March 19, 2024

Subscribe to Head Butler…For People Who Have More Taste Than Time

Everyone gets too much mail, much of it unwanted. One of the biggest time sucks in that daily deluge? Deleting it… which takes an average of 3.2 seconds per mail. Most of us spend more than 3 minutes a day deleting mail —  time stolen from our lives.

So why I am adding to your inbox?

Because I think you might enjoy the recommendations and reviews on HeadButler.com. It’s published four times a week “for people with more taste than time.” The editor is Jesse Kornbluth. If his name is familiar, it’s because you’ve read his pieces in The New York Times Magazine, New York, and Vanity Fair. Or you saw his novels — his short novels, because he knows everyone’s time is tight — praised by the Times.

Butler is a 600-700 word surprise, published Monday to Thursday. It’s a cheat sheet that delivers information and crisp opinion. Like these:

Jesse’s favorite novel, The Queen’s Gambit. 

Legendary music from a music legend, John Prine. 

Jesse’s favorite memoir (and excellent, overlooked movie): The Tender Bar.  

A one-of-a-kind Holiday Gift Guide.

An occasional short story, like the update of “The Gift of the Magi,” the classic O.Henry story, The Gift of Gifts.

For the weekend, suggestions for books, movies, and music, plus videos and tidbits of interest, in the Weekend Butler. 

If you like what you see on Butler, you’re invited to sign up for the free newsletter. Just pop your email address into the box in the upper right of the main screen. You’ll get an email (possibly in Spam) that you must acknowledge in order to activate your subscription. I like to think you’ll be thanking me… and maybe sharing Head Butler.

Try it, you’ll like it.

Endorse Now!

This past week America’s second-largest newspaper chain stopped endorsing political candidates. Here’s what Jon Allsop in the Columbia Journalism Review newsletter wrote about it:

It’s newspaper-endorsement season again, and that means it’s Should newspapers do endorsements? season again. Last week, Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund notorious for slashing costs at its local titles, came down on the No side of the question, with editorial boards at papers that it owns stating that they will no longer endorse candidates for governor, US senator, or president. “Unfortunately, as the public discourse has become increasingly acrimonious, common ground has become a no man’s land between the clashing forces of the culture wars,” a company editorial explaining the change read, adding that, especially online, readers often struggle to differentiate between news and opinion content, perceiving the latter as revealing a bias in the former even though the two are typically walled off from one another. The editorial said that while the no-endorsement policy would apply in races that bosses see as “increasingly nationalized,” it would not in “more local contests, such as city councils, school boards, local initiatives, referendums and other such matters.”

Blaming this decision on “increasingly acrimonious” public discourse is bullshit. With hedge-fund-financed and most private-equity-financed newspaper buyouts, it’s all about money. Nothing else, just money, and any other excuse is a smoke screen. When a newspaper endorses a candidate, it angers someone, mostly the candidates it didn’t endorse and their followers, some of whom may cancel their subscriptions. Canceled subscriptions hurt newspapers’ bottom lines in two ways: 1) They lose subscription revenue and 2) they have lower circulation, which means they have to charge less for advertising. So, rather than anger anyone, the solution is not to endorse candidates for president, governor, or senator. It’s a money decision, not a journalism decision. Don’t be fooled by the fake moralistic language.

This past September Andy Borowitz’s book Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber was published. In it Borowitz writes:

People sometimes call our nation “the American experiment.” Recently, though, we’ve been lab rats in another, perverse, American experiment, seemingly designed to answer this question: Who’s the most ignorant person the United States is willing to elect?

Borowitz writes that “By elevating candidates who can entertain over those who can think, mass media have made the election of dunces more likely,” and to prove his point he examines four Republicans: Ronald Regan, Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin and Donald Trump. The author divides what he calls the Age of Ignorance into three stages: Ridicule, Acceptance and Celebration.

During the Ridicule stage, ignorance was a magnet for mockery, a serious flaw that could kill a political career. Consequently, dumb politicians had to pretend to be smart. (Ronald Reagan and Dan Quayle)

During the Acceptace stage, ignorace mutated into something more agreeable: a sign that a politician was authentic, down-to-earth, and a “normal person.” Cosequently, dumb politicians felt free to appear dumb. (George W. Bush and Sarah Palin)

Finally, during the Celebration stage–the ordeal we’re enduring right now–ignorance has become preferable to knowledge, dunces are exalted over experts, and a candidate can win a seat in Congress after blaming wildfires on Jewish space lasers. Being ill-informed is a litmus test; consequently, smart politicians must pretend to be dumb..the ultimate embodiment of this stage is Donald J. Trump, and Trump wannabes such as Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis–who, despite being graduates of our nation’s finest universities, strenuously try to outdumb him.

If the nation’s newspapers refuse to editorialize and endorse candidates and warn us how dumb many of today’s politicians are, especially Republican politicians (Herschel Walker, e.g.) then how are we going to know? Also, endorsements are good because they are positive. A newspaper (or magazine or radio or TV station) can say, “Reverand Warnock is awesome: smart, honest, and nice,” and they don’t have to say, “Herschel Walker is dumb as a rock and mean as a snake.”

Yes, newspapers (and magazines and radio and TV stations) should endorse candidates and save us from having another president, or a governor or a senator who tells us, as Borowitz writes, to “inject bleach.”

Onesidedness Should Be the New Normal

On Monday, September 19, 2020, in “The Media Today” newsletter from the Columbia Journalism Review, Jon Alsop wrote

Yesterday, the New York Times and the Washington Post ran more or less the same story about the upcoming midterms. The Post asked the Democratic and Republican nominees in nineteen gubernatorial or US Senate races whether they will accept the result in November; all but one of the Democrats (the one did not respond) said yes, whereas only seven Republicans did likewise, with the other twelve either refusing to commit or not responding at all. Not to be one-upped, The Times asked both parties’ nominees in twenty gubernatorial or Senate races the same question; all the Democrats said yes, whereas six of the Republicans declined to commit and a further six either ignored or batted away the question. And several of the candidates who said they would accept the results have previously cast doubt on the outcome of the 2020 election—not least Adam Laxalt, the GOP Senate nominee in Nevada. “Of course he’ll accept Nevada’s certified election results,” a spokesperson for Laxalt told the Times, “even if your failing publication won’t.”
 
The Times’s story was paired on the paper’s homepage yesterday with a much bigger read: a six-thousand-word essay by David Leonhardt, who typically (and sometimes controversially) anchors the paper’s flagship morning newsletter, describing “twin threats” to US democracy. The first, which Leonhardt described as “acute,” essentially echoed his colleagues’ new reporting on GOP candidates: “a growing movement inside one of the country’s two major parties—the Republican Party—to refuse to accept defeat in an election.”

