1,000 Indians, Magic, and A.I.

April 6, 2024 //
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Image of George Orwell by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” – Arthur C. Clarke.

In a remarkable about face for a technology company, Amazon has confirmed that it is moving away from its “just walk out” technology at its Amazon Fresh stores. The technology boasted that it used a mixture of cameras, sensors, and artificial intelligence (A.I.) to know what consumers had put in their baskets and to accurately bill its customers without all that tedious checking out and interacting with another human being at the grocery store.

Image Copyright Amazon.com used under fair use for criticism, comment, or news reporting.

What was actually happening was that up to 1,000 people in India were watching and tagging videos to ensure that customers were billed correctly. Amazon has apparently laid off almost its entire development team of this “technology” and will start to phase out this service from its existing Amazon Fresh stores. This is all the more surprising after Amazon’s experience with A.I. recruitment. In 2015 Amazon had to abandon an A.I. résumé reading project due to being unable to stop it from discriminating against women. It was seen by many as a humiliating comedown for the tech giant.

Image Copyright Amazon.com used under fair use for criticism, comment, or news reporting.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L.Frank Baum.

While many will smirk at Amazon’s second major public A.I. failure, and I have to admit to being one of those people, there is a bigger issue here which Amazon should be commended for. It is the lifting the vail on A.I. tools that are not some magic that comes out of the ether. They often require human intervention to be usable- both in front and behind the keyboard. In addition A.I., or more accurately Machine Learning , need examples of human labor in the thousands, if not millions, to be trained. The training of these A.I. “models” has become a contentious subject for those with an interest in A.I. both as supporters and critics.   

“Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced” – Barry Gehm’s corollary to Arthur C. Clarke’s original quote.

The main issue with machine learning is that the A.I. industry, almost without exception, sees art, music, writing, film, and pretty much the entire internet as fair game for training A.I. models, which they in turn sell to us in the guise of generative A.I. Those of us on the other side (waves hand in air to indicate exactly where I stand on this subject in case you had not already guessed) say that copyright does not work that way. Derivative works are still derivative.

 It is indeed hilarious to watch companies such as Disney try to navigate this brave new world. On the one hand, Disney has tried to argue that generative A.I. is fine for them to use to create new works based on the work of artists they have employed in the past. But Disney has then complained about possible copyright infringement when someone else has tried the same trick with copyrighted works they own.

Image Copyright Walt Disney Company used under fair use for criticism, comment, or news reporting.

The lawyer who used ChatGPT to write a legal brief might want the machines to infringe a bit more. To his cost, literally, the lawyer found out that the pesky machine had just made up all the cases that it sited in its argument which he signed his name to. He was sanctioned and fined after he was found out. I just love that generative A.I. tools hallucinate (the developers term, not mine).

One of my favorite activities these days is to ask A.I. peddlers what they use to train their models. Indeed, I had a most entertaining afternoon doing just that at this year’s Western Veterinary Conference. Amongst the answers I received were “none of your business – who are you” (my favorite), “medical records from a university,” and “the internet.” None of the vendors I spoke to were willing to discuss privacy, copyright, or what happens if they are no longer allowed to train their models that way. One gets the distinct impression of building on borrowed land.

The latest darling of the A.I. generation tools is Sora, which creates beautiful full motion video from text prompts and is from the OpenAI stable. However, in a recent interview with the Wallstreet Journal, Mira Murati, OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer, refused to answer questions about where Sora’s data set for modeling came from. Murati also refused to say whether the data set that Sora used included YouTube and Instagram videos – stating that she “did not know.” That in turn has led to some serious questions about licensing, as YouTube’s CEO Neal Mohan, confirmed that OpenAI using YouTube content for modeling purposes would be a violation of YouTube’s terms of service.  

“Thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind” – Dune, Frank Herbert

There is a temptation to label those who speak out about our current infatuation with A.I. tools and criticize the foundations those tools are built on as luddites. While our current use of the word brings to mind hoards of unemployed mill workers bent on smashing “the spinning jenny,” the truth about the Luddites is actually far more nuanced and carries a message for today.  The Luddites did not hate all machines, they in fact were fine with most and just wanted them run by workers who had gone through apprenticeships and were paid decent wages. The Luddites main concern were manufacturers who used machines in “a fraudulent and deceitful manner” notes Kevin Binfield in his book “Writings of the Luddites.” Outsourcing the cashing out of grocery shopping to a developing country, and labeling it as new technology, is a tactic the Luddites would have been all too familiar with and would have been happy to march against.

