Initiative, innovation, creativity, resourcefulness: these all are core to our company culture, a deep part of who we are and how we define ourselves.

An entrepreneur is a person with an idea and the will to see that idea to fruition, and who accomplishes more with less than others think possible.

Entrepreneurship is not confined to business; there are social, environmental, and community entrepreneurs.

Mahatma Gandhi is an excellent example of someone who accomplished the impossible with little more than his vision, his will, his determination.

Whenever someone says that something is impossible, that the odds are too long, I reply, “I’m glad you were not whispering that into George Washington’s ear at Valley Forge.”

Entrepreneurs find it invigorating to set challenging goals. We find that stretch goals bring out the best in us, BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) excite us.

Closing Quotes:

“Think big. Small ideas lack the power to stir men’s souls.”

“Where there is a will, there is a way.”

“Sometimes people have a million reasons why they can’t, when all they need is one reason why they must.”

A smile, a nod, a quick acknowledgement: Effective use of non-verbal communication. Much has been made of EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient) of late, as a rounding out of the older IQ concept (see Daniel Goleman’s 1996 groundbreaking book, “Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ”).

IQ primarily deals with math and verbal skills; vital and important, but in today’s increasingly interdependent world, where the fast-growing service sector increasing dominates and global organizations cross cultural lines with regularity, perhaps emotional skills are almost as important. After all, the service sector sells experiences and memories as much as aught else, and it takes a heightened degree of sensitivity to communicate effectively across cultural divides. The world and the organizations and systems that make it function are increasingly complex. An elevated understanding of the motivations and emotional drivers of the people who comprise those organizations may be vital to success in the coming century.

The Story
On a much more mundane level, I walked into a Baby Gap store the other day, gathered up a few items and walked to the checkout counter. There was a one clerk with just one person before her, and I figured for a fast transaction. It was the lack of a crowd in the store that had initially seduced me to stay and shop for a few impulse items. Nice but not necessary consumption, in part motivated by the prospect of a painlessly quick in and out.

As I approached the counter, I saw that the solitary person before me was doing a multi-item return and that the store’s procedures were such that it was not going quickly and easily, so neither would my wait. I paused in indecision. I had put some effort into making my selections but I’m no fan of waiting in lines. Should I stay or should I go? In that moment, on the edge of decision, something critical happened, something that swiftly swayed me.

The clerk looked straight at me and then looked away. Or perhaps it would be more precise to say she looked right through me. She had “seen” me but that was it.

She did NOT

• make eye contact
• smile at me
• nod at me
• or even send a friendly, “I’ll be with you shortly, sir,” in my direction.

In fact, she in no way acknowledged I existed. She did not make me feel

• welcome, or
• special, or
• appreciated, or
• valued, or
• desired

Actually, quite the opposite. By refusing to acknowledge me as another human being, by not greeting me in even the slightest way, she devalued and dehumanized me at some level, she made me faceless. So back went the stuff onto the racks and on my way I went. And as I exited, with me went enough profit margin to pay for a few hours of a counter clerk’s salary. All for want of a one-second smile.

I’m not saying I would have stood there for twenty minutes in return for a smile but, yeah, I would have hung around for a bit. Throw in a, “This may take a few moments, sir. If you want to browse a bit more, I’ll have those items rung up for you when you return,” and I’d have been hers for life!

She may have been having a hard day (or had a hard night, it was mid-morning, just past opening time), and we have all had days when we are off. I might have hit her on one of her off moments, and everyone else that day may have had an exceptional customer service experience.

The Take Home
In any case, I had no bone to pick with her. My beef is with Baby Gap’s training program.

Not everyone is born with a stellar EQ. It is up to us as managers and leaders to train people into a deeper understanding of the importance of creating a pleasant customer experience. Training them to understand the vital part that acknowledging someone’s presence plays, and how the little things can add up to big things and create a lasting customer relationship.

The good news is that unlike IQ, the maximum of which scientists believe is largely set at birth, you can raise your EQ. Lord knows I’ve spend lots of time and energy trying to educate mine and in this, as in many other things, I teach/share what I most want to know.

Every organization is the shadow of its leadership. I find that an awesome responsibility, a tremendously challenging stewardship. And we are all stewards and leaders: for our children, our spouses, our neighbors, our friends, our community, the earth.

The brand was a “ranch’s trademark and represents pride, duty, and stewardship while inspiring loyalty, dedication, and cowboy camaraderie.” (MontanaBunkhouses website). When you rode for the brand, it meant that you had signed on to the mission, that you had committed, that you were a dedicated team player. If you weren’t, then you had no business being on the ranch’s payroll.

There is a poem called “Riding for the Brand,” by Paul Harwitz, that expresses a lot of the values of responsibility, well-earned pride, trust, community, integrity, and teamwork that most Americans hold dear and that are at the foundation of our success as individuals and as a country. I would suggest that any individual, any organization that follows these values will succeed far beyond the norm. Here is an excerpt.

“…it means that you don’t work just for a buck,
But ‘cause you need work like water’s needed by a tree.

“It means you can be trusted, and that you trust each pard,
To do the chores that are needed, no matter how hard,
‘Cause you’re all riding for the same outfit,
And you’re all striving together to benefit it.