The New York Times and the Washington Post are clearly getting more one sided, and it’s about time.

Up until 2016, these two highly influential newspapers’ journalistic guidelines called for bothsidedness–both sides of major issues being reported on had to be included in all news stories, not necessarily with equal weight, but with some sense of balance. Of course, opinion pieces and editorials could be partisan and one sided. Imagine Maureen Dowd being balanced, for example.

For years critics, the Media Curmudgeon included, derided the he-said-she-said bothsideism, especially with issues such as climate change. What is the other side of trying to keep the planet from burning up? However, after Trump was elected in 2016, the responsible news media started inching away from bothsideism and getting less balanced in their news coverage. As the Republicans degenerated into a far-right, election-denying, Trump-dominated party, responsible news media realized that Trump’s strategy was lying, manipulating the media, and creating chaos, so Twitter and Facebook threw him off of their platforms and news outlets such as the NY Times and the Washington Post began to call out his lies and stopped giving him much coverage.

But Trump is harder to get rid of than cockroaches, so now responsible journalism is starting to realize that Trump is not going away and that the real problem is far-right, Republican threats to our democratic system.

In this current crisis, journalism must be one sided in favor of democracy (not necessarily in favor of Democrats).

Response to “Star Wars,” “Lawrence of Arabia,”Freud, and Trump

Dan Manellla wrote an excellent response to my “Star Wars,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” Freud, and Trump post. I especially enjoyed watching the scene from “Judgment a Nuremberg” Dan linked to, and I urge you to watch it. It’s scarily relevant.

On the subject of movies…and Trump….and accountability…. I cannot help thinking about MAGA supporters – many of whom have no clue what they are supporting…many who are historically illiterate people who have no appreciation, nor imagination of what has happened in the past, and what could easily be recreated and repeated….because history does have a way of doing that – especially to the illiterate.  

I am often reminded of this scene from the film Judgement at Nuremberg….   https://youtu.be/8Ioc2KD-I1U

What will these supporters do when they realize what a crook this guy is?  Will they double down…or will they admit that they followed a rat?

After April of 1945 – Nazi’s still existed….they just took the uniforms off…and hid in plain site.

The only thing I would disagree with in what Dan wrote is that I do not believe that all MAGA/Trump supporters are illiterate. Many are college educated, and not all of those college graduates are from evangelical colleges such as Liberty University. By the way, the new Fox News Sunday anchor, Shannon Bream, graduated from Liberty.

Prime time Fox News personalities/bloviators Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham are all college graduates, so, technically are not illiterate, although they sure seem to be.

“Star Wars,” “Lawrence Of Arabia,” Freud, and Trump

In the greatest of the “Star Wars” movie series, “The Empire Strikes Back,” in its most famous scene, after Darth Vader says to Luke Skywalker, “I am your father,” Vader asks Luke to join him in ruling the galaxy. Vader says, “it is your destiny.” Luke, exercising free will, tells Vader, “I will never join you,” and drops into the depths of the Death Star.

In the film “Lawrence of Arabia,” after making an almost impossible trek at night across the Nefud desert, Lawrence discovers his Arab colleague, Gasim, has fallen off his camel, and says he’s going back because Gasim will die in the heat of the day. Sharif Ali tells Lawrence not to risk returning into the Nefud. And about Gasim’s almost certain death Sherif Ali says, “It is written.” In other words, it was Gasim’s destiny to die. Lawrence replies angrily, “nothing is written,” exercises his free will, and chooses to go back into the Nefud in the daytime to find Gasim, which, of course, he does.

If one’s future is determined by destiny or by the Koran, free will is negated. Freud believed in psychic determinism, or the theory that a person’s makeup is determined by how they were treated as a child, a theory that also denies free will. If anyone believes in determinism of any kind, they do not believe that people have free will, that they have a conscious power to make choices. If people’s behavior and actions are predetermined, then we can’t hold them accountable for the choices they make.

Determinists would say that Hitler’s murder of six million Jews was because Germans and Austrians were virulently anti-Semitic, because he was brutally beaten as a child, and because he was over indulged by an adoring mother. In other words, as Han Solo said in “The Empire Strikes Back,” when the Millenium Falcon failed to jump to hyperspace, “it’s not my fault.”

But we must hold malignant narcissists such as Hitler, Stalin, and Trump responsible for their behavior. They made choices and they must be held accountable. They can’t say, “it’s not my fault.” It is their fault. They made their choices. They could have made different, humane, compassionate choices, but they didn’t, so they must be held accountable.

Most rational historians have held Hitler and Stalin accountable for their crimes against humanity. Chair Bennie Thompson and Vice-Chair Liz Cheney of the House January 6 Attack Committee are making a devastatingly effective case holding Trump accountable for inciting a riot that attempted to overturn a free and fair election. Trump is accountable for his crimes against humanity (e. g. separating children from their families at the border).

Great movies such as “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Lawrence of Arabia” tell stories that contain universal truths. Like the truth of myths, they tell us how to live our lives. One of the truths of great movies and myths is that “nothing is written,” that we have free will to choose good or evil. and when we make the wrong choices we will be held accountable.

Trump must be indicted, convicted, and sent to jail. “Star Wars” and “Lawrence of Arabia” were right, Freud was wrong.

Stop Making the Business Case for Diversity

I was shocked, shocked when I read the above headline for an article on HBR.org, the Harvard Business Review’s online newsletter. The article was written by Oriane Georgeac and Aneeta Rattan. Georgeac is a Ph.D. and Assistant Professor in Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management and Rattan is also a Ph.D. and an Assistant Professor in Organizational Behavior at the London Business School. Therefore, the authors’ research had great credibility to me, even though I was skeptical when I first began to read the article.

Here’s what they wrote:

Most organizations don’t feel the need to explain why they care about core values such as innovation, resilience, or integrity. And yet when it comes to diversity, lengthy justifications of the value of hiring a diverse workforce have become the norm in corporate America and beyond. AstraZeneca’s website, for example, makes a business case for diversity, arguing that “innovation requires breakthrough ideas that only come from a diverse workforce.” Conversely, Tenet Healthcare makes a moral case, noting in its Code of Conduct that “We embrace diversity because it is our culture, and it is the right thing to do.”

