit unsure of the global applicability of the new rules.
What is heartening is that since that time, 25 percent of the first edition’s sales have come from outside the United States. As I write this, the book has been or is being translated into 24 languages including Bulgarian, Finnish, Korean, Vietnamese, Serbian, and Turkish. I’m also receiving invitations from all over the world to speak about the new rules. In the past year, I’ve traveled to countries including Saudi Arabia, the UK, Estonia, Latvia, Turkey, Croatia, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, and the Dominican Republic.
So I can say with certainty that the ideas do resonate worldwide. We are indeed witnessing a global phenomenon.
Nettie: Your books are now being used as part of dozens of notable university marketing programs. Do you have any tips on how universities need to be educating marketing students in terms of social media?
David: At first, when the first edition was released in 2007, College and University marketing programs were resistant to the ideas. But a few professors, including Karen Miller Russell, Associate Professor, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia and Stephen Quigley from Boston University, quickly adopted the ideas in the book and began assigning it to their students as part of classes.
However, what I found most interesting is that it was the students demanding that their professors use the book that pushed adoption in dozens of universities. Students would email me exasperated that they were not being taught online marketing and PR and the tools and techniques seemed to be stuck in the 1980s. Several admitted they had cried when they read my book because they felt their investment in an education had been wasted.
So I would say to the professors out there: OPEN YOUR EYES. Study what’s going on and how smart marketers and PR pros are reaching audiences today and educate yourself on the new ideas so you can better prepare your students.
Nettie: What do you think are the three things everyone needs to understand about new marketing and PR for 2010?
David: Before the Web came along, there were only three ways to get noticed: buy expensive advertising, beg the mainstream media to tell your story for you, or hire a huge sales staff to bug people one at a time about your products. Now we have a better option: publishing interesting content on the Web that your buyers want to consume.
The tools of the marketing and PR trade have changed. The skills that worked offline to help you buy or beg or bug your way in are the skills of interruption and coercion. Online success comes from thinking like a journalist and a thought leader.
The Web allows organizations of all kinds (large and small companies, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, political candidates, consultants, even rock bands and churches) the ability to become publishers of content.
So to be successful in 2010, everyone (including me) needs to be asking this series of questions:
1) Who are my buyers? (Or who are my donors, voters, readers, etc.)
2) What problems do my buyers have that my products or services solve?
3) How can I create some amazing information on the Web (a YouTube video, ebook, blog, Webinar, series of photos, charts and graphs, survey results, and so on) that my buyers will be eager to consume and that will brand me as someone to do business with?
Nettie: How do you deal with skeptics?
David: Here is my video response for that:
David Meerman Scott keynote at BMA 2009 national conference from David Meerman Scott on Vimeo.
At every speech, I pose four questions to the audience and ask them to raise their hands if the answer to a question is “yes.” How would you answer?
In your personal or professional life in the past two months, when looking for an answer to a problem or to research a product, have you
(1) responded to a direct mail advertisement?
(2) consulted magazines, newspapers, TV, or radio?
(3) gone to a tradeshow as an attendee?
(3) used Google or another search engine?
( 4) electronically contacted a friend, colleague, or family member (email, IM, Facebook, etc.) who responded with a Web URL that you then visited?
I just love asking these questions in front of skeptics. I’ve asked them in boardrooms filled with senior executives who are adamant that my ideas are not appropriate for their business. I always turn people around.
Over the course of a year, in front of over ten thousand people from many dozens of groups all over the world including college students, marketing professionals, technology buyers, and executives at Fortune 500 companies, the answers were surprisingly consistent. Between 5 and 20 percent of people answer each of the first three questions affirmatively.
These answers mean that the ways most companies have historically reached people—advertising, direct mail, tradeshow booths, and pleas to the mainstream media for coverage—are only effective in reaching a small portion of potential customers. However, between 100 percent of people raise their hands to indicate that they have used a search engine to find a solution to a problem or to research a product and 90 percent report that they have checked out a Web site suggested by a friend, colleague, or family member.
Clearly, establishing a new rules of marketing & PR strategy and creating effective Web content that is indexed by search engines is critical for any business. When people are looking for answers to problems, they go online first.
Nettie: What would you say to people who think social media is a fad?
David: I’d say they are correct.
But let me explain. “Social media” is a misunderstood and over-hyped phrase. Much like the overused “Web 2.0,” many people think they know what social media is, but few can actually describe it. So in my experience, the use of the term “social media” is absolutely a fad.