“It means you keep searching for that one last stray,
Even though it’s the end of the day,
Even though you’d rather stop and go to town.
It means you don’t lay your responsibility down.

“It means you give an honest day’s work for an honest day’s wage,
Whether you’re in the corral or out riding the range.
Every job’s important, and there ain’t none that ain’t.
It’s not the cowboy way to quit though it’d be easier to say ‘I cain’t.’

“It means you’ll not complain when you help dig a well,
Nor even have to be asked to spell a tired cowpoke who’s stove-up.
It means you’ll work with others as well as you’ll work alone,
And that even when you’re tired to the bone, you’ll cowboy-up.

“That’s what it means, that, and a whole lot more.
It means that you’ve got pride in yourself, your job, and the land…”

(Friday’s Populist Capitalist Blog Post)

Painting over rust is what you do when you want something to look better without going to the trouble of solving the underlying problem. The problem remains, but for the time being you look better, can pass cursory inspections, mollify the unsuspecting, and perhaps even receive undeserved praise.

An example is the airlines, which have been pushing back arrival times so to boost their rankings in the Department of Transportation’s “on time” charts, which powerfully affect the public’s perceptions. Delta Flight 715 from New York to Los Angeles now takes over seven hours, up from 6 hours in 1996. No, it’s not continental drift; New York and Los Angeles are still the same distance apart. It is simply Delta cooking the numbers in order to look good without actually performing any better. Delta is far from alone. Southwest Airlines now blocks out 80 minutes to fly from Phoenix to Las Vegas instead of 60 minutes, American Airlines now needs 2 1/2 hours to fly from Chicago to Newark, up 30 minutes from the former 2-hour flight time. (Wall Street Journal, “The Middle Seat,” February 4, 2010.)

I don’t have all the answers, far from it. But this much I do know: covering up a problem never solves it.

Transparency and solution-oriented accountability (never to be confused with playing the gotcha political blame game) are always among the first steps to solving any problem.

Closing Quotes:

”It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.” — John Baptiste Moliére (1622–1673), French playwright

“It is easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an intermediate link in a chain of action.” — Stanley Milgram (1933–1984), American social psychologist , who conducted the infamous Milgram Experiment on submission to authority

“We all participate in weaving the social fabric; we should therefore all participate in patching the fabric when it develops holes.” — Anne C. Weisberg, “Everything a Working Mother Needs to Know,” 1994

“30 Methods of Influence” By Stephen Covey

2. Exercise patience with others. In times of stress, our impatience surfaces. We may say things we don’t really mean or intend to say—all out of proportion to reality. Or we may become sullen, communicating through emotion and attitude rather than words, eloquent messages of criticism, judgment, and rejection. We then harvest hurt feelings and strained relationships. Patience is the practical expression of faith, hope, wisdom, and love. It is a very active emotion. It is not indifference, sullen endurance, or resignation. Patience is emotional diligence. It accepts the reality of step-by-step processes and natural growth cycles. Life provides abundant chances to practice patience—to stretch the emotional fiber—from waiting for a late person or plane to listening quietly to your child’s feelings and experiences when other things are pressing.

In 10 succinct pages, Stephen R. Covey’s “30 Methods of Influence” contains some of the greatest wisdom I’ve ever read.

The methods fall into three categories: 1. Example: Who You Are and How You Act, modeling by doing (others see), 2. Relationship: Do you Understand and Care? (others feel), and 3. Instruction: What You Tell Me (others hear).

While I’ve posted a blog on the 30 Methods in their entirety, they are so powerful and have had such a profound impact upon my life and effectiveness that I am now posting them one by one, one each week. Profound thoughts are best if savored, wisdom is gained most thoroughly if absorbed over time.

Closing Quotes:

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”  — Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese monk, activist, and writer; b. 1926.

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”  — Leo F. Buscaglia, American guru, advocate of the power of love; 1924-1998.
 
“Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.”  — Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Nobel Peace Prize recipient; 1910-1997.

We are accountable.

We must perform as promised.

Effort is wonderful and a necessary step in the process. Activity is good. But in the final analysis, we must successfully execute. It’s performance that counts.

To give anything less than our best is to sacrifice our potential, our greatness.

We believe in ourselves and each other and toward that end “We Expect the Best and We Regularly Inspect for What We Expect.” In short, “We Trust but Verify.” I am a determined, driven, motivated individual with a deep wellspring of internal energy and yet… I still find deadlines, external commitments, and outside accountability to be extremely helpful in focusing my efforts and achieving that last bit of performance.

It is the knowledge that there will be an accounting at the end of the day, that our efforts and accomplishments will be weighed and measured, that provides that last bit of effort, that final push for excellence that marks the difference between first prize and also ran, between good and great.

Closing Quotes:

“Accountability breeds response-ability.” — Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, First Things First, Principle Centered Leadership

“It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.” — Moliere, French playwright, 1622-1673

“The ancient Romans had a tradition: whenever one of their engineers constructed an arch, as the capstone was hoisted into place, the engineer assumed accountability for his work in the most profound way possible: he stood under the arch.” — C. Michael Armstrong, former AT&T chairman and CEO

As with any ability or trait, people tend to be born with a certain innate level of happiness.