These statements may seem innocuous — but our forthcoming research suggests that how an organization talks about diversity can have a major impact on its ability to actually achieve its diversity goals. Through a series of six studies, we explored both the prevalence of different types of diversity rhetoric in corporate communications, and how effective these narratives are when it comes to attracting underrepresented job candidates

In Georgeac and Rattan’s first research study, they looked at publicly available text from all FORTUNE 500 companies’ websites, diversity reports, and blogs, and then used a machine-learning algorithm to classify the data into two categories:

* The “business case” for diversity: a rhetoric that justifies diversity in the workplace on the grounds that it benefits companies’ bottom line

* The “fairness case” for diversity: a rhetoric that justifies diversity on moral grounds of fairness and equal opportunity

The authors discovered that about 80% of organizations used the business case to justify the importance of diversity, and less than 5% used the fairness case.

Given the business case’s popularity, you would think that underrepresented candidates would find the business case compelling, and that reading this type of justification for diversity would increase their interest in working with a company.

Unfortunately, our next five studies demonstrated the opposite. In these studies, we asked more than 2,500 individuals — including LGBTQ+ professionals, women in STEM fields, and Black American college students — to read messages from a prospective employer’s webpage which made either the business case, the fairness case, or offered no justification for valuing diversity. We then had them report how much they felt like they would belong at the organization, how concerned they were that they would be judged based on stereotypes, and how interested they would be in taking a job there.

So, what did we find? Translated into percentages, our statistically robust findings show that underrepresented participants who read a business case for diversity on average anticipated feeling 11% less sense of belonging to the company, were 16% more concerned that they would be stereotyped at the company, and were 10% more concerned that the company would view them as interchangeable with other members of their identity group, compared to those who read a fairness case. We further found that the detrimental effects of the business case were even starker relative to a neutral message: Compared to those who read neutral messaging, participants who read a business case reported being 27% more concerned about stereotyping and lack of belonging, and they were 21% more concerned they they would be seen as interchangeable. In addition, after seeing a company make a business case, our participants’ perceptions that its commitment to diversity was genuine fell by up to 6% — and all these factors, in turn, made the underrepresented participants less interested in working for the organization.

For completeness, we also looked at the impact of these different diversity cases on well-represented candidates, and found less consistent results. In one experiment, we found that men seeking jobs in STEM fields reported the same anticipated sense of belonging and interest in joining a firm regardless of which type of diversity rationale they read. But when we ran a similar experiment with white student job candidates, we found that as with underrepresented job candidates, those who read a business case also reported a greater fear of being stereotyped and lower anticipated sense of belonging to the firm than those who read a fairness or neutral case, which in turn led them to be less interested in joining it.

Clearly, despite having a positive motivation, companies making a business case for diversity is not the best way to attract underrepresented job candidates — and it may also hurt well-represented candidates’ perceptions of a prospective employer.

The business case assumes that underrepresented candidates offer different skills, perspectives, experiences, working styles, etc., and that it is precisely these “unique contributions” that drive the success of diverse companies. This frames diversity not as a moral necessity, but as a business asset, useful only insofar as it bolsters a company’s bottom line. It also suggests that organizations may judge what candidates have to contribute on the basis of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or other identities, rather than based on their actual skills and experience — a stereotyping and depersonalizing approach that undermines candidates’ anticipated sense of belonging.

Ultimately, the business case for diversity backfires because it sends a subtle yet impactful signal that organizations view employees from underrepresented groups as a means to an end (an instrumental framing of diversity). This undermines organizations’ diversity efforts, before they’ve even had any direct interaction with these candidates.

So what should organizations do instead? Our research shows that the fairness case, which presents diversity as an end in itself (i.e., a non-instrumental framing of diversity), is a lot less harmful than the business case — in our studies, it halved the negative impact of the business case. But there’s another option that may be even better and simpler: Don’t justify your commitment to diversity at all. Across our studies, we found that people felt more positive about a prospective employer after reading a fairness case than after reading a business case — but they felt even better after reading a neutral case, in which diversity was simply stated as a value, without any explanation.

When we share this suggestion with executives, they sometimes worry about what to do if they’re asked “why” after they state a commitment to diversity with no justification. It’s an understandable question, especially in a world that has so normalized prioritizing the business case over all else — but it has a simple answer. If you don’t need an explanation for the presence of well-represented groups in the workplace beyond their expertise, then you don’t need a justification for the presence of underrepresented groups either.

It may seem counterintuitive, but making a case for diversity (even if it’s a case grounded in a moral argument) inherently implies that valuing diversity is up for discussion. You don’t have to explain why you value innovation, resilience, or integrity. So why treat diversity any differently?

The position of Georgeac amd Rattan seems counterintuitive, but after thinking about it, it makes sense. If I were a member of an underrepresented group, say a Black woman, would I want to feel like I was hired because I was Black or a woman to fill some diversity quota. No, I think I would want to feel that I was hired for my skills and because the team I’m on liked me.

So, organizations should be very careful about how they promote their diversity values. I hope The New School read this article.

Thank the Teachers

As a part-time associate professor who teaches graduate courses at The New School, I’m very fortunate in that I get great feedback and appreciation from my students. However, last month I had lunch with a dear friend and his girlfriend, who is a high-school teacher in an upscale Long Island school district. She was complaining about how poorly she was treated by parents and students. Therefore, I thought of her when I read the lead item on Axios Finish Line yesterday (June 8), titled “How to Help Stressed Teachers.” Here are Axios’s suggestions:


  1. Say “thank you.” 
    Teachers tell us they rarely receive a simple thanks from parents and community members. Tell the teachers in your life you appreciate them, and post on social media to spread the message in your network.
  2. Make calls and write letters. Pick up the phone and thank the teachers who changed your life. If you don’t have their numbers, look for them on social media and reach out there. And write notes and cards to the teachers at your local public schools.
  3. Volunteer. If you have the time, step up to volunteer in classrooms, in the library or in the cafeteria — and try to give our teachers and school staff a long-overdue break.
  4. Give them gift cards for school supplies and a stash of healthy snacks — they are among the few people outside the home who know a kid is hungry.
  5. Be kind. When you’re emailing your child’s teacher, remember that they’re barraged with demands and complaints. Be cheerful, appreciative and efficient: They may well be answering you on their own time. 
  6. Bring donuts. It may sound frivolous, but it’s not. Show up with goodies or coffee to your kids’ school. Little gestures like that don’t fix the situation. But they sure make it more tolerable, says Brooke Olsen-Farrell, superintendent of the Slate Valley Unified School District in Vermont.
  7. Empathize. Dial back the political attacks on teachers. They, like all of us, are simply trying to do what’s best for our kids. Usually your issues are with the PTA or the union anyway.

The bottom line: Recognize the crazy stress teachers face. They joined a once admired, albeit modestly paid, profession — and now are vulnerable to physical attack, while being pelted with political grievances.