By way of clarification, here is my personal definition: Social media describes the way people share ideas, content, thoughts, and relationships online. Social media differs from so-called ‘mainstream media’ in that anyone can create, comment, and add to social media content. Social media can take the form of text (blogs & wikis), audio (podcasts), video (YouTube), images (Flickr), and communities (Twitter, Facebook, & more).
What’s not a fad is that creating interesting information and publishing it online. The New Rules of Marketing & PR is incredibly effective and most certainly not a fad. The ideas in my book are much more than just “social media.”
Nettie: Thank you.
Leadership Lessons on “The Road to Woodstock”
December 7th, 2009
INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL LANG
Michael Lang is a producer who is best known as co-creator of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969. He has produced festivals in East Berlin, the concert at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Woodstock 94 and Woodstock 99. He is the head of the Michael Lang Organization, which encompasses live-event production, film and theater production and artist management.
He is also the author of “The Road to Woodstock: From the Man Behind the Festival” with Holly George Warren. The New York Times best-selling book is available everywhere books are sold.
In this interview Lang shares some inside secrets from Woodstock, and his take in inspiration, preparedness and intuition.
Nettie: Are you starting to suffer traumatic interview disorder?
Michael: Not yet, but it’s getting close. (laughs)
Nettie: I loved the book. One of the things I read is that you said, “Money has never been my aim – always a side effect of what I do,” can you talk about that in terms of your life and career path?
Michael: I’ve been very lucky in that anything I’ve done I would have done whether it was something that was a paying proposition or not, so I’ve never really had to work at something just for money. That’s been a wonderful way to have gone through life and I’ve been very lucky to have done that. And luckily enough the things I’ve done have made me a comfortable life and enabled me to continue to do the things I’ve wanted to do.
I’ve always sort of looked at money as a tool to do other things.
Nettie: How do you define instinct and intuition, because you’ve said that’s what you really operated on?
Michael: I think if you trust your intuition and your instincts you’re really getting the benefit of that inner thought process without having to filter too much from what your environment tells you and I think that’s a much clearer form of information and much more accurate bit of information because it’s hard to put everything into concise thought and terms and analysis.
You know certain feelings come from just gleaning meanings from body language, and other things you don’t interpret necessarily consciously but provide you with huge and important amounts of information. I’m very much someone who is intuitive that way.
Nettie: Can you tell us the story about your Dad being on the scaffolding at Woodstock and who was playing?
Michael: Sure, that is something I just discovered last year as I was the DVD of Woodstock which had not watched for year. We were looking through some of the outtakes and footage. And as Richie Havens is walking offstage I caught a glimpse of my father, sitting above the deck, about 15 feet off the deck of the stage on the scaffolding. It had never registered that weekend and it was just a great moment for me seeing that footage.
I discovered it when we were making the new film.
Nettie: Was your dad smilling?
Michael: Oh yeah he was having a great time.
Nettie : It’s like the metaphor for dads in Texas sitting in the football stadium. Except your dad got to sit in an amazing music stadium and watch his son.
Michael: (laughs) That’s right. And he had the best seat of the house.
Nettie: Can you talk about John Lennon, in your book you talk about wanting him to come. Was he in Canada?
Michael: Yes, he was in Canada. He had been busted in England and was in Canada in early 68 – 69. The Nixon administration was very much trying to keep him out of the country because of his anti-Vietnam war stance and he was very vocal about his stance on the war. So there was really no way to get him a visa. We’d been working a long time with Apple in trying to make it happen.
In writing the book and doing my research, I went through what I euphemistically call my files, which are old boxes stuffed in the basement. And I came across this letter from Apple with all the Beatles copies, and it had an offer they made (because we couldn’t get John) for them to send The Plastic Ono band, James Taylor and Billy Preston, which all three would have been wonderful to have. But the letter came just as we were getting thrown out of Wallkill. And with the office being all packed up and all the confusion, I never saw the letter until last year.
Nettie: Was the letter opened? Or you found it and then opened it?
Michael: It was opened probably by one of my assistants and then left in my pile.
Nettie : Wow, that’s even a good lesson for the digital age – clean out your inbox.
Micheal: (laughs) Exactly stay on top of it.
Synchronicity, luck and being prepared…
Nettie: What do you think about the role of synchronicity and serendipity in your life and how this event played out?
Michael: I felt we were in this energy flow that was moving us forward. I’ve always had, I guess what some people would call luck. I really look at it more as though if you’re really prepared as well as you can be in every way that you can be and an opportunity presents itself, that’s luck. Lucky that you’re in a position to take advantage of whatever comes along. That’s how I interpret luck, there might be something beyond that, but being prepared is really 90% of it.
