Be Curious

 

Several years ago, I was on a panel at a conference and a question came up for all of us. It was “what advice would you give a young person starting their first job?”

 

As we went around the horn, people said things to the effect as learn all cutting edge computer skills, find a good mentor or two, work harder than your colleagues, and always keep your resume updated.

 

When they at last came to me, I said that I do not like to give advice as it reeks of telling others how to live but I followed with, if pressed, I would simply say, “Be Curious.”

 

This got a few smiles from the attendees but, as I think back, it may well be the best advice that I have ever given to anyone.

 

Think about it for a moment. So many people seem to amble through life rarely asking why. Others are so superficial it is frightening. Many times, I was asked to brief someone for a meeting. The request would go something like “Make me smart on this topic. I have five minutes.”

 

I would try to be succinct but was always stunned at the request. Also, people working on a piece of business would not be willing to read a FORBES, FORTUNE or BUSINESS WEEK article about a company that was a direct competitor to their client. One person told me, “You are not my direct boss, and I am not giving up a half hour of my weekend to read that. I do enough here.” Pathetically, the direct boss did not encourage his team to read the article, but I had my team read it and we discussed it at length over a lunchtime pizza.  Everyone left knowing their client a bit better and what challenges it faced.

 

I understand that I am more curious about some topics than most. If it is something that I am very interested in such as markets, economic thought, certain areas of history, or foreign lifestyles I am all over it and read all that I can about it.

 

The issue is that curiosity is very valuable. I find that asking questions or reading about a topic in detail opens my mind up to different points of view. I rarely will argue directly with someone about politics or the economy but do probe a bit. 

 

As I get older I understand that dwelling on the past goes little good, I have to live in the present and always use the here and now to plan for the future.

 

Finally, do not confuse real curiosity with nosiness. When people start a sentence with: Tell me, I am curious about …. my antennae go up and I generally dodge giving an answer.

 

So, my unsolicited advice is keep asking why and dig a bit. Be curious!

 

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com or leave a message on the blog.

My Problem with American Politics

 

Over the last year, I have received several requests from MR readers asking, “What is Wrong with American Politics?”. Interestingly, some 40% of the queries came from people outside the U.S.

 

My usual answer has been that MR is not focused on politics, so I dodged the question. Lately, it keeps popping up fairly frequently so I will give my opinion that, while not unique, may be different than your current perception.

 

A knee jerk reaction that many give is that money is what is wrong with our system. The day after someone is elected to the US House of Representatives, they start making calls the next day to raise funds for their re-election which is now less than two years away. Okay, that is definitely part of the issue.

 

Here is how I see it. Let me start by raising a name that is all but forgotten in US politics except for some real political junkies. Les Aspin was an 11-term congressman from Wisconsin and long-time chairman of the House Armed Services committee.  A Democrat, he had a PHD in economics from MIT and long was a burr in the saddle of many Pentagon bigwigs. He once famously said in a committee hearing that he wanted to know what we got for the trillions that we have spent in defense over the years.

 

Aspen left the house to become Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of Defense. To run the Pentagon well, you need to be a superb administrator and that does not appear to have been Aspin’s strong suit. He was eased out of the cabinet and, sadly, passed away a few years later at only 56.

 

 

 

My favorite Les Aspin quote is as follows: “If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, they will always do it.” He was not talking about voting twice during a roll call. What he was saying was that as a member of Congress, you serve two masters to get re-elected. The first is appease your constituents who vote you in to office. The second, which does not always get enough play in the media, is your campaign donors. They may have different agendas, but the crafty and cynical lifetime politicians often serve both.

 

Here is a wonderful example of this but an obscure story. Ever hear of Senator Ted Kaufman from Delaware? I would doubt it. A friend of mine from my Boston College days could always name all 100 members of the US Senate. I am sure that he remembers Ted.

