Survival-made-easyfor executives

By ANDREW LEE
andrewlee@thestar.com.my

How to Relax without Getting the Axe
Author: Stanley Bing
Publisher: Harper

FEW people working in large businesses seem content with their day-to-day jobs. The initial diligence that any newcomer displays is unsustainable as soon as he finds out that business is a hamster wheel, that he is the hamster running all day long, huffing and puffing to keep things turning.

As soon as it dawns upon the newcomer that there is in fact no future (or a bleak one, at the very least), work becomes a chore, effort is kept to a bare minimum, and quality of the final product is compromised. The newcomer eventually rises to a certain position where he no longer has the opportunity to advance any further, thus becoming the bitter and disgruntled employee who is stuck in a situation where staying on and quitting equate to the same thing – hardship.

Yet, for every obligated rodent who keeps the wheel running, there is a sleek furball happily “working” in the corner office down the hall. These guys seem to contribute less, and are often more unreliable and irresponsible. However, they soon rise to the top on the back of hefty bonuses and “business meetings” to various countries. The rodent, it seems, eventually mutates into the fat cat.

These crafty people have mastered the concept of executive life, what Bing describes as “the middle ground between slavery and unemployment”.

In his book, he goes on to explain the executive life. Citing examples such as the provision of big bucks with bonuses (in spite of screwing up), US$150 lunches, the loss of touch with reality, as well as drinks with “friends” who would like to see you dead. According to Bing, the secret of happiness is to live such a life whether one deserves to or not. The fact is that nobody deserves to. Therefore, to quote Bing: “Why shouldn’t you not deserve to at the same high level as other guys who don’t deserve to?”

The book teaches us a phalanx of ploys, evasions, hoaxes and clever swindles grouped together under a simple name: Executricks. Along the way, Bing guides us through the core skills that no budding office ear picker can afford to do without - delegation (telling people what to do and having them do it), absence (operating from the digital vacuum), abuse of status (it can be done), decisiveness (even when confused) and engagement (but only when necessary).

Bing cites a few examples of respected figures who have mastered executricks. The greatest delegator in history, Ronald Reagan was widely chastised back in the day for sleeping during meetings and allowing his wife to act as the actual chief executive. Yet, he is remembered as one of the greatest American presidents, with nary a word implying that he snoozed through the majority of his second term.

Today, great potentates such as Putin, Jobs, Gates and Kim Jong Il are honoured more in the breach than in the observance most of the time. They have mastered the ability to be the perceived train drivers when they are, in effect, invisible. Can you imagine a Kremlin worker complaining about how lame his boss is for not having been in the Pedestrian Control Department for years? No – the reason being that Putin is totally there, even when he’s not.

It may seem this is the perfect book for those who intend to shirk responsibilities, however Bing makes it clear in one of the final chapters in the book that work is inevitable to the executive. Work is like crisis; there is usually one waiting to happen. The goal therefore is clear – to work with maximum power for the shortest amount of time possible.

But how is one to know what work is, and what isn’t? Thankfully, included in the book are several important definitions of work:

a) Professional expertise, accumulated by you over a period of time, is needed;
b) The need to “get things right the first time” is not imaginary;
c) You get paid for it, and if you don’t do it you don’t get paid at all; and
d) Somebody told you to do it.

The key when the alarm bells sound are to treat every piece of work as a battle. There’s a reason why business types love to read biography and history – it provides them with a useful metaphor! There are numerous conflicts that one could be dealing with during work, and as long as one manages to avoid getting bogged down in long-term unwinnable campaigns (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan), one should be fine. Transform these into short, hard pitched battles, and one can give up work and get back to “work”.

A word of caution. This book is not for budding yuppies looking to rise to the top of their respective businesses or management consultancies. There are various self-help, motivational and Warren Buffett-type books available in the market for such cases (although fetching tea or coffee while staying attentive to the various needs and wants of your boss probably helps as much, if not more). Rather, this book is for the person who realises his or her standing within an organisation, and intends to derive the maximum utility from such a position.