Be prepared for the opportunity to come. Because of all the work we did – preparation, planning and how thorough we tried to be, I think that’s why when those moments came along and things looked grim, and we might have needed that extra moment of faith or luck or whatever you want to call it that it happened for us.
Nettie: Is there a lot of pressure on you to be the best party thrower in the world? What is it like to be an icon?
Michael: (laughs) It’s always been really a positive experience. Everyone that comes up to me seems to relate it as a positive memory.
Nettie: Is it true that the helicopter dropped flowers and dried clothes?
Michael: It was not true. It is close to truth. It was small plane and it was rose petals.
Nettie: And what precipitated that small plane dropping rose petals?
Michael: I had hired the plane early on because I thought it would be neat. It was a lot of rose petals and it cost us like 400 or 500 dollars.
Nettie: What is your favorite performance?
Michael: I was stunned by Richie Havens, Country Joe, Joe Cocker, Santana – the highlight of the energy created by the audience was Jimi Hendrix redefining the national anthem.
Nettie: Has Pete Townshend been less grumpy since Woodstock?
Michael: (laughs.) Yes, I think he realized it was a good thing he did.
Sustainability, Woodstock.com and the future…
Nettie: You said about Woodstock, “we just avoided the silly confrontations that stupid rules can create.” Do you still do that in business?
Michael: Yes. Absolutely.
Nettie: What about Woodstock.com – http://www.woodstock.com , as a brand for the 21st century, sustainability, the green movement and your venture?
Michael: We want to be successful at promoting those ideas that are critical to our planet’s survival and the well-being of our kids and make some sort of contribution to empower the way people get along. I think Woodstock symbolizes that potential for things to work in a better way and I hope we’re useful for that to continue. I’m working on a musical now.
Nettie: What are you doing with that?
Michael: It’s called the Summer of 69 and it’s really about that summer when everything changed for us and hopefully, it will give the audience an experience of what it was like to go through that experience.
Nettie: Do you still drum?
Michael: (Laughs.) I do, but not outside of my childrens’ drum sets. My kids are into heavy metal.
Nettie: What happened to the BSA Victor you were riding around? Does it still run?
Michael: It’s still in my garage. It runs, but it’s incredibly hard to start, so it doesn’t get started very often.
Nettie : Have you come home again with all of this? Do you feel you’ve completed a circle?
Michael: Yeah, I do funnily enough. It’s an experience that I tried to move away from for a long time and I’ve embraced it to write the book and it has been very rewarding. I’ve gained a new perspective on it all and at the same time the people that worked on it are a pretty close knit bunch of people and we’re all still together.
Nettie: Are there parallels you see today in how this culture is changing and embracing a more authentic truthful way of being in the world?
Michael: I think absolutely. You talk about authenticity in that day we were really interested in the real thing, not just appearances. We felt we were really dealing with real issues and we’ve come back around to that. We’ve dealt with the 80s and the 90s, and we’re left in a position where we treated the planet badly and treated each other badly and now we’re facing the consequence. I’m very hopeful for the future and that we can all work for the greater good. Young people are getting more involved and creating a big difference in where we’re heading.
Nettie: What do you hope will happen with the Woodstock.com site long-term?
Michael: I hope it becomes a place where people can exchange ideas, and becomes a place of sustainability where we can all work together for the future.
Nettie: Thank you Michael.
Hoodwinked! An Interview with the Economic Hit Man John Perkins
October 28th, 2009
WHY THE WORLD FINANCIAL MARKETS IMPLODED – AND WHAT WE NEED TO DO TO REMAKE THEM
On November 10th, John Perkins’ latest book, “Hoodwinked”(Broadway Business, 2009) – Amazon Pre-Order Link – will be released.
John Perkins has seen the signs of today’s economic meltdown before. The subprime mortgage fiascos, the banking industry collapse, the rising tide of unemployment, the shuttering of small businesses across the landscape are all too familiar symptoms of a far greater disease. In his former life as an economic hit man, he was on the front lines both as an observer and a perpetrator of events, once confined only to the third world, that have now sent the United States—and in fact the entire planet—spiraling toward disaster.