While I am not advocating for a Butlerian Jihad as Herbert described as the backdrop for Dune, there is merit in the context he provides to the proscription on thinking machines.

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” – Dune, Frank Herbert.

As author SJ Sindu wrote on Twitter (I refuse to call it X on general principles); “We don’t need AI to make art. We need AI to write emails and clean the house and deliver the groceries so humans can make more art.”

A.I. art needs human art to model itself on and the pushback from artists and consumers is already significant. When the argument over modeling reaches the courts, the damage may already be done. Only then will we see the parallels between the creative arts and A.I. that we saw in the 2000s with Napster / Pirate Bay and music. Will it be too late to put this tool back in its box?

A healthy skepticism when it comes to A.I., I think is all important. And not just a skepticism for what A.I. can do but for the intentions of those that wield it.

A.I. will need to be “open” and not just open as in the name of a for profit corporation. Its models will need to be transparent and be able to be questioned. As I wrote about in my review of Hilke Schellmann’s book on A.I. in hiring and Human Resources “The Algorithm”; …it is often difficult to impossible for candidates or employees to challenge decisions by managers which they may feel have been affected by bias. How much more difficult is it when it is not a human making the decision or recommendation? A tool of which we cannot ask the most basic of questions: what were you thinking?

Footnotes and links would be a great start. But most generative A.I. companies consider this proprietary information and therefore refuse to provide what would seem a most obvious step when it comes to trust. That, in fact, is exactly why authors use footnotes and links, to allow others to follow their thinking on how they reached their conclusions. I’ve tried to add as many links and footnotes as I can to this article without becoming burdensome.

I am not a Luddite in the modern sense, but I do share a lot of the same concerns of the Luddites of old. We only need to look at our world to see why we should be concerned. It is a world where poor people in the developing world watch us shop so that we can pretend we are living in a magic future where machines do all the work. Where the drudgery of making art has been taken away from us so it can be sold back to us by corporations owned by billionaires.

I’m not sure I want A.I. to write my emails, but I can think of plenty of things that I’d like it to undertake. I already use it in a number of ways. I’ve used A.I. images in my books (although I probably will not do so in the future). I currently feel that A.I. has to earn its place in my world by proving its benefits not just to me, but the world as a whole. Will the undertakings of A.I. be for the benefit of people? Currently, that seems to be the last thing on the developers’ minds.

“The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.” – 1984, George Orwell

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Categories AI, Business, Copyright, Marketing, Politics, Veterinary

Book Review: Battle for the Bird by Kurt Wagner

March 30, 2024 //
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There are a lot of books about Twitter out there right now. That is perhaps not a surprise given (Spoiler Alert) that it has become a corporate / Silicon Valley dumpster fire.

Mr. Wagner’s account is balanced and well researched; however, one cannot feel while reading the work that it is missing the insider juicy details that make tech CEOs squirm. Perhaps because so much of Twitter’s (now X’s) dirty laundry has already been aired there is little new revelations in the work.

What” Battle of the Bird” does do is provide a clinical timeline from Twitter’s founding through to the events leading up to its purchase by Elon Musk and the unravelling of the technology institution under his stewardship. This in turn provides insights into the failure of Jack Dorcey (Twitter’s former CEO and co-founder) and Elon Musk’s failures with X.

As I talked about in my review of “Kingdom of Happiness” by Amiee Groth which referenced the failures at Zappos and the Downtown Project, both Dorsey and Musk in hindsight have had a failure of leadership due to a lack of management. It is all very well being able to persuade people to jump out of a plane, but you have to ensure that they have parachutes and know how to use them.

There is no doubt that Dorsey and Musk both do, or more appropriately have at one time, loved Twitter and what it has brought to the world. While Dorsey, according to Mr. Wagner’s book, seems to have lost interest in Twitter as a company once the reality of being a public company set in. Musk on the other hand, seems far too interested in his own press and ego once he understood the challenges Twitter faced and continues to face even after his pointless rebranding to X. It is hard to feel sorry for billionaires when the world does not work the way they want it to.

There is a theme throughout the book that perhaps Twitter can’t be a company. Dorsey in particular laments that what Twitter should be is a technology like email, that allows for the exchange of information, but that is not gatekept by any one platform. This is the kind of wishful thinking of people who have been made rich by the decisions to take their company public and have second thoughts. That they wish the world could be a different place. It can be, but only if different decisions are taken – the kind of decisions that don’t make entrepreneurs and venture capitalists rich.

