To read or not to read...

… and I’d like not to be worried. After all, for me, the smell of a Barnes & Noble is nearly aphrodisiac, and I consider the buying, reading and piling up of books and magazines my birthright. I confess to not having a Kindle or similar device yet, but I know that’s coming. To me, format matters, but content matters more. That’s why I found Fortune’s cover story The Future of Reading particularly thought-provoking. I can’t believe it… could it even be possible… that people will ever lose interest completely in reading? Let it not be so.

Fortune, of course, is speaking largely from a business perspective, especially regarding journalistic concerns. I noticed that I couldn’t find the text of that March 1 lead article, which I first devoured in print while waiting at my allergist’s office, online as I wrote this – since it’s this week’s issue, Fortune would no doubt like us to buy the magazine and thus support the advertising. I certainly understand this. After all, a great deal of vSA’s work is in public relations, media relations in particular. If there is no revenue, there will be no publications. Plain and simple. Fortune, and even Broom, Brush & Mop magazine – difficult as it is to believe – are not mere labors of love.

Here’s my educated guess, based on the cosmic and not-so-cosmic shifts I’ve seen in my decades on this earth and at my desk (including the door-on-file-cabinets that served as my vSA desk in those first daring years of entrepreneurship): Reading will not die. The stature of Amazon and my beloved Barnes & Noble are evidence to that. Sadly, small bookstores and publications large and small have suffered and will continue to do so. The media will continue to adapt, with false starts and many casualties, to new models for advertising and other revenue generation. More and more of our reading will be done on notepads and online. People will continue to love video in all its forms, and many – okay, most – will prefer it to the written word.

But there is a magnetism to writing and to reading, and, despite the challenges of doing it well, there is a certain simplicity and joy to creating stories – just think, most children compose tales and essays as soon as they can wield a crayon or navigate a keyboard. We love our news (both the important and the supremely trivial) and we relish our rehashing of information, much of which will continue to be in the form of articles, opinions and other text.

Fortune, by the way, agrees, by and large: Reading – somehow, someway – will live on. What’s your take?

Are you tired of hearing the words, “No one could have predicted…” and variants thereof? I am, because the consequences of people in positions of responsibility not thinking outside the box and not planning and initiating appropriate action are often extreme. Here are just a few examples that should be etched into our collective memories:

Predictable given the mood of the public-Scott Brown’s election and the resulting likely (if temporary) demise of comprehensive health care reform: Putting your personal politics aside for a moment, imagine you are President Obama, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid – it’s okay, it’s just for a minute. Obama should have become more involved, and Congress should have moved faster – before the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority.

Predictable given geological and infrastructure facts-Haiti’s disaster: Construction with few building standards built on a fault line. An airport with such small capacity that only a few planes can be there at any one time. Add one (predictable) earthquake and we have the tragedy we see today. Worst thing? It could happen again.

Predictable given economic facts and indicators-The collapse of the housing market and the too-big-to-fail banks and our subsequent economic woes. As I’ve mentioned in this forum in the past, my father, a retired schoolteacher, accurately predicted the housing market collapse a couple of years before it happened. It’s hard to believe bankers, economists and politicians lacked the same data.

Predictable given clearly inferior engineering combined with neighborhoods below sea level-By now, what we knew and didn’t act on following Hurricane Katrina should be obvious. But guess what? We still haven’t fixed the problem with the levies, even as we rebuild below sea level in New Orleans.

Those are political issues that affect the world. Complacency and inaction are enormous factors in business, too. Consultatively, vSA always urges business leaders to step outside the box to think the big thoughts and then to act on them as needed. We all know how easy it is each day to pursue the latest deal, address the most recent 200 emails and just try to stay afloat keeping up with the urgent. However, it is hardly cliche to remember this: Do not overlook the important in favor of the merely urgent.

Thoughts, examples, strategies?

I hope Martha Coakley will win the Massachusetts Special Election today, I really do.

As I voted for her this morning, I was struck by a feeling that she needs all of us to pull her feet out of the fire and that, to some extent, she has earned this close race through her lackluster campaign. This is not to say she won’t be a good senator – she’s been a good attorney general. She simply isn’t experienced as a politician running for election, and she appeared to somewhat take this election for granted once she’d cleared the primary.