Bing’s ethics might be questionable – but then again, so were Machiavelli’s in the medieval period. And nobody called Sun Tzu a saint either, yet both men are exalted on the same podium as a certain Ronald Reagan. The same fate awaits Putin, Gates, Kim Jong Il and whoever else is able to master the subtle yet effective skills of executricks. Now if you will excuse me, there is a sandwich I need to enjoy.

Who ‘Ruled the Air’ in 1910? (And Who Rules It Now?)

• By Matthew Lasar, ars technica
• Categories: Spectrum, Telecommunications, Wireless

“We each have a signal. A stream of raw power that flows with us. A power. A superpower. A super communication power.” So proclaims Verizon Wireless’s innovative “Rule the Air” advertising campaign.

“Send your signal forth with luminous videos, glorious data, and sublime megapixels,” another Verizon ad urges consumers. “Transmit your latest brainstorm over the airwaves. You just might start a revolution.”

Indeed, the airwaves are fundamentally democratic, Verizon insists. “Air has no prejudice,” a procession of women declare in a Rule the Air video spot. “It does not care carry the opinions of a man faster than those of a woman. It does not filter out an idea because I’m 16 and not 30.” 

Verizon: Rule the air ad. spencss1 http://www.youtube.com/user/spencss1

Virtually unscathed

Revolutionary, democratic, unprejudicial — Verizon’s campaign comes as Americans debate whether the wireless broadband airwaves really represent any of these wonderful things. Who will really rule the air, consumer advocates wonder, smartphone users or the wireless carriers? Two mobile providers dominate the broadband airwaves and, thanks to a recent federal court decision, they enjoy unchecked power to limit or prioritize data, content, and features at their pleasure.

But this isn’t the first time a big carrier tried a charm offensive of this sort. A century ago, the insurgent phone company of the time — American Telephone and Telegraph — also found itself swimming in a sea of public worry. Consumers and independent providers feared (rightly, as it turned out) that the corporation would prevail in its ultimate goal, the acquisition of almost all of the nation’s phone lines.

And so AT&T launched the Progressive Era equivalent of a “Rule the Air” campaign. Obviously there’s a difference between then and now. Verizon offers wireless service; AT&T leased out its land lines. But in terms of policy objectives, the historian Roland Marchand thought that AT&T’s crusade worked.
When the Federal Communications Commission launched its first probe into the company’s aggressive practices in the mid-1930s, AT&T emerged “virtually unscathed” from the ordeal, Marchand noted in his classic history, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business.


“When observers asked why investigations of the telephone monopoly had elicited almost no public support during the perilous mid-1930s, corporate analysts almost unanimously gave credit to AT&T’s 30-year campaign of coordinated institutional advertising and public relations,” his study concluded.
Let’s go back to the first “Rule the Air” campaign and see how it plied its magic.

The Multiplication of Power

Besieged by critics who warned that AT&T was gradually pushing independents out of the market, the company responded with a slogan: “One Policy-One System-Universal Service.” The “curse of Bigness” would be countered with the argument that bigness was best for consumers, for the nation, and especially for businessmen.

AT&T technology represented the “Multiplication of Power,” an early magazine advertisement insisted. The word “power” became ubiquitous in Bell ads. “Has the increased ability of the American business man to bring people to him from every locality, far and near, over the Bell Telephone System, been the cause of the mulitiplication of his power and his principality?” an ad rhetorically asked

You bet it had, just about every AT&T/Bell pitch proclaimed. AT&T represented the “Triumph of Science: Making a Neighborhood a Nation.”

And so it went — the telephone represented the “annihilator of space,” another magazine ad announced. AT&T “beguiled men with talk of their personal power,” Marchand observed, then piled on statistics about subscribers or dollars or lines or miles “to brag of the company’s own magnitude and resources.”

The early ads exhibited a decided penchant for the recitation — to the point of incantation — of large figures. Over the first 10 years, some 70 percent of the ads cited at least one figure in the thousands, millions or billions. Sixty percent included one or more figures in millions or above. Between 1908 and 1912, texts of seven individual ads incorporated ‘million(s)’ and ‘billion(s)’ at least four times. In 1914 the corporation outdid itself by including figures in the millions or billions some 14 times in its April advertisement and nine times in August.

Supreme and glorious

But, note the presence of a woman stretching out the “Transcontinental Phone Line,” a clear reference to the transcontinental railroad built a generation earlier. AT&T was always ambivalent about how to deploy feminine images.