Here, Perkins pulls back the curtain on the real cause of the current global financial meltdown. He shows how we’ve been hoodwinked by the CEOs who run the corporatocracy—those few corporations that control the vast amounts of capital, land, and resources around the globe—and the politicians they manipulate. These corporate fat cats, Perkins explains, have sold us all on what he calls predatory capitalism, a misguided form of geopolitics and capitalism that encourages a widespread exploitation of the many to benefit a small number of the already very wealthy. Their arrogance, gluttony, and mismanagement have brought us to this perilous edge. The solution is not a “return to normal.”
But there is a way out. As Perkins makes clear, we can create a healthy economy that will encourage businesses to act responsibly, not only in the interests of their shareholders and corporate partners (and the lobbyists they have in their pockets), but in the interests of their employees, their customers, the environment, and society at large.
INTERVIEW BY NETTIE HARTSOCK
We had a chance to catch up with John Perkins back from his trip to Panama with Jane Goodall and Lynn Roberts of Dreamchange.org and he answered our questions about his latest book, economic hitmen and his own mission for his grandson.
John Perkins has lived four lives: as an economic hit man (EHM); as the CEO of a successful alternative energy company, who was rewarded for not disclosing his EHM past; as an expert on indigenous cultures and shamanism, a teacher and writer who used this expertise to promote ecology and sustainability while continuing to honor his vow of silence about his life as an EHM; and as a writer who, in telling the real-life story about his extraordinary dealings as an EHM, has exposed the world of international intrigue and corruption that is turning the American republic into a global empire despised by increasing numbers of people around the planet. His website is www.johnperkins.org and he’s also co-founder of www.dreamchange.org . His TWITTER ID @economic_hitman .
Nettie: Could you please describe the term economic hitmen?
John: It is a tongue-in-cheek term, like “spook” or “spy’ for a CIA agent. My real title was Chief Economist at MAIN, a firm of over 2000 professional “consultants.”
Nettie: Can you talk about how economic hitmen work in third world countries and how establishing high debt is one of the things that contributes to the power of the global empire?
John: The most common approach for EHMs is to identify a third world country with resources our corporations covet, like oil. Then arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or a sister organization. But the money does not go to the country. Rather it hires US corporations to build power plants, industrial parks, and other infrastructure projects in that country. These benefit a few wealthy local families, as well as the US corporations, but do not help the majority of the people who are too poor to use electricity, not skilled enough to work in industrial parks, and basically live outside the economic system. The country ends up owing a huge debt that it can not repay. So we EHM go back to the country and say “since you can’t pay your debts, give us a pound of flesh: sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies, or vote with us on the next UN vote, or send troops to support ours in someplace like Iraq.”
On the few occasions when we fail, the jackals are sent in to overthrow the government or assassinate the leaders we EHM were unable to corrupt. This happened with me in Panama and Ecuador where Omar Torrijos and Jaime Roldos were assassinated as a result. If the jackals fail too, then the US military goes in — like in Iraq.
In this way we EHMs have created a global empire, the first in history to be developed primarily without the military.
Nettie: What are the political implications of this recession and the economics behind it? Are there things happening that the general public is unaware of in terms of the shifting of global power?
John: The geopolitics of the world has changed radically. No longer is it so much a question of countries as of corporations. We used to think of the planet as a big globe with 180 or so countries; a few of these — especially the US and USSR — influenced many others. Today, we still have 180 or so countries but we now see the power base as looking something like a group of large clouds that circle the planet. These are the corporations. They know no national boundaries, adhere to no particular laws. The strike deals with the Chinese and Taiwanese, the Israelis and Arab countries. . . We are at a time that is similar to when city states merged into nation states, except now the nations are becoming less and less important. A radical change in world politics and business is occurring.
We are at a time in history when everyone on this planet is faced with the same crises — global warming, resource shortages, rising prices. We are also — for the first time ever — highly interdependent. We communicate through the internet and cell phones with the most remote areas. We recognize that we are a fragil species living on a small planet. Now is the time for us to come together and devote ourselves to solving these problems in ways that will establish better lives for all of us, on every continent.
Nettie: Can you define corporatocracy and how it is operating in the world today and why it is dangerous?
John: It is the modern equivalent of the emperor — a leader who is not elected, does not serve a limited term, and essentially reports to no one. Today, rather than one person, we have a group, the people who run our largest and most powerful corporations; we call them the corporatocracy. As the major financiers of most political campaigns (directly and through their stockholders) and employers of powerful lobbyists, they control governments. They also control the mainstream press –through direct ownership and also advertising budgets. And because of the “revolving” policy they are constantly moving back and forth between the highest corporate and government positions. They control most of the world’s resources and institutions.