Like most things, we can get better with practice, effort, and study. And, like most things, if you try too hard, you can overdo it and regress.

One “secret” to happiness is that much of your happiness is learning what makes you happy, learning your personal recipe. It sounds obvious, but learning what makes us happy is an individual experimental thing, at times trial and error.

Part of the challenge is that from a very young age we are bombarded with messages about what others think should make us happy. The operative words are “others” and “should.” Often “others” have their own agendas: Madison Avenue wants to sell us stuff, stuff we often don’t really need. The easiest way to sell people is to convince them that a particular good or service is essential for human happiness, even if we’ve never heard of it or it didn’t exist two years ago. And often for purely personal or social reasons, “others” wish to control us or influence us or have us behave in a certain way, as if just having people agree with them or act like them reinforces their sense of self-worth or validates their value system. Others’ value systems may work wonderfully for them but each of us is unique and needs to experience for ourselves what brings us happiness, joy, contentment, and lasting satisfaction.

The challenge is that even when we do have a meaningful experience of happiness, or even unhappiness, we do not take the time to quietly think the whys and wherefores of the experience: Did what I think would bring me lasting satisfaction truly do so? Or at best was it just a momentary pleasure? Did I truly savor the moment? Did the memory bring a smile of joy to my face for days and weeks afterward? Or was the moment hollow, empty, strangely unfulfilling?

When a moment of unexpected joy comes into your life, STOP!

Think about its source, contemplate how you can attract more of those moments in your life. At the end of each day, write in your journal. Reflect on the ups and downs of your day, the paradigms, beliefs, and thought patterns underlying each one. How to find more satisfaction and contentment, less frustration?

Coaches and players spend endless hours reviewing game films to learn how to perform better, to hone their skills to the sharpest edge. Does your life warrant anything less? The return on just 15 to 20 minutes of journaling each evening is incredible. And just 10 or 15 minutes of inspirational reading, and your life will pop to even higher levels. I love to read but for my morning and evening inspirational reading I just read for a few minutes until I get one concept that I want to keep in mind, focus on. One change, one thought a day is challenge enough!

Happiness is a skill and like any other skill it can be increased with cultivation.

(Friday’s Populist Capitalist Blog Post)

A new study of 1,300 corporate bosses, board directors, and analysts found that CEOs frequently “responded to negative appraisals from Wall Street by managing appearances rather than making changes that actually improve corporate governance.”

In response to charges that boards of directors lack independence, CEOs typically installed directors “who, although they may have no business ties to the company, are socially close to the top brass.”

In other words, the reason that CEOs and top management get such eye-popping, shareholder—pick-pocketing compensation is that the board of directors is stacked with friends of the CEO and top management. The game is rigged in the CEO’s favor. Analysts acknowledged the potential conflict but “most said they did not have time to look at such issues.”

These “market distorting shenanigans” are not isolated issues. A prior study showed that companies typically enjoy lasting stock price benefits from announcing analyst-pleasing plans such as share buybacks and long term incentive plans even when they fail to follow through. Presumably there is no penalty for blowing smoke because no one checks. Another study found that the “further a firm’s profit falls below consensus forecasts, the more favors its managers bestow on analysts.” (The Economist, “How Firms Fool Equity Analysts,” February 6, 2010.)

One of the duties of accepting the public’s money is to remember it is not your money, but theirs. One of the obligations of power is not to use it to rig the game in your favor.

Closing Quotes:

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.” — Voltaire

“A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.” — D. Elton Trueblood (1900-1994), American author, educator, philosopher, and theologian

“We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities.” — Bill Maher

“30 Methods of Influence” By Stephen Covey

1. Refrain from saying the unkind or negative thing, particularly when you are provoked or fatigued. In these circumstances, to not say the unkind or critical thing is a supreme form of self-mastery. Courage is the quality of every quality at its highest testing point. If we have no model of restraint to follow, we will likely take out our frustration on our fellow workers. We may need to find new models, new examples to follow, and learn to win our own battles privately, to get our motives straight, to gain perspective and control, and to back away from impulsively speaking or striking out.

In 10 succinct pages, Stephen R. Covey’s “30 Methods of Influence” contains some of the greatest wisdom I’ve ever read.

The methods fall into three categories: 1. Example: Who You Are and How You Act, modeling by doing (others see), 2. Relationship: Do you Understand and Care? (others feel), and 3. Instruction: What You Tell Me (others hear).

While I’ve posted a blog on the 30 Methods in their entirety, they are so powerful and have had such a profound impact upon my life and effectiveness that I am now posting them one by one, one each week. Profound thoughts are best if savored, wisdom is gained most thoroughly if absorbed over time.

Much confidence comes from relaxing and taking stumbles in stride. Focus on your successes, build on them. Certainly learn from your mistakes, but don’t define yourself by your mistakes or your past.

If you define yourself by your mistakes, if you refuse to believe in yourself, most people will take you at your self appraisal, spoken or unspoken. After all, who knows you better than you? If you decline the job of being your own cheerleader, who else is going to take the job? Sure, your mom or dad, maybe your best friend. But let’s not over work them, shall we? Let’s help them out a bit. And even they are not always going to be able to be around, so it behooves you to learn how to be a self-starter, your own mentor, your own coach.

