From The Window Seat

Hooked on Deadliest Catch

I have to assume that I'm not the only desk jockey in love with Discovery Channel's "The Deadliest Catch" series.  But why is this show so popular?  What is the appeal?

There's a couple reasons.  First, I am fascinated by the unbelievably hazardous and downright unpleasant environment in which these crews work to put food on my table.  They are but a symbol for the many men and woman who toil in the food supply chain so I can enjoy a delicious meal with relatively little effort.  I actually I feel I owe it to them out of respect for their contribution to our dinner tables to watch as they toil.

Second, the work they do results directly in the monetary reward they receive.  Catch too many crabs - you get a fine.  Catch to few - you don't make as much dough. Sounds totally fair, but not the way most of us white collar workers are compensated.

Third, the job has a beginning and end.  Crab season has its limits.  You either succeed or fail, then you are off for five months or something like that.  I often say my favorite job was McDonald's where with each customer transaction I could tell if I made someone happy, or not.  And at the end of the day, I was done.  Didn't lose any sleep on that job.

Finally, the core message of this show seems to be about the importance of team work.  I'm just waiting for the Harvard Business School to issue a "Deadliest Catch Case Study for Corporate Team Building."  Heck, I think I'll offer to write it. 

Nature or Nurture?

I'm fascinated, though not surprised, by a recent study out of the United Kingdom that shows that children undertaking activities in nature appear to improve symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder by 30 percent.   The stat is reported in "Ad Busters" magazine by Paul Cooper.

The problem, as Cooper sees it, is that kids are spending less time entertaining themselves in the great outdoors. Cell phones, text messaging, video games and on-line chatting are taking the place of building forts and exploring secret gardens. As a heavy user of on-line technologies myself, I'm a bit sheepish about criticizing those sedentary activities. But must it be one or the other?

This past weekend my husband and I went hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We got a ton of exercise hiking, saw beautiful waterfalls, dozens of deer, and even a bear. AND..I'm blogging about it.  See - it isn't an "either/or" game. 

Sticker Shock

This campaign cycle, I’ve noticed an increasing number of people opting to display their candidate's bumper sticker in their rear window rather than affixed to the actual bumper. I read into that a certain lack of commitment.  It says, “I will risk letting you ruin my country, but not my car.”

I resemble that remark

“Even some of Washington's fiercest opponents of oil drilling are thinking anew, and the politics of domestic energy production seem to be shifting,” according to the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.  I am afraid I resemble that remark.

When I first went to Capitol Hill in the mid 1980s, one of my first assignments was to circulate a “Dear Colleague” for signature by all Members of the Florida Congressional delegation opposing offshore oil drilling off the Florida Gulf Coast. I was excited about the assignment and thought it was cool how united the Democrat and Republican offices were on this issue.

Twenty-five years later, I came home today and told my husband I think I’m becoming more conservative. Let’s face it – our country is at tremendous risk of being held hostage not by terrorist, but by those who supply the energy we depend on to function as a nation.

 I don’t regret my support for the oil drilling bans all those years ago, but I do regret we didn’t get all those “Dear Colleague” signatories to use their collective political muscle to promote  alternative solutions for domestic energy production.  I hope it isn’t too late.

All Tied Up

In Washington, there is an association for just about everything. People and companies join these associations for a number of reasons, from harnessing the power of collective advocacy on Capitol Hill to sharing best practices. 

Most associations have a long shelf life, but occasionally some fall by the wayside.  This past week, a sad page in history was written with the closing down of the Men’s Dress Furnishings Association.*   According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of association members shrunk from 120 in the 1980’s “power tie” heyday to just 25.   

 

The number of men who wore ties every day to work dropped from 10 % in 2002, according to Gallup, to 6 percent last year.

 

I read of this development with a sad heart. I’ve always found ties to be a nice way for men to demonstrate their style, creativity and mood.  My husband must own well over 100 styles himself, and I think they are (almost) all very nice.

 

But for a woman who gave up panty hose probably five years ago, I can’t blame men for ditching the noose around their neck.  Please – just don’t give up the button downs for pullovers.  

 

(* Note:  The Men's Furnishings Association’s Websitedoesn’t say anything about the closing of the association, and it’s a pretty cool site that allows you to test your tie-shirt combo prowess.)

Energy Efficiency for Kids

Scanning the morning papers or watching the evening news, it is easy to get overwhelmed by all the world’s problems.  Conflict, disease, natural disasters, poverty, global warming.  But I was uplifted to learn about a group that is trying to identify the solvable ones.

 

With a grant from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Copenhagen Consensus Center analyzes the world's greatest challenges and identifies cost efficient solutions to meeting these challenges. For the last two years, the Center engaged over 50 leading economist, including fie Nobel laureates, over the last two years to evaluate ideas for addressing some of our greatest threats with limited resources.

The “winning” proposal was a plan to provide micronutrients for 80% of the 140 million children who lack essential vitamins in the form of vitamin A capsules and a course of zinc supplements.  Maternal and child malnutrition causes more death and disability than any disease.  While we hold mock debates in the U.S. Congress over the best way to achieve energy efficiency, millions of kids don’t have the energy to get out of bed or go to school.

