The Modern Fool

Although most often associated with English courts of Medieval and Renaissance times, the Court Jester has actually appeared throughout history as an important member of Royal Courts around the world.  Jesters came in two flavors, the "natural fool" and the "licensed fool".  The natural fool appears to have been pure entertainment for the court, and was often afflicted with some type of mental or physical disability.  (This period of history was not known for its political correctness!)  The licensed fool was a completely different case.  Their job was to be critical of the Monarch and the Court - often using fairly severe ridicule to make his point.  Court Jesters were given great latitude by their Monarch, allowing them to say things that no other member of the Court would dare to say.  They often made enemies of powerful members of the Court, but as long as they were favored by the Monarch, they were safe.  For example, a story is told of a Persian Fool who, when the Shah asked whether there was a shortage of food, said: "Yes, I see your Majesty is eating only 5 times a day."   Fools were also often responsible for telling the Monarch bad news.  When the French fleet was destroyed by the English Navy in the Battle of Sluys, the French Jester told King Philipe VI that the English Sailors "don't even have the guts to jump into the water like our brave French."

I believe the modern corporation has revived the ancient tradition of the Court Jester.  The modern Court Jester is now known as the advisory business consultant.  The business consultant is now a fixture in the boardrooms of many powerful CEOs and corporate elite.  You have probably seen them - they hover near the seat of power, acting as personal advisors and confidants to their corporate monarch.  Just like the Fools of Olde England, the business consultant is often the only member of the executive team that can truly be openly critical of anyone or any idea without fear of repercussions.  As long as they are favored by their benefactor, they can wield enormous power, and they may have more direct access to the top decision maker than any other member of the executive team.  Very few people outside of the top corporate tier are even aware of the business consultant, let alone the influence they carry.  They are paid to stay behind the throne, and they are often very good at working from the shadows.

From where I'm sitting, that sounds like a pretty sweet gig.  Sure, your picture isn't going to be displayed in the company's annual report - but in many companies, you may enjoy a much longer tenure than the majority of the senior leadership team.  But more importantly, the business consultant enjoys a freedom of thought and action that is found nowhere else in the corporation.  In most corporations today, it seems that to get to the big table, one of the most important skills is the ability to interpret, process and respond in veiled and encrypted corpspeak.  No one speaks their mind and everything that is said must be instantly and carefully analyzed for hidden maneuverings that may result in a loss of status among your peers.  This seems to go beyond mere "politics" - it seems to have risen to the level of a TV drama - every week there is a new crisis, and alliances shift every 10 minutes.

Only the business consultant seems to be above the daily fray.  It's not that they are unaware of the nonsense - they are absolutely listening to, and understanding, the corpspeak debates - it's just that they are much more likely to cut through the BS and say what really needed to be said without trying to hide it within multiple layers of personal ladder-climbing moves.

I find this a curious example of human behavior - and I also find it fascinating that this type of behavior has been present within groups of powerful human beings for thousands of years.  What is it about the human condition that causes this model to so often be repeated?  It baffles me why a corporate president would populate the executive offices with the best minds they can find - and then still feel the need to hire an external consultant as a "trusted advisor".

I suppose it is possible that the executive business consultant is simply another status symbol - like the corner office, the first class travel and the $1000 designer shoes - all the cool kids have at least one.  If that is the primary purpose, that's very disturbing.  These same leadership teams are downsizing employees, shrinking benefits and requiring employees to take unpaid days off to meet analyst estimates - and yet they are paying a business consultant an amount equal to the salary of 3 or 4 employees.

Another explanation is that the use of consultants may be seen by the executive team as a way to reduce personal risk.  When a decision goes bad, it at least gives the president a way to deflect some of the blame - "Hey, I was advised by the best consultant in the industry and we did everything they said to do.  No one could have known this was a bad idea."  Of course, the consultant will be fired, but the president might survive.