Like I said, it is hard to feel sorry for billionaires when things don’t go their way.

Mr. Wagner does go into some reasonable depth as to the ethical dilemmas brought up by Donald Trump’s tweeting and his eventual banning from the platform. These are bigger issues than Twitter, but the impact on Twitter for both Dorsey and Musk were profound and still rancor the platform to this day. I’m not sure I want a committee of Twitter employees making decisions on whether what a world leader says is appropriate for public consumption, but at the same time I am positive I don’t want Elon Musk making those decisions.

As a grounding in the backstory and drama that is Twitter, now X, Battle for the Bird is a great document. Not a thrill ride or exposé, but a methodical grounding in the facts.

This is probably for the best given its subject matter and the turgid realities of Twitter’s recent past.

Perhaps this is the account we need rather than the one we might want.

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Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management, Poltics, Social Media

Book Review: Burn Book by Kara Swisher

March 15, 2024 //
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Want to read a takedown of the leaders of the tech world, that calls them out for their hypocrisy and recklessness?

Of course you do.

Burn Book is, for the most part, that book. A book that at its most fundamental says “you promised us a brave new world – and what you delivered us was a more rapacious form of capitalism.”

The author, Kara Swisher, is a long-time journalist and analyst of the “tech sector” – particularly in Silicon Valley. She is also the co-founder of the Recode conference and the co-host of the Pivot podcast.

Burn Book, through the narrative of an autobiography, is her journey into the San Fransisco technology sector and her gonzo view of the events that, for better or worse, have shaped the world we currently live in – particularly its technology.

Where Burn Book really scores is in its view of characters such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg, Steve Jobs, and Sergey Brin. From their early days, the beginnings of their success, through to their either refusal to accept the damage of their legacy, or the issues with how that legacy was formed, but also for some of them; their efforts to make amends. One is left with a sense of these figures riding waves that they barely understand or control. That often these figures are deeply flawed individuals who’s flaws have help lead to their success, but that long term they themselves are unrecognizable from the people they once were. Changed by wealth and power and all its trappings.

As Swisher mentions in the introduction; “move fast and break things” is in retrospect indicative of the tech scene entrepreneurs and their willingness to not think through the consequences of their actions. (Move fast and break things was an early internal Facebook slogan that was widely adopted by the tech sector).

Where the book becomes annoying is the author’s habit of “I told you so.” While this may well be true, and the whole purpose of the book is essentially to name drop, and let’s be honest that’s why we are reading it, it can become a little frustrating and seemingly self-aggrandizing. Swisher has earned the right to trumpet her vision and does have a record of putting billionaires on the spot, however, she does seem to fail to see the larger picture of the issues with this kind of innovation model.

Swisher is a self-proclaimed “believer in tech,” and this leads to the impression that she feels if only developers and tech titans were nicer then the world would be a much better place. This is quite possibly true, but one has to wonder about an industry who are happy to undermine industries and even societies, while failing to follow the basic rules that everyone else follows.

To Swisher’s credit she recognizes how close she has become to the tech sector and how that potentially impacts the objectivity of the analysis she gives. Of late she has made efforts to put distance between herself and her subjects. It would be easy to see this book as one of those efforts.

Burn Book is for the most part an enjoyable read with lots of moments to savor for those who want to see the self-proclaimed “Masters of the Universe” taken down a peg and be held to account. It does also do a pretty good job of exploring the duality of some of the complex individuals who run or formed some of the largest companies on the planet with little to no oversight. The author lauds Steve Jobs, for example, but does point out some of the flaws and cruelty that mars his legacy. It is not an in-depth analysis of all that is wrong with tools such as Facebook and the tech sector as a whole, but then it does not set out to be.

This is an autobiography and a story about being in love with an industry. The all too predictable break up, with the realization that who you were in love with is not quite the person you thought they were, is just another part of that love story.

As that, Burn Book succeeds admirably.

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Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Marketing, Politics

Book Review: The Algorithm by Hilke Schellmann

March 2, 2024 //
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It seems that everywhere one turns today artificial intelligence (AI) is being added to every aspect of daily life. Whether it be the arts, education, entertainment, search, or the workplace – AI is everywhere.