I may not know you but I do know that you have some ability, some strength, some talent, no matter how latent or untouched. There is something about you that is special, unique, that is incredibly you. Something within you that sparkles, lights up some passion, hope, or dream. Something you can nurture and develop. It may be a weakness with the potential to be a strength. It may be that you need to search the world a bit to experience and experiment to find your calling. Not all who wander are lost. You may end up marching to a different drummer, and your path may lie down multiple forks, always taking the road less traveled over and over.

Wherever you go, enjoy the journey and relax. Whatever comes your way, you have what it takes.

Closing Quote
“The best performers are good at forgiving themselves, dropping failure from their mental bandwidth quickly so they can focus on the positive.” — Richard Ginsburg, “Whose Game is It, Anyway?”

Pincus’s solution? Post blank sheets of paper on the wall with everyone’s name on a sheet: “By the end of the week everyone needs to write what you are CEO of and it needs to be something meaningful… People liked it (and) there was nowhere to hide.”

Pincus asks that everyone have and know their “Objective and Key Results” (O.K.R.s). “The whole company and every group has one objective and three measurable key results.” The goal is to keep “people focused on the three things that matter – not the 10.”

Pincus also asks everyone to write down at the end of the work week or over the weekend their three priorities for the coming week and then on Friday report how they did against them. Pincus believes that these techniques are applicable in other areas as well: “These road maps are great principles for managing your life.”

Closing thoughts:  Life is not a dress rehearsal and we are the directors and script writers of the ongoing staging of our lives. Enjoy.

“Silos are nothing more than the barriers that exist between departments within an organization, causing people who are supposed to be on the same team to work against one another. And whether we call this phenomenon departmental politics, divisional rivalry, or turf warfare, it is one of the most frustrating aspects of life in any sizable organization. Most silo issue[s] [are] probably more structural and organizational than interpersonal.”

Lenocioni seems to do a better job of defining the problem than solving it. Though, in truth, bringing the issue into the open is half the battle. While he dresses it up a bit (see below), he essentially calls for making the extent of the problem clear——having the courage to say the emperor has no clothes——that what we are doing is not working like it should, we are spinning our wheels, we are capable of so much more if we can all just get on the same page, trust each other, and communicate clearly, concisely, cleanly without posturing, ego, personal agenda, or drama.

He suggests role-playing as a method of building understanding and trust: different department heads taking each other’s positions and arguing their case as if it were their own. It is a good idea and is really just a business-specialized version of Stephen Covey’s “Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood.”

Lenocioni suggests creating a mythical crisis and using the power of the crisis to visualize change: If we continue down this road of butting heads and working at cross purposes, what if our competition cleans our clock, steals our biggest clients, while we are busy bickering internally? The thesis is that once the true cost is realized AND people unite under a common goal (see “A Thematic Goal” below) and defined objectives and metrics, intelligent people will behave better.

While all these are good and perhaps even necessary things, I found myself pulling out “Principle Centered Leadership” by Stephen Covey and turning to the chapter “Thirty Methods of Influence,” particularly those, 9 through 19, dealing with relationships (a paragraph on each method is at the end of this post):

9. Assume the best of others.
10. Seek first to understand.
11. Reward open, honest expressions or questions.
12. Give an understanding response.
13. If offended, take the initiative.
14. Admit your mistakes, apologize, and ask for forgiveness.
15. Let arguments fly out open windows.
16. Go one on one.
17. Renew your commitment to things you have in common.
18. Be influenced by them first.
19. Accept the person and the situation.

Changing human behavior is not easy but it is an extremely high-leverage activity. The key to changing human behavior is to impact the belief systems, paradigms, and world views that drive the behavior. “Thirty Methods of Influence” packs more wisdom in 10 pages then I have seen elsewhere. As always, I share what I most need to learn.

————–

Solution summary of “Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars: Destroying the Barriers that Turn Colleagues into Competitors”

The model for combating silos consists of four components:

1. A Thematic Goal: a single qualitative focus that is shared by the entire leadership team–and ultimately, by the entire organization–and that applies for only a specified time period.

It must be,

- Single. There can only be one. Something has to be most important.

- Qualitative. This is not a number. It is a general statement of a desired accomplishment requiring a verb because it rallies people to do something, such as improve, reduce, increase, grow, change, establish, eliminate, accelerate, etc.

- Time-Bound. The thematic goal does not live beyond a fixed time period, because that would suggest that it is an ongoing objective.

- Shared. The thematic goal applies to everyone on the leadership team regardless of their area of expertise or interest.

2. A set of Defining Objectives: Components or building blocks that serve to clarify exactly what is meant by the thematic goal. Like the thematic goal, these objectives are also qualitative, time-bound, and shared.

3. A set of ongoing Standard Operating Objectives: The ongoing objectives that don’t go away from period to period. The danger is in mistaking one of these critical objectives for a rallying cry, or thematic goal.

