Politics

50 Years Ago

August 1, 2019 By Tom Mungavan Leave a Comment

Man landed on the moon 50 years ago. It was an amazing feat. It was an aspirational and inspirational accomplishment that was watched by 20% of the world population. That was probably close to everyone who had a television.

What made the accomplishment even more amazing at the time was the rudimentary tools available. The computers had very little capacity compared to even our Fitbit or iWatch. The interfaces from the computer to the physical world were very unreliable. NASA would have loved the gyro or the ability to monitor your heart rate in your watch today.

I may be the only person you know who was programing computers 50 years ago. (There were not many of us.) I was a systems engineer for IBM in 1969. I was not putting people on the moon at that time. I was helping companies run their entire business on computers with as little as 8K processors and 5 meg of disk memory. IBM was revolutionizing companies and processes. The fears at that time were that computers would obsolete workers … much like the fears today about robotics in the workplace.

President John F. Kennedy showed the vision and executive presence to inspire an entire nation to get behind an audacious goal of going to the moon.

You probably have seen movies that show computers with blinking lights and levers. Fifty years ago, those lights and levers allowed a programmer to stop the computer program at a certain point and change the program and data using the levers to replace the “0” and “1” (that instructed the computer and represented the data). Much more rudimentary capability than your Fitbit or watch.

There was so little computer memory that programmers recorded years in two digits rather than four (1969 = 69) to save space. It was always assumed that the programs being written at that time would be replaced before the year 2000. Many old programs were not replaced and thus there was the “Y2K” crisis at the turn of the century. Another way to look at the capacity in 1969, capturing one average photograph today would have exceeded all the computer capacity for an entire medium sized company.

In 1969, people wrote letters by hand or typewriter and mailed them. Delivery was measured in days and weeks.

In today’s dollars, long distance phone calls (on landlines) cost $5 to $50 per minute with the help of a phone operator. There were no answering machines or VCR’s. People used cash and checks. Most stores were not air conditioned. Most stores were closed on Sundays and evenings. In addition, Vietnam protesters were setting off bombs in restrooms. It was a very different time.

We have many technological things that we now take for granted. It is difficult to imagine how major the accomplishment was to land on the moon and return. A number of people (including my 85-year-old grandfather) found the accomplishment so hard to believe that a they were convinced it was done in a movie studio and we actually did not land on the moon.

Fortunately, the national news was more trusted than it is today so most people accepted the truth of the accomplishment. Landing on the moon 50 years ago is certainly a tribute to what a nation working together for a worthy vision can accomplish. It is worthy of celebration.

Paid To Be Political

June 25, 2019 By Carol Keers Leave a Comment

Politics are the relationships that help you get things done in a way that deals with the reality of the way people are … not how you would like them to be.

You are paid to get things done, so you are paid to not ignore politics. Accept that managing politics is just a part of the job. If you don’t, you will only hurt yourself and your team.

Executive Presence Tip – Carol Keers

Surveillance

November 27, 2018 By Tom Mungavan Leave a Comment

Tim Cook, Apple CEO, said “If we get this wrong, the dangers are profound…

“Platforms and algorithms that promised to improve our lives can actually magnify our worst human tendencies. Rogue actors and even governments have taken advantage of user trust to deepen divisions, incite violence, and even undermine our shared sense of what is true and what is false. “Our own information, from the everyday to the deeply personal, is being weaponized against us with military efficiency.”

Cook’s hook line for this message is strong. He is advocating for legal constraints similar to those in the European Union. There are two key points that affect us on a more personal basis. What has been already collected?… and how do you make adjustments that you feel you need to make to what is continuing to be collected?

Google

Google is one of the largest collectors (and users) of search data and phone tracking. They are also transparent about what they are collecting about you. You can go to see what data Google has collected on you at Google CHECKUP. It will show your searches, videos watched on YouTube including any “likes” and comments. Google Maps and Android phones show everywhere you have been on a specific day. You can also adjust what you want Google to be able to collect about you.

They will argue that all the data history helps them help you. It is true. It also allows them to send advertising that is more relevant to you. Google only gets paid when someone clicks on an ad, so customizing increases their revenue and their value to advertisers.

Google dominates the internet data as the:

Biggest browser company in the world.
Biggest video host.
Biggest email service.
Biggest search engine.
Biggest mobile operating system.
Biggest server of digital ads.

Google controls 42% of the digital advertising market which is vastly more than anyone else. It is significantly larger than Facebook, which is the second largest. Google’s tracking codes appear on three quarters of the top million sites on the web. Google has a vested interest in tracking people to serve them ads which deliver 86% of Alphabet’s (Google’s parent company) revenue.

Unfortunately, this puts Google at odds with the interests of its users’ privacy. Their Chrome browser was the last to include the “do not track” function. Many knowledgeable technology people refuse to use Chrome.