Often, those of us who are distinctly dubious about the claims that are being made about the current generation of AI, more appropriately labeled machine learning, can often feel like Cassandra of  myth – fated never to be believed. At worst we are labeled as luddites, rather than as people who believe that technologies should earn their places in our lives and societies rather than being instantly adopted after being told by people hoping to get rich that they work great and everything will be fine.

Ms. Schellmann’s exhaustive exploration of AI in the workplace is pretty damning.

It catalogs how Human Resource (HR) departments have been adopting technologies that are often little understood by their users and are often working under misapprehensions as to the scientific backing of the ideas behind these tools. The fundamental problem is often one of garbage in – garbage out; a phrase that has been with us from the dawn of the computer age. For more on this I recommend the excellent “Weapons of Math Deception” by Cathy O’Neil which I reviewed here. The majority of AI tools are black boxes that we can’t look inside to see how they work. The manufacturers consider the algorithm’s inside these black boxes proprietary intellectual property.  Without being able to look inside the magic black box, it is often impossible to know whether an algorithm is biased inherently, whether it is being trained on biased data, or just plain wrong.

One of the things that comes up again and again in “The Algorithm” is AI’s, or the people that program it, inability to know the difference between correlation and causation. Just because a company’s best managers all played baseball, does not mean that baseball should be a prerequisite for being a manager – particularly if it means that an AI would overlook someone who played softball – which is essentially the same sport. When one considers the fact that men tend to play baseball, and woman tend to play softball, it is easy to see just how problematic these correlations can be.

The problems with correlation and causation are of course magnified when junk science are involved. Tones of voice, language usage, and facial expressions, are being used in virtual one-way interviews for hiring and have little to no science behind them. In one highly memorable section of the book, Ms. Schellmann speaks German to an AI tool, reading from a Wikipedia entry, which is assessing her customer service skills and quality of English. The tool rates her highly in customer service and English even though she is speaking a different language and does not even try to answer the questions being asked.

Where the book falls down a little, but probably says more about the sad state of business thinking, is on personality testing. The author seems to accept as scientifically valid that employees can be categorized as one of a few simple types. You can read my review of “The Personality Brokers” by Merve Emre here for more on this nonsense and dangerous business tool. As Ms. Schellmann rightly states in her take down of how AI handles personality testing, but could actually just apply to all personality testing; “we’d be better off categorizing by star sign.”

It is disturbing just how much AI has already invaded the hiring space in the HR offices at large companies and gives one pause as these tools become more mainstream. While it is true that it is often not the AI software itself that is the problem, but how the humans that wield such technologies choose to use them. There is also the problem of how hard it is for a human employee to challenge a decision that is made by an algorithm – which by its very nature is a secret. The developers will often say that these tools should not be the final word in hiring or firing; but the knowing wink and smile behind these statements tells us everything we need to know.

Ms. Schellmann’s work is laser focused on human resources, an area where bias has been and often is a significant problem. The idea of a tool that can be used to eliminate bias, and that companies want to use tools like this, is not inherently a bad idea – in fact it is admirable. The problem is that bias in hiring is often unconscious bias and tools that are wielded by those who are not aware of their own biases are most likely fated to continue to have these biases and therefore affect the process. In addition, it is often difficult to impossible for candidates or employees to challenge decisions by managers which they may feel have been affected by bias. How much more difficult is it when it is not a human making the decision or recommendation? A tool of which we cannot ask the most basic of questions: what were you thinking?

This is an important work for our time – hopefully one not fated to be a Cassandra.

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Categories AI, Books, Business, Career Advice

Book Review: Range by David Epstein

December 15, 2023 //
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As a society we tell ourselves stories that, while convenient, are not always, or even ever, true. In what is probably Malcom Gladwell’s best book “Outliers” (which I can’t believe I have not reviewed) the author tells of the often decade long stories, and tales of extraordinary advantage, of seemingly overnight successes. David Epstein, in “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World”, is also debunking one of the stories we tell ourselves – that to be really good at something, or to have great success at something, we have to have focused on that thing for a long time – if not forever.

Before I go any further a word to my veterinary and human medicine readers. In this post, and indeed in Mr. Epstein’s book, when we talk about “specialization” we are using it in the general sense as opposed to the legal (small “s” rather than capital “S”). Although, I do believe that there are lessons for students from Mr. Epstein’s excellent book. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to map out your career. It’s a good thing to try out different interests and to change your mind – you’ll be better in the long run for it.

