Archives for March 2020

"Crash baby crash," wrote a socialist relative on Facebook last Friday, apparently referring to the stock market, which was apparently listening. 

I didn't appreciate that, as I was in the middle of what felt like a PTSD flashback from a memorable visit to my dad in Ohio in September, 2008.

Over a couple of weeks, Dad was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, the stock market crashed and cost him half of the savings of his careful life and a wind storm came along on a perfectly sunny Sunday in Cincinnati and blew out power in the area for three days.

Last week was the coronavirus panic and the ensuing stock market crash. And Friday I learned the fifty-nine-year-old brother of a dear pal, and a friend of mine, too had a devastating stroke. (He didn't make it.)

Usually work distracts me from trouble, but by Friday, trouble was distracting me from my work, and I found myself writing this instead of answering fucking emails.

I don't like to say that out loud. Aside from being a pretty buoyant soul by nature, I have a number of reasons to be publicly positive.

As the head of a small company, I feel responsible to be cheerful most of the time. A leader, Napoleon said, is a dealer in hope.

As the head of a professional association, I know a lot of people who are out of work, and others stuck in terrible jobs. I think it's more proper to worry about others than about myself. 

I'm writing a book urging Americans not to give up on one another, not to speak violently to one another urging them to "make an effort to understand."

I'm a husband to a woman who teaches in one of the most troubled neighborhoods in this troubled city.

I'm a dad to a teenager who's just getting acquainted with how monstrous people can be, and now meaningless life can seem.

Gaping blankly at the computer screen last Friday afternoon, I reminded myself of my mother's shrink in the 1970s. "Dr. R. says he’s been depressed lately, too," she wrote in her journal. "'Last Thursday, I just didn’t give a shit. I closed the office and went home.'"

Sometimes that's the best thing you can do.

From 5/18/17, originally published at the website of Vital Speeches of the Day. —DM

***

Bill Lane died last week.

Lane was a speechwriter and exec comms aide for legendary G.E. CEO Jack Welch for two decades—years during which Welch used leadership communication to “Talk G.E. into Becoming the World’s Greatest Company,” as Lane subtitled a fascinating and instructive memoir, Jacked Up.

The memoir, in which Lane said he eventually made seven figures at G.E., remains the best example I've ever seen of what it looks like when a CEO and a speechwriter actually believe that careful and candid communication is essential to successful management.

The book is also an obnoxious account of two brilliant, profane, testosterone-slathered men in a corporate culture full of them. I led off a mostly positive review of the book by writing something like, “Jack Welch and Bill Lane are a perfect pair of assholes, who deserved each other.”

Lane, who had spoken at a speechwriting event for me before writing his book, and would go on to appear at another one afterward, wrote to me and cheerfully said it was the best review he ever read.

He said he especially liked the “assholes” part. 

***

The book, if you can manage to see the forest for the toxic masculinity, is an amazing account of what can happen when a leader decides that a company is going to start telling the truth—rigorously, strategically and compellingly.

This comes courtesy of our correspondent from mid-20th century Britain, Peter Dean.