4. Metrics: Measurement. Metrics could be numbers or dates (time frames).

————–

Thirty Methods of Influence—Relationships:

9. Assume the best of others.
Assuming good faith produces good fruit. By acting on the assumption others want and mean to do their best, as they see it, you can exert a powerful influence and bring out the best in them. Our efforts to classify and categorize, judge, and measure often emerge from our own insecurities and frustrations in dealing with complex, changing realities. Each person has many dimensions and potentials, some in evidence, most dormant. And they tend to respond to how we treat them and what we believe about them. Some may let us down or take advantage of our trust, considering us naive or gullible. But most will come through, simply because we believe in them. Don’t bottleneck the many for fear of a few! Whenever we assume good faith, born of good motives and inner security, we appeal to the good in others.

10. Seek first to understand.
Seek first to understand, then to be understood. When we’re communicating with another, we need to give full attention, to be completely present. Then we need to empathize—to see from the other’s point of view, to “walk in his moccasins” for a while. This takes courage, and patience, and inner sources of security. But until people feel that you understand them, they will not be open to your influence.

11. Reward open, honest expressions or questions.
Too often we punish honest, open expressions or questions. We upbraid, judge, belittle, embarrass. Others learn to cover up, to protect themselves, to not ask. The greatest single barrier to rich, honest communication is the tendency to criticize and judge.

12. Give an understanding response.
Using the understanding response (reflecting back feeling), three good things happen: 1) you gain increased understanding and clarity of feelings and problems; 2) you gain new courage and growth in responsible independence; and 3) you build real confidence in the relationship. This response has its greatest value when a person wants to talk about a situation laden with emotions and feelings. But this response is more attitude than technique. It will fail if you try to manipulate; it will work if you deeply want to understand.

13. If offended, take the initiative.
If someone offends you unknowingly and continues to do so, take the initiative to clear it up. Consider two tragic consequences of not taking the initiative: first, the offended one often broods about the offense until the situation is blown out of proportion; second, the offended one then behaves defensively to avoid further hurt. When taking the initiative, do it in good spirits, not in a spirit of vindication and anger. Also, describe your feelings—when and how the offense took place—rather than judging or labeling the other person. This preserves the dignity and self-respect of the other person, who then can respond and learn without feeling threatened. Our feelings, opinions, and perceptions are not facts. To act on that awareness takes thought control and fosters humility.

14. Admit your mistakes, apologize, ask for forgiveness.
When we are party to seriously strained relations, we may need to admit that we are at least partly to blame. When one is deeply hurt, he draws back, closes up, and puts us behind prison bars in his own mind. Improving our behavior alone won’t release us from this prison. Often the only way out is to admit our mistakes, apologize, and ask forgiveness, making no excuses, explanations, or defenses.

15. Let arguments fly out open windows.
Give no answer to contentious arguments or irresponsible accusations. Let such things “fly out open windows” until they spend themselves. If you try to answer or reason back, you merely gratify and ignite pent-up hostility and anger. When you go quietly about your business, the other has to struggle with the natural consequences of irresponsible expression. Don’t be drawn into any poisonous, contentious orbit, or you’ll find yourself bitten and afflicted similarly. Then the other person’s weaknesses will become your own, and all this will sow a seed bed of future misunderstandings, accusations, and wrangling. The power to let arguments fly out open windows flows out of an inward peace that frees you from the compulsive need to answer and justify. The source of this peace is living responsibly, obediently to conscience.

16. Go one on one.
An executive might be very involved and dedicated to his or her work, to church and community projects, and to many people’s lives, yet not have a deep, meaningful relationship with his or her own spouse. It takes more nobility of character, more humility, more patience, to develop such a relationship with one’s spouse than it would take to give continued dedicated service to the many. We often justify neglecting the one to take care of the many because we receive many expressions of esteem and gratitude. Yet we know that we need to set aside time and give ourselves completely to one special person. With our children, we may need to schedule one- on-one visits—a time when we can give them our
full attention and listen to them without censoring, lecturing, or comparing.

17. Renew your commitment to things you have in common.
Continually renew your basic commitment to the things that unite you with your friends, family, and fellow workers. Their deepest loyalties and strongest feelings attach to these things rather than to the problems or issues around which differences often emerge. Differences are not ignored; they are subordinated. The issue or one’s point is never as important as the relationship.

18. Be influenced by them first.
We have influence with others to the degree they feel they have influence with us. As the saying goes, “I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care.” When another feels you genuinely care about him and that you understand his unique problems and feelings, he also feels he has influenced you. He will then become amazingly open. We take the prescription because it is based on the diagnosis.

19. Accept the person and the situation.
The first step in changing or improving another is to accept him as he is. Nothing reinforces defensive behavior more than judgment, comparison, or rejection. A feeling of acceptance and worth frees a person from the need to defend and helps release the natural growth tendency to improve. Acceptance is not condoning a weakness or agreeing with an opinion. Rather, it is affirming the intrinsic worth of another by acknowledging that he does feel or think a particular way.