The pressure to focus on one thing, whether it be in sports, music, or entrepreneurship is all pervasive and often has business interests behind the marketing of “hyper specialization.”

 It is a good story.

The Tiger Woods story is one that the author highlights. It is a story of the very young Tiger playing golf before he could talk and spending all day at the golf course. It is a story of winning tournament after tournament and having an unflinching goal of winning more titles than anyone else. Mr. Epstein juxtaposes the “Tiger story” with the far less well-known story of Roger Federer. Federer’s mother was a tennis coach but she refused to coach him and actively tried to dissuade him from playing tennis. A young Federer also seemed far more interested in soccer, basketball, skateboarding, handball and skiing. It was not until his teens that Federer started to gravitate towards tennis and then his goals were not lofty, but the rather quaint “meet Borris Becker” and “play at Wimbledon.”

This wide range of experience and lack of focus is the author’s main argument – that, more often than not, it is range that leads to success rather than specialization. That depth of experience of different fields matters more than depth of experience in just one. Interestingly, the evidence that Mr. Epstein quotes, rather persuasively, is that while early hyper specialization can lead to children getting a head start in that chosen area, they tend to fall into line with their peers rather than stay ahead as time goes on.

Where the book misses, for me, is that it seems to continue to fall back to specialization being a worthy goal via a route of different experiences, rather than the range of experiences being a worthy goal in itself. However, this minor quibble aside. The book makes a very strong case for experience in general and for following one’s interests. A great example is the idea to not ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, but rather to ask them what they are interested in. Our education, and in our careers, we often ask others where they are headed and penalize them for not knowing. This may be a mistake.

When I look at my career, I’ve had very specific goals at different times and while I have met some of them, I have taken some spectacular left turns that has led me to areas I would never have even considered just a few years earlier. No one is more surprised than me that I live in Las Vegas, watch a lot of hockey, and write poetry.

This is an important book for those who mentor, or lead, others. How we choose to guide – matters. We are often a deciding factor in whether to specialize in an area or to follow seemingly unconnected interests. There is value in a range of interests and experiences that benefit both the person and the employer.

A more enlightened view of the goals of mentoring will benefit everyone.

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Categories Books, Business, Career Advice, Leadership, Management, personal development, reviews

The Parable of the Eggless Omelet

November 17, 2023 //
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Chef 1:- I just… I don’t think it’s fair (talking to Chef 2)

Kiki: Chef!

Kiki: Chef!

Chef 1: Yes, Kiki, what is that?

Kiki: A man on table six wants an eggless omelette. He wants an egg…

Chef 1: Kiki you can’t have an eggless omelette, can you?

Kiki: Why do we not have any?

Chef 1: No, they don’t exist, do they? Because there’s no… Breadsticks, what are they made of?

Kiki: Bread.

Chef 1: Bread, very good. OK, take away the bread, what are you left with?

Kiki: Sticks?

Chef 1: No, Kiki! (Sprinkles a few herbs on an empty plate) There you go, that’s an eggless omelet.

Kiki: Okay (takes plate)

Chef 1: No, don’t take the plate, Kiki, what are you doing? Please!

Chef 2: Kiki, just ask the nice man if he’d like his omelet made with whole eggs or just egg whites. (Kiki smiles and goes to leave)

Chef 2: You can leave the plate.

When I was first shown this scene from the British restaurant-based sitcom “Whites” I found it amusing like I’m sure most of you did. How we can laugh at how silly Kiki is being and how she lacks all common sense. And the scene is funny, but it reflects a real behavior that we see every day, admittedly pushed to extremes.

But this is an attitude that needs to change. Just like to scene where the security guard gets humiliated for not stopping the scruffy young man from entering the fancy building and not recognizing that he in-fact owns the building and is ultimately is the security guard’s employer. The poor guard is just doing his job. Just because you walk around like you own the building does not automatically mean you actually do. We’ve all seen the videos that prove you can get it almost anywhere if you are carrying a ladder. Employees, just like clients, can suffer from being of the loosing end of the curse of knowledge.

The curse of knowledge is where we humans can’t understand that others may not have the same life, education, and training as us and therefore may not know the same things. What is obvious and, in that most awful of phrases, “common sense” may not in fact be widely known or common sense. For more on my hatred of “common sense” you can read this post.