 

The cost for making a significant dent in this global public health problem is a mere $60 million/year, according to the proposal’s author Sue Horton. Interestingly, I’ve been hearing for years about the value of bringing vitamins to impoverished countries through food fortification programs as a member of Bread for the World.  BFW cites studies in Mexico, Kenya and Indonesia where fortification programs have increased workforce productivity by 7 to 42 times the cost of the program. 

But now that the Wall Street Journal is talking about it, perhaps those who have the power to make this idea a reality will listen.

Young Voices

By now you may have read about the 13-year-old Kieiara Bell who made a Detroit Councilwoman, Monica Conyers, look like a fool for her behavior at a council meeting.  Actually, Conyers made herself look foolish and the young Bell just did an outstanding job pointing it out. If you haven’t seen the video, it’s a must.

 

The whole incident reminds me of the time I went to cover a Leon County School Board hearing as a student journalist. The topic of debate was whether to raise property taxes to support education.  As one after another citizen lined up to squawk against the proposed tax, I grew increasingly incensed by their lack of understanding of the desperate financial state our schools in.  We had no air conditioning…in a Florida school for heavens sake!

 

Prodded by one of the council members and my classmates, I ditched my journalistic hat and took the microphone to make a passionate plea in favor the tax (yes, I am a Democrat.)  Much like what Kierara Bell is experiencing, I was an overnight star. The Tallahassee Democrat published an editorial citing my brave position in the face of a hostile crowd and a local business on the major downtown thoroughfare put “Congratulations Ann Hardison” on its billboard. It was all rather embarrassing yet empowering at the same time.

 

But let me not bore with yet another war story from high school.  The point is, young people often have a good point to make, and we should keep our ears open to what they have to say.   

Shuttle Wisdom

This past week I had a business meeting requiring a DC to LGA trip on the USAirways shuttle.  It’s been several years since I was a frequent flier on this route.  But as always, I found the quick jaunt too short to start a book but just long enough to inspire some deeper-than-usual thinking.

 

This particular trip I found myself surprisingly delighted by how full the flight was in both directions. (I can say this because with good planning I myself was spared from a dreadful middle seat in the back.)  My pleasure came in the satisfaction of seeing that, despite the proliferation of technology-based communication, business still requires a good deal of direct, personal contact.

 

Don’t misunderstand.  I believe that the Information Communications Technology (ICT) sector is probably doing more than any to enhance productivity and minimize environmental impacts.  And I’m pretty “switched on” as we like to say at Fleishman-Hillard.

 

But if  were on the board of Delta or USAir, I’d be suggesting a long, hard look at how to keep those seats full when the younger generation that formed friendships in virtual spaces comes of age in the work world.  

 

Will future generations understand the concept that as in business as in life, sometimes you simply must “show-up?”

Observing History, Again

Two high school kids from Scranton made news this week for being suspended from school. Their crime – leaving school grounds to crash a Barak Obama photo op.

Twenty-eight years ago practically to the day, my high school friend Doug Hattaway and I got busted for the same thing. We skipped out of class to see President Jimmy Carter who was visiting the Tallahassee Capitol. He was there to announce a planned federal response to the Mariel Boatlift crisis that was unfolding in Florida.

My recollection of the details is sketchy. I think we used the press passes we had as reporters for the Leon High School student paper to get into the media room. I’m pretty sure one of us actually got to ask the President a question. We accidently closed the elevator doors on Sam Donaldson. And I have a fleeting memory of thrilling our fellow scholastic journalists with other details of our adventure when we returned to school that afternoon.

But I do remember very clearly that my geometry teacher (aptly named Killer Miller) failed me on the pop quiz she gave that day, which ruined my already pathetic GPA for that class. She could care less that my excuse was having gone to cover the President’s press conference.

So, I feel a bond with these kids, especially the one who reportedly has the Rick James’ hit song “Super Freak” on his cell phone. That was “the” song back when I was at old Leon High.

As they saying goes, history does, in fact, repeat itself.

Telling Stories, the Old Fashioned Way

When you ask people in my line of work about we do, often they will say, “we are story tellers.” Maybe that explains my lifelong interest in hieroglyphs. (While "hieroglyphics" is commonly used, it is discouraged by Egyptologists.)

Over the years, I’ve been to several museum exhibits featuring hieroglyphs and even bought a few books on the subject, which I’ll admit are gathering dust. I even frequent this cool website, www.hieroglyphs.net, which provides tutorials, quizzes and even the chance to write sentences in this ancient Egyptian language.

It is a terribly interesting yet complex communication system to decipher.

The concept of hieroglyphs is a nice metaphor for what we tell our clients. Your language, your acronyms, your daily way of communicating among yourselves is basically gibberish to an outsider. Your audiences need a glossary, a translator and a context (i.e. a story) in which to understand what it is you feel is important to communicate to them.

A few weeks ago in this space I panned a book about using doodles to make a point in a business presentation. But I think the next time I go to a meeting where I have to explain the value of hiring story tellers, I’ll start by introducing myself with the doodle below. It’s my name…in hieroglyph.