I know this sounds cynical - and (of course) no executive would ever admit to these reasons - but I think they make about as much sense as having a roomful of bajillion dollar senior executives that need a consultant to tell them how to run their own company.  At least the medieval courts had an excuse - the royalty was composed of Lords & Ladies that inherited their posts, and eventually, the royal gene pool started getting pretty shallow.  As far as I know, inbreeding isn't typically a problem in corporate boardrooms - yet...

Artificial Intelligence

No, this is not another story about killer robots....

I just finished "Patches", a science fiction short story by Lesley Choyce.   It is about a dystopian society where all human beings were connected to a central information store called "The Source" through a skin patch that provided a direct interface between the human brain and "The Network".  The Source was sentient, and had taken control of The Network and all humans, issuing pain and information through the patches to maintain order in society.  An android appendage of The Network made a statement that all human beings were equal and they were no more than a collection of their biological parts.  His belief was that because the Network contained all the information known to humans (by tapping directly into their brains and all other data storage devices) it also possessed all the actual knowledge in the world - because knowledge and information were identical.  A small group of humans, struggling to free themselves from the Network, completely disagreed, and said that knowledge was much more than simply a collection of information.

I think this story points out a very likely failure in a machine ever achieving true artificial intelligence.  It seems very plausible to me that a machine would be unable to discern the difference between information and knowledge.  I think this concept may be one of the fundamental barriers that must be overcome for any machine intelligence to achieve sentience.

Unfortunately, many corporations are falling into this same trap - and I believe IT professionals have merrily led the corporate leaders down this false trail.  Since the beginning of the computer age, we have been chanting the power of information - and we have said that without good information, a company cannot make good decisions and is doomed to failure.  Heck, even our own names for what we do: "Information Technology", "Information Services" or even the old "Data Processing" show that we are focused on the collection and management of the information - not the knowledge that information represents.

There is no better example of this than the typical corporate HR form used to apply for a new job.  A couple of years ago, I wrote about the ridiculous amount of information an applicant must provide in order to apply for a job using the typical online recruiting systems.  I would claim that most of this data provides nearly zero additional knowledge to the company - it certainly is not used during the typical hiring process, or if it is, it is used only in the most crude way to filter out candidates and reduce the size of the potential candidate pool.

The same is true for a vast amount of other information gathered from all across the corporation.  There are massive amounts of data being collected, massaged and reported that provide little or no additional knowledge to the company.  This represents a huge expenditure of corporate resources for absolutely no business value.  It also demonstrates a fundamental problem within many corporate boardrooms: the inability of senior business leaders to define the key metrics that are used to run their company.

There are certainly some companies that have defined their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and they really do use those metrics to make tactical and strategic decisions.  If you work in one of these companies - you are fortunate - count your blessings.  It was only when I moved to a company that did not have defined KPIs that I learned that it was even possible to run a large corporation without good business metrics.

What is really sad is that it seems these companies do not understand or recognize the issue.  To them, sitting in an Executive Team meeting and suddenly asking:  "How did the flood in Thailand affect our sales to Southeast Asia compared to how our sales were affected in 1980 by the election of Ronald Reagan?" is a critical data point that will drive all future corporate strategy.  The rest of the executives turn to the CIO and say:  "That's a simple report, you have all the data, right?"  And the CIO's response is (of course) "I'm sure we do, we'll have that for you later today."

After delaying 3 critical projects and pulling four straight all-nighters, the report is finally produced and scheduled to run weekly for the executive team meetings.  However the CIO is mad that your data warehouse and business intelligence tools are so poorly implemented that you couldn't meet his expectations.  When the report is sent to the executive team, there is a "thank you" reply from the CEO - and nothing is every heard about that report again.  Six weeks later, you check the logs for that report, and you find that there has been exactly one person who has ever accessed the new report - the IT analyst who was tasked to make sure all the reports run successfully every week...