(Friday’s Populist Capitalist Blog Post)

A prime example is “sobriety checkpoints” in California. The quotation marks are because for every DUI arrest, 20 cars are impounded for failure to have a driver’s license. Yep, no driver’s license, no car. Armed police put you on the street, leave you to find your way home. Hope that is not your wife, your daughter, your son’s girlfriend suddenly on the street. Hope there are no children in the car, hope there is a cell phone to call for help, hope there is someone to call, hope someone answers, hope that person has a car and a license. (The New York Times, “Sobriety Checkpoints Catch Unlicensed Drivers,” February 14, 2010)

Think that we do not live in a police state? Think that your possessions are yours and cannot be seized? Dream on! Those are your rights in THEORY. Your REAL rights, your rights in any practical sense of the word, are a lot less. First, the actions of the police in stealing—excuse me—seizing cars are of doubtful legality. The general rule is that the “taking of personal property without a warrant is unconstitutional.” However, the police, in effect acting as instant, on-the-spot prosecutor, judge, and jury all in one, argue that “impoundments were penalties for a criminal offense, and that therefore car owners were not subject to Fourth Amendment protections.”

While there is an economic benefit for strapped cities, it comes at a cost to taxpayers. In the last fiscal year, $30 million was authorized to pay overtime for officers working on the drunken-driving crackdowns. That money came from federal taxpayers through the California Office of Traffic Safety, which contracts with the University of California, Berkeley, to help distribute the money. Some of the police and civic enthusiasm may be driven by the discrepancy between who gets the $40 million benefit (cities and towing companies in California) and who pays the $30 million in overtime (federal government). The practice is exceedingly lucrative for both the towing companies and the police departments who keep most of the proceeds from the impoundments, creating an astounding conflict of interest.

Why no outcry? Why no massive federal lawsuits? Because the impoundments deliberately target the poor and weak: Hispanics make up 25% of San Rafael BUT 10 of the city’s 12 sobriety checkpoints took place around the city’s Hispanic neighborhoods, leading to a whopping 4 DUI arrests but 121 cars impounded for driver’s license violations. In many cases the drivers were immigrants without papers who lack the resources to get their cars back and to whom their cars are their greatest financial asset, their life’s blood, the way they keep their jobs. The human toll is huge: “You’re standing there like some armed guard inventorying her belongings as she takes them out; I have to stand here for days and watch them take their whole life out of their vehicles.”

While it is true that the many of those who lose their cars are immigrants without papers, that is no justification for skirting the rule of law, ignoring basic justice, fundamental concepts of humanity, or acting without mercy. Simply applying a label to a person is the oldest technique of despots and demagogues throughout history to try to get us not to see the human being to whom the label is attached.

It is said that the true measure of a society is how it treats the helpless. To fail to help is one thing, to trip them up and kick them while they are down is quite another.

Closing Quotes

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” — Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (“Who will guard the guards themselves?”) — Satires of Juvenal, 1st-2nd century Roman satirist and poet; the same problem was cited by Plato in “The Republic.”

“The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference,” — Bess Myerson (Born in the Bronx, New York, in 1924, Myerson became in 1945 the first Jewish woman to win the Miss America pageant. In the 1970s and 1980s, she was involved in New York City politics. While competing in beauty pageants, Myerson refused, despite entreaties, to employ a pseudonym that “sounded less Jewish.” She faced prejudice even after winning the Miss America title, with many sponsors and events long associated with the pageant refusing to deal with her. She later campaigned for civil rights, in particular, working with the Anti-Defamation League. Source: Wikipedia)

—NYT ARTICLE—

Sobriety Checkpoints Catch Unlicensed Drivers
By RYAN GABRIELSON
The New York Times

Bernardino’s wife began to sob as soon as she saw the signs warning “sobriety checkpoint ahead.”

“They cannot do anything to us,” said Bernardino, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, as he pulled their 1997 Ford Explorer into a police checkpoint in San Pablo.

His wife knew better. They were sober, but Bernardino, who would not allow his last name to be used because of his illegal status, had no driver’s license, an offense that would cost them their car.

Sobriety checkpoints, like the one in San Pablo, have increasingly become profitable operations that are far more likely to seize cars from unlicensed — and often illegal immigrant — motorists, than to catch drunken drivers.

An examination by the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that in 2009, impoundments at checkpoints generated an estimated $40 million in towing fees and police fines statewide. Cities like Oakland, San Jose, San Rafael, Hayward and Redwood City divide the revenue with towing companies.

While there is an economic benefit for strapped cities, it comes at a cost to taxpayers. In the last fiscal year, $30 million was authorized to pay overtime for officers working on the drunken-driving crackdowns. That money came from federal taxpayers through the California Office of Traffic Safety, which contracts with the University of California, Berkeley, to help distribute the money.

While the checkpoints do catch some drunken drivers, the police manning them are also leaving sober but unlicensed drivers, like Bernardino, on the side of the road, with no hope of regaining their vehicle for at least a month. Once vehicles are impounded, California law requires towing companies to hold them for 30 days. That can mean storage fees and fines that run from $1,000 to $4,000, municipal finance records show. Unlicensed motorists rarely challenge the impoundments.

Often the owners lack the money to recover their cars. Tow companies do not require vehicle owners to have a driver’s license, but they must bring a legal driver with them to the tow lot.