To the Coakley campaign, Scott Brown probably appeared at first  to be an upstart without a chance. Martha Coakley’s campaign missed the mood of many Massachusetts residents – residents tired of the bad economy, worried about what health care reform will actually mean to them and impatient with the Obama administration. Brown painted Coakley as an insider and himself as some odd combination of good lookin’ cowboy and down-home neighbor. In fact, he’s more conservative than is a match for Massachusetts. Boston.com published a January 10 article citing important examples: “Last week he embraced waterboarding. Last month he expressed skepticism that climate change is being caused by humans. He has even denounced two national proposals that he supported in Massachusetts as a lawmaker – mandatory health care coverage and a cap-and-trade system to cut global warming gases.” Great.

Martha Coakley, I hope you win… despite yourself.

Every once in awhile, something happens in the world that is so immense that it jars us out of our daily routine. The earthquake in Haiti is one of those events. It puts into perspective our daily travails: business concerns, stress, minor disagreements with family, and that ten or twenty pounds we want to lose or gain.

Of course, many people here at home and globally struggle with serious issues, too. For those of us whose worries are not so dire, this is a good time to remember that we are empowered to help – to support people in Haiti and everywhere whose lives are truly a day-to-day struggle. In the instance of Haiti, consider an online donation to the Red Cross or to Clinton Foundation fund for Haiti Earthquake Relief.

Is it just me, or is business getting extraordinarily complex?

Oh, it’s just me?

I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Because here’s my thesis: nothing is easy anymore. Only the strong will thrive. Just as jobs for low-skilled labor are as scarce as flowers on Mars (or has that changed, too?) successful careers for high-skilled professionals in marketing, technology, industry, and the like are not for the weak of spirit.

Top five reasons why Work is So Complicated Now:

5- The oversupply of really smart people, devising new stuff. Innovations are everywhere.

4- Global everything, with all the cultural differences, language barriers, legal obstacles, and heavy competition that brings. (Leben ist schwierig.)*

*Life is difficult (German).

3- TECHNOLOGY.

2- Related to #3, new communication techniques, and a startling abundance of information sources, some of them reliable. Who can possibly read it all? Or remember 50% of what one would like to know?

1- Energy. And I don’t mean alternative. I mean the kind that you and I need just to keep up, let alone lead the pack.

How does a marketing professional serve clients brilliantly, especially when staffing is short, budgets are tight, and careers can live or die by short-term ROI? Few people can glide by for too long anymore without hard work. (And yes, I suspect that once, in a faraway time, perhaps the 90s, some mythical ad people could do just that. Probably they had talent, or charm. Something like that.) In a profession that has at times received and on a few occasions even earned the dubious distinction of being composed of hot air (yes, marketing, unfair as that may seem) the air has cooled, at least for the moment.

Now, working smart is critical. Just for starters, keeping up with industry news and trends is a marketing must. At vSA, we’ve become selectively engaged with Twitter, for example. We can use it to quickly get the word out about news of interest to important editors and our clients’ prospects. We’ve also seen that our clients can sometimes benefit as much by having customers make positive comments about their products on Facebook and post engaging videos on YouTube as they do from certain trade shows. More than in the past, we feel the need to monitor even relatively recent vSA work to assure that it’s up to the minute: for example, some Web applications we created to help clients sell online four years ago need to be updated… already and probably not for the last time.

But we have an additional responsibility as well. Outside of subjects that are clearly “of our industry,” it’s become more incumbent than ever to follow world news, fast-changing consumer trends, the mood of the nation, the day-to-day state of various segments of the economy, and more. Today I learned something more about Total Recall, a Microsoft research project based on the prediction that an archive of an individual’s digital data, largely generated without much of that individual’s thought, through GPS, cell phones, cameras, credit cards, health records and everything else he or she does, will someday create a pretty comprehensive record of that person’s life… and will thus change the way humans use and recall memory. Concepts like that, when they achieve traction (aside from being in my opinion pretty creepy) are always appropriated by business and marketing interests. So we marketers need to know about them. I also learned today that some prominent economists are concerned that the Obama administration has lost its way in pushing for regulatory reform of the financial markets and that these same economists fear that another economic collapse may be just scant (really scant) years away. Mmmm, hope they’re wrong, but better bear it in mind.