OK, the report criteria I used for this example was fictional, but everything else was a regular occurrence.  The senior leadership believed it was perfectly acceptable to ask any random "I wonder..." question and the data would be available and the report easily produced.  It never occurred to them how disruptive their seat of the pants management style was to everyone involved in producing those ad-hoc reports.  And even worse, the ad-hoc reports were often not actually used for anything - they were apparently just an idle thought that wasn't actually the basis of any decision making process.

In some companies, this behavior is combated by purchasing more ad-hoc reporting tools in an attempt to provide the executives and their staff the ability to run their own reports.  That may work in larger companies where their is enough staff to cater to the executive whims - but not in companies that run much leaner.  Unfortunately, expecting executives to do their own ad-hoc reporting is a foolish hypothesis - it's simply NOT going to happen, and the result is the worst of all worlds - you have spent the money on the easy to use tools, you do not have the staff to do the ad-hoc analysis, and the executives are still asking the questions and looking at the CIO to provide the answers.

Now, let's say that you are finally fed-up, and you decide to launch a new business intelligence initiative.  The consultants tell you that step 1 is to define the KPIs that are used to drive the business decisions.  So, you go to the executives, and you ask:  "What are the key metrics that drive your decision making processes?"  You get a blank look, followed by the typical executive 2-step shuffle that makes this your fault for not providing the executive with the proper information for them to make *this* decision.  You have no choice but to beat a hasty retreat and rethink your chosen career path.

When you get back to your office and calm down, you realize a startling fact:  the executives do not really know how they make decisions.  They *are* making decisions - they do it every day in all parts of the business - but they simply can't define what information they use to do it.  Even more frightening, you also realize that if they have not defined those metrics, there is absolutely no way the decisions they do make can be consistent, logical or data driven.  Good grief, no wonder the decisions often seem to be somewhat random - they *are* somewhat random!

In an ideal world, the key business decisions are driven by specific data elements and threshold values.  Above the threshold, the decision is X, below the threshold, the decision is Y.  If you have all the key operational metrics defined, your business can almost run on remote control.  At least, that's what the business consultants and best selling authors say.  Of course, in the real world, there are always un-quantifiable factors that influence the decision.  It might be office politics, shareholder sentiment, perceived risk or simply a hunch.    However, should you let those influences drive your decision in the face of opposing data?  Of course, if you do not have the data (opposing or otherwise), then those influences are all you have.  That doesn't seem to me to be a prudent business strategy.

Developing KPIs really is difficult, I'm certainly not trying to say it is easy, because it is not.  You must force yourself to determine the key operational decisions, and also determine what data you use to make those decisions.  In addition, you *must* also determine the threshold values for each data element.  Without a defined threshold to tell you whether to move the lever left or right, you are simply looking at data without a business context.  You may find that some of your decisions are based on trends - upward, flat or downward - once again, without knowing how you will use the data, seeing the data will not help you make the decision.

I suspect that some executives do not really want to define their decision making processes.  They may believe, or want others to believe, that their decision making is a combination of unique insight, luck and magic that is only found within their well-paid head.  If I was an investor in a company with leadership like that, I would be very, very nervous.  I don't want to invest in unique insight, luck and magic - that might be OK for betting the longshots at Santa Anita horse races, but not my 401k money!  I want leadership that can articulate how they run the business, and I want to know that they aren't just flying by the seat of their pants.

I urge all business leaders to take a critical look at the information they are collecting, processing and reporting.  If you can't directly link the data to a specific business decision - then stop collecting and reporting on that data - it's a waste of your precious resources.  Encourage employees to question all requests for new data and new reports.  "Because the VP wants it" is NOT a good reason.  Every report should have a purpose, and "I've always run that report on the 3rd Tuesday of every month" is NOT a valid business purpose.  Don't just collect information - always strive to create knowledge.                            