Perry Shusta, vice president of the California Tow Truck Association and owner of Arrowhead Towing in Antioch, said two-thirds or more of the impounded vehicles were never reclaimed and were sold at lien sales.

The proceeds go primarily to the towing companies.

The Investigative Reporting Program reviewed hundreds of pages of city financial records and police reports, and analyzed data from sobriety checkpoints during the past two years. The data revealed that police departments across the state are seizing a growing number of vehicles from unlicensed drivers. In the last fiscal year, the police seized approximately 24,000 such cars at sobriety checkpoints, up from 17,900 in 2008 and 15,700 in 2007.

Law enforcement officials say demographics play no role in determining where the police establish checkpoints. But records show that cities where Hispanics make up a majority of the population are seizing cars at three times the rate of cities with small minority populations. Sobriety checkpoints typically take place on major thoroughfares near highways. On average, officers seize seven cars for each drunken-driving arrest, state data show. The disparity is far greater in some cities. San Rafael averaged almost 15 impoundments for each drunken-driving arrest in the last fiscal year, and the police in Oakland seized 11 cars for every drunken driver who was caught. And in Montebello, state records show, checkpoints netted up to 60 impoundments for every drunken driver apprehended.

Police officials said they asked for driver’s licenses at sobriety checkpoints because doing so helped remove another kind of unsafe motorist from the road — unlicensed drivers — and because the California Office of Traffic Safety, which provides the grants for the checkpoints, advises departments to do so. Research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that motorists driving with a suspended or revoked license cause collisions at a higher rate than licensed drivers.

“I think that a significant number of the hit-and-run drivers, when we do apprehend them, often have no driver’s license,” said Chief Ron Ace of the Hayward Police Department. “Which adds to one of the reasons why they don’t stick around.

”The seizures appear to defy a 2005 federal appellate court ruling that the police cannot impound a car solely because the driver is unlicensed.

Christine Gasparac, a spokeswoman for the office of Attorney General Jerry Brown, wrote in an e-mail message that the “law is unclear regarding the circumstances under which a vehicle operated by a driver who is determined at a checkpoint to be unlicensed may be constitutionally impounded at the scene.”

A challenge to the constitutionality of California’s 30-day impound law will be argued later this year before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Ms. Gasparac said the ruling might clear the matter.

The San Francisco Police Department is not waiting for a ruling; it recently altered its impoundment policy to allow unlicensed motorists 20 minutes to find a legal driver to move their car from the scene. The policy of the California Highway Patrol is to refrain from impounding vehicles at its checkpoints simply because the driver has no license.

Data from state records show that Bernardino was one of 91 unlicensed drivers to lose his car in San Pablo in 2009. The ratio of impoundments to driving under the influence arrests was high around the Bay Area in 2009: In Daly City, there were 39.5 impoundments for every D.U.I. arrest; in San Rafael, 18.6; and in San Pablo, 9.

Drunken-driving checkpoints have saved countless lives on the nation’s roadways. But in California, motorists arrested for drunken driving can usually retrieve their vehicles the next day.

Impoundments, on the other hand, can create a significant economic hardship for those who depend on a vehicle to get to work. And the consequences can be more than economic.

Bernardino, for example, worked seven days a week to raise $1,900 to pay the city fines and tow fees so he could recover his sports utility vehicle. After 30 days, he gave the money to his brother-in-law — a licensed driver and the vehicle’s registered owner.

But an acquaintance robbed Bernardino’s in-law of the money and shot him to death the day he was to retrieve the Explorer.

For three months, as his family mourned and struggled to send money to relatives back home, Bernardino said he worked long hours so he could buy another car, allowing him to travel to higher-paying jobs in other Bay Area cities.

“If I lose the car, I cannot do anything, so I need to have it,” Bernardino said in Spanish. “I have to drive because I have no alternative.”

While state law prevents an illegal immigrant like Bernardino from getting a driver’s license, it does not prevent him from buying a vehicle.

Location, Location
A checkpoint typically lasts six hours. As the cars roll through and licenses are checked, officers rarely inquire about the drivers’ residency status. Nor do they contact United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement when they suspect unlicensed motorists are in the country illegally.

In mid-December, the Hayward police stopped Hugo Hernandez, a 26-year-old illegal immigrant and unlicensed driver, at a checkpoint and impounded his 2002 Nissan Altima.

Mr. Hernandez went to the police headquarters the next day to pay his fine and retrieve the car. But a Hayward Police Department clerk told him the car would be kept for 30 days, he said.

Local governments require car owners to pay impoundment release fees, on average $155, cities’ records show. And cities increasingly charge tow companies franchise fees, which gives the governments a cut of the dollars raised through impoundments.

The checkpoint where Mr. Hernandez was stopped was outside El Potro, a Latin music nightclub run by Francisco Ruiz. Mr. Ruiz said that for a dozen years, he had not seen any sobriety checkpoints. Then, the police department confirmed, it conducted four operations there in 2009.The state does not consistently collect data on where departments set up sobriety checkpoints. A majority of more than a dozen California law enforcement agencies refused to release records showing which intersections they single out or what had happened at checkpoints. But the disparity between vehicle impoundments and arrests for drunken driving exists in nearly every region of California. South Gate and several other cities around Los Angeles average 20 cars impounded for every D.U.I. arrest.