 

Kaufman was named to the US Senate after Joe Biden was elected Vice President in 2008. He only served through 2010 and never got the political “disease”. As was true of many of us, Kaufman was disgusted by the shenanigans of many in the financial sector leading up to the Great Recession of 2007-2009. So, he tried to do something about it. Kaufman co-sponsored a bill dubbed FERA which was the Financial Enforcement Recovery Act. This bill authorized $165 million to target white collar crime. It breezed through both houses of Congress. I saw him in a TV interview, and he was thrilled.

 

Well, I got some political education here. While Congress had authorized $165 to chase down white-collar crime, eventually they appropriated just $30 million in the final budget. He could not whip up more support as members did not want to lose Wall Street contributions. It was then that I learned that there is huge difference between an authorization and an appropriation in the US Congress.

 

So, this was a clear example that Aspin’s seemingly cynical comment about voting on both sides of an issue can come to life. I am certain that either on the stump in fall 2010 or in debates, creeps in both parties proudly mentioned how they voted for the Financial Enforcement Recovery Act. Yet the money from Wall Street continued to flow in their campaign coffers.

 

The problem, then, is that money runs things and members of congress seem laser-focused on re-election rather than improving things. An option to help this issue that I have embraced in recent years is term limits. If people know that their time in Washington is limited, they might be more apt to do the right thing.

 

To close, I may surprise some of you who know me well by quoting consumer advocate and political gadfly Ralph Nader. When running for president in 2000, I saw Mr. Nader state the following in an interview that I believe was on C-Span: "We do not have a Democratic party or a Republican party in the U.S. What we have is an incumbent party.”

 

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

Artifical Intelligence and Advertising

 

These days it seems that every day I get a “gloom and doom” e-mail from someone saying how both robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will transform our lives and kill millions of jobs within the next few years. Other messages come to me touting a certain new issue that will break through and tap in big-time to the trillions of dollars soon to be made in AI.

 

Do not get me wrong. I firmly believe that both robotics and AI will have significant and profound effects on our economic landscape. My issue is how fast they will develop and go completely mainstream.

 

Keep a few things in mind:

 

1)   About 40+ percent of new jobs are created by small business. It will be a while for a shop with 25 or fewer people to afford the high functioning robots that major manufacturers employ. Some coffee shops are testing robotic baristas, but it will be some time before such things are widespread.

2)   AI is definitely making inroads in our society. I would think that driverless trucks would be the first major job killer to hit the US economy. So, it would not be wise to be a 30-year-old long haul trucker and expect 30 more years of active service. Short haul delivery such as UPS or Amazon may also be affected but thousands of small businesses will keep their truck drivers for at least a decade. Uber and Lyft will likely go the driverless route once consumers get over initial skepticism. I would get in a test driverless Uber today and take my chances but not with my grandkids.

3)   AI, in many situations, will allow companies to trim significant costs, particularly personnel and benefits, which will have great appeal to both management and shareholders.

4)   One area where I think that AI will have significant and perhaps profound impact is in the advertising industry, particularly in the creative development process. Generative Artificial Intelligence, which most of you have been following closely should be a game changer in the field where many of us have toiled. This You Tube bit from a very recent CNBC segment is a wonderful introduction:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKWQMOqYV-k

 

 

      Finally, be VERY careful about investing in this New Age space. There are hundreds of new issues emerging and self-proclaimed market savants are touting start-up companies that are “sure” to make you rich. This reminds me of the late 1999-early 2000 cavalry charge of new internet companies. Some had no sales but raised many millions in venture capital. A few were seen on the 2000 Super Bowl and disappeared quickly.

 

     Call me old and out of touch but I am willing to bet that only a handful of the new entries will survive the coming crunch. Also, the big guns such as Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta and one or two others are investing huge amounts into these new technologies. If a few new players emerge with breakthrough applications, they will likely be bought by one or two of the existing giants who have the deepest pockets in business history.

 

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com or leave a message on the blog.