The Big Lie

Is honesty a dead concept inside corporations?  Why do managers lie to their employees?  Is it all just to protect the company against litigation?  "Open and honest feedback" is a catch phrase in the majority of corporate statements on ethics and values - but I believe the reality is that the vast majority of corporate leaders refuse to give *any* feedback - and when they do - it will be (at best) corp-speak: legally blessed yet completely meaningless.  At worst, it will be a complete fabrication - a lie to satisfy the employee and make them shut-up and get out of their office.

I recently read a blog (sorry - I didn't save the link) by an HR recruiter that said that the primary reason many companies do not provide feedback to job candidates is that often that feedback simply starts an argument with the job candidate and leads to job candidates responding with an abusive reply.  I'm sure that's true - especially when the interview was as ridiculous as some of the interviews I have been on - and you then find out that it was a waste of time because they promoted an internal candidate or they give you a BS reason that is an obvious brush off.  Of course, some candidates are also just jerks - and they would blast back at any failure to be hired.

However, is that really a good excuse for a company not living by their own corporate values?  Perhaps they should change the corporate values to say "Open and honest communication, when it is convenient and doesn't lead to conflict."  In addition, even a system generated "thank you for applying, however you have not been selected for this role" is FAR better than simply providing nothing back to the candidate.  How rude do you have to be to invite a candidate in for a face-to-face interview, then simply never respond to the candidates phone calls or emails asking for a status?  Are you really that busy, or do you simply have so little thought for another human being?  I suspect the latter - because job candidates are not really people - they are just resumes or names in a database.

Of course, it's not just the recruiting process where honesty is dead.  Lack of honest communication runs rampant through organizations.  I pity the poor employee who actually believes the senior executive when they give the "I have an open door policy" speech.  The typical senior executive wants to hear only "It's done" from their employees.  If you are part of the inner circle of a corporate leader, you can see the planning that goes into the half-truths, misdirection and spin-doctoring at the top - of course, you won't see the planning that goes into the spin applied to *you*...

The typical justification for not being honest when speaking to employees is that managers "must do what's in the best interest of the company."  If they actually told the employees that they will all be replaced within a year with lower cost offshore contractors, the employees would all bail and the corporation would grind to a halt.  So, the managers lie.  They say that the future looks bright.  They say that you are a key member of the team that will lead the company into the future.  They say that there are no plans to cut staff.  They say these things at the same time they are working with HR to eliminate your position, meeting with candidates to "upgrade" you for another resource and/or working with offshore staffing firms to move your job to Bangalore, Bucharest or Shenzhen.

Once upon a time, when a company wanted to use a different technology, the project would include training for the existing IT staff so that they would be able to work with and support the new technology.  Now, the existing staff is simply replaced with new resources already trained in the new technology.  If there are still older legacy systems that also need to be supported, contractors are hired until those systems can be replaced.  The IT staff is rotated with the systems, and since the typical life of an IT system is 3-5 years, that is also the maximum time you can expect to keep your corporate IT job.

OK - so looking at this from the CEO's position, what's wrong with this scenario?  He's getting the best IT resources for the lowest cost, and he doesn't have to continuously spend money to train his internal staff.  After all, once they are trained, they might just leave the company for another gig anyway.

I see several issues with this short-sighted strategy:

1. No functional business knowledge continuity - It is tempting to believe that the tech geeks in your IT department don't need to understand how your business operates.  That is dead wrong.  The more the technical staff knows about how the business operates, the better your systems will match your true business requirements.  Translating functional business requirements into technical system designs is the absolute key to any successful technology project.  It is the difference between happy & efficient users, and an expensive pile of useless HW & SW.  Fail to recognize this at your peril.

2. Failure to form a Business-IT partnership - If you have fallen into the fallacy of believing your IT staff doesn't need to understand your business, then it must follow that you believe all business knowledge must come from the business users.  Congratulations, what you have just established is the typical Business vs IT organization where neither understands the other's world, and the business sees IT as simply a group of techies that need to be told what to do.  Conversely, IT sees the business as demanding technophobes that have no clue what they are asking IT to build.  There can be no partnership without understanding, and there can be no understanding without knowledge being shared in both directions.  This requires the ability to build long-term relationships at the employee level - not just at the executive table.