Hispanics make up only a quarter of the residents of San Rafael, according to data from the federal Census Bureau. In the past two years, however, 10 of the city’s 12 sobriety checkpoints took place on streets surrounding the city’s Hispanic neighborhoods, the Canal District. Those operations resulted in four arrests for drunken driving and 121 cars impounded for driver’s license violations.

Lt. Glenn McElderry, head of the San Rafael Police Department traffic unit, said, “We do not put checkpoints right there in the Canal District.”

While the police have not staged operations inside that district, department records show that checkpoints halted traffic on two primary feeder streets.

Impoundments at checkpoints are incidental, not intentional, law enforcement officials say. And the operations, they say, do not single out Hispanic areas. Nonetheless, it is often Hispanic drivers — sometimes whole families — who are left by the side of the road at a checkpoint without their car and all that was in it.

Some tow-company workers have seen Hispanic mothers arrive at impoundment lots to remove car seats and toys.

“You’re standing there like some armed guard inventorying her belongings as she takes them out,” said Mattea Ezgar, an office manager at Terra Linda Towing in San Rafael. “I have to stand here for days and watch them take their whole life out of their vehicles.”

Checkpoints’ Origins
Fifteen years ago, California lawmakers who broadened the impoundment authority of local police had no expectation of the kind of checkpoints now common in the state, said David Roberti, former president pro-tem of the State Senate.

“It’s turned out to be a far more vigorous enforcement than any of us would have dreamed of at the time,” Mr. Roberti said.

In 1994, Quentin L. Kopp, then a state senator representing San Francisco, sponsored the 30-day impoundment legislation to toughen penalties for a variety of traffic violations. Driving without a license was just one of them. The measure became law in 1995.In an interview last month, Mr. Kopp, now a judge in South San Francisco, said he had not intended to single out unlicensed drivers, and certainly not illegal immigrants.

“The impounding bill I don’t remember as being that controversial,” he said.

What he did not anticipate was the way his law would work in concert with a voter initiative, Proposition 187, which voters approved in 1995 and which took away illegal immigrants’ driver’s licenses and their chance to obtain one legally. The impoundment law then helped strip them of their cars.

But even with the new legal authority to set up frequent checkpoints, it was not until 2006 that their extensive use became evident.

Search and Seizure
“It is assumed under the law that the taking of personal property without a warrant is unconstitutional,” said Martin J. Mayer, a founding partner in the Fullerton law firm Jones & Mayer, who represents numerous law-enforcement associations.

Mr. Mayer was referring to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which restricts law enforcement’s authority to seize private property without a court order. That, he said, protects everyone, whether they are in the country legally or not. He communicated his opinion in a memorandum to his clients, California’s police chief and sheriffs, in 2005 after a ruling by the Ninth Circuit in an Oregon case.

In that decision the court held that law enforcement could not impound a vehicle if the only offense was unlicensed driving. The only exception permitted the police to impound a car was if it posed a threat to public safety, was parked illegally or would soon be vandalized if left in place.

The ruling sharply altered the legal status of vehicle impoundments. In response, in 2007 the legislative counsel of California called on the state’s police departments to cease what had become a standard practice.

“If a peace officer lawfully stops a motor vehicle on the highway and the driver of the motor vehicle is an unlicensed driver, that alone is not sufficient justification for the peace officer to cause the impoundment of the motor vehicle,” the counsel, who advises lawmakers, said in a report. But the counsel has no authority over police departments.

In 2008, in a separate case in Federal District Court case, a judge arrived at a different conclusion, agreeing with the State of California and several cities, who were defendants and argued that the impoundments were penalties for a criminal offense, and that therefore car owners were not subject to Fourth Amendment protections. The plaintiffs’ appeal is pending.

Most California law enforcement agencies continue to seize vehicles based on driver’s license violations alone.

State officials have declared that 2010 is the “year of the checkpoint,” and plan 2,500 of the operations statewide.

Ryan Gabrielson is a fellow with the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Don’t Believe Everything You Think” also is a short book (239 pages plus notes and index), by Thomas E. Kida, on the seemingly lost art of critical thinking.

Six common errors of thinking:

- We tend to prefer stories to statistics, no matter how misleading the story or how accurate the stat.

- We seek to confirm, not question, our ideas; everyone wants to right, nobody wants to be wrong.

- We rarely fully appreciate the role of chance in shaping events, attributing to skill what is often merely random outcomes.

- Our memories often are inaccurate.

- We often misperceive the world; worse, we have an inordinate and unwarranted degree of confidence in the accuracy of our observations.

- We tend to oversimplify; the world is more complex than we possibly can deal with, hence we respond by looking for sole causes to things that are greatly overdetermined.

Closing Quotes:

“We think so because other people all think so; or because – or because – after all we do think so; or because we were told so, and think we must think so; or because we once thought so, and think we still think so; or because, having thought so, we think we will think so…” — Henry Sidgwick

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” — Aristotle

“No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.” — Henry David Thoreau

“Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” — John Cotton Dana

“Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.” — Voltaire

“Reason obeys itself: ignorance submits to what is dictated to it.” — Thomas Paine