Nettie: What are some of the positive changes you see in terms of the world and how the awareness is growing in terms of these issues?
Since the publication of “Confessions” in late 2004, I have seen major changes in attitudes. One example: students. In 2005 when I dined with MBA students before my speeches at their schools and asked them to describe their goals, nearly all of them talked about making money and attaining power. In the fall
of 2008 and the first half of 2009, I did not hear one student speak like this. Not one MBA student from Stanford, Columbia, Wharton, the University of Michigan, Ohio State, Boston University, Harvard, Antioch, or the China Europe International Business School. Nor did I hear it from undergraduate students at Olivet College, Regis University, St. John’s University, William Patterson University, or Wilmington College. Attitudes had changed in just three years. Not a single student who attended those dinners and other meetings with me listed as his or her primary goal the accumulation of either wealth or power. What they said instead was that they wanted to help create a better world.
Nettie: Can you talk about your personal mission and your books and why it’s important for people to take action now?
John” My mission is to create a sustainable, just, and peaceful world for my 2 year old grandson, Grant. I know that in this highly integrated world, that is only possible if every child in every country enjoys that same opportunity. This is totally new. Never before has everyone on this planet been so closely related to everyone else. We are truly interdependent. We are all impacted by the same crises: climate change, diminishing resources, over population, increasing prices for the essentials of life, and violence due to deprivation and desperation.
And, for the first time, we all know it. We are all communicating with each other, over the Internet and cell phones. We the people have always been the ones to foment change. Whether it was about getting rid of slavery, women’s rights, cleaning up polluted rivers, or ending wars (like Vietnam), we have had to force the
politicians and CEOs to do it.
Nettie: Can you talk about your transformation in terms of your mission and how you liberated yourself from being an economic hitman?
John: A very long story which is discussed in my new book, HOODWINKED (Random House/Broadway Books, November 10, 2009). Short version: I came to understand that the world we have created is no longer viable and that it is in our self-interests to alter our path.
Nettie: What can companies do to make the world a better place?
John” They must change their primary goal from “maximizing profits, regardless of the environmental and social costs” to “making profits only within the context of creating a sustainable, just, and peaceful world.” We — you and I — must commit to buying only from companies that make that commitment — and we must let them know, by sending them emails and letters.
Nettie: You also work with DreamChange – Dream Change and Pachamama Alliance – can you talk about those groups and what inspires you most in terms of your work with them?
John: I helped to found both Dream Change and The Pachamama Alliance back in the early 1990s and continue to serve on their boards. They are non-profits dedicated to creating a sustainable, just, and peaceful world. Both of them honor indigenous wisdom and ways of relating to the earth as part of their teaching tools and also help indigenous communities protect their lands and cultures from those who would exploit them, including oil, agribusiness, cattle, and timber companies. You can learn a great deal more at www.dreamchange.org and www.pachamama.org.
Nettie: How and why should corporations redefine themselves? What does it mean for a corporation to be a good citizen?
John: Ultimately, our survival on a planet any of us will recognize depends on it. So does the survival of these corporations. Once we all understand this, we will change.
Nettie: Can you talk about your new book Hoodwinked and what your mission was in terms of writing it?
John: In summary, HOODWINKED discusses the following.
As and economic hit man, I experienced today’s economic collapse before. The banking industry and sub-prime mortgage fiascos, the rising tide of unemployment, and the shuttering of businesses are all too familiar in the Third World countries where I worked. I have to say that I was both an observer and a perpetrator of events that have now sent the US – in fact the entire planet – spiraling toward disaster.
The real cause of our global financial meltdown is predatory capitalism – the mutant form of an economic system that encourages widespread exploitation of the few to benefit a small number of already very wealthy people. A new geo-politics has emerged; today the CEOs of big corporations, rather than governments, control human and natural resources around the globe, as well as politicians and the media. Their arrogance, gluttony, and mismanagement have brought us to the perilous edge. The solutions will not be “return to normal ones”.
HOODWINKED offers a way out. As I say in the book, “Unlike other empires,this one is not built primarily on the back of the military. It is subtle, market-based, and it depends on our voluntary choices. We hold the power – if we only recognize it.” HOODWINKED provides a blueprint for creating an economy that fosters a sustainable, just, and peaceful world for us and our children. It offers concrete actions each and every one of us can take..
Nettie: What do you hope to achieve with this book in terms of effecting change in the world?
John: A sustainable, just, and peaceful world — in my life-time.
END
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