3. Lack of Innovation - It's all well and good to hold the CIO responsible for the long-range IT strategic vision - that's his job.  However, the CIO often does not see the day-to-day technical challenges that are faced by his staff.  It is very common for these daily challenges to drive ideas for improvements in processes and systems that represent the source of innovation within the IT department.  If your staff is composed of specialists in your current technology and augmented with low-cost contractors, you may very well have limited the amount of innovation that will be generated by your staff.  An employee looking at a maximum of a 3-5 year gig has very little incentive to maximize efficiency - particularly if that efficiency means a new technology that will ultimately result in them being replaced with another specialist.

4. No commitment - You are simply fooling yourself if you think your employees are unaware that a new technology means the end of their job.  They absolutely do know - they know because they are not receiving training on the new system, and their role on the implementation project is limited to "data conversion and migration" or "legacy system interfaces".  It will only be a personal desire to do good work that will keep your staff motivated.  You haven't earned their commitment and, quite frankly, you don't deserve it.  You will blame your project manager and the project team for not hitting their milestones - but really, you should be looking in the mirror to see who is to blame.

I'm not an executive (clearly!) but to me, the possible gains from this type of short-term thinking does not seem worth it.  Not when very expensive, business critical systems and projects are on the line.

There is another solution - don't lie to your employees.  If you believe a new system will mean an employee will be replaced, then be honest with them.  Tell them the end date, and give them an incentive package to stick around and hit that date.  The money is a pittance compared to failing to complete the new project.  Companies want it all - they want their employees to be happy little trolls toiling away in the salt mines, and they also want the ability to sweep them to the gutter when they aren't needed any longer.  But it won't work. Even the flying monkeys knew she was an evil witch.

    
  

What Happened To The 70's?

The completely laid-back teens from the 70's are now running our corporations with an iron fist. What happened to them? Why are they now overly-sensitive to ANY voices that do not march in lockstep with the drumbeat of the corporate galley-slave task masters?

I was a teenager in the 1970s - and the '70s were a time of great contrasts - it was after the drug heyday of the 1960s, yet my high school was full of stoners who got high at lunch - and drug use by high school kids was significantly higher in 1977 than it was in 1967. Being "born again" was the backlash away from the free love generation, and yet in 1975 the incidence of Gonorrhea was 3X higher than in 1965. The 1960s might have taught everyone how to do it, but in the 1970's more of us actually did it. The 1970s gave us Debbie Gibson, Andy Gibb and the Bee Gees, and it also gave us Van Halen, Ted Nugent and Kiss. It was a strange and confusing time to be a teen - but it was also considered relatively stable compared to the turbulent social upheaval of the 1960s and the worldwide economic and political changes of the 1980s.

The teens of the 1970s went on to create Microsoft, Apple & Dell and we also built the Space Shuttle. They powered the economy that destroyed the Soviet Union and tore down the Berlin Wall. In the 1990s, they were the middle managers who created the internet and drove the dot-com explosion. And now, they are the senior executives who run companies with an iron fist - controlling how their employees dress, speak, act and use the very technologies they helped to create. What the hell happened to them? How did they go from smoking pot, listening to Ted Nugent and having sex in their Camaro's (well, probably not Bill, but other kids were!) to now ordering the monitoring of their employee's email messages & Facebook posts, and purging anyone who does not march to the beat of their Armani-suited corporate drum?

I am very worried about the state of our corporate environment. The college graduates entering the corporate world today must be prepared to suppress their individuality for the sake of the corporate brand they now represent. They will be told that protecting the brand is their most important job - more important than any personal belief or idea they may have. Oh, the orders will be shrouded in corp-speak and called an "Employee Handbook", "Statement of Values" or "Social Responsibility" - but make no mistake, the primary purpose for them is NOT to protect the employees - it is to protect the brand FROM the actions of their employees.