Facebook

If you go to Facebook’s Accessing Your Facebook Data page, you can download all the data Facebook has collected from you. It also has all the contact information of your friends, including phone numbers etc., for the contacts you are connected to, those you deleted, and those you turned down. Photos are obviously there, too, and they can recognize faces. When you use a Facebook or Google sign-in for other websites, information is shared in both directions.

There is data that they collect on you that they don’t share. Many sites have tacking pixels that keep track of what you do on those sites and send the information to Facebook. Your messages to your congressman about political issues are often collected. Facebook has a patent pending that will connect you to others because their location data says you were in the same place at the same time. You don’t have to be connected or even know the person’s name.

Which is why it was such a big deal that Cambridge Analytica gave information to the Trump campaign and others. There is little doubt the Russians and Chinese have the data, too.

All mobile applications

When we check the box to accept terms and conditions without reviewing them, the implications are significant. That is a broader topic. There are some helpful insights on Ted Talks on data collection and artificial intelligence.

What can you do?

Most people do not know what data they agreed to give away. Above are two of the big data collectors you can check and adjust if you are concerned. There are a number of people deleting Facebook or significantly restraining it’s use. If you don’t want them to track your location, sign-out when you are not actively using the app. (That is not just closing the app; you need to log out.)

There are knowledgeable people who say it’s too late. The concept of privacy is gone. Just as you cannot collect the feathers of a pillow once you have released them to the wind, the data already shared will not go away. I do believe we can make the choice to be more aware and to actively manage how many feathers are in the wind.

Tim Cook is raising the issue because it is important and because there is still time to have impact, on a personal and global level.

How to Be More Appreciated

October 4, 2018 By Change Masters Academy Leave a Comment

Why do some people get so much credit when they do less than you? You work hard and get great results, and it is hardly noticed. We hear this often from talented leaders who have progressed quickly early in their career and then seem to stall out in their progress.

“My work should speak for itself,” is often the mantra. “I don’t want to be a brown-noser or stuck-up”. “I don’t do politics,” is a comment that usually follows close behind. Our Asian clients will say they do not want to be the “shoeshine boy”.

Why? We hate the idea that we might come across as phony or superficial. We have all seen the “empty suit” who gets recognition and promotion when others know they’re not that good.

So how can you be authentic and still get the recognition you deserve?

If you invented a really great product and did not tell anyone about it, or what it does for them, would you expect people to buy it? Of course not. What you do is much more apparent to you than to others. If you do not communicate how your product benefits others they are not likely to buy it — and if you don’t let others know what you and your team are doing they are not likely to buy you either.

I am not talking about the old-time “snake oil salesman” who sold a worthless product. That’s closer to the empty suit. You need to craft your honest marketing plan for you and your team if you want others to recognize and appreciate what you do.

It is your responsibility to promote yourself – you can’t outsource this responsibility! Some people are fortunate to have a champion to do their marketing for them. You cannot plan on that continuing, nor should you.

You need to help your boss promote you. If your boss’s boss and your boss’s peers do not see how good you are, your boss takes a big risk to promote you or recommend you to others. If you are promoted and do not meet expectations … it reflects poorly on the one who recommended you. That is a high risk. The higher you go in the organization the harder it is to measure success, and the higher the risk.

What if your champion is transferred, leaves the company, or retires? Your reputation is what you have left. Make it a good one that is well known. Assume that people are too busy to automatically pick up on what you’re doing. If you do so, your courage to tell your story will be doing yourself, your career, and your paycheck a big favor. If you have value to bring to the organization and nobody knows about it you are also hurting the organization. They will promote someone else when it should have been you.

You don’t have to be slimy to build advocacy or market yourself at work

How can you show that you are on a different glide path? If you do this right, you can segue more smoothly into your self-marketing so it doesn’t have that slimy factor we all hate. Here’s how we encourage our clients at Change Masters, our global leadership communications company specializing in executive presence, to make their capabilities known in their organizations. This template works around the world – in fact, here’s an example from a Western European leader now working in Asia.

First, make your progress known in the three big areas every company is interested in today:

1. Driving business results. 2. Driving breakthrough innovations. 3. Driving people development to the next level of performance. Just thinking of these things allows you to re-calibrate your language and your actions to focus yourself in the right direction.

Second, if they don’t know what you’ve done it’s almost like you haven’t done it. Get the word out. You create a product or generate an idea, but stick it on the back of the bottom shelf and let it get dusty, no one will ever buy it. You have to socialize your ideas to get heard within your circles of influence. Don’t let your comfort level be your guide — let their ability to register and retain your message be your guide.

Third, when you socialize what you’ve done, concisely focus on some unique nuance of your approach or what you did that made it work because of your unique perspective on the situation. Don’t assume they know! When you do so, cut out the blah, blah, blah of providing excess background. You just want to hook them with one brief, intriguing statement. As one client of mine, a Dutch engineer, said, “Take them by the hand and give one line of background for context, not the history of the world!” He had great results with this approach, saying, “You made a Dutch engineer half-Italian!”

Bottom line: Engage your senior leaders in topics that are meaningful to them. Remember, if you did it and you said it, you’re not bragging!