As Marchand noted, the Bell System consistently pitched to the business class first — the phone represented as essential to companies and professionals. Bell ads often drew the latter as square-jawed guys confidently clinching deals in their offices. AT&T marketers were far more ambivalent about touting the telephone as a venue for “female” gossip (as if men didn’t gossip as well).

AT&T’s “bias towards ultilitarianism and no-nonsense masculinity” had a purpose, Marchand argued. “A monopoly utility company, one charged with supplying a functional service, needed to assume a dignified civic stature; it had reasons to shun any association with frivolous indulgences.”

But the corporation was also anxious to emphasize the “democratic” nature of telephone service, especially during the First World War, as women’s suffrage became a national issue and, in 1920, a national reality.
“War gave woman her supreme and glorious opportunity to enlarge her field of service,” an AT&T institutional ad explained shortly after the conflict. “In the counting house and chemical laboratory she has loaned her brains to the cause.” And “in telephone service, also, a host of capable, loyal daughters” further the nation’s future, the pitch continued.

Indeed, AT&T itself represented the essence of democracy, a publicly owned corporation exemplifying the central phrase of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “Of the people, by the people, for the people.”
“People of every walk of life, in every state in the Union, are represented in the ownership of the Bell Telephone System,” another ad explained. “People from every class… ”
And, of course, “Of all AT&T’s stockholders, the respectable, needy widow gained central station by virtue of her representation of the ‘many citizens of small means’ who depended on the company’s profits,” Marchand observed. “No plutocrats were visible here.”

Evading the worst

By the mid-20th century, these advertising campaigns had repeatedly helped AT&T to avoid anti-trust scrutiny, even as the company gradually gobbled up most of the nation’s phone carriers. In 1913, the corporation avoided breakup or nationalization by agreeing to connect with local carriers and to a more regulated approach to their acquisition. In 1919, the Bell System released itself from wartime government control.
“The leading AT&T executives … freely attributed the success of their negotiations to the previous 10 years of AT&T advertising,” Marchand concludes.

And in 1935, when the “seemingly inevitable” government challenge finally arrived:

The FCC’s relatively harmless specific recommendations, at a time when many corporations felt themselves gravely threatened or impaired, clearly represented a victory for AT&T. [AT&T] Vice President [Arthur] Page pointed to AT&T’s good public reputation as the reason such a “natural target” had escaped attention earlier in the “investigating craze,” and he took delight in the public’s apparent indifference to the investigation reports. Fortune magazine buttressed the judgment of AT&T’s executives that the investigation had “produced only the most trivial accusations” against the company. It credited the absence of any public outcry to the success of the corporation’s tireless advertising and public relations campaign.

A century later, we have a repetition of AT&T’s approach in Verizon’s “Rule the Air” offensive. Will it work? The campaign doesn’t seem to be getting great results in terms of new subscribers, but with Verizon’s 4G device lineup impending, that’s an unfinished story.

The bigger question is how we’ll define who really “rules the air,” and under what terms? Do consumers enjoy sovereignty solely by virtue of their purchase of the newest, coolest mobile-broadband device? Or must they have some say in the terms under which “the air” is sold to them, and under what circumstances data and features on the public byways are managed, prioritized or even barred?
Who rules the air? Hopefully this time around, that question won’t be decided by an ad agency.

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Further reading

These nearly century-old magazine advertisements are just some of the amazing illustrations to be found in Marchand’s Creating the Corporate Soul, published by University of California Press. The 460-page book also includes chapters on the auto industry, the World Fairs of the 1890s through the 1930s, and General Electric. A great holiday gift for all technology lovers, you can buy it directly through UC Press here.
Follow us for disruptive tech news: John C. Abell and Epicenter on Twitter.
See Also:

• In Escalating War Against Verizon, AT&T Is Getting Tone Deaf — and …
• Verizon to AT&T: Can You Sue Me Now?
• Verizon Leads, AT&T Runs Last in Wired.com’s 3G Speed Test …
• AT&T Sees No Threat in a Verizon iPhone
• Cap My iPhone? Try This Instead, AT&T
• A Step Ahead of Regulators, Verizon Activates Concession Mode …

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Dollar doldrums: No end in sight

10 Yr Treasury vs USD Index: Economic Analysis By HiddenLevers Aug 1 Aug 16 Sep 1 Sep 16 Oct 1 Oct 16 2.3% 2.4% 2.5% 2.6% 2.7% 2.8% 2.9% 3.0% 3.1% 76 78 80 82 84 5d | 1m | 3m | 6m | YTD | 1y | 5y | 10y | All Economic Analysis By HiddenLevers

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- All hail the puny dollar?