My College Students Are OK

In the Sunday Review section of The New York Times on May 15, Jonathan Malesic wrote an Opinion column titled “College Students Are Not OK,” in which he claimed:

In my classes last fall, a third of the students were missing nearly every time, and usually not the same third. Students buried their faces in their laptop screens and let my questions hang in the air unanswered. My classes were small, with nowhere to hide, yet some students openly slept through them.

Dr. Malesic (Ph.D. University of Virginia) teaches at an elite private university –Southern Methodist University–and a less swanky public university. He writes that other university teachers have similar problems:

Last month, The Chronicle of Higher Education received comments from more than 100 college instructors about their classes. They, too, reported poor attendance, little discussion, missing homework and failed exams.

Malesic also writes about online courses in 2020:

Faculty members and students across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where I live, described a widespread breakdown in learning that year. Matthew Fujita, a biology professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, said the results of the first exam in his fall 2020 genetics class, a large lecture course, reflected “the worst performance I’d ever seen on a test.”

I’ve been teaching college courses for 42 years, and for 25 years in the graduate Media Management Program at The New School in New York. I taught an in-person course this past spring semester that ended May 10, and the students in the course were OK. In fact, they did some of the best work I have seen in a class I’ve been teaching for 20 years. The students were highly engaged and enthusiastic about their projects and attendance was excellent (about three percent absences).

Perhaps some of the reasons why my students were engaged were:

First, I stopped lecturing about 10 years ago. If I want to impart some new knowledge that is not in the textbook or reinforce some lessons in the assigned reading, I present a PowerPoint presentation that is heavy on visuals and graphics and is about 20 minutes long. I post longer, full-text versions of my presentations online so students can study them and keep them for reference as long as they want. The reason I stopped lecturing is that I realized that young people’s attention spans can be measured in milliseconds, primarily because they are used to social media and dating apps. Keeping them engaged for longer than 18 minutes is virtually impossible. Eighteen minutes is the average length of a TED Talk, and the latest research shows that viewing to TED Talks is down significantly for younger people. Viewing time for young people for a video can be counted in seconds, not minutes by a generation addicted to Tik Tok, Instagram and YouTube videos.

Second, I also stopped giving exams about 30 years ago because I realized that students cram for exams and then forget almost everything they shoved into their heads. There is virtually no retention of the material or concepts covered in the class. Students learn by doing, not by taking tests. I divide my class into teams, randomly assign a team leader and give the teams projects in class to complete and present to the class. I give teams feedback on their presentations (smile when presenting, look at the speaker, use gestures, etc.). Students not only learn how to solve practical problems, but they also learn teamwork and presenting skills.

Third, halfway through the course (after eight weeks), I have a feedback assignment (five percent of their grade) and ask the students to send me an email giving me feedback on how the course is going: what they like, what they dislike, how am I doing and what subjects would they like more of and less of. I urge students to be candid. I have found that the students appreciate having the opportunity for input and to be heard, and every semester I receive good ideas on how to present concepts, structure the course and guests to invite. I do this Feedback Assignment halfway through the course because official course evaluations filled out by students at the end of the semester are worthless. The horse has left the barn; you can’t make course corrections. Besides, those who have been teaching for more than a couple of years know that regardless of the questions asked on the student evaluation questionnaires, all the evaluations reflect is, as a Stanford professor once told me, “how many jokes you tell.” They are popularity contests that, like almost all rating or evaluation mechanisms, tell you more about the evaluator than the evaluatee. Also, course evaluations absolutely do not help teachers improve their courses.

Fourth, on week number seven of a 16-week course, I asked the students to design the content for the class on week number 12. We wrote the suggested topics on the whiteboard and voted on them. We selected two topics that got the most votes, and I asked three professional experts to be guests on a Zoom session to address the topics the students wanted to know about. I copied this idea from best-selling author and University of Pennsylvania professor, Adam Grant, who mentioned it in his monthly newsletter, “Granted.”

Fifth, in his first paragraph, Malesic wrote “Students buried their faces in their laptop screens.” Why on earth does he allow laptops, tablets or cell phones to be open in his class? I have a policy in my classes that laptops, tablets and cell phones are forbidden to be open or even visible during class except when students are working on a team project. I ruthlessly enforce this policy to no ill effects on course feedback or course evaluations, which I never look at, but have been told are pretty good.

Sixth, 20 percent of a student’s grade in my courses are based on a team grade. At the end of the semester, students are required to submit a letter grade for their team leader and each team member. I ask the students to be candid and not to give As to free riders and to those who do poor work. This past semester one student was given a C for poor work. In my couses I emphasize the vital importance of teamwork in today’s business environment. In many articles I have read about the top five or ten qualities companies look for when hiring people, collaboration is invariably in the top five, usually in the top three. Therefore, I stress collaboration, teamwork and creating an atmosphere of psychological safety in teams.

Maybe my students are OK because the MMP program has exceptionally motivated and engaged students. Maybe students in Texas are different from students in New York. But maybe my students are OK and engaged and show up because I don’t use outmoded (before social media) teaching methods: I don’t give lectures, I don’t give exams and I don’t allow laptops or cell phones to distract students. I suggest Dr. Malesic and other professors he quotes in his article look in the mirror before blaming the students.

Managers’ Roles Change Again

I received an intelligent response to my blog about managers’ roles changing from my good friend Bruce Braun, so here it is:

Your commentary got me thinking about why is it that just about every business management book or magazine article focuses on the roles and responsibilities of management. 

What about the roles and responsibilities of employees or subordinates?  Without them, work doesn’t happen.  Are they just worker bees carrying out the functions or assignments?   Or are they an integral part of ensuring how well an organization performs?

Managerial attitudes are important, but so equally are employee attitudes.  Co-equal for sure.

How about books that address how to be a great employee?  Inward circumspection rather than only outward expectations?

I’ve noticed, as I’m sure you have (as you’ve written about) the generational shift in attitudes towards work and work ethics.  Here are some of my observations over the past 15-20 years:

Responsibility to my employer: From “I will work hard to learn all I can about my industry, job, and company to be the best I can be.” Shifts to “All I need to know is about my current assignment.”  From “I know that it takes three to five years to become really good at something.” Shifts to “My career has stalled if I’ve not been promoted along with a raise within 12-18 months. Experience is highly overrated, the crutch and refuge of dinosaurs.” From “I believe if I work hard and perform there is a career path to more responsibility.” Shifts to “What’s a profession or career? Everyone is expendable.”