Conform or die.

If we quash all individuality and self-expression, we also eliminate creativity and innovation. And that's what has me so confused. Why can't today's senior executives see the danger? Is it as

simple as the old "absolute power corrupts absolutely" adage? Have they really completely forgotten what it was like before they got their preferred parking spot and corporate credit cards? I do NOT believe that only the uptight do-gooders from high school ended up running corporations. That just isn't the way the world works!

Some of you might recognize this situation - it seems to be very similar to the early 1960s, when corporations hired the Mad Men to make sure their brand was seen only as the corporation wished it to be seen. Of course, it was easier then - there was no internet, no blogs and no youtube that could instantly give anyone's words a worldwide audience. Control the media ads, and you controlled the hearts and minds of the entire world. Unfortunately for the corporations and the Mad Men, the early 1960s turned into the late 1960s - and the corporations became "The Establishment" - hated and shunned by an entire generation.

Is that where we are headed? Another social revolution? It is undeniably true that societal and cultural norms rarely stay constant for very long. We move in cycles - just as the conservatism of the Victorian age led to the Roaring '20s, and the stability of the 50's Happy Days led to the riots and protests of the 60's. I really have no idea what is coming - but I do think we're approaching an inflection point where something will change. Happiness in our jobs and careers is becoming a scarce commodity. We're working harder and longer than at any time since the sweat shops of the industrial revolution gave rise to the labor movements, unions and communism.

I know this sounds very maudlin. It is meant to portray my frustration at the fear & inequality

the average corporate employee (AKA drone)

must currently endure. It appears the old counterbalances of labor unions and entrepreneurial opportunities are weak and no longer effective at limiting the barely legal abuses of the corporate overlords. I'm certainly NOT advocating a return to a time when the unions held huge amounts of power that caused ridiculous inefficiencies in businesses. I believe an employee *should* be paid based on their skill and performance - not only on their years of service or payment of union dues. HOWEVER - when the corporate environment is built to provide all benefits to the top leadership at the expense of their employees, I call BS. That is theft - theft of the employee's skill and hard work without the compensation of job satisfaction and a career path for the employee.

There's no easy answers for this one. The corporate masters will continue to tell their serfs that they should be happy to have any jobs in this time of economic upheaval - and then they will drive home in the Mercedes, Porsches and Maseratis that they bought with their $6 million/year total compensation packages. Meanwhile, their employees are reading the latest email from the CEO telling them that in order for the company to make their forecasts, the employees will have a choice of using 5 days of vacation this month or taking 5 days of unpaid leave.

Let me know when the next generation takes over as our corporate leaders. Maybe the teens from the 80's will do a better job. Then again, maybe not...

Cynicism 101

I recently saw this line on a company's employment site: "Cynics, pessimists and curmudgeons need not apply." Well, that certainly caught me up short. I am a self-professed True Cynic, and I am also hunting for a job, does that mean I need to stop and reevaluate my life? Am I holding myself back by having a "bad" attitude? That's not good!

But wait, is being a cynic a bad thing? Maybe I need to back-up and figure out what the heck a cynic really is.

I hate stories that contain a dictionary definition of a word - that is so lame. However, looking up the word "cynic" returns a rather interesting history. A history that has significantly changed the meaning of the word from it's origins.

It starts in ancient Greece, with a wacky group of philosophers that called themselves the "Cynics". These dudes believed that happiness meant living in agreement with nature, and that this world belonged equally to everyone. Suffering was caused by making false judgments about what was important in life. They rejected *everything* associated with the conventions of their modern society - religion, manners, style, money, power & decency - they believed in only the pursuit of virtue through the most simplistic and non-material living. Wow, that sounds like a barrel of fun, doesn't it?