But yet we do this all the time. The client who does not know to vaccinate their new puppy. The coffee drinker who does not know that Starbucks calls its large “Venti” or a regular coffee an “Americano.” There is a whole video just about that too.

With employees a lack of knowledge is a teaching moment. Of course, it can be frustrating and if we find ourselves teaching the same thing over and over again we have a different problem, but we can’t criticize, or worse snap at, for a lack of knowledge – even when we think employees should have this knowledge. In any other environment, we would recognize this behavior for what it is; bullying.

Recognizing that teams need be able to express when they don’t know something helps to create a safe space for learning. Teachable moments should be embraced for what they are – a chance to get better, to improve. Its also just the decent thing do to. There can also be more going on than just not knowing something.

New employees, for example, don’t know the limits of their knowledge yet. So while they may not of heard of something does not mean that it does not exist. We don’t want them to guess – so employees ask. They need to praised for checking and confirming that what we think is obvious is actually not. We all need to be better about this. I for one know that I can be bad at this but, as with most things, recognizing when you have a problem is the first step in fixing it.

The Kiki’s of the world deserve that we try.

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Categories Leadership, Management, personal development, Staff Meeting Resources

Book Review: Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara

November 11, 2023 //
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Let me tell you a secret about most business books – they are not about business. Oh yes, they claim to be about business, how to work with people, and affect change, but in reality a lot of them are not. They are often about the hard things – finance, cost control, selling, and product development, or the soft things – people management, team dynamics, and marketing. Rarely is a book about how all these things fit together, and how to grow while at the same time dealing with the realities of business day to day.

Which is why Will Guidara’s book “Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More than They Expect” is so refreshing. This is part memoir of a restauranter and part business manual on blending soft and hard skills that all businesses try to do – with varied levels of success. Mr. Guidara was the general manager of a number of fantastic restaurants, including Eleven Madison Park which became the number one restaurant in the world.

For a book that talks a length about people, values, growth, and mission it is so unusual to hear the real world politick of “I’m also clear about what my job is, which is to do what’s best for the restaurant, not to do what’s best for any of you (the staff). More often than not, what’s best for the restaurant will include doing what’s best for you. But the only way I can take care of all of you as individuals is by always putting the restaurant first.” Just wow!

And that quote really sums up the problems with a lot of books on management and leadership – they are two different things people and not mutually exclusive (I can shout that louder for the hacks with the crappy memes) – we are often being asked to hold ourselves to an impossible standard. People are sometimes not the right fit, sometimes we just have to get through the shift, sometimes we are not going to be perfect. An illuminating passage deals with the idea that while it is often trotted out that employees have a language of appreciation, they may also have a language of criticism – people may need feedback in different ways depending on their personality and work history.

I love the advise to “not let things slide – those small things become personal slights.” This is often ignored because every manager today fears being labeled a micro manager. Just like I also appreciate Mr. Guidara’s works to be maniacal on cost control for 95% of your costs and then to spurge for the last 5% to make a difference to the guest experience.

There are times when this book feels like it is written by the staff from the movie “The Menu,” yet at the same time one has to appreciate what Mr. Guidara was trying to do with his business and why he was doing it. The book says, there is nothing wrong with striving for perfection, as long as perfection is not the standard – little things are always going to go wrong. That does not mean one should not try, but it means managers and leaders have to accept realities.  

It may seem extreme and over the top, and it is, but that is the whole point of being “unreasonable.” To give people more than they ever expected in a controlled manner so it can be systemized and scalable. I’ve been banging on about scalability for years, and so to read it in this book was like having to tell the author to get out of my head.

This book should be required reading for managers and leaders of any business who want to deliver a better experience for everyone – including the owner of the business. This is appreciation that businesses are businesses. They must make money and they have to be able to work when you are not there. There has to be systems in place, protocols and procedures, so that everyone knows what to do and new people can be easily trained on what to do.

Unreasonable Hospitality is what business books should be. Simon Sinek, who wrote the introduction and I have been on record for forever as having no time for, could learn a lot from this book for example.

This is where the rubber meets the road. For those who want to add to their passion, or just rekindle it, it is hard to find a better way to do so than to read this wonderful book.   

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Categories Books, Customer Service, Leadership, Management, Marketing

Book Review: Monsters by Claire Dederer

June 9, 2023 //
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How should we feel about those whose work we admire, or even love, when they turn out to be awful human beings or even just deeply flawed? Are you a better artist if you become more selfish? This is the subject of Claire Dederer’s exceptional book – Monsters: A Fans Dilemma.