Management Responsibility: From “I’m grateful I was hired and given this opportunity to learn, grow, and prove myself.” Shifts to “My manager’s job is to teach me everything I need to know so I can be promoted.”  From “I understand my boss is carrying out the directives of the higher-ups.  I’ll do my best to help achieve those goals.”  Shifts to “Why was I not consulted about these directives?  I deserve to be part of the decision-making process despite only being here for six months.”

Participation in the Office:  From “Work begins in the office at 8:30 AM, Monday thru Friday.” Shifts to “Why do I need to come to an office?  The pandemic proved we can all work from home or remotely with hours I will determine.”  From: “In-person 1:1 interaction on a daily basis is critical to collaboration and teamwork.” Shifts to “Zoom video calls are all I need.  Who needs to be in an office full of people who stifle my thinking and productivity?” 

Choosing a Profession and Career Path: From “I want a career in this profession/industry that will help me achieve my professional and personal goals.  If I really love what I do, it won’t be work.” Shifts to “I have no idea what I really want to be when I grow up.  I’ll give this job a shot until it bores me and then I’ll check out being a social media influencer.”  From “I’ll give this job and company my best, believing hard work and perseverance will result in success.” Shifts to “If Elon Musk buys this place, screw him and his politics, I’ll quit.  Billionaires are the scourge of society, other than Jeff Bezos, because Amazon rocks despite being anti-union.  What’s the Washington Post?  None of my friends read newspapers, too old school.”

Managers’ Roles Shift

Even though I’m semi-retired (I teach two courses a year at The New School), I can’t break a 55-year habit of reading about management and management trends.

My favorite books over those years have been: Peter Drucker’s The Practice of Management, Peters and Waterman’s In Search of Excellence, Richard N.Foster’s Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage, John Kotter’s Leading Change and Jim Collins’s Good to Great.

My favorite magazine has been the Harvard Business Review and its online blog, HBR.org. I’m probably being too nerdy, but HBR is the only magazine I tend to read cover to cover because I’m still fascinated by how the media and academia, where I have spent my entire career, are managed.

In general, I believe the legacy media–newspapers, magazines, broadcasting and outdoor (OOH)–are quite poorly managed, with the exception of The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Harvard Business Review and iHeart Media. Of the new media, Google clearly leads the way, and Facebook is a at the bottom of the pack.

If the media, in general, are poorly managed, then academia is disastrously managed. Administrative and bureaucratic bloat has gotten bloatier and less productive in the last several years as tenure, among other things, continues to stifle innovation.

Management-challenged media companies and academic institutions would do well to read a Harvard Business Review article in the current March-April issue titled “Managers Can’t Do It All: It’s Time to Reinvent Their Role for the New World of Work” by Diane Gherson and Lynda Gratton. In the article the authors write that the roles of managers have changed across three dimensions: power, skills and structure. Here’s how the roles have changed:

POWER: From “My team makes me successful” shifts to “I’m here to make my team successful.” From “I’m rewarded for achieving business goals” shifts to “I’m also rewarded for improving team engagement, inclusion and skills relevancy.” From “I control how people move beyond my unit” shifts to “I scout for talent and help my team move fluidly to wider opportunities.”                         

SKILLS: From “I oversee work” shifts to “I track outcomes.” From “I assess team members against expectations” shifts to “I coach them to achieve their potential and invite their feedback on my management.” From “I provide work direction and share information from above” shifts to “I supply inspiration, sensemaking and emotional support.
STRUCTURE: From “I manage an intact team of people in fixed jobs in a physical workspace” shifts to “My team is fluid and the workspace is digital.” From “I set goals and make assessments annually” shifts to “I provide ongoing guidance in priorities and performance feedback.” From “I hold an annual career discussion focused on the next promotion” shifts to “I’m always retraining my team and providing career coaching.”

Wow! The centralized command-and-control, top-down management style of media management that I grew up in and probably used is going the way of the buggy whip. Let’s hope media companies and academia read the Harvard Business Review and change their management style, and let’s hope Vladimir Putin and the Russian military don’t.

     

Ties

Last week my wife, Julia, discovered a number of my 90 ties had moth holes in them and asked me if she could get rid of them. I misunderstood her and said, “Yes. No one wears ties anymore. I’ll never wear them again.” The misunderstanding was that I thought she was referring to the moth-eaten ties but she thought I meant all 90 ties.

Julia culled out a dozen ties she thought I might wear on more formal occasions and took all the remaining ties to Housing Works, a local charity store, which was a perfectly reasonable and practical solution. The next day, I opened my closet doors and was confronted with a horrifying sight, a sight I hadn’t seen in 75 years–empty tie racks.

I was suddenly overwhelmed with a rush of sadness, emptiness and desperation. Where were my ties?

Where was the wool Polo tie that I wore when I had my official photo taken the day I started in 1967 as Eastern Sales Manager of CBS Radio Spot Sales? For ten years I had dreamed of being with the Tiffany Network in a management job. The reason the tie meant so much was that it was a symbol of the culture at CBS in the late ’60s and early 70s when you were judged largely by how you dressed and managed up. If you dressed like Broadcast Group President, Jack Schneider (Polo and Paul Stuart ties, Brooks Brother’s, Polo and Paul Stuart suits and wing-tip Oxfords, Brooks Brother’s tassel loafers or Gucci loafers). Schneider had followed the elegant, preppie dress code set by former CBS president James Aubrey.

The creative people called us “suits,” but it could just as easily have been “ties” because ties were the immediate and most visible element of an outfit.

I was hired as Eastern SalesManager of CBS RSS by the elegant, dapper, very smart Russ Barry, the newly appointed Vice President in charge of RSS as part of a shakeup of the CBS Radio division, and it was my task to fire half of a ten-person sales department and hire more aggressive, younger salespeople. The first salesperson I hired was Herb McCord, a Dartmouth graduate. Russ and I had both gone to Dartmouth, so hiring based on an “old school tie” seemed like a safe bet.

The second salesperson I hired was Norm Feuer, who was a friend of Herb’s at Time, Inc. Norm was not an Ivy Leaguer or preppie. He was the first Jew hired in sales in the CBS Radio Division and dressed like a mechanic. But Norm was really smart and tough and competitive, and I felt he would do well. The first day he reported to work, what was the first thing I did after introducing him to the office staff? We walked to Paul Stuart and I bought him a tie. That was the culture. That was why I wanted to remember that Polo tie, to remind me of a bygone, outmoded culture where I was successful in a dream job for a dream company in 1967.

Another tie I missed was a plain yellow Polo tie with no stripes designs on it that I wore to my daughter, Crickett’s, and my son, Chris’s, weddings in Cape Cod. I love Crickett and Chris and had a ball at their weddings and receptions. The yellow tie, even though I never remember wearing it after those weddings, reminded me of those delightful full-family gatherings. To me, it was the tie that binds.