My point is that to be truly excellent as a high-level consultant in marketing today requires vision, diligence in meeting world situations face-to-face and the energy to continue to understand the ways people want to communicate now – and what these people want and need to hear. No hot air.

Perhaps you’ve heard this possibly-true story before? British statesman and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, noted for his wit, at a party, talking with a socialite:

Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill! Well, I suppose – we would have to discuss terms, naturally.
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.

As a business owner, there’s one thing I like about this recession. Just one, I think. And that one thing is this: during “challenging times” (gotta love that phrase) people show you who they are. (And now we are just haggling about the price.) I like to take advantage of these moments of exposure. When people show me who they are, they’re doing me a favor, albeit unwittingly. Here’s a fab-u-lous opportunity to learn who I’m dealing with, and to determine how (and whether) to deal with that person again. In some cases, the phrase “it’ll be a dark day in hell” flashes like neon in front of my brain when thinking about re-engaging with a person. In others, I find a new friend or mentor.

Quiz: Does your boss/client/spouse/”friend” crush you beneath her heel when she finds herself in control? BAD SIGN!

Carefully observe…

The way very privileged people treat service personnel – the best people treat others the best, do they not? – the way employees treat their boss when raises fail to appear or life is crappy (I consider the French trend of holding the boss hostage when he lays you off to be in poor taste, for example), the rabid way Newt Gingrich behaves in the face of a popular Obama administration, and the way partners and spouses treat each other when the pressure is on… these actions and attitudes can all be taken seriously.

Me? I’m really trying to be nice… especially after I hit the “publish” button today!

I’m not sure if this happens in other fields – I’m guessing it does – but I find that an awful lot of what goes on in the world reminds me of the primacy of communication. Then, when I think about communication, I think about the importance of being logical. Which leads me to the enormous hoopla about executive bonuses, namely, those unfortunately paid by AIG to its people.

It would be easy, speaking of logic, to feel a need to comprehend why AIG sallied forth with a plan that (in retrospect) looks a lot like a greedy company hurling toxic waste at already angry taxpayers. But let’s not look back. This is now, and AIG brass have in their fists very nice bonus checks (which some may be loath to return because – of course – they’ve already committed them to a new vacation home or liposuction for the whole extended family). American taxpayers are madder than wet hens as they gaze at their household bills, their unemployment checks, oh, and let’s not forget their 401 (k) statements, now printed on post-it notes due to the reduced number of digits in the account balances.

It’s the present that worries me. The new U.S. administration has a lot to do. Most likely (!) we should REALLY tighten up our bonus rules for companies taking tax dollars from annoyed citizens. But we should admit (if sourly) that the estimated $218 million (gulp!) in AIG bonuses is a trifle in comparison to the $XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX* in total loans, bailouts, offerings to the gods and whatever else we’re throwing in the fires of the Great Recession. *(I’m looking for a total dollar figure but there are so many choices I’m getting terribly confused). And because we are v-e-r-y busy with important matters, surely we shouldn’t act draconian and transparently political and impose a retroactive 90% tax on this AIG bonus money. Pul-eazze. What if these were working class people? Or union members? Who the heck gets taxed 90% on ANY form of income? Sure, we must address the gaping holes we find in our new recession-fighting programs, and there will be plenty of those. I’m saying that this done-deal-already-contracted-already-paid AIG bonus is a foolish distraction at best and a damaging misuse of our government’s, news media’s and public’s valuable focus at worst.

I like the idea of highly bonused AIG executives graciously returning the money. But whether that happens or not, let’s move forward with the business at hand. Let’s not spend too much energy and time chasing a couple of hundred million dollars that, even though it sounds like a lot, in the end will mean Very Little in the face of the Very Much we need to fix.

You're prepared for all contingencies... right?

A saying from a friend: “The best boat pump in the world is a sailor with a bucket… in a very leaky boat.”