Do great artists become assholes (or monsters) because of their singular commitment to their art or do assholes / monsters become great artists because they know their transgressions will be forgiven? How should we feel about Wagner, Miles Davis, Roman Polanski, Woody Allan, David Bowie, Sylvia Plath, Joni Mitchell, Valerie Solanas, Doris Lessing, and many, many more?

Male artists who are considered monsters are usually considered so because of violence or abuse. When female artists are considered monsters, it is usually because they have abandoned their children – something that male artists do without seeming consequence or judgement. There is also an added dimension of racism. As Ms. Dederer points out by quoting the often-maligned Kanye West; “I’m not a rap star, I’m a rock star.” Why? Because rock stars generally do not experience what Kanye West has experienced ad nauseam: repercussions. A fact that Ms. Dederer points out by not covering the army of white make rock stars accused of sexual predatory behavior.

This is perhaps one of the most complex questions of our times. Claire Dederer does a superlative job of sorting through the mixed emotions we all feel about such figures, and she herself feels as an artist with the choices she has made on her own artistic journey as a writer, a mother, a partner, and as an alcoholic. She also tackles whether this is a price too high for the #metoo movement (spoiler alert: it’s not.)

At its core, Monster is an exploration of the meetings of biographies; the biographies of those with fans and the biographies of the individual fans themselves. It also embraces the fracture points of our society, racism, sexism, and violence. Our reactions to the transgressions of those who make the art we love are subjective and are based on both the artist and the viewer. We can still consume the art of terrible people because there is a difference between what we feel – the emotional response to great art – and moral thoughts. We can look at great art and see the stain left by the actions of its creator. For some the stain will ruin the piece, for others they will see past the stain. What is right for one person will not necessarily be right for someone else.

Monster also places this discussion in a historical context. We often feel that we are in an enlightened time. That we are in an apolitical present where we know better than the past. As Ms. Dederer states – we don’t know better because we woke up, we know better because some people spoke up. We can all look back on the past and say we would have spoken up, however, how many of us do when the world around us burns? The things we thought we had transcended are still there – minority communities have always known this. It is not helped by the fact that everyone still loves an asshole. How any of our beloved characters in book, television, and film we would abhor in real life if we had to deal with them? “Don’t you know who I am,” is an awful and entitled addition to any disagreement. Yet we all love the scene where the clueless front desk clerk tries to stop someone from entering the building they actually own, and the clerk works in.

Stepping away from the art discussion for a moment. Monster is also an excellent discussion of the pressure of career vs. motherhood and the goals of careers in general. Returning to Kanye West for a moment, the line; “People want power and vacations” is an insightful view of what drives people in the modern world. But the balance of motherhood and career is where Monster shines brightest. If it is a real choice to trade levels of career success for the time a mother spends with their children – how does that express itself with professionals? How do both employers and employees recognize this dilemma and neutralize its effects for everyone to get what they want and need?

While the author eschews the term “cancel culture” as non-useful it permeates the book. Is a love of a piece of art enough to make up for the transgressions of the past by the artist? The is the fans dilemma – the subtitle of the book. Ms. Dederer gives no easy answers here but does give us a lot to think about. Is art, or career, worth the price that the artist (or professional) will have to pay or make others pay? Both the viewer and artist need to make that decision.

Monsters is a start to that conversation.  

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Categories Books, Management, Movies, Poltics, Race

Book Review: Simple Sabotage Field Manual (Declassified) by the Office of Strategic Services

April 22, 2023 //
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Why on earth am I reviewing a field manual on sabotage by the OSS (the predecessor to the CIA) from World War two?

Well, there are a couple of reasons other than the most obvious one that someone suggested it.

This very short reprinting, which would usually only be of interest to historians or those with underground bunkers and very full larders, is glimpse into the mind of a someone who wants to disrupt or destroy an organization both physically and psychologically.

There is not much that the average person could not have thought of themselves when it comes to physical sabotage, but it is interesting to note how just not doing simple things in the workplace can create serious problems and should therefore be taken seriously by managers. Most disgruntled employees are not quite so literal in showing their displeasure, but one does become aware, through the numerous examples, of just how vulnerable most workplaces and organizations are.

 There is an illuminating passage early in the book.

“It should be pointed out to the saboteur where the circumstances are suitable, that he is acting in self-defense against the enemy, or retaliating against the enemy for acts of destruction.”