I had an elegant grey-navy blue-and-silver checked Polo tie that I wore on one of the happiest days of my life–the day married Julia. I loved looking at that tie and being reminded of that day.

I had an elegant orange Ferragamo silk tie that I bought for $125 when I was at AOL in 1998. Even though AOL’s Chairman Steve Case was often criticized in the press for appearing in public dressed informally in khakis and an open-neck shirt and set the style for informal dress for internet executives that is still extant today, AOL President Bob Pittman typically dressed elegantly for public appearances. Bob gave a speech in AOL’s New York offices in 1998 wearing a beautiful orange Ferragamo tie. Remembering my CBS days, the next day I bought that tie. I loved looking at that tie and being reminded of my very happy, productive days at AOL where I made some of my still closest friends and, most important, met Julia.

Thus, those ties were memories, were triggers for positive reminisces. I realized that in a time of home-bound COVID isolation, a time of right-wing, Trumpist Republicans threatening democracy, a time of a war in Ukraine, a time of inflation and a time of old age, we need positive memory triggers.

We need our ties to and of the past.

Julia was kind enough to retrieve the ties and, thus, bring back the triggers for triumphs and joys past. I need those ties.

Responses to “Putin and Hitler” Blog

I received two interesting responses to my “Putin and Hitler” blog post:

Bruce Braun wrote:

Like they say:  Every US Senator who looks in a mirror sees a US President looking back.

Back in 1981 when I was at WCAU in Philadelphia, I took the Metroliner down to DC for meetings one morning.  The train stopped in Wilmington and who gets on but Joe Biden along with some guy who was apparently an aide of some sort.

They sat down one row up and over from me, with Joe on the aisle.  They began talking about people and legislative matters.  Joe spoke in a loud voice, the kind that people use when they want those around or near them to hear what they are saying.

It surprised me because I had been taught to never discuss company business when you were on a plane, train, elevator or bathroom.  The reasoning was you never knew who might be in earshot.  And, if you did have to speak, you whispered.

Apparently Joe did not subscribe to that philosophy.  He made a point of expressing his opinions and feeling towards, legislation, other senators and congress members.  None of those loudly voiced comments could have been considered to be complimentary.

I was stunned how vulgar his characterizations were:  asshole, jerk-off, shithead, etc. Yeah, it was that bad and on a crowded public train.  I concluded he was a narcissist of the first order who thought he was a brilliant politician without peer.

I think your analysis below is spot on and in particular,the 50/50 example. 

In respect to military psychological testing and screening. When I went thru Basic and Advanced Infantry training in the Army in 1970, we had six guys in our company who were criminals convicted of armed robbery, larceny, assault, etc.  The judge gave them the choice of six years in prison or three years in the Army.  Early one morning, the MP’s burst into the barracks, cuffed these guys and hauled them off.  The MP’s tossed their lockers and found several live hand grenades, blasting caps, detonation cord, a block of C4 high explosives, magazines of M-16 ammo and even a Claymore Anti-personnel  mine, and other items they had purloined off the different training areas.  Without a doubt, these soldiers-in-arms were psychos of the first order.

I concur about administering psychological screening testing to politicians, starting with every candidate for public office.

Interestingly, Sharon has a cousin who is a clinical psychologist  (Colonel and PhD) in the AIrForce.  Air Force Academy grad as well.  I was chatting with her one day and she told me the AF actually looks for narcissistic traits when screening those aspiring to become military pilots!  I asked why and she said the belief was in part because pilots need to be supremely self-confident and fearless. 

Bill Grimes wrote:

I would never agree that we (who? Pres, Congress, doctors, psychiatrists, you or me?) should give psychological tests because the results are not science and misinterpretation and manipulation would be easy.

And who would be in the role to interpret the results? Democrats, Republicans? Judges, shrinks? Mayhem would result.  

To end life today three doctors must agree that the individual has no chance to recover, and as a result there is frequent disagreement, (I know this because a friend with stage 4 cancer was denied to have a merciful, painless death). It is difficult to get three docotrs to agree, and that causes undue suffering for the person who is denied the right to end his/her life.

We have the right to pursue happiness but not to end our lives without suffering. To this, of course , we can thank religion, mostly Catholicism. Of course in Switzerland and I think a couple of other nations in Europe, one can decide–with certain conditions, like pain and suffering–to decide how and when to have a painless death.  In our country the State decides, which I think is more control over an individual’s life than any government should have.

Psychological testing is not the way to determine whether a person will be an honest, hard-working, empathetic person working for the good of all he/she serves.  Prior experience  and references who have worked with the candidate(s) would have produced a much better result.

I’m not sure that psychological testing is the right answer,but I think we need to debate the issue of how a democracy deals with protecting itself against the Putins, Hitlers, Stalins, and Trumps?

Putin and Hitler

Here’s part of the Wikipedia Early Life entry for Vladamir Putin:

Putin was born on 7 October 1952 in LeningradRussian SFSRSoviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia), the youngest of three children of Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin (1911–1999) and Maria Ivanovna Putina (née Shelomova; 1911–1998). His grandfather, Spiridon Putin, was a personal cook to Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Putin’s birth was preceded by the deaths of two brothers, Viktor and Albert, born in the mid-1930s. Albert died in infancy and Viktor died of diphtheria during the Siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany‘s forces in World War II.

Putin’s mother was a factory worker and his father was a conscript in the Soviet Navy, serving in the submarine fleet in the early 1930s. Early in World War II, his father served in the destruction battalion of the NKVD. Later, he was transferred to the regular army and was severely wounded in 1942. Putin’s maternal grandmother was killed by the German occupiers of Tver region in 1941, and his maternal uncles disappeared on the Eastern Front during World War II.

Putin’s mother was 41 when he was born. She had lost two sons before her last son, Vladamir, was born in 1952. Do you think she might have spoiled her last surviving son?

Here’s part of the Wikipedia Early Years entry on Adolph Hitler:

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary (in present-day Austria), close to the border with the German Empire.[15][16] He was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler and his third wife, Klara Pölzl. Three of Hitler’s siblings – Gustav, Ida, and Otto – died in infancy.

Hitler’s mother was 25 when he was born. She had lost three children–two sons and a daughter–before her last son, Adolph, was born in 1889. Do you think she might have spoiled her last surviving son?

Sigmund Freud taught the world that if you wanted to understand an adult (or adults wanted to understand themselves), understand the child. Freud was also one of the first to define narcissism. As Freud wrote about narcissism in 1917, every child in their oral stage is narcissistic. According to Freud, the ego starts to develop in infancy during the oral stage of psychosexual development. During this time, the child is highly egocentric and believes that he is the center of the world probably because of the fact that almost all of their needs and desires are being fulfilled by their mother.