Historians believe ancient Cynicism gave rise to Stoicism, and may have led to many of the austere aspects of Judaism, the rather socialist ideas of early Christianity, and ultimately to the Vow of Poverty still practiced by many orders of Catholic monks and nuns.

Sometime in the late 18th century, the term cynicism took on a different meaning. It focused on the distrust and rejection of the motives of others, and on the jaded & negative attitude toward just about everything and everyone.

That's pretty much where we are today - a cynic is generally regarded to be someone who questions the motives of others and who looks for the black heart in the silver lining. So, is this bad? And, more importantly, when I call myself a "True Cynic" am I aligning myself with the ancient Greek philosophers, or with the modern pessimistic curmudgeon?

The short answer is both. I look at the world around me and I see plenty of false judgments causing suffering. There is no doubt in my mind that this world would be a better place without the petty power struggles that happen at all levels - from a married couple to entire nations. However, I hesitate when we begin to talk about everyone having an equal share of this world. We may have all been *created* equal, but apparently a huge number of us were dropped on our heads shortly after that. Isn't it possible that many of the "false judgments" made by people are simply because they are stupid? Is it a false judgment if they *thought* it was the right thing to do, but they were just too dumb to see the outcome?

This is also where I begin to part ways with the modern definition of cynicism. I do absolutely doubt the altruistic motives of most people, most of the time. In business, looking for how someone benefits from the position they are expounding is very rarely the wrong path. However, I also think there are many instances when the person is not evil or purely power hungry - they are just plain ignorant. The implication that a cynic always thinks a person generally acts in their own best interest is incomplete - I think a person generally acts in what they believe to be their best interests. That doesn't mean it really *is* in their best interests!

So what am I defining to be a True Cynic? Well, I believe the world really is a very silly place, and most of that silliness is caused by the fact that humans as a whole are a VERY silly species. We are capable of producing individuals that can achieve wondrous things - and we are also capable of creating entire civilizations based on truly idiotic tenets. Therefore, when I call myself a cynic, I am speaking of the world and the human species as a generalization. The trick is to find the subset of our species that was not dropped on its head, and when you do - hang on to them! Call me a cynic, ironic, sarcastic, sardonic - just so long as you call me to dinner.

Not A Smart Move

Every site giving tips on finding a new job tells you to be careful about what you post on the internet. That makes sense - you certainly don't want to scare off any prospective employers with discussions of your depravities & deviant proclivities. So, what's one of the first things I do? I start my very first blog. Not a smart move.

Why would I do such a silly thing? Well, it could be because I'm absolutely convinced that a prospective employer will read *my* blog and instead of thinking I'm a moron, they will be so awed by my deep insights and mastery of language that they will be compelled to instantly offer me a position on their executive team as the CGMO (Chief Grey Matter Officer). Or, it could be because I have decided to shuck the yoke of corporate life and make my living as a thinker and writer, and this blog is my first step down a road that will bring me fabulous fame and fortune. Or, it could be because I'm an idiot. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets!

In my humble opinion, the best blogs hold to some sort of theme. The posts are not just random nonsense on anything that tickles the author's fancy - they are *specific* nonsense that tickles the author's (and hopefully the reader's) fancy. So, what will the theme of this blog be? That has been a very difficult decision. After MUCH more thought than I anticipated would be required, I kept coming back to the same point - cynicism.

Cynicism?
Those who have spent any time with me will tell you that underneath (and not far underneath) my outer facade of jovial, good-natured professionalism lies a True Cynic. I'm cynical on a wide range of topics - from the future of the human race to the genre of reality TV (actually, those two topics are connected). If I am successful, I will challenge your preconceived ideas, amuse more people than I offend and be considered a complete idiot only by those who know me best.

And for any prospective employers out there: No, I wasn't really thinking about the long-term ramifications of this decision, but now that you have pointed it out, I think you are right - it really wasn't a smart move.