I, and most modern managers, do not think of employees, even problem employees, as the enemy. However, it is not a far stretch to think that there have been times when an individual employee on a disciplinary path may feel that they are in a battle of wills. This might not lead to outright sabotage, one hopes, but “quiet quitting”? Quiet quitting is the phenomenon of an employee doing just enough not to get fired – but no more. As the book says a couple of sentences on…

“The saboteur may have to reverse his thinking… Where he formerly though of keeping his tools sharp, he should now let them grow dull…”

Where the book really becomes of interest for managers, however, is in the final seven pages where it discusses what steps managers and supervisors can take to disrupt an organization’s psychology. If you recognize your organization within these pages – it is time for change. It is also a great reminder of seemingly well-intentioned actions by leadership teams. Insisting on perfect work where it does not matter, for example. Or “see that three people have to approve everything when one will do.”

There is even guidance for meetings and committees to be found in this later section. Warnings to try and increase the size of meetings or committees to the point where they become unwieldy is reminiscent of the often-told Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, anecdote that he will not attend meetings that cannot be fed by a single pizza.

A thoughtful reading of this short book by managers should act as a warning and a reminder both to themselves and about others.  I think is also a good training tool for new managers to show what not to do and to be aware of the traps of self-sabotage that managers can often fall into. It is also a good reminder of where the line exists between performance problems and being a disruptive influence in the workplace.

Eighty years old it may be, but this short book still has some things to teach us.

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Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management, personal development

Book Review: Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

April 7, 2023 //
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Empire of Pain is superb in its scope and breadth.

It is not just the story of the rise of prescription opioid use and abuse and OxyContin and Purdue Pharma in particular, but it is also the story of the Sackler family. The owners of Purdue Pharma. Their rise to wealth and power and their role in not only bring OxyContin to market, but their role in setting the stage of the opioid epidemic and crisis, and the multitude of lawsuits.  

There is a lot to unpack in this book and a lot of lessons for society. However, what is of particular interest to me in Patrick Radden Keefe’s outstanding work is what Empire of Pain teaches us about company culture and values.

The Sackler’s have never admitted any wrongdoing for their role in the selling and distribution of Oxycontin, although Purdue Pharma has. This does not just stem from not wanting to go to prison, but from a cultural belief, both inside the family and at the highest levels of Purdue Pharma, that the Sackler’s could do no wrong. Even when marketing strategies inside the United States and outside the United States contradicted each other, the lack of any moral reevaluation of what they were doing to the detriment of millions, never seems to give any of the family pause or cause for reflection.

Even members of the Sackler Dynasty who had little to no involvement with Purdue Pharma were not prepared give thought as to the moral questions surrounding their wealth. Even when their work would seem to be directly involved in reflecting the human costs of the opioid crisis they seemed oblivious or to deliberately obfuscate. Madeleine Sackler is a filmmaker, who in 2018 made a fictional drama, O.G., and a documentary It’s a Hard Truth Ain’t It, entirely inside the level four Pendleton Correctional Facility. However, as the author states, Sackler “was able to weigh in, sagely, on the plight of America’s prison population without being asked to account for her own familial connection to one of the underlying drivers of that crisis.”

What is so surprising about the Sackler Story was the extent to which the Sackler family, while in theory only being board members of a private company, were able to co-opt and influence. This was not just decision making, marketing, and research on a day-to-day basis inside a company that others were supposed to be running, but the Sackler’s were able to influence the culture and thought of those at Purdue Pharma. Of course, money, power, and influence all played a part, but what is most remarkable, and disturbing, is just how much they were able to value loyalty above all else, and that loyalty meant thinking the same way.

It is clear from Empire of Pain, that while there are few who support the Sackler family today – they are virtual pariahs today in the art world, a world where their philanthropy had made them famous – there are still those who are colored by what Hanna Arendt called “the banality of evil.”

These were salespeople, marketers, CEOs, lawyers, secretaries, doctors, and researchers, who all bought into a view of the world so out of step with reality that it led to a crisis that some have stated is “bigger than the HIV epidemic.” The author even notes in his epilogue that the Sackler family story is bereft of whistleblowers. A testament to the family’s power? Or testament to how all-encompassing the culture was at Purdue Pharma.

For those wanting a proof positive macro view of why culture and values matter, you will be hard pressed to find a more glaring example.

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Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Politics
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