But as they grow up, things change. A child starts to realize that things cannot always go the way they want and that not everything is for or about them. Therefore, his self-centeredness starts to decline. Or it doesn’t, and a full-fledged narcissist is let loose on the world.

Psych Central indicates that narcissism ranges from an “excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one’s physical appearance to selfishness, involving a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration.”

Psychologists seem to be ambivalent about the root cause of narcissism, but it’s probably safe to write that there is general agreement that it’s about 50-50 nature (genetics) versus nurture (environment). In other words, there might be a genetic tendency in some people that is triggered by environmental factors, according to Wikipedia, such as:

In Gabbard’s Treatments of Psychiatric Disorders (2014), the following factors are identified as promoting the development of narcissistic personality disorder:

* An oversensitive temperament (individual differences of behavior) at birth

* Excessive admiration that is never balanced with realistic criticism

* Excessive praise for good behaviors, or excessive criticism for bad behaviors in childhood

* Overindulgence and overvaluation by family or peers

* Being praised by adults for perceived exceptional physical appearance or abilities

* Trauma caused by psychological abusephysical abuse or sexual abuse in childhood

* Unpredictable or unreliable parental caregiving

* Learning the behaviors of psychological manipulation from parents or peers[.

If we consider “Excessive admiration that is never balanced with realistic criticism,” “Excessive praise for good behaviors, or excessive criticism for bad behaviors in childhood,” and “Excessive praise for good behaviors,” we might call that spoiling.

Looking at the above definition and list, with certainty we can add Donald Trump to the list, as did the 25 psychiatrists who identified Trump, along with Putin, Hitler, Stalin, and Kin Jong-Un as malicious narcissists in the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.

But why is it that we recognize these pathological, malicious, narcissistic monsters too late–after they are in power? The U.S. military does psychiatric screening that is integrated into an induction physical examination in order to identify only “gross mental health deficits.” In other words, military inductees take a personality test that can usually identify psychopaths, which makes sense. Test people before you give them a gun.

Why don’t we give politicians personality tests before they run? When people file to run for a Federal office, why not make them take a personality test? Skeptics will say that personality tests are too easily gameable by smart people and that such tests might identify a disturbed psychopath but not a narcissist. My reply would be, who says all politicians are smart, and they are all narcissists.

In fact, we’re all narcissists to some degree. In The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump in a chapter titled “Pathological Narcissism and Politics: A Lethal Mix,” Dr. Craig Malkin writes that narcissism falls on a scale of 1-10 and that moderate narcissism (4-6) on the scale is healthy self-esteem. However, pathological narcissism occurs at 9 or 10 on the scale, which is dangerous: Putin, Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong-Un, and Trump.

If the U.S. Military won’t give a gun to psychopaths, why do we give unevaluated politicians nuclear weapons?

So, who’s gonna stop World War III? Psychiatrists.

Office Romance

The biggest story in the media this past week was Jeff Zucker’s resignation as CEO of CNN because of a romance with CNN’s Executive VP, Chief Market Officer and corporate communications director, Allison Gollust.

In a memo to the CNN staff, Zucker wrote “As part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s tenure at CNN, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years. I acknowledged the relationship evolved in recent years. I was required to disclose it when it began but I didn’t. I was wrong. As a result, I am resigning today.”

In a New York Times opinion column by Joanne Lipman and Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld titled “Jeff Zucker and the Reckoning Over Office Romances,” wrote:

The headlines about the resignation of CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, over his romantic relationship with a colleague are electrifying CNN’s defenders and antagonists alike and fueling endless speculation about possible corporate power plays behind the scenes. For those, like us, who have been writing for years about men, women and the workplace, this unfolding scandal also points out how difficult it is to regulate office romance and how unevenly corporate policies around consensual relationships are enforced.

Two paragraphs later they wrote:

What’s so baffling is, why not disclose it? Both are divorced, and the relationship is consensual. Had they been transparent, it’s possible that Mr. Zucker, CNN and its parent company could have dealt with this without precipitating a crisis. What’s more, if rumors were swirling internally that Mr. Zucker and Ms. Gollust were violating company policy, why didn’t the bosses at WarnerMedia investigate earlier? This is an unforced error by CNN, causing confusion and anger among some staff members.

Lipman and Sonnefeld also opine:

Whatever the boardroom drama, this is yet another chapter in the tortured history of companies’ bungled attempts at dealing with office romance. The rules are all over the place. Enforcement is inconsistent. This is an issue not just for chief executives. A 2021 survey for the Society for Human Resource Management found that more than a third of Americans have had or currently have a workplace relationship, and the majority of them did not disclose it to their superiors. Offices romances have turned into enduring partnerships for prominent figures, from Michelle and Barack Obama to Tina Brown and Harry Evans and, on a less happy note, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates.

In their column the NY Times writers do not address what I believe is a more critical issue than reporting an office romance. That issue is defining what a romance is. I think that, generally, “romance” is a euphemism for having sex. Same for the notion of “dating.” You can have a relationship with a coworker, but if you have sex, it’s a romance or you’re dating–often hinted at by using another euphemism for sex: “intimate.”

Why should having sex make so much difference in a relationship? Why is it that you don’t have to report to HR if you have an exceptionally close work-related relationship with someone, but do have to report it when you have sex? Of course, it’s not the physical act of having sex that makes a difference, it’s the perception of the fairness involved in the relationship that matters.

For 20 years the management of NBC and CNN were OK with the relationship between Zucker and Gollust. They must have believed Gollust got promoted because she was good at her job. However, the moment Gollust and Zucker had sex, Zucker had to go. Think about it: if top management wants its people to work closely together, to like each other, to be productive and innovative, it shouldn’t matter if people are having sex with each other. In fact, if having sex makes them happier and more productive and innovative, why wouldn’t management encourage it?

Management can’t encourage it because of perception, not because of reality. In fact, perception is reality. If a manager is a male and a direct report to him is a female, the manager has to be very cautious, especially in today’s #MeToo environment, that there is no hint of favoritism in the relationship. The critical issue is the perception of fairness. If the majority of employees and management feel that a woman got promoted because of merit, there is often no problem.

But fairness is like beauty, everyone has their own, highly subjective view of it. A person who has a strong self-image and realistic view of themselves and their team’s strengths and shortcomings might look at a high-performing woman’s promotion as fair, meritorious and what’s good for the organization. On the other hand, emotionally needy, unrealistically ambitious people who do not have strong underlying self-esteem might look at that woman’s promotion as unfair and not good for them.