So true. In the last recession, spanning the years 2000-2001, our company started out with several sales professionals. We ended the recession with just one… that ONE was me. I believe I represented the sailor with a bucket. Who more than the owner of my small company, after all, knew how much bailing how many sales were required? This time around, the entire van Schouwen Associates staff is truly engaged and actively involved in seeking and leveraging all opportunities. In other words, we have more sailors with buckets now. This is better.

Of course, I keep making the mistake of looking at the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is one global representation of the water level in our collective economic boat. The DJIA is currently under 7,000, pretty dismal, eh? I hope by the time I hit the “publish” button for this blog entry, it has gone back up. (Really, aren’t we running out of patience for this?)

You know best what bailing your own boat means to you. Perhaps, literally, it means your job isn’t what it used to be and you need to… sorry… BAIL and get a new one. (Okay, I won’t play with the word “bail” anymore, really. Don’t go. I’ll say “necessity” instead.)

For our company, necessity means we continually strengthen our prospecting and outreach efforts – something I think we’re good at anyway – because we need to keep the phone ringing. To accomplish this, we’re working our butts off. Not to put too fine a point on it.

A glance through my last couple of weeks’ email dispels – at least for me – the widely held concept that email has depersonalized communication, harshened our tone, and further isolated us from one another. Oh, sure, “you’ve got mail” on your screen is not the same as a perfumed note with dried violets inside (but how often did you ever get such a thing even in the “good old days” of snail mail?)

In my email, here are just a few happy examples received in just in the last few weeks:

From one high school friend to another, copied to a whole group of us scattered around the world, solace upon his losing a much-loved job (this was accompanied by an excellent essay on why and how he should consider self-employment):
To quote David Brown, “the rest of your life is the best of your life”.

A coworker from 25 years ago connected with me through email and shared these thoughts on children – his range from adults to a toddler, so he certainly knows:
When you have kids you get to watch how nature and nurture interact to make a whole person with his or her own quirks, strengths, weaknesses and, of course, with everything that makes us all human together.

And from a member of my book group, a heartfelt sentiment about middle age:
I can’t remember s**t these days.

I hear from someone in my family, or an old and new friend, nearly every day in part because no one needs a stamp to get in touch. And because email is easy and quick. That’s fine. Their emails feel to me as personal and wonderful as any note or card in the mailbox, plus simpler for the sender to accomplish than a phone call when time is short or schedules are odd. Email me anytime.

Here’s guessing: 2009 will be a year during which more people than average experience life upheavals. With hundreds of thousands of layoffs, companies closing and money shrinking, it seems obvious that security elements of our lives are getting trampled. In a new book, The Tyranny of Dead Ideas by Matt Miller (jokingly characterized in one review as “Commie Pinko Socialism”) Miller proposes that we can’t expect what we’ve come to expect (health care from our employer, cradle-to-grave work from same said employer, etc.) and proposes new solutions. Government solutions, largely.

That’s one look at cataclysm, unexpected turns and renewal. Some of the change I expect to see, in myself and others, will be from within. Frankly, I’ve had a window-view of big change as of late – I lost a husband – a good one! – to heart disease suddenly in 2006, and my two young sons have done what young sons often do – they went off to college and life, calling and emailing me remarkably often but nonetheless no longer daily eating my hotdog casserole (recipe not necessary) or savoring my daily advice on Girls, Grades and Grammar. That was big change in my book, and I’m slowly following it with big renewal – closer ties with old and new friends, new love, a new blog (this one! this one!) new speaking engagements, and an updated love affair with boats. Plus, less visibly, a new viewpoint. A few examples: I can now imagine being released from a job (although since I’m self employed I can always have a job, just maybe no pay). Or ending a relationship (personal or business) that makes one feel uninspired or less than worthy. Or perhaps exchanging a spacious home and an hour-long commute for an apartment in town from which one can walk, or bike, to the office. These days I can imagine not only the fear, but also the eventual liberation that a once-unwanted change could bring. Fear and uncertainty aside, I finally see that big change can mean new opportunity – the cliche “when one door closes one door opens” is sometimes true.