The greenback slipped once again Monday morning, falling to a new 15-year low against the yen. The dollar also fell against the euro and pound.

The renewed dollar sell-off comes after global financial ministers pledged to avoid currency wars at the conclusion of the G-20 meeting in South Korea Saturday.

Accusations of currency manipulation have roiled financial markets, with U.S. officials expressing frustration about how artificially low they believe the Chinese yuan is when compared to the dollar.

But global traders are continuing to sell the dollar. And that's because, somewhat ironically, many investors feel that the U.S. may be doing some manipulation of its own -- intentional or not.

The Federal Reserve is widely expected to unveil a new round of asset purchases at its next policy meeting, a two-day session that wraps up on November 3.

This so-called practice of quantitative easing is generally viewed as bad for the dollar because the Fed would be essentially printing money in order to pay for the long-term bonds it plans to buy.

Michael Pento, senior economist with Euro Pacific Capital in Westport, Conn., said that more quantitative easing is troubling because it may discourage foreign investors from buying the dollar, which is something they did in droves during the height of the financial crisis of 2008.

At that time, the dollar was still viewed as a safe bet and its status as the world's reserve currency was not in doubt. Pento worries that this may not be true for much longer.

"The dollar is being destroyed on a daily basis," he said. "Another massive round of easing would put everyone on notice that if you are seeking to hide in our dollar you will be severely punished."

0:00 /2:53Weak dollar is a double-edged sword

The fear is that if the dollar continues to fall, foreign creditors will eventually get tired of the weak dollar and sell their Treasuries. That would push long-term yields much higher and could help bring about inflation.

So far though, as the chart at the top of this column shows, long-term yields have been edging lower even as the dollar continues to fall.

Along those lines, not everyone is sweating the weak dollar. Alex Bellefleur, financial economist with Brockhouse Cooper, a brokerage firm in Montreal, said it's worth noting that the stock market has been rallying as the dollar has weakened.

"The U.S. dollar has been the laggard in international currencies. But that could help in terms of boosting exports and earnings for large companies," Bellefleur said. "We don't think this is something that's negative in the near-term."

The problem is that at some point though, the cons to the weak dollar will outweigh the pros.

Pento said that if the widely-watched U.S. dollar index, which measures the dollar against a basket of key currencies, falls below 70, that could jeopardize the dollar's standing around the world. That index is currently around 77.

But Bellefleur doesn't think that the dollar will slide that much more. He said that for the dollar to truly lose its reserve status, something has to replace it. And he doesn't believe that will happen anytime soon.

"There are still no alternatives to the dollar as the world's reserve currency. The euro used to be viewed as possibly being one but people have had second thoughts about that," he said.

Keep track of the dollar and other currencies

Dean Popplewell, chief currency strategist for Oanda, a Toronto-based foreign exchange broker, said investors should not forget gold. He noted that weakness in the dollar has coincided with the record run in the yellow metal.

So while investors may not think the euro can replace the dollar, gold -- which risk-averse investors love because of its tangible nature -- may be another story.

"At the moment, gold is trading as if it's the reserve currency. People want commodities over the dollar," Popplewell said.

Popplewell added that as long as the Fed has an easy money policy in place, the weak dollar trend is likely to continue. He predicts that the euro, currently trading around $1.40, could climb as high as $1.46 before the year is out.

"There will come a time when the dollar stops depreciating. But right now everyone has the same bet. It's a one-way, lemming trade," he said. "There is no money to be made on betting on the dollar at this point."

- The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul R. La Monica. Other than Time Warner, the parent of CNNMoney.com, and Abbott Laboratories, La Monica does not own positions in any individual stocks.   

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