Over the years I have learned at CBS, NBC, the University of Missouri School of Journalism and at AOL that most people in a department know who the best performers are. If they see a good performer getting a promotion or favorable treatment, people will approve–it’s fair. If a male manager promotes an underperforming, undeserving female, the knives of suspicion, resentment and unfairness come out en masse. Also, there will always be the needy, entitled ones who will never consciously admit someone might be more deserving than me, me, me.

On the other hand, male managers will often promote their guy friends–drinking buddies, golf pals, fraternity brothers–based on palship rather than meritocracy, and no one says a word. It’s business as usual. Competent, high-performing women have had to put up with such unfair situations for years.

More from the New York Times opinion piece:

…organizations need to realize that consensual relationships between peers exist and not reflexively demonize them. Employees sometimes don’t report an office romance because they’re afraid they’ll be penalized, even if that’s not the case. Or they cringe at the thought of announcing it to colleagues, when they may be required to disclose it only to a supervisor or human resources representative. Companies need equally specific anti-harassment policies, with definitions and consequences.

What’s more, the rules need to apply to everyone. This may seem like common sense, but in too many cases, companies look the other way for high performers or senior management. High-profile scandals garner the headlines, but less visible pairings are far more common. Office romances have existed ever since offices were invented. It’s about time offices figured out how to deal with them.

I would add to the above advice that organizations, especially fish-bowl media companies, not only need to have clear guidelines about office relationships but also need to define what romance is. In my view, an unacceptable office romance should be defined by fairness, not by having conensual sex.

Go Long on Tesla

My friend Bill Grimes sent the following in an email:

For reasons disclosed below I ordered the movie “Cabaret” from Amazon and watched it again. Not because I remembered liking it. I recall the plot was insipid: a tongue-tied American grad student comes to Berlin to study German and falls in love with the older, more sophisticated Liza Minnelli character, a star singing and dancing performer on stage at a nightclub, cabaret. It’s a Bob Fosse’s dance-a-thon set in Berlin in the 1930s. The story takes place over a four- or five-year period with scenes of the performance and audience in the cabaret changing slightly over this span of years.

At the beginning of the movie, year one, the patrons sitting at the tables near the stage are delighting in the performance are mostly bourgeois customers, German well-fed capitalists and managers. In the next year or two we have the same view from the stage but the audience is younger, virtually all male with a few wearing brown shirts. On our last visit to the cabaret, three years or four years later, most all in the audience are in Nazi uniform wearing indulgent and contentious smirks.

I thought this visual conceit was a clever way to show time passing and the increasing power of the Nazi party.  

When I moved to Marin County six years ago the fancy automobiles passing through the highways and streets were mostly foreign cars, Mercedes, Jaguars, BMWs, Hondas, and an occasional Rolls Royce.

Soon thereafter I recall seeing a different car, new to our community. What’s that? Could it be an American car? Doubtful, it was too cool looking. But it was an American-made auto, powered by electricity, with the subtle T emblem nameplate and called Tesla. Time sped by and one day I noticed two Ts, both black followed soon thereafter in colors white, red and blue. I thought of the movie “Cabaret” as seemingly slow passing time changed an entire country and later the world. About the US automobile market the words of a Bob Dylan song came to mind: “Something is happening but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?” 

Today in a twenty-minute ride to and from my fitness center in the next town I counted six Ts. I had to know more about this changing market phenomenon and so I googled. In 2021 Tesla sold 936,172 cars worldwide; 292,902 in the US and sixty percent of e-cars in the US are Teslas. Here I note Tesla has achieved this without a dollar spent on advertising 

Its market share is not that of the Nazi’s in “Cabaret” a few years before the war but it’s enough to frighten the lethargic GM which promises to have an electric auto on the market in scale in 2035. Cathie Wood, founder and CEO of Ark Investments who invested early in Tesla, says,  “It’s going to be awfully difficult for those (US auto makers) companies to manage during the next five to 10 years,” Wood told Barron’s. “And we would bet that they will not be alive in their current state. They may be in combination with someone else, or they may go bankrupt.”

Now, according to press releases a super performing and stylish Chinese car, the XPeng, will enter the US market this fall. I’m not a stock market investor but I wonder if the “shorts” on GM are rising. 

I responded by writing:

After I read Bill’s insightful email about Tesla selling 936,172 cars in 2021 without advertising, I looked at my AD AGE 2021 Fact Pack to check out 2020 auto advertising investments.

In 2020 in the top 25 spenders world-wide were: Amazon was #1 with $11 billion,Volkswagen was #12 with $5.7 billion, Toyota #16 with $4.3 billion, GM was #21 with $3.7 billion and Ford was #23 with $3.6 billion.

In 2020 in the US the top 25 ad spenders: Amazon was #1 with $6.8 billion, Comcast #2 with $6.142 billion, ATT #3 with $5.48 billion, P&G #4 with $4.281 billion, GM #10 with $2.952 billion, Ford #17 with $2.280 billion and FiatChrysler #20 with $2.053 billion.  Toyota was not on the top 25 list. The top auto marketers in market share, ad spend in millions, ad efficiency ratios (ad spend divided by market share) and efficiency rank in the US are as follows:

  1. GM           16.9%  $2.952  174.8 Rank 9
  2. Ford.         14.2%  $2.280  160.5 Rank 8
  3. Toyota.     13.9%. $1.508  108.4 Rank 1
  4. FiatChrys   12.9% $2.053  159.1 Rank 7
  5. Honda.         9.4% $1.390  147.8 Rank 4
  6. Nissan         7.9%   $990   125.3 Rank 2
  7. Hyundai       4.2%   $627   149.6 Rank 6
  8. Subaru         4.1%   $523   128.0 Rank 3
  9. Volkswagen  3.8%  $777    204.5 Rank 1
  10. Kia.               3.6%  $534.   148.3 Rank

Note in the list above that Toyota is by far the most efficient (#1) in ad spend-to-market share ratio and Volkswagen the least efficient (#10).  Also note that the three US carmakers rank at 7, 8 and 9 in ad efficiency. 

I’m not sure what all the implications are for these numbers (by the way, the decimals in the efficiency numbers are way off), but one thing is clear: the US car makers are not getting market-share bang for their ad bucks.  For investors this fact must be disconcerting, especially considering Tesla’s success without ad spend.  

Do these numbers reflect on the effectiveness of individual ads or of advertising in general? Is the differentiation in the product or in the advertising?

Should we short GM, Ford, FiatChrysler and their ad agencies and go long on Tesla … and Toyota?